Disclaimer: See Ch. 1.
Ch.4: Heart Beat
Daryl didn't say a thing as we walked along. He simply studied the ground, the trees and bushes. I knew that we would either eventually find the little girl as a walker, or laying on the ground somewhere with a hole through her head. It was fascinating to me, watching him track, taking in every little thing that surrounded him. I could tell by the way that he sometimes stopped and touched a tree or bush that he could tell something had disturbed it recently.
We were still walking, following the trail, when the sun started to set. Daryl simply stopped walking, turned to me and nodded his goodbye for now. He started to walk away when we heard a rustling in the leaves not far away. I made a lazy motion for him to get behind me and to my surprise, he did, without hesitating. The walker who seemed to be in hot pursuit seconds before came to a slow stop and sniffed of the air "Talk…" I grunted. It turned its head to the side almost like a confused dog, sniffed the air again then turned around to leave. That's when Daryl jumped out from behind me and jammed his knife into the back of the retreating walkers head.
His quick movements surprised me, but he didn't know it. How could he know when I had a dead face and body? The closest thing I have to an emotion is an eye roll and those couple of times when I think I may have smirked. "Ya mad?" he asked and I didn't understand why he was asking. So I shrugged.
"Why…be…Mad?" I asked ignoring the fact that my throat was getting worse.
"I keep killin' yer people." He explained shortly. "One less poxy bastard to eat the livin' if ya ask me.."
"Not…people." I said tucking my hand into my pant pocket, trying to act human. "Dead. I gave him… a chance… didn't…Take." I wheezed. With another shrug. "You…had t..to kill."
He nodded to me before he looked around and started to walk away.
He had gotten a few feet away before I spoke, making him turn to look at me. "I mask you…but not…enough…" he simply nodded and I was starting to realize that he was a man of few words. "Need more…" he just stared at me. "A…any ideas?" I asked.
I could tell he was thinking when he shifted his weight to one foot and placed his hand on his hip. "Yeah." He said after a while and started taking off his sleeveless flannel shirt. My eyes followed his movements as he tossed it over my shoulder. "Wear that tonight, get it smellin' nasty like you, then I'll wear it tomorrow."
The shirt should have felt warm against my cold dead skin. But the truth is that I cant feel hot or cold, I'm just here. But sticky sweet tendrils of his scent did waft up my nose even though I wasn't breathing. "Smells good." I sighed and without thinking about it. When I opened my eyes he was already heading back to his camp. "See… tomorrow." I called as loud as I could without killing my throat.
"Meet here at dawn." He called with a wave over his shoulder.
When he was gone I pulled his shirt off of my shoulder and attempted to put it on. It took a few minutes for me to get my dead arms into the arm holes, but I eventually did. It ended up hanging off of my small frame like a garbage bag. What made it worse was I couldn't button the buttons to get it to stay completely on me. So one side of the shirt hung off of my slender shoulder to rest near my elbow.
After a long boring night of wandering and no eating, I went to where we had left off searching for the girl. Dawn came and went. No Daryl. I had promised him I would meet him here so I would, but eventually I got tired of standing so I sat down and leaned against the tree, momentarily becoming a lurker. Though I assumed that no one would stumble by me here.
I was just about to walk away, thinking that Daryl had decided to stop using me as his scent shield, when I heard a rustling in the leaves behind me. I turned to see a sweaty, aggravated looking Daryl. Like always his shirt was sleeveless and his crossbow was slung over his shoulder. I nodded in greeting back to him, not knowing how my voice would come out today. He took in the sight of his shirt hanging off of me and smirked before his face turned back to his normal flat expression. I started to take it off, but he stopped me. "Na, keep it." I felt my head tip showing my confusion as best I could. "We'll look for the girl later, right now I need ya to meet someone." Oh, crap. Who was he going to take me to, a scientist? Someone who wanted to pick apart my brain and figure out what makes me different?
I felt myself blink a few times and take a few steps backwards before I spoke for the first time that day. "Who?" the word came out smooth, and almost sounded normal. I smiled inside.
