This will be my first Walking Dead fanfiction. It will be gory and people will die-it just happens that way! I'm a big horror movie and zombie fan and really enjoy them when they're realistic, hopefully you all enjoy!
This takes place while Andrea is kidnapped by The Governor since we didn't see any of the group besides Rick on the watch tower. Any episodes that happen afterwards won't be addressed unless they are important to the story. (Ex. Someone important dies, they leave the prison, etc.)

Rain descended down from the sky in big, fat drops, splashing on the ground with what sounded like a thunderous 'plop'. It was amazing how much louder things sounded when it was quiet.
Emma struggled to lift her legs through the thick muck. A pair of worn out hiking boots coated in a nice heaping sludge of red Georgia mud caused her to slow down dangerously, and with the cold rain and heavy pack on her back, it felt like she was carrying around a 6 year old child.
Not being the greatest in shape either, she was amazed she had even made it this far. Of course, she had had her older brother to thank for that. The young man lived his life outdoors; he was as backwoods as it came and it had always been a part of their lives, living out in the middle of nowhere made you learn how to live without a Wal-Mart in your backyard. The threat of something dangerous trying to kill you out on a hunt was always there, but never as persistent as it was now...or as dead as it was now.

In a matter of days it'd gone from killing rabbits and deer to killing those things. The biters, walkers, deaders, whatever you wanted to call them they came out of nowhere eating whatever they could get ahold of. Emma and her brother Blake had been out on their own for months now, making their way from the northern part of Georgia down towards Atlanta, but that's where she lost Blake. Entering the city proved a lot harder for the two of them then they had expected and Blake fell victim to the herd of walkers that consumed the city.
It was strange how quickly you had to get on with surviving when your brother and protector was gone and now you were alone and vulnerable. There were times when she would meet up with smaller groups of survivors who ended up dying or being too crazy for their own good and once again, Emma was on her own.

The knife felt permanently attached to her hand and she squeezed onto it tightly, bracing her other hand against a tree to pull herself up out of the sticky mud. The faint groan of walkers around her kept her on her toes, the sound fading in and out of the forest, growing louder and then quieter and then disappearing all together before coming back as if it was right behind her.

Then there was nothing.

Through the trees she finally saw a large, ominous building. Watch towers surrounded it and around the towers it was encased in a large fence with barbed wire curling around the top. In all her years of visiting her father in prison, she knew exactly what this place had to be.
But creeping out from the thicket of trees and into more of a clearing she noticed that walkers wandered back and forth between the prison gates, yet the furthest gate that led into the prison seemed walker free. It could never help to be too positive.
The back of her hand wiped away the rain that coated her brow, dripping down into her eyes. Was it worth the risk to try to see what was inside the prison? Maybe it was some sort of well manned survivor hideout or could possibly just be hiding a bunch of walkers just waiting for a snack.
As Emma took another step out into the clearing, still keeping her wits about the walkers that meandered around her, they was a loud bang next to her ear causing Emma to jump and slip, falling backwards onto the mud.

"Shit." She hissed under her breath, slipping and sliding as she scrambled to get up as quickly as she could.

"Ain't dead!" were the first words out of her mouth to whoever decided to shoot at her.

In a moment, a loud moan of a walker was next to her, trying to grab at her arm, lipless mouth snapping at her. Emma grabbed ahold of the torn up piece of walker's clothing with her free hand while with the other, raised her hand high, stabbing multiple times into the decaying skull of the walker who collapsed with a thud onto the ground.

Her adrenaline running high, Emma tried to catch her breath as she swiveled her head around, looking for the possible attacker. As her eyes grazed past the watch tower, she could have sworn she saw the movement of somebody up there.

The sound of gravel being shook up by tires was the next sound that caught her attention. Someone was driving down through the prison gates. There were people. Emma's breath caught in her throat, and for a moment she forgot where she was. It was a prime moment for a walker to attack her from behind. Its jaws snapped wildly at her neck as Emma struggled to get the thing in front of her. Her knife wielding hand plunged into the walker's neck, blood spurting out wildly onto Emma. The walker almost hissed as she somehow managed to twist herself around, the walkers deformed face inches away from hers when an arrow came whizzing by so fast, she could feel it just barely brush past her ear.

The walker dropped to the ground and Emma stood frozen in her spot, not wanting to turn around for fear that the same thing might happen to her.

"'Git bit?!" the southern voice harshly demanded from her.

"No."

"Put yer' knife down an' turn 'round."

Emma unclenched her fist letting the knife fall with a soft plop next to the hand of the walker. With her hands slightly raised she turned around slowly, the mud squishing underneath the old boots as she did so.

She hadn't expected to see who she saw.

"Dixon?"

"Well...no shit." Daryl replied, a smug smirk crossing his lips briefly as he lowered his crossbow ever so slightly, head tilted slightly at the young woman in front of him.

There wasn't much time for 'hellos' or 'what the hell are you doing heres?'. Daryl took a few large steps forwards, swinging the crossbow around his back as he reached out to Emma who was now standing there, soaking wet and stunned that she had managed to find Daryl Dixon.
Daryl roughly grabbed ahold of the sleeve on her shirt, yanking her back to the car.

"Ain't got time to stand 'round!" he hissed, reaching over with his other hand to open up the back door and shoving her inside. Emma fell uncomfortably into the back seat, finally coming to her senses as she scrambled to sit up.
Through the front windshield she watched as Daryl mouthed some unsavory words to a walker who came stumbling up to him as he almost effortlessly pulled his crossbow from around his shoulder and pulled the trigger. Taking a step or two forward he pulled the arrow from the collapsing skull of the walker and stepped backwards, turning around on his heel and opening up the driver's side door, throwing his crossbow into the seat next to him and slamming the door shut.

"We gotta lot tah' talk 'bout, girl." Daryl grumbled as he put the car into drive, hitting the gas.

"Yea'...no shit." Emma muttered under her breath as she sunk deep down into the back seat.