Red River Blue
Chapter 41
The hot Georgia sun was beating down on him from high above. His head was pounding and as Glenn turned to try and escape the light he felt his hand gliding out over the open air, grasping at nothing. That and the strong smell of death were enough to cause a spike in his adrenaline. He blinked his eyes open, yanking his hand back as soon as he realized that it was dangling dangerously close to a small herd of walkers.
"Maggie!," Glenn hollered, calling out for the woman. He pushed himself up into a sitting position. After observing his surroundings more carefully Glenn did not call out for Maggie again. There was no way she was anywhere around him and all his yelling was doing was attracting more of the dead to his position. He scrubbed at his face with his hands, trying to think back to the last thing he could remember.
They were attacked. By the governor. He had been too sick to fight and he could still feel the stinging shame. But Maggie had not been too sick. Glenn's felt like his heart bottomed out into his stomach as he was forced to consider that his wife had been killed in the attack. Looking down at the walkers below him, he searched the crown for familiar faces. There were none. And most of the walkers looked well rotted. They had died a lot more than a day or two before.
Maggie wasn't dead. Glenn refused to even let himself consider the possiblity any longer. Maggie was alive and he was going to find her. Glenn smacked his parched lips together. The first thing he was going to need was water. Water and food and a weapon. All of these things could be found inside the prison. But supplies weren't going to be enough. He needed a plan.
Out of anyone in the prison group he wished he had been stuck with Daryl instead of being alone. The man was the best tracker he had ever seen. He would be able to find Maggie. Glenn wasn't a skilled outdoorsman. But he wasn't without his own set of skills. He was smart. If he couldn't track Maggie he decided he would simply start searching around the perimeter of the prison, making his search in a circle that would get wider and further out until he found some sign of the woman. He would find her because he had to find her.
Inside the prison, the first thing Glenn grabbed was a huge gallon sized jug of bottled water. He twisted the cap off, dropping it to the floor in his hurry to lift the bottle to his mouth. Tilting it back he chugged until at least half the contents were gone. Setting it down he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. A stray walker wandered out from inside one of the cells on the block. Glenn stabbed it through the head with a butcher knife letting it fall to the ground with the knife still protruding from it's skull.
There were a lot of walkers outside the prison. Too many for one man to take on alone. Glenn knew if he wanted to give himself a fighting chance he was going to need to put on some of the riot gear they had salvaged from the prison. River and Carol had cleaned a bunch of it up, but it was over in the other cell block. Glenn packed a bag, taking only what he needed and the few personal items he couldn't bear to leave behind. He pulled the picture of Maggie down from the wall in their cell and stuffed it into his pocket. Not only did he want her picture, but he also thought it might come in handy if he met any strangers. That way he could ask them if they had seen her.
Herhsel's watch, he couldn't leave that behind. Glenn wondered where the old man was and if he had made it out of the prison alive. Maybe he had. Glenn hoped that he and Maggie were together. He knew it wasn't likely but it was a comforting thought. Glenn picked up a bottle of brandy, turning it around in his hands as the wheels in his mind turned. He now had an idea of how he was going to get into the other cell block.
Glenn flicked the wheel on the small bic lighter in his hand. He forced himself to hold it under the rag until he was sure the cloth was on fire. Then he hurled it as far as he could out into the prison yard. It exploded with a loud popping crash, the flammable liquid inside bursting into flames. Like he had hoped the walkers all turned and headed for the bright noisy light. This left only a handful of them for Glenn to take out on his way to the other cellblock.
While the cellblock he had been living in had suffered only minmal damage, the same could not be said for the one he was entering. The place had been blasted halfway to rubble. A thin layer of cement dust covered every possible surface. Looking at it sent a shiver wiggling up Glenn's spine. The sight of it reminded him of a documentary he had watched in high school about World War II and the concentration camps. The cement dust reminded him of the ash made entirely of cremated human remains that had rained down and covered and entire town.
Climbing over a large chunk of cement, Glenn dodged around a walker that was pinned underneath. That one was someone he knew. An older woman from Woodbury. Glenn felt bad that he couldn't remember her name.
A loud clank followed by a thump and a grunting curse stopped Glenn in his tracks. Walkers didn't talk. And they sure didn't curse. Glenn proceeded with extreme caution knowing that there was a chance that whoever he heard was one of the governor's soldiers and not a friend. Flattening himself against what was left of the wall, Glenn crept closer. When he got close enough he leaned forward and took a quick look to see who he was dealing with. Glenn immediately regretted his actions. He thought the worst person he was going to run into was one of the governor's soldiers and he had been dead wrong. Of all the people left alive in the whole world, it was just his luck that he would be stuck alone with none other than Merle Dixon.
