AN: So here it is, the first chapter.

I don't own the Walking Dead or anything about it…I don't make any money off of this…etc. etc. It's just for fun. The only thing I own are my original characters.

My cover image came from Google.

This is going to be an eventual Caryl story. I want to make sure that everyone understands that by that I mean that eventually the two will be a couple, but it's not going to be anything quick or immediate by any stretch of the imagination. So settle in and enjoy the story and know it's coming but it's not here yet and it's not just ahead.

This story is going to pick up just after they've left Hershel's farm. I'm reinterpreting what's already happened and what will come to suit my own desires for the story. That means that though I'm keeping lightly to what happened in Seasons 1 and 2, there will be changes. Also, I'm going to keep some of the action of Season 3 as it happened, but most everything is subject to change to suit my needs. I just want you to know in case you're someone who's bothered when people don't follow the story lines rigidly. They certainly won't be followed exactly in this tale. There is also an OC that's going to play a large role in the story. If you've read my story Phantom Hearts, then you already know Alice. If you haven't then you'll be meeting her soon enough. If you know her already, though, know that she is like the other characters and changes to fit her new setting.

So here's the first chapter, just to set the mood and get us introduced a little to what we're dealing with. I'll try to have something else up for you soon, since if you know anything about me then you know I love having a million things going on in life!

I hope you enjoy, and let me know if you think you're going to be interested. I appreciate all reviews since they are really the only form of payment any of us receive for fanfic writing and they make me anxious to get more out to the people I know are writing.

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Daryl kept his head down and ignored the sting of the rain as it slapped against his face. He tightened his grip on the handlebars just enough, the bike surging forward only a bit more than it had before. He was leading the pack and for him the scenery changed constantly.

He preferred to be out in front, though. He'd rather go headfirst into whatever was ahead than linger in the back and watch the caravan as they trekked across roads not knowing really where they were or where they were going. They had the maps, but the maps were almost a joke. From one place to another the pieces of paper had been folded and unfolded, studied and restudied, until they were worn soft in places and damaged enough to be hardly interpretable in others.

They didn't know where they were, not really. They were in Georgia, that much they knew. Daryl hadn't seen them cross any state lines yet, and he'd be the one to know if they had. So that's essentially all they had going for them. Rick pretended he knew where they were going. Hershel pretended he knew all the places they'd been. But it was really Daryl who was leading the parade and he didn't have a fucking clue about either of those things. All he knew was they had to keep going.

They'd left the farm weeks ago, maybe months ago. If it weren't for the seasons Daryl might have even suspected it could have been years ago. No one paid attention to time. There wasn't any reason to pay attention to it. Time didn't mean much these days. The only time that mattered was that between sun up and sun down, and the time before the process repeated itself.

They were running. Like rats from a burning barn they were running, and that was all there was to do. For the time being it was the best thing and the only thing. They ran until they had to stop. Road weary and nearly dead at times they stopped where they could. They sought shelter in abandoned houses, stores, gas stations. If it had walls and a roof and could be secured enough for a few hours repose from the road, then it was just about the best damn place they could hope for.

So they hopped from spot to spot like a depressing circus caravan. Rick talked about finding somewhere. Holding up against the world around them. He had a reason to want to stop too, and Daryl didn't pretend that he couldn't understand it somewhat.

Lori was pregnant and her expanding size let everyone know that the baby wasn't going to wait forever. No one had informed the little asshole that this wasn't the best time and that life on the road wasn't any life at all for a kid. The thing kept growing and Rick kept getting jumpier and jumpier about it, despite the obvious strain on their relationship.

Everyone knew the kid wasn't Rick's and anyone with eyes and half a brain could see that the strain of the whole damn thing was about to crack Rick right in half. The kid was more than likely Shane's, and that had been a mess all its own. Rick had to kill the fucker. Daryl knew from Rick the details of what had happened that night, and he didn't blame Rick at all. Honestly if it had been up to him he'd probably have put an arrow through Shane Walsh a few times for his attitude if he were Rick. The man was a reckless hot head and that was the last fucking thing they needed if they wanted to survive in the pits of the hell that they'd found themselves in now that the dead thought feasting on the living was a good damn idea.

Being wound a little tight was one thing, and really everyone in their group had every right to be pulled just as tight as the strings on a guitar, but it didn't mean that you needed to be reckless. You certainly didn't need to try to eat your own. At this point they had enough shit trying to eat them without having to worry about turning on each other.

