OUTLIVE.
❝The dead were never the enemy.
It was the living. ❞
THE WALKING DEAD.
DARYL DIXON.
BOOK TWO of the LANCASTER SAGA.
[ SEASONS 4 - 6 ]
*****
*I do not own The Walking Dead or any of its characters. I simply write to write. Astrid, any addi...
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[ xxxiii. bring her back ]
july 2nd, 2012
➸➸➸
DARYL DIXON STOOD BACK, his features bruised and tired. He observed in silence as Rick Grimes pulled another organ pipe from the wall, the strained groan of the metal echoing in Saint Sarah's Church. Neither man spoke to the other. Words alone could not seem to mend the void left by Astrid's absence.
Because while Rick may have played a role in chasing her away, it was Daryl who bore the crushing blow of losing her.
The thought of Astrid's broken body, shattered further by a reckless car, weighed dangerously on Daryl's mind. His every instinct had screamed at him to reach her, to pull her from the road, to protect her from further harm, but Noah had held him back. The kid had said it was not safe, and for now, Astrid was under the better care of strangers in Grady Memorial Hospital. Taken care of—but trapped. Trapped in a bidding where those in the hospital would find some use for her, whether she liked it or not. Daryl bristled and burned deeper at the thought, wanting to get her back before it ever came to that. But he was not stupid. He knew first that taking on an armed hospital on his own was a task even he might not survive. It was the only reason he had brought Noah out of the city with him, returning to the church in search of reinforcements.
Their arrival at the church was in the dead of the previous night. Michonne had been on watch, her katana gleaming faintly in the moonlight. Her eyes had seared into Daryl, questioning his solitary return, devoid of the woman who had become his tether. As he stepped inside, the questions from the group piled up, an onslaught that left him grappling for answers.
A few hours had passed since then. Hours where Daryl, too, was sent reeling by the events that had unfolded in his own disappearance. Because while he and Astrid had been gone, fighting battles of their own, those left behind had been fighting for their lives, too. In less than 48 hours, over half of the former group had broken and become lost.
Bob Stookey was dead. On the very same night that he and Astrid had left, the former combat medic had been bitten by a walker and then finished off by a small pack of Terminus survivors. Gareth had been among them. He had led his people right to the church's front doors, looking for a fight. But the hunt did not last long, given the fresh bloodstains on the church carpet.
Daryl was sorry to miss it. He hoped they suffered for what they had done to Bob. Eating him alive.
Glenn, Maggie, Tara, Abraham, Rosita, and Eugene were gone now, too, back on the road to reach Washington, D.C. Bob had not even been laid to rest before Abraham had forced the move. The group that had left should not have even been that big, to begin with, but Glenn and Maggie had been reduced to commodities, traded away in a heartless barter that left a bitter taste in Daryl's mouth. What were the odds he would see them again?
