━━━━━━ CHAPTER TEN ━━━━━━
In The Name of Hope, We Rot
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

          IT TURNED THEIR WHOLE WORLD UPSIDE DOWN when they needed their stability the most, so of course they didn't believe Mallory Cohen was immune. She wouldn't have believed herself either, had she gone through this infected world, unrecognizable from what it used to be but a year ago, in the same way they had. Simply expecting to wind up held in a cell however did not change the fact that she was having a hard time maintaining her sanity with the way history dared repeat itself mercilessly upon her.

Had Daryl not been there to hold her hand through the bars, Mallory feared she would have done plentiful of unreasonable and dangerous things that would most likely have her in even more pain than before, requiring more bandages than just the one on her forearm.

The fever came and it passed, like all fevers did before this virus surfaced and changed the world perspective on this symptom, but they still were monitoring her as one would a bomb without a timer that could at any point go off.

"You should get some sleep," Daryl sighed, disheartened to find Mallory in the same spot he had left her that day, leaning the side of her head against the bars of the cell and keeping her knees up, hugged to her chest with only one arm. He's been pulling his weight around, helping in the efforts of securing the prison, hoping that should he play his cards right, they'd let Mallory go without much of a fight. With days passing and not yet a single sign of her turning in sight, everyone was uncomfortably coming to terms with the fact that immunity was possible and unachievable; in a world filled with bad fortune, people who knew the taste of luck were never gonna swallow the bitter pill that they were now deemed and doomed to an unlucky tag as the likes of Daryl had been for most of their life.

They had no reason to keep her there, but that bitterness stuck in their throat, calling out the names of all the people they wouldn't have lost along the way should "immunity" have been a thing for them too. Such things compelled them to keep the keys far and away from Daryl.

He sat down in a mirror of her position, slithering his hand in her cell and finding her own to hold again.

For a while, they both allowed the silence to linger, Daryl calming his breath to a more temperate pace and falling back down in the habit of focusing his inability to find stillness in only drawing circular patterns on the back of Mallory's hand.

"We need to leave now," she eventually murmured and it has been long enough that they were blocked by bars for Daryl only to sigh, and not also dare to disagree with her. Though he hated admitting it, he was seeing it with his own eyes, feeling it in his friends' reluctance to let her go as soon as hours turned to days and that bite mark only healed further towards a gentle scar. Their denial was making him grow wary.

"I understand if you don't want to leave with me anymore," Mallory's voice cracked, ignoring the way Daryl promptly turned around to look at her, ready to dismantle that thought of hers for how wrong it truly was. "If you can't bring yourself to anymore. With Rick on a warpath, with your brother here too, I get why you wouldn't. But I need to go, Daryl. I've spend too much time as a prisoner. I can't do this anymore. I can't do it again, standing by and watching hope maim good people." With silent tears in her eyes she looked at him, "They are good people. But I have seen good people turn into monsters and I am not talking Walkers here. I don't want to give them the chance to lose their humanity over a cure that doesn't exist."

"How certain are you that it doesn't exist?" Hershel inquired before Daryl had the chance to reply, his presence there startling them enough to let go of each other's hand instantly. As Mallory hesitated in responding, Hershel sighed and nodded towards Daryl, "Rick needs to have a word with you. He's outside, by the fences, on perimeter watch."

Daryl remained put, rather uncertain on whether he should leave Mallory's side just then. The sensation that he had wronged her to the point of losing her trust the moment he left her at the prison with the others for Merle weighed heavy on his chest — he couldn't blame this fuck up on the alcohol either, because he's been sober since CDC, so it was all his fault, which made the weight all the more unbearable to hold.

Why did caring about people constantly threw him in a choosing game? Though that truth was beyond him, he was painfully aware that no matter what he chose, someone would turn out to be upset about it. He's cared very little about what people thought of him in the past, before Mallory, before all of this bullshit with the dead, but this wasn't a matter of the mind, yet instead one of the heart, where shockingly he knew even less what to make of anything at all.

Had it not been for Mallory giving him the nudge to go, he would have sat there, staring at Hershel blankly, as if to beseech a reprieve from all the choices he had to make.

To her, things were a little clearer: Daryl's always been a caring man. It's why she fell in love with him in the first place. She had the perfect Christian boy in her town lined up for her hand when Daryl and his brother moved into the trailer park and though they were immediately labeled as 'trouble' to the community, she had looked in his pale blue eyes and told her brother with a hand over her heart, Those are the eyes of a good man, Matt.

