Journey (Part I)
The girl Holly rescued from certain death is a nuisance and a pain. A frightened little lamb who stumbles about far too noisily on legs too weak as Holly drags them bodily through the trees and away from the growls still daunting their trail.
At first, Holly is sympathetic, but as the minutes drag on and the kid is no closer to helping save her own life, still whimpering for her mother, she can't help but think it's absolutely pathetic. Hollys never had a mother and she’s made do just fine.
And really, there are much bigger things to worry about out here. Like how the kid can’t climb a tree to save her own goddamn life and is so clumsy every rotter for five miles could tell where she is at any given second.
If Holly hadn’t come along when she did the girl would be halfway to reanimating right now.
She’s got nothing on her either, no gear, really poor quality shoes and a frilly blue shirt with a fading rainbow on the front. Her pink capris are ripped bloody at the knee and Holly doesn’t offer to help her sew it up.
She sniffles as they walk, clutching an actual doll (What are they, four?) and Holly already regrets this. She’s saying something about the interstate and the sun or some other such nonsense but once Holly feels they've shaken the rotters she just ignores the girl in favor of her compass needle and keeps heading north. That’s where she’s going and if the girl doesnt like it, then she’s free to leave.
Rotter-bait. She’s just going to slow her down.
She’s right (obviously) and they hike for barely three hours before the girl needs to stop. Thankfully there's a hunting cabin nearby, but seriously? It’s barely been any uphill for the last mile at all.
(Thanks to Oliver Wood she could do this kind of shit in her sleep)
The girl shadows Holly as she clears the place, one hand grasping at the back of her shirt until Holly shakes her off in annoyance. It's just a couple of rooms, sparsely furnished and clearly abandoned. There’s a pile of tattered blankets near the worn-out couch. An oil-painting of a bud-light can and an ashtray/racoon statue sit on the side table.
Just a run of the mill hunters cabin. She’s seen a few over the past couple of weeks.
She drops her bags in the kitchen and immediately begins rifling through the cabinets, she’s holding onto those buffalo-mac Adventure Packs for as long as she can. The dumb kid shifts awkwardly behind her but Holly ignores it as she finds a half-empty jar of peanut butter. Score.
Holly throws herself into a chair at the little table tucked under the window, unscrewing the lid and scooping some out with her fingers (sporks at the bottom of her bag, she can’t be asked) . It's creamy and rich and a little earthy from her unwashed hands. The girl wrinkles her nose but doesn’t comment, Holly rolls her eyes and holds out the jar.
“Want some?” The girl hesitates, then moves to the kitchen, rummaging around for a minute and coming back with two spoons. Huh, well that’s an idea. Holly accepts, because she’s impatient but not a barbarian, and holds out the jar for her.
They sit in silence for a while, just passing the peanut butter between them before the girl tentatively speaks up again.
“D-do you know how to get back to the interstate?”
“Nah,” Holly smacks her tongue. Man, this stuff really sticks to the roof of your mouth, “I’m headed to Atlanta.”
“Oh,” The girl squirms, looking suddenly uncomfortable, “W-we just came from there. It’s…” she winces, eyes wet with a shocking amount of sympathy that Holly does not need, “It was totally overrun, even the CDC is gone. Blown up. There’s… nothing there, I’m sorry.”
“Okay, so?”
“So?”
“I’m still going.”
“Why would you?”
“None of your business.” Holly snaps, angry and defensive like a dog bristling the fur on its neck.
“Okay, okay. Sorry. Just…” She hesitates, “So you can’t get me back to the interstate?”
“I probably could, but I’m not gonna.”
“What? Why not?!” Holly scoffs, not unkindly but without any patience.
“Because I'm just as lost as you are. I don’t know where the interstate is from here but I do know how to get where I’m going. And I don’t have time to waste running around the woods calling for your mum and all the dead to hear when she’s probably already walking with them,” she shakes her head with disbelief at the girls suggestion and scrapes the side of the jar with her spoon
Rotter-bait’s eyes were watery and her lip trembled like it was taking everything in her not to cry. “You’re not gonna help me?”
Holly looked back at her evenly, stomach squirming but unwilling to acknowledge it. “I already did.”
The girl sucked in a great big breath like she was about to cry, or maybe die or explode or something. A chastising voice in her head that sounded a lot like Hermione’s clucked at her to be nice, be gentle, and so awkwardly Holly passed the jar back her way, hoping to appease the over-sized toddler (she still had that doll) a bit. She accepted, scooping a huge glob of peanut butter desperately into her mouth, tears streaming in two silent trails down either side of her face.
