The third chapter! I hope everyone enjoys this chapter as much as I do... I had a blast writing it. Thank you to all that have read and favorited, etc. It is very much appreciated. Anyway, enjoy!
"They sort'a look like caterpillars," May said under her breath as she watched the Dead squirm in their zipped-up sleeping bags. They were littered across the floor, writhing against the sticky polyester. Carol let loose a chuckle at May's comment, but Daryl simply grunted—clearly unamused by her remark.
To try and make up for it, May walked towards the two closest to her and impaled their heads with her bayonet. While Carol went to stab the third, Daryl bent down to unzip May's first victim as May did the same with her second. She found a boot knife and a pack of stale Lucky Strikes. May slid the knife into one of her worn red cowboy boots and slid the cigarettes into her back pocket. Daryl caught sight of the pack as she put it away and looked at her angrily.
"'Course, I get the Walker that ain't carrying a pack of cigs on 'im," he huffed, pushing past her as a small and devious smile leapt onto her lips. The closest of the two tents began to move like a wobbling pyramid of jelly. The identifiable anthem of the Dead groaned from inside the tent and Daryl stood up, looked at the tent through the dark hair which hung over his eyes. Whenever May really looked at it—in all its greasy glory—she instantly felt her chest swell with a motherly instinct the young woman would often get. She didn't want to adopt Daryl, she just wanted to push the hair from his eyes and wash it for him.
"Some days I don't know what the hell to think," Daryl muttered as he pulled an arrow from the head of a Walker.
Ash blackened the suddenly crooked streets and the trees that once bloomed in the humid heat of Atlanta were merely the skeletons of what they once were. At least a foot-tall cloud of soot wafted through the streets and turned the corners as quickly as a businessman late for his nine o'clock meeting. It looked like someone had taken a torch to the concrete jungle; burned it down with one single blow. Smudges of cinder were wiped across the sidewalks and up against the tall sides of skyscrapers. May likened the view from the twentieth-floor office to Kathy's charcoal sketches of fantastical cities, where elves grew from trees like apples and gardens grew up the sides of buildings.
"How did we get here?" Carol asked in a dull tone, her voice bereft of the lilt of inquiry.
After a moment of silence, Daryl agreed with a rumble. The tips of May's fingers subconsciously toyed with the small, golden cross that laid between her collarbones. "We just did," Daryl said.
Carol's eyes meekly fluttered over to May's moving hand before moving back to the window, squinting. "How do you still live with that around your neck?" She asked May quietly. "With this? With what happened with Mika and Lizzie?"
Carol sounded like a child trying to understand why we needed air in our lungs or why we didn't fall off the vertical sides of the earth. "I wouldn't be livin' if it wa'n't there."
"You think God's keepin' you alive? An' for this?" Daryl asked, gesturing to the grey world outside the window. Ever since May's enlightened outreach to Gabriel, Daryl had been wondering how on earth some bible thumper like her had survived. Any Christian would have offed themself by now, realizing what kind of place their "almighty God" had put them in. And yet, there was May, smiling at corrupt priests and holding that damned cross around her neck like it was what kept her alive—not guns, food, water, and shelter.
"What, you think I could keep myself alive?" She laughed through slightly wet eyes, looking back at him. "You think I could live with myself?"
Daryl's posture and thoughts softened at the faltering strength in her smile. It seemed so out of place, like she was forcing it onto her face. Daryl wasn't beginning to understand why on earth May would waste her time praying and clutching that cross, but maybe he understood a little better why she couldn't think she was living by just herself.
"We have the chance to start over, May," Carol offered. "We have to start over."
May didn't respond, she only looked out far into Atlanta with eyes as grey as the sky.
Daryl soon shifted in his shoes and leant forward until her forearm pressed against the glass and his eyes squinted beneath the makeshift awning. "You see something?" Carol asked him.
"I don't know," he mumbled, falling his hand away from the dirtied window. "Hand me that rifle," he said and she immediately took it off her person, handing it to him. He positioned the barrel in the right direction with an impressive steadiness and looked carefully through the scope. When he'd found what he was looking for, he pointed at something in the far distance through the window. "Look," he said as Carol squinted, looking through the scope.
"Been there a while," she commented. "Definitely one of them."
