Life I Left Behind (A Daryl Dixon Story)

Chapter Four

I woke up the next morning in a damp sleeping bag which either meant I had backtracked to childhood and was peeing the bed again, or it was raining. The loud, echoing pitter patter of water on the barn’s tin roof was my answer. I groaned, rolling onto my back and forcing my eyes open. Rain trickled down from the small, nickel sized hole over my head and splattered onto my forehead. I grumbled loudly, wiping it off with the edge of my sleeping bag. What good was having a shelter if it meant I still got rained on? I wriggled out of my sleeping bag and tried to ignore the uncomfortable dampness of my clothes. I rolled it up and strapped it to my backpack before shuffling into what looked the one semi-dry area of the loft. I wrapped my arms around my knees, feeling bitter. Couldn’t I catch a damn break? Just once?

A sigh escaped my lips as I pondered what to do. Wait for the storm to blow over and then try to find the town, or tough it out in the rain and try to get there sooner? In the back of my mind, I had already made this decision though. The idea of wasting my morning trapped in a tiny, little barn to hide from the storm seemed like hell compared to braving the rain outside in search of food, supplies, and hopefully a more reliable shelter. I was on my feet before I had even finished my last thought. I pulled a sweatshirt out of my pack and quickly pulled it on, tugging the hood over my head. I made a mental note to check this town for a raincoat or a poncho or something. Maybe even an umbrella. An umbrella could double as a pretty badass weapon against the walkers.

After shouldering my pack and carefully climbing down from the loft, I made my exit into the unappealing weather outside. It was like walking into a monsoon. The sky was a dark, mean looking grey and the swirling clouds gave no indication of clearing up anytime soon. Better find that town soon. I had already checked the map when inside so headed in the general direction I had started off in the day before. If I was lucky, the rain would provide some sort of cover against the walkers. Maybe it would make it harder to smell me. Better yet, maybe they would get stuck in all the mud that was getting churned up by the rain drops.

I hummed under my breath as I walked, though I couldn’t even tell you what the song was called. Probably some mindless pop song I had heard on the radio, back when the world was sane, and that had been imbedded in my brain for all eternity. God, I missed music. If I had music, I probably could have done without the company of another human being. Music had always been my solace, starting from the time I was a teenager. I carried an i-pod in my pack still, though the battery had run out of juice months ago. I couldn’t bear to part with it. It was the one physical memory of my past life that I still carried with me. Other people had grabbed photos, books, diaries…I had grabbed my i-pod, even knowing full well it would be dead within the month. That was what had been important to me to hold onto.

Time passed, either too slow or too fast. I didn’t know. It was hard to keep track of how long I had been walking without the sun to guide me. The clouds still shielded it from view, and the rain continued to pour. If I had to guess, I would have said two hours, maybe less. I counted five walkers. Five that I actually had to deal with. The rest I was able to avoid by either speeding up and jogging around them, or ducking behind a tree until they had passed. I was happy to see I had been right about the mud. More than a few of the dead seemed to be having trouble trudging through the swampy areas of the forest floor. It was almost funny to watch them try. They would reach out their bony, decaying arms as I passed and try to grab at me. Maybe I would have even laughed, except that I never forgot this was my reality and these things, these horrifyingly comical corpses stuck in the mud, wanting nothing better than to bite into my flesh. I would suppress a shudder and move on.

I was soaked to the bone by now and shivering. My clothes stuck to my body like an extra pair of skin and I wanted nothing more than to shed them for something dry. Every time I came to what looked like a break in the trees, I hoped as hard as I could that the town would be right there waiting for me. This has happened three times before I had actually emerged from the forest and not into a less dense area of the woods, but the actual end of the forest. In front of me stretched a crumbling country road and not a mile down it sat the small town I had spent the last few days trying to find.

“Finally!” I couldn’t suppress the triumphant shout that escaped my lips as joy welled up inside me.

If I was lucky, I’d find food here and some dry clothes. Maybe even a place to hunker down for a few nights. My legs felt heavy and sore, but it was easy to ignore seeing how close the town was. I kept going. I never thought I would see the day when nothing made me more excited than a dry place to sleep and the possibility of finding something to eat besides stale bread and canned ravioli. Maybe they would still have beer here. I would kill for a beer. My pace quickened as the rain began to slow. By the time I had reached the edge of town, it had stopped altogether. I pulled back my hood, letting my long, damp tresses escape.

First things first, I needed a grocery store. A few walkers milled about the streets, but nothing I was too worried about. My mood had heightened and I’d be damned if I let a few dead people get the best of me now. I spotted a corner general store across the street. Something stopped me dead in my tracks, though. My heart sank a little and my happiness began to deflate, like a popped balloon. I heard the sound again and ducked into the doorway of the nearest shop, my eyes scanning the streets and rooftops frantically. Gunshots.