AN: Here we go, another little chapter.
As always, we're following something like the basic storyline of the show, but there are going to be a lot of things that go differently.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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When Daryl heard Carol yell out, he was at quite the distance from where people were beginning to congregate and was trying to help T-Dog. The man had managed, in the mass confusion that had erupted when at least part of the herd they'd been trying to outrun had caught up with them, to cut his arm open on the broken window of a car.
Daryl was doing his best, now that the Walkers had passed, to help the man wrap the arm enough to keep him from bleeding out before he could figure out where the hell Alice was and even if she'd survived the herd along with the rest of them.
At Carol's screaming, though, Daryl left T-Dog to his own devices of getting back to the rest of them and he rushed toward the group of people that was herding together.
"She hurt?" He called out before he ever reached them, but no one seemed to notice him at all.
When he got closer, though, he could hear that she was blubbering something about Sophia and was sitting on the guardrail of the highway with Alice while Alice rubbed her back.
"Sophia?" Daryl asked, looking around.
He wasn't going to let himself think about what was trying to creep into his brain. Those creatures hadn't gotten Sophia. He would have heard screaming. There would be blood. There would be evidence of all that, and right now the only thing that there was evidence of was the fact that something was wrong and it was wrong enough that Carol was crying and shaking.
"Went over the guardrail," Lori offered, standing there with her arms around the boy that hung around her waist. "Two of the Walkers. They took off after her."
Daryl looked toward the wooded area off the highway.
"Went over there?" He asked.
"Rick followed her. He went after them," Lori said.
Daryl hopped the guardrail and jogged the first ten or fifteen feet until he'd hit the wooded area. It was hard to know where they'd gone or what might be happening, especially when he wasn't even sure where to begin looking for some kind of trail.
Daryl looked around for signs of anything that might tell him where to go and listened, expecting to at least be able to hear Sophia possibly yelling for some kind of help, but he couldn't detect much of anything. It was going to be easier to wait until Rick returned, and hopefully that would be all there was to it. Hopefully when Rick got back he'd come with the girl and the whole thing would be simply under control.
By the time that Daryl made it back up to the highway, everyone there was tooling around and doing the same kinds of activities that they'd been doing. Carol was sitting on the guard rail with Lori sitting beside her, but everyone else seemed to have either entirely forgotten that Sophia was missing or was ignoring it altogether.
Daryl stepped back over the guardrail and Carol turned to look at him. He diverted his eyes away for the moment, not wanting to see her face screwed up in the pain and anguish that he could see there.
Finally, though, he brought his eyes back toward her.
"Rick's gonna bring her back," Daryl offered. "Couple minutes, maybe. Prob'ly just missed 'em."
He knew it was possibly false hope, but it was all that he had at the moment. Carol looked at him like she knew that it was nothing more than something he was trying to offer her to soothe her over as well. She nodded slightly at him, wiped at her nose with her hand, and went back to the quiet waiting game that she was playing with Lori.
Daryl walked over to find Merle going through the saddle bags of his motorcycle with more intent than usual, having emptied at this point the entirety of the contents onto the ground. He was sorting through it with the same sort of confusion and misdirection that he'd often used when he was strung out and searching for something that he'd thought he lost, but Daryl knew that his brother hadn't been anywhere in the vicinity of drugs for quite some time.
"Fuck you doin'?" Daryl asked.
Merle growled.
"I know bigger'n shit I had some damn shit in here from the last time I got the fuckin' clap," Merle commented.
Daryl chewed at his thumb nail and glanced around. From here he could see the RV. Dale was working on it, but Andrea was sitting on the steps to it. He imagined, since he had no idea where the hell T-Dog was or Alice, that they were inside and she was likely working on his arm.
"Andrea done give ya ass the clap?" Daryl asked.
He didn't know the blonde well, but she didn't look to be the disease carrying type. Looks could be deceiving, though.
Merle looked at him like he was an idiot.
"Shut the fuck up," Merle commented. "Was gonna give the shit ta Al…but every damn thing I had's just gone."
Daryl chuckled to himself.
"Oh," he commented. "Yeah…that's 'cause Al done got it."
Merle looked at him.
"Fuck you mean?" Merle asked.
Daryl shrugged slightly and looked around, taking a fast inventory of everything that was happening, and then dropped his eyes back to his brother. Merle, at least the Merle who had been emotionally attached to the drugs he'd dropped like candy, would have been pissed to know what happened to his collection. Daryl didn't figure, now that he was clean and seemed to enjoy it, that he'd be too pissed to know what happened.
"Long damn time ago," Daryl commented. "Threw out the shit that weren't no good for nothin' an' she's been haulin' the rest around in that damn duffle bag she thinks is gonna save some damn body's life."
He paused and shrugged again.
"Maybe it might," he said.
Merle didn't look pissed at all, but he did give up the futile search for the drugs in the saddle bags and start returning things to his small storage space with more care than he'd removed them.
"Girl's gone missin', Merle," Daryl commented. "Walkers after her."
"An' Officer Friendly's after them," Merle commented. "What the hell you want me ta do about it?"
"You reckon we could track 'em?" Daryl asked.
Merle hummed.
"You know good as I do we could," Merle commented. "But they ain't no damn need when we just sittin' pretty an' waitin' for his ass ta get back."
"What if he don't bring her back?" Daryl asked.
Merle paused in his arranging of items, set his jaw, and looked at Daryl.
"Then fucker ain't worth shit," Merle commented. "They said he went over that rail not five damn minutes after she hit them woods. Hell…I coulda fuckin' pissed at that distance an' knocked one a' the fuckers out. He'll bring her back."
