Chapter 3 – A Wily and Dangerous Foe
Darla had been sort of distantly aware that she had grandparents. It was just a fact of life, right? Every person had parents and grandparents, regardless of their level of involvement. Everyone came from someone.
Darla had known that Will Dixon, Daddy's daddy, was too mean to die and was thus still skulking around Rose Ridge. However, she'd never met or even seen him. He lived in a deep-woods shack and rarely showed his face anywhere other than the local dive bar and subsequently the drunk tank.
But there were times when Daddy would spot a certain brown pickup truck in the parking lot at the grocery store or the hunting store and completely abandon any plan he had of going inside. Instead, Daddy would take her for ice cream; they would go to the park right beside the parlor and walk and eat their cones, and he would (gruffly, quietly) tell her that he loved her and was proud of her. Any reminder of the abusive monster of his own childhood made him double-down on his exceptional efforts to be the complete opposite, and every time he did, it seemed to help him exorcise just a little bit more of his long-buried trauma.
And that was fucking beautiful.
Almost as beautiful as the way his face would light up like a solar flare when she always grinned back and declared, "Love ya and proud 'a ya, too, Daddy."
So, yeah, Darla had known that she had grandparents, that one of them lived nearby and deserved to fall dick-first on a rusty chainsaw, but she hadn't spared the individuals in question much thought.
However, Rose Ridge was a small community, and news of the scandal at the preschool got around quickly, as did the fact that the Dixons had come into a lot of money via the settlement.
When Will heard that little tidbit (long after everyone else did, because no one actually liked talking to the asshole), he got it into what was left of his booze-soaked brain that he was entitled to the entirety of the windfall.
But since the day Daddy got big and brave enough to thrash the old man rather than run away, hide, or let himself be beaten, Will had barely acknowledged either of his sons, and vice versa. There'd been a kind of stalemate between the two sides, a mutual avoidance. Live and let live was too generous of a philosophy; it was more along the lines of If you stay the hell away from me, I might not kick your teeth down your throat.
But… well… that was before there was money involved.
Daryl had it.
Will wanted it.
Although he'd never been known for rational thought, the old man still possessed enough sense to realize that his sons would rather build a bonfire with their cash than voluntarily give him a red cent.
Long story short, Darla was six years old the first time she got kidnapped.
xxXxx
If she'd been awake at the time, she would not have tolerated an abduction. You should never let a kidnapper take you to a secondary location—everyone who's ever watched a crime drama or a true crime documentary knows that. So, yeah, she would've busted out her tornado-siren scream and kicked, punched, elbowed, scratched, gouged, and headbutted every joint, eye, nose, throat, and testicle she could reach. (Formal self-defense and martial arts classes were in her ten-year plan, but she was still quite small and young for such things; she did, however, know some great brawler moves courtesy of her daddy and uncles, whose philosophy seemed to be "If ya ain't fightin dirty, ya ain't doin it right.")
Unfortunately, Darla slept through her first kidnapping.
In her defense, it had been a long day of driving to the nearest testing center, taking a lot of tests for all her advanced-placement homeschooling, and then driving home. Michonne (a junior partner at the law firm that had handled the settlement) had provided a lot of the research and legwork involved in getting Darla enrolled in various gifted independent-study programs, and the girl had been thriving on the challenge, not to mention getting to do the majority of the work at home or at the shooting range with Daddy and Uncle Jesse or wherever else she damn well pleased. Avoiding her snot-nosed so-called peers was another huge bonus, as was being slated to be done with high school by the time she hit ten. The one downside was the periodic testing that had to take place at actual testing centers, which involved (as previously mentioned) long drives to and from said locations and hours of focused work in between.
