Stray // Daryl Dixon

Sanctuary

We were stopped in the middle of the road, again, we needed to have a plan on where we wanted to head next. I felt drained, my need for sleep was beginning to overpower all my other senses, which wasn't good. I stared down at our map that Maggie had sprawled over the hood of the SUV, the image of it wasn't making sense to me, it was just a blank stare as they spoke.

"We've got no place left to go," T-Dog said, looking down at all the areas we had circled, indicating where a large herd of walkers sat.

"When this herd meets up with this one we'll be cut off, we'll never make it South," Maggie analyzed it.

"What'd you say? It's about one hundred and fifty heads," Daryl now walked around the car to take a look at the map.

"That was last week, could be twice that by now," Glenn answered.

"This river could have delayed them," Herschel pointed to a location, "if we move fast we might have a shot to tear right through them."

We had tried desperately all winter to avoid these herds, running into them once and marking down their location, but we were now running out of places to go.

"Yeah but if this group meets up with that one they could spill out this way," T-Dog pointed to the herds on the other side, making Herschel's plan unlikely.

"So we're blocked?" I asked, finally breaking my stare with the map.

"Only thing to do is double back to 27 and swing toward Greenville," Rick explained.

"Yeah, well we picked through that already," T-Dog scratched the back of his head, "it's like we spent the winter going in circles."

"Yeah I know, I know. At Newnan we'll push West, haven't been through there yet. We can't keep going house to house. We need to find someplace to hold up for a few weeks," Rick looked towards Lori who remained sitting in their car.

"Alright," T-Dog agreed, "is it cool if we get to the group before we head out, it won't take long, we gotta fill up on water, we can boil it later."

"Knock yourself out," Rick allowed them to. Maggie and Glenn went with him.

"She can't take much more of this moving about," Herschel now said quietly to Rick, referring to Lori.

"What else can we do there, give birth on the run?" Rick questioned.

Herschel placed his hand on Rick's shoulder, "Do you see a way around that?" he left that question pondering in our heads.

"Hey, Red," Daryl called out to me, he was loading up his crossbow, "while the others wash their panties, let's go hunt," he said, motioning to Rick to come as well, "that owl didn't exactly hit the spot."

I chuckled, agreeing.

We walked a little way into the woods, following a train track so we could easily find our way back to the road. We had to be quick, not wanting to leave our people for too long. There still weren't too many animals running about yet, we would maybe come across the odd squirrel or if we were lucky a rabbit.

"Man we gotta get off these tracks if we wanna find anything," Daryl said, scoping out the area. Other than our own, we hadn't heard any movement.

"Alright, we'll walk a little further up, and if we don't find anything we'll cut back through the bush," Rick compromised.

We were entering an opening in the tracks, it looked like we were up on a hill, just at the edge of the forest. The trees opened up to our right, allowing us to see our surroundings from the high ground. I was just rounding the last few trees to the opening when I saw it. Just down the hill, across a small pond of water sat a high-security prison.