Instincts (Daryl Dixon FF)

t w e n t y t h r e e

Beth is a stubborn person.

"I can do it.", she pressed and pushed my hand off her chest. I could see the knifepoint shaking out of the corner of my eye.

"Do you see him?", her voice was shaking just as much.

"I can hear him."

Then, suddenly but not unexpected, he was there. He crashed through the thick shrubbery, right behind Beth. A few twiners had wrapped themselves around his body and teared of lappets as he pressed forward further and further, hunger-driven, and utterly unimpressed by being skinned. With him came a stench, so pungent and disgusting; I helplessly scrunched up my nose. He slung his arms, which looked like he had bathed them in muriatic acid, around Beth in a deadly hug and started snapping his jaw against her tender neck. I let my knifes fall to the ground and grabbed the walker by the mixture of fabric, skin, bones, and blood, which somehow still formed a shoulder, and ripped him away. In this moment, our gazes met, once again. Daryl's and mine. Like they were pulled towards each other and he said, I've got you. I've got your back. He had thrown me a grenade, now I was throwing him a walker, which landed on the ground with a thud and an arrow through his head.

"Thanks.", I handed him the arrow, he nodded silently. Beth trembled, "You good?", I asked and glared at her. Don't tell me otherwise, it was your own damn fault. She nodded hastily and removed a strand of hair from her face.

We walked on, encountered some dead bodies, walked on, encountered more bodies, and walked on. In between we overnighted in the trunk of a car, sleepless. This had become the sad rhythm of life: Death and death and death. Around midday we set up shop. I stretched a tripwire, as Daryl wolfed down a piece of burnt snake meat and Beth stared, face pale, at the bloody snakeskin, which was sprawled out on a log next to him.

"I need a drink.", she stated and hugged her knees. Daryl threw her an old water bottle.

"No, I mean a real drink. As in alcohol."

I pricked my finger with the wire, "Motherfuck- "

"I've never had one. A drink, I mean. 'Cause of my dad but he's not exactly around anymore, so- "

"So?", I interrupted and sucked on my finger. The memory of Hershel hurt.

"I thought we could go find some." Daryl scoffed, "And then? Throw a little celebration party?"

"No, but spending the rest of our lives staring into fires and eating mud snakes? No thanks."

"You prefer being walker's muck?", I asked dry and cramped the remains of the wire back into a rucksack.

"You know what?" I've learned to hate that tone. Beth got up, stomped towards us, pulled out the knife and spat, "Maybe I do!", before storming off into the woods. I correct, Beth is a very stubborn person. I grabbed the backpack.

"She'll come back.", Daryl murmured and looked up from his mud snake-jerky for the first time. "I dunno."

"Golfers like to booze it up, right?" I stared down the glade, little red flags marked a way to the golfer's clubhouse like signposts. On a dark, green metal shield stood the fitting caption 'Pine Vista Country Club'. The inside was painted a pseudo-elegant beige shade. I looked around as Beth softly closed the door behind us and inserted a golf club through the door handles. Newspapers and dirty, yellow sheets half-heartedly covered the windows, clothes, coated in dust, hung on clotheslines stretched across the room. Sleeping bags were scattered on the ground, mostly empty, but some filled with corpses. Daryl grabbed himself a flashlight off a chair and nodded towards a door. We combed through a few rooms. Mould spores hung in the air like picture noise and I felt the need to hold my breath. I decided to bury my face into my shirt.