━━━━━━ CHAPTER THIRTEEN ━━━━━━
Turning In Their Graves
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          A DIFFUSED TAP ON THE WINDOW joined in the efforts of the bright morning light and successfully managed to finally scrunch up the bridge of Daryl's nose, eliciting thus his awakening groan. It takes a moment for the eyes to adjust to seeing once they've opened after a much needed sleep and Daryl has been putting off this rest for so long that his blurred sight tried to make him understand at once that he'd sooner need a hibernation, than to wake up so soon.

Very little makes sense in those seconds or minutes right after one has ended their blissful sleep.

Though he could tell the tapping sound came from the window he kept his back at, Daryl found no hurry within himself yet active enough to turn around and find what was causing the noise. In fact, why should he? Between his blinks, he still saw glinting glimpses of the dream he was leaving behind. It was a memory wrapped up in a wish, taking the shape of Mallory, looking at him as any man wants to be looked at. And she was an echo of Heaven before his sleepy eyes, with the sun halo behind her relaxed curls; he's always been so mesmerized about how in the sun, her hair lit itself into the sort of auburun shade that reminded people of real beauty and of those crisp autumn nights, spent cuddled by the fire.

His blinks were slow, because he didn't want the dream to leave him just yet. Of course, he was hopeful enough fresh off a good rest to not realize it was not up to him anymore whether the heavenly image left him or not. Each blink faded away the luminescence of her presence, until at last, the colors dulled and he realized the driver's seat was empty. He was alone.

It was only then that the intermittent tap became a call of 'danger' and Daryl truly woke up.

From the corner of his widening eyes, he distinguished the figure outside the car looked nothing like Mallory. A masculine build was all he had to glimpse at before shouldering the door open and stepping out with crossbow at the ready, finger sliding across the safety, tugging it off. He striaghtened up his posture and narrowed his gaze on the man that has been knocking on his window. Though holding a shotgun, the man's hands flung up and he took a step back, defensively.

"Where's the woman I was with?" Daryl barked his inquiry, trigger finger itching to fire a bolt through pretty much any part of that man's body until he shed some light on what was happening. In a quick assessment from the top of his head wearing a heavy winter hat, down to his mud filled boots, with quick stops along the way to notice the white streaks in his beard and the badge at his belt, Daryl had to admit to himself that in no way could this man be approaching him with innocent thoughts. He was too well cleaned up to be someone roaming the roads: this guy had to have had an outpost.

"It is her who I am here for right now. She sent me to get you, son," the man nodded, his plump cheeks red as he smiled, awfully friendly. "She went looking for help with the car, you see. Came across our town this morning. She's a nice lady, and we've got resources to spare so—"

"I ain't fucking buying it," Daryl cut him off. Mals wouldn't trust no strangers, his mind chanted his reasoning to him, strengthening thus his taken stance into an immovable force. She wouldn't leave on her own like that either. "Quit the yapping about resources that ain't never worth sparing in these times and drop that gun. You're gonna tell me what the fuck you've done with her and where she's at, before I start poking holes through your body."

"Now," the old man sighed, lowering his gun slowly to the ground, "no need to get all vulgar. She did warn me ahead you might be a bit jumpy about new people and I get it. It's one crazy world we live in, but I believe there's still good people left..."

"Yeah?" Daryl was on the edge of his patience. "And let me guess. You're one of these last good people left?"

The man extended forward a knife, taken from his belt, as to hand it over directly to Daryl. Had he not recognized the blade as being the one he gave Mallory himself, Daryl would have taken the gesture for a threat, especially since the knife presented itself stained with long dried blood.

"She believes I am."

The words added by the man cancelled out the ringing in Daryl's ears and snapped him from the trance of panic at seeing Mals' only weapon in the hands of a stranger.

Instantly, Daryl took two steps forward and hit his crossbow into the man's chest. "This is the last time I'm asking without drawing blood, you asshole, where is she?" The words barely made it out from behind his greeted teeth, intelligibility of his accent plastered upon them decreasing the more serious his concerns got. That's what I get for sleeping in, was one of the many incriminating thoughts passing through his mind.

"In my town," the man inhaled sharply after the hit to his sternum, but kept his cool, for his exhale was not rapid as much as it was slow and calm. Daryl startled him, surely, but didn't properly frighten him just yet, which was the sort of behavior he knew to expect from someone who either knew something he didn't or someone who could take him down with his bare hands. The old man didn't look like he fit in the latter category, so he had to assume right there and then that there were other people out there watching and waiting to shoot him down should he make the wrong move on their Sheriff. The possibility of being outnumbered helped Daryl make a quick decision that he shouldn't risk it: playing their game might yet bring him to Mallory, no matter what her situation was. If this was a trap, he only wanted to know her safe first.

