itsi3 - Oooh indeed!
delenadreamer16 - If you were alive during a ZA, I bet you'd be the last one standing. You seem sharp. ^_^
Padgeant - Hopefully! Stay tuned and thanks for the review!
Claire Randall Fraser - Girl, I hope you're still with me on this series! It's been forever!
purplegirl60 - Thank you for the review! I am sorry this update is super late! But I love that you still thought to review this!
KajunKatlz - Thanks for the review, love the username! I am very, very sorry for this late update. The story will get finished, but I've just been so busy with my original writing, I'm due to publish a novel soon so I have been insanely busy.
girlface - Thanks for the review! I have decided to come back to this story after a long time in the dugout. I also want to see reunion's happening and Milton of course, because he's earned a little love for himself.
To everyone, I am so so sorry for this late update. I know, I'm a horrible person for leaving you all hanging like this. But! I will be working more on this now that my novel is set to be published, so I look forward to having more time for this work. I thank you all for your patience with me. And I hope you're still interested enough in this fic to keep with it until the end.
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Chapter Thirty-Seven: Big Rock Candy Mountain
**Daryl**
He was on his own.
Didn't matter, Cash was a fucking pain in his ass anyways.
Admittedly, walking the Georgian countryside wasn't the best idea, but he had no other options.
He had no idea where Carol would be and you couldn't track what wasn't there.
Around him was nothing but trees and trees and bushes and shrubs and those goddamn rotting sonsabitches.
The reality was that they would never be easy. There was always the possibility that someone somewhere was snuffing it and potentially becoming a literal walking hazard, just waiting to get you when you least expect it.
You're a failure, you little piece of shit! You're gonna fail just like every asshole in this bastard family fails!
Daryl's father's voice came screaming back at him. One of his first memories of the asshole.
And maybe he was right, he failed Merle, he failed Sophia, and he was about to fail Carol.
Contrary to what the others at the convent thought, Daryl Dixon still felt fear and he felt it then and he felt it now.
He didn't know what to do, and that scared the holy hell out of him.
In his mind this fear turned to anger which easily slid into rage and he stopped walking to kick the shit out of a nearby tree trunk.
He tore the branches from it and scratched bark off until his nails bled and his fingers bruised.
Carol kept him calm and without her, he was useless. Just as fucking useless as he was then.
Slumping down against the tree, he stewed in his misery for a bit, before a realization hit him like someone had punched him in the gut.
He was just a fucking child throwing a tantrum in the wild.
You have to go home, a voice told him as though Carol was standing just beside him. You have to go home and be a man for your daughter.
For a moment Daryl's mind fought this idea. He had to be the one to find and rescue Carol and Fate.
But Carol is strong and Fate wouldn't let her get hurt. The dumbass would get himself killed before he allowed anything to happen to anyone he loved.
Go home, the voice urged.
A snapping of a twig to his left had him getting to his feet as swiftly and as silently as he could, crossbow in hand.
He scanned the woods around him, but the one thing about walkers, covered in dirt and grime and rotting into a greenish grey, they were easily to miss among the colours of the forest.
Steps shuffling in the leaves to his back had him spinning. More sounds, more directions and Daryl found he was somewhat surrounded by whatever was approaching him.
Carefully he reached for the tree, but he had broke off all the branches he could have reached in his furious rage, so he moved around the truck carefully, slow enough that he made no sound.
A gunshot cracked and Daryl tensed, pressing closer to the tree trunk until he could figure out what was surrounding him. Another gunshot and Cash emerged from the thick woods into Daryl's clearing, walking like an idiot, not knowing that he was entering into the trap.
Daryl took that clearing the man made as a bit of a blessing and headed for him.
"Shit, I didn't think I'd-"
Shoving Cash back in the direction he came, Daryl moved off slowly and cautiously.
"Shot some walkers," Cash whispered as he followed him.
"There's more, we need to warn Delgado and get our asses home."
"Home?" Cash asked, just before a walker fell out of the thick bushes on him, knocking Cash to the ground, pinning him under the rotting bastards body.
Daryl tried to take aim, but in the struggle he wasn't guaranteed a clear shot, so he dropped his crossbow to hang by his side and reached for his knife, but Cash already was pushing his thumbs into the walkers eyes.
"Ew, ew, ew," Cash groaned as he kept going.
Daryl stepped forward and finished the creature off, shoving it off of Cash and helping the blond to his feet.
"Come on," he ordered.
The two fled a little more cautiously in the direction of Delgado's farm. Behind them they could hear the crashing as the noise of their struggle had drawn the attention of more walkers.
Cash glanced back as the ran and turned his head forward with wide, terrified eyes. "Shouldn't have looked," he admitted regretfully.
