Starting Over... |Daryl Dixon| |The Walking Dead|

Chapter 20: Home Sweet Home.

The sun was slowly setting over Georgia, cooling the muggy air just a little. The sky was just barely beginning to show hues of orange and pink against the bright baby blue. White clouds faded into wispy, lavender smears against the contrasting colors.

Daryl and I had been hiking for almost two hours, and we had covered over half of our distance back home. Even after a year of walkers and day to day survival, it still felt strange to call a run down, maximum security prison "home".

The country terrain was inconsistent, sometimes we were traveling uphill, sometimes down... We had to trudge through muddy water, and sometimes the forestry came to a sudden halt, forcing us to brave abandoned backroads lined with rusting cars and open fields of tall, overgrown grass, like we were now.

Following a few feet behind Daryl, I gazed to my right, out into the wide open field's horizon. The mellow orange sky met the dull, dried out grass in a huge contrast of colors.

Judging by the scraggly remains of some scattered haybails and an old, rickety barn at the other edge of the field, I could only guess that this used to be a cattle ranch. An eerie chill ran up my spine as I kept staring, noticing a few bodies stumbling aimlessly around the barn... Walkers.

I tore my gaze away from them, thanking my lucky stars that they were far out of our path. Daryl led the way as we continued across the field, heading for a fence of barbed wire that had once been used to keep cattle from wandering too far.

"Shame that there ain't no more cows hidin' 'round here somewhere." Daryl mumbled from in front of me, the first words that he'd said in over 20 minutes.

Sure, we had chatted about this and that, from before the end of the world and after, but it was pretty hard to keep Daryl engaged in the topic. Our conversations only lasted for about five sentences before they fizzled out into nothing again.

"Yea, we'd have steak for a week." I agreed, thinking about the amount of beef just one cow could produce for the group.

Before the turning of the Earth, I hated red meat. Absolutely hated it. Every time my dad would grill out in the backyard during summer time, there had always been a chicken breast or pork chop for me, mixed in with everyone else's burgers or steaks.

But now, whenever there was any chance for a hot meal, I didn't turn it down, especially protein... That was what fueled the body, and it was the hardest thing to find these days. It was really hard to survive off canned fruits and vegetables.

"Here." Daryl muttered as we approached the fence, pinning the lowest wire to the ground with his boot and bending down to pull the next one upward, creating a gap for me to crawl through. "Go on."

I nodded and crouched down, moving in a quick sideways motion as I carefully stepped through the gap in the barbed wire. When I was safely on the other side, I turned around and took the barbed wire from Daryl's grasp, keeping the gap open so he could pass through now.

Since he had a good six inches on me height wise, I assumed he would have a little trouble ducking through the gap as easily as I had. But he proved me wrong, crouching down and moving quickly in the same sideways motion, sliding through the gap in the barbed wire, crossbow and all. Well, I guess he was a hunter, and god knows you had to be nimble in this new world, so I shouldn't have been so surprised.

Daryl and I continued on through the field, which was slowly merging into forest again.

The thin, sporadic trees on this side of the fence sliced the fading, golden sunlight into ribbons, giving the area around us a strangely calm and tranquil vibe. It was hard to imagine a rotting, blood thirsty corpse lurking around a place this beautiful, but as I looked up ahead... That's exactly what I saw.