This was bullshit.
Amy Harrison knew from a very young age that she had lived before. She figured she must have done something right to get a second chance but in true millennial fashion she was waiting for the other shoe to drop. It did. In the worst way. Her new dad was awesome, loved to spoil his princesses and inherited more than enough money to make sure their dreams came true. Her mother was just the right amount of encouraging and cautious. Lastly, her much older gorgeous sister loved her and never doubted her dreams, just from afar.
It did not occur to her that she could have been born into a world she knew from her first life. Even having read stories of such fantastical things happening, there was never even a daydream of a Hogwarts letter.
So, she continued on, being a precocious but introverted child. Amy knew she wanted to be a nomad from a young age, wanted to live the #campervanlife. Too scared to just go for it in her first life, Amy made it very clear that she would go to college like her parents wanted but after that she would travel and see the world. Her father indulged, her mother made lists, and her sister promised a road trip.
Andrea Harrison looked and acted like her show counterpart, right down to her horrible taste in men and awful superior attitude. Looking down her nose at her beloved bus, a brand new Earth Roamer that her father designed just for her. With high tech everything, heavy duty everywhere, and even a panic button that locked down the entire rv and set off lights and sirens. The king size bed was a dream and she couldn't get over all the storage space. It was a leap and jump away from the tiny converted sprinter she originally thought she would have.
"This is not what I had in mind for our sister bonding road trip."
Well, thats just too bad big sister, Amy did not plan for the fucking zombie apocalypse. Sure, they took taekwondo when they were kids and their dad even took her shooting on occasion but beyond that she had no idea how to survive this shit world. That was why she was currently sanding a much better grill for Jim's truck. It was like something from those apocalypse trucks from her first life, perfect for bisecting zombies and pushing shit out of her way. She couldn't fix that onto her own bus, seeing as it had a reinforced winch. Not to mention she had been using it to get around last week. It was the least she could do for Jim, to reinforce his ride a little.
"What's the point of this again?" Her sister shouted close to her ear, pulling down her headphones in the process.
"Crowd control." Amy deadpanned, making someone nearby snort. She did not understand how watching her work became a spectator sport but she didn't particularly care. One of the first things she built upon getting to camp was a washing machine. Lori was just as annoying as she feared, so Amy grabbed a traumatized Jim to hit the local scrap yard. She MacGyvered a fifty gallon drum to an old bicycle and viola, poor man's whirlpool.
"There's plenty of other thangs around here to do than work on your projects." Shane cajoled, trying to sound reasonable but Amy wasn't canon, agreeable and soft. She was awkward and tended to disassociate when random people came to her for small talk.
"Oh Shane, leave her alone." Andrea waved him away dismissively, laying herself down in a patch of afternoon sun. "This was hers and my dad's thing for years."
"Why wouldn't you just buy an RV?" Glenn asked curiously from where he stood beside Dale.
"It is an RV, just something you would never see on any normal showroom floor." Morales practically drooled, looking over her bus with keen eyes.
Amy glanced around seeing that most of the camp survivors were scattered close to the ridge where she parked her bus. It had a clear view of the entire clearing and down to the quarry. On one of hers and Jim's trip to the scrap yard, they looted a family dollar. They ended up bringing back a trailer full of outdoor furniture to scatter around the camp. Most of the others did not appreciate the cheap clothes, acting as if it were beneath them. However, Amy was able to get her hands on those stackable plastic tubs to fill the large storage bay underneath the bus.
She thought it was weird that Shane just naturally fell into the supposed leadership of their camp. There was no vote, they didn't really gather to decide anything. In fact there was hardly any kind of organization other than what the Harrison sisters and Dale put together for supplies. Glenn volunteered to go on solo runs to the city of Atlanta, ignoring any suggestions of the smaller towns in the area. Lori banded most of the ladies together to cook and do laundry, complaining to anyone who would listen when someone ignored her. Most of the campers ignored everyone outside of their immediate family unless it was meal time.
"Amy wanted to be a nomad." Her sister continues on, ignoring her annoyed glare. "Ever since she was six she talked about making her own home on wheels and traveling all over the continent."
