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Cicatrix
CADEL
[CHAPTER 3]
The first thing Daryl Dixon sees is the rabbit-foot hanging over his dashboard.
It's significant because he doesn't think it should be there.
Actually he knows it shouldn't be there.
It's grey and dirty like it's always been, like the day his uncle Jess cut the furry paw off the creature and handed it to him as an impromptu gift in the middle of the woods. 'Lucky charm?' he remembers himself saying. But his uncle moves deeper into the woods and just replies, 'No such thing as charms boy. Yer make your own luck'. This eventually makes him wonder why the man gave it to him in to first place, but of course it still doesn't explain why he sees the dangling appendage now.
There's something like a knocking sound coming from somewhere but Daryl barely takes note of it.
No, instead he focuses on sharp pain running down his neck and back because his shoulder is bitching out on him. It doesn't appreciate the angle in which he decided to abuse it for the night, but it's all forgettable in comparison to the discomfort of the oven-like temperature.
Because it's hot. Georgian hot.
It takes a full thirty seconds for the hunter to blink away the unsettling nothingness in his head and just wake the fuck up because he can't recall where he is or what he's doing there.
He manages it eventually because he suddenly figures out he's in a truck.
And not just any truck, but his truck. The one he abandoned on some long forgotten highway, left aside to become another mechanical carcass in a great metal graveyard.
Daryl bolts up.
He's awake now. More than he's ever been because something clicks into place and he knows it's significant.
Then there's that knocking sound again and it takes far too long for Daryl to turn around and look out the window.
"Hey, you right in there?"
Daryl flinches as far away from the car door as possible and presses deep into the other side of the truck, nearly analing himself on the gear sticks in his haste. He reaches for the gun by his hip but there's nothing there and Daryl's unease triples when he realises he can't see his crossbow anywhere.
So Daryl quickly reaches out and locks the doors, eyeing the stranger with a narrow gaze that could peel the paint off his truck.
The man is tall and wears a dark green hat with a little bear logo on it – 'forest ranger' his mind supplies usefully after thirty seconds of silent staring. For some reason Daryl focuses on the man's eighties moustache which looks like something out of Magnum P.I and it's totally weird, but not as weird as the fact that the man is there at all.
"Oh good you're awake. Been trying to get your attention for a while – thought ya might be dead in there."
Daryl continues to just look at the man like he's an alien.
The stranger seems unfazed and unconcerned by the hunter's dumb silence.
"Gonna pull a stroke if you stay in this metal oven in the middle of the day. Pull down the window at least yeah?"
Where the fuck is his gun? Daryl shoots his eyes around the tree line near the road, searching for other humans or walkers alike. He sees nothing and the forest ranger is still talking.
"Wanted to tell ya you're blocking the path. Best move along now."
The man tips his hat towards him like everything's right in the world and walks away. Daryl's gaze never leaves the man's back till he gets into his own vehicle and drives into the forest track.
Then the stranger is gone.
Daryl blinks slowly and thinks the man is nothing more than his heatstroke talking.
II
There's a half-eaten burger sitting on the other seat with several empty cans of beer sprawled all over the leather, and the thing is so bizarre that he doesn't actually know what it is.
In the end Daryl gingerly picks up the burger because he doesn't think he's seen one in years, and inspects it like one would inspect a poisonous insect. It's the paper wrapping that's more baffling than the food itself because it's slicked with grease and the ink is bright and it's the most colourful damn thing he's seen in all his life and Daryl doesn't know what to do with it.
He eventually decides to sniff the thing.
And it smells good. Really good. Cold and stale from overnight air, it shouldn't be as mouth-watering as it is but the half-eaten burger is the freshest thing he's smelt in forever.
His feels goosebumps erupt all down his arms and he knows all of it's wrong.
Daryl drops the burger like it burns him and he doesn't take a bite.
II
Daryl drives.
He drives and drives and drives down the winding mountain road till he finally locates which stretch of country he's found himself in. The roads start to become familiar and he passes a few signboards that give away where he is.
And it's Northern Georgia. He knows this from just the terrain alone.
Daryl nearly swerves the truck off road the first few times he sees other cars passing him by, trying to duck and steer straight at the same times as he reaches for the gun he doesn't have. But after one handyman truck, two family cars and a motor cyclist later, Daryl stops trying to hide from the other drivers on the road and just grips the wheel tight under white knuckles and shifty eyes.
Daryl eventually stops the truck on some cliff that overlooks a view of a bustling town below.
