The flashlight clicked off and in a heartbeat both of them ran with light careful steps behind two trees, away from those drag marks.
Randall set the woman back down against a different tree. Unable to drag her any farther away.
He has to get farther away from that guy — and from where they fought. If that dude finds either of them they're both dead.
He almost screamed the second he moved around the other side of the tree. It's not every day you almost end up with a cleaved machete and a bolt to the head.
"Whoa whoa whoa— I ain't dead!" Randall barely got the words out before Daryl slammed him up against a tree.
The hunter's blood boiled. A vice-like grip wrapping around Randall's throat accompanying a dark almost in-human growl.
"You got about 3 seconds to tell me where she is before I rip yer eyes out and show ya what yer own throat looks like."
"Right there! Jesus— She's right there! Right there!" Randall frantically pointed to the bush, coughing out his words with the increasing pressure on his throat.
Glenn all but ran around around the tree and immediately dropped to his knees. "Eve!"
"She's hurt real bad." Randall coughed, trying to tap out on the scary dude's wrist but the exact opposite happened.
"What did you do to her!?" Daryl pressed harder on Randall's throat.
"Eve!" Glenn shook her almost timidly but with a sense of urgency. "Eve, can you hear me?"
"What do I do? I don't know what to do." Glenn wracked his brain for things Eve would do, what Hershel might say or do, even what Rick or Daryl might do — despite one of the two being right next to him dealing with the escapee.
"I was keepin' her safe—!" Randall coughed clawing at Daryl's arm as the tree bark dug further into his back. "I thought you were that guy comin' back for 'er! — For us!"
Daryl's eyes narrowed dangerously. "What guy?"
"I don't know — that dude who was with that other guy first time y'all was gonna let me go. The bald one—"
Randall barely got a chance to answer before Glenn frantically stage-whispered, "Daryl, she doesn't look so good. We gotta get her to Hershel."
Daryl leaned closer to Randall. A deep growl rumbling low, "You best be tellin' the truth. And you better pray she's okay."
Daryl let Randall go and the kid coughed, grasping his throat and almost fell down, while the hunter moved to Glenn.
The first thing that caught his sight was the glint on her forehead. The thick red ooze that caused a spark of iron in his mouth, traced back to a cloth tied around her head, soaked in red.
Daryl carefully peeled up the edge of it and mirrored Glenn's grimace beside him at the large cut splitting her forehead.
Glenn looked away as he put the makeshift bandage back in place. His eyes caught on the walker on the ground, and at Randall peeking around the tree at them but not daring to move closer but rather than looking at him, Glenn's gaze stopped on the steel clutched in his palm.
Eyebrows furrowing, he looked back and forth between Randall and the body. "Did you— were you the one who took down that walker?"
Randall glanced at it, nodding with a muttered "Yeah" but couldn't find it in himself to be proud or cocky like he normally would.
Not because the redneck dude's looking at him now and making him wanna run away or anything.
Eve groaned all of a sudden and Daryl froze, for a split second one terrifying thought flicked through his mind before he watched her throat bob with a swallow and unfocused amber eyes slowly opened as if they'd been glued shut.
"Oh thank god," Glenn breathed, tense shoulders slumping with the weight of thinking his best friend was... it doesn't matter. She's awake.
Her hand reached for her head and Daryl caught her wrist. "Don't"
It took a moment to get her bearings but she looks even more confused than them.
Turning to glance up at Randall, a sharp breath stopped her in her tracks, eyes coming to sudden focus as her hands went to her side.
"What is it?" Daryl looked down. "Let me see."
He moved her hands, passing Glenn the flashlight and she grit her teeth hissing against the cold air while he lifted her shirt.
Glenn's hand covered his mouth, staring at the bruises that had nearly been healed now coloring over her potentially cracked ribs, once again.
If they weren't actually cracked before, they certainly are now. They look so much worse and her face is pinched so much harder than last time.
"Who."
Daryl's voice dropped almost two octaves, dangerously steady as he carefully rolled her shirt back down. His white knuckled fist shaking around his bow.
Eve looked him dead in the eyes. A serious light that doesn't happen often, shining through the screaming of pain. "Finally made his move."
