•twenty-eight•
Beatrix
"You can't drive all night," I sigh, crossing my arms. "You need to sleep. Just let me drive."
"I'm not lettin' ya drive my bike, Trixy," Daryl shakes his head as he inhales the smoke from a cigarette.
"Well I'm not letting you stay up all night," I argue. "It's dangerous and not healthy at all. Get your sleep and let me drive. I promise I know how to."
"Don't need to sleep," he grunts and pushes off the tree he's been leaning against, tossing his cigarette onto the ground.
We're currently stopped beside of the road, letting everyone take a break from driving and sitting down for so long. It's probably around four in the morning, and we've been driving since eight in the evening, still not really having a destination. Rick has just been leading, driving wherever he feels like driving. Now, all of the drivers are rotating so that they can get some sleep. All of them except for Daryl, of course, because he won't let up.
"Yes you do!" I exclaim, walking behind him back toward the bike. "Daryl, please. I don't want you to fall asleep while you're driving and kill us both. I've been asleep, and I'm good to go. Rick said we were stopping in about two hours anyway."
"All right," he mumbles, finally agreeing as he looks into my eyes. I can clearly tell that he's sleepy— his pupils are glazed over and bloodshot. He's probably been sleep deprived for days.
"Thank you," I faintly smile before pressing my lips to his in a light kiss.
"Everyone, let's roll out!" Rick yells from the front car before getting into the passenger seat as he starts the engine. I believe he's letting Merle drive while he sleeps, which is surprising. He used to hate Merle.
"Just do what I do," I say to Daryl as I start up the bike, and he awkwardly wraps his arms around my waist. "Lay your head on my back, and go to sleep. You need it."
"I will," he says, yawning.
Daryl makes sure I'm good driving before he finally lays his head down. I swerved a little at first—a motorcycle with someone on the back is literally nothing like driving a bike or a car— but I got the hang of it. After a few minutes, I can feel his arms go limp, and I can hear him snoring.
///
"Psst, wake up," I whisper, poking Daryl's face. "Merle found us a place to stay."
"Merle what?" He questions, raising up to look around us.
"He said he knew this place before the turn," I explain, gesturing to the three-story hotel in front of us. "Said this is where he always had business meetings."
"Business meetings my ass," Daryl scoffs as he lightly pushes on my side, wanting me to get off of the bike, which I do, so that he can get off too.
"Can I ask you something?" I look to Daryl as he observes everyone packing their things inside. He nods, so I continue, "Was he on drugs before?"
"Mhm," he nods, keeping his answer short.
"I can tell. Not that he's acting weird or anything, but doctors just know. We're trained to look for the signs," I explain. "Can I ask you something else?"
"Ya just did," he lets the smallest hint of a smile tug at his lips.
"You know what I mean," I smile back, rolling my eyes before I turn my facial expression to serious. "Why did he do that? Does it have something to do with your scars?"
"Trixy," Daryl warns, and I know he doesn't want to talk about it, but I do.
"It's okay, Daryl," I lower my voice and take his hand in mine. "Do you think I'm going to judge you? I'm not. It doesn't matter to me that they're there. I would just like to know."
"Not the time for it, Trixy," Daryl shakes his head and places a soft kiss to my forehead. "I'll tell you soon, I promise."
"Okay," I nod, accepting his response. "Come on, let's go pick out a room."
"Didn't they check to see if it was safe first?" He questions, staring at Merle standing on the porch. "We're surrounded by gates, but what about the inside?"
"They checked while you were asleep. I didn't want to wake you up. You looked too peaceful," I smile and pull him close for a kiss. He doesn't let it last long though—everyone's outside around us.
"You go on in and pick out where ya wanna' sleep. I'll bring our shit in," he replies before walking off to the trailer, and I make my way inside.
"Rick," I call for him inside of the hotel. The inside is really fancy, not really something you'd expect a drug deal to go down at, but I guess maybe they just didn't want to cause suspicion.
"Yeah?" Rick replies, stepping from behind the check-in desk.
"What exactly is the plan?" I ask.
"We'll stay here as long as we can. Good thing Merle brought us here," he says, rubbing his hand over his beard. "We're all gonna' stay on the bottom floor in the left wing. The even numbers have double beds and the odd numbers have a king bed. You can go find one for you and Daryl. Since there's no power, the lock that requires a room key doesn't work. Come find me when you get done."
"Okay. Thanks!" I smile at Rick and take off in the direction he pointed me to.
There are about twenty rooms to choose from, which is more than enough for us. I look to the left side of the hallway, seeing as the rooms on the left are the odd numbers. After opening two doors with people inside—one was Maggie and Glenn's room and the other was Merle's— I decide to skip two doors and take the fifth one, room one-thirteen.
It seems really nice. Obviously a king bed is sitting in the left corner of the room, while a small couch takes up the right corner. Across from the bed is a dresser with a TV on it, though that won't be any use to us, and there's a desk with a rolling chair in front of the couch. There's also a small bathroom to the left when you first step in the door, but I don't think that'll be any use to us either. As I walk into the room farther, I can tell that the window behind the curtains is actually a door that leads out to a small patio outside.
Deciding that this is the room I want, I flip the door stopper out to prop the door open before going to find Daryl. It doesn't take me too long, though. He's waiting for me in the lobby with our bags, letting a hint of a smile tug at his lips when he sees me.
"Where we at?" He asks, shifting my bag on his shoulder.
"One-thirteen. Let me carry nine," I offer, reaching for the bag, but he jerks away from me.
"Not a chance," he smirks before heading down the hall with me right behind him. "This it?"
"Yeah," I smile and hold the door for him as he brings the bags in and throws them down by the couch. "It's cute. There's even a little patio for you to smoke on. No smoking in the house," I joke, sticking my tongue out at him.
"My mom taught me that lesson," he mumbles, sitting down on the couch.
"How?" I ask, sitting down on his lap sideways and wrapping my arms around his neck.
"Fell asleep smokin' when I was nine," he replies without emotion. "Burned the house down and killed herself."
"Oh, I'm sorry that happened," I frown and push his hair back, giving him a kiss on the forehead. I'm just glad that he's finally starting to tell me about his past. I'd tell him anything he wants to know about mine; he just doesn't ask questions. "It's a bad habit anyway. As a medical professional, I'm obligated to advise you to stop."
"Ya know that won't happen," he smirks before grabbing my thighs and moving them so that I'm straddling him.
"Daryl," I let out a small laugh as he begins to kiss down my neck. "You've already given me enough hickeys. Besides, I'm supposed to go talk to Rick."
"Rick can wait," he mumbles against my skin.
"Later," I promise, pulling back from him and standing up. "But for now, we need to get settled in and safe."
"How we gonna' do that?" Daryl asks, rubbing a hand over his beard, which is getting a little out of control; he needs to shave it.
"I don't know," I shrug as I walk towards the door. "That's why we need to go talk to Rick. Come on."
Daryl follows me down the hall and back to the lobby. When we don't see Rick there, we look outside. He's walking the perimeter of the gate around the hotel. I have no idea why there's even a gate here anyway. Maybe it was a protection mechanism to keep thieves from stealing the drugs, or money, from all of the deals that went down here. It probably wasn't even a real hotel, just an easy way to launder their drug money and hold drug deals. I'm probably thinking about this way too much, but my headcanon is fun and that's what I will think about this place from now on.
"Beatrix, Daryl," Rick acknowledges our presence, nodding his head and walking away from the gate. "If we plan on staying here a while, we'll need to reinforce the fence. More than ten walkers could get past it easy."
"We can do that," Daryl replies, shifting from one foot to the other.
"We need to make this place safe," Rick says, looking around the outside of the building.
"We will," I assure him, even though I know I won't be much help.
"We're still low on food, so I'm taking some people out on a run. If you two come, I'll have to leave Glenn and Merle here to protect everyone. Can't have all of our fighters out at once, especially when we just moved into a new place," Rick informs us, and I internally laugh at the thought of me being referred to as a fighter. He probably just knows by now that Daryl and I are a package deal.
"We can go," I look at Daryl, and he slightly shakes his head at me. "Or we could just stay here."
"Trixy and I will look after the group," Daryl says.
"All right. We'll head out in a bout half an hour, and we should be back by dark," Rick nods and turns on his heel, walking off towards Glenn.
"Why didn't you want to go?" I question, grabbing Daryl's hand.
"Didn't think ya needed to after what happened last night," he shrugs and drops my hand as he walks towards the building, me following right behind.
"Daryl, I'm fine," I lie. I'm on another level of not fine, but I have to suck it up and deal with it.
"You're not," he counters, seeing right through me.
"I know," I sigh and sit down on one of the chairs in the lobby. "But I don't get to lay down and cry about it. The way things are now, I have to stop being so emotional. It's going to get me killed."
"As long as you're with me it won't," he replies, pressing a kiss to my forehead. "I'll go take watch. You need to make sure everyone's here, and tell 'em to stay inside."
"Yes, sir," I roll my eyes and stand up to walk off down the hall.
"You best watch your mouth, sunshine," Daryl calls after me as I'm walking away. I turn around, smirk at him, and continue walking away.
