September 29, 2010
A week after their population expanded again, Merle announces he's leaving in the morning to start searching again, with Morgan going along. He's leaning on the deck railing, holding a cup of coffee. He and Shane are looking out over the backyard where Michonne has the two children and Morgan going through warmups in the gray light of dawn. In a little bit, it'll progress to kickboxing techniques she says are to build up strength and willingness to hit and be hit.
It's the same thing Merle said about giving the kids boxing lessons. Shane agrees. When he got volunteered to teach community self-defense classes, the hardest part was teaching non-athletes to make hard contact with someone else. Even asking them to take a bump or blow was easier than getting them to deliver one.
He wishes he thought to work with Sophia earlier on something other than weaponry, but the more logical part of his brain reminds him he wasn't up to taking even a practice blow to the chest.
"Where are you gonna start?"
The older man takes a drink of his coffee before replying. "Thought I would check out that farm first. See if anyone circled back, even if just for supplies. Herd should be moved on by now."
"Yeah, no reason for large numbers to linger. Cattle's either eaten or fled."
"I'll leave a note in case Daryl or the others happen by."
"Want Sophia to write them out?"
Merle empties his cup in one last drink and nods. "Couldn't hurt. They're going to respond better to her leaving a breadcrumb trail than me."
"You really up to the hospital today? We can probably get plenty of supplies from other locations."
"Don't think Chonne or Sophia are gonna feel settled til they get what they can out of that place. Andre's happy enough to stay with the kids and critters."
It's been a feature for debate. Having a fourth adult will be invaluable in the hospital, but it means leaving the three children completely alone for most of the day. Sophia's plenty old enough to babysit, but it still makes everyone anxious.
"I keep reminding myself they've got the shelters."
Despite both shelters being mostly root cellar now, there's still room for them to actually act as a shelter. With the radio system Morgan cobbled together, they won't be completely out of contact range. Neither will Merle be, once he travels, if their luck holds on him putting up a couple of repeaters.
"Luck should hold out here. Type of assholes you described ain't looking out like this usually. Scores are around the towns. Hang out, look for movement or signs of occupancy."
"Which we've done, by clearing buildings."
"Just means you need to be more creative in covering up how recent it was. Missing supplies could have left at any time. Board some places up, chain others, make sure you aren't neat when you scavenge."
"Set the scene."
"Precisely right, deputy. Tween you and Chonne, you should be able to think round that."
Considering the woman was an attorney before, he imagines she can definitely wrap her mind around helping.
Down below, they're moving to their actual workout, discarding jump ropes. Merle grins. "You know it's just a matter of time before we're not allowed to just watch anymore."
Shane laughs. He's still doing a restricted version of his old routine, but honestly, a group effort like that actually appeals. "Be interesting. Haven't had a partner for working out in a long time, much less a group. Might just volunteer."
It's been seven weeks since he was originally stabbed and most surgical waits are six. He guesses it's time to step up his game. Hell, Merle's missing an entire hand and going on the road.
"Guess I should finish out daypacks before Sophia thinks I'm slacking off up here."
Merle chuckles and heads inside with Shane, going to wash his coffee cup while Shane does a final check that each pack has water, meal bars, a med kit, and the rest of Sophia's essentials list she worked out with Merle.
Another reason Shane feels reasonably safe is that they've made getting this far down the road difficult. The project isn't finished, only small areas closest in, but when Shane and Morgan are done, the only easy access here will be by water. Even that point Morgan has a few ideas for, but it's going to take months.
And for now, they at least have tripwires to warn the kids if anyone crosses at the shoreline.
Footsteps on the stairs signal the workout ended. Andre is actually the first inside.
"Mer! I jumped!" He's got a child sized jump rope in his hands.
Merle finishes securing the heavy leather prosthetic and grins. "Did you now? Show me."
The rest have arrived, providing the boy with a full audience as he gamely makes three skips of the rope before his coordination fails. "See! I jumped!"
"Yes, you did, little man. You're already ways ahead of Ole Merle."
Andre giggles. "You can't hold both sides."
"Might have to try out some duct tape and prove you wrong."
