Red ~ TWD (Daryl Dixon)

The Whisperer War

Daryl and I crept through the woods, the moonlight filtering through the skeletal branches, shadows moving with us like silent stalkers. The night smelled of damp earth and rot, an almost constant reminder of what hunted these lands.  Henry's tracks were easy to follow, too easy.  The kid had blundered through Hilltop's gates like a blind calf, leaving behind bent blades of grass, scuffed dirt, and the occasional snapped twig.

Careless.

Stupid.

"Keep thinkin' so loud and every walker in a fifty-mile radius gonna hear ya."

I ground my teeth, the muscles in my jaw tight. He wasn't wrong, but his comment only confirmed how obvious my agitation was.   My husband always knew. He could read me like he read tracks in mud.  And right now, my thoughts were as blunt as the knife at my hip:

Find Henry.

Get him back to Hilltop safely.

Then kill Henry.

Daryl stopped, glancing at me over his shoulder, crossbow in his hands.  "We ain't killin' him, Red."

I rolled my eyes and kept walking right past him.  "Maybe just a little bit?"

He snorted and fell into step beside me.  We hadn't walked more than half an hour before we both stopped, staring down at the numerous tracks outlined in the mud.  Slinging my rifle across my back I bent down, carefully outlining one of the tracks with my fingers before looking up at Daryl whose face looked grim.

"They caught up to him," I stated flatly before standing up.

He nodded, "There was a struggle."

I exhaled harshly, checking the surrounding area.  It didn't take long for us to realize which direction they went.  The big question wasn't if we would find Henry.  It was, what condition would Henry be in when we found him.

The woods broke their silence with a pair of mournful growls.  Two walkers shambled up a dry creek bed toward us, their ruined faces twisting in hunger.  I pulled my knife free, flipping the handle so the blade gleamed in my fist.  Beside me, Daryl's crossbow rose with a soundless certainty.

They lurched closer.

I let my knife fly.  It spun once, twice, then buried itself in a rotted skull before the body collapsed in a wet heap.  I was already moving, boots splashing into the creek bed, crouching over the fallen woman. My fingers pried the blade free with a sickening crack.  I wiped gore off on her tattered shirt, then yanked Daryl's arrow from the second corpse before tossing it back to him.  He caught it without breaking stride.

We had to move.  Every wasted second was another chance Henry's heart stopped beating.

The Whisperers were masters of mimicry, but their numbers betrayed them.  No matter how carefully they moved, no matter how still their masks, the dead didn't walk in packs this large without leaving scars on the land.  The growls reached us long before the herd did, a dreadful chorus swelling in the distance.

"Good size herd," I whispered, throat dry, the two of us taking care to approach with absolute stealth.

Up ahead there was a small clearing, a group of walkers lumbering in from the opposite direction.  It didn't take us long to figure out why.  A couple of Whisperer's were tossing down a fresh body, taking care to scatter the blood so the herd knew exactly where to go.

"Are they feeding them?"  Daryl nodded grimly and I shook my head.  "I say we just kill them all now and be done with it."

"It's just the two of us out here Red."  I stared at him.  That wasn't a question.  "We ain't takin' on all of 'em alone."