"The girl's mom. She's given up hope. Need ya to tell her that ya can help me find her, that ya've seen her." All happiness about my new voice fell and a pain that I had never felt before shot through I chest. Was it fear, hurt, or…what? How can I face the mother of the little girl that I bit and tell her that we were going to find her daughter? I couldn't. "She needs us."
I felt myself start shambling backwards from him. "I…can't." Something told me that if I could cry, that I would have.
"She ain't gonna finish ya off. I won't let her. Ya ain't gotta be scared of her." He misunderstood my hesitance. How could he? He didn't know I was the reason they were looking for this woman's daughter in the first place.
But it was his eyes, something in his squinted, blue eyes that made me agree to go with him even though I didn't want to. "Fine." I breathed and he nodded now looking hopeful.
He turned and waved for me to follow, so I did. Why was I doing this? There was only one way it could end. It would end with everyone heartbroken and me dead, for good.
He led me to a small lake with a pier, but he stopped me at the edge of the woods. "Wait here while I go get her, and don't come out until I say to." I just nodded before he walked off.
A few minutes later I saw them walking over to stand near the edge of the lake. "Do you see it?" he asked a skinny woman with short salt and pepper hair. Her clothes were dingy, then again who's wasn't these days? She asked him what he was pointing at. Before they got close to a bush of flowers like the ones he was looking at the day he found me. "We'll find her." I watched as they stood in silence for a few minutes, just looking at the white flowers. "Hell, I'm sorry about what happened this morning."
"You wanted to look for her." The woman's voice matched her small stature. "Why? This whole time I just wanted to ask you."
"Cause I think she's still out there." I could see her turn her head back to look at the pretty flowers and Daryl spoke again. "Truth is, what else I got to do."
I wished I could read the look on her face, but I couldn't. So I just watched her reach down and touch one of the flowers petals. "We'll find her. We will. I see it."
"Good, 'cause I have someone I want you to meet. Someone who's been helping me look for her." The woman looked confused, I knew that much, but there was another emotion on her face that I couldn't figure out. "Ya have to promise not to be scared of her." The woman opened her mouth to say something, but closed it and shook her head. "H, come on out here."
It was the first time he had actually called me H and something fluttered in my stomach. I tugged the sleeve of the shirt he had given me up onto my shoulder and stepped out of the trees. The woman's mouth fell open and she reached for the knife on her hip. I knew then that I needed to talk, to prove myself like I had with Daryl. "Hi. H…hello." I said with a stiff awkward wave. Her eyes got big as she looked quickly from me to Daryl then back to me. "I won't…hurt you." I said hoping my voice would be as smooth as it had earlier that evening, but it came out a bit raspy. "I… don't like…eating people." I managed to get it all out without stopping too much.
"What is she?" the woman asked with her mouth agape and I saw Daryl smirk out of the corner of my eye.
"Don't know, but she said she's seen Sophia." Daryl said to the open mouthed woman who couldn't stop staring at me where I was standing a safe distance away. "H, come here." Daryl waved me over and I stumbled closer to stand five feet away from the woman. "H this is Carol. Carol, H." he said with a smirk as he looked at Carol's still shocked face. "She helped me find Sophia trail again. Picked it up yesterday, followed it all day. I'm getting close, I know it."
I had never heard Daryl talk so much and I couldn't keep my eyes off of him. He was so hopeful. I didn't know what he was going to do when they found out what I had done. "Thank you." The woman's shaky words made me look at Carol to see her holding out her hand. I took it and gave her a nod as she shook it once, then dropped it. "Do the others know about her?" Carol asked and Daryl shook his head no. "I think they need to know. This changes everything. How do we know there aren't more like her?"
It was like I had no control over myself as I followed Daryl and Carol back to their camp. Bringing me back hadn't been an easy decision for them to make. Daryl argued that I might devour the whole camp, while Carol, of all people, decided that I wouldn't as long as I had the skin of a fresh animal to wear as a mask so that I wouldn't smell all of the people around me. When we got to the farm, I could see several people sitting around on the porch looking hot and bored.
When we got close enough for everyone to realize that I was a walker, people started jumping up and running over to kill me. "Whoa, hang on guys. She ain't dangerous."
An Asian man pushed a pretty young brunet woman behind him as if to protect her. "Daryl, I don't know what you see, but that's a walker. It's dangerous."
