CHAPTER FOURTEEN,
highway to hell
THE HEAT OF the prolonged highways was all Samantha Walsh had ever known for the past few days. The group of survivors was exhausted of hope, exhausted that every corner they turned it would just be as dead as the CDC. Their desperation's made them turn to Fort Benning, her big brother's plan becoming their solution - even if some didn't agree.
Nathan was against the idea, claiming it wasn't logical. He hasn't heard from his men.
His opinions picked and prickled at Shane's skin, his temper much more of a loose canon since the CDC, but he tried so hard, so hard to restrain himself for the sake of his baby sister, but being the mess that Shane Walsh was, his tries become hopeless and in vain.
Several of the men had to pull the two off, with their faces red and veins popping from their skin. It was agreed that Shane and Nate couldn't stay in the same room for awhile, hoping for whatever dislike that was brewing would soon blow over.
Samantha sat at the table with her brother, barely listening to Andrea who droned on about her past. Finally, she left for the bathroom and the siblings were left by themselves for a few moments.
Shane had his face downcast to the table, his thoughts rapid and his silence long. Suddenly, a finger pushed a rusty penny into his peripheral vision, and he lifted his head to glance at his side, acknowledging his baby sister's leaning form against the window, her smile directed at him. "Penny for your thoughts, big brother?"
Shane sighed. "Just a few thoughts," He mumbled, and he watched as her furrowed eyebrows pair with confused eyes. Her brother sighed, glancing around the stuffy RV and back at Samantha. "Look, one of the main things to me right now is keeping you safe - keeping us safe."
Samantha felt her lip twitch into a frown, but before it could she forced it into an assuring smile. "We're safe, Shane-" But her voice became layered with his own.
"No, we aren't," He contradicted. "After what happened at Atlanta - the CDC, you almost died. This group, it ain't safe. I'm not taking anymore chances of losing you. You're my sister, my responsibility."
Samantha stared at him for a long moment, trying to read his eyes, his everything to made sure she was hearing him right. You're not saying what I think you're saying, right?" The words left her lips and was met with the silence of her big brother, but that was enough of an answer to confirm her thoughts. "You can't be serious. This group, they are our family, we can't just-"
"You're my family," He interrupted, his tone a mixture of firmness and softness. Shane was trying to make her understand, understand that he just wanted her safe. "I gotta keep us alive, but if we traveled alone - it could be so much easier."
"But what about Lori," Her name made Shane go tense, shifting his gaze from his sister. "Carl," He was gazing out the window now, his lips in a tight line. "Rick," He felt the same selfish rush of resentment grow with him, making his head feel fuzzy with terrible thoughts.
But then it also made him realized how much his baby sister loved Rick like a father, and the resentment now had jealousy to clash with.
"Just listen-"
"I am, and I'm not agreeing with what I'm hearing," There was a slight waver in her voice as she looked at her brother skeptically, almost not even recognizing him.
She could see so many emotions in the darkness of his eyes, too many emotions, that it made her fumble on her thoughts and her words.
Only three people were able to cause her to do that, and she was sure that her brother was one of them.
Suddenly the engine begin to splutter and the RV came to a halt. Samantha jumped up as Dale Harvoth cursed damn!
"What's going on?" Andrea questioned with raised brows, finally leaving the bathroom.
Samantha barley glanced her way. "Dale's RV is finally retiring." The twenty year old remarked, and the older man turned to look at her and pushed out a sigh.
Piles of abandoned cars were littered across the highway, a graveyard of what's left and a cold reminder of a society that had been abandoned.
"I said it, didn't I?" Dale sighed, standing in front of his RV. "A thousand times. Dead in the water."
"Problem, Dale?" Shane asked, not catching the glare his sister threw at him.
"Just a small matter of being stuck in the middle of nowhere with no hope of-" He paused, nothing Daryl Dixon looting the back of a vehicle. "Okay, that was dumb."
"There has to be something," Samantha hoped. "This place is a goldmine of junk we can use." Not only was it a goldmine, but a graveyard full of ghost.
"There's a whole bunch of stuff we can find." Daryl agreed, his features hardening when he noticed the small smile Samantha sent him.
"I can siphon more fuel from these cars for a start." T-Dog offered.
"If we're lucky enough we can find food, water, and maybe some medicine," Nathan mentioned. "We should stay alert. This place gives me the chills."
"He's right," Lori agreed. "This place is a graveyard. I don't know how I feel about this."
There was a long uncomfortable silent, uncertainty in the air.
