A group of us met for a pseudo council meeting the next morning.
Considering we were basically split down the middle, with half of us in isolation from the other, I hesitated to even call it a council meeting at all. Hershel seemed to be the only one bound by officialism. He sat at the head of the table, elbows leaning against the marked wood, a troubled expression pulling down his white brows.
Beside him was Daryl, sitting on a backwards-facing chair, forearms draped over the wooden backing. I had made a point of spinning my own chair around and comically mimicking his position.
It brought a smile to Hershel’s troubled face and pulled a soft laugh from both Carol and Glenn. When I grinned at Daryl, he just shook his head at me, but I could see the way his eyes softened and the lines on above his brow faded.
A light feeling filled my chest. It was nice to see that, even with the morbid reality of death and disease hanging over us, that I could still make someone laugh.
The mood didn’t last, of course. Hershel began his spiel about the rise of infected and I sunk down into my chair with a deep frown.
At some point, as he spoke, I tilted my head back, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath through my nose in way of a sigh. My eyes snapped open.
The smell. It lingered in the air around me, faint yet definitely there. I straightened in my seat, my grip on the edge of the chairs backing growing so tight the wood gave an audible groan. Daryl’s head turned in my direction as if he had sensed my sudden rigidness from beside me.
I sniffed again. The smell was coming from my left, the opposite side Daryl was on. Without moving my head, I slid my gaze across to scan my companions. Other than her oddly ridged posture, Carol looked fine, if not a little troubled. If I focused hard enough, I could smell only the fading scent of smoke and… was that gasoline? Huh. She must have stepped in some back in the solitary yard. Karen and David had been drenched in the stuff before being set alight. Little pockets of puddles had been all around their bodies.
But… Had she even stepped close enough to…? No. Stop that train of thought. Stop it now. Continue later. Right now, there was something else to focus on.
My gaze slid from Carol, over to the slim man sitting at the opposite head of the table. Glenn. His skin had a slight sheen to it, as if he’d been sweating – though that could easily have been explained away by the weather and the fact he’d been shovelling dirt for hours before we’d called him in here. What couldn’t be explained away so easily, of course… was the smell that leaked out of every pore and corrupted the air around him.
My nose crinkled in mute disgust.
Hershel had been in the middle of saying something when I cleared my throat and asked, “Hey, Glenn. You feelin’ alright, mate?”
He glanced at me with a furrowed brow look. Under the light streaming in through the windows from the overcast sky, his skin looked paler than usual, glistening beneath that sheen of sweat. With a slight hitch to his shoulders, Glenn shook his head. “I’m fine.”
My brow lifted of its own accord. “You sure about that?”
I felt Daryl and Hershel both scrutinising me curiously as Glenn swallowed with a grimace. He took a second to answer, seemingly pausing to check how he actually felt, before he shook his head. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
YOU ARE READING
The Monsters Among Us ➳ Daryl Dixon
Fanfic𝘋𝘢𝘳𝘺𝘭 𝘋𝘪𝘹𝘰𝘯/𝘖𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘍𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘳 Not human. She was not human. They all knew it. Could almost feel it, but couldn't make sense of it. That was why they were afraid. Not because of what she used to be Before. But...
