Chapter Thirteen: Ignoramus
Ignoramus: an ignorant or stupid person.
Day 60
"Hey, T-Dog, try that CB." Morales suggested as they all stood in a group, looking warily towards the rowdy group of walkers outside. "Can you contact the others?"
"Others?" Rick asked, Daisy looked questioningly at the group around them.
"Glenn mentioned a camp." She added, searching for clarification. Morales gave her a short nod in reply, deciding the explanation succinct.
"Got no signal." T-Dog bemoaned, holding the crackling radio in hand, glaring at it for its fault. "Maybe the roof?" He suggested with renewed optimism.
As if some unseen force had heard them, a loud bang and whooping voice sounded from above; a gun had fired. All in the group looked to the ceiling, those who knew the origins of the noise narrowed their eyes at the disturbance.
"Oh no, is that Dixon?" Andrea interjected, leading the group away from the walkers scratching at the glass doors and back towards the roof access.
"Come on, let's go."
Daisy and Rick followed behind, not exactly hopeful that this 'Dixon' person would be a reasonable person, if that shout had anything to say about his character. They made their way up winding stairs, feet making hollow thumps on the dull metal steps, overshadowed by the loud gunshots echoing from above, until they reached the uppermost floor.
Morales led the group, flinging the roof door open, "Hey Dixon, are you crazy?" There was a hoarse snicker, and Daisy emerged into the daylight. The group stood staring at the man, Dixon, who was on the ledge of the roof, aiming a rifle at the walkers below.
"Oh, jeez." Andrea muttered beside Daisy.
"Hey! You oughta be more polite to a man with a gun!" Dixon had turned, and was now holding the rifle in front of him. Daisy didn't know him, but upon this first impression, she didn't exactly have faith that he wouldn't act on his veiled threat. "Huh? Only common sense." Dixon jumped down from his perch and strode towards the group with a shit-eating grin smeared across his face.
"Man, you wasting bullets we ain't even got!" T-Dog yelled at him, rushing up to confront the wayward man. "And you're bringin' even more of them up on our ass!"
"Hey! Bad enough I got this taco-bender on my ass all day. Now I'm gonna take orders from you? I don't think so, bro. That'll be the day."
T-Dog paused, looking at him with narrowed eyes, "'That'll be the day'? You got something you want to tell me?"
Daisy's eyes widened in disbelief and she muttered to herself, "What the fuck kinda racist?" The man, Dixon turned his eyes on her, narrowing them.
"You got something you wanna say there, Sweetheart?" His mouth twisted as he looked at her lecherously, Daisy backtracked with her nose wrinkled in disgust. Merle just chuckled and scoffed at her in dismissal, turning back to his confrontation with T-Dog.
"You wanna know the day?" He continued, looking smugly at T-Dog in front of him.
"Yeah!"
"I'll tell you that day, it's the day I take orders from a nigger."
"Motherfu—!" T-Dog flung a punch at Dixon and Daisy stepped back from the fight, shoulder bumping into Glenn's behind her.
The group all at once started forward, Rick getting the closest and interjecting himself between them. There was a heavy, meaty sound as Merle landed a hit on T-Dog's shoulder, he went down and Rick held out a calming hand towards Merle. Another punch, this time from Merle directed at Rick, and Rick was pushed down to the ground, falling over the heavy pipe that was fixed between them.
"Fucking…" Daisy rushed forward and helped the disoriented Rick to his feet, looking up to see the brawl continuing, and wondering just what she and Rick had gotten into. There was a loud ringing thump as T-Dog's face was smashed into a large pipe, Merle stood over him and began to kick him.
"Dixon, get off him! You're gonna hurt him!" The others stood to the side, screaming for him to stop and see some semblance of reason. Daisy stepped over the pipe and gestured for Rick to follow her, she held out a hand which he took to give himself balance. Behind her she could hear the sound of Merle's fists landing on T-Dog's face, she cringed at the sound of T-Dog's groans.
Rick touched a hand to his face, and shook his head to find some clarity. He started forward, just as Merle had pulled another gun on T-Dog, aiming it directly at his anxious face. Merle cocked the gun with a metallic click.
