Chapter Twenty-Five
Daryl winced as he pulled his hands away from the rough bark of the tree. He'd been leaning against the branch long enough now that deep grooves littered his hands, as well as a smattering of shallow scrapes. His back ached from maintaining his crouched position, and neck screamed in protest each time he conceded to crack it gently. But it was the dull kind of pain, the kind that could be ignored and forgotten in the right circumstances.
Shane was counting on him, and there was no amount of pain that could distract Daryl from his task.
From a treetop across the way, Merle shot his brother a curt nod. Nothing yet, the gesture told him, but stay sharp. He'll be here.
They'd smoldered the fire haphazardly, doing a poor enough job of it that smoke still billowed up into the night sky. The goal was to seem hasty and inexperienced. The perfect bait, especially with Rick slumbering away in the tent below.
At least, Merle was convinced Rick would be out like a light as soon as his head hit the pillow. Daryl knew better. Rick may have been the softest of the four of them, the one with the least knowledge of survival and least aggressive nature, but he was also fiercely loyal to the people he cared about. If Daryl knew Rick at all, the boy was lying stiff as a board in that tent, eyes wide open and knife clutched in his hand. It had only made sense for Rick to play the damsel in distress, but doing so knowingly took balls of steel.
Daryl cracked his knuckles methodically, and kept his eyes trained on the tree line opposite.
Finally, a figure appeared from below, and Daryl held his breath. The man- maybe the one from earlier, it was too hard to tell in the black of night- walked up to the front of the tent. He had a small parcel in his hands, wrapped up like a birthday present.
Daryl looked towards Merle, hoping to catch his brother's eye, formulate some sort of unspoken plan like they always did. But it appeared today wasn't going to be one of Merle's cool and rational days. Groaning in frustration, Daryl watched as Merle vaulted from the tree in which he was perched and slammed into the man from above.
The younger Dixon didn't waste time with a sigh before clambering out the tree right after him, and drawing his bow at the writhing figure Merle was fighting to overpower.
"You want an arrow up the ass, motherfucker? You best stay down!" Daryl shouted. The sudden sound of a voice from an unnamed source threw the man off just long enough that Merle was able to best him. He clocked the man in the head, not hard enough to knock him out, but certainly with enough force to daze him. Rick threw Merle a furl of rope, and the older Dixon made quick time in tying the man's hands behind his back.
It was the man who'd ambushed them earlier, in all his mad-eyed too-wide smile glory. He smirked up at Daryl and licked his lips lewdly.
"You want some that bad, sugar? All you had to do was ask!" the man cooed, thrusting his hips once in the air. Merle punched him square in the jaw in a fit of rage. Daryl didn't so much as blink.
"Where did you take him?" Daryl growled.
"Aw, he's safe. Probably bendin' over for my buddies right about now," the man mocked, "I'm sure he'll be up for round two by the time y'all find him, though. Ain't nearly as breakable as them whiny little bitches."
Merle shoved his shotgun in the man's face, eyes bulging, and screamed, "Shut the hell up!"
And then much more quietly, from behind them, Rick rasped, "What's in the box?"
Three sets of eyes darted towards him, and the carefully wrapped box clenched between his shaking hands.
Rick swallowed hard and spoke up again. "There's...it's bleeding. The box, it's…"
Merle was on his feet in a heartbeat, grabbing the parcel out of Rick's hands while Daryl kept his bow carefully trained on their captive's head. The elder Dixon grabbed the box, ripping off the cartoon news clippings in which it was wrapped. When he finally popped open the lid, Daryl saw him set his jaw and stifle a gasp. It was bad. If Merle thought it was gasp-worthy, then it was really, truly bad.
Rick spat it out before Merle could stop him. "Oh my god. They cut off his finger. They cut off his fucking finger!"
The Sheriff's son curled in on himself, knees crashing to the forest floor while he raked his hands painfully through his hair. "Oh, God. Oh God. Shane…"
A twitched eyebrow and harsh look in Merle's direction, and Daryl and his brother traded places. He took the box from Merle's outstretched hands, willing his hands to stay steady, and peered inside. Daryl clenched his eyes shut, bit down hard on his lip for three solid seconds, then let out a rush of breath through his nose.
"Rick," he said, moving towards his adopted brother's crouched form. He laid a hand down on his shoulder, forced the boy to look at him. "Rick, stop. It ain't him. Ain't his."
Rick looked up at him, blue eyes brimming with hope and unshed tears. "It's not?"
Merle smacked their captive in the head once, just for the hell of it. He looked to Daryl. "Baby brother, you sure?"
Daryl looked between the two of them, earning confused glares from both men when his lips quirked into an inappropriately wide smile.
"Trust me, I know Shane's fingers. And this ain't one of his."
"But-" Rick started to protest.