"Some kind of lead," May mentioned quietly, not really seeing what they were referring to except a small white dot crashed into the side of the freeway.
"We should fill up," Carol said, scaling the desk by the windows. As she began to fill up a canteen of water, May crouched and rifled through the drawers of the desk and Daryl stood still, focusing on a large and rather primitive-looking piece of art on the wall.
To the tinkling of the water splashing down in a slender stream to the metallic base of the canteen, May slowly leafed through disorganized stacks of paper. She passed by bills and opened letters until she came across a substantial amount of mouthwash. Opening her bags, she poured the miniature bottles in before closing that drawer and moving on to the next.
"You got a date?" She heard Carol ask, looking over the desk as May put the mouthwash in her bag.
"They're antiseptic," May smiled.
"Oh. I thought you were planning on kissing somebody," Carol said in dramatic voice. May liked how much of a mother she acted like sometimes, and almost always to nearly anyone. Carol waltzed over to Daryl as she took a sip of water from the filled canteen.
"What?" She asked Daryl as she looked at him questioningly. His eyes drifted across the canvas once again before he looked at her with an irritated frown.
"Bet some rich prick paid a lot'a money for this," he shook his head, taking a sip from the canteen she handed him. "Looks like a dog sat 'n paint, and wiped its ass all o'er the place," he said, dragging his hand into the air in the motion of the theoretical dog's bottom.
A concealed laugh broke from May's nose and Daryl looked at her with an unreadable expression, either he was irritated she'd been listening in on a conversation she really wasn't a part of or he wasn't expected to get a laugh out of anyone but was relatively satisfied that he did.
"Really? I kind of like it," Carol said.
Daryl scoffed, looking at her before taking another sip of water. "Stop."
May moved on to a cabinet against the wall and her heart dropped when she saw its contents. However, neither Daryl nor Carol seemed to notice her awe.
"I'm serious," Carol clarified. "You don't know me."
"Yep. You keep tellin' yourself that," Daryl replied. As he slung his crossbow over his arm and made way for the exit, he caught sight of the fire-headed girl looking up into the cabinets with wide eyes. She was relatively tall—taller than Carol and probably taller than Maggie—but she still had to look up to see exactly what was in the cabinets. Daryl walked over when he saw the sun reflect the crystal inside the cabinet.
He stood closely behind May, until the sound of him breathing could distract her from the glittering bottles of untouched liquor. "Damn."
As Daryl watched May's skinny hips slide through the crack between the padlock-sealed doors, he heard the cocking of a large gun. For a reason entirely unknown to him, the idea of May on the other side—the receiver of that preparation—made him angry. He didn't want Carol to pass through the gap before him, but she was already bent and ready to crawl to meet May on the other side, despite the telltale sign of loaded armory on the other side.
Daryl sighed as he stood up, seeing a kid on the other side with Carol's large rifle in his hands. The boy aimed it at him once Daryl was standing. "Lay down your crossbow," the boy ordered.
Daryl looked away disapprovingly. "You got some sack on you."
"Nobody has to get hurt, I just need weapons. So please, lay down your crossbow."
Daryl conceded reluctantly, staring daggers into the boy. "Back up!" The kid ordered sternly. May stood still as Daryl and Carol took small steps towards the doors against their backs. "Back up, please."
"You ain't goin'a shoot me," she said.
"You're right," he said and quickly snatched up the crossbow. "You're tougher than me. Tough enough to get past this," he said as he dragged a knife down the silky wall of a tent. Soon enough, a Walker found its way out of the tangled polyester and made its way for May. It was only a second before her push dagger quietly found its way inside the Dead's brain, and another second before Daryl's machete was planted into the next's. Daryl helped May up from her crouched position on the floor, but they stopped when they heard a gunshot ring in the air behind him.
"Carol!" Daryl hissed, looking back as he saw the muzzle of Carol's semi-automatic pointed at the boy. May boldly put herself in Carol's line of fire and knocked the gun from the older woman's hands. With the clatter of the gun as it hit the floor, May began racing after the boy with Daryl on her tail. Carol looked at her small gun on the floor with moon eyes before she realized that her companions were far ahead of her if they'd gotten past the exit. However, they hadn't—she discovered, when she found them both pushing themselves up against a door locked from the other side.
