breakout✗d.d

Chapter 23 - Breathlessness

Layla POV

I was still shaking. I couldn't help it. I wasn't even cold. Just shivering, teeth chattering. I just wanted to go back to camp and sleep in my cosy sleeping bag in my little tent with Merle and Daryl nearby, protecting me as a slept. But to hell with that. I'm in the woods, exposed to my surroundings. I can't relax. I have to be on high alert 24/7. Those few seconds I'm not aware of what's going on around me, could be the few seconds it takes for a walker to bite me.

I couldn't steady my breathing. Like the rest of my body, my breath was shaky, never falling into a natural pattern. I'm either breathing so heavily I feel I am going to pass out or breathing so shallowly that I'm not getting enough oxygen, my lungs gasping for breath. I can't relax, I can't calm myself. I feel like just sitting up against a tree and letting the walkers have me. I mean, I don't wait to die but... I just don't have the energy or the nerve to carry on. Serves me right.

My uncle Callum had always told me that. That I was weak. He always took care of me over the summer holidays when Leah went to summer camp and I got jealous once when I was little so ever since then my parents made me stay at his. He was my mum's elder brother and even though I told her before that I hated him, she still insisted I went. I didn't mind just being at his house, he had a beautiful wife ~ Chloe and twin daughters Holly and Louisa. It was fun for a while until every year for 2 of the 6 weeks I had to stay with them, we all went camping. Leah first went to summer camp when she was 4 but my mum went with her as a helper. That was the first year (when I was 11) that I went camping with them. Holly and Lou are 9 years younger than me so whenever my uncle wanted to go into the woods and make a fire of go swimming in the woodland lakes or tree climbing on these massive pines it was always just me and him. Chloe always had to stay at the tent to take care of Holly and Lou (who were only 1 the first time we went) and Callum had always been the boisterous type for as long as I can remember.

My mum told me that he used to drink, even when I was born and my parents took me to see him he would always be drunk. Mum said Chloe had tried to stop him but instead he got her into drinking too. It was only when Chloe was pregnant with Holly and Lou that she had no choice but to give up so supposedly Callum did too. Supposedly.

It was getting too much for me. My throat suddenly closing up. I leant up a tree, trying to regain my breath but it felt as if someone was strangling me, gripping tighter with every desperate breath I took.

"Layla?" I heard Daryl say as he turned around to check on me. Seeing what was going on, he quickly bent down slightly to my height so he could see my face properly and put his hands on my shoulder supportively. "Layla? What's going on? Are you ok?" He concerned again as my vision became disoriented. His face turning to a blur in front of me along with everything else around me. His voice ringing in my ears, slowly muting out and being replaced by a high pitched squeaking. I felt him shake me a bit before I shut my eyes to blackness and my hearing gone completely nuts. It then felt like my feet had been lifted off the ground, like I was floating upwards before more pain on the back of my head.