All I Ever Will Be
Chapter Seventeen - The Journey
Author's Note: Hi guys. I'm not thrilled with this chapter, but I needed to move on from it and get back to more Daryl/Beth moments. Hopefully it's not too slow and you guys still enjoy it! Hope you're all having a great weekend. I'm feeling nervous for tomorrow's season finale of TWD... As always your reviews, favs and follows are very much appreciated!
"Show me again," Daryl said, holding out a throw pillow in front of him as he sat upright in bed. Sunlight from the open window illuminated small feathers, floating in the air around them. Beth almost felt like giggling, the scenario was so ridiculous.
"Daryl," Beth sighed, moving on her knees to stab the pillow with her knife again just to show him she could. "I'll be fine." She sunk the knife deep into the cushion, knowing this was definitely not what it felt like to actually kill a walker, and removed it with ease, placing her fists on her hips, the knife against her thigh.
Daryl narrowed his eyes at her and frowned. "You stay in the car until you absolutely have to get out," he said to her. "Go in and get out. And,"
"Don't use the gun unless I have to." Beth finished his sentence.
Daryl sighed, leaning back in the bed. It was the most helpless she'd ever seen him. They were out of painkillers now, so she knew beyond worrying about her leaving, he was also fighting pain. "You come back before the sun gets low. Don't matter if you've found nothin' or not," he said in a deep voice, looking out the window.
She nodded at his request. "I will," she said. She caught his glance, his piercing blue eyes beneath his shaggy mane. He was clenching his teeth now, trying to adjust himself to get comfortable in the bed. She needed to get him medicine today. "Don't worry."
"I'm gonna," he replied gruffly.
He had woken early in the morning, practically shaking her awake. He'd wanted her to find a map so they could figure out the best path for her to take. They'd identified the road they had traveled in on which, if Beth navigated it correctly, would lead her right into a small town called Molena. Daryl had traveled there a few times with Merle. He'd remembered there was some kind of rehab center not too far into town which she was to navigate quickly, hopefully find what they needed, and get out.
"You gonna stay in bed?" she asked him, cocking her eyebrow.
"You know I ain't," Daryl said honestly.
Beth rolled her eyes at him, knowing he was too stubborn to argue with. "Don't know what to do with you Daryl Dixon," she said.
"Just...kiss me...before you leave," he mumbled, still shy, and she slid her knife back into it's casing on her hip and crawled towards him on the bed, landing over his thighs and placing her hands on his cheeks. The scruff of his beard scratched her hands but she kissed him deeply and the familiarity of him made her heart beat faster and her skin tingle.
He broke the kiss, placing his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. "You come back to me," he said.
"I'll be back before you know it Daryl," she replied.
Beth had never been in an expensive car, let alone a Mercedes. The Greene's weren't a flashy sort of family and she'd always been proud of that, but it didn't diminish the beauty of the car she was in. It rumbled to life with the turn of the key and she felt the power beneath her body. She hadn't been behind the wheel of a car in a long while, so she reversed too quickly, zooming out of the garage she had opened manually, skidding to a stop outside. Real smooth Greene, she thought to herself, getting out of the car and moving towards the garage.
She pulled the garage door closed, climbed back into the car and turned to drive down the long driveway that spilled out onto a dirt road. She had inspected it when she'd navigated the property, knowing the driveway was safe of land mines. At the end of it, she choose to turn left, putting on her blinker as she did so, feeling incredibly silly. The light clicked and she watched it flicker on the dashboard, sounding smooth and strange. The driving lessons that Daddy and Maggie had given to her stuck with her after all this time.
Suddenly, she felt like crying. The feeling frustrated her. When would this get easier? She looked in the rearview mirror back at the house where she knew Daryl was. He was it. There was no one else. He was her family now and she needed to do this for him.
Beth felt like she'd only been driving for a few minutes when she saw a sign for Molena, but according to the still working clock in the car, it had been thirty-three minutes. She'd laid the map that her and Daryl had gone over this morning in the seat next to her. The machine gun was on the passenger side floor, leaning against the seat and beside that, a large duffle bag she'd found at the house.
As she drove past the sign, the road split, a second road veering to the right. She took it, slowing down and feeling nervous, her eyes darting wildly to take in the surroundings. The area was filled with trees so it didn't offer much visibility into the town but Daryl had said it would be one of the first buildings she'd see as she came in off the main road.
Moving along slowly, she noticed the end of a driveway, almost hidden by a fallen tree. She squinted, trying to see in the distance, a building slightly visible in the background. She would need to get out to explore more. Slowly, she turned the car around in case she needed to get out quickly, turned the key and pulled it out, placing it in her pocket.
Beth took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a minute, preparing herself. She was scared. There was no denying it. There was no one here to protect her now, just her, her instincts and what Daryl had taught her. She reached to her hip, as if she was afraid she'd left her knife back at the house. It was still there, faithful. She opened her door, grabbed the machine gun and duffle bag from beside her and slung both over her shoulders.
