"You been holdin' out on me?" Daryl tugged at the flap of one of her cargo pockets down her legs playfully as he passed her to the breakfast buffet set to the side of the table. "Got a bit of country in you after all?"
Eloise blinked. Her outfit of the day was a pair of high waisted white and black camouflage cargo pants, black belt, and a black, long sleeved crop top shirt. She'd tamed her hair waves to a pair of pig tails rested behind her ears. Freshly shined black combat boots laced up far passed her ankle tapped against the floor.
She'd snuck out of the shared room early that morning as he snored peacefully on the floor. The thought of waking the man after a night of drinking and making out in the shower was not the exact situation she was prepared to confront that early.
Lori, Carl, Sophia, Carol, Rick, and Dale were audience to his question. Lori's brows raised in interest behind her coffee cup. It was a thick focus of the table as they pretended to not have noticed the interaction.
She swallowed down a mouthful of reanimated powdered milk. "I was caught out of town during a dance competition. This was one of my uniforms."
"Dance," he scoffed. His eyes took a long appraisal of her before he turned to heap a plate full of scrambled eggs atop his plate. "What kind of dance?"
"Hip hop," she answered.
He grimaced like he'd taken a bite of rotten food. "Hip hop?"
"Stomp," she clarified.
"Hence last night," Lori added. Her smile was that of a safe, fed, well rested woman. A refreshing brightness to the eyes as her body filled with the old comforts of memory. "The dancing with T-Dog."
The empty glass lowered to the table. Eloise's face stricken with the reminder of what wine had done to her the night before. "He looked like a guy he knew his way around footwork. I just thought I'd see how much."
"You're a good dancer," hummed the lovely flowing tone of the young girl next to her mother. Her bobbed blonde hair was straight and brushed cleanly through. The dark circles buried beneath her eyes were lightened, to only a faint shadow.
Eloise smiled. "I can teach you, you know."
"You can?" Her eyes widened.
"Sure. I used to work at a choreography center with girls younger than you. That's the time to start. While you're still flexible."
Carol rubbed her daughter's back. "She used to take dance classes when she was younger." Her voice broke then, "Ed thought it was a waste of time. Learnin' how to dance."
The late husband was not missed by many in the group. It was only the fallen faces of the two family members who showed any sympathy for the loss.
"You know we had a guy come into our studio. Forty years old. Said his dad never let him pursue dance as a young boy. Afraid what might be said about him," Eloise explained. "He came in and enrolled in a beginner's class. Oldest one there."
"Forty?" Dale chuckled. He nudged Rick at his side. "Can you imagine walking into one of them places?"
Rick was a quiet man. He did not ramble on with nothing to say.
He simply shook his head and replied, "No. I don't think I can."
"He was one of the best dancers there," Eloise explained to the doubtful masculine faces of the table. Even Daryl held a nose wrinkled in distaste. "He loved dance and was driven to do it. That's what made him so great, even years past his prime."
"I'd have loved to dance," Carol murmured.
"I bet he had no shortage of dance partners." Lori smirked from her cup. "A man that can dance is rare enough."
It welcomed a rumble of chuckles at the expense of Rick who looked at his wife with interest. "I danced at our wedding."
"And you tripped over my feet," she pointed out. "Twice."
Breakfast was a casual affair. People filtered in as they awoke. Poor Glenn crawled to the table and never lifted his head up off the edge or he'd turn a deeper shade of green. Jacqui gave him a warm cup of coffee and urged him to drink. Everyone looked refreshed over their warm meal. Fresh showers did them well.
All except Shane, who still looked like a stuck-up asshole with his condescending down-the-nose glare.
"Christ Almighty, did you even go to bed? You look like shit." Rick chuckled.
A flash of fearsome eyes jumped to Lori at Rick's side before he answered. "Yeah, well, I can't sleep without thinking I should be the one awake. In case something happens…like at camp."
It dropped the tone. Reminders of what they'd escaped, just a day before, flashed to their minds.
Ed, Amy, Jim. Losing Morales and Miranda and their kids. A whole part of the camp, disappeared.
There was not a single person at the table that had not lost everything at the start of the pandemic. Cities were decimated. The population of the world, razed. The people they all once knew, in passing, acquaintances, childhood friends, lovers, parents, children, siblings, rivalries. It was snapped out of reality as if their memories were a simulation, too fantastical to have been true.
If it weren't for the constant reminder that required slaughter, Eloise wouldn't trust that the people she once knew were real.
