AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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As soon as they'd finished breakfast, Daryl had been dragged off by Shane so that the man could make a request of him in private. He'd asked Daryl if he had any mechanical knowledge, probably jumping to conclusions based on his own inner collection of stereotypes, but had been pleased to find that this particular stereotype turned out to be accurate.
Since they'd lost people, they had a surplus of vehicles. The bright side to that was that Daryl was going to get to go through and choose the soundest—or desirable for other reasons, honestly—vehicles available for the group to drive. They would siphon gas out of the rest and divide it as evenly as possible among the cars they would take with them.
It was a good idea, and Daryl had agreed to it immediately. He didn't even have to ask Shane why the man was addressing him at some distance from the group, though. Any idiot could see that Shane wasn't pleased with Rick's presence at the camp. Daryl assumed that a great deal of it had to do with the family that they'd thought was Shane's, but Daryl didn't much care for digging too deeply into the business of others.
All that mattered to Daryl was that he felt like Shane's reasoning was sound, his request was in the best interest of them all, and Daryl understood his hesitancy to bring up anything around the man who seemed to want to control everything and, besides that, to be contrary to everyone else on what appeared to be principle alone.
They said goodbye to a few scattered people they'd collected during their time there, and those people set off in search of whatever they believed they would find. Daryl practically forgot their names and their faces before the sound of their engines was too far away to hear. He had no time or energy for remembering people, honestly, that held little importance for him or his family.
He inspected the vehicles and gave Shane his honest opinions. Beyond concerns of reliability, Dale was taking his RV. The vehicle would offer them shelter in an emergency and, therefore, was valuable. Daryl was taking his truck because he could load Merle's bike on the back. The motorcycle was loud, but it was fast and easy to maneuver—sentimental value aside—and it could prove valuable if Daryl needed to move around quickly and easily to check out whatever might lie ahead of them.
The rest of the vehicles selected were reliable.
They broke camp by packing up everything they had in the various vehicles. They siphoned gas and filled tanks with what they found.
Everyone stuck to what they were doing, really, and got everything ready to go rather quickly.
When they were packed, and people were already loading cars, Daryl dropped an arm around Carol's shoulder and pulled her close to him. She practically melted into him, the way she always did, and wrapped her arms around him.
Daryl took one last long look at the camp—a place he'd been many times before, but never quite like this. He got that distinct feeling in his gut that he'd never come back here. He'd never see this place again, just like he got the feeling that he'd never again lay eyes on the sleepy little town of East River.
There must have been something in Carol that could read his emotions. She tightened her hug.
"You OK?" She asked quietly.
"Gotta be," Daryl offered.
"You wanna talk about it?" She asked.
Daryl smiled to himself. Carol urged him to talk about things. She urged him to talk about his feelings. That wasn't something that Dixons used to do—talk about their feelings. They used to express their feelings with slamming doors, fists, and open palms or backhands. They used to drown their feelings or try to send them away with drugs.
That kind of behavior frightened Carol, though, because she knew how destructive it was, and Daryl would never let Carol be frightened—not even for a moment—not if he could help it.
Dixons were changing, perhaps, slowly. Now Dixons talked about their feelings, and Daryl had to admit that he preferred the new way of dealing with things over the old.
"Not yet," he said. "Right now, I guess I'm just—sayin' goodbye to somethin'."
"To Merle?" Carol asked.
Daryl's chest tightened. His throat cramped. He nodded his head because, at that moment, he couldn't have talked about it if he'd wanted to. He was choking on it, and he wasn't ready to move all the way to the point where Dixons cried about their feelings—at least not in public and beyond the safety of a private space shared only with the person to which they'd chosen to be bonded for life and, hopefully, something beyond.
"When you're ready, OK?" Carol said. Daryl nodded his head and Carol leaned to kiss his jaw. She buried her face against his neck. He felt her sniff him. He probably smelled like sweat, and gas, and dirt, but she still seemed to love to smell him.
She stood there with him for a long moment. She ignored he comings and goings of the others with him.
And then, when he was ready to go, he turned and pulled her along with him as they walked toward the two vehicles their family would be taking—the truck with the bike already loaded and the four-door car that Carol had been driving for years, but which Daryl knew was reliable because he'd seen to having nearly everything on it upgraded or replaced.
Andrea was standing by the car with a hand on Sophia's shoulder.