"Rick," Daryl interrupted flatly, "The guy's had his fingers inside me more times than I can count. Think I don't know what they look like? These are too short. Too skinny. They ain't Shane's, alright? I'm positive. Probably a trophy from whatever girl this fucker's got stashed out in these woods."
"Smart and pretty," the man on his knees cooed, "You and me are gonna get along just fine, sweet pea."
Merle stormed over to him, eyes all fury and death, and slammed the heel of his boot against the side of the man's face. When their captive crumpled towards the ground, Merle pushed further still, and laid his foot down onto the man's neck, increasing the pressure with each passing second.
"You listen, and you listen good," Merle growled, "You're gonna tell us where you took our boy. You're gonna fuckin' show us. And if you don't, if you ain't in the fuckin' move, then you die here. Today. With a bolt up your ass and my boot down your goddamn throat. Now, you got anything you want to tell us?"
TWDTWDTWDTWD
Shane awoke with a jolt. He was laid sideways on a rough wooden floor, hands tied behind his back. His head was pounding, and he could feel blood trickling from behind his ear. That fucker had hit him hard..
He was facing a wall, so Shane rolled up onto his knees to take in his surroundings. He was in a room. A small one, at that, with no windows and barely enough space to pace a divot into the floor, if he were so inclined. The only light came from the crack underneath the door, but the sliver of illumination it provided was hardly enough to make out his feet on the ground, let alone scour for an escape.
Shane knew he should stay quiet. If he held out long enough, convinced how ever many guys there were out there that he wasn't a threat, then he might just be able to live to see Daryl again.
But then a sharp scream cut into his thoughts. Feminine and broken and pleading. So much closer now, he could hear just what the woman was saying. Please kill me. Please just kill me. Please.
"Hey!" Shane screamed at the top of his lungs, his alpha brain and deep-seeded desire to protect overruling the part of his mind that knew what he was doing was dangerous. "Hey, motherfucker! Get your ass in here!"
His wish was fulfilled all too soon. There was a stampede of heavy footfalls, and then the door to his room swung open with a thud. Rather than one man standing in his way, the face of a man Shane already knew, it was three strangers who shadowed his doorway.
"C'mon, then" Shane seethed, unperturbed. "Gonna hurt some poor innocent girl? Untie me, you fuckers! Let's see how you stack up against someone your own fucking size."
But when three sets of hands were scrabbling to reach for him, Shane's back pressed into the corner and eyes locked onto the three predatory snarls fast approaching...well, maybe Shane regretted opening his mouth a little. Just enough to make the hits sting, as well as ache.
TWDTWDTWDTWD
The man on his knees kept laughing, and laughing, and fucking laughing. And Daryl was tired of it. He dropped his bow to the ground, plucked his knife from his belt, and hauled the maniacal skeleton up to his feet.
"Hold him," Daryl demanded of his brother. And as soon as Merle complied, he cut away the man's belt and jerked open his fly. Merle's expression was confused, at best, but Daryl's was plain vicious.
"What, now you ain't interested?" Daryl taunted. "Thought this was what you wanted, right? To get your dick wet?"
The man's cocky facade finally began to crumble, and Daryl saw true shock and alarm flash behind his eyes.
"Here's what's gonna happen," Daryl growled, "I'm gonna cut off one of them nuts of yours. Get your dick nice and wet, that's what you wanted right? And then, if you take us where we need to go- take us to wherever the hell you're stashing Shane- then I might just let ya keep the other one. If you make damn sure not to waste our time on the way."
Daryl pressed the tip of his knife down, down, and further down, relishing the way their captive hissed and flinched in fear.
"Now," he drawled, deathly quiet, "You got something you wanna tell me?"
TWDTWDTWDTWD
Shane wheezed against the scuffed up floor and tried to catalogue his injuries. A few broken ribs. A dislocated shoulder. A deep cut across the length of his left arm, with an accompanying pair of grapefruit-sized bruises at the center of his back from when they'd held him down to inflict it. The worst of it so far, or at least the bit that had Shane most worried, was the concussion he was nearly sure he had. His hearing kept dropping out abruptly, vision going blurry. And the pounding headache of now multiple blows to the skull was hard to mistake.
If their initial fervor for beating him bloody had been unprovoked, then their newfound enthusiasm boded of an early, unjust death. Where are your friends? Thud. What kind of weapons they got? Thud. Why the fuck isn't Leo back yet? Thud. What did those faggot friends of yours do to him? Thud, thud, thud.
They never gave him more than a split second to answer, and Shane was positive that they were too methed-up to care. But with every minute that went by, their friend still somewhere in the woods-hunting his friends and family, no doubt- the hits became harder and more frequent.
For now, at least, he'd earned a short respite while they bickered amongst themselves.