He stepped back, lowered his crossbow and took Mallory's knife from the man's hand. "You lead me to her," he ordered.

"That was the plan," the man nodded, grateful to have appealed to reason. Before he had the chance to retrieve his shotgun, Daryl picked it up and thus shrugged on his shoulder the strap of his crossbow, preferring to carry it and use the gun instead should need arise.

"You try somethin' funny and..."

"And you'll kill me," he completed over Daryl's muffled tone. "I got it the first time, son."

That single look inside the car as Daryl leant in to take his backpack didn't paint much of a favorable picture to the old man's tale. Mallory's things were still in there. She wouldn't have left to begin with, Daryl told himself. Not without me. But if she had to leave without me, she wouldn't have gone without her stuff. She knows better than that.

"Name's Martin by the way," the man introduced himself, not yet aware he was about to take a stroll with a hardly chatty fellow. "Friends call me Marty. Sounds better next to Sheriff and all that."

Daryl didn't even bother grunting along the conversarion Martin held. He kept to his much preferred contemplative silence, as questions were many in number, and constantly piling up.

If they hurt Mallory and got the information out of her that she ain't alone, I should have been dead when he found me sleeping in the car, Daryl reasoned. But what is the alternative? Mallory actually leaving me behind? This guy actually being well-meant?

The more Daryl thought about it, the less could he be certain on which scenario was more unlikely. And you mean to tell me Mallory walked this far away into a forest she didn't know in hopes to stumble over a settlement? He found himself doubting as he noticed they have been walking for about ten minutes already, on a rather sinous path. Something doesn't add up.

It wasn't until Martin slipped a key piece of information that Daryl finally started paying attention to what he was saying in his irritating monologue, "... she's gotten herself in need of our medical assistance—"

"I thought you said she came looking for help with the car," Daryl interrupted. Why would she ask strangers for help with the car when I am right there? That question haunted him for the entirety of the walk up to that point. He would have understood of her to hide stuff like this from him before, if she messed up something with the car herself and didn't want him lecturing her about it, but even that was an unlikely scenario. She would have woken me up.

"Well, that's why she was out and about in the first place. But there's Turned in these parts, a whole lot of them too unfortunately. She wasn't bit or anything, so you can relax," Martin took a tentative glimpse at Daryl, noticing nothing he was saying was helping the man lose from his tension. He expected nothing less, though he hoped for things to go better than they were; after all, had this been his wife missing, he would have perhaps shown even less restraint. He was counting on that real care though. In fact, that trait he found in Daryl was pivotal to Martin's plan of getting him back into his town, because that sort of care is what got the men complying to everything and anything for the sake of their loved ones.

"But there was a small incident," Martin admitted with a sigh. "My boy, Arnie, got her back to our infirmary. She's fine... Ah!" The forest ended, opening up to a field in the middle of which was the small town, a sight of exclamation that otherwise saved Martin from Daryl's follow-up inquiries about what sort of incident was Mallory involved into. "There's our lil modest town."

Hasville's Summer Festival, spelled the letters on the wooden arch above the main gates of a town built from festival caravans and stalls.

"The festival was supposed to happen on Sunday," Martin recalled, with a certain degree of melancholy stuch to his tone. "But those nasty things appeared Thursday morning. Tore through our community. Got everyone I could gather, but most people knew the church around which we had every festival would be the perfect refuge. These cabins, that church on the hill, they were our salvation, gave us a little breathing room to get ourselves togegher and start fighting against those things. Not just running. We built it all up from the ground." 

As they advanced towards the town on the little elevation on the field, Daryl took notice of the deep trenches dug all around, the traps set with wire that Martin guided him around.

"How many people?" He inquired, looking ahead and trying to make out if there were any guards up on the wall.

"Around fifty now," Martin boasted. "We were only twenty at first, 'bout six families. Four months ago, after our trenches were all done and we fought back a horde of Turned, we started expanding. Cleaning the forest on shifts, looking for more survivors."

It sounds like charity work, Daryl couldn't help but think. That ain't a thing no more.

"There are still good people left in this world," Martin reiterated his previous thought, seeing as his walking partner did not answer. "It's not perfect, this town, but it's our home and we want no trouble. We've got enough to deal with as it is."

