Disclaimer: I don't own the Walking Dead.
This story takes place in between seasons 2 and 3.
It was sweltering. Heat rose up from the asphalt, distorting the road ahead of him. That morning had been so cold that the group breathed white clouds while shuffling around their cars sleepily. Now, in the afternoon, the sun powered through the thick haze that kept them chilly in the morning.
Indian Summer in Georgia. The last heat wave of the year before the frost set in. It was sweating weather.
But Daryl barely had time to sweat. He revved his engine and raised his hand up, gesturing for the car behind him to turn left onto a smaller, backwoods highway. It followed close behind him for another few minutes—uphill, Daryl noted with annoyance; it would burn up their gas faster—before he skidded to a halt on the gravel shoulder.
He shifted his crossbow to a more comfortable spot on his back, checking over the canvas quiver of bolts to make sure he didn't lose any on the trip. Rick opened the driver's side door, his mouth a grim line and his eyes darting around at the walls of forest on both sides for creeping walkers. Maggie hopped out of the shotgun seat and helped Glenn grab their weapons out of the back of the car. They were mostly melee tools—a machete, a crowbar, several long hunting knives that were too inconvenient to carry around all of the time.
The two of them kept an eye out so that they wouldn't be caught unawares, like they'd been so many times before. T-Dog spread out a map on the hood of the Hyundai, using his Ladysmith as some kind of post-apocalyptic paperweight, and Rick and Daryl came over to scan the map for the hundredth time.
"This is where we turned off," Rick drawled, jabbing a dirt-covered finger at a thin yellow line on the map, sounding even more tired than usual. Though that might have been the humidity slowing his words before they hit Daryl's ears.
He exhaled through his teeth, dragging his finger further up the yellow line to a web of tiny black lines, "And this is Dawson."
"We go there as a last resort," Glenn tossed over his shoulder. Rick nodded his assent, though somewhat absently. Daryl had to restrain himself from grabbing the man by the shoulders and shaking him until all the crazy fell out of his ears. Ever since the farm, and Shane's death, Rick hadn't been on his A-game, which would have been alright if the group wasn't on the run from blood-thirsty monsters and the coming winter.
"We just gotta go up this hill for a mile," Daryl said, pointing to the jagged brown line on the map and up the untraveled highway ahead of them simultaneously. "There'll be a main street for a place called Mulberry or some shit."
Rick nodded his head at T-Dog, signaling him to fold up the map and stuff it into his jeans' front pocket, waved Maggie and Glenn forward. They danced over, obviously nervous. Their group hadn't had very good luck, not since they'd found Hershel and his family at the farm. And even that should be considered a stroke of more bad luck; the only reason they ran into them was because Otis shot Carl and Sophia went missing.
"Now I know that you're all tired," Rick started, sounding a bit more like his usual, inspirational self. "And I know that you're hungry."
Daryl was sure that each of their stomachs took that moment to growl in unison. He felt the back of his neck flush in frustration and just a little bit of shame—after all, he was their unofficial hunter-gatherer and he hadn't been able to catch more than a few rodents in the past week. He watched as Carl and Beth grew gaunter and paler as the days went on and there wasn't a thing he could do about it.
Most of the group was also worried about Lori. Some nights they all went hungry, of course, but only Lori had to worry about another person living inside of her. Daryl had noticed some of the others—mostly Carol and Rick—shifting some of their rations onto Lori's plate when Lori was occupied elsewhere.
Rick continued, snapping Daryl out of his shame spiral, "But if this run goes well…"
"When," interrupted T-Dog. The others stared at him. He shrugged, "Positive thinking can go a long way, y'all." Daryl rolled his eyes.
"When this run goes well," Rick emphasized, checking T-Dog's satisfied expression for approval before going on, "we'll have food in our stomachs and enough for the others back at camp. So, let's get this done fast."
They quickly agreed. Maggie, Glenn, and T-Dog yanked empty backpacks over their shoulders, ready to be filled. Then they took off up the hill, towards the place called Mulberry.
"Why…" Glenn panted after only five minutes of jogging on a gentle incline, "did…we…drive…up…the mountains…again?"
"Not as many people live in the mountains," Daryl huffed, not quite as winded as the Asian boy but sweating a great deal more than he was comfortable with. "Less likely that there'll be walkers."
"I think…" T-Dog gasped, "I'd rather…take on…a herd of walkers…"
"Quiet," Rick rasped back to them, effectively silencing Glenn and T-Dog's bitching. Daryl was glad for it; not only because their complaints were loud enough to be heard by nearby walkers, but because he hated hearing them whine about something or other. Yeah, it was hot. Yeah, running uphill sucked. What could you do about it?
Mulberry was basically Main Street with a few dirt paths that led further up the mountainside. It must've been a town for hikers to pick up supplies before they set off on their journeys, Daryl figured. Back before the world went to hell in a hand-basket, he'd scoffed at the rich folk who liked to "rough it" by carrying around an entire year's salary worth of tents, sleeping bags, state of the art ass-wipers or whatever the hell they had for pussies. But now, he had to thank God for those pussies, because without those snotty Yankees, there wouldn't be places like Mulberry for them to ransack.
Daryl noted a pharmacy, a book store, a convenience store, and a small clothing boutique. "Only gotta hit the pharmacy and the 7-11 on this side," Daryl said, shifting the bow a bit on his back. Maggie shook her head a little.
"We're gonna need warmer clothes for the winter," she stated, glancing down the street they came from. Before they'd left, Daryl had seen Beth shivering in her sleeveless shirt. Even he wouldn't mind wearing sleeves now that the days were shorter and colder. "I'll go; I know everybody's sizes."
