Alright, not my best chapter, but I sure hope you enjoy it! Special thank you to WalkerBait16, you are amazing, girl! Please read and review, and tell me what you think about the story so far. I am also open to any suggestions! Also, I am posting a soundtrack for this story on my profile, and I will also post the name of the chapter's song at the end of each chapter from now on. Sorry to ramble on, but please just tell me what you think!
Rainbow
Three: Rotten Oranges
Beth
The back seat of the car becomes my home. We keep on driving, for months. Every time we stop, thinking we've found a place to stay, even for just a few nights, our plans fall through, and we are once again forced to leave. Each of us waits desperately for the day we can relax and not need to kill a walker. We are tired, we are hungry, and we are dwindling.
Our group ransacks abandoned houses for food and water, but we never stay in these houses. We sometimes take clothes from them, and blankets, and guns if they have them, but most of the people took their weapons when they were forced to flee. Most times, the residents of the households are still occupying their homes, and we have to shoot them. Sometimes there are too many to kill with the knives and the axes that we have, and guns are the only choice. The noise draws more geeks, and we are forced to grab what we need and escape again in our cars, driving far away from the walkers.
Sometimes Carl sits next to me in the backseat and sleeps against my shoulder. Other times, Kase will sit in the very back with Boots, and rub my shoulders. That was when the times were good, and they aren't like that anymore. Carl still sleeps next to me, but he is restless and mumbles about hunger in his sleep. I don't let Kase rub my shoulders anymore, and think only of how hungry I am. And I am not the same – there is no way I can look at Kase and not know this. And he doesn't know about it – no one knows about it. I don't know – I guess my brain just goes into a certain denial, like when Rick shot my mother's corpse and I went into shock.
"We're low on gas." Maggie says to Dad, who is in his usual spot in the passenger's seat. His crutches are in the back with Boots and Kase, who has made the large back of the car his domain. A blanket is strewn down for the dog, and Kase uses his body as a pillow, staring up at the ceiling. He hasn't spoken to anyone in a long time. "Maybe we should stop."
"We aren't getting far without it." Dad clears his throat, and his adam's apple goes down as he swallows the small bit of salvia left in his probably-dry mouth.
"I'll tell Dad." Carl picks up the large walkie-talkie that looks like the first cell phones from the 90s. He presses the button on the side and a static-like noise takes over the frequency as he talks. "Dad, Maggie says we're going to run out of gas."
Rick's voice comes back on the other side of the radio, fuzzy from the terrible signal. "So are we. Tell her to pull over and we'll look for some."
Maggie gently eases the car to the side of the empty highway, unbuckling her seatbelt. Kase opens the back hatch, sliding Dad's crutches out. Boots jumps out and stretches his legs on the pavement, groaning his dog-like noises, and shaking out his coat. Both Kase and his dog have grown noticeably thinner, and I can count Boots' ribs.
The others get out of their cars now, too, gathering together around Rick. Daryl swings his leg over his high-handled motorcycle, wrapping his poncho-like jacket over his tank top. Come to think of it, I have never seen Daryl wear a shirt with long sleeves, unless he has his wrap-around afghan. All I have been wearing are sweatshirts anyway.
"Tank's almost empty." Rick gently slides his arm around Lori's waist, planting a kiss on Judith's forehead. She is bigger, close to a year old now, and can start eating real food. The problem is, we don't have much food to give her, and her cries hurt all of us. Mostly, we all feel like crying. It has been a long 5 months driving, never ceasing, never settling down.
"'Cycle's runnin' on empty, too." Daryl leans against his motorcycle, crossing his arms. I can see my breath in the air, we are getting farther north, and the winter months are upon us. Whoever classified Georgia as one of the states that doesn't get cold, they are wrong. There isn't a time that my hands aren't cold. "Need ta find more gas."
"We could scout for food." Carol wraps her arms around her waist, shivering. She has on a knit cap, but her jacket it thin and provides hardly any warmth. "And warmer clothes." Carl tilts his hat up as she puts her arm around him from behind him, ruffling the hair on the back of his neck.
"It's getting dark." Dylin shivers, her teeth chattering. Her braces glint as her teeth click together, and she bites her blistered lips. There is no way to get the bands off of her teeth, and the metal is starting to rip, tearing the soft insides of her cheeks and lips apart. It hurts for her to talk. "What if something happens."
