The Fear (The Walking Dead / Daryl Dixon)

Chapter 65 - Always Moving

As promised a new chapter, and in usual me fashion it is a couple days late, because I didn't realise just how much I actually had left to write and it ended up quite long... like longest chapter yet.

I really wanted Kat with Abe's group for this so I've tried to make not looking for Beth make as much sense as possible. But I also couldn't have her leave before Daryl got back. Also I'm skimming some of it, a lot of it isn't necessary. 

My mind was moving slowly the next day. Unable to process the full weight of everything that was happening at a normal rate. Molly was dead. Buried in the church graveyard with a makeshift cross as the tombstone head, her name messily engraved into the wood by Luke and bellow it an added touch by Gabriel that read 'grace has lead her home.'

Sasha sat over Bob's fresh grave, twisting a piece of twine around his own cross to keep it in place. The people from terminus had been cleared out, their bodies removed but Rick wouldn't have them burried. He left them a good way out in the tree line much to Gabriel's protest.

And then there was Noah. The boy who was perhaps Beth's age who he had brought back in replace of Carol. He'd told us what had happened. He and carol had found a car when they went out in search of water. She had meant to leave. Go out on her own again, but he had followed to stop her. And then a car had driven past. A car with a white cross painted on the back, the car that had taken Beth.

They followed it all the way back to Atlanta, Carol had run out ahead and that same car had run her down. They took her in before Daryl could get there and in his attempt to get her back he came across Noah. A boy trying to escape those same people. Noah knew Beth. Beth helped him get out. They were cooped up in Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. The people were made up of hospital staff and police officers, the group led by a woman. A sheriff before all this named Dawn Lerner. What her reasonings were for taking people, Noah couldn't say other than that she truely believed she was helping and she understood that people, the right people, were a resource. But once you went into Grady, she never let you leave.

A group was being formed to get her back. Daryl would lead the way, Noah would help to repay the debt he owed Beth. Michonne would stay back with Gabriel, Carl and Judith while Rick and Daryl took everyone else.

But Abe had no intention of changing his plans. After last night he was leaving. He wasn't putting his people through another ordeal, risking Eugenes life. Not after losing so many people in such a short time and just to one group. Introducing another threat was not on his agenda. I understood. Terminus was his problem, as much as it was ours. But these people in Atlanta... they were nothing to do with him and it was in the wrong direction.

But that was when things got complicated. Glenn didn't want to break his word, Maggie didn't want to and Tara certainly didn't. Tara was going regardless. She paid her debt to Glenn, she didn't know Beth and she had made a promise. She was going. Glenn and Maggie had been close to breaking theirs and if anything was going to make Abe understand surely it would have been this. It was Beth. Maggie's sister. My sister.

But they couldn't. Glenn left the decision to Maggie. And Maggie took a long time to decide which only made me mad. Abe's words screamed at me that I should go wherever Maggie went. She was here and I couldn't leave her side again. But Beth was there. Beth needed saving. Maggie didn't. But I saw it in her face... she was scared. She was scared that Noah was wrong. She was scared that something had happened after she helped Noah escape. Something she didn't want to know about. It was why she wasn't as keen on finding Beth in the first place. She thought she was dead. And if she was dead and she didn't know she could go on pretending.

But then there was Eugene. The man that could save the world. A cause that both Maggie and Glenn were growing to believe in more and more. And they trusted Rick and Daryl. They trusted that if anyone could save her they could. And if the mission could be done without them...  then why shouldn't they go? It would have been selfish. One life, regardless of whose it was, verses all life.