Coming to the farm's fence line, Daryl grabbed hold of a post and using the strongest, most secure part of the wire beside it, hoisted himself up and over.
Cash wasn't so quick, but he was wilier than people gave him credit for and vaulted over the entire fence, tucking and rolling on the other side.
Even as they ran through the pasture, they heard and felt the whizzes of bullets from Delgado's people up in the tree giving them cover from what Daryl could only imagine was a herd on their asses.
"Shit, shit, shit," Cash muttered under his breath as he raced alongside Daryl.
Skidding to a stop on the front porch of the farmhouse, Daryl turned only to realize that the herd was larger than he was thinking.
Some of them had been stopped by the fence, others were in the pasture going after the cattle and horses, most still heading for the house.
He realized that they had led them there and immediately sprung into action, grabbing a rifle and some shells that stood just inside the house by the door and taking up a position on the front porch.
In the tree, Gwen and Eve and the Kowalski brothers kept the herds number dropping as it approached the farmyard, but even they couldn't keep up with the sheer number of them.
Delgado and the others were all scattering around the yard to take up positions and offer back up, while Cash and Daryl moved forward to stand under the tree.
Running out shells, he dropped the rifle and began to use his crossbow, while Cash dropped his .45 to take up his knife, heading to meet the walkers who were now entering into the farmyard.
A few of Delgado's people joined Cash, a couple of them falling under the weight of walkers as the factions collided.
Daryl tried to keep one eye on Cash, but in the fray he lost track of the bobbing blond head.
Whoever the hell was leaving their walkers here in their territory was going to get fucking torn apart by Daryl. He would leave nothing but a shit smear.
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**Fate**
He had waited long enough for Carol, before he headed off to look for her.
If their plans to get the hell out of Dodge were to happen, he sort of needed her to complete them.
It had been at least an hour past their planned time to meet up and begin their escape and she was nowhere in sight.
Wandering the camp, he came across that weird intel officer, that Devlin, who was posting against a nearby supply truck munching on sunflower seeds and surrounded by a small clutch of soldiers. When he spied Fate approaching, he seemed to dismiss the men and they scattered, disappearing among the ranks of the surrounding men who were loading and unloading the trucks.
"Tell me, what is Étouffée, Lieutenant?" The Major greeted him, still snacking on his seeds.
"Shellfish and rice dish smothered in sauce. Have you seen Carol?"
"Your wife?" Major Devlin asked. "Have I seen your wife? I have, but let me ask you something else first. Before you were escorted from your place in the universe by Brute and Numbskull, did you notice an influx of the dead walking around?"
"Yes, where is she?"
"Were they really gross?" Devlin asked with a smirk.
"Where is Carol?"
Picking out a rotted looking seed from his bag, Devlin seemed to grow disappointed. "I always hate having to cleanse the bag of imperfection. One bad seed can spoil the taste experience." Flicking the seed away, he made a small sound in the back of his throat, before setting the bag aside and brushing his hands off. "Who now?"
"Carol, have you seen her?" Fate inquired.
"What has your wife been up to, Lieutenant? Out of curiosity, what kinds of friends has she been making here?"
"I don't know, but if you know where she is, you'd best tell me, yeah?"
"Take a walk with me, I want to show you our entire facility."
The man was a fucking cockroach, but Fate followed him anyways. He was nervous, but he wouldn't allow that to show.
"Personally, I couldn't care less what happens to us," Devlin said as they seemed to stroll through the loading area. "Every culture has their end of days mythology. I was just disappointed that this one failed so miserably."
As they strolled through the maze of trucks and soldiers, Fate began to realize that the objects being loaded onto the trucks weren't supplies or weapons for the men, but they were elongated and wrapped tightly in plastic and zap straps. They looked like bodies.
"What is this?"
"Every country has it's imports and exports," Devlin pointed out casually. "These are our exports."
"They look like bodies," Fate returned, starting to get the creepy assed gist of the whole thing. Nearby one of them began to croak and moan and Fate stopped dead. "They're alive?"
"Oh, let's not get into the philosophy of these things," Devlin said. "We were on a hunt for Mrs. Vancoughnett."
Planting his feet firm, Fate remained where he was. "No, let's get into these things. Are you the assholes who've been leaving these gifts all around the Georgian countryside?"
"Now, café au lait, is that just coffee with cream or is it an actual different thing entirely?"
Fate made a move to grab the man by his shirtfront, but the little bastard was fast, ducking back and laughing. "Easy now, Lieutenant, I'm not that kind of boy."
"You'd best start answering some of my questions direct without any of those riddlefucks you've been giving me," Fate warned darkly.
