I slowed down a little when we reached the treelines and let myself fall behind Shane. Daryl was yelling for his brother, still oblivious to the fact that Merle wasn't there.
"Daryl, just slow up a bit. I need to talk to you." I watched the hunter turn around halfways, still a little confused and eyes in search of his older brother. Shane continued, "About Merle. There was a… There was a problem in Atlanta."
"'He dead?'" Dixon still seemed a little too calm to me for being told something had happened to his brother.
"We're not sure." I fought hard to keep in the snort at Shane's reply. Given the circumstances under which we left Merle behind, it was awfully optimistic to state that we were just not sure.
"He either is or ain't!" Daryl practically growled in annoyance. Rick joined in beating around the bush which only resulted in the hunter giving him a confused glance before he snapped at him asking who he even was.
"Jesus Christ! Just give it straight to him or we will still be standing here when the first snow falls…" I bit my tongue when the hunter now fixed his eyes on me. I had planned on staying out of this, but as is often the case, I just couldn't keep my mouth shut for all it was worth. I had never been a fan of sweet talking around facts, it didn't change the situation.
"What's she talking 'bout? What happened to ma brother?!" He had turned back towards Rick and Shane gave me a look that basically told me to shut the fuck up. I pressed my teeth together so I would not give him a piece of mind. If they weren't going to tell the redneck then I would, whether it sat right with the ex-cop or not.
"Don't, sweetheart. Just don't…" Shane's words were cut off by Daryl coming at Rick, so I assumed he finally told him that he was the one to handcuff Merle to that roof. With some curses Shane got behind the redneck as he pulled out a knife with his eyes fixed on Rick. Within seconds they were both sitting on the ground, Daryl in a chokehold and Rick crouched in front of him. I didn't get the words that were exchanged but I couldn't help to roll my eyes in annoyance. Putting the hunter in a chokehold had been an unnecessary display of dominance on Shane's part. It would have been enough to take the knife from him and just restrain his arms. What did they expect him to do when they told him we left his brother to die? Ask them to help him gather some daisies?
Again Dixon's eyes landed on me while I still stood there with my arms crossed over my chest and my bow now slung over my shoulder. Judging by the look he gave me, he had no idea what to think of me, whereas he seemed to have made up his mind about Shane and Rick.
"Fine! Let me up a'ready…" Slowly Shane let go of the man in front of him and with a pissed look the hunter shuffled back to his feet.
"What I did was not on a whim. Your brother does not work and play well with others." Daryl just rolled his eyes opening his mouth to get back at Rick.
"It's not Rick's fault. I had the key. I dropped it." I looked at T-Dog and pinched the bridge of my nose with my left hand when another discussion broke loose with everyone else in the camp standing there and watching Daryl getting angrier and angrier again. Not that I'd blame him. I didn't know him but I could understand his reaction. Hell I might have acted the same way if someone told me they dropped the key to my brother's freedom and wellbeing.
"Hell with y'all! Just tell me where he is so that I can go get him." I watched Daryl turn around with a huff as Lori told him with a disappointed look on her face that Rick would be showing him the way. I frowned slightly as the hunter stomped off and wondered what Lori's game was. Did she just say that because she feared her husband would abandon her again or was there more to it? I couldn't quite put my finger on what bothered me about their relationship, it just didn't seem right. And what was it with those looks Shane and her sometimes shared? Weird was the only word I could put to that kind of relationship.
"You okay?"
I gave T-Dog a small smile. "Sure T. Just thinking. There are some people I can't figure out just yet." He gave me a sideways glance when I started chewing on my bottom lip.
"You're going back." I slowly nodded at his statement.
"Yes. I need to. It's my fault he's still up on that roof. I should have gone back for him in the first place," I murmured, more to myself than to the man beside me.
"You know that I can't let you go alone with that redneck to save his dumbass brother. I couldn't look at myself if something happened to you while you cleaned up my mess…" I had to acknowledge T-Dog's will to act and to clean up his so called mess, even if it was just some dumb accident since he didn't lose the key on purpose.
"I appreciate your concern, but it's really not necessary. If I go, it is my own decision and has nothing to do with anyone but my own pride and sense of morality. I'm gonna find my clothes, I don't feel comfortable going back to the city in this tight fitting stuff Lori lent me…" With a little smirk as a thanks to T-Dog for escorting me back, I walked towards Dale's van, glad that I found my own clothes neatly folded in the chair in front of it. Since Lori was somewhere talking to her husband I figured I had to thank Carol later for bringing my stuff back. I grabbed the stack and went inside the van to change.
