Show Me a Life With Blood and With Beauty

Aftermath

We didn't have long to celebrate our family unit getting bigger because what seemed like a few weeks but could have easily just been days our worst fear came true. The Governor came back to the prison and this time he wasn't alone. He had an army, tank, guns. Daryl told me to stay in the cellblock to be safe with Judith and Miracle. I watched Daryl leave and I started to cry. He turned around and ran up and hugged and kissed me and Miracle. "If anything happens and you need to get out stay safe. If you can't find me just go. I'll find you. Keep yourself safe and those two safe." I shook my head. I watched as the door closed. I looked down at Miracle who was oblivious too the whole situation. I couldn't imagine her growing up not knowing her daddy, but in this world that was a big possibility. I decided to look out the door because I thought I heard people arguing back and forth. I looked down in the yard and saw Rick standing out in the open with the Governor with what looked like something in his hands. I squinted and saw Michonne and Hershel on their knees and the Governor was standing beside Hershel and I knew what it was. Michonne's sword. Was he really going to do this? I kept watching and then I heard Rick say 'We can all live here. There's more than enough room here for your people and my people. You can take a cell block and we take the other. We won't speak or bother you until we're ready." - "Yeah there's more than enough room, but my people don't feel comfortable with your people sleeping so close." - "Believe me, we've done things we wish we hadn't done. This prison is ours. We've spilt blood for it. We've got a woman inside who just had a baby. Michonne told me you had a daughter. We've got babies who need a safe place...' - 'No deal. Like I said our people are different.' - 'We can come back. We've all done things but we get to come back. Put down your guns we can end this right now. Nobody has to die.' - all of a sudden I heard gun shots ring out. I quickly closed the door and just ran into the cell where Judith and Miracle were both crying. I started to panic. I gathered up a few things such as diapers, blankets, clothing a small gun that was hidden and Daryl said it was to be used as a last resort. I picked up both babies and braced myself as I was preparing to run. I started to try to put Judith in the car seat and picked Miracle up and breathed in deeply. 'I've gotta get out of here" I thought. I got Judith a little bit outside in the seat and realized it was too heavy to carry plus with walkers all around. I bent down and quickly tried to get Judith unbuckled and figured it would be easier to run without lugging the carrier around. I picked both her and Miracle up and started to try to figure out my surroundings. All of a sudden out of nowhere a walker lunged at me and I heard a gun shot ring out. I looked up and noticed Beth standing in front of me.

'Beth... where's Daryl? Rick? Carl? Maggie? Anybody?!' - 'Maggie was getting on the bus with everybody else until she saw Glenn wasn't there. I... I... don't know.' All of a sudden we heard a loud explosion. Beth offered to take Judith and off into the woods we ran. I kept looking over my shoulder to see if Daryl happened to be trailing us. Nothing. We kept running for what seemed like an eternity. We came upon a highway and found abandoned cars, we decided this would be the best place to came for the night. I couldn't help but cry. 'Daryl is going to find us. He's alive.' I looked up with my eyes all red 'You don't know that. I'm sorry about your dad.' - 'Its okay..' I decided to sleep in the same car I'd sleep in the front seat and Beth in the back. I.. as much as I wanted sleep I was awake. I kept my eyes and ears peeled to the surroundings. Daryl was a good tracker but at night in pitch black nobody except walkers would be able to find anybody. I dozed off and was awoken by the sun shining and cries. Beth was already awake trying to take care of both babies on her own. 'You should have woke me up..' I said as I picked Miracle up. I decided to try to get fresh air and got out of the car and stopped. I saw a huge herd walking our way. I looked at Beth and told her 'Shhh..' and pointed. I had Miracle up close to me and Beth had Judith. I closed my eyes and just held my breath hoping they wouldn't cry. We both laid down and tried to stay as silent and still as possible. I heard the moans and groans as the bummed the car. We waited until they passed and sat up. I heard a cry. I hoped they were as far away as they could be so they couldn't hear. Judith started having a fit and Miracle started. We had two fussy babies and really no way to help them. I decided maybe fresh air would do everybody some good. I got out and heard rustling in the woods and picked up the gun out of the bag. I pointed it at the woods waiting for the walker to come our way. I fell to my knees when I saw Daryl with his crossbow raised. I started crying. I held Miracle and just cried. He ran up to me and hugged me. He looked and saw Beth in the back seat of the car. 'I..I..I thought I lost you.' was all I managed to say. 'No. Never. Are you guys alright?' - 'Yeah.. Beth saved me. If it wasn't for her we would be dead. I had Judith in the carseat and bent down to take her out and a walker came up behind me. I owe my life to her.' He looked at Beth and said 'Thank you.' He picked up Miracle and just looked at her. 'She's perfect. You did a great job. Thank you for this gift.' I looked at him with his sad eyes and said 'Thanks. You did too. If it wasn't for you she wouldn't be here.' I looked down at the pavement I was sitting on and picked up my hand. I looked at the ring on my finger. I smiled. I looked at Daryl's as he held Miracle. I smiled. This life was our life. I looked at him 'So... how's it feel to be married and a daddy Mr. Dixon?' and he looked at me with a smile. 'Pretty damn good. If it wasn't for this shit world I wouldn't ever be able to afford you a ring like that. I can't even give my family a proper house.' - I looked at him and picked his chin up 'Hey, that back there.. wasn't your fault. You tried. We'll do what we did before.. find a place and stay there til it's not safe anymore. That's all we can do.' - 'You don't deserve that, these babies don't deserve that. Nobody deserves that. I've lived that way my entire fucking life and I know how it is. You deserve a house. We deserve a place to call home. Where these babies can grow up safe and not worry about this shit world.'

