Chapter Forty One: Danger

Danger: a cause or likely cause of harm or injury.

Day 80

It had been approximately a week since the stranger—Randall—had been taken back to the farm, and interrogations were not going as swimmingly as most hoped. Though Daisy was not privy to the interrogations themselves, she often spotted Daryl, Merle or Shane with tentatively healing knuckles that told of brute force intended to get someone to talk. As with most of the others, Daisy felt a newfound trepidation toward Shane and the Dixon brothers. Unlike most of the others, Daisy was reconciled by the fact that such violence was necessary—Randall and his furtive group posed an obvious threat to the farm. As such, Daisy found herself in the forest a few miles from the farm, walking steadily with Daryl at her back.

Ordinarily, Daisy could not find her way through a forest to save her life, but the barest trace of a path wound through the trees from Daryl and Merle's frequent rounds of checking traps and hunting animals. Her concentration was on the ground, following along the dirt path and minding stray, sneaking roots that seemed determined to trip her up. Just as her stride had begun to widen in confidence at her burgeoning path-tracking ability, a harsh pull on her backpack threw her backwards into Daryl. She shot a glare at the hand that had twined in the strap of her backpack, then turned it towards Daryl himself, who took no mind and simply held a shushing finger to his mouth. Daisy followed his line of sight, and spotted what had caused him to stop her; a pair of rabbits had stopped to nibble on some nearby grass at the opposite end of a clearing some twenty yards ahead.

Before Daisy could stop herself, her face lit up at the sweet sight of the rabbits. Hurriedly, she realised her mistake as Daryl raised his crossbow and loosed a bolt. Blood splattered against the grass with a disturbingly wet sound as the nearest rabbit was pierced cleanly by Daryl's bolt. The dead rabbit twitched for a second, then stilled as its friend scampered off. Daisy's face smoothed over as she looked at the dead rabbit, Daryl moved past her to retrieve it. One should not see possible food as 'sweet' while hunting, as it will very likely be killed momentarily. Daisy had learned that lesson time and time again, it annoyingly refused to stick in every case, though she took pride in the fact that she had become very resilient in the face of animal death since the world ended.

"Shit," Daryl grumbled as he swiped the bolt from the rabbit. He began to tie the rabbit's neck to the piece of rope that held his other victims.

"'Shit?' What is shit?" Daisy asked with a sigh as she shuffled along the path towards Daryl. He looked up at her with a squint, then scowled back down at the rabbit as he adjusted the rope around his neck.

"Could'a gotten em' both...becomin' a rusty shot with all this layin' about," Daryl said as he turned to continue down the path. Daisy tilted her head in confusion, then hurriedly caught up to him. She studied the dead rabbit as it flopped limply over Daryl's back, there was an empty socket where the bolt had pierced neatly through its left eye.

"Yeah, Daryl, definitely getting rusty," Daisy said with no small amount of sarcasm. "Never mind the fact that you shot a rabbit through its eye from forty yards away."

Daryl looked back at her through narrowed eyes, then quietly corrected, "Twenty yards." Daisy saw that the beginnings of a tiny smile lifted his cheeks, and a warm feeling spread through her chest in satisfaction, she directed her own small smile towards the back of his head as they continued quietly through the scrub.

After a few more rabbits were shot and bagged, Daisy had spent enough time trampling through the forest to gather some of her courage together. Ordinarily, Daisy would not hesitate in asking a friend about something perhaps more personal than that which is spoken freely—but the friend in question was Daryl Dixon, hunter extraordinaire and emotionally frigid bitch. Daisy smirked slightly at her fondly thought nickname of him, and her smirk grew wider as she ruminated on the truth of the sentiment. After Daryl shot her an odd look, likely because of the way that she was staring off into the distance with a slightly crazed expression on her face.

"Shouldn't stare into the sun, freak," Daryl said with a slight smile to lend fondness to his own, less private nickname for her. Daisy startled out of her thoughts and glanced slightly to the left, where the sun was hanging high in the sky glaring at her.

"Whoops," Daisy said vaguely, then dropped her gaze to the ground. Her nose wrinkled in concern as she noted the purple shadow that was left in her vision after accidentally staring at the sun—an affliction that most left in childhood. Daisy rolled her eyes, annoyed at herself.

"What'cha thinkin' on?" Daryl asked awkwardly as he peered around a nearby tree as some bushes rustled in the distance. Daisy stared up at him in surprise, and restrained a smile as she dared to assume that he was concerned about her.

"Are you worried about me?" Daisy asked, not willing to let the rare moment leave without acknowledgement.

"Shit no," Daryl said hurriedly and he shot her a light glare. "Relieved, more like. Usually you talk up a storm and make the game piss off for days."

"Gee, thanks," Daisy said sarcastically with a quiet laugh, mindful of what Daryl's point about her scaring off animals. She stopped and looked towards him, then decided to take his answer as joking, and that he might want to be party to her concerns. "What d'you think is gonna happen with Randall?"

"Psh," Daryl scoffed. He spat off to the side, and Daisy recoiled in mild disgust, though was careful to do so discretely, so as to not scare off her apparent friend. "I think we should kill the fucker, Merle does too."

Daisy paused and stared at Daryl warily. "Merle, I get…but why do you think he's better off dead?" Daisy trusted his judgement, as she knew him to be a somewhat reasonable person, unlike his brother.