He had stomped off in a fit when Lori, apparently that new guy's wife, had stated her husband would bring him to his brother. Grumbling, he threw the squirrels he had brought back to camp into the dirt at his tent's entrance. He should have gone with them instead of scavenging the woods for food. Even that went to shit after that rotten bastard had dug his rotten teeth into the deer he had been tracking for hours!
He grabbed a bucket of water and some cloth to at least wash off some of the dirt before it would start to irritate his skin too much. Sitting there in front of his tent and scrubbing off the dirt he took a look around camp.
The ex-cop and his wife were arguing about something, Shane watching them from afar. He hated that bastard, had hated him from the first minute. Sure he knew what he was doing and had kept the group together and mostly alive over the last weeks, but his domineering attitude didn't sit well with the hunter. The two sisters were a case for themselves. Their personalities just didn't match well with his own, especially Andrea's. He'd rather keep to himself than get into business with those two. Ed was just plain stupid and would probably have died years ago if it wasn't for Carol. While he didn't like the way she and her daughter were treated, he wouldn't interfere, it was not his business.
A soft laugh had him turning back towards the treeline. There was another riddle. He narrowed his eyes as he watched the strange new girl walk towards Dale's van accompanied by T-Dog. The idiot who had dropped the damn keys and was mostly responsible for leaving his brother handcuffed to a damned roof with walkers on the other side of a bolted door. The girl was different from the other women in the camp. She had something about her that told him she wasn't helpless or a nuisance. If he was honest he had been a little impressed when she had crushed that head under her boot without so much as blinking. The argument that followed hadn't gone unnoticed by him as well. One thing was for sure, she didn't take shit from anyone.
He shook his head. What was it to him? He didn't care for anyone but his brother. And he would get Merle back, no matter what it took. They should have stayed on their own, like it had always been. Just the two Dixon brothers and nobody there to tell them what to do.
He looked up again when the girl exited the van, obviously after having changed clothes. Rather than that stupid and much too tight jeans she was now wearing some loser army pants. As she stepped outside she just slipped a dark tank top over her head and bra and pulled it down over her stomach, not caring who was watching her. It didn't go unnoticed how Shane was ogling her. That was new… Until two days ago the curly haired man had been practically glued to Lori. Not that he cared, enough but that was strange. And for whatever reason he didn't like the way Shane was looking at the new girl one bit.
I had quickly discarded Lori's clothes. While I appreciated her lending them to me until mine were dry, I just didn't feel comfortable in them. After I put my pants and boots back on, I quickly slipped into my black sports bra. Gripping my sunglasses between my teeth I stepped outside while pulling my tank top over my head. I didn't really care if anyone watched me standing there in my bra. Being in the army had taught me that privacy was some luxury that often couldn't be achieved and so I didn't care that much about it, so long as all the important parts were covered.
Putting my glasses on to cover my eyes, I spotted Rick, Lori, Shane, Daryl and T-Dog standing together. Rick was back in his police uniform and the hunter had cleaned up a little. I walked over with my bow in hand and my rifle back over my shoulder, expecting us to leave soon after Daryl's last statements.
"So you and Daryl, that's your big plan?" Lori had her hands stemmed into her sides and was pouting at her husband, who was trying to convince Glenn that he needed him to come back to Atlanta with him.
"I am going too. I wanted to go back for that moron in the first place." All heads turned to me, some in surprise, others, mainly T-Dog's, not so much. Daryl gave me a questioning look, evidently not sure what to make of me and my statement yet.
"Look, I am sure we could find something else around here for you…"
"Sorry, Shane, for giving you the impression this was up for debate. I am going back for Dixon." Shane glared daggers at me, but before he could say anything, Andrea cut in.
"Why would you do that? You don't owe that asshole anything."
I looked at her for a second. "No, I don't. Hell, I don't even like him. But I don't need to like him to help get him back in one piece. Like I said yesterday: He is one of us and we don't leave the living behind." I just turned back around and walked towards the white van, assuming we would be driving in that. I had no intention to stand there and listen to them discussing who should go and who shouldn't. In all honesty, I didn't really care. The fewer people that tagged along, the faster we could move within the city grounds.
I felt the vehicle shift a little as someone got in through the back.
"Why would you go back for my brother?" I turned slightly around in the passenger's seat and looked at Daryl, noticing for the first time his bright blue eyes since we were so close now with him leaning forward between the front seats.
