Merle couldn't believe it. That Goddamned psycho bit his fucking fingers off!
He could feel his hand burning even through the spots he was seeing. The Governor had him by the neck; that emotionless eye staring into his soul as his life was choked out of him. Merle knew it. He was going to die, and worse... he had failed at the one thing that might have redeemed him. He had nothing left to fight with; head spinning from a good kick courtesy of Martinez, ribs probably broken, arm out of joint, down to three fingers... shit!
He relaxed and let the darkness take him.
Only the Governor decided to let up, let him breath. Merle coughed and wheezed as the man backed away. He couldn't move, so he glared as best he could.
"I ain't gonna beg," Merle choked out. "I ain't begging you!"
"No." The Governor's voice was cold as a river in January as he raised his pistol.
Merle heard the sound, felt the punch in his chest, but didn't feel any pain. Odd...
He tried to make a grab for his enemy, but fell forward instead. His body jolted and suddenly came alive with white hot agony.
That asshole... that asshole stepped over him, left the shed.
Merle's tomb.
He wasn't dead yet, but he knew it wouldn't be long and he kinda wished he could get on with it. He couldn't breath. He tried. Good Lord how he tried, but every gasp burned worse then the last and it felt like he was breathing boiled water.
Only it wasn't water. It was blood.
He was drowning in his own blood.
Finally... finally he grew numb, faded out. This was it. All he ever achieved was hurting people and screwing over his brother, and he couldn't even take out one asshole before dying like the pointless nobody he was.
It was with heavy regret that he closed his eyes and exhaled his last breath.
The end.
Or was it...
Merle opened his eyes and he was outside, siting up, back resting against a metal pipe. The first thing that registered in his muddled brain was that he could breath. His throat was raw and dry, dry, dry, but he could breath!
He checked his chest with his left hand and found no blood or bullet wound. What the hell?
The second thing he registered was holy shit did his skin ever fucking burn. He tried to stand and brushed his sun baked right arm against the pipe. "FUCK!"
And then he saw it... his right hand, present and accounted for, the wrist scraped and bloody from the handcuffs that fastened him to a pipe.
"No..." he breathed. He tugged on it, twisted, tried different angles, started pulling and pushing with his legs and screaming to the high heavens for someone, anyone to intervene and let him go. Then he fell down amidst the pigeon shit and filth of that Atlanta roof top and started to sob. Pathetic? Yes. But he couldn't help it.
This was Hell.
He had died a shitty, ugly excuse for a human being, and now he was going to spend eternity on this hateful roof paying for it.
Merle stayed like that for awhile, weeping in pity for himself, but nothing changed. All was still and quiet, save for the moaning of the Walkers that were trying to get through the access door. He calmed down a little and stared numbly under the pipe. The tool box was there... and the saw; all exactly as it had been when he lived this. He could use his belt again, get the saw, follow through.
This thought was overridden by flashes of memory; blood, pain, the wooden sound of metal on bone...
Merle nearly threw up. He jerked into a sitting position and clutched at his intact wrist, willing the phantom pain to fade.
"Jesus no," he whimpered. He couldn't do it. He couldn't cut his own hand off a second time.
He leaned forward and rested his brow on the pipe. He focused on that sweet oxygen in his lungs and on the slowing tattoo of his heart. He could hear his blood in his ears, along with the endless moans and hisses of the dead.
Merle lifted his head and stared blearily at them. He'd been so damn scared of them last time, so frantic to escape being eaten alive... but now he could see how stupid he'd been. The damn things couldn't get through the door!
There was a heavy chain stretched taught on the inside, keeping it from opening more than a couple of inches.
Had T-Dog done that?
Merle sighed. It was hard to think with the familiar jitters of a drug crash. This was the first time he felt it in almost a year and he couldn't believe how unwelcome it was. He needed to think dammit!
He was too hot, his skin burning and peeling, his muscles cramped from sitting in one position all night. It was mid-morning, judging by the sun, and already the day was a humid bastard. It was making him dizzy and nauseous. If he was alive... if he was alive, he would only last a couple more hours.
He could saw his hand off, or he could let the heat kill him, or...
Daryl had claimed he came back, that Merle was the one who left him. He'd said Merle was always the one leaving.
If this wasn't Hell, then Daryl might be on his way. Merle had option number 3: trust his brother, and he decided that's the one he would take.
This time he would wait.