"I wasn't even twelve yet," Daryl muttered, his voice directed at the walker clawing uselessly at the bars. "I spent nine days alone in the woods and ate whatever berries I could find. I drank from streams that probably had cow shit in 'em."
He let out a bitter sound that might've been a laugh.
"I wiped my ass with poison oak."
The walker snarled as its fingers scraped against the metal. It didn't care about his story. It didn't care about anything except the meat it could smell but couldn't reach.
"Lemme guess, you survived? That the point of this sob story? You want a fuckin' medal?"
Daryl's jaw clenched. "I walked out on my own and made it all the way back home, and nobody even knew I was gone. Then I went straight to the kitchen and made myself a sandwich. I wasn't hurt at all. Except my ass itched like hell for a week."
"That's my brother. Too stupid to know when he should've died."
Daryl ignored him. He was done listening to that voice, whether it was real or just his own head eating itself alive.
His hands gripped the cage bars. The broken leg was screaming at him. Blood from the wound on his thigh had soaked through his jeans completely, leaving a dark stain that kept spreading.
He was running out of time. If he stayed in this cage much longer, he wouldn't need the walkers to finish him. His own body would do the job.
"These assholes think I'm gonna break. They think if they throw me in here with the dead, I'll just curl up and wait to get torn apart."
His eyes lifted.
"They got it backwards."
He pushed himself up straighter, ignoring the way his broken leg screamed in protest. The bone ends grinding together sent fresh waves of nausea through him, but he gritted his teeth and kept moving.
"I ain't the prey," he said quietly. "Never was. I'm the hunter."
From somewhere deeper inside the factory, he had been hearing noises. At first they had been faint, almost easy to ignore. Now they were louder.
Something was happening out there. Something bad enough that the guards had stopped checking on him.
He decided to test that theory.
He grabbed the bars of the cage and shook them. The metal clanged and rattled, loud enough to wake the dead.
Which, in a way, it did.
The walkers outside the cage immediately went wild. They pressed harder against the bars. Still, no guard came running.
That meant opportunity.
His eyes moved through the room, studying everything visible in the soft light that filtered through a high window.
There were no weapons.
The Shepherd's people had taken his crossbow, knife, and even the hunting blade hidden in his boot. They had stripped him down and tossed him in here.
But they had missed something.
They had underestimated him.
He slowly turned his head and looked at the wall behind him.
An old clock still hung there. It was probably left over from when this place had been a working factory.
A plan began to form.
He grabbed the hem of his shirt and tore it into strips. He shoved one strip between his teeth and bit down.
Then he looked down at the wound in his thigh.
This was going to suck.
He took a steady breath and drove his fingers into the wound.
Agony shot up his spine and burst behind his eyes. He bit down hard on the cloth to muffle the scream.
He forced his fingers deeper, tearing the wound open and making it bleed again. His vision darkened at the edges, and for a moment he thought he might lose consciousness.
But he didn't.
When his hand came away, it was covered in blood.
He reached through the bars and grabbed the severed arm he had broken off one of the walkers earlier. It belonged to some poor bastard who had probably died screaming in the same cage. The flesh was cold and already beginning to rot, but it would serve its purpose.
He smeared his fresh blood over the dead arm, covering it thoroughly. He wrapped his thigh with the torn fabric as quickly as he could. The bandage was sloppy, but it slowed the bleeding.
Then he waved the blood-soaked arm at the walkers, getting their attention.
"Yeah, that's right," he muttered. "Come and get it."
With the last of his strength, he hurled the severed arm through the gap above the cage. It flew across the room and landed in the far corner.
The walkers immediately surged away from the cage. They scrambled over each other, clawing and biting as they fought to reach the bait.
Daryl didn't waste the opening.
He pressed his back against the bars, planted his good leg firmly on the ground, and pushed. The cage wasn't bolted down. The Shepherd had probably never imagined anyone would be desperate enough to try moving it with a broken leg and a room full of walkers.
The cage scraped across the concrete floor.
Pain burned through his leg. Every shove sent a fresh wave of agony through the broken bone, but he forced himself to keep going. He pushed, paused to breathe, and pushed again. Sweat poured down his face. His breathing became rough.
Finally, the cage slammed into the wall.
The impact shook the old clock loose. It fell from the wall, struck the top of the cage, and clattered to the floor near his feet.
He grabbed it and turned it over in his hands. The glass face had already cracked from the fall. He smashed it with his fist, ignoring the new cuts that opened across his knuckles, and tore out the metal hands.
Two thin pieces of metal remained in his palm. They were different lengths, but both ended in sharp points.
It wasn't much. But it was better than nothing.
The walkers were finishing with the arm now, tearing apart what little flesh was left. In seconds, they'd remember he was still here.
Daryl gripped the longer piece and pressed his bleeding palm against the bars.
"Come on, you dead sons of bitches."
The creature slammed into the cage, forcing its head and arms through the gaps between the bars. Its jaws snapped only inches from Daryl's face.
Daryl waited until it pushed forward as far as it could. Then he drove the metal spike straight through its eye.
The resistance was lighter than he expected. The spike slid through the socket and pierced the brain behind it.
The walker went limp at once.
He pulled the spike free and shoved the body aside. Another walker was already approaching, drawn by the noise and the smell of blood.
He killed that one the same way. Then another. And another.
By the time the final walker collapsed, Daryl was shaking. His hands were slick with blood. The pain in his leg had faded into a dull, distant throb.
He crawled toward the cage door, dragging himself forward with his arms. The padlock was cheap. It was strong enough to keep the door shut, but not designed to resist serious force.
He took the shorter, thicker clock hand and forced it into the keyhole. Using it as a lever, he put every ounce of strength into one violent downward wrench.
Metal shrieked, and something inside the lock snapped.
The shackle sprang open.
He shoved the cage door wide and pulled himself out. His leg could no longer support his weight, forcing him to drag himself across the floor.
He needed somewhere to rest. If he could find supplies, he might even be able to make a splint.
Then something moved at the edge of his vision.
His head snapped toward it.
Something small crawled out from beneath the pile of walker corpses. At first, Daryl thought it was a rat or some other scavenger.
Then he saw the pale skin and the lifeless, milky eyes.
Small hands reached toward him. It was a child. Or what used to be one.
It must have been trapped beneath the larger walkers, unable to reach the bars. In the darkness, he had never noticed it.
He tried to scramble backward, but his broken leg betrayed him. His hand slipped in a pool of blood, and he fell. The impact against the concrete knocked the air from his lungs.
The child walker lunged.
He kicked with his good leg and struck the creature in the face. Its head snapped to the side, but it didn't stop. It grabbed his injured leg with both hands, and its weight pulled painfully at the broken bone. The walker climbed on top of him. Its mouth opened wide, revealing broken teeth that lunged toward his throat.
A spike suddenly drove through the back of its skull.
The walker went rigid. A moment later, it collapsed onto Daryl's chest.
Daryl shoved the body aside and looked up.
A figure dropped from the ventilation duct above. In the dim light, blond hair and blue eyes came into view. He straightened and pulled the spike free from the walker's skull. He wiped it clean on his jeans while keeping his gaze fixed on Daryl.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Daryl simply stared. Then the boy smiled.
"Found you."