MILTON
Given that Milton had only been led to a room right down the hall and speculating that Gareth wanted the others to hear him and his men raping their victims, Milton figured that the women couldn't be far. Out in the hall, they heard a scuffle and the sound of a fist making contact with flesh coming from the room right across from the one where Milton had been led to. Merle burst through the door, revealing Beth who had been stripped naked and was now struggling to fend off her attacker.
Michonne gave an enraged shout on Beth's behalf, but Tyrone heard her and like Gareth, ran for it as he fired his weapon back over his shoulder at them. Beth hugged her knees to her chest, trying to conceal her nakedness, and Michonne put her arms around the girl who was sobbing in disgrace and fear. Milton and Merle began wordlessly picking up Beth's clothes and handed them to Michonne who started dressing Beth.
"We'll get that fucker," Merle promised the girl. "C'mon, Miltie."
Milton observed Beth's tear-stricken face, feeling hate rage on inside of him on behalf of this teenage girl who had lost her father, Parker, and quite possibly her virginity. A man's touch was not something that she would be wanting right now, but Milton felt a tug in his gut that told him to try. He put out his hand, palm up, and Beth seized it like a life preserve.
"Miltie, Andrea'n Maggie're still out here, let's go!"
"Get her out," Milton told Michonne.
The sounds of a battle reached them through the open window in the corridor which meant that somewhere, Rick, Hans, and Daryl were waging war on the Termites. They might have found Andrea and Maggie, but Milton knew that he and Merle still had to check every room to be absolutely sure. They raced down the hallway, throwing open doors with a kick and shooting the locks off of others until they reached one that stood slightly ajar. Through the crack, Milton saw Andrea's blonde ponytail and burst into the room to find her warding off Curtis with a knife she had apparently stolen from his belt. Her coat, shirt, and undergarments had been stripped off, but she wasn't even attempting to conceal herself as she held up the knife at Curtis.
Merle brought Curtis down by the legs and then buried his boot in Curtis's stomach.
"Putcher hands on her, will you?" he hissed.
Shivering, Andrea, attempted to pull her bra back on, but before she could, Milton saw the hand-shaped bruises forming on her face, neck, and arms, and what looked like teeth marks on her shoulder from Curtis.
Milton picked up a cleaver from atop one of the boxes by the door, grasped it in his vein-throbbing hands, marched over to where Merle was still brutalizing Curtis, and brought the blade down into the cannibal's skull, but he didn't stop there. He hacked away at the scalp until brains splattered the floor, blood shot upward, and Merle had to jump out of the way to avoid getting doused in it as gooey contents squirted out of Curtis's half-empty head.
Merle gave an appreciative whistle.
"Damn, son."
Milton felt the hot blood from his kill on his chin and brushed it away with his forearm. Outside, he heard a crash and someone calling for help. The rest of the Termites were outside; Gareth, Kara, Tyrone…
He didn't realize he was doing it, not even when Merle and Andrea shouted at him to stop. One moment he was inside, the next, he was out in the courtyard, shooting at anything that moved on the rooftops as he dodged from cover to cover. Bloodlust was something he knew about thanks to Merle, but he always considered it to be a low, unethical, draining, and pointless waste of time. Until now, though, he had never had a reason to want blood spilled. There was more than just wrath and a need for justification involved; bloodlust was born from loss, taken up by someone who was acting in another's stead.
"Milton, get outta the open!" hollered Rick off to his left. He had Maggie and Hans with him.
Merle burst out of the warehouse, drawing fire from one of the second floor windows. He threw himself down between two giant cinderblocks as a Termite shot at him from the other side. Trapped in between shooters, he had nowhere to go. Milton walked out into no man's land and astonishingly, no one fired at him. Perhaps they were shocked that he would so willingly stand where anyone could shoot him, but it gave him time to find one of the shooters and without even aiming, put a slug in the woman's eye. Realizing that one shooter was down, Merle propped his assault rifle up on one of the cinderblocks and shot the other one out of the window so that the body toppled two stories before it splattered on the ground.
Leaving Milton to rejoin the others, Merle headed back inside for whatever reason. Thinking that he had best follow, Milton had gone about ten paces when he heard the whistling. He'd never heard one in person, but he knew what it was, and he launched himself into the Termites' washing pool. The explosion made the water pulse and Milton could feel the impact in his ribs as he waited for the tremor to pass, completely submerged. He'd never been near water in such a large quantity before and had no idea how to swim, but he wasn't even close to panicking as he found his footing and waded out. The water pouring off of him didn't so much as make a sound as it dripped onto the concrete. All gunfire and shouts had ceased. Suddenly, the meaning of Milton's calmness was revealed; he could only hear ringing in his ears, deaf to all else, and in shock.
/ / /
MERLE
We like to play with our food before we eat it.
The Governor was thrashing around even as they held him down and tied off his arm with a tourniquet. Merle prided himself in having a strong stomach, but the sight of the Termites sawing through the layers of flesh, muscle, tissue, and bone reminded him of having to cut through his own hand. Through the wadded up gag that had been stuck in his mouth, the Governor screamed and kept on screaming after his limb parted company with the rest of his body.
