NZ

NINA

[icekisseddevil]

Below are the links to each individual fandom that I write for. Request will be open eventually once I get on my feet and have established some fics. Constructive criticism and suggestions are always welcome here.

The Walking Dead

Harry Potter

Animal Kingdom

Bridgerton, the 100, ASOIAF, and hockey coming soon.

[icekisseddevil]

Officer friendly

Chapter 2 following the trip into Atlanta

Notes: this may be a little boring but it was needed to establish Rick getting to the group without a huge time skip. I finished part 1 and 2 at the same time so 3 and 4 will take me a minute :/

Warnings: implied SA, violence, gore, mentions of drug use and firearms, age gap relationships, sex. cursing and child abuse (flashbacks)

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Word count: 7k

Eventual Daryl Dixon x reader

A few days after my talk with Daryl, Shane rounded everyone together mid morning for a meeting while he stood in the middle of camp with Glenn beside him.

“We need to talk about supplies,” he said. “Food’s getting low. Medical kit is almost out of the basics. We need guns if we’re going to keep a proper watch on this camp.” He looked around the circle of faces. “I need people willing to make a run into the city.”

There was silence for a second until T-Dog’s hand went up before Shane could plead with the crowd. “I’m in.”

Jackie was beside him with her arms crossed. “Where he goes I go.”

Shane nodded. Looked around.

Morales was standing with his arm around his wife’s waist, her leaning into his side. He looked down at her for a second, a look of understanding between them that prompted her to give the smallest nod.

“Me too,” he said.

“I’ll go,” Andrea said, from the other side of the circle. Very matter of fact, no hesitation. She wasn’t the best shot but she would do.

Shane wrote something on the notepad before handing it back to Glenn. He was looking at the ground doing math in his head, already thinking about streets and routes and how to move through the city efficiently.

I was standing at the back of the group with my arms crossed and I did not say anything. I wasn’t sure if I could handle myself. I’d only been against one walker and it was my mom.

Shane looked around again. “Anyone else?”

The circle was quiet. Carol had Sophia pulled close to her side. Dale was watching Shane with his steady patient eyes. Lori had her hand on Carl’s shoulder.

Shane nodded once. “Alright. Glenn’s going to lead on the ground, he knows those streets better than anybody. We’re looking for canned food, anything with shelf life, medical supplies, and firearms if we can find them. Don’t take risks you don’t need to take.”

“When?” T-Dog asked.

“Wheels up in two hours.”

Merle was leaning against a tree at the edge of the group picking at his thumbnail. “While y’all are playing errand boy,” he said, “Daryl’ll head out. See what he can bring back. I’ll come to Atlanta.”

Daryl said nothing, just shifted the crossbow on his shoulder and looked at the tree line.

“Good,” Shane said. “We need it.”

The group started breaking up, people moving off to get ready or get back to what they’d been doing. I stayed where I was.

Glenn drifted over with his map already unfolded.

“You should come,” he said, not looking up from it.

“I’m good here.”

“We need people who can handle themselves.” He glanced up. “You can handle yourself.”

I looked at the map. At the streets marked in Glenn’s careful handwriting, routes traced in pencil. I thought about sitting in this camp for another day watching the tree line and waiting for Daryl Dixon to come back with something to eat.

“Two hours?” I said.

Glenn nodded.

“Fine.”

He smiled at the map like he was trying not to and went off to find T-Dog. I stood there for a second in the middle of the emptying camp and looked at the quarry sitting flat and silver through the trees and thought about Atlanta and what was sitting inside it and told myself it was fine.

It was fine.

….

Two hours went fast.

I had my bag packed and sitting outside my tent as I was lacing my boots when the group started pulling itself together around the van. People drifted over to say goodbyes and making request, not wanting to be involved but not wanting to miss it either.

Andrea and Amy came up from the quarry path together, fingers laced, seeming closer than they had earlier weeks at camp. They’d been down there a while. Amy’s eyes were pink at the edges and she was doing best to keep smiling to so she didn’t cry.

Andrea was holding herself very still on purpose. They walked through the camp like that, hands swinging slightly between them, and Andrea stopped at the van and turned, pulling Amy in hard, both arms around her, her chin over Amy’s shoulder.

Amy’s hands fisted in the back of Andrea’s shirt.

“It’s a supply run,” Andrea said into her hair. “We’ll be back tonight.”

“I know,” Amy said. Her voice was mostly steady. “I know that.”

They stayed like that for another second. Then Andrea pulled back and held Amy by the face for a moment and admired her.

“Almost your birthday,” she said.

Amy laughed, wet around the edges. “You keep saying that.”

“Because it keeps being true.” Andrea kissed her forehead and picked up her bag and got in the van and looked straight ahead.

Amy stood there with her arms crossed watching the van door and breathed through her nose until her eyes cleared.

Merle and Daryl were off to the side of all of it, close together, voices low. From where I was standing they looked almost angry at each other, the way Merle had one hand on the back of his neck like a dog you weren’t fond of.

I saw Daryl was staring at the ground, barely reacting to anything Merle said until Merle made some sharp comment that finally got him to look up and answer.

Merle clapped him once on the shoulder, hard, and walked away.

Lori caught me before I got to the van, coming over with a folded piece of paper and a look that was almost apologetic.

“I know you’re going to be busy,” she said, holding it out. “But if you happen to come across any of this.”

I took the paper and unfolded it. A small list in her handwriting, neat and slanted. Children’s Tylenol. Toothpaste. Socks, size small. At the bottom, underlined once, chocolate if there is any.

I looked up at her.

“Carl’s been asking,” she said, and something in her face was softer than usual this morning, lighter. She looked happier than I’d seen her in a while, and it wasn’t forced. “And I just thought if it was there.”

“I’ll look,” I said, and folded the list into my jacket pocket.

“Thank you.” She squeezed my arm once and picked up her bucket from the ground beside her. “I’m going to get water before it gets hot.” She nodded toward the woods path that ran down to the quarry and headed off through the trees humming something, bucket swinging at her side.

Shane appeared at my shoulder. “She seem alright to you?” he said, watching the trees where she’d gone.

“She seemed good actually, happy.”

He nodded, something settling in him slightly. He looked at the van and then back at the woods. “Look after yourself while I’m—” He stopped. “I mean while you’re gone.”

“I’ll grab you something while I’m in there.”

He looked at me sideways.

“See! That right there. Don’t make it weird,” I complained, rolling my eyes and punched his shoulder. “Just say thank you and move on.”

The corner of his mouth moved. “Yeah alright.” He looked at the tree line one more time and then headed off toward the woods in the same direction Lori had gone, hands in his pockets, unhurried.

I picked up my bag and walked to the van.

Glenn slid the door open from inside and held out a hand to help me up and I took it and climbed in and pulled the door shut behind me. The van smelled like old leather and fish breakfast with a side of body odor. There were too many people in a small space on this warm morning.

T-Dog looked back at me from the middle seat. “Ready?”

I put my bag between my feet and looked out the window at the camp sitting quiet in the morning light.

“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s go.”

….

An hour into the city and my neck hurt from looking up.

I couldn’t help it. The buildings came up on both sides of us so tall and so close together that the sky was just a strip of pale blue running between them, and standing at the bottom of all that glass and concrete made something in my chest go tight.

I’d never been actually been to Atlanta before. Not really. I’d driven past it on the highway a hundred times but that wasn’t the same as being inside it, feeling small inside it, the shadows falling heavy and cold across the pavement even with the sun still up.

It was so quiet here.

That was the part that kept getting me. A city this size should have been loud just breathing. Traffic and horns and somebody’s music leaking out of a window three floors up. Instead there was just our footsteps on the asphalt and the wind moving through the gap between buildings with a low hollow sound, and every now and then something far off that none of us commented on.

