The End of a New Beginning // Daryl Dixon

Part 20

Meredith

DARYL AND I woke the next morning and gathered our things. We kept our bows with us, ready for the next clearing Rick has planned for the day. We enter the dining area and found Rick, Hershel, T-Dog, Beth and Carl at a table. We look on the table and find body armer, flashbangs, some artillery stuff.

"Not bad." Daryl nods, picking up a flashbang.

"Flashbangs, CS Triple-Chasers." Rick nods. "Now sure how they'd work on walkers, but we'll take 'em." Daryl puts down the flashing and he picks up a helmet. Melted skin, bodily fluids immediacy poured out.

"I ain't wearing this shit." Daryl quickly denies.

"We could boil 'em." T suggests, holding up a glove with the same thing that happened with the helmet.

"Ain't enough firewood in the whole forest. No." I deny, staring at the body armor in disgust.

"Besides, we made it this far without 'em, right?" Daryl says, picking up a baton and swinging it.

"Meredith." I turn my head and find Carol standing in the doorway. She nods her head silently for me to follow her.

"Everything alright?" Rick asks.

"Yeah. Nothing to worry about." Carol nods. I glance over to Rick and gave his shoulder a squeeze. I follow Carol into the cell block. "It's Lori. She's worried about something." She informs me. We stopped at Lori's cell and I see her rocking back and forth, sniffling and breathing heavily.

"Lori?" I ask, quickly falling to my knees in front of her. Her hands were visibly shaking and I knew it was something serious that she was worried about.

"It's the baby. I think I lost it." She says.

"You haven't felt it move?" I ask her.

"Nothing." She shakes her head. "And no Braxton-Hicks. At first I thought it was exhaustion or malnutrition."

"You're anemic?" I ask. She nods.

"If we're all infected, then so's the baby." She says. "So what if it's stillborn? What if it's dead inside of me right now? What if it rips me apart?"

"Stop." I grabbed her hands. "Don't let your fear take control of you."

"Okay." She sniffles. "Then let's say it lives and I die during childbirth."

"That's not gonna happen." I reassure her.

"Why not?" She questions. "How many women died in childbirth before modern medicine? If I come back, what if I attack it? Or you? Or Rick? Or Carl? If I do, if there is any chance, you put me down immediately. You don't hesitate. Me, the baby, if we're walkers, you don't hesitate and you don't try to save us. Okay?" I inhaled deeply and nodded my head. "It might have been better if..."

"If what?" I ask.

"I'd never made it off the farm." She exhales.

"You're exhausted, scared." I tell her.

"Yeah, that's true." She nods. "My son can't stand me. And my husband, after what I put him through..."

"We've all been carrying that weight." I nodded. "All winter."

"That's easy for you to say. You've been Rick's right hand man." She lightly laughs. "I tried to talk to him. He..."

"He'll come around." I nodded. "He will."

"He hates me." She says. "He's too good a man to say it, but I know. I put him and Shane at odds. I put that knife in his hand."

"You know who doesn't give a shit about that?" I ask her. "This baby." Lori finally chuckles. "All it's going to care about is it being loved by the people surrounding it. Now, let's make sure everything's okay." I tell her. Lori nods. "And Lori...unless you're cramping severely and are bleeding like a heavy period, this baby is alive." Lori grabs my hand and gives it a tight squeeze.