my tears ricochet

Chapter Twenty Eight

"You and I could end this tonight," Glenn had offered Michonne, one shaky hand reaching out to another with a loaded gun. He had seen that tension between the pair of them, each taking stock of their losses and injuries, that dismantled pride stretched thin.

Daryl realized in that moment that Ivy wasn't there. He had felt the urge to deflect her from joining the twinned campaign and noticed for the first time that she was absent from the cellblock. A quick check of the yard showed nothing but Oscar setting out filing cabinets at random intervals, perfect for a body to duck behind in case of bullets firing. "You see my kid?" He asked, frustration blooming. "She come through here earlier?"

Oscar blinked at him. Checked the space like she was going to show up beside him like magic. "Ivy said she was meeting you to go trapping. Said you were waiting on her."

He already knew that if he checked, her gun and knife from the cell were gone. She was long gone. Daryl started running across the grass to get to the gate, Oscar at his heels with the keys. "Ivy's goin' to Woodbury," he said with sharpness, rattling the gate with irritation.

"She's on foot at least."

That's a small mercy. Carol's first driving lesson hadn't been enough to enstill comfort in handling cars. That kept the gap between them and her manageable. They followed the road to the first body, a walker slumped awkwardly from where a knife had rendered it truly dead and Daryl scouted the ditches for prints.

Walkers tended to make tracking the living difficult. He had realized that with Sophia when trails got muddled from foot prints that went no where, bits of torn clothing caught on branches. But he knew his daughter, the rough size of her feet. He found two clean steps before she had skirted towards rocks. He wasn't sure if she had intentionally gone to dry ground where she would be less likely to leave a path or if had been coincidence but he kept checking, marking individual signs in the wild.

Following the road would have given her clean visibility but Ivy would have felt safer amongst the trees, where she had the option of ducking for cover and using the brush to shield herself. Anyone could find her in the open.

Merle had, standing in a parking lot.

"Keep going in this direction, you'd hit Woodbury."

It would be a clean path. The roads all curved and bent, subjects of property and land rights. She could cut her way through and save time for it.

Oscar wasn't bad to have at his heels when he tracked. Glenn had a habit of standing in the path and getting his feet all over what Daryl was looking for and Rick got jittery, unable to stop himself from peppering the man with question after question. He stayed silent with an eye out, searching the woods for any walkers stumbling about.

One walker drifting in loose circles showed Daryl the place where Ivy had ducked low, catching her hair on the rough branch of a thorn bush. A few strands of hair betrayed the ground that had been pressed down, her hands steadying herself in the looser dirt. She would have avoided the stray walker and gone backwards, using the natural line of thorns and brush to keep out of sight.

He jerked his chin and they doubled back, following the near invisible prints. Eventually Daryl would teach her about tracking to make sure she could survive in the wilds the way he could, but for now it's a weapon, something to use against her. He doesn't want to chase a ghost so he keeps going, checking for the trail, checking that the trail didn't get caught in falsehoods.

Twice his eyes had tricked him, making him believe her direction had changed. His desperation made it so easy for him to imagine tracks where there was nothing. It was aggravating sorting his way back to the true line, a heart line pulsing amongst trees and roots; father and daughter.