Guts || TWD

30. Where's The Arsonist?

The I-89, very early in the morning...

Eleanor Adams sat on the tailgate of her brother's truck, wrapped up in a blanket and Glenn's arms. She looked peaceful, but she couldn't have been farther from it.

She was sick, violently ill from her head injury, and she felt awful to boot. She, Glenn, Beth, Maggie, and Daryl had made it from the carnage first, but they had been sitting there for hours. In restless worry as they tried to conjure up the most believable turn of events for why half of their group was still missing.

Maggie and Beth were stuck together, sitting hand in hand in the hatchback trunk of Carol's Cherokee. They hadn't seen or heard from their father yet; it was unknown if he had even made it off his farm.

Daryl was pacing across the width of the highway, one concrete divider to the other. He was stressed, already high-strung from the hours before. He had gotten Elle to safety after her injury, the Greene girls were okay, but... where was Tucker? Rick? Lori and Carl? Rory? They can't have lost that many people with such a foolproof plan. Run, distract, get to the highway. It wasn't fucking rocket science.

But Glenn was the real bundle of nerves; he was trying to be strong for Elle since he knew she felt so terrible. He held her close against him, providing her comfort when she needed it. She had thrown up several times in the last few hours. Her head was aching with such intensity she felt like she needed an IV drip of Dilaudid just to take the edge off.

Her ear had been ringing since the accident, and the blood had clotted, then broken open again in the bustle. There was an eerie river of scarlet seeping from the long gash on her skull. Though it promptly dried in their idle hours, crusting to the side of her head and in her hair. Glenn wanted to help her clean up, to see if he could rummage up any pain medication. He was sure even something as trivial as an Aspirin would help her feel even minutely better, but he refrained. He wanted to wait for Rory or Herschel, someone to tell him that what he was doing was helping, not making her worse.

They never came... it had been hours. The twilight had started to splinter off as the impending dawn broke.

"Where are they? They should be here by now." Beth huffed, looking to Daryl as if he somehow would have all the answers. A lot of people had been looking at him like that lately, and he wasn't sure if he could fill those shoes.

"We should go back, look for them," Maggie added, but Glenn hummed in denial.

"No, too dangerous, we stay here. That's what Rick said."

"Rick's not here!" She snapped back.

"He will be," Daryl promised, "settle down."

Elle looked from Daryl to the girls as best she could. Her pupils were dilated, and her vision was hard to keep in focus, and the pain. Oh, god, it was unimaginable, sharp and stinging with each movement of her eyes. Defeatedly, she dropped her head back down to Glenn's shoulder, and he pulled her closer by the arm wrapped around her waist.