Daryl's Angel: Saviour (Book Two)

Chapter 12: Feel Something, Anything

The sun just won't let up, although there are more clouds in the sky than yesterday. I keep praying for rain.

We're walking even slower today. The dogs last night helped, but the thing with hunger is that it keeps coming back. Glenn and Daryl came back from the morning scout with a half-full plastic water bottle to show for it, and that's all we have to make it through right now.

Daryl and I linger near the back of the pack, staying just ahead of Abraham and Sasha. He offers her sips of his booze. She coldly refuses him. I close my eyes and imagine how she laughed when it was her and Bob, playing their games, and it already seems like a distant memory.

"Daryl, Hope." Glenn slows down to fall in step next to us, holding out the water bottle.

Daryl shakes his head. "Nah, I'm alright," he says.

Glenn purses his lips, still holding the bottle out. It has to last us until we find more, and the last thing I want is to be greedy. What if the others need it more, like Carl? Or Judith?

"Hope, just have some," Glenn says.

I take the bottle and have a drink, just enough for a good swallow. It's the most refreshing thing I've had in a while, and when I lower the bottle, I hold it out to Daryl.

"Don't," he mumbles.

"Please?"

He doesn't look at me and doesn't reach for the bottle, even when I tap it against his arm. He just shrugs it off. I let out a defeated breath and put the cap on, handing it back to Glenn. He stays beside us.

"Hey," he says. "We can make it together. But we can only make it together."

Daryl doesn't so much as look at him, and I have no better words to offer. He picks up the pace, rejoining Maggie, and Daryl slows down. He looks out at the forest, then back at me.

"Tell 'em I went looking for water," he says.

I can barely get a word out before he's gone again, always disappearing into the trees, leaving us behind. I force myself to keep walking, face forward instead of watching him leave, because each step just hurts me more.

----------

"What in the fresh shit is that?" Abraham asks.

A cluster of bottles sits in the middle of the road—four four-litre milk jugs and ten smaller plastic water bottles, each filled to the brim with water, with a piece of paper perched on top. Rick moves to the bottles and picks up the paper. I catch a glimpse of the writing.

"From A Friend."

Rick paces, looking at the note, at our surroundings, and the rest of us wait in a loose cluster, staring at the water like we're in a dream. It's like someone left us a tiny little plastic oasis, and I would very much like to take a dip.

Daryl comes out of the woods not long after. Rick approaches him, handing him the paper. He takes one look at it and pulls his crossbow off his back, readying it.

"What else are we gonna do?" Tara asks.

"Not this," Rick retorts. "We don't know who left it."

"If that's a trap, we already happen to be in it," Eugene says, staring at the water with wide, hungry eyes. "But I, for one, would like to think it is indeed from a friend."

"What if it isn't?" Carol asks. "They put something in it?"

Eugene grabs one of the bottles.

"Eugene!" Rosita snaps.