Disclaimer: I don't own The Walking Dead.

A/N: Wow, so sorry this took a million years, but I basically wrote the whole chapter, re-read it, then hated it and scrapped it and redid the entire thing. But I'm happier with this outcome, because I really didn't want to have to go over the scene where they show the test subject and shit. I had originally and the chapter just ended up being so pointless and seriously boring. So this is what we have instead. The italics is a flashback to Glenn and Roxy's first ever encounter with an actual walker, before everything really went postal.

Gimme Danger

Chapter 37: Lean Into It

"What the hell is this shit?" Roxy questioned as she strolled into the living room, a glass bong in her left hand as she scooted Glenn over and sat beside him on the small couch. He had been sitting front and center, attention focused on the small screen they had hooked up to the neighbor's cable.

"That disease. It's crazy." He was captivated by a news program; something neither one of them usually paid any mind to.

"Oh yeah? What's the big crisis this year? Swine flu? SARS? West Nile? It's the same thing over and over again. A few people are unlucky enough to die from it, and they act like it's a pandemic threatening to wipe out the entire human race," she snorted, uninterested, right before she ripped the piece.

Glenn watched for another minute before shrugging and grabbing the remote. "Yeah, you're probably right. We should go anyway."

The TV went black and Roxy took another quick hit before leaving it on the small coffee table her feet had been on and spraying herself with body spray.

"Let's do it," she agreed with a bit of a sigh, grabbing a sweatshirt and following her roommate out the door. There was no elevator in their complex, but they'd scaled the flights of stairs so many times it took them under a minute to go down the twelve levels.

Roxy tied her hair up, throwing a Braves hat over it and pulling the hood of the sweatshirt she'd put on as she moved, over her head. Glenn was wearing much the same thing; covered almost head to toe, dark clothing, hood up.

It was late at night, and most of the people wandering around looked like bag ladies, or pretty much identical to the two walking the streets, paying them as little attention as they wanted paid to them. The roommates walked six blocks down the road before they spotted the place they'd been searching for. It was a well lit up Italian bistro called Magoni's, but they bypassed it, and went around to the other side of the block, passing through an alleyway that led to the parking lot to the place.

"Don't a lot of mob guys hang around here?" Glenn questioned in a whisper as Roxy fumbled around with his backpack. He couldn't see her roll her eyes.

"It's an Audi dude, not a Rolls. Relax. He's just some white collar businessman who comes in to work all the time." It belonged some high rolling shareowner of some major corporation that had some jailbait girlfriend and slummed it so people he knew wouldn't see him at a titty bar. He spent money, and Roxy figured he wouldn't miss it and she and Glenn would probably be able to pay their rent and some of the backed up hospital bills they owed with the chunk of change they'd get for a luxury vehicle. Roxy knew he came here every Wednesday, and she also knew he had a faulty alarm system in there. She'd scouted the car, and even tested the security on the way home from work one night, giving the driver's side handle a good jostling. It was locked, but the blinking light on the inside was simply for show. Whatever alarm system it contained was no longer working, and apparently this smug asshole figured people would be scared off by the alarm indicator on the inside of the vehicle.

But she was turning into quite the criminal. "It's fine man. Just be ready, okay?"

"Yeah," Glenn nodded. It felt like they'd done this a hundred times already, though they couldn't fill both fingers and toes with the actual count, and Glenn still felt just as scared as the first time. Roxy though, had become eerily comfortable with the dangerous situation. She said it was even easier money than stripping, and hey, she liked money. She needed money. They both did. And that's why they did this.

Swallowing his guilt and nerves alike, Glenn prepared himself, taking a deep breath as he watched her move through the poorly lit parking lot, using the jimmy to pry the window open slightly and use the flexible rod to flip the lock. She'd gotten better at it, quicker, and a second later she had opened the door, proving to have been right about the busted alarm. Glenn breathed a sigh of relief. The scariest part was over.