"Alright, then. Daryl, you and Maggie check out the north side," Rick pointed to the stores on the north side of the street. "T-Dog, Glenn, and I will handle the general store on the south side."
Glenn opened his mouth to protest—he was obviously not alright with being separated from Maggie—but Rick had already walked off. Out of instinct, Glenn looked to the next in charge: Daryl.
"Don' look at me, man," he said, shrugging and motioning for Maggie to follow across the street. He didn't have to look to know that Glenn and Maggie were probably making out in the middle of the street, because it seemed like every time they were together and Hershel wasn't around, they were playing tonsil hockey.
After a moment, Maggie popped up beside him. "Ready," she chirped.
"Well, alert the fuckin' media," he muttered under his breath, but by the way Maggie glared at him, he was sure she heard him. Whatever. Someone was always glaring at him for something insensitive he said.
They crept up the sidewalk beside the 7-11, Daryl just ahead of Maggie with his crossbow at the ready. He motioned to her to pry open the glass sliding doors that were usually automatic but had long since lost power. Using the machete at her waist as a crowbar, she slowly opened the door while Daryl kept an eye out for walkers.
She nodded to him once it was open. He nodded back and ducked inside, she right on his heels.
Immediately on their left, there was a walker that had been slumped down behind the counter. It stood when it heard the door scrape open, albeit very shakily. Daryl hadn't seen that before. It was like the walker was tired. Walkers didn't get tired, though.
He and Maggie exchanged confused glances before he lifted his bow and put a bolt through its brain. "Asshole," he muttered under his breath.
"That was weird," Maggie whispered. He shrugged in response. He would bring it to Rick's attention when he had the time, but for now, his number one priority was fast food.
Unfortunately and strangely, the convenience store was clean. Well, clean was a misleading word—there were too many shattered pieces of glass and spatters of walker blood to be called "clean"; it was bare. The metal shelves boasted no bags of chips, no bars of candy, no molding pastries in plastic containers. Daryl almost kicked down a row of shelves in anger.
"There ain't anything here," Maggie muttered, picking up a chip bag that had been emptied already. "Do you think it got cleared out before everything?" "Before everything" meant before walkers ruled the world.
Daryl shook his head. "Who gives a shit; it's empty."
Maggie didn't like his answer. Frowning, she replied, "What if the rest of the town is like this?"
"Let's just worry 'bout this place 'fore we start jumping to conclusions," he replied, though he had the same fear.
They combed the entire store and the only thing they found was an obese rat without its head and one rotting Twinkie out of its wrapper. Daryl had not been amused when Maggie told him that she'd won a bet against T-Dog; T subscribed to the belief that Twinkies lasted forever.
Apparently, Daryl didn't believe in gambling, no matter how innocuous. He'd rolled his eyes and shook his head. After several minutes of muttering under his breath, he'd said, "Let's hit the pharmacy; this is a fuckin' bust."
By his tone, she realized how disappointed he'd been by this run so far. He probably felt responsible for their hunger; he hadn't been able to catch very much recently and it frustrated him. She didn't understand how he could place their group's wellbeing entirely on his own shoulders, but he did and he did it without asking for any gratitude. She didn't know how he could deal with the responsibility.
The pharmacy had been even less promising. Only a half empty box of Band-Aids and a few other things that were of little use to them remained in front of the counter. Behind the counter was worse; there had been no painkillers, not even the weakest stuff. Only a few containers of Viagra and Benzodiazepines sat on the shelves, much to Daryl's anger and Maggie's disappointment.
"Man, this town's been stripped," Daryl had growled, throwing a bottle of Alprazolam across the room. Maggie had flinched when it hit the wall with a loud rattle. "Long time ago, probably."
"Let's check the clothing store anyway," Maggie had suggested carefully, so as to placate Daryl's fury. "I doubt that's been mined yet."
Daryl had stood seething in silence for so long that Maggie had called his name quietly, "Daryl?" Finally, he nodded, pushing past her without a word.
As they were leaving, a small untouched shelf had caught her eye. She's whistled lowly to Daryl for him to halt, stepping closer to inspect them. Her eyes had widened when she saw them.
"Prenatal vitamins," she'd said, a grin spreading across her face. She'd opened up the empty pack on her back and swept her arm across the shelf, shoving the bottles into her bag. "Guess these aren't exactly in high demand."
Daryl had snorted as she straightened up, readjusting her pack. "Probably 'cause no one's that goddamn stupid."
She'd given him a disapproving look, but hadn't disagreed. They loved Lori and they'd die for her, but everyone was pretty much in agreement about her pregnancy: it was irresponsible and dangerous. Still, it wasn't like there was much anyone could do about it now, so they tried to keep Lori as fed and comfortable as possible.
When Daryl had pushed open the door of the clothing boutique, Maggie was hopeful. No one thinks about how important warm clothing was for the winter—though, to be fair, the turn had occurred in the heat of summer, so carrying around cold-weather clothing would have been downright foolish. So when they'd crept into the shop and seen how filled to the brim with clothes, Maggie heaved a sigh of relief.
"Daryl, you should get a warmer jacket or something," she whispered, palming her machete nervously. They hadn't completely checked out the store; it might have been completely filled with walkers. "Get stuff for the other guys as well."
"Do I look like I know what fits them?" he deadpanned, nevertheless wandering over to the men's section, which was a little further from her than she was comfortable with.
The shop was strangely large, two big rooms to house all of the clothes. Men's clothes were at the front, women's in the back, and fitting rooms behind that. Maggie kept her machete out as she entered the women's section, prepared for anything that came out at her.
Except for that.
