Forged In The Flame
While Rick was arguing with Dawn, Beth silently indicated that she wanted Daryl to give her his gun. It pained him that she no longer trusted him to protect her, but he couldn't blame her after he had failed her the night she was taken. He discreetly handed her his gun, and she turned away from him with a grim expression he had never seen before. Then she shot Dawn in the head.
Daryl tensed as Dawn collapsed, but the other cops made no move to retaliate.
"Noah is leaving with us," Beth announced.
"Take him and go," the blond female cop said.
They left quickly before any of the cops could change their minds.
Beth walked ahead of Daryl with Noah, but nobody spoke a word until they exited the building. Maggie screamed out Beth's name and ran to embrace her sister. Glenn, Michone, and the rest of the group with them all smiled as they watched the sisters' reunion.
Daryl exchanged a somber look with Carol. "You okay?"
"Yeah," she replied. "They fixed me up pretty good."
"I'm sorry," he told her.
"Not your fault," she assured him. "Guess I still have to look both ways before crossing the street."
"Let's go," Rick said as a couple of walkers shuffled toward them.
"The church has been compromised," Abraham informed them as Daryl took out the walkers with his crossbow.
"I know a place," Glenn said. "It's pretty well-hidden, so they might not know about it."
Daryl then remembered that Glenn used to deliver pizzas and knew his way around the city.
They drove to a posh neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. The lawns were an overgrown mess now, but the mansions still looked impressive, except for the busted out windows.
"This place has been ransacked," Rick commented.
"You didn't tell me I was marrying into a rich family," Maggie joked.
"I have one very successful cousin," Glenn told her as he directed Rick to stop the truck.
Abraham brought the other vehicle to a stop behind them, and they scanned their surroundings for walkers as they gathered on the empty street. The place appeared to be deserted, but the rest of them stood guard as Glenn, Maggie, Rick, and Daryl approached the mansion. The door was wide open, and they saw the body immediately. Someone had bashed his head in, but his face was clearly that of a walker. His pajamas were stained with dried blood.
"Steven," Glenn stated flatly. Then he began to shout as he hurried through the house. "Katie!"
They looked around cautiously as they followed him from room to room and up the stairs to the second floor. Glenn stopped short in the master bedroom at the sight of a walker with a partially eaten torso. It raised its arms in an attempt to rise from the bed and reach them, but it was unable to do so.
"They just left her like that," Glenn exclaimed.
Maggie stepped forward and plunged a knife into the walker's head.
Glenn moved to stand next to her. "All that preparation, and they never even got a chance to use it."
"Use what?" Maggie asked softly.
Glenn tore his gaze away from Katie and turned to walk out of the room. "I'll show you."
They had already seen that the pantry had been cleared of food while they had wandered through the kitchen during their search for Katie. Glenn led them back downstairs and out of the house. "He probably died in his sleep and turned. It might have been his heart condition."
He walked back out to the street and called over Michone. "We might need to hack away at the weeds in the back. They're probably blocking it."
Michone then joined them in following Glenn to the backyard. It was, indeed, wildly overgrown. She hacked away where Glenn indicated, and they discovered a hidden door in the ground.
"It's an underground shelter," Glenn explained. "Get the others."
As Michone went to lead the rest of them back, Maggie questioned why Glenn hadn't come here when everything started.
"Steven said that he wouldn't open the door for anyone after they locked themselves in. I was out of town when everything started, and it was too late by the time I made it back. I thought they were safe, at least."
"I'm sorry," Maggie said.
"I thought they were in there drinking martinis. Crazy, huh?"
"They could have been," she remarked sadly.
"They loved martinis," he added.
When the rest of the group had assembled around them, Glenn opened the door to the shelter and reached inside to turn on the light. Seeing that it was safe to enter, he walked down the stairs with his weapon held in front of him. They followed suit, and Glenn went back up to lock the door after the last person in closed it.
The place was big, and they cautiously inspected the entire shelter before being satisfied that it was truly safe. Glenn's cousin had spared no expense, and he had built the best shelter that money could buy. Nobody was getting through those thick walls and heavy steel door. It was an underground fortress powered by full generators with adequate reserves of fuel. There was lots of food, and even a working bathroom with a shower. It had been set up with one bedroom, but there was also a living room area with couches and recliners. There were also plenty of blankets, pillows, and sheets. And enough clothes to open a store. These people had been planning to wait out the apocalypse in style.
