The next day found Sam up even before daylight. She felt fine, not perfect, but better than the night before. She had had a bad dream about drinking uncountable amounts of wine and throwing up as Daryl held her hair up, the desperate cries of a baby in the background, her mind too foggy and drunk to make her go and tent to it. She had woken up, mouth dry, drowned in an entire plastic bottle of water and gone back to sleep, this time thankfully with no dreams. Now, as the gathered her own backpack among the others, she saw Darryl approach quietly. With a look, she knew he had something to say. The way he kept his head down but his eyes glued on hers, teeth nibbling on his lower lip, also told her that he didn't want to say whatever it was in front of the others.
Sam nodded at him once, sharply, and turned around to walk away, knowing he'd follow. She marched over to stand among the empty tents and turned around, arms crossed, to see Darryl join her. Now that they were alone, he let show what he was thinking. His pace was annoyed and agitated.
"Ya ain't goin'." he stated clearly.
"Yes, I am." Sam said just as firmly.
"Y ain't!" he took a large step towards her and stood close, looking down at her. "I get you wanted to go before, but after last night, with Merle out there with ya – Just tell Shane to go!"
"If he goes, not me, Merle will be out there alone with all those people," she also took a step, entering her personal space. Daryl straightened his back but didn't move away. "He's going and we can't convince him not to. I don't want him out there, not the way he is since yesterday, and what he did to me, but you know we can't stop him."
"I'll go then!" Daryl threw his arms up, but still didn't back away. "I'll go to help and contain him if that what this is about."
"You're going out to hunt, Daryl!" Sam gesticulated at him, getting impatient. "We're low on food, we need you to do this, we've talked about it already! Please, it is your job, you know that."
"My job?!" Daryl seethed. "My fuckin' job is looking after you! Go out and find food for all these people I don't even care about ain't more important than having your back!"
Sam got stuck in place, arms still crossed and looking up at his reddened blue eyes, hatred evident as he breathed hard. She blinked and opened her mouth to speak but closed it again, uncertain of what to say.
"Ya not going." he repeated in a definitive tone before turning around and walking away from her angrily, and still said over his shoulder. "Merle gonna deal with himself."
* * *
As Glenn said, the department store was still untouched, an actual supply paradise. The group looked around, delighted, and Glenn explained that he had been there already, got to know the back doors, rooftops of this and adjacent buildings, fire escapes and alleys around, all to make sure he could get in and out safely. The others thanked and congratulated him, glad to imagine how long they'd be able to survive out of so any new things. Also thanking him, Sam was proud to see him take charge and organize the group the best he could, splitting them all up to go gather things. As the others wandered away, Merle stood by her, his old, well know smirk firm on place.
"Watcha gonna get me do, sweetheart?"
"I ain't calling the orders today, Dixon."
He laughed. "Ain't no fuckin' way I'm letting China boy tell me what to do! And the fuck is that calling me Dixon all about? Still pissed 'bout last night?"
"Did you forget what I told you? Were you that drugged?"
"Wasn't drugged, princess, I'm quitting it. Did have a bit o'whiskey though."
"Do I need to tell you what happened then?"
"I remember just fine, thank ya very much. Just didn't thing ya'd be the type to hold the grudge 'cause of a fuckin' joke."
"You of all people should know ya don't joke 'bout this kinda thing, Dixon. I meant it, just stay away. Do your job as Glenn tells you, just like everyone else, try to be normal for once."
She walked away from him then, unable to look at his face any longer, but still heard as he mumble, his footsteps going up the stairs, "Ain't getting orders from China boy." She took a deep breath, eyes closed. As angry as she was with him, as much as she wanted to cut any kind of relationship with him, she had the feeling that this had not been the right moment to do it. Something bad was going to come out of it.
A couple of hours later, the mount of supplies scavenged that they all left close to one of the doors was huge. They had found clothes, tools, camping gear and even a few kitchen stuff. The mood around was good, Sam could see smiles she rarely saw on camp, but she was worried herself. Glenn had told her Merle had been up on the rood, a rifle in hand, looking around to the other buildings, keeping guard. She would be relieved if she believed he would not do anything wrong until they left. Just as she thought about going up to call him down, since they'd be leaving in the next few minutes, all thoughts and smiles were gone. From the street, gunshots cut the eerie silence of Atlanta, followed after seconds by walkers passing in front of the store, seeable through the glass doors. The gunshots kept ringing, now strangely accompanied by horse hoofs hitting the asphalt.
"Fuck! What the fuck!" Sam cried as the number of walkers outside doubled every second. Without saying anything more than yelling in outrage, all of them ran up the stairs that led to the roof in the hope of understanding what was going on. What they saw down there chilled their bones. Some strange man with a hat was on a horse, shooting at the walkers that surrounded him, hitting a few but attracting even more to him, to the street, to the front of the store and around their cars. They watched as the man got hopelessly surrounded and started to fall. Andrea turned around not to see the man get eaten, Jackie cried but kept looking. The man fell from the horse, which was immediately attacked by what looked like a hundred walkers, and completely disappeared from view.
"Fuckin' bastard only lived enough to fuck us up!" Merle said from the edge of the group, from where he also observed.
"No, wait!" Glenn pointed down to the street. "There he goes!"
He was right, Sam could see. The man still had his hat on as he crawled under the tank – yes, an army war tank that had been abandoned in the middle of the street – and once again disappeared. They heard gunshots again and then, nothing.
"Shit!" T-Dog broke the silence. "Now he's gone."
"Don't tanks have a door on the floor?" Morales asked to no one in special. "Like, a second exit, for emergencies?"
"Dude, I have no idea if tanks have emergencies exits!" Glenn told him. "But I guess we can try the radio, see if he answers. I mean, if he's alive and I can get the tank channel…"
"Why would you want to contact him?" Andrea asked as she turned again to the group. "Look at what he did! He's killed us!"
"Killed us?" Jackie asked her. "What do you mean?"
"Do you see any way out of here? Every single walkes in this area is in front of the store, on our cars! It will take a miracle to get us out of here, and it's that son of a bitch's fault!"
"I hardly think the man did that on purpose." Sam told her as she got away from the edge of the building. "What would you do if you were surrounded by walkers and had a gun in hand?"
"It doesn't matter now, does it?" Andrea continued angrily. "We're fucked! Fucked!"
"Well, ya seem to like that word, blondie!" Merle laughed and blinked at her, his tongue coming out as he laughed. Andrea rolled her eyes and turned away from him.
"Glenn, do you think you could contact him?" Morales asked him, ignoring what Andrea had said.
"I guess I can try. You guys think I should?"
"I think it's up to you." Sam concluded.
He looked around to the people while they all remained silent. Sam knew he would try to help the stranger, this was Glenn after all, nice, sweet good-hearted Glenn, he would never leave someone to die, even if it was a complete stranger who had just ruined all their means of escape.
"Ok." Glenn said after a moment with a resolute nod. "Okay, then, I'll need to go down through that building so I'll get closer to the tank. I mean, If I can talk to him, but I guess I'll get as close as possible before even trying, so we'll make an escape fast. Ok. Right, when we come back, if it works out, we'll need to cross that alley we used to get in, but there will be a few walkers there, so I'm gonna need help."
"Ok, don't worry about it. I have the radio, you let me know when you're getting back to the alley, I got this."
Glenn gestured to Sam with his own radio and ran away crying "ok" over his shoulder. Seeing him retreat, Sam also set to motion, trying to think fast.
"Morales! T-Dog! Come with me!"
She ran downstairs, knowing they'd be behind her, her mind rolling through the supplies and the rest of the store, trying to figure a safe way to clear the alley for Glenn to return to the building, the stranger with him or not. When they got to the store, her mind was set on the sports section. Understanding immediately wheat she meant, T-Dog and Morales got on hockey uniforms and got baseball bats ready at hand. They heard shooting on the street again at this point.
"Ok, go, go!" Sam rushed the two men to the side room, where a door led to the alley. Her heart was racing, a chill on her stomach, thinking of how dangerous it was out there for Glenn, thinking she'd never forgive herself – or the man with the hat – if something happened to him.
They stood in silence, ready, Sam with the radio raised close to her face, listening intently. After a moment, Andrea and Jackie joined them without a word, looking just as nervous as Sam felt.
"I'm back! Got a guest plus four geeks in the alley." Glenn's voice creaked on the radio.
"Ok, you two, go now!" Sam ordered the man. T-Dog opened the door and ran out, followed by Morales. The three women stood there, still, ears attentive to the noises. It was possible to hear the baseball bats crashing into walkers' skulls, feet running. In a moment, Glenn ran in, breathing hard and red on the face, followed by the stranger. Outside, T-Dog shouted for Morales to go back and both entered the room, the door being shut after them.
"You ok?" Sam asked Glenn, holding him by his upper arms.
"Fine!" he told her wide eyes and sweaty.
"Son of a bitch, we outta kill you!"
Sam let go of Glenn as she turned around to see Andrea cornering the man with a gun pointed right between his eyes. The man, who only now Sam saw was wearing a sheriff's uniform, remained silent, blue eyes wide.
"Just chill out, Andrea, back off." Morales told her as he started to take off the sports gear.
"Come on, ease out." Jackie also tried to appease the other woman.
