178…
Daryl started calling them walkers and having seen enough horror movies, he knew something for certain. Walkers were dead and therefore, they were stupid. Their coonhound was smarter than the walkers shuffling around all over. (And in his opinion, Martha was smarter than most dogs around.)
But that was a problem. For being stupid, walkers were everywhere. That shouldn't have surprised Daryl. He was always grumbling about there being too many people around and now, the majority of those people were dead, but still there. But the walkers were like pack animals – so much dumber than actual pack animals, but despite the dead brain in their skulls, they seemed to have gotten the gist of it.
Over the past couple of weeks, Daryl had observed them as often as he could without going detected by anything. Sometimes, he'd climb up into the trees just so he could watch. The walkers stumbling around on their own, those were easy pickings. From his tree, Daryl would fire a bolt into their skull and that would be that. If one walker stumbled into another, those two began stumbling around together. They would then stumble into another and their due would become a trio of walkers and so on and so on until they grew in size to the dozens.
It was kind of interesting to watch them, Daryl admitted. Still dumber than a box of rocks though, no matter how many of them were together. If he wanted to crawl down from his tree and high-tail it back to the cabin, all he had to do was throw a few rocks in the opposite direction of where he wanted to go and the walkers followed the noise like trained seals – no offense to trained seals if there were any left.
Despite what his teachers in school had always thought, Daryl knew that he wasn't stupid. Just because he hadn't talked that much and wasn't the best at taking tests, that didn't mean he didn't understand things. He was the kind of guy who learned by watching. He didn't have the brain for math formulas or science problems, he knew, but that didn't make him dumber than anyone else.
In the past couple of weeks, staying in these mountains, listening to the world get quieter and quieter around them, Daryl had watched and Daryl had learned.
One thing he had learned – something that was already keeping them alive – was walkers pretty much left something alone that smelled already dead.
Daryl had tried it first, killing and then gutting a walker, covering himself with the blood and guts from within and yeah, it was pretty much the damn nastiest thing he had ever done, but if doing this was able to help keep his wife, their dog and himself alive, then Daryl would coat himself in walker every day.
He and Beth even figured out how to disguise Martha's smell when she and Daryl were out hunting.
With a raincoat he had snagged from Andy's store, Beth had sewed the collar shut and then had cut the bottom of the raincoat away so she could make it into a band that they could fasten around Martha's middle. This way, if the dog and Daryl had to run, the raincoat wouldn't fly off of her. And then, putting her front legs through the front sleeves, Daryl rubbed the walker blood and guts all over the coat that went down the length of her back.
Martha snorted in distaste every time Daryl told her that it was time for her coat, but she stayed still like the good girl she was.
"I know. I don't like it much myself," Daryl told her as he made sure she was slathered all over before putting on his own raincoat covered in the guts.
And it still amazed Daryl that both were able to move pretty freely through the mountains and along the roads without walkers catching their scent and coming after them. He had yet to see another living person, but he would be surprised if he did see one. These mountains were home to people who didn't want to be bothered too often by other people so if they were still alive and around, they were doing what they always did. Keeping to themselves as they figured out how to survive this.
Just like he and Beth were doing.
At night, they turned their power off so the cabin was plunged into complete darkness, hidden in the complete darkness of the woods around them. And during the days, if Daryl wasn't off, hunting or exploring to see how things were, he and Beth stayed inside or outside, just around their cabin.
They had stayed put until the quiet had come, just as they had discussed and decided to, and two weeks after they made the decision, the world around them was silent; as if people had never been there in the first place. Every morning, after they woke, Daryl would look at Beth, asking a silent question, that so far, she always answered with a shake of her head.
"Not today," she would tell him.
Daryl didn't ask her what they were waiting for. He would stay put for as long as Beth wanted them to. They had plenty of supplies in their cabin and with the way they were rationing their food every day, they were good with that. It also helped that Daryl and Martha were able to hunt every few days. When Hershel had given them a check with money to help fix the cabin up, in addition to their solar panels and well, Daryl had also splurged on a water purifier.
And after these past couple of weeks, he was convinced it was the best thing he had ever spent money on. Who the hell knew what was going on? Dead people were walking around. Whatever it was, it was either in the air or the water. It had to be either of those because if it wasn't, what the hell else was it? If it was in the air, that meant that he and Beth already had it and there wasn't a damn thing they could do about that, but if it was in the water? If it was in the water, that might make it preventable.
"You alrigh'?" He asked her as he smeared blood onto her cheeks, chin and forehead.