So, yeah, she was tired, and she didn't wake up when Daddy parked at the last gas station before home and went inside to pay (because of course the tiny facility only accepted cash, and although Daddy now had a credit card, he didn't really trust it or like using it). She also didn't wake up when Will Dixon—who happened to be walking past at the time (after getting thrown out of the local bar by the burliest bartender, who'd also confiscated the belligerent asshole's keys) and happened to get one of his "genius" ideas—jimmied the driver's side door, hotwired the ignition, and calmly drunk-drove away.
Darla didn't wake up as Will made a quick stop to use a payphone to leave a ransom demand on the answering machine at Uncle Jesse's office (which was the only number the old lush still had access to, and even then only because it was in the local yellow pages and advertised all over town). Darla didn't wake up as Will steered the truck up into the mountains and eventually to his crumbling shack or when he carried her inside and put her on the disgusting old couch that doubled as his bed
She'd always been a heavy sleeper. In her last life, the girl had snoozed soundly through a major earthquake and two fire alarms, one of which had been a real-deal building-on-fire situation that started with a moron who couldn't cook popcorn and ended with Darla's happily snoring ass getting carried princess style out of her dorm by a reluctantly impressed (and tragically married) fireman. The tendency to sleep through just about anything had traveled universes with her, obviously, but with the apocalypse imminent, she was going to have to do something to better manage the condition.
Well, that was a concern for further down the line.
Darla didn't wake up until she was good and ready, which happened to be when her stomach politely reminded her that dinner was long overdue. However, as her senses returned to awareness, the girl caught on quickly that something was wrong.
First, she smelled years of cigarette smoke, moonshine and meth fumes, stale body odor, and a general lack of cleanliness (dust, mold, mildew, etc.), none of which any of her marshmallows would tolerate in her vicinity. Daddy had quit smoking cold turkey the day they met; Uncle Merle hadn't, but like with all his other vices, he didn't smoke in her presence or inside the house and would get his ass stomped if he tried. Uncle Jesse hadn't smoked since before he met Aunt Grace; she'd had asthma.
The second thing Darla noticed was the stiff, scratchy, rather pungent fabric beneath her, which caused a visceral NOPE that had her body pitching itself almost violently off the unfamiliar piece of furniture and right into a battle-ready crouch. Clearly, her reflexes were way ahead of her consciousness in recognizing imminent peril.
Her mind caught up then, eyes blinking and darting frantically as they adjusted and catalogued the dark room. Later, she would find out that her paternal grandfather's shack had no electricity and that he'd learned his lesson about the dangers of passing out with open flames around when his wife burned down their trailer with herself inside it all those years ago. That meant no candles. Not even a hearth. Just a fully enclosed cast-iron woodstove to cook on and keep himself from freezing to death in the winter.
In the darkness and the sparse starlight coming in from the sole window, Darla spotted what she thought was a low table as well as an armchair on the other side of it, the boxy shape she later learned was the woodstove, another boxy shape she later learned was several cases of bourbon, some random clutter, and-
She jumped nearly out of her skin when the armchair let out a loud snore.
No, not the armchair, she soon determined, the person sitting in it. A tall, bulky man who'd apparently nodded off while staring like a total creeper at her unconscious form.
"What the fuck?" Darla whispered to herself, quickly putting together the pieces that she'd been kidnapped. She checked that her clothes were still on and seemingly untouched, and then she promptly slammed down any impending freak-out. Luckily, her kidnapper appeared to be on his lonesome and also kind of inept. Really, she was only six, but not tying up your hostage and then falling asleep right beside them? Amateur hour.
The sound of the asshole's snoring covered up the slight sounds that Darla made as she scuttled farther away from him, retreating until her back hit a corner and there was nowhere left to go. She took a minute to just breathe and assess and then headed for what she thought was a doorknob. It was, and she got the attached door open and slipped out, only to realize that she was in the deep woods, not even the far-off glow of civilization visible above the looming trees. There was no way she was going to stumble around in the deep woods in the dark all alone, especially without knowing which way she needed to travel to get to safety. If she were bigger, she'd help herself to her daddy's truck, which the kidnapper had also stolen, but her legs still weren't anywhere near long enough to reach the pedals. If the kidnapper had driven her there, then there was likely some sort of road, but she wouldn't risk trying to hike it until morning. And unless she incapacitated the kidnapper, he could just chase her down regardless.
