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

85. Animus

"Omid?" Clementine could more clearly hear him crying as she sat up. She leapt out of bed and rushed outside to see Omid tugging on Sarah's blankets.

"Sah-rah!" he cried as he tried waking her.

"Sarah!" Clem rushed over to her friend and knelt down by the bed. "Are you okay?"

"I... I'm fine, just let me sleep," mumbled Sarah without opening her eyes.

"Hum-bee!"

Sarah sat up suddenly after hearing that and discovered Omid looking up expectedly at her.

"Just give me a minute Omid," said Sarah as she grabbed her watch. "It's only..." Sarah put her glasses on and suddenly her sleepy eyes shot open in surprise. "Oh... I guess I overslept."

"Hum-bee!" repeated Omid before breaking into tears.

"I'm sorry," mumbled a guilt-ridden Sarah as she struggled to free herself of her sheets. "I'll—"

"I'll take care of him," insisted Clem as she knelt down. "You want some breakfast Omid? You hungry?"

"Hum-bee," sniveled Omid as Clementine picked him up. While Sarah got dressed, Clem hurried over to the closet. Slipping inside to find some breakfast, Clem couldn't help noticing their shelves were half empty now. Eyeing what they had left, there wasn't much fruit so she grabbed a can of beans. She opened it up and got a spoon, but no amount of coaxing could convince Omid to eat any, not even a single bite.

Sensing another fit coming, Clem relented and eventually collected one of their few remaining cans of peaches. After moving the beans far away, Clem calmed Omid long enough to feed him a spoonful of sticky fruit, after which he couldn't get enough to eat. Clem had hoped to slip herself a bite, but she couldn't even get the spoon close to her mouth without Omid loudly protesting. Eventually, she surrendered the entire can to him without so much as a taste for herself.

As Clem scrapped the last of the syrup out of the can for Omid, she noticed Sarah coming out of the bathroom. "Are you okay?" asked Clem as Sarah wiped her lips and started rubbing her head. "Sarah?"

"Huh," she said.

"I was just asking if you're feeling okay?"

"Yeah I'm... I'm just wore out from going out everyday and never finding anything. There's not even any lurkers out there, which is good but... it means there's also nothing to find." Sarah looked at the opened beans sitting on the table and hurried over to them, immediately digging into them with the spoon Clem had left in the can.

"I didn't think you liked beans that much."

"I don't," said Sarah between bites. "I'm just really hungry."

Clem left Sarah to eat while taking Omid into the bathroom to clean him up. After changing him, Clem headed back outside and was surprised to see Sarah had opened a second can of beans and was eating them now. Feeling her stomach growl herself, Clem headed to the close and tried to find something she liked that Omid didn't so as not to deplete what few foods they had left for him.

After their late breakfast, Sarah moved to the driver's seat and started the RV, preparing to move them further west. They had nowhere to go really and both girls still clung to the faint hope the others weren't far behind them, so Sarah never drove them far. But they needed food more and more with each passing day, and so they always stopped at the first town they found on the interstate so Sarah could go scavenging.

It was nerve-racking for Clem, waiting for Sarah to return each day. Even with their radios, Clem was terrified anytime she heard the static of an incoming call that would be the time Sarah would say something happened; something terrible. So far that hadn't happened, and Clem was relieved when Sarah would come back each evening, but it was always empty-handed. After about a week of searching, she had found a case of colas and a few loose jars of things they didn't want to eat like olives or relish, and even those were rare.