Sink Into the Underground

Daryl didn't rouse the sleeping blond on his chest until the rain stopped, which was a few hours after the sun rose. She must have busted him out of his horsey prison just after nightfall; either that or the hours ticked by slowly when one was a fitful sleeper and had a strange woman asleep on their chest. The redneck sighed at his luck - it was the goddamn zombie apocalypse, and after seeing what happened to Lori, he wasn't risking getting anyone fertilized - and shook the girl firmly by her narrow shoulders.

"Let's move, stitches." She glared at him through one half-open eye, but folded the blanket carefully as if she meant to oblige him anyway.

"Why'd you let me sleep so long?" She was shoving her jacket in her backpack and shouldering her bow as he replied.

"Rain," Daryl observed as Campbell managed to drop down from the fork in the tree, noting her wince of pain and less than graceful contact with the wet earth. He followed her down. "Figured it would be better to be dry."

"Surely." She breathed in as if scenting the woods, oriented herself to the sun, and started walking.

"Where are we going?"

"The road. There's a car."

"There're tons of cars,"

"My car."

Daryl paced in silence behind the moody girl, not daring to say another word lest she lose her temper with him. He wondered how far her escape plan went, if she knew about the folks at the prison or if she had just planned to go at it together from this point forward. He plucked a pair of sweetleaves from a small patch of the wildflowers along their supposed path and offered one to the girl, chewing the other.

"Pretty flower," She grumbled, forging ahead.

"Make your breath smell better, stitches." He offered the flower again, and she took it, rolling it in her fingertips before she popped it in.

"Why do you keep calling me that?"

"You ain't a morning person, are you?" To that she sighed, and shook her head. He figured as much, Merle was never a morning person either. He resolved to remain quiet for a bit and dropped back behind the blond.

Daryl got his first close look at her then - sure, her face was pretty when she had slept on his chest, and he was intimately familiar with the side of her chest, but her body shape... Campbell had large hips, and looked like she had once carried more weight than she did now, though her thighs were distant from one another. Her waist was narrower than the backpack she hefted, her arms toned - from drawing her bow, he assumed. The blond braid reached near the small of her back, a lot of fucking hair for the apocalypse. Come to think of it, aside from being a good shot with a pretty face, she really wasn't that attractive. Daryl preferred a woman with more meat on her bones; but then again, that was certainly hard to come by these days.

"You staring back there?" Her thick southern drawl was cutting, he felt like a schoolboy who had just been caught admiring the teacher.

"Just thinking you're skin and bones, girl. You want, I could find you some potato chips." She brushed him off with a wave of her hand, but he could hear her snort of laughter as much as she tried to hide it.

It wasn't the first or last time he would consider bringing Campbell back to the prison, to the group of people he now called a family. She seemed normal, as normal as someone could be these days, and she could hold her own. That kind of talent with a bow was not something that could be written off any more. Yet these people, the ones who had lost him at Woodbury and didn't seem to want to come find him, they were special. Especially the smallest of them all, the infant Judith. So he decided to wait, to try and figure her out. It wasn't the last time he ever tried to figure Campbell out.

He started on this endeavor the very next day, after another restless night in another forked tree. This time, the blond had distanced herself more from Daryl, but they had stell been close enough to share a blanket. Close enough so that he could smell her. She didn't smell as awful as most people had started to, and he supposed that was because she had come from the "civilized" town of Woodbury, where showers were still somewhat available. The fact that her hair still smelled like watermelons had made him self-conscious about his lack of hygiene for a few moments, until he forcefully reminded himself he didn't give a fuck.

They had set off in silence at first, Daryl having figured out she wasn't good at interacting with humans in the morning. She was about as good at talking as he was. It was this silence that had been their saving grace.

The unlikely duo were making their way through the underbrush as they always had, and Daryl had just shot a squirrel. He diverged from Campbell's path to retrieve the animal, when he heard an arrow whistle through the air above him.

"Get down!"

Daryl looked up to see a group of walkers, about ten of them, ambling toward where he stood. When the first one fell with an arrow in its eye, he dropped to the ground, his knife ready in case one came for him through Campbell's barrage. One by one, he heard the geeks drop. Finally, he stood as he heard the girls soft footsteps venturing toward the small herd.

"Where'd you learn to shoot?" Daryl asked, as she retrieved her arrows.

"I always had an eye for it. Couldn't read until I was nearly eight, but I could shoot anything."

She wiped the brain matter from each arrow on whatever was left of it's victim's clothing, and snapped them back into the quiver installed on the side of her bow.

