[ 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 TWO ➶ INDIANA WALSH
OUT OF the corner of my eye, i watch daryl walk with the white flowers he carries. he picked them off a lone, dead bush, nothing blooming on it but two white, flattened roses.
he didn't say anything as he plucked them off, but he also didn't say anything the moment he realized we weren't going to find sophia in that house. he just went quiet again.
so as i'm watching him walk with those flowers, i wonder if maybe it's so he doesn't return with nothing. either for carol or for himself, although he and i didn't find sophia this morning, at least he can return with a sign of hope—that maybe tomorrow will be our last day of searching, maybe tomorrow a little girl and her mother will be reunited.
"my uncle says none of you knew each other before you became a group. who were you before all this?" i ask over the sounds of insects and swish of high grasses against our legs.
"just a guy." daryl doesn't look at me as we walk side-by-side through the woods, heading back toward home; toward his camp for now.
"but what'd you do?"
he clears his throat, taking his time down a steep slope of uneven ground, "tried to make it to the next day, tha's what i did."
i follow behind him, matching my steps to the footprints he's leaving behind. i frown, "the same thing you're doin' now?"
"yeah, not much 's changed. only thing different now is i'm killin' already-dead people for sport." he reaches the bottom, turning around and watching my footing on the hilly, rock-scattered slope.
"you went to the CDC before you all came here?" he nods as i meet him at the bottom where the ground levels out again. "and nothin'? no leads on how this whole thing started? no advances on vaccines?"
"nah, but even if they did, the whole place blew up into flames, so ..."
"right." i swallow, feeling a bit sick at the thought; at reality. i knew that, they told us that when they got here, but for some reason i still had a little bit of hope.
"you kill any of these things yet?" he asks, his drawl deep, but his voice is smooth.
i can see the woods starting to thin out. we'll be back at the greene's farm soon.
"one. the one that tried to kill me and maggie when we went into town. you're not scared of them, are you?" i speed up ahead of him, turning my back in the direction the farm is in, walking backward all so i can see his face.
"not really." he shakes his head.
"is that why you're able to spend the night all by yourself away from the others? don't you wanna take a cot in one of the tents? or even the couch in my living room?"
"you worry about everybody's sleepin' accommodations?"