Huge piles of supplies; they looked like everything the small town had to offer had been transported to the boutique. Why hadn't anyone taken them?
Just as she started towards the piles, she froze when she heard the click of the safety being turned off on a handgun.
"That's far enough, Rambo." Raising her hands, she inched around to stare down the barrel of a Beretta M9. On the other end of it was a woman younger than herself—maybe 18 or 19?— looking as tired and dirty as she imagined she would look if she saw herself in a mirror.
Maggie breathed a little shallower and quieter, as if that would calm the gunslinger somewhat. "I don't want any trouble…" she said quietly. Where the fuck is Daryl? She screamed internally, annoyed that the one time she wouldn't really mind him skulking around and shooting off snarky comments, he was nowhere to be found. They'd assumed that the worst thing they could run into was a walker and Maggie had gotten pretty good at dispatching those on her own.
It seemed foolish now to assume that they wouldn't run across any living people. After all, Glenn and the others had found the Greenes, and together they'd run across Randall and his group.
"Neither do I," the woman said, though she didn't loosen her grip on the gun at all. "That's why you're gonna walk out of here and tell the rest of your group that you didn't find anything in here. I've got snipers on your people right now, so don't even think about telling them anything else."
Cold rushed over her body at that news. This woman's group must have ID'ed them the moment they walked into town. There could very likely be a gun on every head in her group right now.
But…
The piles of supplies called to her; large cardboard boxes filled to the brim bottles of painkillers, bandages, ointments, gauze, and other sterile equipment. And what they really needed was there too: food. Cereal boxes, bags of chips, cans of soup, dried fruit, jerky, granola, juice; hell, Maggie thought she spotted a bottle of whiskey that she wouldn't mind taking a swig of right now. If she walked away without even trying to get the supplies, they might be out of luck for a long while, no telling how long either.
"Look, I don't know how many people you've got in your group," Maggie started. The woman didn't move, but her eyes darted up and behind Maggie, probably making sure she wasn't about to be interrupted by a pack of walkers. "But we need food and medicine. And it looks like y'all got a lot to spare."
"You best be on your way," the woman advised in a way that told Maggie that there wasn't a rational discussion to be had. But even though her tone suggested that she was two seconds from pulling the trigger, her eyes shone in desperation. Maggie was almost certain that the woman wasn't very trigger-happy. But she didn't want to test that theory out.
"Th' fuck?" Daryl—finally, Maggie thought—stalked in with that cat-like grace that only natural hunters had, saw the stalemate, and immediately raised his bow at the belligerent woman's heart.
By the way she jumped and whirled around, it was obvious that she didn't hear him come in. Maggie took that opportunity to pull out the Glock that Glenn had stuffed in the waistband of her jeans when they kissed goodbye and aim it at the woman's head.
"Put the gun down, lil' girl," Daryl barked.
She stood her ground for a moment, her hazel eyes opened fractionally wider in panic. Briefly, Maggie was afraid the woman's finger would twitch onto the trigger in her distress. But then she raised her hands up, like she had made Maggie do, and slowly placed the gun on the ground. Daryl narrowed his eyes at her. Rolling her eyes and huffing in poorly concealed frustration, she kicked the firearm towards them and out of her reach.
"She said her group had snipers on ours," Maggie panted, releasing a breath that she hadn't realized she'd been holding the whole time.
"Hey, if you don' wanna die right here and now, you better tell your people to get th' fuck outta here," he growled and for a second, Maggie was certain he was going to send a bolt through her heart. She couldn't honestly say she would be surprised. It only took the threat of Randall's group attacking them back at the farm to make Daryl beat the shit out of the kid. Maggie wasn't sure if he'd hold back just because this time the threat was a woman.
"If you don't want to die, you'll get your people out of here," she hissed back. Maggie faltered a little at her venom, but Daryl didn't even flinch. "This is our town—we did all the heavy lifting and like hell I'm gonna let the great white hunter and his posse take what's ours!"
"Let's just calm down, alright?" Maggie asked soothingly, sensing that the situation was spiraling out of control. She was also now 80 percent sure that Daryl was two seconds from forgoing his crossbow and blowing the woman's brains out with his gun. "Can we please work something out?"
"No!" They both yelled at her. She might've laughed if she was sure she'd see her family ever again.
Maggie lowered her gun and hissed to Daryl under her breath, "Some supplies are better than no supplies and no supplies are better than casualties."
"Or I could put a bolt in her brain and take everything," he replied stonily. Maggie didn't know Daryl very well, but she knew that was the last thing he wanted to do. She could tell that shooting a scared girl in cold blood wouldn't sit right with him.
"Our people are being targeted right now!"
Daryl's eyes snapped from the woman to Maggie's face. "She's lyin'."
"Are you willing to bet their lives on that?" she asked stubbornly. Sure, she might be bluffing and they could just be on their way.
But if she wasn't…Glenn, T-Dog, and Rick would be dead and she just couldn't fathom that thought.
Maggie never got to hear his reply as something quick and small rammed into the back of her knees, making her collapse into a heap on the floor. Beside her, she heard Daryl swear loudly when he got the same treatment. She scrambled to get up—a difficult feat to attempt when you felt like a javelin just speared your kneecap—but when she flipped over, there was that Beretta in her face once again.
"What th'…" Daryl mumbled.
"You leave in the next ten seconds and I won't shoot you, does that sound fair?" the snarling woman behind the gun asked. Over Daryl, Maggie started at the sight of a little girl, no older than Carl, pointing a pistol at his head. Daryl appeared to be just as surprised and a thousand times more unwilling to retaliate now that there was a kid involved.
