Three Orphan Pilgrimage (The Alternative to TWDG's Final Season) [Walking Dead]

58. The Other Side

"Come on OJ, go get it!" Clementine threw the ball across the room and waited for the boy to run after it, but he didn't. "Come on, don't you want your ball?"

Omid stood up, walked across the bed and stretched his arms up towards the back window. "Muh-duh."

"I know, you want to go out," sighed Clem. "Here, I can at least do this for you." Clem picked up Omid and held him up to the window. The boy placed his hands on the glass and looked out in amazement at the empty fields full of dead grass that were drifting past them. Searching for anything to distract her from the strain in her arms, Clem looked down at Sarah, who was lying on the bed with a book covering her face.

"Is that one of those medical textbooks?" asked Clem as she looked at the cover. "What are you reading about?"

"Sex," said Sarah without looking up.

"Really?"

"Well reproduction, and stuff like that," said Sarah.

"Why?"

"I was just curious," shrugged the older girl as she turned the page. "You're not?"

"No way. I hated just hearing you read about it in the encyclopedia that one time, it was so gross. Why do you want to know more about that?"

"It's just... interesting. I mean, this is where everyone in the world comes from," reasoned Sarah. "Aren't you curious about where Omid came from?"

"I saw where OJ came from," said Clem with a shudder. "I don't want to read about something gross like that if I don't need to know about it."

"Then why do you ask me what I need tampons for?" retorted Sarah.

"What do you need them for?" Even with a book covering most of her face, Clem could see Sarah was cringing in response to what she asked. "When I'm older?"

"Yeah, maybe around the same time you want to know more about sex."

"Well that'll be never," said Clem as she turned back to the window, noticing they were crossing a bridge now. "Do you think you could hold him for a second, my—"

"Oh shit!" Clem heard Patty yell before she felt the brakes being slammed on. She clutched Omid close to her chest as they came to a quick stop, then set the boy in his crib. The girl hurried to the front just in time to see Patty stepping out of the vehicle. She followed after the woman, bursting outside and walking forward on the bridge for a few steps before stopping when she saw what Patty had seen.

"What happened?" The road itself disappeared about twenty feet in front of where Clem was standing, leaving a massive gap between two ends of the bridge which were only connected by the metal framework running beside and over a highway that was no longer complete. Taking a few steps forward, Clem looked past the edge of the road and saw the river churning far below them.

"The hell is going on?" Clem looked over her shoulder and saw Anthony emerge from his camper. "Why'd we stop? This some kind of—whoa..." Anthony moved right to the edge of the remaining bridge and peered downward. "What happened to the road?"

"I don't know," spoke a shaken Patty. "I'm just glad I spotted it before I drove us off of it."

"Wow..." Clem looked over to see Sarah approaching the group. "What happened? Did part of the bridge fall down?"

"I don't think so, look at how the concrete and metal on the edges is blackened," said Patty as she motioned to the far side of the broken bridge.

"And there are cars on that side of the bridge, but not this one," noted Clem as she looked at where Patty was pointing. "Like, they wanted to keep people out."