Salvation. The Walking Dead: Season Five.

Mark Your Graves - Part Four.

*

They had departed Laurel Caverns as intended, adequately shrouded - at least they hoped - by both the night and the sea of trees.

That was until they crossed the border into West Virginia, there they had to shift back onto the course they had been taking until the Hunting Party had forced them further East than they'd planned.

It had taken them three extra hours all told just to get back to the route Lilly had mapped for them. And it had been hours filled with complaints of hangovers and generally irritating behaviour.

Sophie was visibly ill, even in the pitch black she was ghostly pale. Moreso than Clementine was accustomed to. She tried to suffer in silence but every few miles she would wretch and they would have to stop until she was sure it was another false alarm.

Louis was also suffering the effects, lamenting the strange feeling of emptyness in the pit of his stomach that came with every drinking session he had ever succumbed to.

A feeling that could not be soothed by no amount of food nor water. Clementine could sympathise entirely. But the indentical symptoms she felt inside were not born of excessive alcohol consumption, but rather Violets continued quiet.

She wasn't being rude, or even explicity giving Clementine the cold shoulder, she was just off in some way that Clem couldn't pin point with certainty. They held hands, and yet her grip felt limper than usual.

She would smile at Violet, and recieve one back, but a half second slower than Clementine was used to. She wondered if she was simply being paranoid, fearing at the same time that she wasn't. That somehow Violet knew about the physical attraction she had for another.

Was it really that bad? She was being stupid. Violet and Minnie had once been an item. She couldn't just turn herself off to that physical appeal Minerva had. No more than Clementine could. It was natural. As long as neither acted on their impulses, she should understand....

Shouldn't she?

"Do you think they are still following uss?" Questioned Ryan, bringing Clem back from the four walls of worry in her head.

"They'd have to be pretty dedicated." Louis proposed, hopeful that they weren't.

"Truth is we have no idea. They could have gone out ahead of us by now, or still be behind. That's if they even bothered to give chase beyond Uniontown. Threat could have easily been idle." Clementine said, though she didn't believe it for a second.

Lilly chimed in with confirmation. "I took out two of their guys, and I heard the crazy in their voices when they called after us. They're out here somewhere, believe me."

It wasn't sound logic, but Clementine had encountered enough lunatics in her time to know it was entirely possible. Hell, Carver had crossed state lines to blindly track down the cabin group. And succeeded in doing so.

They regained their cover when they entered Coopers Rock State Forest, one of the places that Lilly had designated as a rest stop, originally intending to have reached it before nightfall.

As it was the group were having the devils own job to evade the arboreous land all around them, a task almost as testing as the surprise walker attacks that continued to befall them as they moved stealthly onward.

Lacking much of any sight left everyone with their ears pricked for any alien movement, yet with all crunching leaves from the footfall of the survivors, it rendered pre-empting such attacks mute.

Each time it was a snarl from point blank range that would be their earliest signal someone could soon be missing a chunk of flesh. And without the spacial awareness, the target was often required to fend for themselves as any interference from the rest could result in blindly decaptating one of their own.