The mood only sank further when Dr. Jenner appeared. He poured himself a cup. Dale rose, unable to control his curiosity. He had to know what there was to know about the epidemic. Was there a cure? The pressing question.
"It's the reason we're here, isn't it?" Dale stated.
Dr. Jenner was a strange, awkward man. He led them back to the presumed control center of the facility. The large screen showed just what it was to be a person, and what it meant to be ended by the disease. The flurry of lights on an MRI died to a dull glow at the lowest part of the brain.
The bullet through the skull ended the glow.
He told them there was no hope. The world was overrun. It was pointless to run.
"That timer. It is counting down to something." Dale pointed at the blinding red light of numbers. "What happens when it gets down to zero?"
"The generators," the doctor said weakly.
No matter what they tried to do, there was no stopping what would happen. The building would explode. It contained and decontaminated everything within its wall to ensure nothing escaped. Including them.
They were locked inside. None to escape the room forced to watch the numbers dwindle.
"No!" Shane shouted. His large hands banged at the solid metal doors.
The suction of air in the room felt permanent. It pressurized them in the cylinder, like in a container never to be opened again.
"Open the doors!" Rick exclaimed. "Let us go."
"I can't," Jenner said.
They clawed at the walls. Scared. After he tried the doctor, Daryl swung on the door with an axe. It clanked loudly. Sparks flew through the room. The distinct faint scent of metal and smoke in their bodies.
Lori clutched Carl. Sophia was kept to Carol's chest as she whimpered.
The begging. They pleaded for their lives with the man who kept them locked in his suicide.
"Let us keep trying," Lori begged. "As long as we are alive, we have to keep trying."
"My daughter doesn't deserve to die like this."
The words of mothers. It broke Eloise's heart. She had to turn away to keep the water from spilling down her cheeks.
No parent deserved to hold their child in guaranteed death.
"It lights the oxygen on fire. No pain. Nothing."
"It doesn't matter how you explain it," Eloise snarled. Her throat clenched, unable to swallow or the rattling sobs would overtake her. "It's still murder. You're murdering us."
"You'd have them die out there?" Dr. Jenner shook his head. "You'd rather watch them turn and have their skulls split open to find peace when it is here. Now. A painless exit."
"Keep trying!" Shane shouted to Daryl as they took turns swinging the axe at the doors.
Their fighting spirit was alive with fire and rage. They fought for their lives.
There was hope in them still.
"Painless is not having to hold each other close as all hope fades on a countdown clock," Eloise demanded. "We're forced to watch the few good things we have left – each other – die. What about that is painless?"
The men kept at the door as if there was hope to break through. They were meant to withstand a nuclear attack. Nothing short of a missile or meteor would burst through their barrier.
Even the violence did not phase Jenner. He accepted his fate. He accepted death. He was ready to die.
A gun to his head did not have the man flinch nor did the wild threats out of Daryl's mouth or the cries of mothers as they held their children close.
"It is really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature. Let any obstructing cause, no matter what, be removed in any way, even by death, and we fly back to first principles of hope and enjoyment," she recited from memory.
The doctor blinked. The quotes sank through their bones.
No one knew what to say in response.
She looked to the faces that she was now fond of. They were the people she depended upon, protected her, opened their group to her, and trusted her to not abuse that bond.
They were one. "We have hope because we've found each other. We are hope. We've chosen to endure the death outside those doors because we have hope in our hearts in the eyes of every person with us. Deep down, we know – we know – that together, there is a chance for a future not drenched in despair. I don't believe that humans will end because of this. We've overcome disasters through the ages. It takes us off our feet, but we come back, stronger. We're strong now. We're going to be the ones who endure."
Rick stepped forward. The click of his boot heels against the hard floor.
"Please," he murmured. "Let us go."
He gave a defeated fist against a button. The suction lessened. The metal doors groaned as it moved apart.
Daryl stood at the widening entrance with bewilderment. He looked to his group in question.
"I can't open the outer doors. Those are sealed," the doctor explained. "You'll have to do those yourself."
It didn't matter. Eloise fled. As they all did, they surged through the building to find their belongings, weapons for the harsh world outside the thick walls of safety. Daryl emerged with his crossbow and bag. She was hot on his tail with her own backpack and knives slung over her shoulder.
"Let's go!" Daryl yelled.
Glenn emerged from his room. He looked around at the scrambling faces. "Where's Dale?"
Rick put a hand on the young man's shoulder. "There's no time."
