Chapter Text
The whole damn world smells like dry death and wet death and the low, rich scent of fresh blood. It’s all over Daryl’s clothes, down the legs of his filthy fucking jeans where T-Dog had nearly bled out on him, mixing with the hot stink of walker guts. He can hardly catch anything over it—not the reek of his own BO, not the mixed smell of the woods, not the tang of little girl fear-sweat he wishes he could follow.
Nose to the ground like a goddamn coondog, Merle would say. Smell that, boy? He’d do that wet sucked-in breath through his teeth, taste it on his tongue. Ay-strin-gent, ain’t that what your pussy little friends called it? A fucking three dollar word if I ever heard one. We eaten roadkill smells better than that scared little girl-pup.
Coming up the rise, dogging Rick’s heels, Daryl feels the limb-missing-ness settle on him and ride him like a monkey on his back. Merle didn’t like nobody, not Daryl, not himself, not a bunch of half-strangers with more guns ‘n him. He would just as soon spit on someone askin’ for help than lend a hand, and how many times when they were playing house in that camp did he get his ass half-beat by Shane for threatening those little kids running around everywhere.
It doesn’t make the missing of him any less painful.
Merle wouldn’t stand there with his goddamn crossbow useless across his back, sucking in death-taste through his open mouth, watching the sky over Carol’s shoulders instead of her leaking eyes when she sits rocking on the guard rail moaning out, “She’s just a child. She’s just a child.”
Rick’s talking to her but also to all of them, saying he didn’t have another choice, but he’s also looking back at Daryl when he says it, his hand half out to him. We did everything we could, his eyes say. Didn’t we do everything we could?
Yes, is the only goddamn answer to that, except it’s a goddamn lie. They haven’t done everything. Rick is looking at him, eyes wide and a hook cuts into Daryl’s stomach, tugs in deep inside his guts. It’s been there since Atlanta, since the muzzle of his Colt slammed against the side of Daryl’s head, right against the skin and dug in, harder than a warning bite to his neck. Since Rick—
Well, since Rick, there’s an ache pulls his spine through his stomach, hard and instinctive.
Carol makes a wet whimpering noise, like a snotty little kid. A long time ago Daryl had crouched in the floor of a rattling Humvee and listened to Ford’s obnoxious drawl as he recited shit poetry and worked muddy sand out of Daryl’s fur. Pack right is the right of the meanest.
Now, Carol was crumbling herself up crying, and the others were scattering, and Rick was walking away alone down the long line of cars, the line of his back straight and hard.
The chain was pulling, tugging tighter the darker the night got. “It’ll be alright,” Lori said as Daryl cut away from them, his whole chest hurting.
The air in his mouth was thick with curling rot. Daryl kicked the tire of a car, furious, and prowled away until he couldn’t see the others, could only hear the bare murmur of their voices, everyone too afraid to speak up in case the walkers heard. Carol’s sobs kept cutting in and out, making his shoulders tight.
It had been Merle before, for a long time. He’d been bigger than Daryl and meaner than Daryl, but now Merle was gone and they were all looking at Rick. And Rick was the kind of man who’d reach for your hand when you were on the ground. He’d pull you up if he could. He’d carve his own heart out of his chest and put it in a walker’s mouth to save his family, walk on hot coals to save his friends.
After Merle, after the CDC, Daryl was spinning in his own damn skin trying to figure out what to do. Rick had gone past him and put a hand on his shoulder like it was nothing and the last little loyalty to Merle had curled up with a whine and died.
His foot hurt. He kicked a car again, harder, snarled, “Fuck!”
There was a gasping breath behind him. He jerked around, swinging the crossbow up, jumped as Amy shrieked. “Shit!” she said, desperately. “Don’t shoot.”
“It’s just me,” like that had any meaning to him. Like she was any less threatening than the walkers that had shambled past and around them earlier.
That last night Daryl had peeled away from T-Dog and Rick and Glenn. He’d stalked around them in a wide circle into the brush and they’d let him go without a damn word. Their shit little tent was further out, reeked like home and he’d stripped down and stuck his nose into Merle’s mess of blankets like a lovesick puppy-pawed little bastard and mouthed at the filth on them until the smell came up. Everything he had left, gone.
Then geek-stench had come through the air, heavy on it, cutting in the burning fish-and-wood stink, the people stink upwind, and it hadn’t taken him any thought to slip out of the tent and through the trees. He’d come up in the shadows just in time to see Amy standing at the door of the RV like an idiot, mouth open wide but not screaming yet when the walker had come at her.
