She cries for the first twenty minutes after they pull away from the prison gates. He's not exactly sure what to do so he just lets her. She's not sobbing but he can still see the tears over her freckles, the way the tracks glisten on her cheeks as she stares, stony faced, out the window.

After a while, though, he can't take it anymore.

Merle pulls over on the side of the road and leaves the car in park. "You gonna keep on like this all day?"

"Just keep driving."

"If we was outside, you'd be drawin' biters, Mouse."

She wipes her face. "Don't call me that."

"Call you what, sweetheart?"

She scowls and turns away from him, her eyes creasing in the corner. Angry. But at least she's not crying anymore or huffing for breath.

It's the breathing that bothers him the most when women cry. It makes them sound like they're drowning and Merle's always had a thing about suffocation. Seemed the worst way to go. No help from above. Just sinking and that useless feeling like he got when he was a kid and his dad was wailing on his old lady.

Carol leans forward, fiddling with the top of the pack Officer Asshole gave to her. "You shouldn't have done what you did," she says. "I was going to handle it."

"Sure you was."

He glances in her direction. She's so painfully small. But there's a tension in her spine that wasn't there back in the quarry. She bristles now. He has no doubt that if threatened she would wait until his back was turned and stick the knife between his ribs.

That's why they're here, isn't it?

Her, at least.

Merle rubs his face.

He should've just left things well enough alone. Let that perv Jensen stalk her around some more. Let him do whatever it was that he was gonna do. Rape her or worse. Then he'd still be in the comfort of that iron wrought home, sucking on stale cigarettes, watching those sweet young hens hang laundry on a line instead of stuck here with a woman that doesn't want him and doesn't need him.

After two days of wandering, they find the chapel. It stands at the edge of a dirt road up near the border of Georgia and Tennessee. The walls draw high—windows stained in reds and purples. They're intact for the most part and wholly out of place in this area. Most of the other buildings they've seen have been rundown, rotting.

They're deep in the Appalachians now, with curved mountain peaks all around and trees that look blue from a distance. It's about midday and the sun's shining but the air has that mountain bite—crisp and smelling of pine.

"Looks like our lucks changed, Mouse."

Carol lingers a few paces behind. They've been walking the whole morning, having decided to ditch the car when the accessory belt broke and the sound of it hissing down the road started drawing in hordes of biters.

"And a mansion! Shit, of all things."

"Keep your voice down."

He slows, waiting for her to catch up. There's a soft scowl on her lips, this dullness that's seemed to plague her since they left. He offers her his water bottle. "You mad, Mouse?"

"I told you to stop calling me that." She takes the bottle from his hands. "And it's not a mansion, it's a chapel."

He knows it's a chapel but it's nice to see her mad. He prefers it to her being quiet. Her being sad. "How come it look like a mansion then?"

"It's just… big."

"Mansions are big."

"Merle, you can see the crosses on the spires."

He holds back a grin, watching as she brushes a piece of curling hair away from her forehead. She'd have nice hair if she'd let it grow out a little longer. It's never been something he thought on too much but now… he's started picturing what she'll look like in a couple years. Hair down around her shoulders and that pearly white skin all tan.

Merle shakes the thought away.

They might be stuck together now but she won't stay with him forever. No one does.

"What d'you think?"

She takes a sip, hands him back the bottle. "Might be hard to clear—big building like that."

They walk forward. Lately it's just been them and the sounds of the outside—the grass fluttering, the way the branches creak when they sway. The bugs up here are softer than down south. No more cicadas. Here it's just the crickets, the faint hiss of those monster june bugs.

The other day, he told her they could eat the insects if they wanted. The look of disgust on her face was enough to send him howling up the road.

"You're set on it?" she asks.

He looks up at the spires that rise into the sky, the curve of the mold around the door. It's a solid building, and mostly intact. Not the greatest location but it'll be safe and he won't have to worry about her here.

They clear two bodies from the chapel and Carol takes it upon herself to bury them. She finds a shovel in a storage shed out back and starts to dig, even though the night sky is already darkening to black.

Merle watches her work from the back door, a cigarette burning at the corner of his mouth. Being in the chapel's made him think about things. Stories he read back in the barracks when he was in the military. Bible verses.

"Hey, you ever hear that story about the lost son?"

She stops digging for a moment, looks up at him. In the waning light, her eyes crease to slits. He would like to lick the sweat off her chest. She's got a nice set of tits on her—small but insistent, the kind that can't be ignored. "What are you talking about, Merle?"

"The one where the son that takes all his father's money and gambles it away. Falls destitute and shit." He sucks in on the cigarette. "And then he comes whining back like a bitch asking for forgiveness. You know that one?"

