AN: This is a little one shot in response to a Tumblr request.
I own nothing from the Walking Dead.
I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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The ship had sunk. It was at the bottom of the ocean now. In pieces, no doubt, and there would never be any chance of raising it again. It was entirely hidden beneath the water's surface and there would be nothing for helicopters to see if they were looking for it.
They were the only survivors. The air was quiet. There weren't any sounds of other life. There weren't even screaming and wailing of victims that were realizing that these were their final hours. There was just silence. No one else was left alive.
Daryl didn't even know how he'd gotten to the shore. He couldn't remember any of it. He couldn't recall how the ship had gone down or how he'd managed to avoid being sucked down with it. He didn't know he'd managed to cling to Carol and drag her with him to the land. He didn't even remember how they'd been lucky enough to find the piece of land that was now saving them from drowning and joining the others in their watery graves—others he knew existed, but couldn't recall.
As soon as Daryl found his feet, he pulled Carol up. She was fine. She'd suffered no injuries. Neither had he as far as he could see. She was dry and he was too—they'd been out of the water some time.
Daryl had known this kind of thing would happen. The minute that Carol had told him about the cruise she was going to book, he'd gotten a feeling in his gut that told him it wouldn't go well. Something was going to happen. Something horrible. And he'd been right.
The ship had gone down—somewhere in the middle of the ocean, somewhere where no one was ever going to find them—and everyone else was dead.
Their life together was just beginning. They were newlyweds. They were so freshly married that the gold bands they wore on their fingers still felt foreign and out of place and weren't comfortable yet. They had dreams of a nice house, a comfortable life, children, a dog—and all of that was never going to happen because they'd taken the stupid cruise that Daryl knew they shouldn't take from the moment that he'd seen the brochure.
No. He wasn't going to let them die. He wasn't going to sit there, his ass in the sand, and wait to see which one of them would go first and who would be forced to live their final hours in grief. At least, if they died, they'd die trying to live.
Daryl tried to remember all that he'd ever learned about survival in an instant. They needed three basic things right away if they were going to make it through this: shelter, water, and food. Shelter was the top priority at the moment. If Daryl could establish a shelter for them then they'd have a base camp. Then water would be his second priority. Third, they'd find something to eat. It was doable. They were intelligent, able-bodied people, and they could do this.
And he was thankful that Carol, for as much as she sometimes gave way to bouts of anxiety, was remaining almost perfectly calm and was going right along with everything. It would help him much more than having to calm over her nerves at the same time he was busy trying to figure out how they were going to save their own lives.
Immediately Daryl scanned the area around him. There were trees or bushes or whatever they were supposed to be called that looked like the cane bamboo that he'd seen shelters built out of before. They could fashion something out of them—but that would take time. It would also be at risk of giving into storms. If they were stuck here for a long time, and he had no reason to believe that they were ever getting off this island, they'd need something sturdier. It was hot, and he didn't know enough about geography to be sure it would, but if it got as cold in the winter as it was hot right now? They'd need something that could protect them from the cold.
He'd missed them before—overlooked them entirely—but not far away there were small caves. Those would be perfect. Carol seemed to read his mind because she darted for the caves and he followed after her. He held her back as she approached the entrance and, instead, went in himself. From his pocket, he pulled his lighter. Despite having been soaked in the ocean for possibly hours, it still flickered to life. The cave was empty. There was nothing in there. Nothing they had to worry about.
They had a base camp. They needed water. Boiling sea water would remove the salt. It would make it drinkable. He needed only to find something to catch the steam—and something to transfer the water from the steam to another container.
He'd barely left the cave before he stumbled—practically fell—into the gourds. In his pocket, he found his pocket knife. He pulled it out and sorted through the blades to find something that would work. He noticed the small keychain attached—a bar and rod—that he'd bought some years back at a gun and knife show. When would he ever need an emergency fire starter? Merle had even laughed at him—but it was going to come in handy now. It was going to be much more reliable than even the lighter, which he seemed to have dropped in the cave somewhere, or rubbing sticks together. Now they could build fires with ease.