Daryl went rigid; stiller than a photograph.
Murderous eyes turned back the way they came as if Shane would be able to feel the knife Daryl's going to dig under his ribcage the moment he lays eyes on him.
"Can you stand?" Glenn trying to ignore the homicidal rage rolling off the man beside him.
Daryl obviously knows who she's talking about and he wants to know too but they've got bigger things to worry about right now. Like getting her back to the house asap.
Eve nodded — carefully — and as soon as she started to get up, Daryl finally moved.
He passed his crossbow to Glenn and all but dead-lifted her off the ground, pulling her arm across his shoulders and wrapping the other around her back; being careful of her ribs.
He couldn't grab where you normally would when helping someone like this, so he had to settle for holding farther down, on her hip instead. Seeing as how it's the only part of her torso that hasn't taken a beating in the last two weeks.
Eve leaned so heavily against his side he's practically dragging her, but it's less because she can't hold her own wait and more because when she stood her vision swam. Her own dizziness is giving her vertigo and her skull feels like it's splitting open.
She can't help hunching over. Her ribcage feels like it's gonna cave in but even as they'd barely started moving, Eve stopped the moment she looked at the walker on the ground; Daryl coming to a halt with her.
"What?" The man followed her line of sight.
Eve reached for the light in Ace's hand — who handed it over without question — and slowly looked over the corpse.
Her eyebrows furrowed as she double checked. 'There's no blood on him. Not even around the mouth.'
The only blood anywhere on this walker, is the stuff seeping out of the hole in its forehead.
Eve looked at Daryl and it took him a moment to put homicidal thoughts aside and see it too.
"He's got no bites." Daryl looked at Glenn, Eve turning her head slowly towards the other two boys as well, blinking a bit harshly in the dark.
Glenn was confused for a second before he followed her eyes to the body and both of them finally got what she was after. "None that you can see."
"Maybe he got scratched?" Randall offered and tried not to shrink back or look too intimidated when all 3 looked at him.
Glenn nodded and crouched, searching the body while the others kept a lookout, Eve holding the light for him.
The arms, the legs, the stomach, the face, the neck, its back, nothing. Almost two minutes passed and he turned back up at them. "There's nothing here. I can't find anything."
Eve tilted her head in confusion, bad move. Her vision swam and she swallowed hard; trying not to wince at the pull the contracting muscles created in her chest.
"Let me." Daryl turned his attention back from the shadowed trees.
Glenn stood and transferred Eve's weight onto him so Daryl could take a look. An experienced tracker and hunter might see something he's not but he swears, there's nothing there.
And he's right. There's nothing to be found.
Daryl searched and searched for a cause of death but no matter how many times he looks it over, he can't find one.
It's like he just died. Maybe he ate something?
Randall watched Daryl turn the man over for the third time, and a small black case slip out of the dead man's pocket.
Having no filter + being nervous, his mouth fired off the first thing that came to mind. "Diabetic?"
Everyone looked at him. Then the box. Then the corpse, before sharing looks between themselves.
'Diabetic — could be cause of death, but that doesn't explain how he turned.' The gears in Eve's head began to turn. 'Is there any way to turn without visible marks?'
'Maybe… he wasn't scratched on the outside. Possibly in his mouth somewhere? I don't know, that's a bit of a stretch.' Eve grimaced with another onset of pain through her throbbing skull.
'If he ate somethin' that might a offed him.' Daryl chewed the inside of his bottom lip. 'Food poisoning or somethin' spoiled, Hell maybe son a bitch got desperate enough to try to eat walker.'
A twig snapped nearby, startling them all out of Sherlock Holmes mode back into the reality of where they are as four sets of eyes shot to scan their surroundings in every direction.
One by one, they returned to each other upon coming up empty. Eve doing her scan a little quicker than usual and immediately squinting upon returning her eyes to where the light in her hand shines.
Eve put her finger to her lips, looking directly at Randall whose mouth is already in shape to say something but cut himself off and clamped his jaw shut the moment he saw her.
Daryl stood, taking his crossbow and double checked to make sure it was loaded before motioning for the group to follow.
Eve pulled her knife, finally noticing Randall has the other in his hand but she can think about why he's got that and she doesn't, later.