"Well, that's nice and all but what's the point in building a grill like that on someone else's truck, and the siding?" Shane questioned, waving his hand towards the truck's new additional mesh covering and reinforced siding. "It's not road legal, you'll just have to take it off soon anyway."
"Shane." Amy spoke slowly, her tone incredulous as the clearing fell into an uneasy silence. They didn't speak about the outside world often after they bombed the city but most were still optimistic, moronically so. "They bombed all major cities, who do you think is coming to fix this?"
"No one, that's who!" Merle Dixon crowed, toasting her with his warm beer. Daryl leaned against a tree nearby staring at Amy like she was a brand new game trail, quickly looking away when she briefly made awkward eye contact. "Gov'ment cleared out they families and fucked off wherever rich people fuck off to."
"Watch your mouth!" Lori chimed in immediately, looking around for her son before turning to glare at the redneck. "It may take some time but this is temporary-"
Amy put her headphones back on, nodding along with the music. Lori Grimes and Merle Dixon should not even be in the same area code, let alone within speaking distance. It was as if they worked on some kind of strange echo wavelength that if they heard each other's voices, they had to start an argument. The day before, Lori asked Shane about local mushrooms and then Merle was suddenly there, ranting about city bitches and their pet pigs. Even Shane looked oddly jealous of their strangely passionate interactions.
Amy stared in horror at the compact car with a single walker slamming onto the back windows. The hood was up so she assumed that they had some car trouble but the child's face pressed against the window terrified her. Jim, still edgy from watching his family devoured, did not join her when she hopped out of the truck to stab the walker in the head. The young girl looked more than a couple years younger than Carl was sobbing loudly in the front seat, clutching a yapping puppy in her arms. Two car seats were strapped in the back but the lack of crying was worrisome.
When she opened the back door, the smell of piss and shit hit her full in the face and she wondered how long they had been trapped there by a single walker. A baby was sleeping fitfully and even with his red face she could make out a bruise in the shape of a hand covering his mouth and nose. The girl had yet to say anything, just staring at the other car seat in fear. It was large and back facing, so she assumed it was a newborn.
"Hey sweetie." Amy tried to be soothing but the girl only curled into herself more at the sound of her voice. The German shepherd puppy in her arms watched on, panting heavily.
The other car seat was covered with a receiving blanket but Amy could faintly hear a low gurgle that did not sound like any baby she had ever seen. Jim made the mistake of coming to the other side of the car while Amy unlatched the toddler to pull him from the stifling heat. The older man ripped the blanket away and immediately fell on his ass from what he found. Even with the little boy secure in her arms, Amy choked back a sob at the sight of a baby that small turned. It was once a little girl but if the angry bruises on her neck and face were any indication the baby wasn't bit.
"Daddy told us to be quiet." The little girl in the front seat whispered into the fur of the dog. Her blonde hair was matted and she too had dark bruises on her cheeks as if someone much larger had grabbed her.
"What are you going to do with them?" Lori asked that evening after Amy spirited the children into her bus.
Jim disappeared into his tent, not helping the blonde in calming down the anxious trio. The little girl said her name was Emma-Lynn and her brother was Braden, the baby had not been named in the days she had been alive. Emma quietly told Amy of her mother dying to give birth and coming back to bite their grandmother. They were on their way to the refugee center when their car overheated. Their father was bitten and bled out after shooting a walker that stumbled out of the woods. Emma had been trapped in the hot car for hours before Amy and Jim showed up.
"Well, I can't exactly call CPS." Amy sighed, feeling exhausted after giving both children a quick wipe down before laying them down in the bus with the AC running. "They have no clothes or family that I can find, the baby doesnt even talk yet and I have no idea what to do with kids. I'm not about to dump them off on anyone else I've known for less than a week."
"Amy, you're only twenty one." Andrea rubbed her little sister's back in comfort. Having absolutely no maternal instinct, she kept a wide berth of the two children while Amy took care of them. Bemusedly watching her warm up chicken noodle soup while they clung to her eagerly. The toddler refused to be put down while they ate slowly and the girl sat so close she was practically in her sister's lap. "Way too young to take care of children that you're only a little older than."
"She's right." Shane nodded, but still looked very conflicted. "We don't have the authority or the resources to take on two more with you going on runs so often, we rely on the supplies you bring back to camp."
