She doesn't sleep. She grabs maybe a handful of rest before she jolts awake, fingers dancing across the hilt of the hunting knife and her breath held tight in her chest. She mistakes the cube van for a closet, and she's reaching and groping in the dark until the pack is there in her hands instead of a twisted vacuum pipe. For a long moment afterward she sits in the quiet, listening.

And no matter how she controls her breathing, no matter what silent thoughts she sends hoping he won't notice she's awake – he does.

"It ain't time for your watch," he says.

"It's okay," she replies. "I can't sleep."

By the time they're a few days out from the drug store Cal is haggard. She can feel the wear and tear of both hunger and her sleeplessness. She's on edge, growing more wary of Merle with every restless night. She can't help but watch him, the wariness she had felt that first day mutating into paranoia. With every passing breath he does something to set her on edge – a wayward glance, a hungry glare, the subtle twitching of his fingers.

Merle notices her vigilance. He snaps at her one afternoon to quit her staring.

She can feel it; that same quiet that had hung around the drug store now surrounds them. A silence – a queer calm that waits with bated breath. She knows it's only a matter of time. She doesn't quite know what the end game is going to look like, but she has an inkling it'll end with them going their separate ways.


She tells him about a group – one that doesn't exist, but that is a minor detail – and that said group is outside of Atlanta. He accepts this, and so the congested roads of rural Georgia became their new storming ground.

Cal's pack is low, water is all they have now – that and antibiotics –, but it still isn't enough. They had been on the interstate for a while, but the roads are no longer reliable. They're mass graveyards that force them to duck and weave – funneling them down certain back roads and then randomly spitting them back out onto the I-85. Eventually they're so turned around that the van is suddenly rattling over a cattle guard and they're both staring up at an abandoned house tucked forlornly amongst a copse of trees.

For a long while they sit in the van and stare up at the house and at the trees and the road behind them. "We need food," Cal finally says, and Merle agrees.

They slip out of the van, Cal slinging her pack over her back while eying the mean knife in Merle's hand – recently liberated from an abandoned truck. She leaves the keys in the ignition, and shuts the door as quietly as she can. With one last glance back down the road she turns to regard the house, her breath held tight in her chest.

The old house isn't boarded up. It isn't in any way different than it might have been any other time in its life – except that it is as quiet as the wood that surrounds it. The curtains are drawn on all the windows; the wrap-around porch is covered in a fine layer of undisturbed dust; and the front door is shut.

They move forward, the afternoon light glancing through the trees to offer them a smattering of sun drops. Merle walks ahead, Cal having dropped back to let him pass.

The pack is light on her back; her fingers itch to do up the chest and hip straps. She doesn't. She knows better than to secure something to her body that could become a liability.

The porch creaks when Merle takes a step, and they both wince. She lets out a long and deep breath, willing herself to hear anything – anything that suggests that something or someone is inside. The deep quiet is reassuring. Eventually they move up to the door – it's locked. She lets out a breath, and Merle casts her a look. She doesn't say anything.

Merle is the one that gets them in. He takes the butt of his knife and smashes a small hole into a panel of glass beside the door knob. He reaches in and unlocks it. The door creaks open. "Not the smartest thing," she hisses, "sticking your hand into some dark hole."

"Depends," Merle smirks back at her and Cal stops dead in her tracks.

"Pig," she squeezes past him and into the house, moving quickly into the first room to the right. Her knife is poised to strike, her other arm held out in front of her. The position is ready. Her legs bent and weight low. Her heart beat is a bruising staccato in her chest, and her breath slides evenly from her lungs.

She stands in a quaint living room. A television tucked neatly off in a corner, and a plethora of woodsy furniture hugs the walls. A deer head mounted on the far wall stares down at her, its glassy eyes sightless and eternal.

"I'll check upstairs," Merle mutters, his voice already far away as he begins creaking up the stairs.