And for that reason Daryl stayed out of things a good deal. He kept to the sidelines when they were stopped and minded his own damn business. He overheard conversations and he listened when Rick had ranted to him about the anger he felt toward Shane…the anger he felt toward Lori…his uncertainty about the probable bastard child she carried. Daryl listened, but he stayed to himself as much as possible.

That was also why he liked leading the pack. On his bike it was him and the road, charging forward instead of looking back. He didn't need to look behind him. He knew what the fuck was behind him. Herds and herds of Walkers all following them until the ends of the Earth, that's what the hell was behind him.

He liked the solidarity and the relief from being cramped in the tight spaces that they shared when they did decide to stop and decided to swap back and forth the same idle chitchat about where they might end up. He liked the quality time with the bike that he'd inherited when his dumbass brother had gone and disappeared off the roof where Rick had handcuffed him because he was too damn strung out to know his ass from a whole in the ground.

Merle, Daryl's brother, had been the only damn person in his life that had even been semi-constant and he was the only person that Daryl ever let in even a fraction of the way. They'd been through hell together with his parents and then Merle had disappeared. He'd done stints in Juvy, he'd done stints in prison, and for a few years he'd paid his debt to Uncle Sam in the military. Anything to get the fuck away from their old man. He'd left Daryl behind then, but Daryl had tried to forgive his sorry ass as best he could. He'd have gotten the fuck out too if he could have.

And now Merle was really gone. Daryl had no idea if the big dumb asshole was even alive anymore or if he'd already gone to wherever the hell it was that his ass was going at the end of it all. What Daryl did know was that they were on the move, and Merle wasn't with them. Though he suspected they were doing big ass loop de loos around the entire green state of Georgia, he didn't know if they'd ever cross paths with his brother again…assuming the bastard was alive…and so Daryl figured that he could probably count him out. It was probably better that way anyway. Really one of the only people he'd ever given a hot damn about was long gone and the world was gone to hell.

The bike shifted a little with the movement behind him and Daryl compensated, keeping from spilling to the ground at the pressing speed he'd chosen despite the stinging rain. He reached his hand just back a little, daring to remove it from the handlebars, and dug his fingers into Carol's thigh in case she'd fallen asleep behind him. He knew her face was pressed against his back, likely seeking relief from the biting water, but her grip was lax and she only typically shifted when she was beginning to doze from the absolute exhaustion of the road and the mind numbing repetition of trying to keep a few days ride ahead of the herds that trailed them.

Carol…there was that. Daryl didn't know quite what to do with the woman on the back of his bike. He wasn't sure what the relationship between them was, exactly…or if there was anything at all. He sometimes thought that he was making it up and reading some shit in the tea leaves that just wasn't there.

He didn't have any experience with women. One or two clumsy fucks along the way with drunken women did not an impressive track record make. Most of them were out of their panties and on his dick before he even knew what the hell was happening and they were out the door just as quickly.

That summed up his entire romantic life right there. A quick fuck here or there from a strung out woman that, as far as Daryl knew, didn't have a fucking name and probably didn't even know the difference between him and his brother.

Carol wasn't at all like those women. The closest he'd ever seen her to drunk was the night at the CDC when she'd had a whopping two glasses of wine. The liquid hadn't even left her seeming drunk either. She'd been a little pink cheeked, and she'd smiled and laughed more than he'd seen her laugh since he met her, but she hadn't so much as weaved at all as she'd passed him in the hall that night headed to the room where she was sleeping. She wasn't the kind of woman that got drunk and crawled unceremoniously on some man's dick.

Daryl didn't know why he felt drawn to the woman, but he did. She'd been married, from what he could tell, to one sorry son of a bitch who had met his match outside of Atlanta and not a moment too soon. Daryl figured the world was always better off without men like that. He'd seen when Carol had put a pick axe through what was left of the man's head and he'd seen the anger boiling there inside her. All of them had seen the bruises, the black eyes, the busted lips in their time together with Ed, the asshole. They'd heard some of the sounds coming from their tent and had their own ideas about what had happened behind the flaps of cheap ass imitation cloth, but when Daryl saw Carol's face the day she laid Ed's sorry ass to hopefully burn in some fiery pit somewhere…Daryl realized that it was nothing new to her. Ed's actions hadn't started with the outbreak of the living dead. Daryl Dixon knew what long term abuse looked like, and he'd seen it written all over her face. The anger she felt boiled out of her, and he hated that he knew deep down it was justified.

And then, as though her obvious shit show of a life needed to be even more fucking exciting, Daryl had watched the woman fall apart as she lost her child. He'd never wanted one damn thing in his life half as bad as he wanted to give that woman her kid back. He didn't even like kids, but he knew what the hell it felt like to lose in life, and it was obvious she'd pretty much lost every damn thing she gave half a fuck about when that little girl had disappeared.

