The Fear (The Walking Dead / Daryl Dixon)

Chapter 53 - Home

Song credit to Mumford and Sons! With some very minor lyric changes.

Minus one small incident on the highway with a small herd of about 25 that we managed to drive through we got to the farm by 12:30am.

Or I should say we got to the gate at 12:30am. The kids were asleep, but when the car rolled to a stop the change in pace woke Molly and when she shuffled, Luke also woke up. 

"What's happening?" She asked.

I stared, my eyes fixed on the mail box and the name Green written across it. I glanced in the rear vision mirror and saw that Martinez was leaned up against the back window with a blanket over him, presumably also asleep.

"Kat?" Luke asked causing me to look back at the two kids.

"Sorry, I just... I lived here... before."

"This was your home?" Molly asked. She had a sweet voice, so did Luke, but maybe that was just a part of being that age length brunette hair pulled back with a bandana and whenever I saw her around the prison she always wore jeans held up with suspenders. I hadn't really had much to do with her before, but I knew she was friends with Luke who I also didn't have a whole lot to do with until the flu outbreak. The more time I spent around the two of them the more I began to wonder if they were younger than I originally guessed.

"Once." I replied, moving the car back into gear and heading off down the drive way. The bumpy gravel road did wake up Martinez and I saw him rise in the back and stand to look out over the roof and to the approaching house. In the dark it looked like it still held strong, but there was nothing left of the burned down barn expect a silhouetted rusty burnt out frame of the RV and a few piles of debris. I saw that as we drove past. 

The grass was long and weeds grew along the sides. But there was no sign of walkers. The herd that had been here would have burned up in the flame of the barn when they were drawn to it or had long since moved on. There would be an odd straggler no doubt and when we approached the house I noticed that the damage wasn't as bad as what I'd expect it to be. The front steps were ruined, the door cracked open. There was only a few steps and maybe with some difficulty a walker could make it up. A window was broken even with the boarding we had put up behind it, but everything else seemed fine. Without noise drawing them in, most would have just went around. 

It still wasn't an ideal place to be. With some good reinforced walls something could be made out of it, but we weren't here for that. And I wasn't here to be sentimental or come up with dreams that could never happen. 

"Stay in the car." I told the kids before I got out as Martinez leapt to the ground. I shook my head when I saw what was in his hand. "No guns. We need to be here for a little while, cant risk it, not when it's this dark. Here." I held out my machete for him to take as he put the gun back in the back. "There's a flashlight in the black bag." I told him while he was still over at the truck while I took  a step closer to the house and pulled out Daryl's knife. 

"I'll go first." He said, moving forward with the light.

"No. I know the house. Give me the light." He did.

"You lived here?" He whispered as we approached the door.

"My whole life. I was on this porch about a month in when Rick came running across the field, Carl in his arms. He'd been shot in a hunting accident. My dad fixed him. And we've been with him and Carol and Glenn... Daryl. Ever since. We tried to make it work here, but... it was never going to. On your right." I said, shining the light as Martinez moved forward and cut down into the he head of a walker that came around the corner and then pushed it back. It slammed into the grandfather clock and hit the ground. If there had been nothing to draw them out then a few had probably been wandering around the house from room to room unable to find the exit, maybe even since we left. We found two more downstairs and then it was clear.