It was like a rupture through the heart. A split second of pain for the loss of three significant people: Andrea, Jacqui, and Dale. How life would go on without them was a question unable to be pondered. She couldn't allow it to sink through as the glass windows of the lobby were blasted to bits by grenade and their bodies swung through the open wound speckled with shards of glass, sharp and jagged.
Reality. The stun of the sunlight on their faces, warm air of the late morning, fear back in their veins as they ran as fast as they could.
The CDC had been their hope. Their last hope. Salvation.
Eloise never believed it possible, the cure, but when they found sanctuary from relentless slaughter, she'd let herself forget. The freedom of life without fear of immediate bloody death, without turning into one of those rotten walkers. They were sheltered inside. Dr. Jenner gave them a taste of a life they once had inside those walls with his food and wine and encased walls. It was harder to rip off the band aid now that they'd been given another reminder of all that had been lost.
Perhaps Jenner was right. She stopped and beheld the massive building.
It was an opportunity to die with a shred of humanity intact. The world was over. Life would never be the same, not in the sense of what it had been. Not without these memories.
The doctor had given them a chance to be human in death. She should have considered it harder.
Daryl's old truck fired up. It roared to life without care what dead was alerted to their presence. Rick threw his body into the driver seat of his car and did the same. Lori pushed Carl into the back seat. Carol and Sophia slipped through on the other side.
Shane was the last to approach the caravan. He slowed when he saw the pause in her pace.
Darkness in his eyes did not lift. He kept them shielded, squinted against the sun, as he followed her line of vision. The building they'd just fled.
His head shook. An arm shot out pointed at the truck. "Go. GO."
The thought, a sliver of thinking, made her chest tighten in defiance until the resounding echo of Daryl's horn hit their ears. She glanced at the man at the wheel.
"Come on! What are you waitin' for? Lets go! Hurry!"
Eloise threw herself into the passenger seat with a last glance at Shane. He narrowed his eyes in watch until she'd shut the door behind her.
The smoke in the rearview as they drove out of the city. A large space of open air remained where a tall building once stood like a beacon of hope. It was gone. Lost. Dead.
Total silence lived in the cab of that truck. Even as they stopped a few miles outside the city to plot a route to Fort Benning, Daryl and Eloise remained silent. There was nothing to be said. Nothing alleviated the pain of safety being lost – again. Lost to the savage world where the dead ruled, and the living suffered for it.
The drive wore on them. Windows were rolled, just slightly, to let in a bit of wind. It refreshed the air of the truck. Warmth of the sunlight, brisk breeze in through the windows, a gentle lightness seeped in without their permission. It was almost like a life before. Almost.
"I'd kill to hear a bit of music," Eloise found herself murmuring. Her eyes were captured on the highway outside the window glass. The emerging fall was still warm and comfortable. Colors were still bright green. An illusion, she thought. An illusion to be lured to its comfort. "Anything to fill the silence."
Daryl made no effort to speak. His lips stayed fitted in a thin line. She could tell he agreed.
The previous night's events between them was a possible topic of conversation. One that she was not ready to confront. By the way he avoided mention of it now, it was clear that he did not know what to say on the matter either.
Was it boredom? Was it relief, need of relief, from whatever was nearest?
Or had it been the cumulation of what had developed between them in terms of intimacy fully peaked at the allure of safety to act on their wants rather than needs?
The drive gave time. Time to think of all that had happened since the world ended. Her time in Atlanta being something she pushed to forget, and memory of the camp outside the city being a crafted story to her entire survival. If she pretended nothing before the camp happened, it was like she'd always been where Daryl put her.
She observed him now, saddened that she'd hated him upon first meeting but had used him to get away from the men she knew tracked her.
Split judgements were something Daryl resented. Greatly. Bitterness coated his tongue when a comment of assumption was made. A childhood of being lumped into the status of his appearance made him a defensive man. Strong, yes, but defensive too. He was ready to fight another person just as easily as he would fight a walker.
After observing him around his elder, fouler brother, Eloise guessed that it had something to do with him.
"I never got the chance to say I'm sorry," she said.
His face wrinkled. "Sorry?"
"About your brother."
It fell quieter still.
The road ahead kept his attention. The bumper of an old Jeep Cherokee in a sickly pale yellow.
"Do you miss him?"
A wrinkle crossed the bridge of his nose. The thought of his brother often did that to everyone.
