[ season 2 ]
✰ in which every corner of the world becomes the world's most loneliest corner, but the girl tucked away on her family's farm would bet all the money in her pockets that hers is the loneliest.
and the guy who meets her up there, bringi...
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CHAPTER ONE ➶ DARYL DIXON
IT'S THE sight of her that makes me sit up straight, still in the shadows of the trees, but i notice her.
just like i noticed her for the first time yesterday. and since then, when the others talk and i let my eyes drift around, i try not to let myself look at her twice.
i fail each time, but she's always looking at me, too.
her footsteps are near silent in those little brown boots and my eyes begin to trail up from them, up the long expanse of skin, to the raw threads at the cuffs of her shorts. that's where i draw the line.
she doesn't say a word and neither do i as the shadows drift off of her face, the porch light illuminating her blushed cheeks, tight jaw and eyes looking right into mine.
the muffled voices inside her house behind me grab her attention, and she places the beer bottle that's in her hand on the rail of the porch before taking the steps up quickly.
the screen door slams in her wake, the wooden door behind it left open, but i don't take my eyes away from the bottle she left on the railing. condensation drips down its sides, beads of it collecting along the way.
"hey, kiddo, everyone settled in?"
"i told them a few could sleep here. no luck." her voice is soft in response to her father's, and i almost turn my head at the sound of it. i almost look through the window behind me to watch indiana walsh fill in her dad and uncle on how things went tonight at the greene's.
shane's brother, jack, that's who shane and rick have been talking about since we hit the road leaving that quarry behind. shane said his older brother has a place not too far out of the way to fort benning, that he doesn't know if he's alive since everything happened.
not even 72 hours ago we were on that highway, running into a section of it jam packed with cars tight enough that we couldn't get through unless we went by foot. that's when it all happened, a herd of those dead-brain fucks came weaving in and out between the cars we walked along.
a little girl ran off, one of our own, now she's missing. and let it be god or fate, whatever dale wants to say it is, those woods we searched through for the girl led us right out to a big old farm.
it's gotta be a sign, they all said.
but she wasn't there—sophia. she wasn't at the greene's farm. but shane recognized the place quickly, looking like his heart was about to give out all while a young woman with short brown hair yelled in his face, an older man behind her with a shotgun in his arms.
shane was unfazed by the bounty for trespassing on his head, too focused on how past the farm's barn, far around the curve of woods is a single standing house with a pretty blue porch, mud splattered truck parked out front, and the answer to all his threats to god that his brother and niece are still alive.