The glass doors at the front slammed open and Rick, Glenn, and T-Dog came stomping into the shop, catching a glimpse of the scene. They stood in silence, staring for the briefest moment. Then, several things happened all at once.
Rick blasted his revolver at the woman who'd immediately shuffled and ducked when the door opened. She wasn't quite fast enough to dodge the bullet—it ripped through her left arm. But she was lucky— Maggie knew that Rick never aimed to wound. She cried out in pain and knelt down involuntarily. The little girl leapt over Maggie to kneel beside her injured friend.
"Don't!" she yelled at Rick, whose features were stricken with confusion. Then, T-Dog called to them, "Walkers!"
Maggie groaned. As if their day wasn't going badly enough already. Rick and T-Dog secured the door just in time for a few walkers to slam up against them, their rotting teeth grinding against the glass. Glenn rushed to her side and helped her up. "Are you ok?"
She nodded. "Fine." She nodded her head over at the moaning horde outside of the boutique. "Now what?"
"Is there any other way out of here?" Rick asked Daryl, who kept himself occupied by watching the young girl sluice water through the woman's gunshot wound.
"Dunno. Didn' have time to get a good look aroun'," he growled, jerking his head in their direction. Rick nodded absently, staring out at the walkers. He ran his hand through his hair before shoving his revolver back into its holster at his hip.
Then he stalked over to the girls. Valiantly, the woman tried to get up and corral the little girl behind her. But she didn't look too threatening with blood pouring out of her arm and her face paling rapidly.
"How many of you are there?" he asked. She glared back at him, the only movement on her face made by her pursed lips. He kicked their dropped firearms towards Daryl as he harshly repeated the question, "How many of you are there?"
She stayed silent until at last, she broke their eye contact to glance at a frilly pink dress on a rack behind Glenn. "It's just us."
Maggie could almost feel Daryl's quietly smug stare from where she was standing. Told ya she was lyin', it said. She rolled her eyes.
"You wanna tell me why you threatened my people?" Rick asked, in a way that seemed like an angry father scolding his children for playing baseball in the house.
She didn't answer this time. Rick—to his credit, and everyone else's annoyance—waited a good two minutes before sighing and saying, "My name is Rick Grimes."
There was another pregnant pause in which Maggie thought the woman would grab a stiletto heel and beat the crap out of the cop. Then the little girl, who they'd almost forgotten was there, stepped out from behind the woman and held her hand out. "I'm Cassie."
Rick took it, a little bemused at the girl's out of place maturity. "Nice to meet you, Cassie."
Daryl would've guessed that the little girl was younger than Carl, but she might've looked young for her age. Her eyes were large and doe-like, set in a dark-skinned face with high cheekbones. The woman had surprisingly soft features, with wide hazel eyes, tanned skin, and shoulder-length brown hair. Neither of them looked particularly well-fed, but they seemed to be doing a hell of a lot better than most of their group was doing.
With her hand still holding her bleeding arm, the woman offered, "Anna." Rick nodded to her a little more stiffly than he had with the little girl.
A loud bang against the glass had them all jumping in surprise. "Yeah, can we save introductions for when we're not about to get eaten?" Glenn cut in.
"Is there any other way out of here?" Rick asked. Cassie scuttled over to the boxes with the medical supplies and rummaged around for a needle and some surgical thread. Anna sat down heavily, nodding.
"There's a door down by the manager's office," she started, wincing a little when Cassie began stitching up her wounds. Though no one said anything, their entire group was more than a little disturbed that this pint-sized girl with big eyes was sewing up her guardian's flesh like it was just another Wednesday. Even the seasoned 'medics' in their group still grimaced at the sight of their own blood. "But it's padlocked."
"We didn't really see a need to get it open before," Cassie continued, pausing only a moment to stare at the gun in Rick's holster. He shifted uncomfortably.
"How're we gonna get it off?" Daryl asked lowly, never taking one eye off of the perpetually hungry geeks outside. It was only a matter of time before they broke through the glass and Daryl sure as hell didn't want to be here when they did.
"Do you have bolt-cutters?" T-Dog blurted out. Cassie and Anna turned to him with uncannily similar expressions.
"Yeah, they're right here in my pocket," Cassie deadpanned. Glenn snorted a laugh, but quickly sobered when the rest of his group turned to glare at him. He cleared his throat.
"Sorry."
Daryl growled, "We're gonna have ta shoot it."
"That'll attract the walkers to the back," Rick said, scratching furiously at his chin with a grimy hand. "We might not all make it back to the cars. Plus, those walkers are gonna follow us…" he glanced at his people with a meaningful look. They all understood immediately. If the walkers followed them far enough, they ran the risk of coming into their camp. But Rick didn't want these strangers to know anything, not even the general direction, about camp.
Cassie scoffed, finishing up her stitching by clipping excess thread with a pocket knife. She grabbed a roll of bandages and started wrapping it around Anna's arm. "Unless one of you can walk through walls, you only have two options: the front or the back."
One of the window panes cracked under the pressure of twenty ravenous walkers. Daryl knew that the doors wouldn't hold much longer. "We're jus' gonna have ta make a run for it."
"Or," Anna suggested quietly, "We could take the front and the back." She stood up and went to pick up her gun from where Rick had kicked it over to Daryl. Once it was back in the holster at her side, she flicked her head over at Cassie, who seemed to immediately know what she was thinking and grabbed two big packs resting by the pile of food. She then picked up a black metal recurve bow that looked enormous in her arms along with a canvas quiver filled with a mix of wood and metal arrows that she immediately clipped to her belt.
"Which one of you is the fastest?" she asked quietly, staring at each of them for a few uncomfortable seconds.