He asked me what I remembered. I said 'All I remember was everybody running outside and the explosions and the blood and bullets.' I closed my eyes and shook my head. I tried to get the images of the bloody bodies out of my brain. I remember seeing that sword go into Hershel's neck and him fall over. I remember it all. I sat close to Beth in the back seat and Daryl walked up and down the highway to see if any of the cars would start. No luck. He walked back and I could see he was frustrated. He opened the car door and sighed. I looked at him and said 'Its okay. Since we've been here we've only had one herd come through and a few stragglers. He looked at me and said 'We're leaving tomorrow. This highway isn't safe. We need walls. Security.' - 'Where do you suggest we go? We don't have any buildings for miles.' - 'Guys stop arguing!' Beth piped in. We both looked at each other and sighed. Pretty soon the darkness settled in and we fell asleep. I don't know for sure if Daryl fell asleep or not. It seemed like he didn't really sleep. The sun woke me and Beth up. 'Come on get ready. We're leaving.' I picked up the bags I carried and Miracle and hurried behind Daryl. Beth walked next to me. 'She.. looks just like Lori.' I said. I felt guilty that even though we both had kids born into this hell that I survived. I didn't understand it. My mind went back to the prison what happened to Rick and Carl? Did they think Judith was dead? I left the carseat there in the middle of the war zone. Everybody was on my mind. We kept walking until Daryl shushed us. He aimed and fired at something. He started getting happy and I kinda picked up my pace and saw there was a deer. 'Hello dinner!' I heard him say in an excited tone. I started to laugh just to see him get this excited over a deer. He got to quickly gutting it as me and Beth looked around for some stuff to help start a fire. We gathered a few little twigs and leaves. We were staying in the middle of the woods with those monsters. Would we survive? Night hit quickly as it did always. I made a little bed for Judith in one of the bags I had.. and Miracle in the other. Me and Daryl and Beth sat around the fire not saying much. We were just happy to eat. 'We're not the only ones who made it.' We both looked at her 'They are probably looking for us. We should go and try to find them. If you guys aren't going I'm going to go find them.' she started walking off and Daryl got up and grabbed her by the arm. 'Daryl you're hurting me. Let me go!' - 'You're going to sit down. Ain't nobody looking for us. If they are it's cause we're their food! You wanna be their food go right ahead missy.' I got up and started pulling on Daryl and saying 'Let her go Daryl!' and he pushed me down in the middle of the struggle. I looked up at him and Beth looked at him. He let her go and started to walk over to me. 'I...I...I'm sorry.' - I just looked up at him with a look of disgust. 'You put your hands on me. For what? Just cause I'm trying to tell you to be a bigger person and you shoved me to the ground.' 'It..it was an accident.' - 'Doesn't matter Daryl. You put your hands on me.' - 'Forgive me? Please?' I looked up at him and I was hurt, but I still loved him. I knew he wasn't abusive in any form. He stood up for me at the prison when that creep put his hands all over me. He risked his life more times than I could count.

