THINK ABOUT LIVING | Daryl Dixon

011 | Country Roads Are All We Know

━━━━━━ CHAPTER ELEVEN ━━━━━━
Country Roads Are All We Know
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          THE END OF TIMES WAS A SILENT ORDEAL, much more so than anyone could have ever anticipated. Wind passed over the gas station with a whimpered sound, rolling over the ground a couple of fallen leaves that have travelled all the way from across the deserted street to meet with the litter, blood and guts that painted this pavement on which their stop had added another couple of Walkers with their heads bashed in. Above the station, dark clouds have slowly prolonged the dominion of night over the hours of day, making it indistinguishable to pinpoint exactly what time it was.

A little past noon, Daryl sniffed the air imbued with one pleasant scent hovering above the carnage and decay of the ground; that scent alone was heralding a good rain. He exited the driver's seat of the car to return to the open front. Late autumn, he concluded in his mind the puerile attempt of telling which month it was anymore, then finally threw a quick glance back at the small store of the gas station and its closed door behind which he knew Mallory was surrounded by Walkers she insisted they needn't waste time on taking out.

Inside the little shop, Mallory gathered in a plastic bag salvaged from under the counter just about anything that was not expired and they could use, starting with the last two unopened water bottles, but also including two packs of cherry flavored gum she's been missing since her last pack ran out, a woodsy scented air freshener because sleeping with the window cracked every night in a reeking car was going to get them a good old cold sooner rather than later, and a handful of unopened beef jerky that she appreciated should by all means still be good.

Right as she moved in a ghostly silent fashion past one of the four Walkers in that crammed little store turned upside down by their violent beginnings, she spotted a familiar label on a bottle on the bottom shelf, under some collapsed rubble filled with dried blood and guts. Disgusting as it was, she reached for the bottle of windshield fluid anyway — after the need to defend themselves plastered a big stain of blood on their windshield two days ago, driving has become awfully tedious to the eyes, despite Daryl trying to convince her it wasn't the case.

Though in normal times the travel from Georgia to Maine would have taken them no longer than a day, they were steadily counting the third month on the road and not even half the distance crossed out yet.

They've had a lot of setbacks, apart from the general rule they've set without needing to discuss it, of avoiding all major cities. After the first month on the road, they've added the rule of staying off highways as much as possible too, because between country roads and moving vehicles out of their way all day long, the first one was much more time efficient.

Even still, they've ended up changing cars three times already and a fourth time was probably on the horizon, if Daryl couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. Two out of three times they haven't been fortunate enough to find a working car in the vicinity of their stop, resulting in weeks of uncomfortable camping and tiresome hikes. Given their luck with finding this gas station, Mallory reckoned they wouldn't have to repeat the on-foot journey experience once again.

She pulled the windshield fluid out of the rubble and heard the noise awaken the groans of the Walkers. As soon as she straightened up, the one closest to her was right in her face, a sight rather disgusting, even for a mostly empty stomach — the Walker used to be a till worker at this gas station's store, by his uniform; he got a good layer of skin chewed off of his face, a large chunk of his shoulder completely missing, such that the white of the bone sticking out had yellowed from time and humid air.