Driving to the veterinary college took almost half a day. They had to make several stops en route to siphon gas and investigate the contents of abandoned cars en route. Daryl had been against any unnecessary stops and his impatience spilled off him in waves.
"Just grab the gas and go!" he had snarled as he jumped from their people carrier at the third stop.
Tyresse hurried toward a group of four abandoned vehicles, his equipment in hand, "We need gas or we'll never make it there and back."
"I ain't stupid," Daryl snapped, "It's just taking a damned age to get anywhere!" He didn't add that the rest of the group were trampling on his frayed nerves just by simply breathing.
Michonne appeared from behind the open boot one car, "I found a ton of batteries, a few books, baby things and a decent sized first aid kit. No pills of any kind, except Aspirin. But that could come in handy, right?"
Daryl kicked at the tyre of the saloon nearest him in anger, "Yep, come in handy if that flu wipes out most of our people back home. Be less of us there needin' headache tablets."
Michonne slammed the down the lid of the boot she had been investigating, "Look, having a pissy attitude the whole time isn't going to help. We'll get back as soon as we can, but we can't get all the way there and back without any stops."
"Whatever," replied Daryl, pulling a cigarette from his pack. "When y'all done, I'll be sittin', waitin' ready to go." With that he climbed into the driving seat and lit up. The pattern repeated each time they found vehicles to check.
The rest of the group exchanged uneasy looks; this trip was like trying to appease an angry, hungry tiger.
They finally pulled up at the college, Sasha in charge of the list. After gathering their equipment, they formed a huddle on the path which lead to the main entrance.
Tyresse looked at the list, "I think we should head straight for any labs or store cupboards. They probably kept all the medicines together."
"Why are we standin' around talkin' about it instead of just goin' in?" Daryl said with exasperation. "We know the drill, it ain't rocket science. Done it a hundred times. Go room to room, floor to floor until we clear the place. Deal with the dead ones on the way." He adjusted his bow and started to walk towards the door.
"Hey," answered Tyresse, grabbing the tiger by the tail. "What Michonne said earlier, about you havin' a pissy attitude, was right. It's not helping and going off half boiled will end up gettin' us killed." The others braced themselves.
Daryl turned, anger burning in his eyes, "Oh yeah?" he shouted, pointing at the much larger man, "You the expert now, huh? Gonna try to tell me how to do things, huh?"
Sasha, Michonne and Bob stepped between the two men.
"No," came the calm reply. "But that flu claimed the woman I happened to be falling in love with. It's too late for her now, but that doesn't mean that it's gonna be too late for the others. We just need to not lose our heads. You snappin' and shoutin' every second isn't gonna make this any easier, no matter how much you want. Now, you want to work together to find what we need, or go off in a rage like a spoiled kid?"
Daryl narrowed his eyes and looked to be about to explode. Tyreese held the hinter's glare. Then Daryl's face relaxed slightly and he barked, "C'mon!" They took that to mean that they'd be working as a team.
They approached the building in a formation; Tyresse at the rear with his hammer, then Sasha, Bob and Michonne in a triangle with Daryl in front. Once at the door, they noticed a heavy chain with a padlock.
The padlock had been obliterated by a tool of some kind. They shared disappointed looks. This could be an indication that the place had already been ransacked.
Daryl held his right hand aloft and rattled the chains as loudly as possible, then waited. Nothing. He turned to the rest and indicated they should have their weapons ready. They moved into the building.
It had two floors and the ground one appeared to be a mixture of classrooms and laboratories. They checked each room in turn. The place was deserted. After checking three classrooms and two laboratories, they were beginning to lose hope; no medical supplies anywhere, not even a gauze. The third lab yielded results. Medicine cupboards. As his four comrades filled their bags to the brim, Bob investigated the room further. Once they had everything they could lay their hands on, they decided to leave.
Their exit was now blocked by a substantial group of Walkers. They immediately turned back and headed for the stairwell.
Once upstairs, they noticed a dormitory full to the brim with the dead, and they noticed the group, immediately congregating at the glass doors. Luckily the doors had been nailed shut from the outside, but that was no huge comfort.
