A soft whimpering followed by a wet tongue licking her fingers, brought Annabelle Ford reluctantly to full wakefulness. When she didn't immediately jump out of her cot, Juno, her dog, leapt into her bed and started licking her face. Anna thrashed around for a second, to get away from the assault of dog saliva, before finally rolling out of her cot.
"I'm awake!" Anna said as she wiped the saliva from her face.
Juno looked at the door, then let out a deep throaty growl. Frowning, Anna grabbed her military jacket then topped it with her Kevlar vest before grabbing her hunting knife and assault rifle. She quickly strapped on Juno's armor before putting her ear to the door and listening carefully. Just as she did, the bases alarm came on, screeching loudly as red lights came on.
"Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!" The computerized female voice came over the intercom.
In this day and age, that could mean anything. Ever since the dead had risen up, the line between who was the enemy and who was your ally, had be come blurred. Having an intruder could mean some raiders had attacked and successfully penetrated into the naval base but that was highly unlikely, they just weren't smart enough or well enough equipped to attack something so large and so well defended. More likely, someone had been bit, didn't report it and died in their room and somehow managed to escape to cause havoc. It had happened before, during the initial months but a year had past, and Anna liked to think people had become smart enough but fear did strange things to people.
Anna cracked the door, then sighed as she slowly closed it again to take a deep breath. She hated it when she was wrong. Wandering down her hall was five of the undead staggering towards the nearest speaker as two others stood by one of the rotating red lamps reaching up towards it hungrily.
After collecting herself, Anna opened the door once more and stepped into the hall, plunged her blade into the first walker that wandered in her path as she made for the exit. Just as she rounded the corner, into the main hall, Anna and Juno skidded to a stop. They were now completely surrounded by the undead, as the ones who'd been by her bedroom had followed her and now twenty walkers clogged her other two options.
Juno ran to a closed door and started scratching at it frantically. Anna decided to trust her dog and kicked the door open. She rushed inside then shut the door behind her, using first a chair to hold the door shut before pushing the big heavy desk against it. Juno had made a good call, coming into this room. It was an office on the exterior of the building close to the exit, but they were still on the second floor.
Anna looked out of the window and winced, below her a large herd of walkers wandered the Naval yard, most of them wearing Navy uniforms. Anna turned to the smaller hutch where the phone with the internal line and a row of pictures, sat. She picked up the handset for the phone, then dialed the number for security. After the third ring, someone picked up.
"Hello?" A deep masculine voice answered.
"This is Senior Petty Officer Ford. What the hell is going on?" Anna growled into the phone.
The man let out a relieved sigh. "Someone is still alive! I'm not completely sure what happened. It happened fast. One minute one of the guards is going nuts then the next thing I know, the whole compound is swarming with the undead."
"Why wasn't the alarm not sounded sooner?" Anna asked irritably. "I was asleep and had no idea what was happening! By the time the alarm had gone off, they we're already down my hall! If it wasn't for my dog, I'd have never gotten out!"
"Commander Grainer ordered me not to. He didn't want to whip the herd into a frenzy…" The man on the other end said. "But I couldn't wait any longer, things just kept getting worse."
"And where's the Commander now?" Anna asked, her expression becoming dark. She knew Grainer a little too well and he was a selfish son of a bitch.
"I…I think he escaped…" The man replied his anger lowering his voice to a growl.
"Son of a…" Anna also growled. "Can you just activate the alarms on one side of the base? Maybe we can lure them off to one side and give us a chance to escape out the other?"
There was a long pause, so long that Anna thought the man had hung up, but he finally did respond. "Yes…yes I can."
"Alright, here's the plan. You activate the alarms on the east side of the base, there's only the ocean in that direction. If possible, make an announcement over the intercom to let anyone still alive have a chance to get away."
"Roger that, Ford. Where are you located?" The man asked. "I can queue up the footage outside your location and guide you out."
"What about you?"
There was another long pause, and when he spoke. His voice as quiet. "It's too late for me, ma'am. I'm bit ma'am, and I don't have much time left."
