Sink Into the Underground

The boards of the barn-slash-prison apparatus of Woodbury creaked and moaned as the wind pushed against them, telling of a storm to come. Groaning winds were not enough to drown out the lifeless moans of the walkers kept in the horse stalls in the barn to the only live ears within the building.they reached with their claw-like fingers, begging to destroy live flesh as a way to sustain their meaningless existence, to destroy all that once made up humanity. Broken nails, shattered bones and bloodless, ragged flesh stretched through the bars of the horse stalls, all straining in the diction of the one warm heartbeat, imprisoned within the building.

Daryl Dixon, the only living thing in the building, was thinking about the only thing which had occupied his thoughts since it had happened. Sure, he had seen his brother die before. In his dreams, after the tough old buzzard had sacrificed his hand on that hot rooftop in Atlanta, Daryl had seen his brother die many times. But Merle had always been a survivor, Daryl could always count on the fact that he would show up somewhere, some day. He may not show up whole, but he would show up.

This time was different. This time, Daryl Dixon had heard his brother die. This was different than any dreams. In his dreams, he couldn't hear Merle's insults deteriorate into hoarse shouts of pain. Or the gurgle of dying lungs. They had fed him to the walkers as a form of sport, these disgusting people. They were as blood hungry as the monsters they used to kill hs brother. And his fate would be the same as his brother's. A fight to the death with real, flesh eating, former humans with nothing but his hands to protect him.

For the millionth time, Daryl rose up as tall as he could in his shackles and cast around the cell he was locked in - a horse stall, with hungry walkers on either side for company. There was nothing he could use to escape, nothing to pick the lock of the shackles which held him to the wall but hay. Not that he hadn't tried picking the locks with hay yet... Frustrated, he sunk onto his haunches in the center of the stall, as far away from the walkers' groping hands as he could get.

"Horse shit."

It must have been hours later when the sound of soft footsteps roused the man from his half-sleeping state. The sound of someone small, walking softly and on their tiptoes. The footsteps stopped outside of his prison, and the bolt slid quietly out of the lock - whoever this was must have had an oiled rag, as the lock had done nothing but protest whenever one of his captors paid him a visit.

"You ain't here to feed me, are you?" The hoarseness of his voice surprised Daryl, how long had it been since he had anything to drink?

"No." The reply was higher pitched, but quiet. A female. He could badly see her form in the dim light that filtered through the barn's scanty roof, but she was short and thin. But then again, who wasn't thin in this shit hole of a world they now lived in? "Give me your hands."

Daryl obeyed, but only because he knew that if the little slip of a thing wanted to kill him, she would have left him chained to the wall. She couldn't even hope to take him mano y mano. The girl clumsily fumbled for the key hole in the dark, and finally unlatched the shackles slowly, as to catch them before they clattered to the ground.

"Why are you doing this?" The stranger hissed in response to Daryl's quiet question, begging for silence.
She pulled his newly-freed wrist toward the door, which caused the larger man to uncoil from his crouched position in order to follow.

She left the opposite way as he had heard her come in to the barn, through a small back door. Daryl found himself presented with a full backpack and a compound bow.

"Can you use this?" The question was nearly silent, barely a whisper above the wind, a wind which foretold a storm to come. The blue eyed man nodded in reply, and took the weapon, inspecting it with his fingers. Not his normal choice, but beggars couldn't be choosers and his crossbow had disappeared to fuck knows where. The girl had already begun moving again, so he shouldered his backpack and continued after her.

One look at the gate told Daryl that the girl had chosen a good time for escape - not only had the guards become disorganized and disorderly without Merle in charge, but the storm clouds were just about to obscure the waxing crecent's dim light. The storm coming was going to be a decent squall, nobody would notice he was gone for days if they could escape unnoticed. Silently, he followed his rescuer, hoping that his blind faith in her was not misplaced.

Just before they reached the gate, Daryl's savior crouched behind the nearest house's hedge and motioned for the man to come up beside her. It seemed as if there were no way to escape unseen, there was a guard at the gate casting his glance about, and a group of drunks waiting over a fire not one hundred feet off.

"I am going to talk to the guard. You go over that low point. Meet me on the other side." Her voice was accented with a thick southern drawl, she sound like Paula Deen would have invited her over for supper before the world ended... Daryl nodded in reply, and shouldered his - her - bow. He noticed she had one of her own as she reappeared around the far corner of the house, striding toward the guard at the gate like she owned the town.

She was a blond, with a long braid down her back, and wore what looked to be horseback riding breeches and dark leather riding boots. Her jacket was leather as well, and her pack and bow camouflage. She seemed as if she spent a lot of time in the woods, or was really good at faking like she knew what she was doing.

The wind was picking up, but wasn't loud enough to block snippets of the conversation from Daryl's ears as he waited for the right moment to make his move.

"You can't go out tonight, Kavanaugh. There's a storm rolling in. Were going to close up shop..." The guard's voice was lost in the night, but Daryl was able to pick back up on the girl's drawl.

"... Llshit you can't let me out. We need meat, and all of the little deer will be grazing now before they ..." Again, Daryl lost the conversation, but it was obvious that the answer was still no.

There was the flash of a knife, a muffled shout and accompanying thud, and a sudden flurry of motion from the stranger as she loped back toward Daryl's hiding spot at a full gallop.

"Move!" Her hoarse shout was lost over the sound of the drunks by the fire motivating themselves to pursue the blond.

Without a second thought, Daryl vaulted over the "low point" in the fence, hoisting himself up and over the thick wooden fenced and onto the wheel well of a car. He could hear the girl behind him as he crested the tower of vehicles used as an anti-walker barricade and dropped gracelessly to the ground, rolling to prevent breaking his ankles before he took off running toward the shelter of the trees. There was a gunshot and a shriek that caused him to stop in his tracks - his savior had not been so lucky. She slid from the hood of the top car to the ground on her ass, and crumpled at the bottom of the barricade.

Daryl was about to continue on, believing the girl to be dead and his chances of survival narrowing the longer he stayed near that god-forsaken city, when the girl stumbled to her feet and began to stagger at a painful-looking trot toward him, clutching her side with her right hand.

"Move, you piece of shit!" Her voice authoritative and angry rather than pained, but she accepted Daryl's arm under her own as the made a break for the woods, half running and half being dragged along.