///
"I think we need to scavenge this place," I suggest to everyone sitting in the lobby of the hotel, which is pretty much everyone that didn't go out on the run: me, Daryl, Beth, Hershel, Otis, Lori, and Carl. T-Dog didn't go either, but he's outside keeping watch right now.
"For what?" Lori asks as she rubs her stomach.
"Anything," I shrug. "Food, weapons, clothes, medical supplies. I don't know. There could be anything here."
"That's a good idea, Beatrix," Hershel nods to me.
"Thank you. We have flashlights, don't we, Daryl?" I look to Daryl.
"I don't think you should be goin' alone," he simply replies.
"I'll go with her," Beth volunteers.
"Me too," Carl pipes up, earning a look of warning from his mother.
"Otis and I will go," Hershel says.
"If you're goin', I'm goin'," Daryl mumbles to me.
"Good. We can split up and cover more ground," I push up off of the couch I was sitting on and walk over to the check-in desk. There are three flashlights, so I take them all, giving one to Hershel and one to Carl. "Daryl, Carl, and I can take the third floor if you two and Beth will take the second."
"Sounds like a plan," Hershel agrees, making sure his kife is in its designated place on his side.
"You can't just leave me alone down here," Lori says. "And I won't allow Carl to go."
"Come on, mom!" Carl objects.
"Beth can stay with you," I suggest, looking to Beth.
"Yeah," she agrees, even though I can tell she doesn't want to, but she's the most qualified to take care of her (besides me, of course).
"And Carl will be with me and Daryl. I promise you, Lori, we won't let anything happen to him," I place my hand on her shoulder and she reluctantly nods her head.
"Let's go," Daryl grunts, leading our small group toward the stairs.
We all walk up one flight to the second floor, and then Hershel and Otis head off to see what they can find. Once Daryl, Carl, and I arrive at the third floor, we ready our flashlights and push the door open. It's eerily quiet and pitch black, but hey, that's why we have flashlights.
Daryl walks in first, with me and Carl following closely behind. The corridor extends to the left and to the right, though the left side isn't as long as the right.
"I'll take the left and you and Carl can take the right," I suggest to Daryl, making him turn around to look at me.
"You're crazy if you think I'm lettin' ya go by yourself," he replies, shaking his head.
"Carl would be safer with you, and we can get it done faster if we split up," I argue. "We're literally not going to be that far apart. If I need you, I promise I will yell."
"All right," Daryl reluctantly agrees. "Both of you need to keep your silent weapons out. Don't use a gun unless you absolutely have to."
"Don't worry, Carl doesn't have one, and I don't like using mine," I reassure him. "I'm not very good at shooting it."
"I'll fix that soon," he promises before walking off to the right with Carl right behind him.
Now it's time to go off by myself. I'm not exactly nervous, because Daryl is not far away from me at all, but I'm not thrilled to be alone either. I know I suggested it, but it's really the best if I go by myself.
I open the first door I come upon, and to my relief, there are no walkers inside, not even in the bathroom. I quickly rummage through the drawers, looking for anything that could be helpful, but there isn't anything there. Since the beds are perfectly made, with a thin layer of dust on top, it's safe for me to assume that nobody had been staying here when the world fell.
The next few rooms were the exact same. The only things I took from there were the rolls of toilet paper, the soap bars, and the miniature shampoo/conditioner bottles (even through we don't currently have a working shower, we're going to have to find a way to wash off eventually). If it gets too cold on us later, we can always come back and get the extra blankets and pillows.
When I get to the fourth room, I feel as if it's going to be different than the others, and once I open the door, I know exactly why. The bathroom door is shut, and I can hear a walker scratching at it from inside. I know that I can't just leave it there, so I'll have to kill it.
I position myself with my body pressed up against the door with my right hand on the handle, Daryl's knife in the other. Very slowly, I open the door just enough to fit my hand through. Unfourtinately, that's enough room for the walker's hand to fit through too. It reaches its hand out, clawing at my face, trying to grasp onto anything. Realizing that it's not going to be as easy as I'd hoped, I use all of my strength to stab the walker's arm with the knife to pin it to the door frame. Luckily, it worked. I quickly grab my gun, open the door up more, and used the end of the gun to beat the walker's head in.
I swiftly retrieved my knife before looking around the rest of the room. Clothes are scattered everywhere, with suitcases still open on the beds. Jackpot.
After pilfering through the mess of clothes, I can see that most of them were not meant for winter. However, there were a couple of jackets and a few long sleeves. I figure that I can take those and they can be useful, so I pack up what I can into a suitcase and roll it out into the hallway. I can pick them up on the way back down the hallway to meet Daryl.