"I'm sorry, Lieutenant, really," Devlin said. "If I had my way, we'd have all gone down in that glorious bloodbath we were promised. I was craving that hot red to rain down on me and cleanse my sins, but...instead we have this. Not a fitting end, more of a sputtering flame really. Ah well, in any matter. Good luck."
Furrowing his brow, the Lieutenant only then noticed a plastic tarp had been placed just behind him, that Devlin had positioned himself just off to the side of him.
A clean shot through wouldn't hit him that way.
"I have a little boy at home," Fate whispered. "And two little girls."
"Yeah, and Carol isn't your wife, I know." Devlin said. "See, the thing is, I don't care. I'm broken, if you could say it like that. I've seen too much to know that it all ends. You bet on the wrong pony, Lafayette. You should have gone with Kravitz, he's the winning horse."
"I won't beg," Fate whispered, he was trapped, he allowed himself to be trapped. If he made a move for any of his weapons on him, he wouldn't be fast enough for the sniper at his back, all he could do was just finish it gracefully. "But just...don't leave me to become one of those things, yeah?"
"I'm sorry, you're an important commodity to us. We need to cleanse the outside before we can begin to rebuild."
"Is there a General?" Fate asked.
"Yeah, of sorts." Devlin smirked. "Well, not exactly. See, Miss Hopewell, she's a real gem. Allows me my bloodlust, in exchange, I serve her well."
"You're not broken," Fate said. "But I get what you are. Too much killing and blood will do that to a man."
"Do you know what the sickest thing is? How many factions would put their headquarters or ammunition plants in a functioning school or hospital if only to have human shields at easy reach. The thing is, word doesn't reach across the sea about how many children die when war comes knocking. It's easier for people to go on with their lives, buying their groceries, paying their bills, when they don't know how hard the rest of the world really has it when it comes time for revolution and change."
"I'm sorry, I know how that feels. To get how things really are, because you've seen it."
"Do you?!" Devlin demanded. "Because I was the man who made those decisions. The decision to have the school...the children that make it out, they grow such a hatred of us and...they become the one who you shoot down a few years later. We ultimately fuel the machine that keeps the war machine running, because with war what do people have? They sit around and bitch about taxes and the one percent hoarding money and that's not good for the economy, is it?"
"You need help," Fate said gently.
"You know, when I meet someone, the first thing that goes through my mind is how I'd kill them. Blood is always on my mind. Because without it, there's only memories and...this dead walking around thing, it's just a pest infection. The real threat was over there. Genocide and war and hate and death, that's what I ate, what I slept and what I breathed. There's no coming back from that for me. This is it. This is all I am until someone gets lucky and I die. And I've made my peace with that."
The gunshot came so unexpectedly that Fate flinched.
He touched his hand to his chest, feeling himself for the exit wound.
But it wasn't anywhere on his person.
It was Devlin who had fallen to his knees, blood pouring from the wound to his neck, Fate touched a hand to his own neck scar in solidarity, before turning slowly to the sniper.
Carol was removing a helmet up from where she had been crouched behind a truck, using the hood as something to balance her rifle on.
"Jesus, girl," he breathed, kneeling at Devlin's side. "We have to get out of here now."
Devlin was struggling, the bullet had only grazed his neck, but it didn't look fatal.
Fate was torn for a moment, between killing him and helping him. The man was so broken, but...he didn't think it was his place to judge.
Carol drew her knife as she approached, ready to use it.
Not missing the blood on it from a previous kill, Fate spoke to her softly, "are you alright?"
She nodded.
Devlin, in shock from his wound, eyed them both with wild, predatorial eyes rolling in his head.
"What do we do with him?" She asked.
"Tie him up, put him in the truck, we're driving the hell out of here," he grabbed Devlin and began to truss him up with the zap straps that had been meant for him. "I'm sure the others heard that gunshot, our best bet is to drive a swath through them. If we don't, we'll be easy pickings here."
"We should kill him," Carol said.
For some reason, something inside him prevented Fate from making that decision when it came to Devlin.
"No leave him," he said. "Let God sort him out."
Inside the truck, the keys were in the ignition, waiting for the driver.
"I don't know where they got the fresh gas, but thank God for it," Carol murmured.
"What happened to you?" Fate asked as he inspected the truck interior for a gun.
"Miss Hopewell," she said.
Nodding, he moved around to the back of the truck to look for a rifle or something since he only had his knife on him.
God, he wanted Marie back so badly. She comforted him.
Finding a supply crate tucked in the very back of the truck, he opened it to find a whole mess of frag grenades.
"Carol!" He shouted, unable to see her. "Drive!"
"What?!" She shouted back.
"Drive!"