"What if he doesn't come back?" one of them whispered, "He coulda been caught by the pigs. Cops could be on their way here right now! We oughta burn the shit out of this place and get gone."
"Or he's taking his time killin' this faggot's boyfriend," another countered, "Gettin' a body buried ain't quick. And he's got three on his hands."
"They could have killed him," the third man said, "Three against one ain't good odds for the best of 'em. I'm with Ed. Shoot the bitch and the fairy, burn this place up, and find us a new place to cook."
"Fuck that," the second man interjected. Shane figured him the leader. "We ain't turnin' our backs on all this equipment unless we're damn sure we have to. It'd take us months to steal it all back, and find us another place to cook. Naw. We give Leo more time. 'Til then, we can have our fun with the girl, and this sack of shit."
Shane didn't need to open his eyes to know they were looking towards him again. He sucked in a sharp breath and shoved himself up to a sitting position. He opened his eyes and took them in: three hunched and looming figures with shirts thinning in strange places and faces that were hollow and pale. They hadn't smiled his way since he'd woken up here, not even a cocky leer, but Shane was willing to bet his left kidney that if they had, he'd have seen three sets of candy-corn yellow teeth. If they still had full sets of teeth at all.
Shane's breathing was so shallow,he doubted that his chest was moving at all. Still, he forced his lungs to fill even slower, as not to draw attention to himself. They were staring, waiting for him to make some kind of move or noise. A challenge. A sigh of defeat.
The girl in the next room was crying again. Softly, the way a person did when she was afraid to let her sorrow break free. And not with nearly the intensity of the sobs she'd gasped out when Satan's trio had been in there with her earlier. But in the midst of suffering so deep and long-lasting, she couldn't seem to keep the tears at bay.
Shane considered giving these men what they wanted. He could send them on a wild goose chase, provide some dead end location that one would go out and investigate while the other two remained at the cabin. He could even insist on leading one of them there themselves. Maybe get the jump on the guy when they were out in the woods alone.
But the fact remained that any plan he hatched would invariably involve leaving the girl in the next room to fend for herself. Even if he did manage to overpower the guy, and that was a big if considering the current state of his body, the girl currently whimpering in the adjacent room would be left alone for an unpredictable amount of time. Shane couldn't know for sure what they'd do to her in his absence, but he had a good idea.
Shakily, much more shakily than he'd hoped for, he locked his eyes on the men in front of him and stood up as straight as he could. He pushed himself away from the wall, and squared his feet underneath him.
"Well?" he asked, chin tipped up and eyes lit up the same way they had before he'd fought Will Dixon, "That all you got?"
TWDTWDTWDTWD
The door to the closet Shane had once been locked inside was cracked open, and from his spot on the floor, Shane could see his three captors smoking and drinking in the main room of the cabin. They were hyped up and at each other's throats, but still, Shane was thankful they weren't cutting his.
The girl next door seemed to similarly understand that they weren't in any immediate danger. She was humming to herself, quietly. It reminded Shane of the handful of times he'd been to Church with his mother, as a boy. He'd always hated putting on a collared shirt, a tie even more. And the shoes his mother insisted he wear were gaudily shiny and pinched his toes. For Shane and his mother, the process of getting dressed for Church was always a long, and stretched-out fight. But whatever animosity was left between them melted as soon as they stepped through the tall wooden doors.
Their church had a choir. Not the kind that attended national competitions or brought any notoriety to the town, but a group of men and women who were famous in their own right. Known in spirit by every single member of their small town. Their voices weren't perfect, but their intentions were pure. And as soon as their low and harmonious melodies hit Shane's ears, the tension would drip away from his body and he'd shoot his mother a wide smile.
The girl in the next room was singing one of the hymns he'd heard in church such a long time ago. And for the first time in hours, Shane thought that maybe even if he didn't survive the night, he'd still be okay. That maybe his surviving and things being okay would not be mutually exclusive.
There was a string of harsh words and sickening grunts, and then the men all stood up and lumbered to the back room. The girl's humming stopped, didn't bother to scream, this time. So Shane did it for her.
TWDTWDTWDTWD
When Daryl spotted the cabin through the trees, he shoved their captive at Merle and broke out into a sprint. He wasn't stupid enough to scream Shane's name, not when they'd already gagged the sick fuck they were dragging along with them, and when they were depending so absolutely on the element of surprise.
"Daryl!" Merle hissed sharply from behind him, "Daryl, wait!"
Daryl heard him, but the words came belatedly, like an echo in a deep cave. And with every reflex in his body pointing towards find Shane and get to Shane now, there was no room to react to Merle's useless cries. With his brother still tying up the man to a nearby tree, and whispering hurried directions into Rick's ear, Daryl hoisted his bow up onto his shoulder, felt once to ensure his knife was safely at his hip, and burst through the front door.