The sun is in the position of late afternoon and Michonne begins to veer off the road a little bit to setup camp. She has been walking for hours she will lose the light in a couple hours and she knows that she has to find some place safe for the night. The sounds of thousands of insects and birds play in unison as she enters the woods. She remembers how she was able to stay alive out here alone. So she begins to hunt for a couple of walkers.
After walking deeper in the woods Michonne makes marks on some of the trees she pass by in order to make it back to the road in the morning. While marking one of the trees with her sword she hears a low hissing sound. Michonne stand completely still for a moment waiting to see if she hears some footsteps, the noise of the woods are louder than the low hissing sound. As the hiss gets closer she notices that the noise is coming from the ground. She looks down and sees a pile of leaves and branches moving but there is no wind. Michonne bends down a little closer to the pile of leaves only to notice that it's a snake slithering underneath. She almost forgot that these woods are littered with snakes.
Michonne stands back up and starts to look at the ground around her. Her attention is so completely obsorbed by the idea that she could get bit a snake instead of walkers that she doesn't see a roaming band of walkers coming up behind her. While slowly backing away from the snake she saw Michonne looks to her left and right and sees two walkers
Before her attack taking out four walkers would have been no trouble at all but, now she is nervous almost to the point of panic. She drops her satchel and pulls out her sword. The sword in her hands feels wrong to her somehow. She feels like her grip to strike down walkers is wrong, her footing feels awkward too.
Michonne decides that maybe it would be better to runaway this time instead of trying to kill them this time. She leans down and quickly grabs her satchel in order to run but another walker begins to lean over her back, just as she is about to stand up and run. She hears the walker hovering over top of her just as the walker is about to fall on her she rolls on the ground away from the walker but she is also face to face with the snake she was originally trying to get away from.
Michonne knows that she can't afford to make any sudden moves because of the snake but the four walkers are closing in and the one walker already on the ground is struggling to get back up. She leans up every so steadily so that she doesn't scare the snake as soon as she backs up she swings her leg at the two walkers closest to her making them fall to the ground One of the fallen walkers grabs her leg so she kicks it in the face cracking its skull in the process. She backs away from the walkers on her hands and feet, feeling the imminent danger right before her she forgets about running away now because there is no time. She manages to get on her feet and instantly unsheathes her sword slicing one of the walkers almost completely in half. Then she swings in the other direction and cuts another one from shoulder to hip.
Michonne starts to backup because now the other three walkers are on their feet again almost within arms-length of grabbing her when suddenly she feel something grab her long dreads preventing her from fight off the walkers in front of her. She starts panicking because she can't seem to release her hair from whatever is holding it.
Out of nowhere Michonne hears low zip thud sound in back of her and head is suddenly free. When she turns around to see what she what was holding her hair she sees Daryl, "Get down!" Michonne ducks down as Daryl shoots another arrow in the head of the walker that is just about to grab her.
After ducking out of Daryl's way she stabs the other two walkers in the head. "Chonne, what the hell are you doing out her?" Daryl says irritated that she would come out her alone. Michonne looks at him then grabs her satchel. Michonne puts her sword away and catches her breath, "I lost something." Daryl can tell by the tone in her voice and the look on her face that she was working something out on her own. So he shakes his head o.k. and walks over to her, Daryl wants to ask her if she is alright but decides against it he knows the last thing she would want to hear is him being overly concerned. "What are you doing out here?" she asks. Daryl walks over to the walkers to retrieve his arrows and says, "Hunting." He grabs all his arrows then turns around and asks, "Does Rick know that you are out here?" She looks at him with slight embarrassment then shrugs and shakes her head, "I don't know, I left this early this morning once everyone was out of the house." He nods another o.k. then he walks over to the hissing sound of the snake Michonne was worried about in the first place, he stomps his foot down on its head, takes his knife and cutes the body of the snake from its head. As he begins to walk back the way Michonne had originally came he swings the lifeless snake body and says, "Come on I got a camp about a half mile away. It'll be getting dark soon especially in these woods.
As Daryl and Michonne walk through the dense woods Daryl slows down and motions his hand to her to keep quiet. Then he points to the buck 12 yards away. Daryl readies his bow and shoots the buck in the base of his neck causing it to run off. "Shit! Come on he's wounded we should be able to track him."
