...
“What's going on?” Daryl said, sitting up after
something startled him from sleep.
It was broad daylight when Daryl
woke up, blinking from a ray of sunlight in his eyes. He could tell by the
position of the sun that it was high noon. He was pissed that he'd been allowed
to sleep so long, but at the same time he knew his body had needed the rest.
Sasha was awake and the pain on her face made Daryl’s stomach tighten. Karen
sat beside her, holding her hand, but Daryl knew their quiet conversation
wasn't what had pulled him from sleep.
“Firefight outside,” Karen said.
“The rest of that gang is here.”
“Can't the doc give her something
for pain?”
“He's given her the strongest stuff
he's got.”
“I'm ok,” Sasha said weakly.
“You ain't,” Daryl countered. “I'll
find something for you.”
The pop pop pop of gunfire was muted
but unmistakable. Daryl hopped from the bed and met Sasha's eyes. He'd never
been good with his feelings. He had a lot he wanted to say but there was no way
he could bring himself to say it, especially with Karen sitting right there,
but the way Sasha squeezed his hand and met his stare he had a feeling he
didn't need words. She got it. For her part, Karen deliberately looked at the
floor to give them what privacy she could until Daryl cleared his throat. He
shifted awkwardly on his feet.
“I'm gonna go on out,” he told her.
“I'm gonna find a way to get those meds for you.”
Sasha winked. “Don't risk too much.
I don't want you dying for some aspirin for my boo-boo.”
She had more than a boo-boo but he
wasn't gonna bicker with her about it. “I ain't the one dying for this
shit. They are. All that noise will draw walkers they'll have to deal with.”
He wanted to kiss her but didn't.
Being honest with himself, Daryl hated even having the impulse for it. So
they'd fucked once, big deal? She wasn't his woman and he wasn't in love. Fuck
that. She was a friend and he was tired and…
“See ya later,” he said, and hurried
from the room, feeling like an asshole, knowing she probably thought he'd just
used her and now didn't want anything to do with her.
It wasn't until he was in the hall
that Daryl literally clapped a hand to his face.
See ya later, he thought. Jesus, what was that?
Sasha was in trouble, laying there
with a gunshot, in dire need of medicine for surgery, and they'd just fucked
hours ago, and he comes up with see ya later ? This was why he avoided
relationships, women. They made him doubt himself. They made him say stupid
shit like see ya later .
“Daryl, the list,” said Dr. S. He
handed Daryl a piece of paper with a list of items that Daryl not only couldn't
pronounce, but he couldn't imagine what they looked like, either.
“I'm going with you,” Bob said,
approaching with a backpack slung over his shoulder. He was also armed with a
gun on his hip, and a knife.
“You were a field medic in the army,
right?” Daryl asked.
Bob nodded. “I was trained to shoot,
handle a knife, basic hand to hand combat. You won't have to babysit me out
there, and I know what to look for.”
“I gotta see what's going on out
there,” Daryl said. He looked to the doctor, tilted his head back to the
infirmary. “I'm coming back. You keep her alive.”
The doctor nodded. “I'll do my
part.”
Daryl and Bob headed for the nearest
exit, which wasn't far from C Block. They stepped into the sunlight, saw the
barricades up, and saw there were over twenty armed men in front of the prison.
“Beth and Carol are trapped in the
tower,” Maggie said, when she spotted Daryl. “They'll be there till nightfall,
at the least.
“We can distract them while you and
Bob slip out the back door,” said Rick.
“I guess these dicks don't wanna
talk,” Daryl said.
“Oh, they talked,” Rick informed
him. “The leader is a man named Harry. You killed his brother, Henry, and he
wants your blood.
So, Teeth had a brother and he was
here for revenge. Daryl peered through the fences and inwardly shivered. It
looked like Teeth had survived, come back to life as a living man instead of as
a walker.
“Spittin’ image,” said Daryl.
“Sasha ain't got time for you to
deal with this mess,” said Tyreese. “Y'all get the medicine. We'll take care of
them.”
“The tombs is where we'll head out,”
Daryl said. He turned to leave but Rick gripped his arm.
“What those men did...It won't
happen again. Not to you, not to our people. I'll see to that.”