"Come on man, does it look like she trying to bite anyone right now?" Daryl asked, but the guy didn't have a chance to answer because another, more aggressive man, walked up with a bag of guns strapped over his shoulder.
"You with me man?" he guy asked Daryl as he handed him a gun, then his eyes landed on me and he started backing away. "What the hell?" he asked noticing how I was wearing Daryl's shirt and the skin of an animal over my nose.
"Not…going to h…hurt anyone." I finally spoke making people's mouths fall open.
"What the hell is this thang!?" the aggressive guy yelled making people come out of the house.
"What's goin' on out here?" an older man asked as he stalked out of the house taking in all the people standing in a scattered circle around Daryl and me. "Did you take her from my barn?" the old man asked and Daryl shook his head.
"No, she's a friend." Carol said as she stepped into the center of the circle with us. "She's different from the rest."
The aggressive guy scoffed making everyone look at him. "You got somethin' say asshole?" Daryl asked and the man started laughing.
"She's not a friend, Daryl. That bitch doesn't even have a pulse." The aggressive guy's eyes turned to another man who stood on the porch. He stood between a little boy and a tall skinny woman.
"Shane, just calm down a minute. She doesn't look like she's trying to eat anyone to me. Let's hear them out." The man had an authority to his voice that even I caught. And he was right. I wasn't trying to eat anyone, because I had the animal mask tied around my nose. I couldn't smell a thing.
The older man walked down off of the porch and made his way to stand in front of me. "Hershel, man, get the hell away from the thang." Shane said with an eye roll at the old man.
"See? This proves it. I told ya'll that these people were just sick. She's healing, look at her." Hershel said as he walked to sand at my side. I stood perfectly still, as the man examined me. I had opened my mouth to say something and it was in that moment that three shots rang out into the air. My body jerked with each one. Pain shot across my chest and stomach. I leaned forward and clutched my stomach. Black blood bubbled from the new wounds, coating my arms.
"These thing's are not sick! They're dead. Ain't got to feel nothing for them 'cause all they do is kill!" Shane started yelling and pacing around like a mad man. "These things right here. They're the things that killed Amy." He started passing out guns to everyone as he yelled. "They killed Otis. They're gonna kill all of us." Shane started heading over to the barn and everyone followed trying to stop him.
"Shane shut up." I heard someone yell, but I didn't pay attention to whom.
Shane stopped when he got to the door of the barn and started pacing in front of them. "A living breathing person couldn't walk away from that. But you know what they can't walk away from? This." Shane raised his gun and pointed it at my head. But he didn't have time to pull the trigger before Daryl knocked the gun out of his hand.
"Shane, enough!" the same person that yelled at him before, yelled at him again.
"You know what man that is enough." Shane said glaring at Daryl as he picked his gun up off of the ground. "Enough risking our lives for a little girl who's gone!" Daryl held his place in front of me where I had moved to stand at the back of the group, far away from Shane. "Enough living next to a barn full of things that are trying to kill us. Enough! Rick, it ain't like it was before!" Shane said looking at the man who had been telling him to shut up, and trying to talk him down. "Now if y'all want to live, if you want to survive, you got to fight for it!" I just watched as the man continued to rant and rave. Then he ran over and broke the locks off of the barn, letting the walkers inside come shambling out.
I thought, for a split second about trying to hold back my fellow walkers, but that's when everyone started firing down, including Daryl. I had decided to leave and was slowly starting to back away. I was still moving backwards when things fell silent. "Sophia? Sophia!" Carol's screams for her daughter stopped me in my tracks. My feet felt like they were glued to the ground as I watched Daryl, who had momentarily forgotten about me, wrap his arms around Carol, stopping her from getting too close to her daughter.
Th-thunk. Ouch! What was that? Something moved inside my chest. Th-thunk. There it was again, and it hurt worse than being shot three times. I didn't have too much time to ponder the feeling, because that's when Rick started moving around people to get a clean shot at walker Sophia. The new feeling, mixed with the sounds of Carol's cries somehow gave me the adrenaline I needed to rush to Sophia and push her back into the barn. Rick's shot missed and hit the door. Everyone stood, in shock.