Shortly after, they found another door that only led empty office space. Carol made an effort to explain herself as they three walked speedily across the linoleum floor: "Three bullets. We're in the middle of the city and he was stealing our weapons. Did you think I was going to kill him?"
Neither Daryl nor May replied, but May's eyes flashed over to Carol with a look of obscene disapproval. After what had happened with Mika and Lizzie, would she really have no qualms about killing another kid? "I was aiming for his leg. Could that have killed him? Maybe, I don't know—but he was stealing our weapons."
"He's just a damn kid," Daryl uttered as they reached another door that was locked. Daryl slid his knife out of its sheath and automatically began working on the locked knob.
"And without weapons we could die," she tried to explain, but neither of the two seemed enlightened by her defense. "Beth could die," she tried appealing to Daryl.
"We'll find more weapons," May answered, slipping a smaller knife to Daryl as she noticed the large one he was trying to pick the lock with wasn't working effectively.
"I don't want you to die. I don't want Beth to die. I don't want anybody at the church to die, but I can't stand around and watch it happen either. I can't—that's why I left. I just had to be someplace else!"
"Well you ain't someplace else; you're right here!" Daryl turned around. "You're tryin'."
"Look, you're not who you were and neither am I," she began again. The lock finally popped and the door sprang open an inch. Daryl handed back the knife with a look of satisfaction. "And I don't know anymore if I believe in God or heaven, but if I'm going to Hell, I'm making damn sure I'm holding it off as long as possible."
Her eyes moved to May in a flash of unjustified anger towards the God-fearing girl. "You heard me," she said with a straight, grim face. May looked at the ground and picked up Daryl's bag for him, accidentally spilling its contents into the hall the door Daryl'd open emptied into. In front of Daryl and May, scattered on the ground with Daryl's other few belongings, was the book from the domestic abuse center on survivors of child abuse. Carol couldn't see into the hallway and she was too torn between fuming and beginning to feel bad for taking some of her anger out on May, but May could certainly see the secret Daryl had kept hidden in his bag. Prepared to snatch up his bag with a rude push, Daryl was knocked out of the way himself by May. She picked up the book with gently as she did the balled-up shirt and the rusted knife that had come out of his bag too; she treated them all the same and looked back up at him with genuine, though unaffected, eyes.
"Sorry," she said to him quietly—not made shy by discovering what was in his bag. Daryl was surprised by her reaction; he knew she wasn't one to butt in on business that wasn't hers, but he had at least expected those stormy-blue eyes to go wide in pity. But they hadn't.
Daryl nodded after a moment's hesitation. He was made more awkward than she was. Carol's mind drew away from her recent burst of anger and focused on the unusual interaction between Daryl and May. But it only lasted a moment, because soon they were headed down the staircase Daryl had broken into with May in the lead.
As Daryl watched her apricot orange hair shine beneath his pointed flashlight, he realized him much he liked her quiet tenderness.
The walk to the freeway was long, far, and hot, but they proceeded without running into any trouble for the most part. All three took down a handful of Walkers, but otherwise they hadn't been bothered much. A few of the Dead trudged along their trail, but they were a decent stretch away.
Carol looked at the backs of Daryl and May with guilt in her eyes. She hadn't meant to lash out at either of them, but she couldn't stand the person she was slowly becoming. She tried desperately to defend her own actions to herself and to her two companions, but her efforts seemed fruitless. She had tried to shoot a kid.
May had picked up a map that'd blown past her in the hot wind at some point in their journey, and Daryl watched her flatten its creases against her legs. She looked like an idiot, he thought, with this gigantic, unfolded map stretched out in front of her torso and head. What was she doing—trying to work her way around a map like a tourist… in the middle of the fucking apocalypse? The depth of her idiocy was fully realized by Daryl when she nearly ran into a Walker that was heading her way. He had spotted it but hadn't done anything about it, he wanted to see how unaware she really was.
May yelped when the map pushed towards her face and she finally came to realize there was a Walker up against her—her only defense being the map. Daryl sighed and sunk his knife into the Walker's temple, letting it fall to her feet.
"What the hell're you doin'? You could'a died right then if I hadn't'a been here to save your scrawny ass."
May kicked the Walker's head before looking up to Daryl and scowling. "Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit… I sure'd be dead as a doornail without you here!" She exclaimed sarcastically.
