Red River Blue
Chapter 36
"Where's yer sister?," River asked. Her hand was pressed against her face, holding pressure on the side of her jaw where Daryl's shoulder had rocketed into it. River hoped it wouldn't leave a bruise. No matter what she said, if there was a bruise on her face people would think Merle hit her. River didn't know exactly what had happened between her husband and Glenn, but whatever it was both him and Maggie seemed determined not to let it go. They had spread some rumors around and because of the obvious crook in her nose where River has been hit all those years ago the rumors were easy to believe. She tried to remember that other people's opinions didn't matter to her, but the truth was it made River angry to know people were talking about her and Merle behind their backs. Merle had done everything he could for these people, but sometimes River felt like no matter what he did it was never going to be enough.
"She went out earlier to check her snares," Wren answered. The worried look on her mother's face had her up off her bunk and on her feet in seconds. Carl popped up behind her. River cursed under her breath. Daryl was her top concern at the moment so she decided to ignore the fact that Wren and Carl were reading together on her bunk again. Alone in her room with the curtain pulled most of the way closed. One crisis at a time was enough.
"What's wrong?," Carl asked. His hand moved instinctively to rest lightly on the gun that was strapped to his belt as he moved half a step in front of Wren. He had spent enough time around Wren's parents to know her mother didn't panic for no reason.
"Daryl's after yer dad," River admitted.
"Over Carol?," Carl asked. River nodded, wondering how much the boy knew and where he had gotten his information. She didn't really want her daughters knowing she had burned the bodies of two people after watching Carol stab one of them in the head. Not because she was worried about what they might think of her, but because she wanted to spare them from as much of the horror of this new world as she could. Carl turned toward Wren, nudging her towards the corner where Harley kept her personal belongings. "Get that stun gun your sister has," he told the girl.
River thought about asking Wren what in the hell Harley was doing with a stun gun, but figured the answer was obvious. Harley was probably keeping it for protection or planning to shock the shit out of someone that had pissed her off. Either situation was equally likely. Wren pulled out a small black rectangular device from under a neatly folded pile of her sister's clothing and placed it into her mother's outstretched hand. River turned the device around in her hands until she found the button that turned it on. Being careful not to get her hands too close to the live end, she pressed the button on the side resulting in an audible zapping noise.
Now that she was armed with the ability to stop two grown men from fighting, River turned on her heel and started running in the direction Daryl had taken. Half filled with concern for their family members and half excited to see a possible altercation, Wren and Carl hurried along behind her. River was breathing hard by the time she got to the door that led outside her cell block and into the courtyard. The humidity of the hot georgia morning hit her in the face like a wet washcloth and she had to slow down her pace in order to catch her breath.
Despite the heat, River felt the hair on the back of her neck prickle up. Something didn't feel right outside. At the time River couldn't put her finger on what was wrong. She would realize later that all the walkers were missing from the fenceline. Cleared out by the man that was about to attack them and destroy their home. But at the time she was too busy chasing after Daryl to take notice of her surroundings. Circling around the outside of the building, River rushed into Rick's cellblock. But she was already too late to stop the fight.
Several people were standing around with shocked looks on their faces. Rick and Daryl were up on the catwalk struggling with each other. Daryl must have come at Rick without warning because he had Rick's body pinned against the bars of someone's cell, punching him repeatedly in the side of his body. Glenn was yelling for them to stop, but he didn't look eager to get physically involved.
"Where's Hershel?," River asked, shouldering Glenn out of her way so she could get to the metal stairs that led up to the catwalk. When she asked where Herhsel was, she didn't really want an answer. She wanted Glenn to go get the man. Daryl would listen to Hershel. At least she hoped he would. Anger ran in the family but while Merle had the shorter fuse, Daryl's was much harder to put out once it had been ignited. River knew he probably wasn't going to listen to her.
"Stop it!," River hollered. She wasn't too happy with Rick herself, but getting into a fight with him wasn't going to bring Carol home. Daryl was stronger and bigger than her, but River grabbed the arm he was using to punch Rick with both her hands and put all her body weight into keeping him from swinging again. Her mistake was she forgot that she was holding the taser in her right hand. When she grabbed Daryl, she squeezed down on the trigger button and shocked him hard on the inner flesh of his upper arm. She also managed to shock herself quite badly on the hand.
