Scraping By, Chapter 13: The Reception
Title: Scraping By
Fandom: The Walking Dead
Rating: M
Disclaimer: All rights for The Walking Dead go to Robert Kirkman and AMC. This story takes place strictly in the TV show 'verse.
Author's Note: The violence in this chapter earns that "Mature" rating.
Chapter 13: The Reception
It was Thursday and Daryl Dixon was late.
The fifteen minute drive from Montrose to Dublin had taken two hours longer than usual because his fool brother dismantling his alarm clock in the middle of the night for shits and giggles. When Daryl got home from his latest hunting trip he'd found Merle on his sofa. He mentioned working a burial at the Magnolia Park cemetery in Warner Robins, bitched about a casket that had been making noise when he got ready to fill the grave in, and made sure to tell his brother four separate times that this was the eleventh grave he'd dug since Tuesday. Merle was already drunk off his ass (how his brother could still drive his loud motorcycle in a straight line for more than six feet was always a mystery to Daryl) and the younger Dixon swore his brother was high again.
Daryl was still trying to fix his tie and ran through the catering menu in his head for the billionth time when he pulled up to his usual parking space.
The reception was scheduled for 1:30 PM and he was supposed to be doing prep work in the morning. The crazy bride had duck and artichoke hearts on the menu and that was the was one of the weirder combinations he and the rest of the staff had to make work.
It was fifteen minutes past noon.
Daryl figured he probably would have felt worse about being so late if the bride hadn't been a total bitch about the menu. Her slow explanation of how she had to have the artichoke hearts because the purple shade matched her wedding colors was easy to ignore, but the insulting way she kept eyeballing him like he'd sooner shove a leek in his ear than do his work made him mad enough.
It wasn't until he got closer to the kitchen, tie finally situated, that he noticed the full parking lot wasn't the only place that was too quiet.
Through the side entrance, Daryl could hear that there wasn't a sound coming from the kitchen.
Frowning, Daryl bumped the door with his hip as he worked on rolling up his sleeves. Halfway through the door, he opened his mouth to explain to Walter why he was so late.
Walter was lying on the kitchen floor with a ragged, bloody hole in his neck and a bread knife sticking out of his eye.
The image took a full minute to sink in and by the time the smell hit him, Daryl came close to vomiting in the sink. The ovens were starting to smoke with overcooked food and he could see blood smeared across the floor and out the main kitchen doors.
"Jesus Christ," he whispered. "What the fuck happened?"
Something slammed against the inside of the walk-in freezer door. Daryl's hand immediately went to his belt for the knife he usually carried but came up empty. He wasn't out hunting. This was a formal wedding party that required staff to wear their best. The slacks and nice shirt he had on weren't what he was used to wearing on a daily basis considering how he usually spent his shifts wearing jeans and a T-shirt for comfort's sake. Berating himself, Daryl dug his keys out of his pocket and unlocked his utility drawer. His knife set was still carefully packed away to the side of the prep list and it looked like Colleen borrowed them again because he was missing the chef's blade, the serrated blade, and his shears.
He still had his sharpening steel and one large skinning blade.
Making do, Daryl gripped the skinning knife in his left hand and the sharpening steel in his right. The freezer door was thumped on again and he checked the window to see what was going on inside.
The maid of honor was pressed up against the door.
"Shit!" Daryl quickly pulled the handle and went to help her move somewhere warmer when he saw her face in more detail.
Her eyes were rheumy and bloodshot, but that wasn't what made Daryl back up. It was the fact that her lips were gone. Not just gone, but ripped off.
Her arms waved through the air and her teeth gnashed. Daryl instinctively kicked out when he saw the set curve of her hands and how her screwed up eyes were focused on his neck. She slammed into the side of the freezer and he shut the door again. She was determined to get her teeth into him, though, and wedged her ribcage in the crack of the door. She growled high in her throat and clawed at her own waist as if she could just pop her torso off and drag herself towards her walking meal.
Daryl decided to put her out of her misery and slammed the door again-just hard enough that her ribs visibly and quite audibly broke. The crushed chest and possible punctured lung and heart was probably enough to put her down.
Not quite.
As he turned to pick up the phone and call someone, she let out a sad little moan and her hand pushed past the freezer door for him.
Daryl thought back to every stupid zombie movie his brother ever made him watch and he traded the knife to the same hand that held the sharpening steel. The meat tenderizer at his prep station was within reach and he was better at throwing things than getting up in close fights. Without thinking it over too much, he hefted the spiked mallet twice and launched it at the maid of honor's forehead.
It landed in her skull with a loud squelch and she fell over dead.
Brain. It has to be the brain… Holy shit the movies were right.
This couldn't be happening.
Daryl grabbed the phone off the wall and dialed Information.