Daryl was so frenzied by trying to think through everything at once, that he barely even noticed the act of sawing the gourds to decent size pieces. He forgot to ask Carol where she got the perfectly hollowed bamboo "straw" that she found. It didn't matter, at any rate, because it was perfect for what they were building—it would transfer the water with ease. Water that he brought for them with quick trips to the ocean, panting beneath the exertion of his efforts.
Leaving Carol to the water, Daryl went in search of food. He was a hunter. He could hunt something here. He just needed to look for signs of any kind of life. He needed to find what might live here and kill it. It was simple enough. He picked up a walking stick as he searched through the vegetation for any sort of tracks and he was pleased when he discovered that it was really sharp enough, just at the end he was stabbing into the dirt, that he could pierce the flesh of almost any animal with it.
The first sign of animal life he found was a nest—but upon closer inspection it wasn't a nest. It was more of a bed. It was a large bed and tracks led right off from it—tracks that he followed with relative ease. Pigs. Wild hogs. Just one that was so unaccustomed to threat that it didn't notice him at all. It didn't even look in his direction. He killed it with less effort than he would've even used to pick up a pack of pork chops from the grocery story. He circled the body and tried to figure out how to get it back to his camp—he couldn't even remember where he'd left Carol now. He abandoned his stick, sure that he'd find another when he needed a weapon again, and heaved the animal up. It was good sized but not nearly as heavy as he'd anticipated. Maybe he just doubted his own strength.
The camp wasn't difficult to find. The fires showed him where it was. Three of them. He must have left the fire starter with Carol. She'd maybe found the lighter in the cave where he'd dropped it. She'd be happy to see the pig and know that they wouldn't starve.
They had, after all, all that they needed to survive.
They had water, shelter, food—and they had each other.
The helicopters might come looking for them, eventually. They might fly close enough to see the smoke from their fires and they'd drop them a ladder to climb before they took them home. Maybe it wouldn't be helicopters. Maybe they'd send rescue boats out to find them. Of course they'd hate that nobody else had made it through whatever had sunk the boat—a storm, maybe? Daryl knew it was too hot for icebergs. They'd be happy that they survived, though. Quick thinking, they'd say, had saved them. Quick thinking and simply being prepared to survive whatever life threw at them.
That they were. Daryl and Carol both. They were prepared to survive whatever life threw at them. This hadn't been in their plans—not at all—but look at them. The sun hadn't set and Daryl was cleaning the pig that they would cook on the spit that Carol had built over one of the fires.
They never should've taken the cruise and Daryl knew that before they ever even booked the thing. He'd gotten the feeling in his gut that something like this was going to happen. He'd known it. He never should have agreed to the trip. He should've stopped Carol, somehow.
They could be here long enough they forgot everything about civilization and the world that had brought them together. There could be some kind of people who inhabited the island—people they hadn't met yet. Not only would they have to befriend them, but more than that—they would have to become them. They'd have to join them. Learn their ways. Survive with them as brothers.
Their children would be born into this world. Daryl knew that they'd have children—they had to. Eventually? Even if they tried to avoid it, it would simply come to pass. Their children would grow up knowing nothing more than the ways of the island people and survival in its rawest form. They'd have to teach them that. There wouldn't be any reason to teach them anything else because they'd never be off the island.
But they would teach them to survive. And they'd survive.
They would survive and their children would survive. Their children would marry within the group of natives—practically their family—and maybe they'd even survive to see their grandchildren.
They could entertain them with stories about a world that was so crazy—so outside their realm of understanding—that it would seem impossible that it was real at all.
But they could never let their guard down. There were too many dangers on the island. Dangers they didn't know about, yet, but surely they were there. They'd have to take turns keeping watch. They'd have to find a better way to guard the entrance to their cave than the bamboo door that Carol had put against the opening—or maybe Daryl had done it—because the natives would, undoubtedly, try to find their way in.
And if they weren't friendly? If they weren't receptive to taking in Daryl and Carol and accepting them as new and strange family members? Daryl was prepared to kill all of them. He could fashion weapons from the things that the island offered. He could fight. Carol could fight. They'd protect themselves and their children. They'd take control of the island if that's what they had to do to survive.