"Nothing will happen." Carol reassures her, resting her hand on Dylin's back gently. The two of them move closer to each other, sharing body warmth. "We'll search for clothes and such while the others extract the gas from the cars."
"I'll go with Beth." Carl steps forward, the tassels on his sheriff's hat glinting against the silver metal of the car he's leaning against, crossing his arms. "Don't worry, I can protect you." He looks at Kase directly, his eyes narrowed, eyebrows creased as he studies him. Since Kase and I have been getting closer, before I stopped talking to him, he has been over-the-top about protecting me, making a big deal about it.
"Alright, everyone check the cars." Rick clicks his shotgun into place, turning to Lori, who has Judith swaddled in a blanket. "No one out there alone, at least have a partner."
I follow Carl around a bend of abandoned cars, shivering inside of my thin jacket. He makes a big deal of slipping his gun out of its holster, pointing it around every corner of each car we make out way around. I pop the trunk open of an ugly, green minivan, sifting through the junk strewn about. It smells like fermented, rotting oranges, and my stomach twists with nausea.I put my hands on my knees, spitting onto the asphalt. Reflexively, I hold my stomach that is swimming at the stench, and I can feel my eyes watering with the rancid scent.
"Beth, are you okay?" I feel Carl's hand on my back, and I force myself back up, rubbing my side that is cramping up.
"Fine." I wipe the perspiration from my brow, holding my breath so I don't have to breathe in the smell. "Maybe you could look in that car over there?" I suggest, pointing to a rusty Volkswagen with one of its front doors open. "Looks like there may be something in there."
"Okay." Carl reluctantly retreats around the side of the abandoned car and starts prying the back hatch open. I still hold my breath, sifting through the junk in the back seat of the car. There is a suitcase already half-open and I lift the package from the car, sorting through the clothes. It was a woman who owned the contents of this suitcase, and she must have been a big fan of the color yellow. Yellow t-shirts, yellow sweatpants, even yellow sneakers. Something tells me she was of a younger age, maybe a teenager, like me.
I take out a sweatshirt, holding it up to me to figure the size. It is a little big, which is what I am searching for, and I slip it on, sighing at the warmth. It seems like just yesterday it was so warm. Just last week, I remember Carol was walking around in a tank top, putting lotion on her terrible, inflamed sunburn. In fact, it was last week, I remember, and I realize we must be farther north than I expected.
I gather more things out of the other surrounding cars, a few bottles of water, more clothes, a stale box of graham crackers, and a bag of chocolate chips I think Carl will enjoy. I am panting just carrying the small stock of items, as I've noticed that I have been having trouble lifting things the past month or so. I set the pile down on the ground, kneeling and trying to rub my back from behind, breathing in deep each time I hit the tender spot.
"Are you okay?" I hear Carl's voice, and I look up from my position to see his figure blocking the sun, half-covered by a cloud. I immediately right my body, feeling a terrible round of head rush closes out my vision, and I grab the car door as I go down. "Beth, whoa!"
"I'm alright." I close my eyes, counting to ten, breathing in another deep breath to calm myself. I can feel Carl beside me, hovering, trying to help. "Don't worry, I'm okay, help me sit down, please, Carl."
He puts his arm around my waist and helps me sit on the cold ground, leaning against the car. I open my eyes to his youthful face, looking to me with concern.
"Beth, what happened?" He looks me right in the eye, and I look down at the ground, my eyes flitting to my beat-up green converse. I have been wearing them since the outbreak, and there are rips in the canvas, and they are more brown then green.
"Nothing." I lie, picking up a stick and scratching it against the paint of the car. "It was nothing, Carl. I think I'm just thirsty, that's all."
"Here." He uncaps a plastic water bottle labeled "Ice Mountain" and hands it to me, his eyes that are the same shade as Rick's focusing on my face. I take the bottle, my hand shaking, and press the neck to my lips, managing to take a small sip.
"Thanks." I try to hand him back the bottle, but he shakes his head.
"Drink more." He demands, knowing firsthand how easy it is to lose hydration. "You hardly took a sip."