One thing Shane's noticed is that the longer the kids act nonchalant about the missing hand, the more Merle settles down about it. He even forgoes the cloth cover for hours in the evening, which means the skin is looking much healthier.
Shane can certainly see him rigging a jump rope to amuse the toddler. Andre believes it because he offers his jump rope to the man.
"Now we got another problem, little man. I'm just a little taller than you."
Even the adults join the laughter when Merle unfurls the toddler sized jump rope that barely reaches his waist from the floor.
"Mama will find one for you."
"Sounds like you're scheduled for jump rope tonight," Michonne muses, smiling as she adjusts her daypack to accommodate the katana sheath.
Merle hands Andre's rope back. "Remind me tonight, alright?"
Taking that as a promise, Andre runs off to put away his jump rope.
"Fee. You need anything before we go?" Shane asks.
She's sweaty, but seems jazzed as always after exercise. He accepts the hug she offers, pressing a kiss to the shaggy hair that Michonne straightened up so that it looks more purposeful and less Shane guessing how a haircut works.
"Nope. We're good. Got plenty to study and practice inside today." With Andre as their responsibility, the kids are housebound for this first trip.
As they pull out of the driveway in Merle's SUV, Shane can see the kids wave from the deck.
"Even I don't look as worried as you, Shane." Michonne's expression is understanding as she looks back over her shoulder from the passenger seat to where he's seated behind Merle.
"I haven't been farther than the width of my property from her since I found her."
Morgan chuckles. "It's like leaving an infant the first time. Your brain keeps screaming you're headed in the wrong direction. Your emotions don't really distinguish her age and capabilities."
Reassured that he's not going damned crazy at the uneasy feeling, he takes a deep breath and half-watches the changes to the neighborhood as they go by. His place is the smallest one on the road, in acreage, but not the only one already fenced. They fenced off his immediate neighbor's property just by running heavy duty fencing between his property and the next fenced one.
It's where the goat and lambs are now housed, along with a hodgepodge of other farm animals. All are from the remains of a petting zoo where walkers weren't the danger, but starvation. The situation was dire enough that two-thirds of the animals were dead, and they lost two more after transport.
It makes Shane really dread trying the exotic animal sanctuary.
They have to slow the SUV twice to disengage and reengage Morgan's booby trapped barriers. The rest of the trip to town is uneventful. Merle eyes the military checkpoint thoughtfully.
"Not safe to leave that out here. Humvees aren't secured, and that's a damned Bradley. Needs to be removed and disabled before some predatory group lucks by."
"They're all over the state like that now, though. In the towns large enough for hospitals, particularly. They deployed Guard to oversee medical evacuations, or so they told the sheriff's department."
"Take 'em all then. Hide what you can't use for parts. You know they're designed to run on anything, right?"
Morgan leans forward, interested. "I heard that it's a single fuel system."
Merle nods. "Those fuel drums by the birds? Runs everything in the parking lot."
"We'll put them on the list to clear out. Hell, Sophia can ferry me back and forth in the Bug to fetch them. Park them in the woods on the place across from mine."
"But today, we need medical more than military," Michonne reminds them.
Merle puts the SUV back in gear, heading to the front entrance. "Front door service," he quips.
"Not worried about the upper floors," Michonne says. "We're too small a group to risk the whole building. But the important places are going to be ground floor or basement."
They all step out of the SUV and sling empty duffels over their shoulders as they enter the wide open doors. There are no moving dead in sight, but the lobby bears witness to the fact that living humans were gunned down alongside the walkers.
"Jesus Christ."
Morgan looks sympathetic at Shane's utterance, even as Merle eases around the body to shuffle for ID badges off the ones in scrubs.
"Only saving grace is that the men who did this didn't escape either, not with all their equipment left," Morgan says, passing the ID cards around. Shane recognizes the doctor on his and sighs at the waste of a good man.
Morgan studies the darkened halls. Whatever power still ran when Rick woke up is long gone now or at least not apparent on this floor. "These probably won't work anywhere. There would need to be a server active."
"Better to have them and not need them than vice versa," Merle says.
