Naomi
Momma was the first one I killed.
I think that made the rest of them a hell of a lot easier.
I pushed her hard, just once and right between the rib cage. It was enough dislodge her from on top of me for a moment and gave me a chance to grab the knife. The blade sliced my palm.
Her cold fingers were back on my neck before I'd caught my breath. It was amazing that they could be so cold with the fire all around us. I twisted in her grip, saw a flash of her grey, dead flesh. Her snapping teeth. I jammed the knife into her skull. Little, tiny bits of brain oozed down the side of her face. Her whole body went slack immediately.Little chunks of grey matter and tiny crimson rivers of blood against the paleness of her skin. My stomach turned over at the sight of it. Grief and guilt fought to control me but there was smoke in my lungs and I knew I couldn't last here much longer.
I pushed again and she slumped off me. I tried to stand up. Just as I had pulled myself to my feet the ground shook and I was thrown back down. There was a flash, an explosion of bright and blinding fire. Something had exploded nearby, probably the gas stove. an explosion shook the ground, throwing me back down onto the ground. I rolled onto my side and faced away from it. It was all I could do to protect myself in the moment. The skin on my back was searingly hot for the longest second of my life. My eardrums hurt. Everything buzzed. A high pitched ringing sound made me dizzy. When I could open my eyes again, I fixed my gaze on Momma's window at the back of the house. It was my only safe escape route now.
The fire was right behind me. The heat was way more intense than before. The kitchen had blown out and it would be moments until this place was nothing but flames.
Now or never.
I climbed back to my feet. So much smoke had already plumed in front of me that I had to make my way to the window by memory. It was so dark and so thick that I couldn't see it or the latch keeping it closed. I could barely see my hands in front of me as they felt for it, sweaty and panicked. I held my breath, knowing if I breathed in too much smoke I ran the risk of passing out. My heartbeat throbbed in my ears. Smoke stung my eyes and I could feel tears on my face.
And then my fingers found the latch.
I tugged on it. My fingers were so sweaty it didn't budge. I pulled again and it opened. Finally. Smoke poured out ahead of me. I took hold of the windowsill and pulled myself up. The window wasn't very wide and I felt either side of it squash against my shoulders as I pushed myself through.
I fell. Hit the ground real hard. I think it probably hurt but I didn't notice because of everything else I was feeling, from my slightly singed skin to the stinging in my eyes to the burning smoke in my lungs. The night air was refreshingly cold. I coughed so much I was sick. My vomit was black from all of the smoke I'd inhaled.
I sat back for a moment, my head spinning. I was ready to collapse but I could hear more of those dead things. My vision was still so blurred from the smoke that it was difficult to tell which of the people around me were dead already and which of them were just trying not to be. I stumbled away from my burning house, trying to dodge anything that came near and get as far from the smoke as I could. Legs shaking and lungs heaving, I wanted to collapse onto the cold ground but I knew the danger weren't over yet. And there was only one thing running through my mind.
Mia.
Where was she? Was she okay?
I could hear people screaming. Could feel them running past me and none of them stopped to help. None of them sounded like Mia, either. I wiped my eyes on the back of my hand. Things came into focus enough for me to see that while some people were running, there were others who weren't. They dragged their feet like they were broken. They reached out for anyone who got too close to them. They were dead like Momma, she'd moved like that too.
It seemed to me like they were swarming towards the flames. Was it the heat that was attracting them to it? The light? The sound of burning things falling in crackling flame?
Whatever it was, I was grateful for it. It let me slip away from them, only having to avoid a few who reached for me and then were immediately distracted by the fire.
Other sounds started to make their way through the ringing in my ears. There was so much yelling. So much screaming from every direction.
The house gave an almighty creak and I knew it was about to collapse. My lungs hurt so much, like the fire had made its way inside them.
Crash.
