Scars (Daryl Dixon FanFiction)

||Chapter Twenty Two||

||Chapter Twenty Two||

||Daryl's POV||

The rough granola bar stuck out my mouth as I ran my fingers over the books in the master bedroom. The Ms. Darlene that Avery had mentioned had a full library with mostly Stephen King books. I grabbed a few that looked interesting like The Green Mile and Fahrenheit 451 along with a burgundy colored book with no writing on the cover.

I plopped myself on an old couch in the corner of my room and ripped a piece of granola from the rest of the bar. I chewed the sticky food as I flipped through the pages of the titled books. On second thought, I didn't really feel like reading.

Outside, the walker's groans got louder. There was small thumping noises from them banging on the building, but there was no way for them to get through. We had the door blocked and we boarded up the windows once we checked the rest of the orphanage.

I then thought of Avery upstairs. She was in the room I found her in earlier probably looking through old things of hers. I didn't poke around too much afraid I might mess up her childhood.

I started to become curious of the untitled book. It lay on the side of me waiting to be opened. I picked it up lightly and pulled back the cover. The first page was blank until I got to the second one. It had Darlene Martin scripted in black ink in the middle. I thought it was just her claiming the book to whatever it was.

That was until I flipped onto the next page. It wasn't a regular, printed book. All the pages were written on as if she was writing a one. It was more of a journal than a diary. It was a fancy handwriting that seemed to be perfect.

'January 2, 1984:

A newborn girl was delivered to the orphanage today. A police officer and a doctor had brought her to me. They wore serious faces with the girl in the doctor's arms.

They sat me down in the living room before they asked for the other children to be sent to their rooms. We sat there and I started to get worried. They let me hold the baby as they explained what was going on.

The doctor told me that the little girl's name was Avery. Her parents died in a car crash leaving them with no other option than to bring her here. They were scientists together working on a serum to heal people for an unknown disease.

Avery was a little over a month old and was being put under tests. The serum they were using had to grow over the years and all the other subjects for testing weren't reliable. It had be kept under wraps and a child with no parents or background to her name was the perfect thing. Not even Avery will know because they will wipe her memory of the visits.

I was quite uncomfortable with the ideas of putting the poor child through this, but I was told if I didn't take her, she'd be held in a quarantine with nowhere else to go. I was their only option.

So, that's why I'm writing this diary/ journal in case Avery ever needed to know about what she was. This will be all about her and what she's gone through without her even knowing it.

~Darlene Martin'

A lump caught in my throat. I have to show Avery this. I raced up the stairs with the book's page marked with my thumb.

"Avery?" I called hoping I wasn't intruding, but this was important. I threw open her door to finder her lying on her bed with a book over her face. She wore thick, black glasses ad gave me a confused expression.

I panted heavily as I walked closer to her,"You have to read this." I held the book open as I pointed to the center of it. She sat up an swinging her legs over the bed after marking her place in her own book. She jerked it from my hands and glared at the pages.