"Well this is all kinds of fucked up."

Sinclaire nodded. It was the first thing either of them had managed to say since they had pulled up to what was left of the CDC.

"I mean…now what?" he continued, looking at her as if she should know. "Ya think he was in there?"

"I doubt it," Sinclaire began, but Merle went on, losing his temper in that rapid way he had.

"Ya doubt it? But ya don't know do ya? What the hell could bring the place down like that? What…"

"Calm down."

"Fuck calm!"

"Look, let's just think it through okay? You lose it way too easily," Sinclaire replied.

"Hell, how would you be actin' if it looked like your brother got blown the fuck up?" Merle demanded.

"Like you," she admitted. "But, luckily for both of us, and probably luckily for him too, we don't share a brother. I'm here to make sure you find him."

"Yeah since it's your fuckin' fault that I missed gettin' back to camp before they moved it," he snarled.

"Sure. For my unpardonable sin of saving you."

"Savin' me? I saved myself!"

"Right. And what would you have done if you'd managed to get in the truck? You can't drive. You were barely even conscious. Fuck it all Merle; you couldn't even piss by yourself!"

"Fuck you!"

"Intellectual response. It's a real pleasure being stuck in a verbal disagreement with you," Sinclaire forced her voice into a tone of bored negligence.

"Ya want a physical disagreement with me?" Merle challenged.

"Now why would I risk my ass just to kick yours?" she gestured at the zombies shuffling around to emphasize her point.

He didn't know what to do; for a second he just stared at her. She lifted her eyebrows and spread her hands, wearing an expression that clearly asked, "Whadda ya gonna do?"

He snorted after a moment, half a laugh, half frustration. Sinclaire sat with him in silence for a while, letting him get his temper under control while she wracked her brain. If she was a shy, (possibly) virgin, bow-hunter with an overbearing redneck brother where would she go? As none of those adjectives strictly applied to her, she was at a loss when Merle reigned his temper in and spoke.

"Ya said ya don't think he was in there?"

"No I really don't. Places like this usually have…as lame as it sounds, they have self destruct sequences programmed into them. The group couldn't have gotten in if everyone inside was dead and if someone was alive in there he wouldn't have let them in knowing that the clock was running down," Sinclaire pointed out.

"And what if all the people that work here just left? What if Daryl and them didn't know…"

"Not likely. The CDC had bullet proof glass, and the self destruct would kick in when the power ran out. I don't think there would be a way in without being let in. And like I said…it's not likely that anyone was there to let them in. They briefed me on the place before orders stopped," she went on when Merle looked suspicious. "They thought about sending us as backup for the citizen panic."

"I don't know where to go next," Merle admitted.

"I don't either. We'll figure something out though. When they figured out the CDC was a bust what would they do?" she mused out loud.

"Walsh. Shane Walsh. He was sort of the leader. He used to be a cop, seemed to get off on leadin' everyone around. He'd be the one makin' the decisions." Merle frowned as he thought deeply and continued, "Military. He said somethin' about the military one time. Fort Benning. They went to Fort Benning."

"Why the fuck?"

"I don't know," Merle said. "Him and his woman was talkin' about it one time. He said that was the backup plan if somethin' happened to the camp."

"Then why'd they come here?" Sinclaire frowned.

"Hell I don't know! Maybe Walsh died. Maybe Officer Friendly took over…it's still somethin' to go on ain't it?"

"Sure I guess. So you think…what's the guy's real name?"

"Rick." Merle spat the name out.

"So you think Rick would have gone to Ft. Benning?" When Merle shrugged, she went on, "He's the one who left you on the roof I take it?" Merle nodded and Sinclaire said, "And he's a cop too? I wouldn't have expected so much of the local P.D. to make it honestly. They were right on the front lines."

"He ain't local. And he almost died; he rode into the middle of downtown like a motherfuckin' cowboy. Those things ate the horse right out from under him."

Merle grinned, clearly recalling it as a fond memory. On the one hand, Sinclaire understood that he was recalling the man who'd left him on a rooftop in the blistering city heat with no water, no food, and no hope of escape. On the other hand…she had to cover a sudden laugh with a forced cough. The puns in this situation were nearly limitless and her sense of humor could hardly be described as high-brow.