To satisfy him, I drink about a fifth of the bottle, and he caps it again for me. Like it is on cue, the pain I have been feeling lately shoots its way through my stomach, like a lightning bolt zigzagging downward through my innards.
"Ah!" I suck in my breath and hold my stomach, grimacing at the pain as it radiates through my insides, fading as fast as it had come.
"Beth!" Carl hisses, taking my hand. "Beth, please tell me what's wrong! You haven't been yourself since – "
Since I met Kase. Yes, I know, Carl.
"Don't tell anyone, Carl." I suddenly take his hand and hold it tightly in between the both of mine. He pulls away shocked, but I don't let him go.
"Don't tell anyone what, Beth?" His pupils shrink with fear. "Are you sick? Maybe I should tell my Dad, or get Hershel-"
"No!" I interject, swiping at a tear in my eye that topples at the edge of my eyelid, threatening to fall. "No, not my Dad."
"Just – tell me what's wrong then." Carl kneels in the gravel, his hands on his knees, hat tipped down to block the dim sunlight. "Do you have a fever? I can get you medicine."
Leave it to Carl to care. Of course he does, he is so much like his father. I take his hand again and pull him to me, and he lets me soak his shirt with my tears. He just rubs my shoulder as I silently let the tributaries of emotion slide down through the dirt caking my cheeks.
"Promise you won't tell anyone." I gasp through one of my final sobs. He nods, a sort of unspoken thing, and I know I can trust him. He has come to be a sort of best friend to me, ever since we were forced to flee the farm, especially since Jimmy was killed, and I have always sort of sensed his little amature crush on me.
"I promise." He says, no questions asked. If only it could be so simple as it is to Carl, only a mere kid. Well, truly he is an adult now, just in a kid's body. The apocalypse will do that to you.
"Okay." I sniffle and wipe my nose on my shirt sleeve around my wrist. He waits patiently as I inhale and exhale to get my breathing regular once again, and for my heart to stop racing. Slowly, while still holding his hand with my left, I lift my shirt up with my right, exposing the skin around my stomach. It is pushed out around my belly button, distended like someone's stomach might get when they are lactose intolerant and they have just drunken a gallon of milk. But my stomach is firm, hard, a protective layer, and is definitely growing. It has been for five months now.
Carl just stares at me, his eyes flashing from my abdomen to my face. I am sure I wear somewhat of a guilty look, or such, but his eyes are all shock. His mouth hangs open, too, and I want badly to tell him to close it.
"You're pregnant, and you haven't told anyone?!" He hisses, his breath shortening and coming in quicker now. "Oh God, Beth-"
"Shhh!" I hush him, afraid someone nearby might hear us.
"Uhh-" he stammers, still staring at my raised stomach that is getting harder and harder to hide, lately especially. I am a fairly small person, and thankfully I am not showing so much, but soon I will be. "How – how long have you known?"
The first month on the road, I hardly noticed it. I would get tired, yes, but I figured it just to be fatigue. My body felt sore, but then again, it always did, and I thought nothing of it. I got sick a time or two, but so did Maggie a week or so before, so I figured I had just caught whatever bug she had.
After twenty odd days, I remembered my period. In the apocalypse, you sort of forget your regular cycle and how many days and all that, but I knew it had been enough time to start the cycle over again. Maggie, as always around the others, would slip me toiletries when she knew I was going to the bathroom, and she knew it had been over a month for me, too. Each time I pulled down my pants, nothing was there, and I would end up slipping the supplies back in the car, because I didn't want to waste it.
Around this time, I started having a hard time bending over. There was a hard spot in the way, beneath my belly button and well under the line of my pants, but still there all the same. It felt like I had swallowed a rock, and it had been planted in my womb, but by now I knew exactly what it was. I knew enough about anatomy to know what my body was doing; building a protective wall in my uterus to protect – I didn't even think the word.
I stopped talking to Kase then, in fear he could sense it about me, that a part of him was inside of my, by a twist of fate. He tried and tried to get me to talk, and it was hard to ignore him. He begged to tell me what was wrong took my hand and looked me right in the eye and asked me if there was something he had done, but I would always pull away and stop listening. When he finally figured out I was permanently shunning him, he stopped trying and stopped talking. We haven't spoken since then.
