Hey ya'll! Here's another story from yours truly, but this one is completely AU, with a zombie apocalypse. The characters are all the same ages that they were on the show, but I've put a twist on it, you'll see why. This will be a stand-alone for now, but more may or may not follow.

I do not own one iota of The Walking Dead.

Survival of the Dixons

Sixteen-year-old Alyiah Dixon was every bit of her mother. She was independent, confident and even a little mysterious from time to time. However, she was also every bit of her father, in the same respect. Where she was confident, sometimes her confidence left her cocky. She was also very active and outgoing. The teenager very rarely wore a frown on her face, unless, also like her father, her volatile temper got the better of her.

Everyone often wondered how her parents had gotten together in the first place. Merle was a dishonorably discharged, mean ol' redneck and Michonne was a well-educated lawyer. Of course, Alyiah knew that her parents had met after her papa had gotten out of jail for punching one of the sergeants that had gotten in his face one too many times. He tried to impress her mama, but it didn't work right away. In fact, it didn't work out until Merle made that first contact. The teenager knew that she was conceived out of wedlock, which to this day still grossed her out. Almost seventeen years later, there wasn't a doubt in their minds that they loved each other. Alyiah was the only child that they ever had, but that was all that they needed.

When the world ended, the teenager had gone to the mall to get her nose pierced, and she had a few of her friends along for support. She had her mother's consent, but Michonne kept her husband out of it. She knew exactly what he would say about it, and it wouldn't be the answer their sixteen-year-old was looking for. The lawyer trusted her teenager's judgment and responsibility well enough; she just really wasn't looking forward to hearing Merle gripe about it for the next sixteen years. (Alyiah had her ears pierced when she was a baby, but none to her father's approval. To this day, he still complained that she was still too young to be gettin' all dolled up with pretty jewelry.)

On their way back from this endeavor, however, the teenagers noticed that everyone was all heading in one direction, and that seemed to be out of Fontana. Alyiah called her mother, who had already been watching the news at the time.

"Alyiah, where are you?" Michonne answered the phone, her voice cautious as ever. "Do we need to come get you?"

"Come get her ass? She shoulda been home by now!" Alyiah heard her father in the background. The sixteen-year-old resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Yep, that was papa alright.

"Mama, I'm fine," the girl assured her mother. She ran a hand through her thick light brown hair and glanced around the empty road ahead of her and her friends. "We're on our way back home."

"Well, when you get home, you need to start packing a bag and fast," Michonne explained, "how are the roads looking out there?"

"Not very crowded coming towards the city. But it's a freakin' disaster if you're trying to get out," the teenager propped her cell phone between her chin and shoulder, adding, "Mom, what's going on?"

"Something is coming our way. A virus of some sort. It's wiping citizens out and reanimating them to feed on the living," her mother explained, her eyes glued to the television set.

Alyiah paused for a minute. Didn't that sound familiar? "Wait a minute… are you trying to say that we're being attacked by zombies?" She heard silence for a moment, but then her father piped up in the background.

"I got the truck ready. Tell that kid o' ours to get her ass home, and now!"

"I'm about five minutes from the house, mom, I'll see you then," the teenager replied, just before hanging up with her mother.

Whatever was going on was really starting to freak me out, Alyiah thought to herself. As she finally pulled into her driveway, she felt a feeling of dread settle in the pit of her stomach.

o—o—o

Merle was hooking up the trailer to the back of his pickup truck, which had his motorcycle safely strapped down to. He heard someone pull into the driveway, which he figured that it was his youngen finally coming home. The redneck turned around to see Alyiah pulling in with her blue Volkswagen beetle. 'Bout time she got her ass home, he thought to himself.

The teenager got out of her car, toting a few shopping bags. She went over to her papa, forgetting all about the fact that she had gotten her nose pierced.

"Girl, ya better git in that house and go see yer mama," Merle told his daughter, just before getting a glimpse of her purple nose ring. Alyiah's skin tone was the color of a perfectly creamed coffee—not too light, but not too dark, either. She had her father's strikingly blue eyes, and her hair, although it was textured just like her mother's, the curls were all how Merle's had been. "…What the fuck is in yer nose?"