An explosion drew the Termites' attention and leaving the Governor strapped to the table, they hurried out of the room to go address the commotion. Merle stole forward, anticipating the return of a Termite at any moment. He avoided the steady puddle of red dripping from the Governor's stump and prodded him with the end of his weapon. The Governor's eye opened.
Even if Milton couldn't kill this bastard off, Merle sure as hell could. He wasn't going to spend the rest of his life looking back over his shoulder for this man to appear and murder someone else. He was going to gloat and let the Governor mull over Merle's success, stare him in his single eye as he killed him.
He ripped out the gag and the Governor coughed, spitting the grime from his mouth.
"It's a bitch, ain't it?" said Merle, showcasing his own maimed limb to compare it to the Governor's.
"You thought I was a monster, Merle. You thought tanks with dead heads and stubborn hope that a biter's body still had my little girl inside of it was crazy. What d'you think these people are, huh? I never stooped to eatin' my enemies. Eatin's for the dead."
"I wouldn't give a shit if it was biters or cannibals that ate your punk ass, but you ain't gonna last that long while I'm here."
"I wouldn't blame you for leavin' me here like this. I know I did wrong in makin' you fight your brother. But what I did then was what you did when you brought Glenn and Maggie to Woodbury. You were angry, weren'tcha? Y'wanted answers and justice for your hand, for what they left you to in Atlanta. I wanted justice for my little girl. I thought Milton could bring her back and Michonne ruined that one chance we had. 'Course I see now that I was just being ignorant. The dead're dead and they stay dead. But I didn't see it at the time; all I saw was Michonne puttin' her blade through Penny's head which would never've happened if she'd been killed—if you'dda killed her like you told me you did. But since I couldn't punish her, I wanted to punish you. And now I'm payin' for it, bit by bit."
The Governor turned his head sideways and spat out blood but being tied down, he could do nothing to wipe a dribble of it away from the corner of his mouth.
"I'm not askin' for you to take me with you because I know you never would, not after what I did to your people. But I'm beggin' you for mercy, Merle. I found you barely alive and I took you in, housed you, clothed you, and fed you. I made you my lieutenant and then I betrayed you, but you owe me. You owe me this because I was your friend once. I trusted you once. All I'm askin' now is for you to take that blade and stab me through the head before they come back. I don't wanna be eaten by anythin'."
Merle slashed down through the Governor's bonds and pulled him upright by the front of his shirt. He put his blade to the Governor's neck, not sure how it would get the desired effect, but it was worth a shot.
"Y'already reserved yourself a place in hell for what y'done."
"I did," said Phillip. "And if you could believe that I'm ashamed, I truly am. These past few months…frankly, I don't know how I'm still alive. I didn't have a goal anymore once I lost track've Michonne, so I gave in, let myself go to waste. But for all the men I've killed, I couldn't turn my gun on myself and put a bullet in my mouth. I just need a way out now, Merle."
Merle's grip tightened and a trickle of blood ran down from Phillip's throat.
"Y'two-faced, murderin', lyin', piece've shit fucked up bastard, y'sent us all here t'begin with when y'attacked the prison. You did this, damn you. And y'want mercy for that? I don't owe you shit."
Then Phillip began to cry. Merle didn't know whether to feel disgusted or sympathetic—or what. As Phillip had said, they were friends once, or as close to friends as Merle allowed them to be. They had shared drinks, laughs, jokes. They had defended Woodbury together. They had killed innocent people together. Bat-shit crazy, demented, evil he may be, but Phillip was just done now. Even if Merle didn't feel merciful enough to make his death quick by capping off a round in his brain instead of stabbing him through the gut and letting him bleed out to become a biter later, he had chosen to follow this man and would have continued to, had it not been for his own lie.
It was not Michonne stabbing Penny that triggered the events that led to this. It was he, Merle, refusing to go after her into the hot zone because he was scared. If he had followed Michonne, he might have gotten himself killed and never been able to find Daryl, to be there for him and save him. Merle's decision had brought about the apocalypse within the apocalypse.
So in truth, yes, he did owe Phillip.
"Shut up," he hissed as the man continued to blubber. He slapped him across the face with the backside of his hand and shook him. "You lookit me when I'm talkin' t'you."
Phillip looked up—and then reached for the pistol at Merle's side. He pulled it loose, cocked back the hammer, and fired. A body crumpled behind Merle and he spun around to see a woman dressed in an apron sprawled on the floor.
"They'll be comin' back," said Phillip.
Merle snatched up a shotgun and a handful of shells from the desk behind him and shoved them into the Governor's hand.
"You're gonna help us break out. You're gonna provide cover fire and shoot when I tell you to. You stay in front've me where I can see you at all times and if y'so much's breathe in the direction've the others, I'll put fifty rounds in both legs and your arm and leave you to whichever carnivore party gets t'you first. If you're still alive when we've made it out, I'll kill you myself."
"Okay," said Phillip.