Daryl held his crossbow up, staring down the sight at the underbrush. He was tracking something big enough to feed the whole group until they could hopefully find a new place to hunker down. He could hear the brush rustling close, and he knew he was about to land his catch. Taking a knee, he stared down the sight breathing out silently to steady his shot. A fox slinked through the underbrush, crunching lightly on the leaves as it moved through the grays and silvers of the forest. Daryl's finger tightened on the trigger.
A loud rifle blast broke the trans-like silence and the bolt flew into the open air to pierce the ground just where the fox had been. He watched as the fox's hind end pushed through a low growing bush and cursed to himself. With a growl he stood up and slung his crossbow over his shoulder. The sun shone brightly in his eyes as he quickly surveyed the area around him—still the same silvers and varying shades of grays. With a swipe to his hair and a smudge of dirt to his cheek he started back in the direction he'd left the group. Something struck him that made his heart beat a bit faster. No one in the group was hunting with a rifle that would make that loud of a bang. "Shit." This was someone not in their group. He turned on his heel and bolted towards where that blast had sounded.
As he broke the tree line into a small clearing his blood ran cold. Shane and Rick were crouched around the small body (he could only assume was Carl) and there was dark blood oozing from the front of his shirt. A kid with a rifle ran towards them and, for a second, Daryl debated whether or not to pull his crossbow until he saw the kid (well, not really a kid. The guy was in his twenties at least) drop his gun and drop next to Carl. He was babbling something, but the blood rushing through Daryl's ears made it difficult to hear. He watched as Shane grabbed the punk by the front of the shirt and snarled at him. A handgun found its way jammed into the kid's cheek. "Shane…" Daryl's eyes darted back to Rick and, for the first time in a long time, Daryl saw something desperate in his eyes.
Daryl found himself crouched next to Carl, his grungy gray plaid balled up and pressed against this kid's bleeding stomach. Both Rick and Shane turned and helped apply pressure.
"Dad…" Carl wheezed.
"Don't talk, Carl. You're gonna be fine."
"Dad…"
"Listen to your dad, Champ. Help is on the way," Shane's voice was strained with anger and fear, but only Daryl would really notice. Daryl's head jerked as he picked up on the pounding of footsteps. It sounded like a pack of elephants. Daryl worried it might be the pack of walkers, but the rhythm of it was all wrong. The snapping of branches, the thundering of the footfalls was too methodical. They were too even and hard to be the mindless ambling of the dead. A quick glance over his shoulder saw that punk kid running back with people following him. He didn't bother to watch further, too worried about Carl bleeding out to give a rat's ass who else was here. He heard a woman's voice he didn't recognize talking about things they were going to need if they had any hope of fixing this kid up.
A loud girly shriek and a thump made the group jerk and watch what was unfolding. Daryl watched as the woman he'd heard talking about the needed supplies and the punk kid who had shot Carl moved as swift as lightning to help someone struggling under a walker. He glanced back down to Carl as he heard the telltale sound of a knife sinking into the skull of something dead. He looked back and choked on his own breath. Standing before him were four people bathed in a wash of absolute color. Daryl felt his heart thump heavily in his chest as he noticed that all the silvers and grays of the forest had been turned into the prettiest browns and greens he'd ever seen. His mind raced as he tried to take in everything he was seeing. Sure, he'd heard the stories as a kid, but, being a Dixon, he'd always just assumed that he'd never get a soulmate. Colors and happiness were a little out of a Dixon's league, but here he was seeing greens, and yellows, and varying shades of brown. He wanted to grit his teeth and cuss up a storm.
The world was in the shitter and now he had to worry about some woman being able to take care of herself and keeping herself alive. As if he didn't have enough to worry about. Daryl Dixon wasn't under the delusion that he and his soulmate were going to ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after. He was an ass. He was gruff and grumpy, and solitary, and honestly he liked it that way. There wasn't a single thing in the world that was going to make him change his mind. His eyes darted back down to Carl who groaned from where he was laying, bring Daryl out of his silent revelation. He looked at the newcomers, studying them, noticing all the new colors that arrived when they entered his field of vision.
The punk kid and the woman who'd been crouched down next to the rest of the group had dark brown hair, but the girl laying on the ground, eyes closed, had the prettiest golden hair he'd ever seen. And the old man he hadn't seen run up was sporting wintery white hair (not that that was a new color for him.) He looked away and noticed the bright red of the blood now covering him, the punk, Rick and Shane. The kid was in bad shape, and he was about to pipe up and say something until he heard the soft voice of the blond girl ring out into the clearing.
"There's more comin' we gotta go," she said.
Daryl chanced a glance and saw she'd pushed herself up on her knees. "I can hear 'em. We gotta go!" He watched her as she pushed herself to her feet and turned towards an older man that had come up unannounced during the struggle with the first walker that had taken her down.
With a growl he listened and he could hear it too: the low moaning and gurgling of a group of walkers. The snapping of branches was aimless and random, but definitely getting louder. "We gotta move." He rumbled out. Without preamble he scooped up Carl and looked at the group.