He got it, and he got a couple others, teeth so caked with shit that he’d thrown up twice before he even struggled onto two legs, muscles loose and easy and half-limp. Went back for his clothes, his crossbow and snuck into the mess without anyone even noticing.
But she was always watching him afterwards, clinging to her sister like she was any good at shit, at keeping them safe, but keeping her eyes on him, tracking him around until he was half-crazy and ready to slam her down just to make her look elsewhere.
“What the fuck do you want?” he demanded, and snorted as she reached out and shoved the crossbow away from herself.
At least she and her sister didn’t pussyfoot around. She shoved his crossbow away and said like she didn’t care who the fuck heard it, “You could find Sophia, if you, you know, changed.”
Like she thought he’d just be stripping off his vest and squirming into a penguin suit.
She cried out when her back hit the piece of shit car she had been leaning on, and he shoved his hand over her mouth. “Don’t say that shit so loud. Not your ass that’s gonna get lynched, someone hears you.”
She shoved at him, and he let her. “No one’s going to lynch you,” she said and wrinkled her nose. “Especially if you find Sophia. It’s twenty-ten, people have rights now. No one goes around just lynching were—”
She shut up when he lifted the crossbow again. “Don’t say it,” he said, low, and she swallowed, nodded. Even noseblind, he was close enough to smell the rank curls of fear as she bit out, “Fine,” like she was pissed at him.
And then, “Come on, Daryl,” in a tone that set his teeth on edge. “She’s all alone out there, just a little kid. Lori says she’s only twelve years old.”
Like Daryl was stupid, didn’t know Sophia wasn’t even old enough to be off the fucking teat. “Whatever,” he said, shrugged hard. “Didn’t you hear Rick? We’ll go off in the morning, bring her back. She’ll be fine.”
“There’s like a hundred walkers out there!” Amy said. “She might not even be alive in the morning!” And then pissed as hell, “Daryl, come on! What the hell are you scared off?”
Like she had any right to ask. She’d never had a teacher sit her away from the others like he could pass it on with a shared pencil, a fucking touch. Never been shoved on sidewalks, never been stared at like she might explode any second. Never dunked her muzzle into a bowl of water before she’d been old enough to know what rat poison smelled like. Never scarfed meat off the crooked steps of someone’s back porch and spent three days screaming in agony, waiting for silver buckshot to pass out his bloodied ass.
But the burn in his guts now. If he opened his mouth to tell her that, his guts were gonna come right out on that fucking fishhook.
“You gonna get b’tween their guns ‘n me?” he finally choked out, but he didn’t really mean it.
He set his crossbow down on the roof of the car. The buttons on his shirt were sticky from all the blood when he fumbled at them, tore the front of it open and shrugged it off. “Don’t touch it,” he said, rolled the edge of his lip up so she could see his teeth when she reached a hand out for the crossbow.
“Okay,” she said, eyes wide. Staring at him still, until his whole fucking spine itched with it.
“You never heard of privacy before?” he snapped as he reached for his belt, and she went red, turned her back with a shiver. Scared of him, even after he saved her fucking life, and wasn't that jut shit.
“Hey!” someone shouted, came closer at a fast clip. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Shit,” Amy said as she turned around, and Daryl paused, watched with narrowed eyes as Andrea stormed in close, Dale shuffling behind her, calling out, “Andrea?” in concern.
“Leash your goddamn sister,” Daryl said. “Or she’s gonna be the one gettin’ out the damn rope.”
He left his boxers on because they were so filthy-nasty he wouldn’t mind turning them into rags. Amy was shoving past him, putting her hands out like her sister was a spooked animal or something. “It’s okay,” she said, because she was a goddamn fool. “He’s gonna find Sophia.”
“Then why,” Andrea said, low and nasty, “is he naked.”
There was only so much space between the rows of cars. Dale was standing shoulder to shoulder with Andrea, and he wouldn’t move aside, just met Daryl’s eyes in a way that made him suddenly and hotly furious.
“Got a problem, old man?” he demanded, and shoved through, knocked Andrea against a car in a way that made her squawk like a bird.
“Hey!” she said again, but Daryl was already leaving them behind. The concrete was half-hot under his feet, and he kept stepping on broken glass from the car windows, crunching it into the soles of his feet.
Carol was still crying, jagged noises. She didn’t look up when he padded past them, dug into the backseat of the station wagon. Sophia’d crammed her over-shirt between the seats, and he tugged it out, threw it onto the ground where it wouldn’t be hard to reach it.
There was noise behind him, a noise to his right. The skin on his back rippled, turned up goosebumps under the force of all the eyes on him.
“Daryl?” Rick said.