"I think everyone's ready to go," she said.
"Are you OK?" Carol asked her.
"I think—right now I'm just here," Andrea said.
"Good enough for now," Daryl said. He looked at Carol. "How you wanna do this? All y'all pile into the car? I'll follow with the truck?"
"Why don't you ride with Daryl for a while?" Andrea asked, directing her words at Carol. "Sophia can keep me company."
"I can," Sophia offered. "I'm good company."
Carol smiled at Sophia.
"You are," she assured her. "Are you sure you're not going to be too scared?"
"Andrea's got her gun," Sophia offered, as though that were explanation enough as to why she wouldn't be frightened, even though they had no idea what they might see on the road.
"Are you sure you don't mind?" Carol asked.
Andrea gave her a half of a smile which, in that moment, Daryl figured was about all that his sister-in-law could muster. She'd packed up camp with the rest of them. Daryl had watched her pack both Merle's things and Amy's things—carefully tucking them away. In theory, she was taking them so that someone else could use them. Daryl knew, though, that, in practice, it was the last way that she had to be close to either of them for just a while longer. She was wearing one of Merle's shirts at the moment—stained and dramatically oversized for her frame—but Daryl didn't point that out.
"I would love it," Andrea said.
"Then it's settled," Daryl said. "Y'all go in front of us. That way we can keep an eye on you. We'll be in the truck."
Daryl took his turn hugging both Andrea and Sophia after Carol finished giving out her affection. Then he opened Carol's door and closed it once she was inside the truck. He came around, let himself into the driver's seat, and closed the door. They sat, in silence because there was nothing else to say for the moment, and waited until everyone else got their ducks in a row. When they all finally ready to leave, the Dixon family joined the caravan as it left the camp and headed toward Atlanta—and whatever the future may hold for any of them.
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Daryl slowed the truck as the caravan in front of him slowly eased to a stop in the middle of the road they were travelling on as they moved toward Atlanta. There was no need to pull off to the shoulder. They had no worries about traffic, or tickets, or anything else.
It appeared, as they took in the world beyond their camp, that they were the last remaining living people on Earth. Daryl doubted that to be true, of course, but it certainly looked that way.
At any rate, there was nobody around to complain about their choice to stop dead in the middle of the road.
"What do you think it is? What do you think's going on?" Carol asked, sitting up and stirring next to Daryl. They'd been quiet for most of the drive because there was really nothing to say and, sometimes, they both enjoyed the comfortable silence of each other's presence. It allowed for thinking and processing—something everyone was going to need to do a great deal of these days. She hadn't fallen asleep, but she had certainly been lulled. Now she was almost immediately tense thanks to the sudden change in movement.
Daryl reached over and caught her shoulder. He squeezed it. He moved his hand closer to her neck and squeezed, again, affectionately.
"Flat tire, maybe. Engine trouble. Prob'ly somethin' like that. Just relax. I'ma check it out."
Daryl let himself out of the truck. He was aware that Carol followed him, spilling quickly out of the passenger side door. She nearly jogged to the car in front of them and pushed the passenger door closed, pushing Sophia to stay inside if she'd tried to get out. Carol stood against the car door, her hand on the window in a sign that told their daughter she preferred if she stayed inside the car, even though Andrea got out of the driver's side.
"What is it?" Andrea asked. "What's happening?"
"Prob'ly just a flat or somethin'," Daryl said, waving his hand back at both women. "Stay here. Stay close to each other. Get in the car if anything happens."
Daryl walked forward. People were spilling out of the vehicles. Suddenly, bursting through the silence around them, Daryl heard screams from inside the RV.
"Shit…the hell is that?" He spat, hating to admit that the abrupt yelling startled him.
"Look—Rick—we can't go on like this," Dale said. "We can't keep going with him like this." The yelling in question continued and Daryl very quickly figured out it was the man who had been bitten.
"It's getting worse," Jacqui said. "The fever's burning hot. And he's in pain constantly. He can't take the movement."
"We've got to get him to the CDC," Rick said.
"If he keeps screamin' like that, none of us is gettin' no damn where!" Daryl said quickly. "He's gonna bring every Walker in Georgia down on us. Someone's gotta shut him up."
"What do you want to do?" Rick asked.
