How do you survive- Chapter 2: Hunting
It's been two weeks since I left the camp for the last time. I'm going crazy in here. The only activity I have been doing is cleaning squirrels with Daryl. More people have arrived in the camp. A family of four, the two children haven't said anything since they've arrived. But they seem nice. The father helps around the camp a lot, and the mother is a very good care-taker, she watches over the children in the camp when their own parents can't. She is mostly joined by Carol.
I haven't seen my mom and Shane for the last three hours or so. Maybe this is my chance to sneak out, when they're out doing what I think they're doing, it could be another three hours before they'll return.
And there is my escape. Daryl just walked by and according to his crossbow on his back, he is going hunting.
"Daryl, wait up!'' I yell at him before taking my bow and running towards him.
He stands still at the edge of the woods. His hand holds his crossbow in right hand as he leans against one of the threes with his left side.
"You finally allowed to go hunting princess?"
His nickname for me still bugs me but I put up with it. He used to call me 'sunshine' because in the beginning I was way too optimistic, but he stopped doing that because my optimism turned down a lot and I turned into the grumpy girl no one wanted to be around.
I shrug as an answer and walk into the woods. Is almost can't hear the silent footstep following me, but I know they are there. Daryl would never let me go into the woods alone. We both stay silent as we walk through the woods. The trees get closer to each other and it gets harder to just walk.
Out of nowhere I feel the soft tap on my shoulder. I freeze and look around. Daryl stands still behind me and points to my right. In the distance I can see the silhouette of a man. He limps, dragging his right foot along with him. It doesn't take long before I can see more details of the man, well, walker. He has long dirty hair and he misses his left ear. Daryl and I wait till he gets a bit closer. One of us could hit him from where we stand, but it would mean that we have to walk a great distance to retrieve the valuable arrows.
"Go ahead princess, if… you can still do it." He mocks me, and stands back to lean against a tree.
I grab an arrow and aim for the walkers eyes. Just before I want to shoot, the walker falls down. I wait until he stands up again. My arrow leaves the bow and lands right between his eyes. He falls down ones again and this time he doesn't get back up.
"Shit!" Daryl curses and loads his crossbow. Behind the walker I shot down appear a lot more. "Let's get out of here, to many to take down."
He grabs my arm and drags me to the side. We run as good as we can. My orientation isn't very good, but I know we aren't running back to the camp. Which is pretty obvious, we wouldn't want to lead all those walkers back to the camp. We run for a while, our route blocked by walkers multiple times, causing us to change our patch a lot of times.
"I think we lost them." I pant as I stop running. I look behind me before leaning against a three, hands on my knees. Guess I have to train more. But Daryl also seems a bit out of breath.
"Yeah, not used to running are ya princess?"
I just shake my head and get back up. Adjusting my bow so it lays a bit more comfortable on my back.
"So… where are we?" I look around me. We're standing in an open field, surrounded by old trees and dense bushes. I can't see past the open field, everything is pretty packed around us.
I look at Daryl, small beads of sweat are dripping down his forehead to the ground. His eyes scan out surroundings. Just now I notice how he stands, like a lion ready to attack, searching for his pray among the bushes and trees.
"I don't know, let's just keep walking."
We decided to go to the south, we remember running of the north so that would bring us back to the camp, or at least to the highway. We should be able to find out way back to the camp from there. But it's getting dark soon and we won't be able to find our way back through the dark. To make it even better, it starts raining.
We're soaked and cold before we find an old shed. We only have to kill two walkers inside. And to our luck there are rabbits running all around this place. Daryl manages to shoot one from inside the shed.
"Fuck, we should have been back hours ago. My mom Is going to kill me.'' I sit down on some hay, my back against a wooden pole. Suddenly I feel the tiredness flooding over me and I close my eyes for just a second.
At least I thought so, but when I open my eyes again there is a lot more light in the shed. Small rays of sunlight shine through the cracks in the walls. Daryl is slumped against an old stall door, his hand on his bow. He seems peaceful when he sleeps, less hard, less angry.
"Daryl, hey!" I throw a small piece of wood against his left leg.
"What?!'' He jumps up, crossbow ready and arrow pointed at me.
"Relax, it's just me. We fell asleep, it's already morning. We have to get back!''
"You fell asleep, I just thought I might get some sleep when were stuck here anyway."
I roll my eyes at him before I stand up. We grab out stuff together and head back out. After a short time of walking we hear an alarm, like from a car or something. That means there must be a road up ahead. We go into a slow running space, saving energy in case we are far away from the camp. The sound has already stopped, but we just keep running straight ahead, slowly going downhill.
"We are the foot of the city, that means it's an hour walking back to camp, at its most."
Daryl doesn't react, instead he just starts walking down the road, away from the city. I just follow him. I can't wait to get back to the camp, but the hunting started nice. Maybe I can sneak away more often to go hunting. Daryl didn't explicit said he didn't like having me around.
