Home Is Your Heartbeat ('Home Is' Book Two - Daryl Dixon)

Chapter 86 - Vengeance Is Mine (Alice Cooper)

DARYL

Get to the last door on the top floor of the office block. Open it slowly.

If they aren't stashed away in here, or the rooms that Rick is currently checkin out? Then we're up shit creek. Have no choice but to try again with them garbage traitors.

And Dwight will be a dead man for screwin us over.

Hell, who am I kiddin? I'm gonna turn him into a Walker, regardless.

The sounds of gunfire comin from down in the courtyard are tapering off.

Aaron and Eric's team had done good. Killed a few Saviors, then held the rest of them down until their dead companions turned. Into Walkers, and then on their own people.

Letting them do the job....in finishing them off for us.

Fuck!  Ain't nuthin but an empty storage closet with....

I lose track of time for a minute or so. Start takin a little trip down memory lane in my head.

Three weeks....thirty years....three weeks....thirty years.

Hear the click of a lock after the door closes, leavin me alone. Huddle in the darkness. Feel the trickle of blood from the fresh slashes due to the switch. No, not slashes....I mean the bullet wound.

It's running down my back. The agony and shame.

Will he come to let me out of the cupboard by mornin....or go and get shitfaced again? Forget, then leave me in here for days. Just like before. Lying in my own piss and crap.

Hungry....thirsty....hurtin.

Have to go to school tomorrow. Can't have any more time off or I'll get detention. Suspended even? School is the only escape I've got now, from hell....home. Can't lose that.

We're on easy street....

Need to escape from this, though. And right now! So I can find my Nate. Cos I need her to hold me, heal me....and love me.

'Ya deserve it, boy. Ya done deserve everythin that I'm gonna give to ya. You got your friend killed....who are you....kneelkneelkneelkneel....KNEEL!'

Their voices and my own screamed out over each other. Fightin for space in my skull.

The thud of something heavy hitting a wall down the corridor? Makes me jump back to where I'm s'posed to be.

I begin to walk off and find Rick. Instead, I force myself to look back at it again. Properly this time.

The handcuff dangling from the exposed pipes is covered in rust-coloured stains of old blood. Same as the filthy floor below it.

I glance around, expecting to see a dismembered hand and hacksaw. But there are only a couple of empty dog food cans....a dried-up sandwich.

So, it wasn't just me then. They do this to anyone! Everyone?

Those fuckin animals, they smash people's heads in. Rape women, murder kids, and turn people into slaves. Lock folk up in cupboards or Walker-filled dungeons. Torture them when they refuse to kneel.

And they do it every single day. Like it's simply a part of their routine.

They gotta die....and we gotta win!

*

"No guns here. No weapons at all, apart from the ones they had on them!"

I have to look away.