Chapter 11 - Roadside Assistance

Highway 85

It was decided that morning that the group would finally give Shane's idea of finding refuge at Fort Benning a try. Tess wasn't entirely on board with the idea and it annoyed her that her reasoning continued to fall on deaf ears but she let it go. Rick hadn't been overly keen either but he also didn't have anywhere else in mind and at least saw it as a next step. They'd agreed to only take some of the vehicles with them and now they were on the road again, backtracking to Fort Benning. Daryl was out in front on Merle's motorbike, Rick, Lori, Carol and the kids were in the Peletier's old Cherokee and the rest of them were cramped into the RV.

Tess sat up front with Dale, having quickly gotten herself as far away from Shane as she possibly could. She wasn't exactly thrilled about their current state of affairs but it made sense to lessen the load as much as they could. The drive had been mostly quiet and uneventful and dare she say, boring. She'd been glad to talk to Dale though and was quick to express her relief that he and Andrea were still around. He didn't say much about why he stuck by her but Tess didn't press, either.

"How long have you had the RV for, Dale?" Tess asked, curiously.

"I bought it after I retired. Irma, my wife… I had planned for us to travel across the country but she was sick. Cancer. It was too late by that point." Dale was quiet but emotional and Tess felt awful for having asked the question.

"I'm so sorry, Dale. I didn't mean-"

"I know you didn't, Tess. It's okay. She was the love of my life. I don't think I'll ever get over it but I can't let it stop me from living my own life." Dale put on a brave face and Tess gave him a gentle smile in return.

"I'm sure she was a great woman." The old man chuckled and grinned widely,

"Oh, she was! Firecracker my wife was, even to the end."

"Lucky man." She smirked good-naturedly, relieved that Dale no longer seemed upset.

"Who's a lucky man?" Behind Dale, Glenn leant against the driver's seat for support, having left the table at the back of the RV where he had been playing cards with T-Dog.

"Not you, I take it?" Tess grinned mirthfully, glancing over her shoulder to see the triumphant look on T-Dog's face.

"He was cheating, I swear!"

"Sure, Glenn." She replied, holding back a laugh. "T-Dog's a real card shark at Go-Fish." Glenn just glared at her, playfully, not really mad that he was being made fun of for losing.

"Hey, Glenn, take the wheel would ya', son? I've gotta' hit the head." Dale said as he stood up slowly and Glenn quickly jumped behind the wheel. The look of panic on Glenn's face finally made Tess laugh but he was too focused on the task at hand to care.

"Quick hands, Jack Traven." She complimented him sarcastically.

"Who?" Glenn looked over at her, clearly confused.

"Speed? No?" He still looked clueless and she rolled her eyes, "It's a classic, c'mon. You're making me feel old."

"That might be the knee's." He jested, cheekily and Tess feigned offense.

"Hey! What are you, like nineteen? Can you even legally buy alcohol?"

"You're just jealous of my youthful skin." Glenn held a hand under his chin and beamed.

"You better not be implying I have wrinkles." Tess gaped at him in mock horror and Glenn replied, deadpan,

"I thought you knew?" The pair of them bust out laughing, tears coming to their eyes because of the absurdity of it all. It felt good to laugh like that, especially after yesterday; it was therapeutic. Tess looked over at Glenn fondly and wondered if this what it would have been like to have a younger brother.

As Glenn maneuvered them through a particularly tight snarl of abandoned and wrecked cars, the RV began to shudder and wheeze, smoke quickly filtering out from the engine and the vehicle rolled to a stop.

"What's going on?" Dale asked, walking back up to the front.

"Glenn broke it." Tess replied, jumping up and swiftly getting out of the RV to check what had happened. Glenn's cries of protest trailing behind her. She wasn't much of a mechanic by any means but she knew some basics. Enough to know when something was broken anyway. Dale and Glenn were quick to join her and they all looked under the hood to assess the damage.

"You got a broken hose." She pointed out and Dale sighed,

"It was only a matter of time. That thing's been on its last legs for a long time."

"Can you fix it?" Glenn asked.

"What we need is a new one. I don't know how much good repairing it will do."

The others in the convoy had come to a stop now and were joining the rest of them at the RV. Rick jogged over, looking concerned,

"Everybody okay?"

"Good as gold." Tess assured him but gestured to the smoking engine, "The RV on the other hand…" Dale was wringing his hat in his hands, looking stressed.

"Problem, Dale?" Rick asked, noticing his distress.

"Just a small matter of being stuck in the middle of nowhere with no hope of… Okay that was dumb." Everyone looked around at the stockpile of auto parts, just ready for the taking.

"If you can't find a radiator hose here…" Rick laughed nervously, trying not to stress the old man out any more than he already was.

"There's bound to be loads of stuff for us to salvage. Maybe some water." Tess stated, feeling how dry her mouth was.

