Disclaimer: I don't own AMC's The Walking Dead or any of its characters. Wishful thinking aside.
Warnings: See previous chapter for complete list of warnings. In addition, will be significant adult language and reference to drug use and drug slang used throughout this particular chapter.
Authors Note: Please read and review. I am excited to see what you all think. I am open to comments, advice, and constructive criticism. This is my second Walking Dead story so I am especially looking for feedback. In addition, I wanted to send a quick thank you to my reviewers. You guys are the wind beneath my typing fingers. I adore you all!
A/N #1.5: This chapter is dedicated to Mahiri Chuma for being a delightfully evil little sprite with her capabilities of mental mind control. Represent!
Rotation – Chapter 2
The next morning the broadcasts were sporadic, the hosts confused and visibly frightened as they grasped at the merest fragments of reports or stopped completely in mid sentence, apparently bereft of their usually seamless transitions as new information continued to pour in. The news rooms both in the background and behind the rolling cameras seemed to be caught in a permanent state of uproar, with the staff yelling and shouting intelligibly in the background, often crossing directly in front of the cameras to hand deliver the latest information to the stuttering news hosts.
And all the while, the text at the bottom of the screen rolled on by, telling him what the hosts couldn't quite seem to get out. That things were bad, really bad.
No one really knew what the hell was going on and it showed up like a bad penny on payday.
He had woken up with the dawn, startled out of bed just as the sun rose, when the TV he had left on in the living room crackled temperamentally with static, the volume still cranked from the night before.
He was just throwing water on his groggy face, sleep still clinging to his eye lashes, when the broadcasts that were floating sporadically through the half open bathroom door finally registered in his sleep fogged brain.
"Breaking news to report this morning. Our top story: Jerusalem, Israel has been left completely decimated. Reported to be entirely destroyed in the wake of a massive overnight air strike by the countries military forces, apparently in a final desperate attempt to stop the spread of the contagion after containment measures in the countries capital failed. No clear report on the loss of life is yet available, but initial estimates place the numbers as possibly ranging as high as anywhere from 450,000 to even 650,000 dead."
He skidded out of the bathroom in a tangle of bare limbs, shirt slung forgotten over his shoulder and yarding up his boxers as he went. His bare feet screamed as he stalked across the cool hardwood floor, toes curling away from the unforgiving chill as he all but threw himself into the living room. He was just in time to see live footage of Manhattan fill the screen.
Only now, the landmark city skyline was awash with smoke and littered with piercing towers of sharp, jagged metal, the only marks left from where buildings, businesses, and homes had once stood. It looked like a fucking war zone..
He breathed in sharply through his nose, shaking his head slightly as if to rid himself of the vestiges of a bad dream. But when his eyes refocused, the crumpled, burned out shells of down town New York remained. ...Shit.
"Breaking news: New York lost, all attempts to destroy the Manhattan Bridge in order to contain the infection has failed. We repeat: New York City is lost. The state has lost contact with all known departments of the NYPD, New York Coast Guard, localized military personnel, and the FEMA operations staged in Eastern Manhattan. The loss of life cannot even be begun to be tabulated at this time. More information will be immediately reported on this situation as it comes into the news room."
Christ on a fucking crutch!
He tried calling Merle, bare feet wearing a hole in the carpeting as he redialled again and again, cursing as the dial tone assaulted his eardrums. The man's cell was out of service! The asshole never did remember to charge the damn thing.
"China, Russia, Japan, Britain, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, and France officially close all land, sea, and air borders to all outside traffic. The use of deadly force is rumoured, but cannot be confirmed at this time."
He left five growingly expressivemessages on his older brother's home machine before he remembered that the man was out on a week long bender with a bunch of his old prison buddies. And he hadn't heard hide or tale from him since the night, nearly a week before, when he had invited himself over to the farm stead for dinner, and had mentioned it.
