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Chapter Twelve: Taylor

The door closed behind me with the quiet click of the latch. I hobbled over to the bed and gently sat myself down so as not to jar my leg. I wasn't sure what had just happened, but something did. The look Daryl gave me before walking away had me trembling. His face never changed, but his eyes did. I think he realized I was a woman and not just another person he passed on the street.

It was going on two weeks since we started this experiment. I had not expected today to go as it did. Last night, my foot had slipped off the second to last step and I eventually landed in a heap at the base of the stairs. There were a few thuds, bad twists, and one big loud crash. Luckily, no one was around to see my clumsiness, but then again no one was around to give me a hand either.

I knew I had landed wrong on my ankle and that pain went all the way up my leg. Everything hurt. I sat on the floor trying to get myself together for longer than I liked. And yes there were tears. I couldn't help it. I felt stupid and it hurt, so I cried for a bit before I told myself to stop being such a baby and figure out how badly I had messed up my leg.

The dinner I was heading down to make was now out of the question, so I scooted myself to the staircase and went back up on my butt. Then I hobbled back to my room where I spent the rest of the night and morning with my leg elevated. It helped, but not near enough.

That first couple of steps after I saw Daryl was accomplished by sheer determination. He had surprised me when he waited for me. I really hadn't expected that. I didn't want him to think I was a bigger mess than I actually was.

But the pain was just too bad.

He took my breath away when he lifted me into his strong arms and started carrying me. First, I was going to lean on him, but it still didn't take enough weight off my leg. Then all of a sudden I'm in his arms and his handsomely rugged face is so close to mine I almost can't breathe.

Why is he making me feel this way? No man ever has...including my husband. Mark never made my heart race or made me nervous the way Daryl does. I don't understand why. He's so not my type. I was boring, so I dated boring guys. Mark was as boring as they came. He was an accountant in a large firm. We had an occasional dinner out, but we never did anything fun. That was what we liked. We drove unexciting cars and never did we consider any other lifestyle. That was just us.

And I knew that wasn't Daryl.

I never saw a man as full of confidence as he was. Not self-centered or full of himself, but was sure of himself and his abilities. Just like Rick. That's why men like Daryl survived the mess we lived in and men like my weak husband didn't. Well, I didn't think he made it. Why I survived was nothing but sheer luck. There really was no reason I should still be a living breathing person. None at all. Maybe God hadn't forsaken me after all.

I had been a regular churchgoer every Sunday. I put on a nice dress, my husband wore a jacket and tie, and my boys were in their best little boy clothes. We never missed a service sitting in our regular pew every single Sunday morning at ten o'clock. My kids said their prayers every night before going to bed, yet God took them away from me in the most brutal way possible. How could God allow the world to come to this? The dead walked the earth devouring everything in its path including my family.

That's when I wanted to stop believing. I couldn't imagine what horrible unforgivable act my children had done to deserve to die that way. Or was he punishing me? I had thought about that for months. Was it me? What had I done to anger him so much that he basically destroyed my life?

Nothing. I knew I had done nothing, so that's when I decided that the God I had believed in since I was a young child in Sunday school was a fraud. He didn't exist. How could he let what was going on happen? There was no lesson to be learned here, it was simply the dead rising up to exterminate the living.