AN: Here we go, another little chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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They were stopping more than Daryl was comfortable with as they started their journey forward to a destination that absolutely no one had in mind. It felt to him like as soon as they got started, the caravan was pulled to a halt. They spent more time stopped than they spent moving and by the third day of madness he was ready to absolutely scream at someone for the delay.
When they stopped for the fourth time that day, Daryl cursed under his breath and felt immediately sorry for it when he saw Carol wrap an arm protectively around Sophia, probably not even sure that she'd done it.
The banging on the back sliding window made him open it while he sat there stewing and watching the other vehicles reach their stopping points, all catching up with the realization that the horn blowing behind him was an indication that they needed to stop once again.
"What the fuck are we stopping for?" Alice asked when the window connecting her from the bed of the truck to the cab was open.
"Hell if I know," Daryl commented. "You the one in the back. You tell me what the hell's goin' on back there."
"How am I going to know?" Alice shot back. "Rick blew the horn…I think. Someone blew it. They're getting out now."
She sighed with the final words. She was clearly as tired of the in and out as he was.
Daryl opened the door and let himself out, directing Sophia and Carol to stay in until he knew what was going on and barking at Alice about being out of the truck when she dropped over the side and to the pavement.
"I want to know what the delay is," she growled back at him.
"Too fuckin' nosy," he growled back.
She laughed softly.
"What?" He asked, directing his steps toward Rick's car where he was getting out…Lori and Carl trotting off into the woods just beside the road.
"Character flaw," Alice responded back, her voice as low as his to keep the conversation between them.
He rolled his eyes at her and directed his attention then at the other man.
"The hell we stoppin' for this time?" Daryl asked. "Too damn many more a' these an' we coulda walked as far as we gettin' before the sun goes down."
It was evident that his question annoyed Rick. The man wasn't exactly hard to read. It should have also been evident, if Daryl was wearing his emotions half as much on his sleeve as he hoped he was, that he was equally annoyed at the fact that they were wasting gas with the starting and stopping and burning daylight that they could spend putting distance between themselves and any of the Walkers that he and his confidants believed might be following them from even as far back as the CDC.
"Bathroom break," Rick commented. "We can't keep going without knowing where we're headed. What are we going to do? Keep everyone cramped up in cars forever?"
Maybe his concerns were legitimate, but there simply weren't any answers for them at the moment. Daryl looked at Alice, though, hoping she might have some and he heard her struggling for words while he glanced around and took inventory of everyone who was staying close to their vehicles, all looking as confused as he felt about the frequent interruptions to their traveling.
"We're going to find something somewhere," Alice said. "But…staying in cars and staying alive is better than sitting still and dying for our freedom."
"This isn't living," Rick commented.
"Neither is being lunch," she responded back.
Daryl chuckled at the exchange. Rick tried, with his body language, to intimidate her, but Daryl hated to tell him that she was the woman who had knocked Merle's ass out…and she might not hesitate to do it again if her buttons got pushed too hard.
"Look," Daryl said, throwing in his two cents then, "it ain't convenient, but every damn body's pissin' when they can an' holdin' it the rest a' the damn way. Get a fuckin' bucket if you gotta…but we burnin' fuel we don't have with all the damn startin' an' stoppin'."
Rick gave him another look.
"Do you have any ideas where we're going?" Rick asked. "Honestly? I mean at least I knew about the CDC and we had somewhere to go. We had somewhere to set our sights on. It felt like something we could achieve."
Daryl stared back at the man. He could understand him to some degree, he really could. The aimless wandering was difficult. It made you feel insecure and it made you feel like you didn't know what tomorrow might hold.
But the problem was that there wasn't any security right now and none of them had a single damn clue if there would even be a tomorrow.
"Fort…prison…base…anything," Daryl commented. "Somethin' with walls or fences. Somethin'…where they can't get at us."
"We can't keep stopping," Alice said. "We have to find something at night and we have to travel during the day until we find something more permanent. Right now we're just asking for trouble."
Rick looked at her, shook his head slightly.
"Tell your brother," Rick said, "to start looking out for something for night."
"We got a couple good hours if we can move," Daryl commented. "Merle knows when ta start lookin'."
Rick muttered something, but Lori and Carl, closely watched over by Shane, were coming back toward the car and he turned to join them and start the whole thing moving again. Daryl glanced around and saw that everyone was making preparations to move on once more…back to their regularly scheduled program…and he turned to head back to the truck with Alice right behind him.
"You think we gonna find somethin', Al?" He asked, his voice low.
He stopped by the tailgate of the truck to offer a hand if she needed it while she crawled into the back. She didn't accept the hand…and he really hadn't expected her to.
"We'll find it," she said. "Or we'll die trying," she added with a chuckle.
She sat on her feet in the back of the truck, holding onto the roof of the cab, and Daryl slid into the cab to crank the truck and wait for the caravan to lurch forward once more.
"Problems?" Carol asked.
"Nothin' for you ta worry about," Daryl commented. "Same old shit."
When they started moving forward, Daryl gunned it a little harder than he intended and heard Alice curse from the back of the truck where he'd, apparently, thrown her off balance.
"Flat on ya ass!" He announced through the window.
"Asshole," she responded back.
He laughed to himself and reached up, sliding the window shut between them and putting her on the outside again until they were forced to stop, hopefully this time with the sunset, yet again.
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"This isn't so bad," Daryl heard Carol say to Sophia. They were spending the night in a farmhouse that looked like it came straight out of some antebellum movie. Daryl would have never even been allowed inside a place like this prior to everything going to shit. The only thing that it had going for it, really, was that it was large enough to house all of them and almost to give them all somewhere decent to sleep.
