wastelands → the walking dead ¹

[ 010 ] the traffic snarl.

— CHAPTER TEN.
the traffic snarl.

THEY LEAVE THE CITY.

On the first day after the tragic end to the CDC and Jenner and Jacqui's lives, Rick takes them to a nursing home. They find nothing but corpses of old people and a couple dead chihuahuas. That breaks Odessa's heart but she knows  the new world is not meant for sickly old people and house pets.

They sleep in their cars the first couple nights before they find shelter in a Walmart. It's convenient, albeit not stocked. Glenn and Odessa find a hidden gun. Glenn tells her, "there's nothing left in this world that isn't hidden." And she would stick by that for the rest of her life.

Then they decide to leave the city and travel the one hundred and twenty-five miles to Fort Benning. They abandon Shane's jeep, Daryl's pickup truck, and the church van to save gas.

Dale, Shane, Andrea, Glenn, and T-Dog all pile into the RV. The Grimes and Peletier family ride in Carol's Cherokee. Daryl leads the caravan on Merle's— well, now his motorcycle.

Odessa envies his freedom. The wind in his hair and the not having to be smooshed up against a window and Carl— who smells bad in her opinion. When she tells him that, he smacks her in the nose and gets in trouble. She laughs in his face and gets in trouble too.

She rests her head on the window when her mother speaks up, "just thinking about our trip to the Grand Canyon with Carl and Odessa."

Odessa's brows furrow and she looks to her mother curiously. Rick laughs in response while Carl says, "I don't remember that."

Odessa thinks hard for a couple seconds before loudly announcing, "oh, my God! I remember that!" She laughs and looks at Carl. "You got sick and you threw up everywhere. It was all over you, the backseat, me. It was in my hair, Carl."

Carl and Sophia both laughs at her story. "It was so nasty." She scoffs.

"Ick," Carl scrunches his nose.

"Yeah, ick," Lori laughs. "The doctor in Texas said you'd live and we turned around and drove home."

"That sucks." Carl says sadly.

"No, it was a good trip." Lori reassures him.

"The best," Rick smiles.

"Can we go see it? The Grand Canyon?" Carl asks their parents and Odessa frowns. "I'd like to."

"I would too," Sophia then speaks up and Odessa's frown deepens. "Can we go?"

"We'd never go anywhere without you and your mom," Rick tells the young girl. "That's a promise."

They still don't get it. Odessa knows that. They are still only twelve years old, still children. They don't deserve to grow up in a world like this. Where you have to look behind you every couple seconds and sleep with two eyes open. But they don't get it. Odessa did. And she is reminded of it every time she scratches her scar.

The caravan begins to slow and Odessa looks out of the windshield with confused eyes. "What is it?" She asks as she watches Daryl return from driving ahead.

"Traffic jam," Rick says to her.

They slowly drive through the traffic snarl, following behind Daryl. The teen looks out the window with Carl and watches the vehicles they pass. She grimaces at the dead bodies and tells Carl not to look.