The next morning I woke up and saw the fire was out and Daryl keeping watch. I rubbed my eyes and sleepily asked 'What are we going to do? We need shelter. It's probably going to rain and these babies can't be out in the elements.' - 'There's not anything for miles. If you want to start walking today be my guest.' - 'We gotta do something. We can't just stay here. Let's walk and see if anything comes up. We need to get out of here.' - 'Okay, pack up all your shit and we'll follow you.' I looked at Daryl with an annoyed look and rolled my eyes. We packed up what little belongings we had and scuddled on our way. I was leery as I held my daughter with all the hidden places walkers could hide. I kept looking around hoping something would come our way. It seemed like we were walking for miles and miles. We found a perfect place to take a break. The babies were asleep most of the trip. I looked at Daryl and he looked at me. 'What the hell are we going to do?' - 'This was your idea. You want to walk, we're going to walk until sundown and then we stop.' - The 3 of us were running low on water. We tried to ration as much as we could. I think if it came down to it Daryl would give his bottle of water to me and Beth to share. I hoped it wouldn't come down to that. We rested for a few minutes and got back up and started on our journey. Daryl ended up killing a few walkers that crossed our path. I happened to be looking at the sky and yelled 'Daryl.. Look..' as I pointed to the clouds. Black. 'Looks like a storm is heading our way. You have to jinx everything don't 'cha.' Daryl said as he looked at me. 'We need to find a safe place for the babies. Until this thing passes.' Beth added in. We kept walking and I could tell just the way Daryl was walking he was tracking something. 'Looks like something came this way.' We kept walking and walking all of a sudden out of nowhere a loud thunder clap sounded. I jumped at the sound of it. 'Daryl. We need to find some shelter soon.' - Daryl looked back at me 'Like I told you. Ain't nothing here. We've been walking for miles and nothing but more trees. I told you we should have stayed put. But no you didn't want to stay.' - I started walking and kept walking. I looked at Daryl standing there 'Where the hell are you heading girl?' - 'I'm going to try to find a place safe and dry for the night so our daughter doesn't have to stay in the rain. You coming or you staying?' I turned around and came face to face with a walker. I quickly tried to find my knife but my hand went straight to the thing's neck to try to keep it off me and my daughter. I heard and arrow peirce the damned thing's skull. 'Thank...Thanks' is all I managed to utter. Daryl glared at me. I could tell he was pissed. He went and grabbed Miracle out of my arms and held her and just looked at me as I picked myself up off the ground. 'I... I'm sor-' - 'Don't you dare say you're sorry! You put our damn daughter in harms way. Why? Because you have some false dream just like blondie over there. For fuck sake you women are so damn stupid.' I heard Miracle start crying. 'Daryl stop. You're scaring her!' - 'Oh like a walker almost eating her alive didn't scare her enough.' - Here we were arguing in the middle of walker infested woods with a crying baby.

We kept walking Daryl took the bags and tried to stuff as much as he could into one bag so the others we could put the babies in them to sheild them from the rain. It was drizzling and with the heat it was sort of a relief. He ended up carrying Miracle until we reached a point where we had to stop. We sat down under a tree for a little shelter all I managed to get out of the prison was a few baby blankets, outfits. I sat down and held the bag with Miracle hidden inside and just cried my eyes out. The thunder claps probably would hide us from walkers. We didn't have a fire tonight, and I sat leaned against the tree and thought 'This is horrible. We're probably going to die out here.' I didn't sleep at all. I sat there looking out in front of me at the pitch darkness. Scary thing was, we didn't know if a walker was right around the corner or not. I remember blinking and hoping that I'd wake up front this nightmare. Only positive thing from all this? Our water bottles were getting filled up. Morning couldn't come quick enough. Beth sat with me in the mud and tried to calm Judith down. Judith caused a chain reaction because Miracle started crying. I looked at Beth 'Does she have any formula left? I grabbed what I could.' Beth dug through the back and pulled out the formula can and looked inside. I saw her face drop. 'She's out.' She showed me the empty can. I figured the only other solution was nursing her like I had been trying to do with Miracle. I took both babies and got a blanket and threw it over myself and tried my best. I heard a noise and Beth grabbed her knife and had it ready to strike. Turns out it was Daryl. He had stuff in both hands. One hand he had some small squrriels and the other flowers. He sat down and put the squrriels down in his lap. 'Here this is for you.' He said as he handed me one of those dandelion flowers. 'This one is for you.' He said as he gave Beth a flower. We both smiled. 'You're so polite Mr. Dixon.' I said with a sarcasic tone. He gave me a smirk. I had finished nursing both babies and went to give Judith back to Beth. I held Miracle in my arms and she was looking all around. She stopped looking around to look at Daryl gutting and skinning our so called breakfast. He stopped doing what he was doing and just looked at her. He quickly wiped his hands on his filthy pants, and reached out to pick her up. She started smiling. He started smiling. Babies were one thing that I knew that couldn't keep him from smiling. 'Hey my Lil Ass Kicker.' he said in a hushed tone. He looked down at her trying to grab for him. I couldn't help but smile. She knew who her daddy was.

We finished our so called breakfast and headed on down the path. It was complete mud. A few downed branches and we kept our guards up. I held Miracle and stared straight ahead. I was so scared that what happened yesterday was going to happen again. We were coming to an opening in the trees and we heard groans. I looked over my shoulder and saw a bunch of walkers were coming up from behind 'Daryl!' He looked at me 'RUN! DON'T STOP!' We kept running and running. We got to an open area. We looked around noticing it was a golf course. We kept running til we saw a building. We stood there looking at the glass with a walker pressed up against it and clawing to get out. We turned around and saw walkers heading straight for the building we were standing infront of. All of a sudden we heard the glass shatter and Beth start screaming.