He didn't want to necessarily take Beth with him today as he and Martha walked the area around them, checking on things and seeing how many walkers they came across today. Daryl had already lost count of how many walkers he had killed in the past two weeks. But Beth couldn't just stay at the cabin the whole time; couldn't stay there forever. That's not just the way things could be anymore.
Beth nodded and didn't say anything. Her raincoat was already covered with a coating of walker blood and guts and the smell was overwhelming. "It smells so bad," she then said, almost whining.
Daryl cracked a small smile. "You probably don't smell that good inside either." Beth looked at him, doing her best to not smile, and it only made Daryl smile more. "Close your eyes for me," he then said and Beth immediately closed them so Daryl could gently swipe some blood under her eyes. He was coating her with too much, he knew, but he couldn't stop himself. He would rather have his wife weigh an extra five pounds with all of the blood and guts she was wearing than not wearing enough.
"Am I good?" She asked after a moment of quiet, her eyes fluttering open again to look at him. He had blood swiped on his own face, but not as much as she did.
Daryl paused. He took a step back to look her over and make sure that there was enough coverage. He hated when she came with him, but there was no reason as to why she couldn't. She had already killed a walker and she would only have to kill more. Eventually, they would have to leave the somewhat safety of this cabin when they left to head back to the farm and Daryl already knew that they would be running into hundreds more walkers than the few a day they saw up here.
He couldn't just expect her to be completely unprepared for that. Not only was it unrealistic, it was stupid. His wife couldn't be helpless. He thought of the movies and he knew that walkers, eventually, wouldn't be the only thing to worry about. The world ends and people tended to end with it. Everything of how it used to be wasn't the way anymore and they all had to figure this new world out. And fast.
"You're good," Daryl confirmed with a single nod. He then sighed before he could stop himself.
"What is it?" Beth immediately asked.
He didn't answer her right away. Instead, he looked down to their dog – Martha wearing a raincoat stained in blood and innards – and he then looked to his wife, wearing the same.
"I don't know what the fuck I'm doin'," he then admitted.
"Yes, you do," she didn't even pause before she was disagreeing. She reached out and took one of his dirty hands with one of her hands. "You're keeping us all safe. No one could do this better than you."
Daryl held tightly onto her hand and looked into her big, blue eyes – still so blue despite being covered with a coating of blood. "Why don't you wanna head to the farm?" He finally found himself asking. "'s quiet. We said we would head down when it was quiet."
He didn't know why the hell he was wanting an answer. Getting to the farm and getting back to her family was important, but he wasn't exactly in a hurry to leave here. Who the hell knew what they would find down there from this mountain?
Beth took her turn to sigh. She lowered her eyes to the ground and was quiet for so long, Daryl began to frown. They had been married long enough by this point for Daryl to know that she wasn't okay. There were certain quiet tones that Beth had and Daryl had learned what they all meant because every quiet mood of Beth was different and meant something different.
Daryl stepped to her and lifted his hands to either side of her head, gently pulling it up so he could look into her eyes; to see if he could be able to tell just from her eyes.
"I'm scared," she whispered.
"Of what?"
The question made her smile; but not a happy one and definitely not like her usual smile that she gave him more times than not. All of Beth's smiles meant something different, too.
"Of what?" She echoed. "I'm still waiting to wake up and find that this whole thing isn't real."
Daryl knew what he should do. He should kiss her head and hug her and agree with her because some mornings, he woke up in their bed, waiting to hear an airplane fly overhead or for Beth's cellphone to ding with a new text message from someone. None of this could possibly be real. He went through every day, watching these walkers, killing them, smearing himself, his wife and his dog in their blood and a part of his brain just couldn't believe it.
He wanted to tell Beth that he agreed with her.
But he couldn't do that right now. Right now, they were covered in blood so they could mask their living smell from the dead because that was what they had to do to stay alive.
"Beth," he said her name and her eyes stared into his. "I need you to stay awake."
This is all real. Those words go unsaid, but like how Daryl could tell the difference between Beth's quiet moods and her smiles, Beth always knew what Daryl said without him saying a word.
…
Thank you! Daryl and Beth come face-to-face with someone they both know quite well in the next chapter.
Thank you for your patience. It's very hard for me to write Daryl and Beth with my muse for them waning more and more with each day, but I'm also writing GOT stories and I'm actually beginning the process of writing my own original novel - of a boy and his family living in the Appalachian Mountains (wonder where I got that idea? lol) So, with being pulled in so many directions, thank you for reading!
