ONE
Daryl stopped his motorcycle on the side of the unfamiliar dirt road, glanced around him to gauge his surroundings and pulled a map out of his saddlebag. He knew roughly where he was, he always did, but this road didn't seem to be marked on his map. He wondered if the map was out of date or if he really was truly lost. He scanned the side of the road for a sign, any sign, and his eyes lit on a bridge a few hundred yards away. "Trickle Creek", it read. Good, a landmark. He studied the map, smoothing the wrinkled page carefully against the seat of the bike and skimming his finger down the highway until he found what he thought was Trickle Creek. No road, though. The map showed the creek, connecting two larger rivers and running perpendicular to the highway he'd left behind half an hour ago. But no road.
He was further out than he'd ever been from Alexandria, and he knew he was taking risk after stupid risk but he couldn't bring himself to give a shit. Being trapped in that town, behind those walls painted with the names of the dead drove him absolutely crazy. He couldn't stay still, couldn't settle to the routine everyone else had seemed to pick right up. He wanted out, but couldn't bring himself to leave his family for good after everything they'd been through so he compromised and left for solo trips whenever he could. It was, strictly speaking, against the rules. Nobody was supposed to go out alone, even though the threat of Negan and the Saviors was over. There could be others. He felt like every bend in the road hid more bad guys, and the weight of deciding who was good and who was bad pressed down on him like a dark fog. He needed to be alone, to hunt and scavenge and try to clear his head.
He stood up to stretch his legs and lit a precious cigarette. He paced while he smoked and thought out his next move, pushing himself to think clearly and critically. The road not being on this map didn't mean it wasn't on others. But his map had come from a big service station on the highway, meaning he wasn't the only one using that particular guide to this area. If a road wasn't mapped it was likely to be far less traveled than one that was, and that meant that any building or structure or whatever he found out here was less likely to be picked clean. Less likely to be people too, he thought.
A twig snapped, somewhere to his left. He whipped around, ice blue eyes scanning the woods. Maybe more likely to have people, on second thought. He'd much rather be on an unmapped road himself. He took one more drag on his cigarette before grinding it out with the toe of his boot and gave the woods one more careful going over before getting back on the bike. He revved it, loud, purposefully announcing his presence for no reason other than he was pissed off and wanted a fight.
"What an asshole." Dylan muttered to herself, shifting her weight uncomfortably. She was up in an elm tree, in a little perch tucked between the branches in a way that hid her from every view except directly below. She'd heard that guy on his stupid bike coming from a mile away and had guessed, correctly, that he'd come down her road and chosen her perch to watch. The entrance to the little dirt road off the highway used to have posts and chains across it, making it look like a disused pull-off for construction vehicles, but some other asshole had taken her chain and she hadn't been able to replace it yet. She had debated stealing and putting up a weigh station sign to dissuade people further but did not relish the thought of carrying a sheet of metal for miles down the highway. She didn't like when people got this close, but she wasn't worried about the biker getting closer to her cabin. She'd already thought of that.
"Goddamnit," Daryl growled, throwing out the kickstand to his bike violently and standing up. "This is fuckin' bullshit!"
He had parked his bike in front of a barricade. Junk cars, fallen trees and decayed walkers were heaped from one guard rail to the other. Getting a car through would be impossible, and he had his doubts about getting his bike through too. Someone didn't want anyone coming this way, and had made a concerted effort to keep people out. He studied the barricade. Under scrutiny it wasn't an accident, it wasn't haphazard. Somebody had lined the cars up end to end, filled the gaps with trees and brush and garnished the heap with walkers, probably to gross out whoever happened upon it. Daryl Dixon was not easily grossed out, however. And he knew that if he had built a wall like that he'd want a way around or through for his own convenience. He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes, not at the barricade but at the guard rail it was built on. He half smiled, strode over, and unhooked the hidden latch. The entire section hinged inward, to the woods, showing him a worn path around the side of the barricade.
He rolled his bike through it, latched it behind himself and kicked the bike started. As he laid rubber, revving his engine obnoxiously away from the barricade, he held his middle finger high in the air, victorious.
"Fuck you too, buddy." Dylan was furious and starting to get scared. The barricade had worked against almost everyone who'd come down the road. People on foot she didn't bother with, just kept an eye on until they passed through or died. Usually, they died. Good sized herds roamed through here and she didn't usually bother killing many, preferring to avoid risk and wait it out in one of her tree perches. She'd stayed in one for four days through a thunderstorm waiting for a particularly large herd to roll through not too long ago. She'd thought she would go crazy, confined to a six by two foot platform, completely exposed to the elements and pissing off the side onto the walkers below.
She watched the biker, off in the distance. He'd have to stop and camp, and if he had any kind of brain he'd stop exactly in one of her traps. Trickle Creek doubled back and the bridge had washed out, about five miles ahead. The bank was clear, easy to defend, and the water would be tempting. She was guessing biker boy wouldn't leave his motorcycle, and would stop at the bank to camp and plan how else to annoy her. She had a perch there, too, across the river and hidden in a stand of Georgia pine. She'd meet him there. Dylan stepped out from behind her tree, adjusted her beanie over her wild hair and buckled her backpack strap, thinking a moderate jog would get her there as he finished setting up camp.
