You learn patience in long walks. The kind where your legs burn, your boots rot, and the silence stretches so long you start talking to ghosts.
We were two weeks out when Amy finally asked it.
"You sure we're not lost?"
I didn't answer.
Because truth was… no.
Not by the old world's rules, anyway.
But Rick knew where we were going. And he trusted this map like he'd drawn it from memory. Because maybe… he had.
And I trusted Rick.
So we kept walking.
Our scouting crew was light and fast:
Daryl, our tracker
Glenn, our route-runner and maphead
Amy, sharpshooter and the eyes behind us
Me, trying to hold it all together with instinct and discipline
We carried light packs, rotated horses, and traveled east until east became uphill, then uphill turned to forgotten pavement.
The farms gave way to forests. The forests gave way to dead highways. Roads cracked like the world had split open beneath them.
Bridges were gone.
Tunnels flooded.
Most nights, we slept in rusted cars or sheds with doors too warped to shut.
But every morning, we kept moving.
Virginia was brutal in the wild.
Thick, wet woods.
Tangled roots.
Hills you climbed just to slide back down.
We spent days rerouting around broken freeway arteries. Some still had semi-trucks jackknifed across all lanes, skeletal corpses still strapped to the seats.
Twice we had to swim across collapsed routes.
Three times we had to fight off full walker herds—moving slow through fog, then fast when they caught wind of horse sweat.
Amy killed twelve in one fight alone.
Glenn kept pace, but by the third week, his voice was dry and thin.
"You sure it's not just a memory he made up?"
I stared ahead and said, "We find out when we see it."
Morale cracked on the twenty-third day.
Food was low. One of the horses went lame and we had to put her down. Daryl and I spent an entire afternoon carving a path through a choke of fallen trees just to keep moving east.
"We keep burning days," Glenn muttered.
Amy answered, "We keep burning distance."
Daryl didn't say a word.
I thought about Rick's face when he pointed at the map.
"Trust me," he'd said. "You'll know it when you see it."
God, I hoped so.
On day twenty-eight, we found a hill taller than the trees.
It was overgrown, covered in thorns and ivy, but I dragged myself up it anyway.
Amy and Glenn followed. Daryl took point, brushing vines aside.
At the top, we stood.
Beneath us: a distant patch of symmetrical rooftops. Beyond that — a wall. Steel. Reinforced. Solar panels glittered faintly. A small windmill turned in the breeze.
Alexandria
I exhaled.
We'd made it.
Four weeks. Over 300 miles. And there it was.
The place Rick remembered.
Alexandria.
Amy raised her scope slowly. "People on the wall."
"Armed?" Glenn asked.
She nodded. "Yeah. Not aiming."
Daryl squinted. "No banners. No open gates."
"They're cautious," I said. "Smart."
We crouched low.
"We camp here. Watch from a distance.