"Like what?"

"Seasonal colds mostly," he admitted. "We've had it so easy before and we didn't even know it. Now, antibiotics are scarce, medicine is rare, no matter how far we go looking for it. We turned to our old ways, herbal remedies passed down for generations, but it's a big leap to be forced to retort to prayers when it comes to the health of our friends and family, when but a year ago, we had hospitals, licensed medics. Fact is, we've been much more than fifty, but we've lost a lot of them to dangers that cannot be stopped by a couple well-dug trenches and well-thought traps."

Though he finally started believing that Martin may not be a particularly bad person, especially not one capable of hurting Mallory in a brutal fashion he initially considered very likely to have happened, Daryl could not rule out a troubling thought now that he's witnessed the amount of planning that went into the town defenses: he should not underestimate this man's ability to scheme the perfect robbery or trickery. People these days would kill for any sort of supplies and that was a state which could only ever get worse as the years go by.

Such thoughts played a part in why, as soon as Martin waved and called a guy 'Danny' inside to open the gates, Daryl somehow grew even more tense. Much to his shock, once inside, no one really made a move to disarm him of anything.

"That's still our emergency hideout," Martin explained, pointing at the church in the middle, as carefree as a guide on a tour, rather than someone carrying out a mission for a stranger wounded on his territory. "If we have a perimeter breach, the church would serve as our last defense. This way," he motioned for them to head to the right. The moment they've passed the church, Daryl caught glimpse of a cart being pulled by two horses out of the church's backyard. In the back of the cart piled about five coffins.

"We bury our dead here," Martin filled in the gaps that awakened Daryl step-hesitstant confusion. "We're trying to remain as civil as possible. The Turned get burials too, but we save the coffins for those we know. Come on."

"I thought you said Mallory's in an infirmary," Daryl commented once Martin led him in a building which looked and smelled far closer to a shared house than a medical center. Though he's had answers to pretty much anything up until then, even questions that never got to be answered, Martin didn't reply this time around. Silence tightened Daryl's grip on the shotgun. He felt the shiver on his fingertips telling him — he was going to have to use it.

Once Martin invited him in a living room with two kids waiting solemly by the table, Daryl slowed his pace. "The hell is this? Where's—?"

"She saved my little girl's life," Martin admitted with a deep sigh as if some heavy burden had lifted from his chest. He walked over to take a seat at the table, dropping in the chair and removing his hat. "That's how she got hurt."

"Where is she?" Daryl raised the gun and heard a click behind him.

"Don't," Martin raised his hand towards the man that had raised his pistol on the back of Daryl's head. "We can talk this out like civilized men. We are civilized men. This ain't the Wild West." His gaze returned to Daryl and focused on him again, "What happened was a tragedy. Nonetheless, an honest mistake. Our town wants no trouble and we'll give you whatever we can, though I know nothing will truly make us even."

Daryl raised his shotgun to the ceiling, fired a round and stepped forward. He felt the cold barrel of the pistol pushed against the back of his head and the stranger behind him warning him against taking another step forward. The two kids present cowered a step back and the older from the two, the boy, burst into tears.

"Please don't kill my dad," Arnie removed his own hat, speaking before Daryl could ask the same question again. "I shot her, sir. I did. Not him."

"Arnie, I told you to shut your mouth and let me handle this!" Martin raised his voice at his boy, getting up from the chair.

The ground felt uncertain beneath Daryl's feet. An empty pit formed in his chest and for the first time in months, his hands quivered their grip on the gun uncertain. He hasn't felt such a shattering blur of a sensation since... well, since he recognized Merle as a Walker. All of Daryl's thoughts got turned down to a buzz, a faint distant ringing and he didn't know for a good moment what to say, nor what to do.

He wasn't hearing much either, because by the time Daryl realized Martin's lips were moving as he explained perhaps what had happened, he was done talking and Arnie took over again, cried tone breaking his words into cracks, "I'm sorry. She was next to my sister and she really did look like she was a Turned—"

No, Daryl finally heard his own thoughts clear up, because if Mallory was mistaken for a Walker and she was shot... "Where did she get shot?" He blurted out the question breathlessly.

"In the chest," Arnie answered, lowering his gaze. Though the boy went on to explain he missed his real shot, Daryl took the luck he came across as it was and spoke over him once again, this time looking at Martin.

"Where'd you put her?"