Darla stepped back inside and let the door shut with a soft snick and then pressed her back against the adjacent, half-rotten wall. Breathe. Reassess. She couldn't hear anyone else in the building, which really did appear to be nothing but a single-room shack. There was nowhere in said shack she could go that was more than three large steps away from the snoring kidnapper. No closet that she could see. No cabinets. She hugged the wall and kept her eyes on the lump in the armchair, staying low while making a circuit of the space and feeling around for anything useful.
She found a lot of empty beer cans and liquor bottles, unsurprisingly, and had to hold her breath each time a crinkle or clink of disturbed garbage threatened to alert her captor. On a rickety shelf near the sole window, she scored duct tape and snare wire. Next to the woodstove, the girl helped herself to a little whittling knife and a piece of wood that was small enough on one end for her tiny hand to grip but big enough on the other to do some damage if she had to swing the makeshift bludgeon.
That made her think to grab one of the empty bottles, too. Uncle Merle had been well into his teens the first time he bottled someone, and Daddy had been even older. Darla didn't know if she had the physical strength to actually break the thick glass over a person's head, but she'd sure as hell give it her best shot and maybe beat the Dixon family record by a decade.
Her kidnapper hadn't stirred, which made her theorize that he was more passed out drunk than asleep. That would be good news for her but also a little insulting. She was a wily and dangerous foe and should not be underestimated just because she was small and young and female and had slept through the initial phases of the kidnapping.
I'll show this asshole, the girl thought to herself, cataloguing her finds and coming up with a plan. No one messes with ol' Darla…
xxXxx
He shouldn't have called the cops. That was his first mistake, panicking when he walked out of the gas station to find his truck and—much more importantly—his little girl gone from beside the pump.
Wait. No. He hadn't called the cops. He'd cussed and hollered a blue streak and run frantically into the street, looking up and down it for any sign of his truck or his kid. When he'd found none…
He didn't know. His memory cut out for a while, his brain fried with horror and fear.
He wouldn't have called the cops. He would've called Uncle Jesse and Merle, so it'd probably been the cashier who called the cops.
Either way, the cops showed up to find Daryl collapsed on a curb, hyperventilating with his head between his knees and his hands fisted in his hair.
Someone had taken his kid.
The cashier must've mentioned him by name or at least mentioned the name Dixon, because the first pair of cops walked up smirking and smug, probably expecting to haul him in for disorderly at the very least. Just another day in Rose Ridge. They changed their tune real quick when he started babbling about his kidnapped daughter.
Within minutes, the place was swarming with what seemed like every cop in town. The ones he'd dealt with during the preschool incident largely took over and got him calmed down enough to relate the scant details: He'd been headed home with his kid and stopped for some gas. She'd been asleep, so he'd left her inside the locked truck. He hadn't been gone even five whole minutes, and…
Someone had taken his kid.
He did his best not to think certain words:
Pervert.
Pedophile.
Rapist.
Human-trafficker.
Murderer.
Alerts went out all over the county and the surrounding ones, and that was about when Uncle Jesse called in a state almost as desperate and crazed as Daryl's.
"Tell me you got Darla in your sight," the old man begged, out of breath and audibly loading and cocking weapons.
"No," Daryl croaked. He wasn't crying, but he was certainly close. Probably going into shock, clammy and shaky and about to puke. "Someone… I stopped for gas… Gone…"
Uncle Jesse swore loudly and colorfully, demanding, "Cops there?"
"Yes, sir," Daryl mumbled, somehow falling into habits from his fucked-up childhood. He felt overwhelmed and paralyzed and helpless, but his uncle had shown up to fix things.
"Put me on speaker."
