Daddy's Little Girl

Gas? - 4

Kat’s P.O.V 

I hope that won’t be the last time we see George and Dwight... I gaze aimlessly out the window, trees and houses blurring by as we drive in comfortable silence. I have a good feeling about Atlanta. We’re gonna find our families there, I just know it.  

*** 

I must have fallen asleep on the ride because the next thing I know I’m woken up but Reginald getting back inside the car and starting the engine.  

“Sorry to wake you.” He says with a little smile, glancing down at me.  

“It’s okay, where’d you run off to?” I ask in a yawn. A weird look washes over his face as he doesn’t look away from the road. A mixture of sorrow and grief, but something else that I can’t place. Fear?  

“Just went to take care of some unfinished business.” He dismisses. I can tell it was more than just ‘business’, but I leave it alone. I turn the radio on but all we hear is static. Reginald presses the CD button; it reads for a second before it begins playing mid-song. Country music. 

“Good Lord!” I blurt out as Reg quickly picks up the song, singing along to the music.  

“What, you don’t like country?” He asks laughing, a grin the size of Texas plastered across his face.  

“That’s all my daddy ever plays! I’m not saying I don’t like it. Hand me a guitar and I’ll play till my fingers bleed! I’m just not the biggest of a fan in the south.” I explain, causing him to burst into a fit of laughter, causing me to join him before we both sing along to the music.  

*** 

We’ve been on the road for a couple of hours now. After multiple washrooms breaks from yours truly, we’re actually starting to make some progress. My daddy always made fun of me for having such a small bladder, said he wouldn’t be able to stay sane with the amounts of times we would have to stop. I miss my daddy... I miss his tight bear hugs... I miss his laugh, his smile, the sound of his voice…  

“Broadcasting on emergency channel, we’ll be approaching Atlanta on Highway 85. Anybody reads, please respond. Hello? Hello?” The sound of Reginald's voice pulls me out of my deep thoughts, “Can anybody hear my voice? Anybody out there? Anybody hear me, please respond. Hello, can you hear my voice? Hello? Hello? Can anybody hear my voice?” I hope somebody’s out there listening to this ‘cause if he says hello one more time I’m gonna lose my s**t. “Anybody who reads, please respond. Broadcasting on the emergency channel. We'll be approaching Atlanta on Highway 85. Anybody reads, please respond.” He repeats for the last time before he put the speaker back in its place.  

“You know, we never got to finish our game of twenty-one questions, right?” I say trying to lighten the mood. It seems to have worked because judging by the smile on his face he wants to play.  

“Ok, let’s play.” He replies looking at me and smiles.  

“How old are you?” I ask. 

“Pass!” He laughs.  

“Come on now!” I laugh, lightly hitting him in the shoulder. “Where’s your depth? You’re soul?” I mock, pressing my hand to my chest acting swoon. 

“Alright! Alright!” He laughs, shoving me lightly. “Last time I checked I was thirty-six.”  

“What about you?” He chimes in. 

“Last time I checked,” I mock, earning another shove. “fifteen, turning sixteen in July. If July hasn’t already passed...” I trail off, a weird feeling forming in the pit of my stomach. “What’s your favorite colour?” I ask, trying to shake the feeling.  

“Green. Like a grass green.” He explains, making me laugh.  

“Grass green.” I laugh. “Favorite type of food?” I chime. 

“Chinese. Yours?”  

“Really?! Mine too!” We both laugh.  

“Did you have any pets? Before this?” I gazing out my window. Reginald chuckles lightly before answering,  

“No, it was just me, Irene and Clyde.” 

“Tell me about them.” I ask, “Sorry.” I say not thinking before I speak, as usual.  

“No, it’s okay.” He assures, “Irene is my wife, an amazing, strong, confident, brave woman and just, gorgeous. The love of my life and the mother of my only child, Clyde. He’s what-fourteen fifteen years old now. He’s kind and strong, compassionate and plenty smart, but acts dumber than a doorknob sometimes. But that’s boys for you.” He laughs to himself.  