Glenn had us tight together, moving fast, hand signals instead of words where he could manage it. He knew these streets like the back of his hand, Glenn could cut through alleys I wouldn’t have noticed were even there.

Nobody questioned him.

Even Merle kept his mouth shut and followed, which told me more about how nervous he actually was than anything else would have.

The warehouse sat at the end of a service road. A loading dock with doors shut and padlocked. Glenn pointed at Merle without looking at him. Merle already had something out of his pocket.

Forty seconds and the lock was open.

The employee entrance was narrow and dark, the smell hitting me before my eyes adjusted. Dust and old cardboard and underneath it something sweeter, like a spill that had dried a long time ago and never quite left. The shelves went up to the ceiling in long rows, the light coming in gray through the high windows, everything perfectly still.

Glenn split us into pairs with a look and a point and everyone moved off into the shelves.

I went left.

The soap aisle was three rows back and I smelled it before I found it, that sharp clean smell cutting through the dust, and I stood in front of the shelf and looked at the options the way I used to stand in a drugstore with twenty dollars deciding what Ice cream to keep and what to put back. I grabbed two bars of the good stuff and dropped them in my bag.

I moved down the row slowly, dragging two fingers along the shelf edge, reading each label. The other shelves had the rest of what we needed, unopened box of tampons, body oil, Tylenol. I was hitting the jackpot.

No chocolate though.

Merle’s voice floated over from somewhere to my right, probably talking at T-Dog whether T-Dog wanted conversation or not.

I found a rack of pocket knives near the back wall, wrapped inside a little cardboard sleeve. I picked one up and felt the weight of it. Light but it would do in a tight spot for Amy. Then I picked up a second one.

That one I turned over in my hand for a second, thinking about Shane.

I dropped it in my bag.

Down the next row I found a shelf of those little travel sized things, deodorant, toothpaste and lotion in a wire basket. I grabbed a handful and stuffed them in without looking at the labels because something that smelled like anything was better than body odor. There was a candle on the shelf below, thick and white, blueberry pie. I took that too.

I could hear Glenn moving two rows over, I stood still for a second and listened to the warehouse breathe around me, the gray light coming down through the high windows and falling across the concrete floor in long pale rectangles. six hours ago I was sitting at the quarry with cold hands and now I was here, inside a dead city, stealing soap.

I almost laughed.

I didn’t, but almost.

…

The door to the roof was heavy and rusted at the hinge and it took Merle’s shoulder to get it open all the way. The heat hit us like a brick wall the second we stepped out, that thick flat Atlanta summer heat with nowhere to go and nothing to cut it, bouncing up off the tar paper and pressing down from the sky at the same time.

The hair at the nape of my neck dripped the second we cleared the doorway.

From what I could see, the roof was wide and low walled, the city spreading out in every direction below us, and for a second everyone just stood there and looked at it.

All those empty streets below us. All those still cars sitting in the intersections at every angle like somebody had just walked away from them mid-turn and never come back.

The buildings rose up around us on all sides and from up I’m here you could see just how far it went, block after block of nothing moving, the summer haze sitting over all of it in a pale shimmer.

Morales had the binoculars out already, scanning the streets.

I stood at the edge and put my hands on the concrete and looked down at the street below. The tar paper under my boots was soft from the heat, sticking faintly with each step.

Andrea came to stand beside me and I could see the line on her forearm where her sleeve had been, that sharp stripe of pale skin against tan, and I had the same thing on both arms, farmers fans were not my favorite.

Everyday I wished we could’ve been stuck at the beach instead of a small quarry off the highway.

Merle moved along the wall toward Andrea with an energy that told screamed “the apocalypse was a better time than ever.” He leaned on the wall beside her and squinted out at the street below and said, “So you and the old man, huh.”

Andrea glared at him.

“Dale.” Merle said the name like it was funny. “That your situation?”

“That’s none of your situation,” Andrea snapped back.

Merle grinned at the street. “All I’m saying is the man’s too old to get it up. You could do better.” He glanced sideways at her. “Significantly better.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Just putting it out there.”

“Consider it received and discarded.”

Merle laughed and moved off down the wall. T-Dog caught my eye from across the roof and shook his head once. These old men were so bold.

The sun was full on the roof now with nothing between us and it, and my tank top was sticking to my back way past uncomfortable and more of a sweaty mess. Morales wiped his face with the back of his arm and kept the binoculars moving.

Glenn was crouched near the far edge with a city map folded open on the concrete, finger tracing routes, lips moving slightly.

Then the gunshots went off.

they ricocheted off the buildings and came at us from two directions at once so you couldn’t place it right away. Everyone on that roof went still at the same time.

Morales had the binoculars up and pointing before the echo died. He tracked for a second, swung left, stopped.

“There.” He handed them to Glenn.

Glenn stood up and put them to his eyes and was quiet for a long moment. He pulled them down and looked at the street and then back through the binoculars like he was checking that he’d seen it right.

“There’s an officer down there,” he said. “On horseback. He’s coming up through the intersection on Fifth.” He paused. “There are a lot of them in the street. A lot.” He shifted slightly. “His horse just went down.”

Nobody said anything.

“He’s on foot now.” Glenn’s voice had gone careful and flat, just reporting. “He’s running. He’s going for—” He stopped. “There’s a tank. He’s going for the tank, there’s an abandoned tank sitting in the middle of Fifth and he’s heading straight for it.”

Merle was at his shoulder now, not grabbing the binoculars, just listening.

“He made it in,” Glenn said. “He’s inside.” He lowered the binoculars and looked at the hatch on top of the tank for a second, visible even from here. He brought them back up.

Then he reached over and picked up the radio from where Morales had set it on the wall.

He clicked it once. “Hey.” His voice came out easy, almost casual, like he was knocking on somebody’s door. “Hey you. Dumbass. in the tank.” A pause. “You comfy in there?”

The radio crackled.

We all looked at Glenn.

Glenn looked at the tank.

….

We heard them coming through the employee entrance before we saw them.

Footsteps, two sets, moving fast across the pavement behind the door before it banged open and Glenn rushed through first, breathing hard. The officer was behind him. Still in the uniform, which was the first thing I noticed, his tan shirt dark with sweat at the collar, a scrape along his jaw that was going to bruise.

Andrea came down the stairs from the mezzanine so fast I heard her boots on every step.

She had her gun out.

Not raised, but out, at her side, and the look on her face was the kind that made people take a step back without meaning to. Her jaw was set and her eyes were bright and sharp as she walked straight up to Rick and stopped close enough that he had to hold still.

“You,” she said, “almost got every single one of us killed.”

Rick opened his mouth.

“Don’t.” Her voice was flat and low, which was worse than if she’d been yelling. “One shot, that’s it, that’s all it took for you to ring the dinner bell, and now you trapped us in here. You sat in that tank and you fired in the middle of a dead city and now they know exactly where we are.”

The store had gone quiet around her. T-Dog on the stairs. Morales behind me. Jackie with her hand on my shoulder. I could hear the walkers from outside, faint through the glass, and if I was still enough, the low shuffling sound from the front doors.

Rick looked at her steadily. He didn’t flinch, which I noted.

“Andrea,” I said.

She didn’t look at me.

“Andrea.” I stepped up beside her, not between them, just beside her. “Shooting him isn’t going to make ‘em go away.”

“I’m not going to shoot him.”

“You’ve got your gun out.”

She looked down at it like she’d forgotten. She hadn’t forgotten. She put it back in her holster and crossed her arms and kept her eyes on Rick like she was deciding whether to be done with it or not.

“He didn’t know we were here,” I said. “He was in a tank. He couldn’t have known.”

“That’s not the point.”

“It kind of is though.”

