WILDFIRE -Beth Greene

Gone Girl

Gwen later learned that the man with kind eyes name was T-dog, whom she already was very fond of and a younger Korean man, named Glenn had already cracked more jokes than she thought humanly possible. She liked him too. Jessie had walked off with the woman, Carol, whom Gwen could tell her sister had taken too.

After the initial excitement and nerves of taking in new people died down a bit, the group dispersed, people got to work scavenging and working on the broken down RV. Jessie shot her sister a smile and wondered off with Carol and her daughter, Sophia, as Gwen started searching along side a very blunt, rather dirty man, Daryl.

"So, how bad is it, in Atlanta?" Gwen asks as she rummaged through the boot of a car whilst Daryl raided a truck near by.

He grunts, a negative grunt as far as Gwen could tell. "Pretty bad. Why? You got people there or something like that?"

"Something like that. When it all when down, my baby sister was staying with our aunt and uncle in the city. Hoping maybe she'd still be there or something." Gwen could feel tears welling, she'd known it was a pipe dream from the first time Jessie had mentioned it, but still.

She pulled herself together so the man wouldn't see her cry, he didn't seem like the comforting type, "What are your plans? Where are you heading now?"

"We're trying for Fort Benning but I don't know about it." Daryl answers as he pulls out a knife he'd uncovered, he held it out to Gwen, "Saw you didn't have anything on you, you'll need it. 'Sides I already got one of my own."

Gwen smiles at him, "Thank you. You know you're nicer than you look." The man just grunts in response, "How about you? You got family? Siblings?"

She must have hit a nerve as an icy look comes over the man's face, "Man, can't you just be quiet, it'll go faster."

Just as Gwen's formulating a response to his rude switch up, she hears Rick racing towards them, "Lori, get down, under the cars, now!"

And that's when she sees what she'd missed before, a whole herd of walkers heading right for them. her eyes immediately search for Jessie, who looks back at her before quickly leaving Sophia and Carol's sides and dashing towards her, shoving them under a truck together when she reaches the frozen girl.

As they roll under the car, Gwen sees T-dog ducking behind a car door and slicing his arm on a piece of metal before dashing off out of view. Breathing heavily, the sisters pull close to the each other as shuffling feet and the moans of the dead surround them.

A few cars away from the pair Sophia and Carl can be seen by themselves. Jessie's chest hurts, filled with sudden guilt for leaving their sides. As if Gwen can sense this, she holds her sister's hands even tighter, almost as tight as she's holding her breath waiting for it to be over.

After what feels like hours, silence falls as the crowd of walkers march on, unaware. Still, Gwen holds her breath, surely they'd been too lucky.

That's when she saw movement, not from a walker but the car Sophia was hidden under as she began to shuffle her way out, back to her mother. Before her head was even fully out, a lone walker caught site of the young girl, scaring her back under and crawling out the other side. And before anyone could really register, she was running, taking of into the surrounding woods, two walkers and Rick on her tail.

Gwen hears Jessie gasp and whimper from beside her and the two slowly emerge from under their car, others following as Carol sprints to the forest's edge, held back by Lori.

The group sits in silence, except for Carol's cries, until Rick's return, alone. Gwen could see the guilt in her sister's eyes and the blame on Rick in Carol's.

Rick, Daryl, Shane and Glenn head out to follow Sophia's tracks, almost begged by Jessie to join them but she was refused, saying she'd be safer with the group.

So, Jessie sat down, beside a still crying Carol and did her best to comfort the grieving mother as Gwen headed off in search of T-dog.

The man she was looking for sat on the steps of the RV, blood spilling out of his arm at an alarming rate. To say it was a cut would be an understatement.

"You know how to rap that up?" Gwen asks, to which all the man had the energy to do was shake his head, "I can do it if you like, I'm good with things that like." She smiles a soft, sad smile at the man, which he returns.

"Thanks, doll." Gwen's eyebrows shot up and she smiles again, genuine this time.

"Doll? I can tell we're gonna be best buds, we're already on a nickname basis and we just met 3 hours ago."

"I'm guessing Gwen is short for Gwendolyn? Right? Hence, doll." The man grins through his obvious pain.

"Okay, I'll allow that."

"Well, thank you, ma'am."

"You'll thank me more later, let me go grab my first aid box."

After speeding back to the hood of the car Jessie and Gwen had dumped their stuff in previously and grabbing what the girl assumed she'd need, she sat herself and T-dog down at the table inside the RV.

Sighing, she pulls out her kit and got the work, silently. Mopping up the pool of blood as best she can and disinfecting the surrounding area, she's to hyper fixated on the work at hand to hear T-dogs question the first time he asks it.

"Sorry, what did you say?"

The man smiles, "I was just wondering how two young girls had been wandering round on their own for weeks with no weapons to defend themselves but a shit ton of disinfectant wipes and Twinkie bars. And yes, I have seen those and will be stealing regularly."

Gwen couldn't help but laugh, it was silly she supposes, "Well, girls gotta have some priorities. I chose Twinkies 100% of the time."

They could hear Carol and the others concerned conversations, signalling Glenn and Shane's return, talking of Rick and Daryl's continued search for the girl.

"Sorry, I can't really do much else." The girl finishes, wrapping up the length of his arm in bandages.

"Thanks. Where'd you learn to do all this anyway. I could barely use a plaster when I was your age, hell, I can hardly do it now."

Gwen stays silent for a moment. She didn't want to talk about why she knew how to treat wounds. Why she knew how to craft make shift slinks, why she knew how to move dislocated limbs back in place and could perfectly cover a bruised eye with minimal concealer.

"Oh, you know, just picked things up here and there. I would have liked to be a nurse, I think, before all this." Disbelief clouds the man's face but he acts like he believed her lie.