"I don't give a damn what'cha do!" Daryl said. "But someone's gotta shut him up. I got a wife. A kid. My sister-in-law. I can't stand to lose no damn body else 'cause you wanna play fuckin' Florence Nightingale drivin' him to the CDC." The yelling continued. Daryl felt like it echoed in the trees around them. "Man—shut him the fuck up!"
"Daryl's right, Rick!" Shane threw in. "I wanted to give you the chance. Give Jim the chance. But he won't make it the CDC."
"Then we wait here," Rick said.
"And what? Wait for the fuckin' Walkers to tear us apart?" Daryl asked.
"We can't just kill him," Rick said. "You can't just shoot him because he's…"
"Because he's dying, Rick," Shane finished. "And that's exactly why we should shoot him. Man—put him out of his misery."
"I'll do it if you ain't man enough," Daryl said. "But we sure as shit can't wait here. We won't make it through a night with him screamin' like that…and he ain't gonna make it no damned way."
Daryl started toward the RV and Rick grabbed him by the shoulder, somewhat spinning him around. He backed up when Daryl put his hands up as a warning that he didn't appreciate being manhandled.
"We can't just kill people!" Rick barked at him.
"You ain't had no problem doin' it before," Daryl said. "When it was my brother you was killin'. What the hell is it you love so much about this asshole?"
"I didn't kill your brother," Rick said.
"Left him for dead. Close enough."
"He could've waited for us to get back."
"Except he had no fuckin' reason to believe you were comin' back," Daryl said. "No fuckin' reason to believe you would even tell us the truth about what happened. If you even did. That sorry asshole in there is dyin', Rick. Gonna burn out from fever or go insane from pain. Either damn way, it's a lot worse to go like he's goin' than to take a bullet to the brain—over in a second. But if you think I'ma stand here an' let Walkers eat what the fuck is left of my family so that he can scream himself to death for an hour longer of miserable damn life? You got another damn think comin'."
"Back up," Shane said, somewhat putting himself between Daryl and Rick. "Just—back up. Daryl—cool down. Go talk to Carol. Get a bottle of water or something."
Daryl did back up. He checked himself and realized his temper had him nearly boiling as hot as Jim was boiling with the fever. He didn't go talk to Carol right then, because she was close enough to hear what was happening. He did light himself a cigarette, though, to try to calm down.
"Daryl's not wrong, man," Shane said. "We hang out here another hour, even, we could lose the light. Trying to navigate Atlanta in the dark when it's overrun is suicide. Staying close by after he's been screaming like this? You gotta think about shit. Who the hell would you rather kept on living? Jim—who isn't gonna make it anyway, or Lori and Carl? You gotta think about that, Rick."
"What if we give him a choice?" Dale asked.
"A choice of what?" Shane asked, turning quickly toward the old man.
"Does he want to try to continue on, or not," Dale said.
"He already said that he doesn't want to be shot," Rick said.
"And he's still saying that," Jacqui said, stepping out of the RV. Apparently, while they'd been arguing, she'd taken it upon herself to go inside and ask Jim exactly what Dale suggested that they might consider asking him. "He wants to stay here."
"We can't just hang around here waitin' for him to die an' waitin' to be torn apart," Daryl said. "Man—I was gonna stay with you, but fuck that. We're out. We'll go on. You can stay here and watch him burn alive with his fever."
"No," Jacqui said quickly. "No—not like that. He wants…us to leave him here. He wants to die here. Alone. He knows it's time. He wants us to go on without him."
"Can't argue with what the man wants," Daryl said.
Rick gave him a look, but Daryl shrugged it off.
"We could get him to the CDC," Rick said. "There's still time."
Daryl laughed to himself.
"It's done, Rick," Shane said. "We can still go to the CDC. We can still see if there's—some kind of solution. Some breakthrough in all of this, but it's too late for Jim."
"He doesn't want to go anyway," Jacqui said. "He says—he's not going. He wants to stay here."
"Then what the hell are we still arguing for? Let's get this taken care of and hit the road. We're burnin' daylight, and we don't wanna stay here no longer than we already have," Daryl said.
"You really don't care about this?" Rick asked, half to Daryl and half to Shane who was already moving to help Daryl move Jim out of the RV.
"We don't have that much time, Rick," Shane offered.
"Don't you try to paint this shit like you tryin' to paint it. I'm not a monster, Rick. Complete damn opposite of that. I got enough things I'm carin' about right now," Daryl said. "Everybody's just got their limit. This happens to be mine."