my tears ricochet

Part 111

Glenn came after him but he overbalanced, falling down hard on the rock and struggling to get back onto his feet. Rick started screaming into the chaos, whipping the flashlight over in wild arches. "Hey! Hey, come on! Over here!"

This was it, Daryl's traitorous heart through, this was it—

But Glenn punched down, frantic and desperate, teeth clenched as he recovered. And then he managed the next leap, unfaltering, as fast as he had been when he raced through the streets of Atlanta like the devil himself, moving forward without thinking twice. Daryl caught him by the arm and helped haul him across the steep incline to safety, the pair of them looking back as Beth managed to gracefully maneuver her own way through. Rick followed slowly, awkwardly encumbered by holding the flashlight in one hand. "I hate this, I really hate this, I can't even begin to tell you how much I hate this—" Glenn rasped in Daryl ear as they continued moving upward, crouching through a narrow passage and into a newer opening, Beth and Rick right on their heels.

"Simon's gonna open the gate and bring this on through our homes," Daryl seethed around his own clenched teeth, livid at the world and himself. Powerlessness was a burden on his shoulders. "Anything you've had set up? Won't matter. He's got easy access."

The tunnel opened up fourteen miles from Alexandria. That was nothing. The underground was swarming with death and they were merely in a pocket of security.

"We're going to have to assume that some of his people are down here," Rick said tersely. "But that means there's a way out. That matters. Doesn't matter that we're down here. We're here together. We're gonna get out of it together. Don't count up the dead when we've still got chances."

Negan should've killed every single one of them when he had the chance. He thought he took out the biggest fighter, took Rick's best people away. But they were still enduring to survive, outlasting the monster himself. Daryl swallowed his own bitterness, shoved away the memory of a pink knife waiting for him, the knowledge that something evil was coming for the one thing he had left.

"Mine stretches all the way out back home. That's basically an easy highway," Glenn said. "But there'll be stations, ways to get out. It'll work. We just have to keep moving."

"Listen. I don't know how far this all goes," Rick said. "I want to move ahead, see if anything could be coming at us. You all stay, resupply on water. Rest. Take advantage of this place while we've got it."

The man departed with the matches and flashlight, leaving them with the torchlight. Glenn shook his head at Beth when she went to follow Rick. "Stay in this light," he warned her. "No further."

Daryl slumped down against the rough stone wall. It reminded him of the occasional work he got in construction and taking breaks behind rough builds, slinking into the coolness of the shade. Glenn followed him, persistent, shoulder bumping against him. "You don't like the dark," Glenn told him serenely almost, mouth turned into a bitter smile. "And before you bullshit me, I don't like it either anymore. Not after being in it for so long."

He couldn't forget that closet. He was still living inside of it, some distant memory never truly escaped from the confines of it. The red room, the Sanctuary. All of it was inside his mind. "You're fine," Daryl informed him sharply. Beth held her bottle up to catch water dropping down from stones and he kept a careful eye on her. "Doesn't matter what I like or don't like."

"We're fine," corrected Glenn, patient. "We're going to be fine."

"You ever think this shit is just some kind of punishment?" Daryl asked into the darkness. "We fucked ourselves up by surviving this long?"

Glenn frowned, tilting his head. "Think we deserve better, if you're asking my opinion."

The red door opened inside him mind. Oscar, Abraham. A television splintered. "I don't want to kill Simon. I just want to hurt him," he confessed, ears ringing from the absence of moaning. "I want to make him regret everything. I want him begging for forgiveness, and then I want to kill him."