Hearth | The Walking Dead

𝐈𝐈𝐈. NEW WORLD ORDER

CHAPTER THREE

NEW WORLD ORDER

IT WAS ONLY A MATTER of a year before the Ford family was back on the road.

Their supplies had lasted for a long time; Abraham, as tough as he seemed, also had the intelligence to pack a household of food and water. Very few trips had been made out of the house since the family had arrived, and only Abraham was allowed to leave. Eventually, even the backyard had become off-limits, Ellen worried that the Uglies—only one of the nicknames Abraham had assigned to the monsters—could break down the fence and get the kids faster than they could get back inside.

Rebecca stopped speaking after the first month. Abraham and Ellen hadn't encouraged her to talk, if they'd even noticed, but A.J. and Sydney had done all they could before giving up after six months. Sydney hoped her sister would speak again, but she couldn't blame Rebecca even if she wanted to. The Uglies responded to noise; if Rebecca felt she would be protected by staying silent, then who was Sydney to tell her any different?

They left in the morning, the sun barely beginning to rise over the surrounding mountains. The car still had gas, enough for them to drive out of Texas and into Louisiana but only a little further than that. The last time Sydney had sat in the van, she had been surrounded by supplies that had seemed never-ending. Now, the car felt empty and cold—Abraham refused to turn on the heater, worried that using too much of the car after a year would stall it out before they had even left the driveway.

Rebecca and A.J. were asleep in their seats; the boosters had been taken out in favor of more space, on the off-chance they came across supplies on the road. Sydney was sure they wouldn't, and she was sure her family believed that, too; but if they didn't have hope, then what did they have besides fear? It would have been so much easier to stay at the house they'd lived in for the past year, but with the surrounding area picked clean by both Abraham and other survivors, Sydney knew it best that the family moved on. Her parents knew that, too.

The road wasn't clear ahead. Abandoned cars dotted the sidelines, pulled over in their owners' hurry to run and hide. There were bodies strewn about, too—faces turned away, blood long since dried, clothes ripped and flesh rotting. Sydney was grateful to be in the car, not because the bodies were quickly out of sight but because the smell of the corpses couldn't reach her nose. She'd already seen bodies—it was the smell that was the worst part about them, not their appearance.

Uglies roamed the barren streets. They turned their heads when the car passed; Sydney noticed that they began to follow the car, but were so slow that it wasn't a worry. Abraham kept the speed steady—not enough to push the car to its limit, but enough to use the sparse gas they had available. With the road clear of any other cars, it was easy to drive as fast as needed before they ran out, so long as they didn't need to take detours around the Uglies.

Ellen and Abraham remained silent as the car moved down the road. Sydney found herself wishing she had a way to listen to music; she missed listening to the Fearless album on repeat, annoying Rebecca with repeating songs even though they were both looking forward to the new Taylor Swift album. She missed being able to put in headphones to block out the sound of her parents fighting with each other. Most of all, she missed being able to put on music to distract herself from feeling carsick.

Sydney pulled her knees up to her chest and laid her head against the window, watching the scenery pass in a blur. Her head was pounding, stomach eating itself in desperation to remind her to eat. She had grown used to the feeling over the last few months; Ellen and Abraham had decided to reduce how much the family ate to preserve supplies, but the headaches never got easier to deal with. It didn't help that they'd run out of aspirin after a few months in the house; it was impossible for Abraham to find more on his supply runs.