That's Me Trying

"I should have stayed with ya," Daryl breathed out. I was snuggled underneath his arm, the sun rising through the blinds and burning the right side of my cheek. I spent the night tossing and turning, images of those polaroids coming to life in my dreams. I was up before the sun rose and so was he, although, we lay here comfortably, silent until now.

"We're here now, everything turned out fine," I responded, attempting to ease his thoughts. Although I didn't entirely believe the words myself. We were home and safe, but far from fine.

"You and Glenn almost died," he shook his head. I could feel his arm squeezing tighter around me.

I sat up, one arm propped on the bed holding my body weight and the other draped over his chest, "But we didn't," I said, a smile on my lips that didn't meet my eyes. I leant down, softly placing my lips on his. Not even that seemed to warm him to me. "What's wrong?" I questioned.

His eyes refused to meet mine, his focus set straight ahead on the ceiling. I studied his face. From the curve in his frown to the wrinkles in his brows that made his eyes dark with anger. "Those people I met, the one's in the burnt forest, when I was separated from Abraham and Sasha--"

"During the herd attack?" I asked, cutting him off.

He mumbled out a yes. He had told me about them briefly, a man and two women, that had taken him hostage in the burnt forest. He managed to get free, yet instead of fleeing, he helped them, one of the women in desperate need of insulin.

"They took my shit in the end, took my bike, the same one that Saviour rolled out with," he explained. I could figure out what he was hinting at, but I didn't want to think it to be true.

"Well, the Saviours could have stolen the bike from them, no?" I questioned.

Daryl shook his head, "Nah, those people in the burnt forest were running away from something. Running from somewhere."

"You think we started something last night?" I asked, my heart dropping to the pit of my stomach. Those people he met in the forest were a part of the Saviours or trying to leave them. But, either way, they were not at the satellite base last night, which means the Saviours had a second location, or third, or fourth.

"I do," he exhaled, "I don't think we even made a dent."

--------

By the time I had got ready for the day and reached our front porch, Denise had been waiting for me. The moment I had swung open the front door, her fist lay dormant in the air, prepared to knock. She stood to the side, allowing me to walk out as she fiddled with a map nervously in her hands.

"I wasn't-- I haven't been standing there long," she stumbled on her words. She had always seemed to be a nervous bird, unsure of how to stand on her own or know if she even could. I don't know if it was us she was intimidated by, or if she had always been that way.

"Good," I responded, a smile inching up my face to try and relax her. "Are you attending Rosita's lessons today?" I asked her, as I walked down the porch steps. The sun once again scorched the side of my face.

"Actually, can we do something else?" she asked, following me down the steps. I turned to look at her, my hand hovering over my eyes as I blocked the sun from them, looking down at her map. Just then Daryl emerged from the house.

"Daryl," I called him over, insisting that he listened to her plan for the day as well.

"Good, I was going to ask if you were around," she pointed at Daryl, "I actually thought I'd see you first," she said and I tried not to be wounded by the tiny insult. She pointed down at the map, her index finger placed on top of a location she had circled in red ink. "After I got out of DC, I just drove. I remember seeing it right when I realized I had no idea where I was going. Edison's Apothecary and Boutique," she explained, "It's just this little gift shop in a strip mall, but if it's really an apothecary, they had drugs."

"How do you know they still got 'em?" Daryl questioned.

"It isn't that far. I just wanna check," she said, her way of admitting she had no idea if it'd even be worth our while. "And you and Scar aren't our scavenging or pulling shifts."

Daryl nodded his head, not needing to hear any more from her, "We'll go," he offered.

"I wanted to check," she then said, "I just wanted to help."

"How much time you spend out there?" he asked, his eyes narrowing. I studied the side of her face. I could see how bad she wanted to do this. Why? I don't know?

"None--"

"Forget it," Daryl instantly shut her down.

Denise didn't like that as she fought back, "I can ID the meds. I know how to use a machete now. I've seen roamers up close. I'm ready."

Daryl paused for a moment, exhaling as he looked over at me. I crossed my arms, staring at Denise as she fought to make this trip with us. "You good with this?" he asked me as soon as my eyes met his.

My face remained hard, my lips pressed into a thin line as my nostrils flared, "No."

"I'll go alone, if I have to," Denise said like her asking us to come along was a courtesy to us.