Daryl did so, only fumbling a little with the buttons on his stupid fancy phone. It wasn't even close to the best on the market, but he hated the ridiculous gizmo and only carried it around because it was how Darla's teachers and all the lawyers and number-crunchers handling her cash got in touch.
"It's Will Dixon," Uncle Jesse announced, making his nephew sway and damn near black out. "He took Darla. And the idiot left a ransom demand on my answering machine." There was a tense pause before the old man hit play.
And a voice from Daryl's nightmares blared out of the speaker.
"Fer a million bucks, ya can have yer pretty little brat back without a hair outta place. Ya know where ta bring it. If ya don't, I guess I'll have to find somebody else willin to buy her off me."
Every slurred, hateful syllable echoed in the horrified silence that followed.
Daryl screamed.
xxXxx
Will Dixon woke with an aching skull and a roiling belly. There was nothing unusual about that, and his typical breakfast (a few strips of dried venison, a can of baked beans, and a good couple slugs of whiskey) always took the edge off and let him go about his day.
On that particular day, however, when the man went to stand, he discovered that he couldn't. Although he'd never admit it, he did panic for a few moments, thinking that he'd had a stroke in his sleep, that he was going to waste away paralyzed in his favorite chair, an alert mind trapped in a useless body.
But, no, he could still move. He just couldn't-
"Mornin, sunshine!"
The volume and pitch and enthusiasm of the cheerful young voice were enough of an assault to make him flinch away and then squint angrily at its source, a little slip of a girl with messy blond curls, a big toothy grin, and a manic sparkle in her familiar blue eyes.
What in the hell was-
Oh.
Oh shit.
Now, Will Dixon would never claim to be a particularly smart man or a particularly law-abiding one, but kidnapping a child was a level of stupidity and a level of felony that he'd never before achieved, even at his drunkest. And he had been very drunk. Drunk and angry. And getting cut off at the bar and forced to walk home and then spotting one of his ungrateful sons along the way had brought to mind all the money the boy now had that he refused to rightfully hand over to the head of the Dixon family. Never mind that Will hadn't spoken to either of his sons in probably a decade and hadn't had a civil conversation with either in… ever. He was still the head of the family and obviously hadn't done enough to beat respect into his boys' empty skulls while he still had the chance.
Will had a feeling that none of his rationalizations were going to play well in a court of law.
"Ya got anythin to eat other than beans, booze, and jerky?" the girl wondered, having helped herself to one of said cans of beans and eating right out of it with a whittled spoon. She took a long, pointed slurp of the concoction before observing, "Ya pro'ly don't. No wonder it smells like an old man's rotting asshole in here."
"Watch yer mouth!" Will corrected reflexively, one of his arms attempting to lash out but still restrained by… Hell, it looked like an entire roll of duct tape wrapped all around him and his only damn chair and felt like a whole spool of wire underneath. He had to give it to the brat: what she lacked in respect, she made up for in cunning and overkill.
Completely safe thanks to the very thorough restraints she'd slapped on him while he'd been passed out, the girl arched a dark blond eyebrow and took another slurp of beans before drawling, "Kidnappers don't get ta scold me 'bout my language. If I wanna call ya a smelly idiot who's pro'ly gonna die in prison, I sure as shit will. Hell, I'd call ya worse, but I doubt ya'd understand or appreciate my extensive vocabulary."
They spent a long minute just glaring at each other. Well, Will glared, and the girl continued to stare back unconcerned and slurp beans. It made him realize that she'd basically stolen his breakfast, and that pissed him off even more. But damn if he would beg the brat for anything, even feeding him or cutting him loose.
Finally, he challenged, "What's the plan here, girlie? Just gonna leave me like this and go snitch ta the pigs?"
