CHAPTER 11

In Which: Glenn wants to make a quick detour and Daryl can't believe his life.

"Pull off here."

Daryl looked over at Glenn but didn't change course. "Why?"

"Just turn! Quick, we're passing the ramp!"

Daryl twisted the wheel and the truck swerved jarringly over the rumble strip. An open packet of crackers that Glenn had set on the dashboard flew to the side and exploded against the window in a shower of crumbs.

"Godamnit, Glenn!"

"Whooo NASCAR turn! Alright!"

"You're a pain in my ass, y'know that," Daryl exhaled in a longsuffering sigh.

"Yeah, you said that like an hour ago," Glenn replied, flicking a crumb at him. "See my face? That's apathy." He leaned down to brush the crumbs into a pile and yelped as Daryl swatted the back of his head.

"Shut up 'n focus. Why're we in - what is this dump - Murfreesboro? Th'hell kinda name is that for a town."

"Oh!" Glenn bounced back up. "We need to go to the Amazon warehouse."

Daryl waited a beat. "Why?"

"I have an idea."

Daryl muttered a few choice words under his breath that Glenn chose to ignore for the sake of social harmony.

"Hey stop at a gas station, will you? I have the address but we need a local map."

Daryl pulled up at a Circle K and got out to check the pumps and tanks while Glenn ran inside. The street was barren with not a walker in sight, more disconcerting than comforting, and he hoisted his machete as he cautiously entered. A sudden noise caused his heart to thud and adrenal glands to squirt, before he realized it was a little bell above the door. Well, that made him feel dumb.

He made quick work of searching the aisles for threats and/or snacks. Nothing, besides a three quarters bottle of Jim Beam behind the counter. Plenty of maps though. He grabbed one and left.

"Any gas?"

"Nope," said Daryl. "All cleaned out."

"Same inside. Okay!" he exclaimed brightly, slamming the passenger door shut behind him. "Let's go! Uh..." He opened the map, which was practically the size of the windshield when unfolded, and disappeared behind it. "Gooo," he began, raising his voice to be heard over the crinkling paper as he turned the map this way and that. "Right! Then right, left, left, right, left, right, left, left. Oops, I mean right, right, left. At the end there. Okay?"

Daryl raised an eyebrow, unimpressed.

"Uh, go that way," he pointed.

It took them twenty minutes and two wrong turns before they finally managed to find the right street. It was in the industrial part of town, chain link fences and towering hulking monoliths of iron and steel rose around them. It was odd, seeing so many smokestacks standing in a row without any smoke, like Paul Bunyan's church organ.

"Can you imagine Captain Nemo playing Toccata and Fugue on a pipe organ the size of those smoke stacks? Talk about creepy. Brrr," he said, shivering dramatically.

Daryl's gaze bounced between him and the stacks incredulously. "Y'know what gives me th'creeps, Glenn? You."

"Oh come on, you know what I'm talking about. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea! It's a classic!"

"I know what it is, jackass, I ain't stupid."

Daryl seemed so honestly offended that Glenn couldn't help but feel chastised.

He bit his lip. "Right, sorry."

Daryl snuck another glance at him. "Yeah, well. Are we gittin' close to this place'r what?"

"Should be just up ahead."

They ended up pulling into a huge parking lot littered with upturned traffic cones, broken down cars, and crows. As they slowly made their way through the mess, the crows squawked angrily into the sky, revealing the hidden layer of corpses beneath them. The piles of bodies were thicker towards the edge of the lot where they ended in a huge burning pile near the dumpsters. Nothing new or alarming.

The building itself struck Glenn as prisonesque. A nice prison, but still a prison. Long, tall, with thick walls and corners that stood above the rest and resembled towers. They drove slowly past docking bay door after docking bay door, on and on and on. It was a monster of a building.

Daryl stopped the truck in front of the dock closest to the entrance.

"What are you doing?"

"Ain't no way I'm goin' in and leavin' Nellie like this. Aside from the fact we don't know what th'hell we'll find in there, don't wanna come out to walkers swarmin'er."

"Right. I'll go in alone and open the bay door." Glenn pulled out his backpack and unclipped a small, single-strap backpack that was hanging off the side.

Daryl gave him a weird look. "What's that'cher purse?"

Glenn glared. "No! It's my slingpack! I love this thing! It's got all my tools and it's a convenient size!"

"Y'know I think you're eyeliner's worn off, might wanna fix it when you're inside."

"Shut up man," Glenn ground out, opening the door angrily. "It's Swiss gear," as if that meant something. "It's not a freaking purse, you douche." He moved to get out but paused at the feeling of a callused hand gripping his forearm. He followed the hand up the arm, up the shoulder, up the neck to Daryl's solemn eyes.

"Watch your back," Daryl said seriously. "There could be anythin' in there. If you're not out in five I'm comin' in after you."

Glenn swallowed and nodded, thrown off by the sudden change in atmosphere. Daryl let him go and he clambered out of the truck. He threw a mock salute to ease the tension and felt better when Daryl rolled his eyes.

The entrance was two huge double glass doors. Unlocked, thankfully, and with one last glance back at the truck he went in.

The first room was empty. Literally empty, one big cement room with three floor-to-ceiling turnstile gates at the other end. Well, crap. Hopefully whoever left the front doors unlocked was expecting to return and left these open too. He tried the first one but it wouldn't budge. Damn it. He stood there for a minute, fuming, and shoved at it angrily just because he could. This time he was rewarded with one scraping inch. Maybe it was just rusty. He tried the next turnstile and it spun smoothly around him.

Eh heh. Daryl didn't need to know about that.

The next room had a row of small, personal lockers and a row of three metal detectors leading to the next room. He waved his machete merrily as he pranced through the rightmost one. How novel. He sniggered to himself before being completely floored at the size of the next room he found himself in. True he'd read it was over a million square feet, but still.

Think big. Not just big, but big and filled floor to ceiling with crap: boxes and bags and plastic and metal. It looked like a real life game of chutes and ladders, with packages in various states of undress in various stages of their journey, paused permanently on various conveyer belts and trapped forever within various machines.

It was pretty sweet.

But he was forgetting himself. He made his way to the first loading dock, noticing with profound sadness an abandoned pallet stacked shoulder-height with brand new Xbox Ones. It was so wrong. Damn the apocalypse. Behind the pallet was what interested him more, a computer station with a shelf full of scanners next to it. That must be the inventory system. He started towards it before he remembered, shit, Daryl.

Running to the dock, he grabbed the handle and heaved open the bay door, barely managing to get out of the way before Daryl barged right in with the truck.

"Dude!" He yanked the door shut. "You about ran me over!"

"No shit," Daryl bit out, slamming the truck door and stalking over to loom over him. "You made time bleed y'shaved it so close."

"Did I?" he asked nervously.

"You were late."

"Was I?"

Daryl's eyes darkened. "Stop makin' out like you don't know. I'm serious, Glenn. When I say five I mean fuckin' five. I'm not gonna sit out there on my ass not knowin' if you been et or if y'just dickin' around. You best 'member that if you wanna be with me, boy."

Glenn blinked.

A rusty wheel turned behind Daryl's eyes. "I need to trust you if we're goin travel together," he explained gruffly, starting to look like he regretted saying anything. "Sioux Falls, it don't mean nothin' to me." Now he looked majorly pissed at himself and broke eye contact, looking slightly down and away.

Glenn wasn't sure what to say. Daryl had basically just admitted that he only came along because Glenn meant something to him. Unless he was reading into things, which was entirely possible. Possible but unlikely, judging from how uncomfortable Daryl looked with himself.

"Okay," Glenn said simply, tilting his head to catch Daryl's eyes again, trying to convey understanding and sincerity.

Daryl didn't move his head but flicked his eyes back up to Glenn, nodded minutely and turned away. He inhaled deeply and looked around himself for the first time. "So what're we lookin' for?"

"Oh you'll see," he said gleefully and waltzed over to the computer.

"How's that gonna work with no power-" Daryl cut himself off as Glenn turned the tower on its side and popped off the side panel. "Oh."

