Survive - Daryl Dixon - Follow The Plot Fanfic

Eleven

Warnings: Sexual Assault (Will give a second warning closer to the time but I haven't gone in to too much detail.)

I wake up to the guys moving around and packing up their stuff. I sit up slowly and start to rub my knife on the concrete floor to sharpen it. 

I look over at the centre of the room to see splats of blood everywhere, I freeze, I cant move.

When the loud metal door gets opened, Daryl wakes up and immediately looks at me. He looks to where I'm looking and then back at me. He pulls me close, turning me away from the blood, petting my hair gently. As I slowly start to relax, I take a few deep breaths and start to pack up my things as I get up. 

As we all leave, I notice Len's mangled body on the floor with an arrow through the eye. He picks up a dirty blanket to lay over the corpse, but I gently touch his arm and shake my head. He looks at the body for a second, then throws the blanket aside.

After a good long while of walking beside Daryl, Joe drops back beside me and offers me some alcohol in a hip flask, I take it and drink some.

"White Lightnin'." Joe states. "Easiest thing to make with the least amount of supplies. I'd start slow if I were you. Your stomachs probably emptier than you think." 

I take another drink, then hand the flask to Daryl. He takes a sip and hums, handing it back to Joe.

"I ain't been lit at dawn since before everything fell apart." I say to no one in particular.

"Fell apart. Never looked at it like that. Seems to me like things are finally starting to fall together. At least for guys like us, livin' like this, survivin'. We've been doin' this since the start, right?" Joe says, more to Daryl than me.

As we catch up to the rest of the group, who are huddled around a scruffy, wooden sign.

"Gettin' closer." One of them says to Joe before he keeps moving.

Craning our necks to get a good look, Daryl and I walk in front of the sign to read it.

"You see this before?" Daryl gestures to it.

"Oh yeah, I'll tell you what it is. It's a lie. Ain't no sanctuary for all. Ain't gonna welcome guys like you and me with open arms." Joe walks behind us.

"So is that where we're headed?" Daryl asks.

"So now you're askin'?"

"That's right."

"We were in a house, minding our own business, and this walking piece of faecal matter was hiding in the home. Strangled out colleague Lou and left him to turn. Lou came at all of us. He lit out. We tracked him to these tracks, one of those signs, and thus, we got a destination in mind." Joe retells his story.

"You see his face?" I ask, thinking he could be one of ours.

"Only Tony. That's enough for a reckoning."

The guy in front of us stops and looks down at a plant growing from the floor. Daryl looks between the plant and the guy for a second.

"Claimed." He announces and steps forward, uprooting the plant, looking at it for a second and shoving it into his bag. We keep walking.

Last night, Tony said he had seen the man who strangled Lou and that we were going after them. Daryl had other intentions.

"Once they get this man... we leave. I don't trust these men as far as i can spit," He states

"Okay." I reply, just relieved to be getting away from these creeps.

Once the group had walked out onto the road to confront this man, Daryl and I just stood, listening to Joe count down in Mississippi's for a minute before we start to leave.