"Hmm," she hummed around her latest mouthful, chewing and swallowing daintily before continuing, "Originally, yeah, I was. But then the sun came up, and I realized who ya are." She flashed him another grin, and for all that it showed off perfectly straight white teeth and dimples in both rosy cheeks, the expression was downright unsettling. "I thought it'd be a lot more fun ta torture ya a bit for what ya did ta my daddy and uncle. And the best part is that I won't even have ta lift a finger. For a hardcore alcoholic like you, the withdrawal's gonna do all the work for me." With a delighted giggle, she added, "If I remember correctly, alcohol's one of the most dangerous substances ta withdraw from, especially cold turkey. If ya make it through without permanent brain damage, I'll be very impressed."
Will actually recoiled as much as he was able to, noticing for the first time that he was already starting to sweat and shake. Barely, but he knew what was coming. Although he did his best not to show an ounce of fear or weakness, he had to wonder how in the hell either of his moron sons had spawned the sadistic little demon before him.
(Deep within his cold, black, shriveled heart, he could almost admit to being proud.)
xxXxx
Merle had never asked for any of Darla's money. He'd been tempted early on, but he knew himself. He knew that he'd just blow any cash he had on booze and drugs. He was usually fine with that, totally unconcerned with stealing and dealing and spending rent money on hookers and meth. If he'd earned the money, no matter how he'd earned it, then he could spend it however the hell he liked. But the thought of wasting cash that had come from his beautiful baby niece's pain and suffering and was supposed to go toward financing her bright future made him sick.
He'd never asked, but he ended up with some regardless.
Of course, his family also knew that he couldn't be trusted with cash. And while that kind of hurt, he had no one but himself to blame for their rightful lack of faith in his self-control. The way the trust was set up, the bulk of the settlement was invested, and each family member got what amounted to a monthly salary from the portion of investment revenue that wasn't just reinvested. Wasn't too complicated. Even a burnout like him could understand. Merle got his salary in the form of having his rent paid for him each month as well as having grocery and other supply deliveries periodically show up on his doorstep. He got sent gift cards for clothes and gear and other stuff he might need or want, and it was almost as touching as it was infuriating to know that his family wanted to look after him and had found a way to do so that didn't enable his destructive habits, at least not directly. (If he put his mind to it, he could sell and trade shit for whatever else he wanted, but he always found that pretty hard to convince himself to do.)
Another perk was a family health insurance plan, and Daryl had made it clear that Merle shouldn't hesitate to get himself taken care of whenever he needed anything. That, his little brother had solemnly insisted, included everything from getting his latest bout of crotch-rot treated in a timely manner to checking himself into the best rehab facility in the state.
There was no pressure, no ultimatum, no disappointment, no disgust, no pity. Just a casual offer of whatever he needed to be healthy, whenever he felt he needed it.
The whole family—Daryl, Darla, and Uncle Jesse—were all in total agreement and right behind him, no matter what.
It shouldn't have pissed Merle off as much as it did or sent him into such a self-destructive spiral, but by the time the kidnapping incident happened, Merle hadn't visited home in nearly six months; he'd gone maybe a handful of times over the previous year and a half, staying less than a day each time because his addiction had reached the point of needing a fix too often for longer stays. Plus, he barely ever answered his phone (another bill that his family made sure was always paid, a replacement device showing up out of the blue whenever the previous one was lost or damaged or stolen or sold).
The night of the kidnapping, he was too damn high off his ass to answer said phone, despite the frantic texts and calls and voicemails coming in every five minutes.
Even in his completely wrecked state, lying in his own vomit on the filthy floor of a condemned warehouse turned drug den, he remembered staring blearily at the cell, mesmerized by its lights and sounds and vibrations, but his stupid mind couldn't make the connection that those things meant he was supposed to pick up the gadget and actually check who was trying so desperately to reach him. (He knew enough to go absolutely ape-shit on some tweaker asshole who tried to steal the phone, but that didn't help much overall.)
Michonne found him like that the next morning, the young lawyer apparently the closest to him (according to his phone's GPS) out of all the devoted professionals who now handled his niece's trust. The statuesque Black woman did not bother to hide her sneer, nor was she gentle in directing the two men with her (her boyfriend and his friend, he later discovered) in getting Merle on his feet and out of the crumbling building only five minutes ahead of a police raid he was sure she arranged personally.
