It was quiet the next morning. Ace didn't get any sleep, which meant that she was approaching her 48th hour awake, not that it was uncommon among the group. The only one that slept more than an hour that night was Carl. Everyone was miserable, and no one had the energy to do anything about it.
Rick split the fuel between the two cars, taking some from the Hyundai and putting it in the Silverado. It was the only way he could keep the group together while keeping them on the move. No one was being left behind, and no one was going off alone. Not anymore. After everything that happened, he couldn't risk losing anyone else.
When he was done, he gathered everyone up, wanting to get on the road as quickly as possible. They were still too close to the farm for his liking, so he wanted to get as far away from the herd as they could.
They drove for almost an hour and found nothing. Rick was becoming worried that they would have to stop and send someone ahead to siphon some fuel, but he would keep going for as long as he could without letting that happen. Sending people off alone was the worst-case scenario at that moment, but the idea of it was becoming increasingly possible.
Carl was so still that he could have been mistaken for being asleep, hugged into his mother's side and sitting in silence as they drove on. After Rick blew up on them the day before, he hadn't said a word to anyone. Carl was still trying to cope with the fact that Shane was dead, that his dad was the one that killed him. And then that they were all infected, that he would someday become a walker.
Lori knew that she would have to tell their son about the affair with Shane soon because she was the biggest reason he was gone. Shane meant too much to Carl for her to sweep it under the rug, and he deserved to know what happened. But she couldn't tell him. Not yet. They all needed some time.
To Rick's pleasure, Ace had fallen asleep on the drive. Her head was against the window, body twisted to the side, so she was resting on one hip. Using the thin coat as a blanket, she was out cold almost as soon as they started driving.
Rick made sure he kept going as smoothly as he could to keep her asleep so she wouldn't see the ever-declining fuel gauge. He wasn't in the place where he could take the comments or criticism that Ace would surely give if she were awake. Rick didn't blame her for it, he'd started to notice her pestering worsened when she was worried or anxious. Those emotions radiated off of her like heat from a space heater, projecting those emotions into something she knew.
"There's a car up ahead," T-Dog motioned in front of them.
"I see it," Rick said, slowing down and stopping on the side of the road.
Before they left the ruins, Ace recommended that the Silverado drive in front, so if they ever needed to stop or slow down, then the others would see them. It had the lowest miles per gallon, so they would almost always be the ones that needed to stop first. It was the only way of being able to stop without using the horn and alerting every walker in the area every time a quick stop was needed.
Just as she said, the other vehicles parked up close behind them.
"I'll stay with the kids," Lori said, keeping her eyes ahead.
Rick didn't answer, and neither of them looked at each other as he stepped out of the vehicle and walked ahead. T-Dog followed him, but not before grabbing the fuel canister and rubber hose from the back of the car.
Glenn and Daryl followed them over to the new vehicle, and they all searched the inside before going to siphon the fuel. As Glenn kneeled down at the back of the car, T-Dog looked at the gauge and turned back to the others.
"It's more than half full," he announced.
"Who'd just leave a car here that's got so much gas left?" Glenn questioned.
"No one," Daryl pointed out past the tree line to a house that none of them saw when they first started looking around. "Look."
Glenn stood up and looked at the house, "Do you think they're still here?"
"Dunno," Daryl shrugged.
"If they are, they won't be happy that we're taking their gas," T-Dog said.
"Should we go?" Glenn asked.
Rick shook his head, "That's the first place we've come across in two days. If someone was in there, they would have done something by now. We should go take a look around. If it's empty, we'll stay here for the night."
The three were hesitant, still worried about the idea of someone being inside, but none of them argued with him. They couldn't.
"Glenn, stay with the group," Rick continued. "Let them know what we're doing, and stay alert. We don't know how many walkers are around here."
Glenn nodded, "Okay."
Rick turned to the others, "Come on, let's check it out."
Glenn stayed by the car, deciding to siphon the rest of the fuel before telling the others what was going on. He watched as they walked into the treeline, the shrubbery making them almost invisible, which made him start to worry and look around for walkers.
Rick led them towards the cabin, and they were all silent as they neared the wooden house, peering in every window before deciding whether or not to enter. They couldn't really see anything because it was so dark inside.
"Looks clear," Rick said, but he didn't really know for sure.