As she ran, she pondered. She had always liked running, before the world fell apart she'd been a regular runner. Now, she ran as her primary form of transport. And away from things, frequently. She'd been alone out in this stretch of woods for about eight months, by her reckoning. Dylan preferred to work alone and when her group fell to the Saviors she had been out, alone. She returned with a backpack full of medicine to complete and utter destruction. Their small camp, really just two parked RVs with a tarp strung up between them and a fire pit, had been completely torn apart. The garden she and Zoe had carefully planted was torn up, the half grown vegetables not even taken, just trampled carelessly into the dirt. The picnic table was ablaze, one RV was on its side and there was no sign of anybody. She knew it was the Saviors, it had to be, nobody else was brutal enough to take people away as slaves. Other bad guys just murdered you, if they were really bad they didn't headshot you so you turned, but the Saviors took people and ground them down into cogs in their massive machine of chaos. Dylan had scavenged what she could from the campsite and gone the opposite way, turning tail and running.
Her face burned as she thought about it. She had immediately given up on her people. She even knew where the Saviors had their nearest outpost and had given it a wide berth. She didn't want to fight anymore. She didn't want to decide who was good and who she could trust and who might murder her for the stale granola bar in her bag. So she came here, to the hunting cabin her dad had brought her to when she was a kid, and she'd blocked off access to the road and to herself, finding limited solace in her solitude but at least not worried about being betrayed or having to protect someone or facing yet another loss. She slowed, then stopped. Stretched her arms over her head and rolled her neck, feeling out her sore and tired muscles and knowing she wasn't going to get much sleep tonight.
Daryl pulled up on the banks of a creek, scoping it out as a possible campsite. The smooth clay banks rose up into a little hill, with a stand of thick brush to one side and a sharp decline to the creek on another. Those features would naturally deter biters, leaving him only one side to actively defend. Fresh water would be nice, too. He shrugged and began to make camp, parking his bike up against the brush to block in a little space he could sleep in while being at least a little hidden.
Dylan silently stepped through the woods, dappled fall sunshine falling between the trees and onto the thick bed of brown leaves carpeting the floor. She blended better in the fall, her wild orange hair tucked under an olive drab beanie mixed with the fall foliage and her practical brown canvas vest and thick grey sweater mingled seamlessly with the trees. She came up on the protected side of Daryl's campsite, guessing that the thick stand of brush would lull him into not checking it thoroughly. It was way too overgrown for walkers to get through easily, and the few people who'd made it this far had not bothered to guard it. She had a perch close enough to have eyes on his camp all night, just to make sure he was just passing through. There was nothing left to scavenge out here, the one convenience store had long since been looted and the only houses for miles a few scattered hunters' cabins, bleak and empty. She liked it that way.
Daryl debated lighting a fire, but decided against it. The moon was almost full and he'd strung up enough cans and junk to alert him to any intruders. He'd had cold beans before and they weren't the worst. He settled himself against the trunk of a young maple, using the bark to scratch between his shoulder blades. Dylan watched, silently, from her tree. She was close enough to spit on him, almost. She scanned his site, noticing and cataloguing every single thing about this stranger. He seemed at home, leaned up on a tree and forking cold beans into his mouth. He had a crossbow next to him and a quiver on his other side, but no sleeping bag or blanket or anything. She took little comfort in knowing they'd both be sleeping rough tonight as she shifted her weight from side to side, the rough, unforgiving planks of her perch were making her ass numb. She stretched, took a sip from her canteen and settled in to half-nap, not quite asleep but not fully awake. Some time later, she heard the man stirring around beneath her and cracked an eyeball to see him standing, now, crossbow up and ready, knees flexed like he was gonna run. She snapped to, cocking her ear in the same direction he was looking and heard the telltale sounds of a herd coming in from the south. In the still, cool, night air, she could hear twigs crackle and leaves flutter and the low, unmistakable moans of the not-really-dead.
"Fuck." She muttered, scrambling to look behind her, in the direction the noises were coming from, just in time to see the first walkers stumble out of the woods and into the clearing. She crouched at the edge of her platform, making herself as invisible as possibly. The man below her cursed and grabbed his crossbow, firing off a couple shots before straddling his motorcycle and kicking at the starter. It wheezed, half turned over and died.
"Shit!" Daryl growled and got off the bike, pushing it down in front of the walkers to slow them down. He scanned the woods, thinking for a second he might climb a tree when someone came barreling out of the woods, holding what looked like a crowbar. He instinctively drew on the figure, sighting down the length of his bow at what turned out to be a girl, redheaded and wildeyed.
"Wrong target." She snapped at him, tapping the bow away from her face with her crowbar and shifting to stand back to back with him. He fell in next to her, shouldering his bow and pulling his knife from its sheath at her belt. She dipped forward and caught an advancing corpse cleanly on the side of the head, dropping it where it stood. She danced back to stand at his back and he took a turn, striding forward and kicking out a knee before burying his knife into a rotten skull. They continued for a few minutes, easily and naturally picking up the other's rhythm. The herd wasn't thinning though, and Dylan feared that meant a surge they couldn't handle. She had no choice. After deciding she wasn't going to watch this guy get eaten and jumping down from her tree to help, she couldn't leave him now.
"Too many." She grunted as her crowbar made contact with a particularly gross walker, its brains splattering over her jeans. "Follow me." She didn't wait for his response, just turned tail and ran. If he chose to stay that was on him.
Daryl stared at the girl's retreating back. She had come out of nowhere, sassed him for pointing his bow at her, fought with skill and grace and a fucking crowbar and then took off, expecting him to follow her? He didn't trust her as far as he could throw her, but unfortunately he was out of other options. He kicked the walker closest to him down and followed the girl, tracking her by the gleam of the moon on her crowbar.