"Ease out?" Andrea repeated without looking away from the man. "You're kidding me, right? We're dead because of that stupid asshole!"
"Andrea," Sam approached Andrea, her gun and the sheriff. "Back the fuck off!" she demanded but Andrea didn't move. She still stared at him, gun hand shaking, breathing hard. "What ya gonna do, shoot the man? I said back the fuck off, Andrea!"
The blonde, raging woman took a few more seconds before letting him go. She started crying immediately.
"We're dead. All of us, because of you."
"I don't understand." the man finally spoke.
"Yeah, I'll explain to you, sheriff," Sam told him and grabbed his left arm. She walked out of the room dragging him with her into the store, everybody else following them. "We came to the city to scavenge supplies. You know the key to scavenging is?" Sam told him remembering perfectly the day Glenn had told her these very words. "Surviving! You know the key to surviving? Sneaking in and out, tiptoeing, not shooting out the street like it's the O. K. Corral!"
T-Dog, by their side, completed her thought just as they stopped in the middle of the store, looking towards the glass doors. "Every walker for miles around heard you popping off rounds."
"You just rang the dinner bell." Andrea completed the thought. They all stood there, looking out, an enormous herd of walkers by the door, trying to get in.
"Get the picture now?" Morales asked darkly.
The glass doors were not going to hold for too long. It cracked on the top left side just as they looked, under the pressure of the herd. It didn't break, though, but it was a matter of time. They all backed away, scared.
"What the hell were you doing out there, anyway?" Andrea asked the sheriff.
"Trying to flag the helicopter."
"Helicopter?" T-Dog asked, uncertain, and looked around to the others. "Man, that's crap. Ain't no damn helicopter."
"You were chasing a hallucination," Jackie came quickly to the conclusion. "Imagining things. It happens."
"I saw it!" he said firmly annoyed.
Sam thought he sounded too certain for it to have been his imagination. What if there had really been a helicopter flying over Atlanta? It could mean rescue, but if the man had seen it, it had been about twenty minutes ago. It could be anywhere by now.
"Hey, T-Dog," Sam called him. "Try the radio again, see if you can contact the others."
He raised the radio instantly to channel it. They had tried it before, to contact the radio they had on camp, but it had been fruitless.
"Others?" the new man asked hopefully. "The refugee center?"
Sam laughed sadly, "Yeah, the refugee center!"
"They got biscuits waiting in the oven for us." Jackie rolled her eyes.
"Got no signal." T said still messing with the dial button. "Maybe the roof."
Before anyone could agree to climb the stairs and go try it again from the top of the building, a gunshot echoed down to the store, startling even more the already scared group.
"Oh, no! Was that Dixon?" Andrea asked to no-one, looking up.
As if agreed to, the group started running towards the stairs. All Sam could think was 'I knew it! I fuckin' knew it!'
"What's that maniac doing?" Morales asked as they ran and Sam also heard Glenn calling the stranger to follow them upstairs. Sam ran in front of everyone up the stairs, her legs burning with the effort, but she only stopped when she stormed out of the door and onto the roof, only to see Merle standing on the parapet, aiming down and shooting what she thought would probably be walkers.
"Hey, Dixon, are you crazy?" Morales shouted as the others also cried out their disbelief. That was it, that's exactly what Sam had been talking about to Daryl; the moment where someone would have to control Merle had arrived.
"Hey! Ya'll be more polite to a man with a gun! Huh?" he laughed aloud as he turned to look at the others and hopped down to the concrete. "Only common sense!"
"Man, you're wasting bullets we ain't even got!", T-Dog approached him, shouting. "And you're bringing even more of them down our ass, man! Just chill!"
"Hey, bad enough I've got this taco-bender on my ass all day, now I'm gonna take orders from you? I don't think so, bro. That'll be the day."
They were facing each other now and Sam took the last few steps to stand by them.
"That'll be the day?" T-Dog repeated, his annoyance almost palpable. "You got something you wanna tell me?"
"T, just leave it," she told him. "It ain't worth it. Now, Merle," she turned to him. "Cut it out, alright? The fuck you doing?"
"Now ya talking to me? What happened to the get-away-from-me-Dixon bullshit, huh?" he looked briefly at her before facing T-Dog again. "I'll tell ya the day, Mr. Yo. It's the day I take orders from a nigger!"
"Son of a –", was all T-Dog said before he jumped on Merle, trying to punch him but missing. Sam took a step back to get away from the line of fire, instinctively. With the butt of his riffle, he knocked T-Dog down. The sheriff, who had been standing quietly by, also moved in, trying to stop Merle, but got punched square in the face. With that out of his way, Merle moved back to T, and there was no stop now. He hit him repeatedly until the man fell to the ground, hitting his forehead on a large pipe. With him down, Merle still threw punches down at him, unaware of all the cries pleading him to stop. They only stopped, frozen in dread, when Merle took out a handgun and pointed at the hurt man. A terrified silence took them all, T-Dog staring up at Merle with his eyes wide.