She made a sound that wasn’t agreement but wasn’t argument either and took a step back and that was the end of it, or the end of that part of it.

She’d circle back to it later in her own head, I knew that, but she was done for now.

Glenn put a hand briefly on Rick’s arm and steered him further into the store and the rest of us followed.

Rick stopped when he saw the front doors.

There were a lot of them pressed up against the glass. That low shuffling sound I’d been hearing made sense now, all of them moving against each other in a slow directionless way, hands dragging across the door panels, faces turning toward the light.

The glass was holding. It wouldn’t hold forever and everyone in the building knew it, but it was holding right now and that was what we had.

Rick stood there and looked at them and didn’t say anything for a long moment.

“I haven’t seen that many,” he said finally. “Not all together like that.” His voice was quiet, not scared more like doing math in his head that wasn’t coming out to a number he recognized.

“Where have you been?” I asked.

He looked over at me. “Hospital,” he said. “King County. I was shot, came out of a coma and the place was empty.” He paused. “I found a man and his son squatting in my neighbors house. They took me in, showed me how to handle myself against them.” He looked back at the doors. “I thought I had a sense of how bad it was.”

“Well you didn’t,” Andrea said from behind us. No heat left in it now. Just fact.

“No,” Rick said. “I didn’t.”

The walkers pressed against the glass and the glass held and we all stood there in the department store light looking at them looking back at us.

….

We were halfway up the stairs when the first shot cracked through the building.

Everyone stopped. Rick’s hand went to his holster before he’d even finished turning around. Glenn looked at me and I looked at the ceiling like I could see through it to the roof and then another shot went off and we were all moving back up.

Merle was on the roof with the rifle.

He had it up at his shoulder, one eye closed, taking his time about it, and the sound of each shot was enormous up here in the open air, bouncing off the surrounding buildings and rolling out over the street below.

Down there the crowd at the doors was already thickening, heads turning, that horrible slow drift of bodies toward noise.

“Merle.” Morales voice was sharp. “Put it down.”

Merle fired again. Laughed at something only he found funny.

“Hey.” T-Dog moved toward him. “Hey, man, you need to stop. Right now. You’re pulling every one of them in the city down on us.”

Merle brought the rifle down and looked at T-Dog with disgust. “Boy,” he said, “I don’t remember asking you.”

The word landed like a stone in still water and everybody felt the ripple. T-Dog’s jaw tightened.

“Don’t,” T-Dog said. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” Merle tilted his head. Grinning now. “I’m just talking. Man can’t talk?”

“You know what you’re doing.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Merle agreed, and the way he said it shifted everything. He set the butt of the rifle on the ground and leaned on it like a walking stick and looked around at all of us.

“Matter of fact I been knowing what I’m doing. Y’all been out here playing house, waiting on somebody to come tell you what’s next.” He looked back at T-Dog. “Wasn’t gonna be you.”

T-Dog stepped toward him and Merle moved fast for an old man. He got T-Dog by the front of the shirt and had him turned and down on one knee before anyone had fully registered it was happening, one forearm across the back of his neck, and T-Dog was big but Merle had the leverage and the angle and the particular viciousness of a man who had been in this kind of situation before and knew exactly how to end it.

“Get off him.” My voice came out hard. I didn’t move toward him. There was no point moving toward him. “He hasn’t done a single thing to you.”

Merle looked up at me from where he had T-Dog pinned and smiled like I’d said something charming.

“See that’s where you’re wrong, sweetheart.” He straightened up, keeping T-Dog down with one hand, and looked around the roof. “I been watching this little camp of yours. Waiting to see who was running things. Couldn’t figure it out.” He paused. “Then I figured out nobody was.” He picked the rifle back up with his free hand. Easy. Comfortable. “Was gonna let it go another week or two before I made my move. Didn’t expect to do it today but here we are.”

He let T-Dog go and brought the rifle up.

Not at anyone in particular. At all of us. Moving it slowly around the group the way you sweep a flashlight, unhurried, making sure everyone understood what it meant.

“So,” he said. “Anybody got a problem with how things are gonna work from here on out?”

Nobody said anything. Jackie had her hands pressed together in front of her mouth. Glenn had gone very still beside me. Andrea’s eyes were moving, calculating, and I could see her deciding whether the angle was right, whether she could get there in time, and deciding she couldn’t.

She really couldn’t, her safety was still on.

I looked at Rick.

He was already looking at Merle with focused attention, just waiting for the right second. I took one small step to the side. Out of his way.

Rick made his move.

He was fast and deliberate about it, he got inside Merle’s reach before the rifle could track him, one hand on the barrel pushing it wide, the other going to Merle’s wrist, and then Merle was turned and down and Rick had a knee in his back and the handcuffs out before Merle had finished cursing.

The cuffs clicked shut around the pipe running along the roof ledge.

Merle yanked against them once, hard, and the pipe held and he yanked again and it held again and then he just breathed, chest heaving, cheek against the rooftop.

Rick stood up. His jaw was tight but his hands were steady. He looked down at Merle for a moment, a look in his eyes that wasn’t satisfaction, and then he reached into his pocket and took out the handcuff key.

He looked over at T-Dog, who was back on his feet, rubbing the back of his neck.

Rick tossed him the key.

T-Dog caught it. Looked at it in his palm. Looked at Rick.

“For when we figure out what to do with him,” Rick said.

Merle said something ugly at the ground that nobody responded to. Down below us the street noise had gotten louder, that low collective sound that set my teeth on edge, more of them gathering at the building front, drawn by the shots.

I looked out over the edge of the roof at the street and then back at the group and thought, we need a plan and we need it fast, i looked at Rick because he seemed like the person most likely to have one.

….

The smell hit me before we even opened the door, I had braced for the smell but I wasn’t ready.

Rick had found a cart in the back storage room, one of the big flat ones they used for moving stock, and he’d pulled two walkers in from the alley, put them down himself.

Smart.

I wasn’t there yet but I understood the logic.

We stripped the aprons off the rack by the employee entrance and put them on over our clothes and Rick looked at us both and said, “Ready,” but it wasn’t really a question.

Glenn looked at me with an expression that was mostly brave and partially the face of someone trying very hard not to breathe through their nose.

The smell coming off them was something I didn’t have adequate words for. Hot garbage with sweet undertones. Skunk spray baked into something wet. I breathed through my mouth and it didn’t help because you could taste it, thick and coating, sitting on the back of your throat.

Rick handed me a length of intestine like he was passing me a tool.

I took it. I did tried my best not to think about it. I rubbed it across my forearms and the front of the apron and across the back of my neck and tried to be somewhere else in my mind entirely.

Glenn made a noise beside me.

“Don’t,” I said.

“I’m not,” he said, and then made the sound again.

We covered ourselves. It took about two minutes and felt like two hours. By the end of it we were dark with it across our shoulders and down our fronts, the smell so close that my eyes were watering.

Rick had it across his face and he wiped his hands on his thighs.

I turned around.

T-Dog was by the door. I pointed at him. “The key,” I said. “Don’t put it down. Don’t set it anywhere. It stays on your person.”

He held it up between two fingers so I could see it. “I got it.”

“With your life.”

“With my life,” he said, and I believed him.

I turned back to the door.

Rick pushed it open and the outside air came in, heavy and hot and humid and we walked out together, letting the door close behind us.

No turning back now.

Up close the noise was layered, not just the shuffling but the breathing, that wet ragged sound they all made, and the low occasional knock of them moving against each other. There were dozens of them between us and the fence. Dozens pressed together in the street and spilling out into the space beyond, all of them slow and directionless, drifting.

We walked right between them.

Slow. Eyes down. I kept my gaze on the pavement in front of my feet, the cracked asphalt, a flattened paper cup, a smear of something dark. I did not look up. I moved the way they moved, unhurried, no destination, just forward.