"We buried her with —" 

But his words after that didn't matter. Daryl tossed Martin back his shotgun and turned around, pushing the man that had been behind him out of the way. The cart with coffins, Daryl's mind gained a tunnel vision instantaneously. If I catch up to it, I can follow it to their burial sites. As an echo behind his focus hurrying him out of the building and into the street, where his presence had finally been noticed as suspicious by the townsfolk, he had a troubling thought, They buried her alive.

In a confined space, six feet below ground, the amount of oxygen left as compared to carbon dioxide expelled is the fragile balance that tells the difference between life and death.

Mallory woke up to complete darkness.

A sharp and heaved inhale hammered a headache upon her.

Her first panic was first and foremost seeing nothing, so she tried to blink her eyes wider, all the while her left hand flung upward in an attempt to press on the source of pain on her chest, only for her knuckles to bruise on wood.

Her breathing pattern quickened and she raised her right hand slowly, feeling the flat surface above her.

"No," she barely muttered past her growing panic and her sore throat. Without seeing a single thing, she tried to seat up. Pain made her scream before her forehead even hit the inside of the coffin.

"Help...," Mallory heard her own voice succumb to a pathetic, strangled plea, sounding in a complete and utter silence alone. Her hands were too weak to remain pressed against the thight coffin, so they dropped on the pool of blood that was her quivering chest. Cold tears fell down both her cheeks and her throat hiccuped on her sobs.

She could feel the pain. She could hear it distort her voice. But Mallory couldn't help but wonder, in the absence of every other sense and memory, was she actually dead this time?

There was no way for her to tell how long it had passed, just that at some point, she was fluctuating between numbness and that heavy ache flaring in her body. She couldn't tell whether or not her eyes have shut from exhaustion, only that darkness persisted all around her, a cocoon of solitude that strangled each grain of life out of her.

Daryl received no help digging up the dead.

His arms were sore, his lungs begged for a break, but he could not stop — they buried her alive —, he could not phantom to stop digging. Not knowing the limits of just how much she could survive made him hyper-aware that he did not wish to risk discovering such things.

The town grave digger was a drunk who, even at gunpoint, couldn't recall which of the dozen fresh graves were Mallory's. "All coffins look the same," was his excuse, confirmed by Martin, who, followed by the men of the town alarmed by this defamation of the resting places of their loved ones, were threatening at any point to open fire on the crazy stranger shouting at them that they had buried a woman alive.

It wasn't until Daryl dug up the first coffin and let out a Walker that the spirits calmed away from lynching him and towards another sort of panic. These people didn't know...

"We're all infected," Daryl laid the news on them between grunts, after having shot a bolt through the Walker's head. He started digging up the second grave. "When we die, we all turn."

"Your woman—"

"She is not dead!"

No matter what arguments Martin tried to come up with to get him to stop, Daryl continued his job without further explanations. It didn't matter how or why, just that Mallory wasn't dead and they were all wrong. Though he didn't want to think, his mind was dreadfully masochistic to force him to picture how torturous each minute wasted by him up there was for her, down below.

So he dug.

In some of the fresh graves, the Walkers have started climbing up through the dirt too, at which point Martin realized, had these strangers not crossed his town's path, they would have faced a perimeter breach by their own humanity's doing — their hurry to bury the dead and the horror that comes with their faces would have killed the town.

People were starting to rally, to rush for shovels, break out the older graves in their town and kill whatever turns down there, but Daryl, covered in sweat, kept at it with the newer ones, until at last, he ripped open a coffin and nothing lunged at him.

"Mals!" He shouted, voice broken.

Her eyes were closed, her lips were bruised, her skin so pale underneath the dirt of a long journey that the red stain on her chest looked ever the more petrifying. Daryl feared this image was about to be permanently printed on his mind, bound to haunt his sleeps forever into restlessness. Look what one moment of carelessness did!

He fought that fear and hesitation with conviction, reaching his hands out to the cold skin of her face. "Mals...," he called, shifting his posture to be able to reach around her shoulders and have her sit up. She was heavy, as would a corpse. "Please... You're safe now," he hugged her to his chest, tenderness battling his desire to cling as tightly as possible; she felt so fragile in his arms. "You can wake up. Just wake up, honey."

From outside the grave, having heard his initial shout, Martin looked down, hand on his pistol.

