Fight, Love, Live.

XVII

I was damn tired of Merle following me every time I get pissed off. I feel like me getting pissed off is gonna be common with this damn group, and if he follows me every single time I will never get any peace. 

"Stop followin' me!" I grumbled out, hearing his heavy footsteps behind me getting closer. 

"Well how bout you stop runnin' off brother?" I glanced at him but didn't say anything, knowing he would just talk anyway, didn't need to encourage him. 

"Why you let Riley get your panties all in a twist?" I glared at him.

"What the hell you talkin' about?" 

"Come on brother, you don't gotta lie to old Merle. I see the way you look at her. Ain't ever seen you look at a woman like that?" I chuckled. 

"Oh, you mean hate, rage, and any other horrible emotion you can think of?" Merle just rolled his eyes at me. What the fuck. 

"Whatever man. Lie to yourself if you gotta. Sure that stuff is in there. But it's hiding the other stuff. The stuff I can see. You notice that the two times you been out here today it's been 'cause of her?" Fuck. He's right. But what does that matter? She drives me up a wall is all. 

Daryl and Merle had finally come back to camp, Merle was swinging a pickaxe into more dead bodies, and I don't know what Daryl was doing, he had disappeared up into the RV. 

The kids were still in Daryl's tent, and I was standing right outside, kind of like a bodyguard, just watching everybody, making sure everything was alright, also because while I love kids, I can only talk about dolls and comic-book characters for so long before I feel like I'm losing my mind. 

Carol had just gone up to Merle to ask him for the pickaxe he was holding, and then she swung it down onto a larger man's head. Maybe he was her husband? I had seen some bruises on her arms when I met her this morning, so maybe he deserved this. 

But Andrea did not deserve this. I could hear ragged breathing coming from over near the RV, and I knew that girl was alive now. I looked over, and Andrea was leaning over the body, stroking its face while it growled and reached its hand up into her curls. She was talking to it. And then she stopped, and there was a gun shot, and the body dropped. 

It wasn't until it was over that I realized that Daryl was standing at the feet of the body waiting to kill it if he needed to, but it was Andrea that had pulled the trigger. I was right. She was waiting for something. 

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A couple of hours later all the bodies were dead, officially, and they had all been loaded into Daryl's pickup truck and we were supposed to go up the hill to bury them. 

I had just rounded up the kids and sent them off to their parents, and started walking up the hill with Bailey, who had been doing lord knows what this morning but she had come back earlier looking for food, when I was stopped by Merle and Daryl. 

"Get in." Merle said gruffly, gesturing to the truck. 

"What are you talking about?" 

"You. Getting in the truck. You're pregnant. You don't need to be hiking half a mile up hill. Get in the truck." Merle said again, opening the door for me this time, and Daryl, who was leaning against the hood next to him, just rolled his eyes but didn't say anything at all. 

"I'm not takin' no for an answer sweetheart." Merle said with a straight face, so I just sighed and nodded, and got in the passenger seat, and then was forced to scoot into the middle when Bailey jumped up and almost landed in my lap. 

"Bailey!" I scolded as Merle shut the door. It took a few seconds before someone got in the drivers, and I was surprised when it was Daryl. Though I shouldn't have been I guess, since it was his truck. 

He though, was surprised when he saw how close we were being forced to sit by Bailey, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat pretty much the whole way up to the graves. When we finally arrived Daryl jumped out without a word, but did come over to open my door. I scooted out and mumbled a surprised, 'thank you' but all I got in return was a grunt before he tuned into whatever Rick and Shane were saying. 

"I still think it's a mistake not burning these bodies. It's what we said we'd do, right? Burn 'em all, wasn't that the idea?" Daryl said gruffly as he moved to open the hatch. 

"At first." Shane said, not taking his eyes off of me. 

"The Chinaman gets all emotional, says it's not the thing to do, we just follow him along? These people need to know who the hell's in charge here, what the rules are." Daryl continued, and I couldn't help but agree with him. We did need rules. 

"There are no rules." Rick said angrily, and it was then that I noticed that everyone else had caught up. 

"Well, that's a problem. We haven't had one minute to hold onto anything of our old selves. We need time to mourn and we need to bury out dead. It's what people do." Lori argued, and I just rolled my eyes, and stood off to the side while everyone began to unload the bodies and put them in the holes that had been dug. 

Andrea took the longest with her sister, refusing help and almost hurting herself pulling the body into the hole. But eventually it was over, and Daryl was opening the door for me again, and I was ignoring the looks Shane was giving us, and we were back down at camp before I could even let go of the feeling that death had consumed us, and we could never escape it.