Disclaimer: I do not own or have any rights to the characters/plot of TWD series. I am just a fan exploring the marvelous, macabre world Robert Kirkman created.
Companion song for this chapter: "Nothing Like You and I"- The Perishers (I do not own the rights to this song, it just helps animate this chapter.)
Thanks for reading!Chapter 1: Bloodstains"You take the west sector, try to see if you can find anything in that airport. Might have been totally cleaned out like Ronald Regan International was, but we might get lucky," Aaron rambled on about the plans.
"Doc said we were low on antibiotics so keep a sharp eye out for them. I'll go east and try to see if there is anyone holed up along the river. Let's meet back up at the hospital before sunset. I want to find a good vantage point to see if there's movement in there. If we don't see anyone, we can go in tomorrow and see what meds we can grab before heading back home," Aaron said as he pointed to the map to show the location of the hospital.
Briefly glancing down at the map, Daryl grunted in agreement before turning and stomping off the edge of the highway. Aaron noted that Daryl had taken off his trademark angel wing vest about a year ago and still hadn't put it back on. He wanted to ask Daryl why he no longer wore the leather vest but he could already predict Daryl's glare in response to the personal question.
Aaron knew Daryl's distant attitude was not a reflection on him so he merely smiled and shouted, "Stay safe!" to Daryl's back.
Daryl turned back to Aaron, shielding his eyes from the morning sun. He had grown quite fond of Aaron over the last few years, despite his tendency to talk too much. They had become friends during their numerous multi-day recruiting trips. Daryl could just imagine the ignorant, homophobic comments Merle would make if he were still around.
"You too, man," Daryl said honestly, giving Aaron a slight nod.
Today, they were going further out than ever before to scout for various items and for "good" people to bring back to The Safe Zone. Daryl was still not fully convinced that good people still existed. Everyone had their demons, and in this world everyone had blood on their hands.
But he liked his job because it got him outside of the fences.
After Rick took over Alexandria, once again assuming the leadership role that came so naturally to him, many people got new jobs—Michonne left the police team for the supply runs and Carol abandoned her weak-ass-old-lady-act to begin patrols. Daryl kept his job because it had the most freedom. He grew up running to the woods to seek refuge from his abusive dad and now he left the refuge of Alexandria to evade his family's pitying looks and attempts to cheer him up. He almost snorted at the irony of it.
He still remembered what Joe had said when he was walking with the claimers: "The saddest thing is seeing an outdoor cat thinking it's an indoor cat." Daryl is definitely an outdoor cat, so this job was perfect for him.
It had been over two years since he lost Beth but it still hurt just as much as the very first day. He knew that saying: "time heals all wounds," but it was bullshit. The pain from Merle, Sophia, Dale, Hershel…from everyone else had indeed decreased.
But Beth was different.
She was definitely not "just another dead girl" as she had shouted at him outside the moonshine shack several years ago.
The shock was fresh each morning when he woke up and had forgotten that she was gone. The grief overwhelmed him every single night that she wasn't laying in the same room with him. His sorrow was almost palpable whenever he walked through the Alexandria library where the piano was. The sadness reverberated inside him, like an echo rocking through his empty chest, with each of Judith's giggles or big family dinners that she missed.
The time seemed to elapse as the archer trekked silently through woods thinking about Beth. The chill of the morning had begun to dissolve into the warmth of midday. His black jeans and long flannel shirt were getting uncomfortable. So he stripped off his top shirt as he walked, leaving on a gray t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. It was summer and dried twigs were scattered along the forest ground. He had to walk carefully to avoid crunching loudly through the brush, but he enjoyed the woods like this. The more focused he was on a task, the less energy he had left to fixate on his grief.
After a little over an hour of walking, coming across only two lone walkers, he saw the break in the trees that signified the airport was near.
Daryl had never been on a plane, never even been to an airport before the dead started roaming the earth, but he knew that the long runways needed excess space. This made him nervous because it meant that he would not have any tree cover as he approached the main building. If anyone was in there, they would be able to see him coming.
He decided to wait just inside the tree line for a while to see if he could see any movement through the large glass windows.
The hunter pulled his nearly empty pack off his back as he lithely squatted down and leaned against a tree. The pack only contained a few bottles of water, a few cans of food, the flare gun and the envelope full of pictures from Alexandria. Daryl pulled out one of the tepid bottles of water and drank carefully—he didn't want to run out of water in case they ran into trouble on the drive home.
