Nervously, Tess chewed and nibbled at the reddening skin of her thumb, barely noticing the slight sting. Her eyes latched onto her brother's form, as he too nibbled anxiously at the skin of his fingers. A nervous habit that all of the siblings possessed, passed down like some cursed, unwanted family trait. Hazily, a memory of her sitting in the passenger seat of a 1967 Chevy, with her blonde hair billowing in the wind came to mind, when she would unknowingly commit to the habit and Dean would affectionately grab her hand away from her mouth and clutch it between them, gently tracing the damaged skin of her thumb between his fingers, before raising her hand to his lips to place a lingering kiss on the fin of her hand. Like an unwanted jump scare in the middle of a romantic movie, her mind then raced with other images, that she couldn't push away - Dean's bloodied and twisted form, his face bruised and twisted in pain. Painful screams, raw and desperate echoed within her head. Then worse- silence. His lifeless eyes staring at the ceiling.
Suddenly, a loud clatter resonated throughout the room and snapped her back to reality and she let out a shaky exhale as she attempted to calm her breathing. Her eyes latched onto Rick's kneeled form as he leaned on one knee and stared at the bag beneath him on the floor. Rubbing his hand down the side of his face and let out a sigh before emptying some of the guns and ammunition from the bag and started to methodically separate them into two piles.
Beside her, Tess saw the shift before he even spoke—the way Daryl's brows knitted in deep, shadowed lines, his jaw clenching hard enough she could see the muscle flex under the stubble. He uncrossed his arms in one slow, deliberate movement, fingers twitching briefly at his sides before he took two purposeful strides forward.
"What the hell are you doin'?" His voice came low and gravel-rough, tinged with disbelief.
Rick didn't look up, his hands moving with that steady, practiced rhythm as he checked each chamber, the metallic click of the revolver echoing in the air.
"Splitting the guns," he said simply.
Daryl's eyes narrowed, his head tilting slightly as though trying to make sense of it. His gaze flicked to Tess for a heartbeat, a silent, sharp look that said you hearing this too?, before locking back on Rick. "Why?"
"Because we're trading them for Glenn," Rick said, voice calm but carrying that hard edge of decision that meant it wasn't up for debate. He kept working, not a pause, not even a hitch in his movements.
Daryl's shoulders rose with a slow inhale, then he let the air out through his nose in a sharp huff. His fingers twitched once more, the heel of his palm brushing the handle of the knife on his belt without him even seeming to notice. "And you really think they're gonna hold up their end?" His tone carried that blend of disbelief and quiet fury only Daryl could manage, rough enough to scrape.
Tess shifted, feeling his tension radiating off him like heat, and in the silence between Rick's next click and Daryl's next breath, she knew he was already weighing every possible way this could go wrong. All the things that could go wrong crowded her mind, pressing against her like the weight of the air before a storm. They hadn't had many brushes with the living since the infection spread—too busy trying to survive the dead, too busy keeping each other alive to worry about what humans might do. They had been lucky so far—most of the survivors they'd met had been decent people, sharing what little they had, hoping to thrive instead of just survive. That luck, though, felt fragile.
Men like the ones who took Glenn didn't play fair. They found ways to survive that were cruel, calculating, the kind of men Tess and Daryl had known back home—the kind who pushed, who lied, who used fear as a weapon. That was why she'd left, why she'd chosen a different path, and it still made her stomach knot to see those same patterns emerging here, so far from the world she'd tried to escape. The guns might offer protection back at camp, a small safety net against the chaos of the outside world, but Tess couldn't convince herself that any weapon was worth risking Glenn's life over. Besides, deep down, she knew Glenn would do the same for any of them, without hesitation, without thinking twice.
YOU ARE READING
Back Woods
Fiksi PenggemarIt had always dawned on Tess Dixon that she would end up alone,but being this was the first time that she was actually apart from the group, anxiety and the acceptance of death seemed a lot closer. Tilting her head back to lean on the tree behind h...