Carol leans on the shovel. She's got a small smirk on her face. "You mean the parable of the prodigal son? Luke?"

"Whatever."

"I know it."

He kicks his toe into the earth, weeding out a dead dandelion near the edge of the door. "That story always pissed me the fuck off."

"Why's that?"

He grunts. "Stupid sonofabitch comes home while the other brother's been there the whole time working his ass off… gets welcomed back like he's some hero."

Carol puts down the shovel. She's got sweat and dirt caked onto her arms. They shine as she makes her way over to him, reaching out to where he holds the water bottle and removing it from his grasp. "It's supposed to be a story about forgiveness, Merle. Redemption."

"Fuck, he left. Why should he be forgiven?"

"I'm surprised you think like that."

"Why?"

She takes a swallow and wipes the sweat from her chest and his gaze lingering dangerously on the hollow between her breasts. "Because you left home and went back, didn't you?"

His gaze snaps up to her face. "Who told you that?"

Carol closes her mouth. She looks back at the yard and then down at her hands. He realizes she is looking for her weapon and has left it back at the grave sites. "Daryl did," she says softly.

His cheeks heat. Of course Daryl opened his big mouth. Saying things how they weren't. Saying things the way he wants to see them. "Let's get this straight, Mouse, I weren't the favorite son in our house." He puts the cigarette out between his index finger and thumb. "Everything Daryl got, I got ten times worse. He wasn't my kid. Wasn't my responsibility."

Her eyes flicker. It's irritating how beautiful she is. "I wasn't judging."

"Sure, you wasn't."

"I know it was hard on both of you."

The wind blows a lock of her hair across her forehead. It smells like dirt and wet air and woman. Merle straightens, moves away from his position at the door. "He'll come lookin'. Don't worry. You ain't gonna be stuck here alone with me forever."

But Daryl doesn't come looking. Merle's not sure why. He left a clean trail. Even a dumbass like his brother could've followed it. So why hasn't he?

Carol sleeps very little the first few nights. They take up in a room near the back of the chapel, a large study on the second floor with clear windows, views stretching into the mountains, good for seeing intruders, and a high ceiling. They push the desk in front of the door at night and sleep on a collection of pew cushions near the back wall.

He thought she would want to lie as far away from him as possible but she insists on sleeping right up on top of him. Sometimes he'll wake up to her pressed up against his back, eyes clenched shut.

It's not until later that he realizes she's fighting dreams.

"You talk in your sleep," he says one morning when they're out by the river in the back, washing up. Her back is to him. The water runs around her shoulders, hiding most of her. She's not shy about it, didn't ask him to turn around when she waded in but managed to slip in before he caught a glimpse.

Carol cranes her neck to look at him. "I do not."

"Hate to break it to you, sister, but you're a mess when the lights go off."

She makes a tisking noise with her teeth and turns away from him again, sinking down a few inches so the water is almost at her chin. It makes him uncomfortable how easy she is in the water. One slip and she could go under. "What did I say, then?"

"Nothin' too clear," he lies. She said her girl's name once. Then a chorus of Ed don'ts before he jostled her shoulder to wake her. He feels like a dickhead for bringing it up now. "'Cept for how much you wanted me."

The water churns. She draws up out of the water, breasts bared and everything. The smirk drops from his face. Her tits are small but full and softly rounded. Her nipples are darker than he imagined. She takes the bar of soap from his hand and sinks back down in the water. "I doubt that," she replies.

"Well…" he says, and wets his lips. "Shit. What was we talkin' about?"

She lathers the soap around her neck and arms, then lower, beneath the curtain of the water. She's staring out at the shore where smoothed rocks line the sand, an errant cattail, short and squat. "You were going to tell me what I said in my sleep last night."

Carol looks up at him. Her eyes are so soft it makes him mad. She's got no business going around like that, not after everything that's happened. She should be more like him. She could be, she just doesn't want to yet.

"Merle."

Water eddies at her chest. Merle reaches out and flecks a strand of wet hair out of her face. "Look, darlin', I sure as hell aint my brother. You keep parading around like that and I'm gonna have to do something about it."

The words ring false from the moment they leave his lips.

It's clear from the smirk on her face that she doesn't believe them, either.

A week passes.

No Daryl.

They spend a day in the woods, foraging, trying to stock up for winter. He finds an old hunting cabin near the outskirts of Dahlonega and Carol decides they will stay there for the night instead of heading back in the dark.

This is the land of Chattahoochee National Forest, where state parks are numerous and the land curves with the rising mountains. Towns are small and spread apart. It's colder here than it was at the chapel, being higher in elevation, but there's also fewer walkers.