Cal moves fast. She scours the lower floor, trying hard not to look at the framed photos lining the walls or the personal touches of a family long dead. Betty and Graham Gray; she spots their names cross stitched above a window overlooking a quaint back yard. She swallows hard and continues on.

Compartmentalization. It was something she'd learned at an early age; something she'd needed lest she become like her mother – a catatonic mess waiting for someone to come home from a far off war. But even she had a hard time standing in someone's house, staring at what once was their lives and their past and their future. She made sure to never look at the photographs; she never searched the faces of people who were long gone and dead.

It sits wrong in her gut that she knows the names of the couple who had owned this house.

Eventually she finds the kitchen, and its there that she finds the food. A few cans of non-perishables. Beans, peaches, some sort of mystery meat that makes her mouth water. She's fishing them into her pack when Merle shows up, a grin on his face.

"Look'it," he's holding up a baggy of prescription drugs. A shirt is draped over his arm.

"Where'd you get that?" She turns back to the cupboard and pulls out a pack of rotten cookies.

"Bathroom." She makes a sound in her throat and moves on to the next, there are a few bottles of water, and even a bucket of powdered lemonade. "Not a lot, huh?"

"Nope," she mutters, tossing the bucket into the pack. They make short work of the kitchen, pulling out the food first, but then proceeding on to the drawers. She pulls out a roll of duct tape and tucks it neatly away in her backpack.

"Found some clothes upstairs. Thought a change might do," Merle's voice is coming from the living room, and when she pokes her head in she finds him sitting on the couch staring at the television. He's thumbing the buttons of a new shirt tucked on beneath his vest. He grins at her. "Makes me some sort of handsome, huh?"

She leaves him there in the living room and moves upstairs, moving through the doors that Merle had obviously thrown open. The first room at the top is a bathroom, the drawers tossed open and rifled through. She grabs the tooth brush sitting in a cup beside the sink and tucks it away in her pack.

The next few rooms are storage; the skeleton of old beds tucked against corners; cardboard boxes that are nibbled and chewed on by squirrels; a room full of toys and books and games. Every room echoes of life, but in the end they are just that – echoes. Rooms full of memories long past – of a time when the house had pulsed with life.

She hesitates when she pushes open the last door and realizes it is the bedroom of Betty and Graham.

She swallows at the sight of the open closet, the discarded clothes littering the floor that Merle had obviously tossed about. The bed is still made; a fine layer of dust distorts the crisp lines and bright colours of the duvet.

For a long moment she stands in the doorway, shifting her weight from foot to foot. She has done this before – rifled through people's homes and taken what she'd needed -, but something as simple as knowing Betty and Graham's names leaves a foul taste in her mouth. It's no longer disconnected – she can imagine their faces, their disappointment.

She takes a hesitant step inside the room, and then another.

Slowly she makes her way around the room, pushing past her discomfort, reminding herself of the familiar disconnect she had felt in the city as she pushed into people's apartments and abandoned lives. She moves to the closet, peering in at the few clothes that were left behind. Frilly lace collars and woolen sweaters stare back at her. She grimaces and shrugs on one of the large flannel, not caring if it smells like moths.

She scouts the rest of the room, indifferent that Merle already had. She finds a photo album beside the bed, open to a page with a small finger painted flower and a short and sweet note that says To Grandma.

She tucks the album away, her lips thin as she opens the bedside stand. It's there that she finds a gun.

It's unexpected really. Firstly, that Merle hadn't found it himself. Secondly, that it's even there. A gun left in so plain a place said as much as a splash of gore might have. One way or another Betty and Graham were gone.

Before she can quite comprehend what she's doing, she's tugging the handgun out from the drawer of the bed stand. For a long moment she stares at it, her back slicking with a sudden sweat. She can feel the sweet chill of a gun against her temple; she can smell the slick tang of gun-oil. And then she blinks and it's gone; the chill is replaced by that stuffy Georgia heat, and the smell of the house is musty and old.