Daryl hummed at Merle. He didn't doubt that two Walkers shouldn't be too much of a challenge for anyone, especially if they were armed. He'd seen Alice take out more than that with a bucket one morning when their little camp had gotten the attention of some of them.
But then Daryl had more confidence in Alice than he had in Rick.
"What if he don't?" Daryl asked.
Merle hummed again.
"Then we go the fuck after her," he said nonchalantly. He got to his feet. "Gotta take a piss," he said. "Look out for Andrea? She's been followin' me like a dog an' she sees I'm gone…might not take it too well."
Daryl nodded at Merle and steered his steps back toward the guardrail where Carol was maintaining her silent vigil so that he could wait and see what the rest of this adventure would hold.
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By the time that Rick finally emerged from the woods, the sun was beginning to set. He was filthy, but he was alone. Daryl was sitting on the guardrail and facing into the woods, a few feet down, Carol was sitting on the guardrail with Alice and looking over her shoulder toward the same area. When Rick appeared she got to her feet and Daryl saw Alice take hers too before he even bothered to get to his.
"Where is she?!" Carol yelped out. "Where…where's Sophia?"
Rick didn't have time to speak before Carol started crying again. His face said a lot, but it didn't say everything.
"What the hell happened?" Daryl asked.
Rick shook his head at him and at the moment Daryl wanted to hit him and say the same thing that Alice was famous for yelling at him and Merle both…use your damn words.
Rick stopped walking about three feet from Daryl and Daryl could hear the sounds of a crowd forming behind him without even looking back.
Rick shook his head again.
"She's not up here?" Rick asked.
Daryl looked around, suddenly feeling like he was in the twilight zone.
"Been here a good three hours," Merle called out. Daryl didn't realize he had come up behind him. "That's what the fuck we all standin' here lookin' at you for. You late for the damn party."
"I left her…" Rick started.
"You left her?!" Carol called out in anger through her tears. Rick looked at her and held a hand up in her direction, even though there was a good deal of distance between them.
"I left her so that I could lure the Walkers away and kill them," Rick said. "I couldn't shoot them or I'd just call back the herd that just left. So I left her in a safe place and I took them off to kill them."
"So go get her," Daryl offered. "Outta this safe place you found. Go get her."
He could feel his blood pressure rise a little at the explanation being given, but he didn't want to lose control too thoroughly and risk elevating everything that was likely to blow up as it was.
"I went back," Rick said. "She wasn't there."
"No shit," Merle said. "This story keeps gettin' better an' better."
Rick looked angry and Daryl could see in him the expression of a cop who had learned to react quite negatively when his authority was being called into question…those kinds of cops were the most dangerous. They were Barney Fife figures…they were the kind that would shoot you because you dared to ask them to repeat themselves.
"I told her to come back here," Rick said. "I told her how to get back if I didn't come back! I did what I had to do to keep her alive!"
"Where is she?!" Carol declared loudly from where she was standing, now with Alice keeping a hand on her shoulder instead of Lori who had been doing it earlier.
"Let's everyone just calm down," Lori declared. "Rick did the best he could. She probably…she probably just got confused, right? She's probably around here. Maybe she…found a place to hide."
"That's my daughter!" Carol turned and yelled at her. "My baby is out there alone!"
"We'll look for her," Rick offered. "We'll look for her and we'll find her. She didn't get too far."
"We're going to have to pack it until tomorrow," Shane tossed out from where he was standing. "We're not finding her before the sun goes down unless she's just hiding behind that tree right there."
"What?" Carol asked. Daryl turned toward her. She was looking back and forth from person to person and shaking her head. "No…No! We can't just leave her out there! We can't just leave her in the woods…alone? No!"
"I'll go look for her," Daryl offered. "I'll go see if I can't find where she went. Rick…I'ma need you ta show me where ya left her."
Rick looked back to Shane like he needed the man's permission to do what the hell should have been a no brainer and Daryl added to his request quickly.
"You don't gotta stay," Daryl said. "I'm fine on my own. Just show me where the hell you left the kid."
"I'll go with ya," Merle offered.
Daryl cast a glance at Carol. He didn't expect her to look wholly relieved. After all, her kid was out there in the woods, woods full of Walkers no doubt, and it was almost nightfall. They probably wouldn't get back to where Rick left her good before it was too dark to see anything more than three feet from your face.
She did look, though, at least a little grateful that someone was doing something besides throwing their hands up in the air and saying that there wasn't anything that could be done.
"You're going to try to track someone at night?" Shane asked.
"Better'n leaving the kid out in the dark," Daryl commented.
Rick held his hands out in the direction of Daryl, and Daryl assumed Merle since his brother was behind him, and shook his head.
"The sun's going down as we speak," he said. "We'll go out in the morning. Everyone who wants to go. With the first light. We'll find her then."
Daryl glanced back toward Merle and Merle shrugged slightly, but Daryl could tell that he wasn't wholeheartedly disagreeing with the whole thing. And Daryl knew, as well as his brother and everyone else there, that it was probably impossible to find anything in the dark anyway.
He'd just wanted to go because he didn't like the idea of Sophia out there all night. And he didn't like the look on Carol's face.
He looked at Carol and then diverted his eyes away when he saw the way that she was looking at him…like she was pleading with him for help. She was pleading with him to give her something that he really couldn't give her.
"First light," Daryl commented. He looked at Carol again. "It's gettin' dark and she prob'ly got scared. That's why she didn't make it back. Prob'ly just hunkered down somewhere. We'll find her, first light."