The collective weight of the group of the dead could easily overcome that barrier. They ran along the corridor passing rooms, all of which had been nailed shut in an attempt to keep the Walkers in. At the emergency exit door they waited and pressed an ear each to the wooden door.
Sasha whispered, "Sounds like there's a number of them on the other side of this.""Oh shit," muttered Tyresse, readying his hammer.
The Walkers from the dormitory had managed to work the makeshift barrier on the door loose and were shuffling towards the live targets. Michonne drew her sword. There were three large windows adjacent to the emergency exit, each at hip height and extending up towards the ceiling.
Daryl peered out of one and saw a wide ledge running under the windows and along the side of the building.
"We smash these," he explained as Michonne set to work slicing the nearest Walkers down.
"Go out onto the ledge, along to the front of the building, then we'll have to jump down."
The others nodded. "Ty!" he shouted and the big man used his hammer to smash the nearest window to them. They had no time to consider what affect any noise would have on any nearby Walkers, they just had to take their chances.
Once they were all on the ledge, they noticed a group of the dead gathered along the side of the college. "Shit!" Daryl cursed.
They hurried along the ledge in single file, but Bob shouted out from the back as he lost his footing. His backpack fell from his grasp slightly. He still had hold of one strap as he tried desperately to wrench it from the grasp of the waiting bodies below.
The rest of the group turned to help him. Tyresse grabbed Bob under the arms to pull him further into the side of the building and away from the edge.
"Hey!" shouted Daryl, "Let go if you have to, it ain't worth being pulled over for! We got more than enough anyway!"
Bob gave one last monumental pull and the bag landed on the ledge with a suspicious clank. Daryl would recognise that sound anywhere. "What's in there?" he asked, knowing the answer.
The only sound was the gnashing and groaning of the animated corpses.
Daryl grabbed the backpack and tore it open. Bottles of liquor. Bob had found a long dead professor's secret stash.
"I-I just need it to sleep. The noise or the silence, I just can't switch it off with either." Bob tried to explain.
Daryl's anger was ferocious, "You take a so much as a drop of that before we get this medicine into our people; into my family and I'll kill you." He had gradually moved closer to ashamed man, until he could nudge him with his forehead and emphasise the threat.
"C'mon," Tyresse picked up the bag and handed it to Bob. "Let's get outta here before those in the hallway make it out."
Sasha and Michonne stared at Bob in disappointment. They shouldered their own packs and made their way along to the jump off point.
Once they'd loaded up their vehicle, a silence settled over them. The stops on the way back were calm and quiet, only necessary exchanges passed between them.
Daryl chose to remain in the car while the others siphoned gas for the return trip. It was useless trying to hurry the group along, they had to make sure they had enough fuel to make it back.
He played with his jasper stone, ran it around his hands and studied its surface like an archaeologist with a new fossil. He thought of home, and prayed they weren't too late for the person who had made it so for him.
If he allowed his mind to wander to the possibility that Carol was no longer alive, then his stomach tied in knots and it was almost a physical pain in his chest. He wouldn't, he couldn't deal with even approaching the thought of how he would proceed without her presence in his life.
Even if she didn't feel about him the way he did about her, he could never be without her completely. She was like an anchor in the rocky sea that was his life, which must have been due to the workings of fate; they'd have never gravitated towards each other before the fall of the world. He had to see her eyes and smile lit up with amusement, and good health.
As he ran his blood covered hands over the stone, he wondered what it would feel like to caress her smooth skin, to nuzzle at her neck enough to bring delicious shivers to her body. To know without any sliver of doubt that she was his, hear her breathe his name into his ear as he did all the things he'd fantasised about. To know that she needed him the way he needed her; one of his fears was that the longer he delayed, the more chance there was that she would discover that he was just too damaged to love, and not worth the tremendous effort that thankless task required.
Yet, she had already breached his natural defences numerous times. He had allowed her much closer to his true self than anyone else, even his own brother. He felt vulnerable and exposed which led to these incidents of unleashing his frustrations on those around him.
Once back home, he vowed, he would break the cycle and step towards being a part of a whole.