AN: Here we are, another chapter here (by special request).
I hope you enjoy! Please don't forget to let me know what you think!
111
Weaving through too many Walkers—those that were still moving and those that had been hit and were obstacles in the road that could stop their forward progress if they weren't careful—turned the trip to the highway into a much longer ride than Carol would have imagined it could be. They had crawled along, at times, and she had felt every second stretch out.
Everything hurt.
Her body hurt from her exertions. She was tired, and her eyes burned. Her chest hurt. Her heart hurt.
Andrea was dead, and Carol felt like a piece of herself had been cut off and left behind at the farm. The moment she'd met Andrea, she'd been fast friends with her. She'd connected with her on a deep level. Being the Dixon women had only made their bond that much stronger. They knew the men they were married to. They understood them. They loved them. There was something about that—about loving the Dixon brothers and being Dixon women—that made them that much closer.
Carol knew Andrea, and she loved her, and now? She was dead.
And it didn't seem right that so profound a loss could happen and there was no marking the moment. The ground hadn't opened up. The sky hadn't either. There'd been no noise. There'd been no shaking of the earth.
There had been nothing. Just as there had been with every other death that had ever occurred, there was just an absence where a presence had once been. And, at the moment, Carol's heart felt that absence profoundly.
Daryl, Carol was sure, was feeling the hurt as well. He had to be feeling it on several levels. Andrea was his brother's wife and, honestly, the love of his brother's life—even if Merle had often failed at showing that in quite the best way. Daryl had felt responsible for her, as part of the Dixon code that he and Merle had between them, and he would feel her loss as some kind of failure on his part—even though that absolutely wasn't the case.
At the moment, Daryl was focused on getting them to the highway. He was focused on safely navigating his way down treacherous roads overrun with ambulatory corpses. He was focused on getting to Sophia and reuniting what was left of their family.
But when it was all said and done? Daryl would need to mourn, and he would need Carol's support, and she would support him in every way possible.
While he drove, the only support that she could offer him was to find him some cigarettes in the truck and light one for him. Other than that, she simply leaned into him to feel his closeness and offer him her own.
111
By the time Daryl caught up with everyone else, the sun was coming up. He was bleary-eyed. He felt like someone had blown hot ash into his eyes, and he only halfway entertained that some of that might be true. A fire had broken out while there had been chaos on the farm, and it wasn't impossible to believe that he might have gotten some ash in his eyes.
Some of the pain he knew, though, was from lack of sleep.
Daryl felt inexplicably numb as he reached the highway. His eyes scanned over the people and the vehicles as they approached. Everyone turned to see them—the last to arrive, presumably.
Daryl's heart and stomach both felt heavy already, and seeing that there were some absent faces only made things feel worse. He opened the truck door and slid out. He'd intended to go around and help Carol, but he didn't make it to open her door. She'd let herself out and met him at the front of the truck.
From somewhere behind the old man and woman, Sophia came running. She practically threw herself at Carol, and Carol dropped down on one knee, clearly overwhelmed, and rocked her daughter. She pulled Sophia down against her, but Sophia didn't complain. She simply sunk into her mother's arms and accepted her affectionate caresses.
There was a long and somewhat awkward silence. It was heavy. It hung over all of them like a big, wet blanket had been dropped over all their shoulders.
"Where's Andrea?" Sophia asked. Her innocence meant that she didn't guard decorum.
When Daryl turned to look at her, Carol was wiping Sophia's hair back from her face as the little girl clung to her doll. Her expression said she already imagined the response to her question. Carol's tears were a pretty clear answer.
"I'm so sorry, Sweetheart," Carol breathed out. "I'm so sorry…I'm so sorry…but—she loved you, Sophia. OK? She loved you so much…so much…and she's OK, now, alright? She's OK…and…"
"And she's with Merle," Daryl said, louder than he meant to say it. His voice cracked. He heard it. He sucked in a breath, tried to steady himself, and focused on his painful, aching throat. "She's—she's with Merle, Soph. And you know—you know how damn much she loved Merle. And she's been—you know she's been missin' him. So—she's happy, Soph. She ain't missin' him no more. And he's happy. And they're havin' a big time, right now."