The roof caved. The weight of it suppressed the flames a little, almost extinguishing some of them. I looped back around to the front of my house, dizzy and disoriented, trying to get my bearings so that I could find my way back to my sister.
On the other side of what had once been my home, a charred body lay sprawled out on the grass. I thought for a second it might be Momma's, thrown outside by the explosion, but it was too tall. And dressed in leather that was melting off burning flesh. It looked like he might still be moving.
Daryl?
Could it be that I had actually heard him outside and now here he was, dead and burned beyond recognition?
A cold stab of grief right through my heart.
No.
There's no proof it's him.
There was another dead thing coming around the side of the house next to mine. It was probably heading for the glowing embers of my house but I was right in its path. I gripped the handle of my little kitchen knife and wished I had a goddamn gun. I ran, swerved around the burnt maybe-Daryl-body and kept running, wanting to save my strength for when I really needed it.
My feet carried me to Mrs Jones's on muscle memory alone.
"Mia!" I called as I got closer. There were three dead things at the door. When I yelled they all turned around to look at me… if 'looking' was even an accurate description of what they did. Their eyes didn't really see anything.
Shit.
All three moved at once, like they had some kind of hive mind.
I raised my knife, ducked out of the way of the first one and jammed it into the skull of the second. It crumpled to the ground so fast I didn't have time to pull my knife out and it almost took me down with it. I put my foot on its shoulder, gripped the hilt of my knife real hard and kicked the body away. My knife came free just in time for me to turn around and get the next one. This time, I squeezed the knife handle tightly enough when I pulled back that it didn't stay stuck in the skull. I was learning. Fast.
That was all you can do to survive in this new world but I didn't have time to think about that at the time. I didn't have time to think about anything.
Two down, one to go.
He lunged at me.
I swiped back, my knife cutting the side of his face but not piercing the skull. A large and jagged scar appeared down the side of his face. A sliver of flesh started to peel away.
I almost threw up again. But I'd already thrown up everything in my stomach.
The wound bled. A little. But it was a dark, deep red that was almost black. Old blood. Dead and drying blood. Not like the bright red fresh blood of the living. I didn't seem much like the dead guy noticed that his own face was starting to peel. How much could these things feel? Clean headshots had seemed humane so far. But maybe pain weren't a part of their world anymore. Maybe I didn't need to worry about that kinda thing.
The next time he came at me, I stabbed through the eye.
Somehow, it was worse than going straight for the skull. I think it was the squish. The eyeball juice that then kinda oozed its way onto the back of my hand.
It fell to the ground. Dead.
Again.
How many times could these things die? Would I walk away only for them to get back up again? I looked for signs of a second afterlife but they stayed still. No twitching. None of their horrible, rattling breaths.
Bang.
It sounded like a bird flying into a window. I looked up. Mia's face stared back at me. She banged on the glass again when she saw me. Mrs Jones appeared next to her, her face pale and wide-eyed in the gloom.
"Mia!" I almost burst into tears.
She vanished for a second and then she was at the door. "Naomi!" she was crying so hard it stopped me from doing the same. I ran to her, pushed her back inside where it was safe and closed the door behind me. I'd never held her so tightly in my life.
"Nate!" Mrs Jones grabbed my shoulders. "Have you seen Nate?"
"No, I'm sorry," I said. There was so much chaos in the trailer park around us, he could have been anywhere. She frowned and let go of me, walking back to take a look out of the window. "He might just be holed-up someplace."
I offered it as a comfort because I had nothing else to say. She nodded but I think she was trying to reassure herself more than she was agreeing with me.
"He went off to see them Dixon boys," she said. "He must be with them."
"Yeah," I said. My throat was dry.
Daryl.
He was here.
Somewhere
Or he had been.
I remembered hearing his voice, thinking it was in my head or my heart and knowing now that it had probably been real. Had he come looking for me when he saw the flames? How'd he know I was here?
