Chapter Eight: Reality
Reality: the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them.
Day 59
Daisy stood in front of the stunned, newly awakened Rick, still trying to subtlety catch her breath after that short burst of running.
"I know you?" Rick asked Daisy.
"No! I'm Daisy…" Daisy gave him a wide, closed smile, hands clasping in front of her as she tried to think of how to explain the shit storm that they were now in, that Rick was doubtlessly unaware of. "You don't know me. But, I know you! Rick Grimes: King County's Sheriff Deputy, gunshot wound to the armpit. Read it on your, uh, chart thing."
Daisy gave an awkward shrug and Rick continued to look at her confusedly, eyes narrowed.
"That's gotta suck man…armpit, ugh!" Daisy gave a sympathetic wince and continued to stare at him, hoping for some response. He just continued to stare at her, eyes darting around to look at the empty world around them.
"What happened?" Rick interjected suddenly. Daisy's mouth twisted in sympathy at what he had yet to learn.
"It's…all gone." She began hesitantly. "We've been basically post-apocalypse for about two months." Daisy nodded with wide eyes.
"Post-what?" He sounded disbelieving.
"Yeah, didn't you notice all those bodies lined up outside the hospital? The military base set up just over that hill? The complete lack of other alive human beings? 'Cept me, of course." Daisy gave him a weary but comforting smile. Rick's hands came up to run through his admittedly greasy and unwashed coma-hair.
"You okay, dude?" Daisy asked, despite the obviousness of his distress.
"My family, you know if they're okay?" His eyes looked at her pleadingly.
"Sorry…I don't know them? I only came across you about a month and a half ago, there was no one with you. We could go look for them?" Daisy suggested, with Rick giving a slight nod in reply to where he was staring off into the distance. "Great! Where d'you think they would be?"
"Home." Rick mumbled, and Daisy gave an affirmative nod before starting back towards the hospital.
"Come on. I already have a car hot-wired." Daisy beckoned him with one hand. Looking back, she saw that he stared at her with a concerned look. Her eyes widened in realisation and she continued, "I mean, my car…that I own…it's parked around the back of the hospital, Deputy Grimes!" Daisy finished with a hopeful smile. Rick scoffed and shot an amused smirk at Daisy, following along behind her.
"We can, uh, find you some clothes too…can't be walking around with your ass hanging out all day." Daisy chuckled.
Behind her, Rick's head whipped towards her indignantly.
"My ass is not hanging out!" Daisy gave a bark of laughter.
"Well, okay…I mean, granted in it is in boxer shorts! But still…" She conceded with an amused grin.
Later at the Grimes' House
"Sorry, bud. I don't think there's anyone here." Daisy said reluctantly to the saddened Rick, who was choking on a sob after hearing no reply to his calls of 'Lori' and 'Carl'.
He was crouched down in the middle of what had been his living room before all this, looking down at the floor with a distant gaze. The house was despairingly empty, dust was undisturbed and there were bright squares of wall that looked like they were once covered with pictures that were now missing.
"Is this real?" Rick murmured softly to himself, voice catching on the words.
"Rick?" Daisy's strong voice cut through the silence. Hearing this, he startled and seemed to snap out of his stupor, looking on the verge of tears. Maybe if Daisy hadn't been there, he wouldn't have snapped out of it.
"They're not here." Rick stated obviously, looking up at her with pleading eyes.
"Yeah, but…uh, maybe they went to one of the safe zones?" Daisy suggested. "There was one in Atlanta, I mean, before it got bombed…"
Rick turned to look at her in shock, before she back-tracked, "I mean, if they were there, they probably got out before then! We can go to Atlanta, look around for them?" He sighed, tired from the day that he had had thus far, the first out of a long coma nonetheless. Rick stood from his crouch, folding back in on himself and touching the bandage on his side with a slight wince.
"Yeah." Rick agreed, slowly walking past Daisy and out the wide open front door of the house. Daisy continued to stand where she was for a while, looking around the abandoned house apprehensively. She took a deep breath and turned to follow Rick when she heard a dull thud and a yell.
"Daddy! Daddy!" She heard from the front yard. "Daddy, I got the sumbitch I'mma smack him dead!"
"Fuck me, what now coma guy?" Daisy managed to mutter exasperatedly with wide, panicked eyes, already sensing a trend with Rick's luck. She rushed out the door to see Rick on the ground, a kid standing over him holding a shovel up in the air.
Daisy looked incredulously at the kid, then a loud gunshot made her jump. Her head snapped up to see who she presumed was the kid's father walking towards them, and away from the dead man he had just shot down. She continued to stand still in both fear of the man with the gun, and in shock at seeing another person alive after so long.
"He say something? I thought I heard him say something?" The man asked the kid.
"He called me Carl."
"Son, you know they don't talk."
"Hey, mister! S'that bandage for?" Rick's head raised up a fraction, but Daisy couldn't hear him from where she was standing on the porch.
"What kinda wound? You answer me, damn you! What's your wound? You tell me, or I will kill you."
The man cocked his gun, and Daisy startled forward. She saw Rick's head hit the ground again in a faint.
"Whoa, what the fuck, man?" Daisy shouted, moving towards the unknown man. He swung the gun around to point at her and she stopped in her place, hands raising in surrender.
"His wound? It's a gunshot, happened before all this! He was a cop, got shot tryna stop some bad guys or something!"
The man narrowed his eyes at her thoughtfully, the kid moved behind him.
