One morning in early summer, Daryl and Aaron are out on a run. Looking at some maps, they had decided to explore some type of sleep away camp named on the map. Looked like it had been a church camp or some type of scouting camp. They hoped to find some cabins or vacation homes that hadn't been ransacked too thoroughly.
They parked their vehicles on an access road that had grown over with vegetation, a canopy of trees along the road provided shade on this sweltering day. After a couple hundred feet they came to an arched sign that had definitely seen better days announcing this was the Mission of Hope Summer Camp. Daryl and Aaron looked at each other and smirked. "Best not be no fuckin' Jason out in that damn lake," Daryl rasped, and Aaron snickered.
They edged down the entrance drive toward what looked to be the main cabin or office building. Looking around quickly, they took in the wood cabins, rotting basketball hoops, a pavilion that looked like it'd fall over if they barely pushed it. "Looks like this place had been abandoned well before the virus hit," Aaron whispered. Daryl nodded, and motioned for Aaron to follow him around to the back of the cabins. They could hear splashing and yelling, and raised their eyebrows at each other. Who would be stupid enough to make this much noise in this day and age. They glanced around carefully, wary of a herd of walkers suddenly coming upon them drawn by the noise.
They crept toward a sandy beach area, a few scattered picnic tables in the shade of the trees. Daryl and Aaron kept toward the cover of the lush, overgrown bushes whose branches drooped with bright ripe berries. They saw a fire pit with a fire slowly dying out. Daryl frowned. Was this a trap?
Creeping along slowly and silently, they peered around the treeline toward the picnic benches and saw two men sound asleep on their backs on the benches. Daryl shook his head. These people were either incredibly stupid or drunk or high. How could they not have anyone on watch?
Before he and Aaron could move or speak, he saw a woman rapidly approaching from the left of the lake. She looked close to his height, which would be tall for a woman, with a mass of reddish-blonde curls cascading loosely down her back and over her shoulders. She had an athletic build, with long tanned muscular legs. She was dressed in jean shorts and a tank top and tennis shoes, all of which looked decent and clean. She had a frown on her face as she got closer to the table on which the men slept. Daryl watched in amusement as she placed her fingers in her mouth and let out a piercing whistle. The two men started awake and one fell completely off the table. The other stood up unsteadily and ran his hand through his thick blonde hair.
"Dammit, Lucy. Why ya gotta scare the shit outta us?" he whined. Daryl shook his head in disgust. He saw the aforementioned Lucy stop and cross her arms over her chest, tapping her right foot. If looks could kill, then the man she was looking at would definitely be dead. Daryl had to choke back his laughter and he and Aaron watched, waiting to see what would happen next.
"Seriously?" the woman called Lucy snapped. "You fell asleep. AGAIN. You know you're supposed to keep an eye out for walkers, for strangers, for anything and yet here you've fallen ASLEEP again," her voice was the voice of smoke and alcohol, the sultry voice of femme fatales in movies. She shook her head in anger and pointed at both of the men, the second of which had managed to haul himself up from the ground where he'd fallen.
The first man spoke before she could continue. "Dammit Lucy, no one's around here. We checked the whole place out already. I don't see why ya have the shortest and quickest temper of any woman I know," he whined again. To Daryl's surprise, the man strode slowly over to the woman and lifted a hair to her stray curls. "Must be this red hair-always heard redheads were passionate," he murmured before kissing her deeply on the mouth. The woman quickly pushed him back away from her and murmured something they couldn't hear and then she sat on the picnic bench while the men stoked the fire back up and cleaned up the mess they had made of beer cans and litter. Daryl wondered where the hell they'd found any beer still worth drinking. He looked over at Daryl and they nodded in agreement. No telling how many of them were out there swimming near what appeared to be a dock of some sort. Best to try to talk to the three here on the little beach while they could still manage it if there was some type of fight.
