One more night of listening to her cry just might make Daryl snap. So far he had done his job in taking care of the girl, but even he knew he was being cold towards her. Beth was weak and he needed to know he was with someone who could help hold their own in a fight. In the week since they had to leave the farm they had only ran into a handful of walkers and Daryl had taken care of them all.
"I'm sorry," Beth rolled over as she spoke, "I know I am probably the last person you would have picked to end up with."
He was taken by surprise. Daryl barely had the people skills to deal with passing conversations on a good day, but an apology from a girl he could barely stand really left him with nothing to say.
"Are you even listening to me? You've barely said a word to me all week. It's the end of the world. We can't just sit here, we have to do something," she looked exasperated when he had nothing to say in return, but took it as a cue to continue, "I'm going to go out. I've got to look for the others, or find food or something besides sitting in this suck ass camp."
Daryl sat wordlessly as she got up and stormed off. What the hell was wrong with Beth? Didn't she understand how to survive? They needed to stay together in order to get through this. Running off at the drop of a hat just because she was bored would get them both killed. He threw down the water bottle he had been holding and grabbed his crossbow and reluctantly began tracking Beth's footprints through the woods. Not that he needed the tracks; he could still hear her sloppy movements up ahead of him.
She was useless to have around. He hadn't seen her even try to fight for her life even once. She had even gone so far as to try to end her life back at the farm when he had first met her. It was hard enough to keep yourself alive these days, let alone keep someone alive who showed no interest in living herself.
What the hell was wrong with him anyway? Did he feel nothing? Did nothing that happened just a week ago have any effect on him at all? He was probably too much of a hard ass to even care about the people that may have died or that they will never see again. Of all the people she could have escaped with it had to be him. She knew he probably gave her the best chance of surviving another day, but someone friendly wouldn't hurt either.
She was still angrily storming away from the camp when she suddenly ran into the middle of three walkers.
"Shit," she mumbled under her breath as she reached to get her knife off her belt. Fighting had never been her strong suit, but she was getting better out of sheer necessity.
The first two walkers went down fairly easy. The third walker, however, was nearly a foot taller than Beth and, even dead, was probably was double her strength. She tried to hit him in the back of the legs to knock him down more to her size, but instead she got tangled and they both crashed to the ground. She was struggling to avoid his open jaws when the sickening sound of a bolt piercing flesh above her made the walker go limp.
Daryl had the walker off of her before she had time to react, but there was still a small blood stain down the front of her shirt.
"Thanks," she mumbled, but he was already out of earshot, stalking back through the woods, as silently as he had come, in the direction of their camp.
Beth reluctantly followed him back through the woods, realizing that she probably wouldn't get very far without him seeing as she couldn't track and had no idea where they were out in the woods.
"We have to find somewhere more secure to stay. We can't keep camping out. It will be g cold soon," Daryl talked to Beth over his shoulder as they made their way through the woods. It had been almost three weeks since the farm was over run and winter was coming early this year so camping out wasn't going to work much longer.
"Are you thinking we try to go back into town?" Beth answered and Daryl could tell she was getting out of breath trying to keep up with his break neck pace through the woods. He knew they needed to be moving quickly, but he slowed his pace just enough for her to keep up with him.
"No were too likely to run into large groups in town with the weather like this and we don't know what kind of people we would be dealing with. And the more people the more walkers would be there anyway. We should be able to find an old huntin' cabin or something far enough out in the woods that we should be safe for a while."
Staying walled up in a tiny cabin with Beth all winter wasn't his favorite plan, but it was the best one he had come up with so far. Going back to try to find the rest of the group would be ideal, but the risk of running into more trouble was too great. And who knows how far they could have gone by now, or if they even survived the fall. Hiding out in the woods was the safest way to spend the winter.
Beth felt like they had been walking for hours. Not just walking, Daryl had been going at a pace that was more of a jog for her and she knew she couldn't keep that pace much longer. They hadn't seen much of anything while they had been traveling. Daryl had taken down a couple of squirrels early on and one walker who was trapped under a fallen tree.
Beth wasn't sure how much time had passed when Daryl stopped and let Beth catch up.
"See that?" Daryl pointed off in front of them, but as far as Beth could tell it was just more woods.
"All I see are more trees," Beth spat back at him. She was too tired for guessing games.
"A chimney. About half a mile out. We'll be there soon," Daryl said then started off through the woods with Beth jogging along behind towards the chimney she wasn't even sure existed.