It was Anna's turn to pause. "I'm sorry, solider, I didn't get your name."
"Emilio Sanchez, ma'am." Sanchez answered. "Petty Officer Third Class and before you give your sympathy, save it ma'am. We don't have time."
Anna rubbed her head, suddenly feeling bad for her previous opinion of this man. "Right." She looked around her. She had been uncharacteristically frantic when she'd left her room, so she hadn't paid attention to which room she'd ducked into. "Second floor…hall C…" Anna said as she looked around the room. "I didn't get the room number but it's Chief Officer Anderson's office." Anna finally was able to answer as she looked at the plaque that had been on the desk.
"Alright, you've got quite the collection outside of your door but hopefully your plan will draw them off. If all goes to plan, your best option is to go right to the end of the hall, where the staircase is located. Once on the ground level, go out of the fire door which head you straight to the secondary gate."
"Roger." Anna said, closing her eyes as she tried to visualize the corridor.
"Initiating alarm in three…two…one." Sanchez said then the loud blare of the intruder alarm sounded again but this time only out by the shoreline.
You could hear the hungry growls of the undead as they got excited and agitated. When Anna looked outside of the window, she could see the undead slowly lumbering towards the sound.
"All personnel the base has been overrun." Sanchez's voice came over the intercom. "Abandon base, I repeat abandon base. Wait ten minutes for the undead to move off then head east. Rendezvous at EZ 4."
Early in the Outbreak, the powers that be had set up evacuation protocol's, most of which were never activated and were beyond the point of being able to activate but they had set up six evacuation zones, all stocked with a limited amount of food, weapons and other survival needs, for cases such as this.
"Are you still there, Ford?" Sanchez asked, once again on the phone.
"Yeah. Good thinking with the EZ." Anna said, kicking herself for not thinking of that herself.
"You should be clear straight to the ground level but be careful once outside, there's a couple blind spot that I can't see and some undead that are lingering. I've unlocked the doors for the buildings that should be on the way, give you a place to duck into but I set the timer to relock the doors in fifteen minutes…I doubt I have that long." Sanchez said, his voice grim.
"Thank you." Anna said softly.
"It's the least I can do." Sanchez said with equal softness. "Now go! And God speed."
"Good bye." Anna said then hung up the phone. With a sad sigh, Anna looked down at Juno. "C'mon girl, we're getting out of here."
Anna pulled the desk and chair away from the door and slowly opened it poked her head into the hall. Not a single undead was insight, so Anna raised her gun and stepped into the hall.
"Heel." Anna said in a firm whisper, ordering Juno to stay at her side.
They trotted down the hall together, running as quietly as they could and keeping their eyes constantly moving, looking for danger. They made it to the stairwell without incident, but Anna wasn't out of the clear yet. She opened the door carefully, closing the door quietly behind Juno once they entered the stairwell. Anna pointed her gun over the rail, looking first down then up, making sure there were no undead in the stairwell then rapidly descended to the bottom.
The door at the bottom was a solid steel door with no window and with no windows in the walls to see outside, Anna just had to hope there were no undead within the immediate vicinity of the door. Like before, she slowly opened the door, peered carefully outside then stepped out into the sunlight.
As Sanchez had suggested, there were undead still lingering near the building, but they were far enough away that Anna and Juno should make it to the gate. Anna took off at run, running as fast as she could, narrowly dodging an undead as it emerged from the shadows of one of the buildings as Anna ran by, but Juno must have smelled it and tackled it to the ground before hightailing it after Anna.
Anna finally made it to the gate and swiped her card in the cardlock in the security room beside the gate. She paused as she stared at the gate as it rolled open. She could leave it open and let more of the undead to walk in but if there was still someone alive inside and they didn't have the clearance to open the gate or forgot their security card, they'd have a hard time getting out.