The pause was long – an awkward stagnation that felt like conversation's end. She relaxed back to her seat for the rest of the silent drive without expectation of answer.
"Nah," Daryl said finally. He shook his head. "He was never around. Always in juvie or runaway. I'd only see him when he felt like it."
Eloise blinked. Unexpected answer from a brother so devoted to the other, when the lack of connection seemed blaring.
The white knuckles against the steering wheel convinced her that the topic of Merle was not a happy one. If it had to do with the scars splintered all across Daryl's back, she was glad to know he was gone.
"You ever go with him?"
"Huh?"
"To juvie," she clarified.
Redness spread across his face. "No. No I ain't ever been locked up. You think I'm just some criminal?"
The venom in his voice was strong and precise. It knew how to strike to drive a person away.
"He might be my brother, but that doesn't mean we're alike." Daryl's hand gripped the wheel harder. Paler his knuckles turned.
Eloise was quiet for a minute. The strength of his words remained in the cab of the truck like a foul odor.
She should have known that Merle's name would do that. It tainted everything it touched. Apart from being wildly racist and sexist, the man was scum of the Earth. All he spoke about was sex. He enjoyed violence. More than that, he was wildly obsessed with keeping his brother in line.
A man like that was sure to instill that loyalty to a younger comrade. She wondered just how many times Daryl had been the scapegoat for Merle's evil.
Her seat squeaked as her hips squirmed. It only earned a cursory glance.
"I only asked because of your tattoo. The one on your bicep." She swallowed back the tension in her chest. It was guilt that kept her body taut with strain. Guilt that she'd offended him in an unintentional way. "It's homemade. Most call them jailhouse tattoos."
Crystal blue eyes looked to the exposed bicep. The black ink still visible, faded with age, smudged and bled through the flesh.
"Merle did that when I was twelve," he explained. "Learned how in juvie. Came home to show me."
"That's awful."
He shrugged. "At least he got me drunk before he did it."
EWMN.
"What's it mean?"
He sighed. His fingers went lax. Palms held the wheel steady on the road. "He told me it was just a tattoo for the strongest. Said he saw all the strongest guys had these on their knuckles. Wasn't until later when he told me what it really meant." He paused. The memory of that day as a young man when he met another man, a friend of Merle's, with the same tattoo. "Evil, Wicked, Mean, and Nasty. That's what it means."
Evil, wicked, mean and nasty.
It sounded like one of the walking dead. Better yet, it more resembled those left alive in the world of the dead.
They were forced to stop the Ford a time later. It was out of gas. There was no place to secure any more either. Gas stations had been drained dry right at the start of the pandemic. There was none to be found except in the tanks of abandoned cars.
Daryl took the motorcycle from the bed. He fussed with it, loading his gear into the saddle bags, crossbow across the back, until it was ready.
"Got enough gas?" Rick asked.
"It'll go farther than any of these," Daryl retorted.
Eloise slung her pack over her shoulder. Her thighs were equipped with knives in their holsters. The belt holster reappeared from its depths. It hanged across her hips fitted with blade and weapon she'd found.
"Alright." The old sheriff nodded. He turned to the woman displaced. "There's room in the Cherokee with us. We can sit the kids close together. We can throw your stuff in the back."
"We got space in the RV," Glenn offered.
"Not much," Dale grumbled. "One of us might have to sit on the floor."
The conservation of gas was more important than riding comfortably. They all abandoned vehicles they hadn't needed to ensure their destination was reached.
Fort Benning was too important to lose to comfort.
She shrugged. "I'll go wherever."
Daryl sat astride his bike. His wrists rested against the handlebars.
"I've got an open seat." His head gestured to the empty seat behind him. "Can ride there."
It was a place she would rather not be.
The back of the bike – stickers still intact on the gas tank – reminded her of Atlanta, the things that happened there with that horrible group. Daryl was a savior on the back of that bike. But it was on the back of it that she coped with what she's escaped. Her mind shifted from survival to realization: a horrible place to be if reality was not pleasant.
On the floor of an RV or the backseat of a car would be better than the open back of that bike.
Still, comfort was not the objective. Survival was.
She swallowed. "Alright." He held the body of the bike steady as she swung her leg over the side. The sensation of it between her legs triggered emotions. "Just don't drop me."
"No promises," he said.
The eyes of a few were uncomfortable. Glenn, Dale and Carol stepped back to allow them room. A few things were grabbed from the truck that didn't fit on the back. Rick and Shane remained, watching, as the motorcycle was fired to life. Her arms subtly slipped around Daryl's torso. The rise of her crop top's edge. The exposure of more of her almond flesh.
