With a quick glance at Michonne he reassured himself that, just like him, she had absolutely no intention of obeying that command. He slowly raised his hands, his right still holding his crossbow, as if to prepare to go down on his knees prior to lying down as ordered. „Behind us", he muttered, careful to move his lips as little as possible in case there was a sharpshooter rifle aimed at them from ahead. „You drive - I can't, with the leg." She hummed her consent.
With a clucking sound to get her going simultaneously, he practically threw himself across the last few yards separating him from the passenger door of their pickup, yanking it open and getting behind the door at once as the gun started spitting bullets at him from behind. At the same time, Michonne raced around the front of the vehicle to get to the driver's door, and he hoped fervently that nobody was covering that side of the truck.
Splinters of asphalt peppered his door and hit the window as he fell into the seat, cradling his crossbow and closing the door. Then a bullet hit the door directly and a shaft of light suddenly illuminated his seat as he yelled at Michonne to get going. She didn't even bother to close her door before turning the key in the ignition, almost breaking it in her eagerness to start the car, and they took off with tires screeching.
Looking into the rearview mirror on his side he saw a slim shape rushing out from behind the hedge around that last house they had cleared to stand in the middle of the road, aiming at them, and he wanted to kick himself for being so negligent. He had almost gotten the two of them killed simply because he hadn't thought to check out the garden. Another burst of gunshots from behind them, with one bullet hitting the bed of their truck, and then they were around the nearest corner and out of sight of the gunman for the time being.
Swerving around a jumble of trashcans that had tumbled over and landed in the street, Michone raced toward the main road leading out of town and toward the highway, her eyes on the street ahead and only occasionally flicking to her rearview mirrors to see if they were being followed. So far, neither of them could see any sign of other vehicles chasing after them, but they had no intention of slowing down before they'd reached the safety of the prison. At the same time, they needed to make sure they wouldn't be followed back - the Governor was quite enough of a threat and they certainly didn't need to bring down another menace on themselves.
With a tense look over at her, he shifted in his seat and his eyes fell to his left thigh and the tear in his pants, reminding him of his injury. The adrenaline coursing through his body had numbed the pain and he hadn't felt or even remembered that he'd hurt himself. Although he doubted that the car's emergency kit would suffice for what was hiding under that flap of his pants, he carefully lifted it again to check if he'd done any additional damage to it. He dimly remembered that there were some fuckin' large blood vessels in the thighs and he had no idea how close he'd come to tearing them.
Sticking to his torn-up pants was a large flap of skin and tissue, and when he lifted it along with the flap of fabric he looked into what seemed to be a pocket-like hole torn into the fatty tissue on the inside of his thigh. The dirt that had all but hidden the cover before he'd stepped onto it had ended up smashed into the wound and was now sticking to the inside of the damn hole like a bloody lining. Surprisingly, there was little blood - just a rim of tiny bright red beads glistening in the sun along the torn edge of the skin - and next to no pain, apart from the deep, grinding ache in his hip and knee joints - but that was probably still due to his high adrenaline level right now. He couldn't imagine that a hole like that, torn into his body, was not going to hurt like a bitch.
„That was a trap", Michonne said matter-of-factly with a glance at his thigh. „They needed us distracted, so they prepared that utility cover to flip up on its edge as soon as someone stepped on it. I bet they never counted on you to still make a run for it after that fall." He grunted, reaching down under his seat for the first aid kit. Opening it, he got what he needed and started taking care of his wound, first spraying it with disinfectant without bothering to even try to remove any of the dirt, and then bandaging it on top of his pants, complete with the flap of fabric as additional protection. The pain in his joints and the thigh muscle hidden unter the torn skin was cranking up a notch now that his leg was being handled, but he dared not take anything for it as he had no idea what their attackers still had in store for them - and never mind the fact that Merle's good example hat put him off any and all kinds of pills, even those that the doctor ordered.
Once he was done with his leg, he made sure that his crossbow was still loaded, ready to fire, and that his bolts hadn't been damaged during his dive into the car before looking behind them once again. „'m sure that's not the last we seen a them -„ he began just as a car shot out at them from the street they were passing, its engine howling and with the person in the passenger seat leaning out and taking aim. „SHIT!" Daryl yelled, reaching behind his seat to grab the rifle he had stowed away there. He used the rifle's butt to smash out the window and then leaned out himself, aiming behind them and taking potshots at their pursuers.
Michonne kept swerving right and left, using the entire width of the street to make targeting them more difficult, but of course this also served to throw off Daryl's aim and he wasn't sure he even managed to hit the car, let alone do any damage. Reaching another corner, they skidded around it, leaving rubber marks on the street, and she worked furiously to keep the car from going over the side or flipping over. „Where do we go?" she called out desperately over the roar of their car's engine and the deafening sound of his rifle.
„Past the safe house over in that shit of a flyspeck village down south", he called back, pulling his trigger again before rooting around for a fresh clip. „Try to gain enough ground so I can get out and hide somewhere, might be able ta take 'em out as they pass me - they'll never know what hit 'em." She nodded, concentrating too hard to answer, letting the car screech its way onto the highway.
Two cars with an unknown number of people in them were following them as they raced down the highway, the second one gaining continously and finally overtaking the one that had come at them from the side street. Daryl was on his third clip by the time they reached the small town where one of their safe houses was located, and they had just enough time when they reached it for him to get out and drop out of sight in the middle of the carefully arranged group of bushes on the front lawn before the lead car screamed around the corner in the distance, gaining seriously now that Michonne had slowed down almost to a standstill. Ramming home a fresh clip and nudging his crossbow so that it hung squarely on his back, well out of the way and secured against swinging forward, Daryl parted the bushes with his rifle and took aim.
His bullet smashed through the windshield on the passenger side and blood and other unsavory things splattered across all windows in the front as the passenger's head disintegrated. The car swung wildly across the street as the terrified driver jerked the steering wheel to the left. Daryl only allowed himself a brief, fierce baring of his teeth before reloading and taking aim again just as the second car came around the corner, its passenger once more hanging out the window with the rifle at the ready, Michonne still a promising target as she took the next turn right.
Making a valiant attempt to keep his hands steady, Daryl centered his crosshairs over the head of the second car's passenger, exhaled slowly and gently pulled the trigger. This time, the car's windows were sprayed from the outside as the passenger dropped his rifle and slumped over the side of the car, his head a shapeless red mass.
The next moment the car screeched to a halt, the driver's door and both doors in the back opening as three men got out, all of them armed, and started searching for the sniper who'd killed two of their men.