Daryl had his crossbow loaded and ready, and Rick had a knife in his hands. T-Dog walked up two stairs to the door, pulling the gun from the hem of his trousers, aiming it where the door would open.
"Ready?" T-Dog reached for the handle.
"T," Rick stopped him. "No guns."
T-Dog paused for a moment before his eyes widened, "Shit, you're right," but then his face turned to confusion, and he asked, "what should I use?"
They were all quiet for a second, looking around for a more quiet weapon that T-Dog could use, when Daryl took a step back, grabbing a shovel that was leaning against the front of the building before holding it out for T-Dog to take.
"Oh," he frowned but grabbed it from him anyway, "great."
Holding the shovel in one hand, he reached forward to grab the handle with his other, before twisting it down and pushing it open. There was nothing they could see, not in the first room, at least.
Not to begin with.
The noise of the door hitting the wall was not left on deaf ears but on dead ones, which became apparent as a man stammered out from behind an open doorway at the back of the room. The walker stepped towards them, leaving the three standing in surprise that there was something inside.
"Move!" Daryl pushed his way in front of Rick and T-Dog, swinging his crossbow up and immediately taking the man down with one swift bolt.
Daryl lowered the crossbow then, pulling his knife from the holster and glancing around the main room to make sure that there were no more inside. He moved through the kitchen and living room to the door the first walker came out from, but there was nothing else in there either. There was only one other door that led to an empty bathroom.
"Well, he didn't leave, that's for sure," T-Dog said, referring to their previous worries about the car.
"Let's drag this body out and get the others," Rick said.
"I'm gonna take a look around," Daryl said. "See what he left here."
️"We cleared the house," Rick said. "Go get everyone; bring them inside."
Glenn nodded, turning around and walking back to the vehicles where they had left the group. He already said that they found the cabin and that they needed to wait until they were done clearing it out to see if they were staying or not, so all he really needed to do was say a quick Come on, and they were following him over to the house.
After telling the Greene family and Carol, he then walked to the Silverado, letting Lori and Carl know that they could go inside. As the two stepped out of the car, he noticed Ace still inside and still asleep.
"Ace," Glenn called, but she didn't move. He then leaned into the car and across the seats, placed a hand on her shoulder and gently shook her to wake her up.
She grumbled something as she woke up and rubbed her eyes. "What?"
"Come on," he said, "you can sleep inside."
Ace sighed and stretched her arms in the air before grabbing her bag from the ground next to her. She pulled the jacket around and placed her arms through before getting out of the car and letting Glenn lock it behind her.
He led her over to the house where the others were going inside, and Daryl and T-Dog were moving some furniture out to make room for everyone. The cabin only had three rooms, the bedroom, bathroom and main living area, and there was no way they would all fit inside with the coffee table in the middle of the room.
Ace waited for them to awkwardly carry the table out before walking up to the house. Rick was standing in the doorway, partly watching the group and also keeping an eye out in case any walkers decided to show up.
"Are we staying here?" Ace asked, rubbing her eyes.
"For the night," Rick answered.
She wasn't surprised, just disappointed. She knew Rick wanted to find a forever home, and this house in the middle of nowhere didn't have the supplies or defences for this to be where they would hang their hats, but they had been on the road for a day, and Ace was starting to get sick of it.
Ace followed Hershel into the living room, dumping her bag down near the fireplace and sitting down on the ground, leaning back against the arm of the sofa. Glenn sat on the ground beside her, with Maggie cross-legged on the sofa behind him. Hershel and Beth sat next to Maggie.
Ace was shocked that Glenn would sit next to her when he seemed so angry about them keeping the infected secret. She wondered if he knew that she was involved with it but decided not to test fate and ask.
Across the room, she saw Lori sit down in an armchair, with Carl sitting on the ground at her feet. Everyone else took their positions in the room and watched as some of the guys wandered around, gathering what little supplies the house still had left to offer.
Rick came out of the bedroom, holding a pile of clothing in his arms, "There were some coats in the wardrobe," Rick dumped them on the ground. "Take one if you need it. We'll find some warmer clothes soon."
Ace reached forward and grabbed the last one from the pile before putting it on. It was a thick black coat made of some waterproof material. It must have belonged to an adult man because it was way too big on her, and the sleeves stretched so far past her hands that it was laughable.