They continued down the highway with the steady hum of the motorcycle's engine in their ears. It was welcome. Noise cancelled out thought. It made conversation a struggle, with the whipping of the wind by their faces.
Her hands clung to Daryl's chest. Muscles, tendons, organs, awash with the struggle to remain calm.
That smell. It brought back those first days in the wilderness with Daryl. After they'd left Atlanta, it was close to dark. The noise of his motorcycle would draw them back to camp if they made a break for it. It forced them to hunker down in an old drive-in to wait out the night.
That night was one of the hardest. She quivered and shook from the pain. Her body bled. The last attack being the hardest it'd ever been. All of them, angry and demented, the way they cut her and used her, her pain a hardening in their pants that they shared pointedly.
Daryl never asked. He remained quiet as she endured. Watchful. That first night…
"You good?"
Her arms were ratcheted against him like she squeezed the air of his lungs. She instantly loosened.
"Sorry," she said, half of it lost to the wind.
Progress on the highway slowed as they stumbled upon an impassable blockade. It forced them to a standstill.
Lines upon lines of quiet vehicles sat on the road. Empty, unmoving, silent. It was like an eerie graveyard. There were once occupants to their bodies, now long gone or nearby in the shape of a being not quite human.
Daryl's feet walked along the road as they slowed. The Cherokee was thrown into park at the head of the pack. Red lights of the RV showed to their eyes until it stopped.
Eloise's hands went to his shoulders to steady herself as they stopped and parked, too.
The group gathered together in brainstorm. Fort Benning laid in that direction and circumventing backward would have them stranded even farther away. There wasn't enough gas reserves for that. Straight forward was the only way.
"Blew that hose again," Dale said as he wiped his hands on an old shirt. "I'm gonna need another one if we are going to get out of here."
The sheriff looked out over the desolate landscape of abandoned cars in their way. It was a large task that needed a faster solution.
"There's got to be one out there," he said. His brown eyes looked to the road ahead as a selection for their perusal it seemed. "I'm sure there's supplies, too. Things we're low on, in those cars."
Shane lifted a brow. "You say we split up?"
"What should we look for?" Carol crossed her arms.
They all lingered close. Their ears intent for instruction. Any idea to keep entrapment away from their thoughts.
Eloise slid her machete into the large sling at her thigh. A hunt through an old highway was not safe. Bodies locked in seatbelts still were capable of biting, clawing, and eating, should they try hard enough.
"Food. First aid kits. Weapons," Shane listed.
"Any vans or large trucks," Dale said. "I'll need to see their hoses."
Rick nodded. "Carl. Stay in sight. It might look safe, but it isn't."
The little boy was pulled to his mother's side. Her long arms held his shoulder against her leg with a piercing gaze out at the danger ahead.
They were a half dead group, low on supplies to survive. There was no choice but to scavenge the belongings of others less fortunate in the hopes that their fortune might fare better.
Carol and Lori took their children and split out between the cars of the highway. Doors groaned as they were opened. Some noses were covered at the baked stink of death from inside.
The eldest of the party stayed fussing over his hoses with Glenn there to listen to his rambles on how to fix the older than dirt motorhome. The RV was the lifeblood of them all. It was their center. A moveable home that kept them grounded in a sense. It was important to be kept. The largest transport, and most useful, to be found.
Andrea was moody since the CDC. Her face stayed locked in a permanent, resentful scowl at being forced to stay alive that she was impossible to be near.
"We might be able to clear a path." Rick's arm waved out toward the congested road. It was an impossible task. So many laid in their way.
"I'll push," Eloise volunteered.
A shotgun was hoisted across the deputy's back. "Let's go. Faster we move, faster we can get going."
It didn't matter that she was paired with the most unbearable man of the group. Purpose was better than nothing. Even if that purpose meant being bossed around by the wannabee enforcer.
"Push the ones they've searched," was Rick's last bit of advice. "Don't push anything without looking."
The rest split through the rows in search of items in car windows while Andrea went back inside to fidget with something or other. Daryl and T-Dog went farther down. Fuel was a rare resource. It could be pulled from the abandoned vehicles if they were lucky enough. Their eyes were kept open for salvageable trucks. A radiator hose was top priority as a path would not make the RV run.
Shane and her took turns pushing and steering cars out of the way. They kept it as silent as possible. Only a few spare words were exchanged.
