Disclaimer: I do not own The Walking Dead.
A special thank you to:
Majestic butterfly
jeanf
loveorpain
jamielynn25
CoralElizabeth
Scout out
AmethystSiri
GrimmEchoes
Chels
mysticaloricalmandi123
celia azul
hotcheeto
Shellyluv34
Guest
BreenaBelle-xoxo
StrangersAngel
Emma
Alex
Rogue Deciever
coxm15
Wolf9lucky
Hotcheeto
Laura-LaLa
Moreover, thank you to those who have favorited and/or followed this story!
Her Angel, His Strength
19 Beside the Dying Fire
"I'm going after them." Andrea stated, tired of waiting, just as Lily was.
"Don't, they could be anywhere. And if Randall comes back, we're gonna need you here." Lori said just as the front door opened and Daryl and Glenn appeared. Lily felt the relief wash over her instantly.
"Rick and Shane ain't back?" Daryl asked after looking at them.
"No."
"We heard a shot." He said, looking around as if wanting to see who was hurt.
"Maybe they found Randall."
"We found him."
"Is he back in the shed?" Patricia asked.
"He's a walker."
"Did you find the walker that bit him?" Hershel asked.
"No, the weird thing is he wasn't bit." Lily frowned. How was that possible?
"His neck was broken." Glenn continued.
"So he fought back." Patricia said, doubting her own words.
"The thing is Shane and Randall's tracks were right on top of each other. And Shane ain't no tracker, so he didn't come up behind him. They were together." Lily had a feeling she knew what caused Randall's neck to snap.
"Would you please get back out there, find Rick and Shane and find out what on earth is going on?" Lori asked Daryl. Lily was just about to get to her feet to deny it, send the woman to look after them herself if she wanted to, when Daryl agreed. She glared at him, how could he do that? He just got back! She had just thought of making him sleep with Jimmy and T-Dog when he came back.
"Ya wanna see this."
Lily could not breathe. It was just too much of them, she never saw so many walkers together before. They had to leave now.
"Maybe they're just passing, like the herd on the highway." Glenn tried. "Should we just go inside?"
"Not unless there's a tunnel downstairs I don't know about." Daryl replied not taking his eyes from the massive herd heading their way. "A herd that size would rip the house down."
"Carl's gone." Lori cried. "He... He was upstairs. I can't find him anymore."
"Maybe he's hiding."
"He's supposed to be upstairs." The mother screamed. "I'm not leaving without my boy."
"We're not. We're gonna look again. We're gonna find him." Carol said, going with Lori inside the house just as Maggie came out holding their bag of guns and Lily's bow and quiver.
"Maggie." Glenn said surprised when she got a riffle for herself.
"You grow up country; you pick up a thing or two."
"I got the number... It's no use." Daryl said.
"You can go if you want." Hershel replied, reading his weapon.
"Ya gonna take 'em all on?"
"We have guns. We have cars."
"Kill as many as we can, and we'll use the cars to lead the rest of them off the farm." Andrea agreed.
"Are you serious?" Lily questioned in disbelief, her brown doe eyes widening.
"This is my farm. I'll die here."
"All right. It's as good a night as any." Daryl said, jumping the porch and heading for his bike. "C'me on, baby."
"Daryl!"
"There's no way in hell ya leavin' my sight tonight." Lily swallowed and, with trembling fingers, got her handgun ready.
Lily could only be grateful for the gun training she had before. She had no idea how many walkers she had killed that night, but it was more than she had ever even seen before. Holding onto Daryl with only one hand and firing with the other, she knew she missed more than she got her target.
"Daryl! Look, the barn's on fire. There must be someone in there!" She saw him look on the direction she pointed and turned around, heading towards it.
"Yo!" He screamed at Jimmy, getting closer to the RV. "Must've been Rick or Shane who started that fire. Maybe they're trying ta get out back! Why don't ya circle around?" Jimmy nodded and left.
"Daryl, I'm out." Lily said, putting her gun inside her pants and grabbing her bow. She wouldn't be able to shoot with it while they were moving.
"There's nothing left. We gotta go."
"Where? What about the others?"
"Do ya hear it?"
"What?"
