AN: Here we go, another little chapter. I'm going to try to get the final one done as soon as possible and we'll be closing this story up.
Character death ahead.
I hope you enjoy (you know what I mean). Let me know what you think!
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Merle stumbled through the soggy, leaf covered bed of the woods near the farmhouse with Alice so close to his side that she bumped him whenever her steps didn't match his correctly. Rick was at least three feet in front of them, following the deep tracks the boy's shoes had made in the mud. Anyone could have followed them. His "need" for Merle as a tracker was truly questionable, and the only reason that Merle had gone along with it was because Rick had more or less commanded Alice that she go with him in case the boy's disappearance had something to do with a re-injury to the bullet wound that he'd suffered.
No one really knew how long the kid had been missing. It could have been an hour or he might have been missing since breakfast. That was the thing, it seemed that his parents did very little keeping up with him. Merle wasn't too surprised when he'd heard that the kid had disappeared.
But Rick had gone out looking for him, circling around the perimeter of the farm, and had come back saying that he'd found tracks and needed Alice to go with him. He'd suggested, too, that he might need a tracker in case the tracks got harder to follow. The fact of the matter was that, instead of getting harder to follow, they were getting easier to follow as they neared one of the many small waterways that ran through the land around them.
"Don't know what the hell we doin' out here," Merle growled, keeping his voice just low enough that Alice could hear him. "Shoulda had our asses gone three days ago."
"We're doing everything we can," Alice said. "Hell…we're bartering everything but our underwear to get enough food and supplies to make it far enough to look for what we've gotta have to live. We'll be out of here in less than a week."
"A week too damn long," Merle commented back.
Their conversation might have gone on longer, but it would simply be rehashing things they'd already discussed. To himself, even, Merle felt like a broken record. They needed to move and they needed to do it soon. There was no telling when the shoe would fall and he'd rather not get caught with his pants down around his ankles, whether it was Walkers or winter that came for them.
They stopped talking, though, when Rick yelled out and caught their attention, and likely the attention of any Walkers that might be in the area, their growling audible but their faces still hidden.
The kind of yell that Rick let out, though, wasn't a normal kind of yell. It was almost a howl and Merle immediately turned his eyes in the direction of what it was that had the man so worked up. And as soon as he saw it, he knew what the hell it was.
There, just in the edge of the murky, shallow water, just where it really got thick and the sludge got to be something of a quicksand consistency, there were two bogged Walkers. And they weren't much of a threat, given that both of them were stuck tight and seemed almost suspended in time while they waved their arms and gnashed their teeth at the approach of food, but it wasn't the threat that had Rick up in arms.
It was the fact that upon finding the Walkers, they'd seemed to find both his son and the half-rotted corpse responsible for the boy's demise.
"Fuck!" Merle spat, before he could even stop himself. Alice shocked and horrified at the vision of the boy snapping and snarling, his throat half torn out in what seemed to be the most common "Walker to human" injury anyone ever saw, grabbed Merle and buried her fingers in his shirt, spitting some string of words that didn't make sense at all.
Rick seemed frozen with the grief that was keeping him from, now that he'd screamed out the air in his lungs, so much as moving, and Merle shrugged out of Alice's grasp and made his way around the man. Someone had to put the kid down, and the Walker that he'd gotten too damn close to as well, and it might as well be Merle.
As he walked closer to the body, though, his foot struck something and he looked down, expecting something like a piece of a stump and finding a gun in the leaves. He picked it up and looked at it.
"The fuck?" He marveled. "That's Daryl's gun."
"We traded all our guns this morning," Alice declared. She hadn't changed her position and she still seemed shaken up at the sight of the trapped Walkers.
Merle decided he had little use for the gun. They were trading nearly everything they had for some of the "group's" food since Rick was pissed they were leaving and basically had declared that as "fugitives" or "traitors" to the group they weren't owed anything of the supplies. They had to trade, from their personal stock of things, for anything they wanted. The guns had been something that they'd decided they didn't need. They could make do with knives and Daryl's crossbow. Merle dropped the gun back in the mud where he'd found it and palmed his knife, headed closer to where the Walkers were bogged in the mud, feeling irritated over the whole thing now.