They slept on opposite sides of the couch at the start of the night, they’re both theoretically small enough to fit, but the idiot kicked in her sleep and so it didn't take long for Holly to move her sleeping bag to the floor, unbelievably bitter about it and grumbling all the way.
///
Sophia dreams in black and white and red.
She’s standing with her family on the side of the road, watching Atlanta burn in the distance. Her mother sobs and her father swears and it’s all Sophia can do not to just turn and run. She wants to but it feels like her feet are frozen in place.
There aren’t any walkers at first, but she can still hear them. Each time her father opens his jaw to speak it hangs there loose and spews over with the static-like growls of a herd. She looks into his eyes, they are pale and hungry. His veins are black under his waxy skin.
Her mother grips her tight like she’s scared Sophia will run away, she says nothing at her back but Sophia can feel her tension, grip too tight and swaying a bit. Her fingers rot and fall apart and there's hot breath on the back of her neck.
Then Carl’s dad is there, waving his arms, revolver in hand and telling her to run. To forget the sun and the creek and move--just go before it's too late.
Sophia can’t breathe, she can’t think. What used to be her parents move in closer and she wakes with a start. Her hands fly to her chest, her throat is tight and she thinks she’s hyperventilating. Does she need a bag?
“Calm down, you’re fine.” She starts before she remembers. The dirty girl is there in a disgruntled heap floor, sitting up in her sleeping bag, an annoyed tilt to her lips, rubbing one palm on her eye to chase away sleep and glaring at her with the other, a shock of venomous green in the dark. “It's just a bad dream. Go back to sleep.”
Sophia nods and lies back, blinking tearfully up at the dark slats in the cabin roof for a long time before she falls into black.
///
“What’s your name anyhow?”
“It’s Holly.”
“I’m Sophia.”
“Alright.”
///
Midday they stumble across a creek and Sophia actually seems excited. There are wild onions growing along the edge but Holly doesn’t think it’s about that. Still, she digs them up carefully with her fingers and wraps them in a patch of cloth from her torn shirt. With the extra-whiny-mouth to feed, she’s finally worrying a bit about food and rather unenthusiastic about trying Dan’s line-fishing technique again.
Sophia paces along the creek bed, eyeing the surrounding terrain, the tall walls of dirt, roots like fingers reaching through the soil, the river-rocks and gently trickling water with an intense, frantic sort of scrutiny.
“This… I was near a creek.” She mumbles, turning on the spot, twisting the bottom of her shirt with her fingers.
“With Rick, a-and those walkers. H-he told me…he found me and told me to k-keep the sun on my left s-shoulder, keep moving and find the interstate and my m-mom would be there… maybe…” She turns to Holly with tears in her eyes, “m-maybe we can-”
“How do you know this is even the same creek?” Holly asks impatiently, knowing by the devastated sheen in her eyes that it probably wasn’t. Feeling bad but mostly sore and in a rush.
“I-I don’t-” Sophia cut herself off with a sharp breath, and Holly tried to make her voice as gentle as she could given her simmering frustration.
“I’m sorry, but we gotta keep moving. It's not safe here.”
And it’s not, they can both hear the dead moaning and snapping branches somewhere-not-too-far-away. Sophia's face falls, lip wobbling (again, it’s really getting old) for a seemingly endless moment as she clutches that ratty doll to her chest.
She looks so small and lost, teetering on shaky legs somehow even scrawnier than Hollys, about to break. When she does, it's with a low cracking sob, and she throws the doll away with such disgust that it genuinely surprises Holly, as she promptly breaks down in tears.
Sophia wraps her arms around her stomach as she cries, Holly lets her and tries not to look. But as the minutes drag on and her sobs get somehow even louder she can’t help the way she shuffles in place impatiently, checking over her shoulder every few seconds for the source of the groans she can hear getting steadily closer.
She was never good at this kind of stuff. She wants to comfort her, but much more than anything else she just wants it to be over.
Finally, the blonde girl wipes her eyes, choking out a last sob, wiping a snotty face on her shirt and turns to face the direction they were originally headed. Eyes downcast and embarrassed, refusing to look at Holly again, who was now trying to covertly catch her eye.
“Okay, I’m ready now.”
///
Sophia is loud and clumsy and stupid and scared and annoying and seems so much younger than Holly even though they must be pretty similar in age. The Girl-Who-Lived bites her tongue against what she wants to say, tries to remind herself that she’d lived an incredibly difficult life compared to most other twelve year olds and is by extension much tougher than them, but Merlin, does Sophia make it hard sometimes.
