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Of Blood and Breath

Chapter 24: Chupacabra

Forrest woke up later than usual the next morning in his tent. He made sure that he had all his gear with him- today would be another day of searching for Sophia. He hoped the group hadn’t already set out without him. He was informed today that they would be searching in teams today- teams other than Jimmy and Beth like the previous day.

He left his tent to see that the group was circled again around the hood of the truck- Rick, Shane, Daryl, Andrea, T-Dog- and surprisingly and much the Forrest’s dismay, Jimmy. Did that kid ever learn? He had looked so terrified of the walker he had faced the previous day with Beth.

“Did I miss anythin’?” Forrest asked.

“We’re settin’ out,” Rick said. “Me an’ Shane, Andrea an’ T-Dog, Daryl by himself. You can go with Jimmy.”

Oh great. Just what he needed. Yesterday didn’t go well. He wasn’t even out there for a full hour with his fellow teenagers before they got all scared and had to run off back to Hershel.

“Sure,” Forrest said, nonchalantly, hiding his contempt.

“Here’s your grid,” Rick pointed to a part of the map. “You guys cover that real quick then head back as soon as you find Sophia or as soon as you cover every part of the grid.”

“Yes, sir,” Jimmy agreed.

“You really think it’s a good idea to send some two sixteen, seventeen-year-olds out there on their own?” Shane questioned, his reasoning was actually somewhat logical, but it came off as abrasive. “Like we established earlier, Jimmy can’t even shoot a gun.”

“I’m comin’ to gun trainin’ later,” Jimmy defended himself.

“Forrest can handle himself just fine,” Daryl pitched in. “If Jimmy can’t then that’ll be his own problem.”

“If Hershel permitted Jimmy’s help, then Hershel trusts that Jimmy can take care of himself too,” Rick added.

At the mention of Hershel’s name, Jimmy’s eyes darted around the group suspiciously. He clearly was lying about getting permission from Hershel.

“I know this area real well,” Jimmy continued. “Probably better than all y’all. Trust me, you can use my help.”

Forrest scoffed inwardly. It was pointless to know the area if you didn’t know how to handle a walker. Forrest and Jimmy headed out together into the woods, Jimmy holding the same baseball bat he had bared yesterday.

“You let me lead you around,” Jimmy said. “You can take care of any of the dead people that come around.”

“Whatever,” Forrest shrugged, not fully agreeing to Jimmy’s proposal.

He could let Jimmy think he was in the lead, but he would be damned if he was going to let someone that dumb and cowardice tell him where to walk.

“Why’d you really come out here?” Forrest decided to question daringly. “Y’all told me yesterday that ya needed to make sure Hershel didn’t see ya sneakin’ off the farm with me, so the old man clearly didn’t give ya his word.”

“He found out,” Jimmy confessed as they navigated through the woods. “He found out ‘bout yesterday, ‘bout you, and me, and Beth sneakin’ out. He ain’t too happy and he told me that he wanted to talk to me an’ he wanted ta talk ta you and Rick ‘bout it and I’m kinda avoidin’ him right now. That’s why I’m out here. Rather watch you kill ‘walkers’ then face Beth’s dad.”

“You’re an idiot,” Forrest criticized. “Ya let yer girlfriend sit in her room all alone and traumatized from yesterday jus’ ta escape her overprotective dad?”

“…Yeah. I guess so. When ya put it like that it sounds so bad.”

“It is bad.”

“It’s not that bad.”

Forrest scoffed at the boy, this time outwardly. He seemed to be oblivious of his own stupidity.

The rest of the hour was just Forrest and Jimmy travelling together through a large plot of woods, no sign of Sophia or anything useful at all, Forrest looking for tracks and Jimmy thinking he was leading the other boy.

The two teenagers arrived back on the farm to be approached immediately by Rick, who wasn’t looking entirely pleased, but not irrationally angry either.

“Jimmy,” Rick said. “Hershel wants to see you in the house. And I need to talk to you.”

“I’ll bet ya do,” Forrest remarked as Jimmy headed off towards the house.

“Hershel told me about somethin’ you did yesterday,” Rick said. “Somethin’ to do with Jimmy and Beth and the woods. He wasn’t too happy about that and I can’t say that I am either.”

“You don’t get to control me,” Forrest grumbled. “Neither does Hershel. It ain’t my problem if his daughter and her boyfriend want to go and look for a lil’ girl who’s lost out in the woods all alone. He should know that he can’t control them either. I didn’t instigate it. They approached me and insisted they go with me.”

“Well, can ya try not to do that kind of thing,” Rick pleaded. “Now Hershel’s sayin’ that he don’t want you ‘round Beth at all anymore. He’s tellin’ us that as soon as we find Sophia and Carl’s well again that we need to go. Look around, we can’t leave this place. It’s somethin’ special. There ain’t no walkers here for whatever reason. It’s for their own good too. We need to stick together to survive- we can’t split apart and we all have to get along.”

“It’s secluded, not secure,” Forrest replied, referring to the farm. “An’ it’s Hershel who has got a problem with me and maybe it’s Beth who’s got a problem with him. I don’t got nothin’ against the old bastard.”

“Just try to not take his sixteen-year-old daughter out into the woods,” Rick suggested.

“She took herself out into the woods.”