They all switch on headlamps and Shane leads the tense group toward stairs for the basement. "Dated a woman for about three months who worked in central supply. She bitched it was like working in a tomb."
Creepy words now, but luckily no one comments on his poor phrasing. This stairwell is internal only and dark as hell. Morgan swipes the beam of a bigger flashlight up and down the concrete steps. Splashes of blood can be seen, but no movement.
They ease their way down the stairs, where as predicted, the keycard reader isn't working. However, the door was never meant to withstand the force of crowbars forcing it open. The latch sheers right off and the door pops open.
The downside is now it won't shut behind them.
They opt for the pharmacy first, and the door is more secure than the stairwell door. Even so, it's not a bank vault. The upside is that they've made enough noise there's unlikely to be any loose walkers down here in the oppressive dark.
"Merle and I will collect the list of essentials," Michonne says. "What we can find in this mess. You two open this other door and then stand guard."
She hangs a battery powered lantern that at least gives more light. Once Shane and Morgan prove the other pharmacy door isn't force proof, they return to the outer door, tense and alert as the pair behind them rattles bottles and mumbles over the lists compiled from the PDR and nursing books.
Tapping the glow function on his watch shows him they've been down here half an hour just as the lantern light moves again.
"We will definitely have to leave things in the lobby if we try other places," Merle mutters.
He has two duffels slung on his back and one rattles as he moves. Shane remembers how the pill bottles he took back in Greenville rattled in the bag.
"You sound like a walking maraca," Shane teases as they ease down the hall to the clean supply.
Merle just snorts, eyeing the dark hallway carefully as Shane and Morgan force access. This time, Michonne and Merle stand guard, while Shane and Morgan fill their duffels with all the loose supplies and any instruments they can actually identify.
They avoid the packaged trays for the most part, since no one has the training to use things like catheters. But the IV kits go in even if Shane has to volunteer for pincushion practice.
"Christ, Sophia would have loved to have had these when she treated my chest," Shane says as he packs away three wrapped surgical instrument trays. "Instead of a razor blade and tweezers."
"What the hell?" Michonne's headlamp swings inward.
"She boiled the blades I had for caulk work and used them to debride the wound edges that were going necrotic."
"Sweet Jesus, that poor child. How conscious were you?"
"Through the whole thing."
"Damn. At least Merle managed to pass out when I worked on his arm, and I did have appropriate tools. Benefit of taking shelter in a fire station and having a nurse for a mama."
Shane did note her kit was less haphazard than what he and Sophia collected, but now he knows why.
"Well, if she could save my ass with a razor blade and tweezers, just imagine her with tools and training, right?"
Merle coughs out a laugh. "Maybe we get lucky and that old vet survived."
Shane certainly hopes so. Hershel saved Carl, so he's bound to be a wealth of knowledge for Sophia. Old man wasn't without skills, so odds are better in the long term for him than he thinks they were for a dreamer like Dale.
"If not, we keep collecting knowledge for her. For all of us," Morgan says.
"Shit. We probably need more bags," Shane mutters. Moving the lantern, he's found another row of shelves of various supplies used for the packages. Maybe not all useful, but harder to tell in the dark.
"Can fit a little more in one of my bags," Merle says. There's rattling as he passes the bottle filled bag to Shane. He holds it open while Morgan fills it off with plenty of those gauze pads Sophia used up on his chest.
"We'll make another trip once we have a better inventory," Shane says. "It's not like it's going anywhere."
Michonne agrees. "I would like to try to access the kitchens this trip, if we can."
Shane frowns as he zips up the bag. He shoulders two instead of Merle this time as they make their way back into the hallway.
"Rick said the cafeteria was blocked off and full of the dead."
"The kitchens may be separated enough that we can access the food supplies," she replies.
"Could look for a loading dock. Food delivery usually needs one for a place this big," Merle suggests.
With that idea in mind, they all head for the ground floor and daylight. Shane isn't the only one who shivers in the sunlight as they load bags into the back of the SUV. They load up and circle to the back.
The back of the hospital, where the emergency exit is, is nothing but an uncouth morgue of decaying bodies. They nudge the SUV around them, but when they open the doors at the loading dock, there's little of the smell Shane associates with walkers.
