In the Sound

The group was together again.

We hadn't all been together since the meeting about Randall. With Dale too. But this time we didn't have a govern over us. I couldn't help but think how much our group needed Rick and Shane.
Without them, without Glenn and Daryl, we just waited.

Unmoving. Dead faces.

Hell, we were no better than walkers.

Andrea was the only one with a little buzz. Her knees were tapping up and down in fast jitters. She bent over her lap, fingers folded between her knees. Those hard eyes were fixed on the carpet. Her sallow, sharp cheeks were set into a frown. She and Lori were butting heads for the past hour. At first I thought it was just Lori making those harsh snaps at everyone. But now I knew. Andrea loved to stir her up even more, she was the only one in the group who could do it.

Things were tense.

I stood beside Herschel. His presence calming. The faintest waft of soup still hovered over him. Glancing up at him, I noted a small smudge of soup tainting his wrinkly chin. I tugged at the handkercheif he'd messily stuffed in his shirt pocket. Herschel set his wise, beady eyes on me. But he didn't speak. Instead, he softly clamped his lips together as I dabbed the soup off his chin.

When I was finished, I tossed the handkercheif onto the mantlepiece before leaning on it myself.

Herschel's crackled lips curled into a careful smile, "Appreciate the fatherly, Nora."

"Wasn't out of my kind heart or anythin' Herschel. I jus' know I wouldn't be able to sleep til' I knew that spot was gone."

A scratchy, old laugh rumbled from his chest. He scrambled to cover his mouth before the chuckle turned into a throaty cough.

To my surprise, Maggie suddenly clambered to her feet. She turned to us dramatically. I felt the heat seeping off of her. There was a deep scowl at her lips, her eyes flickered between me and Herschel. "This aint the time to be laughin'," she snapped.

Damn. I wanted so badly to throw balled little fists at her face. My knuckles were going pink just at the thought. Probably not the best thing to do though. Not when you owed a debt to her Dad for saving your dog's life. Yeah, probably a bad idea.

If the Greene farm door hadn't opened, we probably would've been drowned in tension.

The floorboards creaked violently, two people quietly sweeping over the wooden floors. Their boots were screeching here and there, like they were bringing wads of mud in. Lori tensed in hope that it was Rick.

"Rick an' Shane aint back?"

Fuck, I missed that thick southern tongue.

Daryl rounded the corner, his head drawn back confidently. There was dirt shadowing his sallow cheeks. A few scratches that told me he probably came across a walker. Or a tree or somethin'.

Glenn was trailing behind closely, his wide eyes swimming in worry. I heard Lori's little sigh of disappointment.

"We heard a shot."

Lori was on her feet, scurrying over like a Mum scolding her kid for being out too late. "Maybe they found Randall."

"We found 'im," Dixon replied in a hoarse voice.

"Is he back in the shed?" Carol piped in, her tone almost a whisper.

Daryl's dark eyes did a quick sweep of the room before finding mine. My heart thudded a little harder in my chest. He looked like he wanted to edge over to me and just touch me.

His lips parted first, then the words. "He's a walker."

I felt my brow knit into confusion. Impossible. I heard him wrong.

"Did you find the walker that bit 'im?"

"The weird thing is- he wasn't bit."

My head was spinning fast I couldn't even catch who was speaking. It was all just jumbled sentences and voices. Blurring together. Words were clicking across my skull. Randall's chortle. His curse. His jesus preaching mother. Everything about him that seemed so funny, was suddenly making me sick.

Daryl's fists clenched like he needed to squeeze me. I wanted him to. I needed him to hold me up and steady. I was pretty sure that I could drop to my knees in dizziness. But he lingered in the middle of the group, drawing his eyes away from mine.

"His neck was broke. Shane and Randall’s tracks were right on top of each other, an' Shane ain’t no tracker," Daryl said sarcastically. "So he dint come up behind him. No. No they were together.”

Together?

The group burst into a wave of chatter, filling the room with nervous comments. Daryl's eyes fell on me again, a curiosity in him. I knew he'd picked his words as carefully as possible. He knew that Randall was a part of my life once.

Daryl lifted his chin slowly and gestured towards the patio. As he turned, Lori scuttled up to him,

"Would you please go back out there. Find Rick an' Shane. Find out what the hell is going on?"

I kind of expected Daryl to snort at her before throwing a string of cartoon character insults. But he just nodded, "You got it," and swept from the room.

I weaved through the crowd to follow him into the night. Both Glenn and Andrea was filing out onto the patio, trying to intercept each other. I skipped to keep up, head still sort of dizzy. Lifting up my hand, I clawed at Daryl's forearm to slow his pace. I didn't give a shit if the others saw.

Dixon's legs were a lot stronger than my arms, but he stopped anyway.

"Hey," he grumbled. He brought his face down a bit, his features all tight and scrunched up. He squinted those narrow eyes at me. For a second it looked like he was gonna apologise or something stupid like that.

"Oh my god."

Our heads spun at the sound of Andrea's voice. Her eyes were on us. They were hard and pointed. I felt a fire rise up in my veins. I really wasn't in the mood for another judgemental bitch tonight.

I opened my mouth to have a go at her, and realised she wasn't looking at me at all. Carefully, I studied her eye line and tracked it over my shoulder. She was looking out across the fields and into the darkness. Her mouth was parted in shock. Instinctively, I turned to peek behind me.

My heart sunk.

If I wasn't dizzy then. I was now.

Heads were all lulled. Limbs dragging. Gutteral sounds groaning out of their rotting mouths. They lusted for us in a way that sent shivers down my spine. There were so many. More than I'd ever seen before. Like a herd of cattle, unstoppable and unchangeable. Moving through to devour and chew. There was about eighty, maybe a hundred.

About a hundred of corpses trailed towards the house.