Daryl believed him. There was too
much conviction in Rick's voice, too much certainty in his eyes.
“We're gonna hit up a veterinarian
clinic a few miles from here. Be back by nightfall.”
He turned from the battle, from
Rick, and headed inside to get his things.
For such an aggressive group of
pricks none of them were very smart.
They were all hiding in the trees taking potshots at their people, but Daryl
noticed not one of them had sent lookouts around back or the sides of the
prison, just in case some of their people tried to sneak out. This guy, Harry,
was concentrating all his manpower in one position. That was something Daryl
planned to exploit just as soon as he and Bob got back from this run.
Walking was slow-going but they
finally got to the jeep they kept on the emergency escape route. It was on an
overgrown path, not easily visible either from the prison or the road. They
hopped in, Daryl taking the wheel, and Bob riding shotgun. They cut through the
thick brush, both men keeping an eye out just in case some of Harry’s men were
lurking nearby, looking for any runners. There was nothing.
“This reminds me of a run our group
made last year,” Daryl said.
“Yeah?”
He looked over at Bob.
“Rick’s son, Carl, had gotten shot
by accident by a man named Otis. He was a friend of Hershel’s. We took him back
to the farm but Hershel didn’t have the equipment he needed to operate. One of
our guys, Shane, went on a run with Otis to get the stuff he needed. Otis had
been a volunteer EMT. Shane was a former cop, Rick’s best friend.”
“I take it Shane died on the run?”
Bob asked. “You're talking about him in past tense.”
“No. He made it. He and Otis got
trapped by a bunch of walkers. They were down to their last round. He shot
Otis, left him to be eaten by walkers while he escaped and brought the
equipment home to save Carl.”
Bob shifted in his seat and tapped
his gun on his leg. “You trying to say you’ll do the same—”
“No. I’m saying I’m nothing like
Shane,” Daryl told him. “I’m gonna get you home, get the stuff Dr. S needs to
save Sasha, safe and sound. Don’t care what I have to do.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Bob said,
but his voice was still tight. Daryl was the one who’d found him on the road
but they weren’t close, they didn’t know one another. He didn’t know if Daryl
would kill him to save someone he knew better, especially if what Bob suspected
about Daryl and Sasha being a little closer than just friends was correct.
They were losing daylight, fast, but
some of that was the cloud cover that was rolling in. Daryl parked the car in front of
the fence to the vet clinic and killed the engine. Last time he’d seen the
place it had been clear of walkers. That wasn’t the case now. There were six in
the yard and he could see more lurking inside.
“I’ll draw a few of them off,” Daryl
said. “We’ll spread them out, take ‘em out quiet as we can. Last thing we need
is gunfire drawing even more of ‘em.”
“Right.”
They hopped out and Daryl approached
the fence heading right, while Bob headed left. The walkers came right for
them, hands outstretched. Together they took them out with their machetes,
hacking into their heads, getting blood and gore splattered on them, uncaring
of it though they did.
“Shit. The place is packed,” Bob
said.
“Okay. You open the door, let a
couple out at a time. I’ll kill ‘em, drag them away, open the door again.”
“That’s gonna take ages. It’ll be
dark—”
“We ain’t got no choice,” Daryl
said. “There’s too many of them to take head on.”
Of course, as soon as Bob opened the
door there were too many to hold back. They crowded the exit, shoving so hard
Bob lost his footing and went down. He screamed on instinct, making the walkers
bloodlust peak. Daryl gripped the top of his shirt, hauled him back, and lost
his knife in the process. At least he managed to get Bob back on his feet.
“The fence!” Daryl shouted.
They hurried back to the other side
of the fence, saw there were at least fifteen walkers pouring out of the
building.
“Why the hell are there so many in
there?” Bob asked.
“Fuck if I know,” Daryl groused.
“Last time I was here the place was empty as a tomb.”
He went back to the Jeep, grabbed
his crossbow, and fired every last bolt he had while Bob worked at the fence,
hacking away. It was slow work, the sun was fading, the clouds thickening and
threatening rain. It was proving to be a wet spring and the last thing they
needed now was rain to make the ground muddy.