She doesn't know why she does it, but she wraps it carefully in one of Betty's lacy purple shirts and shoves it ceremoniously into the brain of the pack. Her hand lingers on the zipper, trepidation flaring in her.

And then she returns to Merle, and they leave Betty and Graham's house behind.


There was a taste to the air. A peculiar flavour that was part Georgia sweetness, and part dead. It would slide right into your mouth and leave a thickness at the back of your throat. In the heart of Atlanta it had been thicker and grittier, prompted by the concrete jungle that baked the air with the summer heat. In the country there were moments of reprieve; in the country there were moments when rolling down the window of the cube van didn't mean getting a face full of walker stench.

Merle had wanted the air conditioning on. "Just for a moment," he'd said. The cool air had circled around for just a moment before he flicked it off. The gas gauge was just under half a tank, "best not waste much, huh."

Afterward, when the coolness leaks away, they roll down their windows. The wind breathes in and swirls around them. It smells sweet, but not the kind of sweetness the dead leak off – more like peaches and beautiful hills and a sky that was endless blue. It smells like thunderstorms in the afternoon - cloud bursts that rumbled and wept and went on into the distance forever. Maybe that's why they both succumb to a quiet – their hearts ache for a time long past.

A time they'll never see again.


"You ever just... have a feelin'?" Merle mumbles around his food, eying her from across the dim lighting of the flashlight.

"What sort of feeling?" She's not looking at him, she's staring down at her own can of beans.

Merle shrugs, and pokes at the spongy meat in his can. "Like you see somethin', but you ain't sure it's real, you know?"

She thinks about it, mulling over what to say. "Like this whole mess we're living right now?"

"Nah," Merle says.

And he stares off towards Atlanta, towards the black cloud still circling into the sky.


The days turn gray as the sky thickens with clouds, and the van chokes on the last fumes of its gas tank. Cal pinches her lips as they crest the hill, and then she's shifting into neutral and they're soaring down the slope in silence. Just as they begin to slow down she's back in drive, pushing the van a few more miles. A few more miles.

Merle is quieter than usual. The fever in his eyes is gone, but he's still pushing antibiotics past his lips every moment she looks at him. He cradles his amputated arm to his chest and fingers the bandages – and now duct tape – wrapped around the end.

Eventually the van dies, and they stand in the middle of the road and stare at it with incredulous eyes. The last cars they had seen had been nearly ten miles back, and with the two empty water bottles they had been using to siphon gas there was no way it'd be worth the trip. Merle isn't happy about leaving it, but eventually Cal convinces him that they should continue on foot.

"I'll carry the pack for you," he offers.

Cal shrugs, "it's fine." She shoulders the familiar weight and starts walking in the direction they'd been headed.

It isn't long before they find the town. One moment they're walking in the countryside, and the next they're standing awkwardly at the top of a small incline. Cal glasses the town with her binoculars, her lips tight as she sees a handful of walkers on the far side of the main road.

"Find a spot to catch a few winks," Merle murmurs. "Maybe find a gas-can or a fresh car in the mornin'."

They wander down into the town. Cal doesn't like it. It reminds her of the quiet in the suburb – a deep silence that grins wickedly back. She has her knife at the ready. Merle mirrors her, his eyes wide and jaw tight. Both of them say nothing as they move down the road, and for the first time Cal acknowledges that Merle is quite light on his feet.

They break into a small building tucked at the end of the block. A For Lease sign hangs in the window. Cal almost grins with joy when they see the gutted insides – only white walls, a front window papered over, and two doors standing opposite one another. The room is hardly big enough for a post office; it was like they hadn't left the cube van behind at all.

As they settle in for the night it begins to rain. The sharp crack of thunder is deafening, and Cal curls up against the window with her long shirt tucked around her arms and hands. She rips the a small triangle into the paper and stares out across the road – Hatlin's Bar stares back at her, dark and ominous and shadowed.