There was a spare moment when she was leaned against a car in attempt to catch her breath when she caught Lori's eye. It was riled with confliction. A rift between Shane and Eloise was a liability toward the truth of Rick's absence, one that clearly weighed on the woman's mind.
Sweat dripped off Eloise's brow. She gave it a long swipe. Her chest heaved with exhaustion. Afternoon heat was pounding in unbreakable strength. Georgia humidity was not merciful either.
"Do you need to be switched out? I'm sure T-Dog is up for pushin'."
Shane stood with proud puffed shoulders. His waist was narrow with a black strap across his chest. It kept the look of a deputy. An idea that Eloise believed he strived to keep.
Authority.
She shifted off the car. "No. I'm fine."
"No harm if you're not," he said.
There was no problem with authority. A leader was essential to keep a group together. Roles, established. It made things smooth. She was not against it. Rick, for example, lead naturally. He commanded a presence, intimate knowledge of being a calm head during intense pressure, without being frightening. A good man with a sense to think of everyone.
Good was not a thing she sensed inside Shane. There was something in that look of his that spoke to the things he'd do if he felt it. A hot-headed mess with an ego that dragged for miles.
Men like that were dangerous; this world catered to their instincts.
"If you need to stop, Carol is right there ready to step in."
It was not well received. He bristled. Palms against the back end of the nearest car.
"Get the wheel."
They kept at it until there was an eerie shushing through the air. Silence rode on the breeze like an eerie calm.
Hairs rose on the back of her neck. She turned in question to the RV where Dale stood watch when his body was suddenly gone.
Rick appeared at the end of the rows. He dropped to his knees.
"Get down. Down." He whispered as loudly as he could. "Under the cars. Everyone. Now. Carl, Sophia, down."
Shane and Eloise slipped under a nearby truck. There is only enough room for the pair of them. They moved close together, suddenly stilled. The heat of Shane's breath was at the back of her neck. Each exaggerated exhale pushed against her neck.
Blood surged through her limbs. She felt the growing tension raise through her when the shuffling sounds of feet descended like a sudden rain shower. A mass – a horde – flooded through the highway.
They quieted their breath. Each positioned themselves against their weapons, ready to strike.
The sounds. God, the moans of the walkers were agony. A sound of suffering, endless hunger, death and rot in their throat.
Her hand pulled a knife from her thigh. It moved slow and steady up her side until it came nearer her face.
Some bare feet passed. Their nails were black, half torn away from their foot. Smudges of filth stamped across the pavement. Only God knew what. It smelled awful, worse than death and gore, as they marched through as a moving herd of soulless bodies intent on devouring every living thing in their path.
Glenn was under a nearby car. Their eyes locked in total shock.
Whatever hope there was to escape was gone with the numbers that passed through. If they were discovered, there was no chance of survival. It was a haunted gaze, one that resonated in the gut.
Shane moved himself, ready to shoot if he needed to. Insurmountable odds did little to dim his confidence. He gestured that she keep watch above their heads and to the left. He took the other two.
Back to back their breaths aligned. It was simple to match his calm despite the growing panic in her blood.
The feet stayed shuffling by. Vision of their tangled mess of broken ankles or decayed flesh dragged against cement became sparse as sounds of their growling lessened.
Glenn eased out first. His eyes darted one way, then another. He kept himself bent low as he moved on the other side of the car.
His hands waved them out. "They've passed."
The young man kept watch as she emerged from beneath the truck. She appreciated the effort.
"What the hell makes them group together like that?"
"They congregate in the city," she retorted quietly.
"That was different. This is out in the open. They have all this land to roam, but they're…they're together like a pack." Glenn looked off at the highway still filled with their shuffling bodies. "It's like they know they're stronger together. But they – you don't think they can think like that, do you?"
Shane rolled out from beneath the truck. His eyes went low to the rest of the group farther down the road.
A shrill whimper echoed up from between the lanes.
"What was that?" Glenn asked swiftly.
It sounded like…crying?
"Holy shit," Shane said. A fist gripped his shotgun as he went to his feet. Glenn and Eloise went on alert. Blood throbbed in her chest as she followed Shane's line of sight toward the edge of the trees. Walkers entered the dense foliage, two of them. Her hands clenched against the hilt within her fingers, the cool metal against the sweating hot of the midday air. "What the fuck is he thinking?"
Dale climbed down from the roof of the RV. "What's happened?"
