Last One Standing ~ TWD Daryl Dixon

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Jo

The sunlight was warm on my upturned face, it's rays amplified by the bug spattered windshield. I allowed myself to close my eyes and revel in it for just a moment longer. I could feel it behind my gritty eye lids, warming my face. I let the heat seep into my body and bring me back, just for a moment, to a happier place. A place before Them.

A horrible, chest deep, coughing hack wrenched me back to reality. I turned in my seat to face my younger sister, Kate, in the back of the SUV. The teenager looked even more pale than before, her normally tan skin was sickly white and pasty from illness. Her slim frame shook with the force of her coughs. I sucked in a breath. Kate was getting worse, and there was nothing I could do about it.

I handed her back the last of the water. I was going to have to scavenge soon, find more water, maybe some meds, but we were in the middle of no where. The county highway stretched out in front and behind us in an unending empty ribbon. It was just one of many roads we had traveled over the past months skirting around the suburbs of Atlanta scraping by any way we could to survive.

It was all I knew now, survival. Not living, surviving.

Kate took the water and she smiled weakly in thanks as though she were trying to reassure me. My heart constricted as I watched my baby sister try to put on a brave face for me. I reached out and gave her hand a gentle squeeze. I waited until Kate took a sip before turning back to the road. We needed to keep moving but we didn't really have a destination.

I glanced once at the passenger seat but our brother-in-law, Nick, was still sleeping soundly. I gripped the wheel tightly and eased the car into gear. It had been temperamental the last week and had to be loved a little. I cringed at the thought of having to find a replacement. I didn't want to pick up another lemon. I set the cruise control to thirty to conserve gas and set off down the road.

Driving was the worst, especially since now neither Nick not Kate were up to making much conversation. Driving gave me time think. It gave me time to reflect on how much my life had been altered in the last year since the outbreak, since They appeared. It gave me time to remember all the people I lost.

I took a deep breath. Stop, I thought, reset. It was a trick I had developed to control my wayward thoughts before they took me someplace dark.

Kate broke into another coughing fit. She coughed until she gagged, then collapsed back against the seat, exhausted. I glanced worriedly over my shoulder, my grip tightening on the steering wheel.

Kate's coughing finally roused Nick. He looked around bleary eyed. "Where?" he started to ask as he blinked slowly, his eyes struggled to focus on anything.

"Highway twenty-nine," I replied tersely. "According to that old map there should be a couple small towns along this stretch. Easy pickings." I motioned to the worn paper map sitting on the dash. Kate had found it in the glove box when we took the SUV a few weeks back after my car finally died. The map was ancient and well worn and it made me nervous that it might not be accurate anymore. It's print date was 1995. Since GPS had become so popular before the outbreak I had been shocked anyone still carried a regular map. But cell phones had become little more than paper weights only a week into the outbreak.

Nick grunted in response, his eyes drooping once more. I cut my eyes to him. He was laid back in his seat which was back as far as it could go to accommodate the makeshift splint on his leg. Three days before Nick was forced to jump out of a second story window to escape Them. From what I could tell he had broken his left femur. The leg was ballooned up to twice the normal size, the skin was an angry purple and black and hot to the touch. He could barely handle the pain without pills and even with the pills he couldn't put any weight on it. Running was absolutely out of the question.