Anna cursed as she laid her card down on the counter, wrote her security number down on a sheet of paper, the hit the close button and burst through the gate as it closed. Once through the gate, she paused and looked back at the base. There couldn't possibly be a safer place than that out there? What was she going to do? Should she try to find her brother? If she was to do that, where would she find him? He lived back home in Texas with his family when the outbreak hit but it was very unlikely that he was still there, if he was even still alive.
Anna sighed, first thing was first. Go to EZ 4. Being on foot, it took Anna an hour to get to the EZ and when she arrived, no one had yet arrived. EZ 4 was in fact an abandoned cabin deep in the woods behind the base. There was only one road that lead to the cabin and that road could be easily missed if you didn't know where to look.
111
Anna stayed in the cabin for a week. After the second day, she knew that no one was coming but she didn't know what to do next, so she just stayed. After her eighth day, she had a close encounter with a large herd of the undead, making the cabin no longer a safe place to stay. She decided she was too close to a major city, so she need to move deep into the wilderness if she was to have any chance of escaping their presence.
The only problem with that thought was that it was more than likely, many others had thought of that as well and she was likely to run into hostiles. On top of that, she wasn't like her brother, she couldn't really hunt. She could shoot things, but hunting was more of an art. So far, she'd largely survived off of the food that was in the cabin with the occasional squirrel that Juno had caught. While she was a better hunter than Anna, Juno was a War dog. She was meant for smelling out humans and explosives and protecting Anna, not catching squirrels and rabbits.
Anna stuffed every bit of food, medical supplies, bullets and survival gear she could into the pack that was in the cabin and what she could into the pockets of Juno's vest. With one last look around the cabin, Anna walked out of the door and headed northwest.
111
Anna collapsed on to her knees, exhausted and parched, next to the small stream. Anna wasn't sure how many days had gone by since she'd left the cabin, but it'd been at least a month, maybe two and things weren't going well for her. The food she'd taken from the cabin had long since run out and the houses and businesses she'd come across had very little or nothing left in them.
The only water she'd been able to find, had been from streams and rivers that she could find on increasingly rare occasions. In the beginning she'd treat her water with the tablets that killed the germs that lived in it but those too had run out. She had a pot to boil her water in but there were days where she was too thirsty to wait for the water to boil and drank straight from the stream, like now. That unfortunately had left her with some unpleasant side effects, leaving her even more dehydrated from not being able to keep any fluids in her body and weak.
On top of the fact that she was ill half the time and barely ever ate, she also barely slept. Occasionally, she found a house she could stay in for a night or two, but it almost never failed that whenever she found a place, she thought might be safe, a herd of the undead would roll through or hostile people would show up and run her out of town. Anna was very skilled with her gun and successfully defended herself several times, but she was only one person and she only had so many bullets.
Anna was splashing water on her face when Juno suddenly looked up and let out a quiet whine as she looked towards the bush to their left. It was the sound that Juno made which told Anna that the undead was nearby. Anna took a quick gulp of water, then got to her feet as she looked around them cautiously.
"C'mon." Anna whispered to Juno as she dashed off into the bush, heading in the opposite direction than Juno had sensed the undead.
They had only run a few yards when they slid to a stop as their path was blocked by a massive herd of the undead. They turned and bolt off in another direction only to have to make a quick change in direction, once more. Juno could have easily out paced her, especially now days but she was loyal and would only run as fast as Anna.
Anna was quickly losing steam, having not eaten in four days, and her adrenaline was quickly fading. They suddenly broke from the cover of the trees on to a highway which was a bit of relief for Anna, a highway would be a lot easier to run on. The highway was slightly raised, and Anna tried her best to raise her feet high enough to continue running but her toes caught the edge of the pavement and she tumbled forward, hitting her head on the road. Anna tried to get to her feet as Juno licked her face anxiously, but Anna could barely get onto her elbows, her strength completely depleted.
Juno suddenly growled viciously and lunged over top of Anna as she continued to try and get up. She started barking and running off, trying to lure the undead away from Anna but she was only partially successful. Finally, Anna flopped on to her back and pulled out her pistol and started shooting at the undead who were still coming after her, but her vision had become blurred and she was having a hard time getting headshots.