"Or food!" Glenn exclaimed, his stomach rumbling and Tess nodded eagerly, as well as did many others. Lori on the other hand, felt disturbed by the idea of ransacking the vehicles for their needs,

"This is a graveyard. I don't know how I feel about this…" Tess wanted to roll her eyes but refrained, knowing she was probably pretty desensitized to this kind of thing and tried to see it from her perspective.

"What we find here could mean the difference between us leaving or joining them." Her response seemed to take Lori by surprise but she appeared to understand and nodded in agreement.

—

It was so damn hot and there was not a single cloud in the sky. Generally, Tess would have been happy to see such a lovely day but the lack of water in her system just made her grouchy. She had found herself a new backpack, some painkillers and a basic first aid kit, along with some saltine crackers and a tin of mixed beans. She'd come across a suspicious jar of clear liquid and all it took was a whiff of it to let her know it was someone's bootleg moonshine. She'd bagged that too. But no water.

Wrenching open the door to the backseat of an old Toyota Corolla, she refiled through a pile of pillows and blankets, hoping to find something useful. In and amongst the heap of material, were some scrawly crayon drawings, obviously drawn by a young child. In red and blue crayon, two people dressed in capes soared across the sky on one piece of paper. On another, the same caped crusader's stood side by side with an orange cat donning a blue cape at their feet. Tess smiled to herself as she sat on the edge of the seat, enjoying the breeze and the shelter of the car roof. She imagined the young kid that had drawn this picture and thought fondly about how much they clearly idolized their father.

As she held the picture in her hands and daydreamed about this family she didn't know, a shadow cast over her, blocking the sun for her. She peered up from the paper and saw Daryl looking down at her.

"What you lookin' at?" He held his crossbow over his shoulder and tried to take a look at what she was holding. Tess got to her feet and dumped the picture back onto the seat before he could see,

"It's nothin'." She shrugged, feeling like she'd been caught at a vulnerable moment. She stepped past him and moved on to the next car. Daryl frowned and watched as she bagged some items from the trunk of the SUV, having found her clipped tone somewhat unusual.

He looked back into the car she'd previously been sitting in and picked up the piece of paper. He didn't know what he'd been expecting but some scribbled child's drawing wasn't it. Tess quickly slunk off to pick through another car further up ahead and could hear Lori and Carol chatting amongst themselves not too far away from her, their kids in tow. Finally spotting a bottle of water left discarded on the passenger seat of a pickup truck, Tess excitedly went to grab it, only to find that the truck was locked. Who the hell locks their truck when they're fleeing?! She groaned audibly and dropped her head against the window, still clutching the door handle and pulling to no avail.

"Here." She heard Daryl offer beside her, a bottle of water extended to her and a strange look on his face. Tess gratefully took the bottle from him and eagerly drank the water. "You got kids or somethin'?" The bizarre question took her by surprise and she choked as she drank, water burning her nose and throat as it came back up.

"Ow! Jesus! What? Why would you ask that?" She spluttered, trying to regain composure, but also not hiding her shock. Daryl simply held up the picture from before and said nothing. Quite honestly, he didn't know what to say. He hadn't planned a follow up question and hadn't really even thought through his first question as it was. Tess' throat still burned and she looked over her shoulder in embarrassment, not missing the way Lori was pretending not to listen. She huffed and turned back to Daryl,

"I told you that was nothing." She wasn't trying to come across angry but she could hear in her tone that was definitely how she sounded.

"Yeah, sounds like it." Daryl grunted, which only served to piss her off more and she ripped the drawing from his hands, tearing it in half.

"Not that it's any of your goddamn business but I'd never have kids. And I really don't appreciate being ambushed with this shit." She shoved the paper back at him and stormed off, leaving Daryl to wonder what the hell had just happened.

—

Lori had observed the interaction with avid curiosity, still not knowing very much about their newest member of the group. She tried her best to feign disinterest but Carol was quick to call her out.

"I don't think we should be listening to their conversation.." She had mumbled hesitantly.

"We hardly know anything about her." Lori argued, as if that excused her nosiness.

"Have you tried talking to her? She's really very friendly." Carol told her, standing up for her newfound friend. Lori, however, saw Carol's comment as an opportunity to dig further details out of her.

"You've spoken with her. What has she told you?"

"I'm not gossiping about her, Lori."

"It's not gossip. She's living with us, with our kids. We should know who it is we're sleeping next to."

"Lori… I really don't feel comfortable with this… Besides, I don't know that much about her."

"Carol. Please. At least for my own peace of mind." Lori begged and Carol felt stuck between a rock and a hard place.

No matter what Lori said, she still felt like she was gossiping and that felt like the wrong thing to do but at the same time, she didn't want to make Lori feel like she didn't care about her concerns. She struggled internally but finally decided to share what she knew about Tess. Lori was stoic as Carol shared the information and she was curious whether Lori even cared or was hoping for something more substantial.

"That's all I know about her. Can you keep that to yourself?"

"Of course."