"You'll die alone," Daryl fought back, pointing out her stupidity.

"I'm asking you to make sure I don't," she guilted us.

Daryl sighed, once again pausing to look over at me. "I am not being left alone to die with her," I said.

It had been settled after that. Denise guilt-tripping us into taking her along on the run. Or, her guilt-tripping me and me guilt-tripping Daryl. Either way, we now sat crammed in the front seats of an old stick pickup truck. Denise wedged in between Daryl and I as she stared down at Daryl's hand on the gearstick, wincing each time he shifted it and the truck made a horrible rebutting screech.

"It-- the…" she said, pointing at the stick before stopping herself.

"What?" Daryl questioned, the gears grinding underneath us.

"Forget it," she shook her head.

"Tell him," I said, my voice light as I smiled to myself. I knew exactly what was wrong. I never learned how to drive a stick myself, but I grew up riding in cars where my father only drove stick shifts. I knew enough to be able to tell when someone was doing it wrong.

"I think maybe you're disengaging it too soon," Denise said and my smile widened. I looked over to see Daryl already peering over at her. She stuttered, clearly intimidated by his rough exterior, "I've been driving stick since I was 15, usually beat-up trucks like this," she immediately defended herself. "I mean, before-- you know, before I left home," she added in. Daryl made a face as he went to shift gears again, the metal grinding together underneath us. "My brother taught me, so I just know," she said as she shook her head, hearing him actively destroying the gears.

"Daryl," I cut them off, drawing attention to the massive oak tree that lay in pieces across the centre of the road.

"Yep," Daryl muttered, slowing the truck before bringing it to a halt. "Stay here," he ordered Denise as we got out to assess the situation. See if there was a possibility of the truck getting by and what surprises lay on the other side out of our sight.

As soon as the sound of my door slamming shut echoed over the road, the gurgle of a walker roared from ahead of us. Daryl held his gun high, scoping out the perimeter as I approached the fallen tree. Its thick summer green leaves rustled in the wind, but one section shifted harshly. The leaves fell off the branch in clumps as the walker clawed out from underneath it. I grabbed a hold of the branch, yanking it backward and throwing it off to the side to reveal the walker pinned underneath.

"The tree rotted out. It wasn't people," I said, seeing no gunshot or stab wounds visible on the walker. He had a backpack strapped on tight and a rope fastened around his waist. It looked as if he was in the tree when it gave out and took him down with it. I threw my machete down on the walker's skull, some resilience in the bone telling me that he hasn't been dead long. I opened his backpack, looking for anything of use as Daryl retreated back to the truck to bring Denise out.

"What'd you find?" Denise called out to me, clearly watching me closely from inside the safety of the truck.

I yanked out a small plastic bag from his knapsack, holding it high in the air for her to see, "Bottle of booze. Any takers?"

"No, thanks," Denise declined, "They were kind of my parents' thing. Which is why they aren't mine," she revealed. My face softened as I placed them down on the hood of the car, not pressing her for any more information.

"That tuck ain't gonna make it past this tree. Come on, let's walk," Daryl pushed us forward down the road.

"Hold up," Denise called out, staring down at her map. "It looks like a straight shot if we follow the tracks."

"Nah. No tracks. We'll take the road," Daryl declined.

"That's twice as far," I stopped him.

Daryl walked back a few steps, looking directly at me, "Remember last time we followed the tracks? I choose to have a visual. I ain't taking no tracks," he fought before carrying on down the road.

I huffed out a breath, knowing that he was right. His short temper got the better of him, knowing that he wanted this run done and over with as soon as possible. "We should stick together," Denise said, looking back at me like she was sorry to be following Daryl's word.

I shook my head, "I know. The first rule for surviving out here… follow your instincts," I said, "He's right, let's go."

It was around noon by the time we reached Edison's. The sun was high in the sky and the morning breeze had faded to almost nothing. My t-shirt clung to my skin with sweat and my feet burned inside of my boots. There was little relief as we reached the shaded canopy of the gift shop. The parking lot of the small strip mall had been completely deserted, only copies amounts of trash and walker bodies had now littered the pavement. Daryl and I walked up to the boarded-up windows, bloodied hand prints smeared in clusters around the front doors of the shop. Daryl banged the palm of his hand on the glass, waiting for a moment to hear anything stirring about on the inside.

