AN: This one is a relatively short one, but given the content of the chapter, it was the information that I felt needed to be contained in this chapter. That means that I cut it where it needed to be cut.

That being said, we've reached 100 chapters together!

I know that as you read fics it can be difficult to review and comment on everything you read. I'd like to ask you all now, though, as a favor, to take a moment and drop me some kind of review or comment. Let me know that you've made it here to 100 chapters with me, and (hopefully) that you're anxious to continue on with our group as they make their lives in this world of the dead.

The first 100 chapters have taken a lot of time to write and it's been a lot of work, but it has been exciting and fun as well. I hope that you're enjoying the story as much as I am and that you're as excited as I am (and I'm a little amazed, frankly) that we've managed to make it so far! I'm even more excited about what we've got still to come!

I hope you enjoy this chapter, and I hope you've enjoyed our last 100!

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Daryl had fallen into a deep sleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. He hadn't realized how exhausted he was from the escapade with the bull until he'd gotten into the bedroom. He'd suddenly been so overwhelmed with the desire to crawl into the bed and pass into dreamful oblivion that he hadn't even bothered reminding Michonne that she'd promised him any sort of sexual encounter because he was too tired to consider it himself.

He was sleeping peacefully when he started to wake. As he was waking, he became slowly aware that something had woken him, though he wasn't sure what it was at first. There was a noise, but it was distant and muffled. Then, slowly, as he started to come further into consciousness, the clamor of the noise grew. Something in his mind was telling him that the noise was one that he needed to pay attention to. It was something that was important, something that he'd taught his mind to think of as important, but still it seemed unfamiliar.

Finally Daryl came into a waking state. The first thing he did was look around, noticing that everything seemed fine in his room, or at least it seemed like it normally did in the pitch black of night. He could hear Michonne sleeping, though she was making a fitful noise in her sleep that told him that she was trying to wake to the sound too, but it still had crossed from her subconscious mind enough to wake her entirely. She was battling with it in her sleep.

Daryl shook her, listening for the sound. He heard it start up again, almost as though it had taken some kind of break. Slowly the realization of what the sound was washed over him and he shook Michonne, jumping up to wrestle on his pants, not worried about the rest.

The sound that Daryl heard, the sound that his brain knew it should respond to, but which had seemed so strangely unfamiliar was the sound of the alarm system that they had put in place. Furthermore it was the simultaneous sound of several of the alarms that they had put in place. He didn't know what was happening, but they were being roused by every possible alarm they had.

As Daryl charged through the bedroom door and started down the stairs, knowing his crossbow would be on the wall by the door with the other weapons, he called for Tyreese. The man, wearing only shorts and as unconcerned with it as Daryl, was already taking the steps two at a time while Daryl was strapping on his knife. He grabbed for his crossbow and ripped the front door of the house open.

Immediately Daryl was struck by three sounds, those of the alarms, those of screaming voices, and those of the moans and groans of Walkers. It was dark outside, but there was an eerie glow that Daryl couldn't immediately identify. In the eerie glow he could make out more Walkers than he'd seen in a very long time. He backed up quickly and shut the door momentarily to get control of himself and soak in the situation.

"There's a fuckin' herd of Walkers outside," Daryl said. "I don't know how many head, but they ain't just a handful."

Tyreese stood in front of him now, armed and ready.

"Let's go," he said.

Daryl opened the door and the two of them started out. As he came off the porch, Daryl started stabbing at the Walkers. He suddenly wished he hadn't even brought his crossbow. Even with the orange glow, there was no way to accurately shoot it while enveloped in the darkness around him, and even if there were the Walkers were closing in too quickly to shoot anyway. This was hand to hand combat. There was no way around it.

Daryl made his way into the street, feeling his way with his feet. Once he almost fell because his foot caught on what he had decided to think of as a Walker. As he waded into the sea of Walkers, he realized that the eerie orange light was coming from high rising flames. The house that they had designated as headquarters all this time was engulfed in flames. The fire rose high above the roof, and Daryl could only hope that it didn't spread. Their house was the closest one to it, and though there was a decent space between them, he still feared that it would go up. He hated to think of Carol and Michonne trying to wade out into this madness with the girls.

