RIDE OR DIE | DARYL DIXON

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TARA AND ENID had woken her up the next morning before the sun had even rose. A few guards the night before had seen Magna and her group slip out, and they immediately alerted Tara. With quick thinking, Tara sent those two guards out to search for them, and her and Willow have been keeping watch ever since they left. 

"At least we know what they snuck out for." Tara tried to shine some light on the situation. "They'll know where to look for them."

They had already been out there for at least three hours, and the sun has began to rise. It made Willow antsy that they hadn't seen or heard anything the whole time.

She tilted her head, stretching her neck. "I'm not gonna settle for anything until they all get back- alive."

Tara let her arms dangle over the top of the wall as she leaned into it and looked out at the field of crops they had created and expanded. "You'd think after we've given them shelter and food, they'd be fine with following just a basic set of rules."

Willow glanced over her shoulder when she heard some chatter of a few people that had strolled outside- including Daryl, Sienna, and Henry. "I get them being anxious to find their friend... but to sneak out at night under our noses? Shit doesn't settle right with me."

"Maybe you can tell them that." Tara said behind some binoculars.

Willow turned back around and spotted Magna and Yumiko standing in some bushes. Their gazes locked, and she could see their expressions falter a bit. They knew she was going to be talking to one of them.

"Open the gates." She told Kal.

Upon opening the gates, Yumiko was the first to come in and she climbed right up the ladder and stood in front of them both. She removed her bow from her shoulder and set it down on the catwalk, taking a few moments to catch her breath and think of what she would say.

"What'd you find?" Tara asked her.

Yumiko lightly laughed with exhaustion. "Nothing. Look, it was wrong of us to leave. I just wish... we'd realize that sooner. I should've-"

"Open the gates!" Another person demanded of Kal.

The three of them glanced back outside of the walls and saw the two guards Tara had sent out after them walking up the pathway with Kelly and Connie. Her and Willow both began to feel slightly better that they were back, but the anxiety for Alden and Luke still lingered.

"Our guards saw you sneak out." Willow said with crossed arms. "We weren't gonna take any chances. I get why you did it. But the next time you want to challenge our decisions, just do us a favor and come talk to us about it. I don't want any more people to die, and that includes you guys, too."

Yumiko nodded with a solemn look on her face and glanced away to Kelly and Connie. Willow watched her face drop even more as she picked up the binoculars again.

Looking out with her, she saw Kelly pushing against the two guards as if she was trying to get to Connie. Looking a bit further, Connie ducked into the corn field, and even further... a group of Lydia's people in the same dead masks they had already seen one too many times before.

Willow's heart stopped as she turned around quickly. "Get the children inside!"

Daryl stood from his spot beside the campfire the second he heard her yell. He ushered Sienna along with the other kids that were led inside by Bonnie and Ash, and he came to the ladder and stood up beside her. Yumiko called over Magna, and she joined them too.

The five of them watched the masked group approach and stop just outside of the secondary wooden fence they had built a few years ago. At the front- a bald woman with dirt surrounding her eyes and mouth. She was the only one that didn't wear a mask... at least not then.