River yelped and dropped the stun gun on her own foot, feeling the stinging pain shoot through the baby toe on her right foot. Daryl had not only been punching Rick, he had his other arm on the man's throat. Once he was able to get a full breath of air in, Rick realized his body was no longer pinned against the bars of the cell. Since he felt he was acting in self defense and was in more than a slight panic at the thought of almost being choked to death, he fought back without fully assessing the situation. Rick swung once and missed Daryl's face by a hair. Then he punched low. This time he made contact, hitting Daryl in the gut and sending him falling backwards.
Daryl slammed into River. She was already off balance and the weight of his body sent her tumbling over the guard rail and almost onto the cement floor below. She managed to catch the top bar with the one hand that hadn't just been shocked with thousands of volts of electricity. Her body swung down and her ribs slammed into the lower bar on the guard rail. River let out a strangled yelp. She was fighting to breathe and she could feel her fingers slipping. River knew if she fell she was done. She focused all her energy on not letting go of the metal bar in her hand. The fall was too high and the floor was too hard. She would break her ankles at the very least. And a broken ankle was a death sentence.
River felt a strong hand grip her wrist just as the bar slipped from her fingers. Then the loud rip as the armpit seams of her shirt gave way. She looked up. Rick and Daryl were pulling her back up and over the guard rail together. Daryl grabbed her by the wrist and Rick had leaned over and taken hold of her by the back of the shirt like she was a naughty kitten being carried away by it's mother. Soon two pairs of strong hands were gripping her and she felt herself lifted back up and over the rail like she weighed nothing at all. Her feet hit the floor with a squeak before she felt her knees going out from under her. Daryl steadied her on her feet with an arm around her waist. Then Wren was rushing into her arms.
Hugging her daughter close, River glanced up at the two men that had just saved her from a nasty fall. Both still appeared angry, but at least they were keeping their hands to themselves. For now.
"Y'all should shake hands," River said, offering up her opinion on the matter.
"Ain't shakin' his fuckin' hand," Daryl grumbled. Maybe once Carol was back safe and Rick had apologized to her. Maybe then Daryl would shake his hand. Then again maybe not. He had forgiven Rick for the incident involving Merle's hand. But he had not forgotten it. Putting Carol in possible danger was just another bullshit thing Rick had done in a long list of bullshit things.
Before the conversation could go any further the floor under all of their feet shook. A loud boom and the smell of smoke had people running and ducking for cover. The prison was under attack.
TWD
Harley liked being alone in the woods. She had never cared much for being around large groups of people. Not even back in regular life. That was the main reason she hated high school. And living at the prison was basically like living in high school all the time. The gossiping. The stares. All day every day people were in her face. It made her stir crazy. She knew she wasn't really supposed to go out by herself. But sometimes she just needed space to breathe.
The day was hot and muggy, but it was cooler under the shade of the tall trees that surrounded the prison. The snares hadn't been very lucky lately. Her uncle Daryl said in his simple and direct way of speaking that they were trying to feed too many people off a patch of land that was simply too small to support their needs. The woods closest to the prison were getting over hunted and the nearby lakes and streams were getting over fished.
Most people were scared to go too far outside the prison. But not Harley. She simply marked herself a path, carving little arrows in the trees and painting them with a bottle of Wren's hello kitty pink glitter nail polish. Instead of setting her snares in the area right outside the fences, like most people had been doing, she walked a few miles away and set them.
The walk out usually took her about a half hour. The walk back often took longer, depending on how many walkers the smell of the game she was carrying attracted. The first dead ones she saw were smashed together in a small cluster. Once corner of Harley's mouth kicked up into a grin. The dead didn't gather together for no reason. Seeing them meant she had probably gotten something in her first trap.
Harley was careful to stay far enough back that she didn't have to worry. She pulled an arrow from the sheath on her back and notched it in her bow. As her arms and shoulders moved Harley could feel the lightweight shirt she was wearing sticking to the skin on her back, which was damp with a light sheen of sweat. They were all constantly trying to find the balance between dressing for the hot and humid georgia heat and keeping the skin of their bodies protected. A leather jacket could save you from getting scratched by a walker. But it could also make you sick from heat exhaustion.