Daryl walked over to the fire, holding a few tins he grabbed from the kitchen so everyone could get something to eat. He hated how much food it took to feed everyone, but it had been over a day since any of them had a meal, so they all needed it.
He handed out the first few bowls before then leaning over and placing one in front of Ace. Finally, he gave one to Rick and took the last one for himself. They all just sat there and ate in silence.
Ace was more than happy to finally get the hot meal, even if it was just tomato soup. With the new coat and the food, she was finally starting to warm up to a point where she no longer had to sit with her legs hugged to her chest.
Glenn was the first to break the silence, still annoyed that Rick had hidden the fact that they were all infected and still very tired from being on the road for a day. He just wanted some more answers; he wanted to know if Rick knew anything else as he dragged them across the state looking for some kind of home.
"What's the plan, Rick?" Glenn asked, trying to keep his voice level as he started digging for some answers. "I know you want to find a place, fine, but do you have anywhere in mind? Farm? Town?"
"Store?" Maggie continued for him.
"I'm all for finding a place for us to fix up," T-Dog agreed. "But it'd be better if we had some kind of idea where we were going."
Rick was quiet. He didn't know how to answer their questions because he didn't know the area well enough just to pick out a place and stay there. They needed to stay far from the city to steer clear of the herds, but other than that, he was clueless.
They needed some kind of home, but they couldn't say for sure where that would be because they didn't know the state of any nearby areas; he didn't know if they had been bombed or overrun.
"We'll find somewhere," was all he could think to say.
"And what do we do when we find this place?" Carol asked. "We had fences around the farm, and they came down."
"Can we build walls?" Beth questioned.
"That could be dangerous," T-Dog said. "But I doubt we'd have another option. We need something that's gonna keep walkers out."
"There's no point planning any of this until we know where we'll be staying," Hershel said, stopping all of them from continuing the topic.
Rick was thankful, giving a nod to Hershel before continuing to finish his food. Everyone else also went back to eating, now fully aware that they had no plan, and they just had to keep going with no way of finding out if anywhere would even be safe.
️They had been on the move for almost a month, moving from house to house as they tried to cope with the idea of being on the road. No one was enjoying it, least of all Ace, and she was slowly starting to become downhearted as they jumped so quickly from one place to another.
Carl was aware of the affair. During the first week, Lori pulled him aside and confessed, about her and Shane, about how she thought his father was dead. Not everything, of course. But enough. He didn't take it well, but she knew it needed to come from her rather than have it slip up from someone else in the group. It was one of the reasons he was dead, so Carl needed to know.
Ace soon noticed that Carl was much more distant towards his mother, ignoring her when she spoke and walking away when she wanted to get his attention. Ace knew that Carl would be angry, angry at both Lori and Rick, but there was nothing she could say to make the situation any better, so she didn't say anything.
They found new clothes during their time on the road. Not a lot and they were going to need more soon, but at least all of them had something warm to protect them from the ever-declining temperature.
Ace was now sporting her brown wool-flannel coat, which was much warmer than the thin jacket Maggie had given her. The next thing she needed was a good pair of boots because her red Converses were useless when it came to keeping her dry, and it was starting to rain more and more as the weather got colder.
Rick made sure everyone had a weapon, both a gun and something quiet to take walkers down with, knowing that they couldn't keep shooting in places where they wanted to stay. They had no idea where herds were or what shooting would attract, so they had to kill walkers silently unless they had no other choice. People still needed some more experience in both methods, but for now, they were going to keep things quiet.
Ace still had her gun and knife from what happened on the farm. She had it for so long that she just assumed it was her gun now. Rick said when he was teaching her to shoot that she could use that because he had his Python, but she never expected just to keep the gun forever.
Everyone had also been more involved with clearing out and searching buildings, with Rick even letting Carl join him on the rare occasion. Carl never killed a walker with his knife, or a gun, because they hadn't found silencers or anything, but Rick knew that if Carl was going to help out more, then he, out of everyone, needed a silencer on his gun. For now, he spent most of the time waiting outside with Lori and Beth.
Ace had cleared out some houses herself, taking down walkers with her knife-like Daryl taught her back on the farm. She only really did it for something to do, as this was really the only activity she had left. Her iPod was dying, and she wouldn't let herself use the last few percent of battery she had.
