A/N: Trigger warning for mentions of SA (rape) that maybe upsetting to readers. I apologize that I did not put that in my last post.
Chapter 2
A strange man was at camp when Daryl and Eloise returned from an overnight hunt. He met them in the trees where a walker had devoured the prey they'd been tracking. He wore a uniform. Sheriff's deputy. Sickly thin, clean shaved, sallow skin.
"Who the fuck is this guy?" Daryl said.
Eloise stowed away her knives when they reentered camp.
The silence was tense, palpable on the tongue. A displacement in the air.
It all became clear in a flurry when the mention of his brother on the latest supply run to the city was pricked. He became visibly upset. Daryl asked if his brother was dead. A thought came to mind. There was no way a bastard cold as that attracted any walker to feast on him.
"You chained my brother to a roof and you left him?"
Rage emerged in the remaining Dixon like a boiled-over pot: it kept coming.
Daryl would have fought the entire camp. Such anger. It only took a chokehold to subdue him.
There was no hesitation to reenter the city to retrieve his older brother. Merle Dixon, the man who'd pour salt in his own wounds just to laugh about the pain. He did not deserve left to dehydrate on top of the roof in a building filled with the roaming dead. It was questionable whether he deserved a first-class rescue mission with the strongest in the group though.
They were virtually left with a few strong abled bodied fighters to protect a herd of walker food. Children being an easy target, an assumed desire for the infected to feast upon.
Rick, the new deputy, was the husband of Lori, partner to Shane, father to the little boy in camp named Carl. He was the man they missed.
Eloise grimaced as the man took his wife in his arms with the knowledge of what his wife had been up to since they parted. There was no give in acknowledgment in the awkward position it put the rest of the camp in. The affair between his partner and wife was either missed or ignored.
The deliberations of whether it was right and wrong were taxing, and lengthy, for a man who was faced with the possibility of being an only child at the group abandonment of his brother.
Daryl excitedly blared the horn. His fist pounded against the wheel.
"Let's go," he shouted. His voice carried its anger.
All of the rescue team neared the edge. Glenn had his backpack tight against his spine. He climbed up the bumper into the back of the transport van. Rick and T-Dog heaved their guilty conscious' over the side as they loaded up.
The large firearm at Rick's side set a thick tension through Eloise. A revolver, none the less.
Sound attracted more than just the dead. It attracted the living, too.
She handed up the last two arrows that were forgotten inside the deer at the news of Merle.
Daryl gave no attempt at a goodbye. Neither did she.
It was too awkward. The eyes of the camp on them as they interacted. Each time their eyes met, a focus of everyone else found interest in the coming and goings of her and Daryl. No matter the double of food brought in from the hunt, attentions were captured easier with a silent glance in the general direction.
The few days in camp were more like time spent in a small town than she thought possible since the start. Gossip swam through. Drama, always instilled within.
Merle had behaved like a jealous child since her arrival. He vied for his brother's attentions like there was a competition for it, in a time where there was nothing to do but be present. The distractions were very few.
She, of course, resented the assumption of their bond going beyond that of being friendly. They hunted. Their days were spent doing what they could for their camp. It was not because they yearned for privacy.
Gone were the times that such beliefs could be given stock. Survival was not romantic. There was no appeal to it. Attachments were liabilities. Neither of them could afford a thing.
Doors slammed closed. The cube van loaded. A single boy on the very edge of camp, onlooking at the departure of the father he believed dead, like all the life had drained from his soul as his father left him again. A forlorn woman stood beside him. The similar shade of heartbreak tainted her eyes.
It was a lonely drive down the winding road. Eloise followed the path of the van down the side. Her eyes went to the city in the distance. Sickness churned inside. A wet slob of salvia gathered in her mouth. She spat it out.
"I hate watching them leave," a soft voice said at her side.
Eloise froze.
"It feels like a funeral procession. A one-way road."
The young woman was named Amy. Her face held the innocence of youth that was clear through her lack of wrinkles and bright eyes. Much had been shielded from those blue sapphires. Vibrance like that was not possible with what they had to do to survive unless a great deal was left unsaid.
"There is no two-way road." Eloise sighed as she stepped away from the hillside edge. "Not anymore."
Amy kept her eyes over the edge a moment longer. "Do you think it'll ever come back? The way it felt before when someone left. The assumption they'd be just fine, never thinking a thing else was possible."
