Chapter 19

There was suddenly a wall of people in front of her. Their eyes bore into her and tried to drill through her hard-shelled exterior. Carol continued her fearful routine. She had put on a mask and she did not intend for them to see through it.

"Where did you come from?" One of the men demanded. That all too familiar wave of fear crashed over her. Despite her resilience and strength there were times when it still found her. Like an old friend it would make itself at home and reignite all those doubts and insecurities she had locked away.

Carol flinched, scrambling back to one of the chamber walls like a frightened little mouse. The men closed in around her until one of them forcefully made them stand back and crouched down in front of her.

He was a young man but he had old eyes, searching in hers for the truth. He had tattoos covering his hands, arms and neck and his knuckles were cracked and broken. He liked to hit things it seemed. She saw something familiar in him. That same glint of evil that had shone from Ed's eyes whenever he felt like toying with her. He had loved to put her on the back foot and make her think that she had been the architect of her own beating. This man had that same aura around him.

"How did you get here?" He asked her, forcefully taking her face with one hand and observing her bruises. He turned her face violently from one side to the other and she could see Daryl in the back of the chamber watching. She was sure the fire in his eyes wasn't just a reflection.

"My husband..." she explained, wide eyed and frightened. Drawing on actual experience in her life helped her to be more believable but it opened doors in her mind that she would prefer had remained closed and sealed. "I'm just trying to get far away from him"

"It's not safe down here Ma'am" another man chimed in, he was grinning wickedly and unbuttoning his pants at close to eye level. It seemed he hadn't even had to think about his action, naturally assuming a woman alone in a sewer tunnel was now his property. A plaything to entertain them for a couple of hours before they crawled back to their meaningless lives. "Something bad could happen to you"

A third man crouched down in front of her, he had a glint of something in his eye. Something sinister that made her feel unsafe. He placed his hand on her thigh, sliding upwards as he grinned to all his friends and they all closed in around her. She tried to pull herself away from him but found the solid unforgiving sewer wall behind her. For a moment she was transported back to that time when she was this person she was now pretending to be. Scared and timid, vulnerable and alone.

"Nobody knows you're down here?"

Carol shook her head and drew her legs up close to her body as she watched Daryl draw a shard of glass across the mans throat and let his body fall at her feet.

He tossed her half a bottle and she slammed it into the crotch of the man with his pants down before smashing the rest into his neck. Daryl drove the tattooed man's face into the wall of the chamber repeatedly. The chamber wall became a canvas, blood spatter painting intricate patterns across the brick like a work of modern art.

The rest of the men scrambled in panic and Carol kicked ash at them halting their escape. Daryl quickly stabbed two of them in the neck and threw them onto the fire the sound of their simmering bodies filling the air like a symphony.

Two ran back the way Carol and Daryl had come; Better to retreat. They had no intention of chasing them. One fell heavily into the pile of discarded glass and thrashed around violently with shards of glass sticking out of every visible surface.

Daryl dodged a blade of glass from one man trying to fight back before slamming him into the ground and pummelling his face with his fists. He kneeled astride his body and punched his fists into his face, covering himself in blood in the process.

Carol stood face to face with the last man. She could tell he wasn't sure whether to fight or run. Part of her hoped he would run, he looked younger than the rest and certainly more frightened. He watched in horror as Daryl continued to beat who Carol assumed was his friend suddenly finding some pent up rage and racing across the chamber to avenge him. Carol sighed, darting towards him and running a large shard the entire length of his throat before he could reach Daryl. She stood there with the man's hair held firm in her hand as he gargled and fought his inevitable death. A dark river of blood flowing from the wound in his neck as she let him fall, face first onto the ground.

They stood in the chamber breathing heavily, surrounded by bodies and covered in blood. Daryl slid his arm around her waist and pulled her into a passionate, blood-soaked kiss. Her head was spinning and the sheer sense of feeling he conveyed in that kiss almost swept her right off her feet.

"Better go" he growled when he finally pulled away, heading across the chamber and into the next group of tunnels leaving her momentarily stunned, lips still parted, eyes still closed.

It took her a few beats to gather herself enough to follow him which meant she had to jog slightly to catch up.

"I can't believe you left me like that!" she cried as she closed the distance between them.

"Like what?" he asked, turning round and shining the flashlight the length of her body to verify she was uninjured.

"Horny" she grinned without missing a beat.

Daryl quirked a smile but rolled his eyes and turned away.

"Shut up"

Carol continued chasing him down. It had started as a joke but she was beginning to wonder how far she could push him. She had an adventurous soul and she was pretty sure with the right guidance Daryl could have too.