"No, no, no! Please!" Andrea pleaded with the unreasonable Merle from the side. All was still for the moment, no one daring to move. T-Dog moaned from where he was flat on the ground, Merle looked around at the terrified faces of his group, then looked back down to stare into T-Dog's wide eyes. The hand pointing the gun wavered, and then Merle simply spat a huge gob of spit onto T-Dog's face and gave a yell.
"Yeah! Alright! We're gonna have ourselves a little powwow, huh? Talk about who's in charge…I vote me." Merle stood and backed off of T-Dog, looking around at the group with a smug grin as they collectively pulled T-Dog to his feet. "Anybody else, huh? Democracy time, y'all."
Daisy just continued to stand off to the side, entirely unwilling to get involved in that hot mess of a situation. She didn't know what kind of power trip this maniac was on, just that she wanted nothing to do with it.
"Show of hands, huh? All in favour?" Merle prompted the group, gun pointing off to the side with one hand while his other raised into the air. "Come on. Let's see 'em." Morales reluctantly raised his hand.
"Oh, come on." Andrea cried in disbelief, her face scrunching up at his conceding to Merle's impromptu democratic election.
"All in favour?"
One by one the group started to raise their hands, their expressions telling that they would rather do anything else had Merle not been waving his gun around in threat. Daisy's lips tugged up in a smirk when she saw that one of the women had the middle finger or her voting hand raised towards Merle.
"Yeah, that means I'm the boss, right? Yeah. Anybody else?" Merle looked around at the people, eyebrows raised mockingly. Daisy's attention was caught when Rick shook off her hand and moved forward, towards Merle who had his back turned towards the two newcomers.
"Yeah." He said quietly, Merle turned to see who dared oppose him, only to be promptly assaulted by a shotgun to the face.
There was a thud and a grunt as Merle landed heavily on the concrete roof, Rick knelt down. One knee was pressed hard into Merle's neck to contain him as Rick found his police handcuffs and slapped one cuff around Merle's wrist, and the other around an offshoot of the heavy pipe that overtook the roof.
Daisy huffed a relieved breath and lost the tenseness in her shoulders, glad that somebody was capable of shutting that crazy person down. She looked over to see the others in the group staring at the downed and cuffed man, Rick had hauled him up to sit against the pipe and his hands were balled threateningly into Merle's vest.
"Who the hell are you man?!" Merle managed to shout between pained grunts.
"Officer friendly." Rick leant back and took Merle's fallen gun off the ground, turning back to get into his face after taking the bullets out. "Look here, Merle. Things are different now. There are no niggers anymore." Rick sneered the word at Merle. "No dumb-as-shit, inbred white-trash fools either. Only dark meat and white meat. There's us and the dead. We survive this by pulling together, not apart."
"Screw you, man." Merle scoffed at Rick, who looked away with a bitterly amused smile.
"I can see you make a habit of missing the point." Rick narrowed his eyes at Merle, his face turning serious.
"Yeah? Well, screw you twice."
"Ought to be polite to a man with a gun." Rick spat Merle's words back into his face, pointing Merle's lost gun against his forehead. "Only common sense."
All was quiet for a few beats, save the heavy breathing of the group members, until Merle ill-advisedly spoke up again.
"You, you're a cop."
"All I am anymore is a man looking for his wife and son. Anybody gets in the way of that is gonna lose. I'll give you a moment to think about that." Rick tilted his head with newfound awareness, then patted around Merle's vest until a little vial of white powder surfaced. He tilted Merle's head back, "Got some on your nose there." Rick flicked the offending appendage
"What are you gonna do? Arrest me?" Rick rose and then threw the cocaine over the side of the building. "Hey! What are you doing? Man, that's my stuff!" Rick walked away from the screaming man. "If I get loose, you'd better pray…yeah, you hear me, you pig? You hear me?"
"Yeah, your voice carries." Rick muttered to himself as he passed the wide-eyed Daisy. He leant his forearms against the barrier around the roof, Daisy peered around his shoulder to see him gripping his wrist, hand shaking. Morales came up on Rick's other side and began talking to Rick, Daisy backed off and slinked past the fuming Merle, who glared at her mutely, then approached the rest of the group. T-Dog sat on the ground, hand gingerly probing his tender face where Merle had assaulted him.