They follow a trail of bright red blood on the ground, "He's bleeding pretty bad it shouldn't be too much further it looks like he's heading in the direction of my camp. As they get closer to his mini-camp Michonne sees that the road is not that far away. One of the trucks from the cul de sac is parked slightly off the road blocking the light coming from the Daryl's enclosed campfire. Michonne follows behind him as he turns to the left of the camp because that is where the trail of blood is going. Daryl starts walking lower and quieter in case they find the buck he asks her, "So what makes you think you will find what you lost out here?" "I don't know, I only know that I wasn't going to find in that room." Daryl turns around and motions to her, "Look." Michonne looks a little ways past Daryl and she can see the buck that he shot early laid on the ground dead. They both smile at one another, "And it's close to the truck" he says like it's icing on the cake. "Yea but how the hell are we gonna get that thing in the back of the truck?" She says. "We are gonna use that light-saber of yours and cut the som-bitch up." Michonne has a look of disgust on her face because she knows that it won't be easy and it will probably stink like hell". She sucks her teeth bit says with a smile, "Alright." He can see that she not to excited at the idea of cutting the buck up so he says, "Look at it this way, you may find what you lost in deer."
Michonne and Daryl cut buck up in three large pieces and place the pieces in the truck after a while they sit around the small campfire that Daryl kept going while out hunting. He picks up a couple more pieces of dry rotted branches to make the fire larger so Michonne and get some warmth out of it too. Daryl pulls the dead snake out of his back and starts to skin it. Michonne watches him as he pulls the skin away from the muscle of the snake. She turns her lips down as she hates the site of shedded snake skin and she wasn't crazy about dead snake skin either. Daryl looks over at her, "What? This is to gross for you?" Daryl chuckles, "Well you ain't got to eat to eat then." He says grinning. "Oh know the process is disgusting but I will definitely eat whatever you put in front of me cause I am starving", she laughs.
The woods are still the only noise is the crackling of the campfire and some howling wolves in the distance. Daryl and Michonne eat the snake meat in silence. He reaches in his bag and pulls out two bottles of water, he does a short whistle in her direction and throws one of the waters to her. Michonne looks up and catches the bottle with one hand and puts it down next to her. The two continue to eat.
When Michonne finishes eating she looks over at Daryl, "Listen, I want to tell you something and I don't want you to read anything in to it for the moment. Just listen. That morning that Carol died…I think I saw something but I can't say for certain yet. When everybody started moving in to the fields I was watching James, Jimmy and Eugene moving out in to the field too", She takes a deep breath and continues, "The grass was really high so it was really hard to keep the binoculars in focus but, I think saw Jimmy swing his axe at Eugene's leg causing him to fall to the ground that maybe why walkers got him. But what was even stranger was that Tara came running up to Jimmy and started yelling at him. All this was happening in the middle of trying to kills walkers mind you, then, I was trying to zoom out so I could get a larger view of what was happening and then Tara disappeared. Like she was never there, the only thing I saw after that was James and Jimmy killing the walkers in the field."
Daryl remains silent for a minute, "I never really cared for James and Jimmy too much, but I never tried to get to know them either. They just happened to luck out because their sister begged us to rescue them before we escaped Terminus", he says while covering up some of the campfire coals to dim the light for it a bit. "What do you think about Jane?" She asks. "I don't. She takes care of Judith while Rick takes care of the group. I mean she has a job in the group that seems to work right now. What do you see?" He asks. "I can't say I see anything either. What makes it worse…I mean you can see that Jimmy is quiet maybe even a little off. James seems to be normal enough but I don't understand how Jane can be so cheerfully all the time. So far we have yet to see any side of her other than the one." She says. "Could be she feels really blessed to have made out of Terminus with her two younger brothers, maybe she is glad that she still has some of her family still intact." Michonne looks over at Daryl as he stands up to kick some more dirt on the edges of the campfire, "Close your eyes." He tells her so she doesn't get any flying dirt in her eye.
We better get some sleep I am supposed to meet a couple of people from the cul de sac over at a rest stop on route 85 tomorrow. Its bout 25-30 miles east so we can do some scavenging once we get there.