Hershel didn't leave with Daryl though, a choice much anticipated. He's been taking care of her these past days, after the panic about her possibly turning wore off of him and the spirit of a doctor remained behind. Unsurprisingly, Mallory was no longer a fan of doctors, so to say, but Hershel's voice... well, that reminded her of her father. It was a rather ironic combination, one that confused her enough to not refuse his help with her bandages, but neither engage in too much conversation either.

He unlocked her cell, got inside and pointed his crutches towards her bed. "May I?" If she really was some monster, he thought to himself after receiving her nod, she would have gotten up and left right there and then. That thought alone prompted him to note after sitting down to rest, "I don't believe you are a monster."

Mallory didn't respond. He didn't expect her to at that point anyway. Both of them were aware her bandage needed no changing with the bite almost completely healed, so this was by no means a concealed attempt at a leveled conversation, but rather a direct one.

"I understand your reticence and mistrust in people, but I hope you can also understand how your condition shocks us. It sure shocks me still." He thus begun a slow paced conversation, well aware that he might be leading a monologue with a girl who, in his eyes, had grown rather close to a fleshed out and breathing 'test of morality' that he otherwise considered the whole world to be at that point. Self-awareness did not spare him the realization that by keeping her locked, they have most likely failed the said test.

"Most of us haven't had a gram of hope that there will once be a day in which the world will be free of those Godawful creatures out there," Hershel continued, pacing himself such that he perhaps lured her to look him in the eyes eventually, "that we will live to see a day in which they won't outnumber us by such a mortifying difference. And after learning that everyone is sick with this virus already, that all of us are dead and we just don't know it yet, I admit, I questioned the Lord's plan." He paused, "But there you are. Hope."

Yes, Mallory thought, maintaining her state of looking away, back through the bars, at the prison itself. Across from her cell, up on the tall walls and through the barred windows there, she glimpsed at the pale blue sky. "When this whole thing started," she confessed slowly, voice too tainted to speak any louder, "I ceased being a human and turned into hope. A concept cannot be hurt, you see. And people don't have moral obligations before it either."

"Is that the sort of mentality the people who cut you up had?" Hershel inquired, making Mallory finally look at him and notice his finger was pointing out at her chest. Panicked, Mallory stared down at her two opened buttons and hurried to close them up again so that her autopsy scars didn't show anymore.

"I'm sorry you had to meet such people," Hershel sighed once Mallory decided to look away from him again. "We are not monsters. Just... men and women who've gone a long way without hope."

"There is no cure," she finally responded, letting that information sink in. "The people who cut me up were looking for it. They were doctors, scientists. All with military connections. The sort we all expect to have all the answers when the world needs them to." Rubbing her hands up both sides of her arms, Mallory looked like she was hugging herself through remembering, a process she otherwise dreaded. "The day I got out of there, Walkers had infiltrated the facility. A whole horde. I woke up on the same table, alarms blasting around, and one doctor above me, sewing me up, as fast as he could. He stayed behind while everyone else left. I suppose he realized he was too old to outrun what was happening there. He told me he didn't condone any of it. When they voted on whether or not they should cut me up to see if they can figure out what makes me so different, he said he voted against it. But once it was done, he couldn't do anything to stop them. Do you know what he told me while he was sewing me up?"

Mallory finally watched Hershel for a reaction, the faintest of smiles carrying bitterness on her lips, "He told me it was all for nothing anyway. Pointless. All of it. All the deaths I've had on that table. All the pain. Everything they did to me in that facility was pointless, because they hadn't a clue yet what this virus really was. So, even if they found the difference between me and a human susceptible to the virus' symptoms, it would mean nothing, because they didn't know what started the virus, they didn't even know what sort of virus this was to begin with and all the data that they needed to find that out, he said, was gone. Lost. The virus spread so fast, they had no chance of tracing it back to its root, to its origin."

With a short puff, Mallory leant the side of her head back against the cold bars. "They were cutting me up for show. For hope. To calm the people there, keep them in check. So yeah, there is no cure for this. I'm sorry to be the bringer of bad news to you, but that's the truth."

It was Hershel's turn for his answer to have a veil of silence draped upon it. He nodded, he got up, he passed Mallory and left a pat on her shoulder, as if she wouldn't look up at him and see the beginning of tears break out from the crack in his attachment to hope. The true surprise came after he left her cell: he left her door open too.

Mallory's heart clenched in her chest, eyes wide and staring at that breach in the confinement she's had since then. With haste, she stood up, brough motion to her muscles used to their break, then, with great hesitancy passed on as a little sweat on her palms, she stepped out.

There it was, her chance to leave.