On this particular day Harley had dressed for comfort. She wore long tank top that dipped down low on the armpit areas of the sides, exposing the sides of the bra she had taken from some silly boutique style shop downtown near the fancy baby store they had been looting for Judith. She had laughed her ass off at the three hundred and twenty dollar price tag on the thing. But once she had it on she quickly decided she could get used to being rich. Not only was it the most comfortable bra she had ever worn. But it looked good on her too.
Harely had never spent much time looking in the mirror. But once she was alone she had stripped off her clothes and taken a good long look at herself in the mirror. Just to see what such expensive undercothes looked like. It had been so long since she looked in the mirror that she almost didn't recognize the person staring back at her. The tall slim girl that had finally grown into her nose just like her mother always told her that she would. Her full breasts still looked a little too big for her frame. But they were balanced out now by the curve of her hips, which had filled in as the world emptied out. Her hair was still unruly but the weight of the length and not washing it as often as she used to had tamed the curls down.
Looking at herself in the mirror, dressed up in a fancy bra and panties set like she was getting ready for a date, made her feel a funny tingling down in the bottom of her stomach. It felt so foreign she had immediately turned away from the mirror and yanked her ratty pajamas on to cover her naked flesh. As she walked out to check her snares she had been thinking about it. Thinking but mostly trying not to think. Trying to push thoughts of the dreams she kept having out of her mind. Dreams of some faceless handsome boy reaching around behind her back and unsnapping the tiny gold hooks of her fancy lace trimmed bra. She could never see his face but he was tall and he had strong shoulders and gentle hands. Even if there had been someone she liked back at the prison, which there was not, Harely reminded herself that she had no time for boys. Boys were nothing but trouble. Her mother had ground that into her head since she was still in pigtails.
Harley felt the muscles in her back. They bunched together, strong from all the time she spent working at the prison and hunting in the woods. She practiced shooting her old bow enough that she was strong enough to use a long bow now. Her compound bow with the girly pullies and wheels had been handed down to Wren. Holding an arrow notched in her bow, Harley was reminded of something she felt she had forgotten when she was staring at her body in the mirror. There was nothing wrong with looking pretty. But her body was good for so much more that being some kind of ordament. Her body was strong.
Harley stared down the shaft of her arrow, setting her sights on the walker she wanted to take down first. A slight whoosh of air sounded as she released the first arrow. She was already pulling another arrow from her sheath as the sastifying thunk of her first arrow hitting it's target broke through the silence of the woods around her.
Stepping over the pile of walkers on the ground around her, Harley knelt down and checked the first trap. She mostly had snares. But she had set up a few live traps too, taken from the back room of a mostly looted tractor supply store. Seeing the walkers gathered around had been promising. But sadly there was only a very scared looking cat inside Harley's trap. It's fur was long and near the tail end, the animal was covered in burrs. Harley sighed and looked in at it's big frightened eyes.
For a moment Harley considered killing and skinning the animal. When it was all said and done, meat was meat. But once the cat let out a sad little howl Harley's compassion took over. She set the cage down and clicked her tounge at the animal, trying to coax it from the cage without reaching in and grabbing it. The cat howed again, sounding even more miserable than it had before.
"Yer lucky Glenn's not here," Harley informed the small animal, "He'd eatcha fer sure." Harley giggled at her own bad joke, glad her mother wasn't around to hear her and scold her dad about it later. Everyone knew Asian people ate cats. Her dad hadn't told her that. She had seen that shit right there on the history channel.
Coaxed by the gentle timber of Harley's voice, the cat slowly eased itself out of the trap and darted off into the closest bush. Harley reset the trap with a dollop of spam, hoping to catch better than a cat the next time she came out. The next trap she checked was empty. But Harley got lucky with her snares. By the time she started walking back towards the prison she had two fat rabbits and a groundhog hanging over her shoulder.
Harley rather stay out in the woods all day, but she hadn't told her mother she was leaving. If she didn't turn up by lunch time, she knew her mother would probably have every redneck in the damn place out looking for her. So Harley headed back towards the prison. She headed back but she took her time, walking leisuely and humming a song to herself that she had been trying to work out some lyrics for.
It had been months since they ran into any people outside the small group. And the last person they brought in was Bob. The man was a worthless drunk but he wasn't exactly a threat. That in combination with the warmth of the sunny day and her happiness at having caught dinner lured Harley into a false sense of security. She always listened for walkers, especially when she had fresh game on her. But if she had been listening more carefully instead of humming and singing to herself she would have realized she was being followed before it was too late.