Note: Hello readers!

Enter disclaimery stuff here, I don't own TWD and I don't own the characters yada yada

I'm writing this to experiment with Merle Dixon. He's a character that kind of confused me all this time. I've been writing Caryl for a while and the mushiness has been boring me a little so I won't be back to that for a while. Anyway, this is my first time writing an OC and I don't have anyone to read this through for me before I post, so be gentle. This is just a short snippet prologue, but more will follow soon!

Enjoy!

Prologue

'This is not a story with a happy ending. It is not intended to lull one to sleep at night. If you read this, be prepared, because the things we have done and the things we intend to do are evil. I never wanted to be a 'baddie' but there are no heroes in this world, only those with the power to survive and those who end up dead. I don't for one minute think that we will live for long, but I'm happy taking comfort in the little things for now. We're off to the nearest town, to arm ourselves. I only met him a few hours ago, already I've let my inhibitions go and I will follow him, he's safe to be around.
There are stories from the point of view of good guys- the ones who fight evil and keep their morale's even in the face of adversity but this is not one of them. This is the story of how we made the lives of a group of people who have done nothing wrong to me, a living hell.

The Diary of Sally Houton. Day One.'

The philosophy which Sally had stuck to since the troubles began, was that you could trust Walkers. They stumbled, ate, chased, growled and walked endlessly. That was about the extent of their abilities. But survivors were different. The living would cheat, steal, kill, lie, plot and scheme, and it was that which frightened her. The Walkers were nothing more than the physical manifestation of death, but humans were a whole lot worse.

The troubles had started for her like a flash of torchlight in the dark, it happened so fast. The entire prison had been isolated, they were neither exposed to the outside horrors nor were they given weapons or allowed to defend themselves, so when everything went to hell most were swept under, completely clueless. One guard had stumbled in late one afternoon and sunk his teeth into the face of another. With one chilling scream the shit had hit the fan. The doors were thrown open as guard and prisoner alike attempted to flood out into the streets and away from this fresh hell, but they merely stumbled from one hellish scene into the rest of the world which was hastily becoming the devil's playground.

A small band of prisoners had busted out of their locked cells and banded together with some remaining guards, putting the prison into lockdown. Each of them killed and looted their fair share of undead as they attempted to make the prison safe, many carrying nightsticks and pistols which quickly came in handy. It took a while for them to understand and put in place the 'blow to the head' rule as they watched their fellow survivors pulverize the bodies of the Walkers until their shattered corpses dragged themselves along the ground like some freakish moving carpet. The living would thump his boot into the arms, shoulders, legs but always the creatures kept coming, undeterred by shattered bones or bleeding stumps where limbs should be. Even in this state, often the creatures were able to sink their teeth into their assailant and they too would have to be 'put down'. It took a lot of bloodshed and loss of life to secure the prison, but in the end they were safe.

Sally had been visiting her boyfriend, trying to find a way to get the guards to let him evacuate with her. She was a short, petite girl who wore the look of oppression like a sash, with soft electric blue eyes and pouty red lips, real jailbait. Her body left a lot to be desired, she was almost inebriated with hardly a lump where her breasts and backside should be. However, she was not the dumb blonde jailbait she was stereotyped to be. She was permanently thinking, solving puzzles, watching with a keen, intelligent eye. She had watched in horror as one of the monsters threw her man to the ground and began to tear chunks of meat and bone out of his neck with its jagged teeth, slowly severing it. She heard him gurgle her name pleadingly through the blood spewing from his mouth as she was pulled away by a guard towards 'safety'. Now she was completely alone, the only woman remaining in a group of twenty or so men. It wasn't long before she started noticing them gazing at her, whispering to one another. Guard and prisoner alike became darker, it seemed only a matter of time before the hunger overcame one or more of them and they tried to take her.

When it did happen, she decided quickly that she could no longer remain in the group. The men had become violent, irritable and used her as they saw fit; the tension, stress and horror of their new world into which they were plunged so roughly into had turned them into rapists, murderers and thieves, even those who were decent men before. She left without a word to them, quietly slipping away and charging into the new world, ready to conquer whatever it threw at her.

She left expecting scenes of carnage around every corner and she was not disappointed. Everywhere, the violence and horror was astounding. Very few Walkers remained but the parking lot outside the was dotted with piles of bodies and rubble, and what was most astounding was that within the piles of the dead occasionally there was a movement, a creature trapped trying to free itself, or perhaps gnawing on another body. When she moved onto the main road it was empty of sound and movement, so she decided to follow it. She expected to stumble across a town soon and set herself up in a cozy little shop where she could blow her brains out quietly in comfort. She expected there might be a gun store or pharmacy where she could find something to end her existence quietly, she expected that her entire family would have succumbed to the blight and she expected that she was completely alone. Her boyfriend, definitely gone, mother, gone, father, gone, sister, gone, lover, gone... She expected she couldn't possibly handle the pressure.

What she could never have expected to come driving towards her through the slowly accumulating fog was another man equally as sociopathic as she. What she could never have expected was that when he stopped and opened the truck's door for her and their eyes met, his devilish blue orbs could have stripped her immediately of pride and lured her temptingly in. He wasn't a particularly handsome man but something in the rugged way he talked, laughed and joked was enticing. Perhaps she simply needed someone to depend on for a while, she thought as they flirted and chatted. She could never have expected they would be going at it like rabbits in the back of the truck shortly later, and she could never have expected what came next as she was brought into his world. They circled a small group of survivors who the tall, rough southerner had some vendetta against and she unwittingly found herself plunged into his mean way of thinking.

She never expected, in a million years, to run across someone like Merle Dixon.