Well, no solid plan ever began with that question. Not liking where this was going, they all stayed silent for a moment, shooting each other uneasy looks. In that time, Cassie handed Anna the larger bag before shouldering the other. Anna winced when she took the bow with her good arm.
Then Glenn raised his hand slowly.
"I'm pretty fast," he offered. Maggie opened her mouth to protest but Glenn cut in before she could say anything, "Just…tell me what the plan is."
Anna nodded. "Our car is up the highway a ways. About two miles...?" she glanced at Cassie who nodded in confirmation. "You'll shoot the lock off of the door. The biters will follow the sound— you lead them away, towards our car. Once you get to the truck, there's another way back to town—it takes you on some back roads, but it spits you out about three or four miles south of here."
Daryl almost snarled at her plan. "Tha's the stupides' plan I've ever heard." Maggie nodded violently.
"He doesn't know the way!" she exclaimed over the increasingly frantic groans of the walkers.
"Cassie does," she explained, glancing over at the little girl. "She'll go with him and guide him back to you."
"She's a child!" Rick seethed as the others looked at the little girl with uncomfortable stares. Glenn just looked a little nauseous. If Daryl was in Glenn's place, he'd be feeling just as nervous—first off, the kid was a kid and probably didn't have the survival experience that they needed. From Daryl's limited experience with children—that is, Carl and Sophia—kids could never listen to instructions when it mattered most.
And second off, if this kid was going with Glenn, then Glenn would be responsible for her safety. And nowadays, you just couldn't guarantee someone's safety. They'd all learned the hard way with Sophia.
"I'm twelve," Cassie muttered, already pulling a pistol from her pack and sliding it into the back of her waistband. She tossed her bag over to Anna without question.
Daryl rolled his eyes at them. "Yeah, let's have a twelve-year-old run out there with them flesh-eatin' bastards."
"She knows the way," Anna repeated firmly, ignoring Daryl's skeptical remark. "She'll get him back safe. Besides, I don't know if you noticed, but those biters out there aren't exactly in tip-top shape."
All of their eyes shot to the front of the store where the dead stared at them with milky eyes. They were riled up from the thought of a meal, but they were a lot stiffer than the walkers they'd come across in the past. They pushed at the glass more feebly and dragged themselves from one end of the entrance to the other at an almost leisurely pace.
"And what about us?" T-Dog asked wearily, gathering all of their attentions again. "Did you make sure we had an exit strategy, or are we gonna stay put and hope those walkers ain't feeling too hungry?"
"When the walkers are distracted by the gun shot, we run out the front," she explained. "We'll run to your cars or whatever and wait at the end of the road for Cassie and your man."
"You could be leading us into a trap," Rick rumbled. They didn't know for sure if there were any more in their group; she could have been lying about lying. But the way the two interacted—especially how the woman made sure she kept her body between any of them and the kid—told Daryl that they wouldn't last too long with a group.
Cassie glared while Anna just stared stonily at him. "We're not lying!" Cassie said hotly, ignoring Anna's placating hand on her shoulder.
"Do you have any other options?" she asked Rick quietly. He was silent.
Glenn interjected, albeit shakily, "We'll take our chances. We don't have a choice."
Daryl repeated, "This is not a good idea." Anna rolled her eyes at him.
"I don't hear you bringing anything to the table, so unless one of your snarky little comments can double as a grenade launcher, I suggest you keep your goddamn mouth shut!" she snapped. Glenn, Maggie, and T-Dog gaped at her. "Are there any questions?"
When no one answered, she said, "Good," in such a self-righteous way that despite the severity of their predicament, Daryl kind of wanted to slap her. "If you want any of the supplies we gathered, you better take some now." Maggie, Glenn, and T-Dog immediately dove for the food pile.
"Ya ain't gonna be able to run with all of that," Daryl said gruffly, nodding at the bulky cans of soup they stuffed into their bags. "Go for the light stuff."
They nodded slowly and went to the medical supply pile, though Daryl saw Maggie and T-Dog split open a bag of tortilla chips and stuff a few in their mouths. Daryl's stomach grumbled at the sight. The three of them grabbed the stuff they were always in short supply of: surgical sutures, bandages, gauze, antibiotics, painkillers, and isopropyl alcohol.
Daryl sidled up next to Rick, who kept his mouth shut, something Daryl found simultaneously odd and normal. Ever since they'd left the farm, Rick had been a little off. Probably had something to do with the fact that he had to shank his best friend after he tried to kill him. But that didn't mean that he wasn't the leader anymore, because he still made time to get into everyone's business. It was something he admired and found extremely annoying about the man.
"You just gonna let Annie Oakley and her child soldier take the lead?" he muttered under his breath to Rick. He shook his head in a 'what else can you do' kind of way.
"You have any better ideas?"
Briefly, Daryl imagined clocking the woman over the head and tossing her out of the back door as a distraction, but he figured the others probably wouldn't go for that plan. If she'd shot one of theirs, he'd do it in a heartbeat, but the fact that she hadn't shot Maggie on sight had to count for something. She was probably just as freaked out as any of the other women back at camp would have been in that situation and he couldn't exactly begrudge her for trying to protect herself and the kid.
He grunted at Rick to let him know that he didn't have any better ideas, but he didn't like their predicament. Rick picked up a roll of bandages and tossed it over to Glenn, before glancing back at Daryl. "But if she makes one wrong move…"
Daryl nodded. "Alright." He didn't have to say anything more; Daryl would watch their backs against walkers and this stranger.
He kept a sharp eye on the eagle-eyed woman who was kneeling beside the wild-haired child.