"Darla's been kidnapped," she announced once they finally had him in her car, a clean and spacious hatchback. He'd been wiped down with baby wipes and pumped full of sports drink and coffee but was still feeling rough and half-delirious, so he was sure he couldn't have heard that right. "By your father."
Merle swallowed down bile at just the thought of letting Will Dixon near that precious little girl. The man was a monster through and through, but his abuse of his sons had been limited to verbal, mental, and physical. Merle had no idea if being female would protect Darla from the man's twisted rage or make no difference at all or have him crossing the line into sexual abuse. Will Dixon had always gone after women who were far too young, most of them still technically girls. Hell, Merle's mama had been sixteen when she'd had him, fifteen when she'd conceived him; Will had been twenty-eight.
And although not the spitting image of the late Cheryl Dixon née Ray, Darla did share the woman's dark honey blond curls and striking blue eyes, the sunny smile that Merle had seen only rarely during his childhood before Will had beaten it out of her.
"Drive faster," Merle ordered, shaking from more than just exhaustion and the beginning stages of withdrawal.
Once upon a time, Merle had walked away from his father instead of killing the man, and Daryl had paid the price.
Merle wouldn't make that mistake again.
xxXxx
Torturing an abusive old drunk wasn't nearly as fun as Darla had wanted it to be. Even the knowledge that Will Dixon deserved to suffer didn't make said suffering sound or smell any better, and the girl had mostly left him alone to stew and scream and seize in his own piss and shit and puke.
She distracted herself by going through her daddy's truck for anything that could help him find her. She had no doubt that he would eventually, but she'd rather hurry the process along. Other than the usual bits and bobs of hunting, camping, and general outdoor gear, her search located some granola bars and water bottles as well as some road flares. A flare gun would've been much better, but she'd try the road flares after dark, if she hadn't been rescued by them. Alternate food and drink were a blessing; she was already sick of beans and jerky, and she couldn't exactly down any of Will's stocked beverages. There was no nearby fresh water source that she could find, and it was a miracle that the old man hadn't died of dehydration years ago.
She guessed that either Daddy'd had his cell phone on him or Will had disposed of it along with hers, which had been in the cupholder but now wasn't. Asshole. He was damn lucky that she was good about backing up all her pictures at least once a week. Her phone was nice but not top-of-the-line, and it had a lot of parental locks that pretty much only let her send and receive calls and texts from preprogrammed numbers. But it was hers, damn it, the product of many months of convincing Daddy that each family member should have one so that they could always get in touch no matter what. Currently, it was probably steeping in a mud puddle. So much for constant communication.
Darla huffed. She wanted to go home, and as soon as she got there, she was going to beg to be microchipped like a frickin dog. Or maybe she'd beg to get a dog, a big Rottie who'd maul anyone who tried to touch her, especially while she was sleeping.
Will started shrieking again, only one in ten or so words even remotely coherent. He seemed to seesaw between rage and terror.
"Shoulda gagged the bastard," she grumbled, sprawled in the bed of the truck, which was thankfully in the shade. Unfortunately, giving the old asshole a swift death of choking on his own vomit didn't fit with her plan of making him suffer, so she'd decided to skip that step. Her poor ears were paying the price.
The next lull in the screeching allowed Darla to hear something else: footsteps among the trees and the brush, too large for anything but a deer or a predator but far too loud and clumsy to be either. And then…
Some idiot in headphones wandered right into the clearing. Stocky and dark-skinned, the young man, maybe early twenties, blinked back and forth in confusion and took a few minutes to squint at a torn map—not a real one, a printed flyer with little detail and no scale—before bothering to really look at his surroundings and subsequently notice the little girl watching him from the bed of the old truck.
