She certainly wasn't a talker, Merle thought to himself as he drove the deserted back country road. She'd been sitting for over an hour just staring out the passenger window. He tried a few smart ass remarks trying to rile her up to get her talking but she just rolled her eyes and looked away.
Suddenly he heard her say, "Wait. Back up. There's a road there, like a farm road." He stopped the car and backed up a ways. There was a road but just barely. It was a one lane dirt drive that had almost been overgrown by bushes and honeysuckle vines. There was no way of knowing what lay at the end of it except to try it. He turned and eased the truck through the brush. About 100 yards back off the road behind a field was a small farm house. It looked deserted. Merle drove up close to the front porch. He sat and waited a minute or so to see if anyone poked their head out.
"Wait here," he told Marty, "Gonna check it out." He stepped on the porch and followed his usual protocol, rap on the door a few times to draw out any biters and wait. Nothing came running. He stepped inside. The house was neat and orderly. Everything looked intact. He checked each room and found a door leading to an underground cellar. That's where he found the former residents.
A man and woman lay side by side with hands entwined. They both had gunshot wounds to the head and the man was still holding a pistol. A smaller bundle wrapped in a Winnie the Pooh blanket lay next to the woman. Blood had seeped through one end of the blanket. "Goddamn it," Merle whispered as he retched at the sight and smell before him. He quickly made his way back upstairs.
He checked out the back. There was a storage shed and a clothes line with tattered towels still hanging on it. There was also a small garden plot to one side which had gone wild but apparently some seeds from previous years had produced a couple of tomato plants and a cucumber vine. There were several ripe or nearly ripe tomatoes and a bunch of cucumbers. They'd eat good tonight. He checked out the storage shed just to be safe. Nothing was inside except an old garden tiller and various tools.
He walked back around to the front and told Marty that it was safe to come inside. She hobbled up the steps and walked in with a kind of reverent awe. He stood aside and watched as she walked from room to room. She stopped in the living room in front of a family portrait of the trio he'd found downstairs. It was something he hadn't even noticed. It was your typical WalMart family photo with the smiling couple and a tot of about four or five sitting on the mom's lap. Marty reached and gently touched the faces on the photo before turning to look at Merle.
"Are they here somewhere?" she asked.
"Uh, yeah, all dead," he replied uncomfortably.
"Were they turned?" she asked, her eyes looking misty.
"No, no bites that I saw. Looks like they ended it themselves," he admitted.
She nodded and turned away before easing herself onto the sofa and propping her leg on the ottoman. It was the first time he'd really looked at her since back at the store. She had cleaned up in the shower before Jones showed up. Her dark brown hair was short and curled slightly at the ends. She had very fair skin with a few freckles sprinkled across her nose, and her eyes were a deep blue/gray color. She was a fine looking woman. If she wasn't so worn down and exhausted she'd probably be a real beauty. He could tell her ribs were hurting her again.
"Did you pack the rest of those Vicodin?" she asked.
"Yeah, they're in the truck," he replied, "but do you need to be taking that shit being pregnant and all?"
"I don't remember asking for your advice, boy scout," she told him. "My fuckin' ribs hurt. I'd like a pain pill or do I need to go get it myself."
"I'll get your pills. But before you take 'em think about that baby. However mad you are at that bastard Jones, however much you hate him, that baby didn't have nothin' to do with that. He or she is coming here, into this already fucked up world, as a clean slate. What you do from here on out is gonna make the difference in whether that kids turns out good or just like its Daddy," Merle told her.
"What the fuck do you know? You don't know what they did to me, my family. You think I wanted that bastard all over me every night. Do you know what that's like? Of course you don't. When he wasn't raping me, he was beatin' the shit out of me. How the hell can I be all maternal towards something that belongs to him?" she spewed viciously.
"That's the thing, though, it don't belong to him. Not anymore. It's yours now. I don't know what it was like for you, but I do know how it feels to be beat just for breathin'. That was my life for about fifteen fuckin' years. I ain't tryin' to tell you what to do. I just know that from the time I was born, my Daddy hated me, took every chance to make sure I knew it. I never did anything but try to please him until I couldn't take no more. If you're startin' that cycle with this baby before it's even born, it ain't gonna end well for either of ya," Merle advised.
Marty turned her face away from Merle. He could tell she was holding back sobs. "I'll go get those pills for ya," he mumbled.