Cars on the roads, people on the streets and the occasional plane in the sky all playing out like it some great postcard come to life.
And that's when Daryl finally knows for sure what had made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on edge, what made his eyes shifty with unease and his stomach roll like a vat of boiling water.
There was no rot in the air. No death in the water. No flesh in the earth.
Just like the neglected burger next to him, the smell is all wrong. Fresh, open and virginal – Daryl feels the cleanliness, the apparent lack of disease and decay in the air like an all-encompassing blanket of 'what the hell?' threatening to crush him from all sides. There's now a different kind of colour to the world, a different kind of taste that doesn't match the flavour of hell Daryl had lived for the last couple of years.
Daryl takes another look at the little town below and marvels at the street lights glowing as far as his eyes could see and he briefly thinks it kinda looks nice, like fireflies studded into the earth, buzzing with live wires and pulsing heartbeats. He forgot the landscape could look like that.
He eyes the rabbit-foot dangling from his rear-view mirror and presses his forehead against the steering wheel when he can no longer fight off his headache.
He really doesn't know what to do.
II
Its twilight and Daryl somehow pushes away what might've been mild catatonia because he doesn't remember what he's been doing for the last few hours.
When the hunter finally shakes himself out of his stupor, he realises one certainty he knows for sure.
He wants his crossbow.
He wants his crossbow as badly as Merle would moan and bitch for his crystal meth. His fingers itch like he's been handling poison ivy and the absence of his weapon makes Daryl unwittingly snake-eyed and snarly at every little sound.
He can't recall where he left it but there are only two real options: Merle's cabin or his father's garage.
It barely takes him a second to choose the former because he ain't ever going to Will Dixon by choice. So Daryl starts the engine and drives for one hour flat till he finally pulls to a stop at his brother's hunting cabin in the mountains.
He takes one look at the wooden house and Daryl knows immediately that no one is there. Everything is dark and still and the hunter refuses to acknowledge the disappointment he feels from his brother's absence because the man is dead and Daryl doesn't care what kind of hallucination all of this is. He ain't gonna whip a dead horse. He ain't gonna keep on hoping. Crazy or not, he's on his own and Daryl is perfectly fine with it.
So Daryl edges his way into the hunting cabin, knocking on the walls to alert any walkers to his position. Room but room Daryl clears the small dwelling till he feels safe enough to locks the doors and shut himself in.
II
Daryl doesn't find his crossbow.
But he does find drinking water, actual clear drinking water and he spends almost a minute marvelling at the clean liquid gushing from the tap.
"Hey guys, there's actually running –"
Daryl cuts himself off when he realises that he's talking to no one.
That's right, he thinks to himself, Rick and the gang ain't there. And while being alone was once a constant state for the hunter, Daryl is not surprised that he finds the silence uncomfortable now – like having a pebble in a shoe or a splinter underneath the skin – the irregularity is small but almost disproportionately impossible to ignore.
In the end Daryl just leans his head under the tap and takes huge gulps of water like he's drinking the fill of his entire missing group.
It proves to be a bad choice in the end because Daryl just throws it all up again.
II
It is well into the night and the dense forest outside the cabin makes Daryl feel safe as well as very nervous.
He doesn't dwell on either feelings and just buckles down for the night.
The man knows where his brother keeps all his guns and Daryl systematically hunts them out of the fireplace, the ceiling and from the wooden floor panels till he can make a neat pile of toys on the drinking table. He pulls the forty-five apart, cleans the revolver and counts the bullets in the glock. Daryl also pockets the small kitchen knife in the sink for extra measure while remembering to lock the back doors and all the windows.
He knows there's a perfectly good bed in his brother's cabin but Daryl doesn't bother sleeping. Instead he drags the mattress into the living room and places it against the furthest wall where all his guns were lined up and at the ready.
He hears familiar night birds and rustling leaves, all normal but also equally eerie and he knows he won't sleep till morning comes.
So Daryl just sits there and waits for the sounds of walkers to come out and play.
He waits for the gnashing teeth, the groaning bones and the hungry wails of the dead. He waits for them to come and find him.
They never do.
II
'No such thing as charms boy. Yer make your own luck.'
Later, much later when he looks back on that day, Daryl will wonder what higher power thought it'd be okay to greet his second life with a freakin' 'good luck' charm.
It seemed more like a cackling 'fuck you' instead.
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Note: My followers and reviewers have coaxed this chapter into existence, one kind word after another.
Thank you
CADEL