Daryl was surprised she'd been so jeering—he'd just expected her to look at him with big eyes and a frown. He squinted at her as she scowled at him. "Well, we're runnin' all o'er hell's half-acre an' you're standin' 'ere readin' some damn map with your head up your ass!"
"How's I supposed t' read with my head up m' ass?"
Daryl seethed. He reached for the map and ripped it out of her hands, crumbling it in a ball and throwing it to the sidewalk.
May gasped. "You snake!" She cried, slamming a fist into his arm and mustering enough strength to actually shove him. Now Daryl wasn't just startled by her outcry, but also her boldness.
"Hey!" He exclaimed, regaining his footing as she ran over to the sidewalk, picking up the balled-up map. Daryl rubbed his arm but quickly left the buzzing, temporary pain alone, careful not to show her that she'd actually wounded him. "Christ, could you piss off the pope."
"Don't you use the Lord's—"
"Oh, won't you two shut up?" Carol shouted from behind, a laugh wrapped around her tongue. Both Daryl and May looked back at Carol with side-eyed glances before continuing to glare at one another.
May's attention eventually returned to her map as she worked at unfolding and flattening it some more. She began to mutter to herself. "If you'd not been such a big jerk, you'd'a figured out this is actually a map of Atlanta," she eventually said in a voice loud enough for Daryl to hear.
"What do we need a map for?" He sighed.
"To find our way."
"Don't need no map to find our way. I can get us there," Daryl affirmed. Carol giggled from behind him and he turned to see her and May smiling at one another and leaning in at some sort of esoteric joke. Daryl frowned, he didn't like when people laughed behind his back; it reminded him too much of those days when he was just a kid and the girls would laugh at the cigarette burns on his arms or the violet bruises ringing his eye. "Stop it."
But the two kept laughing.
"What're you two on about?"
"You're such a man—can't take directions from anything or anyone. Not even during the apocalypse."
Daryl rolled his eyes. "Would you two just shut up?"
They listened, smiling at each other with the remains of laughter on their lips. Eventually, May had pinpointed their place on the map and her feet were veering towards those of Daryl. She tried to point out things about the what was coming up and how far away things were, but Daryl pushed her away each time.
Suddenly she came crashing into him. "See this right 'ere? That's the World of Coca Cola," she gushed, pointing to a large rectangle on the map. "An' right next t' that's the Aquarium… Wonder what that's like nowadays. Ya'd think the fish'd grow legs 'n start walkin' 'round here like it ain't nobody's business!" She laughed girlishly, causing Carol to emit a chuckle from behind them.
"Would you shut up?" Daryl asked, pushing her away from him with a shove. "Thought you were quiet an' somewhat tolerable, but all of the sudden you're irritatin' as hell and you don't got no qualms 'bout poppin' personal bubbles."
May grew quiet momentarily and Daryl nearly laughed. "I'm jus' shy around people I don't know that well."
"Well, you don't know me. You might know Carol, but you don't know me. So stop actin' like we're all buddy-buddy and everything's all right-and-fine."
"Daryl, you'd like May," Carol argued in a motherly tone from behind him.
"Like her?" He looked at May angrily; he looked at the messy red hair clipped to her shoulders and the pink pout beneath her small, elvish nose. "I can't stand her!"
The vulnerability in May's eyes watered down to an uncomfortable puddle as she began to gnaw on the insides of her lips. She faced forward, shoving the map into her bag and readjusting the blades clipped to her chest and the guns on her belt. Without another word, she moved on, and Daryl couldn't help but think about how she hadn't even thought of judging him when she found that damned book in his bag. But here he was, judging her for only trying to be herself.
A thick jacket of dirt layered the eggshell paint job of the white-cross bus crashed through the side of the freeway. Daryl stepped around the faded tires and geometric cutouts of old cardboard that littered the asphalt, reaching for the automobile's back door and throwing them open with his long, dirtied arms.
"All right," he sighed. "Let's get this done," he said as he set his hands on the inside of the bus, prepared to lift himself up and in.
"It's unstable—" Carol stopped him. With a gentle prod, she pushed May towards him. "She's the lightest here. Have her go."