As he sat staring at the building, ears straining to hear any movement in the woods around him, his hand drifted unconsciously to his pocket and pulled out the small silver charm. He flipped it over and over in his hand in a manner that had become habitual for him over the past two years. Fiddling with this silver piece had become more and more of a routine as cigarettes had gotten scarcer. Glenn had complained about Daryl's new habit at first, teasing that his smoking was less annoying, until he saw what the charm was. That shut Glenn right up.
He hoped after this raid of the airport he would be leaving with a pack full of meds and clothes. Colder months were approaching, and the winters were much worse here in Virginia than they had been in Georgia. He wanted to find some jackets for the community and they desperately needed clothes for Judith, who was growing like a weed, and Maggie who just announced she was pregnant at last Friday's family dinner.
Everyone had been sitting around the table in the house he shared with the Grimes family. Glenn had banged his fork on his glass and said he had an announcement like a damn conductor. He had a grin so big that Daryl thought it looked like he had a coat hanger stuck in his mouth as he looked at Maggie and said, "We're pregnant!"
Tara and Carol had both jumped up and grabbed the couple in a huge embrace. Carl had exclaimed, "Awesome!" before picking Judith up out of her chair. Rick and Michonne quickly glanced at each other before sweeping into the jumble of hugs and shoulder pats.
Daryl, however, couldn't bring himself to feel happy about the news. It was yet another moment that Beth was missing.
The Greene sisters had a solid relationship before the fall of the prison and he knew that Beth would have been ecstatic about Maggie's pregnancy. In fact, he remembered sitting on the porch of the moonshine shack with Beth. She had talked about Maggie and Glenn getting pregnant and how much she wished Hershel could be there to see his grandchildren. Now his heart ached because neither Hershel nor Beth would be there to see the newest member of their family. Daryl felt a knot of guilt in his stomach; he was responsible for both of their deaths. He could picture the warm smile that would have made Beth's big blue eyes light up, he knew how much she would have fussed over Maggie as her stomach grew and could imagine her singing to the baby like she did for Judith. It was a happy moment for the entire group…but without Beth the celebration just felt empty.
In fact, each day without her felt incomplete. When she died, so unexpectedly, Daryl didn't really lose her all in that moment. He continued to lose bits of her everyday, the little pieces of her tearing bits of his soul away with them. People slowly stopped mentioning her, he stopped finding individual strands her long blonde hair weaved into his clothing, and he felt certain that the singing voice he remembered was just a pale comparison to the real thing.
If he had known the last time he saw her would have been the last time, he would have memorized the pattern of blue in her eyes. If he had known that the last time he carried her into the kitchen would be the last time he touched her alive, he would have never set her down.
Daryl looked down at his feet, trying to clear his head but instead he saw the black and white shoelaces around his ankles and smiling slightly. He had replaced the laces several times; shoelaces were one of the many casualties that resulted from regularly running from walkers through overgrown forests. But every time he got new laces, he always made sure one was black and one was white. He still remembered the day Beth—
Just then, a walker stumbled out of the woods and onto the tarmac on the far left side of his vision and pulled Daryl from his thoughts.
Since the walker wasn't headed his direction and it seemed to be alone, he decided to just let it continue walking. He wasn't willing to reveal his position yet. He was curious to see if any people would come out of the building to take out the walker and his dark blue eyes meticulously searched the windows for any flutters of movement. He was fortunate that the sun wasn't facing in a direction that caused a glare on any of the windows. No one came. The walker, groaning quietly, continued shuffling past the airport along one of the runways.
Based on the position of the sun, Daryl estimated that he had been leaning against the tree for over an hour but still hadn't seen even a flicker of movement inside the airport.
He decided that he would stay hidden in the tree line as he did a perimeter check of the airport. It wasn't a large building, nothing like the Ronald Regan International one Aaron and Daryl had been to a few months back, so he knew it wouldn't take long to circle around to the back of the building.
From this distance, he could see plenty of cars in the airport parking lot, people who had likely been hoping to fly out of this mess at the beginning of the turn. Daryl wondered briefly if there had been a place to fly to safety, some distant island that the virus hadn't reached. He shook this thought away. The whole world was screwed, he knew it.
Daryl finally left the sanctuary of the trees, crossbow ready as he walking through the parking lot as he approached the building. Most of the cars in the lot were in fairly bad condition, windows smashed, doors left open, which lead Daryl to believe that others had already scavenged this place. Daryl peeked into one of the only cars that still had all it's windows intact, this is the car he would have chosen as a getaway vehicle if needed. He didn't see any packs or anything that would indicate that people were using the car. But there was still something more…
Something was off.
The hair on the back of his neck seemed to stand up as he glanced around.
