Notes: Still having format issues, trying a new space break with text to try to help define shifts in POV or time passing. (Updated to correct typos 3/29)
Disclaimer: Not mine they're the intellectual property of their comic book creator and the writers at AMC
:: Walking Dead ::
Chapter Six
(Daryl's POV)
She's up before dawn the next morning her bag already rolled.
He's half worried she's taken off in the night after hearing her scream in her sleep. God only knows what people had to do to someone even in a nightmare to make her cry like that…he doesn't want to think about it.
A quick search of the house provides proof that she's still nearby; her pack is by the front door, neatly organized.
He hears gravel crunch and looks out the window, crossbow in hand, lowers it when he sees her climb out of a pollen covered station wagon. He watches her cross the driveway to the porch, same outfit as yesterday. Low cut drab olive cargo pants, the harness she put on Beth the other night once again strapped to her waist and around her thighs. She's got two machetes leather cased and attached one on each leg; the blades are so long they almost hang past her knees. Their ends secured through another strap near her knee keeping them flush with her leg; probably so she doesn't stab herself climbing up the damn trees.
Her bow is in her hand, arrows and quiver held in the other, she slides the strap over her head and one arm as she moves. Shrugging it into place over the long sleeve shirt, the heavy leather strap shifts the collar just enough that the two pink straps from some undershirt she wears are visible crisscrossing her pale collarbone. She's somehow gotten all that dark auburn braid from yesterday tucked up into some intricate knot at the base of her skull. Which is good to see; that damn braid would be too easy for a Walker to grab.
He leaves the window as she opens the front door. She sees him and stops. She stares at him for a few moments before stooping to grab her bag by the collar with a quickly uttered. "We need to go." She heads back out to the car.
She's not wrong, it's barely dawn though so someone will have to get Carl up and Beth too; girls still exhausted. Last night was probably the first real rest she's had in days.
He hates to get her up so soon for what might be another long day. Can't be helped though.
Daryl climbs the stairs. Rick is already getting himself up as he reaches the top. He nods to him in acknowledgement, kneels next to Carl. Taps him lightly until he's awake. Beth wakes when she hears them stirring jumps up, ready to help instantly. He tells her to take the blankets downstairs to the car, they might need them; no use leaving them behind.
He sends them downstairs with the stuff and helps Rick get his boots on. "You hear her last night?"
"Yeah, I heard. Don't think Carl or Beth slept through it either; but they had enough sense not to get up and make a commotion."
He pauses to look up from the boots, wonders if Rick is trying to say he should have left her alone. Girl was loud enough to wake the dead. "Guess that explains why she's been staying the Hell away from people."
Rick looks tired, rubs a hand over his face wincing as it pulls his chest.
"Think those were the sumbitches she killed?" God he hopes so. In his book they definitely deserved to die. Deserved to burn in Hell.
"Let's hope so." Rick stands slowly and they head downstairs.
"Just wish I knew why she said my damn name, I did'n do nuthin to her."
Rick pauses at the bottom of the stairs. "It's a nightmare; it's not always logical. Three nights ago I thought I heard her say Carl's name, and someone else named Tobin...think she was trying to save him."
"She mention it to you?"
"No, she doesn't talk about herself."
They're standing in the open doorway now. Fin is lowering the front passenger seat back; obviously for Rick to ride in from the way she's shoving the pillows into the space, packing them in. She circles to the back to help Beth jam as many blankets in as possible around her bag.
He doesn't know why her nightmare bothers him so much. Shit they all have nightmares. It's one of the few ways he knows he's still sane enough to realize how fucked up his life is.
Why should he care what haunts her at night?
"You know, there are worse things than liking a pretty woman."
Daryl's eyes snap to Ricks face, but he's looking down at his feet like he just made a comment about the weather.
He scowls, face screwed up like he's eaten something putrid and sour. "The Hell you tell'n me for?"
Rick looks up at him. "No reason." He shuffles past him into the yard without another word. Fin helps him into the car.
Beth and Carl are already piled into the backseat when Daryl finally crosses the yard, climbs into the back without a word and slams the door with more force then strictly necessary.
The car pulls out of the gravel drive and to the main road heading east; away from the lake and towards what might be their new home.