"Nation Wide Alert: All Military reserves, Policing and emergency personnel, and any remaining emergency support staff, including all coast guard units, Search and Rescue personnel, and Conservation officers have been officially recalled and deputized as of immediately. Please report to the nearest military base, reserve unit, or government law office in your state."
It had been the first time that Merle had be back to the farm since Pop had died and cut him out of the will entirely. Merle hadn't stepped a foot back home since, even despite the fact that in a fit of brotherly compassion soon after the man had been released from prison, he had offered to share the family home. But Merle, stubborn bastard that he was, still apparently had his pride, because he refused and got himself a rented flat in a town two counties over.
Merle had called it a 'fresh start', a chance to get away from the stigmas and preconceptions that were abound in the local gossip of their small, backwater town. Away from the memories of fifteen months in solitary lock up. Away from the booze and the slow melt of his finger tips, as feverish hands prepared his next hit. But deep down, they both knew he was lying. Because the only thing Merle had been doing was trying to run away from what he saw in the mirror every morning.
"All contact lost with North and South Korea. Radar images obtained before the communication blackout suggests a major air strike, land shelling, and a possible ground assault initiated by the Northern country on South Korean soil. The confrontation is believed to have been provoked by action on both sides as the border between the two countries was reportedly breached on Tuesday, 6pm, standard time. There has been no statement issued from the White House on this matter at this time."
But for some reason, as he stood there, phone in hand, and watching the news reports spewing the same old garbage, passing around theories and explanations like they were party favours at a kids birthday, all he could think about was the last time he had seen him, flying high on blow, and knowing Merle, probably a gut full of Alley juice to boot, as he roared down the farm's pot hole strewn gravel drive, revving the engine in lieu of a goodbye as he screeched off down the road.
"Mandatory curfews are in affect for all major cities and urban areas Nation wide. Citizens are urged to use caution and not to panic. Marshal Law has been issued across America as of immediately. We repeat, America is officially under a state of Marshall Law.. These are precautionary measures that come directly from Washington in order to better ensure public safety."
He threw the phone at the couch cushions in frustration and confusion. The stupid bastard.
"Mexican border officials report complete failure in their attempts to close the countries borders into the USA as massive influx of refugees continue to flee from the Southern States as the contagion threatens to spread down from the Northern States."
"FEMA, the Red Cross, and other Disaster relief support crews are currently assessing the worst hit areas and are expected to set up relief camps and safe zones in all major affected cities in the next forty eight hours."
"All reports indicate that Canada's provincial borders, from British Columbia to Ontario have been breached, with rising numbers of the infected reportedly roaming along the border lines freely. Last known news reports from the region detail that the downtown core of the city of Vancouver, British Columbia has been engulfed in a massive, city wide fire. The origins of the blaze are unknown at this time, but it is currently being reported that thus far, all attempts to bring this blaze under control has been largely ineffective as fire and emergency crews cannot be located in sufficient numbers to attack the growing blaze. Canadian government officials report that Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal are completely overrun, even as darkness falls over the nation's capital."
The entire world had gone to shit.
But perhaps more importantly, the entire world had gone to shit, and that shit was fuckin' spreading.
That was when it really registered; they hadn't been able to stop this thing, not the military, or the government, FEMA, not even the damn CDC. And it wasn't just spreading down the Eastern sea board anymore; it was coming down from all sides, enveloping the country and the world in its seemingly limitless grip.
And if things kept up the way they did, Georgia wasn't going to be out of it for long. Hell, even if they did manage to stop it, find a cure, and figure out how to put things back to rights again, there was still going to be civil unrest, panic, looters, and god only knows what else to deal with.
Shit.
He tore himself away from the TV in the middle of a news report detailing the latest information released by the CDC. His strides quick, and uneven in his hurry as he all but flew back to his room and into his pair of jeans from the day before, only just throwing on a shirt when he was already halfway out the door, truck keys biting into the meat of his palm as he threw himself into the cab, gunning the engine all the way down the driveway and onto the crumbling country blacktop.
