Ruin Me So You Can Save Yourself (Daryl Dixon X Male OC)

21. Deer In Headlights

Samuel Grimes

As said in the morning we gather around and everyone grabs themselves a weapon. Machete, hatchat, knife or other sharp stuff of that sort.

"These aren't the kind of weapons we need. What about the guns?" Andrea asks.

"We've been over that." Shane sighs. "Daryl, Rick and I are carrying. We can't have people popping off rounds every time a tree rustles."

"It's not the trees I'm worried about."

"Say somebody fires at the wrong moment, a herd happened to be passing. See then it's game over for all of us. So you need to get over it." Shane says throwing a backpack on his back.

I grab myself a machete that catched my eye. It had a metal D guard and wooden handmade looking handle. Someone probably found it in one of the cars and damn this is some kind of thing. I attach the sheath to my belt and spin the machete in my hand.

Dale and T-Dog stay to fix the RV while everyone else walks out into the woods. I keep around the middle of the group, with Daryl and dad leading the way and Shane on the very back making sure no one gets lost on the way. We walk for a while before Rick stops and gestures for us to squat down. So I do and looking over him and Daryl I see a tent in the middle of nowhere.

"She could be in there." I whisper.

"Could be a whole bunch of things in there." Daryl whispers back before getting up and moving forward slowly.

Daryl, Rick and Shane move forward gesturing for the rest to stay behind. Daryl moves towards the tent, laying his crossbow down on the ground and pulling out his knife as he attempts to peek inside through a slightly opened door. Then he moves over to the other side trying to peek in through the other side of slightly opened tent before turning to the rest and shrugging his shoulders.

Dad turns to the group and waves his hand. "Carol." She jogs over quietly. "Call out softly. If she's in there, yours is the first voice she should hear." Dad whispers to her as I stand nearby with my machete in hand.

"Sophia, sweetie. Are you in there?" She calls out quietly. "Sophia, it's mommy. Sophia, we're all here, baby. It's mommy."

When no response is got to it. Dad and Shane move closer to the tent and Daryl carefully and slowly opens the door and gets in. Shane and Rick peek in and start coughing as Daryl disappears inside the tent for a long minute.

"Daryl?" I call out. No response, he's trying to give me a heart attack or something? Just that bloody silence. "Daryl." I repeat and another long moment passes before he steps out of the tent.

"It ain't her." He says.

"What's in there?" Andrea asks.

"Some guy. Did what Jenner said. Opted out. Ain't that what he called it?" Daryl answers picking up his crossbow and putting it on his back.

Then we all hear what sounds like bells. Faint. Quiet. But it's there. We all move out in that direction and sound gets louder, it's hard to place the sound in the middle of the woods but manageable. Soon we get out to a clearing with a cemetery and church.

"That can't be it. Got no steeple, no bells." Shane says, looking at the building across the field. That doesn't stop dad though. He just walks towards the thing. "Rick." He sighed and followed him.

We walk up to the church door and dad opens it, opening a view at three walkers sitting at the benches. That's creepy. Why are they just sitting there? Not banging on the doors or anything, just sitting. I feel a little chill run down my spine. I don't really like all this apocalypse thing. I liked it better sitting with my nose in a book or something. Daryl, Rick and Shane move in, each killing one walker.

"Rick. I'm telling you it's a wrong church. It has no steeple." Shane tells my dad.

Then there was a bell ringing. Really loud. We run outside and around the church. Sound coming from it, but there's no bells. I run around and see a speaker hanging up under the roof. I move to the small box with wires on the wall and open it grabbing onto wires and rip them out making bells go silent.

"It's on a timer." I say turning to the rest of the group gathered around.

"I'm gonna go back in for a bit." Carol says moving towards the church.

Carol goes off to pray inside and everyone follows her, I just walk over to a shadow by and plop down onto the ground by the wall. I never really liked churches, they made me uneasy, I never understood whole praying-to-a-crucified-guy thing and churches always smell weird. One more reason for my parents to hate me, I'm pretty sure they thought I was a child of Satan for a while because of that.

Soon enough everyone was out of the church and gathered around. "Y'all gonna follow the creek bed back. Okay, Daryl, you're in charge. Me and Rick we're just gonna hang back, search this area another hour or so just to be thorough." Shane spoke.

"Splitting us up. You sure?" Daryl asked.

"Yeah, we'll catch up to you." Shane nods.

"I want to stay too. I'm her friend." Carl speaks up.

"Just be careful okay?" Mom says and pets Carl's head.

"I will." He says before walking over to Shane and Rick. "Sam?" He asks and my head snaps to him.

"Huh?"

"You coming?"

I shrug. "Sure, might as well." I nod and look up at Shane and dad who give me subtle nods so I walk to them and we move out to sweep woods.

We walk looking around to find Sophia and then dad stops staring somewhere in the bushes. I narrow my eyes looking where he was looking and saw a deer. Nice young buck. So beautiful just walking around. Shane raises his gun to shoot it but Rick stops him as Carl moves forward to get closer to the animal with a grin on his face. I smile watching him slowly walk closer. It turns it's head towards him but didn't move just stared at Carl as he moved closer.

Then I notice some movement. Somewhere behind him and my eyes narrow staring into the woods and when they settle on what looked like a barrel of hunting rifle sticking out of the bushes I jolted forward.

"No, wait!" I shout but it's too late, loud gunshot cuts through the air and both deer and Carl fall to the ground.

"No. No. No!" Dad runs towards Carl.