The glint in those blue eyes pierced through the hardened exterior, the girlish hope, a child-like want, the weight of impossibility lessened with the added want to keep that feeling alive.
"One day. Maybe."
It earned a soft smile. They stood on that lonely perch above the heights for a moment longer. Neither wanted to tear away. As long as they saw the van, everyone remained safe. Once it left sight, their lives were in limbo.
Amy sighed as she wiped the desperation from her cheeks. "I've got to get back to the kids," she breathed. "They've got to work on some of their reading skills. Do you…I mean, would you want to help?"
A dense moisture collected in her palms. Eloise dragged them down the length of her thighs.
"They just read some passages from the books." Amy walked away, pausing in wait for Eloise, to a shaded table beneath a hickory tree. There sat four even younger, fresher faces with brighter eyes. "We only have a few so we have to switch between them."
Carl and Louis. They looked up. Boyish features with dark hair.
Eloise staggered a step backward. So close, so real. A life in a camp just as this, still innocent as they were before, puffy and childish, naivety alive in their expression.
"I think I'll haul some firewood."
Distance. She needed distance from them all.
The day was spent in a nervous hustle. Their minds needed a distraction, hands occupied with chores, cleaning and fishing and chopping wood, anything to keep their thoughts from wandering to the missing members and the question of their fates. It lived in their eyes. The anxious worry. The doubts of their return.
Eloise used her own patch kit to close the split in a tent ceiling. Daryl said it let in too many bugs. Duct tape was too valuable a tool to be wasted on a tent. She set about patching the hole with the emergency patch sent in the box of the tent she grabbed from a hardware store on the way out of the city.
There was fraying of the ventilation in Merle's tent. He wasn't around to ruin the thought with his piss poor attitude, so she used a makeshift knitting needle and mended the slits in the netting.
It prevented wanton thoughts of death and despair at the suicide mission in the city.
"That's nice."
The unexpected voice of softness behind her had her jump out of her skin. She turned to find the meek slender body of Carol there with kindness in her eyes, sad gentle kindness, as if was the only thing she could imagine giving.
Eloise loosed her held breath. The needle had been held between her fingers as a weapon. Her fingers relaxed against the slender metal.
"He won't appreciate it," she blandly replied.
Carol gave a subtle shrug. "Might." Her feet stepped forward as the thread was wound up around Eloise's fingers. "Who knows? There might be a soft side to Merle Dixon. Doesn't strike me as the kind who's ever had someone lookin' out for him."
A warm breeze swam through the camp. It whipped up pleasant scent of earth and summer.
There was a moment of silence. Mention of Merle brought forth a peculiar taboo on the body. The skin shivered, as if it knew that bad luck came to those who thought of the foul man.
Of course, there was another foul man who was not as bad as he seemed. Once passed through the glaring abrasive disposition, he was a soul that did not seem bad in company as he did not talk a lot and did not have a problem with silence.
"People turn into things in the name of survival," she felt her lips say.
"There is always hope," Carol said gently, "hope they find their way back."
They shared an uncomfortable moment together where a few things went unacknowledged before Carol cited the need for water and set to boiling herself some water from the quarry. Eloise was left to her own devices which was promptly filled with knife sharpening. It eased the nervous energy. Her fingers against the blade, smoothing the metal against rock until it was sharp enough to slice through flesh.
The energy around camp was much the same. There was a visible need to keep busy.
Chores ate up a large part of their day. Firewood, water, foraging, mending, washing, standing guard, mending the perimeter line. All tasks that distracted them from the crushing reality of living outside during an unprecedented apocalypse defenseless in every definition, and the creeping thoughts of what their loved ones might be doing at any given moment. It was visible in all their eyes. The need to not contemplate what happened. An urge to escape their own mind in favor of mediocre work.
Losing their most successful hunter, their scavenger which they needed to survive and two abled bodied men to a mission to find a left behind man was a larger hit than any of them liked to contemplate. They were vulnerable without those members of their group.
It was a looming cloud, a collective breath of that survivor camp, that had all their hearts aligned in one faltering beat.
Eloise stayed at camp. She was unwilling to venture to the woods on a hunt in fear of what she might return to. A fighter – even one as inexperienced as her – was invaluable to the survival of the camp without their largest protectors.
A fresh haul of fish livened up the spirits of camp later that day. A bundle adorned from a string. Pale blue scales glinted in the hot sun. Andrea and Amy spent their day in a simple boat under the beating sun floating around with a few borrowed lines. Multiple bodies of hanging fish brightened their faces. Children excitedly beheld what would be their supper. A meal worthy of all their stomachs.