Merle thinks they won't see another person for days, but just like everything else in his life, he's wrong as shit.

He finds foot tracks on his way back from a short hunt, a rabbit slung over his shoulder and a cold sweat drying on his skin. The tracks are smaller than his own, but there are two distinct patterns. Not small enough to be women, and his gut drops.

He closes the distance between the woods and the cabin at a run.

The rabbit gets dropped into the dust a few meters from the shelter.

When he gets inside, one of the men is crouched in the corner already bleeding out. His hands are covered in red from a wound at the side, and the other man is on top of Carol, squeezing her neck as she claws at his face. Her knife's on the floor a foot away, stained crimson. Some of the supplies he gathered earlier spill from a backpack that isn't theirs.

Merle says her name. Maybe a curse. Then he just… loses it.

He shudders forward and starts stabbing. Over and over and over until the guy lets go of Carol's neck and goes limp. Warmth floods his stump. That smell of close death. Then he hears Carol trying to catch her breath again. It's a wheezing sound, the same she made when she was crying that first day but this is worse.

He never should've fucking left her. This isn't some stupid bible story. No happy ending.

Merle starts stabbing the guy again. It's more difficult now that the original stroke of adrenaline has worn off. He feels more strongly the resistance of the man's body, the way his muscles grow lack and counter. He gets a good stab in the eye. A sucking sound.

"Merle," Carol pleads. "Stop."

But he can't stop. This is all he's good for.

The whole world's pretty shitty but there are some things he can change and he's doing people a favor by taking these guys out. He did the world a favor by slitting Jensen's throat. Carol couldn't see it before but maybe now she will.

They stay in the hunting cabin because they've got no choice. It's night by now and too dangerous to make the trip back to the chapel in the darkness, just the two of them, Carol injured and shaken up like she is.

He buries the bodies in the thicket of elms behind the shack. To his surprise, Carol helps him.

"I just did this," she says softly. Bruises from that man's fingers are starting to pop up around her neckline. "It's all we ever do anymore."

Merle pauses his work, looks at her. She looks out of place and for the first time he thinks about what Carol was like before the world went to shit. Maybe she lived in a nice house. Had some fancy china. She was better off financially than him—that he knows. She still has the softness of a middle class broad.

Maybe if they met before, she'd think she was better than him. Maybe she thinks so now.

"Why you still with me?" he asks. "You coulda gone off on your own."

She smoothes down the soil over the first shallow grave, her fingers fumbling in the rocky terrain. The smell of the earth wafts out, the smell of the trees, heavy pine. "We stand a better chance together."

"Maybe. But it ain't why you stayed."

He finishes with the second grave, waiting for her to speak. The wind pushes in around them.

But Carol never answers.

They tidy up and then he follows her inside where she proceeds to wash her hands and neck clean with water from a small basin. She takes off her blouse, flecked with blood stains, and sits on a cot in the corner of the room in just her tank top. He washes up, too, keeping her in his periphery.

"I did what needed to be done," she says. But still her voice is heavy, drawn tight and dark.

Merle scrubs the filth off his stump.

He should've figured.

What she means is, I stayed because I'm not sure I'm worthy of the others. I stayed because, deep down, I think I deserve to suffer.

"You sound sorry," he says finally. "Don't be. This ain't the world for that, honey."

That night, they sleep together on the cot. Carol surprises him by spooning up against him, her pear shaped little ass to his dick, and he gets hard for a second before he realizes she's fast asleep. She's not trying anything. It's not like she was with his brother, all flirting and smiling.

Carol doesn't think of him like that.

(But he can show her good. Can't he?)

Merle drapes his arm over her waist, letting his thumb brush the soft expanse of her stomach before coming to rest against the mattress. He holds tight. Tells himself he won't let anything else happen. Not ever again.

Outside, the june bugs hiss. The branches sway.

Merle closes his eyes and starts to think about the story of the two sons. It was something he read over and over while in the army. Sat and fingered through the pages until his thumbprints left marks. Decided that the whole story basically came down to the favorite son and the other and what you have to do to win favor.

He thought for a long time, there was something he could do. Something he could say or make happen.

But there isn't.

He killed that pervert back at the prison, and Rick and everybody else still looked at him like he was a piece of shit stuck on their shoes.

They get back to the chapel early the following morning. It's still all around them, the world sleepy on the edge of daybreak. Silent. He never thought it would bother him but it does. The trees are silent, the bugs. Carol herself seems like prey on its last legs, stretching out the inevitable.