As he drove, he coasted through the broadcasting channels intently. But eventually he ended up having to switch the CB off in annoyance, every channel seemed chalk full of chatter, as people weighed in about growing situation from as far as the short and long bans could pick up.
He made it to Juliette, in Monroe County in just under an hour and a half, ignoring the only stop sign in the sleep little township as he breezed past Jackson's Hardware and Electrics, and that greasy old diner that he could never remember the name of, before he came to a stop in front of the only halfway decent hunting and supply store in over a hundred and fifty miles.
He glared heatedly when the hick behind the counter gave him a suspicious, beady eyed stare as he bought the man out of his stock of .30-06 shells. Sneering as those beady eyes went greedy as he threw down his rarely used American express card, telling the clerk to throw in half a dozen cross bow arrows on pure impulse. Thinking back to his last hunt only two weekends before when three of his best spare bolts had been sacrificed as he brought down a particularly large buck. The arrows had been bent beyond repair as the animal had dashed them across a low lying rock shelf in its death throws.
It had been a shame really, Pop had given him those bolts, ordered special from over seas for his fourteenth birthday to match the cross bow he had gotten the year before. He hadn't been allowed shoot anything other then blunt tips before that, with his old man being of the opinion that until you came to respect and understand a weapon, you shouldn't be allowed to fully use it. Heavy thoughts from a man who had ended up rotting out his liver and drowning himself in Johnnie Walker Swing before hitting his prime, leaving their Mama to care for two hellion boys on a 15 acre farm in the middle of buttfuck no where.
Outwardly he hadn't batted an eye as the final total had flashed an alarming, blinking crimson across the register screen. It was an amount that would have normally sent him into conniptions, but this time he simply stood silent, mind too full of what he had seen on the news the night before to pay something as mundane as a credit card bill much mind.
Besides, he had a sneaking suspicion that it would be a good, long while before the credit card companies would come collecting anyway.
But despite all that, despite the bullets, the gas, and the thick sheets of plywood he had picked up from old mister McMurdoh's store on the way home from work the next day, when it actually came, when his world went and suddenly changed on him.. He just hadn't been prepared for it.
Not one bit.
He hadn't realized that it was going to be like this. That it could be like this. And what was worse, was that he hadn't been prepared for what this whole mess might actually mean. Not just to the world, or the country, but to him, personally.
He had thought that he was ready for it, whatever it was. He thought he could take it and deal with it in the same ease he dealt with almost everything else in his life, whether it was the good or the bad.. But for one of the first times in his adult life, he had been wrong. Dead wrong.
Three days later, he woke up to the sound of the horses screaming.
It was here.
The sun hadn't yet reached its peak before he was throwing his Browning BLR, his father's old Pre-64 Model 70 Featherweight, Merle's shitty Smith-Corona, his compound crossbow, and a few duffle bags full of food and other survival gear into the back of his truck. He made the trips from the truck to the house quickly, averting his eyes from the blood splattered horse ring, and the woman in the blue patterned dress, who had wispy cornbread yellow hair, and despite being quite obviously very much dead wouldn't stop twitching in the long grass by the front porch. Her head almost completely severed thanks to a desperate, last second swing with his hand shovel after she had caught him from behind as he went after the last of the group that had swarmed the four breeding mares that had been grazing in the front pasture.
It wasn't safe here anymore.
And as he looked back at the corpse strewn lawn and the blood smeared, white wash siding of his childhood home, he paused long enough to open the cattle padlocks, chicken coops, and horse pastures enough to give the animals a fighting chance.. in case he and Merle didn't make it back.
Mama would have thought that that woulda' been the right thing to do.
Before the lord had taken her, his twenty fifth birthday not yet a week past, she had sat him down at the worn, hand hewn kitchen table, her tired hands still dusted with flour and salt from breakfast, and had talked to him about respect. It was a lecture he had heard her give to Merle many times over, though they both knew they were words wasted. But she had never given it to him, not before that day. And it had chilled some part of him in a way he hadn't been able to define.
