𝗔𝗠𝗢𝗡𝗚 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗥𝗨𝗜𝗡𝗦 (DARYL DIXON X READER)

Chapter 7

You crouched down behind a rotten tree stump, your heart racing in your chest as you looked around and waited for the moment that you could use to get closer to the prison. Soon enough, you saw a walker dragging itself through the underbrush nearby, stumbling around with its dead eyes already fixed on you, but you barely even flinched. By now, this was routine.

You tightened your grip on your sword as you prepared to kill it, but as the walker got closer, an idea crossed your mind. You'd need to blend in if you were going to get close to the prison without getting bitten by the walkers around you. After all, you couldn't just walk up to the fence and kill all of them by yourself, even if it would probably leave quite the impression.

Instead of going for the kill right away, you waited until the walker was practically on top of you. At the last second, you stepped aside, letting it stumble past you before grabbing it by the back of its shirt, or what was left of its clothes, and throwing it down onto the ground. With a quick move, you pushed your sword into the base of its skull, killing it, without making too much noise.

"Sorry, buddy. Nothing personal," you mumbled, wiping the blade off your pants before kneeling beside the rotten corpse.

The smell was even worse up close—sweet but rancid—a smell that, once you smell it, you'll never forget. You closed your eyes and let out a deep breath, reaching for the walker's shirt and ripping it off in strips before cutting its torso open. You could feel the bile rising in your throat, but you swallowed it back down since you didn't have time to be soft. Not now. Not when you were this close.

You smeared the walker's guts across your clothes, feeling the fluid soak through the already dirty and old clothes. It was highly disgusting, but it was necessary. The only way to get close without drawing attention or getting yourself killed was to simply smell like one of them. You worked quickly, covering yourself in the walker's blood and even bits of decayed flesh until you were practically coated with it. When you were almost done, you noticed a chunk of the walker's small intestine still hanging out of its abdomen. You grimaced, but you knew it would be a nice finishing touch, and with a sigh, you wrapped it around your neck like a scarf.

"There. Perfect. Disgusting, but perfect," you muttered, standing up and taking a step back to examine your work. "Yeah. Definitely fucking gross."

With the walker's guts and smell, as if you were rotting yourself, blending you in, you set your sights back on the prison. It wasn't far now, just beyond the treeline, so you tried to ignore the stench clinging to you, and you started moving, hoping for the best.

Every crack of a twig underneath your feet and every rustle of leaves had your nerves on alert., and you knew the prison was probably well-guarded. The Governor had drilled that into your head, but seeing it with your own eyes was a whole different story, and it wasn't just about that. It was the fact that you still had the feeling that someone had been following you out there in the woods before.

As you got closer, you could make out more of the details—the high fences, the barricades set up in the yard, and the people moving around outside of the cell blocks and other buildings.

From this distance, the people inside looked almost... normal. You spotted an older man walking around with crutches, occupied with caring for a small garden that had been set up near one of the fences. Next to him, a kid—who couldn't have been more than thirteen or fourteen—was working on what looked like an improvised barricade as he hammered some nails into a board, wearing a sheriff's hat.

"Shit, this place is really something," you thought, narrowing your eyes as you continued to scan the area. "What the hell is the Governor so worried about? These are just... people. Survivors."