"You…okay?" Daisy managed, wincing in sympathy for him. T-Dog just gave her an obvious look, then glanced off and continued to try to soothe his injury. "Yeah…haha, guess not." Daisy's eyes wandered over the rest of the new people, most of whom were looking curiously back at her. "So what the fuck is that guy's deal?" She mumbled under her breath, nodding her head back a fraction in his direction.
"Asshole hick thinks he can do whatever he wants just because he and his brother hunt for the group." Andrea explained briefly, bitter tone accurately conveying the general feeling towards the two. Daisy nodded her head up and down a few times in understanding, then twisted her mouth in thought.
Above them the crackle of thunder resounded, Daisy looked up to see dense, heavy clouds covering the Atlantan sky. Andrea and Jacqui both stood up from where they were crouching and glanced over the ledge.
"My God, it's like Times Square down there." Andrea remarked, Daisy leaned against the ledge and glanced down at the street below. Her brow furrowed as she took in the hundreds of walkers that littered the streets, each ambling slowly around with no apparent destination.
"How's that signal?" Morales asked T-Dog, him and Rick approaching the others.
"Like Dixon's brain. Weak." He replied snarkily, rightfully so after the beating that his face took. Daisy gave a half-smirk as her eyes continued to scan the horde of walkers.
"Keep trying."
"Why? There's nothing they can do. Not a damn thing." Andrea added, somewhat unhelpfully.
"She's right we're on our own." Rick reiterated. "Up to us to find a way out."
"Good luck with that. These streets ain't safe in this part of town from what I hear. Ain't that right, Sugartits?" Merle added, sneering at Andrea lecherously. Daisy's nose wrinkled in disgust, already regretting Merle's existence. "Ay, Honeybuns! What's say you get me outta these cuffs, we go off somewhere and bump some uglies? Gonna die, anyway."
"I'd rather." Andrea replied frankly, Daisy couldn't help but agree.
"Rug-muncher. And you, Curly?" Merle looked up at Daisy beseechingly, she just gave him an obvious look. He scoffed and sighed, abruptly spitting off to the side. "Figured as much. Hope you two'll be very happy together." Merle jeered mockingly.
After mentally dismissing the jeering man, the group debated possible plans for an escape, finally coming upon a decision to try the sewers rather than the walker-infested streets. So, they convened in the sub-basement of the building, circled around the fenced ladder that led to the sewer entrance. Torch light shone down to show the dank entrance.
"This is it? You sure?"
"I really scoped this place out the other times I was here. S'the only thing in the building that goes down." Glenn assured them. "But I've never gone down it. Who'd want to, right?" Daisy and the rest of the group simultaneously turned to look at him, his face slowly fell in realisation. "Oh." He said flatly, "Great."
Glenn nodded his head slightly, it seemed to Daisy as though Glenn had often drawn the short straw. After Glenn insisted that they do things on his terms, the group split to attend to their assigned jobs. Rick, Andrea and Morales went to the storefront to protect from walkers with their guns, Glenn and Daisy started down the ladder to the sewer, and Jacqui stood watch at the top of the ladder.
Daisy stepped off the ladder and onto the floor, wincing inadvertently at the sound of her boots hitting the murky water. She held her torch up and followed Glenn into the entrance of the sewer. Their steps were hollow and echoing through the tunnel, water continuously dripped along the pipes on the wall. Daisy gritted her teeth at the sight of a very large rat scampering out of the torchlight, ahead of her Glenn groaned in disgust.
They continued through the twisting tunnels, shortly reaching the end of their journey at the barred blockage of the tunnel. Glenn and Daisy shared a short glance.
"Reckon we could cut through it?" Glenn pondered. Daisy just pursed her lips and gave a shake of her head. "Thought not…"
Just then there was a screech and a walker lunged at the two through the bars, both of them leapt back in fright. The walker moaned, disembowelled rat held in hand and a bloody mouth suggesting he had taken a bite. Glenn and Daisy shared another, disbelieving glance.
"We just can't catch a fucking break, huh?" Daisy muttered incredulously.