DISCLAIMER: I don't own anybody but Noel, much to my distress. Please review and tell me what to improve!
AN: I figured this would be a decent way to get to know the boys and introduce my little vixen. Have fun!
His feet were quiet as he listened. The woods would talk to you, tell you everything you needed to know if you just shut up every once in a while. There, he heard it. There was movement in the trees so Daryl Dixon lowered himself to the ground, gazing down the sights of his rifle, waiting. He knew it was there, he could hear it moving. The animal didn't sound like one of those dead things he and Merle had killed as it went too near the cabin they inhabited in the mountains, far far from the city. It sounded like a four-footed animal. With hooves. As he closed his eyes, he could pin it. It was a cloven-hoofed animal, so odds were it was deer in this part of the woods.
It was then he realized something was wrong. The entire section of the woods he was in had gone quiet. Way too quiet. He rose himself into a crouch while he slowly and steadily switched from the gun to the crossbow. It had been Merle who figured out that guns just drew more of them to you, as they had learned.
–
The cabin had one window and one door, and the brothers had been woken from sleep to something banging on the window. It had been Merle who went outside to scare off what he had deemed to be a "huge ass fuckin' coon". As a habit, neither of the Dixon boys went anywhere unarmed, and that had saved Merle's life.
Daryl wasn't sure what happened, but he heard the shot and rushed outside, only to find more of what Merle had shot coming out of the woods, practically running towards the sound. They was something wrong with them. They were people. Or had been people. The way they walked and ran wasn't quite right; as though they were injured or had forgotten how to walk. In the early days of the infection, the infected had still looked like people. Sick people, yes. But still people. Daryl had been unsure of what to do as these things ran towards him.
"Fuckin' shoot 'em, little brother!" Merle had already taken down two more of his opponents with clean shots, but Daryl had come out without a gun. It was just a knife against these gray-skinned, hungry-looking people who were coming at him with already chewing jaws, sensing only one thing. Meat.
"What the FUCK are you waitin' on, boy?" Merle was still shooting. Daryl picked up the axe they used for chopping wood and did the only thing he could. He swung. That was when they learned only head shots kill the dead. The axe was now wedged firmly into the man's neck, and he was hissing, straining against it, reaching out for Daryl.
"Wh'the fuck is THIS SHIT?" Daryl grabbed his hunting knife from his belt and jammed into the man's skull, finally silencing him. "Go fer th'head!" In a matter of minutes the brothers had dispatched all the walkers coming out from the woods. Daryl sat down on a stump, running a shaking hand through his unruly, slightly unwashed hair and pulled out a cigarette. "Wh'the fuck was that?"
Merle stole it from his hands. "World's fuckin' ending, little brother. White man finally gits his revenge." Daryl rolled his eyes, pulling out another cigarette. "You'n yer white nazi bullshit, bro. I see a white guy in that pile there. What we do know is sumthin's goin' on out there. We better go see what it is."
The trip to town in Daryl's pickup truck had provided a terrifying sight for Daryl, even though Merle seemed to love it. Their quiet little mountain town was abandoned. Cars were littered across the road, empty. The shops were all left open with their items, some of them having been looted already. "ANARCHY, little brother! I said it was comin!" Even Merle got quiet, however, when they saw a woman tearing chunks out of the only man who had been nice to the Dixon brothers in this whole town, despite their reputation.
"This's some fucked up shit, Daryl. We gotta get back and fortify. Stop by McClaren's on the way." McClaren's was the only hunting-goods store nearby, a good ten miles out of the way. Daryl glanced around and turned the way the place was located. The drive only got worse. The closer they got to actual civilization, the worse it got. The more things they saw, some trapped in cars and clawing to get out, others just sitting in the road, staring at them with blank expressions as the truck roared through the rural Georgian woods.
Once they got to McClaren's, Daryl parked close to the entrance, and both the brothers turned blue eyes to stare into the building. There was a sign on the door, hastily taped, that said
"CAUTION: LEFT FRONT DOOR OPEN.
TAKE WHAT YOU NEED. PAY ME WHEN
WE GET BACK FROM HELL."
Daryl was the one who broke the silence. "Git in, git out, bro." Merle got out of the truck, holding what was nothing short of a machete. Daryl followed him, holding onto the trusty axe with his hunting knife at his belt. Merle's voice was quiet as he looked in all directions. "Stay together. Stay quiet. We need food, propane, guns. Ammo. Knives. Anythin' we can carry but no more'n that. Get bogged, we're stuck. Leave the truck doors unlocked." And with that, he strode into the store; fearless.
