The man who brought me here told me these were Merle's quarters. They're cleaner than I might've imagined Merle's quarters would be, though. The bed in the alcove is made. The brown rug on the wood floor appears to have been cleaned recently, and there's not even any food left out on the counter in the kitchen area. But I don't dwell on it much. What I dwell on is escape. What I dwell on is finding where Glenn and Maggie are and getting out of here.

I hear a lock work in the door as soon as my escort closes me in. I wait for his footsteps but hear none. Great. A lock and a guard. All for an eleven-year-old girl. For once I wish I'd been underestimated.

I check the windows first. There's one in the kitchen area and one by the bed. They don't open. I press on them, and they're strong, but I could break them with something, probably. But then what? I'm on the second story. I can't make that jump, not without hurting myself, definitely not without attracting attention. And I don't trust any of the people I see walking along the street below me to keep their mouths shut if they see something.

People. Walking along the street. Of a town. Because me and Glenn and Maggie, we've managed to land ourselves in what I'm sure is the last town left on Earth. And I hate it.

Woodbury, Merle called it. He said welcome to Woodbury, as he took away my gun, the knife at my belt. He even found the one in my boot. "Haha, learn that from your daddy, huh, Little Bit? Well, he learned it from me. I'll see ya in a few minutes." Then he took away Maggie and Glenn, blindfolded, and let my escort – Shumpert? – lead me up here. But not before Glenn told me, in a voice that reminded me very much of Rick, not to say a thing, not to tell Merle or anyone a thing.

Merle yanked him off before he could say another word.

And I have no idea what he's doing to them . . .

Merle. My uncle Merle. My eyes start to swell up. How did he get to this? How could this have happened? I've never felt so betrayed, so . . .

No. Stop. Can't think about that now. Escape. Escape. Merle left me with the release for my bow and I twiddle the trigger now, considering. The windows aren't an option. So what? Take out the guard, Shumpert? Get him to open up the door and then try to put down a grown man three, four times my size? Quietly?

I find myself in the living area. I clench the back of the couch, this boring tan couch my mother would hate. My mother. She couldn't stand Merle. Oh, if she could see him now. I bend over the couch, contracting my fingers against the material, and I think. My dad. What would my dad do?

My dad would never have been stupid enough to get himself here. He would have seen through Merle. Seen what's happened to him. Merle, he was always out of hand, I knew that even when I was little. But he wasn't evil. He wouldn't threaten someone's life. He wouldn't kidnap anybody. If he'd been there today, Dad would have seen how he'd changed, he wouldn't have trusted him. Dad. I want him here, I want him here so bad.

"He's not here," I mutter to myself. Snap click snap click snap click. "Man up."

Merle said he'd see me in a few minutes. He'll have a gun, probably. What if – what if I managed to get it from him? Then I could take out Shumpert, and I'd have a better chance against anyone who came to the rescue. Then . . . Well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. If I come to it.

I shove off the couch, go back into the kitchen area. I dig through some drawers. Most of them are bare, even the silverware drawer I finally find is nearly empty. Just five spoons and three forks. No knife. Doesn't he ever need to cut something up? I picture Merle slicing bread with that knife-hand of his and I'm caught between the urges to laugh and to shiver.

I sleep with my weapons close at hand. Maybe . . .

I go over to the bed. A table with a single lamp is on the left side. No knife, no gun to be found. There are two drawers in the table. The top one holds three orange bottles of pills and a few of what I think are the things called condoms. I close that drawer quickly. The bottom one has a pocket-sized copy of the New Testament. That's it.

I try the bathroom next, which is a desperate move, but I'm feeling pretty damn desperate. It's a small bathroom, kind of cramped, painted a gross sort of green. The mirror is broken. I can imagine how it got that way, because I've seen it happen before, with Merle and with my mother. My mother was drunk, Merle was just angry. And as I saw today, Merle hasn't really gotten over his temper issues. But it doesn't matter how it happened. Some of the shards are missing, but some are still in place, stubbornly clinging to the cork. One of these shards in particular catches my eye. It's long and thin, but wide enough that it won't snap all that easily. Hopefully. I don't know much about mirror material. I dig my fingernails beneath the shard and pull, trying to avoid cutting my fingers on the edge, if just so the blood won't give Merle any hints. Finally, the cork gives, and I have a weapon. Maybe.

Just as I turn to leave, I catch sight of something. A piece of paper slipped into the seam between the mirror and its frame. A picture. My school picture. The same one my dad still keeps.

I stare at it for a minute. Then I stare at the shard in my hand. Then I stare at my reflection through all of the cracks in the glass. How different I look from that girl in the picture.

Can I do it? Can I attack Merle? Even if I don't try to kill him . . . Can I draw his blood? The blood we share?

