Chapter Text
Tyler loved the beach. Her earliest memory was of when she was four years old, and she had run into the waves unfearful, letting them swallow her and envelope her in their salty brine. It was one of the rare and few vacations her family had ever been on. The coast of Virginia had been the happiest and earliest part of her life that she could remember. She'd felt so safe in the sun's glory, happy with the sand between her fingers. Her brother and herself built a sand castle three-feet high, and knocked it down with buckets of water just to build it again. They were safe. They were happy. They were alive.
But that day on the Virginia coast had happened way before then.
Way before the world ended.
Way before the dead ever roamed the Earth.
The new world had come in like a tsunami on the shore. There was nothing anyone could do except for watch and brace themselves for what was to come. At first, the military promised refuge in larger cities like the one Tyler had been living in. But when her roommate became one of the monsters herself, Tyler knew that staying home and waiting for rescue was no longer an option.
She wanted to hit herself for staying so close to the city for so long. It was overrun with the dead; the military long gone from the area because of all the bombings. After the military and its FEMA camps went down, Tyler knew she was truly on her own.
A pair of trusty throwing axes bounced on her sides as she jogged through the forest. The rubber on the handles were a bit worn as the axes got plenty of use between the dead and other tasks. A mop of brown hair bounced around her head in shoulder length curls and waves. The hair was insanely uncombed, with knots billowing every which way.
As she ran, her brown eyes darted from tree to tree, looking for danger.
While the group of dead ones were long behind her, Tyler knew how easily they could catch a scent or pursue their prey if not provided a distraction.
Her body ached at her to stop.
Ahead of her, the perfect opportunity awaited.
Slowing to a stop on the forest floor, Tyler scanned the pine tree before her and nodded.
"You'll do," she shrugged, causing her light pack to bounce on her back as she did so.
Reaching her hands up and pulling with all her might, Tyler heaved herself onto the closest branch and began up the tree with relative ease. As she climbed, she listened for any approaching footsteps or grunts or growls.
One thing about the dead that Tyler learned very quickly were how loud they were. She could always tell when they were near due to their constant snarling and moaning. Their footsteps were short and inconsistent and dragged on the ground wherever they walked. The noise never ceased, and sometimes at night when Tyler was hiding out in a tree top or somewhere else high up and secluded, it would annoy the shit out of her.
She wished they'd all die already. How hard could it be to decay?
In the trees, she could see everything. And with a rope to secure her lest she fall, it was about the safest place she could find most nights with decent weather. Winter had been rough because she was forced to shelter in old houses, which were magnets for the living and traps if the dead were to overcome her. Spring had been full of thunder storms and excessive humidity. Summer was proving to be no better, as even at night Tyler found herself removing her leather jacket because of the residual heat of day only to replace it in the wee hours of the night.
Tyler was constantly afraid of the dead as well as the living. The living probably even more so. Her last encounter with the living had been months ago, and it was an encounter that made her want to never see a breathing person again.
Shaking the bad feeling that overcame her at the thought of those few days, Tyler resided herself to sifting through her supplies.
Some rope, a utility pocket knife, and a half-full canteen of water was all she had for survival other than her axes. She sipped her water, noticing the near empty quality of the canteen as she did so. With a sigh, Tyler debated her options.
Food had been scarce for the past few days of her "journey", and she wasn't sure why. Of course, the dead were constantly chasing around anything living and edible, but so far the only dead she had run into had been the only group in the entire week. In fact, it seemed like the farther she headed north, the more she ran into.
But north was her direction-- her only direction. The only solace she had in mind since leaving her apartment was perhaps finding some familiar faces near her home town of Lesage, West Virginia. Doubt had recently crept into the back of her mind as the seasons changed and a few months turned into a year of the outbreak.
Tyler figured that by the time she got there, Cabell County would be nothing more than a memory. If her brother and father were still around, which she doubted, she felt as if she would side against a family visit. Her Uncle, the only person worth visiting, had probably hunkered down in his doomsday bunker. He'd be the only one to remain, the crazy old bat, but he was enough for Tyler to attempt the lengthy journey. It had been years since she had seen her family, or at least what was left of it, even before the outbreak she was sure that soon the pain the town had caused her would just be a distant, painful memory.
But the desire for something familiar swept in like a wave upon the shore as she escaped her apartment complex, and thereby the Atlanta city limit, and realized that she could not think of anywhere else to go. At least up home she had familiarity, and if anyone had stuck around the area, maybe even a friend or two. Mountain people were different, stronger. They stuck to their own, and they all knew how to shoot, hunt, and take care of themselves. On one hand, herself and those from her place of origin could be backwards, on the other, they were incredibly sturdy. She attributed having been raised there to her grit and survival.
So to West Virginia she went. Besides, it's not as if there was anything else to do.
She sighed and zipped her bag up. Seeing as how nothing, dead or living, seemed to be around, she began her climb down from the branches which held her. With a turn toward the trunk, a bit Eastward, a flash of a structure caught her attention.
