Chapter One
Dark, dark clouds and orange flames, crackling up into the attack. He couldn't see, he couldn't breathe, and his coughing fits were enough to make him puke as he screamed for his mother, for his father, for his brother, for anyone to help him. No one was there.
SLAM! CRACK! CRACK! SLAM! The door to the attic bedroom flung open and a man in a faded yellow jacket and pants burst through the door.
"Are you alright, son?" The firefighter asked, his voice muffled by the mask that covered his face. The boy, who was merely eight, stayed motionless and said nothing. The strange man didn't bother to ask any more questions, and grabbed up the child, running him through the house and out the door.
When they were outside, not one person the boy recognized was in sight. Not even his mother, who was almost always home. He searched the familiar territory. He looked up and down the road, at the forests next to his house, towards the space where his father parked their old pickup.
"Mama?!" The boy cried as he was set down on the back of a huge red vehicle that's lights flickered white and red. "Mama!?" He screamed, tears welling up in his burning eyes. He hunted for her, looking all around, but finding nothing. The same firefighter that had saved him knelt in front of him, sighing and looking mournful.
"Your mama's dead, son." He muttered, shaking his head.
"MAMA!"
"Daryl. Daryl, wake up!" A sharp, heavily accented voice urged while pushing the sleeping male's shoulders. Daryl Dixon opened his deep green eyes, dazed and confused.
"Merle? That you?" He asked, rubbing away the tears caused by his nightmares.
"Well, who else would it be?" Merle replied sarcastically, standing up from Daryl's bed and walking away. Daryl looked at the clock beside him; It was five in the morning. It was still dark other than for the dim light that was turned on above him.
"The hell are you waking me up for so early?" He asked, frustrated. "You must be damn near crazy if you think I'm going to be up this early in the morning."
"You sure as shit are up right now," Merle teased, chuckling.
"Very funny," Daryl replied, rolling his eyes.
"You know I am, brother!" His older sibling joked, slapping his knee. Daryl rolled his eyes again.
He sure thinks he is one funny son of a gun. Daryl thought to himself as he slipped out of his rickety old bed in nothing but his boxers. The slender twenty seven-year-old pushed past his older brother and into the only bathroom there was in the entire shack they called a house. There was no door for privacy, so he stripped nude and turned on the water in the shower, which was lukewarm, as per usual.
"Do ya always got to take showers?!" Daryl heard Merle shout from the bedroom. "We're only goin' hunting!"
"Well, someone has got to smell decent in this house!" He shouted over the shower, only half-joking.
The shower was quick, one that only required cleaning his grimy body and shampooing his sweaty head. When he felt clean, Daryl hopped out and wrapped a towel around his waist, covering his private parts. He walked out of the bathroom to see Merle laying on the hardwood floor, to his dismay, reading.
"Woah, bub, what's the occasion?" Daryl laughed.
Merle looked up from what he was reading and flipped him off. "I could pound you, you know."
"If 'pounding' means sitting on me, than I guess you're right." Daryl mocked his chubby older brother as he went to their shared closet and grabbed a cut-off jean shirt and a pair of camouflage pants. He walked back to the bathroom and changed quickly, knowing that soon his brother would be hounding him to hurry up.
As suspected, just as Daryl finished combing his semi-long brown hair, Merle was right by his side. "You ready yet?"
"Yes, I am." He said, giving Merle a "god-damn-you-stop-bothering-me" look. Merle nodded and started towards the door.
With that, the two brothers headed out the door, Merle holding his shiny new shotgun and Daryl with his favorite crossbow.