The group stayed there for a month while Carol recuperated. The shelter was stocked with over the counter medicine and basic first aid supplies, but being able to rest was the most crucial part of her recovery. They let her sleep on the bed, while the rest of them took turns sleeping on the living room furniture and on the floor. There was no need to sleep in shifts anymore, but somebody always volunteered to keep watch. Anyway, they could take naps whenever they felt like it. The uninterrupted rest they got there was something none of them had experienced since before the world ended.
They all knew, however, that it was temporary. Their large group was using up the water supply much faster than two people would have. They were also indulging in the hot showers they had been denied for so long. The funny thing was that they were hardly even doing anything to get dirty.
Not unless you counted a different kind of getting dirty. Glenn and Maggie were old news in this department, but that was to be expected since they were married. Daryl quickly caught on to the fact that Abraham and Rosita also had carnal knowledge of each other. The shelter was big enough to afford them some privacy, but it wasn't difficult to guess what they were doing when they went off together.
The rest of the group entertained themselves by watching movies and reading the books that were provided in this underground haven. Carl was overjoyed to see the video game console, which they also used as a DVD player. He was able to once again play his favorite games. There were no baby toys, but Judith had just as much fun playing with pots and pans. She also had no shortage of people eager to keep her happy.
It was a wonderful, rare reprieve from the brutal world outside, but they would have to emerge from the shelter eventually. Fortunately, Glenn's cousin had also hidden about four tanks worth of gasoline down here, and it was stocked in conveniently portable plastic gas cans.
"They've got two cars in the garage if nobody took them," Glenn said.
They were discussing where to go after they left the shelter. Noah wanted to find his family, but Eugene still insisted that Washington was their best chance.
"We can check on Noah's family first," Beth stated decisively. "Then we can go to Washington from there if everybody still wants to go."
Daryl saw the change in her and wondered what, exactly, had happened to her at the hospital. He had seen her stubborn side when she had insisted on getting her first drink, but she had still been the same sweet Beth that had hugged him after he yelled at her. She had still been the same kind person who had enchanted him with her lovely smile and the warmth in her eyes as she spoke of writing a thank you note. He had momentarily believed in the kindness of strangers, and he had been happy.
Then it had all gone terribly wrong, and she had been taken from him, leaving him alone and in despair. He would rather die than ever feel that way again.
"You were right," he told her that first night in the shelter when he found her watching Carol sleep. "I missed you when you were gone."
He noticed that her smile was muted. "Noah told me how you were looking for me. I didn't think you would."
"You didn't think I'd look for you?" Daryl asked in an affronted tone.
She shook her head. "I didn't think you'd find me," she clarified.
"Me either," he admitted with a haunted expression.
"I'm glad you did," she said with that same wan smile.
He regarded her silently for a moment. "You okay?" He knew how inadequate that question was, but he didn't know another way to ask.
"Yeah," she replied.
Her answer was lacking even more than his question. "I think it was the right call," he told her. "But it's tough after the first one, even when it's a bad guy."
Her expression went blank. "She wasn't the first. Goodnight, Daryl." She turned away from him and Carol, and she walked with sure, steady steps out of his view.
He stood rooted to the spot, gaze fixed on where she had just been although he could no longer see her. Now he understood why she hadn't hesitated for even a second before shooting Dawn. What had they done to her in that place? If Dawn hadn't been her first human kill, then who was?
Daryl had been so relieved when he found out that Beth was alive. All he could think about was having her back safe where she belonged, but now he was troubled by thoughts of what had happened to her. She had seemed to be unharmed, and he had naively assumed that she had returned to them unscathed.
He remembered his conversation with Carol about what they were now. She had told him that he was a boy, but now he was a man. Beth had been a sweet girl the last time he had seen her. He wondered what she was now.
Notes:
I'm attempting something more complex with this story than anything I've ever written before. I wish the show would have gone in this direction instead of again treading down the same path of grief and anger that they always do. I won't get into a useless rant about how cheated I feel that they didn't complete the character development they so brilliantly began last season. Beth was becoming a very strong character, just like Carol.
Someone suggested awhile ago that I should write a love triangle with Daryl, Beth, and Carol. At the time, I just didn't see it. The recent episode with Carol and Daryl having that conversation in the women's shelter changed my mind. Something was between them that I never noticed before, and it inspired me to take a stab at writing this. So I'm changing events to suit my story, and I'm erasing that horrible moment from my mind.