I remembered the charred body outside my house and was filled with the urge to go back to check it for any signs that it was him but I knew from my own memory that whoever it had once been was burned beyond recognition.
It might not have been him.
There had only been one. I doubted Merle would have left his brother. I hoped he wouldn't. I prayed. But he'd left before and you can never tell how someone's gonna react to something like this.
"What happened to your hand?" Mia asked, pulling me out of a cold pit of despair I could feel myself spiraling into. She took hold of my wrist and turned my palm towards her.
"Cut it trying to get this knife," I said. I stared at the open would, amazed by how little it hurt. Shock was keeping me from feeling a lot. I looked at Mrs Jones, who was still pacing back and forth by the window. "You got any bandages?"
"Over there," she waved to the bathroom. I got up and went to wash the cut in the sink. Mia stayed close to me.
"Where's Momma?" she asked it in a small, quiet voice. Like she already knew. I watched the water turn red with my blood.
"She didn't make it," I told her and looked up at her to see how she reacted, if she'd cry or blame me for not letting her stay with Momma in her final hours. Thank God I hadn't. She didn't do either. There was a moment when I thought she would cry but then she just blinked a lot and the tears didn't fall.
"I'm glad you made it," she said in a whisper.
"I weren't going to leave you alone," I said. "I'll always look for you, no matter what. You hear me?"
She nodded. "What… what's wrong with those people? The ones outside..."
"They're sick," I said. I glanced at her bare arms. No bites. Didn't mean one of them hadn't got her, though. "Or maybe dead, I ain't sure. You seen them?"
"Yeah."
"How close did you get to them?"
"Not very," she said. "It was just the ones outside. Will they make me sick too?"
"Only if they bite you," I said. "You can't let them get close. And if they do get close, you gotta get them in the head."
"Like you did out there?"
"Like I did out there," I agreed. "You got that?"
"Yeah," she said. She gulped and I knew she was dreading the thought of having to actually do it.
"Don't worry," I told her. "I'll get any one that comes near you."
She nodded and looked at me with so much trust in her eyes it made me dizzy. I was used to feeling responsible for her, but this was a whole new kind of responsibility. This was instant life or death.
"Can we go home?" she whispered. It gave me a moment to pause for thought. No matter where I moved or what I was doing, Georgia would always be 'home' to me. It was the first place I thought of when someone said the word. It had shaped who I was. It was where my heart and soul would always be no matter where I was working. It hadn't occurred to me that things would be different for Mia. But of course it was, only her earliest memories would be here. All of her new and (I hoped) good memories, would be in Washington. Her school, her friends, the first safe place she'd ever lived; all of that was back in DC.
My second thought was that Washington might not be a bad place to head to. Not right now. Not when the cities were in the grips of their current panic. But maybe later, when they had this thing under control, Washington would have the infrastructure to survive it. The President had to be somewhere safe, as far as I knew there'd been no statement about any of this from the White House before the power had gone down. Somewhere, there would be a plan to keep the President alive during an epidemic. Our best bet was probably being as close to wherever he was as possible.
"We can try," I said. I saw her starting to get upset. I wondered if she'd grasped how bad this was or if she thought she'd be back at school with all of her friends on Monday. "I don't think the airports are open. We might have to wait a few weeks for things to die down or see if we can get a car and drive."
I guess the fact that I thought that another plane would take off ever again shows that I hadn't grasped how bad this was either.
It seemed to calm her down a bit, though. "Okay," she said.
I tied off the end of the bandage and tested out my hand. I could still feel the cut when I moved it around but it weren't that deep. All of my fingers still worked so I clearly hadn't severed any tendons.
I stepped past her and back into the living room. Mrs Jones was still peering anxiously out of the window. Things moved out there. But not like they were living.
"I should try and find him," she turned to me, carrying on the conversation like I'd never left the room. I knew she meant Nate, I didn't have to ask. "He could be anywhere out there."