It was not just about the respect one man gives to another, or the kind a kid might give to their elders, but the respect one has to have towards the things that enabled them to survive. It was about respecting your roots, respecting the land upon which you lived and worked, and the animals that kept you fed and employed. It was about respecting the baser things in your life, the things that when melded together define your very existence. Not the 'things' that simply filled it.
And while he already knew those things, perhaps better then his mother had ever realized, lessons largely self taught throughout a childhood spent by his lonesome, kicking up dust with his bare heels in the forests, fields, and pastures that made up the majority of their property, he had still listened with great attention. Hoping to give his mama, who had been sick for far too long, cause to smile again.
And when she had passed, not a month later, he had buried her with a mound of dirt spread underneath the soles of her patented black leather shoes. Merle had let him, though he had never really understood why, the older man staying silent and uncharacteristically sombre when the service had finished and they were left alone with her.
He had been uncomfortable in his black, long sleeved dress shirt and slicked back hair. The shirt had been confining and tight, but he had ignored both the discomfort of it and Merle alike when the man had finally breezed in, smelling of cheap booze and cigarette ash as he stood there alone beside the open casket.
In fact he only acknowledged his older brother with a small nod over a quarter of a hour later, letting the man stew in his own frustration, and the heat of his biking leathers in the stuffy recycled air of the funeral home, before he finally took out that little jar of soil he had collected from all four corners of their property, and sprinkled it underneath her feet.
Merle never did understand the nature of that kind of respect.
He shifted in the spray with noticeable discomfort, mind already punishing itself for dwelling on such things. Nothing good ever resulted out of thoughts like that. And he knew it. Forcing his thoughts back to their original course he let himself slowly relax back into the stream, painfully unclenching the fingers that he hadn't even noticed had gone tight around the edges of the hand rail as he twirled the temperature dial as far as it would go, gritting his teeth and simply taking the pleasurable pain that resulted.
When he had he hit the back country roads, bound and determined to find Merle and drag him out from whatever back water trash heap of a bar he and his buddies were haunting, it didn't take him long to realize just how much deep shit they were actually in.
These were rural roads he was traveling on. Ones generally only used by the people of the counties that straddled them. And still the infection..or whatever the hell it was, was already far too apparent.
He remembered how he had tried not to look too closely at the distant figures that stumbled and shuffled through the wind rippled barley fields that lined the road way, half afraid that he might recognize one of them.
He knew these people. He had grown up here. This was his home town. He had had his first beer, his first smoke, and his first love along this country road. Everything he had, everything he was, had been moulded from what lined the sides of this winding blacktop road.
And now he couldn't he couldn't escape from it. Because as the truck treads ate up the miles all he could see were the sights and smells of farmsteads burning. And all he could hear was the sound of suddenly cut off screams, and the echoing cracks of gunshots as they rang out like fire crackers on the 4th of July in the still summer air.
It took him almost two full days to track down Merle. And by then, everything in Georgia had changed.
And as it had happened, he had arrived just in time. Merle, having apparently not watched the news any longer on any given day in the last week other then to get the weather report, was drunk, high as a fucking kite, and had had even less of a clue then usual, because he was dealing out punches left, right and center like he was in a bloody bar brawl. The man had been entirely oblivious to the fact that the geeks that had him surrounded were doing their very best to sink their ugly ass teeth into him. And indeed, as Merle would later tell it, he had been under the impression at the time that the group had just been really, really pissed about him cheating at pool. Although the man had refused to go into anymore detail on the matter when he had incredulously asked how the man had missed the fact that most of the geeks had been covered in blood, sporting bite marks and severed limbs like they were rejects from a Romero film. So, in a way, he still wasn't quite sure what to make of the mans answer.
Ignorance, for the short time it had lasted, must have been fuckin' bliss.
