Almost done with season 2! Yayeet! So excited. Hope you like this chapter- and please leave a reviews. Reviews are my most favorite thing in the entire world.

Wendy and Lily- if I could hug you, trust me, I would. You guys are Thebes's best people ever.

Daryl POV

"Run fast for your mother and fast for your father. Run for your children, for your sisters and your brothers. Leave all your love and your longing behind. You can't carry it with you if you want to survive." - Dog Days are Over, Florence and the Machind

It was a hard feeling to describe, holding, the strong emotions that were bubbling inside of me. I held Nicole close to my chest, sighing quietly. Like a small child, she burned her face in my shirt, blocking out the rest of the world. I could feel her tears soaking through the fabric, but I didn't care about that right now. Her entire body shuddered and trembled with each breath, each hiccup. Instinctively, I wrapped both of my arms around her, covering as much of her as I could. That was all I wanted to do right now. I just wanted to shield her from this messed up, horrible world. I wanted to hold her and tell her that everything was going to be okay, but I knew I couldn't say that, because I didn't know. For all I knew, we would all be dead tomorrow. So I did the next best thing. I held her close and let her cry.

Everyone was staring at me, eyes wide with alarm, all except Rick, Lori, and Carl, who were huddled together, not paying attention to anything in the world except for each other. I felt the mix of gazes on me, and I was about to yell at them to mind their own damn business, but when I moved Nicole whimpered in a way that was so pitiful that I couldn't bring myself to do anything about it.

"Her brother died." I said coolly. This caused everyone to look at me, even the whole Grimes clan, who looked as if someone had just hit them all in the gut with a baseball bat. I realized that this was the first time one of us had spoken in about 5 minutes, breaking the dead silence. I sighed a little, upon seeing Rick's surprised eyes at the way I was holding Cole. "She looked like she needed it." And with that, I looked back down, not bothering to see their reactions. I didn't want to. I knew I was going to get some weird speech from Rick later, but now wasn't the time to worry.

After another minute of silence, Cole finally pulled away, looking up at me with tear-stained eyes. She opened her mouth to speak, but no sounds came out, almost like she had lost the power to do it. I simply nodded at her, giving her a silent answer, one that told her that she didn't have to say anything, hell, she never even had to mention this again. It was obvious to me that she saw me like another brother to add to her list, and I was okay with that. It killed me, but I was okay with that.

"We need to go back and bury him." Hershel said quietly, leaning his rifle on his shoulder. We all nodded in agreement. As painful as it was, we couldn't just leave his body out there.

"What's that?" Patricia said suddenly, her finger pointing towards the field Cole and Rick had just come from.

"Not sure." Rick said, peering into the gloom. "I think it's...Shit." His face went as pale as a sheet. "Walkers." He hissed. As a reaction, every single one of us snapped to attention, our minds instantly clearing. We all looked intently into the distance.

"Those can't be walkers." Andrea said. "There's got to be…." Her eyes widened in horror, her hand going to the gun at her side.

They were coming up on us, like a growing, heaving, moving mass. They were a tidal wave, hell bent on our destruction. They were a super storm, heading straight for us, ready to rip us apart piece by piece. Beth gave a small squeak of fear and grabbed her father's arm. Lori pulled Carl close to her, and the boy didn't even protest. The fear around us was palpable, surrounding us in a thick, suffocating fog. And this wasn't the normal kind of fear, the kind that shook you a little. This was the kind of fear that knocked a man off of his feet, that chilled him to his very core. It was a sense of panic, of hopelessness, of fear, but it was masked by a calm face, one that I had perfected. It was the face I wore when I knew that I had to be the strong one. I could break down later, but not now. They needed me to be Daryl. They needed me to be the downhome, backwoods, crossbow shooting redneck that never backed down from a challenge and never wavered in fear. I couldn't let them see me break. I turned to Rick, and saw the same look of false stoicness in his eyes. He knew what was happening.

"We need to get out of here." He said finally, his voice only wavering slightly. "Towards the house." Everyone else just stood there, staring at him like he was crazy. Only Cole looked like she knew what was happening. She turned her hard gaze towards me. All of the sudden, she didn't look so anymore. She looked pissed.

