Crickets chirped in the blackened forest, the darkness consuming everything except the tree Randall sat next to, and the woman he's trying to keep alive.
He may not be above begging for his life, but he's not a coward. He decided to do this, he ain't gonna back out now. It's not like he can anyway.
Even if he'd changed his mind about helping her and waiting for her people, he can't leave now.
The temperature hasn't dropped much more since the sun went down and the wind has stopped but while as comforting to his chills as that might be, it makes the forest deathly quiet and is damaging his calm by the minute.
Before the only thing he could hear was rustling leaves and the little sounds nature makes every day. But now, the only thing he can hear is his own blood in his ears, and sometimes her breathing.
Daryl looked for absolutely any sign something bigger than a squirrel has been through here as he walked through the forest with Glenn.
Moonlight streams through the trees, adding to the grey coating the forest but it doesn't provide much in the way of seeing. Just prevents their eyes from totally adjusting to the harsh dark shadows it's casting from the trees.
Fog rolled in with the fall of the sun, looking more like spooky dust than anything but has limited their field vision even further. Even if it isn't too thick, they can barely see 50 feet in front of 'em.
A frustrated sigh growled past Daryl's throat, and if Glenn wasn't standing right next to him, he easily could've mistaken the sound for a walker.
"This is pointless." He should've grabbed Eve's night vision goggles before they left. "Give me that light." Daryl reached his hand out.
Glenn handed over the flashlight in his grip and Daryl looked around again, confirming that it isn't his eyes, or the dark, there really are no tracks.
Another groan of frustration, 'To Hell with this' Daryl turned back. They don't have time for this. They've gotta find Eve.
It got dark faster than Randall thought, and it's freezing. How his breath isn't misting in front of him, he'll never know.
What if they're stuck out here all night?
He thought for sure they wouldn't leave her. But… he can't help but start to wonder if, maybe he was wrong.
He doesn't know why she was out here in the first place, but that other dude looked pretty surprised to see her.
Maybe she went somewhere and wasn't supposed to be back so soon. But that means… if she wasn't supposed to be back this soon, oh no.
No one's looking.
Randall stopped breathing. Lips parting with eyes blowing so wide they stung in the chilled air.
Can he survive an entire night out here on his own? No fire, no food, no sleeping bag, blanket, or even a spare jacket, and looking after her — can she make it through the night?
What if the temperature keeps dropping? What if more roamers roll through? He could barely handle one, on his own.
He can't run, he can't drag her, she's still unconscious — what if…
Randall's eyes slowly turned to her, anxiety calmed only the slightest bit by the fact she's still breathing and has steadily been doing so this whole time.
What if she turns?...
He'll — he'll have to—
Randall, absorbed by his spiralling thoughts, didn't see the light off his right shoulder moving over the trees. Or the two bodies approaching until a twig snapped and he ducked to hide without even thinking, the knife in his hand, clutched close to his chest in a shaking fist.
Roamers— no roamers don't have flashlights and don't talk (even though he can't actually hear what's being muttered). It's gotta be her people!
Randall almost stood up before his blood ran cold.
But if she isn't supposed to be back, then the only person who knows she's out here is…
His throat closed as he swallowed. He'd thought of it before, he thought that guy might come back, but now that it's actually happening— what does he do?
He can't take that guy on. He's probably got both those guns too — all Randall's got is her knife and he can't throw it like she did. Even if he somehow managed to sneak up close enough to that guy, he can't take him down.
What does he do? What does he do!?
In a desperate blind attempt, he shook her again, trying to wake her up. If she wakes up, maybe she'll know what to do — she could throw this knife or some other ninja shit like she fought him earlier.
"Eve" a quiet voice called out soft but urgent.
'Wait that, that don't sound like that guy. I coulda sworn his voice was deeper'
"There's two sets a tracks right here."
"Are they Eve's?" Glenn immediately asked.
"Nah," Daryl shook his head. These two definitely belong to two separate people.
