THINK ABOUT LIVING | Daryl Dixon

009 | The Inevitable Point of No Return

━━━━━━ CHAPTER NINE ━━━━━━
The Inevitable Point of No Return
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          THIS WAS AS GOOD A TIME AS SHE WAS going to get for leaving. Morning shed a warm light over the prison walls, over the yard itself and the quiet horizon surrounding it all. Somehow, she has always imagined the end of times to be something inexplicably loud, a sort of Hell unleashed on Earth in a terrible roar, something other than this looming silence, a merciless but slow herald to an endless solitude turned to extinction of humanity.

Mallory didn't get any sleep whatsoever waiting for this very sunrise. The night had been dark and full of hushed voices that, whether she liked it or not, she listened to the problems and the debates of until it was time to take herself, empty handed save for Daryl's spare knife, outside. Oh, how ridiculous it was to miss having things of her own.

From what she unintentionally had to listen to the previous night, she gathered facts that ended up supporting her endeavor of leaving the prison and this group. First, there was the matter of the four people Carl and her have saved from certain death while Rick was out. They were sent on their way, being refused refuge within the prison. Second came the news that the prison was not entirely safe anymore, on two fronts already: on one side, the Walkers had a way to crawl into the building that none of them had seen coming, and reach through the tunnels that none of them knew how to close, and on the other side there was this "Governor" from some town they've apparently pissed off, a man with odd antics but enough guns and men to be dangerous.

Man will kill man before the dead get the chance.

Indeed, this was perhaps the best time for her to get going, down the main road, as far as she could go without getting into trouble. She wasn't an experienced hunter and had not even the slightest clue how Daryl could track so well, but Mallory had no other choice but to rely on her faith and hope that she will find him. The alternative of staying with a bunch of strangers that could at any point find out what she was only to then turn on her didn't sound too good. Today they may be waging a war with others, but tomorrow they might point their guns at her. She was no stranger to the untrustworthy wavering of human nature.

Truth was, she preferred her odds out there, than in this prison. Here each day would have been spent praying some great disaster did not reveal to everyone that she's not like them — being different and unable to merge in a group has never been more deadly than it was in the end of times. Out there, at least she had no one to trouble with her existence, for as long as she stayed quiet. 

"Any second thoughts?" Michonne inquired, breaking thus Mallory from her trance that had stopped her before the gates to look once more upon everything she was leaving. Mallory noticed that unlike her, this woman seemed to have a goal in staying, in catching roots; there was a strain of jealousy amongst the fragrant melancholy Mallory felt when looking at someone so tethered in humanity as Michonne.

"No," she shook her head. She wanted to pass on a wish, some last words that she didn't bother sparing anyone else.

Who would she say goodbye to anyway? Carol? A good woman, who Mallory knew to recognize had a distinct care for Daryl. Perhaps Carl? A kid who reminded her too closely of the good days, before the madness and the pain. Hershel? Just because he tended to her wounds once. Or Rick? For trying to keep her there, for a reason that alluded her completely and she had no patience and trust in humanity left to try to understand.

Truth was, Mallory wasn't about to go looking for all of them, as they were all about their own business already, given all their troubles. While they may have been a chapter in her life, she knew she was barely a footnote in theirs.