Sorry for taking so long to update! I actually spent some time in the emergency room and I was feeling really sick so I didn't do any writing. But, I hope you enjoy this chapter!
In the morning, Daryl made a quick breakfast of porridge for him and Beth. They ate it rather quickly, their hunger getting the best of them. They were both going their separate ways again. Beth was nervous. The last time they parted, she thought he had died and Daryl thought she had been bitten. She never wanted to feel like that again. It felt like her heart was being squeezed by a boa constrictor. After two nights of sleeping together, they slept in separate beds.
It took awhile for Beth to finally fall asleep. She had grown so accustomed to the weight of Daryl's arm draped over her stomach and the warmth he brought. Her light blanket wasn't going to cut it for the approaching winter. Like always, Daryl had awoken first and jostled Beth awake slightly. Old habits die hard.
As she got dressed, he started breakfast for the big day ahead of both of them. Daryl was to head out with a few others to string up the rotting deer meat far out in the forest and Beth was going to give a pep talk to the kids and teach the women how to use weapons. Beth tied her hair up into a ponytail as Daryl counted his arrows. With her hair situated, they both headed out towards the carousel.
The usual crowd was there – Alice and Will, Martha and the quilting ladies and some of the hunting men. Daryl stepped up onto the platform, turning back to talk to Beth. "I'll see yah later, okay? If I don't see yah before we leave, this is goodbye." He held her gaze, gauging her reaction. This wasn't the first time he was going far out of the safety of the fences, but this time was different. He was taking all the rotting meat from the night before with him. It was going to attract a crowd of walkers. It wasn't a job he could do alone.
Beth took a deep breath, trying to keep the tears at bay. She finally nodded. "Yah stay safe, all right? I'll see yah for dinner," she promised. Daryl gave her one of his signature half-smiles and they parted ways without another look.
Daryl made his way through the tables towards Will. He wouldn't talk to him about Christopher or even about what happened yesterday. He'd just ask for his help. It'd be a nice thing to get his mind off of the pain. "Hey, Will," Daryl called as he approached. Will met Daryl's gaze, looking up from his meal. He crooked an eyebrow, signaling for Daryl to continue. "I was thinkin' maybe we could take all that rottin' meat out far in the woods n' string it up as bait for the walkers."
Will finished what he was chewing before answering. "Sounds like a plan," he said, taking another bite out of his toast. Daryl thought he was handling the situation well. He nodded and went to ask the others if they wanted to tag along. The more people he had going with the better.
By the end of his rounds, Daryl had a group of seven people wiling to go with him out into the forest. Roger, Peter, David and Sal all elected to go with again – they liked to get out of the fences as much as they could. Will was going with and two other new recruits had volunteered to go along; Lucas and a man named Skeez. No one knew exactly how Skeez had gotten his nickname and no one wanted to ask. Nevertheless, he would be going along.
Once everyone had finished their breakfast, they had all headed down towards the bathhouse where the meat was still sitting. A few squirrels had come across it and ate some chunks, but it was otherwise left alone. The stench was becoming revolting and had grown a small crowd of walkers on the other side of the fence. "Can someone take care a' those?" Daryl jutted his chin towards the dead.
A collective glance was shared between the group before David sighed and stalked over to the fence, unsheathing his knife. It was small, only a two inch blade. Daryl wanted to roll his eyes, but resisted for the time being. David quickly disposed of the small group of walkers and returned to the group to assess the situation of the meat. "How're we gonna get it up in a tree?" Sal asked, scratching his head.
"That's easy," Will countered, a smile painting across his lips. It almost took Daryl by surprise. He had done his grieving last night and now he was a completely different person. "We take down the netting from behind the basketball game stand and we rig it up in the tree." Everyone agreed that that was the best and safest idea.
While a group went to cut down the basketball netting, three of them stayed back to organize the meat into a pile. Daryl took the liberty upon himself to stay back and work with the meat even if it burned his nostrils. David and Peter stayed back to help; the two youngest in the group. "So, who gave yah that knife, kid?" Daryl asked David as he grabbed a platter of rotting meat.
David grabbed a plate, following Daryl to where they were laying it out. "My dad. I know it's small, but I ain't got nothin' else," he rambled.