When they're done stashing the supplies from their run, she corners him in the study and puts her hand on his arm. The bruises on her neck are furious—scarlet and purple and alive. He'd like to smooth them down with his tongue, drip ice water down her flesh and watch her skin pebble beneath it.

"We have to go back to the prison," she says. "Something must've happened."

Her hand feels heavy on his arm. "You think, huh?"

"Daryl should've come by now."

Merle stiffens. He doesn't want to think about this. Not now. He's tired of talking about Daryl. Daryl's not out here, it's just them. Why can't she see that? "Maybe he didn't feel like lookin'."

"Merle… it's you and me. He'd look."

"You know, sugar," Merle shifts, "maybe you ain't as important to him as you thought. Maybe you ain't important to anybody back there, and that's why you're still out here."

Her eyes flash. There's a moment where he thinks she might start crying but she holds it together. She's gotten good at that. Her mouth straightens out and she looks him right in the eye.

She's grown so beautiful to him in the past few days that he can barely stand it.

"Well, they're important to me," she says finally. "And I think they're important to you, too."

They agree to leave for the prison tomorrow morning.

Damn small women. He's always had a thing for them. When he and Daryl were kids, he always went for the tall chicks, just so he never ran the risk of falling for them. He was too deep in other things to have time for a woman. Life then was almost exactly how it is now. Wading through a pile of shit just to be lucky enough to wake up the next morning for more.

"You're worried about him," Carol states.

They're up in the second floor of the chapel, in the study, and he's seated against the wall looking out the window at the row of elms. They flex in the wind, bright green. Buds soon to grow. "Would you get some sleep already? Shit."

"I'm sure he's okay. He's strong, you know. He—"

"Don't tell me about my brother, sweetheart. I know him better than anybody."

Carol shifts on the pew cushions. She's wearing a low cut tank top with no bra and her peaked nipples are clear through the soft fabric. She stands and walks over, sits down in front of him with a sigh. With one finger, she examines a healing wound on the edge of his stump where the cuff wore away at the skin. "My mother told me once I'd be lucky not to have sons," she says. "Brothers are too competitive."

"Mother was a stupid woman, then."

She stops. Looks up at him. "Why do you do that?"

"What?"

"Shoot me down when I'm just trying to talk to you."

Her gaze is unwavering. Merle looks out into the trees, swallowing. "Ain't a competition. My baby brother… he's always been the good one."

"You're good, too," Carol says, and reaches out to touch his chest. "When you want to be."

Merle pulls away.

He's lots of things, but good is not one of them. The people back at the prison understood that. One of the old hens from Woodbury even told him she thought the undead were souls of the living, trapped in the devil's bodies. Atoning for their sins. It really stuck with him, the picture of all the sinners forced inside those fucked up bodies, barely able to move. Suffocating from within.

"Are you going to sleep?" she asks.

Merle rubs his eyes. "Nah."

"I'll stay with you," Carol says, and stretches out next to him on the floor on her side. She curls one of her jackets underneath her head and looks up at him, waiting. "You can lie down, Merle. I won't think less of you. Promise."

He grunts but doesn't move. Looks back out into the greenery.

He doesn't want to go back to the prison. Doesn't want this bad feeling in his gut to take shape. He couldn't stand to watch his brother turn or see any of those dumb kids all torn up.

Merle leans forward, rests his arms on his knees. "Wanna hear the stupid shit Daryl told me before he left on that run?"

Carol perks. She tilts her head back so she's looking at him. Her eyes are hard blue, like the salt crystals they put on the sidewalk after a snow.

"Told me to watch you. Keep you safe if anything went down."

He plays with a rip on his pants. The room smells like chalk and the dust that collects on old books. It reminds him of the barracks. Makes him feel like he's home for a moment.

When he looks back, Carol's face has gone soft. Her eyes.

"Shit," he says. His stomach twists and immediately he feels like a huge fucking asshole. He scoots down so he's lying on his side next to her, face to face, and drapes his arm over her waist. "Aw, come on, Mouse… the fuck you crying over?"

She swallows a few times, blinking back the tears until she regains control. "Shut up, Merle."

He rumbles a laugh. It smells like salt, like faint lavender from the soap she used to clean with earlier and, instinctively, he pulls her closer. The coolness of her skin is a balm against his. As she drifts into sleep, the wrinkles near her eyes even out. She looks like an angel lying there, just within his grasp.

Merle runs his hand across her back, feeling her ribs, her spine.

Good people don't get by in this world, but truth is, if there was something he could do to cast out his demons, he would. Give it up to God or some shit, bathe in a rain of holy water. He'd do anything not to carry the weight of who he is and all that he's done.