"I'll get started cleaning them," Dale announced. The haul was handed over, near touching the ground before he raised it high above his head.
Eloise followed. Her voice was low when she commented, "I'll help."
A space was cleared out on the edge of camp, away from the prying eyes of children at the spilling of fish guts in the grass. The fish divided between the pair. A bowl of clean water, the place to put their freshly descaled filets.
It was quiet as they worked. Noises of camp behind their backs, a happy hum. Excitement over the coming fish fry overtook their tongues. Their desolate spirits finally raised.
Funny, a small thing like a fish might lift a person out of their darkest mood.
Dale scratched his white beard. "Say, where'd you learn to skin a fish?"
She gripped the hilt as she shimmied it upward through the slender body of the fish. Her eyes stayed fixed at her fingers. One mistake, one slip of her hand, was easy enough to take off a finger with a blade so sharp.
"Spent my summers with my grandpa in the woods," she replied. "Pops lived off the land. Hunted and fished for supper. No free rides either. I had to learn to kill and clean my food if I wanted to eat."
"He did you a service by teaching you a skill like that. My hands aren't what they used to be. I used to be a lot faster."
A softening came to her face. Her brow loosened from its hardened concentration under the soft lure of memory. "I'm sure he's up there, smilin' that they finally came into use."
The old man's face fell. "Oh. He's…"
Eloise slipped another filet into the water. "Couple years ago."
A fish slapped against the cutting board. She wiped the edge of the blade against the grass before poking through the tough scales into the moist insides. A flat palm rested against the length of the body as she slid the blade down the spine.
"Dropped of a heart attack," she finally added. "Out of nowhere."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Dale replied.
"All this wouldn't have phased him. He rarely saw another person. A few zombies wouldn't have mattered… He was hard like that. Tough as nails. Country boy in and out. His farm would have been the perfect place to hunker down, too. Groves of peach and apple trees. Some oranges, too. Pecan and walnuts. A blackberry thicket big as a car. Hundreds of acres as a backyard. Up into the mountains where game was aplenty."
Dale mumbled, "Sounds like a child's dream."
"It was," she hummed lowly. "It really was."
They worked through the catch. The smell of fish stained her nostrils with each breath. Hands coated in the slick juices of the insides and blood of the animals.
"You said there were other survivors in the city." Dale discarded a thin section of fish skin in the nearby grass. "Making a go of it."
Her motions paused.
"Any of them having success?" He asked. "The refugee center. It was said to be large. Is there any success there? FEMA was supposed to have stocked the site. I thought…well, that there was some hope it might be survivable."
A lack of focus came to her eyes. Her hands still paused halfway through the fish.
There was a hope in the man's tone. A harmful thing to let slip.
She met his gaze with a drooping sorrow. "There is nothing left."
"Nothing?"
"The ones who are still there won't last too long," she said. "There aren't enough bullets to clear the city. Let alone the ones it would draw in if they tried. Noises carry. Gets them riled. They all flock together. Enough of them get together, they can bring down a building."
Bad news was not easy to deliver. It cut through Eloise to watch the hope drain from Dale as silence fell back to its thick blanket. She pretended to not notice his despair. The crushing emotion in his eye as he finished the last filet.
Amy checked on the progress, surprised that it was already completed. "Wow. Look at that. It's all done."
Dale sniffed back his hurt. "By luck, I had help this time. Eloise knows how to filet a fish."
"Everyone is going to love these." Her two hands gripped the sides of the bowl. The water neared the rim, full of the white meat. "Carol says she has some crackers we can use to coat them."
"Cracker crust. Yum." Dale's furry grey brows raised.
The young girl chuckled. "Better than the squirrels we've been eating."
"Or the canned chili."
Canned chili. Daryl never minded the canned chili. He said it reminded him of camping when it was all he'd brought to eat. It made it easier to choke down when reminded that it was something brought someone good memories.
Eloise shook her head. "I don't mind the chili."
Amy and Dale scrunched their faces in a sour recoil.
"God. It's awful. I should cook you some of my chili. It blows that canned crap out of the water," Dale declared. "Onions, tomatoes, and beans, and a hint of coffee. Gets that flavor nice and deep."
"My dad used to make chili for football Sunday. Every week. So, when it was made in the off season, I thought of football." Amy grinned.
