KEAGAN'S POV:

I went back to sleep surprisingly easily. I had no more nightmares, not even a dream. But when I woke up, I had a crick in my neck and my ankle ached terribly.

I sat in the bed for a few minutes after I woke up before Dale came in, asking about my ankle.

"How's it doing?" he asked, bending down to get a better look at it.

"It hurts. Not as much as it did yesterday, but that's not saying much." I told him, grimacing as he poked at it once more.

"I'll have to take the wrappings off to get a better look at it." He looked to me as if asking for permission.

I nodded. Better safe than sorry. But when he took it off, I almost wished he hadn't.

The swelling had increased rapidly and grotesquely. My ankle was about 3 times its normal size.

Dale's quick intake of breath alerted me to the dangerous condition of my ankle.

"We're going to have to reset it," he said, already looking apologetic.

This was going to hurt. A lot. We had no anesthetics and nobody certified to do this. It would be guesswork and if we messed up, we would just have to start all over, putting me in even more pain. I silently cursed and sighed.

"I'll be right back," Dale said, nodding to me and exiting the RV.

I turned my head to look out the window and saw Dale walk up to Daryl. He looked like he was asking him something. Daryl disappeared inside his tent and when he came back out, he handed Dale a pill bottle and a bottle with some brown liquid in it. Whiskey. My outlook on life at this point in time went up a little. Dale motioned for Daryl to come with him and Daryl hesitated a little before consenting.

I closed my eyes, mentally preparing myself for the pain. I heard their footsteps thud all the way back to the bed I was laying in.

"Ya look like hell," I heard Daryl mutter as he moved to stand behind me.

I opened my eyes and looked up at him, his face upside down. "So do you," I said, smiling sweetly.

He scowled and grabbed onto the sides of the bed. "So what'd ya need me fer?" Daryl asked Dale, seeming a bit annoyed.

"I need you to hold her down. This wont work if she's thrashing around." Dale handed me the bottle of whiskey.

I took a long gulp out of the half empty bottle.

I started to hand Daryl the whiskey bottle, but he pushed it back into my hands. "Might need to take one more. Jus' in case."

I nodded and took another big swig. After I had handed Daryl his booze, he handed me something. I looked into my hand and saw abrown leather belt. I nodded and folded it, placing it between my teeth. I held my arms up and grabbed onto Daryl's upper arms and he held onto mine. I closed my eyes as I felt Dale's hands close around my foot. I bit down on the belt and gripped Daryl's arms tighter, my fingers digging into his skin.

The last thought I remember crossing my mind before the pain started was "Wow, Daryl must work out."

I screamed around the belt, trying to keep myself still. Daryl held my arms a little tighter, so I guessed my efforts at keeping still had failed a little.

The pain in my ankle was tremendous. It was on fire, it was frozen, it was terrible, it was wonderful, it was so many things that didn't make sense all at the same time. But mostly it hurt. It felt like years that Dale had to push my foot back onto the end of my leg, willing my ankle's bones to mend themselves in the right place. The whiskey should have worked but, what I had said about drinking in Texas was true. I had been drinking since I was a teenager. So the liquor didn't have much of an effect on me. I had built up kind of an immunity.

I opened my eyes and saw the tiniest bit of a glimmer in the corner of my eyes, the beginnings of tears. I didn't cry, though. I couldn't stand watching Dale shove at my foot, so I looked up, focusing my eyes on Daryl. He looked down, focusing intensely on my eyes.

I screamed again, louder this time. My screams continued echoing in my ears for quite a while after I had passed out from the shock of the burning pain.

DARYL'S POV:

The first of her screams was quieter than I would've thought. More of a grunt than an actual scream. But I knew the pain must have been insane.

I felt her hands tighten around my arms. I did the same to hers, trying to keep her from moving too much. She opened her eyes and looked at Dale. I frowned. That probably wouldn't help her keep from moving around.

Then she looked up and straight into my eyes. I held her attention there. We had a stare-down for a few minutes before she screamed her lungs out. By the end of the long, piercing scream, it had turned raspy and eventually died out when her eyes closed and she went limp.

"What's goin' on? What happened?" I asked, looking at Dale and panicking.

"She passed out from the shock or the pain. I'm done now. She'll be fine. She just needs to stay off of it for a while." He started rewrapping her ankle and then exited the RV, telling me to watch her while he went to go do something or another.

I wanted to say no, do it yourself you stupid old man. But I didn't have it in me. I had been awake for 3 days straight and it felt good to not be constantly moving around.

I sat on the edge of her bed, careful not to jostle her. I looked her up and down. She was attractive, sure. She was kind of short and pretty thin, with medium length black hair. She had full, red lips and a splay of freckles across the bridge of her nose. I remembered looking down into her pained eyes… they had been almost brown, but too green to be brown.

Her limbs were flung akimbo and her hair was sticking to her sweaty forehead.

Shane and Dale came back in the RV then. I stood up, moving out of the way. This RV hadn't been made for this many people to be back here at once.

Shane was carrying 2 pieces of a wooden board that had been cut to about the size of her foot. They placed each piece of board on either side of her foot, taping it tight in a diagonal position so it reached her ankle, too.

After it had been taped tight to her ankle, Shane looked up and seemed to just notice me. "What are you still doing here, Dixon?" he asked, sneering at me.

I grimaced and decided not to get into it here with him while Keagan was laying injured on the bed right beside us. "Shut the fuck up," I told him, walking out of the RV. Stupid prick.

KEAGAN'S POV:

I wasn't sure how long I had been out, but when I woke up, no one was in the RV and Glenn was nowhere at all.

"Hey, Dale?" I called to the old man sitting atop the RV, looking out with binoculars.

He looked down.

"Where's Glenn?" Glenn and I had become fast friends in the short time since I had arrived at the camp.

"He made a run into a small town up the road from here."

I knew Glenn was the guy everyone went to when they wanted something from the city, but I still feared he wouldn't make it back. But that fear was foolish as I realized when, less than an hour later, Glenn came sauntering, care-free up the dirt road to the camp.

I limped forward and hugged him, avoiding the large, bulky-looking thing he was carrying with him.

"Don't scare me like that," I muttered sternly as I pulled back.

"I was only gone for an hour. And besides, nothing could have actually happened. I'm a ninja!"

I laughed, stepping back so he could show me what he had behind him. It was large and black and looked like a tarp with some thin poles.

"I got you a tent!" Glenn announced, obviously pleased with himself.

I smiled widely at him. "Thanks, Glenn."

He nodded and began helping me pitch the damn thing. It was pretty difficult, but eventually we got it to stand the way it was supposed to.

I was kind of excited for that night. I finally had my own tent and could stop mooching off Dale and sleeping in his RV.

But the entire time Glenn and I were goofing off and trying to make the tent quit leaning one way, I had one question on my mind: What on earth had I done to make Daryl want to glare unyieldingly at me from across camp?