This is the "meanwhile back at the Prison" chapter.
If you are a BTVS fan you will recognize the title I borrowed for this chapter! Thank you JW, I only steal from the best.
8. Conversations with dead people
Glenn stood at the edge of a tall building with the hot Georgia summer sun trying to curdle his brain like a hardboiled egg. He leaned over to look down at the street below. Saw a tank. Saw hundreds of walkers swarming the barely visible corpse of a red roan horse next to it. He felt dizzy, disoriented—but he knew where...and when...he was.
"Looks like you're up shit creek, Jackie Chan; unless you learned how to fly..." A painfully familiar gravelly sarcastic drawl growled from behind him.
Glenn slowly turned around and saw Merle Dixon, handcuffed to a pipe on the roof the building where they'd left him so long ago. The day he'd met Rick, saved him when he'd been trapped in the tank below.
"Dumb ass." Glenn bit out, swaying slightly, his head throbbing, a sharp pain in his gut on the left side threatening to make him heave up his lunch...it had been a good lunch...venison...hadn't it?
Daryl had brought back the doe last night-at noon today Carol had breaded the chop cuts and fried them up in pork fat from one of Hershel's pigs...smiled as she told him greasy food was a good hangover cure... Maggie had looked at him with wry amusement, telling him she hoped he'd enjoyed his bender last night because that was the last one he was allowed before the baby...shit! The baby!
He looked around, panicked now—he had to get back to her-back to his wife-he looked over to where he remembered the door had been, saw it moving , almost pulsating, pushing in and rocking back, long blackened and grey fingers and glassy eyed faces trying to push through the crack revealed each time it came towards him.
"Locked; chained up thanks to the fuckin' key master hisself." Merle griped, simultaneously thanking T-Dog for not leaving him to the biters and damning him for dropping the key. "Geeks can't get through—I'as contemplatin' hackin' off this here hand til you showed up."
"I'm not supposed to be here." Glenn said, wrapping his arms around himself and hunching slightly against the burning in his belly. Looking down he realized he was wearing the same baseball shirt—the same entire outfit he'd had on that day, down to the cap—he hadn't worn a cap since the night the farm had been overrun...when he'd finally told Maggie he loved her...when he'd stopped feeling like a kid lost in a AU video game...finally knew this hellish world was real.
"Ain't none of us supposed to be here, Number 1 son. I should be back at camp eyeballin' the fine ass of one a them blondies Dale's hoardin in his RV... sister act, mm hmmn, that's what I'm talkin' about!" and he cackled, waggling his tongue lasciviously.
"Shut the hell up, Merle!"
"Aw now, tell it true, my young rice picker—you in yer sleepin' bag havin' some alone time with yer piece an' some Vaseline jus' imaginin' it was pretty little Amy's—"
"Fuck you!" Glenn yelled, stalking towards the seated sunburned man. "You really were a grade A asshole weren't you?"
"I'm a glass half full kinda guy, Short Round." Merle laughed and his hand whipped out, grabbing Glenn's leg, pulling him down, his shoulder and head hitting the hard graveled surface of the roof with a thunk, making him see stars and knocking the wind out of him.
Merle's free hand went around his neck, throttling him and Glenn flailed against it, choking, gagging, and digging his fingers into the implacable leather tough skin on the back of Dixon's fist.
"Now I figure we're in hell, see? But you ain't supposed to be here—nah uh—you a white hat—so if I hitch my wagon to ya, Old Merle might just get harrowed outa here when yer guardian angel comes after ya, savvy?" he loosened his grip incrementally so Glenn could breathe and reply.
"Guardian angel?' Glenn croaked. Did he mean Rick? "Officer Friendly?"
"Nope—other one-same one's always savin' yer ass—piss-ant mother fucker who shoulda been savin' mine." Merle's voice sounded furious and something else...hurt.
"Daryl." Glenn sighed.
"He's talkin' again, Daddy." Maggie said, removing the cool compress from Glenn's forehead.
"That's to be expected, honey. His fever spiking again." Hershel said from behind her. He was worried about both of them. His daughter was pale, shaky, she probably hadn't eaten, a combination of morning sickness and worry removing all traces of an appetite.
"Let me sit with him a spell." Hershel said gently, laying his hand on her shoulder. "You've been here all night—try and eat a little—get some rest. You're no good to him if you can't function." Maggie reached back and covered her father's hand with her own.
"I can't lose him, daddy...not like this..." she choked out, her shoulders shaking.
"Daryl..." Glenn said distinctly, slitting opening his eyes and looking up at them.
"Glenn?" Maggie cried, putting her hands on his burning flushed cheeks.
"Tell Daryl..."
"What? Glenn, what?"
"Hurry—tell Daryl hurry..." Glenn said, focusing intently on Maggie's face, but then his eyes rolled back and he went rigid, his head dropping to the pillow.
"Daddy?" Maggie looked back at her father anxiously. Glenn's body was stiff, his head thrown back, hands, fingers splayed out and his toes pointing down.
"Seizure—petit mal." Hershel told her—it was not the type with shaking or trembling, but it was serious, a symptom of his brain having trouble coping with the fever. "We need to get his temperature down now—quickly." He didn't tell Maggie that even if Glenn lived long enough to have the surgery, even if it was successful, if they didn't get this fever down he could have permanent brain damage...