"My family never made chili," Eloise revealed.
"Really?" Amy gasped.
She nodded. "We made gumbo. Shrimp gumbo."
"Oh gumbo. I haven't had that in years." Dale reminisced.
It made a good story over the fried fish that evening. He told the story of his anniversary where he tried to make a gumbo on his own.
They all had a good laugh at his recollection of using head-on shrimp and using an entire bottle of creole seasoning and nearly burning off his taste buds from all the spice. His wife holding back sweat and tears as she tried to muscle through eating her bowl.
Their voices must have carried. The fire, perhaps too large, or the scent of their cooked food too appetizing to pass up.
Before they all realized it, there were shouts. Screams. Eloise knew the ones: the sound of being eaten alive.
One breath, and their camp was filled with walkers. People ran. The children whimpered. Shot gun blasts echoed in the dark air.
It was night. The moving, grunting of shuffled feet and the tearing of teeth through flesh, the only sign of walkers noticeable through the dark of night.
Andrea huddled over top Amy. Blood gushed through the pale flesh. Dale stood atop the RV, taking shots of his rifle. The shotgun blasts were from Shane's gun. He stood at the front of Lori, Carl, Sophia and Carol. His voice splintered the dark. He called out for the rest of them to come close.
"Group together," he shouted. "Make your way to the RV."
It was dense night. The sky was blanketed from the light of stars and moon. It was all too dark for them to stand a chance.
Eloise tossed logs on the fire. Their low flame rule would only aid the walkers.
The flare caught a glimpse of a woman cowered against a tree. Tears poured down her cheeks as she swung a short hatchet. Its reach not much longer than that of her arms. The blade no longer than a hand.
A pair of walkers descended.
Their pace caught panic right in the woman's chest. She threw her hatchet. It landed in the grass, not on target, and left her completely defenseless.
Eloise grabbed hold of a knife and threw it across the fire. It hit a walker and flung it into the tree. Black juices flowed onto the bark as the twitching life of afterlife drained from it. She jumped at the other. Her knife landed on the back of its shoulder.
"Go," she screamed. The woman trembled to her feet from the crouched cower and made way back to the rest.
The walker fought to reach its back. All too late. A knife plunged into the back of its neck, severed the brain stem from the spine. It dropped to the ground as she stood, the remaining victor.
There was a stronghold of survivors at the RV. They were all huddled together. Backs to the side of the cliff where the RV was parked. They formed a half circle against the wave. She stepped forward to join the rest of them when a strong weight landed upon her arm. It gripped her bicep. The tips of its nails slowly working through the leather.
"Shit," she gasped.
It wretched her backward. Her feet struggled to remain below her as it pulled again at the thick coat.
A decayed walker, with an eye dangled from its socket, ripped apart lips, absent nose, a skull with crumbling pieces of flesh, black and foul, pulled at her. She caught sight of it over her shoulder. It snarled. The beating of her heart throbbed in her neck. A hollow hunger overtook its deadened eyes. Primal need lunged it forward.
Her fingers grasped the hilt of her knife at her thigh and thrusted through the forehead. The spray of rotten juices – not blood, as it was not alive – coated her hand. Fingers stained with the inky black of death.
There was no time to clean it off; another walker surged to replace it. This one lunged. Its arms stretched forward to reach her. She retracted the knife. It slipped in her palm. A slick slide against its dead flesh, slipping the knife from course and slicing off its scalp and ear instead.
This walker was much larger than the last. Its hiss filled her ears. Jaw near wretched apart from want of her body.
A breath rattled her chest.
The camp was infiltrated. So few left to defend what they had, with dwindling ammo and weapons. Even if they managed to kill the walkers, the losses would be great.
The slain were vocal as they died. It was not instant, but long, drawn out, eaten alive, all the while, choking on their own blood, knowing that soon it'd all end for them, only to be born as one of the haunted walkers in hunt of more flesh.
It was a lost cause.
"El, get down!" A voice shouted.
She dropped to her knees as a bullet exploded in the face. It went limp as it fell to the ground.
A louder surge of gunfire splintered the camp. The constant flash of bullets as they exited barrels until nothing, but dark silence remained.
Their breaths exasperated and adrenaline fueled.
"Go on. Get back to the RV." Daryl said. He was nearest, the only one out of formation. A long shotgun displayed at his chest.
