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It was like an itch under her skin. As soon as she'd seen the truck, it'd struck her. She had to get in there. It was the first time she could distinctly remember ignoring her instincts, her muscles tight with the need to bolt when she'd forced herself to lie still. The hair on the back of her neck rose as she'd looked through the binoculars. She didn't want to think about why. She just wanted to do it.
Her head was throbbing. It'd taken so much effort to force those words out, but she had to. As carefully and forcefully as she could, she'd strung them together into something that she thought he would understand. It wasn't a compulsion, it was a necessity. It'd been taxing, but the ache in her skull was worth it. Daryl had agreed.
There are still good people, Daryl.
The words were flashing through her head like a pulse as she eased some of the leaves in front of her to the side to get a better view. There were good people. Daryl was one. Aaron and Eric were two more. It was possible there were others. They could walk into that house, looking for shelter, a roof, a home. She watched two men as they came out of the house, carrying automatic rifles and long slender sticks that forked at the end. Cattle prods, she thought. How she knew that, she had no idea, but it wasn't important.
The truck cranked up, its powerful engine causing the earth to vibrate as it lurched forward like a big green bull. She watched it roll down the gravel driveway, until it was out of sight. And still, they waited, listening to the rumbles echo up from the road, then slowly fade out, winding back and forth further up the mountain. She spared a second to wonder if they should follow. Aside from clearing out the house, she considered the fact there may be little to nothing that would tell them anything inside. But something uncurled from that dark little corner of her mind, a soft voice that quietly insisted that she remove the potential threat to innocent people.
Who was innocent in this world anymore? she fired back, not bothering to hide her scowl even as she slipped up to her feet. The old adages had found fertile soil to take root here, and those who lacked strength or cunning were eventually devoured. How many times had she seen it happen? How often -
Screams, ear-shattering screams that reverberated in her bones even as a baby's happy gurgle bubbled up from the dark.
She almost paused as she kept low, sensing Daryl and Aaron slinking along the edge of the yard behind her. It wasn't all that unusual for the memories that surfaced to be jumbled up, impressions of sensations, sounds, tastes, smells, flitting images that never stayed still long enough for her to get a grasp of what they were or how they fit with the others lingering in the dark.
She shut the musings down as she approached the door, pressing her ear to it and sliding her knife out of its sheath. Glancing at Daryl, she moved her head a fraction to indicate that she heard nothing. He pointed a finger at Aaron then down at the porch. The curly-haired man nodded, his rifle comfortably settled in his hands as he put his back to the section of wall that jutted out, creating an alcove of sorts for the front stoop. Just as they'd done yesterday, she and Daryl framed each side of the door.
In tandem, they swept into the house, Daryl swinging the door open and taking point with Beth right on his heels. In moments, they cleared the first level, the open floor plan leaving few idle places for concealment. Daryl stayed in front of her, angling his body deliberately as they moved through the house, leaving openings for her to dart around him or lash out with her knife if need be. In turn, she kept her back to him, swiveling her upper body in a half arc, her steps measured and made with care as she scanned back and forth for any threats they may have missed, unlikely as the possibility might be.
If she wasn't going to listen to the most sensible of her instincts, she paid the price of pride and allowed the more paranoid of them to take the reins. She'd probably outlive the regret for walking into this death trap in the first place.
Which begged the question of why back to the front of her mind. Why would they set this cabin up like this? She couldn't fathom deliberately placing walkers in a house for any other reason than a trap of some kind, so storing them maybe? Both? But it was so far out of the way. Aside from the people in the trucks, and themselves, who the hell had the ability to make it this far up into the mountains?
The questions led to another that made her blood chill. Had the people in the trucks stumbled on the trail of bodies they'd left in their wake? Where any of them trackers? Had they already been by the cabin the three of them had stayed at last night? Were they being watched?
That last one had her glancing out the windows they passed as they climbed the stairs to the second floor. They knew what the rooms on the right end of the hall contained, so they went left, Beth ducking under Daryl's arm as he put his hand on the first door they came to. She adjusted her grip on her knife, her free hand bracing on the wall as she looked up and nodded to him. He threw it open, swinging his crossbow around to aim inside. Beth came around the doorjamb beside him, dropping to her knee so she could peer beneath the bed. Seeing nothing, she scrambled to her feet and went to flank one side of the closet, cautiously gripping the door knob. Daryl's eyes flickered to hers and she yanked on it, knife poised in her hand.