"You should wait until it's light out," I said. It was so hard to see out there. It was a good enough reason but I'd pulled it out of my ass. I didn't want her wandering off out there unless she had to and I was too tired to have a reasoned debate about it. "You got any guns?"
"Nate's got 'em," she said. "But maybe we should wait 'til he gets back."
I nearly snapped and told her how unlikely it was that he was coming back but I didn't. I just said, "I think he'd rather they were keeping you safe than sitting here doing nothing while we all die."
That convinced her. She took me over to a closet with a safe at the bottom that had a few small guns and a little bit of ammo. It weren't much but it was better than nothing. I picked them up and laid them all out on the kitchen table, making sure they were all loaded but safe. I was so glad that Mia had the foresight to bring all of our stuff over from our Momma's house when she came a had brought our bags over from our Momma's house. It meant we had our toothbrushes, a few spare clothes. I remember being super happy that there were two books in mine, like they'd ever be of any damn use. I stashed the extra bullets in my satchel. Mia watched me doing it with disapproval like I was stealing something but I weren't planning on using them without Mrs Jones knowing about it so I didn't feel bad.
The room flooded with light.
After so long in the dark, it hurt my eyes.
I squinted around at all of them to see who had turned the lights on. Neither of them were near the switch and they both looked as surprised as I felt. "What the hell?"
"Power went off a while ago," Mrs Jones shrugged. "Must have come back now."
It gave us all a false sense of hope and normalcy. The TV came back on, playing some pre-recorded message about how the station had shut down due to an emergency. It urged us all to stay calm and stay inside.
And then something hit the side of the trailer.
Knock. Knock. Knock on the walls.
And then another one, on another side.
I could hear the indistinct moaning that the dead make.
Why were they bothering us now?
Was it the sound? The light? I knew I needed to work out what it was that these things were and weren't reacting to, I just wished that experimenting weren't so life and death.
"Turn it off," I said, pointing at the TV. "Get it off. Now."
Mia acted quickly, while Mrs Jones just started to whimper. I think she was whispering prayers, her hands shaking as she backed into the middle of the room. More knocks on more walls. I sprang for the light switch and flicked them off, plunging us back into darkness. Without the light bouncing off the windows, the faces of the dead ones outside were suddenly visible. One of them reached the door. Mrs Jones screamed. The dead ones outside started hitting the walls harder.
I grabbed her and put my hand over her mouth. I pulled us both low to the ground and motioned for Mia to do the same.
"Shut up," I hissed. "They can hear ya."
She nodded and I took my hand away from her mouth. I hoped if we stayed still and out of sight, if we kept quiet and kept the lights off then they might get bored and leave us alone.
We listened.
We waited.
The noises outside got louder and more frantic.
"My poor Nate," Mrs Jones moaned. "Out there all alone."
I refrained from pointing out that Nate was a grown man who could fend for himself. And either he was dead or he was with the Dixons. If he was with the Dixons then he was probably fine, I knew Merle weren't dumb enough to hang around a place like this while everything was going to shit.
"We're gonna have to leave," I said. Thinking about Merle and his ability to survive anything by just leaving it when things got bad really made me think about how dumb we were being just sitting around and waiting for something to happen. "This place ain't safe. We should get outta here."
"Not without Nate," Mrs Jones said. "I can't."
"We don't have a choice," I said. "That door won't hold forever."
It rattled like it had heard me. I knew these trailers weren't well built. I'd seen many doors round here kicked in with minimal effort. I didn't think these dead things had enough of a functioning brain to deliberately kick in a door but I knew if they threw themselves against it enough times they'd be able to knock it down. I moved quietly, carefully around each window, trying to gauge where they all were and how many there were. They were too evenly spaced for us to safely climb out of any windows.
"Naomi?" Mia whispered. Her fear made her sound so young. "I don't want to go out there."
"I know," I said. "But if that door breaks, we'll have nowhere to run. It's better that we do all of running now, while we're still in control of it. We just gotta find somewhere safe, okay?"