She doubted Daryl would go with her anymore, no matter what their plan had been. With Merle back and his friends needing help in this war with the Governor, she knew she wasn't going to be a priority. Awareness carried over the fact that she couldn't stay either — she promised herself she wouldn't trust strangers in these times no more and that was a vow to herself too deeply embedded into fear for her to break on a whim, even one rooted in her love for a man that had stolen her heart once and made it his own for the eternity to come.

Mallory walked slowly through the prison. She had nothing but that knife from Daryl to claim possession over still, so she was going to travel light. By then, she appreciated there were some impossible miles between her and her home, but the beaches on which she grew up were still the final destination in her mind, the end goal. She was going to see her brother again, no matter how.

It helped that the prison was quiet. Mallory thought she could slip out unnoticed, see how far she could make it through the back door, where there were too many Walkers all the time for the group to post watchers on the wall.

However, before she could carry out this plan that had her walk like she was heading for the noose, the door sprung open and she heard the familiar quiet clicks of a well maintained crossbow. She looked up and, after a good squint through the blinding light of day coming up behind him, she saw Daryl, looking at her confused, his right hand tightening its grip on a hanging bunch of keys.

"Hershel let me out..."

She barely breathed out that statement before Daryl closed that distance between them, letting the door behind him shut closed. He threw the keys on the nearest surface and lifted his freed hand up, touch shaking in the air for a moment of indecisiveness, before caressing down on the side of her face. Everything after that happened quicker: his hand left her cheek, but only so he could wrap that arm around her and pull her close to his chest.

"We're leaving," Daryl declared, leaving a short kiss on the top of her head, as he held here there, close to him at last. "Now, we gon' have to take Merle with us too and I know you two aren't geting along all that well since... That's just the deal. We're leaving for Maine today." He pulled away from the hug, meeting Mallory's wide eyes.

He wanted to scold her so badly for thinking the way she did back in the cell, that he wouldn't leave for her, but a single look at her face told him to close his mouth and not ruin the moment — there was a time for words and there was a time for silence. That pure disbelief bringing light in her eyes and sparking across her features was worth swallowing down and pushing aside his restlessness that came with the thought that she didn't trust him anymore. Only God knows the shit I would do for you, Mals. It's why He made you my Heaven on Earth.

"Daryl!" Rick ran inside panicked perhaps to a high enough extent that he noticed the closeness Mallory and Daryl had right before they took a step away from each other, but could do nothing with that information apart from letting it leave his brain immediately. He had been so pleased with the deal he presented Daryl with outside — that Mals shouldn't be there, should things go sideways; her existence being too rare and possibly important for a cure in his mind to risk having her around probably lethal violence — that a certain asbence echoed with Earth shattering strength through him. "Where's Merle?" He let that question off his chest breathlessly.

Merle was gone, and given the shared panic between Daryl and Rick, something was up that Mallory hadn't a clue about. Thankfully, this time around Daryl wouldn't leave without her by his side, so though Rick explained nothing while at the prison, once her and Daryl left, she understood what had happened: Merle was out doing what he had always done best — looking out for his brother, even when he needn't do such a thing.

The Governor had offered a truce, should Rick give over Michonne as a bargaining chip. It was a deal with something of a barbaric nuance to it, but nonetheless, something Rick had obviously taken into consideration properly. He had two kids, one of which not even one year of age; he had to think of them first. But all Merle had to hear was that there was hope the prison and therefore his little brother too remained safe; he's done worse things than doom a stranger to a torturous death, or so people always liked to believe about him after all.

Daryl knew exactly where his brother was heading so keeping his trail was hardly difficult. Meeting Michonne on her way back to the prison was a trail confirmation eventually, but one that left him a bitter taste in his mouth. Why would Merle let his bargaining chip walk away? Somehow, Daryl already knew the answer to that, and part of Mallory could anticipate what they were walking towards too.

A strange sense of deja-vu tightened in her chest. A strain of a headache murmured at the back of her mind like something was trying to scratch its way back from the very shadows behind the front stage of her consciousness.

But before she could listen to those thoughts or even notice the little exhaustion building up for trying to keep up with Daryl after not having slept in so long, the sun hid behind an even blanket of mildly grey clouds, right as its late hour inched it closer to the horizon once more. They drew near the empty grain silos and the barn where the meet-up with the Governor was supposed to take place. The dead silence was followed instantly by a sight of the macabre: corpses of the Governor's men torn to pieces, eaten upon by famished Walkers and by devastating bullet rounds fired into them.

Daryl led the way with Mallory close enough behind him to almost look like she was holding onto his shirt in order not to get lost. However, the compact movement didn't last long because there was one person Daryl could definitely never not recognize.