The girl might have been saved too…Daryl couldn't help but wonder. If any of the others had given even half the damn that he'd given about returning that kid to her, she might have been safe in her arms right now instead of Walkerfied and laid to rest in the cold ground at Hershel's burned out farm. Daryl wasn't the kind of man who had any luck at all besides bad luck and God wasn't exactly smiling down on him and wanting to hand him any favors. He hadn't yet and he wasn't likely to want to start any time soon. He'd known, because of that, that he wasn't likely to find the girl and save her, and he was right. He wasn't meant to be a hero and none of the assholes in camp that were wired to be heroes had done anything about it.

They'd been too busy rolling amongst themselves over Lori's stupid ass. Daryl didn't give a shit if he ever got a decent piece in his life, so long as it never led him to a woman like Lori Grimes. She'd been a hot damn mess the whole time he'd known her and he felt like her ass had served to make this living hell just a little worse than it had to be. He knew it wasn't fair to blame everything on the woman who looked like the living version of Olive Oyl, she didn't bring the dead back to life after all, but short of that there wasn't much that had happened to their group that he didn't feel he could hold her accountable for.

Rick had damn near busted his nuts to come back for the bitch and she was shacking up with Shane. Daryl thought off the bat that showed a little poor judgment on her part, but he hadn't really cared all that much in the beginning. Let them handle the shit with the little woman. It was only really when the whole damn thing turned into a giant pissing contest between the two men that things got rocky. From then on it seemed that every damn thing they did was in Lori's best interest instead of in the interest of the group. Now she was knocked up and couldn't even seem to keep her hands on that slippery little son of a bitch she had as a kid already.

Daryl knew, though, that most of his anger toward Lori might be misdirected. He was still angry about the little girl and he was angry that he wasn't good enough to save her. He'd hated seeing the defeat and the loss in Carol's eyes when she'd realized the kid was gone for good. There wasn't any coming back from where she'd gone.

No…Daryl didn't know why he cared so much, and he tried his best to keep some sort of distance between himself and Carol. He didn't trust the way he felt about her. It had never gone so well for him to care about anyone in his life.

So he considered her a friend and nothing more. Somewhere, if they kept going and they kept living and the herds closing in around them didn't tear them limb from limb one night, he assumed that Carol would find someone. She was friendly and warm with everyone. Everyone seemed to like her, except maybe Shane, and Daryl had already decided that Shane's brain was fucked up because of Lori, so he didn't even count him among rational human beings. He was dead and gone now anyway.

Yes, one day Carol would find someone out there if she lived and maybe they'd make up, somehow, for the fact that Ed had been an asshole and Daryl hadn't found her kid before she crawled out of a barn, dead and snarling.

At least Daryl had her as a friend, and he felt like she cared for him as a friend. She had been kind to him, and that was something he couldn't say about most people in the world. She'd showed him, in the short time that he'd known her, more kindness than anyone else that he could remember.

That's why, he supposed, he felt somewhat protective over her. He hadn't been able to give her back her kid, but if he could he figured he owed it to her to at least help her keep what sorry excuse for a life she had and give her the chance to do better with it sometime.

When they'd left the farm so many nights before, when all hell had really broken loose, it had been a chaotic cloud of screams and roaring engines. Walkers, fire, gunshots…the shit had really hit the fan. Daryl had hung back a bit and watched as his comrades roared off in their vehicles…the ones that were lucky enough to make it out alive. He'd sat back, on his bike, watching the barn that had held the little girl as it burned away to a skeleton and collapsed in on itself.

He'd figured he'd catch up with them all somewhere down the road, or he wouldn't. There really wasn't any way to tell what the fuck would happen these days. He'd sat there, a little longer than he intended, judging exactly how long he could wait and watch until he had to go to keep from the slobbering fuckers catching up to his ass.

He had already assumed that she was dead then. He wasn't expecting anyone to save her and she'd been far too far away from him when the shit show had begun for him to do a damn thing about it. The group didn't give much of a damn about her. Everyone cared for their own first and the others second, and she had no one to call her own. Just like him she was alone now.

So when he'd heard her scream, once and then again, he'd almost thought it was some kind of hallucination. His brain playing tricks on him that the woman was still alive. She was his friend, and he'd bothered to give some kind of a damn about her…he certainly hadn't expected her to live after that. It was almost like a curse for him to care at all about someone.