Tears well up in my eyes again. But no. Merle will be here any second, and even if I can't make myself fight him, I ain't gonna let him see me cry anymore. So I bring my hand to my lips and bite into my knuckle. The pain courses through me, distracting me, and the tears slip back into my eyes. I go into the living room again. I hide the shard in between the cushions on the couch. Then I sit and I wait. I've only been still for maybe thirty seconds when the lock clicks and the door opens. And my dear uncle appears before me. The door shuts, we eye each other. Merle shakes his head. He has a bandage on his nose now.

"Mm-mm-mm. Darlin', you are a sight for sore eyes, let me tell ya."

I don't say anything. Merle reaches for his metal arm. He unhooks something and the blade slides into his hand. He bends down, leans it on the wall. "I'm sorry it had to go down that way. Back on the road." He comes forward, and I edge to the middle of the couch, not wanting him to sit beside me, not wanting him touching me. He doesn't. He takes the chair from a desk in the corner and places it in front of the couch before sitting on it backwards, the way he always did. "But your friends, they were gonna take you away from me. I couldn't let that happen. Couldn't lose ya twice, Little Bit."

I want to shout that he wasn't going to lose me. That my dad was going to come get him and things would work out. I want to scream at him, ask why he's doing this, cuss him out. But I just say, "Where are they?"

"Your friends? They're with mine. Good people. Unless you treat 'em wrong. Or treat one of their own wrong."

"You one of their own?"

"They think so."

"Glenn and Maggie ain't never treated you wrong."

"Maggie? That the farmer's daughter?"

Damn it. Giving him her name? Was that bad? I can't see how, but I still clamp my mouth shut.

"Hm. Well, no, she ain't ever done nothin' to me. But Glenn . . ." Merle holds up his metal arm. "Glenn did this to me. I'd call that treatin' me wrong, now, wouldn't you?"

I stare at the thing. Without the blade, it just looks like a huge bullet. Not much better. "Glenn went back for you," I whisper. I hope it's a menacing whisper. "So did Dad. And Rick." I swallow. "And T-Dog. You were gone when they got to the roof. But they tried. Glenn tried."

"That right?"

"Yeah."

"Huh. Well, that just makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. Don't grow my hand back, though."

I can't tell if he's trying to be funny or if he's just really bitter. Then I realize that this is Merle and so it's probably both. He leans his chin on the back of the chair. "Baby girl, truth be told, I'm over all that. Let bygones be bygones, right? My only problem with your friend Glenn is that he won't tell me where your daddy's at. And he don't want you to tell me neither. But Little Bit, this is me. This is your ole Uncle Merle. And all I want is for me, and you, and your daddy to be all together again. A family. Like the old days."

"If that's all you wanted, you woulda waited!" I blurt. Snap, really. "You woulda waited at that store like Glenn told you to!"

"Ooh, she bites." Merle sits up straight again. "I see the end of the world ain't curbed your temper much, huh? That's good, though. Need a little fire in ya if you're gonna make it through this life."

The shard in between the cushions. I forgot about it, somehow. But now I'm remembering it, now I'm considering it . . .

"But you caught me." Merle leans back, shrugs. "Thing is, Sydney, I ain't alone here. You saw outside. You met Shumpert. There are a lotta others like him."

"Like your friends that are with my friends?"

"Yep. And some of them friends want things from me. And see, I owe them. One friend in particular . . . We call him the Governor." Merle stands and strolls around the couch, over to the refrigerator. "Y'see," he explains from the other side of the fridge door, "The Governor was there for me when no one else was." He comes out with a can of beer. An actual can of beer. He points at the fridge. "Hungry?"

"No."

He closes it up, cracks open the beer and comes over to me, leaning against the back of the couch. After a long sip – the smell brings back a good-and-bad rush of feelings and memories that I have to press down, now is not the time – he says, "The Governor saved my life. Your buddy . . . The sheriff . . . Rick, wasn't it? He left me to die on that rooftop, Little Bit. In the hot Georgia sun. Handcuffed to a pipe." Merle holds the metal arm in front of my face. I don't look at it, I look into his eyes. Eye contact, eye contact. "He made me do this to myself. When the Governor found me, I was d – your daddy cuss in fronta you yet?"

"Sometimes."

"I was damn near dead." A long swig of beer. "Ah. And he took me in. He gave me food, shelter, medicine. And, when I was well enough, he gave me a job. I still have that job. And I intend to do it to the best of my ability." He turns, crosses his arms across the back of the couch, so we're at the same eye level. "And part of my job right now is finding out where y'all's little settlement is."

"It ain't little."

He chuckles. Just a bit, it's really more of a snort. "Where is it, Sydney Rose? Let's get our family back together, watcha say?"

"Why do you need to know? What do you wanna do to them?" To us?

"Just lookin' to make some new friends. That's all."

Silence.

I could do it. Right now. I could shove my hand into the cushions, pull out the shard of mirror, drive it into Merle.

