He face-planted on the concrete, smashing up his nose in addition to the already existing cut across his chin. He had tripped over his own clumsy feet and completely lost the element of surprise. Scuttling back into a standing position, he spat out the blood from his nose that had run into his mouth and looked around wildly for the station wagon. His bat was swinging at his side but he rested it across his right shoulder, preparing a wind-up as the walker closest to him gravitated inward, starting the long procession of walkers that came towards him as if he were a human magnet. The scent of fresh blood on the air probably didn't help him at all, but he had to ignore that at the moment. The mouth, the nose, and one eye completely caved in when Merle struck the bat into the walker's ugly mug, but as he finished the swing he gave a loud cry of pain and nearly dropped his only close quarters weapon.

"What are you waiting for, you dumbass?" called Andrea from inside the car. "Run!"

Run…right…

He tried, found the sensation to be well beyond painful, and thought, Screw it. He turned his back to the car, almost jogging backwards so that he could keep an eye on the walkers closing in on him. There were two walkers close to the wagon, but he wasn't worried about them. The fifteen walkers on his ass were the real problem and he had to keep them occupied so that they wouldn't go for Andrea who was hanging out of the tinted car like a complete idiot.

"Get that ass outta sight unless y'want it bitten off!" he hollered, poking a walker in the face with as much ferocity as a vicious pool table jab which was all his wound could stand at this point. Once he was sure that the walkers behind weren't going to catch up, he faced the two by the station wagon, dodging the one on the passenger side and approaching the one blocking the driver's seat. It opened up a set of atrocious jaws and a forked tongue—how that had happened, Merle didn't even want to guess—and moved in. Merle, however, gave it a healthy thwack across the forehead with his bat and a mutter of, "Get the hell out've my way." He closed his door, gripping the wheel in stained hands for a moment and staring at his beaten reflection in the rear view mirror. It was definitely him staring back with the bruises, the swelling, and the blood, but the eyes, his eyes had changed. Still faded blue, unremarkable, hard, cold, Merle-esque, but there was something more there, or perhaps a lack of something else that had been negative. As a walker beat its decaying fist on the passenger window he turned the key in the ignition, put the car into drive and shot it forward, flattening a walker's skull completely underneath the tires. He brought the wagon to a lurching halt right beside Andrea's hideout and leaned across the seat to open the door for her as his wound stretched in protest. Andrea nearly dived into the seat next to him and he took off again before she had completely sat down.

"What the hell took you so long?" she complained, punching his arm irritably.

"Blood rush t'the head," Merle invented. "Didn't help that you were cheerleadin' up a storm for all the parkin' lot t'hear. I had t'pull the walkers away 'cuz you was sittin' there like a moron with the door wide open."

Andrea had no time to argue, for Merle had parked the car about ten feet from the nearest car connected to the jumble that Daryl and Dale had disappeared into. He slid out of his seat, bat back in his ready hands and began haphazardly searching for any sign of a familiar body. He half hoped that he wouldn't find one. It would be another arrow in his gut if he saw bloody remains, but the thought of them being completely consumed made him want to vomit. The air was rank with long dead bodies still piled inside some of the cars. He twisted between a neon-orange Slug Bug and a Hyundai Accent and stepped on someone's still moving hand.

It was the last marauder's, its owner twitching in pain underneath a walker's body which acted as a scent shield as he pressed one hand over an arrow wound through his side similar to Merle's. So Daryl had gotten him after all…

Merle kicked the corpse off of him and pointed his Hi-Power at the rather large space between the son of a bitch's eyes. He drove his heel down into that damned face four times, breaking the nose and the jaw and cutting open an eyelid so that through the slitted flesh the eye was blinking rapidly to clear itself of blood. With the bat he broke both of the man's kneecaps and then, biting through the agony of his wound, brought it full swing into the raider's stomach. If Merle hadn't at least ruptured the marauder's spleen, he had made the bastard shit himself. None of the hits were meant to kill; he wanted this man alive until the walkers found him.

"Die slowly, motherfucker," he said with venom clinging to his every word before he hacked up as much saliva as his parched throat allowed and spat dead center onto the maimed eye.

He had spent so much time lingering that the walkers from across the lot were dangerously close. Andrea was calling him back, but he knew that if the marauder had been standing here, Dale should only be a few feet away. He wound his way around a smashed car and came to the spot where he judged that Dale went down.

There was nothing there, only blood smears.

