Part Five, Night
Daryl fell asleep earlier than he usually did, with less patrols of the perimeter beforehand. His sleep was fitful and punctuated with dreams. As he awoke from another dream, one he didn't quite remember, he rolled onto his side. He didn't feel well. He couldn't quite place it, but he felt ragged. His muscles still ached, but now his head throbbed dully and he felt weak. He sighed and sat up. Looking toward the funeral home. Less packs were on the porch but there was no current activity to be seen. A cold panic hit him and he worried that she'd set out.
Daryl started to stand but hesitated. He sat back down instead. What if she had left? What did it matter? He wanted to keep her safe but maybe he was hurting more than helping. If she wouldn't leave because she was aware he was in the woods, she'd eventually use too many provisions to travel safely. He sighed deeply. His eyes were heavy. It was doubtful she was even gone. Traveling alone at night was very dangerous and Beth wasn't stupid.
He laid back down and looked up at the night sky. He usually could estimate the time by studying the sky, even at night. Wracking his brain, he tried to place the time. He couldn't tonight. His eyes grew heavier and heavier until he closed them. Eventually, Daryl drifted off.
In his sleep, he was back at the day when everything had started. He'd been staying at a motel with Merle just outside of Athens. They'd recently knocked over a few houses about a hundred miles upstate and were laying low for a couple weeks. Daryl was high and lying on a dingy bed in a dingy room, the lights out and the room illuminated only by a cheap television set. A half burned cigarette rested in his hand over a coffee cup. Even though it was a shithole motel, it had had a no-smoking policy. He and Merle hadn't listened for the last three days, there was no use starting now. In the bed next to his, Merle snored nosily.
The television droned on about increased instances of police brutality and some virus that was circulating. They made it sound like some killer flu bug mixed with rabies. He thought about the last time he'd seen a flu shot advertisement. Hadn't been one this year yet. Don't they usually try to get that stuff out before the new virus hits?, he wondered half-heartedly.
He dragged on the cigarette. The TV dimmed as the newswoman cut to some footage of cops shooting at people in a dark, nondescript street. Some of the people kept coming towards the cops despite being shot, and a few that reached a couple of unlucky cops launched onto them and started mauling them. Daryl wasn't the most-versed in science but it looked to him like the people weren't sick, just completely blazed on bath salts or PCP. When the camera returned to the woman, she glanced off screen like she was reading something and began announcing more closed streets, businesses, and schools that were taking any early day off.
It almost looked to him like she had some repressed terror in her eyes, like she could say more but wouldn't. He had a tendency to get paranoid when he smoked weed alone though. Daryl stamped out his cigarette and stretched out on the bed. Whatever was going on wasn't of much concern to him, he had no roads to travel or businesses to visit today. He felt groggy and decided to take a nap. He rolled away from the TV and closed his eyes, feeling the lovely warmth of buzzed sleepiness developing.
A knock came to the door, and Daryl opened his eyes. He thought for a second and remembered they'd put the 'No Housekeeping' sign on the door. Annoyed he closed his eyes again, hoping the maid got the message.
A series of light, rapid knocks sounded on the door again, followed by a few heavier ones. Daryl rolled over and sighed, looking at the door. Merle snored on, oblivious; it took a lot to wake him. He rolled his eyes and got out the bed. He trudged across the room, ready to tell the maid to read the sign and shove off. When he looked through the peephole though, Daryl saw no one.
He moved his head back and looked at the door, confused. Maybe they'd already left. Another series of small knocks came. He looked through the hole. Nothing. He narrowed his eyes, his paranoia sharp. Who the fuck was playing with their door? He kept the safety chain attached and unlocked the deadbolt. He opened the door a crack.
A little girl, no older than nine, stood at the door. She had red stains on her dress. Her face was messed up entirely with crying. She sobbed and sniffed pitifully and reached her hands into the door. Daryl took a half step back.
"Please sir let me in there, please. My dad got ate. He won't get up cause they ate him down the hall and I'm scared because they're gonna eat me too" she sobbed out in a blubbering, squealy voice.
"You should go to the office, little girl" Daryl said. He pushed the door some, trying to close it. She thrust her hands deeper in and squealed loudly. Her crying was more like an animal than a person.
"No, no, I don't wanna get eat!" she cried out. Daryl looked her full in the eyes. It sent ice up his spine. This little girl had seen something and had the look of someone on death's doorstep. He heard motion down the hall. The little girl looked off and screamed, forcing her entire arms through and smashing her face into the door crack, desperate to get in at any cost.