Daryl laughed. "That ain't gonna protect yah from nothin'. Look, if yah want a real knife, yah can have one a mine," Daryl said sitting down his plate. He pulled out one of his longer blades from his sheath and handed it over to David. Daryl could already see that he was taking pride in the blade. It was heavier than his small knife and much more balanced. "Let's hope yah don't gotta use it today."
He smiled but nodded, sheathing it against his thigh. Once Daryl, David and Peter had moved all the meat into one sole pile, the other half of the group had returned with the netting. Wasting no time, they laid out the net and moved all the deer meat to the center of it. To carry it, they knotted it at the top and slid two medium sized sticks through the bundle. And finally they were set to venture out into the woods.
Daryl scouted the woods out in front of him as they walked. Sal, Roger, Will and Skeez carried the load as David took up the rear and Peter walked on the other side of Daryl. They were lucky enough to not run into any walkers just yet, but they were still anxious. "Just keep an eye out," Will grunted, adjusting the branch on his shoulder. Daryl nodded.
They had been walking for ten minutes already, but Daryl wanted to go farther. The farther they went, it would take walkers twice as long to get there at their rate. Daryl spotted a tree up ahead that looked sturdy and tall enough for the meat to hang just out of reach from the walkers. "Right up there," Daryl said, just as the growls started. He held his hand up, halting the group.
David's grip tightened around his gifted knife and Peter adjusted his hands higher on his aluminum baseball bat. The growls grew louder, yet no walkers could be seen. Daryl took a deep breath and focused on the sound and which direction it was coming from. And then the walkers spilled out from behind the trees descending upon the group.
Beth had laid out her assortment of knives she's collected on the picnic tables under the party pavilion for her quilting ladies. There was at least ten different ones, but she kept her favorite one sheathed by her side. There was no way she was going to let anyone else use that specific one. She had it since she stole it from Daryl right after the prison fell. It had saved her life many times.
"Go ahead n' take one," Beth told them. They were all obviously nervous to be even touching knives. Beth couldn't fathom how they had made it this far in the apocalypse and didn't know how to defend themselves. Delilah, Esther, Lainey, Kimber, Alice and Martha each reached out and took a different blade. Beth wasn't nearly worried about Alice as she was with the others.
This was her second task of the day after talking to the kids. She, very politely, sat them down and told them about two superheroes named Sophia and Carl. She got her point across that Sophia and Carl would never have opened those gates, but instead would be helping out to whatever they could to survive. She left them each with a hug and a smile. But this group of ladies weren't that easy to deal with. She couldn't tell them a story about superheroes or make-believe. This was the real world.
Beth had them all stand, except for Martha, and had them slash at the air with their blades. Though Beth told Martha that she could just learn how to hold the blade with her arthritis, she stood anyways and tried to strike out at the imaginary attackers. Beth walked along behind the ladies, watching their form as they threw the knives at bulls eyes drawn onto trees.
At first, they were far off, hitting the farthest line or missing the tree all together. But after a few more minutes of practice, mostly everyone was hitting the center. Martha still couldn't throw the knife so Beth worked more with her on hand-to-hand fighting. She showed her how to use her weight to her advantage if a walker ever got close enough to her. Martha shot her a toothy grin, grateful to Beth for not going easy on her. "Thanks, Bethy," she mused happily.
Her heart almost stopped. Bethy was the nickname her father had given her. Beth tried to smile back as big as she could. "Anythin' for you, Martha," she said. "Why don't we take a break for awhile, yeah?" She asked everyone else. "We can make some lemonade, eat a little?" Everyone agreed after the long day working with knives. Together, the quilting ladies made it over to the carousel to make the lemonade and to see what was available to eat.
Martha went quickly to work on the lemonade despite the fact that her wrists were starting to bother her. Beth would talk to Daryl about finding some painkillers or anti-inflammatories on one of his next runs. They had found some deer jerky that was still good and passed it out around the group. "Oh, Lainey," Alice gasped as she took the bag. "That's a nasty scar, what happened?" Lainey held up her forearm, the jagged white scars crossing over the pale skin.
Lainey let out a laugh. "It's nothin'. I got caught up in some barbed wire when I was younger. I've grown so used to it, I don't even realize it's there anymore," she told the group as she hopped up onto a picnic table. "Anyone else got any scar stories to tell?" She asked, a sly smile on the corner of her mouth.
