When the dead roam - (Daryl Dixon)

Chapter 34 - Not my baby

Seven months ago

Determination ran through her veins like thread through a needle. Sure, she was shaky on her feet but her mind remained focused on getting to her daughter. Every sound was louder - every step was longer. She was desperate for even the small sign that she was still alive.

There was at least half a mile between the horde and Louise. She had been running for what felt like a lifetime and her muscles were burning but she couldn't bring herself to stop. It took all her energy not to collapse on the moss covered ground. Her lungs were burning and any air that succeeded in making its way into them was leaving quicker than it arrived. If she didn't know any better, she would have thought she was dying.

Louise could hear Shawn up ahead, begging his neice to continue but like-mother-like-daughter, she was refusing to leave without her mother by her side. Her small fists were balled at her side and the more Shawn pulled on her skinny arm, the more she backed away.

A sigh of relief washed over the mother and for a moment she was pleased.

"Hol, we have to leave now"

"No. No. I'm not leaving her. You can't make me!"

"Hollie! I said lets go!"

Louise wished that was the last words she had heard her daughter say. She wished the final moments of her kin didn't haunt her dreams - that they didn't forbid her the sleep that she so desperately needed. But they weren't. And they did.

She took off in the direction of the voices, jumping over fallen trees and shouting her daughters name in hopes of a reply. She didn't care how much noise she was making or how vulnerable she sounded. She just wanted to know her little girl was safe.

"Hollie?"

She dodged a tree to her left and jumped over a dead walker, the heel of her boot stepping in its dark blood and dyeing it a deep crimson. Growls bounced off her ears as she avoided a lone walker to her right and sent a bullet through it's forehead with her pistol.

"Hollie?"

Her voice was getting louder.

"Hollie!"

She broke through the tree line ahead, batting branches away from her face as she did so.

Shawn and Hollie were pressed against a large oak tree, surrounded by seven walkers - give or take one. The small girls screams echoed around her mother, her heart beating through her chest and her body shaking. She had never been so scared. Her cheeks were stained and her face was plastered in dry mud. Shawn shielded her body with his own, swinging a broken bat out in front of the 'walkers' and connecting it a few times with their skulls.

"Shawn?" she shouted over to them, racing towards the dead as she did so, her hunting knife now held out in front of her as she charged.

When he saw Louise his posture changed. Everything about him changed. He glanced at the small girl by his side and then back at his sister, never once contemplating his decision before he gripped Hollie's wrist and threw her out in front of him. Her body collided with the dead, sending a few onto their backs whilst the other's clawed at the seven year old. Shawn took his opportunity and ran towards his sister, locking his arms around her torso and pulling her backwards as he used his niece as bait. The 'walkers' ripped into her stomach, pulling the flesh away from her ribcage and biting into it, blood dripping from their decaying mouths. Each cry that escaped through the small girls lips ricocheted off the other as she begged for her mother; but it didn't last long.

Shawn gripped his sisters waist, holding her back as she lashed out and reached for her child. Her only child. Tears streamed down her face and her nails dug into Shawn's hands but he never once faltered. She kicked her legs out and scratched at his face but he never let her go. Instead, he forced her to watch as her daughter was ripped apart limb by limb.

Hollie's pale skin turned a sickly shade of red as he body shook. The 'walkers' relished in the dead child, chewing loudly on the intestines that once remained in her small frame as her mother sat on her knees a few meters way, sobbing into her hands.

"No. No. Not my baby, no"

Shawn reached down to her, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Lou-"

"Don't touch me!" she crawled away from him and towards her dead daughter. 

Hollie lay on the ground, surrounded by the undead - eyes wide open.