As Daryl fought, trying to keep from tiring, the Walkers seemed to just keep going. In the darkness, Daryl could only see shadows. There were shadows of Walkers in the flickering light, but from time to time, as he got turned around in his desperate battle, he saw shadows that flicked and moved far faster than Walkers. From time to time he heard screams and shouts, war cries even. He knew most everyone was around him somewhere, fighting to save their homes.

Daryl searched his mind while he fought for an explanation. The only one that he could think of was that a herd had been passing through and pushed down one of the walls, though they had seemed secure enough during the day. That was the only way, though, that they could find themselves in such a large herd. They had to have pushed down the wall. Then the herd would have only grown, naturally, because the hoard of Walkers that typically lingered around the fences would have found their way around flooding in after the passing herd.

The fire baffled him, however. Carol was very particular about fires, and it wasn't like her to leave even embers burning after dinner. He wasn't sure how one could have started, but it was blazing hot, so he knew that somehow it had.

Daryl could feel his muscles straining now. He was tired after the day they'd had to begin with, and now he was running out of juice. He couldn't tell how many Walkers they'd killed or how many more were coming. He just kept swinging at any that got close to him and hoping that no one living walked into his path because he wouldn't be able to distinguish the difference right now.

Daryl heard shouting, and he heard a piercing scream, but he wasn't able to distinguish the voices as they rose up out of the other sounds around him. Suddenly from seemingly nowhere there came an explosion that startled Daryl. It sounded like a cannon blast at first, but then he realized that would be a ridiculous thing to hear. He thought about it for a second and realized that it was likely that the fire had reached some of the fuel that they'd stored up behind headquarters. He hoped that the explosion wasn't enough to spread the fire too bad. He risked glancing away from the Walkers at hand for a moment to look toward the burning building. The flames were still rising up, but it didn't really seem that the inferno was spreading too far. Some of the yard was clearly on fire, but he couldn't really see how much the flames had consumed beyond the now skeletal structure of the building.

Daryl heard a voice close to him calling out. He had no idea what the voice was calling, but he could at least identify it as Rick's. Rick wasn't too far from him, obviously fighting. He could only hope that whatever he'd said hadn't been a call for help because there was no way he was getting anywhere to help anyone. He couldn't see what he was doing, the Walkers weren't letting up, and he had to be careful not to lose his footing over the already still bodies that littered the ground.

Whoever had been sounding the alarm had stopped. It was probably Josh and Brenda. They were always on night watch and would have likely been the first two to notice when the fence fell and the Walkers had laid claim to the streets of the community. Daryl wondered how far the herd had spread out. He hoped, at least, that the noises from the alarms and the emergence of his group members from their homes had drawn all the Walkers into the same general area. It would be easier, then, to know when the threat was over. Until the sun came up they really had little hope of running around the community and locating any straggling Walkers, just as they had little hope of figuring out what to do about whatever part of their parameter had been breached.

Another explosion sounded off and Daryl cast his eyes once more toward the flames. They continued to lick the darkness around them, but they weren't progressing with any great speed and he hoped that the fire remained somewhat contained to the area instead of spreading. The good thing about the house they had known as headquarters was that it was situated somewhat oddly in the community. It had a larger lot than many of the other houses, and that had been one of the reasons they'd chosen to use it for its original purpose.

Daryl heard another scream rise above the other noises around him and he recognized the scream as Sadie's. Her screams had a very distinct sound to them and there was no denying that it wasn't a battle cry. Somewhere, Daryl was sure, she'd fallen victim to the herd.

Daryl tried to put it out of his mind, just as he tried to put out the other shouts and screams out of his mind. In the moment all that mattered was controlling the threat. There would be time to mourn and time to assess the damage once the Walkers had been cleared.

