Healing Broken Wings [Daryl Dixon] The Walking Dead

Sixty Eight| Back To Alexandria

🛡️Jake🛡️

"Where do we go? Dad!" I race after him, keeping a firm grip on the hand in mine as we run. The snarls and growls of the dead chasing us aren't that far away. I was too afraid to look behind me and find out. "Quiet! I'm thinking," He says as we zig zag through this maze of a city.

"I can't... I can't..." John gasps supported by my father, his other arm hanging limply at his side, hemorrhaging blood from the bite he received not ten minutes earlier when we were swarmed. "I will not leave you," my dad responds and he chuckles dryly. "Then we'll all die."

"Jake, I'm scared." I turn and look into her frightened expression. I rub the back of her hand with my thumb as we continue moving. "I know, Kayla. I am too. We just gotta find someplace to wait them out." We were with a another group of survivors, we had a camp, but it got overrun and we've been on the move ever since.

We've been moving from one place to the next, never staying anywhere more than a few days, gathering supplies as we go. We were hitting a shop when the dead just came out of no where, catching us by surprise. "There!" I look at where Dad's pointing, seeing an abandoned hospital in the distance.

"We'll never make it," I say fearfully as the dead get louder. "We don't have a choice. Now move!" He drags John forward and I pull Kayla along after him. Suddenly, I'm jerked to a stop and Kayla's screaming loudly from pain. I look behind me and my entire body tenses up when I see two had latched onto her and were tearing into her skin.

"Kayla! No!" Her grip on my hand becomes painfully tight. Her piercing screams ring in my head as they tear flesh from her body all while she's still alive. An arm wraps around my torso, breaking me from my daze. "No! No! Kayla! We have to-"

"She's already dead. You can't help her." He yanks my hand from hers and drags me away as the rest of them catch up and she's swallowed up by the dead, but I can still hear her screams. "Come on!" John calls to us as he holds the door open and Dad races in, dragging me by the arm.

They close the door and I drop to the floor, hugging my knees to my chest. For two years I've had to live like this. Always running. Watching over and over again as friends are torn apart right in front of me. It never ends! I came to Virginia with my Aunt Jenna to visit my dad when he checked himself into rehab.

He was trying. He was getting better. He seemed happy, then the world went to shit and I lost Aunt Jenna. Then one after the other I kept losing people I cared about. Kayla... goddammit! I slam my fist into the wall, ignoring the stab of pain that enters my hand as tears sting my eyes.

I'm so angry. This world, it made me angry all the time. I got into a lot of fights with the other teens at the survivor camps. Other kids my age are just real assholes. They wanted to kick me out, but Kayla changed their minds. She became my friend, then she became something more than that.

Now she's gone and I... I don't know what to do! "Don't fret over me. Go talk to your son," I hear John say as I stare down at my bloody knuckles. Focusing on the physical pain rather than the emotional one. Heavy footsteps come towards me and eventually my father crouches down in front of me.

"Let me see," he says with slight concern in his voice and I shake my head. "It's not that bad." Blood trails down the back of my hand from my split knuckles. "I don't care. Even if it was just a splinter, I'd still tell you to let me see it." I look up into his face, his long brown hair slicked back against his head.

John's been bit. The fever will set in before long and he'll eventually die and come back. I don't think he's processed that just yet. When John goes, it'll crush him. He was the first friend my dad ever made after becoming famous. One that wasn't looking for a hand out or supplying him with drugs.