Martha spoke up then. She held up her first finger on her left hand. Despite all the wrinkles on her aging hands, a silver scar snaked around the side towards her thumb in a crescent moon shape. "I was slicin' potatoes with my momma for the first time. I was eleven," she smiled, reminiscing at the memory she had of before the walkers started popping up. "We were laughin' and carryin' on, singin' and what not. I wasn't payin' any attention and I sliced my finger right open. Wouldn't stop bleedin' for awhile."
Beth smiled along with Martha and the other girls. But she knew she only had two scars. One was along her elbow from when she fell out of a tree when she was younger. The other graced her wrist from one of the lowest points in her life. It was also from when she first met Daryl. Martha went on to tell all the other stories of her scars, which ended at the fifth one.
Beth would stay silent as long as she could. She leaned forward on her knees, listening to all the stories from her friends. Kimber had a scar on her forehead from chicken pox right in between her eyebrows. She then told the story of the birthmark on her hip in the shape of a horseshoe and how it always brought her luck.
She thought about her own birthmark. Right beside her bellybutton. It was one of the only things Beth liked about herself. Soon, it came to be Alice's turn. She showed the scar on the bottom of her lip from a car Christopher threw at her face when he was just a baby. And then the one behind her ear from a car accident in her teen years. She then nudged Beth. "What about you, Beth? Got any worthy scar stories?" She smiled, waiting for Beth to start her stories.
Taking a deep breath, she decided she wouldn't tell the story about her wrist. Instead, she pointed to the one her elbow. "Got this one from fallin' out of my parent's tree. I was playin' hide-n-seek with my older sister Maggie. I got the best of her but when I went to get down, I fell," Beth laughed, reliving her own memories from the past.
Alice looked at her, waiting for more. "That's it?" She asked. "You only got one scar?" Beth nodded, trying to just end the conversation there. "Then why you keep rubbin' your wrist like that?" Alice asked, grabbing at Beth's hands. She held her hand out for the group to see, the serrated white edge raised along the crease of her wrist.
Beth sighed, pulling her wrist back. She avoided their gazes as she started to speak. She could feel the tears brimming at her eyes, but she would not let them fall. There was no way in hell she would cry over this. "That scar happened after the apocalypse happened," she told the group. "I had just met Daryl, not that he's a part of the story in how I got this scar, but…"she trailed off. "I tried to kill myself." She flinched at the intakes of breath. "I no longer wanted to live so I broke a mirror and slit my wrist. I instantly regretted it the moment I finished."
She ran her finger over the raised skin, remembering the feel of the mirror in her hands. "I've moved past that moment in my life and I've never wanted to live more," she said, looking out at the people listening to her. Martha had tears in her eyes and Delilah wouldn't even look at Beth. Alice moved over and wrapped her arms around Beth's shoulders, giving her a loving squeeze. The group had fell into silence, sipping their lemonade and eating the deer jerky.
For the first time in the day, Beth let herself think about Daryl. She never realized that he should have been back by now. While lost in her thoughts, Beth hadn't noticed the ladybug crawl across her knee. She stuck her finger out for her little red friend. Alice gasped. "Beth! Do you know what that means? When a ladybug just happens across you?" She asked. Beth shook her head, eyes trained on the bug crawling on her finger. "My mom always used to tell me Asian legends when I was younger, don't ask me why," Alice laughed. "But in Asian culture, if a lady bug happens across you and you let it go unharmed, it'll fly to your true love and whisper your name in their ear and your true love will hurry to your side."
Beth smiled. She liked the story that Alice had told her. Just then, the ladybug flew from her finger towards the pools. "I'm not exactly sure who my true love would be in this world," Beth joked, though she could only think of one person.
"Look!" Lainey exclaimed, pointing in the direction that the ladybug had flown off in. Everyone followed her gaze just in time to see Daryl and the others emerge through the fence with two dead deer in tow. "Seems like those legends were real after all."
Who's excited to hear about what happened when Daryl was out with the meat? Also, with the scars two of the scar stories are my own! It's Martha's finger scar and Kimber's forehead scar are two scars that I actually do have! Thought I'd throw in the lady bug cameo from 'Still.' Hope you enjoyed this chapter. Let me know in a review! (: