Okay, first off, I'm sorry I didn't update this morning. That's why there are two updates after school. Because we kinda overslept and it was just totally CRAZY! But tomorrow is break, so my updates will start getting consistent. Thanks again, and please review, follow, and fav! Oh- this the sad part I was talking about earlier. Maybe it gets happier... Muwahahaha!
Dawn broke in her tree, and she looked around, finding the area walker-free, before climbing down. The sun was rising in the east, she'd walked a trail west into the woods, yesterday, so she just had to follow the rising sun.
She started out, hatchet in hand. She strode along, silent, normal, noticing a squirrel on a tree, eying her warily.
She smiled, drawing her knife and curling her fingers around the blade. She took a breath and let it fly, pinning the squirrel to the tree and killing it. She took it, cutting it open and picking out the meat. The blood tasted metallic, but there was no way she was making a fire to cook it. The smoke would advertise her position to everyone.
She ate as she walked along, and by noon, she found the tree line, but something stopped her from heading back to camp before nightfall. Tracks, Daryl's tracks- he hadn't bothered to hide them. He'd been looking for her, he'd believed she was still out there, still wanted to come home. Lori and Shane probably expected her to be dead by now, more so with each passing hour. Let them think that.
She stayed around the treeline for the rest of the day until dusk- walking into camp during the middle of the day would be anti-climatic. Some part of her that was still a child wanted to walk in as dawn broke, wanted Daryl to come running and hug her. She wanted to come in at dawn.
She heard the moan and whirled, seeing a walker staggering towards her. She swung up into a tree to her right, scrambling above the walker's reach, breathing heavily. She didn't have her bow, she had a knife and a hatchet. The noise the walker was making as it reached up towards her was going to attract even more walkers out there, and she swung her hatchet at the reaching arm. It fell to the ground, blood poured out of the stump, but the walker grit its teeth and hissed, frothing at her...
With one arm on it, she felt safe enough to lean down, and she buried the axe in it's head. Blood spattered all over her, like some sucky effects from an old horror movie. She ripped the axe out and kicked at the walker's head, and it fell to the ground, dead. She re-sheathed the bloody hatchet, climbing higher and sitting back against the tree, staring at the stars. In the field in front of her, walkers flocked out from the woods. Four of them total, all moaning and staggering around. It would've been so much easier to pick them all off with her bow, and she cursed herself silently for not bringing it along. She just wouldn't sleep tonight, making sure one of them ventured too close to her tree.
"Daryl. We need to talk." Rick said, and Daryl walked towards the main camp, holding Jamie's bow, still. He'd gone out searching again today- there was no trail except for his own from yesterday.
So he'd come back to camp and just sat, hoping she came back soon. He stood almost outside the circle of light cast by the fire, and was surprised to see almost everyone looking anxiously at him.
"Tomorrow we start a formal search effort for Jamie headed by Daryl." Rick announced. "What do you have in mind, Daryl?"
"Leave her." he grunted.
"What?" Carol asked, looking shocked.
"Leave her. If I can't find her, no one can. She covered her trail, she'll come back if she wants to."
"You can't be serious. You'd just leave her out to die?" Lori asked.
"You did that already. She'll come back when she wants to. If she wants to." Daryl growled.
"Daryl- let's be realistic here, she doesn't have her bow. She's not going to last long." Rick said.
Daryl shrugged, turning and heading up towards his empty camp. She'd be back- she had to be.
Dawn started to break, and she took advantage if it, jumping down from the tree and heading towards the first walker in a half-crouch, starting towards it with her hatchet. She placed her hand on the walker's shoulder- he was a man in his mid-thirties- and when he whirled she buried the hatchet in his forehead.
She pulled it out and he fell to the ground, but that had attracted the other three walkers. One woman in a nightgown, a teenage boy, and a business woman wearing a suit coat and matching skirt.
"Come on, Come on..." she turned to the side so one of the walkers was closest, drawing it away, holding the bloody hatchet in hand and waiting until the woman in the gown got close enough, smashing the hatchet between her eyes.
To her surprise, the hatchet stuck, and she was left staring as the walkers came towards her.
She struggled, but the hatchet was in too deep- she drew her knife, hoping she could draw one of them away enough so she could slash it.
The business woman, ironically, was the fastest, and came at her, arms out stretched. She ducked under her arms and came up behind her, sinking the knife into her head and pulling it out, whirling to face the teenage boy, the last walker.
He was fast, faster than the others had been, and he was already too close for comfort.
She ran towards the woman her hatchet was buried in, struggling to pull it out, but realized she didn't have the time. The walker was limping towards her shockingly fast. She turned to run and tripped, stumbling and falling onto her back, scrambling on her behind...
Five feet away. The walker was getting closer with every step. She clutched the knife in her hand, by the blade. She was holding it wrong, the blade dug into her palm, but she took a breath and threw. It struck the walker in the eye and it fell, dead, in front of her.
She stared, gasping for breath, looking at them. She'd pulled it off. Four walkers dead, without a bow. She crouched over the walker, pulling her knife from his eye and re-sheathing it, heading towards the woman and pulling on her hatchet. It was really stuck.
She'd been wearing her boots, though, and she placed her foot in the walker's mouth for leverage, finally pulling the hatchet free. She dropped it into her belt and stood, taking a breath. She was going home.
"Rick! Someone's coming up through the pasture- I think... I think it's Jamie." Andrea said.
"Jamie?" Rick asked, looking both shocked and relieved.
Andrea grabbed the pair of binoculars Glenn had tossed her and stared.
"Holy crap! The kid's covered it blood... she might have been... you know." Andrea hesitated.
"She is not a walker." Daryl growled.
"We don't know that. Shane and I will go out to meet her, see if she's been bit..." Rick tried.
"She'd rather shove a knife through her head than become a walker." Daryl said. "YOU all stay back, but I'm going to meet her."
Daryl picked up his crossbow and shouldered it, holding Jamie's own bow and quiver in his other hand and starting forward.
Jamie looked up, grinning, when Daryl approached her. He was he only one she wanted to see right now.
"Jamie!" he called. And she was off and running towards him, grinning, before she threw herself at him. Daryl had dropped their bows, catching her and wrapping his arms around her. She was covered in blood, yes, but this was Jamie, HIS Jamie.
"Where the hell you been?" He asked quietly.
"Out." she said simply. He set her down and she picked up her quiver, slinging it over her shoulder, as well as grabbing her bow.
"You alright?"
"Yeah, fine." she lied. She didn't want anyone fussing over something as stupid as a cut hand.
"Everyone's been worried about you. You met some walkers?" he asked, eying her bloody t-shirt.
She nodded. "Five. I took them out, though, they didn't get me."
They'd started walking towards camp, by now. Carol ran to her, enveloping her in a hug. "Don't you EVER scare me like that again!" she ordered.
Jamie was stiff in her arms for a moment before sighing, trying to push her away. "I'm fine. Stop fussing."
Everyone stared, and she realized she'd left a bloody hand print on Carol's chest and stared.
"Jamie- let em see your hand." Rick said.
Slowly, she obliged. "Rick..."
"Did a walker scratch you?" Rick asked.
"No. It was my knife, Rick, a walker was coming at me and I needed to throw it- I held it wrong and it cut my palm."
Shane snorted. "Yeah, right. You're living in borrowed time, kid."
"I am not! If it were a walker scratch, I would've killed myself in the fields! You really think I'd have come back and risked infecting you all?" she said, looking anything shocked at his accusation.
Lori felt her forehead hesitantly. "She's warm."
"No shit. I've been running around killing walkers." Jamie said.
Carol felt her forehead, putting her cheek onto it like she'd with Sophia. "No- you have a fever."
"When you cut yourself on the knife- was there blood on it? From the walkers?" Rick asked.
"Yeah, a little..." Jamie said, when she realized what he was getting at. She stared, starting to breathe heavily. She lunged forward, grabbing the gun from Rick's holster and turning to run into the field. She wasn't going to become one of them, she wouldn't become a walker. She wouldn't infect the whole group...
"Jamie- wait!" Daryl grabbed her before could escape. She struggled, desperate to put the gun in her mouth, but he knocked it away.
"Let me die! I don't want to be one of them!" she screamed, hysterical.
"We're not sure, Jamie! You could be fine!" Daryl said.
"I'm not willing to take that chance." they all heard a gun cock and turned to see Shane with a gun aimed at her head.
"Shane! Stop!" Andrea pleaded. Suddenly Dale's cautioning about him were making sense...
"You'll have to shoot me first." Daryl said, stepping in front of her.
Just then, Carl ran forward, seizing the hand Shane had the gun was in and knocking the gun away.
"Carl! What are you doing!?" Shane yelled.
"You're not my father! I won't let you kill her!" Carl yelled.
"Everybody stop!" Rick yelled, picking up both guns that had been dropped. "We'll handcuff her to the fence, Jenner said it takes a few hours, if she's alright then, we'll know. Until then, she's still ours. She's still Jamie."
Jamie shook her head, shocked. "Promise me... Daryl- I want you to do it..." she pleaded, tears streaming down her cheeks.
"Nothing is gonna happen, kid..." Daryl said, looking as close to tears as he'd ever been.
"But... if I do.. I want you to... you to do it..." She hiccuped. "Promise me..."
"I promise." Daryl said. Rick offered his handcuffs over to Daryl, who went to carefully put them of her wrist. "That too tight?" he asked.
"It's... fine..." She assured him. He picked her up, wanting as much physical contact with her as possible in case.
"Jamie- there are a thousand reasons you could have a fever. Maybe you just caught somethin..." But they all knew how unlikely that was. Carol was crying- she went with him. She'd taken to enjoying the antics Jamie and Daryl had, the messes they got into- it was almost like losing Sophia again.
Daryl cuffed her to the fence and she sat down. He pulled her into his lap. "It'll be alright, Jamie- it'll be alright."
But for once, he wasn't sure.
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