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:: walking dead :: dead walking :: walking dead ::
There isn't much gas and the vehicle backfires often, sputtering like it's going to die before catching again.
Rick comments that it sounds like the engine needs a little work.
She's grinning at the road. "It's probably because I had to use Jim Bean instead of fuel."
"You can do that?" Carl is leaned up between the front seats. Daryl grabs his collar and pulls him back into his seat.
"Not really," The car backfires again, it's loud. At least the car drives fast enough to keep them away from any Walkers drawn by the sound.
"Jim Bean? Saw someone do that once before all this shit went down, ran like crap and ruined the engine."
"What were you a mechanic before this?" She's leaned forward to see over the hood carefully pulling off the road to get around three cars smashed together in a twist of metal and shattered glass.
"No, I was a cop."
Fin grins at him. "Well, that's a problem officer cause this vehicle is stolen."
"Is that so?"
"Yup, and I'm pretty sure there's unlicensed weapons in the car."
She guns it to get past several Walkers lurching towards them as the tires contact asphalt again. They quickly leave them behind once more.
"Well, since you're being so honest I guess I'll let you off with a warning."
"Well, that's a relief." She's grinning at Rick again. Daryl turns his head to stare out the window.
She steers them around more blocked cars and down a windy back road when it looks like the main highway is completely blocked without even pausing to look at the road. She obviously knows this area well; if she's really made her home near here for two years then she must know the whole area. It should be really helpful looking for the others.
It doesn't take long, maybe two hours with all the off-roading before they enter a town. It looks deserted. A few more Walkers stumble after the wagon missing by a lot. They turn down a few cross streets, almost out the other side of town again when she turns onto a paved road with a big sign. An empty gas station stands on one corner completely abandoned.
The attached parking lot is wide and open with very few scattered vehicles parked haphazardly by the entrance.
Fin parks the car in a space of all the absurd things to worry about.
"Nice parking job, think your license is safe a while longer." Rick jokes as they pile out of the car. Daryl jerks the car door open in agitation to look around.
The front of the large warehouse has large concrete columns. Someone has secured two sets of chain link fence to them, one on each side. Metal bars have been H and T bracketed between them, barb wire is piled on top in off centered loops. Someone made their own prison style fence-too bad the inside is filled with Walkers. The whole building front is swarming with them.
Daryl frowns. So much for a safe place to stay.
"Don't know when the last time you were here was," he turns to look at her still pulling her backpack out of the trunk. "Looks like your fence failed."
Fin turns to look at him, face calm. "No it didn't, they stayed in."
"You keep Walkers on purpose?" Rick sounds upset. They've seen this before.
"Yes, because they keep people out. People see the front and figure it's not worth the risk."
"What if they get inside?" Carl asks.
"Well. They'd have to get through cinderblock walls, and a steel roll down door that's braced on the other side with three layers of pallets stacked 10 feet high." She slings her pack over her shoulder. "And if they did get inside, everything is built up on warehouse storage shelves with steel frames, so they'd have to climb 30 feet to get to anything important."
"How long have you had them like this?" Rick is staring at the dead.
"Almost two years. They've never gotten through, or gotten out. And that's with just me to maintain it."
She turns walks away leaving them to follow. Carl and Beth follow her quickly, Rick and Daryl have caught up before they reach the backside of the warehouse where Fin climbs the ladder onto the top of a semi-truck's shipping container, walking along it's top to an access ladder starting halfway up the wall to the roof.
Rick is sweating and flushed by the time they make it onto the roof. He leans against the roof's lip struggling for breath.
"Be right back, going to make sure nothing's been opened, and no one's been here." Carl follows her down a ladder into the building via an opened skylight. While Beth knells down beside Rick, face pinched with concern.
Carl's head pops back up through the skylight opening a few minutes later. "Dad! You have to look at this! It's Awesome!"
Rick is still breathing too hard, face flushed and sweaty. "Alright, let's go check it out."
"Careful" Beth helps him straighten up slowly, supporting a lot of his weight. It takes both of them to get Rick safely down the ladder and onto the ply board floor of the top shelf.