Her legs shook from the adrenaline. Relief to find him so close. Unwounded.
He urged her forward. His gun spun around behind them as they made their way to the others.
Shane shielded the group behind him when she approached. "You bit?"
Her pace slowed. Brows fell.
"Is she bit?" He shouted again.
He wouldn't let anyone come near. His eyes wild.
Daryl stood behind her. "Put the gun down, man. She ain't bit."
Lori shook her head. "She's fine."
"Those bruises. What's them bruises then?" Shane lifted the barrel of his gun straight for her.
Eloise raised her hands. Heart beat wildly, out of control. She primed for a reach to her side should he move his finger a bit more.
Daryl swooped around her. "Ain't you hear me? She's not bit."
There was a crunch of feet as Rick fast approached. His hand touched the shotgun. "Shane. Put it down."
It took a long moment of their quiet whispering before the gun was lowered away from her chest. She released a ragged breath.
"Check her." Shane's breath was low, as if he only spoke to Rick. "Check her."
"I will," he replied.
The eyes of the camp went to her. Their suspicion of her status, if she was bit or just hurt. Lori clutched Carl close to her side, still trembling from the attack.
Although it was lowered, Daryl kept his gun tight against his body. The veins of his forearms popped through.
Rick approached. His eyes went to her arm.
The one sleeve of her jacket was ripped and frayed at the shoulder. Fire was died down in the hearth behind them. It only gave enough flickering of light to catch the dark patch of flesh at her bicep. There was a matching mark on the other arm.
"Did a walker bite you?" He asked.
She shook her head.
"I saw it. It just tore her coat," Daryl answered.
A hand was held out. It waited her compliance.
She placed her arm in his hand for inspection. Rick probed at every ounce of her arm. His fingers poked the dead center of the bruise.
Her face winced.
"The bruise. What's it from? You get scratched?"
"No," she answered.
"You sure?"
Eloise gulped.
"If you're bit, tell us now."
"It ain't a bite. She's had it for days now." The biting irritation in Daryl's voice was something that rivaled the tone he had when he was told Merle was left in Atlanta. "It'd have killed her already if it was."
Rick remained suspicious. He appraised her arm once over.
"How'd you get it?"
It'd gone quiet. The quiet whimpers of sorrow at the fallen survivors ceased. No one lost a breath as they waited for her to answer.
Motion of Daryl's shifting stopped. Out of the corner of her eye, his hands clenched tighter at the grip.
"In Atlanta…" Her voice lost strength. A horrid churning to her stomach as she tried to fight through it. "They used to tie me up before they'd – before they'd use me. I'd fight so hard that they'd have to dig their knees into my arms to keep me still."
It was not what anyone expected.
The touch on her arm ceased. It dropped to her side with a lifelessness that filled her insides.
"She's got one on the other arm if you want proof," Daryl spat.
"No, no." Rick said lowly. "I don't need to see."
"Good. Cause we got a camp to clean."
Eloise stood silent. Her eyes down at the splatter across her jeans. The smeared blood down the back of her thigh.
"Wait until morning," Rick told Daryl. "At first light. For now, we'll stick together. Make sure they don't spring on us again."
With their backs to the RV, they stayed up all night in wait for another horde to wander through.
It was silent that night. Amy laid dead on the ground. Blood coated her throat and chest, the light gone from those pretty blue eyes. Her sister clutched at the dead body the entire night. Eyes never left the pallid face.
Eloise sat in the gravel. Her eyes kept at the tree line. The faint imagination of shadows amongst the dark, battled only by the red glow of coals.
There was tense air that surrounded her. She felt it in their eyes when they looked over and whispered something. Her arms laced across her chest, tighter and tighter, until each breath was a painful fight.
Dawn broke. It splashed a lessening dim across the camp. The outlines of tents, bodies, trees all filled in.
"Are you alright?" Lori knelt. "I'm sorry. What Rick asked. He shouldn't have made you answer."
"Doesn't matter," Eloise replied flatly.
"No. It does." The woman sighed as she took a seat next to her on the ground. Dust clouds of the dry gravel toyed with the edge of their nostrils. The deep grit on their tongue. "No one should have to relive what you have to in front everyone."
There was no answer that conveyed the emotion that it brought forth. Nor did it compare to the awful pity in their eyes where suspicion once lived.
A soft shuffling brought Lori closer. Her voice lowered. "I know what you saw in the woods, with Shane. It was -."
