Zedler, M.D. // Daryl Dixon

Chapter Eighty-Nine: The Quarry

•eighty-nine•

Beatrix

I sit with my knees pulled to my chest, just looking at the graves in front of me. Some mean nothing to me, being for people who I never even knew existed, but there are two that mean the absolute world to me. They sit right beside one another, Caroline and Merle. I like to think that they're keeping each other company, wherever they're at.

The past few months (I think it's been a few months. I'm honestly not sure) have been a pretty wild ride. The good news is that Tara woke up. It took a while, but thankfully she was able to pull through with her memory still intact. That in itself is a miracle. The other good news is that Ron seems to have backed off of Enid.

Rick has also moved up to be with Deanna in power. To absolutely none of our surprise, he's the one that calls most of the shots now. Thats how it usually goes with Rick, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

Lucas, Beth, and I have also started back on our hunt for answers about my bite mark and how I didn't die from it. None of the Alexandrians know about it, thankfully. We've been able to keep it a secret, but we still want answers. We need answers. We need a cure. We need this to be over. It's not like it isn't a priority, but life sucks sometimes and the cure is what seems to always have to take the back burner until things calm down. With us, things rarely calm down, and when they do, they don't tend to stay calm for long.

"Hey, you ready?" Daryl breaks my attention, pulling my gaze from the two graves to look at him. He bites his thumb like he usually does when he's nervous, shifting from one foot to the other as he stares at the graves in front of me.

"Yeah, I just came here to think," I softly smile, using his hand to help me up. "Are you sure you're okay with me going?"

"Yeah, ain't nothing dangerous happening until tomorrow anyway," he mutters, turning and walking towards the gates. He already has our car-the Audi from the garage- pulled up to the gate and ready to go, beside his bike, of course.

Baxly rides with me as we drive out to the quarry. It feels so weird to be driving a car like this again, but I still love it. I love that I have the opportunity to try and feel a little normalcy. I park the car far away from the edge and we walk over to where Rick and the others are already standing.

When I look over the edge again, I still can't believe my eyes. I've been here a few times now, but that doesn't make it any more believable. Apparently it started with a group, camped out at the bottom of the quarry. They used some semi trucks to block off each of the exits, and they died down there. Since then, the noise of the walkers has just been accumulating, drawing more in, and they fall in like flies. There have to be hundreds if not thousands of them down there, aimlessly walking around.

Rick says that it looks like the semis could fall any day now, and some are already pushing their way out. If this horde got out of here and headed to Alexandria, we would all be dead, so we have to take care of the problem. Of course, I offered to slip in and kill them off slowly, and of course, Rick and Daryl both shot that down pretty quick. Rick said we didn't have time, and Daryl said he wasn't going to risk it. I don't see what it matters, though. They don't see me. I've proven that over and over again. I can walk into a horde and none of them even notice I'm there.

Once Rick is sure everyone is here, he starts to go over the plan again. Our plan now is to do a dry run of how it should go tomorrow, a dress rehearsal, if you will. It's definitely a long and tedious plan, but it should work. It has to work. The plan is that Daryl will ride his bike and lead them away from us, even though I am not fond of the idea at all. Abraham and Sasha are going to ride alongside him, and my job is to walk behind him. I'm pretty sure I only convinced Daryl that this would be safe for me to do because he'd be there, too, and if I got into any trouble, I could just hop onto the back of his bike.