She was cute, in a sort of school teacher, porno librarian way. All he could see was her pert ass and some very tangled brown curls. Still, from the little he'd seen of her her hanging like a side of meat from the tree, he was relatively sure she would be cute. Well cute if she wasn't covered in mud, dust, blood and vomit.
"Up yea ghet girley" He grabbed her elbow, pulling her to her feet. He was taller than some but shorter than many other guys, but he dwarfed her. Damn, she was short. He wondered absently where she'd come from. He'd seen the survivors in Atlanta and she looked like a different breed, something from before all of this, even if she was filthy, she was pale and soft of smooth looking. She was looking up at him, she couldn't be more than five foot, maybe five two. And only in slacks and her bra, huh, would ya look at that.
"Merle Dixon"
"Jeannette Aberdeen."
She wiped her hands on her slacks, then proffered her left, it was always good idea to be polite even to a figment of your imagination. He ignored her proffered hand, looking her up and down. She drew a heavy breath, blinking rapidly, then, gathering herself she let out a stream of words so rushed as to be almost continuous.
"Thank you Merle, may I call you Merle? Thank you for saving my life." She threw caution to the winds, perhaps blunt was the way to go.
"You don't have any intention of killing, eating, raping, or dismembering me or any combination or permutation there in, do you?" She paused, drawing a breath and watching him, eyes fixed on his face.
Merle almost laughed, "Nah, 'sides, if I was gonna, I wouldn'a let ya run yer trap so much." She smiled slightly and nodded, her snarled hair bouncing up and down. Her eyes were unnaturally wide and she was trembling from head to foot. He was almost certain that she was going to be a handful as soon as the shock wore off and she realized exactly what had just happened.
In a past life, and not that he's proud of this, but he would have thought about it. Not the eating or dismembering or nothin', and not the rapin' either. More along the lines of physical persuasion. She was tiny, and just standin there in 'er bra and pants, and well, it wouldn't take much effort to just finish the job.
That was before. After the van had run out of gas he'd bushwacked into the woods. He wasn't a hunter, not like Darlina was. He could manage himself in the woods and the underbrush meant he could hear the geeks coming. On his way through the woods, he'd seen two girls. One dead, raped he supposed and other things besides, then gutted. The other, well that was somethin' that would stay with him till he died. Someone had stripped her, and must'a lashed her between two saplings. They had cut her hair, cause there were great blond hunks of the stuff lyin' 'round. She'd been raped as well, that much had been obvious, and cut too. The worst thought, what would haunt him, was that the saplings that had been pulled together, had been cut free from each other, but not her arms. From the look of all the blood, she may have been alive, when they'd let her get ripped to peaces. That wasn't a fate he'd wish on anyone, not even fuckin' officer friendly.
Oh, he was still an evil bastard, he knew that much. He had left his only family in the world, and had spent the better part of The End of the World out of his mind on drugs. Still, God, or luck or some unnamed force had let him escape the roof. Merle was never a religious man per say, but he had sworn then, that he would do what he hadn't done before, what he had failed to do when he had been young and angry and full of self righteous anger. He'd never been a pray'en man, but here he was. If there was ever a man less deserving of salvation Merle didn't want to meet him. Even so, he had escaped and he was alive and now, now he had to pay the piper. Truth be told, and he would never own up to this, but he had half hoped the scream came from sugartits, Andrea, or her snot nosed sister, or the bedraggled one, Carol. He didn't want to go back to the dogooders, didn't want them judgin' and makin' rules, but he needed to get back to Daryl and that would mean finding the group and having them not kill him. With luck, Daryl would have managed to not fuck things up to badly, and he could get his brother and go. Surviving a confrontation and leaving with some supplies would be much better if he had a bargaining chip.
Granted, it could have been worse. He was almost certain that the men he'd killed, were then men who had strung up blondie. Looking down at Jenny, he wondered if she too would have been trussed and killed. He wasn't much for the white knight roll, but her was glad he had heard her screams, he seemed to be loosing his taste for blood. Besides, fresh blood brought walkers.
She smiled and wobbled unsteadily, seemingly unbothered or apathetic to his self reflective silence. Walking a few feet to pick up a ridiculous looking high heel. She swayed, arm's flailing. He was waiting for her to burst into tears. No one could go through that and come out right as rain, no one who was normal anyway. He didn't really want to be around when she lost it, crying girls weren't really his thing. Still, after he had left the do-gooders he had noticed, people, especially good people, were precious hard to find. He looked up in time to see her loosing her balance.
"Woah there..." he reached out an arm, the wrong arm, and she slipped, falling to her knees.
"Damn" he hissed and cradled his wrist, well, his wrist-stump.
"Oh," she sprung up again, peering at his arm.
"Oh, I can help!" and with that she turned, listed first right, then left, and set off into the woods.
"Damn" he muttered. He'd known it, this girl was goin' to be trouble. Flighty. He could tell already. Still, he didn't want to be in the clearing with the dead bodies, attracted walkers.
He walked in a straight line, predator and prey. The trees were more regular here, planted in rows, not all random like. He could hear the girl crashing through the brush, if she had been bigger he would have worried about walkers, but as it was, they would be more likely to scope out the fresh blood. As he followed the noise he let his mind wander again, his solitude seemed to foster this introspection.
