No-one talks as we make our way back into the city, not that we wanted to. The tension is high as we come to a stop at on railway tracks on the outskirts. Daryl has been staring at T-Dog the entire time, picking at his fingernails. T-Dog just stares back at him, waiting for Daryl to say something. I know he will, Daryl likes confrontation. To him, getting in others faces and getting straight answers means he can get things done faster. Even if that means throwing the first punch.
"He better be okay. That's my only word on the matter." I roll my eye at the comment, Daryl at first glance can be intimidating and to most unapproachable. The whole onion analogy fits Daryl Dixon, there is way more to him than when you first meet him and when you actually get to know him.
"I told you, the geeks can't get at him. Only thing that's gonna get through that door is us." T-Dog says as Glenn pulls the van to a stop. Glen turns in his seat to address us all.
"We walk from here." Three us of stand, Daryl pulling open the van door and jumping out. T-Dog hold out his hand to help me down and I take it on my jump down. Shooting him a smile, which he returns with a nod, the two of us follow after the others as they jog off towards the city.
Glenn leads us to an overpass down the tracks, where a hole in the wire fence has been cut. He pulls the fence back and Rick passes through, followed by Daryl. Rick stops just shy of the hole and waits for Daryl to come through.
"Merle first or guns?" Daryl doesn't even hesitate to answer him.
"Merle. We ain't even having this conversation."
"We are." Rick turns to look at Glenn and I. "You know the geography, it's your call." Glenn and I share a look, my eyebrow raised since I didn't know where either of them were. With a map, I would be able to find them easily. Glenn shot us both a look as we began jogging.
"Merle's closest. The guns would mean doubling back." He answered. I tapped on Ricks shoulder and he slowed down to match my steps. I held up the notepad and he stopped altogether to read it. T-Dog noticed first that they were two people short and stopped to find us.
"What's the hold up?" He called back to us. Rick held up a hand to acknowledge him before looking up from the notepad to me. He studied me for a moment before speaking.
"You sure you wanna do that?" I nodded and took the pad from him. Glenn and T-Dog walked back over to us, Daryl fuming behind them.
"What now? Girly overexert herself?" He scowled at the glare I sent him.
"Seems our friend here is gonna go after the guns whilst we go get Merle off the roof." He directs his next sentence to the group. "T-dog, you go with her in case she needs any backup. If there is any trouble you pull back and leave it. You know where the department store is, come find us there. We'll wait until you two get back." T-Dog nods and they all start to move away but I reach out and grab Glenn's arm. He stops and shoots me a quizzical look.
"What?" I hurry to scrawl a small note and shoves the notepad in Glenn's awaiting hand. I held the pen out for him and he spent the next few minutes going over a small map with me, so I would know where to go. Daryl paced near the group obviously agitated.
"If you're done, let's go!" He finally stowed the notepad away in my back pocket. I rolled my eyes at him and took off with T-Dog, the latter having handed the bolt cutters off to Glenn. While we jogged to the gun bag, I slipped the bat off my belt loop and handed it to T-Dog. He accepted the bat and held it at the ready as we dear near the first junction. The moans of a few lurking Walkers has me drawing my bowie knife and crouching. I peeked around the corner and counted 7 in between where we were and the side street we needed to cross through. I pulled the notepad out and drew x's where I spotted the Walkers.
T-Dog and I crept out around the corner and took cover behind a parked car, watching the movement of the Walker's shuffles. I pointed to the closest two and mimed knifing them, T-Dog nodded and went after a lone Walker in our path. A loud 'Thwack!' draws the attention of the Walker closest to me but T-Dog is already scampering off to the side street. I creep up behind it and drive my knife into its skull. Lowering the body to the floor as quietly as I can while the second Walker advances towards its downed friend. Without a second to stop I shove the Walker to the ground and stab it in the brain.
Another 'Thwack!' sounds just ahead of me and I leap to my feet. T-Dog is in the street panting with a downed Walker at his feet. I tapped his shoulder and he spun around with the bat ready to swing. My hands flew up to protect my face and T-Dog swore under his breath.
"You gotta make some noise before you sneak up on people, didn't even hear you coming." He shakes his head and sighs. "Gotta get you bell or something." I gawk at him and he snickers. I punch his shoulder and pout, not really having a counter argument. T-Dog grins and we continue our way down the street.
Coming to a stop at the edge of the street we spot the tank. The Walkers have dissipated for the most part since, from the looks of it, the horse is nothing but bones with scraps of meat clinging to them. The smell of the dead was heavily concentrated around the area and it was hard not to gag. T-Dog spotted the bag of guns before I did and nudged my shoulder.
"There, half way between the tank and the alleyway there. Straight shot from there, Glenn said something about a ladder that goes all the way up to the top of the building." He points away down and there it is. The large black bag is sitting in the middle of the road and he's right. It is a straight shoot but it's currently surrounded by lingering Walkers. We pull back and crouch down, the map Glenn drew sitting on my knee, we took stock of the area around us.
There was a few trash piles, bits of ripped clothing, and old mail posts. The lack of cars around made it hard to create a distraction but we had to do something. We spent the next few minutes hashing together some semience of a plan. Since the Walkers were spreading out, making noise would get them to clump together, but the only thing we could make noise with was the sniper rifle on my back and the mailboxes.
Our plan consisted of a whole lot of danger. T-Dog was going to use the baseball bat to hit the mailbox as hard as he could a few times making a bunch of noise. Once he had enough attention drawn to him, I would swoop in and grab the gun bag and lay down some cover fire.T-Dog would skirt around the majority of them, we would escape into the alleyway and up the ladder. Since the bag would be on the heavier side T-Dog said he would carry it up the longer section of the ladders. Glenn said it would be a straight shoot from there, and if we didn't see them awaiting on the roof with Merle, we were to go back to the Van.
"When I start making noise, a few Walkers are gonna pass by your spot. I'd say maybe hide but there isn't much for you to hide behind, other than the dumpster." T-Dog pointed behind us and tucked away in a corner was a rollaway dumpster. It was about level with my head, which would provide me a higher ground to knife the Walkers from. I could snipe any that got too close to T-Dog and kill any that clawed at me. I turned and smirked at T-Dog, he smiled back when he clued in to my thoughts.
"Lets see if we can't go move that thing without making too much noise. Wouldn't wanna spoil the plan before it even begins." And with that we were jogging over to the big green dumpster and carting it over to the alleyway mouth as quietly as we could. Once it was in place T-Dog hoisted me up onto the lid and I slipped my rifle off my shoulder. We did a quick survey of the area to see if anything had changed and were pleased to see that only one of the Walkers had moved away from the others.
"You ready?" T-Dog asked, shooting me a glance out of the corner of his eye. I nodded and cocked the rifle. T-Dog took a breath and darted out into the street.