She reformed the thought. To look at the situation another way, that was better, it didn't inspire laughter. Merle obviously wasn't a nice guy and she knew damn good and well that he wouldn't have been nearly so eager to travel with her if she'd been black. She also knew without a doubt that he would have been just as physically violent with any other woman. It was only her years of Army training that had saved her from being seriously hurt and only the fact that she'd beat him with a move that could have killed him that kept it from happening again.

In short, Merle Dixon wasn't the type of man she'd ever have spent time with before this. She was almost sure that he'd done something to deserve being chained to that roof. But…he'd also saved her life, after he'd put it in danger that is. And he'd taken her side over Metzger's. Metzger who was a white, American male. Surprising, since he'd apparently been harboring the idea that she wasn't quite the pure blooded white American stock he apparently preferred to surround himself with. Hell, being one quarter Lenni Lenape, she was more American than he could ever hope to be!

"What ya makin' that face for?" Merle had been watching her expressions change for a while now. That woman didn't have much of a poker face.

"I'm thinking about you," she admitted.

"Aw, I'd be touched if ya didn't look so goddamn pissed. What've I done to ya in the last few minutes?"

"To me? Nothing. I just can't help wondering what you did to them."

"It don't matter."

"It matters to me. Your fuse is pretty short and I don't want to light it without meaning to," she informed him. "Did you have a reason? Or were you just all coked up?"

He didn't respond.

"Good answer. I really feel like I was there," she muttered.

"It didn't have nothin' to do with ya anyway," Merle maintained.

He didn't want to tell her for a lot of reasons. Mostly because, yeah, he'd been a bit fucked up and he honestly didn't know why he'd gotten as violent as he had, other than to say it tended to happen when he was…what did they call it? Under the influence? Yeah, that was it.

But really, he'd never seen a good reason to keep his temper in check, even stone cold sober. He liked getting his way and he'd discovered at a young age, mostly by watching his old man, that fear was a priceless motivation technique. He'd practiced it on Daryl and now look at that. 35 years old and he still did whatever the fuck Merle told him to do, which was good, because Merle knew Daryl didn't have the brains or the balls to run his own life.

"Fort Benning then?" Sinclaire arched a brow and he nodded. "Get the map."

Merle shook the map out awkwardly and she scooted closer, looking at it, tracing the route.

"Ain't that far," Merle said after a while.

"No, under normal circumstances it'd be easy. I-85, I-185 mostly…but I don't really want to hit the interstate."

"Why not?"

"Traffic reports were crazy; our supply carriers could barely get anywhere. Trips across town were taking a full day, and that was before everything went to shit. It might be better to take back roads and hook up with them at the base. Or we might meet up with them on a back road, if they have a navigator worth a shit," Sinclaire raised her eyebrows and Merle shrugged.

"The chink…" Merle shrugged again in response to her annoyed look. "The Asian guy, that better? He knew his way around; if they listen to him they'll probably take back roads."

"Okay. Then, back the way we came and back roads to Fort Benning," Sinclaire put the truck in reverse, gritting her teeth as the wheels bounced over several zombies who'd gotten curious and approached the back of the vehicle as she and Merle talked. Running over something of human size and shape was a weird thing to try and get used to.

"Ya don't talk much," Merle observed after about half an hour of silence.

"What do you want me to say?"

"Nothin'. Most women ya can't shut up though. I'm just…curious," he was curious about her. She could be just as cold as he could, but she'd actually gotten somewhere in life…not that it mattered now. He shrugged off the thought that she might be a little better than him. Fuck it, this was his world now. It could be their world.

"Here's a conversation starter," Sinclaire pointed at the cars blocking the road. "We need to push those out of the way."

And that was what the spent the afternoon doing. Every time they cleared up some driving space, they ran into another jam. With water and rest breaks and lunch and dinner, they didn't get anywhere close to Ft. Benning that day. When the sun started going down, Sinclaire flatly refused to drive further, pointing out to a very impatient Merle that God only knew what was in those cars. They'd already had to deal with several surprises. She sure as hell didn't want to face any of them in the dark.

"Fine," Merle sighed and lay down across the front seat as she stretched out in the back between crates. "We'll get there tomorrow though right?"

"I don't see why not," Sinclaire replied stretching and sighing. "It's not far away now."

When Sinclaire looked back on it, she laughed to herself at her foolish habit of trying to predict the future.