Nathan stepped up. "Look, we've been on the road with days. We're tired, hungry, and frustrated," He sent a brief glare at Shane. "But if we work together we can get through this together. We have no choice."
Shane chuckled dryly, wiping some sweat off his brow."Military boy finally stepping up." He taunted.
"Shane..." Rick exasperated, tired of the conflict between the two men.
The groups begin to search the abandoned, rusted vehicles through the hot, Georgia sun. They were weary, desperate, and hungry, but somehow that fuels the hope to find something in them.
Samantha couldn't find anything useful for Dale's however, but she was able to discover a bag of untouched Doritos. Instead of saving it for herself, she decided that the kids needed it more than her.
"You're not gonna believe this!" Glenn exclaimed , appearing next to her. "Look at what I found." She turned to him and raised a brow, staring at the bag of gummy bears in his grasp.
"You're such a kid." She chuckled.
"Ive been craving sweets for weeks."
"At least you aren't craving flesh. Its apparently the newish trend." She replied, pursing her lips to hide hide growing smile. Glenn shook his head amusingly.
"I wonder why we call them walkers," Glenn said. "Why can't we just call them zombies?"
Samantha shrugged, rubbing her head. "You might want to ask the writers of the show."
Glenn stared at her in utter confusion, but before he could open his mouth to respond they both heard a noise. They both turned to the source and found Nathan bent over behind the back of a car, puking his guts out.
"Damn, poor guy," Glenn sighed, and through the disgust there was genuine sympathy for his friend. "He's been through a lot," He lifted his cap from his head and ran a finger through his unruly dark hair. "Your brother needs to cut the dude some slack," he continued. "Nate has seen more than us."
Samantha nodded, shame and guilt twisting her insides. She felt terrible for being so impulsive at the CDC, letting her word vomit take over her thoughts and actions. She was his best friend, and she needed to be more considerate. "I'm going to check up on him." She announced, and Glenn gave her a short nod before leaving.
Nathan was sitting against the car and away from the puddle of puke, his heartbroken eyes staring forward. Samantha sat next to him and laid her head upon his shoulder gently, her best friend looking down at her.
"You okay, Sergeant Dickhead?" Instead of answering, his eyes trailed to the car in front of them. Following with her eyes, she saw the back door was open and she lifted her head from his shoulder to get a closer look.
From what she could see, there was blood splattered against the seat - but then she looked even closer, and she saw a baby's booster. There was even more blood there, spatters decorating the childish flowers and fleshes of meat.
Samantha immediately felt a wave of nausea and before it could take action, she pulled herself from the ground and quickly shut the car door, leaning against it with deep breaths.
"I," Nathan licked his lips, his voice shaky. "We were supposed to save them. This wasn't supposed to happen."
Samantha swallowed the vile down her throat. "We?" She questioned, tears burning her eyes as the sight of the booster imprinted itself in her brain.
"The government, the military, me," He ran a hand through his dark locks, every emotion fighting inside of him. "We failed them, I failed them. We were created to protect." He continued.
"Nate, this was unstoppable." She tried to reason, kneeling down in front of her best friend and trying to grab his attention, but Nathan was a million miles away in his own head.
"I'm such a coward," He seethed. "I ran away-"
Samantha grabbed his dog tags and pulled him close to her face, her eyes as sharp as her tongue. "You see this? This is your worth, this is your bravery. You saved lives, you fought for your country, you are fighting for these people. So stop being the victim, and be the soldier that you are."
Nathan gazed at her for a moment, trying to cling onto her words and all her details - but he wasn't strong enough.
He pulled himself from the ground, his dog tags slipping from her fingers.
"Look around you, Sammy. This place isn't just full of ghosts," His eyes darkened, shielding away any emotions that dared to come to the surface. "This place is hell on Earth."
Samantha frowned, glancing at the car and then at the disappearing figure of her best friend, the grief and the guilt weighting down on his shoulders.
Laughter broke the air and she turned, seeing her brother drenching himself in a bunch of water that him and Glenn discovered. She would've scolded him for wasting water, but seeing him happy made her happy, so she held her tongue.
But somehow, she still couldn't shake his conversation with her from her head.
Shane wanted her to leave with him - to abandon the people they survived with in the new world, especially the ones that they been with since before. Samantha couldn't picture herself without the Grimes family, and she hoped her brother couldn't either.
Everything seemed to pause when groans sliced through the air and silenced the moment of contentment. Her heart dropped to her stomach and her mouth went dry, whipping around to face the hard of walkers heading straight towards them.
