WILDFIRE -Beth Greene

No Longer Two

Gwen's head pounds as Jessie shakes her awake. They've been making their way, painfully slowly in Gwen's opinion, through the Georgian state in hopes to reach Atlanta. Hiding out in cars and scavenging for scraps of food for what seems like months but in reality could be no more than three or so weeks.

"Gwen. Gwen, I think I hear something, voices." Jessie says, with a hopeful glint in her eye, when Gwen doesn't immediately rouse herself, Jessie huffs in frustration, "Oi, Gwen! I said I can hear voices."

Gwen groans and covers her eyes with her arms sighing, "Well, you should probably get that checked out. That's definitely not normal."

The blond rolls her eyes, "I'm being serious. You're meant to be the morbid one, shouldn't you be a little more concerned?"

"Hey, I'm being serious too, you should really talk to someone about that," Gwen says, smiling and sitting up in the small car they'd stowed away in for the night, "but not me!" She jokes, pointing to her sister.

"-a graveyard. I don't know how I feels about this." A far away but distinguishably feminine voice rings out and snatches Gwen's attention. Worry overtakes her slightly as she sees small woman and an even smaller little girl come into view of their car.

"Shit." Gwen whisper-shouts as she pulls Jessie down bellow eye level.

"See! I told you I heard voices. We should go out there, right?" Jessie says, already reaching for the door handle before Gwen's hand pulls her back.

"Hey, wait, we don't know what these people are about. Strangers are as dangerous as the dead nowadays."

"They've got kids with them, Gwen! I hardly think they're axe murderers," seeing Gwen's mouth open to protest, she try's to reason with the inevitable argument she's about to make, "it doesn't matter if we show ourselves, they're searching the cars. Any minute now, one of them is gonna look in this one and find us."

Knowing Jessie is right, Gwen stays quiet and nervously lets out a shaky breath as she reaches for the handle of the car and steps out.

The woman she'd seen has her back facing Gwen as she fully leaves the car and Jessie follows suit, the little girl, however, catches sight of them and panic floods her face.

"Mom! Mom!" She tugs on, who is clearly, her mother's shirt. Gwen tries to shoot the girl what she thinks is a reassuring smile, "Mom," the kid whispers this time, like that will somehow hide her from these strangers, "there are people here."

With that her mother spins around and as her eyes immediately lock on the two filthy girls, pulling unappealing grins, she's already crying out to her group, "Rick! People. There are people here!"

A chorus of confused questions follow as more people shoot into view, all of their faces dropping at the sight of the teenagers, who are still just standing there, feeling exposed.

A man comes forward, presumably Rick, he's in a police uniform and even though the time is completely inappropriate, Jessie can't help but notice he's quite the looker.

"Um, hello, we come in peace." Jessie says with a nervous chuckle, looking around at the crowd of people that have now gathered.

The look of concern on the surrounding people's faces only increases at this.

"What's are you girls doing out here? Where are your people?" The (rather attractive) officer asks them as he steps forward with caution.

Jessie pulls a face as Gwen answers, "There's no one else. It's only us. We're making our way to Atlanta. Is that where you're heading?" Gwen's nerves only increase as the new faces stare at them.

A new man pipes up, not as friendly as the former, "What you doing hiding out in cars? You watching us?" Hostility laces his voice.

It's Gwen's turn to pull a face, "Watching you? What-no! Didn't you hear? I said we're on our way to Atlanta, this roads takes us that way, am I right?"

The newer man looks the girls up and down, "You should get a move on then, you're burning day light."

The officer turns and whispers something to the man that Gwen can't make out, but he doesn't look too happy. A beautiful woman with long brown hair talks next, "Atlanta's overrun. We've just come from there."

"Overrun- are you sure? We heard the broad casts about a refugee camp? A safe place for people?" Jessie asks and the lady's shakes her head.

Gwen's thoughts spin at 100 miles an hour. Atlanta's gone down? That was their plan, their only plan, to get to a safe place and put this behind them as best they could.

Before she can even really process it, the officer is speaking again, " Have you got a place to go? People to go to?"

Gwen thought it was a rather stupid question because if they had a place and people, why on earth would they be out here? Jessie just shakes her head, "The people we were with, we got separated a few weeks ago. Atlanta and getting there has been our only goal."

The man stays silent for a while, "What're your names? How old are you both?"

Jessie answers for them both in true older sister fashion, "I'm Jessie, this is Gwen. I'm 19, she's 16."

Nobody says anything again for a while but Gwen can see the cogs turning in his eyes, "You're welcome to join us, we've not got much, but it's something."

"I think this is something we should discuss first." The unfriendly man spoke, eyeing the girls.

"Yeah, we don't know these people. They might not be safe." The woman they first startled said, pulling her daughter into herself.

"Shane, they're just girls, out here by themselves. They're somebody's children."

The man now known as Shane shook his head, "Nobody is just anybody, nowadays. This is something we need to discuss as a group."

The people surrounding them didn't look too keen on Shane's behaviour, the beautiful woman stood back with her son, shaking her head.

A man Gwen hadn't noticed before, with a big build, dark skin and kind eyes smiles at her as Shane and Rick speak in hushed voices before turning back, "Is joining us something you would like? There is always safety in numbers and as I hope you can tell, we're good peoples."

The sisters share a look and agreed with no words needing to be spoken, Jessie turns back to the man, "Suppose that doesn't sound too bad."