This is the development of a thought I had about how Daryl ended up so bitter and angry in S1 and early in S2. It takes place in the early days of the ZA, with flashbacks to his life pre-ZA. And if you have read any of the other fics I've read, you will quickly realize that this is very different from the other stuff. There's a lot of sad Daryl here, so don't say I didn't warn ya! ;)
And MUCHAS MUCHAS GRACIAS to beta reader extraordinaire Incog Ninja! You rock!
I had an awful dream/Laid your bones by a shallow stream/And I carved your name in a willow tree/And I beat the ground
With water clear and sun abright/I let the tears alone to dry/I raise my arms up to the sky/And challenged god
He had no prose/He had no right/To take my dove, my little light/Half of my soul, half of my sight/My beating heart, my precious wife
Have you no answer/I'll follow you no more/I'm on my own/This means war
-"This Means War," Shovels & Rope
A dusty pickup came crunching up the driveway, its pace much slower than it had been the week before. Pulling up in front of the house, Daryl climbed out of the cab, shouldering a rifle and sliding a knife through his belt buckle. His face was stony as he went to the front door. Taking a deep breath, he threw the door open, rifle drawn. Quickly, he cased the house, quietly calling, "Rollie? Rollie, buddy, you here?" The house was empty.
Passing through the kitchen, he paused only a second, his eyes surveying the mess, before he went out the back door and disappeared into the woods.
At dusk, Daryl returned to the farmhouse, alone. He found Merle relaxing on the couch with a bottle of tequila and a smoke, amid the debris of the house. Merle looked like he was going to make a smartass comment, but Daryl just glared at him. "Can't be fuckin' bothered to unload the goddamn truck?" Daryl stalked outside and Merle followed.
Daryl's truck was loaded down with supplies. He and Merle had taken guns and ammo from their trailer, but the trailer park where they'd lived was such a shit show that they weren't able to get much more than that before they were forced to run. They had tried to raid a Kroger and then a Publix on their way to the farmhouse, but discovered the stores were overrun with walkers, and more than the two of them could handle. They finally found a QuikStop that they were able to clear out. It looked like they were planning the party of a lifetime - cases and cases of beer and cigarettes, chips, pop, all that shit. With a twinge, Daryl thought how pissed Bree would have been at him for filling her house with junk food. Shaking his head slightly, he cleared that thought out of his head.
Merle had followed Daryl on his motorcycle. Asshole can't leave his baby behind, Daryl thought wryly. Woulda been more helpful if he took something with some room to stow shit.
The brothers began unloading the truck and filling the house with what they'd stolen. Not really like stealin' anymore, though. Nobody left to even steal from, Daryl mused. They had to pause once or twice to pick off a walker that had wandered in out of the woods. Daryl had noticed almost immediately how few there were the further out you got. Once they got everything in the house, Merle flopped back on the couch, dumping a bag full of pill bottles on the coffee table. They'd also ransacked a Walgreens on their way to the farmhouse, and Merle had picked up a junkie's dream's worth of narcotics, along with antibiotics that they figured might come in handy eventually. "Think 'bout it, Lil Brother, if there was ever a time t' get fuckin' loaded, this is it," Merle told him with a dry laugh. He stared at Daryl for a rare serious moment. "Might help clear ya mind."
After a minute's hesitation, Daryl took him up on the offer, and Merle dumped a couple of Xanax into Daryl's open palm. Washing it down with a swig of Jack Daniels, Daryl lit a cigarette and stretched out on the floor. Merle thankfully kept his trap shut, because what the fuck could he say? Even he knew better. Daryl rubbed his eyes tiredly. He couldn't begin to even comprehend how quickly the world had devolved into something out of a nightmare. He tried to restrain his mind from wandering to all the things he wanted to forget, but the Xanax kicked in pretty quickly, loosening his coiled muscles and letting him fall asleep.
0000000
A week earlier, Daryl had come flying up that driveway like he was being chased by the devil himself. In some ways, the analogy was terrifyingly accurate. He had been away on a hunting trip with Merle when they had both realized that something in the world had gone seriously awry. The first time he saw one of the...things, it was surreal. What words could describe when it seemed like you were suddenly a part of a horror movie or some fucked up video game? Disbelief? Terror? Nothing even came close.
Daryl and Merle were way up in the mountains north of Atlanta and hadn't seen another soul for about a week when they spotted what they thought was someone in a shitload of trouble. Daryl's first instinct was to see if the guy needed some help, but Merle, always on edge, held Daryl back. In retrospect, he'd probably saved Daryl's life. As the guy got closer, they could tell something really was wrong with him, but as much as they called out to him, they got no response. Merle started to get itchy and raised his rifle at the guy. That's when Daryl knew something was way off, and he followed suit. Pretty quickly, they went from asking if the guy was OK to demanding he stay the hell where he was, but the guy just kept shuffling towards them.
When he got close enough that they could see the guy's face, Merle hissed, "What the fuck?"
Daryl didn't even have those words. His mouth was a desert and ice ran through his veins as he took in the glassy white eyes, the graying skin, the hand that looked like something had gnawed it off. And yet the guy - the thing - just kept on coming at them. Then there was a crack of a gun, Daryl jumped, and whatever it was that had been coming towards them dropped to the ground. Merle had shot him. Daryl finally managed to form a sentence. "Jesus fuckin' Christ, Merle. What the hell was that?"