She’d forgotten at Hogwarts, what other kids were like who weren’t Dudley (sniffly and weak). Were mages just tougher than muggles? She didn't think so on account of Malfoy and Parkinson and that stupid girl from Hufflepuff, who was still convinced she’d tried to set that snake on Finch-Fletchley. Was it a Gryffindor thing? Maybe she got spoiled being best friends with Ron and Hermione.
Sophia cries and stumbles and slows Holly down and they’ve made significantly less progress when they set up camp for the night than Holly would’ve liked.
The young Potter grits her teeth and snaps out a cruel remark when the other girl complains of the chill while Holly is literally in the middle of clumsily lighting a fire with matches instead of her magic. She says something about her being a useless baby making her life harder. Why doesn't she try it? Holly doesn’t really register her words in her red hot frustration, but it makes Sophia cry and walk off.
Holly feels the stirrings of guilt in her gut but that is drowned out by the wave of relief that comes with being left alone again. Selfishly (horribly), a part of her hopes the dumb girl doesn’t come back at all.
///
She almost gets her wish.
Holly is halfway through a packet of teriyaki chicken (a second portion, the last one, is already out and waiting like an apology, and okay maybe she’d started to get a bit nervous it has been quite awhile since she stormed off and she’d been sort of mean, she guessed, but it was also all true and she’d come back soon anyway, so it would be fine, probably) when she hears Sophia’s frightened screams. Again.
She takes off without thought or anything else either. Charging through the trees like a madwoman on a mission from God, blood pounding in her ears, guilt weighting each step until her shoes slip in the muck. Don’t let her be too late. She didn’t really mean it. The kid’s annoying but no one deserves to go out like that.
Sophia’s actually made it up into the tree this time. When Holly finds her she’s wedged herself up in the lower branches and is holding her feet out of the way of the grasping hands of two dead men. Her wild panicked eyes find Holly's green ones and flood with relief.
(Holly will never admit it to anyone, but she really likes that look. It’s the same look Ron and Hermione give her when she’s about to pull off some insane stunt to save their lives. Or like when Ginny first woke up in the Chamber. Like she’s special or important. Like they believe she can save them. Maybe it's just the gryffindor in her, but she really really likes being the hero.)
Hollys got nothing on her, she’d been whittling (mangling) a stick before dinner and left her knife by the fire, both of these Rotters outweigh her by a hundred pounds, easily. She should take her time to think through this clearly, but one of the bastards wraps a hand around Sophia's ankle and yanks and there is no more time. Holly moves.
There's a rock. Then it's in her hands and she’s kicking the back knee of the rotter with a hold of Sophia and she’s bringing the rock down hard on its skull. Pink mists the air and gets in her mouth and she gags. It’s still growling so she brings it down again. A hand on her shoulder pulls her back into rank heavy breathing and then she’s spinning and shoving and tumbling to the ground on top of the one still moving. She crawls up til she’s straddling his chest, batting his hands away and raises the rock high above her head. She brings it down.
Thwack!
Again.
Thwack!
And again.
Thwack!
Bone cracks and splinters. Blood, so dark it's almost black, surges and splashes across her face and chest. It smelled like something wrong, sweet but still stinging in her nose, almost garlick-y which was just confusing.
Thwack!
Its forehead caves under the stone, the white of its skull stands out milky through the rotten red meat and finally the dead man stops moving.
Holly falls to the side, breathing heavily. She barely has a second to catch her breath before she has her arms full of the other girl, still shaking and crying and thanking her over and over while Holly awkwardly pats her back.
///
They eat in silence and still sleep on opposite sides of the fire.
///
The next morning Sophia crinkles her nose as Holly unstraps her arm, knee pads and shin guards and commands the other girl into them. She accepts them (and the knife Holly forces into her belt) with no small amount of befuddlement. Holly's ears burn and she won't meet her eyes.
(She spent a long time last night awake thinking about little Ginny Weasley, pale and quiet in the corners of the common room all year, overlooked and too weak to speak up on her own.)
When Sophia tries to thank Holly she grumbles something about her needing to be treated like a toddler and stomps off in a huff when Sophia points out that until just now it was Holly wearing these, so what does that make her?
It's a long morning of stony silence after that but Sophia keeps breaking out into giggles at the way Holly pouts as they walk.
///
“Where are you from?”
“Where do you think?”
“Uhm… Australia?”
“Wow. Okay, then.”
