Daryl looked around him, wondering how he had come to be here.
The claimers or marauders, as they called themselves, were all in all five copies of who Merle had been when they were drifters. They thought that this way of living was something they could keep on doing.
Daryl was not convinced, but there was safety in numbers, especially when the people wanting to do you harm were flesh eating monsters. He briefly thought back to the quarry, where despite being ill-equipped for this world they all lived in, there had been good people. There had been kids though, and they made you weak. They needed protection and it meant becoming vulnerable yourself. The kids at the quarry had been nice kids though. Nowadays, you didn't get to see kids especially with the company he had been keeping, and he found that he missed those.
When Merle had told him about leaving them behind because they were dead weight and things were bound to go south, Daryl had followed with a completely different reasoning. They had a chance, those people, perhaps, to make it. Even if they lost some of their own, they were not from the same world he was, not cut from the same fabric and Daryl had felt like he would never belong. They might value him for his hunting skills but they would never really trust him. You needed trust in an apocalypse. That was why he had gone with his brother, and had left them all behind. They had run, for a long time, only trusting one another. They had stayed on the road for over a year, sometimes forming alliances only to drop out of those the moment they stopped working in their favor. They had kept on running, from place to place, gang to gang. They had avoided communities, such as Woodbury, even though Merle had considered joining. His brother had been seduced by the charisma the leader exhibited, but Daryl hadn't been convinced. Either he was just what he appeared to be, which didn't make him fit to run a group, or he was full of shit and they would be the ones to end up walker bait. Since they hadn't entered the Woodbury zone, and had only run into the guy who called himself the Governor while on the run, declining his offer had been easy, but Daryl had a feeling in his guts that if they had knocked on the door of the structure, it would have been a whole different story.
They had travelled wherever the wind took them and had heard tales of a place, Terminus, but they never went there or were even interested in it. If it was a community as some of the signs suggested, he and Merle would be more vulnerable than safe. The people they had encountered, shared a campsite with for a night here and there would call it a haven, having apparently immense hopes for it. However, was there was such thing as a safe place anymore? Daryl had been reticent, and now that he was with the Marauders, he felt validated: the signs were still there, but no one was talking about it anymore, it was eerie. You never encountered someone who had been to Terminus.
A few weeks back, Daryl's world had shifted entirely when his brother and he had been surrounded by walkers and he had found himself separated from Merle. Daryl didn't want to think about the fact that he would probably never see his brother again, or he would have already. After that rude awakening, he had been alone, for the first time in a long time, and he hadn't known how long he could make it on his own.
Meeting the marauders and becoming one of them was something he had done because they reminded him so much of his brother. That, and the fact that they had gun power.
He was no fool, though, and he knew all the ways they could never be like Merle. Apart from the same rough appearance, they were his opposite. Merle had principles, even though he'd have died before admitting it. These guys, not so much.
Ever since he had been with the marauders, there had been no other groups to share a fire with. Joe's men… Their lack of principles, and the way they saw everything as bounty and everyone as prey was obvious from the way they behaved. If Joe hadn't been there when he had encountered the rest of them, Daryl wasn't sure he would have been invited to join. Something in his guts was telling him he would have ended up dead, with one of those assholes sporting his crossbow. He was not happy with having had to join them, but so far he had kept his integrity, his principles, but he dreaded the time they would encounter a situation where the marauders would show they were as feral as they looked and he would want no part of it. This was a temporary arrangement for him, until something better came along, if something better came along.
In some ways, it didn't make sense to Daryl. Sure, no one was perfectly groomed or clean, this was the Apocalypse, the end of days and all that, but it felt like the marauders went the extra mile to make sure they would scare the shit out of anybody unlucky enough to cross their path. They were opportunistic but seemed to have missed the fact that deception would work better in their favor than just plain honesty, which broadcasted that they were nothing more than scavengers. Perhaps it was for the best, Daryl pondered. He could barely imagine the massacres the marauders would commit if they were allowed in the vicinity of unknowing people.
"Dixon, get your ass in gear," Joe yelled, and Daryl realized he had slowed down. They were in a small town and so far the walkers had been a no show. They picked a house and started cleaning it for the night. For once, they were quiet instead of the ruckus they usually made. As they were trying to find a place to sleep, it made little sense to attract walkers. Everything was done in silence, everybody knew their place.
As he watched out one of the windows which would need barricading, Daryl thought he saw something, someone alive but he never had the opportunity to act on that thought. Len and Harley had seen it too, and they ran to the other house where the person had been. Matthew, a new drifter, followed them and Joe went outside the house, waiting to see what his men had caught. There were screams, mostly from Len, and grunting. Daryl was rushing to get there and see what was happening, knowing the marauders were capable of the worst. Whoever it was, they had to have the most rotten luck in history, Daryl thought remembering his previous thoughts about how the marauders were just vultures who did their own killing. He found himself afraid, wondering if this would be the breaking point, if he would be strong enough to not let them do whatever they would do, or if he would be their bitch. Merle's taunts rung in his ears and he promised himself whoever it was that had found themselves at the mercy of Joe's group, he would fight for them anyway he could.
"Let me go!" He heard a woman say, and his blood pumped through his veins as he tried to rush to her rescue. He didn't think, just did, but Joe grabbed him and kept him next to him. Daryl wanted to push him away but he had no choice but to obey to the silent command.
Seconds later, the men came out of the house, beaten bloody but dragging along a screaming and kicking woman with them. She was enraged, and kept trying to take a bite out of them, or more.
"Joe, see what I found?" Len yelled.
Daryl saw her take a look at the situation, before taking a good shot at Len's ankle with her boot. He yelled, but the others held her in place. Daryl saw her face, and with one word he changed the game for them all.
"Claimed."