“I can tell you really love them.” I muse.  

“How so?” He presses.  

“The way you talk about them, your eyes light up and your smile gets bigger.” He smiles at me.  

“What about your family?” He asks.  

“It’s not much of a family, to begin with. I never met my mamma, she-she uh... She ran off when I was a baby, left me and my daddy. Since that it’s just been us and his dumbass older brother.” I sigh, “But I love ‘em, always been there for us. And my daddy, he was like my best friend. We-we did everything together. He taught me to hunt, fish, shoot. You name it.” I could feel a tear escape my eye. Damn it Dougherty! Pull yourself together! I wipe the lone tear away before Reginald could see it.  

“He sounds like a great man.” He tells me. 

“He is.” I agree with a smile. 

“We’ll find them, don’t worry.” He says, “We’ll find all of them. I know it.”  

*** 

Once again, I find myself waking up from an unexpected nap. This time Reginald is in the car, looking at a picture. His family picture. 

“Hey.” Is the first thing to come to mind as I rub the sleep out of my eyes.  

“Hey.” Reg returns with a little smile. 

“That your family?” I ask, pointing to the photo.  

“Yeah, here’s Irene and there’s Clyde.” He says pointing at each of them. 

“She beautiful.” I tell him.  

“Yeah, she’s a real gem.” He says with a smile. He takes the picture and puts it back in his jacket pocket., over his heart. “Come on.” He says.  

“Where too?” I ask excitedly, “I need a good stretch, can barely feel my legs!” Reg shakes the empty gas can in front of my face.  

“Gas!” He jokes as we hop out of the car. “Peaceful ain’t it?” He asks looking around at the trees and open field. 

“Yeah, sure is. Is it just me or does the air seem fresher out here?”  

“Yeah, yeah it kinda does.” And he leaves it at that, ‘cause what else are we supposed to say. We just walk, walk and walk and walk. We eventual find a house on our quest for gas. Reginald and I give each other a shrug, opening the front gate, closing it behind us. Better safe than sorry. We cautiously head towards the front door. 

“Hello? Police officer out here; can I borrow some gas? Hello, anybody home?” Reg calls out, trying to catch the attention of any if anyone around. He puts down his bag and gas can as we walk closer to the front door. Eventually, the only thing in his hand is his hat. We walk up the steps and knock on the door. “Hello? Anybody home?” Reg calls out as walk around the wrap around porch, looking into the windows until Reginald stops, standing in shock before looking away quickly.  

“What? What is it? Reg?” I ask as his face is full of sorrow.  

“It’s nothing.” I raise an eyebrow at him and put my hands on my hips, “Nothing you want to see, anyways.” He corrects himself. We walk back down the walkway and he takes a seat on one of the benches in the garden.  

“You okay?” I ask. 

“Yeah… yeah. Just give me a minute.” He says as he rakes his hands through his hair. I turn around and something catches my eye. “Reg.” I say giving his shoulder a light nudge. He looks up from the look and turns to where I’m pointing at. It’s a truck, and a truck means gas! He gets up and walks to the truck, me hot on his heel. Is this becoming a thing, every time we go somewhere, I’m literally right behind him. I think to myself with a smirk on my lips. He opens the door and looks for keys, coming up with nothing. Crap! Now what? Just as we were about to walk back to the car, we hear something. Hooves stomping and light neighing. We turn around and the biggest smile appears on my face.  

“A horse!” I practically jump up and down in excitement.  

“You ride?” He asks. 

“You don’t?” I tease, making him laugh a little.  He decides to get the horse as I go to collect the bags, leaving the gas can seeing as we no longer need them. I can already tell Reginald and I are getting close, it’s a good type of close, the type of close you have with a good friend. I didn’t even get a chance to pick up one bag by the time Reginald comes up with the horse. 

“Can I name him?” I ask as I pet his mane.  

“Sure, what do you have in mind?” 

“I was kinda thinkin’ something like…. Atlanta.” 

“I like it.” he says as he helps me up on the horse.  