Finally the last walker fell. Daryl
took back his bolts, putting the bloodied things back in the quiver to be
cleaned later, while loading one back up and keeping it aimed ahead of him,
just in case. He got inside first while Bob came in second, flashlight
illuminating the dank interior of the clinic. There was nothing inside now but
broken furniture and old magazines. Luckily for them they managed to clear the
back, where the medicines and equipment were stored, and where the back door
was wide open.
“There's the reason for all those
things,” said Daryl. “They wandered in.”
“Damn it,” Bob said.
“What?”
“Dr. S needs some manual pump
resuscitation bags. There’s none. We ain't the only people to hit this place
up.”
“What about the meds, though?” said
Daryl.
“We’ve got…propofol,” Bob said.
“That’s all that’s left but that’ll have to do.”
“What’s it do?”
“It’ll knock her out for the surgery
but we still need to be able to breathe for her, just in case. Let me keep
looking.”
Bob knelt and was throwing vials
into his bag, as well as syringes and other equipment. He finally smiled and
picked up something, holding it up for Daryl.
“Bupivacaine,” Bob said.
“So?”
“She can be awake but without pain
if we have to,” Bob explained. “We just need to find some bags, just in case.
We really need those. There’s a supply closet—”
He started to reach for the door but
Daryl halted him. He knocked on it first, waited, listened, and sure enough
there was the unmistakable moan of a walker inside. Daryl had Bob pull the door
open while he fired inside, then used one of the instruments on the table to
take the other walker down.
“Bingo,” Bob said, heading inside.
“Oh man, we need all of this shit.”
“Get it, and hurry.”
Bob stuffed his bag, and Daryl’s,
with manual pump resuscitation bags, gauze, bandages, antibiotic ointments, and
as much of whatever else as much as he could carry, including scalpels. When he
was done, he looked with longing at the other stuff inside.
“I wish we could take it all with
us. Never know when we may need it.”
Daryl, nodded toward the door.
“We'll come back for it when we can. Let’s go. Sasha’s in pain and Dr. S needs
to operate soon as possible.”
“So, about you and Sasha,” Bob said.
“Something there?”
Daryl growled and stalked toward the
exit. Bob sighed. “I’ll mind my own business, then.”
Getting out had been easy, getting
the truck parked facing out toward the road, covered in brush to
camouflage it, and then hiking back was a bit more of a job. Apparently Harry had wised up and
sent some of his people around the sides of the prison. Getting up and into the
tombs without being noticed wasn’t going to be easy. Daryl wanted to curse in
frustration. They were so close with everything Sasha needed but four of
Harry’s pricks stood in the way.
“I’m gonna get the one on the left,”
Daryl whispered. “Take him down quiet. Then I’ll go for the one on the right.”
“I can get him,” Bob whispered back.
“A knife to the base of his skull. He won’t make a peep.”
“You sure you can do it? Kill a
man?”
“I ain’t got a choice,” said Bob,
“so yeah, I can do what I have to.”
Bob got his knife ready. Moving as
quietly as they could, using the cover of gunfire up ahead, they snuck up on
their prey. Bob moved first, Daryl second, each one taking a man down.
Unfortunately for them, Bob’s guy reflexively jerked when the knife penetrated
his brain and he fired off a round, alerting his two companions to his and
Daryl’s presence.
Bob was a lot quicker on the draw
than Daryl expected. He managed to shoot one man while Daryl used his crossbow
to take out the other.
“They see us,” Bob said.
Harry’s men were now looking in
their direction.
“This is it,” Daryl shouted. “Run!”
They left the cover of the trees and
took off to the break in the wall, gunfire aimed at them coming in hot and
heavy. Bob cried out just before he got over the wall, and Daryl had to shove
him forward to keep him from toppling back down the pile of rubble.
“My leg!” Bob shouted.
“Come on, I got ya.”
“They’re gonna come around here,”
said Bob, panting in pain. “Take the stuff and get to Sasha. I’ll make my own
way in.”
“We’re already around here,
asshole.”
There was a click as a man stepped
forward, flashing a light in Bob and Daryl’s faces, momentarily blinding them.
Fuck , Daryl thought, just before the
sound of a gunshot made his ears ring.
...
A/N: I think Daryl likes Sasha more than he cares to admit. What about you?
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