"I ain't stupid," I tell him steadily. "And I ain't tellin' you –" I lean in, inches from his face, "A damn thing."

I see it flash across his eyes. Anger. I hear him squeeze the beer can a little too tightly. But he just stands up. Something's changed, though. I've changed something. "You'd best watch yourself, missy. I don't wanna have to wear you out so soon after gettin' ya back." He tilts the beer up, gulps, drains it. Then he crumples it in his hand, tosses it into the kitchen trash bin, and walks back to the chair in front of me. He props a boot in the seat and rests on his knee. "Fact is, I can't make ya tell me. But those friends of yours . . . Now, that's a different story."

My heart is picking up its pace. My palms are sweaty. "Merle. What're you gonna do to them?"

"Just have a little chat."

The scene hits me like I'm in it all over again – my dad with bloody knuckles as he leaves the shed at the farm, and Carol asking him what he's done to him, to Randall, and my dad saying had a little chat, just like Merle . . .

"Merle. Merle, don't hurt them. Please."

"You think I wanna hurt 'em? I don't, Princess, of course I don't. But there are people dependin' on me to get some information. The Governor. And all them people who look up to him, who depend on him. I can't put myself before everyone else in this town. I got responsibilities."

The bastard. The son of a bitch. The absolute bastard.

"Please," I breathe. "Please, just let them go."

Even as I say this, beg like a dog, I push my fingers in between the cushions. I find the shard, cool to the touch. Meanwhile, Merle swings his leg down from the chair, steps to me, puts one hand on either side of my legs and bends in close, to where I can smell the beer on his words. "Sugar, I'll gladly set 'em loose. You'd be doin' me a favor. All I need," he tells me softly, "is for you to tell me where your group is."

I push my hand one more inch into the couch. I wrap my fingers around the shard.

"No."

And then I yank the thing out and go to bury it in Merle's side. Next thing, I'm trapped against the couch, that metal arm of his pressed into my chest for the second time today.

And I've blown it. I've blown it.

Merle's hand takes my arm. "Hm-hmm," he sort of laughs, his face right in front of mine, over the shiny little weapon I just tried to attack him with. He sort-of laughs, yeah, but his eyes don't have a trace of happiness in them. Merle's eyes are . . . in pain. "What were you gonna do with that tiny thing, scratch my back for me?" He squeezes my wrist, squeezes until I have to drop the shard.

"I wasn't tryin' to kill you," I force out.

"Oh, I know that, darlin'. You just wanna protect your friends, right?" His voice deepens. "Forget about your family. Your blood."

He's hurting my wrist, but I won't flinch, I won't.

"Now, your uncle's gotta go take care of some business. But when I get back, you and me are gonna have a little chat of our own 'bout this incident."

It's all I can do not to punch him with my free hand. Pain in his eyes or not, I wanna hurt him more.

He lets me go. He heads to the door, opens it. "Shumpert," he calls as he retrieves his blade from the ground. Shumpert, a tall black man with a short beard, appears in the doorway. Merle connects the blade to his metal arm. "Turns out my little niece can't be trusted alone. You stay in here with her while I'm gone. Make sure she keeps out of trouble."

Shumpert nods and steps inside as Merle steps out. "Bye, baby girl," he says from the hallway. "I'll tell your friends you said hi."

He leaves and Shumpert barely has time to get out of the way before I've found the mirror shard and thrown it at the door.

Hours pass. Just me and Shumpert. Shumpert doesn't start any conversations, which is fine by me. He sits by the door, stares at the ceiling. Me, I pace. Makes Shumpert nervous, I think, but he leaves me be. I go into the bathroom, get my picture down, tear it to shreds and drop them all in the toilet. Have a little chat with that, Uncle Merle. And then go to hell.

My dad, Rick, the others – they'll come looking for us. They'll find my bow, my arrows, and surely Maggie and Glenn dropped some groceries. But will they be able to figure out where we've been taken? My dad, he can track any animal. But a car?

What if they don't find us?

What if Glenn and Maggie . . . ?

The last time I saw Carl, I was yelling at him. If he never sees me again, the last memory he has of me will be that one.

Night falls. Shumpert turns on a lamp. I watch the street outside empty out. I almost ask Shumpert why everyone's going inside but then I remember that I don't like him. The last person has just left my view when the door opens and I turn, hoping I have the energy to face my uncle again. But it's not Merle. That man in the doorway has tan skin and a backwards baseball cap and he's nodding at me. "The Governor wants to see her."

Shumpert stands up as I back against the wall. "Merle okay with that?"

Something's off here. Those instincts of mine? They're buzzing. They're saying run. But I've got nowhere to go, and the new man sighs, frowning. Not in a mean way. But I know it can't mean anything good for me. "Does it matter?" he says, and then he holds his hand out in my direction.