Through a bit of tree tops and a small hill stood a concrete and fenced-in formation of what appeared to be a penitentiary. What stood out most to her wasn't the fortified gates of wood and metal, or the crowds of the dead lining and pushing on the fences, or the rows of sprouts of food or the pens of animals, but the people within the fence, clearing off the dead one-by-one.
She paused and narrowed her eyes to observe. Eyes narrowing, she felt light panic rise in her throat.
The prison was not far off. Only about an acre of forest and then a few yards of grass and hills separated her from the gates which held potential danger. She was in one of the tallest trees on that side of the woods, and from there she could count about four people of the fences picking off the dead, a man toiling in the soil of the inner gates, and a vast movement of bodies beyond in the courtyard.
Her blood pumped, and from where she was, she could make out an array of figures small to large.
She descended from the pine with fervor and panic. Tyler was not ready to be the victim of another human encounter, so she was bolting away from the tree and heading West as soon as her feet hit the forest floor.
Heat from the afternoon and fear rose in her face as she bolted far, far away from what she had seen. In the heat of midday, she was tiring quickly, and she had already been running that morning. Minimal water and food plus a full day of running in the heat of Georgia made for a very heat exhausted Tyler.
So it was no wonder that she did not see the snare waiting on the forest floor.
The rope was thick, made for larger game like foxes, coyotes, and deer. She was only about one-hundred and thirty pounds at the time, an unhealthy weight for the girl, so the rope swept Tyler's feet from under her, and in a swift motion had her dangling upside down with her hair and shoulders in the leaves below her.
Her ankle screamed in pain. The worn out hiking boot on her foot did little to prevent the rope from sweeping up her jeans and rubbing the skin of her ankle mockingly as it popped and rolled about, straining the muscles and making her groan in pain.
Tyler was caught completely off guard.
"Shit!" she shouted, and soon cursed herself for shouting in the forest filled with the dead and potentially people.
She was disoriented. Her head had hit the ground hard on her fall, her ankle was now throbbing in pain, and the blood was rushing to her head. Thinking wasn't easy, but the easiest thing Tyler could think to do was to retrieve one of her axes to cut herself down.
The thought came a little late, seeing as how as soon as she had it, a vicious snarl came through the forest. All the shit piled up as she saw the ugly, deformed, dead creature limping towards her with intent.
"Shit, shit, shit," she muttered and gripped for her axe. Keeping a watchful eye on the spunky corpse, who charged at her from only a few yards away, she struggled for the button of her axe's holsters. It finally made it into her grip as the dead freak got too close for her comfort.
The axe slid out and nearly hit her in the face, and as she riffled for it on the forest floor with her hand behind her head, she watched as the creature tripped on a log, buying her some time. With that time, she found the blade of the axe with her hand, slicing it open on the freshly sharpened blade.
She seethed but found the handle. With the axe in hand, she heaved all of her strength and energy that she had into tossing her body upwards to slice the rope tied to her ankle.
Luckily, the rope snapped with ease. Her body hit the ground with a thud. The pain in her ankle grew as she stood, disorienting herself enough so that she could hardly make out the dead face in front of her.
Within a second, the woman was being pinned to the forest floor once again-- but this time by a force more deadly than just a rope.
She tried to push the foul-smelling dead man away from her with her good hand and the opposite elbow, but her head spun and he fought back with gumption. With a grunt of force and panic, she kicked her legs up from beneath her, earning a spark of terrible pain from her ankle, and kicked the body away from her.
The corpse rolled off to the side, and as it laid there for a second, Tyler shot up with her axe in her bloody hand. With a swift motion, she brought down the axe into his head, silencing his growls and attempts to eat her.
Tyler seethed at the pain in her ankle and hand. Cradling her ankle, she rocked and seethed, noticing the reddening skin from the rope burn.
"Great," she rolled her eyes at the mess she had gotten herself into. The panic had not helped her, Tyler knew that then, and now it had gotten her a possibly dislocated or sprained ankle, a cut hand, and a case of whiplash.
Surviving on her own was enough, but now she was injured with little to no knowledge of how to fix herself.
With that thought, she leaned against a tree to catch her breath. From her pocket, she produced a thin rag which she used to wipe blood off her axe. Wiping the blood away from the blade, she considered her next move and her condition. She could turn back-- she recalled seeing a small town that might hold promise of having a few supplies laying around. Perhaps there would be a place for her to rest her ankle and lay her head.
This time, the steady crunching of leaves and silent whispers alerted her of a much more lethal threat-- people.
A breath caught in her throat, and she crouched down low to scan the area. From the direction she had come from, the footsteps grew sparsely louder. As far as she could tell, there were at least two people-- maybe even more.
Through the trees, she began to see the figures moving towards her, so Tyler kept a low stance and limped around the large tree she was based at so that she couldn't be seen by them.
She looked around for any path she could take-- any tree she could climb. But there were none in the area. Besides that, she doubted that she could make a run for it up a tree with her ankle throbbing the way it was.
Tyler knew that they were coming closer and would soon see the damaged snare and the dead corpse. She had practically set up a show for them in which she was the main character, and she was suddenly having stage fright. Instead of being a sitting duck, Tyler decided she would at least go down running. With a step forwards with her good leg, and seeing no other option, she started off.