Over the next few months, my body changed even more. The hard layer below my belly button expanded, pushing itself out against my jeans, forcing me to wear baggier sweatshirts to hide my stomach. I haven't told anyone, not counting Carl right now, which I know is bad, and could send my health plummeting, but I don't think I could tell my Dad or my sister. I have been shunning the – thing – inside of me, but it will not let me rest.
"About four months." I whisper, leaning back and closing my eyes, pulling the shirt back over my growing stomach. "That means I'm – five months along."
Carl sucks in his breath, and I can almost see the gears turning in his brain. "Beth – when Mom was pregnant with Judith, she too vitamins and stuff. Maybe I can get you the same things – if we stop in a town somewhere, maybe I can sneak away and get you medicine-"
"I don't want to pull you into this, Carl." I tell him, groaning. I now think that it has been a bad idea to tell him.
"Beth, you're having a baby. You don't eat any, I know you don't, and you're dehydrated. You need medicine, you have to eat, you're weak, Beth."
"I'm never hungry." I argue with him.
Carl sighs and kicks a rock against a car. "Who's the Dad?"
His words bring the memory back. The chemistry lab, on that beaten-up, worn in couch. He had been so pure, so beautiful in that light, the perfect person in my eyes.
"Beth." He whispers my name in the dark, pulling my face away from his to look at me a moment. His bright blue eyes shine on the darkness like a beacon of light in the blackness, and I lean in and kiss his eyelids.
"Kase." I simply breathe out his name, leaning in and brushing my lips against his forehead. He holds me close to his chest, and I feel something other than a boy's drive to make love. There is care in his arms, protectiveness, a feeling that has long been non-existent in my life.
His soft, warm lips, tasting of his own special flavor. His skin, the freckles on his shoulders, and the peppering of them on the bridge of his nose, the hard callouses of his palms as he strokes his hands down my shoulders, over my waist and down further to touch my calf and hitch it over his waist. It was more than just sex. It was something else – something exhilarating and fresh and new that I never wanted to end.
I shake the thoughts out of my head. I cannot remember that time in the classroom, but I am reminded of it every day by the stirring in my womb.
"Kase." I tell him quietly, crossing my arms over my stomach. "Kase is the father."
Carl pouts for a moment, nursing his bruised ego, due to his crush on me. I sigh and suddenly get the lightning bolt pain through my stomach again, and I groan softly, pushing my hand to the hard skin of my abdomen.
"What's wrong, Beth?" Carl kneels next to me, concern in his icy blue eyes.
"It just – hurts when it moves." I tell him, my eyes still closed.
"You feel it move already?" He looks down to my abdomen with curiosity.
"For a while now." I take his hand and pull it towards my stomach. When I first felt the small flutters in my womb, I denied it. I viewed it as a sickness, which is still do. A sickness I can't get rid of for another four months. "It hurts when it moves. A lot."
"Can I feel?" Carl's thin eyebrows knit together, and I reach for his hand. I pull his calloused hand to the side of my rounding stomach, and wait for another painful movement. A moment later, a powerful kick pounds my insides, and Carl pulls away his hand in shock as I lean back and recover from the heavy blow.
"It's strong." I whisper, weak from the pain.
"When Mom had Judith, Judy never hurt her like that. Something's wrong." He stands up again, pacing, a trait he inherited from his father. "What if something's wrong and it hurts you. That'll be my fault for not telling anyone."
"No, nothing will happen." I struggle to stand up, using the car for leverage, and Carl grabs my arm to help me stand. "I'm fine, Carl, don't baby me."
"You need to be babied." He interjects, putting his hand on my shoulder. God, does he remind me of Rick right now, and more so as each day passes. "Beth, Mom had a lot of care before Judith was born. I can fake a sickness or something, maybe if we stop to get medicine, I could sneak away and grab you some…"
I am distracted from his heist plans by a stirring in my womb, a heavy blow like a hammer to my gut. I close my eyes, willing it to pass, but my own spawn kicks my insides again, making me cringe and grit my teeth.
"Beth?" I can sort of hear Carl's voice, like it is a distance away and I am hearing him with cotton stuffed in my ears. I hold my stomach tightly, my nails digging into the fabric of my sweatshirt, and I suddenly get the heavy urge to throw up, stronger than I have ever felt, even more powerful than when I had the stomach flu as a child.