A running emergency alert was playing on the other end, telling him to drive to Atlanta for refuge and to isolate anyone who was exhibiting severe flu-like symptoms. Those that were unresponsive and showing signs of what the alert called 'walking death syndrome' (blank eyes, persistent drooling, low cognitive reflexes, and limited motor skills) were to be stopped at all costs. The infected were eating the living.
Daryl hung up the phone and gripped the knife tighter. He could hear shuffling sounds outside that didn't quite make sense until the bride, wearing her sleek ivory dress and birdcage veil, staggered into the kitchen and slid on a broken high heel in the path of blood. Her mouth was full of something that looked way too much like her groom's dark brown skin. She had his arm clutched in her free hand.
Involuntarily, the chorus of Hall & Oates' "Maneater" started going through Daryl's head.
Watch out, boy, she'll chew you up.
He immediately threw the skinning blade at her head. It landed with precision in her left eye and she dropped like a sack of flour right on top of Walter's body.
Daryl nervously shifted the grip he had on the sharpening steel and listened for any more movement. The bride's foot had landed between the swinging double doors and he could fully hear the moans of the whole wedding party intermixed with wet crunching and slurping.
Daryl was ready to sneak back out through the door he came in when he heard someone sobbing.
"Shit-Jenny!" he shouted and sprinted past the corpses toward the sound of his cousin crying. He found her lying on her side in front of the guest entrance to the dining hall. Three groomsmen were kneeling on top of her and digging at her open midsection with their bare hands.
Jenny was still alive.
She saw him standing in the hall and feebly reached a bloody hand towards him. Her lips opened to speak, but the blood that had been filling her mouth almost clogged her voice and Daryl was forced to lipread her plea for him to kill her.
"Jenny," he whispered. He was too shocked to move.
Jenny's face twisted even further and she finally managed to scream at him. "Just fuckin' kill me, Daryl!"
Daryl yelled and rushed forward faster than he'd ever run in his life. He buried the sharpening steel in her eye and he dry heaved when he felt the end of the steel spike rasp against the inside of her skull. Her screams stopped, but his didn't until he saw the best man staring at him hungrily. Daryl ran back to his truck, hopped in the cab, locked the doors, and tore off his bloodied shirt so frantically that the buttons flew against the windshield and scattered across the front seat.
He was crying by the time he started driving back to Montrose on automatic pilot.
Chapter 12: Take What Amusement You Can | Chapter 14: Off Kilter
Fandom: The Walking Dead
Rating: M
Disclaimer: All rights for The Walking Dead go to Robert Kirkman and AMC. This story takes place strictly in the TV show 'verse.
Author's Note: The violence in this chapter earns that "Mature" rating.
Chapter 13: The Reception
It was Thursday and Daryl Dixon was late.
The fifteen minute drive from Montrose to Dublin had taken two hours longer than usual because his fool brother dismantling his alarm clock in the middle of the night for shits and giggles. When Daryl got home from his latest hunting trip he'd found Merle on his sofa. He mentioned working a burial at the Magnolia Park cemetery in Warner Robins, bitched about a casket that had been making noise when he got ready to fill the grave in, and made sure to tell his brother four separate times that this was the eleventh grave he'd dug since Tuesday. Merle was already drunk off his ass (how his brother could still drive his loud motorcycle in a straight line for more than six feet was always a mystery to Daryl) and the younger Dixon swore his brother was high again.
Daryl was still trying to fix his tie and ran through the catering menu in his head for the billionth time when he pulled up to his usual parking space.
The reception was scheduled for 1:30 PM and he was supposed to be doing prep work in the morning. The crazy bride had duck and artichoke hearts on the menu and that was the was one of the weirder combinations he and the rest of the staff had to make work.
It was fifteen minutes past noon.
Daryl figured he probably would have felt worse about being so late if the bride hadn't been a total bitch about the menu. Her slow explanation of how she had to have the artichoke hearts because the purple shade matched her wedding colors was easy to ignore, but the insulting way she kept eyeballing him like he'd sooner shove a leek in his ear than do his work made him mad enough.
It wasn't until he got closer to the kitchen, tie finally situated, that he noticed the full parking lot wasn't the only place that was too quiet.
Through the side entrance, Daryl could hear that there wasn't a sound coming from the kitchen.
Frowning, Daryl bumped the door with his hip as he worked on rolling up his sleeves. Halfway through the door, he opened his mouth to explain to Walter why he was so late.
Walter was lying on the kitchen floor with a ragged, bloody hole in his neck and a bread knife sticking out of his eye.
The image took a full minute to sink in and by the time the smell hit him, Daryl came close to vomiting in the sink. The ovens were starting to smoke with overcooked food and he could see blood smeared across the floor and out the main kitchen doors.