"Hey, you," he heard her mutter. She placed her hands on the little girl's shoulders. "You scared?"
She stared back up at her with enormous eyes. "Yeah," she whispered back, shaking a little with either fear or nervous energy.
Anna scanned her face quickly, and then patted her shoulders. "Good." She pressed a kiss to her forehead quickly before shuffling back up to her feet and asking, "You ready?"
Glenn stuffed one more box of Band-Aids into Maggie's bag and kissed her. He sighed and turned to their interim leader since Rick had apparently decided to let this stranger lead them. "Let's do this."
Glenn didn't see this ending well at all. He looked to his left at the curly-haired kid who reached the top of his shoulder on a generous estimate. She couldn't have weighed more than 90 pounds soaking wet. Forgive him if he didn't believe she could physically hold off walkers with him.
By the way Maggie stole glances at the two of them, he knew she was just as worried for his safety as he was.
"Ready?" Cassie asked under her breath, bracing herself as though they were about to begin a race. He swallowed, nodded, and raised the sawed off to the heavy padlock on the door. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the others position themselves as Cassie had done.
Bang! The lock burst off of the door and Cassie darted forward to push it outward. Glenn took one last glance at Rick, who nodded quickly. He rushed forward to help the little girl shove the rusted door open, and nearly tumbled out onto the pavement at the back of the store where walkers from the front had been drawn to the noise and were now groaning their way to them.
He risked a few precious seconds to slam the door behind them, if only to give the others a couple extra moments. The sound of glass shattering made it to his ears; Rick must've shot through the front windows to escape. If the walkers heard that, then they might head back to the others at the front. He drew a handgun from the back of his jeans' waistband and fired it at the walkers at the front of the horde.
Apparently, Cassie had gotten the same idea. She had a little pistol out (Glenn didn't know the names of guns; he could only distinguish between handguns and shotguns) and aiming at the mass of walkers, mostly hitting their chests and arms, rarely making a clean headshot.
By now, most of the walkers that had been clamoring to break through the front door of the shop now had their sights set on Glenn and Cassie. They weren't quite running yet, but Glenn had seen enough of walkers to know that they could get desperate. He shot a few more before shouting, "C'mon! Let's go!" and jogging backwards.
Cassie fired one last bullet distractedly at a walker, but she missed its head for its left leg. The walker, who had clearly been a gawky teenager working as a waiter at some sit-down restaurant before the turn, tripped forward onto its face. Glenn almost laughed.
But the other walkers took the shot as a signal. Some sort of stared at the fallen geek, others almost grinned at the two humans. Then, they all charged.
"Shit!" he cried and grabbed Cassie by the upper arm. They bolted up the street, the opposite direction from where his group had come. He was tempted for a second to look down the street to where he knew the cars were and where T-Dog, Maggie, Daryl, Rick, and the new girl were headed but he knew that he'd just slow down. And with running walkers on his tail, he needed to stay fast.
"On your right!" Cassie shouted before shooting down an oncoming walker. The number of walkers prowling the street before them was greatly eclipsed by the number currently thirsting for their blood; Cassie had pointed out a particularly obese walker that had shuffled a little too close to Glenn for comfort. He easily dispatched that one and a few others without breaking his stride.
When Main Street faded back into highway, he chanced a look back to see that the two of them were beginning to significantly outstrip the horde, which, thankfully, had not lost interest in them. A bit of the fear that had been pumping through his veins the moment he'd seen Maggie held up at gunpoint by that woman faded. It was quickly replaced by a slow burn in his muscles; the road began to climb up at what felt like an exponential pace.
"Where are we going?" he asked Cassie, who'd slowed a bit so that they wouldn't run completely out of the walkers' sights. Secretly, he was grateful for it; even though winter was coming, the day had decided to be just as humid as any standard dog day of summer was. He was fairly sure he had sweated out enough to make an ice Glenn.
"It's about a mile further," she replied, nodding her head over to a shambling sign that read Dawson County Road, 3 miles. "Once we get there, we keep heading up the highway and make a right on Dawson. Then another right on Forrest, a slight left onto Main—"
"You can just tell me when we get there," he interrupted wearily. She smirked a little and he couldn't help but let out a small laugh. When Anna had explained the plan back at the department store, he'd figured he and Cassie had about a thirty percent chance of survival. Now he was laughing with the kid while taking a light jog down a highway. Of course, there was still the matter of the group of about thirty walkers moaning behind them, but…still.
They ran in silence for a few more minutes. Glenn watched Cassie running beside him, her eyes constantly darting around to examine the tree lines on either side of the highway, making sure there weren't any surprise walkers waiting for an easy meal. Blissfully, there were none. If he had done this at the beginning of the outbreak, back when he was much more optimistic and naïve, he would have chalked up the lack of walkers to a stroke of good luck. But older, disillusioned Glenn felt more paranoid at the lack of walkers than at the abundance of them.
"There it is," he heard Cassie exclaim. He almost cried in relief—he didn't show it, but it'd been a while since he'd run a few miles consecutively and an even longer while since Georgia decided to broil. And that's not even factoring the 200 foot climb that their little jaunt had turned into.
Still running, Cassie tossed him a keychain. Predictably, he fumbled with the keys when he caught them, but opened up the cab before the horde got anywhere near. Cassie popped in beside him, grabbing a bag of jerky off from under the seat. A piece of jerky hanging out of her mouth, she asked, "Whan' sfum?" as she shook the bag in his face.
"Ah, no thanks," he replied on instinct, though he almost immediately regretted refusing when his stomach decided to snarl at him. One of the reasons this run had been so imperative was that they hadn't eaten anything substantial in two days. Even Daryl, their resident Survivor Man, hadn't been able to catch anything more than three squirrels in the past week.
