my tears ricochet

Chapter Eighty Four

One of the dead men had caught attention from a walker. She was gorging herself on the remains, fresh red blood smeared across her face and neck as she chewed at the shoulder relentlessly. Daryl gently managed his footing across loose stone and flowers until he had a good shot at her bobbing head, her body crumpling down the second the crossbow bolt shot through her skull.

It took an effort to focus on yanking it free. She flopped slightly as he pulled it back, hand tight around the shaft, eyes focused on the green feathers. It wasn't Eugene. It wasn't Eugene trying to speak, distantly unaware of the death speared straight through his skull, bleeding from his eye while Rosita tried to catch him from falling—

He looked over at the spot where Eugene died. Blood was drying to the wooden boards of the tracks and the man's presence lingered like the unfinished story he had been spinning.

It was just blood. Daryl had seen so much of it that it shouldn't bother him anymore.

He glanced towards the cars that they had used for some coverage before moving in the opposite direction. Dwight had nearly clipped him with a bullet before running off with his surviving men into the woods where the trees grew thick.

It was a choice to leave Ivy and start hunting. And it was another choice to keep going, to move deeper into the land of unknowns. Daryl stalked across the tracks and into the woods. The previous rainfall left the ground slightly spongey and it failed to give much detail but Daryl pursued his prey like a shadow, gliding around the narrow passages, scanning the land for the slightest detail.

Someone was out there.

The world was easier to process when he kept moving. Daryl could understand both his past and current failures all at once, see that history was replaying itself all over again. The trees looked identical to the ones that had lined the prison grounds and their pale bark peeled off like the skins of ghosts, shivering as a light wind brushed over them.

He had always failed because he got comfortable. Lori died, Hershel died, Ivy got hurt, people kept dying— the minute Daryl looked away from the target, someone started to bleed.

Two walkers ambled up a rockier slope and Daryl met them with patient violence. The body of the man dropped first and was followed by the younger girl. Burs were caught in their hair and their jackets were ragged around the sleeves.

Beyond their bodies was the outline of what had been a campsite. A torn up tent that had once been pitched was left on the ground with rods sticking out on twisted angles. Folding chairs were slung over on their sides. He saw a blanket, crumpled beer cans. A waterlogged book left out for a season of abandonment.

Daryl tried not to read the story set into the scene.

Regret still scorched through his veins. It had taken almost five minutes to destroy every inch of progress Daryl had ever managed with Ivy. His own triggers blinded him to the warning signs building up in her; trying to defend by shattering everything with his own hand.

It had taken precious months in developing trust. And it was all gone. Ivy's face had gone blank from any emotion and she had stood, refusing to retreat, closing up tight to protect from any further hurt. She hadn't looked at him like that since the very beginning when they were strangers to each other, back when caution overrode tentative attachments.

Eventually the woods dropped away into a field and Daryl waded through the long grass along the edges, scanning the texture left into the land. Something had wandered over the property. Grass and hay was bent back in odd directions and he couldn't decipher the movement clearly.

Tracking was a skill but it took patience and guesswork. A rabbit might have started at one place but the person hunting had to assume it wanted to go in a specific direction, to piece together the brushstrokes of a creature in order to know it.