I don't know how this fanfic got started, exactly… Just something I started to jot down in class one day that turned into a full chapter…

Set during the Groups stay at the prison, between the 3rd and 4th season- enjoy!

XXX

The woods were relatively peaceful today. I just needed a short walk alone to breathe. This wasn't the first time I'd ever left the group alone (though if Marshal had his way, it would be the last), so I didn't think too much of it. I passed by the still trees, weary of every shadow, with my hunting knife in hand, just in case.

We just came into this area a few days ago, taken the time to establish a perimeter and set up camp, and now, just like after every time we start to settle in, Marshal had gone into one of his suffocating, paranoid stints. He just sort of hovers around me for a few days, tells me not to leave camp every chance he gets, reminds me again and again that I should go to him with any issue I had… I knew he meant well, that it was only because he cared, but it was exhausting, really. Sneaking away might not be winning me any favors, but at least it was a small aid to my sanity.

I was brought out of my musings by a rustling in the foliage off to my right. A biter? Yes. Maybe thirty feet away, slumped over what looked like an open deer carcass. It hadn't noticed me yet. I anxiously clenched my knife tighter. Just one biter, I could probably handle myself, even considering that I hadn't had very much experience in the sport of zombie killing, and that Marshal had done all he could in recent weeks to keep me safely away from them anyway. I was out of practice, but still, I wasn't stupid enough to hone my skills without someone there to watch my back.

I decided just to leave it and go back to the camp. My absence was probably noticed by now, anyway. I kept my eyes trained on the decaying figure as I slowly retreated the way I came. "Never turn yer back on 'em," I was told once, not long after joining the group leaving Statesboro, "aint no such thing in the world as safe anymore, and don'cha ever fool yourself into thinkin' that ya are, so keep yer damn eyes where they need ta be." …But then, the old man that told me that died two weeks later while on watch duty, so maybe he didn't hold much merit.

A hand suddenly grasped my ankle with an iron grip. Caught unawares, I let out a scream before I could stop myself. The biter with the deer looked up as I fumbled for balance and fell to the ground, but I couldn't pay it any attention. The one on the ground before me was missing both its legs, and had probably been dragging itself, below eye level, slowly towards the smell of deer meat until I'd unknowingly crossed its path. Pale flesh was torn and bloody, worn away from its fingertips and chest by the harsh forest floor. It snarled and snapped at my frantically kicking legs while I simultaneously tried to slide myself back and recover the knife I'd dropped in the fall. I couldn't focus on any one task: kick the biter hard enough to stop it, get myself free and in a standing position, or reach my knife and use it, so none of them were executed very well, especially when the deer biter started limping its way over.

I found the knife. The dark wood handle blended into the dead foliage around me, but I felt the cool blade under my hand at the same time the crawler had wrapped both its hands on my ankle. It heaved, and I writhed harder, grasping the knife tightly so as to not lose it. Dumb move. The blade met my enclosing fingers head on, and I withdrew sharply, blood dripping from a horizontal slice across my hand.

For just a fraction of a second, the crawler was distracted- enticed by the sudden smell of fresh blood. It was just long enough for me to think clearly. I withdrew a small handgun from my belt- the only gun spared to a 'civilian' member of our group. Loaded with a single bullet, it was meant to be my own insurance to a peaceful death. Not today though. I pointed the barrel and squeezed the trigger. The recoil shook my hand while the shot echoed loudly around me, but the crawler fell limp at my feet, bloody skull shattered by the bullet. I clambered up and stumbled away from the second walker, which stood almost over me and now formed a blockade between myself and my knife.

I wasn't an idiot. There was no way I was dodging around that thing well enough to recover my knife and kill it before it could sink its teeth into me. I ran.

Around me, more shadows shifted and I counted three more biters emerging from the trees- those not drawn this way by my earlier scream would soon follow the gunshot, and now that I was running, I was practically inviting any biter nearby to give chase. With nothing but an empty handgun in my grasp, I didn't much care for my odds… Even if I managed to avoid any surprises and get away clean, that still left me in unfamiliar and infested woods with nothing to defend myself. I needed a plan.

