The sky was grey; gloomy and depressing as it brought in the rolling thunderstorm. But Daryl was still out with Rick on a run down to a barn they had seen a few days ago. Finally getting around to venturing out to see if it held any valuable supplies today.
It sat alone in the large browning grass field, but from the other side of the peeling red painted barn Daryl could hear light crying.
Rick opened the doors slowly, both of them with their weapons ready and aimed towards the dark inside of the unknown barn.
Once they ventured in, a damp musty smell surrounded them. And the stench of death became strong as they kept walking, seeming to also walk in the direction of the crying. As the wails began to grow louder.
"I'll check over here, you have the left?" Rick asks, turning to Daryl. Watches him nod and grunt in response.
Taking the left, Daryl has to push a few old boxes out of the way. The floor had for some reason been made into a cement floor, probably making this more of a storage place instead of barn. As he keeps walking, soon he can make out words along with the growing whimpers.
"Momma? Momma?"
A kid. Daryl had wondered by the way the cries sounded, but couldn't think how someone would leave their child alone in an abandoned barn.
Pushing a rusty metal shelf out of the way, Daryl reaches an open area showing the cement flooring that was put in, stained with rich crimson blood.
There in a puddle of oozing blood lays a man, not much younger than Daryl, a woman hunched over him. And by the moans, he knows she's turned.
But what startles him more is the sight of a boy in the corner, tears streaming down his face and sobs escaping his mouth.
"Momma!" He keeps screaming over and over, as the woman Daryl assumes is his mother continues to feed on the man.
Daryl wants to go and slide his knife right through her skull; but this child who can't be older than six is scared enough. So instead he walks to the boy.
"Come 'ere." Daryl mutters to the small child, trying to tell him to grab onto his hand.
But the boy looks up at him scared and unsure.
"I ain't gonna hurt 'cha," Daryl assures the boy, beginning now to wonder what he's doing. "jus gonna help ya out."
Something about Daryl makes the boy takes his large hand reached out. Maybe because of the sudden feeling of safety the boy feels or the words he tells him.
Walking the boy out the way Daryl came, he points to Rick to go over and take care of the two parents.
Reaching the entrance of the barn, and walking out, his hand still grasped slightly by the boy they stop to wait for Rick.
The boy is short, so he can only hold onto two of Daryl's thick and dusty fingers. The feeling is unusual and slightly uncomfortable for Daryl; but he doesn't let go.
"Didn't see anything usable," Rick informs Daryl as he reaches up to the man with the small boy beside him. "were those his--"
"My momma?" The boy asks, looking up at the redneck towering beside him. His voice small and slightly squeaky.
Rick runs a hand over his jaw; thinking.
"Can't leave 'im here."
Rick looks at Daryl as he says that, and back at he little boy that chews on the sleeve of his navy jacket.
"How do we know there aren't people still lookin for him?" Rick asks, trying to keep his voice somewhat low.
"Wasn't no other signs of people, just his ma and pa in there."
