A Painful Place (Walking Dead Fanfiction)

Chapter 4: You Ain't Stupid

“You seem to have a habit of fallin’ down,” Daryl teased as they entered the tree line. “How are you supposed to catch us any food if you can’t even stay upright?”
He seemed to have gotten over his embarrassment earlier and had returned to being friendly. Well, as friendly as Daryl got.
“I do perfectly fine staying upright when I’ve eaten recently,” she replied defiantly. “I’m surprised my legs still work at all. And, if I remember correctly, you contributed to that last fall.”
Daryl scanned the area as they talked. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake he did earlier, especially when he was on a mission to feed the group.
“Anyway,” Tilly continued, “Rick sending me out here, is this just another ploy for you to make sure I’m not a psycho?”
“You ain’t stupid, girl, I’ll give you that.”
“Why don’t you just go ahead and tell me what you want to know,” Tilly wasn’t in the mood for bullshitting. If they needed information in order to trust her, she would give it to them. She didn’t have anything to hide, not compared to anyone else anyway.
“What did you do before all of this?” he asked, before suddenly raising a hand, signaling her to be quiet as he spotted a rabbit. He raised his crossbow and shot an arrow through the creature’s head. After he collected his kill and checked that there were no other animals in sight he looked at her, letting her know she could speak.
“I looked for jobs, mostly. Got a degree in electrical engineering a few years ago, but steady work was hard to find where I lived. I made most of my money doing odd-electrical work for businesses around town. I had lined up an interview for a real full-time job, but the outbreak happened before I could go. Ain’t that just my luck?”
“That’s closer to a real job than I ever got,” he shared.
“What did you do, then?” Tilly asked.
“Ain’t here to talk about me.” He regretted revealing anything about himself at all. She hadn’t earned his trust yet.
“Alright, what else do you need to know?”
“How do you know Lana? You know her before this?”
“I’ve known her for as long as I can remember,” Tilly replied. “Our mothers were best friends, and it kind of just carried on with us. She’s my sister, as far as I’m concerned.”
“You have any other family?” he asked.
“Yes, I did,” Tilly didn’t want to elaborate on that. Over a year later she still couldn’t talk about what had happened when this whole thing started.
Daryl got the hint and decided not to pry into that at the moment. “How old are you?” he asked instead.
“Don’t you know you’re never supposed to ask a lady her age?”
Daryl shot her a look.
Tilly chuckled, “I’m 27. I think. Who really knows when their birthday is anymore? Lana is a month older than me, almost exactly. Is that it?” she sighed, beginning to wish she could focus on hunting instead of playing twenty questions.
“You told Rick you’ve killed four people. Care to elaborate on that?”
Tilly rubbed her forehead. “I don’t care to tell you, but it’s a long story. Maybe we should take a break and find somewhere to rest for a minute.”
Daryl nodded and they found a downed tree to serve as a bench. Daryl pulled a water bottle he had nabbed from Terminus out of his pack, took a swig, then offered it to her. She took it gratefully and downed a bit.
“I’m not exactly sure where to start,” she said.
“Just start at the beginning. We’ll just watch for animals while we sit here, so we’ve got time.” He sat looking out at the woods.
Tilly took a deep breath and began. “A couple of months after everything went to shit, Lana, Joseph and I ran into another group of people. Men, maybe 6 or 7 of them. Back then we were too stupid to realize that when there is no one to keep them in check people can be even more dangerous than the geeks.”
Daryl nodded knowingly, but kept his eyes on the forest.
“Everything was fine for a couple of days. We holed up in an old factory somewhere outside of Memphis. We were on our way south from western Kentucky, and those guys offered to help us make it down here if we stayed there for a bit first. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it turns out those men had no intention of traveling with us. They weren’t even going to let us out of the factory.”
Daryl turned to look at her for a moment as she continued.
“Lana and I were the only women in the group, but we were confident we could handle ourselves, especially having Joseph with us.” Daryl saw Tilly’s eyes sparkle a little with tears as she thought of her lost friend.
“The third night we were there, Joseph was keeping watch as we slept. They ambushed him. Knocked him out. All of the noise woke us up, but it was too late by then. They rushed us. I’m sure you can tell where this is going,” Tilly looked at Daryl.
“Yeah,” Daryl replied, “I have an idea.” He turned his eyes back to the woods, waiting for her to confirm what he was thinking.
“There was one man in particular, the leader, Ron,” she spat his name out. “He had me pinned underneath him. I told him that they could have me. Do whatever they wanted, and I wouldn’t resist as long as they let Lana go. She’s a tough chick, but she has a bit of a history with abuse, and I wasn’t about to let her go through it again.”
Daryl couldn’t help but respect the woman after hearing this. Anyone who was willing to do such a thing to save someone else was alright with him. He had a feeling they didn’t take her up on the deal, though.
Tilly paused for a moment to gather her thoughts before she continued. “He just laughed in my face. He had his men tie up Lana and Joseph, and they made Lana watch as they… As they did things to me. I fought them, but that just seemed to make the whole thing more fun for them. They took turns beating me, raping me,” her voice cracked a bit. “I stopped fighting after a while, because I knew that when they were done with me they would do the same to Lana.”
“They didn’t bother tying me up when they had each had a turn. They thought I was done-for, and they just left me in the floor like trash. They were wrong, though. I wasn’t done, not nearly. They all turned their attention to Lana. Started taunting her, telling her that they hoped she liked what she saw because she was next.”
By this point, Daryl had given up looking for prey and had his full attention on Tilly.
“How did you manage to kill them?” Daryl asked. “Weren’t they armed?”
Tilly nodded, “They all had some sort of weapon, but lucky for me only Ron had a gun. I knew that if we were going to get out of there that gun was my only hope.”
“I’m surprised you were able to think that clearly after-,” Daryl stopped, not wanting to repeat the things that had happened to her.
Tilly shook her head. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. That just seemed common sense to me. I was acting on rage. I was angry about what had happened to me, I was injured pretty badly, but I wasn’t going to let them do it to her. It wasn’t an option. When they’d all turned their attention to Lana, I was able to get behind Ron. My knife was still in my boot. They were too stupid to take it away from me. I stuck it through the back of his neck.”
Ballsy, Daryl thought.
“When he fell, I grabbed his gun and told them to untie Lana. They did it, and she was able to untie Joseph, who was finally awake. One of those bastards had the nerve to tell me to ‘lighten up, we were just having a little fun!’ And that was the breaking point. I shot him in the forehead. Then another, and another. Joseph was awake long enough to have heard them talking about the things they were going to do to Lana, the things they’d done to me. He took care of the rest of them.”
“Damn,” Daryl wasn’t exactly sure what to say. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Tilly replied. “It happened. It’s over. We all made it out. We don’t get to dwell on things like that anymore. If you let something like that stay in your head, affect you, you’re going to end up getting yourself killed.”
Daryl could only nod in response. “Starting to get dark,” he said as he stood. “We should head back, see if we can kill anything else along the way.”
Tilly stood to follow him. “So, you going to tell Rick I’m some kind of crazy killer now?”
“Nah,” Daryl said. I’m going to tell him you’re the toughest person I’ve ever met.