The Fear (The Walking Dead / Daryl Dixon)

Prologue - Never Again

Death is a part of life. It's waiting somewhere around the corner in everyone's life, but when it all comes crashing down one after the other like dominos that overpowering emotion of grief is even more soul crushing then it ever was and it never gets easier.

It's like a cyclone, whipping around you, ripping your feet off the ground and tossing you around like a rag doll only to disappear and drop you to the ground like a sack of rocks crashing into cement. And then you realise what it really means...

Never Again.

Those are the two dreadful words no amount of happy memories can ever override.

Never again will you see that person.

Never again will you hear their laugh.

Never again will you hold them, or them you.

It's silent. A burning silence that tares through you like the most unimaginable fear.

I felt this when my mother died. I was fifteen years old and my sisters were twelve and seven, but for their sakes I never let it show. I stayed strong for them. I pulled them up out of ground with every ounce of strength I had left and I never let go, even to this day.

Two years later, my father moved on, remarried to a woman, a kind woman named Annette who brought with her a twelve-year-old son who soon took the position of my younger brother. I looked out for them all and kept them together, holding on to the only thing I had... family.

Then the apocalypse broke out. The dead began to rise and eat the living. Annette and Shawn became like them and my father, holding onto every string of hope imaginable, believing they could be cured. He locked them away with any others that wandered onto our property. He convinced my youngest sister, Beth, and our two closest family friends, Otis and Patricia, of his views. He tried to convince Maggie and Beth's boyfriend, Jimmy, as well and they refused to say any different, although remained prepared for the worst.

But he couldn't convince me. I never said it, never having the heart to break his again, but I knew they were gone.

That cyclone tore through me again, but this time the death kept coming and the cyclone kept destroying, rarely giving me a minute to breathe.

I've been planning this for so long! Hope you enjoy and please remember to give me some feedback and your thoughts on my character and this book.