When their stomachs start to rumble she tugs the pack closer to herself. Merle watches her. He watches the pack. He sees the flash of purple in it, a brilliant contrast to the greyness of the world outside. He doesn't say anything about it; he asks for his ration of water to go along with his beans. He sees that flash of purple again. The binoculars. The tooth brush. The ever dwindling cans of food and water.

She's distracted. She doesn't see the way he's staring at the pack or how, when she holds that purple fabric just right, he knows exactly what she has. She doesn't see the recognition in his eyes – the realization that she had never intended on sharing that little item with him.

She doesn't see the pills he'd been popping aren't antibiotics at all, but some sweet cocktail made up for one Betty Gray.


There are limits, of course. Go for sleep too long and eventually you start feeling your temper get a bit short or you start seeing things – or you don't see anything at all. In the past week with Merle she'd gotten a handful of minutes – restless and stiff and uneasy sleep that left her feeling leeched and dead.

She hardly sleeps that night, even though she goes to bed with a can of beans in her belly and the pack tucked behind her. The cans of food are easy to ignore, but the familiar nose poking into her neck leaves her staring up at the ceiling for what feels like hours.

She hasn't told Merle about the gun; she doesn't plan on being around him long enough for it to matter. She had told herself when she found him that she'd help him get back on his feet, and then she'd start wandering out from the cities, maybe find a cabin in the woods and live a while longer. Alone. She hadn't wanted to run the gauntlet with others. Too much could happen. People were the unpredictable element, not the walkers.

It had been walkers that had terrorized the world those first few weeks, but then the screams of the terrified became the screams of the tortured. She had sat in her found apartment and watched as a man dragged a woman and her child out onto the street. Cal had heard only a handful of words from the woman before the man pushed her down: we won't eat any of your food, just let us in! He had retreated back inside and shut the door on her; her pleading cries and the child's screams had attracted the walkers, and they had died.

Snuffed out by someone who wasn't looking to live, but to survive.

People were the cruelty in the world; not the horrors that shambled aimlessly through the streets.

Merle hadn't done anything blatantly suspicious, but there was that doubt there in the back of her mind. She had been alone for too long now to give in and stay shackled with the first survivor who hadn't tried to kill her. She had been alone too long to even consider relying on another person – even if he had saved her life back at the drug store.

She was better on her own. On her own she could be quiet. There wasn't room for noise in this new world – and Merle was a thunderclap rolling in on high.


Morning light filters in through the paper, bleeding the room with a yellowed glow. There is that familiar sweetness to the air; a softness to the sunlight slipping dreamily onto her face. For a moment, however brief it may be, she imagines the world as it once was. Soft sheets, warm breath across her cheeks...

Breakfast is a can of mystery meat. Both her and Merle are quiet. She glances up when he slips a few pills into his mouth. Eventually they both toss the empty cans aside and stand – a quick glance out the papered window and Merle is murmuring 'clear'. They filter out of the front door and into the street.

"Y'know. I'm thinkin' you should let me carry the pack for a while. Lil' thing like you – it's probably real heavy, huh?"

She glances up at Merle as they walk. "No," she says quietly. "It's fine."

"Ya sure?"

"It's fine," she repeats.

She doesn't see the look he shoots her.

They find a car a few blocks away tucked in the driveway of a small bungalow. The keys are on the ground. An arc of brown crust clings to the window, Cal stares at it for a long moment before she stoops down and grabs the keyring.

"Previous owner wasn't too lucky, huh?" Merle asks, leaning against the side of the car. Cal sorts through the key, sliding one after another into the lock to test them out.

"Good idea to have a light keyring," Cal hisses as she shoves the third key into the lock, the rest jingle merrily together. "Could get you killed."

Merle makes a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat.

One of the last keys slides easily into the lock, but hesitates at the turn. The lock of the door is stiff, and so Cal wiggles the key a bit more before it lets out a soft click. She pulls the door open, and then turns to face him.

"Took ya long enough-"

The keys are flying through the air – he catches them against his chest.