“To be fair I haven’t done this for years. So, let’s go easy, okay? Slow.” Right after he finishes his sentence the horse takes off, darting down the field. “Easy! Easy, boy!” I can barely control my laughter as Reginald tries to control the horse. “Easy, easy, easy boy, easy!” We almost fall off once or twice because I was laughing so hard. We ride back to the car and gather what little supplies we have, and head on the road again.  

The ride to Atlanta is a bit more entertaining, despite no music or a set to snooze in. We finally reach Atlanta, a complete ghost town. On one side of the freeway, cars and buses bumper to bumper, some even piled on top one another. A city in panic. Reg got tired awhile back and asked to switch seats, said his ass was goin’ numb, but I know that he could tell that I was just itching to ride.  

“We’re here!” I say as we pass a sign that says ‘Welcome to Atlanta!’ 

“Let me get in front for a while, don’t wanna get lost in a place like this.” He half-jokes. 

“It’s bigger than I remember.” I say in amazement, “Even as a ghost town.” As we ride, the streets are now starting to become more and more busier, fallen helicopters, totaled cars. What the hell did we miss? We were strolling down what looked like the main street, something spooked the horse as we passed by an abandon, burnt up, destroyed bus. And that’s when we knew we were no longer alone.  

“Steady. It’s just a few. Nothing we can’t outrun.” He says to the horse, even though I knew he was talking to me because of my grip around his waist tighten an awful lot. We turned down another street to lose them, and on top of a tank, there were two crows picking the flesh off a dead body. I gaged a little, so did Reginald. As we walked past the tank, I heard something overhead of us, it kinda sounded like a helicopter. And it seemed like Reginald had heard it too because both of us were looking everywhere in the sky to see where it’s coming from.  

“Damn these stupid buildings.” I curse under my breath. Reginald is staring at a building made of glass and tells the horse to go faster. As we run, trying to follow the sound we turn a corner, and that was by far the biggest mistake we could have made. Round the corner is a hundreds upon hundreds of walkers everywhere. The street filled sidewalk to sidewalk with them. 

“s**t!” Reginald and I both shout. We quickly turn around and race down the street. As we reach the next set of lights, there are even more of them. Pouring in from everywhere. As we try to turn around again its already too late, they’re here. Grabbing and clawing at Atlanta. They’re trying to pull Reginald and I down as we try to keep each other up. Then all at once, we all fall, thank god most of them go for the horse. Giving us little to no time getaway, we leave the bags and crawl under the tank next to us. Reginald and I are trying to kick them away as much as possible but there’s too many of them. And for the first time in my life I thought, this is it, this is the end, this is how I die. Eaten alive by lifeless assholes. No! I’m a Dougherty and the only thing that can kill a Dougherty is a Dougherty.  

Reginald pulls out his gun and starts to shoot some of them down. Making it a little harder for more of them to come for us. And that’s when I notice an opening in the bottom of the tank and grab Reginald’s shirt as I pull myself up and help him as he closes the hatch. We quickly back away from the door and sigh in relief. Each of us catching our breath from our near-death experience. Reginald is sitting beside a dead solider and I point to the gun in his pocket, as he reaches for it, its head moves. And I am lost for words; all I can do is point. Reginald slowly turns his head and shots the stupid thing in the head. When the gun was fired it disturbed the air compression in the tank and a loud ringing invaded my ears and my vision went foggy. As I tried to regain my hearing, Reginald pops his head out of the hole in the top of the tank. “I see the bag, the gun bag. It’s on the floor not too far from the tank.” Reginald says as my hearing finally returns. I hear them climbing onto the vehicle.  

“s**t! s**t! s**t!” Reginald yells as he closes the top.  

“Reginald what the hell are we gonna do?!” I scream out of fear, tears rush to my eyes as he stares at the gun in his hand. Just as the situation we were in was about to go from horrible to deadly we here static, radio static. Reginald and I look at each other; I’m going crazy, aren’t I?! 

A man’s voice comes through, “Hey you, dumbasses… Hey, you in the tank. Cozy in there?”