"That young?" The girl regarded him with a sharp eye, looking pointedly at his biceps.

"You shoot. When did you start?"
She had turned, and he followed, drawing alongside her as they reached a stream. He bent to drink, she dropped her bags and stripped off her shirt.

"I guess about then. I was never any good with pistols." The girl smiled wryly, and bent to wash the blood off her shirt. Darly found himself staring, although he wasn't sure why. Her ribs stuck out, but she was very finely muscled rather than just thin. Perhaps it was the hideous spray of scars that looked like old bullet wounds across her hips and abdomen - those he hadn't noticed in the dark when he stitched here up. How in he'll did a girl like her get automatic rifle fire across her stomach? He shook his head and went back to drinking, splashing water over his head. She wasn't game for him to appraise. She was out of bounds for him. At least in this world.

"They said I had a gift." She was wringing out her shirt, standing so close to him in just a shockingly red bra. Night was falling, so he figured she would want to start a fire and dry her shirt out. "I went into the army when I was eighteen. I came out four years later as a Designated Marksman with a couple bullets in my stomach." She shrugged, her eyes ever scanning their surroundings, even as she draped her shirt over a branch. Maybe she would be worth the risk...

Suddenly, she stopped, as if she recognized where she was. Pensively, she pulled her jacket on, and zipped it gingerly to protect her still-healing side. He began to pull his bow strap back over his head, in anticipation of what was ging to happen. Sure enough, she threw her backpack over her shoulder and grabb her bow, leaving the black tank top hanging from the bough as she took off at a trot. Daryl grabbed the shirt as he started after her. They ran for a few minutes, before she stopped abruptly.

"Here it is!" Daryl couldn't figure out what it was, and shot the blond a questioning look. "I hid the car in a holler alongside the road. Didn't want it to get taken." Daryl couldn't help but smile as she said 'holler' instead of 'hollow.'

"Well then, where is it, stitches?"

She crossed the broad and empty highway, something he was sure she probably wouldn't have done about a year and a half ago. Hell, he wouldn't have run across the highway a year and a half ago, but he had no choice but to follow, an arrow nocked on his borrowed bowstring. Daryl wasn't a fan of being out in the open, he always felt as if people could see him but he had nowhere to hide to avoid being seen. It made is palms sweat. Especially these days, where those who could see you were either deranged former human beings or hungry walkers. He had encountered the former humans before, and liked them less than the geeks; they were much more difficult to kill.

Campbell stopped at a car-sized path into the woods, and looked back at Daryl. Once satisfied that he was going to be able to follow her into the brush, she seemingly vanished into the brush. The redneck could hear the squeal of an engine starting, but still couldn't see the vehicle itself even as he drew close to where the girl had vanished into the woods. Tentatively, he reached out a hand, and found a camouflauge tarp - but not some cheap walmart piece of shit. This thing had simulated vegetation sewn on it... Real stuff too.

"Did you make this thing yourself?" He called over the rumble of a diesel engine as he yanked down the tarp and began to ball it up.

"Don't ruin it!" Campbell swung out of the driver's seat of an olive drab, four door Jeep Wrangler, something that looked military issued to Daryl. She approached her traveling companion and siezed one side of the tarp and motioned to him to start folding. "I had to make that myself. It'll still be useful yet."

She was really protective of her Jeep, Daryl mused as he assisted in folding the tarp. Sure, almost evyone with a Jeep was somewhat in love with their vehicle (and often themselves) but he didn't see what was so special about the rumbling monster with the lifted body and large tires. Shitty gas mileage, that was for sure. She tossed the tarp in the back seat as she climbed back into the drivers seat. On top of a veritable arsenal.

So the vehicle itself wasn't valuable...

"Hey, can I trade for that crossbow?" Campbell had pulled out onto the highway, traveling north. Away from the prison...

"What, the bow isn't good enough for you?"

"I like those better." She waved her hand in acceptance of his request, her eyes ever scanning the road for obstacles ahead. Daryl had to hand it to her, she was alert. Maybe more alert than he was. But she had military training on her side... It seemed that his thoughts had turned to a constant pro and con list of bringing the blond back to his group, he mused as he traded out the bow for a crossbow. The bow didn't have many quarrels with it, but he could always make more...

"Where we going anyway?" He settled back into his seat, staring at the road ahead as if that would help him figure it out.

"There's a Bass Pro shop up ahead. I hung out there for a while, so I think it should still be secure."