That same night, after the sun had finally dipped down underneath the earth and the moon had risen above the trees, bathing our makeshift neighbourhood in a silver wash of light, it was almost impossible to believe that there was a lethal plague dragging itself across the earth. Everybody had packed away the plates and the last embers of the campfire had been stomped out so as to conceal ourselves from walkers, and everybody had finally retired sleepily to their tents to enjoy a night of hopefully undisturbed sleep. T-Dog and Andrea had just settled themselves on the ledge for lookout, so there was no immediate danger to the camp and I turned my head away from the faint heat still radiating from the dusty, dying pit of fire, and walked towards the tent that I was now supposed to share with Daryl. Neither of us were on watch that night, so we would both be awake for a while in the tent.
I didn't know how awkward things were going to be but despite the mixed feelings we had regarding each other I had to stay there for Beth's wellbeing. I looked at the ragged, muddy green tent, unzipped the tent and stepped inside. Daryl must have been talking to one of the others about something, because he wasn't in the tent when I got there and so I decided I was going to have a look around. There was a single blow up mattress in the corner, with tousled and worn bedding and a grey, bloodstained pillow. My stomach knotted when I saw the blood, but I wasn't too worried, Daryl could take care of himself. Knowing him it probably wasn't even his blood. I moved to the small, messy pile of items he had next to his deflating bed. In it, I could see a dirty towel (again with more bloodstains), a knife with the initials 'D.D' on the hilt, scratched in by another knife, not engraved and underneath it all lay his leather jacket with angel wings stretched across the back. How ironic, Daryl the angel. I scoffed at the thought and shook my head, still staring at the messy heap of things. A zipping noise came from behind me and Daryl appeared, crouching through the door to try and get in.
"Thought Rick told you not to touch my stuff." He grumbled, seeing me observe his stuff. I was a bit offended that he thought I'd stolen from him, but then I remembered what Dale and Rick had advised me...not to take Daryl too seriously.
"I wasn't touching your stuff." I told him with as much patience as I could muster. It was getting late and I wasn't feeling up for any of Daryl's shit tonight. I don't know whether my forced patience was annoying him or not and I didn't really care. He padded over to the mattress and threw himself down heavily onto it despite its feeble protests of leaking air. I laughed at the noise his bed made and he just lifted his head and glared at me. I looked him in the eyes and sighed after I managed to control my laughter.
"You know, this whole sharing tent thing might be a lot easier if we just sort of..."I stopped midway through my sentence because if looks could kill, I'd be a mangled corpse.
"That's what I'm talking about. The death glares and the hostility. This whole tent-share thing could be a lot easier if we just dropped the hate thing and learnt to get along." I gushed out at him. Daryl looked at me as though I'd grown an extra head, so I took that to mean that he wasn't going to go along with my idea.
"You could just mind y'damn business and we could get along with our own lives." He suggested in derision, standing up as he did so.
"Or I could just mind my own damn business and we get along with our own lives." I echoed sadly. He noted the unhappiness in my voice and offered me an olive branch.
"I'm from North Georgia. You?"He asked. I knew he was only asking to make me feel better, but I appreciated the effort he made.
"Virginia." I replied. "Virginia born and raised." I stated proudly, grinning like the Cheshire cat. He laughed at me, but not entirely cruelly.
"Might start callin' you that, sounds prettier'n Gunshot." He said, smiling a little now. The smile that I had on my face from telling him where I was from stayed on my face, frozen, but the emotion that had once been behind had long since disappeared. The smile was nothing more than a crease on my face now, and the same familiar sinking feeling had returned to my stomach. I let the crease fall, and with it, cascaded a burning hot tear down my face. This evidently confused Daryl, and I could understand why. A second before that I was smiling and now it was as if a mirror had been broken, the cracks, suddenly visible as I attempted to trivialise what had happened for the sake of not ripping this guy's head off in this future.
"The hell gunshot?" he said, tone full of shock. I glared at him. "I di'nt do anythin'!" he exclaimed, tinges of guilt riddling his voice. I stopped glaring and shook my head.
"No I know, it's nothing really." I sniffed, viciously rubbing my face with both hands, as if trying to scrub off the scars and tears. I looked back up at him when I'd done and just raised my eyebrows. He still looked to me for an explanation that I felt only visual evidence would provide. Without speaking, I lifted my shirt up a small way, just enough for him to be able to see the raised scar that had been pissing me off for an entire year. He just looked from the scar to my face, tapping his foot so that his entire person shook with it. I dropped the hem of the t-shirt back, allowing it to float around my waist, waiting for a response from the silent redneck in front of me.
Instead of saying anything, he reached for the bottom of his wife-beater shirt and pulled it off over the top of his head. He bent down slightly and pointed to a thick, curved scar which started at the top of his shoulder and crossed down to his opposite collar bone. It was raised as much as mine, identical in colour but it was a lot thinner, and it didn't have the little veins of extra scarring coming off from the outside. I just stared at it, confused but touched by the fact that he'd done this to make me feel slightly better about my own wound. I nodded at him and looked away again, turning to the place I was going to sleep for the foreseeable future. A small rollout mat with my duvet thrown on it, wrapped around so it was basically a sleeping bag without a zip. We were still in total silence, as we had been since I dismissed his concern, until I turned to look at him. I turned just after he'd finished putting his shirt back on and flashed him a small, grateful smile.
As hard as it had been to show him the reality of a gunshot wound on a 16 year old girl, I felt more of an explanation was needed in order for this jagged hunter to understand. I wanted to tell him, to tell anyone the pure, uncontrollable fear that I'd felt as it happened...but I couldn't bring myself to find the words.
"Soldiers." I explained in a voice barely more audible than a whisper. I didn't expect him to fully understand, I didn't think anyone could, but the most comforting thing was for some reason I knew he wouldn't tell everyone.
We didn't say anything else for another ten minutes or so as we were getting ready to sleep, but just after I buried myself in the warm folds of my duvet I poked my head out of the thick cover.
"Daryl?" I called out softly, for fear of waking him or any of the people in adjoining tents up.
"What?" he replied after a few seconds, still as quietly as I'd been. I paused for a few seconds, trying to select the best words I could think of.
"Thanks." I eventually settled on. He didn't reply but I assume he'd heard me, so I fell into a deep and untroubled sleep that night, a huge burden lifted from my chest.