Hopeless1665 asked a very good question: is it common for men to be able to have children or just since the break out and it's a new thing? The answer: you'll see eventually. We need to build up the drama here! Here's a teaser for you though: mpreg and the outbreak are connected.
A/N: This chapter follows the show pretty closely in terms of the plot. There are a few changes and it is a bit slower pace again, but its essential for character development. I promise that the next chapter will start to get into the really good stuff so KEEP READING! REMINDER: READ, REVIEW, REPEAT (WITH MY OTHER STORIES. THEY NEED LOVE TOO!)
Chapter 3
There were only two things on Daryl's mind and they were quite troubling indeed. If Daryl were a different kind of man, the things that dominated his thoughts would probably terrify him. Thankfully though, Daryl was a Dixon, a man of strength and fortitude. If he was scared, he didn't dare show it.
There were walkers in the barn.
Glenn wasn't getting much better.
Daryl was more terrified by Glenn's health than the walkers. Walkers he knew how to handle: knife or arrow straight through the brain. Glenn's illness, however, was something completely foreign to him.
Daryl and his brother had rarely gotten sick. They were wild boys. Sure they got hurt often, but all of the hunting and outdoor activity they did prevented most diseases. Their internal systems were just too strong for them. Glenn, however, was a city boy, a pizza delivery boy who had been thrown into a world he was pretty much unprepared for.
Four days had now passed since Glenn first got sick and Daryl was becoming increasingly more worried. While the younger man had stopped throwing up, his stomach still bothered him. The pain was centered in his lower stomach and ached constantly. Glenn was still bedridden as the fever continued to rage. The few times that he had attempted to stand, he had quickly collapsed in someone's arms and was forced back to bed.
They were sitting around the campfire (all except Glenn, of course), eating breakfast when Dale told them about the walkers in the barn. Everyone froze in shock, not quite able to believe what he was telling them. Hershel had been kind to them for most of their time there. He had taken the bullet out of Carl's side. He had offered them a place to stay until the young boy was healed. He had even taken a look at Glenn when he'd first got sick. Betrayal coursed through them all. The old veterinarian was keeping walkers, dangerous creatures, in the barn not three hundred yards from where they were camped.
Shane jumped into action first.
"You're sure it's walkers?" he asked, practically circling around Dale like a wolf stalking around its prey.
"I heard the moans myself and I even peaked through a crack in the door. They were shuffling about in there, alright," the older man replied.
"What were you even doing over there in the first place?" Lori asked, setting her plate of half-finished food aside.
"You know how we pulled that Walker out of the well near the house? I was worried that the water could still be contaminated and wanted to conserve what we already have stored. There's another well over on the far side of the barn so I went over there to fill up a bucket," Dale explained. "That's when I heard the moans."
Rick sighed and rubbed his forehead with his palm. "What is Hershel thinking, keeping those walkers in there?"
"They're his family and friends, people he's known his whole life. He doesn't see them as monsters," Dale said.
"You asked him about it?" Rick asked.
Dale nodded. "Yesterday."
Daryl clutched his crossbow tightly, snarling silently under his breath. He'd never trusted that old man. He barely trusted Rick and he sure as hell didn't trust Shane. Glenn, Carol, and maybe Andrea were the only ones with any real worth, especially now that Andrea had learned to shoot.
Daryl's eyes flicked to the lone blond. She had a menacing glare in her eyes that was focused on Dale and Rick. Daryl's eyes narrowed as he silently analyzed what was going on.
"We need to go in there and destroy them," Andrea snarled.
"We can't do that!" Rick snapped. "This is Hershel's property. That means we follow his rules."
"Who cares about who the land belongs to? The world is different now, Rick," Shane asked.
"It isn't safe when there are walkers that close. They could break out at any time and kill us in our fucking sleep," Andrea added.
Daryl snarled quietly at her. As if he would let that happen.
"We need to respect what Hershel wants," Rick argued. "If he wants to keep those Walkers locked up in the barn, then so be it. We can take turns patrolling at night."
Shane whined in exasperation. "God damn it, Rick. Put aside your morals for one second. Did you hear me earlier? The world has changed. Who the fuck cares about land ownership?"
"Just because the dead started walking doesn't mean that everything has to go to shit with it. Property is still property. I'm not going to take Daryl's crossbow from him without his permission," Rick replied.
Andrea rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest. "And yet you have no problem looting stores?"
"That's because we need whatever we can find to survive!" Rick said.
"And the elimination of walkers that are close buy isn't going to help us survive?" Andrea asked. She pointed towards the barn. "Those things are a danger to us all, Rick. They need to be taken care of."
Rick was starting to get frustrated, gritting his teeth as he snapped back at her. "We can't afford to lose Hershel's good graces. We'll have to leave this place if we do."
"Who gives a fuck? It's not like he can call the cops on us to kick us off his land," Shane laughed.
"No, but he can shoot at us," Rick replied, glaring at his best friend and former partner.