He started up the car and pulled away from the highway's shoulder at breakneck speed. Now that he was safe behind the wheel of the truck, the gravity of what they'd just done settled down on him. His stomach was a lump of cement in his stomach and he didn't feel quite so hungry anymore. "Holy shit."
Cassie didn't reply for a while. She just kept her eyes on the road in front of them, holding another strip of jerky in her hand. "Yeah. Holy shit."
Once they heard the shotgun blasting off the thick padlock, Rick's group jumped up and made to dart over to the pane glass doors.
"Not yet!" their new companion hissed, yanking down the closest survivor, Maggie. "If they see you, they won't follow the noise."
"So what?" T-Dog asked; stupidly, in Daryl's opinion. He rolled his eyes, keeping his crossbow tight in his arms.
"So, we wait for 'em to clear out," he muttered, watching as the crowd of walkers outside cocked their heads toward the gunshots at the back of the store before groaning and dragging themselves away from their path to safety. "Can't wait too long, though." If they did, then some of the walkers would flood in from where Glenn and the kid just left and they'd be trapped up against the door.
"Now!" Rick hissed at them and they all ran over to the doors. Daryl and T-Dog propped them open and motioned to Rick, Maggie, and Anna to take cover behind an overturned car in the road.
With luck, Anna's plan would have gotten rid of all the walkers out front, but they were never so lucky. A few slower walkers who hadn't been able to crawl to the back of the store in time spotted them as soon as they stepped onto the sidewalk and growled.
"Of course," T-Dog moaned. Daryl shoved the door closed behind them, if only to give them a few extra minutes for the walkers inside to make it back out to them, and took aim at a slim walker that shuffled towards them. A bolt impaled the walker right between the eyes. Bullseye. It crumpled. Daryl waved at hand a T-Dog, who had pulled out his long hunting knife instead of the handgun in his waistband, and went to yank the bolt out from the walker's skull.
"No guns," Rick was saying when he joined the others at the rusting red sedan. "We can't risk it." The others nodded while T-Dog peeked over the hood of the car.
"How many?" Maggie questioned him in a terse voice. T-Dog opened his mouth to answer, but the sound of gunshots stopped him. Maggie's eyes grew wide with fear. Daryl knew she was terrified for Glenn's safety and hearing multiple gunshots didn't make her feel any better.
"Hey," the new girl snapped Maggie's attention back to her. "Don't worry about them," she whispered before looking back at T-Dog, who appeared just as sick as Maggie looked. "How many, big guy?"
"Around a dozen?" Daryl whistled lowly, loud enough only for Anna to hear him. He wanted her to know that her plan was stupid and that if any of his people got hurt or bit, he wouldn't show any mercy when he shoved a bolt between her eyes. Her clenched jaw told him that she got the message loud and clear.
Rick took control like he hadn't checked out back in the store. "We stay together; do not break formation for any reason. Understand?" When no one protested, he nodded and stood up. "Now, move!"
Daryl and the others knew the drill; they'd done this before. They hardly had to speak to each other to know when to turn, when to duck, when to dart. They were a well-oiled machine and it only took them four months to become one.
Daryl was surprised—and somewhat annoyed—to see that their new companion fell into formation with them as though she'd always been a part of their pack. Keeping their backs to one another in a tight circle so that everyone's blind spots were covered by someone else, they hastened out into Main Street. The walkers that had been shuffling towards the sound of Glenn and Cassie's gunshots immediately abandoned that mission when they saw the five survivors.
At that moment, Daryl wished that he wasn't the only one with a long range weapon. While he fired off bolts from a safe distance, the others had to wait until the walkers were within biting distance to lunge out and shove a knife into their brains. It made him uncomfortable watching Maggie have to leave the circle to take out a walker because not only did it leave her vulnerable to attack, it reduced the amount of eyes watching his back.
"Y'know how to use that thing?" he asked the girl, nodding his head at the polished black bow that hung over her backpacks.
"Yeah," she retorted in an offended tone, finishing off a walker that Rick had crippled by breaking its knees. It snarled and reached out to slash her with its rotting nails, but she just danced out of its way, yanked its head back, and stuck her knife so deep into the walker's brain that the handle was half bloody when she pulled it out. "Can't right now, though."
His eyes shot to the bandage wrapped around her upper arm. There was a spot of red over where Rick had shot her, but he couldn't tell if it was her blood from torn stitches or something else's. He had to bite his tongue to keep himself from telling her to suck it up and use her bow; after getting one of his bolts stuck in his side, he could sympathize with her desire to keep her arm stationary. He wouldn't ever admit it, but that experience was excruciating.
"Whatever," he finally settled on saying. They'd made it past the pharmacy that Glenn, T-Dog, and Rick were supposed to check out, but they had at least another block to go before they even made it back to the highway. From there, it was another mile to their cars and his bike. And the walkers just kept coming.
"Shit," T-Dog swore when a tall, slim walker in a windbreaker got a little too close. "Where the hell are they comin' from?"
"We can't take 'em all," Maggie exclaimed over the second death rattle of a walker. By now, there were at least twenty walkers coming at them from all sides, more slowly than they usually did, but too many for all of them to take.
"Cover me," Rick said as loudly as he dared and moved to put an ax in the heads of the walkers that blocked the way out of town. Daryl and T-Dog took out two walkers that almost grabbed Rick and Maggie left the circle for a second to kick down a walker that had gotten its lipless face a little too close for comfort to T-Dog's arm.