Daryl was so thirsty. He'd forgotten to drink and he could feel the burning on his tongue from the dehydration. So long in the salt water had left behind a thick feeling that was choking him. Maybe they'd been in the water for hours. Maybe even days—he couldn't remember because he didn't recall how the ship went down or how hard they had to fight to live when everybody else around them gave up and simply sank down to the ocean's bottom with the boat.
The water was ready though. The steam was collected. The pots were refreshed and more was being made and the steam collected was cool and ready to drink. He put it to his lips, filled his mouth with it, but still he felt parched. There wasn't enough there to quench his thirst and he couldn't drink his fill because Carol, too, would need the water—and his first priority had to be making sure that she got what she needed.
But he was so thirsty. He was so damn thirsty.
And all at once, his chest seized up as he worried that he'd crossed into some kind of point of no return. The water would never quench his thirst. He'd been too dehydrated. He'd put it off for too long. He'd ignored the dizzy feeling that he felt now—the warning that he was going to die. He'd meant to save them both but he couldn't save himself. He'd die, unable to save himself, right there—knowing that he was leaving Carol alone on the island to fight for herself against the animals, the natives, and to save the child, one that they didn't even know about, that maybe would be born after his death. And there was nothing that he could do because he wouldn't survive.
Daryl started violently and there was a clattering noise in the distance. He opened his eyes, no doubt coming to from his thirst-induced coma, and looked around. All the lights were out. The only light at all was the flickering of the television. For a moment, he stared at the television screen and then he reached over the side of the couch and found the remote that he'd knocked to the floor. The movie was one that he hadn't seen before, but there was too much drama for his tastes and he'd only caught sixty seconds of the plot.
Daryl turned the television off and pulled himself into a sitting position. He stretched and rubbed at his aching neck. He wished he'd known better than to fall asleep in that position. He wished that Carol had woken him so that he could join her in the bed when she'd gone there.
He was so damn thirsty that he could hardly stand it. He got off the couch and stumbled to the kitchen. At the sink he filled a glass with water and drank it in almost one gulp. He refilled it and drank the second glass more slowly. He'd regret that decision later. As soon as he got comfortable in the bed and started to drift off to sleep, the water would hit his bladder and he'd have to get up again. The thirst won out, though, and he finished the water before he checked the locks on the doors and headed to bed.
In the bedroom, Carol was already asleep. She'd left the small bedside lamp on for him and he switched it off just as he pulled his feet onto the bed and slipped them under the cover to rest against the cool sheets. He rolled toward her and wrapped an arm around her. In her sleep, she responded with a soft sound and stilled again. Daryl buried his face in her neck and inhaled the scent of her before he put his face against the soft pillow.
She woke and patted his hand.
"Goodnight," she said softly.
"You shoulda woke me," Daryl said.
"You were sleeping so good," she said, her voice giving away the fact that she was trying to have the conversation without waking entirely.
"Didn't sleep good at all," Daryl responded. "Fuckin'—almost died trying to save our damn lives."
Carol woke a little more and laughed quietly in the darkness.
"You saved us?" She asked.
"Saved you," Daryl said. "Pretty sure I killed myself." Carol laughed again. "Of course you think that's funny," Daryl said. "You got saved. You got nothing to worry about. Saved you—our damn kid that was gonna be born after I died—and all our grandchildren too."
Carol laughed.
"Good grief, Daryl," she commented. "What on Earth did you save us from? The end of the world? Some kind of apocalypse?"
Daryl laughed and pulled her tighter against him. She turned her head enough to rub her face against his, her eyes closed.
"Something like that," Daryl said. "Don't matter. But—about that trip?"
Carol hummed.
"We ain't going on a cruise," Daryl said. "I just—no."
"Where do you want to go, then?" Carol asked.
"Somewhere where we don't go on a boat," Daryl said. "Don't fly neither. Somewhere we go in a car." He thought about it a moment. "You said you always wanted to go to the Grand Canyon, right?"
Carol hummed. She was drifting off again.
"That's where we're going, then," Daryl said. "A long ass way away from the ocean."
Carol patted his hand in response.
"Sleep," she said, her voice barely coming out as more than air. "I love you."
Daryl laughed to himself, remembering the frantic feeling that had consumed him during much of his dream—the need to save Carol above all else. He hummed.
"Love you too, woman," he said. "More than you know."