He stopped dead in his tracks and lowered his crossbow. By God, he knew what he would be seeing, but seeing Merle as one of them, a monster chewing on the flesh of a once living human, still hammered into Daryl a fear unlike no other. As if he had been struck by lightning, he staggered back and bumped into Mallory, thus stepping aside, allowing her to see him too.

The mind vertigo of a deja vu struck her once more.

Merle, or rather the monster left behind to live in Merle's corpse, looked up at the noise made by Daryl's first hiccup on his tears. Its eyes had caught the color of putrified yellows and greys, yet even when it stood up with a clear desire to eat and kill, they had that illusion to them of holding at least a little life to recognize that he was looking at his brother, the single soul he would have and did kill himself for the safety of.

The Walker stepped forward, almost tripping over its last meal and Mallory didn't have to look back to know just by sound that Daryl was in no position to handle this. No one should have to do this to their sibling, that deep part of her mind shouted so loud it pretty much scared her hand into grasping the knife and pulling it out.

"What are you doing?" Daryl's voice was torn between his sobs, weak and quiet, such that Mallory understood it was panic that made him have to ask. Thus, when she did speak, she didn't talk to him.

She talked to Merle, "It's alright." The Walker snapped its attention towards her, but as soon as Mallory stood right in front of it, her scent made it lose interest and look right back at Daryl whose aimless steps taken back, then forth she could definitely hear. "There, Merle, it's going to be alright," Mallory talked like there was still someone inside the corpse she hugged. It was her best way of stopping the Walker from advancing without having to make this too quick, too brutal and inhuman.

Her arms were heavy with memory — she has done this before.

For that memory alone, she felt tears sting her sight, because with Merle, she had little to no connection. Their last conversation had her so angry she didn't think straight anymore, making her drink and drive, a pairing that had her in the hospital when this whole thing started, when she died the first time. A colder Mallory would have blamed everything on Merle and pushed him away, to stay a Walker for the rest of eternity as he deserved for turning her away when she came looking for Daryl, for never telling his brother that she was back on mainland for him.

But the end of times made seconds too precious to fill with antipathy, with grudges from before. No one deserves to suffer this end and no one deserved to watch their brother in this state, see that last part of their family hungry for a pound of their flesh.

Over her shoulder, Merle's corpse reached out for Daryl, who backed a final time in tears.

Mallory bowed her head, be that a movement sacrificing her nostrils to a scent of death, then drove the knife through the back of Merle's head. With her eyes closed, her mind traced back years past to the one time she didn't hate the man gone long before he became dead weight in her arms.

It was a Sunday night on the backporch of her house and she brought him a bottle of beer from the ice, reminding him there's plenty of room on the couch inside and he's welcome to watch the game with the rest of them. "Nah," Merle had dismissed. "Think I'll stay here a while." She could see it on his face, the unspoken I could get used to this; all day he had complained about joinging the Cohen family on their morning church going, on the afternoon fair, and the evening dinner before the television playing the game, but seated there, with his face towards the vast ocean and a warm home behind, it was plain as day that he was telling himself, I could get used to this.

So Mallory held on to that memory instead while she twisted the knife in his head. "Suit yourself," she had told him before getting back inside the house. She would find him sitting there, on the backporch of her house, staring at the waves, at the distance, at the stars that slowly paint the sky after the sun had sunk behind the horizon.

She pulled the knife out, then opened her eyes. A blurred, but familiar silhouette right ahead of her, at the edge of the forest, turned around to look at her. Only a blink away, the silhouette was gone and even if it hadn't disappeared, Mallory still would have instantly averted her gaze away from it to focus on lowering Merle back to the ground. She knelt besides Merle's corpse and reached out, closing his eyes shut.

It wasn't long after her knees hit the ground that a thud announced Daryl had dropped to his knees besides her as well.

No words were going to help so she said nothing.

Her being there was the most help Daryl could have wished for had he been alone, he was certain he would have been too devasted by this to move from the spot even as the Walkers around would take notice of him. By being there, she was promise: Today hurts. Today we lose. But you'll be okay. Trust me, you will be okay after a while.

AUTHOR'S NOTE :   
     AAAAAAND the end of Act 1 😎 Hope you enjoyed this first act as much as I did.

The book had four acts planned so buckle up cause action starts to pick up differently from here on as Daryl and Mals take on adventures on their own.

I am already four chapters into writing Act 2 and lemme tell you, there is just sooo much fun ahead !!

Leave your thoughts in the comments about the first act and maybe share some hopes you have for the future of the book? Please, I would love to hear your opinions so far, get some feedback.