It's certainly different, Daryl concludes. Girl built herself a fucking open air apartment on the giant steel shelves. They've entered at the top level, there's two iron yard style fire pits with wooden benches and several of those large plastic and plyboard garden sheds at the other end. The whole platform is probably 100 feet long, with the four shelving units butted up against one another to about 40 feet deep. The shelves are massive; steel bars and wood shelves the size of a house.
"How the hell'd you do this?" He can't help but be impressed.
"Some of it I moved with the fork lift before I ran out of gas. The rest I took apart piece by piece and put back together where I needed."
"How long did that take you?"
"Still working on it, but most of the shelves were moved in the first 8 months; once I figured out how to take them apart and put them back together by myself."
"Come on, I'll show you downstairs. Beth can you sit with Rick and Carl?" Beth nods easily.
She takes him down the first ladder to a second floor; this one filled with bookshelves, couches, and exercise equipment. "Living room."
She continues to the next floor down, one he instantly likes the second his boots hit the ply board flooring. "Shooting range."
Spare mattresses are piled against the far concrete wall riddled with hundreds of small holes, several targets scattered in front of them to practice on. The open walls facing the rest of the warehouse have chain link fencing secured to the steel beams.
"Where'd the fencing come from?" He can't imagine lowering it through a skylight-if you could even get it to the freaking roof outside. Especially with one person.
"Outdoor dog kennels. Store was full of them all collapsed and waiting to be sold. Makes great walls. They let the light in, but it's still a little bit of a barrier just in case."
He steps to the fence, looks out. They're still at least twelve feet in the air, but if Walker's ever did get in the fence would be one extra safeguard.
"We're wasting time. I'd like to teach Carl to shoot before we go so he can practice. Come on."
She proceeds down the last ladder to the concrete floor of the warehouse. Here he notes it is significantly darker, not only are the two walls not edged by the concrete of the building itself lined with chain link; they're also ringed with pallets stacked high with various things. It's too dark to make out what the massive piles are until Fin pulls a kerosene camping lantern off the wall and turns it on.
Food
Mountains off it
Corn flour, beans, rice, cans, glass jars that look to be home canned. He walks through the aisles of it, turning slowly; taking it all in.
"You did all this?"
"What else was I going to do? Everyday alone? It was go bat shit crazy, or stay busy, wasn't a hard choice. I worked my butt off to make this a safe home. I know you and Rick don't like the Walkers out front-but they're not getting in. And if you take them away any drifter or group that comes through will be trying to pry that door open."
She has a point; they'll have to discuss it together. At the prison they worked so hard to remove as many Walkers as possible and it took less than two minutes for someone to ram a truck through their gate and ruin it for them.
"All this food will go faster with more people so everyone's going to have to really chip in so we stay stocked. But I think we can make it work."
She definitely has been keeping busy.
"This place wasn't looted?"
She shrugs, "It was to some degree, but it must have been early. There's no TV's, laptops, Ipads, or video games, the jewelry department was gutted and all the cash tills and the safe were smashed open..."
Daryl eyes the stack of food. "Idiots."
You couldn't eat electronics and necklaces, fools were probably dead long before they realized that though.
"If you go through here you can get cleaned up first while I show Beth and Carl how to take care of things for a few days without me."
He follows her through a door in the back wall to what was clearly a kitchen at one point; but now she's taken the sink apart and turned the faucet into a plastic pipe attached to the wall with a shower nozzle. It's hardly fancy; possibly uglier than the prison showers; but its running water. He stops squinting in the low light at the shelve on the wall near the spigot.
"Why the Hell do you have so many shampoo bottles?"
Who needed that much soap, was it a girl thing?
Her lips quirk up at him. "Just cause it's the apocalypse doesn't mean you have to smell like it."
He scowls after her as she goes. Turning on the spray and striping he grabs the bar soap and a random bottle, the water is too cold to linger over choices. Though he does step back from the spray to quickly sniff a few things; trying to figure out where the whiff of vanilla and spices comes from every time she walks past him.
He grabs the towel off the sink counter; realizes she's left him fresh clothes to wear.
Clothing that he's quite certain weren't there when she left him. Seems he's not the only one with quiet feet.
:: Walking Dead ::