It only took a few steps for her to suck in air at the pain her ankle was in. Her limp was making evident trails in the leaves, and the pain she was in was almost enough to make her cry out.
With a whimper, she half dragged her gimp foot through the leaves, alerting her pursuers of her whereabouts.
A whistle from behind her distracted her steps. A stray root caused her to fall. Once again, her body thumped to the forest floor.
Today was simply not her day.
Throwing her gaze behind her, two men were in hot pursuit of the limping moron she had become within the past few minutes.
"Hey!" one of them shouted. A scruffy beard framed the narrowed gaze he gave as he and a flash of another man whipped through the trees after her.
Tyler cursed and pulled herself up off the forest floor, leaves sticking to the blood on her hand. As she limped forwards, she snatched her spare axe from the ground where she had dropped it in her fall.
The footsteps grew closer in the leaves, and Tyler knew she couldn't outrun them with her poor ankle.
She whipped around, a daring gaze in her eyes.
"Don't come any closer!" she shouted, and her voice betrayed her as it cracked.
They did not slow down, so she brought her axe back near and whipped it towards the one in a button-up shirt. If it weren't for her poor balance, she would have hit him square in the head.
The bearded man stopped for a second after that and gave her a scowl.
"Hey!" he shouted once more, this time angry and outraged.
The other man with him, with a crossbow slung on his shoulder as he ran, narrowed his eyes and kept on pursuit of her. Tyler changed direction and stumbled through the grass. Her hand landed on her other axe on her left side. As she released the button and turned with the ax now in her grip, she was brought down by a large force.
Or rather, a large man.
As they hit the floor, the wind escaped her, and she attempted to raised the axe only for her wrists to be pinned down to the forest floor. With her hips and good leg, she attempted to throw him off, but to no avail. Terrified, her mouth allowed a whimper to escape. The man stared down at her, saying something like "Calm down" and other things that really only made people more scared.
The dark hair fell into his face as he pinned her. For some reason which Tyler could not comprehend in the moment, he had some odd tenderness in his face. HE didn't look like he wanted to rob or hurt her. That did little to calm her nerves. "Let me go, asshole!" she shouted. He said gruffly, "Drop it!"
She struggled more. A knee to his lower abdominals caused him to grunt and snarl at her. He pinned her leg down with his own, causing pain to erupt in her only good ankle. She cried out in pain, her yell as loud as a freight train.
She was immobilized, and she scrunched her eyes while her hand attempted to keep her grip on her axe. Eventually, his intense grip on her wrist forced her hand to open, straining and shaking. When her axe finally dropped out of her hand, the pressure on her wrist made her grumble in discomfort.
"You done?" he grumbled.
She mustered up her courage, and with a sneer on her face, she spat into his eyes. At least she'd die with the last laugh.
He growled, and looked as if he were going to hit her, but he didn't.
"Daryl," the other man approached, "enough."
'Yeah,' she thought, 'call your dog off.'
"She threw an axe at your head," Daryl grumbled, and the sincerity of his voice and his hazel eyes made her shiver, "really think she should be running around after that?"
"Take the axe," the other man said. He had a drawl like a polite southern gentleman. "Let's have a civil conversation."
Daryl, as he was named, grumbled, but relented. As he stood, he took the axe that had just fallen onto the ground. Tyler grumbled and rolled off to the side.
Once oriented onto herself, she took off her backpack and threw it to the ground next to her. She sighed, utterly defeated and injured and alone.
"Here," she said, "Just take it and leave me alone."
Daryl scoffed and made no move to take the bag. Next to him, the other man handed him the other axe.
"Any other weapons on you?" he asked. He leaned on his dominant hip, and although he had just had an ax thrown at his head, he was well composed.
Tyler didn't answer. She just grumbled and brought her good leg closer to her chest. Shaking her head, she refused to look at the two men.
"I'm Rick," the man with the beard said, "this is Daryl."
Tyler stared down at the forest floor in confusion, wondering why they hadn't just taken her stuff and made on their merry way already. After what happened with the last group, what were these guys going to do? Especially after she'd spat in one's face and threatened their lives.
"Our watch tower spotters saw you in the woods-- up in the trees?" Rick clarified, "We came out to see if you needed any help."
Tyler scoffed, "And tacklin' people to the ground is how you say 'hello'?"
"You did throw an axe at my head."
Tyler rolled her eyes, "You were chasin' me."
Daryl scoffed, "What were you doin' in the trees? Watchin' us?"
Tyler unbent her legs, babying her right ankle as she did so.
"Hiding from the dead," she answered.
"And the snare?" Daryl snarled. Based on his reaction and clear distaste to the damage she had caused to it, she would guess that he was the one who set the trap.
"Tell whoever set it I said 'good job'," she said with narrowed eyes, referring to her obviously hurt and rope burnt ankle, "Started runnin' when I saw your place. Don't want nothin' to do with no group."
Rick narrowed his eyebrows, "Why?" he asked.
Tyler shrugged, "People're trouble."
"Well, we're not gonna hurt you."
'It's a little late for that,' she thought.
"We just need to ask you some questions."