Merle honestly didn't know what to do. This was, perhaps, as close as he'd ever gotten to an existential dilemma. Daryl was his brother, the only family he had, and the only person he had ever felt responsible for. And you could see how that had turned out. He wasn't a good big brother by anyones metric, but blood was blood. He loved Daryl, he'd never tell him that, he wasn't a pussy. Still, he loved his brother and he didn't like leaving him with those do gooders. Do gooders got themselves killed. Do gooders got those around them killed too. None of the PTA, town council soccer moms would be able to put down someone that got bit. Sure, they might be able to cuff ol'Merle and leave him, but he was a red neck, not one of their own. He knew they had seen him as a threat from the moment he'd ridden up on his bike. Soon as someone they cared about got bit all bets would be off. They'd drag their sorry, decomposing, biting, murderous corpses around till someone got else got killed, and he wanted to make sure that someone else wouldn't be his baby brother.
He looked up from his musing, only to see Jenny, tits out, well in a bra, but still, running towards him, holding a muddy, straggly bunch of plants. She pushed him onto a fallen log, her hands never seeming to still as she flitted around.
"Tarragon and Thyme, both said to have anti-viral and anti-microbial purposes. Don't suppose you should eat them, I mean you could..." She trailed off, tapping patterns and making calculations on her fingers.
"Plantain, comfrey and chickweed for burns and swelling."
Jenny wasn't stupid, she knew that trusting the murderous redneck was probably not her best idea, but, then again, he had saved her life and it was the apocalypse. She hadn't noticed his hand, which was stupid of her, as it was really hard not to notice. The fact remained, he was certainly a murder, but she had been running around with nothing but her bra and pants, so rapist was probably out of the question. If he was a cannibal, surly he would have gone for one of the bigger men he had killed, rather than following her. She was sure she couldn't take him in a fair fight, after all, she had seen him kill those two men. She also knew how sore his arm was. If she dug her nails in and then ran, she might stand a chance. Jeannette, Jenny, didn't feel safe per-say, but it was the closest she had come in months.
Her hands had been
"What ya doin' girly?" Merle peered down at her
"I um, I'm a historian, a military historian. I was writing my PhD on the history of field medicine and it's evolution over time. And well, my room mate, who is dead now, oh holy hell she's probably dead." Jenny stopped gasping for breath. "She was all in to homeopathy and organics and kale smoothies. She didn't believe in supporting big pharma and she made all her own tonics. Never thought I would have to use it in a practical setting, but I never thought a lot of things..." She trailed off, her large green eyes going glassy with tears. She blinked, shuddered and turned back towards him.
"Hold our your, um...your arm" she sent a little prayer and slapped the compress on the taught pink flesh.
"You cauterized it." She smiled, "Very clever." He raised and eyebrow, staring at her. She blushed, and backed away a few paces. Her hands were trembling with nervous energy she felt light headed, like nothing was real anymore. Merle was talking again, she focused, trying to disperse the fog in her head.
"We ain't all like them two you met girly, some of us ain't bin inbreeding long enough, still a bit of brain there" the corner of his mouth twisted up, enough to let her know he wasn't mad.
She blushed again, feeling silly and ungrateful,
"Sorry, you're right. Still it was very clever." She thought about asking him how he'd lost the arm, but that seemed very personal and she had enough fodder for her nightmares to last her a lifetime, the last thing was a 27 hours horror story to keep her awake.
Away from the clearing, her breath only just settling back into a normal rhythm, she looked up at him, he had a hard, lined face, a face the brooked no argument. The ambient light showed the lines and wrinkles in harsh contrast. His eyes glinted out of their sunken sockets and his mouth was bracketed by deep, grim looked tough, the kind of man she would cross the street to avoid, but now, compared to the dead and the living she had encountered, he was looking like a good alternative.
"So..." she trailed off
"So, where you headed girly?" the compress helped some and she seemed harmless enough. Merle's brain was suddenly whirring. Daryl would hopefully want him back, and besides, he was older and stronger and Daryl opinion on the matter was not to terribly important. The other do-gooders would certainly like to see him dead. But if he turned up with the little lady, someone who could explain that he had saved her, that he was reliable enough to rejoin, well then his problems could be solved. Failing that, he could use her as a bargaining chip, try and play off the groups sympathies to get Daryl and some supplies in exchange for her. She was bright and looked forlorn and small and sad and the other women would take pity on her. After all officer friendly shouldn't be able to resist a college educated white girl in need of assistance.
He had missed the beginning of her talking, lost in his own plotting, he shook his head, hoping he had been looking engaged. Now that he needed her, to get Daryl, he had to keep her with him, and that would be easier if he didn't have to truss her up.
"...my PhD advisor, but my little sister lives near Atlanta so I was going to get her, but then all the bodies, the blood and the smell, so I skirted around. Fat lot of good it did me."
She and been knealing on the ground next to him but as she moved to stand she lurched and crumpled back to the ground. Merle grabbed her chin, tilting it up to look in her eyes.
"You feelin' alright girly?"
"No" she murmured, and for the second time in an hour, threw up.