He hadn't even hesitated as he had thrown himself into the fray. The man might be a stubborn asshole, but he was his brother after all.
As it was, he had only managed to slam the second last sucker upside the head with a shovel just as the last son of a bitch got a hold of Merle's shoulder blade and was angling his head downward for the bite.
They had dealt with that one together, Merle delivering a bone crunching uppercut right into the deadhead's exposed throat, sending it reeling backwards just as he brought the business end of his shovel down front and center across the top of its head. And for a moment it felt just like the old days, the days before Merle's stint in prison, before he started maintaining the crack and the booze like normal people did water, disappearing for weeks at a time and getting into god only knows what sorts of trouble. Back before the prison time that had stripped him down and hollowed him out of everything important, everything that had made Merle, Merle, imperfect parts and all. Back in the days where despite being an asshole, and an idiot to boot, Merle had still cared enough to act like his brother. Like his blood.
But that moment was over almost before it had even begun, because Merle had been so fucking high he hadn't even recognized him, even after the douche bag's fist had connected with the side of his head, sending his vision blurring and head throbbing and he was forced to bring his own brother down to the ground with a divisive chop to the back of his knees, holding Merle still on the grimy, blood speckled floor, surrounded on all sided by downed walkers, as he tried to talk sense into him.
It had been a long ass wait.
But once the stupid bastard had finally come down, and they had a chance to actually talk the whole mess through they decided that the best course left to them was to just get the hell 'outta dodge. Find the most remote place and hole up together, ride out the worst of it until the Calvary decided to come barrelling in.
Only now he snorts at that pipe dream, shaking his shaggy head into the slowly cooling stream at his own foolishness. Because there hadn't been any Calvary. No help, no damn military or government neither. Nothing. They had been left on their own. Left to survive or die.
Typical. It just went to show what he already knew. You couldn't count on anyone else. The only person you could count on was yourself.
He leaned his fist against his forehead in bad temper, the burn of that injustice still percolating deep in his gut, simmering as he eyed the falling water almost hypnotically, watching as it streamed down the length of his lightly muscled calves before gurgling and swirling down the drain.
But regardless, despite his lack of faith in the system, the government, and virtually everyone else, even then, as cynical and paranoid as he was, he would have never thought things could have ended up like this.
Never.
The last few days before the radios and TV ceased broadcasting entirely were the worst. With the headlines changing from warnings and health advisories, to phrases like: "America overrun", "Major cities fall", "The President, Joint Chiefs, and Councillors remain unaccounted for after Air Force One fails to take off from it's scheduled emergency flight at Andrews Air force base. No word on the welfare of the President, First family, or the Vice President at this time.."
People were beginning to realize just what it was that they were facing. And it tore the country..no the world apart. Mass hysteria and panic had just been the beginning. But it was a realization gleaned far too late. No one realized, no one believed what they were hearing until it was too late to do much about it.
The dipshits in Washington tried to maintain order, and assure the country that a solution was in the making. But it was too late. Nation wide, the people in the bigger cities panicked, flooding the highways and freeways just like the dumb bastards did in Atlanta. Turning the highways into death traps as hundreds of thousands of people piled onto the fastest and quickest routes out of the cities.
And most of them died there. Meals on fuckin' wheels as far as the geeks were concerned. Evacuating people were made easy targets when accidents, panic, and vehicles running clean out of gas quickly brought traffic to a standstill. He had even heard of people turning still locked up tight and belted into their car seats. No one knew then that it was the bites that did it. That brought you back.
But by then the virus had spread like wildfire, as people who had been previously bit or scratched by the fuckers somehow managed to escape, and turned somewhere public, like the hospitals, safe points, or rescue centers.
That's why none of them lasted very long. All you had to do is let one in. All it takes is one bite, one scratch. And then it is sayonara safe point. There just hadn't been enough bullets to deal with them all.