"Alright, Red and I are gonna do this," Daryl explained to Denise, "You're gonna stay back, got it?"

Denise nodded as I handed my gun over to Daryl to hold for me. I threw my backpack from my shoulder, retrieving my crowbar from inside. I fastened the bag on tightly again, Daryl handing me my gun to prop back over my shoulder again as I placed the crowbar between the two doors. I wedged the bar in, jimmying it down on the lock, before I pressed all of my weight into the bar, causing the right door to pop open for me. Daryl went in first, his weapon raised as he cleared the small room. I followed his lead, side-stepping in through the door frame as Denise walked close behind me. Thick clouds of dust floated through the light from the open doorway. The stench of something dead instantly hit our noses as the heat only cooked the shit out of it in this boarded-up shop. Denise gaged from behind me, choking on the air. I then realized how new this all actually was to her, how little she has experienced behind the walls of Alexandria.

"We gonna find out what you had for breakfast?" Daryl snarled, using that hard exterior to try and force her to keep herself together.

The door shut behind us, locking us in with the stench. "Oatmeal," Denise answered quietly, causing me to chuckle. "Just so you know," she snapped back.

We clicked on our flashlights, searching around the small shop for these so-called drugs that could possibly be here. The shop did in fact look to be untouched. Clothes still hung neatly on the racks, the floor remained relatively clean, and the product rested tidily on the shelves. Not a common sight to see if a store had been previously raided.

I called Daryl over to the back side of the store, my flashlight landing on the word 'Pharmacy' above a table with a sliding garage door locking up what we came here to get. I handed my crowbar to Daryl, allowing him to get this door as I covered him from the side. This door took a little more work, the lock on it not wanting to let up on us. Finally, the sound of metal crunching hit my ears and Daryl was able the push up the garage door. I shined my flashlight through, shelves on shelves of medicine bottles that have sat untouched by anyone for a very long time.

"If you set it on the counter, I can tell you which ones," Denise suggested as the two of us hopped over the table.

"No, we're gonna take it all," Daryl said.

With that said, Daryl and I began shoving as much medicine as we could into our bags. We started with the most essential, all the ones Denise had written down on her list. Then I grabbed onto any pills that I knew would be of use with my small fraction of knowledge. We didn't stop until the sound of a bang coming from a nearby room drew our attention away from the shelves. I peered over the table, listening closely to the thudding, "It's just one," I said before heading back to it.

"It sounds like it's stuck," Daryl confirmed.

I hadn't realized Denise had gone into that room to check out the noise until she came stumbling back out, slamming her body into one of the tables and knocking over glass figurines. They clanked together before tipping over and smashing into pieces on the floor, creating too much noise for the small space.

"What the hell are you doing?" I snapped, unable to keep my blood from boiling as her freakout put us in unnecessary danger.

"Nothing," she breathed out, her voice barely about a whisper as tears burned her eyes. She stormed for the front door after that. I looked over at Daryl, a questioning glance shot his way as he stared down at me. He didn't say a word as he looked just as confused as I. We zipped up our bags after that, having grabbed everything we needed.

I exited the shop, looking down to my right where Denise sat waiting for us. The whites of her knuckles were prominent as she gripped onto a keychain she picked up in the store. The name Dennis had been engraved on it. I looked back at Daryl after watching her quickly wipe a tear from her eye. I felt bad for her, she wanted to be ready, but she just wasn't.

"Hey," Daryl called out to her, forcing her to look up at him, "You did good finding this place," he said, easing whatever it was she was feeling. Daryl had always been the kind of person you could count on for that. He knew when not to kick the weaker person when they were down. Rather, he gave them something to get that little bit stronger.

"We tried to tell you that you weren't ready," I said, my voice soft, "You're getting there though."

"I know," she responded, grabbing a hold of her machete as she stood back up.

--------

By the time we reached the tracks, I didn't bother to take a second glance at them, knowing it'd be safer to take the road we had come from, even if it had meant it taking twice as long. I walked a couple of feet in front of Daryl and Denise, listening to their conversation about Denise's twin brother Dennis. From the sounds of it, he seemed a lot like Merel.

From the angle I had been walking down the road, I could see Daryl veer right from the corner of my eye. "Daryl," I called out, causing him to stop.