It didn't take much to figure out that the kid, too nosey for his own good and too left to his own devices for his own safety, had likely taken the gun to play with and had wandered down here. What happened then was hard to tell. One way or another, one thing was certain. The gun he'd taken to play with hadn't done him any good when it came down to a real situation.
"Ain't ours no more," he commented. "Group wanted the fuckin' guns, got what the hell they wanted. Can't keep up with the damn kid…shoulda never been Sophia got her ass left in the woods…but all things come 'round I reckon."
Rick moved behind him, heading toward the soon-to-be put down body of his son, and Merle turned just in time to hear the crack of the gun. The bullet, whether it was meant for him or not, missed him. It hit the Walker that had likely left Carl in the state he was in. The body of the Walker fell, making a sickening sound in the sludge around him.
"Rick!" Alice shrieked at him. "Put the gun down…Rick! Don't shoot anymore!"
She started toward them then, obviously meaning to try to do something to calm over the crazed look on Rick's face and Rick turned quickly toward her, gun still raised. She froze when she realized she was in the direct line of fire now.
"Killing me isn't going to change anything, Rick," Alice said, shaking her head at him. "Killing anybody isn't going to change it. We've gotta put him down. That's what he would want, right? It's what he deserves. He deserves that…dignity, Rick. Put him down…to rest."
Rick was making odd noises, types of cries no doubt, but nothing he said or did make sense. He was a loose cannon. Alice's discussion, however, did enough to distract him so that Merle could cross the distance between them and used his elbow to knock the man unconscious. He dropped quickly and Merle took the gun, not wanting him to regain consciousness and grab the weapon again. For good measure, he stripped Rick of his own gun as well and then returned with his knife to put the boy down.
"He dead?" Merle asked, turning to find Alice over Rick's body. She shook her head at him.
"Just out cold," she said.
"What we do with 'em?" Merle asked, gesturing back toward Carl's now still body and the Walker that Rick had downed.
"Leave the Walker," Alice said. She shrugged. "Doesn't matter. One way or another, he'll get where he's going. We'll take Carl and Rick back."
Merle hummed at her.
"You get the boy," he said. "I'll drag Rick. We gotta get a damn move on. Gunshot in these woods liable ta bring us some friends."
He moved quickly, pulling the boy's body loose of the sludge so that she could handle him better, and then he went for Rick's unconscious weight, keeping his eyes and ears open the whole time in case they might find themselves surrounded.
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By the time they made it back to the house, Rick was roused from his state of unconsciousness, but the fight was out of him. Alice had surrendered the body of the boy to him and he'd gone along, carrying it, while Merle basically prodded him forward like cattle.
The closer they got, though, the more sure Merle was that they weren't going to bury the boy…at least not tonight.
Alice turned Merle's attention to it with one sharp hiss of warning and he turned his head just in time to see what she saw. With night falling around them, the dark woods surrounded the farm to their left. Except, tonight? The woods were moving…because the dark line wasn't trees. It was more Walkers than Merle could have ever thought of counting.
"Run!" He called out, risking the sound to try to get the urgency through to those he was with. "Run! We gotta get back…warn everyone!"
Alice darted past him and he yelled at her, her body smaller and naturally faster than his, to get there as fast as she could…tell the others to take cover. Tell them to get the hell out of there. Tell them whatever the fuck she wanted to tell them as long as they knew that the Walker wall was coming and their campfires, right along with the lights of the house, were more than likely giving them a clear sight of where to go.
Merle tried to rouse Rick to go with him, and Rick picked up the speed of his steps, but the weight of the body was slowing him down.
"Drop the body an' move ya ass…kid's gone, Rick, but your damn ass don't gotta be," Merle said, the closest he would ever allow himself to come to begging the man for anything.
"He's my son!" Rick spat.
"Was," Merle said. "Wherever he falls…here or there…same thing now."
But seeing Rick wasn't going to be reasoned with, and feeling like there wasn't any more time to waste begging the man, Merle wished him some good damn luck and put his effort into closing the distance between them and the farm, hoping to give some kind of warning that might get everyone out of there in time to save them.