///
They hike for another two days before reaching the road. There's a sign that shows Holly it’s not the one she needs to get to Atlanta, but it will connect to it in about twenty miles. She’s lost maybe a week of travel but all in all it's not too bad.
She tells Sophia this while they make camp just off the road that night, keeping up an endless stream of chatter that is really rather unusual for her but given the circumstances seems unable to be helped.
There's a gloom that's descended over the other girl since they emerged from the woods that afternoon and it sets Holly's teeth on edge. It's almost like there's a literal aura around Sophia that simply can't be ignored, sometimes Holly catches glimpses of it out of the corner of her eye, it's a dark thing, thick and heavy and it clings to her skin like dried glue. Holly wants to pick at it, to pry it up and peel it off with her fingers, and so she talks long past when the other girl stops responding.
She’s nattering on about how weird the interstate system seems to her as a foreigner (Sophia still under the mistaken impression of Holly’s australian origin) when she’s interrupted.
“This is the right road.”
Holly shuts her mouth with a click and holds her breath. Sophia isn’t looking at her. Just staring off down the road into middle distance, eyes unfocused as she talks more at Holly than to her.
“I recognise it, Carl’s car games were stupid and so I spent a lot of time just looking out the window. There’s a little town up that ways a bit, and a couple hours past it is where I lost them.” She laughs, it's a dry unfunny sound, more of a choke than a giggle, “At least it was a few hours by car. But now I don't’...I don't know…”
She trails off, and then turns to Holly with such sudden focus that she jumps, a bit caught off guard by the intense glint of her eyes in the near dark.
“Tell me, and be honest because I know you’re good at that-” She doesn’t say it mean but Holly still feels pangs of quiet shame, “Do you think I’d survive?”
Holly hesitates but Sophia presses, something desperate and panicked in her voice.
“You said you won’t go back and don’t worry I won’t try to make you but I know if I want a chance at seeing my mom again I need to turn back now and try to catch up with them before they all move on. They might still be there now but they wont be forever. My best shot at making it in time is if I leave first thing in the morning.”
She stops, takes a deep shaky breath and runs a nervous hand through her hair, it's as greasy and tangled as Holly’s own and her fingers are trembling. There's a sheen to her eyes that Holly does not like or really understand, it reminds her of being right on the edge of something precarious, the anticipation of a fall from some great height into something unknown.
“And so I’m asking you… do you think I’d survive that trip on my own?”
Holly looks away and focuses intently on her dinner, chewing her cheek as she chews over some answer to give that is still truthful but not so devastating. That’s the problem with reality though, she’s found. It's almost always devastating, and when it’s not, it’s just plain scary.
She forces her voice to be detached and unemotional, just a blank truth spat out into the quiet between them.
“No.”
Their campfire crackles in the silence of the early evening, sending up glowing orange sparks into the darkening sky.
Sophia exhales a shuddery breath and nods. Saying nothing further as she stares mutely into the flames. Holly watches the chunks of re-hydrated meat in her bowl instead of looking her way.
That night they sleep turned away from each other. Holly pretends she doesn’t hear her crying and Sophia pretends she doesn’t know that Holly is still awake.
///
In the morning Sophia’s cheeks are dry again, and something in her eyes has shifted, though Holly doesn’t know what. It’s harder though, like flimsy cardboard instead of saran wrap (if nothing like Holly’s steel) and Holly is begrudgingly proud of the way she moves through the motions of gathering their things without making a sound of complaint.
She straps into her borrowed gear, rainbow shirt bloody and faded from the sun, grips Dan’s old knife tight in her hand and nods to Holly that she is ready to depart.
They set off together down the road, away from the small town Sophia remembers, away from the creek and the graveyard of cars and her mother and all the rest.
Holly glances at her from the corner of her eye a few times but Sophia keeps her gaze forward, back stiff against all she was leaving behind.
They both knew if she ever saw them again, it would not be for a very long time.
///
And just like that, Holly gained a companion for her journey.
It did not occur to her until two towns over and ten hours later that she would absolutely have to explain about magic at some point before they reached their destination.
When she realized this she was hit with such a shock of fear that she dropped her canteen. This was unfortunate timing, as they were scrounging around the back of an old supermarket and thus alerted the other undead shoppers to their so far overlooked presence there.
Forced to flee for their lives, Holly pushed the notion to the back of her mind, and resolved to figure it out later.
///
When later came, it would come with fear and with blood and with an evil Holly had never faced personally before.
And Holly would find herself frightened, both of people and of her own capabilities for maybe the first time since she’d heard about magic.
She just had to hope that Sophia did not feel the same way about her.