He'd raised up on his bike a little, the swarms of Walkers playing tricks on his eyes, and he'd seen her then, streaking across the field, running from the drooling freaks. She'd just been running to try to prolong the last few minutes of her life, probably. She wouldn't have outrun them much longer and everyone else was gone. They'd left her ass behind, figured her for dead. Queen Lori was probably alive, Daryl figured, so what the fuck did anyone else matter?

He'd pulled up, though, and she'd gotten on the back of his bike with literally seconds to spare before some Walker snatched her back. Daryl hated having anyone ride bitch on his bike, but he'd liked when they were on the road, riding through the straggling Walkers of the herd. He'd felt an odd sensation of happiness sweep over him at knowing she was alive, though he hadn't told her that, and he wouldn't.

Since then she'd rode bitch with him the whole damn way. It hadn't been discussed, really, it had just silently been agreed upon that she would go with him on the bike, and they'd lead the rest of the group that they met up with later, taking a head count of who was left after the showdown at the O.K. Corral.

She was his friend, and maybe the only real one he'd ever had, and he didn't mind her riding with him. He'd rather have her on the back of the bike or cramped up in a corner near him wherever they stopped, than left to hope that in the overwhelming need to make sure that her highness Lori got whatever the fuck she needed, someone still bothered to try to make sure that Carol wasn't snatched right out of the group and devoured before anyone even noticed anything except Lori's whining over some case of the hiccups.

Carol's arms tightened around Daryl's midsection a little and he realized she was awake again if she'd fallen asleep before. He knew she was dog ass tired. He assumed they all were unless some of them were sleeping in vehicles.

They had to find somewhere to call it a night. They could spare a couple of hours of downtime, passed out somewhere, and then it would be right back on the road. Daryl knew they'd have a short conversation, as they always did, about where they'd been and where they were headed. They'd talk about the need to find somewhere safe, somewhere they could lay low for a while, but the fact of the matter remained that they hadn't found that place yet and Daryl wasn't sure if they weren't just chasing rainbows in thinking that they would find it.

Not a mile ahead, Daryl brought the bike to a stop in what appeared to be an abandoned truck stop. It wasn't Buckingham Palace, but they could clear the place out and it would serve the purpose for the night. There might be something to eat and some water to keep them going, and that was all the fuck they could really ask for.

Daryl got off the bike and stretched his numb and tired muscles. He held an arm out to support Carol as she got off and she offered him a thank you and the same sweet smile she always gave him, regardless of how bone tired they all were from the road.

Daryl stood beside Carol and waited as the other vehicles pulled to a stop nearby and what was left of their group spilled out, stretching and coming to life from the road.

"You think this is a good place?" Rick asked, walking over to Daryl.

Daryl shrugged a little looking at the truck stop. Damn place could be haunted for all he knew. All that really mattered at the moment was that they got some rest before they all fell asleep and killed themselves on the road.

"Good a place as any," Daryl said.

Rick looked tired end he pinched at the bridge of his nose.

"We need to move in, clear it out. Hopefully it's not too bad," Rick said.

Daryl didn't know how many Walkers they would find in there, but he figured there were less in there than there were moving around outside, heading in their direction.

"Let's do it," Daryl said.

Rick turned to Carol before motioning toward the others.

"Get the stuff ready to bring in. We'll get the place cleared out as quickly as possible," Rick said.

Daryl took his crossbow and stretched his knees once more. Glenn and T-Dog joined him and Rick and they stepped inside. The place was pretty well deserted and the four of them really weren't necessary to clean out the three Walkers they found lurking in the shadows of the building.

Once they were convinced it was clear, they started back toward the door. Outside everyone else was waiting, holding just what they would need for the night, and probably hoping there was something they could eat inside.

The lightning cracked and Daryl realized the storm around them was getting worse.

"Let's get these fuckers outta here an' get everyone inside 'fore they all get fuckin' struck by lightning," Daryl said.

"It's getting back," Rick said. "I was beginning to wonder if it was safe for you and Carol to be out in it on the bike."

Daryl shrugged and stepped outside.

"Ain't nothin' to worry about. Rain stings like a bitch but lightnin' ain't gon' strike no damn movin' bike," he called.

"Start moving inside," Rick called to everyone else. "We're going to clean the Walkers out and we'll stay for the night. We move at sunup."

Daryl watched as everyone started filing in and he walked over to his bike flipping up the cover on the saddlebag. Carol had already taken his stuff inside, as evidenced by the mostly empty bag, so he turned back to go and help with the rest of the cleanup crew.

They could rest for a night, but they'd better move their asses, storm or not, the next morning if they wanted to stay ahead of what the hell was coming for them.

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AN: I hope you enjoyed! Please review and let me know what you think!