"The gunshots." When Lily frowned, realising they had stopped, he continued: "they must have left too. Rick and Glenn'd go ta the highway where we lost Sophia." With that, he revived the engine and they walked away from the farm.
The sun was raising when Lily asked Daryl to stop. When he looked at her, she grabbed his face in her hands and brought his lips to hers. For the first time, she prodded them open with her tongue. Daryl pushed away from her, turning all the way around, he pulled her back towards him, one hand holding her face and the other grabbing her long brunette hair as their tongues massaged one another, exploring the other's mouth. The sound of a car stopped their kiss.
"Look! Look, Daryl! That's the car Glenn and Maggie were in, wasn't it? It was, wasn't it?"
"Sit back down. Hold on." Lily wanted to scream in happiness. Glenn and Maggie were alive! The others must be too! It didn't take long for them to find another car, this one with T-Dog, Lori, Carol and Beth inside. A while later, they stopped at the highway where Hershel, Rick and Carl were.
The bike hadn't stopped when Lily jumped out of it and crashed into Glenn. He hugged her tight.
"I knew you'd be okay, I knew it!" He whispered into her hair.
"Where'd you find everyone?" Rick asked Daryl.
"Well, those guys' tail lights zigzaggin' all over the road. Figured he had to be Asian, drivin' like that." Daryl said, making Glenn laugh.
"Good one."
"Where's the rest of us?" Lily questioned looking around.
"We're the only ones who made it so far."
"Shane?" Lori asked. Rick denied with his head.
"Andrea?"
"She saved me, and then I got in the car, thinking she was behind me but..." Carol said, shaking her head.
"We saw her go down." T-Dog said.
"Patricia?"
"They got her, too. Took her right in front of me. I was..." Beth cried, tears still running down her face. "I was holdin' onto her, daddy. She just..." Hershel and Maggie hugged her closer. "What about Jimmy? Did you see Jimmy?"
"He was in the RV. It got overrun." Rick said. "You definitely saw Andrea?"
"There were walkers everywhere."
"Did you see her?" When there was no answer, Daryl volunteered:
"I'm gonna go back."
"No." Rick denied.
"We can't just leave her." Lily said, biting her lip.
"We don't even know if she's there."
"She isn't there. She isn't. She's somewhere else or she's dead. There's no way to find her." Rick said firmly.
"So we're not even gonna look for her?"
"We gotta keep moving. There have been walkers crawling all over here."
"I say head east." T-Dog suggested, nodding to himself.
"Stay off the main roads. The bigger the road, the more walkers, more assholes like this one." Daryl said, walking towards a stray walker. "I got him."
Lily did not agree with leaving Andrea behind, nevertheless Rick had a point. There was no way she would still be in the farm or near it; she had to be somewhere else. That did not stop her from feeling guilty about it though. A horn beeping broke her thoughts.
"You out?" Daryl asked Rick when the caravan stopped.
"Running on fumes." He answered, looking around the road.
"We can't stay here."
"We can't all fit in one car. We'll have to make a run for some gas in the morning." Rick proposed.
"Spend the night here?"
"Only got so many arrows." Daryl said pointing at Lily's quiver with his chin. "How you doing on ammo?"
"Not enough." Rick sighed. "All right, we'll set up a perimeter. In the morning, we'll find gas and some supplies. We'll keep pushing on."
"Glenn and I can go make a run now, try and scrounge up some gas." Maggie volunteered.
"No, we stay together. God forbid something happens and people get stranded without a car."
"Rick, we're stranded now." Glenn said and Lily saw a few heads nodding.
"I know it looks bad, we've all been through hell and worse, but at least we found each other. I wasn't sure... I really wasn't... But we did. We're together. We keep it that way. We'll find shelter somewhere. There's gotta be a place."
"Rick, look around. Okay? There's walkers everywhere. They're migrating or something." Lily bit her lip. It was unlike Glenn to be so pessimistic, but she had to agree with him, their situation was very bad.
"There's gotta be a place not just where we hole up, but that we fortify, hunker down, pull ourselves together, build a life for each other." Rick said fervently. "I know it's out there. We just have to find it."
"Even if we do find a place and we think it's safe, we can never be sure. For how long? Look what happened with the farm. We fooled ourselves into thinking that that was safe."
