"Oh Lord, oh God he will rot in hell that nigger. Those damn blacks. They ain't never gave a shit about nobody but themselves. Oh Lord I can't die here like this." Merle Dixon let out a cry of anger and frustration so loud it echoed off the office building a block away. At least the echoes would keep the walkers from knowing which direction the cry came from. But that didn't matter now. Merle was practically a dead man sitting handcuffed to a steel pipe on top of a four-story building. He knew the chain holding the door closed, the only thing between him and the walkers, wouldn't hold up more than five minutes.

He glanced over to the door only to confirm what he already knew; he was a dead man. The bloodied, bony arms of what appeared to be at least ten walkers reached out of the door and pulled on the chain. He knew they were there before he saw them because he could hear their grunts and groans. Worst of all, he could smell them, a stench that would have made him vomit just a couple weeks ago.

The stream of events that had occurred just minutes before he had been left to die happened so quick Merle's simple, drugged-up brain hardly knew what to make of it. He knew it was the drugs; it had to be the drugs. In the old world Merle had definitely done his fair share of drugs, but when this disease came there was hardly a second when he wasn't high. "I'll kill you myself nigger if I ever get my hands on you, you son-of-a-bitch, good-for-nothing piece of-" The hit of coke he had taken before this all happened took effect and Merle fell into a cocaine daze, rocking back and forth, more or less unconscious.

He had been handcuffed to the pipe by Rick Grimes, a sheriff in the old world, who had ventured into Atlanta looking for a safe haven, hoping his family might be there. Instead of finding a safe haven, he walked right into the death trap Atlanta had become in the past couple weeks and found himself surrounded by thousands of walkers. Merle's group watched him as he scrambled around looking for somewhere to hide. Luckily the walkers were preoccupied with Rick's horse and he managed to climb inside an overrun military tank. But the walkers were relentless. They would wait days for him to come out.

Merle didn't want to save him but the others in his group were more humane, especially Glenn. Anyways, they managed to save Rick and bring him back to their hideout, a deserted department store building. When they saved Rick, the walkers followed them to the building. Merle was furious. He took his shotgun on the roof and unloaded a round on the walkers down below. T-Dog, a friendly black man, stepped in to tell Merle to stop. But no one tells Merle what to do. Next thing T-Dog knew, he was staring into the barrel of Merle's shotgun. That's when Rick stepped in.

After Merle had been taken care of, Rick devised an escape plan where he and Glenn would get to the nearest truck while the group waited. Then they would drive back around to pick the rest of the group up. Before he left, Rick gave T-Dog the key to Merle's handcuffs. T-Dog was supposed to unlock Merle when Rick and Glenn were on their way back so they all could get in the truck and speed away, but in a panic, T-Dog dropped the handcuff key down the drain. He had no other option but to leave Merle behind. And so he hurried away clumsily, tripping over a box of tools, leaving Merle to die.

Merle snapped out of the daze and reality hit. He was suddenly more coherent than he normally was sober. He looked around. He could slide himself down the pipe about four feet, which was still a good reach away from the toolbox T-Dog knocked over. Merle ripped off his belt with his free hand and casted the buckle side over to a rusted saw. He hit it on the first try and slowly pulled the saw closer and closer to him. When the saw was in reach, he picked it up and examined it. It definitely would be useless on the metal handcuffs. He had two options: saw off his own hand or die, and he sure as hell wasn't ready to die.