It was the sound of the sirens, constantly roaring, that steadied his breathing and calmed him down so easily this time as he watched her remove the inside panel of the vehicle and spark the wires until the car purred to life. Normally, the thought of police being anywhere near them when they were doing this would terrify Glenn, but with this crazy plague, police and ambulance sirens seemed to be going off constantly, especially the past day or two.

Whatever was happening, they were way too occupied to know that Glenn and Roxy were stealing this car, and they were driving it to the outskirts of the city, down some back roads to a little chop shop that could and would pay a hefty amount of cash for this thing.

Once they got the car from point A to point B, they were home free.

Glenn moved towards her as the car started, her body sliding over into the passenger's side and Glenn hopping into the front, both quickly buckling up before he took off

But before he stepped on the gas, a shriek of pure fear to his right had his head whipping in Roxy's direction, along with the sound of something slamming against the window on her side.

At first he thought they were caught. But then he looked, and he froze for a minute.

Hands pressed to Roxy's window, her body pushed as close to Glenn's as she could get it in horror, a hissing, scary-eye, bloody mess of a man fighting to get into the car, as though he'd never used a car door certainly wasn't the car owner, no. This guy looked like he lived on the streets.

"Glenn, go! Go!" Roxy hollered in fear, sapping her friend out of his own trauma, Glenn stepping on the gas and leaving the maniac behind.

Both reeling from the encounter, they tried to catch their breath, Glenn's eyes frantically moving between Roxy and the road. She pushed hr hair out of her face as she caught her breath, trying to steady her pounding heart. "What the hell was that? Was he on drugs or something? Did he murder someone?"

"Cray eyes. Rabid behavior. They said on the news, if you see anyone like that, to call the police, and don't go near them. They're like... zombies or something."

The silence in the small room seemed to echo somehow, the same way it had in the car that night. Roxy had one of those books open in her lap, though she wasn't reading it, biting her thumb, lost in thought much the way Daryl tended to get. Meanwhile he leaned against a small table, the sloshing around of the hard liquor he'd promised to 'get shitfaced drunk again' off of about ten minutes prior breaking the quiet as he took another large gulp, just before he pushed himself off the table's edge and making his way to the blonde, settling down beside her.

He gave her a sideways glance, noticing she was lost in her mind somewhere between the sorry excuse Shane had made for scratch marks on his neck this morning and the new knowledge that the generators in their haven would soon run dry, and then…

Well, he wasn't too sure.

Daryl took another swig of alcohol and then offered it over to her, but she was still in her own world. "You wanna go?"

The sudden vocalization of what they were honestly both thinking made her stop assaulting the nail on her thumb and her hazel eyes flicker in his direction. She closed the romance novel that had been parted open on her lap and pushed it aside, coming her fingers through her hair to move it away from her face before she shrugged her shoulders.

"Huh?" Had she heard him right?

" 'f ya wanna go an see what else 's out there… we ain't gotta stay with these people. Ain't sure about this place anymore now anyway." There were definitely questions that had gone unanswered just a few moments earlier, and Daryl no longer believed this place was necessarily safe.

She didn't answer right away, silence refilling the room. "So, we're 'we' now?"

Daryl grunted, and shook his head, annoyed. "Can't ya ever jus' take it fer what it is? Do ya wanna go on an' get outta here while we still can 'r not?" He'd pick up and leave right now. It wouldn't bother him none.

"You think Jennar was being shady too, huh? He's not telling us something…" The uneasy and cryptic responses the doctor had given them were not up to her standards either. This place suddenly didn't feel right. The things he'd shown them, the experiment on his wife, the fact that no one seemed to have any hope for any sort of cure, had brought her back to the memory of the first time she'd encountered one of those walkers, and how scared she'd been; how unbelievable the experience seemed.

"An' it ain''t jus' him. You wasn't buyin' that shit with Shane this mornin' neither." Daryl easily sensed the immediate tensions between the new sheriff in town, his wife and the wild-eyed cop.

