𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐋𝐈𝐕𝐄 | CARL GRIMES [TWD]

8 | between ghosts

— CHAPTER EIGHT —
between ghosts
[ 5185 words ]

"You ever played blackjack?" Noah asks.

They picked up Noah at the Hospital. He's like a strange fusion of Glenn and Tara: amusing and unsinkable and initially even tolerable, but he's become insufferable since Glenn found him those playing cards yesterday. He's insufferable for any number of reasons — his hope, his easy smile, how much he looks like Wes when he turns his head just right — but for now Sylvie settles on his cards. They're tucked between his thumbs and forefingers, fanning apart at the top, where his hold can't reach. And his smile peeks out above this curve.

"Is this some shitty Western, now?" asks Tara from beside him.

The upside to this road trip is that she isn't sandwiched between two people. Noah is, with Tara on his right and Sylvie to the left of him, pressed close to the window. She tracks forest smudging by, Georgia a smear of colour, and it feels like she never went anywhere at all. If she closes her eyes, she could be back in that bus, back in that firetruck, and if she squeezes them until her eyelids ache, she could even be back in Yared's Ford, somewhere off the Atlanta highway, the sun low and warm and spilling through the half-open back window.

She opens her eyes, keeps them open until they ache. Then at last she blinks.

Their bickering stops involving her after a while, and she likes it that way. She turns around, raises her head to watch the car drive behind them. She's not sandwiched in the seats, but between cars. They're not heading for Washington just yet, but a place called Richmond. Noah's home. He told her it's the place he lived after; that they took him in, good people, protected people. He told there are walls and gates, and houses and homes. He told her about lots of things that may have existed once, but probably don't exist anymore. When she told him this, his face fell like she had not said the truth, but something insulting, and Tara chewed her lip.

So they are going to a place that doesn't exist anymore. At least the journey is nice. She likes when the road gets thin, and the branches are knobbly and thin and scratch at the windows with a high wail. She doesn't like it when they have to stop and wait, like now, as they curve around a bent road, and the car begins to slow to a crawl. Abraham spins his index finger and everyone is getting out of the car, so she is too. They're all out on this curved bit of road now, not quite thin, but punched in close by forest. Behind her, Rick and those in his car storm up towards them. Carl is at his side, hat slung low on his head to drench his face in shadow. Sylvie looks away. Pointedly.

In front, Glenn and Maggie and Daryl and Carol and Gabriel have popped the hood of their Hyundai. Glenn squinting at its guts. Daryl leaned against it, arms crossed across his chest. Maggie wandering to the edge of the forest. She looks frail, thin, wispy, like she might just float away.