The last few rooms I look in are very similar, with variations of clothes in each one. I even found three handguns and two cartons of bullets. Thanks, drug cartel. Unfortunately, there was no food in any of the rooms. However, I have a total of six suitcases full of clothes for us, along with tons of toilet paper, soap, shampoo and conditioner. And next month when it gets even colder, around Christmas, we will be able to come back up here and strip the beds for blankets to keep warm at night.
My only concern is Lori. I'm afraid that the cold temperatures will have a very negative effect on the baby. That, along with all of the stress she's under, may cause her to have a miscarriage. She's stressed, cold, and hungry. Those are not very good conditions for a fetus. I'm really worried about her, and I don't want her to lose her baby. I really don't want to think about what losing her would do to her and Rick, but I know it won't be good. So I'm going to do everything I can to make sure Lori and the baby both stay alive.
I shake my head, focusing on the task at hand. All of my rooms are done, so I walk back down the hallway, grabbing the six suitcases as I go—though I couldn't exactly carry all six, so I left three by the stairs and went back to get the other three. By the time I have all of my things gathered, I see Daryl and Carl coming out of their last room.
"Hi, guys!" I smile as they walk towards me. "What'd you find?"
"Uh," Daryl calls as he holds onto Carl's arm, dragging him to me. "We had a problem."
"What happened, Daryl?" I ask, my eyes widening in panic.
"Calm down, Trixy, nothing major. Carl just found a knife and accidentally stabbed himself with it," he shrugs, nudging Carl to me.
"Shit. How'd he do that?" I mumble, dropping to my knees and grabbing Carl's arm. He's crying, and the knife is still stuck in his forearm, right beside of the bracheal artery. I immediately grab the knife to steady it. "You didn't at least stablize it? Really, Daryl?"
"Sorry," he shrugs, ignoring my first question. "Didn't know."
"Oh, my God," I shake my head and look up at Carl. "How bad does it hurt? On a scale of one to ten?"
"Four," Carl decides. He doesn't look to be in too much distress, so that's a good thing. The only think I'll need to do is remove the knife and stop the bleeding.
"I'm never leaving you two alone again," I smile up at Daryl, and he smirks back. "Did you find any medical supplies? I didn't."
"Gauze sponges and a shitload of oxy," he replies.
"Well I'm not giving Carl an Oxycodone," I roll my eyes. "Give me the gauze, and then hold the knife as steady as you can. Don't move it."
Daryl does as I say, handing me the gauze before kneeling down to hold onto the knife. I softly press some sponges around the entry wound, and I can tell it isn't very deep at all. I use my right hand to hold the gauze in place around the knife, and grab fresh pads in my left hand.
"Okay, pull the knife out," I order Daryl, and he pulls it out without a second of hesitation. My hand immediately clamps over the wound and once those pads get too full, I drop them and cover the wound with the clean ones.
"It hurts," Carl whines.
"I know," I frown up at him. "But it'll feel better when it stops bleeding. I'll take you down to the trailer and put something on it to prevent infection, and you'll be good to go."
Carl and I decide to just go downstairs and leave Daryl to carry down all of the things we found. When we get back to the lobby, Lori freaks out, and I decide to just send Carl with Beth. She knows how to do it, and she's upset because I made her sit with Lori. It's the least I can do.
After about ten minutes, everyone is back in the lobby and I finally have Lori calmed down. Hershel and Otis lets us know that they found a room full of guns, but barely any ammo. We decide that we'll tell Rick about it when he gets back and let him decide what to do from there.
///
"While you were gone, we did some exploring," I tell Rick as soon as he steps in the door. I walk over to him so that not everybody has to hear our conversation.
"What'd you find?" He questions.
"Hershel and Otis found a room full of guns, but no ammunition, I found clothes, and Carl got stabbed," I mumble the last part.
"Carl what?" Rick tenses up.
"Carl accidentally stabbed himself, but he's fine, I swear. It wasn't even deep enough for stitches," I assure him.
"All right," he nods. "We'll sort everything out in the morning. For now, everyone needs to get some sleep."
A/N:
Hi everyone! Thank you so much for reading! We're so close to 40k, it's insane. My goal is 50k, so keep reading, voting, commenting, and sharing!
Questions to think about:
How's the hotel going to go? Will it last long?
Does anybody else hate Lori as much as I do? Lol I want to kill her off just because I'm making myself hate her.
When's Daryl going to open up to Bea about his past??
Once again, I appreciate every single one of you. Please don't forget to vote and comment!
-Bailey