He definitely felt twitchy, felt the heat on his neck like he was being watched. Daryl had much experience watching others so he knew the feeling; the last few years he spent as a recruiter, following people for days and determining if he should ask them to return to Alexandria. But that couldn't be it, he had been here for hours and hadn't seen any movement or any signs of people. But there was something more… something different.
Finally standing flush with the side of the building he peered through the windows into the area marked "Baggage Claim." There were faded advertisements along the far wall for companies that belonged to a past world. Most of the bags lay open on the ground, scattered across the tile and along big conveyor belts. Items were pulled haphazardly out of the suitcases, sprawling across the floor. It had definitely been raided already but it looked sloppy. Daryl guessed that whoever had searched the airport had been in a hurry, which means they had likely missed things. He decided that it was still worth it to search the bags so he continued his inspection as he searched for a door that he could enter through.
Daryl looked closer at the pavement outside along the "Pick Up/Drop Off" point.
That's when he spotted it: bloodstains.
It was walker blood, he could tell from the dark black color. The blood was dried.
But there were no walker bodies.
Someone had been here. They had cleared it of walkers and then removed the bodies to avoid the smell and to prevent attracting more walkers. But the bloodstains couldn't be washed away without nature's help.
He tried to think back to the last time it had rained. It had been more than a month since the last rainfall which meant that these people had cleared the airport sometime between now and last month.
Daryl contemplated these odds. The likelihood that people had stayed put in a place like this for over a month were pretty slim. The windows made it easy to see if anyone was approaching but there were no walls or fences to keep walkers away. Plus, he had been outside for over two hours at this point and hadn't seen any movement.
Daryl decided to push inside. They really needed supplies.
He silently edged into a small side door; the bolt in his crossbow was ready to fly. This door had been pulled shut but not locked and luckily it didn't make a sound when it opened. As Daryl glanced around the empty building, his eyes landed on the other doors. There were chains and locks on more than one.
Someone had definitely lived in here.
"Dammit," Daryl muttered under his breath, kind of hoping that the people had moved on already.
He was supposed to be scavenging for materials and Aaron was supposed to find the people. Aaron was so much better at talking to the groups they found. Daryl was awful with words and at relating to people. But he knew searching the luggage would have to wait until he cleared the building.
Daryl steeled himself and started heading further into the building. It was only two stories but the ceiling seemed to be over 50 feet high. The second level had a balcony that looked over into the main lobby that Daryl was standing in. There was a huge metal bunny statue that hung from the ceiling. His footsteps were silent as he walked across the tile; it was lucky the hunter was skilled at a light tread because any noise he made would certainly echo through this large space.
He could see that there were several heavy metal doors, he counted 8, on the first floor behind check-in counters with worthless computers on them. People could be hiding behind those doors but that wouldn't be very smart. If walkers pushed in, the first floor would be overrun easily and they would be trapped back there. Daryl would set up on an upper level—easier to protect from walkers and people.
As he came around the corner he saw the staircases.
Damn these people were smart, he admitted.
The staircases were completely blocked. They had tied hundreds of those black, retractable queue dividers around the poles leading up the stairs. It formed multiple barricades up the stairs. Walkers would be able to eventually push through or tumble over the barricades but it would take so long that the people who lived here would have plenty of time to escape through an alternate route in the back.
Unfortunately it didn't exactly stop the living people.
Daryl swung his legs over barriers going up the stairs. As he got to the second level he reached the "Security Check Point", the now-useless x-ray machines were unmoved and countless gray plastic bins were stacked to form a makeshift wall. Again, this would slow down the walkers and make a ton of noise if pushed over, but it wouldn't do much to stop Daryl from getting through.
But as he went to step through the metal detector, he paused. It was too easy. The metal detector was the only way to reach the rest of the airport and they weren't blocked by anything? Daryl squatted down and in the gleam of afternoon sun he could see a clear, ultra-thin wire running about six inches from the floor. It was just high enough to catch someone's foot as they passed through. He glanced to the side and saw that it was a trip wire that was rigged to what he guessed was explosives. If it had been dark, Daryl wouldn't have been able to see the wire.
Definitely smart, but not smart enough. He thought smugly as he carefully stepped over this trap too.
On the other side of security, was a long hallway with the gates and a few shops. There were more windows along both sides of the terminal and rows of chairs bolted to the floor on either side of the hallway.
This place felt huge. Daryl liked it. It was inside, protected from the elements, but the full windows and tall ceilings made it almost possible for him to pretend he was outside.
There was a small shop to his left with souvenirs, books, magazines, and candy. Daryl stepped into the store, he saw that the coolers that used to hold drinks were emptied and most of the candy and snacks were missing too. The stupid souvenir section, shot glasses, teddy bears and miniature statues, were untouched or smashed on the floor. He grabbed a small teddy bear for Judith and stuffed it quickly in his pack, along with an open pack of cigarettes he found on the floor.