According to the truth Daryl himself revealed to the Sheriff and this town, if that woman in his arms was about to wake up, then she'd wake up Turned and bite his neck off while at it too. Martin was prepared to have them both buried together, a merciful end for a couple, but when Mallory's eyes shot open and her hand flew to her own chest, a violent cough arching her back forward, his expectations were the ones being buried instead.

Daryl leant back, offering her some space without his hands however leaving her back, where he patted gently. Color was slow this time to returning to her features, but it was there, fighting the coldness of death off her skin.

"There," he whispered, bringing her in for a quick kiss on her forehead once her coughing dialed down its erratic nature. God, woman, he threw a glance up at the sky as he hugged her back to his chest, celebrating the sensation of her breath, of her heartbeat and her life against him. You've made my heart stop. "I thought I lost you...," he let that thought slip past his lips.

Mallory struggled to speak, her throat hurting like someone had turned its insides into sandpaper and each word was flesh being polished at the price of pouring blood. Nonetheless, she forced herself until her first words were spoken, "I'm sorry."

Seeing how she acted, hearing her speak, Martin almost couldn't believe that when Arnie showed her to him he, himself had declared her dead. Was this a miracle or was his assessment of what was once a corpse wrong? Whichever direction laid the truth, he called for his men to come help the two out of the grave.

No way in Hell was Daryl ever going to leave Mallory out of his sight no more. Never again out of the mere reach of his arm if he could help it. He couldn't stand another death, no matter how certain she was that she'd always come back — no. Even if she came back — a miracle he was constantly thankful for to the point that, though he's never been a believer, he thanked God with each glance he took at her — he knew he couldn't possibly watch her die again and remain sane. He would never get used to it and he never wished to be forced into getting used to it either. If there was ever a time for him to draw a line, the time had come.

However, as soon as he sat Mallory down on the cart and she was given a glass of water, Martin's voice and the chatter of the people confused on how to react to what was starting to be understood as a true resurrection, Daryl felt the itch to leave her side one last time.

She must have felt what he wanted to do, read it in his hand's flinch towards his crossbow. "Don't," Mallory whispered, holding onto the buckle of his belt, the most accessible to her just then without having to lift her hand too high and strain her sore muscles.

"They know about...," Daryl looked down at her, hesitating to finish his sentence, should someone with better hearing make out their whispered conversation.

"So?" She raised her eyebrows. "I'm not gonna kill them and you won't either."

"But..."

"We'll be out of the state before they think of doing anything about it," Mallory reasoned, remnants of her headache making her return to taking a sip from the glass of water. "They don't know where we're going. We can just leave. Please." She feared looking up past Daryl, she feared having to stare at the cemetery of open graves. If she could, she'd close her eyes to avert her gaze, but something inside of her stirred uncomfortably at the thought of darkness overtaking her again. Her best chance of escape, the only one she knew, was to get as far away as possible from this town and what had happened there.

Oh, how she wished to pretend it had never happened. None of it.

Daryl saw that reasoning behind her words hiding sorrow in her gaze and to such sight, he couldn't help but nod. "Alright," he agreed, his hand lifting to hold the back of her head and lean down once more for another kiss on her forehead — a gesture of affection he couldn't allow himself the time to truly think about. "Just give me a second. There's something I need to do first." He brushed his hand down to her cheek, held his rough thumb there to feel her warmth's return, then stepped away, giving Mallory no time whatsoever to even properly lean into his touch, far less to object to him leaving her side so soon and leaving her exposed to the sight of the cemetery too.

Fortunately for her, as Daryl turned and walked straight for Martin, she realized how many people were really gathered there. Before their frightened and puzzled gazes could get to her, she found the pair of eyes belonging to the girl from the woods, the girl she saved. That's right, some part of Mallory's mind talked directly to her. Focus on the good. Little as it may be.

Daryl grabbed a handful of Martin's shirt, "Now you listen here." He pushed forward, having the man step back and away from the crowd with him. "You tell anyone what happened here today, anyone finds out about this from you or your people and I'll come back and make you wish you had been born a cripple so I got one less thing to cut off from you. Nod if you understand!" He pulled on the shirt as he shouted in his face, hardly shy about being heard by more people. Martin nodded, hesitant, but unwilling to test the limits of the pure madness he saw in Daryl's cold blue eyes, at long last unleashed after he had been holding back valiantly for so long; he had no doubt his hands could cause the carnage he promised. "I don't ever wanna see your face again," Daryl pushed the man away from him, but after a single step back, he raised his hand to his mouth, only to then point back at Martin. "And you're gonna get us a car. For our trouble."