"A ring, papa," the teenager shrugged, "mama said that I could."

"Oh, she did, did she?" Merle chuckled, shaking his head. "Well, let's go talk to your mama about this, huh?"

Alyiah sighed, but went along with her father anyhow. She knew that this wasn't gonna end well. When her parents got into an argument, they tended to get really loud. Her dad tried to get his point across, but her mom had him whipped, so to speak. He got his two cents out, but if she told him to shut up, he did just that.

"Michonne!" Merle called to his wife, "babe, where are ya?"

"In here," she announced, her voice carrying from what sounded like the kitchen. The redneck and his daughter carried on into the kitchen and dining room area, where Michonne was busily packing food and drinks for at least three days.

"Woman, what in the hell were you thinkin', lettin' that girl o' ours gettin' her God damn nose pierced?"

Michonne sighed and zipped up the bag he was stocking with food. "Merle, do we really have to talk about this now of all times? We should be getting the hell out of here while we still can."

"Yer damn fuckin' right we gotta talk about this right now," Merle grumbled, taking the bag from his wife. "No daughter o' mine needs to have some shit sticking outta her nose. It just ain't right. Before ya know it, all o' the boys will be chasin' after her!" In the redneck's opinion, no one was good enough for his baby girl. He didn't like her wearing makeup or cute clothes, hell, he even got freaked out when she wore pretty jewelry. Merle wanted his kid to stay just that, his. He missed the good ol' days when she'd ride all over town with him and Michonne, not a care in the world. Her nickname for some time had been "Alley Cat" for years now, which had been given to her by her father.

"Merle, we need to go—"

The redneck turned to his daughter, "that shit needs to come out of your nose before we leave this house." Merle Dixon was raised on tough love and, while the key term tough was far more accurate than love ever was, he still wanted that for his daughter. He raised Daryl that way. Other than the occasional smack on the hand or the butt for when she misbehaved as a young kid, Merle never raised a hand to Alyiah. And he wasn't about to start now. He loved his daughter, and only wanted to protect her.

"Merle Dixon, if you don't shut up, I will leave your ass here and you won't have to look at your daughter's nose ring," Michonne threatened her husband, sending him that glare of hers that had him whipped in the first place.

"Fine, woman," the redneck acquiesced, a heavy frown playing at his lips.

The lawyer cupped Merle's face in her hands, pulling him down for a quick few kisses before pushing him away. He couldn't fight her forever, and he knew it. This was his wife and, whether he wanted to admit it or not, what she said went.

Merle continued to grumble under his breath as he started to carry stuff out to the truck. Alyiah let out a breath of relief, sparing her mama a little smile. Michonne just wrapped an arm around her and kissed her forehead before sending her to pack herself. The mother was afraid that, if they didn't leave soon, they never would.

o—o—o

Alyiah shut the door to her beetle, and glanced up at her father, who just leaned into the window. They were about to leave for Atlanta, to meet up with her uncle Daryl and his wife Carol.

"You jus' follow my lead, li'l Alley Cat," Merle told his daughter, patting the car door a few times. "We're gonna stop come nightfall an' pick back up in the mornin'. By that time, we should be pretty damn close to yer Uncle Darylina."

The sixteen-year-old giggled at her uncle's nickname. Daryl didn't find it funny by any means, but Alyiah got a good chuckle out of it. "Okay, dad, I gotcha."

For the next few hours, the Dixons were on the road. Merle drove at a constant speed ahead of his daughter, whilst his wife fiddled with the truck radio, trying to listen for any more State of Emergency announcements. The eeriest part about it was the fact that there was almost no one on the road. The city of Fontana was a ghost town, and it looked like their road to Atlanta wasn't much better.

Michonne sat back in her seat, a heavy sigh escaping her parted lips. Her husband glanced over at her, reaching out to take her hand in his own. The lawyer let a worn smile grace her features as their fingers laced together.

"You a'right baby doll?" Merle asked his wife, making her nod in return. "Only a li'l while longer an' we can take a break, I promise."

The mother brought her husband's hand up to her lips, kissing each knuckle tenderly. "And then what?" She sighed again, keeping Merle's hand pressed up against her face. "We find your brother and hide out until we're told that it's safe to come out again?"

