We Ain't Ashes • Daryl Dixon •

Burnt Soup and Comic Books

(WARNING: Mentions of suicide and depression in this chapter.)

6 Months Later

Dear Diary,

I had found a cabin. It wasn't beside a lake like I had hoped, but it was secure and it was warm and it was hidden well enough so no one would bother me. Not that anyone had bothered me. I had now gone a full six months without seeing or speaking to another human, and again, I was left in wonder if anyone else was still alive.  If Daryl and his people were still alive.

I hadn't seen them since that day Buzzcut threatened to kill me. I had ran away and not looked back and now I think I was miles away from the farm and miles away from real, living people, if there was even any left.

But I can now, safely say, that I have officially lost my mind and tonight, I am going to put my last bullet in my brain. That's it. That's all I have to say.

Goodbye cruel world and all that shit. Peace.

I sighed and slouched back on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. I felt like a coward, just giving up like this, but a girl could only go so long on her own.

Sure, I was probably in a better situation than a lot of other people in the world right now, if there was anyone left, but I could only take so much.

Don't get me wrong, this wasn't an impulsive decision. I had made the decision almost a month ago when it started to get cold that, if once the snow had began to fall, and the world had started to frost, I was still alone? Then I would end it all. And this morning, I had awoken to snow drifting down from the sky and settling heavily upon the ground. So this was it. This was my last day on earth.

I would do it tonight, after I've had my final meal. How morose. But at least I had something to look forward to, since I had saved my last can of tomato soup for when this day eventually came. It felt wasteful though, since I still had about two cupboards full of tins and jars of perfectly consumable food. And this place had a water well outside, it was a jackpot, and so I would make sure that I done it in the back room so that the next person who food this little paradise within the chaos would be able to live here and find the same security I had.

I picked up my diary again, quickly scribbling down the date I assumed it was- December 2nd, 2010– and then signed my name of the last entry, adding my birthday and suitably, my death day, for dramatic effect. Hopefully someone would come across this one day and know that I existed, but I didn't hold my hopes up.

It was nearly dark out when I finally decided to peel myself up from the couch after a long day of staring at nothing and also doing nothing, and put the tomato soup on to cook over the fire. Only the gentle sound of the crackling wood from the fireplace filled the cabin, the warm flames illuminating the walls in soft orange hues.

It was peaceful— until it wasn't.

A noise from outside shattered the quiet, a shout, a yell. "Go!" A person!

I lept to my feet, scrambling to the window where the curtains had been pulled shut so that nothing outside would see the light within and have their attention drawn. I peeked past the curtain, sliding it open only a little, to find a crowd of ghouls, fifteen— maybe twenty of them, and a group of people desperately fighting them off.