The Fear (The Walking Dead / Daryl Dixon)

Chapter 18 - Walking In Tandem

"Dale could get under your skin. He sure got under mine, because he wasn't afraid to say exactly what he thought, how he felt. That kind of honesty is rare and brave. Whenever I'd make a decision, I'd look at Dale. He'd be looking back at me with that look he had. We've all seen it one time or another. I couldn't always read him, but he could read us. He saw people for who they were. He knew things about us, the truth, who we really are. In the end he was talking about loosing our humanity. He said this group was broken. The best way to honour him is to unbreak it. Set aside our differences and pull together, stop feeling sorry for ourselves and take control of our lives, our safety. Our future. We're not broken. We're gonna prove him wrong. From now on we're gonna do it his way. That is how we honour Dale."

This was the third funeral we'd had, the fifth person we'd lost. I looked over to my family and then around at Rick's group, Daryl standing back as he always did, and then back to Dale's grave that rested beside Sophia's who was beside Annette and Shawn.

I didn't want to have to come back out here, to bury anyone else, maybe not even Shane, but I felt it inevitable. Dale was not the first person we'd lost and he would not be the last. As I looked around the only thing I could think was 'who's next.'

Just like last time we all slowly made our way back to the house and the camp.

"Kat, we were wondering if we might borrow your truck?" T-Dog asked me, apparently being the one who drew the short straw as I looked behind him and saw Andrea, Shane and Daryl. "We're going to do a perimeter check, make sure there's no more walkers on the land."

"Alright." I agreed, somewhat reluctantly and handed over the keys after taking them off the ring that attached them to my other fifty.

There wasn't much to do that morning aside from basic tidying. "Katherine, we need to talk." My father stated as he found me finishing up in the kitchen.

"Oh no, you used Katherine, that's never good."

"I use Katherine all the time." He defended.

"Yeah, when you're giving orders regarding a surgery of some kind. The only other time you use it is when I'm in trouble, same goes for the others. For example I don't recall you calling Maggie Margaret since she was fourteen and rebelling and you haven't referred to Beth as Elizabeth since she told you she had a date with Jimmy." The realisation of this last point suddenly made me nervous, thinking that he had found out about Daryl.

"You're not in trouble, but I've just spoken with Rick and Lori and we've agreed to see if we can move everyone into the house. It's getting colder now and after last night we agree that it'll be safer."

"Everyone?" I questioned.

"Yes, everyone. Including Shane and Andrea." I went to protest, but he held up his hand. "Katherine." And that was the end of it.

We then spent the next hour making room in the house to accommodate for the now 15 people that would be living inside. Once we had done all we could I made my way outside to see that T-Dog and the others were now back with Betty and I went to grab my keys. Rick was standing with Shane, Maggie, and my dad with Beth and Daryl nearby, discussing the moving.

"Gonna be tight, 15 people in one house." Rick said.

"Don't worry about that. With the swamp hardening, the creek drying up..." Dad listed.

"With fifty head of cattle on the property we might as well be ringing a damn dinner bell." Maggie stated.

"She's right. We should've moved you in a while ago."

"All right, let's move the vehicles near each of the doors facing out towards the road. We'll build a lookout in the windmill, another in the barn loft. That should give us sightlines both sides of the property."