I couldn't hear anything, senses overloaded with the snarling and wheezing of incoming figures and the smell of rotting flesh, but I saw my next move soon enough. I bolted past two biters closing in on my left, dodging their reaching fingers, and ran straight for an oak tree about twenty feet away. The branches weren't low; probably a good thing if I was to use it as a safe haven, but that meant I only had one shot to get myself up. It'd been a long time since I'd done any real physical activity that wasn't straight sprinting away from corpses. God, I hoped I still had the upper body strength for this.

I jumped to grasp the lowest branch, hanging just over eight feet from the ground judging by the amount of space between it and my 5'4 frame. My cut hand stung heavily as rough bark bit into the tender flesh, but I bit my lip to ignore it. I swung hard, and hoisted my body up just in time to feel boney fingers graze the bottom of my foot. Once on the branch, I clambered up into a standing position against the trunk. The branch was only a few inches wide, and clearly not the sturdiest branch in the forest but what choice did I have? There were four biters beneath me. One of them was taller than the others, and could almost reach my feet from where he stood, but I didn't dare climb to any of the higher, thinner branches and risk falling all together. I'd just have to manage alone until Marshal found me.

…

I knew I wasn't up there for long, but still, time seemed to slow to an unbearable crawl when you're standing less than three feet above a restless hoard of the undead. Unable to stop trembling long enough to properly wrap it, I clenched my injured hand in a fist over the hem of my flannel in order to staunch the blood flow, but the blood that smeared on the branch when I climbed up still kept the many eyes below trained on me. They pushed against each other, snarling and rasping up at me, with greedy fingers clawing at the air and tree between us. I watched a couple of them scrape the tips of their fingers clear to the bone on the rough bark. Rotted flesh stuck to the tree trunk and fell to the ground, and all the while, they just grew more and more frustrated.

This might be it, I thought, this time I really did go and do something careless enough to get me killed. There was no way I was getting out of this tree on my own. I could try to jump for it, but I knew that even if I managed to clear the group under me, I wouldn't be able to recover from the landing before the they got to me. Another shadow moved through the trees a few yards out. Great. Just what I needed, another one to join the fray below… I looked around me, desperate to find some sort of way out of this one. As the adrenaline from my sprint and climb wore off, unfiltered fear took its place.

The grumbles below me seemed to grow louder as the sound of my own heartbeat did, though the number of biters below me stayed the same. I closed my eyes, willing myself to stop looking at the creatures that would probably be my doom any minute. God, this was stupid. I should have just stayed at the camp! I hope they eat me completely, I thought despairingly, I don't want to become like them. I couldn't think of a fate worse than those who were reanimated to torment and kill the living…

Wait.

My eyes sprung open, immediately looking down at the ground, and the four biters converged beneath me. Still only four.

I looked to the place I'd seen movement a few moments before. If it was a biter, it'd be here by now, or would have at least come into view, yet I could see nothing.

Should I call out? I was already in trouble, I reasoned, even if it attracted a few more unwanted guests, it wouldn't change my predicament much. "Is someone there?" I yelled, only loud enough to carry over the snarls beneath me.

No answer, of course. If there was someone else living and breathing in the vicinity, they wouldn't be dumb enough to stick around. I closed my eyes again, feeling a pull behind my eyelids as silent tears formed but I willed not to fall. Crying wouldn't do me any good now, but I couldn't seem to think of anything else to do.

Suddenly, a noise forced my attention again to my surroundings. It was a short 'whoosh', like something moving quickly through the air, followed by a quite 'splash,' and one of the biters fell silent. My brain connected the sounds: an arrow. Marshal –or someone else from camp- found me. I looked eagerly for the source of the projectile, and found him immediately, stepping quickly closer to my tree from the right side, cross bow raised. Not Marshal, or anyone I recognized. A stranger.