"Just hang in there, Glenn..."
"Glenn?" the kindly patient male voice gently said his name again. Glenn opened his eyes, but his vision was blurred, sun dazzled, a rainbow flare blocking his view of the speaker. He saw white hair, a beard...
"Hershel?" Glenn mumbled questioningly.
"Nope. More of a fisherman than a farmer." the voice chuckled. Glen felt a subtle rocking movement in the ground below him and heard the sound of water lapping gently against wood and then a whirring whiz and a splash. Wiping his hand across his face he rubbed his eyes, looked again and then it all went watercolor blurry again as he teared up.
"You don't look so good, son." Dale said with calm concern. He was wearing his navy blue fisherman's hat, a few finely tied fly lures stuck in the brim, a white t-shirt and pale fern covered Hawaiian shirt over tan chinos.
"Not hell." Glenn said, wiping his eyes and struggling into a sitting position. They were in Dale's canoe on the lake at the Atlanta quarry camp.
"Pardon?" Dale said with amusement.
"Merle said it was hell. Can't be hell if you're here." Glenn said, focusing hungrily on the man he'd missed so much.
"When did you start believing anything Merle Dixon had to say?" Dale guffawed, reeling in his line slowly.
"We were back in Atlanta, on the roof—he—he was still handcuffed there..."
"Purgatory." Dale said.
"What?"
"Kind of a waiting room. Figure that's what this is—despite the fact the Vatican discontinued it –officially—a few years ago." he chuckled again.
"Discontinued?" Glenn said, puzzled. What he knew about organized religion could fit in a thimble, but could they just do that?
"Said it wasn't borne out by Scripture or some such nonsense." Dale mused. "Seems they were wrong." he added dryly. "Hot as hell though." he said indicating Glenn's reddened dry face.
Glenn was burning up. He contemplated just slipping over the side for a nice cool swim, started leaning...
"Wouldn't do that if I were you," Dale's voice drew him back. Glenn looked up questioningly. "Look, but keep your hands inside the boat." he advised. The water was so clear Glenn could see all of the way to the bottom. The upper level, where Dale's line dangled, was populated by a myriad of colorful fish of all kinds, from trout to tropical, probably from every place the older man had ever fished.
As his gaze went deeper, to the bottom and he reeled back, horrified. Walkers. Dozens, hundreds, lurched crawled across the rocky sandy bottom. Just like down on the street in Atlanta.
"I'm proud of you, Glenn." Dale said drawing his attention back from the water. "You're still a good man, despite everything you've been through. You've grown up. Got a wife—family on the way—it's all I could've hoped for you."
Glenn blinked at Dale.
"How—how do you know all that?" most of what he'd just said had happened after...after Dale had died.
"Huh." Dale frowned and canted his head a little to the side. "Omniscience of the grateful dead, I suppose." he said with a shrug. "We're outside the flow of normal time here. Past...present...future, doesn't really matter."
"You can see the future?'
"Harder. Lotsa possible futures—all branching out from every decision we make. If you'd have left Rick in the tank, Merle wouldn't have gotten cuffed to the roof, but you'd have all died when he tried to lead the group back to camp. If Daryl had found me a few minutes faster I'd have lived a few more days, but Randall would've brought his gang of thugs back to the farm and they'd have raped and slaughtered every last one of us." He spun out the horrific scenarios so matter of factly that it took Glenn a minute to register exactly what he was saying.
"God." Glenn whispered, holding his head in his hands, trying not to let images of what Dale recounted fill his brain.
"Capricious bastard, isn't he?" Dale sighed. "Always seems to need a blood sacrifice...if Carl hadn't been shot—you'd have never met Maggie—but Otis wouldn't have died. If Ed hadn't been killed by walkers, Merle hadn't cut off his hand, Sophia hadn't gone missing...Daryl and Carol wouldn't have fallen in love..."
Glenn's head came up at that.
"Daryl and Carol?" he asked, his mouth pulling into a small smile.
"They're out looking for the stuff to save you, you know." Dale said reassuringly. "Had a little set back on the highway, but that actually turned out pretty well for them..." he chuckled.
"Daryl and Carol," Glenn nodded. Finally! He thought with satisfaction. And then he frowned and leaned closer to Dale. "Wait...how come you know this and I don't?"
"Come on Glenn, think about it."
"I...I don't..." his head was swimming again, Dale's face going in and out of focus.
"You're not dead yet." Dale told him gently.
The idea that Glenn has an out of body experience caused by his high fever appealed to me since on TWD we see other characters, (Daryl and Rick), see and have talks with missing loved ones. In the second episode of the series, "Guts" Jaqui says to Rick, after he has told the Atlanta scavenger group he was chasing a helicopter, "You were chasing a hallucination, imagining things—it happens." An idea later echoed by Michonne to Rick in the S3 episode, "Clear." You see somethin'? I know you see things...people. I used to talk to my dead boyfriend. It happens."
Of course Dale was an important mentor for Glenn, but in an odd way Merle was also an important catalyst for growth. In Woodbury, when he threw that walker in with Glenn it forced him to reach deep, go primal; realize that he had it in him to survive no matter what happened. I remember watching that episode and being amazed at what a bad ass Glenn was!