The tree that had fallen was larger than it looked but Beth was able to navigate over it fairly quickly. She landed on solid blacktop, steady on her feet. The grass was overgrown, creeping into the cracks of the pavement - nature slowly taking over as it had in almost every other aspect of the world now.
She walked down the road stealthily, not seeing movement. It ended in a small parking lot in front of the building - a one story, brick structure with a flat roof. She reached it quickly, leaning her back against the brick wall and it wasn't until she rested that she realized how heavily she was breathing. Her anxiety had built and the world seemed to spin around her but she pushed past it to inspect the front door.
It was a heavy double door, with large metal handles on either side. There was a silver sign bolted to the wall beside it that read "Molena Health and Rehab". She tugged on the handles, but they only inched forward slightly. She could tell they were locked from the inside. From the other side of the door she heard a groan and then something shuffling. A walker. Or walkers? She couldn't tell, but it was what she had been dreading.
You can do this, she told herself, turning away from the doors. She scaled the wall, facing outwards and turned the corner, finding windows most of which, to her surprise, were still in-tact. She peeked into the first one, bringing her eyes just above the sill, trying to peer in but the dust on the inside was too thick to see through. She finally found a window with cracked glass, the break spidering across the entire surface.
Not wanting to waste more time, she broke it easily with the back of the gun, carefully turning away from it as it shattered from the frame. Immediately, she heard movement and when she looked inside, a walker turned the corner and reached out towards her, stumbling over its own feet. She hadn't seen a walker up close since they were at the country club. Beth often wondered if she'd get used to it - seeing the dead. It had been a while now, and it still unsettled her just as much as the first time she'd seen one.
This corpse had been old before he'd died. It was pure bones, almost a skeleton now, the skin like an old cloth, hanging from its body. The walker's face was distorted, its teeth clamping down onto each other hungrily, its eyes focused on Beth as she stood there watching. She let it come towards the window and stumble out, the torso getting stuck in the glass she'd broken.
The head turned towards her, chomping wildly and she took her knife and sunk it into its brain. Movement stopped immediately and she easily pulled the body through the window, letting it fall with a soft thud on the ground. She looked back into the window, but it was empty, so carefully she cleared the rest of the glass and guts away from the bottom and leveraged herself in through the window.
She hit the ground with her boots, dust rising from the floor around her. The room was dark and she headed forward slowly, coming up to a hallway. She looked left and then right. At the left she saw the walker she'd heard when she first tried to open the door. A female walker sitting in a wheelchair, its head lolling to the side, shuffling its feet on the floor, moving the wheels of the apparatus. The walker's hair was long and white, shielding its decaying face.
Beth started forward determinedly and suddenly from the corner of her eye she saw movement beelining towards her. A walker, large and tall quickly lunged towards her, crashing into her roughly and she put her arms out hurriedly to push it away from her. It backed her into the wall of the hallway, so that she was square against the wood and she let out a whimper of fear, trying to hold him back with one arm while lifting her arm with the knife to his head. The walker groaned at her, opening his mouth so wide she could see the blackness inside of it. It was close enough that she could smell death and rotting flesh. The scent filled her nostrils and she held back a gag as she was finally able to get her leg up to kick the body away.
The walker fell backwards, trying to regain balance to come forward for her flesh and she quickly took her knife to its brain. She watched as the corpse sunk backwards from her knife, crumbling on the floor. She was gasping for breath now, fear and adrenaline coursing through her veins at the unexpectedness of the attack. Pausing for a minute, she built back her confidence and went over towards the wheelchair walker who she killed easily.
She turned towards the rooms then, opening each of them quietly until she finally found the nurses' working station. It was dusty, but relatively in tact. Behind the untouched desks and chairs was a single door that read, "Employees Only". She raced towards it, her heart pounding, hopeful she'd found what she'd came for.
The door opened easily, revealing a room with shelving that held different colored bins, filled with medication. Jackpot.
Beth opened the duffle bag she was holding dumping bin after bin into her bag, taking everything. They never knew what they might need and it was better to just take the lot then risk needing to run out again.
Once her bag was filled and the shelves had been emptied, she slung the bag over her shoulder - it felt heavier than she thought it would. She found the window she'd broken and climbed out carefully, her boots crunching over the broken glass on the grass where she'd landed.
The air was the same and the surroundings how she'd left them but realized that the quiet was gone. Her ears perked up and she heard faint voices talking in the distance. She looked to her left, then her right, seeing no one.
Terror overtook her. The living were more dangerous than the dead - the Governor had shown them that. She gripped her gun and the bag over her shoulder tightly and ran as fast as she could back towards the fallen tree. Gracefully, she made her way over it, threw everything into the open door of the car, started it and hit the gas with a heavy foot, not looking back.