"Uh, hi," the man greeted awkwardly, peeling his headphones off and almost getting his glistening bald head tangled in the process and then turning off the disc player hanging from his belt. "Sorry. Didn't mean to bother anyone. I think I must've taken a wrong turn somewhere on the trails…" He trailed off, clearly uncomfortable. "Is there an adult around I can talk to? Someone who can point me in the right direction? I'm with some friends up at the rental cabins."
Darla stared at him for a long moment before wondering, "Can ya drive stick?"
He blinked again, seeming to not understand the response. A scream from the shack made him flinch and duck down like he'd just heard a gunshot instead. He rushed toward her and cowered behind the truck, motioning her to get down.
But Darla was too busy staring, because now that the man was closer, although he was clean-shaven and a decade younger and slightly skinnier than his show incarnation, she actually recognized him. She had to nearly bite her lip to keep from squealing, Holy shit! It's T-Dog!
Some higher power was definitely fucking with her. How else would T-Dog just happen to stumble across her in the middle of the woods, in the middle of a kidnapping?
Well, that was one more main character for the pre-apocalypse bingo card.
"What the heck?!" the muscular young man exclaimed breathlessly, twitching with each shriek and expletive. "Is that- Who is that?! Is someone hurt?!"
"That's the guy who kidnapped me," Darla reported sweetly, earning herself a wide-eyed stare of horror. "Don't worry," she soothed. "I tied him up. But I don't know where we are, so I didn't wanna risk tryin ta walk back ta town. But if ya can drive stick, we can take my daddy's truck." She patted it happily. "I'm sure he's real worried."
Another few seconds of screeching passed while T-Dog processed the information he'd been given and the situation he'd found himself in. Eventually, his gaze snapped back to the girl and he managed to stammer, "I- You- There was- Radio-" He had to stop himself and take a deep breath before calming down enough to coherently declare, "This morning, while I was driving up here with my friends, there was something on the radio about a missing girl… Uh… Dixie?"
She chuckled, correcting, "Darla Dixon, actually. Pleased ta make yer acquaintance, Mr.…" She trailed off, hoping that he'd confirm the identity she'd already guessed.
"Theodore Douglas," he answered, seemingly on reflex. "T-Dog to my friends. Nice to meet you, too." He blinked at her another few times, still struggling out of his shock. "You were kidnapped?" Once he received a nod, the young man wiped a large hand over his sweaty skull and muttered, "Wow. Ok. Wow. Uh… You're not hurt? The guy didn't… touch you?" He cringed at the crassness of his own worried question—or maybe at the answer he might receive.
But Darla just shook her head, chirping, "Nah. I slept through most of it. By the time I woke up, the idiot was passed out, drunk or high or both. I tied his dumb ass up good, and I'm pretty sure he's in withdrawal. But hell if I'm gonna give him a damn drop 'a anythin after he kidnapped me."
Though slightly startled by and maybe a bit disapproving of the language, T-Dog muttered, "That's… That's good… So… I guess we should get going, huh?"
Darla beamed and jumped down from the truck bed, skipping up next to the young man and holding out the keys. "Start her up," she ordered. "I'm gonna go say goodbye."
He took the keys almost on autopilot, stammering, "Whu- Uh- No-"
But she was off too fast for him to put his objections into words. Once inside the stifling, stench-soaked cabin, she approached Will, who was a pathetic mess. She got close enough for him to see her even in his delirious state but far enough away that he didn't have a hope of reaching her. She grinned evilly, cooing, "Bye, Grandpa."
Choked sounds from the doorway behind her indicated that despite his lack of coherent verbal protest, T-Dog wasn't willing to leave her alone with her kidnapper. That was kind of sweet. Or maybe just responsible.