Empty.
So were the rest of the bedrooms on that side of the house. She wasn't sure if she was relieved or pissed about it. That itchy sensation was getting worse, making her feel like she had to do something, sink her knife into something, kick down the next door, scream, anything. She just needed a way to release the tense, jittery restlessness that was jangling under her skin and making her nerves sing.
Patience, she crooned in her head, soothing herself like you would an antsy cat. Only a couple more feet. The paranoia was drowning in the blood starting to simmer in her veins, pulsing through her body in a two-beat echo that she could almost hear. By the time they backtracked to the right side of the house, she was humming softly under her breath, some nameless tune that was tickling at the edge of her consciousness. Daryl gave her a side-eyed look that she ignored in favor of eagerly reaching for the door. His hand shot out and covered hers, tightening around her fingers. She snapped her head up to glare at him, her lips pulling back and baring her teeth.
"Wait," he mouthed to her, narrowing his eyes at her and Beth blinked, then forced herself to let go of the door, forced herself to allow her muscles to loosen.
When he felt her hand relax beneath his, he released it and she let it drop to her side. As his fingers curled around the knob, she fell back into the established pattern, lifting her knife slightly and bracing her weight on the balls of her feet. Holding his bow steady, Daryl eased the door open this time, barely more than a crack, and peered inside. He let go of the door as it held its position and held up his hand, fingers spread. More than five then.
Beth felt the corners of her mouth quirk up, adrenaline flooding her body. For the first time that day, she felt right in her skin, the itchiness abating a fraction and replaced with a sense of being charged, anticipatory. But she waited, her gaze fixed on his face as bright blue irises flicked back and forth. Then he was surging forward, firing at the closest walker before dropping the bow and drawing her blade from his hip. He sunk it into the head of the next with a snarl. Seeing it filled her with something hot, threatened to steal her breath as she flanked him.
Walkers, if nothing else, were consistently single-minded. Their tactics never changed, and while that could be an advantage, it was also dangerous. People thrived in a sense of security, and it was easy to fall into the idea that walkers only knew how to mindlessly lurch forward at their prey. And in general, they were right. But sometimes, you ran across the rare one that still remembered how to do more than just grab and bite.
The first walker that came at her fell quickly as she snaked between its grasping arms and stabbed the blade of her knife through its forehead. Her blood up, Beth had to fight to keep the grin off her face. It wasn't the death that was pleasurable, but the fight, the way her mind shut off and her body ran on intuition alone. She craved that mental silence, a temporary peace from the clamoring fragments of her brain. As the walker sank to its knees, she side-stepped it, spinning another to face her as it reached for Daryl. Viciously, she kicked its legs from out from under it, then slammed her boot into its skull, the softened bone and tissue offering no resistance.
More walkers were crammed in the closet, struggling to escape, their hands outstretched and grasping. Beth grabbed one by the wrist and jerked, slamming her knife through its jaw. She shoved it up with a grunt and the dim glimmer in its eyes snuffed out like a blown candle, truly dead. Yanking her arm back, gore and black blood dribbling down her hand, she stumbled backwards, putting space between her body and the remaining walkers, avoiding their clenching fingers. Daryl shifted to stand beside her, she noted out of the corner of her eye before another staggered from his fellows. It was like the right stone fell away from a dam, the rest of them pouring out.
Curling her hand tighter around the hilt of her knife, Beth easily ducked beneath a clumsy grab, angling the weapon as she shot up straight and slammed it into the walker's face. She pushed it back, made the ones behind it stumble and fall. Then she was on them, darting left then right as she bent and plunged the knife through the tops of their skulls, their growls falling abruptly silent. A shadow fell across her and she whirled, driving her knife hard into the eye socket of a female with long hair that was even paler than her own.
Panting, Beth wrenched her knife free again, quickly searching the room for any further threats before she sought out Daryl, seeking and meeting his eyes as he turned to her, breathing as hard as she was. Bodies were strewn haphazardly around them. Ten, a dozen maybe. Her eyes raked over him, her heart galloping and a savage sense of being alive spearing through her.
That pull she'd experienced yesterday was tugging at something low in her belly again as she watched him do the same to her, his gaze slipping over her, pupils blown wide as sweat dripped from his hair. Unconsciously, she licked her lips and she felt more than heard him make a low sound in his throat. He took a step towards her, but that was as far as he got, Aaron appearing in the doorway to the room with wide eyes.
"Come out to the backyard."