Sophia looked at Daryl. He had to look away for a second. Her face, screwed up with emotion, was more than he could handle. He had to look away and pinch the inside of his arm as hard as he could—and as discreetly as he could—to keep from letting go of everything he barely had under control at the moment.
"That's right, Sweetheart," Carol said. She'd somehow managed to make herself sound happy and cheerful—even though fresh, wet tears on her face said she didn't feel the way she sounded. "That's right. She's with Merle, and she's…happy. So…so happy."
"The baby?" Sophia asked, wiping her face on her doll—already mourning the loss of a cousin she'd only begun to dream of having.
"She took it with her," Carol said. "But—where she is? They all get to be happy together."
"Bigger'n shit," Daryl said, ashamed that he practically barked the words. "Bigger—bigger'n shit. Merle's just now knowin' about it and…they all knowin' each other. All of 'em's just…lovin' on each other. Right now."
Daryl only became aware, again, of the others when he heard a sob coming from somewhere around the group of them that was gathered together.
"I'm sorry," Hershel offered as he approached Daryl.
Daryl knew that Hershel knew how empty the words were. His own wife was sobbing—presumably over Andrea as much as the other losses. Jo had been fond of Andrea, and Daryl knew she'd had a great deal of hope that she would see the birth of the baby. She'd believed it was a sign that God wanted the world to go on, and now the child was as gone from them as both its parents were.
"Thanks," Daryl said. He looked back at the others. He cleared his throat. "I—I don't see a couple people."
"Jimmy didn't make it," Hershel said. "Patricia." He shook his head. It was clear that the losses pained him. Daryl understood. He clapped the old man on the shoulder and squeezed.
"I'm sorry, too," he said.
By this time, Carol had gotten to her feet. She seemed a little bit shaky and worse for the wear, but maybe they all did. Sophia clung to her.
"What are we going to do now?" Dale asked to anyone who wanted to answer.
"We can head for Washington, maybe," Rick said. "See if there's anything out there. A government…or…"
"You head wherever the hell you wanna go," Daryl said. "As for me and mine? We're gonna—go."
"Go where?" Lori asked.
"Just go," Daryl said. "We don't need Washington. We don't need—a government. We don't even need people. What we need is somewhere to make a home. Somewhere that's safe. We won't find that shit in Washington. So—you go find what you need, but…we're just gonna…go. It's time."
"You can't just leave and strike out alone out there," Rick said. "Nobody can survive like that."
"I can't afford to stay here," Daryl said. "I got better chances of survivin' like that than I do to keep givin' like I been givin'. I done give you all I had to give. More than I ever—than I ever fuckin' wanted to give. We're not goin' to Washington. We're just—going to find a place to rest. Recuperate. Lick our wounds and—figure this shit out."
"We're going with you," Hershel said. "If you'll have us."
Daryl nodded. He smiled at the old man as much as his face would allow him to make that expression at this point.
"I got no complaints about the company," Daryl said.
"We're coming to," Dale said, obviously speaking for Glenn who was already opening the door to the RV.
"Hell—I'm not going to Washington," T-Dog said. "Not after the CDC. This time we'll get blown up for sure."
"That's fine," Daryl said. "Come on—whoever the hell wants to come. Just know—we ain't goin' nowhere special. We ain't goin' nowhere far. We're just—goin' somewhere to hold up for a while and figure shit out."
It wasn't much of a plan. Daryl hadn't had the time or the presence of mind to think of a really solid plan. It seemed, though, that it didn't matter much to most of the people gathered there. Daryl started back toward the truck, helping Sophia up to sit between him and her mother, and everyone else moved toward vehicles at the same time.
111
"Hold on, Baby. Hold on, Baby. Hold on, Baby."
The mantra had become something that Andrea was saying like a meditation more than anything with actual meaning anymore. The words rolled off her tongue, and her ears heard her voice making noise even as they also heard the rapid intake of her breath, but they no longer registered the meaning behind the sounds.
Speaking, as she was, kept her from hyperventilating. It kept her breathing steadier than if she'd just been desperately sucking in air and blowing it out without any purpose and without focusing at all on what she was doing.
Speaking to her baby, too, she realized, made her feel grounded and calmer than she felt otherwise.
Everything inside of Andrea was screaming.
They had left her.