"I just don't see how someone who has virtually no fingernails does that to himself in his sleep. That was either intentional… or… could he have gotten out last night somehow? Do you think… do you think a geek scratched him or something?" Again, Roxy started to drift back into thought, her hand coming back up to her mouth.

Daryl paused, not having thought about that possibility. Jennar had said that once the door shut, it stayed shut, but that didn't matter. Shane was a sneaky sonovabitch, and Daryl didn't trust him at all. He had only naturally assumed him and Rick's old lady had gotten into it about something, especially with how uncomfortable she'd looked when the marks on his neck had come up at breakfast earlier. But if what Roxy had suggested were true, Daryl wouldn't have a problem putting him down. He might enjoy it, actually.

"Git yer shit an' let's go then," he offered, though he made no move to get up.

She just gave him a half-hearted smirk and a skeptical gaze. "We both know I'm not gonna do that. I can't. We're all in this together now. We need them. And they need us." It had felt like a lifetime since Daryl had felt needed by anyone, but here he was, aware that she was actually right. These people sure as hell wouldn't've survived without him.

Daryl let the thought die there. She didn't want to leave unless they all wanted to, so that was that. Quite frankly, he wasn't sure what would do them better anyway really. Right now, all they knew was once the generators ran out, the electricity would too. While they were still secure, how easy would it be to come and go, and how appealing was this place without the perks of hot water and a stovetop?

"You know, I thought it was all just another thing the news was hyping up to be way more dangerous and wide spread than it actually was," the blonde revealed, feeling foolish now. She remembered what it was like. How soon the sound of emergency had rang throughout the city before it just stopped. She remembered the first time she'd seen one. The first time she'd seen one kill someone. And now, she'd killed one herself.

Polishing off the bottle he had, Daryl set it down and very casually let his arm fall around her shoulders, trying to break her out of the worried state she'd almost reverted to again, staring off at nothing.

Daryl missed the lighthearted air of the previous night, when everyone had been drinking and having a good time. He also had no idea how to comfort the girl sitting next to him, the physical gesture seeming like a decent attempt. "Nose 's lookin' better," Daryl outright lied, though the swelling had gone down some, the redness had turned to darker bruising under her eyes and near the bridge of her nose, the little sparkle in her nostril looking even smaller now.

"No it's not," she accepted, flashing a small, thankful smile at him to tell him she appreciated his attempt though. She wasn't going to make this easy on him, though Daryl suspected she might've been trying to. "I feel… different. That was the first one I ever killed…"

Daryl snorted, his thumb brushing the exposed skin of her shoulder. "I lost count. Trick 's not ta think about it. Ain't nothin' ya can do fer 'em. They ain't even in there anymore. They ain't people. Ya just gotta do like ya done, an' ya ain't dead fer it. An' that's all that matters now, go it?" Guilt and hesitation would get her killed. "I was out huntin' when I killed my first one. 'Bout a week an' a half 'fore I met up with ya. Some old man, tried ta snack on my kill. Then he saw me though an' comes runnin' up, growlin' like a fuckin' animal. Shot at 'im once an' got 'im in the neck. Just kepy comin' at me. Then I got 'im in the head an' he dropped."

Roxy listened intently as Daryl offered information she would consider personal to him. He rarely mentioned anything from his past, and it made her feel very close to him at that moment, her growing awareness of the fact he was trying to make her feel better, able to tell she was feeling off in the first place, made him that much more attractive all of a sudden.

Intimate moments with Daryl, no matter how unconventional or minor, were the only enjoyable moments in her life lately, and just made him all the more irresistible.

Leaning to him, she caught his lips graciously, his mouth tasting strongly of whiskey, aggressively accepting of her come-on.

But before they could get lost in one another, they pulled apart as the lights all seemed to turn out at once, indicating the generators had shit the bed.

And God knows what would happen now.