The magazines remaining on the shelf and scattered around the floor featured scantily dressed celebrities, who were undoubtedly dead now, with headlines that shouted "Get a toned tummy in 3 weeks!" and "Red Hot Spring Trends!"
That stupid shit was useless even before the end of the world, he judged.
There was something strange about the store in the back corner. As Daryl stood in front of the shelf containing the novels, he tried to determine what had caught his attention. He noticed the area seemed to be organized. Some of the spines of books were creased. The books had been read and then placed carefully back onto the shelf. Some of the books seemed to not belong to the store either. There were 30 copies of certain books: "Mockingjay", "The Tiger's Wife", "A Dog's Purpose." But there were other books that only had 1 copy, like they had been taken from someone's house: "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind", "The Diary of Anne Frank", "Edible and Wild Plants."
Someone had definitely lived here for a while if they had gotten comfortable enough to set up a library. And then he realized there was no dust on these shelves. People had cleaned them off, very recently.
It was this fact that had Daryl turning around, prepared to leave the airport. He needed to get out so that he could watch them, get a read on them, and see how big their group was before deciding whether or not to approach them. People had lived here and maybe they still did. Perhaps they had gone for a supply run and that was why Daryl hadn't seen them. Either way, Daryl suddenly felt like he was in hostile territory.
As he stepped out of the shop back into the terminal, he saw movement out of the corner of his left eye.
Here we go. Time to recruit, he thought to himself.
He put his crossbow over his shoulder and raised his hands into the universal surrender position.
"Keep your hands up! Don't even think about reaching for that knife on your hip," said an intense female voice.
"Turn around, slowly. Tell me what you're doin' here and how many people you have waitin' in the woods for you," the woman said again. Warmth seemed to envelop him at the sound of it…
It was familiar.
Daryl turned slowly towards the voice, keeping his hands raised, and beginning his prepared Alexandria recruiter sales pitch.
"My name is Daryl Dix—," his voice died in his throat as he faced his recruit.
His mind seemed to simultaneously freeze and jump into over-drive.
Daryl took her all in.
Her honey blonde hair was pulled back into a long braid that swept over her shoulder. The white tee was pulled tight across her thin body—she looked like nothing but muscle and bones—and it had a few traces of blood and dirt on it. She wore tight, dark jeans that looked impossibly new and worn black leather boots. Her pale face, with small white scars on her head and cheek, was stretched into a frown. Her bright blue eyes had an unfamiliar look in them; cold and wary. They examined Daryl with caution and indecision…
Even with this foreign expression in her eyes, she was still the most stunningly beautiful woman Daryl had ever seen. His dreams for the last few years were barely a dull reflection of the actual girl in front of him now. Small wisps of hair had come loose from her braid. The light shone through the windows behind her, illuminating her, surrounding her like a halo.
She is an angel. I must be hallucinating, he thought.
His heart sped up, beating faster than a hummingbird's wings.
"Beth?" Daryl almost whispered, as if scared that speaking too loudly would break the illusion. But the question managed to fill the entire space surrounding them.
There was a flash of recognition in her eyes before it morphed into confusion. Her eyebrows furrowed, causing her forehead to wrinkle slightly.
There were a multitude of weapons on her small frame: a large knife strapped around her left thigh, a smaller knife in a hip sheath, a Recurve Bow and a quiver of arrows slung across her back and a Glock 19 in her hands. The gun was pointing straight at Daryl.
He ignored it.
She is alive!
Daryl's body seemed to act of its own accord. His hands slowly dropped and his feet began propelling him forward.
"Beth!" he said again, this time louder, certain now that it was really her. Or at least willing to lose himself in his delusion, if he was losing his mind this was a good way to go.
He was quickly closing the large gap between them but she still hadn't lowered the gun. Why isn't she running towards me? Why is she looking at me with such shock and suspicion? The thoughts raced through his mind and his instincts were screaming at him that something was wrong. But his body didn't listen and it continued to fly across the white tile towards her.
She shouted, "Who the hell are you? Morgan! Lucky! Help!"
Then, just as he reached to embrace her… she punched him right in the face.
A/N: Dun dun dun! Hope y'all liked it!In case anyone is curious, the location of the airport was based on Stafford Regional Airport in Virginia (I did a lot of research on it, because I am a nerd). Although, I've never actually been there so I can't vouch for the accuracy of my portrayal.
All reviews are welcome and appreciated. I expect to update pretty regularly—every week give or take—but more reviews/follows/favorites would definitely motivate me ;)
-J. Dean