Lost Too Much 【REDONE】 ║ Daryl/OC or Shane/OC

Chapter 53: You make me do dumb things, Dixon.

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(DAY 072) Nothing extraordinary is happening so I'll just write about what was going on pre-apocalypse. I mean, things are about the same here, anyway. Martinez and I still do our runs, Phillip and I are fine, all that. Nothing new has happened. It's starting to get in a pattern again. So I won't bore you with dumb details.

I believe the apocalypse began in February 2010, for any historians wondering. At least that was when I left home. Not sure on the exact date. The apparent crazy guy that came by warning everyone in Porterdale said that day was the beginning, so I'm going to follow that and consider my 1 AZ as the world's 1 AZ. Anyways, it was February, and cold for our location, Porterdale, Georgia. I'll admit it's much better down here than in PA. We were in PA two days before 1 AZ and it was a good bit colder up north. Aside from that, it should be May now. No one's been keeping track of dates, and I'm only keeping track of the number of days.

At the time prior the apocalypse, I listened to music a lot. I think my favorite song was either Crazier by Taylor Swift or Complicated by Avril Lavigne. Of course, neither of those songs were really new at the time, but I still enjoyed them. I didn't really like any pop music or new stuff that came out. Also, I've learned to play both of those songs on the guitar.

What else was going on at the time? Uh, Barack Obama was president, but... I didn't really pay attention to what was going on in the world then. Wow, great idea, Cory. Let's write about the little knowledge you had of the world when it went to shit.

Okay, scratch this idea. I'll just write about another dumb time I had with Merle and Daryl. There were a couple months of time back in 2005, which would've been 6 years after I met them (since I met them in 1999) that Merle was in jail for 'simple battery' and Daryl and I were alone. I had practically moved into Merle's room in the meantime, which was requested by Merle himself for me to keep an eye on Daryl. We drove out in Daryl's truck to see him at least once a week, and Daryl and I would stay in a motel overnight there and drive back home in the morning. When Daryl and I had all that time alone together, I heard a lot of stories about Will Dixon and how he mistreated his kids. Daryl told me a lot of stories about him and Merle as they grew up, stuff like that.

There was this one weekend that we were supposed to go upstate and stay to visit Merle, but when we reached the motel we typically stayed in, it was during the weekend of some big convention so all the rooms with two beds were booked. Daryl wanted to just find a different motel, I guess because it was such an inconvenience to share a bed with me for one night, but I convinced him to just chill out. So we booked a room, got it and settled in, and suddenly I started throwing up and getting weak in the knees when I would try to stand. It scared the shit out of Daryl. Pretty sure he thought I was gonna die. So we stayed in the motel instead of visiting Merle and Daryl took care of me until I wasn't sick anymore. Suddenly, sharing the bed wasn't an issue to him anymore. I think it was 3 full days until I was done throwing up. Daryl had run into town to get me cans of soup and water bottles to keep me healthy, and even cleaned up after me. We figured out that it was food poisoning from some food I got at a convenience store on the way to the motel.

We decided to just go home and skip that weekly Merle visit. We got about halfway driving back to Porterdale before Daryl pulled off the road and started throwing up. I had no clue that food poisoning was contagious, but after doing research, I found out that any bacteria from the food poisoning that remains can be picked up by another person. So I guess I gave him food poisoning. He drove the rest of the way home and we stopped periodically for him to throw up. And then the roles were reversed once we got home. I took care of him while he threw up, cleaned up after him, unpacked his stuff, bought him soup, all that. Merle called from prison and asked why we never showed up, and then laughed at my answer. After another two days of Daryl being sick, we were both finally okay. We disinfected the whole house, washed all our sheets and clothes from the weekend, and took all the precautions we could. Merle got out of jail like a month after that weekend, and things shortly returned back to how it was, being stupid as hell and Daryl and I trying to stop him from getting into more trouble.