"Jesus Christ," he whispered. "What the fuck happened?"
Something slammed against the inside of the walk-in freezer door. Daryl's hand immediately went to his belt for the knife he usually carried but came up empty. He wasn't out hunting. This was a formal wedding party that required staff to wear their best. The slacks and nice shirt he had on weren't what he was used to wearing on a daily basis considering how he usually spent his shifts wearing jeans and a T-shirt for comfort's sake. Berating himself, Daryl dug his keys out of his pocket and unlocked his utility drawer. His knife set was still carefully packed away to the side of the prep list and it looked like Colleen borrowed them again because he was missing the chef's blade, the serrated blade, and his shears.
He still had his sharpening steel and one large skinning blade.
Making do, Daryl gripped the skinning knife in his left hand and the sharpening steel in his right. The freezer door was thumped on again and he checked the window to see what was going on inside.
The maid of honor was pressed up against the door.
"Shit!" Daryl quickly pulled the handle and went to help her move somewhere warmer when he saw her face in more detail.
Her eyes were rheumy and bloodshot, but that wasn't what made Daryl back up. It was the fact that her lips were gone. Not just gone, but ripped off.
Her arms waved through the air and her teeth gnashed. Daryl instinctively kicked out when he saw the set curve of her hands and how her screwed up eyes were focused on his neck. She slammed into the side of the freezer and he shut the door again. She was determined to get her teeth into him, though, and wedged her ribcage in the crack of the door. She growled high in her throat and clawed at her own waist as if she could just pop her torso off and drag herself towards her walking meal.
Daryl decided to put her out of her misery and slammed the door again-just hard enough that her ribs visibly and quite audibly broke. The crushed chest and possible punctured lung and heart was probably enough to put her down.
Not quite.
As he turned to pick up the phone and call someone, she let out a sad little moan and her hand pushed past the freezer door for him.
Daryl thought back to every stupid zombie movie his brother ever made him watch and he traded the knife to the same hand that held the sharpening steel. The meat tenderizer at his prep station was within reach and he was better at throwing things than getting up in close fights. Without thinking it over too much, he hefted the spiked mallet twice and launched it at the maid of honor's forehead.
It landed in her skull with a loud squelch and she fell over dead.
Brain. It has to be the brain… Holy shit the movies were right.
This couldn't be happening.
Daryl grabbed the phone off the wall and dialed Information.
A running emergency alert was playing on the other end, telling him to drive to Atlanta for refuge and to isolate anyone who was exhibiting severe flu-like symptoms. Those that were unresponsive and showing signs of what the alert called 'walking death syndrome' (blank eyes, persistent drooling, low cognitive reflexes, and limited motor skills) were to be stopped at all costs. The infected were eating the living.
Daryl hung up the phone and gripped the knife tighter. He could hear shuffling sounds outside that didn't quite make sense until the bride, wearing her sleek ivory dress and birdcage veil, staggered into the kitchen and slid on a broken high heel in the path of blood. Her mouth was full of something that looked way too much like her groom's dark brown skin. She had his arm clutched in her free hand.
Involuntarily, the chorus of Hall & Oates' "Maneater" started going through Daryl's head.
Watch out, boy, she'll chew you up.
He immediately threw the skinning blade at her head. It landed with precision in her left eye and she dropped like a sack of flour right on top of Walter's body.
Daryl nervously shifted the grip he had on the sharpening steel and listened for any more movement. The bride's foot had landed between the swinging double doors and he could fully hear the moans of the whole wedding party intermixed with wet crunching and slurping.
Daryl was ready to sneak back out through the door he came in when he heard someone sobbing.
"Shit-Jenny!" he shouted and sprinted past the corpses toward the sound of his cousin crying. He found her lying on her side in front of the guest entrance to the dining hall. Three groomsmen were kneeling on top of her and digging at her open midsection with their bare hands.
Jenny was still alive.
She saw him standing in the hall and feebly reached a bloody hand towards him. Her lips opened to speak, but the blood that had been filling her mouth almost clogged her voice and Daryl was forced to lipread her plea for him to kill her.
"Jenny," he whispered. He was too shocked to move.
Jenny's face twisted even further and she finally managed to scream at him. "Just fuckin' kill me, Daryl!"
Daryl yelled and rushed forward faster than he'd ever run in his life. He buried the sharpening steel in her eye and he dry heaved when he felt the end of the steel spike rasp against the inside of her skull. Her screams stopped, but his didn't until he saw the best man staring at him hungrily. Daryl ran back to his truck, hopped in the cab, locked the doors, and tore off his bloodied shirt so frantically that the buttons flew against the windshield and scattered across the front seat.
He was crying by the time he started driving back to Montrose on automatic pilot.
Chapter 12: Take What Amusement You Can | Chapter 14: Off Kilter