Three Orphan Pilgrimage (The Alternative to TWDG's Final Season) [Walking Dead]

84. A Separation

"Devlin?" said Clem expectedly. "Can you hear me?" Clem waited for a response, then sighed when she didn't get one. She took a deep breath, then held the talk button on her radio again. "Patty, Jet, if any of you can hear me, Sarah and I are at the meeting place, the one we all talked about if we couldn't meet anywhere else and had to move again. We left the code on the road signs so you can find us. Just please... please say something if you can hear me." Again, Clem waited for a reply, and again, she didn't get one.

In the days following Anthony's death, Clem had realized if Devlin was still alive, he would know to try to contact them over the radio and warn them what Anthony did, and yet they had heard nothing. Her first thought was she had been wrong, and that despite all of Anthony's lying he wasn't lying about Devlin's fate. Then she remembered, he somehow lost his radio after returning from the farm, and Clem wondered if he didn't somehow 'lose' Devlin's as well.

Clem changed the channel on the radio and repeated her message, always waiting for a reply at the end of it. For two weeks now she had done this, every morning after she woke up, every afternoon after she ate lunch, and every night before she went to sleep. And for two weeks she hadn't received an answer, on any channel, at anytime of the day, from anyone. Yet she persisted, holding onto hope that her friends were still out there, if just because there was little else for her to do while she lay in bed every day.

When not trying to contact the others, Clem was forced to sit and think about everything that had happened. The more time passed the more confident she grew had made the right decision. If Anthony could so easily try to murder her after pretending to be friends with them for so long, she couldn't imagine what else he could do if left alive. But Clem wouldn't have believed he was capable of that if she hadn't seen it herself, and Sarah hadn't seen that, but she did see Clem kill Anthony right in front of her, and that had changed everything between them.

Sarah still tended to Clem's needs; bringing her meals, reminding her to take her medicine, and occasionally checking on her wound, which she said appeared to be healing properly. But that's all she would say, and her words had become cold and detached. Clem barely saw Sarah during the day anymore, and despite her assurances that she was getting healthier, Sarah always remained in the other half of the Brave, sleeping on the foldout couch and leaving Clem alone at night.

The changes were most obvious when they were around Omid, who had become the single source of joy to both girls in these bleak times. It had been a lot like there time back in Spokeston, spending all day and every day playing and talking with the boy they loved. The difference was they never spent time with him together anymore, practically taking turns being alone with Omid. Sarah was with him right now, and Clem had little to do but call into her radio until it was her turn to be with Omid again.

Clem changed the channel and prepared to repeat her message, but couldn't summon the will to do it this time. Every time she said their names she was forced to think about them, and how much she desperately wanted them back, and every time she used her radio, they felt even further away. After two weeks of this routine, Clem finally couldn't bear to go through the motions anymore and set her radio aside.

Sick of lying in bed, Clem stood up and looked out the window. After snaking their way across the backroads of Kansas, Sarah had found an isolated intersection in Nebraska that connected with Interstate Eighty. She had taken the time to paint the word 'Ceres' on road signs several miles in both directions, pointing the way to a large truck stop. The abandoned semitrailers there helped to camouflage the Brave from sight, while painting the word 'CERES' on a nearby billboard would signal the others where they were, if the others were indeed still alive.

Clem wasn't sure what she was expecting to see. After a week with nothing but a parking lot to stare at, Sarah was kind enough to turn the Brave around so Clem could at least watch the intersection. Sometimes, when she wasn't with Omid, she would just stare at the road and hope she'd see the Sunseeker driving by, but it never happened. Nothing ever seemed to change in fact. Every day just rolled into the next one.