"Wait," she said as she rolled her eyes, "Just bring the fuckin' Advil."
"Okay, Advil it is," he replied with a tiny grin. When he walked back in, she had gotten off the couch and he found her walking down the cellar stairs.
"What the fuck are you doin'?" he yelled.
She saw the trio at the bottom of the stairs before looking back up at him, her eyes huge with grief. She was shaking like a leaf. He walked down, put his arm around her and gently coaxed her back upstairs and onto the sofa. She lay down and buried her face in the cushion. He knew he was supposed to do something to comfort her but he had no idea what that should be, so he just walked back outside to get their things out of the truck.
He took his time unloading their few supplies and then made a lot of noise as he walked back on the porch. He hoped she'd finished her crying. He wasn't used to dealing with hysterical women and had no intention of starting now. She was sitting up on the couch. Her eyes were red rimmed but she had gotten herself under control.
"You, uh, you hungry or anything?" he asked awkwardly. She just shook her head but she did reach for the Advil bottle as he handed it to her.
"We have to bury them," she said after swallowing a couple of the pills with a sip from a water bottle.
"Yeah, I guess so," Merle agreed. "There's a shovel in the shed out back. I'll get started on diggin' some holes. You just stay up here and rest. I'll let you know when I'm done." Marty made no comment but merely nodded once before turning to look out the window.
Merle worked for hours digging three holes deep enough for the bodies. He found a plastic tarp in the shed as well and used it to wrap the bodies one at a time and carry them out to the graves he dug. Once they were all safely planted, he told Marty that he was done. She stood up and walked out onto the back porch.
He'd dug the graves behind the shed under a tall pine. "Figured that'd be as good a spot as any," Merle told her.
She nodded. "It's good. They're all together, the way they wanted to be." Tears were starting to form in her eyes again but she quickly wiped them away. She sat down on the back stoop. The light was beginning to fade and the air was cooling. He sat down on the opposite side of the steps leaving as much space as possible between them.
"I had a daughter," she said as she gazed off into the distance, "a husband and a daughter."
Merle looked at her. It hurt him to see how much pain she was in just talking about it. "I figured it was somethin' like that," he said.
"We lived outside Atlanta in a nice little house, a quiet neighborhood. It was like some damn perfect family tv show up until the world went to shit," she told him. "My husband packed up the car and we headed toward the refugee camp but the roads were too clogged. We ran out of gas and had to start walking. That's when we ran into Jones. He said he had a camp set up, survival supplies, said he was takin' people in. We were desperate. We believed him. We didn't have any other choice. He killed David, my husband, the first week, just knifed him through the chest and left him on the side of the road. He took me and my baby girl Lily to his camp. There were other women there and a few kids. He locked us up, started visiting me at night. When winter set in, we had almost no heat and never had enough to eat. Lily got sick. He wouldn't get medicine for her, said only the strong could survive, that it was the new world order, survival of the fittest. She died after about a week. I think it was pneumonia. After that, I didn't care what happened for a long time. I just existed. When I figured out I was pregnant, I decided I was leaving. I wasn't gonna watch another child suffer and die for that man. I made a shiv out of a piece of metal. When one of his men brought my food, I stuck into his temple, took the key, unshackled myself and left. They would have caught me but I slid down a steep hill into a ravine, tumbled a few times. That's how I broke my ribs. Anyway, that's my story, boy scout, what's yours?" she said as she turned to look at him.
"Me? I ain't got no story," he told her.
"Aw, come on now," she goaded, "Surely you've saved a few cats from trees or helped some old ladies cross the street?"
"Enough with the smartass shit," he replied. "I've had my share of trouble. That ain't too hard to see," he told her as he held his stump out.
"I don't reckon there's anybody left who can say that it's been a cake walk. I was with a group of folks for a while. The leader was a sick bastard. I killed him and lit out. I reckon we're alike in that respect."
She slumped her shoulders and shook her head sadly. "Humph! Ain't we a pair, boy scout? Ain't we just a pair?"
Merle stood up and reached out his good hand to help her to her feet. "Come on, woman. I'm hungry. Let's find some grub," he told her.
The two of them settled in at the little farm house over the next few weeks. They had enough supplies on hand to last a month or so, longer if Merle got a deer while out hunting. He figured that Marty needed to rest up and heal before they even talked about moving on.