Anna had wondered if she was starting to lose her mind as music suddenly reached her ears, slowly gaining volume. Her pistol had just clicked, running out of bullets, as a car suddenly screeched just short of her head. Anna reached up and grabbed the bumper as a man burst out of the driver's door and swung at the undead that was bending over to take a chunk out of Anna's shoulder, crushing its skull and killing it instantly.
"Get to your feet girl!" The man barked as he continued to fight off walkers as they tried to get to her.
Anna managed to get shakily to her feet as Juno suddenly appeared at her side, her bloody muzzle nudging her arm, encouraging her to get up. When she couldn't get up any further, an arm grabbed her arm and roughly picked her up and practically dragged her to passenger side door, eliciting a dangerous growl from Juno as he shoved her inside the car. Juno quickly jumped into Anna's lap then into the back seat as the man bashed his way around the front of the car then climbed behind the wheel and squealed the tires as he took off.
Anna discreetly grabbed her knife as she looked over at the man who'd just saved her as he sat next to her. The first thing she noticed was that he only had one hand and a knife had been secured to his stub. The next thing she noticed was that he was very well muscled and obviously well fed and he looked every bit of the redneck that he probably was. He also looked very dangerous, not the type of person Anna would normally climb in a car with.
"You look like shit." The man said as he used his stub to awkwardly steer as he reached into the center console, hitting the power button on the radio then pulled a cigarette from its carton in the ashtray and popped it into his mouth then picked up the lighter and lit his cigarette. "What's your name girl?"
Anna just watched him cautiously as she continued to discreetly clutch her knife.
"I ain't gonna hurt you girl." He said as he reached beneath his seat and pulled out a mostly empty whiskey bottle and held it out to her. "I wasn't expecting any company nor was I expecting on survivin' the day, but you can have this. It'll at least lessen the hunger pangs."
Anna cautiously took the bottle from him then took a sniff. It certainly smelled like whiskey. She looked back at Juno as she licked her chops as she eyed the man suspiciously. She didn't trust him, but she wasn't acting aggressively either. Anna finally took a good size sip, winced then held the bottle out to the man beside her.
"Naw. I drank most of it, you need something in yer stomach." Merle said waving the bottle away. Now that they were no longer surrounded by an army of the undead, the man had slowed down to a reasonably speed and inspected her. "You take those threads off of a body or is it really yours?" He asked indicating her now ratty uniform.
"It's mine…I'm…Annabelle Ford. That's my partner, Juno. She's a military dog, I wouldn't recommend pissing her off." Anna said, smiling slightly. This was her first human interaction since she'd left the base.
"Or what?" The man asked smirking slightly. "She'll rip my face off?"
"From this angle, that's the most likely option otherwise she'd go for the jugular." Anna responded smiling.
"That's a Navy crest on your arm, ain't it?" The man asked, pointing to her shoulder.
"The SEALs, to be exact…I'm sorry I didn't catch your name." Anna asked as she continued to study him. He had a sharp, chiselled face with shrewd blue eye and short dark blonde hair with some greys in it.
"Merle, Merle Dixon."
"Well, Mister Dixon, you look well fed and clean. I'm guessing you belong to a group."
"Just Merle. And I've, in fact, had several groups but they've either abandoned me or destroyed itself." Merle said shrugging.
"You said you weren't planning on surviving the day, were you planning on killing yourself or something? You had that stereo awfully loud, it almost seemed like you were trying to attract the undead. Then you said you drank almost a whole bottle of whiskey."
"I wasn't exactly tryin' to kill myself." Merle answered as he studied her then shrugged once more. "I was going to kill this guy, the leader of my former group. He was one bad man, killed a lot of innocent people, tried to force me to kill my baby brother. A real Ted Bundy type. A good looking and charismatic fellow on the outside, homicidal psychopath on the inside. It was highly unlikely that I'd survive attacking him."
"What happened to your brother?" Anna asked, accepting his answering.