"I'm-" I try to say that I'm okay, but I know that I am not. There is something wrong inside me, I can feel it, that the seed planted within me, under the hard layer of skin and protection is not a normal one. Pain racks my abdomen as I lean over into the gravel and spit a mucus-like, black substance into the grass, my stomach heaving again and again as it forces more rounds of bile up my throat. My bloated midriff sucks in and out around the hard, rounding bulge as I heave violently, the black substance trickling down my face.
I can tell Carl gets up and runs, probably to get help, but I just keep on heaving, my body hurting, enduring the pain. It is probably my body rejecting the thing growing inside of me, like a person's body might reject a new liver after a transplant. This is miserable, this is what I must live with now.
I should have killed myself when I had the chance.
Daryl
My boots crunch in the turned-up gravel as I stride down the road, making a noise like I am stepping on top of piles of bones. The girl, Dylin, skips along quietly behind me, seeming like she has a natural silent hunting tread. She has her hair in pigtails, like Beth sometimes does, and she is annoying the piss out of me with her "hop*skip*jump, hop*skip*jump."
"I can take care 'a myself, ya know." I turn around to face her, my crossbow smacking hard against my side. "I ain't no babysitter."
"I'm 15." She states proudly, her head held high as she pushes her cracked glasses up her girly little nose. She doesn't have a Georgia accent, so she must be from up north. "I don't need a babysitter. I want to contribute to this group."
I roll my eyes, stomping back along the trail. "And what does the Wizard of Oz think about this?"
"Ozzy doesn't know." She stops to lean against a twisted piece of metal to re-lace her yellow sneaker. "And what about Carol, does she know you're off on your own?"
"Carol ain't my mom." I spit in the dusk, taking an arrow in my mouth so I can stretch the bow string back. This kid is annoying, she's got no right to flounce right in and pretend she thinks Carol cares for me. "And you ain't my kin, neither, so get lost."
The dumb bitch doesn't pay any mind, just scuffs a rock with her toe, which goes hurtling down a ravine, bouncing off the rock in a loud echo, skipping on her marry way like she's friggin' Shirley Temple or somethin'.
"Jesus, girl! You tryin' to attract every fucking walker within mile's distance?!" I yell as the sound of the rock keeps on bouncing back and forth and back and forth down the ravine.
"Sorry!" She impishly squeals, jumping away from my angry bow-swinging.
"I oughta shoot you and skin your hide, just to get rid of ya before you become some son of a bitch's midnight snack!" I point the empty crossbow at her forehead, but she doesn't even flinch. She simply smoothes her hair back gently behind her ears, paying no attention to my threats. "Hey, are you listenin' at all, girl?!"
"I'm listening, Mr. Buckwheat, but it isn't soaking in." Dylin hops on one foot down the lane, grinning to herself. "Possibly because "ain't" isn't proper English."
I ignore her and start whistling a random tune, taking longer strides so she can't keep up with me in any way.
"Where are you going, anyway?" She jogs up alongside me, her thin jacket flapping in the breeze as she keeps up. "Are you leaving Rick and the others behind?"
""If I was gonna, don'tcha think I woulda done that a long while ago." I stop taking so big steps, and go back to my normal paced strides. "Not like they need me no more." She has no idea I'm thinking of the times when we first ended up on Hershel's farm, in the midst of Carl being shot and Sophia being lost.
"Why don't you run now?" She stops for a moment to readjust her spectacles that are much too big for her tiny face, and basically useless now that only one lens remains. She's basically been rompin' around with only one eye able to see, like a God damn pirate. "You could just go, right now."
I stop abruptly, and she easily takes a few steps ahead of me, her sneakers crunching quietly on the gravel.
"What crack pipe are you smokin', girl?" I spin on my heals, thrusting my finger near her nose. She leans back like she is a snake ready to strike, though she is careening away from me. "Ya'll really think I'd up and leave those people? They've been with me since the beginnin', and ain't nothin' gonna change that."
"Don't get defensive on my, Redneck, I'm just pointing something out. Ozzy's too into his dog's to care 'bout me, and Kase's got something going on with Beth."