"His group's dangerous…we let him go, they'll probably come back."

"Dangerous how?" Daisy asked with trepidation, curious as to what Daryl would consider a worse fate than compromising their own morals by killing a man. He did not answer, and lifted up his crossbow to shoot down a squirrel that was idling on a low branch nearby. There was a low thwip as the bolt was loosed, then a sick squelch and a rustle as the squirrel was hit and fell to the forest floor.

"Dangerous…" Daryl started as he moved to pick up the squirrel. He paused and tried to find his words. "He said his group…hurt two girls, in front of her father."

Daisy adjusted her bag awkwardly on her back and suddenly felt sick to her stomach as she gathered what Daryl was suggesting. "By hurt, you mean raped," she said with a quiet certainty that implied her condemnation of Randall's group, and Randall himself. Daryl pursed his lips, and did not say anything. "What does Rick think? And Shane?"

Daryl tied the squirrel onto the line of small game he had gathered thus far, and rolled his eyes. "Naw, Randall said he didn't hurt anyone himself, only watched—as if that's any better. They think he ain't that bad." He narrowed his gaze and looked around the forest, there was no one else around and the world was disarmingly silent. One could imagine that the world had never ended, as deep into the calm forest as they were, were it not for the stray, dismembered foot that was sitting casually near the trunk of a nearby tree, a black pool of dried blood stained the dirt ground. Daryl suddenly asked, "What d'you think?"

Daisy examined the foot, and imagined who it might belong to. Some lost soul, or a poor victim of Randall's group. Either way, it was all too easy for Daisy to imagine it as belonging to someone from her group. The world had become infinitely more dangerous after the dead began to rise to soon outnumber the living. No iteration of life was more cutthroat than that which they inhabited in that moment. Without order and justice, rape and murder were slowly becoming the norm. If her group was not led by two police officers, Daisy could not bear to dream of what devolution would overcome them from a lack of guidance.

"I think you and Merle're right," Daisy said simply. She looked up towards the sky, and narrowed her eyes against the ever-present glare of the yellow sun. Daisy stood beside Daryl and caught his gaze. "He and his group attacked you without reason, and he apparently stood by while two girls were raped by his people. Better to be safe than sorry. We should protect us and ours."

Later

When Daryl and Daisy returned with at least a few days' worth of meat for the group, they were not greeted by a dozen or so relieved faces. Rather, they were greeted by panic and upset, as they probably should have expected from the countless times such a state had taken hold of the camp in the past. In the distance, as they trudged through the tall grass towards the camp, they saw that everyone else was gathered haphazardly near the unlit campfire.

"What the fuck's wrong now?" Daryl muttered to himself with a grimace as they approached the tents on the outside of the camp, he stopped by his and Merle's tent.

"Psycho-kid is gone," Merle announced his presence loudly through the open gap of the tent entrance. Daisy glanced down at him to see that he was reclined casually on his cot with his hands working steadily as he speedily carved a small piece of wood with his pocket knife. There was a partially opened bag of white powder by his arm, and Daisy rolled her eyes as she recognised it to be cocaine—just what the group needed, Merle being even more impulsive and obnoxious than usual.

"Which psycho kid?" Daryl asked, unfazed by Merle's drug use. He threw the squirrels and rabbits towards Daisy and she scrambled to not let them fall in the dirt, then trudged inside to swipe Merle's knife from him.

"Hey!" Merle protested loudly with a death glare directed intently towards his brother.

"Which psycho kid?" Daryl repeated himself as he took himself and his stolen knife back outside of the tent.

"Randall," Merle said obviously with a roll of his eyes as he followed Daryl outside. "Those two pigs took him out, let him loose." Daisy handed Daryl back the line of game as she began to realise what Merle had said. She had only just resigned herself to fighting for Randall's fate being death, to protect their own group from his.

"What?! Th' fuck didn't you stop him?" Daryl growled, his brow furrowed hard as he stared down his brother.

Merle shot him an offended look, then began to walk towards the others as they predictably bickered in the distance. "You think they consulted me before making the big decision?" He shot back at Daryl.

Daryl snorted and replied reasonably, "You sure you weren't just too coked out?" Merle did not reply, which Daisy discerned as being a reluctant acceptance of the accuracy of Daryl's assumption.

The group fell silent as they saw Merle, Daryl and Daisy approach, the former two angry and the latter more tiredly resigned.

"Hope you know that y'all are gonna die," Daryl said tersely as he came to a stop before them. Most of them seemed to agree with Daryl. He nodded towards Shane and Rick, and continued, "These two tell you that his group kill and rape people. Ain't no joke—they're gonna come here, and I sure as shit ain't gonna be here to protect all'a you when they do."

He dropped the line of squirrels and rabbits on the grassy ground near Carol, their resident chef, and strode away towards his tent, likely to wallow. Daisy stared around at the hopeless faces of her friends, and silently cursed Shane and Rick for willingly leading a herd of killers and rapists to their doorstep. Though, as she saw the trepidation in their own faces, she could not entirely fault them for doing only what their morality had bade them to. Daisy stared down at the nearest squirrel which was lying poised near her feet, its body cold and set from rigor mortis; she almost envied the emptiness of its dark eyes, there was no happiness, but also no fear.