They found a few houses on the outskirts of a town and decided to see if any of them had supplies that they were interested in.
Ace had gone into one of them with Maggie, and the two of them checked the ground floor together for walkers before continuing their search upstairs. They always checked the entire house before looting anything there, and this was no different.
Maggie opened the door to the final bedroom, holding up her knife but soon lowering it when she saw nothing inside.
"It's clear," she said.
Ace nodded, entering the room to take a look around for some clothes or blankets to take for the group. Maggie helped her, looking in a cupboard and under the bed but finding nothing that the group would need.
"Come on," Maggie tapped her shoulder as she moved past her. "Let's take a look in the other bedroom."
They walked into a room with a single bed, desk, wardrobe and chest of drawers. The walls were masked with posters and pictures that clearly belonged to a girl that once owned the room. With the recurring face in the images, Maggie soon realised that the person who once lived here would have been around her own age.
Ace followed her inside before quickly getting distracted. "Look," she said, getting Maggie's attention. On a cork board above a chest of drawers was a red triangular flag with white words that read Harvard. It had been glued to a white stick like it was supposed to sit in a pen pot but had been pinned to the board instead, "Harvard."
Maggie walked over to join her, glancing at Ace, whose eyes remained on the flag. She was quiet for a moment before she turned her head to look around the rest of the room, trying to find more clues about the person who lived in this room.
"Wonder what they were studying," Ace said finally.
Maggie glanced around before opening two of the drawers at the top of the cabinet to see some textbooks and stationery. She grabbed the first book and looked at the title before saying, "Looks like economics."
Ace grimaced. "Gross."
"Yeah, gross," Maggie nodded in agreement.
She flipped through the textbook for a moment, understanding Ace's dismay when she saw the work inside the book, before closing it and dumping it back down onto the chest of drawers.
Her eyes moved back up to the flag on the cork board and all the images that had been pinned around it from the girl who had been living there before. Maggie would never have considered going that far away for school, as where she went for college, two hours away from the farm, was far enough for her.
"Long way to go for college," she pointed out.
"Maybe," Ace stood on her toes and reached out across the chest of drawers to grab the flag, pulling it out from the cork board. "But it's a really good one."
Maggie guessed that Ace was the kind of girl that had been looking into where she wanted to go for college, and she knew that if Ace ever had the chance to apply, Harvard would have definitely been an option for life would have suited Ace just fine.
If only she could have gotten the chance to have that experience, Maggie thought.
"Did you go to university?"
Maggie nodded, "Yeah. I was coming home for the summer, and then the dead started walking."
"Where did you go?" Ace asked.
"University of Georgia," Maggie said. "In Athens."
Ace nodded, rummaging around in the drawer that Maggie pulled the textbook from. Maggie didn't really know what she was looking for, but just let her continue her search.
"So, what was your plan?" Maggie asked, walking across the room to the wardrobe. "Be a mechanic forever?" She joked.
Ace started to spin the flag between her fingers, "Med school, maybe one back in Britain. If not, then Biomed."
"You wanted to be a doctor?" Maggie didn't know why she was surprised. Beth went back and forth on what she wanted to do all the time, so she didn't expect Ace to have an immediate answer.
"Hadn't decided. Didn't get too much time to look into it."
"You weren't even sixteen," Maggie reminded her. "You still had two, three more years of high school. You didn't need to make a decision yet."
"I guess," Ace shrugged. "I was ahead in a lot of classes, though."
"So what kind of doctor would you have been?" Maggie questioned.
Again, she was slow to answer, but she had definitely put thought into it, "I might have gone with oncology."
"Oncology?"
"Cancer."
Maggie opened her mouth to say something but had to stop herself before she could snap out her remark. She had to remind herself that she was not speaking with Beth, and if this were her real sister, then she would have understood that the snarky tone that would come out was not used to be mean. But Maggie avoided it, mainly because she didn't know if Ace would pick up on that or not.
Instead, she shook her head and smiled, "I know what it is. I meant to ask, why oncology?"
"Oh," Ace pressed her lips into a thin line. "I don't know."
She definitely knew; Maggie could see that much. It was one of the reasons she didn't try pushing any further. Ace had never actually said anything about her mother to Maggie, but she picked up that Ace no longer had that parental figure in her life. She didn't know how recent the loss was, but it was clear on her face that it happened.