Glenn took a precision screwdriver set out of his pack and immediately set to work gutting the thing, pulling out wires and cords, scratching the poop out of the motherboard, and finally sliding out the hard drive, standing up to set it on the desk. He frowned and blew the dust off it, coughing as it bounced off the monitor and back into his face. There was a snort behind him and mumbled, "Dumbass." He glared over his shoulder and reached back into his pack, digging around until he pulled out two USB adapters, one SATA and the other mini-USB. Plug, plug, plug and he turned on his phone to begin data recovery.

"Okay," he said a few minutes later. "Found it. Come, Robin! To the bat cave! There's not a moment to lose!"

Daryl swiveled around from where he had been fiddling with some type of machinery. "What? Aw, hell no. I'm Batman," he growled.

Glenn stopped short and stared at him agape. "Daryl," he said slowly. "Have I ever told you how amazing you are?"

Daryl's snarl faded into faint bafflement and he just stood there, looking confused and... Well sort of adorable. If Glenn was the sort of person who would notice that sort of thing about the sort of person that Daryl was. Sort of. It wasn't a bad look on him, let's put it that way.

"This way," Glenn said and turned past the conveyors towards the west end of the room that was filled with shelving. The sound of Daryl's boots was a calming presence behind him as they slowly weaved their way to the right aisle, pausing every few feet and perking their ears for the sound of movement in the reverberant room.

"Here we go." Glenn picked up a small box from one side, walked down a few feet and picked up a larger one from the other side. "That's it, let's go."

"You gotta be shittin' me," Daryl griped. "We did all this for that? What the hell is it?"

"You really want to do this now? Or in the car on the road?"

Daryl scoffed and muttered under his breath but acquiesced, leading the way back. Glenn was feeling pretty damn good about all this. Not one setback! He was smiling dorkily to himself as he tossed his stuff into the passenger side, grabbing the handle of the bay door as Daryl turned over the truck engine. He yanked up with all his strength and fell back with a sharp cry as dozens of rotting hands shot through and grabbed at him.

Glenn's ass hurt like a bitch as his tail bone slammed into the concrete, but he didn't notice and brought the machete down in a high arc, slicing off the hand that had managed to clamp onto his ankle. The moans and growls of the walkers echoed in the warehouse like some kind of furry porn video, they echoed through his head like death. He gave a sharp kick at the head of the handless walker, its jawbone breaking clean off from the impact. There were more scrambling up the ramp and he couldn't seem to get his feet under him. Blood was pounding through his skull and his breathing became erratic.

Then a hand grabbed his collar and pulled him halfway into the truck.

"Feet! Pick up your feet! Get the door!" Daryl bellowed.

Glenn hastily pulled his feet in, closing the door just as Daryl floored it. One more second and the door would have been knocked off its hinges as they surged through the docking bay and smashed through the crowd of walkers. Glenn yelped as his head smacked into the ceiling, truck jostling wildly to the sound of crunching and squelching as they plowed down anything in their way, tires squealing as they finally pulled out onto the main road.

"If those walkers fucked up my truck, you're ass is mine Chinaman!"

"It's a piece of junk anyway!" Glenn shouted back recklessly, giddy from their escape. At Daryl's look of pure outrage he hastily added, "I mean I'm sure it's fine, if not we can fix it. I'll help."

Daryl snorted. "Like I want you anywhere near it."

Glenn ignored him, too happily engaged in opening the slightly larger box. Daryl leaned over, blatantly straining to see what it was as Glenn finally lifted it up with a flourish.

"What the fuck, man! That's it? What is it?"

"I've always wanted one," Glenn said, turning it around, marveling at it. "It's... a mini quadcopter!"

"What?"

"And I've just named him Timmy."

"That's it, there's nothin' else for it," said Daryl, sounding slightly dazed. "I have to kill you."

"Oh and one more thing." Glenn reached into his pack and pulled out the Jim Beam. "Who loves ya."

I'm a man, a man of simple pleasures
I got all I need, so I give me whiskey measures
I am told the world is nearly ending
But when I look outside the birds are always singing
But all of my life I've been treated like a fool
But I'm no ones fool

Here I go once again trying hard to pretend
There's a future in your man made rules
I'll be governed by the road, get to shed this heavy load
I see no future, so leave me in the past

"Man of Simple Pleasures" by Kasabian