Eliza Morgan never thought she would be a killer. Nate Dixon never thought he would fall in love. But the world as they once knew it has ended and both of them are forced to reckon with the impossible.
They thought the dead rising was as bad as it...
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Daryl was annoyed. Nate could always tell when Daryl was annoyed. For the past two days they had been away from camp, tracking the trail of a deer in the hope of providing some food that would last their group of makeshift survivors longer than the meager squirrels they usually caught did. But judging by the grunting and groaning and tell-tale screams of a geek being killed up ahead through the brush, the undead had beaten them to it.
Sure enough, as Nate stumbled into an open glade behind Daryl, the deer's corpse lay mauled in the dirt and a few of the other survivors of their camp were standing around the headless body of a walker. Typical.
"Son of a bitch!" Daryl cursed as Nate ran a hand over his face and let out a long sigh. It was evident by the extent in which the deer had been mauled that there were no parts of the animal they'd be able to spare. Two days they had spent hunting the damn thing, and two days they had now wasted. "That's my deer! Look at it. All gnawed on by this... filthy, disease-bearing, motherless, poxy bastard!"
Daryl punctuated each of his insults with a kick to the walker's headless body. Nate merely leaned back on the spear he had fashioned for the hunt (out of a pocket knife and an old oar) and watched his brother. He knew there was no use trying to calm Daryl down when he was riled up like this; it was best to just let him ride it out.
His brother beating on a walker was at least better than him beating on a person.
Nate still remembered the time he got jumped in sixth grade by an asshole bully in the year above. Not having hit puberty himself yet, Nate had been an easy target for the much larger kid and though he fought fast, he simply didn't have the strength to win the ensuing scuffle. He'd come home from school even more bloody and bruised than usual and Daryl had immediately demanded Nate tell him who had beaten him up.
Being seventeen years his senior, Daryl had taken it upon himself to raise Nate when their abusive drunk of a father would not and he could be more than a little overprotective.
When Nate had gone back to school the next week, the guy who had jumped him was sporting a freshly broken nose and a haunted look in his eyes that spoke of someone who had been threatened truly and thoroughly by a no good Dixon. He never bothered Nate again, and Daryl had looked extremely smug to hear how frightened the boy had been when Nate confronted him. Kids kept their distance from Nate afterwards and the whole ordeal taught him a valuable lesson: fear is more powerful than anything.
At least there was one good thing the apocalypse had provided: targets for his brother's mood swings that were already dead. How much could you really hurt a creature that was barely more than a corpse? It was better Daryl take his anger out on a walker rather than picking a fight with an innocent bystander just minding their business.
"Calm down, son," one of the other men — an older guy with a white beard called Dale — foolishly tried to tell Daryl. "That's not helping."
Nate snorted at that. He knew that beating on the walker was likely helping his brother greatly, but he bit his tongue to keep his snarky words to himself. He didn't need to cause anymore animosity between the Dixons' and the rest of the camp. Merle had already stirred up enough shit.