He was panicked now. Merle was stirring also, waking up. He made a decision in that second that had followed him every day since. Forcefully, he put a hand on her forehead and shoved her backwards with all his might. In the instant before he slammed the door back, he saw the utter and complete terror in her eyes as she fell back. He didn't think eyes could ever be as wide as hers were in that moment, and he'd never seen any as haunting again. In the next second, she was gone. The door was shut, screams and sounds of struggle echoed from the other side.
Things happened quickly after that. Merle was awake and without explanation he gauged the situation. They threw their stuff together and opened the window on the opposite of the room from the door. The motel was built like an L, first-floor, and with all rooms facing out toward the woods with a window on one side and the open-air hallways on the other. Crawling out, they armed themselves and snuck slowly out of the city, killing when they met any resistance. And like that, it had begun, over weeks, and then months, the walkers filled up the cities and bled into the woods. People panicked and died and everything changed, but they moved on like they always had. Nothing much had changed for them. They went on stealing and attacking as they saw fit, they just kept to the woods more now.
Daryl woke up crying. He sat up and wiped his face, looking around with shame. He was relieved ghost-Merle wasn't there to see. Night was lifting up anyway. He felt disgusted with himself. He'd felt that way then, too, but he'd buried it down. It wouldn't have taken much to let the goddamn kid in the room. Merle would have bitched and obviously they wouldn't have kept a little girl around, but they could have at least gotten her out of the motel. He could have saved her, and he didn't. In fact, he knocked her down, took away any chance she had of even running. He had offered her up on a silver platter.
Feeling entirely distraught and fighting off a desire to sob, Daryl stood and began walking. He replaced his disgust with anger, and used it to help him walk despite being tired and weak. As usual, he looked at the funeral home. No changes.
He started to walk the perimeter but reconsidered. He was angry and wanted to take out frustration. Daryl almost wanted to find a walker, so he could kill something. Not many walkers had managed to get close to the funeral home for whatever reason. He hedged his bets on walking further into the woods. He walked about a half-mile deep into the woods and started walking in a circle around where he gauged the funeral home to be. He walked aimlessly, without paying much attention to the ground. It was difficult to see yet anyhow. Fifteen minutes of brisk walking later with no walkers and Daryl began to feel foolish for his storming around. He noticed a storage shed up ahead to his left. He hadn't noticed it before, they hadn't ventured this way.
When it happened, he wasn't quite sure if there was a trigger hole or a trip wire or some other device. The only concrete thing he'd remember was that something felt wrong beneath one of his feet and then there was the deafening boom and the bright flash of light and the sound of cracking, splintering wood. Daryl was thrown back and he landed hard on the ground, stars filling his vision as his head cracked against the ground and the air was taken from his lungs. He felt waves of adrenaline course through him coupled with intense pain. He cried out once his lungs regained some wind. The pain radiated and blossomed and folded away, but something was very wrong. He couldn't process it yet and he was afraid to, but he knew something was bad. He laid for a minute and a half before he lifted his head slightly, feeling like nails were being hammered into his skull.
His left leg was impaled through with a piece of the exploded tree. He could hardly register the gravity of this. He made small whimpering sounds and felt himself dip out of consciousness.
Part Five, Day
Daryl came to with no idea of how long he'd been out. The world around him had begun to lighten, daylight drifted in around the trees. The corners of his vision held a soft blur, and he felt as though his field of vision was shrinking, his periphery tunneling inward. His hearing felt so acute and sharp. Crickets and birds announced the morning, a slight wind rustled the tree branches above. Another, more disturbing sound, occurred to him: a visceral whine of pain. It was his own, and he honestly didn't think he could stop himself. He considered how strange it was that he felt so cold yet so hot at the same time. Hot and wet. A fast, rhythmic throbbing radiated up from his leg. With each heartbeat, he felt another unbearably distinct throb call up to him. It dawned on him that he was going to die here and he was going to do so pitifully.
He heard someone approaching, running up towards him. He couldn't turn to look, he could only watch the leaves rustle above him.
"Oh no, oh no, oh God no" she said, panicked. He recognized the voice as Beth's. Even in all his pain, he felt a wave of mixed emotion. He heard her drop to her knees by him. Her hand was on his chin and his head was turned toward her, he looked at her. Her eyes were wide and searching, fear on her face.
