A/N – Thank you so much for the reviews! I will try to get the next chapter done for tomorrow, but (since it is Grey's Anatomy night) I may not get a chance to work on it. I'll get it done and posted as soon as I can though!


Chapter 3

Sophia was trying hard not to fidget on the seat. The car was clearly old and rickety. It had bench seats so when Merle took a corner too fast, Sophia had to hold on to the door handle to ensure she didn't slide across the seat and bump into Merle. She didn't think he'd take too kindly to something like that.

The radio didn't work either. Or if it did, Merle hadn't turned it on at least. Sophia debated internally about what he might do if she reached over and turned the knob. Probably not a good idea.

He didn't seem to say much. The quiet was a little disconcerting. She hoped that maybe they would stumble upon the part of the highway where her mom and the others were, but it didn't seem likely. The road in front of them was completely deserted. She remembered that the highway where the others were was cluttered with abandoned vehicles.

Sophia hadn't realized how exhausted she was until she sat down and the car started moving. The roads they drove on were all flat and smooth and the only sound was the hum of the tires against the pavement. The sound lulled her, relaxed her whole body. She'd feel herself start to drift off and her eyelids would get heavy… then she'd jerk herself awake and remind herself that she didn't really know Merle Dixon and she really needed to be awake and alert right now.


Merle could almost ignore the tiny child beside him. At least she was quiet and didn't move around too much. He'd been driving almost eighteen hours straight. Not that he hadn't done it before, but he usually had some uppers to keep him going when he did it in the past. He couldn't remember the last time he had a good high, or a good buzz even for that matter. Damn 'pocalypse… shit really ruins a good time.

He really didn't have a plan. Had no idea where he was headed. He'd like to find Daryl. Partly because they were blood, and partly because he wanted to know where the fuck his brother was when his ass got fucking handcuffed to a rooftop. Of course, he knew where Daryl was. Daryl had been hunting. His younger son of a bitch brother had been off providing for those fucking piece of shit strangers that left him for dead. What Daryl should have been doing though was helping Merle score some drugs in Atlanta. Damn Daryl. Thinks he's all high an' fuckin' mighty cause his ass don't need-ta git high.

But Daryl wouldn't go. When Merle had said why he was going with the others into Atlanta, Daryl had said that now wasn't the time to get high. That now was the time to think clear and straight and be prepared. Fuck that. And look where not being high got Merle – it got him chained by some asshole cop-with-a-superiority-complex on a rooftop surrounded by geeks, and then it got him off that rooftop minus his fucking hand and all alone in a deserted city full of dead fuckers walking around.

Actually, he thought, the last score he found was right before he saw that truck outside the city – parked there like it was waiting for someone to come back to it. He couldn't remember what he'd taken but it had done the trick. Higher than a kite. And then of course, once Merle was on the road again, he couldn't remember who his own brother was let alone figure out which way to go to get back to him.

Merle always figured he thought straighter when he was high. He felt stronger, felt better, felt more in control when his head was in the clouds than when it wasn't. If he was high there was no way he'd have let this fucking brat invade his car. Hell, he probably would have just run her over the first time. Would have served the little shit right. What kind of world is this when little girls just run out of the woods into the road without looking? Fuckin' people.

He was jostled out of his thoughts as he turned a sharp corner and the girl sitting beside him slid across the seat suddenly, her slight body colliding with his side. The fabric of her shirt hitting his stump grated on the raw wound. "Sonvabitch!," Merle shouted and pushed the sleepy child back over and away from him.


Sophia hadn't meant to fall asleep, but then somehow her head had fallen forward and she'd drifted off, and her hand must have lost its grip on the door handle. So when he turned the car, her body was propelled over and across the seat and right into the bony hard body of Merle Dixon. She startled awake at his voice, "Sonvabitch!"

She scooted back at the same time that he pushed her away and across the seat. Her elbow banged hard into the passenger side door. She rubbed it and looked at him. "Sorry," she mumbled.

"Keep yer scrawny dumb ass over there an' away from me," Merle sneered angrily and turned his attention back to the road. He moved his right arm up as if he was going to rub the sleep out of his eyes and then seemed to realize he couldn't… that there wasn't a hand there anymore. His stump wound still seemed pretty grisly from the looks of it and Sophia wondered how it could possibly not be infected. She didn't imagine Merle bathed much, although to his credit he mostly just smelled like dirt.

Merle huffed a breath and muttered, more to himself than to her, "Guess I better pull it over an' call it a night." There was a small clearing in the woods up ahead off the side of the road, and Merle switched the lights off and pulled in the clearing a bit. He carefully maneuvered the car over some small bushes at the road side and then through some smaller branches so that the dark car might seem concealed in the night. If someone happened to drive by, they might not even notice that a car was parked there, and if they did… they'd probably assume it had crashed there and was long abandoned by now.

The car came to a complete halt and Merle first went to move his right arm again, and then he sighed irritably and twisted to get his left arm and hand across his body to put the shifter into park. Sophia's hand shot out first… she pressed the button on the shifter and pushed it into the park position with a click.

"Hrmph…," Merle grunted something unintelligible.

"You're welcome," Sophia said pointedly.

Merle glanced at her, his eyes glinted in the darkness and she could feel his glare burning through her. If looks could kill, I'd be dead right now. She opened her mouth and stammered, "I just mean… you know… you say, thank you… then I say, you're welcome… it's like a thing... or something… I think my mom called it manners."Sophia had a feeling she wasn't helping her cause here very much.

Merle snorted derisively. "I'm-a gonn' hit the snooze for a bit… feel free to scamper yer fuckin' smart ass off into the woods an' get eaten before I's wake up. A'right then,… uh… uh," Merle searched for something to call her. He realized belatedly that he didn't know her name.

"Sophia," she supplied, "I'm Sophia, Sophia Peletier."

Merle snarled, "I don't give a shit. Yer a fuckin' pain in my ass is what ya is." And with that Merle slumped down a bit in the seat, leaned his head against the side of the car, and closed his eyes.