Samantha stumbled back and held onto a gasp, desperately trying to rack her brain when suddenly, a hand flew over her mouth and pulled her to the ground, a muffled scream escaping from her throat.
━━━━━
Nathan Barton had been trained from the start to always think and act when something would sneak up behind him and catch him off guard. When the dead came, he ushered Sophia to take cover and he dragged Carl under the nearest vehicle.
Carl was a smart, cooperative boy. He knew when to be silent and to not let fear take over in dire situations like these. Sophia wasn't like that. She was whimpering, eyes shimmering with frightful tears as they darted from the soldier to her mother. Keep your eyes on me Nathan mouthed to the child, and she nodded.
Sophia was just another child thrown into the hellish world, and Nathan felt a sense of protectiveness drape over him as he stared at her. He felt the need to protect her, and he will. The fear on her face, it reminded him of his baby brother, Jason. Nathan could remember it all vividly that he could just grasp it with his fingers - the military being overran, the mission being annihilated, the moment the blood left his face when the dead cornered him and his brother.
Nathan shook his head, trying to rid of those thoughts and trying to focus - he needed to.
The tension made him stiff on the ground, but soon the feet of the walkers stumbled further down the road. Carl glanced at Nathan with a small smile of relief tugging at his lips, they had made it-
There was a high pitched scream.
His heart stopped, whipping around to see a walker falling to the ground and reaching for the little girl. Sophia was quick to scramble for underneath the car, sobbing helplessly. Carl jolted forward, determined to help his friend but Nathan stopped him, placing a firm hand on his shoulder and a finger to his lips. "Stay." He ordered. Carl couldn't go after her - two kids weren't supposed to be in the woods.
"Sophia!" Nathan crawled from underneath the car and darted after her. The little girl jumped over the railing, shrieks leaving her throat as walkers followed after her. He saw her retreating form disappear into the trees before he made it to the railing, and he cursed himself. He couldn't lose sight of her, he wouldn't fail her - just like his men, just like his brother.
"Nathan!" It was Rick's voice, but the soldier didn't hear him over the sound of his feet picking up on the ground and running into the trees. The brunette pulled out his pistol and kept it raised, having been training to being alert and intent on his surroundings.
He used to be the best on his field, the more observant one, making his brothers proud and he sure hoped that his father was proud too. Nathan always hoped he was proud of him, watching somewhere in the afterlife.
Green was all he could see as he ran deeper into the woods, his heart pounding in his ears and his lungs burning. He was calling out her name, searching for her. He heard a branch snap and he turned to the sound, his gun raised and expecting to see Sophia-
It wasn't her.
The older man stood in with greying hair under his military beret, his uniform torn. The sight of him made all the blood in Nathan's blood go cold, fear gripping his heart and his soul.
"You ain't nothin' but a coward, boy," His former lieutenant spat, his eyes sharper than a blade of a dagger.
Nathan closed his eyes for a moment, trying to rid those images that plagued his mind like a disease. They were pushing into him and crowding him, as if all the walls of his brain were closing in. "You aren't real." He swallowed the lump in his throat.
"I'm as real as your demons," The color to his lieutenant's skin begin to fade into grey, his teeth yellowing and blackening. "You're gonna fail that little girl just like you failed us, just like you failed Jason."
From his lips emitted a groan, reaching forward with his bony fingers. Nathan squeezed his eyes shut, the images intensifying, the walls tightening around him. This isn't real, this isn't real, this isn't real.
He waited for the pain, he waited for the bite, yet none came. He opened his eyes, and his lieutenant had vanished.
Nathan felt tears prickle his eyes, but he had no time to recover from the episode. A faint panting and sobbing met his ears, and he looked in time to see Sophia. She was running through the trees, her face contorted in fright that made his heart break.
"Sophia." As soon as her name left his lips she stopped, her teary eyes meeting his. She sprinted towards Nathan and almost knocked him to the ground with a tight embrace.
"B-but Nate, what do we do?" She cried, more tears running down her face.
"We run," Nate decided, staring into her eyes. "We run. Just a little farther away? At least until I get you safe."
At the nod of her head and the trust in her brown eyes, growls behind them caused adrenaline to course through his veins and he grabbed the girl and hoisted her into his arms. They ran through the trees, all the while Sophia was causing stains on his shirt from the thats that were constant but he didn't mind, he was just happy she was alive.