There had been some hope though, hope that they had all clung to in those first few days, already knee deep in the dead fuckers, desperately searching, fighting, and trying to find a safe place away from all the madness, with the last television broadcast he saw reporting that NATO forces were undertaking a massive multi-nation regrouping of it's central forces. With the reports suggesting that a number of remote northern Canadian bases not used since the Cold War were being relegated and reopened for use in the mission.
In the beginning it had made sense to everyone. The Canadian north was relatively isolated, especially around those particular military bases. There had even been rumours, spread across the CB that talked about scattered reports someone had heard of some areas up there that hadn't seen even one instance of the infection. He had called bullshit on that, but he had put stock in the NATO rumour. If they were going to regroup anywhere, that sounded like as good a place as any.
And for a long time, everyone held out hope that the military would save them. But one by one the military bases, safe zones, and rescue centers were overrun. And the NATO forces that were supposedly amassing in the Canadian north were never heard from again.
If they ever existed in the first place.
The last radio report they heard, only five days after the infection had spread like wildfire through the States, came as they were driving down through the outskirts of Newton County, dodging the few roaming dead heads they did see as they carefully swerved around the countless abandoned vehicles that dotted the trash and debris strewn roads. The signal was weak, but nevertheless audible. It was a simple message, eerily cut short, and never again repeated, as if the person that had been broadcasting had simply blipped out of existence the moment the sentence had left his lips.
"Its true people, theyare dead. No one knows how..or why. But what we do know is that it's the bites bring them back. That's how it spreads. Avoid contact with the infected at all costs. All methods save for direct trauma to the brain has thus far been reported to be ineffective. I repeat, it has been reported that the only way to stop a walker is get them in the head. It-"
And that was it. That was when the radios went dead. He and Merle had only shared a look over the trucks dashboard. There hadn't been much they could say.
It had been like being stuck in a bad movie. This shit just didn't happen in real life. In fact, in the first few days, soon after he was directly confronted with the evidence of just how much the world had changed, he kept half expecting to wake up, slumped over on the couch with a humdinger of a hangover, a nasty ass taste in his mouth, and to have this whole mess turn out to be some nightmare fuelled by a particularly bad bottle of bootlegged tequila.
Only he never did. 'Aint that just a bitch.
He refused to blink away the sting as a trickle of shampoo seeped down into the corner of his eye. Shaking his head instead, he pointed his face directly into the spray, embracing the hot sting as the water streamed down the sensitive skin of his face.
Stretching up into the running water, he let loose a series of gruff, pleased sounds as the hot water pelted forcefully across his chest, sending his skin tingling with the pleasure of it. God, it felt good to be clean again.
Turning back to the shower dispenser he eyed down the shower gel section critically before finally realizing that he was limited to one of two choices, Old Spice, or something called Axe body wash that glowed a toxically vibrant, day glow blue from the clear section of the container. Old Spice it was.
Curling his upper lip he bypassed the frilly looking loofa entirely. Recalling even as he amassed a generous pile of the body wash in his palm, a conversation he had overheard between Amy, Andrea, and Lori in the first few weeks after 'Atlanta fell, where they had argued quite heatedly that the 'loofa' was both a women's and men's shower amenity.
He hadn't said anything at the time, too busy being secretly amused by the horrified looks on Morales and T-Dawg's faces as the women had nattered on about it. But now, when directly confronted by it, he made a noted point of ignoring the poufy looking thing. Instead, he slathered the gel across his skin himself, letting his fingers spread the lather, methodically digging his hands into his sore muscles as he slowly worked the gel into a pungently clean smelling froth.
God help him, but he was going to scrub so hard his ancestors were going to feel the friction burn…
He didn't leave the shower stall until he had leached every single drop of warm water from the taps. His skin an over scrubbed, irritated red, was already throbbing at the unaccustomed abuse, and yet, it was purely because of that, that the barest hint of a smile was playing along the corners of his lips.
