Daryl waited, albiet the slightest bit irritated, in the left corner of a restaurant. He wasn some sort of Chinese or Japanese restaurant, het even know what he some sort of Teriyaki Kung-Pow something or other. Further dampening his already dangerously dropping mood was the sheer amount of people in the restaurant.
So many people. People standing up and, like him, waiting for their carry-out. People sitting at those yellow wooden tables, which filled the entire right of the restaurant, away from the counter and kitchen. Groups of people. Teenagers and young adults in groups, laughing and talking, and occasionally checking their phones and ipods. Families with their messy children and crying babies. People who sat alone, and shared their time with the book they were reading, or the computer they were furiously typing at between sips of chai tea and slurps of noodles.
The absolute volume of it all came dangerously close to giving him a migrane. He was in a city. Well, what he considered a city. Het need to Order 3149!Your total is $11.49,d never been to one as a kid. Hell, heanywhere else.
He and Merle were biking, on their way to Alabama, when his brother had met up with some friends along the way. Theys, as he do things. Things meaning drinking and start getting high. That was when Daryl had promptly dismissed himself. Hed taken his bike and left Merle a note, saying where he could find him once he was sober, and taped it to the silver handlebars of his motorcycle. Hed gotten hungry and seen a YMCA. YMCA in Daryl were one of the only places where you could take free showers and get clean drinking water, and no one would come to chase you away with a gun. So he He and Merle had been on the road for almost 2 weeks now), and as he walked out, felt a familiar rumble of hunger in his stomach. A rumble that hed parked his bike out front, where he could see it, and took a couple of seconds to stare curiously at the brass statue of some sort of 17th century revolutionary warrior, with his sword sticking, next to him in the (fake brass) grass. The plaque below It read . Het fall completely to the ground before he managed to catch himself on his hands. The person heI ma
He choose his words as he then looked up at the person heNo, that I She said, looking up at him and revealing a pair of big, beautiful brown eyes.
Daryl, catching himself off guard by getting lost in her eyes for a second, faltered before he quickly said, It was an accident He rambled awkwardly. Daryl internally cursed himself again. Smooth. He didn't exactly have a way with words, which is why he usually kept his mouth shut.
s alright,I didn't see you either. So I She flashed him a smile.
She looked wealthy, affluent. Daryl usually despised those people, so stuck up and out of touch with reality. But her down to earth and sensible about her.
Slightly less embarrassed now, he was about to respond when he heard a sharp come from no more than 2 stores down from him. He paused, and so did the woman. People walking along the sidewalk also paused momentarily, to listen.
. It came again, from somewhere close by. Daryl barely had time to register what it was.
d run into. She looked at him, realizing they completely unexplainable, that Daryl himself would convince himself that it had never happened. No matter the ticket for Chinese takeout, which bore the number 3149 in black ink that was folded in his back pocket. No matter the small bruise that would form slightly under his ribcage from running, accidentally, into someone. No matter of any of that. He was high, or perhaps incredibly drunk, he would tell himself. It couldnm going to die. Now. It much better, and so many circumstances against him. That this was how his life was going to end. One bullet, near the parking lot of a freaking mall.
But he didnt. But dying would have been easier than trying to grasp what happened to save him.
The African American woman, in one swift move, picked up the sword from the statue of George Washington, stepped in front of Daryl, and quickly swung her arm out. Time seemed to stop, as he saw, in perfect crystal-clear quality slow motion, as, in one swift action, she cut the bullet in half. The, now two, shells, hit opposite sides of the wall.
Holding the brass sword in front of her, the criminals frozen and unsure of what to do, she looked sideways at Daryl. She said, with what could only be described as a half smile, half frown.
He remembered looking at her, speechless. Trying to find something, anything, that would give him a clue to who she was. She remembered looking at something shiny at her feet. Her driverMt really remember anything more past that. He could, he was sure, if he tried, but what was the point. He remembered walking, running. Getting on his bike put the keys in. The roar of the motor. Next thing he knew he was lying on a cheap, looking at the ceiling of a shabby motel room, and Merle was asking him what had happened while he was gone.
Daryl shook his head, trying to clear the mental fog away that was clouding his thoughts. d you say?Damn, pay attention more bro. I asked if anything interestin . Nothin. I
Merle grunted in acknowledgement as he took out a pack of cigarettes.
Daryl stood, quietly contemplating if he should tell his brother of his day. Shaking his head, he walked up to his brother, who was now on the shabbily constructed balcony of the motel room, smoking a cigarette.