"Aw, my brothers pansy assed friends showed up and got us outta there. You see, he was in a different group, a group that I was apart of back at the start…until they left me to die, chained up to a roof top in Atlanta."
"Why'd they do that?" Anna asked, her suspicion suddenly making her tense once more, but Merle just shrugged.
"Had a drug problem, made some poor decisions. M' brother said they came back for me, but I was already gone. That's how I lost the hand." Merle continued as he held his stub up.
"And what happened to your brothers' group? And you still haven't said what happened to him." Anna asked, wondering what kind of people this man associated with.
"Oh, they're fine, he's fine…for now. So is my old boss, and he's set to destroy my brother's new best friends."
"So, you were going to kill 'em first." Anna said. Normally Anna could generally get a pretty good read on people, but this Merle was all over the board. Part of her screamed DANGER STAY AWAY! while another part of her said he's better than he seems.
"I was going to try. Killin' the Governor would go a long way to prolong my brother's life. Add a couple of his lieutenants would be even better."
"The Governor?" Anna asked as Merle turned down a dirt road.
Merle grunted. "That's what he calls himself, although he claims the towns people started calling him that. Most of the people who live in Woodbury think he's a saint, but those people usually don't leave the walls."
"And is that where we're goin' now?" Anna asked as she studied the trees around them.
"Nope. We're gonna get you some food." Merle said as he rolled to a stop just on the edge of road. "I'm gonna go out there, see if I can bag me some rabbit or something else edible. You and yer mutt stay here. Rest up."
Anna looked at Merle critically. "Why are you helping me? From what I've seen, it's everyone for themselves. If you ain't apart of a group already, then you're on your own."
"That's a little dramatic but yeah, its hard to survive right now." Merle said as he reached behind him for a rifle Anna hadn't previously seen but he stopped when Juno bared her teeth and growled.
"Easy Juno." Anna said soothingly then looked back at Merle. "A strange man grabbing for a weapon doesn't sit well with a dog whose spent the last three years overseas, dealing with men trying to kill us."
Merle cleared his throat then slowly continued to reach for the gun. "Right. Anyways, as to why…well I've been one mean sumabitch my whole life and it ain't gotten me nothin'. My brother is buddy-buddy with a couple people for a few months and he's a fuckin' hero to them."
"So you figure you'd take a page from his book?" Anna suggested. That must've been what she was sensing. Merle was a man with a vicious streak, but he was trying to change that, and it was difficult for him.
"I guess. 'Nough with the sixty questions. I'll be back." Merle said as he opened the door then exited the vehicle.
Anna took another sip from the bottle of whiskey as she watched Merle disappear into the forest. Once he was out of sight, she bent forward and slid off the nearly empty pack from her back. All that was really in the bag was a small hatchet, a flashlight with a couple extra batteries, half a pack of waterproof matches, a basic first aid kit, some bullets, a small blackened pot and a camouflage rain poncho.
The first thing she did was to pull down the car visor and looked at her reflection in the mirror. Right near her left temple was a small gash that had apparently bled quite a bit but now had stopped. She could also see a bruise forming on the side of her face where it had made contact with the pavement, in another few hours it'd be considerably more colorful. Anna pulled out the first aid kit and used the alcohol wipes to wipe the blood off her face and attached a Band-Aid over the small cut.
She then pulled out the box of bullets, then sighed as she looked inside, she only had five bullets left for her pistol. She popped her clip out and inserted the five bullets and popped her clip back into her gun. Once the gun was loaded, she slid the gun into its holster and looked back at Juno.
"Come up." Anna said to her as she patted the driver seat.
Juno jumped over the armrest into the driver seat then turned and looked at Anna expectantly, her tongue lolling out as she panted. Anna ran her hands over Juno's face, neck and body, looking for any signs of injury but she couldn't find any. After trying to wipe the blood off Juno with her sleeve, she looked Juno in the eye.
"What do you think, girl? Should we just leave?" Anna asked her as she scratched Juno on the neck. "I admit that I miss talking with people, but this guy? Maybe we should try to find that group his brother is with."