Rick was ahead of me and Glenn was just behind my left shoulder and I could hear him breathing and I wanted to tell him to slow down but I couldn’t say anything, I couldn’t make a sound that wasn’t theirs.

One of them drifted close on my right and I felt the air shift when it moved past me. I kept my eyes down. My heart was going so hard I could feel it in my jaw.

It kept moving. Didn’t stop.

I let out a breath so slow it was barely a breath at all.

We kept walking. The fence was maybe forty feet away. Thirty. I could see the chain link through the gaps between them, the parked cars sitting silent in the rain-gray afternoon light. Twenty-five feet.

The first drop hit the back of my hand.

I felt it and didn’t react. One drop. Could be anything. I kept walking.

The second drop hit my cheek. Then my shoulder. Then the pavement in front of me went dark with it in a spreading pattern and the smell around us shifted, that rot and copper smell thinning as the rain started coming down, and I felt Rick slow almost imperceptibly ahead of me.

Don’t, I thought at him. Don’t you dare stop. Keep walking.

He kept walking.

The rain got heavier. I could feel the guts on my forearms going slick, the apron front going wet and dark, everything we’d covered ourselves in loosening and starting to run. A walker two feet to my left turned its head.

Twenty feet.

The rain came down harder. Properly now, that Georgia rain that just arrives all at once, and I felt something slide off my shoulder and hit the pavement. Fuck. The walker to my left turned its head again and this time it was toward me and it was not nothing.

Fifteen feet.

I looked up.

The fence was right there. Rick was almost at it. Glenn was a half step behind me. The walker to my left gurgled low in its chest and took one step toward me and I looked at the fence and said, clear and flat, “Run.”

We ran.

The noise that went up behind us was immediate and enormous, that shrieking clatter of all of them turning at once. The fence was coming up fast and Rick hit it first and went up and over like he’d been doing it his whole life and I was right behind him, hands on the chain link, feet finding the gaps, climbing fast, don’t stop, don’t slow down.

Something grabbed my ankle.

Cold fingers, a grip like a hydraulic clamp, and my whole body jerked downward so hard my chin cracked against the fence. I kicked. Hard. Felt it connect and their grip loosened just enough that I could haul myself up and over. The pavement coming up to meet me fast and I came down on the other side, landing wrong, my left shoulder taking the brunt of the fall, white light going off behind my eyes.

I lay there for one second. Just one.

Then I looked for Glenn.

He wasn’t at the fence.

I scrambled up onto my knees, shoulder screaming, eyes tearing through the rain and the crowd pressed up against the chain link on the other side, dozens of hands and faces all reaching, all reaching, and no sign of him anywhere in it.

Rick’s hand was already out to pull me the rest of the way up and I grabbed it but I was still looking back through the fence, throat closing up around his name before I could even get it out.

“Glenn.”

Nothing.

“Glenn!”

And then I saw him, ten feet down the fence line where he must have come over further along, flat on his back in the wet grass on our side, chest heaving, rain running down his face in sheets, alive, completely alive

He pushed himself up onto his elbows, hair plastered flat to his forehead

“For the record,” he said, voice shaking just slightly under the joke, “you smell terrible.”

“Glenn.” My own voice came out cracked. I didn’t care.

“I’m just saying. Objectively.”

“Get the car,” Rick ordered, hiding his smile,

“On it.” Glenn scrambled upright, pointed at me with a hand that wasn’t quite steady. “You’re still very pretty though. In spite of everything.”

And then he was off, full sprint across the lot toward the vehicles, and I stood there in the rain and watched him go, my heart still going too hard, still not fully convinced he was real until I heard the Challenger’s engine catch.

Rick had the van keys in the driver’s side door and I went around to the passenger side and got in and pulled the door shut. Inside smelled like old upholstery and fast food wrappers and in comparison to what we’d just been wearing it smelled like a candle shop.

Rick started the engine.

The sound of the alarm rolled out over the street and I watched through the windshield as the crowd infront of the building began to turn, following the noise, following the loudest thing, exactly the way we needed them to.

Rick and I looked at each other.

We stripped off the aprons fast, rolling down the windows to toss them out into the rain, and I peeled off my outer layer and turned it inside out and shoved it behind the seat and sat back and wiped my face with the back of my wrist and felt slightly more like a human being.

The streets ahead of us were clearing.

My shoulder was going to hurt tomorrow but we made it.

….

The truck rattled to a stop at the edge of camp, tires crunching over gravel, and I was reaching for the passenger door before it had even fully settled.

My hands found the latch fast, muscle memory more than thought, and I hauled the back door open.

“Here, I got you.” I reached up for Jackie’s arm, her fingers cold and shaking in mine as she climbed down, legs wobbling like she’d forgotten how to use them. “Easy. I got you.”

She landed on the ground and just stood there for a second, chest heaving, eyes wet and unfocused like she couldn’t quite believe the ground was solid under her again.

T-Dog appeared at the edge of the truck bed above me, and even before he said anything I could see it on his face, something gone gray and hollowed out that hadn’t been there this morning.

“I dropped the key.” His voice came out low, cracked at the edges. “Wasn’t on purpose. I swear to God it wasn’t on purpose.”

“What key?” But I already knew before he answered, that cold drop in my stomach arriving a half second ahead of the words.

“Merle’s cuffs. I dropped it down the drain trying to get him loose and I couldn’t.” He wouldn’t look at me. “Had to leave him.”

I felt my mouth go dry. Not on purpose. I believed him, the way his hands were still shaking told me everything I needed to know about how it happened.

But Daryl wasn’t going to hear it that way.

Who knows if Daryl was going to take offense that a black man left his brother chained to a roof. If he was anything like Merle he’d draw his own conclusions long before he let anybody explain the difference between an accident and a choice.

“Okay.” It was all I could manage. “Okay, just, don’t say that to anyone yet. Let me be there when you tell him.”

He nodded, jaw tight, and climbed down after me.

The rest of camp was already moving toward us, Shane leading the charge with that loose walk of his, relief was written all over his face even as he tried to keep it casual.

“Look who made it back in one piece.” He clapped me on the shoulder hard enough to rock my body forward. “How the hell’d you get out of the city?”

Glenn was already laughing, that high, disbelieving laugh he got when the adrenaline hadn’t worn off yet. “You are not gonna believe it.” He looked back toward the truck, grinning. “New guy got us out.”

Morales was laughing too, shaking his head. “Some crazy vato who just got into town.” He waved toward the truck. “Hey helicopter boy! Come say hello.”

Rick climbed down out of the cab slow, boots hitting the dirt with a heaviness that didn’t match the frown still hanging around his mouth. His eyes swept the camp once, taking it all in, the people staring back at him like he was something they weren’t sure they believed yet.

Then his eyes found Shane.

Everything went quiet around them. Shane’s jaw shifted, just barely, a flicker behind his eyes. Rick just looked at him, steady, unreadable, the two of them frozen there for a beat that stretched longer than it should have.

“Dad!”

Carl came flying out from behind Lori, small legs pumping hard through the dirt, and whatever had been sitting heavy in the air between Rick and Shane broke apart all at once.

Rick dropped to his knees before Carl even reached him, arms already open, and the boy slammed into him so hard it nearly knocked them both backward. Rick’s face crumpled, all that steadiness we’d seen at the warehouse gone. Rick pressed his mouth to the top of Carl’s head and just held on, eyes shut tight, like if he let go even an inch the whole thing might not be real.

“I’ve got you,” I heard him say, muffled into Carl’s hair. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”

Lori stood frozen for a second, hand pressed to her mouth, before she finally moved, crossing the space between them in a rush and dropping down into the both of them, arms wrapping around her husband and her son at the same time like she could fold the whole family back into one shape just by holding on tight enough.

