Survival - Chapter Two

"Sometimes even to live is an act of courage." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Jesus, Emily," muttered Daryl, checking her over. "You bit?"

She shook her head. "Everything but a bite," she rasped out. "I must've ran two counties," she told him, trying to regain her balance. And through the haze of the light, she mumbled a quiet thank you as Daryl held her steady, his calloused hands gripping her forearms. Her feet ached and the beaten tennis shoes she wore did nothing for the soles of her feet. The clothes on her form, a light-weight jacket and denim jeans, were weighed down by the day-old rain water that had saturated the material.

"Where the hell did you come from?" rasped Daryl, eyeing her outerwear. "Hasn't rained here in days."

"Like I said," mumbled Emily, "I must've ran two counties."

"Don't lie to me."

She shot him a look, her breathing still erratic. "OK," agreed Emily, knowing that it was futile to come up for an excuse - Daryl Dixon was anything but a fool. "But can we get out of here? There's more of those things on the other side of town. The numbers are growing." She rubbed at her arms, rolling back the sleeves of her sodden shirt. "If we're going," she patted the hood of the car. "We need to go now."

"Take the backseat," barked Daryl, jumping in the driver's side of the cruiser.

Hearing the moans and shuffle of nearby Biters, Emily clambered in the back of the car and hastily buckled her seatbelt . She'd seen enough repercussions of car crashes in the Emergency Room than she was comfortable with, and she swore to always wear her seatbelt - end of the world or not.

The voice from the passenger seat made her skin crawl.

"Well, now," called Merle, a slow grin spreading across his face at the sight of his brother and the woman, "if it ain't Little Emily James."

Emily watched as his eyes leered at her in the rearview mirror. She closed her own, breathing in through her nose in displeasure. "Merle," she greeted. And glancing back in the mirror, she eyed Daryl and sighed.


They stopped for supplies an hour later. A small town on the outskirts of Tyrone, Fayette County. The afternoon had winded down into evening, and the sky darkened with each mile travelled. The group of three journeyed in silence, Daryl hitting the radio every so often to listen to local news broadcasts. As he hit the tuner for the fifth time with no avail, Emily spoke up.

"The reports stopped two days ago," she told them, keeping her voice quiet. "It's why Scout and the others started scavenging."

The car pulled to a stop on a muted backroad. Killing the engine, Daryl muttered something about siphoning gas from the nearby abandoned vehicles. In the passenger seat, Merle continued to sleep off his drug-induced high. And not wanting to be left alone with him, Emily pushed open the car door and followed Daryl to a nearby SUV.

"You gonna tell me why you're soaked?"

She nodded her head, keeping her voice low as they neared the next car closest to them - a rundown jeep. "A couple of them chased me into the woods near a lake south of Etowah. Turns out these things don't know how to swim or float. It seemed like my safest option."

"A stupid option," berated Daryl, shaking his head. He glanced around, still keeping his eyes trained on their surroundings. "Could've killed yourself."

"I had to think on my feet," muttered Emily, trying to avoid the look he was giving her. "My feet led me to the river."

"How'd you get out?"

"Swam to the opposite side of the lake and ran like hell," she muttered. As Daryl handed her the gas can, she furrowed her brow. "What the hell did you do to your knuckles?" she asked him, grabbing his wrist to inspect the jagged cuts.

"Nothin'."

"Daryl," chastised Emily, turning the man's hand over in her own. And using her nails, she plucked a tiny piece of reflective glass from his skin. "You have glass shards buried beneath the dried blood." She glanced up at him. "What did you do? Punch a mirror or something?"

"Or something," he repeated, voice low. "Don't bother," he instructed, pulling away as the woman tried to retrieve more of the glass embedded in his hands. "Let's go." And ushering Emily in front of him, they made their way back to the cruiser.


How long had it been? An hour? Thirty minutes? Daryl had left the two in the car parked beside an abandoned theatre. The minutes dragged and they seemed to last as long as hours. From her position in the backseat, she uncapped her bottle of water and sipped at it, wanting something to do other than sit and wait.

"Tell me something, Little Emily," uttered Merle, and he turned in his seat, peering down at the woman. "You fucking my brother?"

At his words, Emily let out a disgusted laugh. "You're sick," she told him. And she pushed his arm off her shoulder. She gestured to the gold band wrapped around her finger. "You know I'm married, Merle. I invited Daryl and you to the wedding." She continued to tell him the facts. "You've met Josh."

Merle hummed something under his breath. "And where's that husband of yours now?"

"Defending his country." And Emily, never one to back down from an argument or banter with Merle Dixon, continued. "Where's yours?"

A smile stretched across Merle's face. "Kittens still got claws, huh? What would little brother do if he knew the truth about you, Em? Huh?"

And suddenly she wanted to go back to silence.


"How long has it been?" Emily asked from the passenger seat of the car. "Six years? Seven years? I invited you down to the house. You and Merle." A thoughtful look crossed her face. "I sent you letters - stupid little parcels and packages of things that reminded me of you." A pause. "I haven't seen you since the wedding, not that you even came."

Beside her, Daryl scowled at the steering wheel. "What?" he rasped. "You angry with me or somethin'?"

She shook her head, neither smiling nor frowning. "No, not mad. Just confused."

"What's there to be confused 'bout?"

A sigh. "Did you work that weekend? The weekend of my wedding?"

"I told you I was busy."

"That whole weekend?"

"Yeah. Why?" Daryl frowned.

"Because the Friday before the wedding," began Emily, choosing her words carefully. "I called the garage. Smith answered. He told me you had the weekend off. Had it booked off. You told him you had something to do that weekend that you couldn't miss."

"So?"

"So," drawled Emily, folding her arms across her chest. "What was so much more important than your friend's wedding?"

"Does it matter?"

"Shouldn't it?"

"Don't do that," muttered Daryl. "Don't answer a question with a question."

"Daryl-"

"What do you want from me, Em? Huh?"

"An honest answer."

Daryl scoffed and continued to stare out at the road ahead of them. "Don't suppose it mattered much," he muttered after a minute of silence. "You had all your family. All those college friends."

"Is this what it's all about?" sighed Emily. "Because I left to go to college? Daryl, that was fifteen years ago. And I didn't even leave town. I stayed behind and waited tables for the better half of four years. You know that." And as she looked back at her friend, she realised that there was no point in continuing this particular strand of conversation."What happened?"

He remained silent.

"What happened to you?" Emily repeated, gesturing to the cuts on his hands. She glanced out of the window and looked at Merle as he leaned against the side of the car.

"I was out hunting with my old man and Jess," answered Daryl, his voice rough in the silence. He ran his teeth across his thumbnail, shaking his head to get rid of the memories. "Old man got bit. Jess got a scratch on his arm." And knowing that his friend knew the consequence of the aforementioned injuries, he continued, "Couldn't do it. Had the gun in my hands, had it levelled at his head, but I couldn't do it. And Jess did it for me."

Emily closed her eyes and breathed in through her nose. She raised her hands and ran them down her face till they rested on her lips. "Good riddance to the man," she muttered, staring straight ahead so she didn't have to witness the look of surprise on the man's face. "It sounds like Jess did a mercy killing." And with those words, she finally glanced at her friend to see that he was staring at her in dead silence. "A mercy killing is too kind for what that man did to you-"

Daryl shook his head and climbed out of the car. "Don't."


In honour of it being Walking Dead Sunday, here's Chapter 2! A big thank you to everyone for favouriting, alerting and reviewing! I'd love to see some more feedback. If this gets a lot of demand, I'll post the third chapter tomorrow morning!