The area around Daryl began to open up some and the Walkers in his direct vicinity were beginning to dwindle. In one direction, toward the area where headquarters had been before it had become a charred skeleton still burning in the night, Daryl could make out bodies locked in combat with Walkers, but he couldn't tell who anyone was. He thought for a second that he made out the figure of Tyreese, but it was hard to tell. In the other direction, back toward the darker part of the street, Daryl could barely make out black shadows on a black background. He knew that there were people fighting there too, but he could make out even less detail about what figures belonged to people he knew, and what belonged to those that were trying to eat them.

He was beginning to feel optimistic about the herd a little. They were still coming at him, but not with the same speed and not in the same numbers that they had when he'd first made his way into the street. He began to move about with a little more freedom, though he still had to tread easy to keep from falling. This wouldn't be the opportune time to lose one's balance and topple down for them to descend upon you. No one would be likely to save you out here simply because no one would be able to see you and know that you needed them.

Daryl had begun to pursue Walkers now, moving about at the fastest speed that he dared. As the numbers were lessening he was becoming more and more aware of living people around him. Everyone wheezing and panting, the thick smoke in the air making it harder to breathe on top of exertion.

Then there was a series of smaller explosions. Daryl's brain struggled to identify the sounds, relating them back to the exploding fuel from earlier, but finally his blood chilled when he realized the sounds ringing out weren't explosions per se. The sounds that filled his ears now were the sounds of guns firing.

For a moment Daryl was incensed. It had been some time since they'd carried guns in the community. They kept them for emergencies when only a gun would do, but they didn't carry them and they didn't fire them. The threats they regularly dealt with were Walkers and they'd long since retired the use of firearms to take down Walkers.

But there they were, the echoing sounds of gunshots ringing through the community. For another second, Daryl wondered who would be firing and who would even think that it was a good idea. The noise would bring more Walkers through whatever place in the fence was compromised, and on top of that it was too dark to even know what you were firing at. Stabbing Walkers in the head at this hour was a challenge all its own due to the imprecision brought on by not being able to clearly see your target. You had to rely on instinct and touch almost, making guns truly impractical.

The shooting stopped and Daryl continued to try to make his way around, killing whatever Walkers he could see. The shots had done something to stir them up, just as could be expected, and now he felt like there were more of them again, like their numbers were building.

Then the shots rang out again. Daryl heard the sound of someone near him groan, and he realized that they'd been hit, though he had no idea at this point who it could be. People were scrambling in so many directions that it would have been impossible to figure it out. He considered trying to make his way in the direction of the person he'd heard, but then a searing pain tore through him and everything around him went blacker than it had been before.

When Daryl started to come to, everything around him made it sound like he was underwater. He felt like his head was fuzzy and he could hear a pounding noise that he quickly realized was the sound of his own blood pulsing through his veins. His head pounded and he slowly became aware that he was lying on the asphalt ground. He'd very probably knocked himself unconscious when he fell.

For a second he couldn't remember why he'd fallen or how he'd fallen. It was blurry and hard to piece together. He became aware, then of the growling of Walkers around him. He started to move, aware that they would close in upon him and devour him if he couldn't get himself together. He remembered now what was happening. There were Walkers, and guns being fired, and he'd ended up on the ground.

Daryl moved his arm, going in search of his knife. He'd dropped it, apparently, in the fall. His back hurt and he winced at it, realizing all too suddenly that he'd landed on his crossbow. He didn't want to imagine what it had done to his back at this moment. He had to find the knife. Daryl felt like he was moving far slower than he intended. Every muscle in his body seemed to protest even the smallest actions. He cursed himself for being weak, for being a pussy. He'd been shot before and he'd kept going, he wasn't going to let the nasty bastards eat him now for something like a simple gunshot wound and a fall.

Suddenly the Walkers that had been closing in on him stopped and fell forward. Two of them landed nearly on top of him and he heard the thud of a third landing nearby. Daryl reached his hand out, dragging it across the asphalt and across the form of a Walker. Finally his fingers found what they were searching for and closed around the handle of his knife.