"What more can we do, babe?" the redneck rasped, darting his eyes between the road and his wife. "Ya know that I ain't gonna let nothin' bad happen to ya, or the kid. Daryl an' me survived for God knew how fuckin' long, just the two o' us. Ain't nothin' gonna get ya."

Merle and Michonne shared an affectionate, albeit short-lived, smile before the former had to slam on the truck breaks. Who in the fuck was standing in the road like that?

"Get out of the fuckin' road, asshole!" Merle hollered out of the window. When the pedestrian, a stereotypical middle-aged man with a receding hairline, didn't pay him any mind, the redneck grew irritated and got out of his truck. He made note of the knife in his back jeans' pocket as he carried on to the man that wouldn't get the hell out of his way.

When Merle got closer to the man, he was visibly taken aback. His tattered t-shirt was soiled in dirt, blood, and sweat, and his khaki pants didn't look much better. The man wasn't paying attention to much of anything: he kept his back towards the hunter, but it was easily seen that he had seen better days.

Alyiah watched her father from her car, practically sitting on the edge of her seat. This was not looking well for anyone. It felt like she was watching a horror movie, only the fact of the matter was that it wasn't a movie. It was fucking real.

"The hell's yer problem, man? Ya want someone to run yer ass over?" Merle asked, not polite in the slightest. Of course, considering the source, no one would expect any different.

When the man went to turn around however, the redneck soon found out that he was biting off more than he could chew. The man's face had rotted completely on one side, including an eyeball dangling from its socket. Inside the empty, black socket was a nest full of maggots. He started lurching towards Merle, growling his entire way.

"What the-" Merle grabbed the walker before he could take a bite out of him and shoved him to the side. The redneck dug in his pocket for his knife, just in time for his attacker to come back in his face. Merle jabbed him in the stomach, which didn't even slow down the walking corpse. Next, he tried the heart. He stabbed the walker three times in the heart, completely flabbergasted at this allegedly indestructible creature. That final time, though, he stabbed it right through the eye, leaving himself with more questions than answers.

o—o—o

When the three of them finally found a secure place to spend the night in, Alyiah did something that she hadn't done since she was about eleven years old. She curled up in between her parents and refused to move for either of them.

"What were those things?" Michonne wondered aloud. She stroked her daughter's light brown hair, but her eyes fell directly on her husband's. On the way to Atlanta, they had seen God knew how many walkers.

Merle shook his head, glancing up at the clock in their hotel room. It was getting late; if they wanted to be packed and ready to go first thing in the morning, then the last thing they needed to do was stay up half the night. They would get up the next morning and raid the empty hotel for the supplies that they would need, and off they would go to meet with Daryl and his family unit. Where would they go from there? Well, that would really all depend on how well the Refugee Center looked. If it was slam packed with people, the elder Dixon brother would prefer taking his chances out on the road.

"Ain't no sense in thinkin' 'bout it now," he added, glancing between his wife and their daughter. "Might as well just go on to bed."

"We're safe, right papa?" Alyiah asked her father. The redneck took note of the boarded windows, and the dresser barricading the door, as if asking himself the same thing.

"I guess so, li'l Alley Cat. We're as safe as we're gonna git," Merle leaned over to kiss the back of his daughter's head. Alyiah had her face pressed up against her mother's shoulder, with her back facing her father. He ran a hand across the sixteen-year-old's back for a sense of comfort, which helped to some degree.

Their daughter sighed and headed for one of the single beds. Michonne looked over at her husband and held her hand out for him. Guess it was time for all of them to turn in. Merle took his arm around his wife and gave her a quick kiss before leading her to the other single bed. He would gladly take the couch for his woman's comfort.

Before telling her husband goodnight, Michonne took a glimpse out at the spaces between the barricades on the windows. This city was in ruins. Trash scattered everywhere, and not a damn face in sight that wasn't shambling around. She had to wonder if, by the time that they did get to Atlanta, would there be anyone left?

And this is a good cut off. I could go on, but this could stand-alone. What do ya'll think? Reviews are welcome!