"I ain't going," she says, and Merle sputters. "Take the car, Merle."

"What?"

"I'm not going with you."

"The hell you ain't. You got the pack."

She's slinging the bag off her shoulder and propping it on the ground, her hands are inside before he can protest and she's pulling out a few cans of mystery meat and beans, and a few bottles of water. She tosses them in the car. Merle looks angry and confused. "I can't, Merle. I'm better on my own."

"But you ain't – you got your group."

She ignores him and glances down the road, her breathing is even, but she can feel a drop of sweat sliding along her spine. "I'm going Merle."

"No."

"Head for Fort Benning – there's suppose to be help there. I know some people there, good people, they'll set you up right."

"What? You just gonna leave a one-armed man alone with no means a'protectin' himself?"

"You'll be fine, Merle. You were fine before we met – hell, you're a tough son of a bitch. You're hardly defenseless. You got your knife," she's hoists the pack onto her back and turns to walk away.

Merle's voice reaches her, dark and cool and slick. "And what 'bout that gun, hm?"

He drips with arrogance.

As she turns to face him she imagines all those people from before: hands trembling and words stuttered as they held guns or knives or shovels to her head. It's a weird feeling to be in the same situation she had been at the beginning of this entire thing; to be staring another person in the eye and to see that same need -so deep and dark and real.

She's in his way. She's in the way of his survival. Everyone had one – a moment when there was nothing left but to take your breathe, or give your breath to someone else. The cop and the cruiser and the whistling tune. Or the man who threw a woman and child to the undead hoard, all for the sake of food and water and more time.

She knew when she had first met Merle that he wouldn't be pushing the car keys into her hand, and walking away into the setting sun. She had known she had to get away and get back out on her own, but she hadn't expected this.

"Don't be afraid."

She's staring him in the eye, lips white. He's telling her to take off the pack and put it on the ground. She complies.

"What are you talking about?

"How 'bout the fact you' been keepin' that gun from me?"

She doesn't say anything.

"You think I wasn't gonna see it? Damn near impossible when yer always rufflin' through that damn thing. I get it." She blinks at him. "You think I ain't trustworthy? From where I'm standin' you're the one that ain't. I know you ain't got a group. I ain't seen nobody lie so bad. And you got a gun hidden in your bag, huh? Thinkin' 'bout usin' it on me when the chance is good? What're you, huh? Some man-eater? Lure me out into the woods and put a bullet in my brain?"

Merle's voice is hanging above their customary whispering by the time he takes a breath. His words punctuated by brief bouts of laughter. His eyes are wild and glassy and he's sweating heavily under his vest and shirt.

"What the fuck are you on?" She hisses at him.

He's ignoring her, his hand rubbing at his neck and his jaw tense. "You n' I – we gonna talk 'bout that pack of yours."

She stares at him for a long moment. Her teeth ache from grinding, and she has to take a single long and deep breath to control the anger and frustration she's feeling. "You want the gun - it's yours."

Merle lets out a low laugh. "Nah-uh-uh, girly. I don' jus' want the gun. If we separating, I want that pack too."

"No."

Across the street a walker is spilling out of the side of an open car. It fumbles on the pavement before standing. It's head tilts towards them, mouth clicking when it realizes they're alive.

Cal notices. Merle doesn't - he doesn't notice because his eyes are glassing over, his nerves are falling away, and he's feeling a bit like a cloud with all the Oxycontin he'd been popping.

He wipes a drop of sweat off his brow. "I need that bag."

"I give you my pack, and I'm good as dead." She's staring at him, trying not to watch as the walker takes one lurching step towards them – and then another and another.

"I need that bag," he repeats.

His intensity isn't for himself – she notices the far away look in Merle's eye. She knows the look – too filled with sorrow to give up hope. It was something she was familiar with; something she knew and had felt once upon a time.

"You're going to go looking for him, aren't you?"

Merle blinks.

The world stills – only for a moment.

And it's enough.