"Forget it. I'm not going to say anything."
"I can explain," Lori said.
"We've got more important things to worry about than that."
The brunette begrudgingly nodded. Her face awash with relief. "I can't thank you -."
"Please," Eloise finally sputtered. "Don't."
Lori blinked. "Right. Well, um, I understand."
A short while later, it was light enough for cleaning efforts to start. The clearing of the bodies from camp, the long arduous task of pulling the bodies of those bitten, infected or otherwise dead.
Carol's husband, Ed, was one of the ones bitten and killed by the horde. His body was in bad shape from the beating he'd earned earlier from abusing the women washing clothes at the pond. It was difficult to lug the man from his tent. It took Daryl and Eloise's full strength to pull him up to the road.
There were other dead survivors. They handled them with care to not upset those who cared for them. It made for more work. More work pissed Daryl off.
"What's the difference? They're all the same," he had said.
But the camp cared for those who were slain, whether they were bitten or not. They mourned for the loss of life.
It was easier for Daryl to ignore the fact that they were people, too. Life without others made it easy to forget what it felt like to lose someone.
His mouth still held the bitterness of his brother. "You reap what you sow. Leavin' my brother to die on that roof…you had this comin'."
Eloise kept quiet. She helped Jacqui locate all the bodies that needed dealt with. There was a silent murmuring on the woman's lips as they knelt overtop a dead walker. Prayers.
"For their souls to find rest," the soft-spoken woman said.
There was a pile for the walkers that wandered in. They mounded together overtop a bonfire. Smoke wafted off their decayed bodies. It's stench stronger with the reek of death in it.
The cleanup efforts were stalled by the wails of Jacqui. "That's fresh blood. You've been bit! Bit! A walker bit Jim."
Jim, the mechanic, was bit on his chest. A fresh, clean bite like a set of dental impressions.
Again, there was a fight between Daryl and what seemed like the rest of the camp when he wanted Jim to be killed before he got the chance to bite one of them. It was becoming common happening. His violence toward everyone – except the one he should show a bit of violence toward. It made no difference. Shane and Rick banded together as leaders of the camp, and their decision to not kill Jim made Daryl's efforts to futile.
Jim was taken and sequestered into the back of the RV. No one wanted to see him left behind. They could not bear to see another one of them turned into one of the walkers they were forced to kill.
It made Daryl all the more angry to have his opinions disregarded. He grumbled to himself as he worked. Eyes squinted against the harsh rays of sunlight. A noted furrowed brow.
"Put a bullet in my head if I'm ever bit," he said to no one in particular. "I don't ever want to be one of them things."
Every so often his eyes would look at the RV with calculation. Like he wondered what it would take to go in there and extend a bit of mercy to the man who was going to be claimed by a virus that ate away their soul.
It was not an easy death. The disease, virus, whatever it was. Pain. Each moment was more torture than the last. Fever that could bring down a raging elephant. It killed most. Of course, there were the bites, the wounds, the infected left on healthy bodies that rotted away the flesh until it was black, septic and smelled of death.
Jim was a soft-spoken man. Helpful, and unassuming. He made conversation easy. Something the camp needed was a person like that to calm the erratic energies of the other personalities that battled endlessly for control.
Mercy was one thing he deserved. A merciful death, like he asked for.
The sound of his cries in pain were enough to shake Eloise's quiet indifference. Her heart leapt each time she heard the groan, exasperated from the sweating, and the muscle pain as his body turned against him. It was difficult to ignore.
Daryl used a pickaxe on the dead bodies. Puncturing their brain was the only way to kill them once and for all. The sounds of the shlunk into their skulls and the gush of fluids out of their bodies was as nauseating to hear as it was to witness.
Eloise held her wrist to her nose. It only deflected the strong stench of death.
"Go on. I can finish up," he said.
She shook her head. "I'm good."
"Always tryin' hang with the big boys."
She scoffed. "I am one of the big boys."
"Then do the work of the big boys."
The sharp exhale of amusement died on his lips when the red rimmed eyes of Carol appeared.
Her voice was soft and meek. "Is that my Ed?"
Daryl lowered his pickaxe. His shoulders shifted, uncertain of what to say.
"I want to do it," she said. "He was my husband. I should be the one."
They stood back, horrified, at the tears in Carol's eyes as she sliced through her husband's brain, over and over and over again.
That look stained on her face stayed imprinted in Eloise's mind.