"That doesn't change anything." Amy said firmly, still reeling from her traumatic afternoon. "I found them, I've got to take care of them."
"What about Jim?" Lori suggested, glancing over at Shane before turning back to the Harrison sisters. Dale stumbled over, looking shell shocked himself.
"Jim did say he had a family before this." The older man agreed, patting the young blonde's hand with care.
"Jim couldn't even look at them." Amy replied sharply, wishing she could just turn around and ignore their opinions. "He rarely sleeps and when he does, we all hear him screaming. Also, I'm not putting them in a tent when they would be safer in th-"
"You want to get rid of us?" A small voice made all of the adults jump. Emma leaned up against Amy, big blue eyes wet with tears.
"No, Ms. Lori is just concerned that I'm not…mature enough to take care of you and your brother." Amy knelt down so that she was eye level with the little girl. She never had children in her first life, was rather ambivalent about it in her second but there was no way she could just abandon these children.
"That's right." Shane chimed in with a megawatt smile. "Wouldn't you rather go with Mr. Jim? He's got a big old tent wit-"
"No thank you." Emma whispered, pressing her face into Amy's side.
"Now, honey-"
"No thank you."
"Ain't she a polite lil thang?" Merle's voice practically echoed through the clearing. Daryl was following close behind with a string of dead squirrels and rabbits in hand. "Well, Toots, here I was thinking you was almost genuine jail bait. Where you been hiding them at?"
"Merle." Amy said slowly, a sweet smile on her face while she pressed Emma's ears towards her stomach. "I like Daddy's, not geriatrics."
The older redneck guffawed while his brother snickered behind him. Her companions looked properly scandalized, especially her sister. It was a well known fact between them that Amy did not date in school, not even when she got into college early did she ever accept any of the many offers she received. While she was underage the older college students were creepy and the boys her age were children. By the time she was technically legal, the only men was even attracted to were her professors. While that was hot in books, she was not messing around and wanted to finish school as quickly as possible.
"Amy!" Andrea hissed, her eyes narrowed in outrage before turning to the other and saying in a strange placating manner. "She's A Sexual! Never even let any of those boys in school take her on a date!"
"Andrea, my sweet loving sister." The younger Harrison sister started sarcastically. "Just because I learned from your mistakes and didn't hop into the first convertible that offered me a ride does not define my sexuality. Now, I'm taking Emma back to the bus where she can rest after the awful day she had with her brother."
The group watched as Amy easily lifted the five year old into her arms, stalking away with her head held high. Emma squinted her eyes at all of them before lifting her middle finger with a smile on her face. The Dixons promptly burst into obnoxious laughter while Lori squawked, waving her hands towards the bemused deputy. Andrea, however, was focusing on her sister with narrowed eyes shuffling off to follow.
They were both quiet while Amy climbed up to the loft where her king size bed was. Braden was already deeply asleep, surrounded by pillows and pushed into the corner so that he couldn't roll off the bed. Emma silently laid beside her brother, keeping her eyes on the younger woman with a pleading expression. Amy was not sure what the girl wanted but she offered up a stuffed Hedwig that usually sat on the dashboard. That seemed to be the right answer because Emma snuggled it close while she toyed with her brother's curls.
"Where are you going to keep them?" Andrea demanded as soon as her sister started shifting through the bags she had grabbed from the compact. When she didn't answer quickly enough she plowed on, her anger growing. "How will you take care of them? Where will I sleep? We share the bed! What happens when we eventually find someone else to take care of them? You're going to-"
"Enough." Amy hissed, slapping her hand down on the large table her sister was resting on. "Enough, Andrea. What the fuck are you even arguing over? It's my bus. It's me going for supplies. It's me that found them not even four hours ago. The bed is big enough for all of us, if you don't like it then the table folds down and you can sleep on the couch. There is too much shit in here to convert it into another bed everyday."
Amy returned to the bags, finding little for the children and more cigarettes and booze. There were men's clothes, some first aid supplies but no formula or food for his children. The last of her doubts about the father of the children were gone. She angrily tossed his clothes in walmart bags before doing the same to the cigarettes and booze. An idea formed in her mind.