I looked away, uncomfortable with how intimate the moment felt from where I stood.

My eyes found Shane instead. He was still standing where he’d stopped, watching the three of them. For a moment, before he could smooth his expression away, I caught something in it.

It looked a lot like grief.

….

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@missilayla

[icekisseddevil]

New Beginnings

Chapter 1 following the fall of Atlanta

Notes: short and brief intro to the story with our MC Rum.

Warnings: implied SA, violence, gore, mentions of drug use and firearms, age gap relationships, sex. cursing and child abuse (flashbacks)

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Daryl Dixon x reader

Word Count: 7k

I had been on the road for three weeks.

Arizona was good. Maybe even better than good. It beat every spot in Georgia I’d ever been to. The first few days I’d eaten at a diner in Sedona that reminded me of my favorite movie, the burgers were juicy and the pie crust shattered when I pressed my fork into it.

I’d hiked the Grand Canyon and listened to rain come down on the roof of my truck overlooking the cloudless sky at two in the morning and thought, this is it. This is the life.

Fort Valley looked exactly the same when I passed the welcome sign. That’s the thing i hated about small Georgia towns.

They never changed.

The peach water tower sat against a white sky, same as always. The dollar store on Moseley had a hand-lettered sign in the window I was pretty sure had been there since 2005. I drove past the ice cream shop I used to work in the summer and didn’t slow down.

Denise’s house was on a street shaded by old oaks, the ones that drop pollen in yellow clouds every spring and coat every surface in a fine green dust by May.

I pulled into her driveway, if you could even call it that and cut the engine. The truck ticked and cooled while I sat there a minute, hands still on the wheel, telling myself I could still turn around and go back.

I’d look like a coward but I’d be happy.

I grabbed my bag from the back seat. It smelled like sunscreen and the cedar air freshener I’d bought somewhere in New Mexico, and faintly of the fast food I’d eaten for the last four hundred miles.

The front door swung open before I could make it to the porch steps.

Gloria came outside.

She was one of Denise’s neighbors, a woman in her late sixties that used to watch us when we were kids. She donned a floral housecoat that I remember her wearing every time I’d ever seen her, or one exactly like it.

She had her arms out before she reached me, and the look on her face made my stomach drop before she said a word.

“Baby,” she said, and grabbed both my hands. Her palms were dry and warm. Her breath smelled like coffee. “I’m so glad you’re home.”

“What happened?” I said.

She didn’t answer right away, and that was its own answer.

“Your mama’s been real sick,” she said. “Real sick. We didn’t want to say it over the phone and worry you while you were traveling but I’ve been over here every day and she hasn’t been herself, she hasn’t been—” She stopped. Pressed her lips together. “She’s been asking for your daddy,” Gloria said. “On and off since yesterday.”

I left my bag on the porch steps.

The smell hit me the way it did when I still lived here as a kid. Fried food and old maple syrup that clung to the curtains and the baseboards. The porcelain dolls on the shelf over the TV watched me come in with their painted eyes, same as they always had.

“Denise?” I called out.

Nothing.

The TV was on in the kitchen, volume low, just noise. A news ticker ran across the bottom of the screen. Ranting about wildfire cases reported in three more counties. Officials urging residents to limit large gatherings.

Her bedroom door was mostly closed. I pushed it open with two fingers.

I covered my mouth and nose with the collar of my shirt and it didn’t help, it smelled rotten and wrong, like meat left in a car in July. “Jesus.”

Denise was on the bed, propped up against the pillows, hands flat on the quilt, eyes unfocused, not necessarily tracking anything.

There was a shallow basin on the dresser, water gone lukewarm, a cloth draped over the edge. Gloria had been in the middle of something when I called.

I wrung the cloth out after moving to the side of the bed and washed her hands first, working between her fingers, her skin loose and soft. Then her face, her neck, the inside of her elbows. She didn’t try to stop me. God knows she needed a bath.

She looked at the ceiling or past it, somewhere I wasn’t, and I ignored the distant look in her eyes. I worked in silence with the lamplight and those dolls at my back. It took everything in me to keep my breathing even and my hands moving because that was the only way to get past the smell.

“Patrick.”

Low and rough, dug up from somewhere. She was looking at the window.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was steady. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for any of it. I never meant for it to get so far.”

I went very still.

She went on about the affair. How long it lasted even before he got sick. The money she’d moved without telling him. How she beat Nikki and I when we found out what she was doing.

She never once looked at me.

She said his name one more time, barely sound at all, and then she stopped.

I sat there.

It was over.

There was nothing I could do now so I got up and picked up the water glass and the tray with her pill bottles on it and carried everything downstairs to the kitchen. The stairs creaked in the same three spots and I didn’t avoid them this time. I set the tray in the sink, pills rattling against each other.

It was getting harder to breathe. I stood there with my hands braced on the counter and looked out the window towards the darkness. I had hated her for so many years even when her memory started slipping. Gloria told me she’d ask for me at night while I was on the road.

Even then I wasn’t ready to forgive her so I told Gloria to remind Denise she has no daughters, just a husband who was busy at work. That he’d be home soon.

I knew I needed to do something so I picked up the phone and tried the ambulance. Then 911. Then the non emergency number I still had in my phone from two when she’d fallen.

Busy. All of it. Every single line.

I stood in the kitchen pacing back and forth. Why was I even here? Why do I have to be the one handling this and not Nikki?

Just try again. I had the phone wedged against my ear, pacing a tight line between the kitchen and the living room while a recording told me all circuits were busy, “please try your call again later.”

Today can’t possibly get any worse.

Then something crashed upstairs, a heavy thud followed by glass breaking loud enough that I froze mid step. The phone slipped from my ear. I went completely still, my body fighting the urge to just run out the door. Instead I rushed toward the stairs taking them two at a time.

“Denise,” I called. My voice came out so small, weak, I needed to be stronger than that.

She turned her head toward me.

The whites in her eyes had gone the color of old paper. She didn’t even recognize me. She made the sound again and started to move, got one hand flat on the mattress and pushed. the smell rolled toward me like a wave.

I jerked away, heart beating so fast I could feel it in my ears, behind my eyes, in the tips of my fingers.

My shoulder hit the door frame.

She got off the bed.

She was slow about it. Unsteady. Pale feet skimming the floor until she stood, chin dropped, arms loose at her sides.

A beat passed before she rushed toward me.

“Stop. Hey.” My voice came out steady. I couldn’t explain how.

She didn’t stop.

I backed all the way into the hallway and she came barreling through the door after me and I was running away from the door. There was a wooden umbrella stand by the linen closet. I grabbed it without thinking, both hands, the wood smooth and cool and solid in my grip.

I swung it.

The wood connected with her head. She went down but didn’t stay down. I towered over her and breathed and waited until she started to move again. She jerked towards me and I hit her again, harder, right against her skull and she finally stopped.

I stood there in the hallway for maybe a minute. Long enough for my breathing to even out. Long enough to figure out an explanation to tell Gloria, who had been calling my name from somewhere outside.

I’m so fucked.

I set the umbrella down against the wall.

I need to get out of here.

I walked back to the front door and stepped out, the breeze cool against my arms where my mom’s blood started to harden. Gloria was standing at the foot of the porch steps with her hand pressed to her mouth.

I picked up my bag from the step.

“I need to borrow your phone,” I said.

…

My hands were shaking on the wheel when I dialed her number, dirt and blood still packed under my nails.

“Hey, you’ve reached Nikki, leave me something good.”

“Hey. It’s me. Call me back when you get this, okay? It’s about Denise.”

I pulled out of the driveway way too fast, gravel spitting up under the tires. My eyes kept cutting to the rearview like something might be coming up behind me even though I knew nothing was, not yet, not out here.

