A/N Hey lovelies! I haven't heard anything from y'all in weeks, don't you love me anymore? Hope you like this chapter. Enjoy!
"I can direct you from here." Sam says, folding up the map and adding it to her collection "I know where I'm going, more or less."
"That's reassuring."
"We're still a few hours away, especially taking the back roads." she shakes her head "I'm really not looking forward to trying to pick our way through the city."
"Maybe the walkers won't be too bad." he tries "They probably moved on like in Atlanta."
"I really hope so. I don't want to have to deal with a herd in a small crowded city."
The more Sam recognizes the towns they go through, the more anxious she gets. She tries to keep herself distracted.
"How long did it take you to get the hang of using your crossbow?"
Daryl shrugs "Couple a months. I knew how to shoot before that, so it was more gettin used to aiming and reloading an all that."
"Maybe you could teach me sometime?" she asks hopefully.
"Don't see why not. Couldn't hurt."
They pass the road sign welcoming them to Cambridge and her distraction attempts stop working.
"Only another fifteen miles or so." she says, fear lacing her voice.
"We might get there before dark, but not by much. We'll have to go in tomorrow." Daryl says, eyeing the slowly dropping sun.
"That's fine, we should be on the edge of town by then anyway. Our place wasn't too far into the city."
"Do you want my food?" Sam asks, offering Daryl her mostly full plate.
"Nah, you eat it." he declines.
"I'm not very hungry tonight." she puts the plate down.
"You gotta eat somethin." he nudges the plate towards her,
"I can't." she just stares at it.
"Damn it Sam, just eat." he says, annoyed with her stubbornness "You'll need your energy tomorrow. An you didn't eat anything all day."
Sam submits, begrudgingly taking a bite of the meal, as soon as the food hits her stomach she is starving and couldn't put the fork down if she wanted to.
"See?" he says, looking at her empty plate "You didn't eat much yesterday either."
"I didn't notice." she says.
"You sure you're gonna be ok to do this?" he asks one more time before they go to sleep.
She lays in his arms and sighs "It doesn't matter if I'm ok or not, at this point we've come too far for me not to be."
Sam wakes in the morning, and even though it's later than usual, Daryl is still asleep. She looks out the window and sees the white dusting on the ground. A giddy excitement replaces all other emotions, just like when she was a kid.
"Daryl," she shakes him awake "wake up. Look."
"Wha?" he forces his eyes open and looks out the window. "Huh. Cool."
"It's so pretty."
He stretches out the kinks in his back "You wanna get going or not?"
"Ugh," she sighs jokingly "Fine, if you're not going to stop and appreciate the little things."
"Oh, I can appreciate them just fine." he mutters with a twitch of a smile, eyeing her backside when she looks for something in her bag.
"What?" she looks back at him.
"Nuthin."
The late autumn sun has melted away the thin layer of snow by late morning. The crisp air and stiff winds blow more leaves off the trees.
Daryl sighs when they have to slow the jeep to a crawl and try to find a way through the traffic jam without backtracking again.
"Jesus, how much of this do we gotta fight through?"
"Just pull in there. It's a few blocks away still, but we can walk from here." Sam says, directing him down an open side street. "We're right near my high school. I know where to go."
"I hope so, you're leading the way." he slides out of the car and waits for her at the end of the street.
"I'll try to avoid the school as much as possible, they probably used it as a shelter in the beginning." Sam says, looking for walkers before she starts walking down the street, careful not to touch any of the cars and set off an alarm.
Daryl follows right behind her, checking behind them periodically, making sure nothing surprises them. Almost as soon as they start moving, the wind picks up, causing all the trash and debris in the streets to get caught in the little tornados. He can hear the moans of a few walkers, but because of the wind can't tell where it is coming from or how far away.
Sam turns the corner ahead of him but instantly backpedals and flattens herself against the brick wall. He walks up to her, placing his mouth next to her ear to be as quiet as possible.
"How many?" he whispers, already knowing what the problem is.
"At least twenty, end of the street is barricaded, looks like they just collected there." she whispers back.
"Do we have to go down that way?"
Sam shakes her head "Gimme a second, make sure I know where else to go."
