Night had fallen in Alexandria; it was my first official night in Alexandria and I was honestly kind of scared. Night was a different time- a time where all of the shadows of the day come out of their hiding places and true colors come out. I sat on the roof of Daryl's house, which thankfully was at the end of a vacant neighborhood boarding on the giant fence. I could see the townspeople of Alexandria moving about their business in the distance, then just beyond that was the woods where I had spent the majority of the time since the end of the world.
"There you are." Daryl slid onto the roof next to me.
"Yeah, I like it up here." I replied and looked at the wall separating my old life from where I am now. "It's kind of quiet enough that I can be alone but close enough to everyone that I can feel like I'm a part of everyone else's life over there."
"That's cool. That's like really deep and shit." Daryl said as he lit a cigarette. "Were you one of those people in the real world?"
"What kind of people?"
"You know, the kind that has their shit together. The kind that goes to parties with mayors and shit to talk about parks and schools and shit. The kind that actually goes to libraries and shit."
I laughed and took a drag of his cigarette. "I mean, I was working on a master's degree in English. I guess you could say I was the type of person designed to not survive a ravenous freak chasing after me wanting to eat my face." That rose a laugh out of him. "So what about you?"
"What about me?" he asked and took the cigarette I offered.
"You know, what type of person were you before all of this?" I slid around to face him and crossed my legs Indian style.
"The type of person who wouldn't ever have a chance with you." He scoffed and put of the cigarette on a shingle.
"Why would you say that?"
"I was the opposite of what you were. My brother and I were… trouble." He stared off into the distance as if something just outside of the trees was beckoning to him. "Right before the end I had just gotten out of jail for some not so nice stuff."
"Tell me." I moved closer to him.
"Nah man, it's not worth it." He got up. "You hungry?" as he climbed down onto the toggle roof and disappeared into the anonymousness of the night.
Something deeply inside Daryl was damaged. Something about his past cut him so deeply that it cut directly through his rough exterior to expose the damaged flesh that, even though it had some time to heal, would probably never heal.