Prison.

If anybody found her like that and found me anywhere near it, that was the only word my head would give me. I needed to hear Nikki’s voice before anything else happened. One time. That was all I wanted.

I called again at the end of the road, phone pressed so hard against my ear it hurt.

“Hey, you’ve reached Nikki, leave me something good.”

“Nikki it’s me again. I need you to call me back. Something happened and I need to know where you and Eli are. I don’t know what to do right now. Please just call me.”

I turned onto the main road heading north, out of Fort Valley, my headlights swallowing the dark in front of me. I called again with one hand on the wheel, the other gripping so tight my knuckles ached.

Voicemail.

The radio clicked on by itself at the county line, the station I always saved for a long drive and for a second I almost smiled at the familiar crackle of it before I realized it wasn’t music coming through.

A mans voice drifted through the cab.

“This is an emergency broadcast message from the Civil Defense Network.

Residents are advised to remain calm and seek shelter at the nearest designated safe zone. Roads leading into Atlanta remain open.

Do not attempt to approach individuals who appear disoriented, injured, or unresponsive to verbal commands. If you encounter such an individual, do not engage. Leave the area immediately and proceed to the nearest shelter.

National Guard units are being deployed to major population centers, including Atlanta, effective immediately.

We will continue to broadcast on this frequency. Head toward the city.”

….

I woke up to knocking.

Gentle, unhurried and it clearly wasn’t planning to stop. I came up sideways off the window with my heart going and my hand finding nothing. The first thing I saw was a fishing hat through the glass and my heart began to slow down.

An older man. Round face, kind eyes, a thermos in one hand and a sleeve of crackers tucked under his arm, standing in the gray early morning light like he’d been there for a while and found it perfectly reasonable.

I cranked the window down.

His eyes went to my shirt for exactly one second and came back up to my face and stayed there.

“Sorry to wake you,” he said, and held the crackers through the window. “Dale Horvath,”

I took them waiting for the catch.

“I’ve got a Winnebago a few cars up.” He poured something from the thermos into the cap and held that through the window too, coffee, actual coffee, and the smell of it hit me so hard my eyes watered slightly.

“I’ve been talking to some of the people stuck out here. There’s a quarry off the highway, few miles back. Trees, water, some cover.” He looked out at the highway, at all the still cars and the pale morning coming in over the tree line. “It’s better than waiting here for whatever’s coming down that road.”

I tried the coffee. It was terrible but I didn’t care at all.

I looked at the crackers and at the highway stretched out in both directions. I didn’t have anywhere left to go.

“Yeah,” I said. “Alright, I’ll come.”

Dale nodded like that was exactly what he’d expected and picked up his thermos and headed back up the shoulder toward the Winnebago.

I watched him go before starting my truck.

….

I followed the convoy off the exit and down through the trees with my window cracked and the morning air coming in cool and green smelling, damp from the night, and I hummed some random song without thinking about it.

The quarry opened up through the tree line and it was bigger than I’d expected. Wide flat water sitting teal and still in the early light, rock shelves dropping down to it on the far side, pines ringing the whole thing in close and tall.

People were already pulling in around the edges, cutting engines, sitting in their cars for a minute before they got out.

I parked at the end of the line and sat there taking everything in. It wasn’t the worst place in the world to be. I’d lived in worse. Trailers, cars, even drug dens.

I turned the engine off and hopped out.

The first hour was uncomfortably silent. Nobody talked. They moved around each other carefully, keeping their distance and privately deciding whether this was a good idea or not.

I found a flat spot back across from the RV, good ground, enough tree cover to block the wind, and I set my bag down and stood there with my hands on my hips. I don’t even have a tent.

I had a deer blanket, a map, and a camera I’d taken from my mother’s house. I had my dad’s cd case in the front seat of my truck and a full tank of gas that was going to matter a lot less every day.

A hand appeared in my peripheral, holding a folded square of olive green nylon.

I turned. A man I didn’t know yet, gray at the temples, beady eyes, nodded toward the flat spot I’d been standing in. “Found an extra in the back of somebody’s wagon. Didn’t look like they were setting it up.”

“Thanks,” I said, and took it.

I patted the bag down for the manual, fingers digging into the corners, feeling for anything that felt like folded paper. Nothing.

“Great. No instructions.”

“It’s cold, right?” a woman questioned. I turned around to see two women had materialized behind me.

Where were these people coming from.

There girl behind her was beautiful, more my age from the look of it. They were both blonde, matching set of ice blue eyes, definitely sisters.

The older woman offered a tired smile, arms crossed against the chill already settling in. “Andrea,” she said, then nodded at the girl beside her. “My sister, Amy.”

“Are you by yourself?” Amy asked. I could tell she didn’t mean to be nosy just genuinely checking.

“For now.”

She nodded like she understood what I’d meant and didn’t push it. I decided I liked them.

I watched them both for a moment while they continued their conversation, Amy tucking herself against Andrea’s side without thinking.

“I think he’s been up since four.” She glanced back at Dale fondly. “He made oatmeal. I don’t know where he got oatmeal, I didn’t ask.”

Andrea’s arm went around her side.

I turned away and snatched the tent bag off the ground and dumped the poles out.

She’s out there somewhere in this mess. My sister had to be alive and I won’t accept otherwise until I see it for myself.

….

Shane Walsh had the look of someone who had been itching for a reason to be in charge. He stood proudly in the middle of the camp in his uniform, badge catching the morning light, and waited for people to notice him.

That didn’t take long because he was built and positioned in a way that made ignoring him require active effort which I don’t think anyone had left in them.

“Can I get everyone together for a minute.”

It wasn’t loud but it carried. People drifted in from the edges of camp, some still holding what they’d been unpacking, the woman with the folding chairs still had hers tucked under one arm. I stayed where I was near the tree line with the unassembled tent at my feet and my arms crossed and watched.

He let everyone settle.

“My name is Shane Walsh. I’m a sheriff’s deputy out of King County.”

“I know nobody here knows what’s coming next. I don’t either. What I do know is that the military is going to be moving through these areas and when they do they’re going to be looking for people, groups who’ve got themselves organized and aren’t a problem to extract.” He looked around the circle, taking in faces. “So that’s what we’re going to be. Organized. Not a problem.”

Somebody toward the back asked about Atlanta.

“Atlanta’s gone,” Shane said. Just like that. No softening. “We saw that ourselves last night. Whatever was in the city, it’s done. That means this is where we are and this is what we’re working with.” He looked around again. “We need shelter set up before dark. We need a food situation figured out. We need to know what everybody here can do and we need people willing to do it.” He paused.

“Anybody who wants to sit this out and wait for somebody else to handle it, that’s your choice. But I’d rather have you with us.”

The camp was quiet around him.

Nobody walked away.

Shane nodded once. “Alright. Let’s get to work.”

People moved with a direction that hadn’t been there before. I picked up the tent and figured out the poles by feel and had it standing in under fifteen minutes, which was a personal record and also the saddest thing I’d accomplished recently.

I stood back and looked at it.

A green tent barely big enough to lie flat in with a deer blanket and a travel bag inside. nothing else.

Home sweet home I guess.

I sat down in the entrance of it with my elbows on my knees and looked out at the camp coming together around me, people stringing lines between trees, a fire pit getting started somewhere to the left, Shane moving through it all with his badge checking things off a list only he could see.

The afternoon light was coming in warm through the pines now, hitting the quarry water and breaking apart into small flat pieces of brightness.

I watched it for a while.

I could’ve been in Arizona right now. I’d had a whole route planned, a folder in the backseat with campsites and a budget broken down by week. Five years of bartending shifts and insurance calls that didn’t work out and weekend waitressing, all of it pointed at that folder.

My dad would have definitely found this hilarious.

