Chapter Seven
Daryl's POV
But we hadn't found her yet.
More days had passed, and we still had not been able to locate Sophia.
The group was broken, in my opinion.
To make matters worse, Carl had been shot in some freak accident and now all of us were holed up on some farmer's land while he recovered.
Rick had never looked worse.
I hated seeing him so pale and distraught over his boy.
The only good thing about staying at this farm was that it offered better resources to look for Sophia.
I forced myself to focus on this task and nothing else.
Rick needed his space and I respected that.
Even Shane seemed to be pushing his limits with everyone.
Ever since he alone had come back from the medical supplies run he and Otis had gone off on, he had been different.
After we had done our memorial for Otis, Shane had come to me, demanding sex with hate and judgment in his eyes.
It had been awful, and I was still a little sore from just how rough it had gotten. Several times during it, Shane has mumbled to himself 'not my fault...wasn't my fault' and each time after he had said it, his thrusts would be even more violent.
Damn him.
But I couldn't think about that anymore, not when I was supposed to be taking the lead in finding Carol's daughter.
Everyone was counting on me.
X
"Alright, everyone's getting new search grids today. If she made it as far as the farmhouse Daryl found, she might have gone further east than we been so far," Rick spoke up as our group gathered around the hood of a car, all of us looking over a large white map that detailed the terrain.
"I'd like to help" spoke up someone from Hershel's group, a young man with an even voice but inexperience shining in his eyes, "I know the area pretty well and stuff."
"Hershel's okay with this?" Rick asked him squarely, turning to take a good look at him.
He looked too green, in my opinion.
"Yeah," the kid piped up before realizing he needed to say more, "...yeah, he said I should ask you."
"Alright then, thanks," Rick agreed to have him help, not that I cared one way or the other about it
"About where Daryl found the farmhouse, it ain't screaming Sophia to me," Shane decided he needed to comment on the topic, earning a sharp glare from me for more than one reason, "...anyone could have been holed up in that farmhouse."
"Anyone includes her, right," Andrea countered smartly, but then I quickly recalled a piece of information from when I was there, prompting me to speak up.
"Well, whoever slept in that cupboard was no bigger than ye high," I said to the rest of the search party, letting them all know that a small child could most definitely have been hiding in that house from the looks of things.
"Good lead," Andrea affirmed with a nod from across the the car.
"Maybe we'll pick up her trail again," Rick said optimistically, his hands laying across the map spread out but his eyes were glued to my mine.
He was beginning to make me nervous.
"No 'maybe' about it," I quipped back to the former police officer before continuing, "but I'm going to borrow a horse, head up this ridge right here and get a birds-eye view of the whole grid...if she's there, I'll spot her."
T-Dogg nodded as Dale settled in next to me at the front of the car and said, "Good idea. Maybe you'll see your chupacabra up there, too."
That bastard...
"Chupacabra?" Rick asked at once, his eyebrows raising at me out of sheer curiosity as well as a tell-tale sign of disbelief.
"What, you never heard this?" Dale chose to fill in the blanks of the story for us all, "...the first night in camp, Daryl tells us the whole thing reminds him of the time he went squirrel hunting and saw a chupacabra."
Rick looked like he didn't know what he should say, but that punk kid next to him laughed.
"What're you braying at, jackass?" I glared at that little shit, ready to beat his ass for laughing at me.
"...so you believe in a bloodsucking dog...?" he posed the smart ass question to me, moronic smile on his face.
I squared my shoulders and swiped a thumb across my cheek.
"You believe in dead people walkin' around...?" I shot right back to him, proving to him that crazy things can exist in this world and very little should be taken lightly anymore.
That shut him up and Rick looked like he wanted to smile, that is, until that same little bastard tried to grab one of our hunting rifles.
"Hey hey...ever fire one before?" Rick quickly retrieved the firearm back and posed the question to him, all of us needing to hear his answer before proceeding.
"Well, if I'm going out, I want one," he answered...if one could even call that an answer.
I adjusted my crossbow on my back, having had enough of this meeting and these people.
"Yeah...and people in Hell want Slurpees," I joked darkly before walking off to begin my task of looking for Sophia, ready to be by myself and do something I knew I was good at.
X
Rick's POV
Many hours later...
Too much time had gone by.
It had been all morning and afternoon that he had been gone and the sun was beginning to set as it was...and still no signs of Daryl or Sophia.
The rest of the camp was going about their business, like everything was just fine.
But it wasn't.
I had spent some time with Lori and Carl earlier, and now everyone was outside on the property, keeping watch or doing their respective chores.
I hated that Daryl had not come back yet.
There would be no way for any one of us to track him, either...so he was totally on his own.
"I'm better on my own,"he had told me once before leaving towards the woods to begin a previous solo search for the girl, refusing my help in his own way whence I had stopped him to chat.
That never had set right with me and my worry was starting to justify itself with him still being gone this late in the day.
"Walker! Walker!" Andrea suddenly called out from the top of the RV, looking out towards the distant tree line several hundred yards away from the house, causing all of us to quickly be on high alert.
Shane, T-Dogg, Glenn, and I grabbed our weapons immediately and raced towards the moving figure emerging more and more into sight from the trees, seeing as it was just one, we needed to take it out quietly.
It seemed to be dragging one of his feet, one side more limp than the other and his head was down, but even from this far away, I could see the large streaks of blood that coated the walker's chin and chest.
We hurried our pace through the field until stopping just before it, and I lifted my heavy handgun, the rest of the guys at my flanks.
He was breathing hard, and...lifted his head.
Daryl...?
Daryl was pale as a ghost and covered in dirt from head to toe, bright red blood staining his mouth for reasons that were escaping me at this point because I was just so shocked to see him in this condition...and that he had come back to me regardless of what had happened.
My heart pulled and thudded inside my chest.
"Is that Daryl?" Glenn spoke up first, his young voice breaking through my haze of seeing Daryl like this and causing all of us to breathe a sigh of relief.
He looked like he had just been through hell...
"It's the third time you've pointed that thing at my head..." Daryl growled out to me specifically, his voice strained with dehydration and hardship recently endured, "you gon' pull the trigger or what...?"
His slight jab at the circumstance made me quickly lower my gun so I could put it back inside the leather holster on my hip, the rest of us sort of shuffling for a second, glad that he was not a walker and was well enough to crack a joke at us.
Suddenly, a shot rang out across the field and the next thing I knew, Daryl's head whipped to one side and his body was thrown to the ground from the force.
Daryl had been shot.
Someone had just shot Daryl!
"No!" I hollered as loudly as I could back to the rest of the camp, waving my arms in a cease-fire motion, before all of us rushed to the fallen man's side.
Seeing him lie there in the grass like that, covered in blood, having just been shot, I could feel my heart racing a mile a minute, praying he was not just shot and killed by accident in front of us all.
I needed him to be alive.
Once I saw his features scrunch together in pain, the poor man probably barely able to remain conscious right now, I knew he was still breathing.
Thank God.
Shane pulled the necklace back that had fallen into his mouth as well as swatted away the hunter's filthy hand that had automatically lifted to touch his new wound, a shallow graze on the side of his head by the look of it, but it was already pouring blood down the side of his face.
Shane and I grabbed his arms and hauled him up, supporting his weight on either side and I kept my eyes glued to the way Daryl buried his face in his shoulder, most definitely in blinding pain right now.
"...I was kidding..." Daryl managed to choke out but I could not laugh even if I had wanted to.
Daryl could have died, right here and now.
I squeezed his bloodied hand tighter as we carried him back to the house.