Daryl remained silent throughout the argument, crossbow strapped to his back. He was torn. While he didn't like Hershel and he most definitely was not okay with those fucking walkers being kept in the barn, he certainly didn't want to piss off the old man. Glenn was still sick and Hershel was the closest thing to a vet probably left alive now that Jenner had set himself on fire. If Glenn got any worse, whom else would they go to for help?
"Besides, it's safer here for us than out on the road. At least here we have a vantage point and a house to go to if we need it. We can't afford to lose that," Rick continued.
"It's not safe when Hershel is keeping things that want to tear us apart and eat our faces off in his fucking barn!" Shane howled.
"It's better having them locked up in the barn than running around wild isn't it?" Rick spat.
"No, it's better that they're dead," Andrea snarled.
"There's nothing we can do about it! We're going to leave it alone. We can't risk moving now!" Rick said with a tone of finality in his voice.
"Why the fuck not?" Shane asked. "I want to be as safe as possible too Rick, but you've heard Hershel. He wants us gone as soon as possible anyway. Why don't we just kill the walkers and leave?"
"Because Carl's here, Glenn is sick, and I'm fucking pregnant!" Lori screamed, jumping up out of her seat.
Everyone turned to stare at her. Even Daryl, who was not usually surprised by anything, was shocked. She glared at them each in turn before storming off, Rick following close behind like a kicked puppy. Shane's mouth hung open and he froze for a moment. Snapping himself out of his thoughts, he quickly jogged after them, shouting for the husband and wife to slow down.
Daryl looked back at the others who were left around the campfire. Dale sighed and shook his head, glancing over Carol. She returned his exasperated, but concerned gaze. Andrea looked annoyed as she stormed off to the RV to start her watch for walkers. Carl seemed unsure what to do until Carol led him away, whispering comforting words to him. While Dale returned to his RV to try and talk to Andrea, Daryl snorted and stepped back into his tent.
Glenn was buried under several blankets and his head rested on top of a small pillow that Maggie had given him in a moment of sympathy. His eyes opened as Daryl entered the tent and he smiled up at the older man, his face still flush from fever.
"Are there really walkers in the barn?" Glenn asked quietly.
Daryl nodded as he bent down to pick up his crossbow. He threw it over his shoulder, silently counting the arrows to make sure he had what he needed. Glenn watched him as he prepared for a short hunting trip, brown eyes following Daryl's every move.
"I feel like I should be doing something," the Asian man groaned. "I feel horrible just sitting here."
"You're supposed to focus on getting better, kid," Daryl said.
"Why do you call me that?"
"What? Kid? Would you rather be called chink or short round like I used to call you?"
Glenn blushed and shook his head, hiding his face in the pillow. Daryl snickered at the younger man's shy behavior as he stood up.
"Stay in bed," he commanded, stepping out of the tent.
"Fine," Glenn murmured. "I'm only doing causing you asked."
"I didn't ask, kid," Daryl replied.
"No, but a command is probably as close to a request is as close as you're going to get to one," Glenn muttered.
Daryl smirked. "Maybe, kid. We'll just have to see."
Daryl was just returning from his latest hunting trip when he heard the yelling and arguing. Frowning to himself, he broke into a light jog, loping over fallen trees and piles of leaves. The squirrels that he had killed bounced against his back as he ran, keeping time with his strides.
As he cleared the trees, he saw a large group was assembled in front of the barn. He could pick out Andrea's blond hair, Hershel and Dave's white, and Shane's clean shaved head. Rick and the others were with them, Rick struggling with a walker held on the end of a pole. A shiver ran through Daryl as he raced towards them. Shane was screaming at Hershel who holler back in reply, though Daryl couldn't make out what they were saying.
Finally, in a scream of rage, Shane picked up the bolt cutters and destroyed the lock on the barn door. As he backed away, the doors slowly opened and the walkers started to appear, moaning loudly as they limped towards the living. T-Dog, Shane, and Andrea opened fire, killing each one at a time. Rick, who was still struggling with the male walker on the end of the pole, shouted at them for help. Everyone else's attention was focused on the barn door and the walkers that stumbled through it.
Finally Daryl made it to them. Stepping up behind Rick, he shot the last struggling walker through the head with his crossbow, watching as it fell to the ground. Rick threw him a grateful glance before turning back to look at the barn door.
Slowly, the last walker came into the light and they all gasped. Sofia –or the walker that was once Sofia- snarled at them, her white eyes filled with the hungry desire of the walking dead. One arm was curled in slightly towards her body, the fingers curved into claw-like shapes. Her hair was dirty and her shirt torn at one shoulder. Her knees were covered in mud, showing that she'd fallen at some point, probably as she fled from the walker than eventually bit and turned her.
Off to one side, T-Dog and Andrea struggled to keep Carol from going towards the walker that had been her daughter. Rick squared his shoulders and approached the last walker as she walked towards him. Taking his gun from the holster at his side, Rick aimed it at her head, waiting until she was no more than five feet away from the barrel of the gun.
He fired and Sofia dropped to the ground, dead forever.