"Daryl!" she yelled, slapping his face lightly, "Talk to me, Daryl"
He couldn't. He felt like he was looking up at her through fourteen feet of water. Beth moved her hand to his throat and lowered his head to his mouth. She smelled sweet and clean. "Barely breathing and your pulse is quick" she stated.
Her eyes darted wildly up and down his body. She took her shirt off and pulled out her knife. Beth cut the shirt raggedly down the middle. Quickly, she moved to his lower torso. He felt excruciating pain as she lifted his impaled leg slightly and looped the shirt around his thigh. Beth leaned in and exerted all her might into tying the shirt tightly around the leg.
Her face appeared directly over his, her hair fell into his face. "We have to move, okay?" You're bleeding a lot. I can't, I can't take this out here. We'll have to move with it" she said. She disappeared instantly. She moved his leg some more and he heard the sound of her hacking away at the end of the branch that had impaled him through. It took her several minutes, she made small noises of frustrated exertion.
"C'mon,, goddamnit" she muttered, he felt her digging with her nails at the branch, trying to remove it from where it'd lodged itself in the ground. Eventually he felt a wave of pain so intense his vision became nothing but a burst of bright white light. He heard himself make an inhuman scream.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry" she whispered as she maneuvered him into a sitting positon and draped an arm around herself. She locked her arms around his torso, hugging him tightly to herself. With a concentrated effort, Beth strained and pulled them upward, until she was standing on bent and strained knees. She turned them and began slowly walking them toward the funeral home.
Daryl's head lolled uselessly. He got a more complete view of the situation as they moved through the field. They were both bathed in blood at this point. Beth's bare torso and bra were splotched red. An ugly, misshapen branch jutted out of his thigh ominously. Each step hurt so much Daryl felt himself fading off into unconsciousness. Beth was red in the face and panting from struggling with his weight. He wanted to stand, to unburden her. He could do nothing, he was paralyzed in his pain and shock. His eyes rolled shut and he passed out.
When he came to, he was in the funeral home. She'd managed to get him up on some hard, elevated surface, he guessed the dining table. He heard her running around the house, gathering things. Beth returned and scrambled up onto the table.
"Don't leave me, please, don't leave me" she pleaded as she crawled halfway on top of him and exerted pressure on his thigh. It felt as though she were trying to rip his leg off. He felt the worst pain he'd ever encountered in his life, so intense he was roused from his blood-loss stupor. He sat up halfway, screaming. She was splayed across his lap, her back to him as she worked on his leg. He found his arms and reached out to her back weakly and desperately. Unable to reason, he clawed at her back, his grip slipping on her blood and sweat soaked shoulders.
"No, I won't let you leave me" she growled back at him, moving away from his grasp. Her force intensified, the muscles of her back tensed. Something in his leg felt as though it gave entirely. An odd sensation of something being taken way occurred to him, followed by a new, hollow pain. She yanked sheets from a stack she'd placed next to them and ripped them. She tied and tied, looping and pulling as hard as she could. When she was done, it felt as though she'd removed half his leg and put a ton of bricks on top of it.
She leaned back some, turning her head to look at him. They were face-to-face, inches apart. Somewhere deep in his mind, behind all the pain this fact filled his awareness, he thought of how bizarrely beautiful she looked. She was covered in blood, hair turned strawberry blonde and clumped in strands and her eyes shining out through a red mask. He collapsed back and panted heavily.
She moved downward and put her weight on his leg also. It hurt horribly but it dimmed the pulsating pain, dampening it down gradually. She stayed that way for what felt like an entirety until the pulses of pain had changed to a constant wall of pain. Beth lifted herself off and studied his leg. He heard her sigh lightly, something like hesitant relief in her delivery. She placed her head on his chest and listened to his heart and lungs. For a while, she stayed like this. Her breathing slowed gradually and she calmed herself. He considered idly how taxing the last half hour had been on her.
"Your pulse is all over the place. You lost a lot of blood" she mused.
"Beth, you-" he croaked, losing his voice as quickly as he'd found it.
"Spare your energy, Daryl" she said softly. Something clanged out on the porch. Beth sat up quickly and left his side. He sensed her moving toward the door to look out the window.
"Oh hell" she murmured. She turned back and forth, gathering her thoughts, "Okay, yeah, okay". She scrambled out of the room, Daryl heard her rummaging around. Returning to the room, Beth put down a gallon of water and pulled Daryl's head up, propping it on a few pillows she'd brought. She took his hands and clasped them encouragingly around the water.
"Daryl, drink this, please. Just try to get some of this down for now, ok? I'll be right back" she assured.