It felt good to feel clean again. There was no way to get around it. It was something integral, even central to how he lived, how he existed and carried himself. He couldn't quite explain it, but it felt as if a part of his humanity had been restored, reincarnated from the filthy ashes and mouldering soils, back into light, heat, and life once more.
He took a moment to look down at the trail of clothes he had left, shucked on the spot as he had made his way to the shower. Curling his lip, he eyed them critically; he could practically smell them from the distance. As it was, he was half tempted to just chuck them down the nearest garbage chute and forget about them. But in reality, as much as the thought actually appealed to him, he knew he couldn't afford to. He had practically no clothes left to him as it was.
Still, he was at loath to put on filthy clothes again, especially after finally being properly clean for the first time in months. Swearing under his breath he flipped aside his worn out, gore encrusted jeans, chucking them behind him as he hunted through the smelly pile.
His underwear in particular looked decidedly rank. And quite quickly he made a swift, command decision. There was no way in hell that he was putting on those shorts again. Not until they had been washed, boiled, and preferably bleached to shit. After all, there was only so much good a scrubbing board and luke warm water could do to a man's johns.
Wrapping a towel around his waist he exited the bathroom in a comfortable billow of steam, still luxuriating despite the indulgence, in the feeling of the deep, heated warmth that still tingled below the skin, the kind of feeling that only a hard scrubbing in the shower can produce.
Seeing no other choice save for leaving his 'bits hanging in the breeze he tightened the towel around his waist and stalked into the main room, eyes intent on the dressers that lined the eastern most wall of the room.
With a glare he leaned down and started to paw through the clothes filled drawers, almost tripping over an upturned guitar and an open, empty suitcase left strewn across the carpet. The carpet itself was akin to an obstacle course, with the previous owners personal effects spread across the floor in a blur of scientific papers, closed laptops, and small piles of dirty clothing, with even a white lab coat thrown half hazardly over the back of one of the desk chairs.
He paused only to arch a guarded brow when he finally located the underwear drawer, critically taking in the very uniformly rolled pairs of boxers and briefs that lined it in muted astonishment.
People actually rolled their underthings? Fuckin' mental. No wonder the world went to shit.
He had never been one to wear another mans shorts, even if he did have none that were clean. But now, as he pawed through the neatly folded piles, he supposed that beggars couldn't really be choosers.
Besides, he figured that by now, the world owed it to him to cut him a bit of slack every once and a while.
He had only just returned to the bathroom, eyeing his facial hair critically as he angled his face in the large mirror, a calloused palm rubbing idly across his prickly cheeks as he tried to decide if he really needed a shave or not, when a knock echoed unexpectedly from the main door.
"There are two big forces at work, external and internal. We have very little control over external forces such as tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, disasters, illness and pain. What really matters is the internal force. How do I respond to those disasters? Over that I have complete control." - Leo F. Buscaglia
Glossary:
-Alley Juiceis slang for: non-beverage isopropyl and methyl alcohol. Because as we all know from the second episode, Merle is a naughty, naughty boy. Also, crack is bad. Don't do drugs kids. You'll end up like Merle, hand impaired and slightly insane. True story. Hee.
- .30-06is a Springfieldcartridge (pronounced "thirty-aught-six", "thirty-oh-six") It remains a very popular sporting round, with ammunition produced by all major manufacturers. The .30-06's power (combined with the availability of surplus firearms chambered for it and demand for commercial ammunition) has kept the round as one of the most popular for hunting in North America. With appropriate loads it is suitable for any small or large game found in North America.
-Johnnie Walker Swing is a brand of Scotch whisky owned by Diageo and originated in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, Scotland. It is the most widely distributed brand of blended Scotch whisky in the world, sold in almost every country with yearly sales of over 130 million bottles. This particular type is supplied in a distinctive bottle whose irregular bottom allows it to rock back and forth. It was Alexander II's last blend: it features a high proportion of Speyside malts, complemented by malts from the northern Highlands and Islay, and is "almost as sweet as a bourbon."