Brotherly Love

Chapter 8 Rattled

©JRF2016

"Hey Rox," Daryl whispered, "Git up." I rubbed my eyes sleepily and groaned at him. "Do I have to?" He chuckled a little, "You always wanted to go huntin' but you never could stand the gettin' up early to do it." I stuck my tongue out at him. We were slowly moving through the woods and Daryl was in serious tracker mode. He was good. "I see you're just as focused as ever when it comes to tracking." He turned and glared at me, "I see you still gotta flap your trap at all the wrong times." I stepped up to him and gave him a shove as I shushed him. "You're gonna scare whatever you're trackin' off!" He bit on his bottom lip again, "You're the one makin' all the racket, didn't me and Merle teach you nothin'?" We both fell silent and dropped our heads at the mere mention of our big brother's name.

After a long silence I finally spoke up, "So what exactly happened with Merle? You never did get to finish giving me the details." Daryl stopped dead in his tracks and thought for a minute. "Dee," I said, "Don't ignore me. I wanna know." He turned to look me in the eyes, "I wasn't ignorin' ya. I was thinkin'." I raised my eyebrows at him for him to continue. "He tried to take the Governor out himself. He died to save us and that's all you need to know about it." I didn't push anymore. I knew Daryl had said all he was going to say.

He stopped suddenly and pointed ahead of us. There was something ahead so with bows at the ready we crept up to a bush and peeked through. As soon as we could see the other side we dropped our bows and let out a couple sighs of relief. Sitting there beside a small fire all by herself was Beth. She looked so sad and alone. "Beth," Daryl said as she looked up from her gaze into the fire to see us standing in front of her. She immediately jumped up with a smile on her face and ran to my brother.

"I'm so glad to see you. Have you ran into any of the others?" Daryl shook his head. "But I'm looking for food right now. How 'bout you two stay here and I'll keep lookin'." I glared at him for a quick second as he grabbed me and pulled me to the side. "She can't hunt, and she don't need to be alone. Keep her company for me, I'll be back soon."

How could I say no to my brother? So I stayed back with Beth. We didn't say a single word between the two of us. We just sat waiting. Finally I looked at her and said, "Sorry about your that old man." She didn't look up or even reply. I could see the tears welling up in her eyes and I knew she wasn't ready to face that yet. After another long pause she looked at me with her tear stained cheeks, "He was my father. Do you think we'll find the others?" I looked down at the ground and shrugged my shoulders. I wasn't sure what to say or do. Truthfully, I hadn't thought of the others too much. I had my brother and I really wasn't close enough to the rest of the group to care one way or the other if we found them. Besides the fact that we hadn't seen any signs of anyone until we ran into her. "Well, I believe we will. We have to. We have to have faith, we have to believe."

Daryl finally made it back with a big rattle snake in his hands. He started skinning the snake as he smiled and said, "Git ready for a good supper." I looked over at Beth who looked a little unsure about our meal. "I'm so hungry I could eat a rattlesnake!" I blurted out and we all had a good laugh. I grabbed the tail end of the snake then as I took out my knife and sliced off the rattler. "This is mine." I pulled a piece of string out of my bag and put the rattler on it and slipped it around my neck. We sat around that little fire eating that snake and not saying anything else.