As he pulled his knife out of the back of an oddly short walker's head, Daryl heard a snarl just a moment too late. He whipped around just in time to catch the geek's face before it took a bite out of his neck. His knife clattered uselessly to the hot pavement. The thing was at least half a foot taller than Daryl and built like a linebacker or at least a fireman by the looks of its burnt yellow overalls. Vaguely, he heard Rick and Maggie calling his name—for help or in alarm at his predicament, he wasn't sure.
Keeping his face only inches away from the thing's chipped, bloody fingernails, he tried to kick it away, but the thing barely budged no matter how hard he shot his leg out to its torso. In his struggle, he noticed the thing still had an ax attached to its belt. If he could just reach it…
Suddenly, an arrow flew through its head and it slumped against him. Daryl shoved the thing off of him in disgust, grabbing his knife and whirling around to take out another walker that he'd heard coming up behind him. But that walker went down the same way. He looked over at where it had come from.
Apparently, Anna decided to give up on keeping her stitches intact because she was sending arrows into walker after walker with almost perfect accuracy. "Go!" she yelled to them, "I'm right behind you!"
They didn't have to be told twice. Despite their hunger and exhaustion, they all managed to get up to a decent clip towards the highway, taking out a few walkers that stood in their way. Daryl glanced over his shoulder.
Anna had gotten up onto the roof of a car still parked at the curb to avoid the reach of walkers' claws. Even from twenty yards away, Daryl could see that her stitches had busted open; the bandage Cassie had so carefully wrapped around her arm was soaked in blood which only riled the geeks up even more. It was a blessing for Daryl and the rest because most of the walkers could now only focus on her fresh scent and left the rest of them to run unmolested.
He wasn't about to turn around and save her ass. She was the one who tried to kill them; she was the one who came up with this god awful plan. So if she went and got herself killed, then that was no skin off of their backs. Still, he couldn't help but feel a twinge of guilt at leaving the woman behind. He shared a glance with Maggie and T-Dog. The looks on their faces told him they felt that same guilt.
But then T-Dog glanced over Daryl's shoulder and his eyes widened in shock. "Holy shit."
They had made it far enough away so that they could still make out the walkers' groaning faces from the highway. Daryl wasn't sure he wanted to turn around and see the carnage, but he did anyway.
Somehow, the woman had been able to clamber down from her perch and had taken out half of the geeks around her with her knife. That alone was impressive enough to warrant a low whistle from Daryl. But then she did something that almost made him run back to take a closer look.
One of the cars—an enormous SUV that Daryl could have imagined some soccer mom ferrying her kids around in—on the street was pointed towards them, downhill towards the highway. She'd been able to lead a group of geeks—about ten of them, Daryl guessed—to the front of the car. Then she jumped into the driver's seat, set the thing into neutral, and let gravity take over. The geeks snarled over the hood of the car at where she sat in the front seat, hands white-knuckling the wheel, as the car slowly began to slide down the road.
"She's fuckin' insane!" T-Dog exclaimed, though Daryl detected a hint of admiration in his tone.
"She's headed straight for us," Maggie whispered.
And she was. The huge car was picking up speed fast, the walkers plastered like flies on the windshield. For a second, Daryl thought she might actually be insane enough to run right into them. But right before the thing got too fast, she swung the door open, cut the wheel sharply to the right, and ducked out of the car. It flew off of the highway downhill into an ancient tree. A couple of the geeks got chopped in half on impact while others smashed their faces onto the windshield, shattering both their brains and the window.
Even Rick had stopped at this point, opening his mouth in shock at the young woman who was still rolling. She scrambled to her feet—though she collapsed the first time from shaking so hard—and limped her way over to them.
Both T-Dog and Maggie sprang into action, catching her before she hit the asphalt again. Apparently, she'd won them over with her crazy actions. Hell, Daryl himself was a little impressed, but that feeling was smothered by a growing rage.
"What the hell was that?" he barked, stomping over to where Maggie had her arm slung over her shoulder, hoisting her up so that the leg she'd landed on was off of the ground. The bottom of her jaw must have scraped against the road because it had a wicked rash that was gushing blood onto her shirt. T-Dog came between them, holding a placating hand up to Daryl.
"C'mon, man; now's not the time for this," he said with a sharp look that would have made better men cower. Daryl didn't back down, though.
"She coulda gotten us all killed!" he hollered, not caring that some walkers that had survived the battle in town could hear him from up the hill.
Understanding that Daryl was in no state to be leading them at the moment, Maggie hissed to Rick, "We need to go, now." Rick came up behind Daryl and nodded.
"We'll deal with her later," he said lowly, placing his hand on his shoulder. They still had about a half a mile to go until they could even see their vehicles, and now that the car had made enough noise for a deaf walker to hear, they had to move fast. Daryl jerked his shoulder out of the deputy's grip before stalking off.
He thought he saw the woman's eyes flutter open to gaze at him with glassy eyes. It startled him and he wasn't totally sure why. Maybe it was because she had seemed like a mountain lion back at the store, when she had a gun to Maggie's head, all bared teeth and snarling lips, but more afraid of them than they were of her.
Then around the little girl she was a mother bear, keeping herself between what she perceived as a threat and her young. Daryl had hunted enough bears to know that she would have ripped them all apart if they even looked at the girl the wrong way.
And when she was taking out the walkers in the town, she was a fox— wily, cold-eyed, and stoic. She obviously didn't need them to protect herself and she made sure they knew that.
So when she looked at him with those eyes, it had startled him to see how much she resembled a doe. Soft, gentle, trusting. Because she hadn't done anything but prove that she was a predator, plain and simple.
So, first fanfiction on this site. I've been working on this for a long time, so I have a few chapters already written. Let me know what you think!