"You heard what he said. Run!" Nicole yelled, snapping the others out of their trance. Immediately, they took off running. The hoard was moving fast, faster than usual, almost as if they were running towards us.

Rick began shouting orders at us. "T, throw the gas cans in the backs. Carl and Lori, get the food from the basement. Carol, Beth, and Maggie, get our go bags from the top. Everyone else get your weapons and get the cars running. We need to move. They'll be here any minute." Everyone hollered an unintelligible response. I looked over at Nicole beside me. Even while she was running she was getting her guns prepared.

After that it was total chaos.

We all got to the house around the same time, and immediately started running around like chickens with our heads cut off. I sprinted over towards the couch, where my stuff was. I stopped in surprise when I saw that my bag had been packed. My extra arrows were tied together next to them. Someone had gotten my stuff together earlier. Probably when they thought Randall would bring his group back. I thought to myself. Well, whatever reason they did this for, I thanked my lucky stars. Everyone else was running around in the house, their stuff all packed like mine. They had been prepared for this.

"Start the cars!" Rick screamed, stuffing guns and ammo in his holsters. I took off towards the back door, bumping shoulders with Glenn on the way there. I was going to my bike, which was next to Hershel's truck. I loved that bike. I wasn't big on the decals, but it was my brother's, and it was one of the last things of his that I had. Damnit, I was taking that bike with me. I grabbed a gas can and knelt by the bike. I could almost hear the walkers getting closer and closer every minute.I was gassing up my bike when I heard an ear-piercing scream. I instantly shot up, running around the side of the house towards the sound. I arrived just in time to see Patricia crumble to the ground, a large chunk taken out of her neck.

"No!" I screamed, loading my bow and releasing it just as quickly, nailing the ravenous monster in the middle of the head, blowing it backwards. I took a moment to look around and saw a horrible sight. The walkers were on us, faster than we had thought. This was it.

"Rick!" I called. "We gotta move!" I turned towards the house and saw Rick run out onto the porch, bags in his hands.

"Shit." He hissed. "We gotta move." He called into the house, trying to catch everyone else's attention. "Get to the cars, now!" He turned back to me, his gun raised. "Daryl, we gotta go!" And he released a round, unloading it into a monster's head. "Run!"

I turned and saw that the walkers were surro being us now. I took off running towards my bike, loading an arrow in my bow, ready to shoot. I could hear the other cars turning on. I strapped my stuff down and started the bike, watching as Hershel, Maggie, Beth, and Glenn flew towards the truc.

"Where's Patricia?" Beth cried, looking around wildly.

"Probably in another car." Hershel said, ushering her into the car. "We need to go." And with that, I pulled forwards, peeling away from the house, towards the driveway, completely not caring about the fact that I was off road. The sound of bullets rang through the air, cutting the eerie silence of the evening like a knife. The moans of the undead were deafening now. I pulled around the house, but was stopped by a giant hoard of walkers.

"Damnit." I grumbled, pulling my gun out of my belt, loading it quickly. I shot down the ones in front of me. I looked over to see the others on the porch, sending out a hail of gunfire towards the heaving mass. Rick was in front, using one of Cole's AKs. Lori was beside him, shooting as precisely as she could.

Hershel pulled up beside me, in the truck. He rolled the windows down, and Glenn leant out and began to shoot, with Maggie doing the same out the other window.

"Patricia!" Beth screamed when she caught sight of her friend's dead form. "No!" Her voice broke in pain as she leaned out the window, extending a hand in her direction. My heart broke for the innocent girl. When we had first arrived she had been wide-eyed, innocent, hopeful. Now she was cold, broken, hard. This world took any bit of hope and squashed it like an ant under a boot.

I kept firing, my attempts at focusing on my targets proving futile. We were being overrun, destroyed. We wouldn't be able to keep this up much longer.

And it was weird. Somehow, in all of this chaos, my mind wasn't focused on the walkers. I wasn't thinking about the fact that I could die, or the fact that we had to leave. No. Those were not the thoughts in my mind. There was only one thought going through my head at this point.

Where the hell is Nicole?