"Poor bastards have been baking too long in the Georgia sun to even smell anymore."
Merle's right, because the remains are more skeletal than corpses now. Shane's grateful, since it lessens recognition factors for him.
It's perhaps evidence of the chaos as the hospital fell that the dock door isn't pulled all the way down. Merle tests for danger in typical fashion: he bangs the metal of the blade on his prosthetic on the door.
Nothing makes a sound.
Once the door is rolled slowly up, they discover where a good number of the trigger happy soldiers died. It seems, in the end, they weren't even safe from themselves. They have to move a few of the bodies to have a path to where they need to go.
Their luck doesn't hold entirely when they find the area they need. But there's only six walkers and four of them, so it's an easy matter to drag the finally at rest bodies aside when they're done.
Michonne makes sure they get no more unwanted guests by simply locking the door leading into the cafeteria. She turns and joins them in taking inventory.
"Not as well stocked as I hoped, but everyone's delivery schedules were probably shot to hell in the end."
Merle drags fingers along the industrial sized cans. "Still more than we could eat in six months or more. I'm gonna make a run for that military cargo truck."
The rest of the run goes peaceably, mostly sweating through their shirts loading the food into the big cargo truck's bed. Michonne even takes a big stock pot and fills it with utensils and knives for good measure.
They're considering leaving when Morgan gets the idea to check for other departments that would need a loading dock. He scores cleaning supplies and toilet paper.
Michonne looks a little too overjoyed by the quantities of cheap industrial toilet paper, but Shane can't blame her. It's a luxury that won't last, but while they have it, rejoice.
He's on the dock as Morgan stacks the last of the boxes they can fit on the truck. Merle's relieving the soldiers of guns and ammo, but Shane is fighting down the feeling of the last time he saw this field of the dead.
"You would have had to leave him, either way."
He nearly startles out of his skin at Michonne's voice just behind him.
"What?"
"Your partner. There's no way you could have gotten him out, much less cared for him. Sophia and I only saved our patients because you were both reasonably mobile and able to cooperate with your care. He would have starved to death outside this place."
He searches her expression and finds nothing but sympathy. "A guardian angel stayed and saved him. You saved his family. If he ever returns to his right mind, he will remember that is the important point."
"Rick's not crazy. That was me."
"You don't leave someone you love to be eaten if you are entirely sane. I would know."
At his startled look, she shrugs. "We all carry that darkness in us, Shane. You and I have just crossed that line more than others."
"Who?"
Fortunately, she doesn't need the elaboration he can't manage. The unexpected kinship is throwing him for a loop.
"Andre's father and our friend, Terry. I left Andre with them to seek out food because the camp wasn't providing it. The camp was being overrun from within when I returned. Those bastards smoked pot while watching my baby."
He's not sure he wants to think about a toddler, especially sweet, cheerful Andre, with no safe adult as a camp is being swarmed.
"I killed the walkers attacking our area. Terry was already bitten, but not dead. I snatched up my son and I left Mike weeping over his friend."
"That's not your fault if he got eaten."
"Depends on how you see it. I knew he wasn't capable of saving himself, but I didn't care. I still hear him screaming, sometimes, when the night's most quiet. He was Andre's father, and I left him to die a horrific death."
She's so solemn he realizes that while he let Merle tell her out of a sense of both justice and self-punishment, she may understand him better than either man he did speak with.
"I still hear Otis."
"It is the burden of a conscience. If you were still crazy, still broken, you would not feel that burden."
"Everything alright out here?"
Merle is looking between them, brow furrowed.
"Shane and I were just finding our common ground."
The redneck grunts and passes Shane the SUV keys. "Gonna take the cargo truck with Morgan."
Shane nods and the other men load up. Knowing they won't leave without them, he follows Michonne to the SUV.
For the first time since he cripples Otis and left him to die to get supplies to Carl, he truly understands the adage that a burden shared is a burden halved. He no longer feels marooned on an island of rightfully earned guilt. It doesn't make him any less blood soaked, but he's not alone.
When she gives him a ghost of a smile as they follow the other truck out of town, he thinks she feels the same.