With that, Forrest walked away. It was clear to him Rick and Hershel’s point. He would stay away from Hershel’s group if that was what they thought was best. Hershel was trying to keep his people safe while Rick was trying to keep humanity together and he wasn’t going to stand in the way of that.

“Walker!” Andrea’s voice announced loudly, capturing the attention of Forrest and Rick.

The two of them rushed over towards a stumbling, bloody figure off in the distance.

“Stop!” Rick commanded as Shane, Glenn, and T-Dog ran towards the beast as well. “Hershel wants to deal with walkers on his own!”

What the hell else would you do with a walker besides kill it? Putting them down was the most humane thing to do if there was any sense of humanity on the subject of walkers for that matter. To Forrest it didn’t seem to matter who killed a walker, as long as it was put down before it hurt any of the living. As he and the others grew close, he realized that the walker was familiar. Daryl. No. Daryl couldn’t be a walker!

“That’s the third time you pointed that thing at me,” he said to Rick. “You gonna pull the trigger this time or what?

Thankfully, Forrest realized that Daryl wasn’t dead, but why was he acting that way?

Before he could comprehend it, a bullet whizzed past Forrest head and hit Daryl.

“No!” Rick shouted.

Forrest stared at his uncle in shock. Was he actually dead? He couldn’t even bring himself to turn around and see who had fired the bullet. Last he remembered, Andrea and Dale were on watch atop the RV with the rifle.

“I was jus’ kiddin’,” Daryl’s voice cried weakly.

These words saved Forrest and brought him out of his trance. He walked over to his uncle, leaned down and put his arm around his shoulder, Rick taking Daryl’s other side and walking Daryl to the house.

“Look at that!” Glenn said. “Is he wearing ears?!”

Glenn pointed to what appeared to be several walkers ears all attached by a string around Daryl’s neck.

“Let’s keep that to ourselves,” Rick said, pulling the ears off of Daryl and putting them in his pocket.

“Guys,” T-Dog called.

Forrest turned his head to see T-Dog holding up Sophia’s doll that she had gotten from Eliza a week or so ago back at the quarry camp. Forrest wasn’t sure if this was a good sign or a bad sign. Sophia always had the doll with her, ever since it had been gifted to her, but he could mean that the girl was near.

Rick and Forrest arrived at the house, dropping Daryl off there.

“He’s been shot,” Rick told Hershel.

Forrest knew he probably wasn’t welcome inside the home so he turned to leave. As he did so he witnessed Beth enter the room. Something about her presence changed something inside of him. She had become the forbidden fruit, banned from touch but so tempting. Or perhaps it was because the boy she had taken as a lover was so incompetent and he felt for her. Or maybe it was because she was unlike any other girl he had ever met. Something about her had become suddenly and unexpectedly infatuating to him.

Wait, what? What were these thought clouding his soul suddenly? He didn’t owe her anything and he didn’t expect anything from her. For some reason, as he walked by her, he found himself unable to break eye contact with her and he took in her scent as they brushed by each other. She gave him a small smile in return, thoughts of yesterday undoubtedly floating among her gentle mind.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Forrest heard Dale say to Andrea as he walked out the front door and onto the porch steps. “We’ve all wanted to shoot Daryl.”

“Watch yourself,” Forrest warned half-heartedly.

“Forrest,” Andrea breathed. “I’m so sorry, I thought he was a walker. Is he okay?”

“He’s gonna be fine,” Forrest said. “He was talkin’ all sorts a crazy for some reason. If you’re shootin’ did anything good, it pulled him out of some psycho trance.”

Neither Andrea nor Dale responded to Forrest as he tromped off the porch and through the yard to his tent.




Later that evening, Forrest found himself surprised when Hershel had invited everyone in Rick’s group- including himself to dinner in the house that afternoon. There was a large table and a small table, the large table seemed to be for anyone over thirty, leaving himself, Glenn, Maggie, Carl, Jimmy, and Beth to eat together at the smaller table.

The dinner was mostly eaten in silence. Glenn had asked if anyone knew how to play guitar because Dale found one on the highway and the only response he got was from Patricia who informed him the Otis had mastered the skill. After that the silence continued.

Forrest wasn’t in the mood for talking anyway. He was sitting directly across from Beth, leaving him to face the things he had felt earlier, trying to ignore them and push them away. He really just wanted to go back to his tent and sleep next to Jack. He found himself catching glances of Beth while no one else was looking, wondering why he was having such urges.

Notes

Comments

Hope to see this fic continue, its super good

Twitterpated Twitterpated
10/7/17

@thewalkerinme
I have some plans for the future. Thanks so much, your feedback means a lot to me. You'll have to wait and see :)

ForrestDixon ForrestDixon
4/17/16

@thewalkerinme
I have some plans for the future. Thanks so much, your feedback means a lot to me. You'll have to wait and see :)

ForrestDixon ForrestDixon
4/17/16

Ahhh! God, I freaking adore Forrest. He's such a great dude. The future of this story excites me to no end. How will you play out the zach thing, and her death, and just her whole story ark in general agh I'm so excited to find out! Beth and Forrest have the cutest scenes together, and he even fits so well with other characters like talking to Rick and Dale *sobs agh my heart*
Keep this up. I look forward to many many more updates!

thewalkerinme thewalkerinme
4/17/16

@thewalkerinme
Sorry for not seeing this until now. I'll do my best to get this story fully back in action. Thanks for commenting!

ForrestDixon ForrestDixon
4/10/16