"Merle?" Sam cut the silence. "I know what this is, alright?" she said, her voice firm but controlled. "Dude, look at me. Merle?"
He did after a moment; gun still pointed, but looked right at Sam.
"Ya not gonna shoot him, alright? I know, and you know why you're doing this. Ok? You'll regret it later. Just cut it out."
He stared at her for a moment, then looked around at the others and down at T once again. Withdrawing his wand, the spit on the man's chest right before standing up. By the look on his face, the glassy, vicious eyes, Sam knew it wasn't over, and she knew it was not an abstinence crisis.
"Yeah! Alright!" He shouted, his gun on display across his chest. "We gonna have ourselves a little powwow, huh? Talk about who's in charge. I vote me!", he spoke as Andrea and Jackie helped T-Dog to get away from him. "Anybody else? Huh? Democracy time, y'all!"
Sam snorted by his side. "When I said cut it out I mean that too, Merle."
"Anybody here voted for ya to be in charge?" he looked right at her. "Huh? I'm giving 'em the chance now! Show of hands, huh? All in favor! Come on!"
"Merle, just –"
"Nobody? Guess I win then! That's good! Anybody else, huh? Anybody?"
"Yeah." Sam turned to see the sheriff by them. She hadn't heard him approach, his feet silent, and he shoved the butt of Merle's own rifle to the side of his head. Merle fell instantly and the sheriff straddled him, held his arm up and handcuffed him to a pipe so fast Sam couldn't even follow his movements.
"Hey!" Sam yelled at him just as he grabbed Merle and sat him up against the larger pipes.
"Who are you, man?" Merle asked him.
"Officer friendly." The sheriff took Merle's gun and checked it. "Look here, Merle. Things are different now. There are no niggers anymore, no dumb-ass shit, inbred white-trash fools either. Only dark meat and white meat. There's us and the dead, we survive by pulling together, not apart."
"Fuck you, man!"
"I can see you make a habit of missing the point."
"Yeah? Fuck you twice!"
Sam snorted again. "So mature, Dixon."
Not seeming to have heard her, the sheriff pointed the gun right at Merle's head. Sam took another step closer.
"Ought to be polite with a man with a gun! Only common sense."
"Ya wouldn't. You a cop!"
"All I am anymore is a man looking for his wife and son." He lowered the gun. "Anybody who gets in the way of that is gonna lose. I'll give you a moment to think about that."
Seeing Merle going quiet tranquilized Sam a bit. She still remained close as the cop checked on Merle's pockets and his hand came out with a little bag of coke. She knew he had to have used something, but now she was sure.
"Fuck, Merle…" she said, her voice disappointed.
"You got some on your nose there." The sheriff said looking at Merle form up close.
Merle laughed, "What ya gonna do? Arrest me?"
The man got up and threw the bag out of the building. Merle shouted, cursed, like a hurt feline in a cage, but everyone else seemed to have stopped listening to him. Andrea was tending to T-Dog's wounds, the sheriff got away from the group and everybody else seemed to calm down. Also silent, she came even closer and crouched by his side.
"Coke again, Dixon?"
"Fuck you."
"You were doing well, you know you were." She ignored it. "Ya see what happens the first day ya get back to it?"
"I said fuck you! Just get me the fuck outta here!"
"Well, make up your fuckin' mind, Dixon. You want me to go fuck myself or to let you go?"
"Ya tryin' to be funny, pussycat?"
"Nah. I'm just gonna leave ya there for a while. Calm down, let the high go, think about what you did to get yourself in this fucked up situation. We'll talk later."
She got up and was thankful that Merle said nothing else, neither did anybody. She walked over to where the stranger was on the parapet, looking out to the city. She could see him cradling his hand, the one he used to punch Merle.
"You're not Atlanta PD. Where you from?" she asked him as she stood by his side.
"Up the road a ways."
"Well… Officer friendly from up the road ways?" she said and he looked at her. "Merle is like that most of the time, he's a drug addict, uneducated redneck. But he was cutting out on the drugs, back on camp. He was getting better, more controlled. We had a fight, things got ugly, and apparently he got right back to it."
"You're his wife or something?"
She laughed, "God forbid, no. I'm his friend. Sorta… Maybe not anymore. But ya see, I had it. In a fight or not, I still got a history with the man, I still know how to talk to him. You're new here, ya don't know us, so next time, before ya go on handcuffing people to the roof, just back off and let us sort our own problems, alright?" she finished and turned to leave. "Welcome to the jungle, sheriff."