It had been easier before, when there were nine of them in the same sweltering tent on the FOB, stacking their clothes on their cots, tucking their boots under. Making jokes about the nylon webbing collars their NCOs were handing out. Stalking naked past each other as they were assigned to fire teams.
It sure as hell had been harder than that. But that was the easiest it had ever been.
His back itched.
“Daryl,” Rick said, harder, enough to make him jump a little.
“Amy said you ain’t gonna torch my shit,” Daryl said, and glanced over his shoulder. Rick was staring right at him, cold eyes, and his Colt wasn’t in his hand, but he kept his palm on it. He didn’t smell afraid.
Them’s killer eyes, Merle said over his shoulder. You’re lookin’ at the fucking face of a man who won’t pause over shootin’ a rabid fucking dog. You think he’s gonna hesitate with a goddamn wolf?
You backed the wrong horse in this race, brother, Merle said. Should have tried harder to find me instead of listening to him.
“You gonna do somethin’ to my shit, you just leave my brother’s bike alone,” Daryl said.
One of Merle’s lays had described it once, when Daryl was in high school. She was sprawled out, sex-stinking, on the stained carpet in the living room, blowing smoke up to the ceiling and babbling like someone cared what the fuck she was saying.
“It’s like someone guttin’ a dog, ‘cept they didn’t even put the poor thing down first,” she said. “Like they gut it, and then they turn it inside out, real fast, ‘fore it can even die.”
She turned wide, glassy eyes at him, and flinched back when he bared his teeth. “What’s it feel like?” she asked, stupid drunk and high out of her goddamn mind.
Daryl hadn’t said anything then. He thought she’d know, if her coked-out head managed to think about it for a goddamn second. It felt pretty much like it looked.
He sank down to one knee, got the other under him. Put his arms above him head and stretched out, pulled with his muscles, pulled deeper than his muscles. And then he was falling backwards, the world was hot and swimming, the world was wet and slick and crack crack crackcra—clackclackclack, panting as his body twisted backwards, flipped, and his paws hit the ground, pushed him off.
A wolf let momentum take him three trotting steps, scenting the air, watching the man with killer eyes. The deathsmells were all around, and here was a man who didn’t smell afraid.
A man has dull teeth, but a man also has fire and weapons and eyes that tracked him in the dark.
A wolf didn’t crawl on his belly and cry puppy-cries. He didn’t cringe away under any man who met his eyes. But this was a man more than that. Here was a man who could take a wolf to the ground and a wolf was not afraid, but a wolf could learn.
A wolf put his ears back and tucked his tail between his legs, crouching low. A wolf covered his teeth with his lips and did not growl.
The man with killer eyes got down on one knee, and held out his empty hands.
A man can do many things. He can open plastic packets with his hands and make cold meat warm again. He can operate strange and monstrous machines a wolf cannot outrun. He can kill his enemy from a great distance.
He can stand behind his friend, and take aim with his gun, and fire at a wolf.
A girl shouted, “Shane, no!” The man with killer eyes jerked to his feet, turned around.
A wolf didn’t live because he was a fool. He turned tail, ground hot under his feet, and swiped with a snap the crumbled fabric on the ground and held it in his jaws as he tore toward the trees, floated over the long line of metal fence.
A wolf slid down the hill, hearing more gun-thunder and man-shout behind him. He slid between the trees, girl-manpup smell in his nose, and flung his prize to the ground. It stank and the forest stank around him when a wolf lifted his nose to sample the night air. Here was man-fear and girl-fear and the thick cut of rot in motion, unnatural and loathsome.
A wolf had learned about enemies from the red man. A man had enemies, but a wolf had only had prey and pack and man. Now, a wolf understood the red man. Death walked on two legs instead of lying on the ground and rotting like it should. It stalked a man-child, but it could have stalked a rabbit or a deer, and still a wolf would seek to end it.
A wolf put his nose to loose cover of leavesdirttreerot and stalked forward.
A wolf went to the water and found death swaying there. It didn’t drink like an animal would, only moved through the water and moaned low when it saw him. A wolf leapt from the bank, unafraid. His paws hit death and his teeth found its throat.
Death fought back; it struck his sides and tried to thrash him off in the water. It tried to bite him but its teeth were dull and a wolf’s fur was thick.
Good flesh was hot and thick with blood and yielded only as he tore. Deathflesh split open under his teeth, stinking and cold and poured down his chest in wet and runny clumps as he tore and planted his feet and snarled, shaking his head fiercely.
Something in deathflesh snapped and slid wetly. Death stopped moving, as it should, and lay in the water below a wolf. It fouled the stream, and a wolf snarled down at it, drooling blackly. The air smelled like brackish water and rot so deep it burned a wolf’s lungs, and it also smelled faintly like girl-sweat and man-fear.
A wolf found a girl-pup’s den under the roots of a tree. He shoved in and scented deeply, cool mud and girl-smell, but no girl. The scent left the den, layered over when it entered, and climbed the bank again. A wolf followed it, and tore savagely at the grass along the edge until he choked and hung his head and threw up old water and acid and foaming rot.
He dipped his head and scented, padded around the mess. He stopped to rub his muzzle clean against the ground, rolled over onto his back to get the gore off his fur. When he was grass-scent clean, he padded to his feet and caught the trail again. Girl-child, and wolf, and man layered over each other, too thickly to miss.
A wolf had come through here before with the killer-eyed man. A wolf had been noseblind and dull of fang, but now he was red in tooth and claw and the winding trail of steps lit his nose, the forest unfolding before him.
A wolf found the place where the girl-child had turned away from the killer-eyed man’s directions. The air stank heavy with rot as a wolf passed his other dead enemy, and he stopped to piss on the rot and bone and bad flesh.
And here was the end of his own old scent trail, and the faintening of the girl-pup’s. A wolf stalked the path, scent the air. Scented the ground. Scented the delicately green leaves and broken branches.
A wolf could run for many miles. A girl-pup could run for many less. A wolf followed her ghost-scent, ignored the shambling death that he passed, until the trees ended and low grass seas began.
Here there was man-smell, a stranger scent. A wolf sat on his haunches and tilted his head back and took in the air. Man-scent upwind, blowing towards his left. Smoke and cow and motor-smells. A wolf saw, very far away in the distance, a light in the dark. Like an ember, so faint and far and orange-red against the black-grey.
The girl-scent did not go toward there.
A wolf went on.
Across the grass and back into the woods, flirting with the edges of the trees. The girl hadn’t gone deep enough again to lose sight of the clearings. A wolf, nose to the ground, didn’t notice the man-den until the girl-scent veered sharply out of the trees, and he raised his head to look for danger ahead of him.
A wolf pricked his ears forward to listen, and sniffled at the air. There was a man-den but no man-smell on the air, only dry wood-rot and girl-scent and deathsmell.
Deathsmell came thick on the air, and the nightsounds tore themselves apart with screams.
A wolf howled. A wolf leapt through the night. The other side of the den—a girl screaming and death swaying towards her, dull teeth yellow and wet. A wolf hit his enemy from the side, snarling him onto the ground. This death was newer, stronger. It hit at his ribs until they ached, thrashed so a wolf couldn’t get his fangs into that soft and swollen throat.
Death snapped its teeth a hair's width from a wolf’s nose. A wolf threw himself away, rolled to his feet. Death was struggling up, and a wolf circled it uneasily, moving toward a girl. Her scent lit the night as a wolf put himself between her and death.
The night was silent, all soft and creeping pray gone quiet at the noise. A wolf listened for heavy not-man footsteps and heard none. A wolf snarled at his enemy as it moaned and faced him.
A wolf attacked.
He hit death hard enough to force it back, threw himself aside and came at death’s legs. Death stumbled, growling, and a wolf circled behind it, drove it to its knees. Death reached for a wolf, and a wolf sprang and tore its arm loose, left it twitching in the dirt.
Death hit the ground on its front. A wolf sprung onto its back and dug its teeth into its weak, rotting neck. A wolf didn’t stop chewing and tearing until it pulled the enemy’s head from its neck and it lay still on the ground in a slick puddle of liquid flesh, black and thick and stinking.
The girl was no longer screaming. A wolf licked his muzzle and pinned his ears back at the taste. There was grass all around and he went and grazed until it caught in his throat and he gagged. His throat worked and his whole body tensed, and he fought until it all came up.
“Um,” a girl whispered behind him, rabbit-breaths caught in her chest, stinking the air up around her. A wolf wheeled around and looked at her, ears up, and her heartbeat slowed.
She was small and frail, a yearling on her own. She was not a wolf’s pup, but she was a man-child and a wolf bowed for a killer-eyed man.
A wolf scented the air and smelled deathsmell onto in the distance, trickling downwind. The girl dropped her eyes when he stared at her and peeled back his lips, and she stumbled forward when he circled her and butted her knees. It was in this way a wolf brought her back to the man-den, where the air was dry and hot and smelled like her and fish and dust.
A wolf could run for many miles, but a girl-child needed to sleep. A wolf padded across the floor, nails clicking on the wood. He climbed the stairs, and scented the still air, and retreated finally to the room with the girl and her den.
She was curled up on a blanket, tightly, and her eyes glistened in the grey-dark. A wolf came and lay on the floor in front of her den, head down on his paws, and sighed heavily. The girl slept, after a while, and a wolf let his eyes shut and half-slept, too.
In the grey of early morning, the girl woke a wolf, crying out in her sleep with little puppy cries. A wolf got up, heaved his tired body from the floor, and padded into her den and lay next to her. She quieted, and fisted a hand in the gore-tacky ruff around his neck, and slept again, while a wolf kept a keen ear cocked toward the shut backdoor.
The world outside lightened until even a man could see well. Sun crept across the floor of the room, and a wolf rose and stretched and pawed at a girl until she woke too. A girl was smart. She ate at the food hidden in her den, and drank at the water, and poured water into a bowl for a wolf.
It tasted like plastic, but a wolf licked up even the last few drops, and tongue-lolling, crinkled at the empty bottle, crunching it until the girl laughed and tried to take it from him. A wolf let her, and danced around her, tail in the air, snapping at it to get it back. A girl was unafraid.
The girl shook the bottle at a wolf, and a wolf barked for it, straining forward, ears up. A girl was unafraid.
A girl threw the bottle across the room, and a wolf danced after it, clacked his teeth against it, shook his head like he was trying to kill it. A girl was unafraid.
A wolf took the bottle back to the girl. She held her hand out and tried to take it, but a wolf was faster. He let the bottle hit the floor, and took the girl’s hand instead, tender and hot and salty between his teeth and held it almost hard enough to hurt. “Hey, no!” a girl said, but—
A girl was unafraid.
A wolf led the girl out of the den-room. He dragged, until she came stumbling on her own. A wolf led the girl out of the man-den, and when he lifted his head to scent the air, tongue lolling pant-happy, she took her hand away and put it on his back. And a girl kept it there as they picked their way back into the woods, a wolf following his own scent trail, as familiar as mother’s milk, as any half-remembered sucklingdream.
Death still stalked the woods, familiar perfume the air, on tree and leaf and branch and dirt, and twice a wolf had to lead the girl around an enemy, ignoring her whimpers, snarling when she balked. Once he fought another death, made it lay and rot into dirt like it should, and a girl waited while a wolf performed his familiar dance—the grazing, the retching, the rolling.
Once, a wolf smelled a man-smell, strange without rot. Sweat oil meat smoke metal. He knocked the girl into the forest-shed, and lay on top of her, feeling her rabbit-heart against his chest, licking meditatively at the mess of her hair until she stopped crying. A man-smell faded, went upwind of them until it was barely there at all.
A wolf made a girl stand, and chivvied her faster, until she stumbled and nearly fell, catching herself on his back.
And then there was the good smell of rotting, dripping into dirt and leaves and becoming plant again, and man-smell thick on the air that a wolf could taste it on his tongue, and voices in the dappled light.
“—lost the trail here,” a man-voice said. “Daryl said he could still see where she went but I can’t find it enough to pick it up.”
“Maybe he’ll come back,” another voice said. “You heard Amy, she said he saved her life. And she said he was really upset about Sophia. Rick, come on.”
“He’s not just gonna run away and leave all his stuff here,” the first voice said.
“He’ll come back for the bike, at least. When he does, we’ll get that son of a bitch, make him follow the trail.”
A third voice, a hateful voice, the bringer of gun-thunder.
A wolf pinned his ears, and growled low in his chest. A girl, clutching at his ruff, stilled with one foot up, pausing in her step, and fear scent bloomed.
Man was sound-deaf, noseblind. A girl didn’t know they were there, ahead of them. A girl was not a wolf. A girl ran but easily tired, needed fire and voices and weapons and warmth. A girl would be safer with man, with the killer-eyed man.
A wolf could outrun thunder. A wolf had done so before, here in the dirt and there in the sand.
The girl balked, wouldn’t come. A wolf snarled, and grabbed at her hand. She jerked it away, and he circled around her, nudged her knees.
A girl whined in her throat, pleading.
A wolf sat back on his haunted, tilted his head, and howled.
“Did you hear—”
Man, running, snapping at the other two men. He came through the brush, skidded when he saw them. The girl cried out, “Rick!” and ran, jumped as he caught her up, both of them stinking the air with salt-smell.
A wolf crouched low, tucked in his tail. The man with killer eyes looked up at him, bared his teeth in the good way a man did. Said, “You found her?”
The bushed ahead of him cracked. “Rick, get back!” Metal upwind, no, downwind, close enough to smell still.
A wolf bristled, snarled.
“Shane, don’t—”
The bushes behind him cracked.
Thunder, burn-scent in the air, cordite.
A wolf exploded into pain.