In the chaos of everything, everyone had left. They'd left her behind. They'd taken vehicles and they'd left. The only thing that they'd left—the only vehicles—had been an old farm truck without keys and an old SUV without keys. The truck had probably been sitting there since the early seventies, and Andrea doubted if either would have cranked at all if she'd had keys for them.
They left her alone, surrounded by Walkers and choking on smoke from a fire that was spreading across grass and licking its way up everything dry as quickly as it could. They'd left her as Walkers had started to ignite, the fire catching on their rotting clothes that hung down and dragged across the burning grass.
They'd left her without weapons. Dale had passed her the bag of guns for all of them to use, but guns didn't last long. Bullets were a one-time thing, and it didn't take long for them to be spent. One by one, and very quickly, she'd made her way through the guns—even after she'd found the bag again after losing it for a short moment while she'd run away to try to help Carol.
She could only assume that Carol had gotten off the farm. She could only hope she had. She hoped that, somewhere, Carol was safe with Sophia. She hoped that Daryl had found them—that he'd kept them safe.
Nobody had kept her safe. She told herself that she wasn't angry about it. She'd fallen trying to help Carol and the Walker that had pinned her had outweighed her by a great deal. She'd been so exhausted that the fall had knocked the wind out of her completely and she'd laid under the corpse for longer than she ever meant to remain there. She'd needed a few moments to get her senses about her. She'd needed a few moments to catch her breath. She'd been dizzy, and she'd closed her eyes, and she'd felt protected because, covered with the Walker, no other Walkers bothered her.
She might have stayed there, but something inside her woke her up. Something inside her made her worry about the weight of the Walker and what that might mean for her ability to breathe well. It made her worry about what it might mean for her baby. It reminded her that she was possibly dizzy from hitting her head, and possibly dizzy from inhaling smoke, and it was possible that she might die there if she closed her eyes for too long, like she wanted.
And then, the distant heat of the fire had become not so distant as it had gobbled its way across the grass and come close enough to lick her—close enough that she'd rolled the Walker's body into the spreading flames before she'd managed to scramble away and find the bag for the last few remaining bullets it could offer her.
They weren't enough.
And she had no knife. And she had no weapon. And she was alone. She would die out here—with her lungs burning from fire smoke and her head dizzy from a concussion and, possibly, the smoke inhalation. She would die torn apart by these creatures. And her baby would die—and, with her baby, the last thing she had of Merle would die.
"Hold on, Baby! Hold on, Baby!"
Andrea kept the mantra going. She kept running. She wanted to prolong it as long as she could. She wanted to live as long as she could. She wanted her baby to live as long as she could allow it—she owed it that. She was Mama, and she owed her baby life—whatever life she could give it.
So, she kept running.
And when a Walker caught her, she slipped its grasp somehow. And when another caught her, she somehow slipped away.
She started to think she might live. She started to think that she might keep slipping away. She might somehow find the strength to run forever. She might live—and her baby might live.
"Hold on, Baby! Hold on, Baby! Hold on, Baby!"
She panted as she ran. She had nowhere in particular to go. All she wanted to do was reach whatever place the Walkers, somehow, couldn't reach.
But, then, her foot caught on something. She went down. She went down hard. She tried to catch herself with her hands and knees, but she only somewhat succeeded in breaking her fall. The wind was knocked out of her—not that she'd had a lot to begin with. Her lungs burned like fire. They burned from the smoke. They burned like she'd inhaled the fire, itself, as it had burned near her.
The Walkers were on her before she could move. She rolled to the side, determined to try to kick them off of her.
The Walkers that had lunged at her dropped to the side. One went one way. One went the other. She felt the wet splatter of blood.
The woman standing over her, wearing a cloak, and hood, and holding a long sword dripping with Walker blood, was flanked by two Walkers—their faces gory with blood and mess. The cloaked woman held chains like leashes to the two Walkers. She stood over Andrea and looked down at her.
There was no escaping this woman. Andrea would never slip her like she'd slipped a few of those Walkers.
Her lungs burned terribly. Her head was dizzy. Her body felt heavy. She tried to move an arm just to cover her baby—an instinctual reaction, she recognized, that was useless. It didn't matter, she couldn't fully make the movement.
Her brain had mercy on her and, slipping out of consciousness, allowed her to be unaware of what she might suffer at the hands of this woman.
Andrea welcomed the darkness.