Daryl and Aaron stepped out quietly from the bushes they'd been watching from and approached the woman on the picnic table. She turned to look at them and her face paled suddenly. Her eyes widened in shock and fear and she quickly stood up. Daryl noted she had no weapons on her or near her. Aaron turned his weapon on the two men, who turned and saw Daryl and Aaron and stood looking with their mouths hanging open in surprise.
"Hey," Daryl grunted to the woman. She nodded silently. Up close, Daryl could see a dusting of freckles across her nose and chest. Her eyes were a vivid shade of jade and were ever so slightly slanted, catlike. She looked to be in her early twenties and was but two or three inches shorter than himself. He could see her tremble just the slightest, and a light sheen of sweat shone on her upper lip.
He lowered his bow slightly, to let her know he wasn't hostile but to let her know he would shoot her if she tried anything. "That's Aaron, I'm Daryl. We've been scouting around this area for survivors, possible new members of our camp." She still shook slightly and kept her eyes on him warily, never once looking over at the two men. "How long y'all been here?" he continued.
One of the men guarded by Aaron started to speak, but Daryl held his hand up impatiently and spoke sharply, "Wasn't talkin' to ya, talkin' to this lady here," and he nodded his head slightly to the woman to speak.
She licked her suddenly dry lips and cleared her throat. "My name is Lucy, and that's Leo and Matt. We just got here two days ago." She stopped, and Daryl nodded her to go on. "We've been on our own for a long time now-were in a group that got separated about six months back west of here, around Pennsylvania, or what used to be Pennsylvania." She paused again and Daryl looked toward the lake and the swimmers out there. They were still splashing and yelling, unaware of the scene on the beach.
"How manys out there?" he rasped. The two men huffed angrily and the one he'd seen kiss Lucy opened his mouth again. "Hey," Daryl said sharply, "I wasn't kidding, shut it. I'm asking her the questions, don't want no answers from you," and he scowled at the two men menacingly. He turned to look at the woman and saw the slight smirk play on her lips before she straightened up a bit and raised her eyebrow at him. He saw she had for the most part stopped trembling. She certainly seemed to have a bit more sense than anyone else he had observed so far.
"There're two more men and three women out there," she said quietly, watching Daryl as he worked it out in his head.
"So four couples," he mumbled. She snorted and shook her head and he raised his eyebrow at that. "What?" he asked curiously, wondering at her reaction to his statement.
"We're a group of eight people, four men and four women-none of us are couples," and here she put the emphasis on the word couples. She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back against the picnic table, a look of disgust on her face. It was his turn to smirk now, wondering what that all meant and who it was directed at. He glanced over at the two men, and realized it had been directed at the man who had kissed her, and he bit his lip to keep from laughing. This was getting more interesting by the minute.
"Well, okay then. Mmmmm," and he looked over at Aaron. "Where's y'alls weapons?" he asked, looking around again the area quickly and not seeing any.
At this, the woman rolled her eyes and snorted in disgust. "Yeah, that would be the question wouldn't it?" she bit out angrily. Daryl's eyes widened at this flare of temper. He nodded, telling her to continue. "We were in a truck, one of those big extended cab monster things," she spat out, "and our supplies were in the bed, covered with a tarp." She glanced over sharply and rolled her eyes again before looking directly at Daryl. "Somebody," and here she emphasized the word sarcastically, "didn't secure anything so a couple of nights ago, before we found this place, the truck with all the supplies disappeared." She huffed angrily and shook her head.
Daryl looked over at the two men and wondered how in the world any of them had survived if they were this incompetent. "So ya been here a coupla days with no supplies, nothing?" he asked curiously. She nodded her head and he could see her chest and face coloring with either anger or embarrassment-probably some of both. He knew if he'd been with someone that stupid he'd have beaten them half to death. So why had that guy been kissing her? This was a question he would have to wait on, more important things to deal with now. "Well, now. Do you think any of you would want to come back to our camp with us? You'll be a helluva lot safer than ya are now." The woman noted the man had never once looked at Leo or Matt when he extended his invitation, just stared straight at her silently. Her gaze roamed over him slowly, not caring if he saw this or not. Life was different now, no time for flirting or playing coy. A person had to speak up or act quickly if they wanted to survive. And she had had her fill of traipsing around with these self indulgent, self centered absolutely clueless people she had fallen in with almost a year ago. She had a pretty good radar for bullshit, and so far her alarm hadn't gone off with these two. The man talking to her looked a bit older than she was and was very striking despite the dirt and sweat and grime he wore like a second skin. The other man was about her age-early thirties?- and very handsome in a clean cut way that she didn't ever think to see again. The majority of the people she had run into the last two years had for the most part been ragged, dirty and exhausted-many suffering from hunger and barely surviving. These two, despite the first one's grubbiness, looked to be well fed and healthy.
