He knew he was screwed when the axe handle broke after he used it on his ninth walker. He only had time to swipe up the blade end before another walker was on him and this one was huge. In its former life it might have been a body builder, but now it was just a tool of destruction with a very bad tempered set of jaws. Wasting no time in trying to use the axe blade on it, Merle slipped the blade under his arm and fired off a round into the beast's head. He had eleven bullets left, if his half-crazed mind was counting correctly. Staggering to the right he made for Dale's rifle. It didn't matter that the thing was empty, he needed something to swing with now. Deciding that he had to forgo his use of the axe, he let it fall from under his arm and picked up the rifle, shoving it over his shoulder at the walker that was going for a sneak attack.

"Eat it, you fuckin' ugly bastard!"

Weaving in between two walkers he cuffed one with his knife and knocked the other's feet out from under it. If he could make it around to the other side of the porch, it would leave the path completely clear for Daryl to drive the truck through. And if there happened to be a tree or ladder along the way then it would be a bonus, but he couldn't get his hopes up. He tried to get a count of how many walkers he had left; there looked to be somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty.

The rifle proved to be a much poorer clubbing weapon than the axe, for it snapped after about three uses. Merle switched back to his pistol and ran backwards, positioning each shot in between the walkers' eyes. He kept a steady count, feeling a shroud of terror as he got closer and closer to zero. His third to last bullet was spent keeping a crawling walker from taking a bite out of his foot and then he stuffed the pistol into his belt, wrenching the knife out of its duct tape hold. Neon pink wrappings fell to the ground like confetti and his cauterized stump was thrown into the light. He held the knife in his left hand, flexing his fingers around it and licking his sweaty upper lip.

"Well, Merle, looks like y'done picked the wrong time to act the hero. Democracy's over with, but who's still in charge, huh? I vote me!"

Screaming as if his body were on fire, he lunged and got in two good stabs before he went down underneath three walkers. He fought like a mad animal, possessed by a rage and will to live that was stronger than much anything else. He used his stump to whack one walker in its eye and he stabbed the knife upward into another's nostril. Reaching across one out-of-action corpse he brought the knife down into the third walker's forehead in the last possible second before it managed to bite him. That was as close of a call as he wanted to have and scrambled back to his feet, now bleeding inside his mouth.

He held on to a fistful of a walker's hair and pummeled his stump into its face, thundering, "Mo—ther—fu—cker!" every time he made contact.

Then he felt cold, clammy dead hands seize his thick neck and reel him in backwards He choked and spun in an attempt to throw his attacker off, but the walker held fast to him and Merle fought with it in a vertical wrestling match. Some sort of black liquid squirted out of the walker's mouth and dribbled down its chin and Merle had to exercise a lot of self control to not vomit again. A swollen purple tongue lolled out of the mouth and the walker's teeth snapped at Merle's face. Behind him he heard another one coming.

This was it.

A bullet grazed past his head, snipping off a bit of his ear as it struck the walker in the cheekbone. He glanced up hopefully and saw Daryl driving the truck at full speed towards the remaining walkers, ramming into them and crushing them underneath the truck's wheels. Andrea was leaning out of the window with Shane's rifle in her hands and from the back of the truck Rick was firing his Colt Python.

All Merle had to do was stand perfectly still as walkers crumpled around him. He watched the last of them hit the ground hard, never to rise again and roared with what remained of his voice, "I had everythin' goin' juss fine, now who asked you to interfere?" before he too fell and lay on the ground, more aware of his pulse than ever before. He felt the vibration in the ground as Daryl and Andrea ran towards him. Daryl pulled Merle up so that they were face to face and shook him.

"Are you bit?"

"'F I was, I'dda taken a chunk outta your ugly face already," said Merle, voice cracking.

"You crazy son of a bitch, you put down nearly thirty of them," said Andrea in relief. "And in about ten minutes, too."

"That's all it was?" said Merle slightly in delirium. "Then what the hell took you so long?"

"Truck stalled," said Daryl with a wry smile.

"Figures."

Andrea slung one of Merle's arms over her shoulder and Daryl took the other. Together they walked Merle back to the truck and helped him sit down on the tailgate while Rick gently pulled him backwards to rest against the side.

"You okay?" he asked.

