Don't Get Dead | TWD | Volume 1

[27] Just Gone

It had been a week, and today Rick and Shane were taking Randall away from the farm and leaving him there. Part of me was relieved that I would never see him again, but the other part had more questions that I wanted to know about his group. No one really asked him anything while he was healing in the shed, and when Hershel deemed him well enough to walk, they tied him up, blasted music in his ears and dragged him out.

Today was the day that I would talk to Daryl, it'd been a week since I saw that he moved his things, and now I wanted to check to see if he was okay. Well, I tried talking to him before, but he was never there, and so today, I prayed that he was still at his camp and not out on some hunting trip so I could see if he was doing well. I was one baked good away from being the overbearing neighbour that shows up when you move in.

I knew he was there this time because the moment I stepped anywhere near his camp, I heard:

"The hell're ya doin'? I wanted to get 'way from you people"

I would ignore any snarky comments he threw that day, knowing that if I retaliated, it would only be so long before he made me leave, and then I would never know if he was okay.

"Coming to check up on you," I said. "I came in the week, but you were never here."

"Is there a reason?"

I shrugged. "I don't know, it just seems kind of lonely."

"Yeah," he scoffed. "That's the point."

"Well, I don't want you to be on your own, so I wanted to come and check on you," I said. "My mum used to say that even people who want to be alone need a friend."

Daryl looked away, his gaze unfocused. I wondered if his staring off into the distance was his way to make me stop talking to him, but after a moment of silence, he just said, "Whatever."

He moved to sit on one of the logs by his tent, scraping his knife along the bark of a stick to sharpen it. I didn't know why unless he was just doing it because he was bored. I'd seen a lot of people doing that whenever they had nothing else to do.

I sat down on the ground at the opposite end of the burnt-out fire. It was my mission to be quiet for a moment, partly hoping that he would forget I was here because if not, then he may just make me go back to camp, and I wanted to be alone as much as he did.

Since what happened in the town, I rarely had any chance to just be by myself, with people always checking up on me. Daryl had no intention of asking me how I was or whether I was okay, and I was fine with that. His ability to act like I didn't exist was the closest to being alone that I could stand.

And then I got bored and remembered that I had many questions I wanted to ask him,  "Why did you move your things?"

"I wanted to get away from you people."

I pressed my lips into a thin line, "Because of what happened at the barn?"

Daryl looked at me for a moment, "It's none of ya business."

I thought that I may have crossed a line, but talking about it was one of the best ways to be okay with what happened, "I know finding Sophia meant a lot to you, and I think it was very sweet the way you were trying to look for her. You even could've gotten hurt, but you still did it. But I won't talk about it anymore if you don't want me to."

"Well, I don'," he said simply, looking back down at his knife.

I nodded. "Okay."

Again, I tried sitting in silence, watching him carve a point into the stick.

Still, I had another question, "Do you think my dad might be with Randall's people?"

Daryl sighed a knowing sigh, his arms dropping to rest on his legs with both the stick and knife still in his hands. He knew I couldn't be quiet for long, "What?"