He weakly fumbled with the water, spilling some on himself, managing to drink some. With his head propped, he had a better view. As he'd assumed, he was on the dining room table. She'd pulled it out into the hall for some reason, maybe to have less area to carry him. Beth loaded a handgun and eyed the door. Rapping sounds and moans drifted through. She'd heard the blast, so had they, and they'd followed the trail of his blood.
Beth steadied her arm, aiming the gun and moved to open the door. She braced herself and yanked it open. Five or six walkers loomed on the porch. Instinctively, he used one hand to search beside himself, but it wasn't there and he didn't have the strength to use it anyhow. She fired off six rounds, one for each skull. They dropped as though they were choreographed. He was impressed despite himself; she'd gotten to be quite a shot.
Looking back at him she spoke, " I will be right back. The blood. I'm going to cover it"
He couldn't speak to protest. She bounded out the door. Daryl laid on the table and drank the water listlessly. A sense of fatigue had settled over him that he couldn't relate to or place. He was tired and sleepy in a way he'd never experienced before, it felt looming and palpable, as though it were some dense cloud hanging above his head and just out of sight. A thought crossed his mind that made him truly terrified: it was death. Death was on the horizon of his existence, and he laid under it and dumbly struggled to drink water.
Beth returned and shut the door tightly behind herself. She swept back over to him in a fluid motion, grabbing his wrists for his pulse, putting her head back against his chest. He noted that even though he felt the movement of her holding his wrist, he couldn't feel her touch. She looked concerned as she lifted her head, turning away to focus on his leg again. She tested whatever bulky, tight, heavy dressing she had on it. She nodded.
"Hands are numb" he managed. Beth looked at him, her eyes brightened as a thought came to her. She jumped off the table and ran out the room. She returned with even more pillows. She grabbed his leg and sent a jolt of extra pain up his back. She elevated his impaled leg, and turned away, disappearing from the room again.
A few minutes later, she returned. She clutched several sealed bottles of different sizes with something clear and water-like, and a bag with tubing attached. Beth surveyed the room and returned with a coat rack. She opened the bottle and poured it into the bag before stringing it up on the coat rack. She busied herself with clamps on the line. Turning back towards him she grabbed an arm and straightened it, she poured a smaller bottle on his forearm and the smell of rubbing alcohol filled the air. A pinch like a bee sting originated from his inner elbow.
"Oh shit" she said as she applied pressure to the area she'd just stuck and warm liquid flowed from the needle. She clumsily turned and grabbed the tubing behind her and attached it to the needle in his arm. She produced some tape, dried the area, and secured the tubing to his arm. Daryl felt a rush of fluid entering his arm. She hopped off the table and returned with a dining room chair. She climbed up onto it so that she was standing level with the elevated bag of fluid. She opened another bottle and poured it into the bag as it emptied itself into him.
"It's saline. It's just something to open your veins back up. I saw daddy do this a few times. Normally it comes in the bag, but they've just got empty bags here. For getting bodies ready I guess. Draining blood or putting in embalming fluid or both maybe" she told him.
Beth put a couple bottles of the fluid into the bag before climbing down. Daryl wasn't sure if it was psychological or not but he thought some feeling had returned to his hand. The pain in his leg became louder, but it felt less like a sucking pain and more like a throb now. Regardless, the cloud still hung over his head.
She looked over him again, repeating her ritual of checking his pulse and listening to his chest. He felt his eyes becoming heavy and he closed them. Relieved, he noted that even with closed eyes he didn't quite feel like he was holding on to a thin rope like he did before. He felt unbearable pain still, and he was fully mentally available to acknowledge it now that things had quieted.
"You need blood" he heard her say. She was quiet for a few minutes and Daryl almost thought she was done speaking. "I'm O positive. I can give you blood. Daryl are you negative? Do you know?" she asked.
He couldn't reply. He tried to hold onto consciousness but it slipped away from. He gave in to the pain, and passed back out.
AN: Okay, to clarify some stuff, don't ever take something impaled out. Also, it's not a good idea to give someone with acute and severe shock water. It takes a while for the water to be volume-replacing anyway, and more risk is had in the person losing consciousness and aspirating the water. What I put out there is basically 18th century battlefield emergent care, and that killed a lot more people than it saved but, hey, gotta work with what you have. Beth, to me, knows OF medical knowledge, and while that's not the same as having medical knowledge, you stll can get lucky sometimes. Also, I hope you don't hate me now for hurting Daryl 0: )