My Fallen Angel (Daryl Dixon Love Story)

Chapter Nine: True Scars

I spend the rest of the day helping around the camp with odds and end chores. I was still worrying about Daryl, it was almost sunset now and he still hasn't shown up. I am putting up wood for the fire when Andrea calls out from her post on the RV. "Walker!"

I run over and follow her line of sight out to the fields across from where she sat. I see a lone figure staggering towards our direction. It didn't seem to be moving very fast, I wasn't sure if it even knew we were here.

Rick comes jogging over to the RV. "Just the one?" He asks.

Glenn, T-Dog, and Shane come to my side holding weapons. Andrea snatches up Dale's binoculars and looks through them at the roaming figure. She lowers them a bit too excitedly and kneels down to grab Dale's gun. "I bet I can nail it from here." She says as she raises the rifle to aim.

"No, Andrea, put the gun down." Rick orders calmly.

"You'd best let us handle this," Shane jumps in as he, T-Dog, Glenn and I approach. I grab out my knife from my boot.

"Hold up," Rick says. "Hershel wants to deal with walkers."

"What for, man? we got it covered." Shane calls back.

We continue our way towards the walker, Rick curses beneath his breath as he grabs himself a weapon; shortly following after us.

As we approach I realize one thing, this wasn't a walker it was Daryl and he was severely wounded.

"Is that Daryl?" Glenn asks.

"Daryl are you ok? What happened out there? Where's the horse?" I ask.

"That's the third time you've pointed that thing at my head you going to pull the trigger or what?" He says to Rick who then lowers his gun but I still hear a gunshot, I freeze and watch Daryl stagger and fall backward. I couldn't hear over all the shouts as I run towards him. Andrea approaches and bombards us with questions. "Is he dead?" She asks panic hinted in her voice.

"Unconscious," Rick mutters. "You just grazed him."

"But look at him. What the hell happened?" Glenn asks. "Look, he's wearing ears."

I look the man over and realized Glenn was right. He didn't look good at all and he was indeed wearing ears around his neck with a shoelace. What the fuck happened out there?

Rick rips the string from Daryl's neck and tucks it in his chest pocket. "Let's keep that to ourselves." He suggests I couldn't help but agree.

"We have to get him to Hershel, move you!" I hiss as I practically push Andrea aside. I didn't know why I was so upset, maybe it was just the stress of everything that happened recently.

"Guys?" T-Dog called from the back of the group. "Isn't this Sophia's?"

We all come to a stop as we look back at T-Dog. He was holding the same doll Morales' daughter had given to Sophia before they left the group.

I help Hershel clean and bandage Daryl's wounds as he informed us where he found the doll on a map.

"Found it washed up on the creek bed right there. She must've across there somewhere."

"Cuts the grid almost in half." Rick says to Shane.

"Yeah, your welcome." Daryl says.

"How's he looking?" Rick turns to Hershel and I. I was cleaning the small scrapes and scratches on his back as Hershel stitched up the arrow wound. I couldn't help but notice all the scars he had and wonder what happened to him in his life.

"I had no idea we would be going through antibiotics so quickly. Any idea what happened to my horse?" Herschel asks I could tell he was irritated.

"Yeah the one that almost killed me? If it's smart it left the country." Daryl fires back. I just shake my head as I clean up the dirty rags and gauze.