Attachment. It only hurt. In the new world of the dead and barely living, there was no space for it in any of their hearts. It hurt twice as bad.
And when it was said that the camp site was no longer safe and a new place was needed, her heart turned cold to what it meant to be a part of the group.
Risk. Risk to the heart and risk to life.
The life part was not all that disappointing. It was risked all the time. Nothing new.
But the heart? That was the only thing that made it worth surviving. If the heart was too damaged, the will to be anything but a mindless animal was lost.
She held her arms as she watched the woman officially kill her husband. There was no thought else other than that. That harsh reality of what they lived, every day. One day, forced to drive a spike into a brain to prevent the turn of someone they cared about.
"I've got a jacket," Daryl mumbled.
"What?" Her eyes pulled from Carol's distressed face to his.
"I don't need it. Too fuckin' hot anyway." He marched over and pulled the article from his pack that leaned against the RV. It was still packed from the Atlanta trip. "Take it."
It was a jean jacket with a black leather vest sewed overtop. The back of the vest was embroidered in silver angel wings. Eloise touched the threads. The bumpy texture beneath her fingertips.
"I'm not cold," she stated.
His eyes dropped. The line of vision went straight to the dark marks upon her bicep.
Attachment. It was a deadly poison. She recognized its tainted, twisted venom injected straight to the sped-up pace of her heart.
She neared total infection. The hungry, devouring of hope that laced through every engrained instinct she knew to be the key to survival. The group, being part of something larger with people she cared for, only put her further in the epicenter of the outbreak.
It was time to sever the spine.
Late in the day left a hot and heavy sun above their heads, an eerie quiet through their camp, and a hollow need to leave the soured memories of the ones they lost behind.
The quarry camp was abandoned. Gear of the dead, left intact, as if they might live on in the eternal memory of that place.
"We have family in Birmingham." Morales and his family wanted to leave. They loaded up their vehicle ready to split from the group. Rick shook his hand, handed over a few bits of ammo to keep them held over, and wished them good luck.
When it came to the rest of them to load up, Eloise was the only one left with her bag on the ground.
"I'm going to stay," she said. "Try my luck in the smaller towns."
Andrea, Lori, Shane, Rick, and Jacqui stood. Their eyes wide in disbelief like she'd just taken out her heart and showed it to them.
"You're not coming?" Andrea said in disbelief.
"The CDC is our best shot," Rick explained. "They might have a cure. A shot at this."
Eloise shook her head. "Going back to the city is a mistake."
"I understand if you're scared."
Scared did not near the depth of emotion she felt.
Jacqui pleaded. "Please. Please. Don't go on your own."
"It's suicide," Lori agreed. "We have to stick together."
The caravan was loaded. Every car fitted with a family, or group, bonded together. Daryl rounded his pickup, rusted at the bumper, loaded with his brother's motorcycle. Black straps held the thing in place. He tugged at them to make sure.
"What we waitin' on? Let's go," he exclaimed.
Rick stepped closer. "I won't force you. We all have to make our own decisions."
"The towns aren't a place to be on your own," Shane called out. "They're just as overrun."
She scowled in his general direction. His threat still fresh in her mouth from the days prior.
"Ya'll deaf or somethin'?" Daryl approached the group. He looked to Shane. "What's the hold up? We're losin' light."
Jacqui released her crossed arms. Her gentle spirit saddened. The watery sorrow in her eyes as she turned. "Eloise isn't coming."
"What?" He stepped forward, like he'd heard her wrong.
The jacket looped on her arm said enough. It was not going with her. The catch of the light on the silver wings.
"She thinks being walker bait on her own is a better chance," Shane stated.
Rick glanced back and shook his head. "No one pressure her. It's on her to choose."
Daryl marched up. His boots stomped against the ground. "Like hell it is."
He grabbed her pack from the ground.
"Daryl," Rick warned.
It did not deter him. Her things were tossed into the empty bench seat of his single cab pickup truck.
"Now she's got no choice," he declared. "Let's go."
Her tongue went dry. It went lax in the bottom of her jaw.
"Ain't no way we're leavin' you here. I'll throw you over my shoulder if I've got to."
The rest of them stood awkwardly. Rick shifted his weight off his hip, a hand on his side.
"Well." His eyes shifted back to the woman in front of him.
There was no give in Daryl's denial. He was set to carry her the entire way to the CDC. He gripped the door handle of his truck, open to the light of day, in wait for her to enter.