Amy appeared beside me with a tin cup and handed it over without ceremony.

“Dale’s oatmeal,” she said.

I looked at it. “Where did he get oatmeal.”

“I didn’t ask.”

I laughed. She dropped down into the tent beside me and pulled her knees up too. I wrapped both hands around the tin and let it warm them.

….

The laundry assignment came from none other than Shane, which Andrea did not find amusing.

“That’s what we’re doing,” she said, not quite a question. She was just staring at him deciding whether to keep her mouth shut or say the rest of what she was thinking.

“It needs doing,” Shane said, and moved on before she could respond, which was probably smart of him.

Andrea stood there for a second watching him walk away. Then she picked up the laundry bucket.

There were five of us down at the water’s edge by mid morning, the sun already warm across our shoulders, the quarry sitting flat and bright in front of us. Amy had claimed the best rock right away, wide and sloped, and was sorting through a pile of children’s clothing.

Carol was beside her, quiet, working through things methodically. Jackie had her sleeves rolled up and was doing the same. I found a spot a little further down and dropped my pile and dipped my hands in the water.

It was cold. The good kind, the kind that wakes you up properly.

Lori came down about twenty minutes later with Carl on her heels and a basket balanced against her hip. She set up between Andrea and Jackie and got to work without making an announcement about it, frustration clear on her face.

Carl lasted about four minutes before he found something more interesting happening elsewhere in camp and disappeared back up the bank.

“I’m Amy,” she announced to nobody in particular and everybody at once. “Andrea’s my sister. In case the bickering wasn’t enough of a hint.”

“We’re not bickering,” Andrea said from further up the bank.

Amy laughed, choosing to ignore the comment as if Andrea’s response proved her point.

“That’s not bickering, that’s processing.”

I looked up from what I was doing. Amy caught my eye and grinned.

“I’m Rum,” I said.

Lori’s eyebrows went up. “That’s a great name.”

“It’s a nickname.”

“Even better.” She wrung out something that had been a white shirt and was now more of a gray one and held it up to the light critically. “Where are you from?”

“Fort Valley. South of here.”

“Really?” She asked, genuinely surprised. “We lived in king county.” She dropped the shirt over a branch behind her.

“My dad worked over there, Grady memorial hospital. He was the janitor,” I admitted slightly embarrassed but she didn’t flinch. Lori just smiled sadly.

“My husband’s still there. He passed a few days ago.” She had her head down over the water, hair falling forward, the tears were silent.

“Carol,” she said quietly, to the water more than to us.

“I know,” Amy said warmly. “Sophia’s your little one, right? She’s sweet.”

Carol looked up at that, something moving across her face that was softer than anything I’d seen from her yet. “She is,” she said. Just that, just two words, but she meant them completely.

It was quiet for a little while, just the sound of water and wet fabric and the birds going in the pines. Amy was humming something I almost recognized.

“Does anybody actually believe it,” Jackie said.

Nobody answered right away.

“Believe what specifically,” Andrea said.

“That the military is coming.” Jackie kept her eyes on what she was doing. “That this is temporary. That we’re going to get extracted and go back to something.”

The quarry sat in front of us bright and indifferent.

“I think Shane believes it,” Lori said carefully.

“Shane needs people to stay calm,” Andrea said.

Lori scoffed at her. “He’s trying to help.”

“I didn’t say he wasn’t.”

“It sounded like you were about to.”

Amy picked up another shirt from her pile and said at normal volume to no one, “And we’re off.”

I kept my eyes on the water. Carol beside me had gone very focused on the hem she was working, fingers moving small and careful, and I had the feeling she spent a lot of time finding things to be very focused on when the air around her changed temperature.

“I think it helps to act like it’s true,” I said. “Even if you don’t know.”

Andrea looked down the bank at me.

“You’ve got to put your energy somewhere,” I defended. “Might as well put it toward something that could actually happen.”

“That’s optimistic,” Andrea said.

“I’m from fort valley,” I said. “We don’t have a lot of other options.”

Amy laughed, real and sudden, and it bounced off the quarry water and went up into the trees and Carol’s shoulders came up around her ears for a second before she let them back down, and when I looked over she was smiling at the shirt in her hands, actually smiling, and trying not to show it.

By the time the sun was overhead we had two lines strung between the trees heavy with wet things drying in the warm air, the smell of clean fabric mixing in with the cooked fish and the quarry water.

Amy was telling a story about a road trip she and Andrea had taken when they were younger that had gone wrong in about eleven consecutive ways and I was listening with my arms crossed and my face neutral. Trying but failing not to smile.

Carol was folding things into neat squares and stacking them on a dry rock, each corner matched up.

“You doing okay?” I asked, low enough that it was just for her.

She looked up. Her eyes were steady, steadier than I expected, and she looked at me for a moment deciding something. “I’m alright,” she said.

It wasn’t the whole truth and we both knew it. But it was what she had right now and I wasn’t going to push on it.

“Okay,” I said, and went back to the line.

The laundry dried in the afternoon sun. The camp kept building itself up the hill behind us. For today at least the world ending felt almost manageable.

….

Two weeks in and we had something that almost resembled a routine.

Mornings were for water and laundry and whatever needed doing before the heat got serious. Afternoons were slower, the camp settling into itself. Evenings were the fire.

That had started on its own, nobody really ‘planned’ them. Someone got a fire going the third night and people just drifted toward it how people always drift toward fire, pulling up whatever they had to sit on, and by the end of the week it was just what we did.

The sun went down and the fire went up like clockwork and for a couple hours nobody had to be useful.

I’d claimed a log at the left side of the pit that I sat on every night with my elbows on my knees and my cup of whatever was left from dinner.

Glenn had started sitting beside me, close enough to talk, far enough to maintain his dignity, which I respected. He brought things sometimes. An extra fish from the pan. A slightly better cup than the one I’d been using.

He never made a thing of it, just set it down and looked at the fire.

It was sweet. It was genuinely sweet and I felt bad about the fact that my eyes kept going across the fire to where Shane was sitting.

He wasn’t doing anything in particular to draw my attention. That was the thing that confused me. He was just there, elbows on his knees same as me, talking low to T-Dog about something, firelight catching the side of his face, and I’d look for a second and then look away at the fire and then somehow be looking over there again.

It was irritating. I was irritating myself.

Glenn said something beside me about a card game he wanted to organize and I said yeah that sounds good and meant it and kept my eyes on the fire so I wouldn’t have to look at either of them.

It was a good night. Warm, the frogs going down at the quarry, the fire snapping clean and dry, somebody’s radio playing low from across camp. I’d washed my hair that afternoon and it smelled like the travel soap I’d found in my bag, something with lavender in it or blueberry and lemon. I felt more like a person than I had since the highway.

T-Dog leaned forward and poked the fire and said, “Morales went out with his bow about an hour ago.”

“By himself?” Andrea asked.

“Said he knew what he was doing.”

Shane looked up from the conversation he’d been having and scanned the tree line automatically. His eyes darted around the perimeter and came back to the fire and he didn’t say anything out loud but I knew what he was thinking.

Glenn offered me the last biscuit from the cloth he’d been holding.

“Thanks,” I said, and took it.

He smiled at the fire.

We heard rustling in the trees before we saw them. Heard voices from the south trail, two maybe three sets of footsteps on the dry ground. Morales came through the tree line first with his hands slightly raised and a grin on his face that meant he’d done something worth seeing.

Behind him came the two brothers. “Found these two about a mile out,” Morales said. “They got a deer.”

The older man had the deer across his shoulders and he let it down and dropped it on the ground at the edge of the fire circle with a heavy thud that made Sophia flinch against Carol’s arm and made Carl’s eyes snap open all the way.

