Chapter Text
It was a wasteland. There was no other way to describe it. It would be as barren as a desert if it weren’t for the white-picket fence suburban houses that scattered the roads. Houses that, under any other circumstances, Daryl would have never found himself in. But now, he had scrutinised almost every one of them. The pack on his back was heavy, brimming with everything him and Merle had deemed good enough to take. They were trudging down the final road where Daryl’s truck and Merle’s bike were waiting. They had left them there and then headed down to the other end of the neighbourhood so they didn’t have to carry the heavy packs on their backs.
Relief flooded Daryl as he took the bag off his shoulder and let it slump into the back of his truck, his shoulder popping from the ease of tension. He let it roll in its socket, massaging it with his other hand before he grabbed the handle of the truck’s door. He was halfway into the seat when a whistle came from behind him. He looked around to see Merle looking at him expectantly.
“Come on, brother.” Merle said, nodding his head in the direction of the last house on the street. “We still got one more house to do.” Daryl groaned but complied, pulling his crossbow back out, his shoulder protesting against the strap. They trundled ahead to the porch of the final house. With his hand on the door knob Daryl looked over to Merle who nodded. He tried to open the door with a slight push of his hand but it wouldn’t budge.
There was something blocking the door. He pushed it again, harder this time, and it opened slightly. They were hit with a stench that made them both recoil. Just through the crack that had appeared in the door, Daryl could see a mangled, grey hand reaching blindly towards them. From what he could tell, the walker was blocking the door, whether it had lost its legs and couldn’t move, or it was just sitting there waiting for them he couldn’t be sure. He looked around at Merle once more, who quickly gestured for Daryl to go first.
Rolling his eyes, Daryl pulled a bolt out from its place on his crossbow and rather than placing it in his crossbow, held it in his hand. He shoved the door once more with his shoulder and as it slid open enough for him to slip through he drove the bolt through the head of the walker on the other side. It fell to the ground with a thud and, with the weight now alleviated, the door opened enough for Merle to enter as well.
He made a point of climbing over the bloody corpse on the ground. It was just a torso, it looked as if the head had been torn off and dragged away by another one of those creatures. The legs weren’t there either, there was just a pool of blood from where they had been pulled and pulled until they snapped. Merle was at the kitchen by the time Daryl had taken his bolt out of the walker’s head and turned to check out the living room. He could hear the rattle of cupboards being ransacked as he crossed to where the sofa was.
The place was pristine, nothing was out of place, unlike the other houses they’d checked out. Still, he overturned the cushions and pushed the TV out of the way but there was nothing worth taking. He searched for a few more minutes but when nothing turned up he went back into the hall to find Merle heading up the stairs. He followed after his brother, the stairs creaking under their feet. On the landing was a dead walker, a woman with half of her face missing. There was a perfect cut in the middle of her head, through which a knife would probably have been, but nobody else in sight.
As Merle headed in the direction of what looked like the master bedroom and the bathroom, Daryl went the other way to two more rooms. One perfectly resembled that of a teenage girl and Daryl had a horrible feeling that it was the bedroom of the torso that lay downstairs. He didn’t spend too much time in that room, he knew that there wouldn’t be much in it but he took some blankets from the closet.
When he moved into the other room he had to force himself to carry on. In the room were two beds, one a lot smaller than the other, the smaller one had pink floral bedding and toys covering its entire body. He searched through the drawers of a desk on the other side of the room but didn’t look much harder. He was about to leave when something caught his eye.
It was a picture frame, with butterflies plastered on the outside. Within its frame was a photo of a family. He picked it up to look closer at the picture. A mother, a father, and three little girls. The youngest was only a baby in the photo. The eldest looked about eight or nine and she was holding the baby in her arms, a long brunette braid flowing over her shoulder. She was looking at the camera with a smile as bright as the sun. The two parents had one arm around each other and the other around one of their daughters. The third daughter looked to be about four or five, her dad had his hand on her shoulder pulling her backwards into a hug. She was laughing, clinging to her dad’s arm as her head was getting buried in his shirt. They looked happy. That was something that was rare to come by nowadays. He placed the picture down where he had found it before going to meet Merle in the hall.