Daryl silently watched her appraising both he and Aaron, and then she nodded and smiled slightly. "I'm in," she said softly, not taking her eyes from him. He bit his lip again to keep from smirking.
The two men started arguing, yelling at her. "Lucy, you don't know them! We can't go off and join a group we don't know anything about," the man who had kissed her shouted in frustration. Lucy looked Daryl over very slowly, making a point to let him know she was weighing him against them. When her eyes met his again, he caught himself smiling slightly in response to her smirk.
"I'm going. I'm not altogether certain the invitation was extended to you, Leo, or to you either Matt. My dad taught me that there are times in life when you simply have to cut your losses and walk away-or as my brother used to say, throw a match on it and let it burn behind you." Daryl winced as the memory of he and Beth doing just that to that moonshine shack washed over him.
Aaron looked questioningly at Daryl. "So, should we invite all the rest of them along as well?" he asked. From what he'd seen, he didn't think any of them save the woman would be any benefit to the group they had waiting back in Alexandria for them.
Daryl cocked his eyebrow and nodded slightly toward Lucy. "Well, maybe we should ask Miss Lucy here, seeing as how she knows their habits more than we do," and he smirked at Lucy. She let out a husky laugh and he found himself smiling again in response.
"Well sir, Mr. Daryl is it?" she stopped and he nodded. "I hate to leave defenseless idiots out in this savage world we now live in, but at the same time I despise carrying somebody's else's weight because they're too thick to help themselves." She glanced over at the two men who were watching her with shock and surprise. "How bout we leave them something-you surely have a weapon or two you can part with? And I don't know, do you have a few supplies they can have so they don't starve?" Daryl choked back a laugh.
"So if I understand you, Miss Lucy," and here he noted how much he liked the sound of that on his tongue, "you're suggesting we leave these folks here to fend for themselves and take you along with us to our camp?" He crossed his arms over his chest, enjoying watching her and waiting to hear what she said next. She seemed a woman full of piss and vinegar as his daddy used to say. A real firecracker, as Merle would say. He admired her sense of self possession, and apparent confidence. She seemed well educated and intelligent. It was a pity she had been stuck with a group that obviously had no common sense or sense of self preservation. He contemplated the idea that she had in fact been the leader of the group and more than likely had been the reason they had survived thus far. If he was right, she could be a real asset to their community.
He nodded over at Aaron and to the men. "Alright then, I always trust my gut and my gut says Miss Lucy's opinions can be trusted. So, we'll leave ya a few weapons so ya can defend yourself and some cans of food. Ya can find it at the end of the road there where ya first come in. Until you hear us leave, ya need to stay here on the beach." He turned to Lucy and motioned for her to follow him, as Aaron brought up the rear.
"Lucy!" the man called Leo called after them. Daryl stopped and Lucy looked questioningly at him.
"Ain't ya gonna at least tell him goodbye?" he teased. He smirked as he saw her flare up at this, but she turned toward the direction of the beach.
"Go fuck yourself, Leo Pemberly!" and she turned back toward him and grimaced. Daryl laughed out loud in surprise and shook his head.
"I hope I'm not making a mistake in bringing your ass back with us," he grumbled.
"Trust me, you're not," she shot back and he snorted again. If nothing else, she would be entertaining to watch and listen to he thought as they backtracked quickly toward where they had hidden their vehicles.