Author's note:
So thanks very much for all the feedback, I really appreciate it :)
Anyways, this chap I'm going to warn for drug use, violence/gore and some minor racism because it's Merle and he's a douche like that. I don't condone, but Merle unfortunately does and to a lesser extent so does Glory.
MarionArnold is still my fantastical beta, give her love and read Polar if you haven't already. Again, I'll wait.
Replies:
AmaterasuKishimoto- Thank you and here ya go! Glad you enjoy it so far :)
Day-Of-The-Dead-Tattoo-Gal: Glad you enjoyed it so much, hopefully I'll continue to meet your expectations!
:Guest- Yes it did lol No Glory definitely doesn't fuck around. All those dumb enough to mess with her crazy lil bad ass self shall be eliminated! I shall take it to many dark, disturbing and wonderful places, rest assured my friend...Muahahahaha!
Emberka-2012 - Glory is definitely a very strong girl, though she's also more than a little disturbed and messed up. Glad you're interested.
MarionArnold- You deserve it lady! They are definitely both bad asses, but also very dysfunctional people, so Imma have fun with this :) Prepare to be freaked.
kadieliz- Thank you very much, Glory is a very tough skinned woman, almost to a fault. But I'm getting ahead of myself, glad you're enjoying it so far!
AudreyEvans5- Merle deserves attention sometimes too! He's a fascinating character to play around with, there's alot of potential to travel to some pretty deep dark corners with him, which is always fun :)
Thanks again for all the reviews/faves/follows/author faves/ author follows, I really appreciate 'em!
Reviews are what keep me going, so keep it up! Anyways, I disclaim all that you recognize, enjoy and review!
Chapter 1: Behind These Lines
I'm gonna be released from behind these lines
And I don't care whether I live or die.
Leave My Body- Florence And The Machine
"Ain't no need to shoot me girly," Merle repeated again insistently as the woman's gun stayed on him, studying her for any sign of reluctance or worse, resolve.
She was obviously a spic, he thought. It was easy to tell from the olive tones in her skin and the long, curly dark brown hair that hung down near her waist.
He allowed himself to appreciate her rack through the thin tank she wore and the way her blue-jeans hugged her hips. Latinas always seemed to have fucking fantastic racks and asses. He guessed she was about 30-35, her eyes were almond shaped and as brown as her hair and she had very full lips.
Taco-Bender or not, broad mighta been good lookin' before all this, he mused. Mighta considered hitting that. But if the scene he'd observed from the bushes was any sign this bitch wouldn't hesitate to kill him if she felt it was to her advantage. She didn't even know him and if that crazy asshole's final rant were any indication she'd been shacked up with that guy for awhile. Yet she hadn't even tried to talk the shithead down, just ran that machete through him like she was slicing up a pizza.
Glory didn't relax or lower her weapon. Studying him, she concluded that it hadn't been biters that had taken his hand off. The fever would be too intense for him to even move at this point, and the wound was too cleanly done and carefully cauterized for biters to be the cause. It didn't lessen her wariness towards him though. One handed or not, the man could pose a rather considerable threat, seeing that he was easily over twice her size.
"Why the fuck shouldn't I?" she asked flatly.
" 'Cause I ain't gonna hurt ya. I may do a lotta shit, but hittin' women ain't part of it, even if ya are a spic." The man drawled lazily in a thick Georgian twang.
Ah, she thought to herself drily, racism. Damn south never changed.
"You really ought to be more polite to a woman with a gun, 'spic' or not," she pointed out. "Now you've got about one, maybe two minutes until I blow your empty little head off if you don't give me a hell of a good reason not to."
He opened his mouth to plead his case, but she never heard it. Instead she heard a low, gurgling moan approach her from behind. What the hell?
The biter dove for her back, knocking her front-ways down on the harsh gravel, which tore up her stomach through her tank top.
She grabbed the thing by its arm before it could rip into her unprotected shoulders, flipping it over. Forcing it down, she pined it beneath her knees and found herself staring at an undead Mark.
His growl was inhuman and strained to the point that it sounded like a vicious gargle. His eyes were a milky yellow and she could almost see through the stab wound in his throat to the earth beneath him. Muscle and flesh contorted horribly in the hole, forcing home how incredibly dead he should be. But he was moving, attacking for chrissakes. He hadn't been bitten, there hadn't been any biters near the place in over a week. Shock numbed her for a moment then, confusion and emotion distracting her.
You had to bit to turn, but Mark turned anyways. The man she'd shared a home and bed with for eight years was trying to kill her. Again.
The brief seconds of distraction were all it took for the much larger No-Longer-Mark to gain an advantage over her and pin her underneath him. The newly-dead were always so much stronger than the rest of the fuckers. Struggling to keep his hands and mouth from her throat, she tried to aim the now unsteady pistol inside his mouth. She couldn't hold him back much longer.
Pulling the trigger, she swore as No-Longer-Mark's cheekbone was blown away, sending him flying off of her. Scooting backwards, she cursed again when Mark kept crawling towards her. The shot must have just missed the brain. No-Longer-Mark was foaming at the mouth as he dragged himself forwards with his arms, too stupid and excited with the prospect of a meal to get up and walk. Mark looked the closest he'd been to happy in months, she thought with a bitter chuckle.
Then the man grabbed Mark by the shirt collar, flipped him over and held him down beneath his steel toed boot. No-Longer-Mark tried stupidly and in vain to chew through the thick leather while what's-his-face grabbed a large rock in his hand and dropped it onto the now biter's face, crushing his skull.
"That good 'nuff of a reason fer ya?" He asked in a mixture of a growl and panting.
She didn't answer him, instead asking a question of her own. "Name?"
"Dixon. Merle Dixon."