"My friend is gonna drive me back ta town," she reported, as though relaying her perfectly normal plans to a doting family member. "I'm sure the cops'll be here soon ta collect ya. And we'll pro'ly see each other again someday. At your trial, at the very least." She leaned in close and dropped her voice low enough that she didn't think T-Dog (frozen and disturbed in the doorway) would be able to hear. Then, she taunted, "Maybe if I cry on the witness stand, you'll end up in the electric chair. Ya deserve worse for what ya did ta my daddy and uncle. And Grandma Cheryl, too." With one last nasty smile, which earned her a bleary glare and a weak snarl from the disgusting old man (whose inherent cruelty canceled out the slight physical resemblance he had to his sons), Darla whirled around and sauntered past T-Dog.
Once they were both loaded into the truck and T-Dog had double-checked that she was wearing her seat belt, the stranded pair set off. The journey was slow, a treacherous trip on narrow mountain roads that barely counted as such. Luckily, the twosome didn't encounter any confusing forks. Stilted small-talk revealed that T-Dog was in the area on a trip with three of his college football teammates to celebrate their upcoming graduation and the fact that one of them (not T-Dog) had gotten an offer from the NFL; however, the other guys had brought their girlfriends, which had left T-Dog the odd man out—the seventh wheel, as the saying (sort of) went. So, he'd tried to go hiking on his own to give the couples space, gotten lost, and stumbled across Darla. The rest was history.
Two hours passed before Daddy's truck made the last turn out of the forest and onto a paved road. Darla crowed with delight at realizing that she knew where they were and then rattled off directions to the local police station, which was only another ten minutes away.
And that should've been it. Kidnapping over. Crisis averted. Everything wrapped up in a neat little bow.
Except just as T-Dog pulled the truck up to the curb in front of the squat brick building, someone else followed behind in a dark hatchback. Uncle Merle jumped out of the back of it, and just for a second, Darla mistook him for Will. Not just Will—mid-DTs Will. She'd seen her beloved uncle in a rough state before, and she'd known that he had issues with substance abuse and addiction. But she'd never seen him looking… well, like Will. Like Will at his scariest and most pathetic. And even though she'd just met Will and been around him for a short time, that was the only comparison that worked in her mind. It was a comparison that she very much despised and hoped to never make again.
Uncle Merle was strung out and pale and sweaty, twitchy and obviously past reason. Hollering vulgarities and slurs that she didn't like to even think about, the man stormed up to the truck and promptly pulled T-Dog out of it, falling upon the confused man in a flurry of punches and kicks, pausing briefly to spit on his chest before continuing the savage beating on a mostly unresisting and entirely innocent stranger. Even when two more men bailed out of the hatchback and rushed to restrain him, Uncle Merle didn't stop, shaking them both off like they were nothing and managing to hit them both hard in the jaw in the process. Even when Darla screamed and cried and tried to jump in to stop him—but was halted by Michonne, who was stone-faced and coldly furious—Uncle Merle didn't stop.
Cops poured out of the station, and two shots from two separate tasers finally had Uncle Merle crashing limply to the concrete, audibly cracking his right arm on the way down. Within seconds, he was in handcuffs, his clearly broken limb bent mid-forearm and already turning purple and getting worse by the second in the tight restraints. When more cops moved to handcuff T-Dog, who was conscious but barely, bruised and bloody and struggling to catch his breath, Darla stopped blubbering long enough to screech at them not to touch him, that he found her and was just bringing her back, that he didn't do anything but help her.
And then Daddy was there, also looking the worst she'd ever seen him, but in a different way than Uncle Merle. Daddy obviously hadn't slept and hadn't eaten and had been crying and chewing all his fingernails bloody. Darla reached for him with teary eyes and shaky arms, and his arms shook, too, as he folded her into them and pressed his face into her curls and sobbed out all his terror and relief.
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My research about alcohol withdrawal and the DTs came from Wikipedia. I am not a medical expert nor attempting to give medical advice or make light of anyone's conditions or trauma.
Hopefully, the pre-apocalypse phase of this work isn't too boring. My rough outline meets up with the beginning of the show at Chapter 5 or 6, so there isn't much more build-up.