Merle scowled at him. "I dunno, Officer Friendly, how do I look? I feel like shit, if that's what you're askin'."

"That was incredible, what you did."

"Yeah, well I gotta strong will to survive. Livin's pretty high up on my priority list."

"I can see that."

"Shut up, man, juss 'cuz we got through this don't mean a damn thing. I still hate your guts."

"That's all fine with me," said Rick. "Daryl, get us the hell outta here."

Daryl obliged and opted to back out over one more walker as he went. Andrea sat in the front seat with him, watching the road ahead and ever ready to fire with her rifle.

"So you gonna stick 'round for a while?" asked Rick as they drove on, bumping along the dirt road.

Merle watching the thick smoke against the reddened night sky growing smaller behind them. He shrugged, and at this point, that took as much effort as it would be to stand up and do a cartwheel off the back of the truck. "I might stay," he said dismissively.

"Thank you," said Rick, voice heavy with regret, "for helping save my son."

"I didn't do anythin'," said Merle.

"In my eyes you did. You saved Andrea too, and it helped us, didn't it? She saved all of us."

"Yeah, guess she did," Merle admitted, watching the back of her head. "Looks like she found somethin' to live for after all."

"And have you?"

"Yeah, I have." Merle stared down at his bruised stump and then the knife he still had in his left hand. "I'm gonna need s'more duct tape and I'm tellin' ya now, it'd better not be pink."

Merle lifted a bucket onto his shoulders and carried it over to where Daryl was skinning a deer with T-Dog. Without looking up at him, Daryl asked, "Did you get the bucket I asked for?" In response Merle clouted him upside the head with his stump, now wrapped in zebra print duct tape with his knife reattached to the end.

"What's this in my hand, y'dumbass?"

"What, I'm busy here, so don't get sore at me!"

"It wouldda taken you half a second to look up and it don't take two to skin a buck, numb nuts."

"I'm teachin' him how!"

"You're hopeless, that's what y'are."

"Argh, screw you."

Merle headed back over to the trailer, passing Rick and Carl who were tying off ropes underneath the cover of the trees. In the clearing around them the woods grew wild and tall. They had found a spot; a sort of hill overlooking a valley below with a running creek nearby. Walkers were few and far between and in the past month Merle had counted about six which meant a total of ten since they had settled in three months ago. He glanced further down the hill where there were four crosses standing side by side. Three of the graves held memoirs of those they had lost and one held Shane's body.

"What are you looking at?" asked Andrea, wiping her hands on a towel as she came out of the trailer.

"Nothin'," said Merle, putting his good arm around her waist. "But I was thinkin', what was the total count back at Hershel's 'cuz I think I saved your ass a few more times that last night."

"No, you didn't. I paid up my last tally when I shot that walker you were wrestling with," said Andrea, sparing him an annoyed look.

"Y'hit me in the ear, though. I can't b'lieve y'actually shot me. Agin."

"Oh, just shut up. We're even now, aren't we?"

Merle glanced down at the small bump forming around her midsection. "Okay, fine, we're even, but if I come up with another tally mark-,"

"You'd better not," Andrea threatened.

Bumping his jaw against her forehead in his version of a kiss, Merle asked her, "So, juss say iss a girl, what are you plannin' on callin' her?"

"Well, Amy is obviously going to be in her name somewhere, but I'm not sure, it's too early to tell. I still think that's going to be a boy, though. And if it is-,"

"I know, I know—Dale."

Merle picked up a rifle from the weapon box and across his shoulders, hanging his arms over it. "I'll be back."

"Where are you going?" asked Andrea.

"Juss for a walk."

He walked past Daryl again on his way down the hill and his little brother shook his head irritably at him. Merle gave him the bird and kept walking.

CLOSING THOUGHTS:

Oh, good grief, this was my first-ever WD story and almost six years later, I cringe at it because it's fully of the types of no-nos that I refuse to give into when I write stories now like "One Year Later"s and "Happily Ever After"s and just-everything with this story. But everyone has that sort of feeling with their first stories, right? I haven't deleted it because some people still tend to come back to it now and then, but I can't come back to it with a ten-foot pole except to write this little ending blurb. If nothing else, this story got me started on my Merle/Michael Rooker love and led to me meeting the man in person a few times and spending time just getting to know a bit about him, which has been very rewarding. So there's that.