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When he arrived at the compound, the warm air of summer was just starting to turn dry and the leaves were starting to change color. The grass was beginning to shrivel up and trees were starting to shed and look like skeletons reaching up from the soil. The sun still warmed anyone who stood right in its aim, but when night took over or you went in the shadows of the remaining full trees, that bitter cold seeped through your clothes and down to your bones.
He remembers that ride on the back of the van with the dim autumn light barely breaching the small windows on the rear end of the vehicle, only making out the outlines of guns still pointed at his head.
Those few starting weeks of being stark naked in a room so tiny that if he stretched out his legs he would hit the wall on the other side, he curled into himself as much as was physically possible. It did nothing to fend off the crisp air seeping in from the poorly insulated walls. He sat in complete darkness. The shivering became normal that he stopped noticing it. When he was fed disgusting dog food sandwiches on stale, hard bread, he ate it without complaining because it was all that was keeping him going. Water was rare but that’s when he looked most pathetic, gulping down water so quick he barely had time to take a breath.
Now, the cold is starting to get more intense. His fingers and toes are starting to go numb, his skin starting to tingle at how cold it got in the little cell, the cement walls and floor doing nothing to make it more bearable.
When Dwight opens the door today, he expects to be thrown another disgusting sandwich, but instead a pile of fabric gets carelessly thrown on the floor.
“Put that on,” Dwight ordered. “Be quick about it.”
Daryl doesn’t even care if he’s exposed. He jumps up so fast that he stumbles and pulls on the shoddily made, baggy uniform.
The fabric isn’t that thick, but it’s better than being naked.
“Now come on, don’t wanna keep him waiting.”