Carol was howling and sobbing as T-Dog drug her towards camp, Lori quickly following. Hershel was on the ground, eyes wide with shock. Beth and Maggie were crying. Andrea and the others seemed frozen in place, staring down at the body of the little girl. Carl stepped up beside his father, unsure of what else to do. Rick patted his head.
"Go find your mother, Carl. We'll dig her a good grave, one that's nice and square, but not too deep," Rick said.
Carl nodded. "Good. Sofia didn't like the dark too much."
Beth let out a screech as she ran over to one of the fallen walkers. Pushing another dead body off of the female walker, the blond sobbed quietly for her mother.
Suddenly, the walker that had been Hershel's wife and Beth and Maggie's mother attacked, clawing at the blond girl. Beth shrieked as she struggled to get away from the walker, trying to kick at it as it grabbed for her long hair. Andrea, Maggie and Shane were on them in a moment; Maggie pulling her sister away while Andrea and Shane quickly put the walker down for good.
As those that remained started to gather up the bodies, Daryl sensed eyes upon him and he glanced in the direction the camp. T-Dog, Lori, and Carol had just stumbled into the camp, passing Glenn without saying a word. The Korean was wrapped in a blanket and Daryl guessed that the fever still hadn't broken. Although Daryl couldn't actually make out the brown eyes of the younger man, he knew that Glenn was watching him.
Nodding to Glenn, Daryl set about to helping clear the bodies. They spent most of the rest of the afternoon burning the bodies of those they didn't know and burying those they did. Hershel's wife and stepson got graves of the own alongside Sofia's. By the time Daryl was back in the cluster of trees that was their camp, he was exhausted.
Dale had taken the squirrels from him a short time after they'd started clearing away the walkers. The little rodents were waiting beside the fire pit when he arrived. Sighing, he hunkered down and began to dress and cut apart their meal for the night. Normally, Daryl would have dressed the meat out in the field, but the catch had been active that morning. It was better for them to have more meat than not enough so he'd chosen to kill as many squirrels as he could as soon as he could.
He was gutting his third kill when Glenn came over and sat down next to him. The Korean had the blanket wrapped tightly around him and his face was red from the fever.
"You should be resting in the tent, kid, not out here walking around," Daryl said sternly.
"I know, but so much has happened. Carol is broken and Carl is pretty shook up. I can feel the anger just rolling off of Shane and Rick doesn't seem to know what to do anymore. Hershel's not going to let us stay here after what we killed those walkers," Glenn murmured.
Daryl grunted, but nodded in agreement. "Shit is about to get crazier than ever."
They fell into silence as Daryl continued to strip the meat from the bones of the squirrels. Glenn watched with a keen interest, dark eyes following Daryl's hands as he cut, sliced, and cleaned the meat. When he was finished, Daryl set the meat on a tin plate for Lori before he started on lighting the fire. Glenn just continued to watch him.
Neither of them spoke for the rest of the day. Only when they were settled back in Daryl's tent did Glenn finally open his mouth to speak.
"You know how I said that my parents lived in Michigan?" Glenn murmured in the dark.
"Yeah. What about it?" Daryl asked.
"I think about them sometimes and to be honest, I know that they're dead, whether they're walking or not," Glenn said, pulling the blanket tightly around him.
Daryl glanced over at the smaller man, his face expressionless.
"My parents weren't the most active of people. They weren't bad people. They were just… passive. Whenever anything happened to them, they just took it as it came and never tried to fix the problems. Their house was practically falling apart when I moved to Atlanta," Glenn whispered.
The Korean laughed to himself lightly, bitterly. "To be honest, my parents and I were never that close. I know what you're probably thinking and it has nothing to do with those Tiger Parent ideals. We just didn't have much in common. We could speak Korean and we were from Korean originally, but that is about it. They liked classical music and I listened to classic rock. They preferred coming home after work and not leaving until the next morning when they would go to work again. I would stay out with friends well into the evening and I was never home on the weekends."
He sighed quietly. "We were just different people. I did try to make them proud, of course, like any kid does. I did well in school, kept my grades up. I helped around the house. I did love them; I do love them, but I knew they probably wouldn't accept or like certain parts of me if I ever told them."
Daryl cocked one eyebrow, interested. Glenn shifted where he lay as he closed his eyes.
"I never told them I was gay. To be honest, you're the first one I've ever admitted it aloud to before. My past boyfriends: they just fell into place without us needing to define who we were."
Burying his nose in the pillow, Glenn sighed quietly.
"While I miss the comforts of our old life, not having to fear walkers or being eaten every second of every day, there are certain things in this new world that I can't say I hate. I have a purpose now where I just languished in the old world," Glenn admitted.
The Korean shook his head against the pillow, eyes still closed.
"I must really be crazy, huh Daryl?" he murmured to himself as he started to drift off to sleep.
When Glenn's breathing evened out and he was truly asleep, Daryl pulled the smaller man up next to him, setting Glenn's head in his lap. As the night moved further into the darkness, he laid awake, patting Glenn's silken hair absentmindedly.
In truth, he had to agree with Glenn.
In this world of the dead, Daryl, just like Glenn, had found his true calling in life: survival.
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