Blood Soaked Arrows (On Hold)

(21) Finding a Reason to Leave

My fingers were stiff and numb from holding onto the steering wheel. My knuckles had long since turned white and the tips of my fingers were frostbitten blue but I wasn’t cold, I was heated with anger. I was furious at myself for being so careless, so stupid for missing such obvious signs. The burnt down street and freshly charred corpses should have been a dead giveaway but I hadn’t put two and two together. Of course a gang of raiders had passed through this town and what other raiders were roaming around Georgia other than Bryan’s group? Now that I was staring right at the devil himself, I couldn’t help but shake with rage.

I had no way of knowing for sure if those corpses back in the street had been people or Walkers when they were set on fire but seeing Bryan standing right in front of me swayed my answer. My gut told me that Bryan would have taken no pleasure out of burning down an empty, lifeless street. Those people had to have been living, survivors like me, when Bryan had raided their houses and now they were dead. Burnt to a crisp because of this psychopath’s sick and twisted brain.

There was no point though in me getting angry over him killing those people though, this was a different world, people died, and killers went unpunished but I couldn’t stop my teeth from clicking together. Bryan’s smile only grew from the doorway, almost bragging about what he had done and how he had finally caught ahold of me. For him to even think that he had me was laughable.

I smiled back at him before slamming the driver’s door shut. I could feel the truck’s engine vibrate through the gas petal as I slammed my foot into it. I looked back up, eyes locked with Bryan’s as the tire peeled against the pavement. His proud, arrogant smile was quick to fall as he swung his gun back around. Through the sounds of peeling tires and yelling from the other men I couldn’t help but hear Bryan curse at me as I stole his truck.

Once the front tires hit the road I flicked my wrist against the stick and shifted the truck into drive. The sound of gunfire and a rumbling engine filled the air. I could hear the loud thuds of bullet slamming into the sides of the truck but as long as the truck still moved I wasn’t too concerned with it. I sped the truck down the road until I hit the dark ashy one and swerved her onto that road. The sounds of shouting and bullets were becoming less threatening the farther I drove and it was then that I realized that there were no other motor sounds coming from behind me. Despite me being in my situation I couldn’t help but laugh. Those dumbasses only brought one vehicle!

Speeding down the burnt road still left me with an unsettling feeling but I quickly brushed it off. There was nothing that I could do for the people now especially when warning Daryl was more important. Knowing that Daryl was still sitting in some garage with his bike half way disassembled left an aching feeling in my chest. I couldn’t picture leaving his bike behind even if there was danger coming up on our tail so I just prayed that he had at least heard the gunshots and had already started putting this back where they belonged.

When I finally arrived at the garage where I had left Daryl I noticed the bin that he was using to collect the old oil was still under his bike and cursed. I slammed my foot against the brake, not caring that I hadn’t properly downshifted the stick shift, and yelled out the half open widow.

“Daryl we got to go!”

Daryl didn’t even look over at me as he stuck a screwdriver somewhere in his bike and started twisting. “Buy me some time.”

I thought about how far away Bryan’s men were and snapped. “We don’t have time.”

“There’s enough arrows in there to hold off those Geeks.” He kicked his crossbow over to me.

My body was shaking with anger when Daryl had obviously ignored the sense of urgency I was implying just so that he could fix his damn bike. Knowing that this wasn’t normally like Daryl to act this arrogant just pissed me off even more. With a loud grinding of gears I managed to slam the stick into park then I kicked open my door and stomped over to him.