Chapter Three

Sorry I haven't updated I had to go to my sister's graduation and family had flown in and stayed and the end of the school year whoa that is crazy but it is over now! yay, and just so you know Beth parts may seem small but she is alone and so there isn't really much she can do at the moment other than run. I haven't been on my computer much while everything was going on but I am also trying to get a few chapters ahead so I can update more often. Blah blah blah I don't own The Walking Dead, you all know this. ON WITH THE STORY!

Daryl walked out of the apartment he was staying in after deciding he probably won't get anymore sleep after the nightmares he had been having about finding Beth's body or her changed into a walker, it was one thing to have to take out Merle he had always had this nagging in the back of his mind that he would have to bury his brother, but he knew if it ever really did come down to it there is no way he could force himself to put down Beth even if she was a walker. He went to get breakfast and saw Maggie and Glenn sitting at a table off to the one side so he got his plate and went to the other side of the area they had were they ate, he sat at the other end of the table where Carl who was trying to feed Judith with Lizzie and Mika's help while Michonne watched and offered them tips, while laughing.

"Hey Daryl, its good to see you this mornin'. I wasn't sure you would stay with Maggie here." Carol walked over and sat beside him and he focused on his plate. "Daryl I understand you are upset, and I know you did everything you could to get her back."

"She could still be out there hurting because I didn't keep trying…" Daryl muttered looking up at Carol.

"Daryl there was nothin left for you to do, you are only human Daryl there is only so much you can do. Beth would never blame you for anything she would know you tried your best."

"Yeah but I promised Herschel to keep his daughters safe and I broke that promise the moment I told her to leave that house. I thought I was keeping her safe but I was just sending her off to be taken by whatever sick fucks just take women." He tried to keep his voice low as to not draw attention to himself.

"Daryl you taught her how to survive and she had more fight in her than any of us do. What you taught her is more than what we did before the prison was attacked, she had known nothing but how to stab walkers through a fence."

"It was a lot easier to teach her than I first thought it would be, she picked up tracking quickly enough." He shrugged and took a bite of his food.

"She does pick up things quickly. Like with taking care of Judith you would only really have to explain something once if I even had to explain it to her at all. Sometimes she was showing me things." Carol smiled thinking back to being at the prison. Daryl nodded and they both pick at their food eating some.

Beth looked around from the vantage point she had up in the tree she had climbed to sleep in. She slowly climbed back down after spotting a river that she could cross to get herself farther away. She got to the ground and positioned herself in the direction she need to go and looked around quickly before she started to walk. She knew crossing the river would be dangerous and make her cold but it would also make her harder to track down, and out of the two options she would rather drowned than let those two men do to her what they had in mind, she would even take letting walkers eat her alive over it. From what she had gathered they had hunted people down for fun since before the change, thats all she needed to know before deciding she had to get away and find a way back to what she considered her family now.

Beth stepped up to the edge of the river looking at it before walking up to the slower moving part and began to wade in after taking a quick glance behind her. She waded in slowly to her waist and was fighting to keep her balance before deciding just swimming may be the best option before she fell and hurt herself and ended up drowning. Beth took a deep breath before diving in and starting her swim. She slowly made her way across the roughly 50 foot river to the point where she could stand again without falling.

Beth pulled herself onto the ground off the side of the river, water still hitting her lower legs, she knew she should get up and run but she was exhausted after that swim and just need to relax for a few minutes before she kept running. She also knew she would need to find food and drinkable water fast before she became dehydrated and starved to death. She took a deep breath and moved to stand up before she felt a tugging on her ankle that pulled her back down and towards the water.

She turned and franticly kicked her legs and reached for her knife searching for what was grabbing her ankle, as she her growls and she looked seeing there was a walker holding onto her leg and several starting towards her from a distance down the river bank. She managed to free her knife and plunge it into the walkers decomposing corpse before kicking its hand off her and pulling herself off the ground and sprinting into the forest.