"This ain't a soap opera." I roll my eyes again and stick my tongue on the side of my cheek. "If ya'll want it to be, you can go let the 13 year old boy getcha pregnant."
"Sorry, I think I'm remembering too much about Degrassi from my high school days."
"What the Hell is that?"
"Never mind." She shakes her head, pulling her pigtails out of their elastics, playing with the stretchiness with her teeth. I've never had braces, but it most literally bite to have them on permanently like this girl does. "I guess I'm just asking for you to take me away from this all, you know? I don't belong here."
I don't answer her a long time, just keep on walking, looking for anything we can use. The group is getting farther and farther away, but I keep on walking, this little girl at my side.
"And what makes ya think that you'll find a place to belong out there?" I toss my free arm out at my side, rubbing my finger under my nose. "Trust me, kid, I found that out the hard way."
"I don't know." Dylin shrugs. "I thought maybe you could just – give me more than what we have here."
"Huh. And what do we have here?" Looking sideways at the young girl, she catches my eye with a glint in her dark pupil. "Don't mean ta rain on your parade, but I could be your Daddy."
"Not in that way." She grumbles, trying to talk around her mouth full of braces. "And that's gross, no offense. I'd never take you from Carol."
I kick a tuft of shriveled grass in annoyance. "What makes ya think Carol's got some sorta claim on me?" When the girl stops, I pick up a stick and flip open my knife, witling it slowly into an arrow using clean, sharp strokes on the blade.
"I don't know." She shrugs, sitting down on her butt across from me. Why won't this stupid bitch just leave me alone? She won't stop following me like some damn lost puppy, and I'm about to send her on her merry freakin' way with her tail between her legs. This is the sort of job a man does alone. "You protect her, she takes care of you."
"That's the way a group works." I look up from my chunk of wood, licking a bit of sap off the branch. I can feel the dim sun beating down on my back, the rays touching my skin through my worn and dirty shirt. We've learned all too harshly that sunburn can happen even if the clouds are covering the sun. And it isn't too pleasing to watch a 7 month old little girl suffer from it, neither. Judith was miserable with her soft, baby skin peeling, and us with no lotion of nothin' to give her.
"I guess I'm just not familiar with the concept." As I try to walk away again, she clumsily gets up again, stumbling so her face goes into the gravel. Reflexively, I grab her so she doesn't face-plant into the rocks, and straighten her out. "I guess I thought wrong then, Daryl."
I shrug and continue to strut down the road, farther and farther away from her. She is still right there, along with me, panting. Her lips are cracked and broken, I can see it because her bottom one has split, and she is bleeding all down her chin. "Stop." I tell her, because she's fucking bleeding all over the place and about to attract every damn walker within 10 miles radius. "What the Hell you tryin' to do, get all 'a us killed?!"
"Sorry." She whispers, crying now, her salty tears mixing in with the red blood. "Sorry – ow!" she exclaims when she touches the end of her shirt sleeve to her swollen lip.
"For the love of mother fuc-"
"Daryl!" Dylin yells, skidding to the ground like she is ducking and covering for an atomic bomb. And now I see why; there is a walker lumbering a few feet away from her, probably having snuck up from behind while we were talking. It's a pretty rotten bastard, his arm half hanging off its shoulder, mange destroying half of his face like moss spreading on a decomposing tree. He's going for the girl again, making groaning noises like he hasn't eaten in days, a noise I have grown much too accustomed to.
"Get outta the way!" I yell to her, which is idiotic because the thing is already on top of her, clawing at her face, knocking her mangled glasses away and getting the blood from her lip all over his clothes. She screams in a high-pitched like she's trying to see damn opera or something, and I aim my bow, shooting the bastard square in the head. Dylin slowly gets up, recovering from her attack, shaking and holding her sleeve over her still-gushing lip.
"You're alright." I spit at her. "And for the love of Jesus Christ, keep that wound covered up!"
She starts crying, sitting down against one of the abandoned cars and folding her chicken arms over her equally skinny-ass chicken legs and sobs into her boney-as-Hell kneecaps. "I hate it down south." She cries, spitting blood when she does. Oh great, a trail she's gonna leave for the biters. "Oz and Kase and I – we were just fine on our own when we were in the northern states. Why'd all you people have ta ruin it?!"