"We won't make that mistake again." Hershel told his daughter.
"We'll make camp tonight over there, get on the road at the break of day." Rick pointed at under a bridge.
"Does this feel right to you?" Carol asked Daryl.
"You know I found Randall, right? He had turned, but he wasn't bit." Daryl asked Rick.
"How's that possible?" Beth questioned.
"Shane killed Randall. Just like he always wanted to." Daryl said confirming Lily's thoughts.
"And then the herd got him?"
"We're all infected." Rick uttered.
"What?" Daryl questioned, frowning.
"At the CDC, Jenner told me. Whatever it is, we all carry it." Lily's heart skipped a beat.
"And you never said anything?" Carol demanded after a minute of silence.
"Would it have made a difference?"
"That is not your call." Glenn said; angrier than Lily had ever saw. "Okay, when I found out about the walkers in the barn, I told, for the good of everyone."
"Well, I thought it best that people didn't know." Rick snarled before walking away from them.
Daryl made everyone move towards where Rick had pointed before. Lily did not know what to think of having a bullet with her name on it. One way or another, she would die, and then she would turn. Someone would have to kill her again. Lily looked sideways at Daryl who was sitting by her side; she could only hope it would not be him.
"We're not safe with him..." Carol told Daryl. "Keeping something like that from us. Why do you need him? He's just gonna pull you down."
"No. Rick's done all right by me."
"You're his henchman and I'm a burden. You deserve better."
"Daryl's not just Rick's henchman. He has his trust." Lily scowled.
"What do you want?" Daryl asked Carol.
"A man of honour."
"Rick has honour." The conversations stopped when they heard something.
"What was that?"
"Could be anything. Could be a raccoon, could be a possum." Daryl said, trying to calm the escalating nerves.
"Walker."
"We need to leave. I mean, what are we waiting for?" Carol said.
"Which way?" Glenn asked.
"It came from over there." Beth pointed towards the way they came.
"The last thing we need is for everyone to be running off in the dark. We don't have the vehicles. No one's traveling on foot. Don't panic." Rick had come back.
"I'm not... I'm not sitting here, waiting for another herd to blow through."
"No one is going anywhere."
"Do something." Carol demanded from Rick.
"I am doing something!" He growled at her. "I'm keeping this group together, alive. I've been doing that all along, no matter what. I didn't ask for this. I killed my best friend for you people, for Christ's sake!" At his words, Carl started to cry, and Lily closed her eyes. "You saw what he was like, how he pushed me, how he compromised us, how he threatened us. He staged the whole Randall thing, led me out to put a bullet in my back. He gave me no choice. He was my friend, but he came after me. My hands are clean. Maybe you people are better off without me. Go ahead. I say there's a place for us, but maybe... Maybe it's just another pipe dream. Maybe... Maybe I'm fooling myself again. Why don't you... Why don't you go and find out yourself? Send me a postcard. Go on, there's the door. You can do better? Let's see how far you get." No one moved. Not Carol, not Maggie, the ones complaining most about Rick's plan. "No takers? Fine. But get one thing straight... You're staying. This isn't a democracy anymore."
Lily didn't know what to think about Rick's speech. She sure would prefer to have a say if something happened and she didn't agree with Rick's way, but she knew she had no chance out there alone. Besides, Daryl and Glenn were staying, so she was too.
T-Dog had fist watch that night, so Daryl and Lily chose a corner to sleep.
"You think Rick's right? About a safe place for us?"
"Not safe, safer. We make it and keep it that way." She nodded, pressing her body closer to his for warmth. It wasn't an answer she liked but she knew any other would be a lie.
"You think Andrea's alive?"
"She's tough. Know how ta defend herself, different from the other women around here."
"You think I can't defend myself?" Lily's frown at him was missed as her face was pressed against his covered chest.
"I know ya can." He said, quietly, pressing a butterfly kiss on her hair. "But ya have me for that."
"Shh. I'm trying to sleep." Carol said from her corner. They stayed silent after that.
If there's no reviews, there will be no update.
English is not my mother tongue, if you find a mistake, please let me know.
Thank you,
Mel.