He waits patiently, but still uneasy so close to so many walkers.
"Alright, let's go." she walks past him and away from the crowded street.
"Shit." she says, avoiding another street of walkers "We're so close, but they're everywhere. Maybe we should just make a run for it?"
"Hell no. how do you know you'll be able to make it into the building before they catch up? Those doors won't break easy an I'm sure they're bolted."
"Fire escape on the back of the building. If the dumpster is still there, we'll have no problem getting up." she says, determination shining in her eyes "We'll find the street closest with the fewest walkers and make a break for it."
"You're crazy."
"It's easier than going half way around the city looking for open streets. We know we can kill on the run, we've done it before. And this way we can at least get in before dark. It's not ideal, but what about life is anymore." she finishes and stares at him.
"Fine, let's go."
Sam goes back a few streets closer to her building and finds one with only a handful of walkers. They run down the street as quietly as they can, taking out a few of the walkers and avoiding the rest. They turn down another street, her building now in sight, and so is another small mass of walkers. The groans from the ones they ran past attract the attention of a few of the ones in front of them.
"Don't stop, we'll end up surrounded." Daryl reminds her, grabbing her arm.
She takes the cue and starts moving again, but straight at the group in front of them. She grabs his hand and sprints past the few pairs of grasping hands, making a quick turn into a narrow alley between the buildings. They scrabble over the trunk of a car parked at the end of the alley.
"Come on," she encourages "fire escape's on the other side."
She hacks away at the new walkers coming towards them and rounds the last corner, seeing the dumpster where it always was. With her last burst of energy she sprints to the dumpster and hauls herself up on it, Daryl following close behind. They make it to the first landing on the fire escape, well out of reach, before they slow down.
"See," Sam says, trying to slow her breathing "that wasn't too bad. We made it."
Daryl glares at her, trying to ignore the pain from his bruised ribs "Lead the way, an lets be done with this."
Sam smiles, despite his lack of humor and begins to climb. She stops a few floors up "Fifth floor, this is us."
The broken glass covers the floor under the window and they carefully climb through.
"I almost wish I didn't have to do that." Sam says, looking sadly around her mother's bed room.
"You know the drill, we sweep first, then we can look around." Daryl says, walking in front of her.
The apartment is empty, front door still locked.
"They're not here." Sam says, mixes emotions warring inside her.
"We'll look around, check and see if they left you a note or somethin. I'll check out here, you check the bedrooms, sound good?"
"Yeah, ok." she heads back down the hall, stopping in the first room.
Cally's room looks like it was looted, but Sam reminds herself that it looked like that long before this started. Clothes strewn all over the floor, only a narrow path from the door to the bed, text books lay in piles on and around her desk, the closet is open and spewing it's contents into the rest of the room. Sam smiles when she remembers how often their mother would get on her sister's case to clean up her room, but it never worked for more than a few days. Behind all the books on the desk is one of Sam's favorite pictures of them, a few years old now, but they were sitting in the park for a picnic, their mother trying to get a nice picture of them, and they just kept making faces at each other. Sam smiles at the picture and slips out of the frame. Sam's copy of 'The Hobbit', which Cally repeatedly steals, sits on the night stand next to her bed. She picks up the book and tucks the picture safely inside. The corner of a notebook page sticking out of the book catches her eye. Daryl's knock on the door stops her before she can see if it's anything.
"Nothing out there. How bout you?" he leans against the door frame.
"I don't know yet," she holds up the book and piece of paper "I got a little distracted."
"Well?"
She looks at the paper, trying to read her sister's scribbled handwriting.
'Sammy, I hope to god you find this some day. It's two weeks after they closed down the city, I had to sneak back to leave this for you. Mommy and I found a group of people that can help keep us alive, but we move around a lot to stay away from those undead fuckers. I miss you so much, but Mom says we'll see you again some day. I love you, and Mom loves you. Stay safe, and stay alive big sis.'
One little tear quickly drops down her cheek and onto the paper, joining the dried ones from her sister. Sam looks up at Daryl, a sad smile on her face. "They made it out of the city. I don't know where they are now, but as long as they made it out, I know they'll be ok."