"Sophia got chased into the trees. And Rick's gone after them," Shane replied. He looked down the ditch with a distasteful scowl.
They all drew nearer. Their eyes widened, in disbelief and uncertainty.
Lori, Carol and Carl trailed up to the railing. Their eyes shaded in horror. Poor sadness overwhelmed Carol's face as she pleaded, under her breath, for her daughter to come back.
A strong hand clenched ahold of Eloise's heart.
"We have to go after them," she said firmly.
Shane shook his head. "No. We'll all get lost in those trees."
"We can't just leave them," Glenn rambled. His tone took on a height when he panicked.
Panic was logical. They were in a new territory. Even without the roaming maneaters, people got lost in unfamiliar trees often. There was no point that some of them travel beneath the canopy and risk being caught in a place they could not find their way out of.
The sobs of a mother, though, fought against that. Carol's sobs stabbed at their reserve. It was difficult not to be affected by the sorrow in her sound.
"Rick will find her." Lori's arm cinched tight against the woman's back. The whimpers were drowned at the shoulder of Lori where her eyes blared straight at Shane. There was betrayal and disgust toward the man. "They'll come out of those trees. Give it a minute. You'll see."
A minute passed. Then another.
A lone figure emerged. And it was not Sophia.
Carol's body started to tremble. Rick's desperation leeched to the air as he called out for Daryl.
The sharp dagger of shock hit her like a ton of bricks. Eloise gripped her thigh to keep steady on her feet.
"Daryl. Come on. We have to find her!" Rick called out.
They loomed over Rick like a defining power on that highway. Shane at the front of them, shotgun pointed to the sky off his hip, as he stared down that long ditch at his best friend with an appraising look.
"Hold on, Rick. Let's talk about this," Shane said warily.
"We're losing time," Rick reasoned.
"We can't go all off in that thicket and have everyone getting lost, now. We'll be stretched too thin."
A quicker whimpering of Carol hit her ears. She glanced over her shoulder. Lori clung to the woman, eyes burned with fear and guilt. Guilt that it was indeed not her son that was lost in this world.
Big brown eyes caught her gaze. The burning desperation for solution, for help, for answer. What could be done to soothe the aching heart of a woman who'd possibly lost the last family she'd ever have?
There was no question in Daryl where he'd go. He climbed over the railing down to the depth of the trees. The crossbow slung over his shoulder took an offensive position in his hands.
"I'll go," Eloise volunteered.
A large palm raised in her path. "No. I'll go. Glenn, too. You stay back at the RV. Everyone, get back to the RV. Hang tight. We'll be back."
"We all should search," Lori said quickly. Her eyes blinked fiercely.
"You know how easy it is to get turned around in the woods. None of us have been here before. There is no point in getting us all lost in there."
Eloise shifted her hip. "Better you four?"
The deputy did not like being challenged. Especially when the mood of the many turned against him. It spread across his body, the tension, the burn of insult, as they stood there in expectation of answer which he could not give.
"It won't be long. She's nearby," Shane said with a final huff. "Keep searching cars. Keep together." His finger pointed to the young man at Eloise's side. "Glenn. Let's go."
To have to watch a mother look on as a small search party went into the trees after her young child was heartbreaking enough without knowing that they had a better chance of finding her if they'd all went.
Though, the best chance was Daryl. He was a gifted tracker. It was what made him successful in their hunting on the edge of the city. The instinct to track was natural, his mind and eyes pictured what happened in the dirt like a movie, it led him straight to what he needed.
Eloise stood at the railing in their absence. Her feet refused to leave that edge until Sophia returned.
"Daryl will find her," she said without doubt.
Carol hugged herself. Her arms wrapped at her waist, eyes in constant search for her daughter. The pain built within her iris. It killed even the steadiest heart. After all they'd lost in the fall of the world, to have to lose the one thing left, the hurt radiated through their spines into every nerve.
"Rick won't stop until she's found, Carol." Lori touched Carol's quivering shoulder.
"Hey," Dale said suddenly. "I'm having a hard time getting this to stop bleeding."
T-Dog's injury had been forgotten in the midst of Sophia and Rick's disappearance, but now they suddenly remembered how grave the cut was on his forearm. Blood dripped down to the pavement. A line of red back to the RV. T-Dog leaned against the wall of the motorhome, forearm stretched out as Dale fought against a ripped t-shirt. The t-shirt refused to cinch tight. It kept slipping. Against the blood and sweat under the Georgia sun.