Merle had already gone for a closer look. "Goddammit if I know," he muttered. "Fuckin' shit! Dude smells like roadkill that's been bakin' on the side a' the road for a fuckin' week." Daryl started to squat down next to him, but gagged when he caught a whiff of the smell. He'd been around a lot of dead shit in his life, but nothing had ever reeked like this thing did.
A noise in the brush caught their attention, and when they looked up, they noticed another one of the things shuffling through the woods towards them. That's when they realized they needed to get the fuck out of those woods. Something had gone seriously wrong up here, and they sure as hell weren't going to stick around to solve that mystery.
Coming back down the mountain, as they spotted more and more of the creatures or whatever the hell they were, Daryl's mind flashed to Bree and Rollie, waiting for him back at home, and he started to panic. "Jesus, Merle, can't ya get this fucking heap t' go any faster?" Bree was pretty handy with a firearm, but what the hell would she even think if she encountered one of these fuckers? If he had frozen up when he saw one, would she even be able to react in time? Up in the mountains, he and Merle had quickly realized that whatever those things were, they were out for blood. He shuddered to think that Bree would have to figure that out all on her own. And when he thought of how much Rollie liked to hike in the woods around the house, he felt sick. "Come on, man!" When Merle didn't even respond with his usual bad humor, Daryl's panic grew.
After what felt like an eternity, Daryl was finally in his own truck, flying over the windy back roads. He kept calling and calling and calling home, but got nothing. Most of the time, he couldn't even get a call to go through, just got the all circuits are busy message. Forcing his mind not to jump to conclusions, he just drove.
Tearing up the driveway, he threw the truck in park and leaped out, keeping his rifle handy. Daryl still wasn't quite sure what these things were, but he wasn't going to let any of them get close enough for him to find out. There were several milling about in the yard, and he took them out, one, two, three. "Bree! Rollie!" he screamed, throwing the door open. The stench of rot almost knocked him over, and he fervently prayed that it was just something in the fridge gone bad.
There was a scraping noise in the kitchen that made his guts twist as quickly as it made his heart leap. "Bree?" Daryl called quietly. "Rollie, is that you, Lil Man?"
Coming around the corner, what he saw made his stomach drop through the floor. He let out a strangled cry of pure anguish and fury. It was her. Only it wasn't really her. She was one of those things now. Her eyes were on him, but they weren't her eyes any more. They were dead. She was dead. And she was hungry for the life that still coursed through him.
Daryl's agony kept him rooted in place as she shuffled towards him, her arms outstretched. Slowly, painfully slowly, he raised his rifle to her, pressing it up against her forehead as she got closer, holding her off, giving himself just a few more minutes to build up the courage to do what he had to do. Her grayed nails clawed out at him even though he was just out of her reach, a horrific, inhuman noise coming out of her mouth. He searched her face, but there was nothing left of what had made her the woman he'd so loved. He moaned, "Jesus, Bree, I'm sorry. I love you. I'm so fuckin' sorry." And he pulled the trigger. She dropped limply to the floor. Then he tore the place apart.
He raged and cursed, upending furniture, hurling dishes, putting his fists through the walls again and again. The sobs that ripped from him sounded like a wild animal. Finally, he collapsed against the wall opposite her body. He stared at her, his face gray and his eyes dull. Suddenly, he remembered. "Fuck! Rollie!" How the hell had he forgotten about the kid? He shouldered his rifle again, and took off out the back door into the woods, calling Rollie's name quietly. Again, in the days since he'd first encountered these walking corpses, he'd learned that they were drawn to noise, so he moved as silently as possible. He crept through the brush, not allowing himself to even consider that the boy might be like his mama. The kid is out here, alive, and I'm gonna fuckin' find him, he swore.
But as night fell, Daryl trudged out of the forest back to the farmhouse, his shoulders sagging. He paused at the entrance to the house, steeling himself for the sight of what he'd left there hours ago. He grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet above the fridge and slumped down against the wall. Staring at her motionless body in the darkening room, he began to cry silently. He took a massive swig from the bottle and then began to talk. He told stories of their first chance meeting and then their second where she wouldn't let him get away. He talked about how it surprised him how fast he fell for her, and all the stupid fucking mistakes he'd made. Then he promised her that he would find her boy and keep him safe. Finally, he muttered, "Wherever ya are, if yer anywhere at all, I hope yer at peace." Standing, he added, "Gonna scatter yer ashes on some hallowed ground, baby, like ya always told me."
With a deep, shuddering sigh, he gently picked up her body and carried it outside, carefully laying it in the grass. Then he began to build her a funeral pyre, pausing only to pick off the occasional corpse that ambled out of the woods. Once the body was alight atop the pile, he sat with his whiskey and a cigarette, but didn't watch the flames. His eyes were trained instead on the woods beyond the fire, his hand on the shotgun that rested against his legs. There was a movement in the treeline, so he picked up his gun. Looking through the sight, he aimed at the head of the creature that came shuffling out. It was not the boy, he realized with a twinge of relief. He stared at the thing at it approached, hypnotized by the unreality of it all. They're like the fuckin' walking dead, he suddenly understood. Fuckin' zombies, like in a goddamn horror movie. He fired and the walker dropped to the ground.
As they continued to come out of the woods, he continued to fire at them, one after the other, until he was out of bullets. But still he didn't stop. He picked up the rifle and smashed it over and over into the heads of the approaching walkers until they were nothing more than a dark smear on the grass. He didn't stop until the fire finally died down when he stared into the smoking ashes, his chest heaving. Covered in blood and bone and tissue, he let out a howl that would have made the blood run cold in people for miles around, if there was anyone alive to hear it.