His lungs screamed for relief, sweat streaming down his face. Taking a turn, he could still faintly hear the walkers before he slammed into a body. Nate stumbled a bit but kept his grip around the little girl, gazing at the panicked expression of Rick Grimes.
Nathan held out his hand and lifted the leader off the ground while maintaining his hold on Sophia. "Are you guys okay?" Rick questioned.
"Minus my heart about to explode, we're fine," Nathan panted, his breaths coming out deeply as he tried to catch his breath. "Look, I got her, just tell us where to go, man."
Rick nodded, the sudden snaps of branches bringing their attention back to the dangers behind them. With a quick exchange of agreement, Nathan begin to follow the cop.
They reached a creek and water drenched Nate's pants as she stepped into the stream, following Rick to a pile of logs. He set Sophia down, waiting for anymore orders from the leader. "I need you both to stay here."
Nathan shook his head stubbornly. "No way in hell. We don't know how many walkers have wandered off from the highway, what if its more than you can handle?"
Rick glanced at Sophia and then back at Nate. "I can handle it. She needs to be protected, you hear me?" He had a pleading look in his eyes and swallowing his pride down, Nathan agreed.
Once Rick was gone, Sophia whimpered. "I want my mom."
"I know, kid, and I'm gonna make sure you get back to her. We just need to be quiet and stay put."
"What if Rick doesn't come back? He has a family, too."
That brought realization. Rick had a wife and kid to look after, if he died Lori and Carl wouldn't survive without him. Nathan would rather take Rick's place, because he's more important. He bent down to Sophia's height, hands on her shoulder. "Look, I'm gonna go help Rick, but I need you to stay here."
"But I'm scared." Sophia whispered, a mixture of tears and sweat running down her face.
"You gotta be brave, not just for yourself but for your momma, you understand?" Nathan said softly. "If me or Rick don't make it back, I want you to go back to the highway. Keep the sun on your left shoulder, that's your only way back, okay?"
"You gotta be brave, not just for yourself but for your momma, you understand?" Nathan assured softly. "If me or Rick don't make it back, I want you to go back to the highway. Keep the sun on your left shoulder, that's your only way back, okay?"
Sophia nodded, before wrapping her small arms around Nate in a tight hug. He stared down at her small firm before slowly returning the gesture. "You're a brave man." The little girl stated, smiling faintly.
He felt his heart warm up. "And you're a brave girl, your mother would be proud of you." Nathan replied, giving her an assuring smile before going after Rick.
What Nate didn't know was that he made a fatal mistake.
━━━━━
With his hand wrapped around her mouth, Daryl Dixon kept Samantha under the vehicle with him. She was on the verge of a panic attack as the smell of
rot hit her nostrils, her wild, green eyes watching the rows and rows of the dead shuffling near the car.
The thought of her brother being out there in the midst of this kept any peace from entering her mind. It made her breathing become rapid, her heart thumping so loudly that even Daryl could hear it. If she didn't calm down, it would risk them being heard.
Shane is out there. Shane is out there. Shane is-
"Shhh," Daryl muttered in her ear, his hot breath tickling her neck. "Breathe slowly."
Her eyes blinked the tears away, breathing through her nostrils slowly despite the horrid smell. In. Out. In. Out. Slowly, pace of her heart went back to being normal, her nerves becoming more relaxed. Samantha knee her brother, and therefore she knew he was going to be fine.
They weren't that far from the rest of the group, but as soon as the walkers passed Daryl and Samantha they instantly knew that they were being hit too. The hunter crawled from underneath the car, dragging his crossbow with him.
"Stay 'ere." He ordered, not taking the time to let her respond as he crouched down and hurried off. She scoffed, feeling as if she were in some cliché, but she was thankful for saving her.
Moments went by and the dead became more distant. Samantha pulled herself from underneath the car and started heading back. She caught sight of familiar ebony colored hair, and when he caught her eyes they filled with utter relief, rushing over to her and suffocating her with his secure embrace.
"Thought you could get rid of me, big brother?" She laughed, feeling Shane release a sigh. He pulled away from her, a twitch of a smile on his face.
Samantha looked over his shoulder and noticed everyone peering into the woods, but Carol looked completely distressed, with lips quivering and tears running down her flushed cheeks.
"What's going on?" Samantha questioned, Shane adjusting the grip on his shotgun. "Sophia got chased off by some walkers. Nate and Rick followed her."
Her eyes widened, and she looked into the trees, hoping to see all three of them trudging through.
But when they came back, there was only two.
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟnote
my bby nate deserves happiness
words ; 3731
edited ; ✔️