They're too big and too deep to be Eve's, Daryl's familiar (possibly a little too familiar) with her tracks. He sees them so often, it'd be difficult not to. Plus her left boot sometimes leaves little cleft marks from the 9 slices on the side.
"Shane must've followed him a lot longer than he said." 'And in a different direction.' Glenn continued following Daryl.
A glisten against a tree caught Daryl's attention and soon the flashlight and the hunter stalked straight up to get a closer look at the red liquid. "There's fresh blood on this tree."
He can't tell if it's human or not but it's certainly at the right height to be someone's head.
'Or face' that whispering voice drowning in suspicious fury helpfully supplied from his subconscious.
Glenn looked at the blood, but he saw something much different than Daryl. It almost looks like… a piece of skin.
Glenn looked around, the eerie forest raising the hairs on his neck even more so than they have been since the four of them split up.
He can't shake the feeling they're being watched.
"More tracks," Daryl started forward again, eyes trained to the forest floor once again. "Looks like they're walking in tandem."
"Whoa, hold up." Daryl stopped, looking around. It took him a second to realize but these aren't just tracks. "This dust up, somethin' went down here—" Daryl froze.
"What? What is it?" Glenn questioned, a little louder than the murmurs they've been exchanging up to now.
'It can't be.' Daryl stared at the cleft boot marks in the dirt. Scattered, solid, more pressed into the dirt than usual, "Eve."
"What?" Glenn looked at the ground as if he'd be able to tell. "How? — How do you know? Are you sure?" the baseball capped man fired off question after question.
Daryl didn't answer, moving forward, desperate to figure out what the Hell happened. His heart rate sped up, a sweat breaking out on his forehead as he saw more literrings of blood and his flashlight froze on a large rock, coated in blood.
An animal call distracted the pizza boy and accidentally walked straight into Daryl's shoulder.
"Sorry" he spoke out of instinct even before he actually recognized the hunter hadn't even moved. Glenn followed his gaze to where the light was shining and stopped breathing.
"Eve" Glenn whispered out as loud as he dared, unable to keep the worry or urgency out of his voice now as his eyes moved rapidly over the forest.
The flashlight moved to a dark mound just a few feet from the rock and a strange rush of relief flooded over tension that's somehow still mounting even noticing the body to clearly be a large man.
Daryl moved closer without even thinking and knelt down.
Blood and bits of brain matter dangled and spread, tangling through the scraggly hair at the top of the head, and given the evidence it's safe to say it was Eve's knife but… this wasn't her.
"This is gettin' weird." Glenn almost shuddered. He has a bad feeling — a really bad feeling about this whole thing. Has since the second Randall got out and Shane came back with a bloody face, but it just tripled.
Even he knows Eve never goes for the top a the head.
The bone's too thick up there, it could chip the blades. She always goes for the softer parts of the skull; the temple, the base, the eye socket, even up through the bottom of the jaw, but never the forehead or the top. Hell she'd put it through the nose before there.
This is sloppy.
Daryl looked around, trying to put the whole scene together in his head, while Glenn desperate but blindly looked for her.
Only Glenn found something Daryl had been too distracted with the walker to notice.
A trail.
One even a city kid like him can recognize. A path of dirt dragging towards the bushes; almost looking as if somebody had raked the leaves away.
"Look," Glenn carefully set his hand on Daryl's shoulder bringing the hunter's attention and more importantly the flashlight to the trail.
Daryl stood, taking fast long strides towards the bushes; probably faster than he should have. But the sight of all this blood, the dead walker that obviously wasn't Eve's doing, the drag marks, and the fact there are two other sets of prints in this ring of mayhem, didn't let him think about anything else. Only the worst case scenarios running through his head because now they know she isn't back at the house like they'd hoped. Her prints only appear here. If she'd gone back, they'd have come across hers a long time ago.
He didn't make it to the tree however, a bush rustled to their left and they both froze.