“Y’all look like you been eatin’ grass,” he said, cutting a grin around the circle. His eyes moved across faces, stopped on Andrea for a beat with something appreciative and not subtle about it, then kept going. “Lucky for you Dixon boys don’t miss.”

Lori was already on her feet. She had Carl by the shoulder, keeping him close, but her chin was up and her voice came out warm and clear. “We’re really grateful. Truly. That’s going to mean a lot to everybody here.”

He looked at her with mild surprise, like he’d expected someone to say something but not someone like her, and then gave her a nod. “Yes ma’am.”

“You’re welcome at this fire,” Dale said from his chair, steady and sure, like he was confirming what Lori had started. “As long as you continue to contribute. We could use it.”

I took a bite of Glenn’s biscuit. It was good. Carol made good biscuits and I was choosing to think about that instead.

….

Dale climbed down the side ladder a little before dark, moving carefully as to not break a hip. He crossed to where Andrea was sitting and she looked up from her book like she hadn’t already heard every footstep.

“Mosquitoes are getting bad tonight.” He produced a small bottle from his front pocket. some kind of oil, lemon-scented from where I was sitting. “Keeps them off better than the spray.”

Andrea looked at the bottle. Then at Dale. “And you just happened to have that.”

“I had a wife for twenty years. I’ve come prepared.” He said it simply, tone even but I could tell he was nervous.

She held out her arm.

He turned the bottle into his palm and worked the oil careful and unhurried across her wrist, then lathering her forearm and she watched him do it. I looked away before either of them could catch me watching.

That man is obsessed with her. She doesn’t stand a chance. Just wait until Amy hears this.

….

The fire light was already going orange by the time I noticed the deer strung up near the tree line, and I wandered over mostly because I didn’t want to sit through the quiet anymore.

Dale had Andrea settled by the fire pit still and the two of them had that look people get when they want to be left alone without having to say it out loud.

Daryl had the deer half open already. I could smell the blood from a few feet off, intense copper, wet leaves maybe, or just the ground itself after a day of heat. He didn’t look up when I got close. Just kept working the knife along the inside of the hide, slow and even, like he’d done it a thousand times and didn’t need to think about where his hands were going.

“You gonna stand there or you gonna help.”

It wasn’t really a question. I crossed my arms and watched him for a second before I answered.

“Didn’t realize I was invited.”

“Wasn’t an invitation.” He finally glanced up, just enough for me to catch the unamused look on his face. “Was an order.”

I laughed.

He had a voice that came out clipped no matter what he said, the exact opposite of invitation. But I crouched down across from him anyway, close enough to feel the heat still coming off the carcass.

“Fine. Boss me around then.”

He huffed through his nose, something close to a laugh he wasn’t going to give me credit for, and held the knife out handle first.

“Grab it here.” He showed me with his own hand first, fingers wrapped low near the guard. “You cut too high you’ll nick the stomach and then ain’t nobody eating tomorrow.”

I took the knife. It was heavier than I expected, the wood of the handle worn smooth in the middle from however many hands held it before mine. He reached over and adjusted my grip without asking, just took my wrist and moved it down an inch.

his hands were rough and dry against my skin, calloused enough around the edges that told me everything about how he’d spent his life before this one.

“Just like that. Now follow the line I started. Don’t saw at it. Let the blade do the work.”

I did what he said. The hide gave easier than I thought it would, a soft tearing sound under the blade, almost like fabric. The smell got stronger the deeper I went, thick and mineral, and somewhere under it I caught pine from the trees behind us and woodsmoke drifting over from the fire.

“You’ve done this before.”

“Hunted some when I was younger. Nothing this big though.” That part was true. Mostly squirrel and rabbit, things small enough that my daddy used to let me carry home myself, proud of it the whole walk back.

Daryl made a sound that wasn’t quite agreement and wasn’t quite doubt either. He took the knife back from me when I got stuck near the hindquarter, showed me where to angle it, just nudging my hand the direction it needed to go.

His patience surprised me. Not at all gentle but I could tell nothing about him was gentle. he wasn’t barking at me either, not after that first order.

He spoke low, almost to himself half the time, narrating what he was doing more than actually teaching it, like he forgot I was there to learn and not just there.

“You’re better at this than your buddy morales,” he said at one point, not looking at me. “Boy couldn’t gut a fish without flinching.”

“Didn’t realize you were keeping score.”

“Ain’t scoring nothing. Just saying what I see.”

The fire popped behind us and somewhere further off I heard Carol calling Sophia in for the night, gentle as ever.

Daryl’s jaw tightened at the sound, just slightly, like he heard something in it too, but he didn’t say anything about it. He went back to the deer instead, hands moving fast now that the light was almost gone, working by feel more than sight.

When we finished he wiped the blade on his jeans and held it out to me again.

“Keep it.”

I looked at him, waiting for the catch.

“I got others.” He was already standing, already turning toward the fire. “Just don’t lose it. And don’t go cutting yourself being stupid with it either.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

He grunted something that could’ve been a laugh and walked off without looking back, and I stood there for a second with the knife warm in my hand from where his fingers had been on it, smelling like blood and smoke.

I didn’t know what to make of him yet. Rude in a way that didn’t apologize for itself, short with everyone, and still somehow the only person at that camp who’d handed me something instead of just talking at me. And insanely hot.

I tucked the knife into my belt and headed back toward my tent.

The tent was hot even with the flap tied back, that thick canvas smell mixed with the bug spray Amy kept passing around like it was perfume.

I lay on top of my sleeping bag because it was too warm to get inside it, listening to the camp settle down around me, crickets going steady in the dark, and somewhere further off the quarry water lapping against the rocks.

I had the knife out, turning it over in my hands, getting used to the weight of it, even running my thumb along the flat of the blade where it had gone dull and gray from however many years of use.

The handle was wood, dark with oil and sweat worked into the grain, and it was smoother on one side than the other, like it had been carried in a pocket more than a sheath.

That’s when I felt it. Three letters cut into the underside of the handle, shallow, like whoever did it didn’t have much more than a pocketknife and patience to work with.

WTD.

I held it up closer, angling it toward the lantern light coming through the tent wall from somewhere outside.

Definitely letters, not just scratches from wear.

Daryl Dixon. The D made sense. But the W.T I couldn’t place. He didn’t strike me as a man with a middle name he’d go out of his way to carve into a knife handle. Merle had a few names for their father and none of them sounded like the kind of man who carved initials into anything except maybe somebody’s face.

I turned it over again, like I might’ve missed something the first time, but it was just the two letters and nothing else. No date, no other mark.

I set it down next to my pillow and lay back.

I wasn’t going to ask him in front of everybody. He’d shut down quick if I put him on the spot but next time it was just the two of us, whatever excuse got us alone again, I was going to ask him.

Everybody at this camp had a story they weren’t telling. I figured his was worth knowing.

….

[icekisseddevil]

The Walking Dead

Welcome to my walking dead masterlist. The primary focus ofc is none other than our shared husband, Daryl Dixon, but will include other characters eventually.

Warnings: implied SA, violence, gore, mentions of drug use and firearms, age gap relationships, sex, cursing and child neglect/abuse (flashbacks)

- there will be lots of crossover between show events AND the comic book for both stories which will imply SA, creepy disgusting men, graphic descriptions of violence. Not to worry though, bad guys don’t win in my story.

Daryl Dixon

He’s My Man

-> MC character board

Eventual Daryl Dixon x Reader - Slow burn 😏

Season 1

Part 1 , Part 2 , three, four, five

Season 2

TBD

Season 3

TBD

Shane Walsh

The Good Guy

I think most of us can agree, Shane wasn't obsessed with Lori, he was obsessed with Rick and what better way to explore that theory than be in his mind.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Negan Smith

Mistakes We’ve Made

Negan Smith x Wife!Reader