Alice, Carol, and Sophia were sleeping in a huge bed in one of the rooms, women and children getting first pick, and Daryl was sleeping on something like a lounge that was in the room.
"This house is creepy," Sophia said.
Daryl chuckled.
"It is creepy," he agreed.
There was a hum of disapproval from Carol.
"It's not creepy, sweetheart," Carol responded. "It's a nice house and it's safe. We'll sleep here for the night and tomorrow we're going on."
"Enjoy it," Alice piped up. "There's no telling where we're sleeping tomorrow."
"I'd rather sleep in the RV," Sophia tossed out.
It gained another chuckle from Daryl.
"Gotta say," he commented, "I'm not too against our recent sleepin' arrangements either…"
There was no response from anyone in the bed. This was the first time that he wasn't sleeping in the truck with Carol. The only reason he wasn't, either, was because the house was so large that it didn't make sense for any of them to insist on sleeping in the vehicles. Moving them all inside was supposed to be something that made their night better, but the truth was that Daryl wasn't minding the cramped privacy of the truck cab one bit...and Carol might not admit it in front of her kid and Alice, but he knew she wasn't minding it too much either.
"We need to put these sleeping arrangements to good use," Carol muttered. "Tomorrow's probably going to be a long day."
"Of not getting anywhere," Daryl muttered, but he echoed her sentiment.
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The next morning they were loaded up and ready to go by the time that the sun came up. They might have been on the road by then, but they were met when the first of them emerged from the safe haven of the house by at least a dozen Walkers.
A dozen Walkers who, if their suspicions were correct, were merely the fastest of the others that were coming.
Daryl hadn't been happy to see the rotting corpses at all, but he was happy at least that they'd shown up during the night and maybe put some credence to the beliefs that they'd tried to convey to Rick. Steady movement was important, nights aside, at least until they had somewhere that they could believe offered them more protection than the roadside. They didn't need to stop every hour or so just so that some of them, unaccustomed to just having to deal with what the hell life threw their way, could stretch their legs and enjoy the scenery.
They had to keep going and they had to hope that they ran into something that was either already established or that they could make their own.
And the dozen Walkers must have sobered Rick, and everyone else that demanded frequent stops, up a bit because they were making great time and putting more distance between them and the Walkers they knew were following them than Daryl had even imagined they might.
They hadn't stopped at all since they started moving. Everyone who needed bathroom breaks was either getting by some way or holding it. They ate and drank sparingly and from the rations kept in each vehicle. They might not know where they were headed, but they were headed there as quickly and steadily as they could.
And Daryl didn't say anything when he noticed that Carol had slid a little closer to him on the bucket seat of the truck or that, watching the scenery go by, she smiled softly to herself and only grimaced when they passed a patch of Walkers ambling near the highway. She sat with her arm around Sophia, and the girl watched in front of them, out the side window, and out the back at intervals to check on Alice who sat with her back against the cab.
It was almost as perfect a day as what the world was now could offer anyone.
And then Daryl noticed his brother slowing down and trailed his eyes ahead of them down the highway where the traffic was thicker than it had been for a while. They'd come through one area that almost looked like a traffic jam unscathed, but that didn't mean that all of them were going to be that easy.
The line of cars slowed to a stop and Daryl watched as Merle, Andrea on the back of the bike as she was now accustomed to riding, weaved in and out of the cars ahead of them, getting lost from sight for a moment in the wreckage, to check whether or not they could pass through.
While they waited, Daryl noticed some of the others getting out of their vehicles and he opened the door to the truck and looked around. It was clear and pretty wide opened. He saw Lori and Carl, along with Jacqui and T-Dog, scampering off the road toward a small patch of trees that would have barely afforded each of them a tree and a patch of underbrush to hide in.
"You gotta piss, now's the time," Daryl said, leaning back in the truck and then repeating simply the word "piss" to Alice as she hung over the edge of the truck to see what was going on.
Carol, her arm around Sophia, and Alice headed off in the same direction the others had gone in and Daryl stretched his legs a moment and listened for the sound of Merle's bike, clearly making a return now.
When the bike pulled up, Shane, Rick, and Dale were already walking toward them to find out what was going on.
"Jammed up damn tight," Merle said, steadying the bike. He shook his head. "Ain't gettin' through it without movin' cars. Be better just ta go the hell back an' detour around."
Daryl glanced at Rick and Shane, standing side by side, both of them shaking their heads.
"We don't have the fuel to keep retracing our steps," Shane offered.
"Don't have the time to waste standin' around here with our dicks in our hands," Merle countered, getting for himself an unfriendly look of warning.
"The RV isn't in good shape," Dale commented. "I need to look around and find a hose for it. I need to find water for it or we're going to be out of a vehicle."
"Find somethin' more practical out here," Merle commented. "Hell two or three if we gotta have 'em. That damn thing don't run more'n it do."
Daryl held a hand out toward his brother to somewhat silence him in the moment.
"We aren't turning back," Shane offered. "We'll stop here an' search for some things. Get supplies from all these cars and see if we can't fix the RV. Hell, maybe fixing something else up wouldn't hurt."
"So we're just hangin' around here?" Merle asked.
"We'll get it cleared and move on," Rick offered. "We've made good time and we've got plenty of time until sundown. We'll move on and find a place to hole up for the night, but it looks pretty clear here and there's got to be a lot these cars can offer if those not working to move cars pick them clean."
Daryl caught a look from his brother but he shrugged and then shook his head.
"Gotta take a piss," he commented. "Then we best get started."