Merle felt hollow and empty. There were no signs of a struggle or attack, so where the hell was Dale? Where was Ari? And Daryl? Did the absence of innards littering the ground mean that Dale had gotten away? If so, when and how? It hurt Merle's head, throbbing against his brain like a giant sledgehammer as he tried so desperately to make sense of it all. No solution was forthcoming, however, and he wanted to just shoot his fucking brains out so that he wouldn't have to feel any more of this hurt and confusion and anger and—

"Merle, now!"

He wanted to go back to her, but Ari was still missing and he refused to leave without knowing. He had to know.

"Merle!"

He hobbled back towards the station wagon, making sure the tread on the marauder in his pool of blood as he exited the maze. Only when he pulled his door shut, locked it, and reversed the car several feet out of the reach of the walkers did he notice that the maze had come alive. Daryl was beating his crossbow on the car hoods, whooping and swearing like Merle had never seen him do before, skirting around the circumference of the jumble. The walkers saw him moving and the car stationary and so they changed course, bumping into one another in their haste to get to their next meal. Daryl made a giant shooing motion with a giant wave of his hand, thundering in a voice he had never used before, "RUN!"

This made no sense to Merle. Run? He was in the damn car, he didn't need to run. But it wasn't him and Andrea who Daryl was yelling at.

"Look!" cried Andrea, pointing her finger in front of Merle's face. He followed the eye line and then he understood. The old man came limping out of the maze, his khaki pants soaked in blood from a gunshot wound through his right leg. The marauder had only succeeded in putting a bullet in his leg and that was why he had gone down. Dale had lost his hat, his salt and pepper whiskers were flecked with red, and he was shambling along pathetically as he tried to run toward the station wagon, but in his arms he was holding Ari. Merle pressed the pedal to the floor and nearly took Dale out in his haste to reach him. Andrea had clambered into the back seat and opened the door for him. Dale performed more of a back flop than a slide as he came to halt on the seat, Ari safely in the carrier. Andrea unbuckled her and with a dry sob held the baby to her chest, stroking her soft curls and kissing her cheek. Merle touched Ari's head with his knuckles and ran one finger down the side of her face.

"Are you bit?" asked Andrea, leaning over to address Dale who was wheezing and gasping for air.

Merle never heard his reply because Daryl's roar drowned it out. Daryl loosened his last arrow at a walker trying to sneak in behind him as he cut through the maze at a diagonal. His knife whipped out, nearly severing a head from a pair of hunched shoulders. Walkers stormed in, though some of them stopped several feet away and by the sound of an unseen inhuman scream, they had found the marauder. No sense of fulfilled vengeance claimed Merle. He had eyes only for his brother who fell as a walker grabbed him around the knees. There was a series of tortured screams followed only by silence.

Blood pounded in Merle's ears, deafening him to all else. He was not aware of putting the car in park or opening his door, but one moment he had been sitting in the driver's seat and the next he was halfway to the cars, coming to the belated rescue of the brother who was no longer there.

But there were hands to pull him back, to keep him from seeing what he knew had happened. Andrea pushed against his chest with both of her hands and Dale tugged at his arms, but he still tried to cut around them. A hand flew up and smacked him across the face. The sting was real enough to be felt, but nothing compared to what was happening at his hip or inside of him.

"He's gone, Merle-,"

"Daryl."

"He's gone!"

"DARYL!"

Screaming out his name would make him stand up, start running to them. Shouting could bring him back, it had to. His voice, so underused and abused when it came to Daryl, was the one thing he had now to save his brother, that infant boy peering curiously at Merle through scratched brown crib bars. But Merle's voice cracked and he lost his only defense. His body, weakened by Daryl's arrow could not hold its own against the insistent efforts of the other two. His mind fought back madly to deny what his heart was trying to prove to him. It just wasn't possible, wasn't happening, wasn't fair.

But since when had the world ever been fair to him? He couldn't even count the times on one hand. Life had given him a very distinctive fuck you.

"Daryl…" he said weakly, putting his fingers over the wound that had slid slightly free of the tourniquet. The wound was all he had left of Daryl. His spilt blood was his only reminder that Daryl had died on unsettled terms, still hating him for abandoning him when Daryl most needed him. Merle's punishment was Daryl's death.

Andrea had managed to get him back into the driver's seat and was urging him to drive onward, but Merle's hands shook on the wheel and as he finally tore his gaze away from the car maze, he saw tears on Andrea's face. She cupped the back of his neck and rested her forehead to his, running her fingers over his skin. She understood better than even he did.

Merle felt a hot liquid running out of his eyes, but didn't try to stop its natural flow. He let the tears plummet down into his lap and encased his hand in Andrea's, squeezing tightly because he knew that if he let go, he would lose her, only one half of anything he had left.

And you thought you knew what was coming…