There was a quiet, frustrated curse as Daryl had no choice to but to follow his older brother into the darkness of the building. In the dark they collected as much as they could. They picked up a duffel bag and went to the gun section, with Daryl standing guard as Merle took pistols, rifles, shotguns...anything that could fire a bullet went in. Daryl picked up a crossbow and about forty bolts, despite Merle's mutterings of "fuckin' redneck". From there, they went to the knife case. Anything that was big enough to get inside something's skull went in the bag. Ammunition for all the guns. Daryl's hair was standing on the back of his neck. "Sumthin's there, Merle. We gotta go."
Merle studied the darkness. "Fer once, I think you're right." Their exit route took them through the dried foods section, which of course, made Merle stop. He took whatever he could and put it in the bag, stopping only as Daryl spotted it, hissing at his brother. "Merle, we gotta go. inow/i." The zombie started the shuffling run, and Daryl took two steps and swung, lodging the axe right on the forehead. He wrenched it free with a foot on the corpse for balance. "Now can we go?"
They made it back to the cabin without major incident, making sure the area was clear before they went and came up with a plan. They'd rig the entire area around the house with cans on a string (there was no shortage of beer cans at the Dixon residence), on multiple levels. A red neck alert system. They were done before sundown and barred the door from the inside and nailing boards over the window, leaving just a small slit for a crossbow bolt or a viewing slice.
There was no fire that night at the Dixon cabin as both men sat in the middle of the room, smoking and listening. There was no conversation. Merle looked eerily comfortable in this situation and it was starting to make Daryl uncomfortable.
–
Daryl was listening, not moving, when he heard movement from several directions at once. And then they came at him in a flurry, clouded eyes and grey skin coming in one, uncomfortable, all directional mass. There weren't enough bolts for them all, not enough time to switch to the rifle and be able to use it properly. He hefted the crossbow; load, fire, load, fire, load, fire. It seemed to go on forever until he had one bolt left, with six of them. Daryl did the only thing he could do. He took a running leap into the trees, pulling up onto a branch as one of the geeks grabbed his foot. The zombie, however, took a swift kick to the face; in all the glory of a steel-toed boot.
Then, out of nowhere, he heard the whistle of an arrow. Then another. Another. Another. He pulled himself to safety and tried to see where they were coming from, wood arrows with grey feather fletching. Not modern bolts. There were two zombies left. Daryl was staring down at the trees, trying to figure out where they were coming from.
What he hadn't expected, however, was to hear the sound of a bow snapping against a bracer directly to his right. Another geek fell. Then the snap again, and the last one fell. He desperately searched for his savior, and then, he found her.
She was probably thirty feet off the ground in what had probably been a grade-a hunting stand. It was a wooden platform with more than enough room for the small woman and all her gear; he also recognized a rope ladder and multiple quivers of arrows, and box of MRE's. Merle's type of woman.
The woman gave him a cold look even as she unstrung her bow that was almost as long as she was. "What are you staring at." Her accent was what caught his attention. Or lackthereof, considering how she lacked the distinctive drawl that designated residents of this particular area. "I just saved your fucking life. What were you gonna do, stay up here for days? No food? No supplies? Jesus, what kind of idiot are you?" He was puzzled. He couldn't quite figure it out, and it was an itch in his brain he couldn't scratch. "Where you from? Ain't from here, I c'n tell."
Apparently the question startled the mystery woman, whose espresso hair was cut short to the jaw, as she actually answered him by rote memory. "Connecticut, actually."
"What the hell're you doin' down here? In a fuckin' TREE?"
His question had apparently earned Daryl another frosty stare, and it was only then he noticed her eyes, a bright gray and rimmed by a darker shade. "What? I wanna know."
Her retort was icy. "You're in a tree also, you know." Daryl huffed at her, still holding onto the tree. "Look, we c'n talk 'bout this all day. How 'bout you let me up in that damn tree?" The mystery woman turned business.
"You been bit?"
"No m'am."
"Scratched?"
"No m'am."
"Good. I won't hesitate to shoot you. I can restring this in a matter of seconds." Perhaps a bit of a bluff, but it couldn't hurt. Noel couldn't leave him there. It was going to be dark way too soon and there was no way he could make it back wherever he came from. Times like these, she figured, you had to try and trust people. Believe in the best of them. She eyed the surrounding woods in a quick but thorough assessment before throwing down the ladder. "Come down, then, before they come back."