Night Shift (oc x Daryl Dixon)

(17) seven

7 months

That's how long they had been on the road. Without a place to call home, without a stable place to rest their heads, without nothing but the clothes on their back. Along with each other.

The farm was gone, gone for probably forever.

Madeline's mind was still trying to wrap around that fact. That she will never wake up again with the beautiful view as she had from her windows. The resting place of her mother, brother, dale, Otis was all gone.

She never thought about that till much later into them being off the farm. She was having a hard night, the winter had beaten her down, as it had everyone. She was finding it hard to find anything to keep her going. She didn't have nothing to latch onto to keep herself afloat.

And all she wanted to do was sit at her mothers grave, and try to feel her presence. To try and imagine her mother sitting with her as well, holding her as she cried.

The night after, she was sat with everyone in the group as they talked bout each other. Which gave Madeline the small peace, she'd know her mother would give her as well.

So after that every time she thought about the graves that laid on the farm, she would look around her. Seeing familiar faces she had grown to love so every much. Easing some of the pain she felt. "It's getting hotter." A voice cut off her thinking.

Madeline's head jumps up from the pavement, she had been looking at. As she was lost in her own thoughts, lately she had been doing that a lot.

She pushed her long now matted brown hair behind her ears. She knew her outfit basically said everything they had been through, her pants had so many holes she looked homeless... which was the truth.

Her one long brown sleeves shirt, had been made into a makeshift tank top. It was pitiful.

Her eyes looked around for a second trying to find the woman she knew the voice came from. Soon enough she found her.

Her eyes landed on Carols. Who looked just as beaten as the rest of them. She watched her Carol struggled to hold up a smile as she looked towards her. Everyone eyes faced forward, keeping them on just what's ahead of them. Faces dull, unlike Madeline's.

Theses 7 months had been hard on everyone. Slowly everyone stopped talking as much, stopped listening as much. Food felt like rare commodity, but even when they did find it. It was never enough for everyone to fill their stomachs.

The sound of rumbling became their theme song.

So now they just mainly focusing on where their next meal will come from. Rather it was living, already dead, or moldy and expired. They didn't care no more.

Once's it turned at that. They all started to feel like, they were becoming what they feared. They were the dead.

But Madeline wasn't so easy. She didn't know what had caused it. Over the past couple months Madeline had work on her hope, she had worked on how to adjust it for this life.

And she found a good balance, of hope and reality. Although it felt hard at times, although doing so took everything out of her. She had done it, Which made her feel good about it, which made life better for her.