All I Ever Will Be
Chapter Six - Separation
Daryl placed his ear flat against the door. There were muffled voices outside - someone was yelling. Then the familiar sound of gunshots erupted, bouncing off the concrete walls outside. He heard a thud on the floor and feet running past their door. More gunshots. Another thud.
Daryl looked behind him where Beth was, still standing in the same place. He wanted to say something to her. Tell her it was going to be okay, but before he could even open his mouth there was someone on the other side of their door. He backed away from it, hearing the lock click.
The door swung open, revealing the man who had thrown them in the room, except this time he was holding a machine gun in his hands, looking even larger than he had before. His shaved head was shimmering with fresh blood and he looked at Daryl with narrowed, small eyes. His full face was red from exerting himself and he had a steady stream of snot running from his wide nose into his mustache. Daryl noticed blood in his beard from a fat lip he was sporting, but the man didn't seem to care. He was frowning and mumbling to himself.
"You," he said, pointing the gun at Daryl's temple. Daryl stepped backwards, staring down the long weapon. "Can you hunt?" he asked.
"Yeah," Daryl responded quickly, trying to stay as calm as possible.
He lowered the gun. "Come on then," he said, grabbing him by his collar. "You're coming with me."
Before he knew what was happening, Daryl was led outside the room and the man was locking Beth in the room behind him. Her eyes shimmered with tears as he got one last look at her before the door closed.
Getting his bearings outside he nearly tripped over the body of a woman who had been shot, fresh blood still spilling from her head. Her face was turned and Daryl saw that she had been badly beaten.
"We need food," the man said angrily, leading Daryl towards the large pillar, past a second dead body - a man. He looked away, swallowing hard. That could be him and Beth if they weren't extremely careful about their next moves.
Behind the pillar was something of a makeshift kitchen, dark and smelling of rotten food and urine. It consisted of a tile counter that followed the curve of the circular room, a stand alone sink, a deep freezer and a table with four chairs, littered with all types of wrappers, dirty magazines, empty liquor bottles and cigarettes.
Another person was sitting at one of the chairs, shirtless, passed out with his face down on the table. It was the drunk guy he'd seen before. The man was just as large as the other guy, same bald head, same bandana. He was snoring loudly and Daryl noticed that he was surrounded by pill bottles and alcohol. He looked away quickly, feeling nauseated.
"We haven't had fresh food for almost a week besides some fuckin' jerky and our other hunters," he peered at the two people he'd showered in bullets laying on the floor, "Are indisposed." He jammed his gun into Daryl's chest. "We need some shit and you're gonna get it for us."
"What exactly am I gettin'?" Daryl asked, careful of his words. These guys were clearly drug addicts and had used the bunker as a placed to get fucked up, keeping other people here to do their dirty work for them. Fucking cowards. Daryl had dealt with high Merle for long enough to know that any slight wrong word or wrong step could set this guy off.
"Don't care what you get, but we need to fuckin' eat. And, we're runnin' out of booze. Maybe I'll spare your girl there for a night or two if you find us a bottle of whiskey," the man sneered at him, revealing a rotten set of teeth inside his mouth. "Whatta say?"
"I say you don't fuckin' touch her," Daryl growled, seeing red. The mention of using Beth - hurting her, raping her was all too much for Daryl to process. He was going to kill these fuckers. He had to.
The man clocked Daryl in the jaw with the machine gun he was holding, and he tasted blood instantly, pain searing through his head. "Shut the fuck up, redneck," the man said. "I'll do whatever the fuck I want. I'm the one with the gun."
Daryl tried to look at the man as calmly as humanly possible, not sure if he was succeeding. He needed to reason with him. "I'll need somethin' to hunt with then," Daryl said slowly, hoping he could rationalize with him. "My crossbow - what I came in with - that's best. Won't make the meat messy with bullets."
His captor seemed to ponder this for a minute.
"Okay," he said slowly. "But I'm coming with you. And so is my gun. You try anything funny..." He lifted the weapon up to Daryl's ear. "Bang, bang," he whispered, indicating he'd shoot him on the spot.
Daryl nodded at him. All he needed to do was get his hands back on his bow.
She was alone in the room again and Daryl was gone and there had been a machine gun and people had been shot outside and she had no idea what the fuck to do. Well, there wasn't much to do except sit and wait. How useless.
Tears welled up in the back of her mind again, but she willed them away remembering what Daryl had told her. You're a fighter, she repeated to herself. You're a fighter.
She paced the room, running her fingers up and down the legs of her torn up pants, feeling anxious, casting occasional glances towards the bathroom where Daryl had propped up the toilet tank lid. It sat there, unmoving, heavy and lethal, as long as she could swing it right. There if she needed it.
Time wasn't even a concept at this point - she wasn't sure if she'd been in the room for minutes or hours or days even when she heard a rattle at the door. There was a clink of keys and for a minute her heart soared, thinking maybe it was Daryl. Maybe he had killed the man and he was back to rescue her. She turned around, staring at the door, breathing heavily, unable to move.
Her eyes were wide and she was trembling as she heard the door open roughly, slamming into the concrete of the wall beside it. Her breath caught in her throat and she knew instantly the shadow wasn't Daryl. The man who stood there was just as large as their captor with a similar look about him, but he had a different sort of face. Instantly, she knew there was something wrong with him. He was standing on two feet, but in his hands he held a bottle of liquor and his eyes rolled back and forth in their sockets, occasionally rolling into the back of his head.
He stumbled into the room, the keys still jingling in the lock. The man was massive, larger than six feet tall, a wide body that hung out of dirty, stained clothes that were too small for him. He was bald, as the other man had been, with dark features and hairy skin. His feet were crossing as he came towards her, and Beth was frozen to the spot. Her brain was screaming at her limbs to move, but she couldn't.
The man slurred something incoherently, walking towards her like a walker would, reaching out for her body with his filthy, chubby hands. She moved then, just as his hands caught around her waist, gripping her skin, pulling at her pants and she knew instantly what his intentions were for her.