Taking a better look at what was going on, Glenn realized that Merle was in quite the predicament. A large chunk of cement had fallen down from above. It was blocking the door of his cell from opening. And at the awkward angle Merle was at, there was no way he was going to be able to pry it loose. He was stuck inside that cell. If no one helped him he was going to starve and die inside that cell. And for the briefest of moments, Glenn considered turning back the way he had come and just letting it happen. The man would be getting exactly what he deserved. But that wasn't what Glenn did.
"Need a hand?," Glenn asked the man, stepping out where he could be seen and offering up a large witty grin. He was going to help Merle but that didn't mean he had to be nice to him. At his new vantage point Glenn could see that Merle had taken apart the bunk bed inside his cell and was trying to use the poles to move the giant slab of concrete. Merle was resourceful, Glenn had to give him that.
The two men started at each other for a few seconds before Merle spoke up. "I ain't gonna beg fer yer help if that's whatcha want," he announced. Glenn rolled his eyes.
"If it was me in that cage," Glenn asked, "would you help me?" Merle scowled at him. Then he shrugged.
"Probly not," he admitted. Glenn didn't have anything he needed. And Merle made it a point not to stick his neck out for people that had never done anything for him. "But yer gonna help me," Merle announced, sounding a lot more confident than Glenn thought a man in his position had a right to be.
"And why's that," Glenn asked, narrowing his eyes at the man. Merle smiled as he leaned forward against the bars of the cell, his stump hand looking naked and raw without the arm piece he usually wore covering it.
"Cause your little dime piece wife is long gone. She got herself a two day headstart and without my help you ain't never gonna see her fuckin' ass again," Merle said.
TWD
After several failed attempts to dislodge the large piece of cement that was blocking the door to Merle's cell, Glenn finally hooked a chain around it and used the tint bit of gas that was left in one of the trucks to drag it. Half the outside wall being missing ended up working in their favor, since that's how Glenn was able to get the truck close enough.
The first thing Merle had done was grab for some water and start chugging. Watching him, Glenn felt an odd sort of comradery with the man, which actually annoyed him. Just because they both needed water to live didn't mean they had anything else in common. Merle packed himself a bag, like Glenn had already done. He took a few drawings from the wall that his daughter had made for him, folding them up and placing them inside a plastic ziplock bag that contained the few letters that River had written him since they reunited before shoving the whole mess down into the very bottom of his bag. He fastened on the metal sleeve he wore over his arm. Glenn was already clothed in some of the riot gear they had taken off some of the walkers at the prison. Since wearing protective gear didn't seem like the worst idea ever, Merle strapped a second set over his own clothes.
Glenn wanted to go out through the main gate. But Merle convinced him that they ought to avoid the heavily walker saturated area and head down and out through the tombs. By the time they hit the woods on the opposite side of the prison, Merle could already tell that Glenn was getting winded. He tried not to let it annoy him too much. The man had almost died from the flu and had quite possibly saved his from a horrible death by freeing him from that cell. But Merle was eager to get to River's trailer, which was the spot they had all decided on as a meeting place in case the prison fell and they were somehow separated. He didn't need Glenn slowing him down.
"Mother fucker!," Merle cursed, kicking at the charred remains of what used to be River's trailer. A walker came stumbling out of the woods and Merle pinned it against a tree with his metal sleeve across it's throat, stabbing it over and over again in the face. When he had worked out his anger at not finding his family safe and waiting for him, he let the walker drop. It slid to the ground with a thump. Merle blinked a few times. He was sure of what he saw written on the tree but at the same time he thought he might be seeing things. River's name was painted on the tree in walker blood. It was partly smeared from the walker he had just killed but it was there. Underneath were the names of some other people in the group and a short note that said they had gone to look for the bus.
Glenn had been sitting near the wreckage slowly sipping a bottle of water and wiping the sweat from his brow. But when Merle called him over he heard something strange in the man's tone. It sounded like his voice was thick with emotion. Glenn didn't even know the man had feelings. Looking at the note Glenn forgot all about Merle's uncharacteristic show of caring as he felt his own eyes filling with tears. Maggie was alive. And she was with River. Which meant there was no way Merle would go back on his word about helping Glenn find his wife.