bullseye ➵ daryl dixon

e i g h t - worth

CHAPTER EIGHT | w o r t h
30/9/17

That sleep was one of the most peaceful Adira had had since the beginning of it all. She'd never slept well, however it got even worse with the monsters, or walkers, as she'd heard Daryl say last night. In her opinion, it wasn't that great of a name, seeing as they did a hell of a lot more than walk, but monsters made her sound like a frightened child.

She slept without a single dream to disturb her. However, she woke up in the early hours of the morning to a thump. She immediately shot up, careful to not wake a sleeping Beth. The door was closed, but the noise wasn't muffled, so she knew it came from inside the room.

She sighed in relief when she heard the sound again, and realized it was simply a branch hitting the window from the strong winds. She shook her head, her heart rate gradually slowing down.

Adira went back to sleep, only this time, it wasn't so tranquil.

A door slamming shut.

Screaming. Footsteps pounding up the stairs. Ruffling through a drawer, something being taken out. A gun being loaded. More footsteps, and a gun being shot.

Something was wrong - really wrong. She stood up and half ran, half jogged her way to the door. Her hand hesitated on the knob. Was it really safe for her to go out? No, common sense told her. However, her family could be in trouble. She had to see what was happening. So she turned the knob, and opened the door.

She ran down the stairs screaming for her mother, for her father. "What's going on? Dad, Mom? Are you okay? What is it?"

But no one answered.

She turned the corner into the kitchen and screamed louder than she ever had in her entire life. She didn't understand. Her mother and father were behind the counter, hiding from the danger present in the room. Two escaped prisoners. But this wasn't any ordinary prison escape. They seemed to be...dead. Their skin was disgustingly green, their bodies half eaten, and when they turned their eyes on Adira, she saw that they weren't human. Their eyes were empty, dead, a void. And they were covered in blood. Their hands, their mouth...almost as if they had been eating something. Something alive.

She ran and got her dad's gun from his study. She'd seen that he had already taken his gun from her parents' bedroom. But when she got back to the kitchen, she saw that he ran out of ammo. The two bodies each had several bullet wounds, yet didn't even stagger from them. She realized that if her medical training taught me anything, it was that the brain was the most important part. If she could kill the brain, she could end this. She could save them.

She had her finger on the trigger, and aimed the gun at the two monsters four feet from her parents. She knew she had to kill them to save her family. But she couldn't - she couldn't live with herself knowing she had killed a human being. What she didn't know was that they were no longer alive. She wouldn't really be killing anyone. In that process, she ended two lives. Her mother's, and her father's. Because she couldn't pull that damn trigger.

She lowered the gun, unable to shoot. Her parents were begging her through their eyes, their facial expressions, to do something. To help them. To save them. And two seconds later, the bodies reached her parents. They devoured them. And when there was no longer anything left except for bones, they turned their sights to Adira. And as they came forward, she shot twice. Once in the head for each of them.

She heard the bodies drop and ran to her parents, cradling their dead, almost completely unrecognizable bodies. She cried, for them, for herself, for what the world had turned into.

She woke up with a small scream, accidentally startling Beth. She probably also woke some people up, seeing as how now the door was oddly open. Maybe someone had checked in on them during the night.

She was hyperventilating. She hadn't had that dream since before she had joined the group. She'd thought maybe it had gone away.

She sobbed uncontrollably as Beth attempted to console her by wrapping her arms tightly around the shaking girl and rubbing her back. In that moment, she was so grateful for her. For the last half a year, she was so alone and so scared. Having someone to comfort her was a feeling she'd thought she'd never have ever again.

As her breathing slowly returned to normal and her eyes dried, Adira opened her eyes and looked over Beth's shoulder.

And she let out a bloodcurdling scream.

Without even thinking about it, she shoved Beth off of her and grabbed her knife, stabbing the walker in the head, it having been just a second away from biting Beth's neck.

Neither of them had heard it, probably because Adira was too busy sniffling. She couldn't believe that so much had happened in just five seconds.

Beth looked at her with wide eyes from where she'd been flung back into the wall. She could tell the blonde was a little hurt from being thrown, but her loud sigh displayed that she was more relieved than she was injured.

The door slammed against the wall as members of the group ran in, knives and guns at the ready, a crossbow in Daryl's case. There was a collective gasp that went around the room as they took in Beth's frightened facial expression, the dead walker on the floor, and Adira's bloody knife.

Maggie immediately rushed over to her sister, hugging her tightly and breathing heavily. Hershel looked on, seeming so scared for his little girl. Glenn watched as well, seeing the girl he loved almost lose her sister.

But no one looked at Adira.

After a moment of hugs and tears, Rick spoke up with his loud, commanding tone. "Are you all alright? What happened here?"

Several pairs of eyes suddenly snapped to her, without a hint of concern. "There was a walker that got in, I don't know how. It almost got Beth," she said awkwardly. They hadn't fully taken her in yet, so she felt kind of strange talking to them.

"She saved my life, daddy," whispered Beth, looking to her father. The rest of the group looked to Adira for confirmation, and she nodded, slightly raising her hand with the knife.

They looked at her with gratitude, rather than the mistrust she'd been used to seeing in their eyes.

The group was silent for a second, until T-Dog cleared his throat. "We should probably clean this up, you know," he gestured to the dead walker currently spilling out blood.

Everyone nodded and started moving, except for Adira. She simply sat there, twirling her knife and looking to the ground. Beth had been seconds from dying. She just couldn't take it in. She almost lost her only friend.

That was why she didn't let people get too close, and hadn't been with a group since the beginning. She was too tired of losing people. But Beth was so sweet, so innocent, so real, that she couldn't help feeling that she needed a friend.

Once the walker was gone and everyone went back to sleep, she laid back on the bed and closed her eyes, hoping tomorrow wouldn't be quite so eventful, and wishing for a better world.