#tradcrs

Seeing Thalia emerge from the entrance to the living room has Daryl stopping in his tracks on the stairs. Relief flicks, however briefly, over his features, and then he shuffles the rest of the way down until he's on the landing.

"Second floor's clear, but I'd avoid the master's bedroom-- guy opted out and I had to put him down," he says, tone as matter-of-fact as it's been since they started running together. "Water's running, too, so I say we take advantage of that."

After two days of trekking in the outdoors, this neighbourhood is salvation wrapped in white collar paychecks. Standing in a house this nice makes Daryl's skin crawl, but he's not about to take any type of shelter for granted. At any rate, it'll be good to sleep with a little less vigilance given all the working locks and the unbroken windows.

this time it was angela's turn to snort. when asking the question, she was unsure if it would illicit a response. if anything, a glare was expected. but she was pleasantly surprised by the other's answer. "good ol' donnie walhberg," angela whispered, a smirk clearly tugging at the corner of her lips. "I was a backstreet boy gal through and through. though, truthfully, my parents and brother solely listened to country so i was surrounded by johnny cash and rascal flatts." it's what happened when growing up in the south, especially in a small georgia town not big enough to employ a police station.

looking to thalia, angela's smile faded. "looking for anyone out here? or are you just trying to survive and find shelter?"

Stepping outside the coddling glorified safety of Alexandria’s walls is revelatory; there’s an element of purity, a touch of deathly holiness. Rick does not believe in God—not anymore. His faith is a tattered fruitless tragedy, a gutted lighthouse, a death song. In hallowed cavernous churches, he seethed and prayed and knelt on his knees, his truculent heart offered in the cupful of his calloused palms and only silent indifference washed over him in harrowing waves. Rick’s faith is housed in the oiled hinges of his colt, in the smooth well-used grip of his machete, in the instincts he has cultivated and bred and nurtured so carefully, with such tempestuous resolve. And he will not part with them, come peace, come comfort, come the jubilant prosperity of their community. He scrubs a weathered hand over his growing beard (he will not shave again.

Let him be the impulsive savage the Alexandrians believe him to be. He will not disabuse them of the notion. No one will fuck with him then. Certainly not after the little performance he put on for them, the blues of his eyes watery, sanguine streaks splashed over his cheeks, blood crusting underneath his fingernails). He glances over at the most recent addition to their little deranged settlement: he did not expect anyone new to join them, but lo & behold, she did, bearing a formidable rifle that she sure looks like she knows how to handle with polished expertise. Rick is no stranger to sizing survivors up and the mechanic walks with the gait of a person familiar with the spitting hurtle of danger. Now, he just needs to see if her mettle can be tested; is she as valuable as she seems to be? This wet run will tell. Perhaps, he should not have taken her out so soon, but better be safe than sorry, better position her in the face of risk in a controlled environment than have her endanger any of his people and make corpses out of them. He begins striding in the direction of an abandoned decaying town that one of his scouts chanced upon while doing the rounds a week ago: there is an outdoor strip mall with a grocery store and a mechanic’s shop they can strip for parts. Promising enough that it is worth the trip.

“Are you alright with walkin’ on your feet?” his voice comes out brittle, a harsh intonation with flickers of dim humor. “Could take a vehicle but seems a waste when we could stretch out our legs. Been a while since we trekked out like this. It’s better than bein’ cooped up in those suffocatin’ houses.”

Mired in the timorous mistrust of the docile sheep and their lacklustre malice, it is a comfort to pull himself away from it all: the politics, the backstabbing, the whispers behind closed doors and drawn curtains. At least, out here, it is all laid bare, truthful. The forest may as well be a house of glass.