my tears ricochet

Chapter One

The world looked bruised and Daryl was still storming through the woods, following the half visible path that connected the farm to smaller properties along the area, veiled by trees and thick brush. 

Each home looked broken, like it had lost the war in carving out a bit of wilderness for domesticity, lawns bleeding into overgrowth and veins. 

Daryl ignored the evidence of plastic play-structures and the bright coloured balls left behind. Back at that traffic snarl it had been a choice; he could shift through the cars but couldn't allow himself to acknowledge the carseats in the back or the bag left half opened on the side of the road. Pieces of life were scattered everywhere and he felt guilty as he skirted along the edges. 

Carl had been shot in the woods and maybe that could have been a kindness if it had gone the other way. The world was a new hell and it wasn't easy shuffling along the road next to walkers. They had nothing to offer anyone and a child had its future pried from their hands. 

The trees thinned out slightly and Daryl found one of the more rundown houses looming in the woods, tin roof like teeth. He eyed the door swinging open in the breeze, the long stretch of space between the fence and the porch. Sophia had gotten so close to finding the highway before she veered off, prints vanishing into thin air. If T-Dog hasn't been bleeding out on the asphalt he might have noticed her breaking off from the road with walkers on her heels, might have been able to prevent any of this from happening. 

He drew up close, hunting knife in hand as he checked the hallway for movement. It felt uneasy, stepping into the shadow of what was once a life. Someone had left shoes at the door and plates on the table. Wherever they had gone, they had left thumbprints of an existence behind.

Lori had called the traffic snarl a graveyard but it wasn't the same as this. This was plain abandonment, the death of a home. 

Floorboards groaned as he checked the rooms cautiously. Daryl could see where photos had hung on the wall, little squares visible after years of sunlight pouring through the windows. Someone must have taken them with them when they left. 

He spotted the closet last as an afterthought. In a perfect world, Sophia would be curled up tight, holding that little doll to her chest. The door would swing open and she'd be there, blinking up at him. Relieved that the nightmare was over and that she could go home. That the world would still be standing for another minute. 

But it would never truly be okay. 

They were losing people at a steady rhythm ever since they banded together in that quarry. And even before that, Daryl had seen people claw at each other in order to escape new waves of dead walking. 

He held his knife and remembered when Merle first gave it to him. Daryl had turned ten years old with torn up knees and a black eye that throbbed like a relentless devil. If he held a knife, he could be the one to do the hurting. Merle hadn't said those exact words but Daryl understood what the gift had meant. 

He swung the door open and barely had a chance to twist back when a girl lunged at him with a knife, and he shoved her hard against the wall behind him. It sounded painful when her head knocked back but it didn't phase her in her fight, trying to slash that little knife twice more before he grabbed her by the wrist and squeezed tight, feeling the bones shift beneath his hand, dropping it to the floor by force.

The house was worn out and hollowed, and she matched the look of it. He wasn't sure how she managed to fit inside that cupboard with the door shut but it reminded him dimly of the closet he'd hide in when Merle was the one taking the hits from their father.

"Get away from me," she snarled, eyes bright with rage. "I'll kill you."

Coming from her, it sounded like a promise. Daryl had said those same words with the exact same conviction in a thousand different places. He had been willing to cut the feet off of a scrawny kid back in Atlanta for Glenn's sake, and he'd been willing to beat his fists bloody his entire life. "Who the hell are you?" He demanded, trying to take in the sight of blonde hair and a bruised cheekbone.