He looked back at me, a smile on his face as he pointed down the tracks, "This way is faster, right?" He continued walking as I looked over at Denise, a small grin creeping up her face. She knew just as well as I did that he had done that for me, a compromise. And I believe the more time she spent with us, the less intimidated she became. She was beginning to see through those hard exteriors with the world.

Walking along the tracks did in fact take far less time. What was an hour's walk on the road from the car, would now be cut in half. The remainder of the trip had been spent in silence, maybe a ten-minute walk left until the intersection in the road. Daryl and I walked side-by-side, Denise trailing not far behind us. The sun was low on our backs now, the day quickly withering away from us.

"There's a cooler in there!" Denise called out from behind us. I whipped my head around, not having realized she had stopped and walked down to the abandoned cars along the side. "Might be something we can use inside!" she yelled over the moans of the walker that sat trapped inside the car with the cooler.

"We got what we came for," I shook my head.

"Nah, ain't worth the trouble, come on," Daryl agreed with me. No sense in wasting more time and energy when we already had everything we needed. Daryl and I pushed forward again, thinking Denise had given up and kept going.

It wasn't until the sound of her grunting and struggling yelps did my head snapped back around. Daryl and I both made a b-line for her, my feet carrying over the tracks and down the side of the hill. We rounded the cars, both of us pulling out our knives as we approached her. She had just got control over the walker again, sitting on top of its chest as she pinned one arm down with her own, while the other gripped onto her machete.

"No, don't!" she yelled at us before we could make contact. We slid to a stop, watching her closely for when we needed to step in. She continued to wrestle the walker back to the ground as it lunged forward until she finally did it. Adjusting her machete in the palm of her hand, she threw it back and plunged it into the side of its skull. We were silent as she panted heavily, standing up from the corpse underneath her. She stared at us, proud of her accomplishment before her body retched up everything she had in her stomach for breakfast. I winced, my nose scrunching up as I turned my head away from her. "Oh, man," she chuckled, "I threw up on my glasses." Denise then walked over to the cooler she nearly died over, flipping open the lid and yanking out a six-pack of sodas.

"What the hell was that?" Daryl finally snapped. "You could have died right there, you know that?"

Denise stood up straight, looking him dead in the eye, "Yeah, I do."

"Are you hearing me?"

"Who gives a shit?" she shouted at him. "You could have died killing those Saviours, both of you, but you didn't. You wanna live, you take chances. That's how it works," she fought, "That's what I did."

"For a couple of damn sodas?" Daryl grunted.

"Nope," Denise said as she smiled, ripping out one Orange Crush soda from the pack and walking past us, "Just this one."

I looked up at Daryl as she walked by us, shaking my head. He could see the anger boiling up inside of me as I took off after her, only catching up when we hit the tracks again.

"Are you seriously that stupid?" I yelled after her. "There is a time and place to take chances out here and they definitely don't involve soda!"

"Are you that stupid?" she snapped back, stopping dead in her tracks to look at us. "I mean it. Are you? Do you have any clue what that was to me, what this whole thing is to me?" she asked, her voice lowering when she finally got to the point of her outburst. "See, I have training in this shit. I'm not making it up as I go along, like with the stitches and the surgery and the…" she paused, staring at us as I could see her growing angry again. She pointed directly at Daryl, "I asked you to come with me because you're brave like my brother and sometimes you actually make me feel safe," she snapped at him. Then her eyes veered over to me, her index now pointing at me as her next target, "And I wanted you here because you are stronger than you think you are, which gives me hope that maybe I can be, too. And you two together are a force to be reckoned with." She paused, sucking in her bottom lip as she struggled for her next sentence. "I could have gone with Tara. I could've told her I loved her, but I didn't because I was afraid. That's what's stupid. Not coming out here, not facing my shit. And it makes me sick that you guys aren't even trying because you're strong and you're smart and you're both really good people, and if you don't wake--"

My feet stumbled backwards, my mouth falling open with all of the air in my lungs as my eyes widened. Warm specks of Denise's blood splattered across my face as an arrow pierced through the back of her head, rupturing through her right eye socket. My eyes were unable to leave her face as she continued to stumble on her words before blacking out. I was unable to tear my eyes away from her collapsing body to even look up and see who had fired the arrow.