Carol wiped her eyes from the silent tears of her daughter. "Here. I'll hold his arm."
Hinges of the RV door screeched as Andrea's boot kicked it wide. In her hand was a small bundle of what appeared to be white gauze. The strips were short. It would take a miracle for them to wrap around his arm.
She handed the supplies forward. "This is all I could find."
Color lessened in the man's face. A distance was growing in his eyes.
"Water," Eloise said as she took the bandages. "He needs something."
"Shane found a water truck over there." Dale gestured toward the box truck.
A few canteens were grabbed from the RV. Lori and Andrea filled them with the bottled water while Carol and Dale held T-Dog still. Eloise put a hand against his temple and held it steady to assert his state. With all the red spilled against the pavement and dripped down his dark skin like rivers burst of a dam, shock was possible.
"It's not that bad," he said, up and down he swore it was not as bad as it looks.
The group was unconvinced. The gash was uneven, bloodied with his life, like he'd been gnawed on.
"Not that bad? You've got blood pouring out of ya." Dale raised one bushy brow.
"You shouldn't talk right now," Eloise advised gently. His head in her hand as they put pressure on the wound, wrapping it tight in layers of bandage with the hopes that it might close on its own before the rags were soaked in all the blood he had. "Take deep breaths."
Carol's hands dropped away. "I got it tied. For now."
They helped T lower to the ground. His back leaned against the RV, one hand on the black pavement with the other displayed against his thigh.
A ragged breath loosed his lips. "I'm fine. I'll be fine."
Rather than stand around to watch their companion suffer, Lori and Carl got distracted with the hunt through the cars. Andrea, too, took to a lonesome path through the highway. Her scowl in Dale's direction only showed what she felt internally about being there, forced to live through the hard world at another's choosing.
The man deflated under her watch. Hopes that she might come to appreciate the gift of life dwindled by the moment as their group was split, one child missing, and another gravely wounded.
It was difficult to find much of hope for anything.
Life was as desolate as that deserted highway. A line of cars that were filled with earthly possessions, forgotten by their owners to worry about other things, presumed to be rotten amongst the surrounding trees somewhere. The echo of silence, a retched curse to their ears, only to be further sullied by the growing of snarls.
It felt like hours lost amongst those empty rows until there was sound of life.
"Is he going to be alright?" Lori's soft voice wandered up the warm breeze and slipped around her mind like a snake.
They were the only ones so far from the RV. Carl was somewhere in between, under his mother's close watch. Her eyes scanned through the scene for sign of his head bobbed through the wasteland. It was tight on him. A precaution she never held so tight until Sophia's disappearance.
Eloise shrugged. "I don't know."
"I just thought you'd know…you were so calm with all that blood."
The woman stepped closer. A few shirts hanged against her shoulder. One cast-iron pot was held between her arms.
The hunt through the cars was no better for herself, who only found a box of band-aids and a half-used tube of antibiotic ointment. It would do nothing to solve T-Dog's problems, but if someone else was scratched, it could save them from infection.
Lori, again, looked down the road. Her eyes stayed a moment before they jumped back to the woman ahead of her. She caught Eloise's glance at the clothing.
Her fingers touched it gently. "Found a few things that might fit Shane." Life left her face as she felt the words drop from her lips. "His wardrobe is pretty limited. He'll need some things if he's to survive the winter."
The care for the man was minimal. Eloise made no comment and moved onto the next car. It held hope. The back end looked stuffed full. Maybe not with medical supplies, but a bit of food.
She yanked open the backdoor. A six-inch blade entered the cabin first until it was cleared of all bodies, living or dead.
A presence did not leave. It came closer. Watched her as she worked.
"He wants to leave the group," Lori blurted.
It only slowed the search through the car. Eloise blinked. She was spread out against the back seat in search of the many items that littered the vehicle. The expectant gaze of the woman outside grew in wait. A pregnant pause, before Eloise eased out back onto her feet.
"It's insane, isn't it? Leaving. Alone." Lori rambled as she stared down at the unblemished cast iron. "I mean, where is there to go? We're all in the same boat here. It only makes sense to stick together. If not for the group, at least for Carl. He's just a boy."
"Shane's a man. He can make his own decisions."
The brunette pursed her lips. "Someone was there to stop you from going out on your own. He would've carried you out on his back if he had to." Her eyes turned sharp. "Even Shane was there to say not to go."
"What I say isn't going to stop the man. Something tells me that the man doesn't listen to reason. Only to himself."