WASTELANDS.
chapter ten, the traffic snarl.
[ season two, episode one ]
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.
Then the goddamn RV breaks down.
Odessa gets out of the Cherokee and approaches the others where she joins T-Dog's side while Dale complains, "I said it, didn't I? A thousands times. Dead in the water."
"Problem, Dale?" Shane asks. Odessa looks at him and huffs. T-Dog looks at her and she huffed again when she notices his stare.
"He's such an asshole," she whispers to T-Dog and he nods in agreement. Though, Odessa's words have more than one meaning. The first nights after the CDC, she got no sleep. She always dreamed of Shane and what he would have done to her had she not defended herself.
"Just a small matter of being stuck in the middle of nowhere with no hope of—" Dale stops talking when Daryl starts to rummage through a nearby car. "Okay, that was dumb."
"If you can't find a radiator hose here. . ." Shane trails off.
"There's a whole bunch of things we can find," Daryl states and Odessa nods in agreement.
"I can siphon more fuel from these cars for a start," T-Dog claps Odessa's shoulder before walking off.
"Maybe some water."
"Or food."
"This is a graveyard." Lori says and everyone looks at her. "I don't know how I feel about this."
"Well," Odessa sighs, looking around at the cars. "I don't think any of these guys care if we take their stuff."
Daryl does not mean to huff in amusement but he does and Odessa grins to herself at it. Lori only sends her a withering look before everyone begins to scavenge the cars.
Odessa approaches a promising looking black pickup and opens the front door. Inside is a dead body. She watches it for a second before its eyes peel open. She stabs it quickly.
She then pulls it from the truck and onto the road. She opened the glove compartment and the sees only napkins and the vehicle's registration. When she moves to the bed of the truck, her eyebrows shoot up.
There's a shotgun, an AK-47, and a bag. She climbed on the back and opens the bag. She lets out a whistle at the contents. Inside is ammo upon ammo and a beautiful knife.
She pulls it out and examines it. The handle and the metal are both a beautiful matte black, the blade itself was a good eight inches. She grins to herself.
She found herself a bigger knife.
She grabs the guns and the bag after hooking the knife and its stealth to her belt. She treks to where T-Dog and Daryl were to show them.
"Hey, guys!" She calls. "Guys—" she cuts herself off when she sees the first walker. She stabs it quickly and it drops. Then she sees the others.
The hundreds of others.
"Oh, holy shit," she whispers. She bolts until she finds T-Dog who is bleeding. A lot.
She looks at him and grabs his shoulder, "what do we do?" She whispers, panicked. He shakes his head.
"Hide," he whispers. "Under the cars."
"I'm not going anywhere without, 'kay?" She tells him. "They're— they'll smell your blood."
Then their savior comes in the form of Daryl Dixon.
He drags T-Dog into a laying position and throws a corpse on top of him and tells Odessa to do the same. She quickly does so, grabbing a body by the shirt and laying it on top of herself while Daryl does it too. They do so with only seconds to spare because the walkers begin to shuffle past the three.
She clutches her knife in her right hand tightly as the walkers move past them. There are so many. Odessa's clenches her eyes shut as they stumble, growl, moan.
After a couple minutes, they're all gone.
Odessa throws the body off of her and moves to T-Dog quickly. She immediately presses her hand to his arm in attempt to stop the bleeding. "What the hell did you do?" She asks him.
"Cut it on a piece of metal," he responds shakily.
Daryl and Odessa pull the man up and help get him back to the others. When they arrived Shane and Glenn quickly help T-Dog. Odessa eyes Carol who stood at the guard rail, she is gnawing on her nails anxiously.
She then looks around and asks, "where's Sophia?"
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word count: 1,287
here's the very first chapter of act two and season two!!! this is the start of some of my absolute favorite relationships odessa has— t-dog, beth, carol, hershel, daryl, and maggie. you guys are going to love all of her relationships.
odessa just found her knife and lemme tell you guys. it is ICONIC. what is up with me and making my characters find their most iconic weapons in this traffic jam? first aiden and her green handled machete (go read the calamity series, i promise you guys will love it) and now odessa and her knife.
so any predictions for this season and what's gonna happen? because A LOT is going to happen in this act. prepare yourselves for a huge emotional roller coaster.