"Because it's the right thing to do. Nobody deserves to go out like that without a fighting chance." His face remained expressionless and he bit the inside of his cheek.
"Still don't get why you would come along, or why Shane gets his boxers twisted about it…"
"Shane can get his boxers twisted all he wants. I'm not a cop or a civilian so he can try pulling rank on me as long as he likes, it still won't keep me from doing what I want." Instead of answering, the hunter's eyes traveled down to my shirt's neckline and before I could ask what he was looking at, he had pulled out my tags.
"Lieutenant Rachel Thompson… Huh, explains a lot." I felt a slight shiver run over my back when his fingers had touched my skin and was a little surprised when he suddenly let go of the thin chain as if he had burned his fingers.
"Shit, what's takin' 'em so long?!" With an annoyed expression, he turned away from me and stomped on the horn. "Come on, let's go!", he yelled out the back and gave the horn another stomp.
Funny how two brothers can be so different, yet the same… I mused while watching the redneck's profile. He really was nothing like Merle with his longer and wild hair and those deep blue eyes. He would have actually been good looking if he cleaned up a little, with this bad boy/outlaw charm.
"Somethin' on ma face?"
I snapped out of it and quickly looked in the exterior mirror on my side, where I could see Rick and Shane. Rick made his way over and I cringed when Shane's eyes seemed to find mine. T-Dog and Rick hopped into the back and I smiled at them in an attempt to take my mind off two men in particular, well aware of Daryl still watching me. Glenn jumped into the driver's seat and we took off towards Atlanta.
"Shane's not happy about you going with us…"
I snorted and focused on T-Dog.
"Yeah, I figured that much. He can try telling me that face to face." Glenn looked at me with a curious expression on his face. "Spill it, Glenn. I can hear the gears in your brain click together." I smirked at the Asian and he scratched the back of his head.
"Nothing. Just wondering…" I hummed to that but turned my gaze back out the window without saying anything else. The truth was that I hated the way Shane acted. He wasn't my superior, so I wouldn't let him push me around. If he didn't want me to go, he should have said so, not that it would have made any difference. I let out a heavy sigh as we approached the city.
About twenty minutes later, Glenn parked the truck outside the city limits near a chain-link fence.
"We walk from here," he stated matter of factly, and we all got out one by one. I knocked an arrow into my bow just to be ready in case I needed it. We cut through the fence with the bolt cutters we had borrowed from Dale and a short discussion broke loose whether to retrieve the guns Rick had left behind in the streets or Merle on the rooftop first. Of course Daryl wanted to go after his brother first and, after Rick asked for Glenn's opinion, we decided to pick up the guns on our way out.
Getting back to the store we had been holding out inside wasn't hard. Most of the herd had dispersed in search of food, leaving behind only a few walkers that we either dodged or took out. Just before we reached the store, we saw that our way in was blocked by six of the walking corpses. Rick, Glenn and T-Dog attacked them with the knives and axes they had brought along, while Daryl and I stayed behind to cover from a distance. Coming to a silent agreement with the hunter, I took out the first walker easily. For whatever reason, he seemed to be one of the few in our group to actually believe I knew what I was doing.
"Down, Dixon!" I turned after seeing a shadow in my peripheral vision that was approaching Daryl from behind. The hunter ducked down the same second I let go of my arrow, embedding my arrow deep into the corpse's right eye. He looked at me and nodded. The only clue something wasn't right were his blue eyes widening.
Not half a second later I groaned when something grabbed my hair and pulled me back. I involuntarily had to follow the pull on my scalp, accidentally dropping my bow in the movement. I heard teeth snapping next to my ear and struggled to get free. My left hand tried to keep the head with the rotting teeth away from my throat while I tried reaching one of my hunting knives with the other hand. Rick, Glenn and T were too far away and focused on the walkers in front of them and Daryl I couldn't see right now. Suddenly the pull on my stopped and I fell on my back with a gasp.
"You gonna lie there all day?"
I scoffed at the hunter standing over me and got back to my feet, ignoring his hand. He just shook his head and followed the others into the store.
It was quiet inside, only one walker strolling around, which Dixon took out real quick. We quickly proceeded up the stairs and onto the roof after T-Dog cut through the padlock he put on the door. I was the last one to walk out and felt my heart clench.
"No! No!" Daryl's pain cut through me like a hot knife as I stared down on the ground next to the pipe where we had left Merle. I wasn't one of those faint hearted damsels, but Dixon's severed hand lying in a pool of his drying blood didn't sit right with me.