Future Ghosts • TWD

36. Things Are Changing.

The group had been on the road for weeks now. Things had changed and were constantly, continuously changing. One thing was that Rick was in charge. Rick said jump and they asked how high. Rosie wasn't too fond of this situation at first.

First of all, she hated the close quarters they were in. She had to constantly be in the sight of at least one of the adults, which drove her crazy. For the first couple of weeks, she'd often get caught trying to sneak into the woods to go out on a walk by herself, but it never worked. Someone always saw her and dragged her back to the group- Daryl more often than not.

Another thing that caused discomfort was that food was scarce. Very scarce. They had been searching houses and buildings for any type of food- whether it be expired or not. There had even been times where they had to eat cans of dog food.

Rosie's crayons dulled down and some of them had broken, and she lost the green one, which totally sucked because green was her favorite color.

The weather got even worse. They spent their nights in whatever type of shelter they could find, trying to warm themselves up so they didn't lose all their fingers and toes to frostbite. Rosie ended up taking the rolled up socks out of the toes of her boots and layering them on top of the socks she already wore. It made it a little harder to run, but it was better than not being able to feel her toes.

Daryl had found Rosie a jacket in the closet of some boy's bedroom. It was a dark green color, which Rosie liked, but it was a little too big. The sleeves went down past her hands, but that wasn't any problem. It kept her hands warmer.

Daryl also found an ankylosaurus toy in the boy's bedroom and gave it to Rosie. He, of course, didn't know it was an ankylosaurus at first, but once he put the toy in Rosie's hands, she told him all about ankylosauruses.

"Ankylosauruses lived at the end of the Cretaceous Period, which was 66 million years ago. They had clubs on their tails and armor-type stuff on their backs. They were herbivores. Adult ones were around 18,000 pounds. They were kinda like armadillos, but huge," Rosie had told him, not taking her eyes off of the toy in her hands. Daryl nodded, even though he was not really taking in any of the information she was giving. He was just happy that she'd actually smiled about something, even if she did twist up her lips to hide the fact that she was smiling in the first place.

For the first few days on the road, Rosie hadn't said anything at all. Any question anyone asked her was responded to with a shrug, a nod, or a simple shake of the head. Daryl worried that her silence would last, but he was able to coax her out of it only a few days later. She wasn't at all talkative- only speaking if spoken to- but it was better than nothing.

The main question everyone had was: why? She didn't care as much about Shane, Patricia, or Jimmy as other members of the group might have, and she barely knew Randall at all, so could it really be their deaths that was making her so quiet?

What they didn't know was that it wasn't particularly unusual for the girl to go quiet around the winter holidays. She had her reasons, but opted out of sharing them. They just brushed it off as her being different. Whatever that meant.

The place they were holed up in now was a shitty old gas station off the side of the road. It was a great find, even though most of the stuff inside was already gone. Inside, there were still a few different foods and drinks other people had left behind. Rosie was ecstatic when she found a bottle of purple Gatorade in one of the fridges, while Carl was much more excited about the two-liter of root beer he found.

Rosie was tucked into the corner, slowly taking sips of her Gatorade in order to preserve it, while Carl sat next to her, pouring cups of root beer into red solo cups he found. He was telling her about some crazy birthday party he went to where he got to mix a ton of different sodas together and drink it.