"Well Merle, you've got a nasty as all hell infection there," she enunciated carefully, giving off an uncaring and calculated air. "You'll be no use to me dying, I'll treat you in the cabin."
Merle cocked a brow, doubtful. "Yer a doc?"
She nodded, "Medic for the USA Marines 4 years and pediatric specialist in infectious diseases for 3 years." Noticing the look of confusion on his face, she simplified. "I can fix you when I get an idea of what I'm dealing with."
He nodded, then glanced towards the finally dead Mark. "You gonna burn 'im?"
"Later, first things first..." She took off the simple gold wedding band from her finger quickly, tossing it unceremoniously on top of the body. "Consider this our divorce," she added in a flatly in a final goodbye to her dead- now ex- husband.
The cabin was sparse and undecorated, just about anything unnecessary to survival thrown away to conserve space. There was a twin bed in one corner, a couple of rifles leaning against the wall beside it, some drawers, a metal surgical table and a medicine cabinet against the kitchen wall. The cabin appeared to be pretty well stocked and Merle was almost impressed. Almost.
"Where the hell'd ya get all this crap?" He wondered aloud as she led him into the kitchen and opened up the medicine cabinet, sorting through a variety of pill bottles.
"Guns are from some dead marines and FEMA workers who were stationed down at Atlanta General Hospital, where I worked, and the medical supplies are from an abandoned medical trailer I ran across on the outskirts of the city. Dumbasses just left the stuff when they ran off."
She grabbed his right arm firmly and moved it towards the surgical table, rolling her eyes when he flinched back.
"I've gotta diagnose the infection smart ass, stub on the table or else."
He glared and grumbled a few curses but obliged, laying his arm out on the table and huffing impatiently while she prodded it. "So what's yer diagnosis Doc?"
She sighed,"Definitely a blood infection, probably got some bacteria in there too, be able to tell you some more specifics if I had a lab at my disposal. Whatever you got that hand of yours chopped off with, it must of been fucking filthy."
"Didn't have many options available t' me at the time..." He growled bitterly.
Glory raised a brow at the statement. So he'd cut it off himself and cauterized it afterwards too. Tough fucker. Stupid, maybe, but tough. That could be useful.
Pretending the information didn't intrigue her, she continued her examination. "I can give you some medication to get rid of some of the more major side effects and pains, but this infection is gonna get a hell of alot worse before it gets any better. Best I can do is give you some anti-virals and Lyrica and let it run it's course."
He glared at her, obviously unhappy with her suggestion of treatment. "Wha' the fuck kinda Doc are ya if ya can't fix it?"
"If I had a lab I could pinpoint the specific viruses and infection and have a more carefully catered treatment plan, but I don't have a lab and I have no idea what kinds of bacteria could be running through your system right now. A general plan is the best solution- the wrong drugs could kill you or aggravate the problem."
He mumbled something about women and their place but didn't argue. She was right and he knew it, though she didn't see him admitting it anytime soon.
Merle's eyes widened as he noticed her loading up a syringe with some antibiotics. Merle was a snorter and a pill-popper, not a needle user.
His Pa had been a needle user and ever since he was a kid the sight of a syringe made his guts churn. Back then it had meant that Pa would be all the more out of it and that he needed to find Daryl and get to the shed as quickly as humanly possible. Otherwise broken beer bottles and Pa's belt would all leave a mark on their backs. Pa had been dead for just over twenty years now, but the sight of a syringe never failed to make him feel ill.
Desperate to take his mind off of the needle that would soon be shoved into his arm before he vomited, he began talking.
"Wha' the fuck kind o' name's Glory anyways?"
She shrugged. "Nickname. Real name's Gloria, got called Glory while I was doing my service with the Marines in Iraq, me and Francis- another medic- got a couple of kids out of this car wreck once. They drove over an IED, parents died instantly and we all figured the kids were goners too, but we managed to keep them alive 'till they could be air lifted out. Got alot of attention for that so Francis got nicknamed Fame and I was Glory. You millitary?"
He nodded, careful not to look at the syringe. "Was fer a couple 'a years, got kicked out. Don't listen too well is all."
The needle pricked his forearm and he instinctively tried to pull back. She grabbed him by the wrist and slammed his arm back down against the table, eliciting a growled string of curses from him as she finished administering the antibiotics.
"There, all done," she stated calmly. "You'll get the pain meds in about a hour or so."
"Fuckin' bitch."
"Play nice or you're not getting any pain meds at all," she mumbled out of pure annoyance, going back into the medicine cabinet and pulling out a container of Benzadrine.
"Hell ya gettin' those out for?"
"For me," she replied coolly. "It'll keep me awake, don't take it personal but I don't trust you enough to go to sleep around."
He studied her with more than a mild interest as she took out two the little yellow capsules, cracked them open and dumped out the white powder within, using the blade of a pocket knife to form a perfect line. It was done with way too much precision and expertise for her to be a first time user.
"How long you been snortin' that stuff?" He asked bluntly.
"Don't see how it's your business, but about six months."
Six months, about the length of this...Well, whatever the hell it was when the dead rose and ate the living.
"Didn't wanna pass out 'round that husband 'a yers?"
She didn't answer at first, but a minute or so later she replied flatly,"I stopped trusting him awhile back," before snorting the line.
He eyed the pills hungrily, however Glory stated simply that no, he couldn't snort a line. Mixed with the meds he was now on, it would kill him, and if he was dumb enough to try and steal a pill she wouldn't waste her breath trying to revive him when he overdosed. They sat in silence until he was given his dosage of Lyrica, at which point she sent him to the bed.
"Tomorrow could very well be the shittiest day of your life," she stated simply.
Yeah, he thought to himself, he was getting that idea.