"I'm serious" she protested reaching out for his hand.

"You're horny in a sewer?" he asked her incredulous.

"Well you can't just go about kissing people like that and expect no reaction!" Daryl huffed his breath making his hair fly away from his face momentarily. The more he protested the more she wanted to push it.

"You got a sewer fetish now?" He teased. Carol shrugged and glanced around the tunnel trying to see it through rose coloured glasses but she had to admit it was severely lacking in romance. The darkness hid an untold number of terrors beneath their feet and the smell was oppressive and heavy.

"They say you should try everything once" She told him, matter of factly.

He considered this for a moment, turning her words around in his brain before turning on his heel and continuing through the tunnel with a throwaway "Nah"

"It didn't even make you a little tight around the trousers?" Extremely amused that she at least got him to consider it.

"If I didn't learn to control what you did to me I'd have been walking around with a stinking hard on for the last 10 years"

He said it with such nonchalance, like it wasn't an earth-shattering revelation, which she supposed it wasn't to him. He just kept on walking, leaving her behind with what was quite possibly the most romantic thing he'd ever said to her. By Daryl Dixon standards that was a massive declaration of love and he'd laid it down at her feet in the middle of a rotten sewer and walked off like he'd just told her the weather.

"You coming?" he called along the tunnel when he realised she hadn't followed.

He'd walked himself right into another innuendo and Part of her wanted to continue teasing him about sewer sex but she thought better of it and simply followed him into the seemingly endless darkness of these tunnels.

It had to be late now, her body was starting to scream for rest and she was stumbling on rocks and debris laying on the floor of the tunnel. Daryl had noticed this of course, Daryl noticed everything. He'd started shining his flashlight on the walls searching for a door or a ledge she assumed where they could rest. They had put enough distance between them and the young men to allow them an hour or so plus their bodies would likely turn and that would delay anybody who felt the need to investigate. If they even tried, those young men were clearly not from the more affluent areas of the town and the fact they were down here suggested they lived in the area of curfew. It was likely those men would simply vanish because the ones who survived would be deemed liable for some horrendous punishment if they spoke out.

Daryl eventually tapped her on the arm, shining his light on a set of iron ladders that led to a small platform. There was a door at the platform but it was rusted and clearly hadn't been opened in many years.

Daryl tried it regardless, pulling the handle and ramming his shoulder into the metal before giving up and helping her up from the ladders. He set the blanket down in the corner.

She sat down heavily, leaning back against the wall and closing her eyes. Her quick shallow breaths soon turned to long slow ones and her legs started to throb a little less. Daryl passed her some jerky and she watched him as he tore chunks of his own with his teeth like a caveman. It always amused her how feral he could be, it frightened some people but she found it fascinating and sort of endearing. A smile tugged at her lips as he caught her watching.

"You ok?" he half grunted through mouthfuls of dried animal carcass.

She nodded and he rifled around in the backpack before tossing her the Tylenol and a rag.

"You look like shit" He told her, sliding a half empty bottle of water across to her.

Carol frowned and feigned offence "So do you"

She used the rag to clean some of the blood and sweat from her face and hands. She figured it was a bit of a pointless exercise because soon they would be slogging through the sewage again.

Daryl followed suit, only succeeding in smearing ash across his face as he tried to clean up. Carol laughed and doused her cloth in a little water, reaching out to stroke his face with it as he watched her intently. There was that flock of birds again, fluttering violently inside her chest, making her heart race and her stomach churn. How she had been able to fight these feelings for so long she would never know.

"I love you" she whispered, barely there into his ear. The only person she'd ever uttered those words to was Sophia. That was the only time she'd ever felt an emotion intense enough to call it love. Like she would rather die than lose them, like they were holding a part of her heart and soul with them that she never wanted back. She felt that way about Daryl and she realised that it didn't matter if he couldn't say it back or he didn't feel the same because he already held those parts of her and he had held them for a much longer time than she had realised.

Daryl met her eye and softly moved a chunk of her hair that had fallen over her face. When he reached out to stroke her face the hair he'd run through his fingers was stained dark red.

They both looked at his hand, soaked in blood and sodden. Fat droplets of blood fell to the ground, pooling around her knees. He must have gripped too hard on the glass and cut his palm to shreds. Carol quickly took hold of the blanket and tore a long strip of fabric which she wrapped tightly around his hand. It would need stitches, they both knew that. The risk of infection had to be sky high down here. The rag soaked through with blood almost immediately. The faster they could get to Alexandria the better.