Daryl rolled his eyes at May, however, and got up in the bus himself. May looked back angrily at Carol before climbing in herself, following Daryl as he plopped himself down in the driver's seat. May reached for the figurine of the Mother Mary on the dashboard and rubbed the smudge off its head. She slid it into her bag. Daryl found it hard not to laugh at her.
The vehicle shuddered when Carol jumped in the back, sliding up to meet Daryl and May up front. She looked out May's window and squinted. "More comin'."
"Yeah, I see 'em," Daryl muttered, biting the inside of his cheek as he thought of what to do.
"We're going to have to fight through."
Daryl flipped over the gurney in the back of the bus and read the typography beneath the insignia on its underside. "GMH. What's that, a hospital?"
"I don't know… Grady Memorial maybe?" Carol said as she hopped out of the back of the bus with her pack on her back. May followed closely behind.
"Grady, the white crosses… That might be where their holin' up!" Daryl shouted as he jumped out too.
The ring of Carol's gunshot rang in Daryl and May's ears warily, just as it had after she'd shot at the kid. But this time they worried for Walkers nearby hearing the sound of the bullet ripping through the air.
Out of the corner of his eye, Daryl watched as May took out Walkers like a machine—one by one by one. She wasn't even moving around that much, just repeating the same motions: Step, swing, skewer, repeat.
But soon there were too many—Carol had drawn them from far and wide. Daryl pulled Carol and May back into the bus with him and he slammed shut the back doors, securing them inside the lopsided vehicle. Their safety and security balanced between two unsteady weights. One half of the scale was weighed down by the crowd of the Dead slapping their deteriorating hands against the back window; on the other half was more literally the imbalance of the bus. As May slid up towards the seats between Daryl and Carol, the bus jerked and she swallowed a yelp. Sitting as she sat in the car they drove into the city, she was between two spots with seat-belts.
"Buckle up!" He shouted to Carol, thinking of squishing May over there with the older woman but worrying for her frail bones. Carol was in no way weak, but her older age was an unavoidable obstacle and it would probably be best for May to double-buckle with him instead of Carol.
Daryl yanked May's wrist and pushed himself against the door, stretching the seatbelt away from him and over May, who eagerly gripped the buckle and set them both in their seats with a click. The bus began rocking and croaking beneath their feet; May could nearly feel the infrastructure crumbling away. She looked back and watched the hands slam against the window like a movie on repeat—their moans and groans the soundtrack.
"Don't look back," she heard Daryl say as he braced himself for the approaching fall. His hands clamped the dashboard in front of him with a detectably impeccable strength, but May tugged one hand from the cheap leather and clutched her hand in his. The strength and heat of her hand was relatively shocking to Daryl, he hadn't expected her hands to be so powerful. He liked the way she practically crushed his knuckles, it distracted him from the death looming right in front of him. "You hold on," he told her and she nodded minutely, her face pale and her freckles as disorganized and abundant as the stars in the night sky.
With a couple more kicks and pats and shoves from the Walkers, the bus skidded forward and tumbled in the air. May half-expected her life to flash before her eyes, but all she could see was black as she winced and clamped shut her eyes, burying her head in Daryl's arm.
It happened in less than ten seconds, and soon that darkness transformed to bright white light. And it wasn't God coming to her and offering her a hand to heaven, it was the explosion of opaque powder released by the airbags. May didn't entirely remember the airbag hitting her face, but when she opened her eyes to all that white, she saw a deflated airbag on the steering wheel in front of her and it felt like she had been punched in the face.
In the silent second directly following the crash, she coughed quietly as the dust the airbags had released settled in her lungs. Daryl grunted uncomfortably and blinked his eyes repeatedly, trying to reassert himself in his surroundings.
"We made it," Carol sighed.
Soon enough, a thump that sounded as heavy as a human body echoed on the bus' roof and dented in its ceiling a little bit. Another Walker dropped and cracked the windshield until it looked like a hundred spiders had crawled across it and each had laid their silky strings.
Every time one of the Dead dropped, May's grip on Daryl's hand tightened, like the repetitive squeezing rhythm of a heart, reminding him she was alive.
When the dropping of bodies ended, their adrenaline hardened and all of their shoulders seemed to slump.
"It's rainin' Walkers," May giggled.
Daryl rolled his eyes, kicking open the car door and pushing her away from him.