Anna sighed. If she wanted to try to join that group, she'd have to talk to Merle at least one more time, she had no idea where to even begin to look and she wasn't sure how much longer she could go on without food. Anna decided to stay for now, so she reclined her seat and get as much rest as she could. Realizing that Anna was settling down to sleep, Juno crawled into her lap and put her head on Anna's shoulder. Having a seventy-pound dog sleeping on you wasn't the most comfortable thing but Anna appreciated the company and was too exhausted to care.
111
Sometime later, Anna woke to the sound of a soft growl near her ear and a voice calling her. Anna groaned and tried to sit up but wasn't immediately able to as Juno still held her down.
"Girl! Wake up!" Merle voice called followed by him clapping his hands as he let out a sharp whistle.
Juno finally got off her chest and climbed into the backseat, so Anna could sit up. "Sorry, I guess I'm more exhausted then I thought." Anna said as she rubbed her eyes.
"Well I caught a pair of rabbits and found some old hunters' cabin. It's got stuff we can take." Merle said as he finally climbed inside the car, now that Juno was no longer threatening to attack him, throwing the rabbit into her lap. While he had been trying to wake her, he had been standing by the driver side with door open, looking in. Juno probably wasn't being too pleasant, so he probably thought it best to wait until she woke up. Now that Anna was awake and calmly interacting with Merle, and now that Juno had settled down, it was now safe to enter the car.
"That dog of yers ain't too pleasant." Merle said glaring over his shoulder.
"Like I said, she's a war dog. Part of her job was to protect me, not just sniff out bombs and hostiles." Anna said as she straightened her seat. "We were together for three years before all this happened, which is unusual. Usually dogs and handlers get reassigned after a year, maybe two."
"Fascinating." Merle said sarcastically as he started the car via the wires hanging from the steering column and turned the vehicle around. "So long as it don't bark."
"No, she knows well enough to not bark. If she smells something, she has signals. Some only I can recognize." Anna said as she watched the landscape roll by.
"Once again, fascinating." Merle said sarcastically as he rolled his eyes.
Anna glared at Merle. "Well Juno ain't the only unpleasant thing in this car."
"Oh, don't sell yourself short." Merle said smirking at her. "You ain't that bad."
Merle turned down a road that Anna hadn't seen when they had driven by it earlier and couldn't really see it until Merle was turning onto it. He drove down the very narrow and bumpy road until the road ended in a small clearing with a rickety old house at the opposite end. Merle rolled to a stop in front of the house and moved to get out but stopped and looked back at Anna.
"Need help girl?" Merle asked eyeing her.
"One, it's Anna or Annabelle or even Ford. And two, I'm fine." Anna said as she opened her door. She put her feet on the ground and painfully stood up, wobbled then managed to straighten up.
"You sure?" Merle asked, cocking an eyebrow.
Anna walked around the car as Juno jumped out. "I'm fine." She growled as she moved towards the house then grasped the rail as she stepped up onto the front porch.
After grabbing the rabbits from where Anna had left them on her seat, Merle followed her inside the house. The house was precisely as Merle described it, a hunting cabin. Along one wall, six deer antler racks dominated the wall, and on the floor was a massive bear rug that took up most of the small cabin. The cabin was essentially a square box with no rooms. In one corner, a bed was pushed into the corner and a tiny kitchenette took up most of the wall that opposed the antler wall. A pair of cowhide chairs and a tiny table with a pair of wooden chairs, were the only other furniture in the cabin besides the tiny bed but even with so little furniture, there wasn't a lot of room to move around.
Anna sat heavily in one of the cowhide chairs and put her head in her hands as Juno stood in front up her, panting. Merle, on the other hand, plunked the rabbits down on the counter then moved to the fireplace that took up what remained of the wall beside the kitchenette. After a couple minutes of using the small hatchet that had been propped against the fireplace to make a log into smaller kindling, Merle had good size fire going.
