Hope { A Daryl Dixon fanfiction }

Chapter 2

Danielle's P.o.v

We gathered all of our things and started to travel. It was just about the right temperature that if the world wasn't a piece of shit then I would actually enjoy walking for miles. We didn't talk, but its a comfortable silence, not awkward. But it wasn't hard to get bored with the long walk and the long silence. 

"So uh, your dad, what was his name?" I asked the first curious question that came to my head.

"His name was Adam." He kept his pace and stared at the ground, but I could tell he was sad and tired. 
"Oh okay. Wanna take a break?" He nodded and we took a seat right on the road we were walking on. 

And un-awkward silence went to beyond awkward in seconds. I didn't really have much to say so I kinda just left the situation the way it was and pulled out my squirrel.

"How is lunch sounding right about now?"

"Pretty good actually." I could here him say with relief in his voice.

We sat in the road that was secluded by forest and looked to be never ending, while eating the last pieces of our squirrel. 

"Hey Danielle, since I'm waiting on you I'm going to go see if I can find anything, I'll be right back."

I nodded as he started walking away then began to run, once he started to fade away and was out of my sight I began to get worried, why would I let a 12 year old run around by himself? 

I began to run after him calling his name but he didn't come back towards me and I still couldn't see him. Why couldn't he hear me? he didn't run that far.. 

I kept calling for him but I never saw him come back. Where the hell did he go? 

I yelled really loud one more time but then I saw him.

"Wow way to scare me!" I hollered after him then jogged towards him. 

But then he started groaning, and grabbing at me like a walker would but he was still his normal self, whats happening?

"What are you doing, stop, Joey seriously quit!" I practically screamed at him as I was trying to hold him back but he kept grabbing at me.

Then I heard something loud ring in my ears and I looked down at the now shot down walker, the one that I thought was Joey. I then looked in the direction of where the bullet came from and saw the real Joey, with a gun in his hand and walking towards me. He threw his arms around me and looked worried but happy.

"Why didn't you stab it?" he asked.

"Because I thought it was you," I answered while staring at the ground.

"What do you mean?"

"Once you left I realized that I shouldn't have let you go by yourself and I ran after you, I was screaming your name and finally that Walker trudged over here and I must've hallucinated."

"Have you ever seen anything before? or has anything like that happened?"

"Never.. Maybe just the fact that this whole time I've never had someone to look out for, and now that I do I'm just a little worried about you." Once these words slipped from my mouth I realized it was all true. From the time the apocalypse started I haven't had anyone, at all, and now that I do its getting to me. I just hope I don't come as close to dying as I did today.

"Well on the bright side of things you're still alive." He says trying to make me feel better.

After the break we continued walking and it must've been around 4 o'clock so we decided to keep going, we were dead tired and we were depending on the sky to get dark so we can finally stop. But most of all, I was tired of not talking because its how we've spent most of our trip.