Ace gave the same look when talking about this that she did when she said that she didn't really talk about her periods with her dad. It was how Maggie guessed that Ace lost her mother, so she didn't want to keep asking about this if it was only going to upset her.
She wished they had a better time so she could bring it up, get Ace to talk to her about what happened, because she knew that talking helped, but there was never a good time. Not when they spent every second looting whatever and moving from house to house. There was no privacy anymore for such intimate conversations.
Both Maggie and Ace jumped when someone rushed through the door, but their panic died down when they realised it was only Glenn. He looked between the two of them, staring at them like something had happened.
After a few seconds, his face relaxed, and he lowered whatever weapon he was holding at the ready when he entered the room, "Are you guys okay up here?"
"Yeah, we're fine," Maggie nodded.
"What's taking so long?" Glenn questioned. "We were getting worried."
"Nothing," she shook her head. "We're okay. We're just talking."
Glenn nodded slowly, glancing at Ace for some kind of confirmation that never came. Instead, he rubbed the back of his neck and asked, "Did you guys check to grab anything from downstairs yet?"
Maggie shook her head, "No, we were just getting to it now."
"I'll help you," Glenn left the room, leaving Maggie and Ace standing there alone, just as they were before he joined them.
Maggie turned to Ace, "Come on before he starts to panic even more."
Ace only nodded, following her out of the room and dropping the Harvard flag on the chest of drawers.
Maggie watched her for a second, "You aren't taking it?"
"It's not my school," Ace shrugged. "Doesn't mean anything to me."
"I found some candles," Carol said as Ace walked down the stairs. "We might actually be able to see something tonight."
They had spent an unreasonable amount of time in houses in the dark. She couldn't count how many times she hit her hip on a sideboard walking past or stubbed her toes. Having the candles lit wouldn't override her inability to walk past an object without crashing into it in some way, but at least she would be able to see what was the cause of her pain.
"Let's just hope the smell doesn't set off Lori," Carol added quietly, turning the glass over in her hands to check what the scent of the candle was.
The door opened and closed, and Ace heard the loud voice of Rick who had walked in, "The cars are facing away from the house, if any walkers come we can just drive out of here."
Apparently she and Maggie had been upstairs for so long that they just decided they would be staying in that house that night. Not that it bothered her. There were enough bedrooms now that she would finally be able to sleep on an actual bed. She would have to share, but she would be on a bed nonetheless.
Carl followed his dad inside, a grim look on his face.
Ace stopped him before he could walk past, "You okay?"
Carl was still down about what happened to Shane, and what Lori told him. Ace had tried to cheer him up over the past weeks with board games and cards, but she understood that he just needed some time to forgive each of his parents for what happened.
Carl only nodded in reply, dropping his bag in the corner of the room where she assumed he would be sleeping that night.
"Wanna play a game, or something?"
He shook his head, sitting on the ground.
"It'll be fun," Ace coaxed.
"I'm good," Carl sat on the ground.
No one else had settled yet, all rushing around, looting the house and taking things out to the car. Things always went in the car. They weren't staying here for long, Ace realised. It was better to get everything ready for when they had to leave.
"I guess it's probably best," Ace rolled her eyes. "You wouldn't have won, anyways."
Carl glanced up, unamused by Ace's feeble attempts to converse with him. But he was still willing to prove her wrong, "I saw some games in the closet under the stairs."
"You're on, sucker," Ace grinned, walking away to find the games he was talking about.
There were boxes of board games and a pack of cards under the stairs, on some dusty shelves that made it seem like these games were out of use before everyone left the house. Ace would have grabbed monopoly if she knew the game wouldn't last 19,386 hours. That was her rough estimate, anyways.
She didn't know what Carl would want to play, so she grabbed the deck of cards and a few boxes from the cupboard before walking back out to join Carl. He had been rummaging through his bag for something before she joined him, but even then, he stopped whatever he was doing when Ace sat on the ground in front of him.
"What do you want to play?"
Carl shrugged.
Ace spread the boxes out in front of her, before grabbing one and holding it up to him, "What about Battleships?"
"Okay," Ace had to ignore the eye roll that came along with the answer.
She opened the cardboard box and pulled out the plastic casing that held the ships along with the white and red pieces. Both she and Carl separated the coloured pins that had gone everywhere in the box, before putting down their ships around the board.