"If yer fine, why don't you go outside and get some water from that well I saw beside the house. We can boil it so we can have some drinking water. Even I will need water soon." Merle said as he walked back to kitchenette. "I'll skin these and fry 'em up."
Anna nodded as she rolled to her feet then walked back outside with Juno on her heels. Like Merle had said, there was a well beside the house, partially hidden by the overgrown grass. Two galvanized pails sat hidden the grass beside the well with a thick, long rope coiled up beside them. Anna picked up the rope and found that it had a hook at the end.
Anna attached the hook to the handle of the first bucket, then lowered it into the well. When the bucket was full of water, it took all she had just to pull the bucket back up. Once she had it over the lip of the well, she immediately started slurping the water. She knew it probably wasn't safe, but she needed something other than whiskey in her stomach and it was helping her cool off while giving her some strength.
Once she had enough, she put the bucket down on the ground, in front of Juno and let her drink as Anna put the other bucket onto the hook and lowered it into the well. After a bit of struggle to get the second bucket up, she finally succeeded and awkwardly carried the pail into the house.
Merle watched her as she brought the pail to the kitchenette and then struggle to lift the pail onto the counter. "I thought you military chicks were supposed to be strong." Merle said as he impaled chunks of meat onto a wiener stick.
"I was strong." Anna huffed as she leaned against the counter, suddenly feeling nauseous. "I haven't really eaten properly in a month. I actually used to have muscle mass."
"I thought military chicks had survival skills…to you know, survive on their own." Merle said as he lifted the pail and dumped half of the water into a pot that could be hung over the flame from the house that was screwed into the stone of the fireplace.
"Throw me into a warzone in the middle of the city, I could survive for months, easily. Drop me in the middle of the wilderness, not so much. My brother was better at that sort of thing." Anna said as she sat in her cowhide chair once more while Merle carried the wiener stick under one arm and the pot in his hand.
Merle just grunted in response as he hung the pot, then pulled the other cowhide chair closer and stuck the rabbit meat into the flames as he sat down. They were completely silent while he cooked the rabbit and when it was done, he held the stick in front of her face. Anna only took one piece, not wanting to be greedy, especially since she didn't catch the food and he did save her life.
"All of it, Ford. That's only one rabbit." Merle said then waited for her to take the meat before getting up and returning to the kitchenette.
When he returned to his spot in front of the fire, Anna looked up from inhaling her rabbit and studied Merle. "So, what's your plan past feeding me?"
Merle frowned as he looked over his shoulder. "Whatdya mean?"
"You were planning on getting yourself killed, killing the man who wronged you. That still the plan? Or are you going back to your brother?" Anna asked as she handed a strip of rabbit to Juno.
"Well, the chance to kill the Governor has passed and quite frankly I'm done with all of that. My brother don't need me, he does better when I'm not around. I guess I don't have one. A plan. What 'bout you? You goin' somewhere?" Merle finally asked as he sat back, put the wiener stick between his knees and pulled the meat off it.
"Well, originally I was planning on finding the wildest part of the state, figuring that'd be the safest from the undead but I was wrong."
Merle grunted. "First couple months, that plan woulda gotten you away from walkers but once the food ran out, they went in search for more."
"Obviously that hasn't worked for me so…I don't know, maybe go north? The base I was stationed at, it was doing well up until a couple of months ago…from a survival aspect. I guess I'm hoping that maybe a base around Washington or Virginia might do even better." Anna answered then licked the fat off her fingers.
"That's no short distance." Merle said watching her carefully.
Anna sighed. "I know, and I haven't exactly been doing all that well neither."
"No, you haven't. No way you'd make it there like this." Merle said indicating Anna. "How 'bout this, I escort you to the northern end of Georgia, find a good place to hole up in for a week or so then teach ya to hunt and survive out here in the wild and you make sure those assholes don't shoot me on sight when we find you a base."
Anna studied Merle again trying to read him, but like before she was getting all sort of mixed signals, but he was all she had right now. Anna put out her hand. "Deal." She said then Merle gripped her hand and shook it.
"Deal."