Another Walker dropped just beside him and Daryl looked up, allowing his eyes to focus. He couldn't make out details of the figure that was over him, but the distant orange light from the slowly dying fire gleamed momentarily on the silver of a blade and Daryl realized that Michonne was only feet away from him, and the Walkers that had dropped around him had very likely lost their heads.

Daryl started to try to struggle to his feet, biting back the pain in his back and side. He could tell from the warm sticky touch of his side that he'd been hit there, but he imagined, now that he was collecting himself and wrestling to the standing position that it was likely only a flesh wound. Nothing major.

"What are you doing?" Daryl panted, only now letting it sink in that Michonne was circling around him taking down whatever Walkers came into the circumference that she'd established.

"Saving your ass," she said. "Are you OK?"

"Shot, but fine," Daryl managed. Her back was to him now and a Walker approached him. He stabbed it, wincing at the pain but not letting it cause him to black out again. "Ya shouldn't be out here," he panted, pulling the blade back out the Walker's head and holding to his side. Michonne didn't respond and Daryl turned, but she had disappeared into the darkness somewhere. Daryl cursed to himself and tried to steady his breathing, the smoke making it more difficult. He took down another Walker and tried to make out all that was going on around him.

A woman's scream echoed out, but Daryl had no idea who it belonged to. It wasn't Michonne's, he knew that much, because he'd have been able to identify her voice anywhere. He heard shouting again, at least two men, maybe three, shouting indecipherable words at one another.

Though they were getting closer and closer to the time when the sun would rise and thankfully cast some light on all that had taken place, the area around Daryl was growing darker. The fire from what had once been headquarters was dying down. It would likely blaze for some time, but it wasn't the blaze that it had once been. The lower the flames dropped, though, the darker the area surrounding it grew.

Daryl didn't know how long they continued to fight. He wasn't sure how many more Walkers went down or how much shouting and screaming he heard, but he felt like the madness went on for hours and hours on end. It couldn't have been that long, simply because his muscles wouldn't have lasted that long, he would have bled far too much in that amount of time, and the sun would have risen, but it felt like that long.

Finally, though, it seemed as though an odd calm came over the community. Somewhere the sun was rising. It couldn't be seen, but enough of its rays must have been spilling over the side of the Earth somewhere to wash over them a little because Daryl began to notice that the world was moving from the monochrome black and white that he'd witnessed the battle in to also include a few shades of gray. He was beginning to make out more and more black shadows against a now dark gray background. The shadows that he could make out belong mostly to bodies heaped on the ground. They polluted the streets, or what he'd once known as streets which now seemed more like burial grounds.

The other shadows that he could make out belonged, he assumed, to his comrades. The souls who, like himself, had been out there fighting in the darkness for everything they had that they felt was worth fighting for. It was likely that they were all out there fighting for different people and for different reasons, but they were fighting nonetheless, and they'd been fighting together.

Daryl saw a handful of Walker shadows wandering about, but it wasn't long before one of the figures of his group members stepped forward and took them out. His head swam a little, but he fought back the dizziness. Now that calm was descending, now that people were stopping to get their breaths, and now that the dead had been laid to rest a second and final time, it wasn't time for giving into dizziness and exhaustion.

Now Daryl owed it to everyone who had been out there fighting to find the fallen ones, somehow, buried among the corpses of the Walkers. They'd have to pull together now not to fight, but to find the ones they'd lost. They needed to see if any had fallen that could still be saved, and they'd need to prepare those that were gone for burial and insure that they didn't rise again.

Daryl looked around him once again at the masses of bodies that littered the streets that he'd once thought of as safe, and his stomach churned. His heart clenched at the thought of the screams and shouts that he'd heard. He searched the figures around him, unable to distinctly make out any of them. He couldn't even tell who was standing, and that terrified him almost as much as the thought of who they would be left searching for.

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AN: So, as usual, I apologize. As you know, I don't necessarily consider battles and action chapters a strength of mine, but in stories such as this they have to happen from time to time. I hope you enjoyed regardless. Let me know what you think!