"Look, put the gun down." Daisy's hands came down a little in a calming gesture. "Dude, I think outta the two of us, it's you who I can't trust." She raised her brow at him expectantly, to which he reluctantly holstered his gun.
"Now, can we get outta the street?" Daisy asked, gesturing towards the few dead that had begun to roam down from the next block over. The man gave a short nod and knelt down by Rick's feet, holding onto them and looking up at Daisy then nodding his head for her to grab the other end of him.
Daisy made her way down the narrow path from the house and knelt down, grabbing Rick under the arms and heaving him up with the man.
"I'm Morgan." He said shortly as he led them down the street. Daisy looked up at him and nodded.
"Daisy." She said. Daisy looked towards the kid, silently asking for his name.
"Duane." The kid said softly, following after them, keeping near his father. Daisy gave him an amused smirk.
"Well, Duane, I'd say it's nice to meet you…but you just knocked my pal Rick here over the head with a shovel!"
That night, at Morgan and Duane's Hideout
"Are you tryna be funny, punk?" Daisy narrowed her eyes at the giggling boy.
"No!" He tried to say with a serious look, smile breaking through.
"You like Superman more than Batman!"
"Yes!"
"Wh—why the heck would you think that?" Duane gave her a doubtful look.
"Superman can fly."
"Batman can fly!" Daisy rebutted, Duane looked at her confusedly.
"No, he can't!"
"Yeah he can! I mean, technically it's gliding…"
"Oh, you mean falling." Duane reasoned.
"No. Flying." Daisy would not relent.
"Falling…with style?" He compromised, and Daisy gave him an impressed look.
"Toy Story, nice reference!" She complimented him, he gave her a wide smile in return.
Heavy footsteps sounded coming down the stairs in the next room, they both looked up to see Morgan enter the room.
"You two doin' alright in here?" He looked amused at the pair, despite any distrust that Daisy knew he still felt towards her and Rick.
"No, we are not. Your boy here likes Superman over Batman!" She informed him. "Now I'm sure you didn't mean to give him such a poor education on the finer details of our Dark Knight, but this is something that must be addressed." Daisy gave him a mockingly serious look, getting a flat look in return which lightened at the sound of his son's renewed giggles.
"Well, I don't know about all that, but I thought you should know that your friend's awake." Morgan enlightened them.
"Rick!" She said unnecessarily, turning to Duane to continue, "We will continue our conversation later." Daisy gave him a cautious stare, rising to walk backwards out of the room. They held their mock stare until Daisy ran back into Morgan's shoulder, she looked at him with exaggerated fear until he gave an indulgent smile at them both.
"Go." Morgan ordered her with a tired but fond shake of his head. "And you, don't think I don't know you haven't finished your reading yet!" Duane's eyes widened and he scrambled to get the book that his father had given him.
Daisy gave a small smile to the two of them and continued to the stairs, no longer walking backwards. She reached the door to where Rick was laying and gave a quiet knock.
"Come in." She heard Rick call softly to her.
The door opened with a creak and she smiled to see Rick conscious again, laying with his head propped up on some pillows.
"Hey there, friend." Daisy said in a happy tone. She looked around the room and noted the lack of ropes around his limbs. "Morgan said he'd tie you up, glad to see he heard me when I told him that was entirely unnecessary. I mean, how does a bullet hole look like a bite in any way?" She reasoned. He furrowed his brow at her.
"Yeah, a bite. Morgan said that if it had been a bite, I woulda had a fever by now. What'd he mean?"
Daisy entered the room fully, sitting at the foot of the bed on an empty space. She realised that she may not have entirely explained their current situation.
"Uh, yeah. You remember that girl in the park? And the guy on the street, just before?" She started, Rick nodded slightly in reply. "I said that the dead were coming back to life, hungry for people?" He nodded again, looking to be in slight disbelief at that.
"That's how you turn." Daisy said, "If they bite you, or…uh, scratch you as well, I've learned," She remembered little Jonah and that goddamn scratch on his arm, "then you get a fever and die, come back as one of them."
Daisy narrowed her eyes at the air and looked to the side, after a while determining that to be a sufficient explanation.
"So, Morgan thought I'd been bit, and that I'd turn." Rick queried with a blank stare. Daisy gave a firm nod in return. "How the hell'd all this happen?"
"Uh, no one knows…I mean no one I've met. One day everything was normal, then the next dead people were rising and chowing down on your friends." Daisy ended with a wry, upset smile. Rick stared at her contritely.
"You've lost people?" He asked her.
"Uh, yeah. When this all started I was with my friends…me and my friend Jess got separated from the rest. Turned out, she'd been bit, so I had to put her down…I haven't found the others yet." Daisy gazed down at the ground, heavy sigh escaping her lips.
"And your family?"
"The day this all started I got a call from my brother, his dealer had turned and attacked him. But I think that Nick got out okay. My mom called, told me about the dead rising and said that I should get somewhere safe…but the phone cut out before long and…I don't know what happened to them." She took a steadying breath. "I mean, they're in LA for fuck's sake, how the hell am I gonna know if they're okay or not?"
Rick sat up and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, Daisy looked over at him in gratitude.
"You'll find your family, Daisy. I know it." His drawling accent was a comfort and she huffed a laugh at him.
"And you'll find yours." Daisy sounded surer of herself than she thought she should be.
"Together." Rick said firmly.
Daisy stared at him with studying eyes, and her mouth widened in a smile. For the first time since losing her friends, she felt that everything might be okay in the end.