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

106. Adapt and Overcome

"They have a what?" asked Sarah as she unloaded and examined her rifle.

"It's this big... tractor thing," explained Clementine as she loaded an extra bullet into her gun's magazine. "It just... dices them up and spits out blood. Dilawar called it a mulcher."

"And they park it in the middle of a road and just let the lurkers walk into it?" asked Sarah as she loaded and cocked her rifle.

"Something like that," said Clem as she holstered her gun.

"That's... brilliant."

"No it's not." Sarah stared at Clem in response. "Fuck, yes it is. Why didn't we ever think of that?"

"We didn't know," shrugged Sarah. "It would have made clearing out Tulsa a lot easier."

"That took us all day," recounted a weary Clem. "Hopefully that's enough time for Dilawar to get the diesel."

"If he can get to it..." Clem looked over and saw Sarah's rifle was trembling in her hands.

"I know," said Clem as she placed her hand on Sarah's shoulder. "I'm scared too."

"We've never done something like this before," noted Sarah.

"Sure we have," said Clem. "It just never stops being terrifying."

"No, this is different," insisted Sarah. "It's not like Shaffer's of Valkaria, where we sort of knew what those places were like, or that evil man in Kansas and that awful woman in Wyoming. This is a huge group of people, the only thing we know about them is they already want to kill us, there's only six of us, and we're going to try to steal from them and hope they don't notice."

The rifle started trembling more and Clem searched her mind for something reassuring to say.

"I did something like this once, before I met you."

"What? Really?"

"When I was in Savannah with Lee, there was this big group of awful people who had made their own city. We needed gas then too, and we knew they weren't going to give us any, so we decided we'd try to sneak in and steal it."

"And... you went with Lee?"

"I wanted to," said Clem. "For the same reason I'm doing this, I didn't want to just wait around for the next horrible thing to happen. I wanted to do something, before it was too late."

"So... what happened? What was it like? What... what did those people do to you?"

"They... were already dead," recalled Clem. "Things had gone badly, and by the time we got there what was left of them had turned into walkers."

"So... you really haven't done this before," concluded Sarah. "Not really."

Clem sighed deeply. "No," she admitted. "Not really.

Clem knelt down in front of the bed. She pulled back the curtain and saw Omid inside, still doodling away on his pad of paper. He even moved Elma in close so she could watch. Clem wished she could join them. She never saw him draw anything before today, at least not with a crayon. She remembered when he tried finger painting and just wanted to smear paint on everything in sight. Now he was just sitting quietly while drawing sand, and Clem couldn't stay to enjoy it.

"Be good Omid," whispered Clem. "I love you."

Clem stood up and found herself staring at someone wearing a gas mask.

"What?" asked Sarah as she stared at Clem, at least she thought Sarah was staring at her.

"It's been a while since I've seen you wear that," admitted Clem. "You don't look like yourself when you wear that." Clem picked up her own mask from the bed and examined it. It looked like a small sunken face with no nose, a filter for a mouth, and two round eyepieces, one of which was still cracked from the Vaquero's bullet hitting her binoculars back in Wyoming. "I guess I don't look the same either when I wear this."