No idea if I'm gonna continue this, but I have at least 3 chapters worth of material for this story for the meantime. There is an OC but there's no romance between my character and any of the others. I do not own the Walking Dead, if I did there would be little to no plot and nobody would watch it. Anything you don't recognize is mine.
Maybe they should have gone in the morning. Hershel could have used up what was left of his supplies, Maggie could have pulled through until daybreak, and then they would have set off on a search for more medical supplies.
A lot of thoughts Rick had recently were like this. Questioning and doubting his decisions and whether or not he did the right thing, or if this was a smart move. At any moment something could happen to him that would take him away from Carl and Judith. Or worse, a mistake he made could hurt them.
Going out when the sun had started to set is one of those moments. He brought long Daryl on the trip, the only man Rick trusted to have his back. Silent but steady as he always is, Daryl held his crossbow in front of him, his eyes peeled like a hawk watching for any sign of movement that wasn't the three of them. Daryl had a big mouth at times, especially when he doesn't know you that well, but he had a good heart, and he was a good hunter, both for food and for danger. If Rick could only have one person at his side, it would be Daryl.
Carl came of his own accord. He was 14 now. More of a man than a boy, especially with what he has seen and done. Old enough to make the decisions to come out with them as backup. Rick's old sheriff hat sat a top his head, and a gun in his hand; Carl looked dangerous. That was the only word Rick could think of to describe his son. In the regular world, Carl would have been entering High School, making bad choices like skipping class and causing trouble. But now Carl's bad decisions revolve around protecting his own kind, deciding whether or not taking a human life is right. It was worrying. Rick would never admit it, but he was worried about his son. Wanting nothing more to just protect him from all the bad things in the world, to make sure Carl didn't become one of those bad things. One of those bad people. In this world, it was all too easy to become one the bad guy.
The three of them pressed forward. Weapons in hand, walking silently towards the boarded up building. It looked as if maybe it had been a pharmacy, but now it was run down and dark. Wood boarded up the glass that had been broken, the paint chipped away by more then just time by the look of the multiple bullet holes. It was something that had seen more than it's fair share of horrors. Scattered around the parking lot were walkers. Not live walkers, dead ones. These ones had been taken care of. Some with a simple bash to the head, others looking like they had put up a struggle with whomever had killed them.
These ones had been long dead.
Daryl side stepped towards the door, peeking down to look at what look like a wire. He gently grasped it in his fingertips and followed with his eyes to where it went went. It came out from under the front door and up into a window on the second floor. The window was boarded up except for the tiny hole in the corner, but off specifically for the wire to fit though.
The Grimes men held their own guns more steady. This place looked like it had been used after the end of days. Like this was some sort of makeshift place for a while. Maybe whoever was in it last had left behind enough supplies.
Without a word, the formed a triangle around the front door. Daryl on it's left, ready to open the door, with Carl on the right pulling out the wooden block keeping it secure. Rick was directly in front, ready to take on whatever came out at them.
But nothing did. With a loud smash the door flew open the moment the wood was gone and Daryl turned the knob. It was loud. Anything that was inside was now alerted to their presence.
It wasn't completely black inside. There was a vague amount of light that was seeping in through the wooden boards. Their footsteps were light as could be, not making a sound to alert any walkers hiding in the shadows, waiting for their next meal.
Each searched through the front lobby flash light in hand, looking for any sign of where medical supplies would be kept. Chairs and couches in what seemed to be a waiting area were torn and hardly usable any more. Blood stained most of them.
Carl jumped over the counter to the receptionist desk. If anything had once been usable, it was long gone. Not even pencil shavings were kept, all that was there was a chair with a missing leg and a smashed computer monitor.
That's when Rick heard it. It was so quiet that he wasn't even sure it was real. But the looks Daryl and Carl were giving him assured him that they heard it to. A beep.
Remembering the wire Daryl picked up outside, Rick looked to the door. His eyes trailing the wire along the bottoms of the walls and then trailing up towards the upper right hand corner of the room. And there it was.
Daryl was the first to speak. "What in the hell..."
Rick stared at it in disbelief. A security camera. It was turned on. The little blue light had beeped on and was now live. How the hell was there a working camera in here? Where was it being fed to? Who turned it on?
Rick considered this one of those moments where he made a terrible decision. He walked towards the camera without checking his surroundings. He got close enough to see the little camera piece inside the overall object when his foot felt it. A trip wire.
This is why he trusts Daryl so much. Before Rick could react, he was being slammed to the ground, just as a giant pile of wooden shelves fell from a spring hidden in the rafters down to where Rick had stepped on the trip wire.
The two men helped each other off the ground about to ask Carl if he was okay, when they realized. No. No he wasn't.
The moment they got off the ground, a figure stepped out from the doorway to the stairwell and grabbed Carl. On instinct he yelled. "Let me go!"
Rick was the first to move towards his son, gun raised, cocked, and ready to go. "LET HIM GO. NOW."
Carl struggled against the figure. They weren't that much shorter than Daryl, but the weren't as bulky. The gun against his sons head, that was the threat. Daryl was right beside Rick, crossbow raised and his facial expressions sharp.
The figure was well equipped. A long brown coat over top of what looked like a leather jacket. There was a hint of a utility belt, most of which had guns, knives and a crowbar tucked away. It would have been heavy. Whoever this person was they were not big, but they were strong. A strange looking mask covered their face. It looked like a gas mask, but it didn't stick out of their face largely, it was mostly flat, and covered from the chin to the eyes. The coat had a hood, which was up. So no hair colour or anything was visible.
That's what made them look scary. With all this equipment on, they looked inhuman. Like anything could be hiding away underneath the mask.
"Dad!" Carl's struggling voice brought Rick out of the fog and back into the situation at hand.
"You let my son go RIGHT NOW or I will shoot you!"
They didn't move. They only spoke. A muffled and indistinguishable voice underneath the mask. "Where is he?"
Rick and Daryl looked at each other. "Where's who?" It was Daryl who asked this time.
The figure pulled Carl closer towards the gun. The voice spoke much more firm this time. As if their patience were thinning away with each moment. "You know who. Where is he?"
Rick took a step towards his son and the gun got a little bit closer to Carl's temple. "We don't know who you're talking about. Just give me my son and we'll leave you alone."
"If you don't tell me where he is I'll shoot the boy right in front of you!" The voice was getting louder, still unable to determine anything about it other then it was much angrier then before.
"Where is WHO?" Rick yelled.
Carl made an "Arg" sound as he was violently shifted from being held at gunpoint, to being grabbed across the front of his chest and pulled towards the figures torso. The gun was now pointed elsewhere.
At Daryl.
With a mighty passion in their voice, the figure yelled at the redneck directly.
"YOU'RE BROTHER. WHERE'S YOUR BROTHER YOU PIECE OF SHIT?