my tears ricochet

Chapter Fifty Two

Maggie cut through the wild like a knife and they all followed her lead, a wave of people marching across train tracks until they found the closest sign pinned up. It showed line work connecting different rail lines all the way to the heart of where all tracks intercepted but they could make out the vague shapes of towns and communities scattered across the landscape.

She tapped her finger against a spot and turned to Ivy. "Look, that one sits closest. Think she would have run there?"

Ivy looked at the map and then turned, pulling against Daryl's hand as she suddenly started in a vague direction to the town. "Hold on," he sighed, kneeling down to get her to face him properly. The temporary hearing loss from the flash grenade left their ability to converse largely one-sided and it frustrated him, the lack of options. She blinked, confused. The light of day highlighted the bruise across her cheekbone, her battered fists. "Beth. Do you think she would have go," he paused, pulling her attention back to the map as he dragged his own finger from Terminus to where Maggie had pointed. "Here?"

"Maybe," she grimaced, gazing at the nest of possibilities. "Just said the nearest one. Could've left a message if she didn't stick around."

He tried to imagine a nervous girl running for her life with armed people on her trail. She would have found the nearest map before getting off of the corrupted tracks. Roads could have been safer, but she might have opted for the natural cover of the woods. Beth had sprinted off and turned into a question mark on the horizon, no real sign to stumble after. "Might as well check it out. If it's not the one, we'll settle up for the night and pick the next town."

Ivy fidgeted, gaze jumping between Maggie and Daryl. "Are we going?"

Maggie nodded, a weak smile on her face. "Yeah, we are. Good plan."

They started off again, hiking through the woods to favour a paved stretch of road, the long chain of their bodies a steady heartbeat burning through the wreckage of what had been a sanctuary. Maggie was at the head of the line and both Glenn and Ivy were determined to keep up to her stride, their footsteps an echo of her relentless march. Daryl at least got her settled between him and Oscar, neatly framed from any surprise attacks while her arm was bound back in a sling. "How'd you get out?" He asked to Oscar, making sure Ivy didn't trip on the loose gravel as they climbed the steep bank of the ditch to get to the road.

The man grimaced, old wounds sharp on the mind. "Was with Tyreese and some of the kids saved us. Mika and Lizzie. Those two little girls found us right when we got pinned down."

Daryl held back his impulse to crane his neck looking for the children. If they hadn't been with Tyreese and Judith, they weren't coming back. "And now you're here."

"Yeah. Didn't know where we were going but Carol found us, got us going again. Kept us going. When bad stuff happened, she took the heaviest part of it."

"Yeah, that's Carol."

Rick had told him about sending her away back at the prison for killing two of their own in an effort to stave off a pandemic. If that secret was still a secret, Daryl wasn't going to ask about it.

Ivy's boot kicked a rock and it blindly jumped down across the road, past an old waterlogged book left open next to a mess of loose cash blowing around. She wouldn't stop long enough for him to check her for injuries so he saw them in bits and pieces; her banged up knuckles, knees covered in blood that had dried black. It must have hurt to keep walking but her pace didn't falter, each step a mirror of Maggie's.

"Had to bury Mika," Oscar suddenly said, mouth twisting with grief. "Didn't ever see a grave that small before."

Daryl looked at him. "Just the one?"