"This way," The brunette woman said quickly and looked to the old man, probably their father. "Let's get to the farm. Daddy has most of the supplies we'll need back there." They heard Shane start to protest, but the woman cut him off before he could even get a full word out. "He can help," She pleaded.
Another walker let out a gurgling moan close behind, and that put an end to the argument. They were all following behind the patriarch, weaving through the woods until they came across the fences built to protect the farm. He watched silently as the blonde took off running towards the big barn, a greying-red from age, but then his eyes were on the rest of the family. They led everyone into a big white farm house and moved Daryl, still clutching a deathly pale Carl in his arms, to a spare bedroom just off the stairs.
Daryl placed Carl in the center of the bed, on top of the frilly quilted comforter that contained too many colors for Daryl's mind to process. The graying old man leaned over him, calling out to his daughter. "Maggie, get my bag. He's gonna need some stitches." He looked up at Daryl. "Help me roll him on his side, I gotta see if the bullet came out the other side." With a grunt Daryl gripped Carl's shoulder and slowly rolled him onto his side. "Passed clean through, and it ain't so far into his belly to hit anything major." He felt the old man shift off the bed before quickly returning with a clean rag that he pressed against Carl's back to staunch the bleeding. "He'll need stitches and some antibiotics, but he'll be fine." That made Daryl's heart beat a little easier. He looked up, searching out Rick and saw the man breathe a deep breath of relief before everything seemed to go deathly quiet. That was when the whole group heard it. The sick moans and groans of the walkers. More than before. More than anyone thought. They weren't close to the house (no doubt stopped by the fences on the border of the property), but the noise they were making would surely draw more and those fences could only hold back so many.
"Rick, gotta go take care of those walkers," Daryl started. He didn't need to finish his sentence.
"Go. Thanks, Daryl." Rick took his place next to the old man to tend to his son.
Daryl cast one final glance at the the pair as they worked over Carl before heading out to go take down the walkers before the place became overrun. He found the trio (that's what he was going to call them until he got some damn names) already out at the fence, taking down walkers. He wanted to groan at the sight of them. They weren't horrible, but he could tell they weren't well trained with their respective weapons, and the weapons they were using were extremely flimsy and not strong weapons at all. They were using kitchen knives for god's sake! They were more likely to do themselves damage with their clumsy attempts rather than make any kind of leeway with the horde. Sudden anger bubbled up inside him. These pathetic, weak human beings had managed to survive this long, but others from his group, others who had been decidedly stronger and better versed in protecting themselves, had died. It wasn't fair. But then again Daryl knew life wasn't always fair. In fact, from his perspective, life was never really fair; it was all about how you took the shit flung at you.
With a tight fist he gripped the handle of his hunting knife and pulled it from its sheath. Without a word to the three, he sunk the cool metal blade deep into the skull of a walker in front of him that was stuck and mangled against the fence. With a jerk from his arm and a wet squelch, his knife was free and, before he could think too much about it, he was sinking it into the head of another rotting walker. He noticed, from the corner of his eye, that the blonde streak of nothing paused to watch him for a moment. He could feel her eyes boring into him with interest but chose to ignore her. There was work to be done, and if she wanted to spend the time gawking at him, well it was her wasting her own damn time. Maybe she could learn a few things about how to kill these walking corpses.
Beth heard the sickly squish of a blade meeting its mark and knew, without a doubt, no one in her family knew how to wield a knife with that much power. Maggie, Shawn, and even her father had shallow sounding blows. She didn't know how to describe it, but the squish was always more high pitched. Like the blade was only barely meeting its mark and doing minimal damage. This sound, this squish, was a deep sound followed by the almost completely inaudible thump of the hilt meeting bone. She paused and watched. It was one of the strangers. The one who had carried the kid through the forest and into the house. She was momentarily dumbfounded as she watched him. He was strong, and he definitely knew how to handle his knife. For a brief instant she was embarrassed by her lack of skill and completely domestic weapon.
She watched as the muscles in his arms rippled and moved as he worked to sink his knife all the way into the skull. He was impressive. She noticed that most of his power came from his shoulder and biceps. He was able to put more weight behind his swing that way. When he stopped to cast her a sideways glare she turned, cheeks flaming, and decided to try it his way. She gripped her knife tightly in her fist, raised it up and swung down from her shoulder, flexing her muscle as her arm swung down. The thick, wet sound was deeper. Her knife was buried three quarters of the way deep into the walker's head. With a vicious twist of her wrist she ripped the knife out and watched as the walker went limp and fell to the ground. She smiled to herself and then turned, freezing when she met the piercing blue eyes of the stranger. She felt her face flame red hot and looked down at her top, a pretty pale green now smattered with dark reddish brown spots of walker blood. She bit the inside of her lip and moved to the next walker before repeating the action. She breathed a pent up breath as she felt the stranger's eyes leave her. He was an imposing figure, and Beth wasn't one to feel intimidated. She raised her arm again and swung down, sinking deep. Each move got easier, and Beth was excited to have learned at least this little bit of knowledge to help make her stronger.