"Ain't my say." I put my heavy boot on the head of the walker I just killed, using it as leverage to pull the arrow out of his skull. The sharp, pointed object comes away sticky and wet with black tinted blood, a sure sign of brain-deadness. "If ya'll don't like the way we do things down here, then go back where ya came from. The same interstate that brought you down here will bring it back."
She doesn't stop her wailing, just shudders her tiny body back into a ball and sorta rocks back and forth. She kinda reminds me of a cousin I had, or once had. Somethin' wasn't right in the head with her, and she did a lotta sittin' and rockin'. Merle liked to tease her, but I left her alone alright.
I sit to wait out her tantrum, searching the corpse for anything useful. He doesn't have much on him; his ID, which I don't look at, a few crumpled dollar bills in his shirt pocket and a chain with a key around it. I throw the other items aside, but put the key in my pocket. The girl doesn't stop, even to take a breath, it seems like, and I just keep on waiting, occasionally peeking up at her. And then our plans are interrupted.
I shoot the first walker that ambles out of the woods easily. She goes down like a boulder, too, square in the eye. But when I leave Dylin to get the arrow back from the thing's skull, I hear a groaning noise from behind me, and fingers cling to my bare arm. I have my knife out quicker than a wink, and it is embedded in his forehead before he can rip his rotten teeth into my flesh.
"Get up!" I yell to Dylin who is now frantically scrambling away from another walker. She is on top of her, grabbing at her, smelling the blood running over her entire face. "Get the hell up!"
She screams instead of listening and I swoop in like a jack rabbit out of hell and kill the thing.
"It scratch you?" I pant, aiming my crossbow at another approaching walker and the arrow makes a squelch noise as it touches the thing's brain.
"No." she sobs, cowering behind me. More walkers are approaching now, surrounding on all sides. "Usually Oz and Kase take care of the wayfarers. Or the dogs."
"You know how to fight?" I thrust the knife blade into her hand, taking out another walker with the bow.
She shakes her head, whimpering.
"Time to learn." I growl to her, sucking in my breath, seeing all the walkers that are now surrounding us, closing in at a shockingly quick pace. I only have four arrows left, and the girl had my knife.
I take out the first walker by using my sharpest arrow as sort of a makeshift knife, stabbing it into its head and yanking it out again. By this time, another one is closing in, and it can smell Dylin' blood that she now has no control over. She looks clueless with my knife, and I jam my arrow into the closest thing's head, and then shoot another one at the one's head that is attacking her.
"Come on!" I yell to her, motioning in the air with my hand for her to run through the crowd of walkers.
"I can't!" she cries, and I think about how great it would be if someone could come help me now. "Daryl!"
I watch as she goes down under the zombie, blindly slashing with the knife at the rotter. She screams and cries, hardly keepin' the thing off of her with her weak arms. With an exasperated sigh, I charge through the crowd of the killers. But I am not going to make it to her in time. There is no way.
They are all around us.
I keep on fighting, hardly noticing as the grey, beat-up Impala pulls up besides the girl, screeching to a halt. I look up from my latest kill, watching as a pair of hands emerges from the now-open door. The hands have a knife with gets left in the geek's head as they pull Dylin into the vehicle. Through the crowd of hungry walkers drives the brave car, and the door opens again, grabbing my arm. I fight against it hard, taking my arrow still in my hand and stabbing it towards the dark insides of the car.
My arrow comes away bloody, following a deep-throated scream from the passenger's side of the car. Before I can kill whoever is taking the girl, a bag goes over my head.
It is dark, and I can't see anything. Something sharp and cold pokes me harshly in the arm, and my senses start to fade to nothingness. I have never been weak. I have never been helpless. I am strong Daryl, I am the man who keeps the others safe, the one who looked for Sophia the most, the one who keeps the group fed. But now, I can't do nothin' but let the pair of strong arms pull me into the car.
Don't forget to tell me what you think! Reviews would be lovely! The song for this chapter is titled "Black Leaf Falls" by Seawolf. It is geared more towards the Beth part of the chapter and her relationship with Kase. Enjoy, and if there are any song suggestions, that would also be great!
Rainbow