Stray // Daryl Dixon

Hope for the Hopeless

I stood in a small pond that was almost knee-deep, as I searched the vicinity for Sophia. Rick claimed this is where he had left her when he attempted to steer the walkers off in the opposite direction, but Sophia was nowhere in sight.

"You sure this was the spot?" Daryl asked as he leaned over and scanned the inside of the small muddy cave. 

"I swear, I left her right here," Rick was frazzled and annoyed, "She was gone by the time I got back here, I figured she just took off and ran back to the group. I told her to go that way and keep the sun on her left shoulder."

Daryl then walked over to the trail, yelling at Glenn to move in the process. At this point, no one knew what to do or where she could be. This was a large forest and Sophia has been gone for too long.

"Does she even know her lefts from her rights?" Shane shook his head.

"Shane she understood me just fine," Rick snapped.

"Kids tired and scared man, gotta wonder how much of what you said, stuck." They went back and forth. 

"Okay enough," I cut them off, "let's just follow her trail and see where it leads us, it's possible she still headed back to the highway."

"I'm with Red," Daryl spoke, "I got footprints right here."

With that said we followed Daryl's lead. He was the best tracker out of all of us and honestly, he was probably our only hope at actually finding her. We followed it for a good while before Daryl stopped and knelt down.

"She was doing just fine until right here," he pointed, "she shoulda' kept going but she veered off in the opposite direction for some reason."

"Why would she do that?" Glenn asked, rubbing his eyes in worry.

"Maybe she saw something, spooked her, made her runoff," Shane suggested and I immediately blurted out 'walker' as the answer.

But Daryl shook his head no. "I don't see any other footprints, just hers."

That left an ire feeling in everyone's stomach. We had no idea where Sophia ran off to, or why.

"So what now?" Shane questioned.

"We get back to the highway before dark, for now," Rick explained, "no need to get people more panicked than they already are."

Agreeing that it was our best option, we headed back. The walk there wasn't long, maybe ten minutes at the most, which made everyone quiet at the thought of how close Sophia was to safety. Upon the four of us walking up the hill to where the rest of the group had been dispersed around the RV, Carol jogged over to the ledge, gasping when she saw that Sophia wasn't with us.

"I can't deal with this," I whispered somewhat to myself and Glenn, as I shook my head. I couldn't handle the breakdown that was about to happen from the one person who really didn't deserve it. 

-----

The night was rough, I didn't sleep for the majority of it, I couldn't. Between the cries coming from Carol and the twisting feeling in your stomach when thinking of Sophia going for it alone in the woods a night, the only option was for you to stare blankly until the sun rose again. Until we could head back out, hoping for the best, to find her and for her to be okay. But your mind spun in circles around the thought of her making it through the night on her own was unlikely.

Not being able to lay on the floor of the RV, wallowing in my own thoughts any longer, I got myself up. The plan today was to get a group of us out there looking for her, pretty much everyone except T-Dog and Dale was going. Stepping out of the RV my eyes immediately landed on Rick, I wasn't surprised that he was already up as well.