"You can start," Ace said after they were done.
"Umm . . . D3?"
"Miss," Ace was quiet for a moment as she thought about her guess, and placing the white piece where Carl had just guessed. "J10?"
"Miss."
They continued on for a little while, just calling out the coordinates to each other. The two were ignored by the group who were getting the house ready or settling down in the other room to start cooking.
Ace glanced over the board at Carl, who was laying on the ground in front of her. He didn't look very happy, even with this riveting gameplay, so Ace decided to take the matters into her own hands.
"Are you okay?" Ace questioned. "B7?"
"I'm okay," Carl mumbled. "Miss."
Ace huffed, grabbing the white piece and placing it on the board. "I know things are hard lately, and I hate being on the road as much as the next person. But everyone's busy right now if you want to talk."
"E10?"
"Miss," Ace answered. "We could even play upstairs if you wanted to talk out of the way. A1?"
"Hit."
"And we could—" Ace stopped herself, grabbing the red pin. "A1? Really?"
"Yeah."
"I think you're supposed to tell me what ship I hit."
"What's the small one?"
"Submarine, and it's your turn," Ace reminded him.
Carl frowned, "Don't you get another go when you get a hit?"
"I don't know, let's just keep playing like this for now," Ace suggested. "Your turn."
They continued on.
Carl seemed happy enough playing down here with her, and he was even happier when he started sinking some more of Ace's ships. He found the aircraft carrier first, before one of the submarines.
By the end of the game, they each had one ship left to sink. Carl with a cruiser for Ace, and Ace with the battleship for Carl.
"And finally," she had a big smile on her face, "H6."
"You sank the battleship."
Ace triumphantly put the red pin on the board. "Told you I'd win."
Carl rolled his eyes, but lifted his head from the ground, "Again?"
️
Ace woke up the next morning in the same bedroom that she and Maggie had been talking in, on the outside of the bed with the duvet being pulled away from her. Well, the duvet was practically imaginary at this point.
Beth had the inside, tucked up against the wall, stealing whatever blanket Ace could have used to keep warm. Ace didn't care, she just didn't expect that she would be freezing to death so early in life.
There was no chance she would ever get any of the duvet back, and she knew it wasn't worth trying and waking her up. Instead, Ace stood up, got dressed.
She packed whatever she was using as pyjamas in her bag, swung it over her shoulder and quietly made her way downstairs into the main room.
On her way to the kitchen, where she heard voices, she heard some other sounds coming from the bathroom. Keeled over the toilet, and being sick was Lori, who had undoubtedly had another wave of morning sickness hit her.
Ace slowly entered the room, perching on the side of the bath to help her. She leaned across from her seat and started scooping up Lori's hair and holding it back behind her head so none of it would get messy.
Lori reached back and placed a hand on the top of her leg, as a silent thank you as she continued to be sick. Ace understood the gesture, and remained there in silence to help Lori until she was done throwing up.
Lori had been getting so much worse, worse than what was considered average for morning sickness, Ace noticed. Whenever they had any meat cooking, she would run away to the bathroom, and that wasn't her only trigger.
It seemed like she was always having trouble keeping her food down, which worried the group. If she couldn't keep anything down, then she would become very unhealthy, and it would be bad for both her and the baby.
The constant moving around couldn't have helped with the sickness, but until they found somewhere where they could stay, they didn't really have much of a choice. It did mean that they had to keep sometimes stopping for Lori to throw up on the side of the road.
When it seemed like Lori had finally finished being sick, Ace grabbed some of the toilet paper from the counter and ripped off a few pieces, before handing it to her. Lori graciously took it from her, wiping it at the corner of her mouth.
She took a few moments before finally deciding to say something, "I was never this bad when I was pregnant with Carl."
"Well, you never had to deal with rotten corpses walking around either," Ace said with a shrug.
Ace immediately realised what she said wrong when Lori spun around and turned her head back to the toilet and started being sick again. Ace leaned forward to grab her again, pulling the loose strands back behind her face.
She cringed at her mistake, "Sorry."
When Lori had stopped being sick again, she told Ace that she was okay and that Ace could leave. She didn't believe her but listened to her anyway, knowing that Lori probably felt like a burden, always needing help from the others around her and not wanting to add to any more distress.
