A/N – This is in honor and memory of my sister. Miss and love you, sis.
This is also for you, my readers. Thank you for continuing to support and encourage me through my hiatus and these difficult times.
Sorry for the long delay in writing. The desire to write comes slowly and leaves quickly.
Chapter 11 –
Baby blues opened before slamming shut at the brightness of the day. Okay, here we go again, Beth, she thought to herself before she slammed her eyes open and squinted at the brightness again. Just like the past week, ever since I was shot…Beth let out a soft sigh as she waited for the world to adjust, to stop tilting and blurring. Her thoughts turned to the hospital, the sound of the gun firing still echoed in her ears, the splitting pain as the bullet pierced her skull, skirted the top of her brain, and shot out the back of her head.
Her survival confused her. She remembered a second shot but everything was hazy, a blur. She remembered Daryl's strong arms easing under her limp body, his sobs as he carried her. She had wanted nothing more than to cry out, to let him know she was alive. She had felt the sunlight and breeze on her body, she remembered the sounds Maggie made.
There had been panic and then she was in the backseat of a car. Abandoned. She had heard Daryl, screaming and crying that he couldn't leave her like that. She had lifted a finger, or she thought she had, and Daryl had yelled some more. She thought he had seen it and that he would stay with her, but he was gone and the car had been pounded for hours by walkers.
It was all a punishment for what she had done. She had killed Billy and Dan, had assisted in the killing of Harley…and then she had spiraled further down, killing Gorman, Jeffries, and O'Donnell.
Even worse than that, she had plotted the deaths of several of the other officers at Grady Memorial. So, this was her punishment. She had sinned and now, instead of being granted passage to heaven, she was forced to stay on the walker-ridden world. Her survival unknown to all of her family.
It had been a week since everything happened. A week of her stumbling, half alive, through shops and streets of Atlanta, a blinding pain a constant reminder that she had survived a bullet to the head.
In all honesty, she was surprised she had made it this long without a weapon and a hole in her head. The streets crawled with walkers but she somehow got through them, undetected and unbothered by the dead around her. Perhaps she was so close to joining them that they couldn't smell her or weren't interested in her. Perhaps she was dead and couldn't tell.
That is a ridiculous thought, Beth, she chastised herself. If she were one of them, she would not have the thoughts she was having. She would not be self-aware. She would be hungry for a man-which and she definitely was not that. In fact, she couldn't recall the last time she actually felt hungry, which was good because finding food was difficult for her.
So, she stumbled north, everyday, grabbing supplies if she saw them, eating if she found something, sleeping when she felt up to it. Which she rarely did because sleep is where she is reminded of everything. Not that she ever forgot any of the things that she had done over the past few weeks to a couple of months (she couldn't quite remember that detail, though she kept track of how long she had been completely by herself). How could she forget. She had become a monster.
A monster that moved freely among monsters. It was impossible.
It was the truth. She despised who she had become. The day before, Beth had reached the outskirts of Atlanta and found a camp of people, a family. The family was surrounded and Beth watched as they cried for help before turning and leaving. She had let the family be consumed. She couldn't fathom the person she had become.
Perhaps the bullet had damaged something in her brain. Perhaps she had given up on people, on faith.
She would have been useless to that family, anyways. She didn't have any weapons to help destroy the walkers they were surrounded by. Perhaps she had acted on that knowledge without being aware of it.
Her head pounded with every step she took and her eyes burned from staying open, from the harsh early morning light. The sun was only just beginning to rise but it was still too much for her.
She paused in her walking as a group of walkers stumbled their way in her direction. She wondered if her luck would run out this time. If the walkers would realize that she actually was not one of them and was really food. Once again, the group stumbled by, watching her as they did.
Do I smell that bad? Do I smell like them? Beth did not want to find out. She pushed herself to keep moving north. When she had come to and had become aware that she was really alive, once she had realized that she was alone, abandoned, she closed her eyes and pointed in a random direction. That direction had been north and that was the direction she walked in.
The days rolled by, eighteen days, to be exact. Beth had been tracking them with lines from a pen she had found on her jeans. Her pace had picked up some throughout the days, her head aching less. She assumed she was healing and recovering. She had found a weapons store with a few hunting knives and guns with ammo, so when the dead finally started to notice her again, she had been prepared.
Her blue eyes took in the house she had stayed in for the night. It was small and quaint, on the edges of Danville, Kentucky. She had surprisingly found a decent amount of food in the house; it was the best she had eaten in a while. Beth had no clue what month it was but the heat of the summer was waning, so she figured it was nearing fall.
It was a bad idea to go north, Beth. The blonde hummed to herself as she prepared her breakfast, a simple one of dry, stale cereal she had found in the house. The humming was the only use her vocal cords received and she found that it sometimes hurt, so it was a habit that was slowly being dropped.
She remembered all of the times she sang for her daddy or Daryl. Beth wondered if her voice would ever let her do that again. She wondered if there was even a reason to wonder if she would ever sing for Daryl again.
Not that the blonde thought he was dead, far from it. She knew he would survive anything. Beth just knew that there was no chance of bumping in to the hunter in Kentucky. Her heart ached with the thought of him and Rick, Maggie, and the others. It had not been her intention to walk all the way to Kentucky; it almost seemed surreal to her that she had done so. But when she stopped and stared at the sign welcoming her to Kentucky, well, it had taken quite a while for it to sink in.
She had been in a haze, recovering from being tracked and attacked by a small band of survivors. Three more names on her list of victims. They had tried toying with her, trapping her, wounding her…one of them slipped up and she had used it to her advantage.
Another scar to add to the list, she thought as she checked the bandage on her shoulder in the mirror of the bathroom, the knife wound healing slowly, the peroxide from a store she had raided earlier in the week stinging as it cleaned. Her eyes floated to the scars Dawn had gifted her with on her cheek and forehead. Then she took in the small spot on her forehead from the bullet.
There was no way Dawn had done that to her. She had walked herself through the entire meeting and exchange of hostages several times. It didn't add up, the angle of the wound and how Dawn had been standing. Beth shrugged and walked out of the bathroom. It was time to leave.
Her blue eyes fell on a photo of a young couple, presumably the former owners of the house. The young, short, blonde woman with bright green eyes standing beside a taller, older man with graying hair. The blonde was pregnant, her hands resting on her baby bump, her wedding ring shining in the daylight. The older man, her husband, Beth guessed, holding her. They looked so in love and happy in the picture. Thank you for the shelter and food, Beth thought to the couple. I hope you have found peace. She tried not to think of their baby.
The blonde supposed some things about her would never change. She closed the door softly and stepped down the wooden steps, her boots moving softly in a circle as she spun, her arm extended with her finger out, pointing her new direction. She stopped and opened her eyes.
East. So she went.
Twenty three days later, she would find a sign of her family living in the Alexandria Safe Zone.
Three days after that, the dark blue eyes of a hunter would find her tracks, find her light blue eyes.
But that is getting ahead of the story and as of right now, she's just a monster walking amongst other monsters.