I couldn't help but watch, transfixed. As the stranger approached, the three biters beneath me directed their attention to more accessible prey, and advanced on him instead. The stranger didn't even slow down. He shot another arrow at the biter closest to him, and it dropped dead while he swung the entire crossbow at the second, knocking it down but not for good, just long enough to withdraw a large knife from his hip and land a blow between the third biters eyes. The second biter stood up just in time to meet the same fate as the others, leaving the man standing alone amidst their corpses. Breathing heavily, he shouldered his crossbow and collected the arrow from one of the bodies at his feet, then turned his attention to me.

"Just gonna stand up there all day?" he yelled to me, in a not entirely polite tone.

I realized I was staring, and tried to force myself to recover from the fear of imminent death and my surprise at his appearance. This man was dangerous, was I really better off alone with him than I was surrounded by biters? Did I really want to find out?

"What's your name?" I called back softly, only slightly ashamed of the quiver in my voice.

He ignored me, and walked to the base of my tree where the other arrow lay imbedded in a skull. He yanked it free, and then looked up at me. "You come down here and I'll tell you." He said, a bit softer this time. This close, I could make out his blue eyes under dark brown hair and a rough looking face. Obviously a guy who's seen some shit.

I didn't say anything, or make any move to get out of the tree. I'd learned to be cautious around other survivors of the apocalypse. A zombie would always be predictable, but a desperate and starving human could do anything.

At my hesitation, the man shrugged his shoulders. "Suit yourself," he said, backing up a few paces, and reaching into the waist band of his ripped jeans. I tensed even more as he withdrew a knife from behind his back- my knife, as a matter of fact. "This yours?" he asked, holding it up not in a threatening manner, but so as to let me examine it. He continued, "I was hunting, found your tracks. You're lucky I wasn't far when I heard your shot, and even luckier there weren't more of these suckers around." He nudged the biter on the ground with his boot. "Pretty stupid to come out here with just a knife and one bullet."

Despite the dig at my intelligence, I don't know why I decided to trust him then. Maybe because he was offering my knife back, or because he sounded so conversational in an environment that usually called for a harsher tone. I swallowed the last of my reservations, and lowered myself into a sitting position, slowly, so I didn't alarm him. I pushed myself off the branch and landed on all fours with a small thud on the soft ground, carefully avoiding the dead body below. The stranger watched me drop without saying anything or moving at all, allowing me the time and space to properly stand.

"Your name?" I prompted, now that I'd come down like he'd asked.

He looked down at me (literally, down, as I now realized that he was almost a foot taller than me), wearily, "it's Daryl." He said, holding out my knife to me.

I took it from him, trying to gauge those blue eyes for any hint of ill intent. Finding none, I responded, "My name is Emily. And thank you, Daryl."

He grunted in reply, glancing around us at the silent woods. "You alone?" he asked. I'd expected this question, and even expected the slightest hint of disbelief in his tone as he asked. I didn't exactly look the survivor type- my jeans and flannel were as ripped and dirty as anybody's, but my light skin and brown hair were still cleaner than many. I wasn't fooling anybody into believing I was alone.

"I have a group." I told him, but didn't offer up any other details, and he didn't ask.

"You should get back to 'em." He said, "Before it gets dark." The sun had just reached the peak of a distant mountain.

I nodded, then a thought struck me, "Do you need a place to stay?" I asked him. I may not look like the self-sufficient type, but he certainly did.

He shook his head, "Nah. I got a place."

A group? I didn't ask. "Ok." I said, taking a backwards step away from him, back in the direction of my camp.

I half expected him to stop me as I retreated, but he didn't say anything or move at all. Trusting that wouldn't change, I turned my back on him and walked away more purposefully. The next time I'd turned back, he had already gone.

XXX

Thanks for reading, guys!
I don't know if this one's going to go anywhere, but I love the show and Daryl so much that I might just have the motivation necessary to continue it. All the same, hope you liked it! Check back or Follow for updates!