The Monsters Among Us ➳ Daryl Dixon

3. The Hand That Fed and Fed

We had been walking in absolute silence for almost an hour before I heard the unmistakable crack echo from somewhere in the distance.

I could tell by the way Daryl suddenly stopped in front of me that he’d heard it, too. He turned his head to look at Merle and I over his shoulder, brows furrowed beneath the strands of hair hanging over his face.

“Was that –“

His question was cut off by the sudden, rapid sound of gunfire in the distance. We all spat out a curse before taking off in the direction of the sound, the same direction I imagined the prison was in. With my hands still bound, I had to pay close attention to where I stepped, which hindered my speed enough that I was only able to barely overtake Daryl. Usually, I was faster than any and all humans in the vicinity by quite a decent margin, but I’d almost made a habit of purposefully slowing myself down to not appear weirder than they all already thought I was. Now, however, I’d thrown caution to the wind.

Merle knew I was fast. He knew I could see and hear things almost five times better than he could. And he knew I was strong – stronger than my leanly muscled body should have allowed me to be. At this point, I think he’d just accepted it. After all, it had been the reason I’d saved his ass so many times.

Daryl, though. I didn’t know how he’d handle it, but I also knew it would crush him if anything happened to his friends at the prison. So, I didn’t hold myself back. Not on purpose. Not this time.

I broke through the tree line almost a full thirty seconds before they did. The sight that awaited me brought me to a slow halt. Biters had infested the grounds inside the fence, having wondered in through the broken gate. A familiar truck sat upon the grassy hill inside the fence, one I recognised from the Governor’s stash of vehicles. It was one of the biter trucks.

I surveyed the situation as quickly as I could, my gaze catching the movement by the side of the prison fence, where the outline of a familiar figure caught my eye. Rick was pushed up against the wire, struggling against the group of biters currently making a move to surround him. He didn’t have a weapon.

Daryl broke free of the forest and stuttered to a shocked halt beside me.

I reached down without looking and pulled the bowie knife from his belt, ignoring his yelp of protest as I kicked off once again, sprinting across the grassy plane towards Rick. Mere moments before I reached him, I felt an arrow blaze past me. It buried itself in the forehead of one of the biters surrounding the sheriff.

I got the one standing next to it, leaping up and burying Daryl’s bowie knife into the top of its skull. Even with my bound hands, I made short work of the next three before Daryl and Merle both arrived to help take out the other five or so.

Rick looked between the three of us, nodding at each in turn before reaching out and grabbing Daryl’s shoulder in relief.

It was a touching moment, brief though it was.

Rick looked at each of us, his face drenched with sweat and his eyes holding an intense, near crazed look as he turned to peer through the fence.

The field beyond was lost, taken now by the dead as they mindlessly shuffled through the untrimmed grass, the sounds of their moans drawing more of their kind in through the ruined gate. Both Daryl and Rick remained standing before the fence, gripping onto the wire, glaring hatefully at the creatures that now walked on their land.