Barely Alive // TWD // Daryl Dixon

Chapter 50 - We're Not Dead

It could have been easily one or two hours until Daryl finally calmed down. I had stopped hearing his sobs for a while and his body wasn't shaking anymore. It had stopped maybe fifteen or twenty minutes ago but I was unable to just let go of him until making sure he wouldn't break down again.

I slowly loosened my grip around him, testing how he would react. I looked down at him and my heart broke even more. I used my shirt to dry his face from all the tears, he didn't complain or refuse, he just allowed me to do so. I cupped his face then and quickly pecked his lip.

"I don't wanna go back yet," Daryl told me in a raspy voice.

I nodded at him, knowing he knew very well how he looked and the others would be able to tell he had cried.

"We don't have to go back yet," I assured him. "But we should get going through the woods before they leave us too way behind."

Daryl nodded at me, he took a deep breath as I stood up. I grabbed both his hands and pulled him up to his feet. Once up, he wrapped his arms around my shoulders and rested them there. I instinctively wrapped my own arms around his torso. He didn't say any words but I knew he wanted to thank me.

I offered him a small smile as I nodded at him to let him know I knew. I moved my hands to his face and caressed his cheeks, looking into his bloodshot eyes the entire time. No more tears came out of them, but they still looked watery.

We eventually broke away from each other but I made sure to hold his left hand which was the one he hadn't burnt with the cigarette, and intertwined our fingers and I didn't let go at all on our way back to the others.

We walked in the woods for maybe thirty or forty minutes until we decided to go out onto the road. Twenty or twenty-five minutes later, still holding hands, we saw the group had stopped and they had made some sort of circle around something. Rick approached us and showed us a piece of paper, which Daryl took into his hand. It read "FROM A FRIEND".

Then we saw what was in the middle of the circle. It was bottles of water of different sizes, ten small bottles and four big containers with about one gallon of water each. Daryl got all uneasy then, he let go of my hand and took off his crossbow belt, instead he held it in his hand and paced, looking to the woods.

"What else are we gonna do?" Tara asked.

"Not this," Rick said. "We don't know who left it."

"If that's a trap, we already happen to be in it," Eugene said. "But I, for one, would like to think it is indeed from a friend."

"What if it isn't? They put something in it?" Carol commented.

"Why would someone do that, though?" I found myself asking as I looked from my family to the water.

There was one time I walked into a bakery in New York, I was meeting someone there, I stared at the desserts that were behind a glass. My mouth melted and I wanted one so badly but I didn't have enough money to buy one. So, all I did was stare. This situation felt so familiar to that, except this time money wasn't what was stopping me. It seemed whatever was stopping me, wasn't stopping Eugene, who leaped forward and took one of the small bottles.

"What are you doing, dude?" Tara asked.

"Quality assurance."

Eugene brought it to his lips but Abraham slapped it out of his hand before he could take a sip, but he was so close that his face and part of his chest were all wet. Eugene certainly wanted to attack Abraham.

"We can't," Rick exclaimed sternly and Eugene just glared at Rick. It was probably the first time I had seen Eugene upset.

But only seconds later we heard something so sweet to our ears that we forgot the issue at hand, we heard thundering. We looked up at the cloudy sky, probably silently praying for rain. And maybe another four or six seconds later I felt the first drop on my face. And then I felt a second and a third one. And then it just started to rain heavily. I couldn't even describe how that first drop felt, not only physical but also emotionally. It gave me back some hope.