Everyone was sitting around in the kitchen when she came out of the bathroom, watching her for a second. They all must have guessed that Lori was sick again, from the looks on their faces.
Rick took a step forward, "How is she?"
Ace glanced back at the bathroom, "Bad."
Carol moved past her to help Lori in the bathroom.
"Morning sickness is kind of a scam, really," Ace frowned, sitting down at the table next to Carl, who glanced at her when the wooden chair creaked. "It happens whenever it feels like, not just in the mornings."
The sound of the back door swinging open, followed by the creaking of someone slamming it closed behind them, interrupting them from continuing the conversation. T-Dog entered the kitchen where everyone was, rubbing his hands together frantically to generate some kind of heat.
"Jesus, it's cold out there," T-Dog mumbled as he came inside.
"Hopefully, it'll start snowing soon," Rick said. "Maybe the walkers will just freeze up."
"God, I hope so," T-Dog agreed.
Ace frowned, having never considered what would happen to the walkers when it snowed. She agreed with Rick that it would probably be best if they froze over the winter seasons, but how well would they be frozen? And walkers inside houses would also have shelter and protection, and wouldn't succumb to the snow.
They would only find out when it actually started snowing, and they weren't at that point yet, but as they said it was getting so much colder, so they shouldn't have to wait much longer.
"Did you see anything out there?" Rick questioned.
T-Dog shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest. "No," he said. "Nothing, for the most part, this place is pretty empty. Only had to kill one walker in the next house, but I didn't see anymore."
"Not many supplies, neither," Daryl said from his seat on the counter. "This place was looted 'fore we got here."
"Or people just took whatever they could when they evacuated," Glenn suggested.
"Doesn' matter," Daryl shrugged. "Whatever it was means tha' we get nothin'."
"We'll get on the road when Lori is feeling well," Hershel said. "Find somewhere else."
"Yeah," Rick agreed.
"I'll wake Beth up, get her things ready," Maggie announced, leaving the room and walking upstairs to make sure her sister was ready to leave.
Ace sat at the table, listening to them as they talked about their plans. She was still focused on what they said about it snowing soon. It was certainly cold enough to start snowing, and she was surprised it hadn't happened already.
"If it snows, we're going to need a third car," Ace spoke up, getting everyone's attention. "Daryl can't ride the bike through the snow, and we don't have enough seats in the two cars we have to take everyone."
They all thought about what she was saying for a moment before Rick gave a nod, "We'll keep an eye out."
"We don't have any tools either," T-Dog reminded him.
Ace had completely forgotten that they had no tools, but he was right. If they did find another vehicle, there was a good chance that she would need to repair it or the others, but they had no way of doing that.
She didn't understand how it slipped her mind.
"None?" Rick questioned.
"We left them on the farm," Hershel nodded.
He frowned, "All of them? I thought we had a toolbox in the car."
Ace glanced up, her lips pressed into a thin line, "Glenn was using some of them to fix the RV, and I had the rest when I was looking at the generator. They were all being used, and then the herd came."
"No one got a chance to grab anything before we left the farm," Maggie finished for me.
"I didn't realise," Rick ran his hands over his face.
Hershel moved further into the room, "We'll find some more tools. There's bound to be some houses with a garage or shed."
They continued talking about what else they needed for a little while, waiting for the others to be ready to leave. Lori and Carol came out of the room not long later, getting the group's attention.
Carol grabbed a bottle of water from the kitchen counter, walked over and handed it to Lori. Lori quietly thanked her and took a sip before looking at Rick, "What's the plan? Are we leaving?"
"If you're okay to travel," Rick said.
She nodded, "I am."
"What're we waitin' for?" Daryl pushed himself off the counter, landing with a loud thud on his feet. "Le's get this show on the road."
Everyone gathered their bags and made their way out to the cars. Ace, who already had her things packed, walked outside and got into the Hyundai with the Greenes and Glenn. She would have stayed in the Silverado, but Carol wanted to join Lori to make sure everything was okay, which Ace was fine with. She would have no idea what to do if anything went wrong, and she didn't want to be in the same car as someone who was going to keep feeling sick.
She waited for the others as Maggie and Beth climbed into the back of the car next to her, and Hershel sat in the passenger seat, allowing Glenn to drive. There was a moment of silence before the car started up, and they were on the move.
Again.