“Anythin’?” He asked as Merle emerged from the bathroom.
“Nah, nothin’. Not even a pack of cigs hidden in the toilet. Stupid suburban bitches!” Merle lashed out, kicking the wall hard enough to make a hole. Daryl could see that nothing better than a few sheets could come out of this so he moved past Merle heading for the stairs.
“Come on, let’s get outta here.”
“Hey.” Merle said before Daryl could get too far, but when Daryl looked back, Merle wasn’t looking at him. Instead he was staring at the ceiling. In particular, he was looking at a hatch that probably led to an attic.
They climbed up, Daryl with his crossbow and Merle with a machete stretched out in front of him. There didn’t seem to be anything up there that they could use, just a few scattered boxes, but the place looked untouched, as if someone hadn’t been up there for years. Merle went for the boxes straight in front of them, which left Daryl to the boxes at the back. He slung his crossbow over his shoulder and went to open the first box he saw, but something caught his attention.
A noise broke the silence of the attic, and it wasn’t just Merle being obnoxiously loud while opening boxes, it was something much closer. He took the crossbow off his shoulder and aimed it at the boxes to his right. There was nothing to be seen at first but as he moved closer a glint of light flashed across his eye from behind one of the boxes. He shifted it to the side to see what had been making the noise.
It was a girl. Her hair was blonde and falling in front of her face. From what Daryl could tell, she couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. Her face and clothes were covered in blood, the same blood that was coating the knife she bared in front of her defensively. Guess he knew who killed that walker downstairs.
She was shaking, her breaths were coming out unevenly, and from what little Daryl could see of her eyes, they were wide and unflinchingly staring at him and, more particularly, his crossbow. She was terrified.
“Merle?”
“What?”
“There’s a girl.”
“Kill her.” Merle said, not looking up from the box he was looking through.
“No.” Daryl said, shaking his head. “She ain’t dead.” That caught Merle’s attention, and he abandoned the box he was ransacking to look at her. She flinched as he came near, the knife being directed at him instead. He stared at her for a few seconds, taking in her appearance and the scared look on her face before standing back up.
“Come on.” He barely glanced at Daryl as he shoved the things he’d collected out of his boxes into his rucksack and slung it over his shoulder.
"We can’t just leave her.” Daryl argued.
“Sure we can. Besides, we don’t need no dead weight.” He added, already climbing down into the house and not looking back. Daryl stood for a few seconds, staring at the spot where Merle had just disappeared. He glanced back at the girl. She was still staring at him, but the knife was now by her side, not pointed at him.
He went to follow Merle, grabbing his stuff, but he only got halfway across the attic before he stopped. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. This was stupid, he shouldn’t do it and yet he knew that he was going to do it anyway.
“That your family down there?” He asked, looking back at the girl who had climbed out of the boxes and was now kneeling on the floor, still staring at him. She looked down at his crossbow, inspecting it and clearly not trusting it around her, then looked up into his face and slowly nodded. He had to look away from her, her eyes boring into him making him uncomfortable.
He couldn’t just leave her there. She would never survive, he wasn’t even sure if she could make it down the hatch without breaking something she looked so fragile. And he certainly couldn’t leave her with nothing but a butter knife to defend herself with.
No. Merle was right. They didn’t need any dead weight to take all their stuff and eat all their food, since she looked like she hadn’t eaten in days. They didn’t know her, she could turn around and slit their throats while they were sleeping. He knew it was a stretch but they couldn’t trust anyone nowadays. No, he’d leave her here, let her fend for herself. If she wound up dead that wasn’t his fault, he wasn’t responsible for this kid.
That was it, he’d made his decision. He turned away from her and started walking away, but a part of him could still feel her eyes on him, staring into his soul and unravelling him. He stopped walking.
Shit.
He marched back over to her, which in hindsight probably wasn’t the best idea as she jumped back and pushed herself against the wall. Ignoring her reaction, he held his hand out towards her. She just stared at his hand reaching out towards her with apprehension.
“Come on, girl, this is a one time offer.” He warned. Daryl was about to take his hand away and not look back after what felt like an age of waiting, when she slowly reached out and took his hand.