Merle's jaw tenses, and his eyes grow dark. It looks like he's going to say something – like he's going to tell her to mind her own business. He doesn't even realize the walker is there until it's on top of him and the pair are collapsing to the ground. Merle is yelling, shoving the walker's mouth away as it snaps and clicks at his face. Cal is diving, grabbing the pack and slinging it onto her back and she's running.

She's running. She's running because she has no choice and inaction means death. That peculiar spike of fear is driving her forward. It's propelling her across the pavement, and away from the walker – away from Merle. Merle, who she's leaving to die. Merle, who would have done the same to her. Merle, who was just looking for his dead brother.

Sweat is slicking down her back. Her hand itches for the gun nestled in Betty's lacy purple top. The pack slaps against her back; it's heavy, and it slows her down, but she isn't going to drop it. She can't.

She's hardly more than half a block when she realizes behind her the struggle has ceased. She doesn't turn to look. She keeps running.

Eventually, he catches up with her.

It's quiet and short and brutal.

She's running one moment and falling the next, catching herself on her hands and belly and sliding on the concrete until she's bloody and raw. Merle is on her in moments, his foot catching her across the face. For a great and terrible breath she stares up at the sky, her vision dancing with darkness – and then she's being pushed over and he's pulling the pack from her back.

"Well now," his voice is cracking and loud and unstoppable. She stares up at him blearily, some part of her screaming to get up and another part telling her no, just stay there and die. "Would'a been a lot easier had you just handed it over."

She doesn't say anything – she can't. She just stares up at him – all five of him.

He's swinging the pack onto his own back, staring down at her with those glassy eyes of his.

"No," her lips feel thick and her mouth feels heavy. She claws feebly at him with the other hand, but he just kicks her hand off and starts walking away.

As she lays there in the road she decides that she had been right, and if she survived this she'd never trust another human again. But maybe it won't matter, she thinks, accepting the darkness clutching at the edge of her vision as the inevitable approach of her death.

For a brief moment she sees nothing but a folded flag being pressed into her hands; rows upon rows of identical grave markers; a woman and child shrieking as a wave of flesh falls upon them...

And suddenly the sky above.

Something stops her from giving in. Something is there in the back of her mind and it's yelling and screaming and shouting. She can't give up that easily. Not after having fought so long and so hard to just be able to breathe. Not after everything that has happened. Her hands burn as she pushes herself off the ground. She nearly collapses when she stands.

"Shoot anything that looks hungry."

He's walking. She's not. She lurches after him, her hand wrapping around her hunting knife and drawing it from its sheathe.

She is on him. Silent. Her knife is burying into his shoulder. Merle yells. His own knife is arcing through the air, flashing gold in the morning light. She hardly registers the pain as it catches her in the side. She can feel the blood dancing down her ribs, but she doesn't care.

She just needs the pack back.

Even with one arm Merle is a vicious and unrelenting fighter. The pain of the knife wound doesn't slow him down, if anything it kindles a rage in him that results in her flying across the concrete and her knife skittering away from her reach. She's frantic, clawing to her hands and knees and lurching towards the knife. Suddenly he's on her, grabbing her shoulder and pinning her on her back.

And then she's gritting her teeth and driving her knife at him, hoping it connects with something – anything. It slides into his arm. He's yelling and pushing her head back into the road; her skull cracks against the concrete -

one.

two.

three.

four.

-and then she's blinking.

She doesn't say anything. She stares up at the sky and wonders why she's drunk. She rolls onto her belly and pushes herself up, and staggers over and hits the ground on her side. She can't see straight. She can't stand or see or hear like she's supposed to. There's a buzzing and a throbbing everywhere.

In the distance a car lurches out from a driveway, and rumbles down the street.

She sees them. Even in her stupor she knows what they are. They're wandering out from the yards and alleys – a handful, hardly more than half a dozen.

Her bloodied knife is discarded a few feet away, just out of reach.

When the first walker lets out a crackling moan, it is enough to get her to her feet.