I didn't know how naive I was being, thinking there was still somewhere safe to run to. I was just filled with unfounded hope that things would return to normal. A lot of people had the same hope in those early days.
"What can we do?" Mrs Jones asked.
"You got matches?"
She nodded and pointed to a drawer by the sink. Mia ran to get them while I reached for some alcohol and an old dishcloth. Soaking the dishcloth in Scotch and ignoring all of the hurried and hissed questions from Mrs Jones about what the hell I was doing, I waited for Mia to bring me the matches. I picked up my satchel and swung it over my shoulder "Pack a bag," I ordered Mrs Jones and then took the matches from Mia, "Get your stuff and open the window at the back... real quietly."
She nodded and ran off to do what I asked. Mrs Jones didn't pack much, partly because we were in a rush and partly because I think she thought she'd be coming back to her home soon. I guess we all kinda thought we'd be coming back to some kinda home soon so I can't really judge her. When she was done, she stood next to Mia and looked at me. They were both so expectant, so trusting that for a moment it really threw me. When had I elected myself leader of these two? Who was I to think I knew anything to get us all out of this fucking situation?
Now ain't the time for an identity crisis.
I was all they got. I was all I got too.
"Okay," I said, taking a deep breath to recover and shut out the annoying voice of self-doubt that was threatening to overwhelm me and kill us all. "Stand by the door, I'm gonna use this to distract them and then we gotta run."
They both nodded. And then it was time. I lit a match, held it up to the Scotch-soaked cloth and watched it catch fire in seconds. I should have been closer to the open window when I started but it was the first time I'd done something like this, I still had a lot to learn. I bolted to the window, the heat on my arm was unbearable. The flames got bigger and bigger. I threw it as hard as I could and watched as the dead ones slowly turned around. Some of them started stumbling towards it. The door stopped rattling. The dead ones on the doorstep were moving away, towards the flames. They moved frustratingly slow. I was too scared to move too quick or make a noise before they'd got too far away in case they turned back.
I crept away from the window and passed the loaded guns out to everyone. Just in case.
"Ready?" I whispered. Mia and Mrs Jones both nodded but neither of them looked sure. I steadied my shaking hand on the doorknob and turned the key. Slowly, wincing every time it made a noise. There was a click when it unlocked. I froze, listened, felt the people beside me freeze too. Nothing outside the door seemed to change but it was so hard to know for sure.
If we waited too long, the fire would die out and we'd risk them coming back. If we didn't wait long enough, they'd still be too close to make a safe exit.
I turned the handle, slowly. I felt the latch click out of place.
Time to run.
I pulled the door open, sent up a silent prayer that it didn't squeak and never once thought about how weird it was that I was a non-believer doing so much praying.
They way was clear. Kinda. I grabbed Mia's hand and we slipped out into the night. We ran and didn't stop until we reached the bottom of the hill. I hadn't realised that was where I'd been running too but it made sense. Higher ground was probably the best place to be. The dead ones weren't that fast and they would take a little longer to walk uphill, so we'd be temporarily safe.
Mrs Jones grabbed my shoulders again, gave me a pleading kind of look and I knew she was about to ask about Nate. I was getting pretty damn sick of hearing his name.
"We can find him later," I promised. "When all of this has died down… Come with us. We gotta get out of here."
She looked around and for a split second I thought she was going to take me up on her offer. But then she shook her head. "I gotta find him," she said.
There was no persuading her. If I'm honest, I didn't try that hard. I knew that if I hadn't just found Mia I would have searched until I was dead too. So, I let her run away and was just grateful that Mia and I were back together. "You ready to run?" I asked her. She nodded.
I grabbed her hand and we ran for the hill. I dunno if it was instinctual or common sense or just the memory that the top of the hill had been the safest place for me when I'd been growing up but that was where we ran.
I sat Mia down on the old and decaying log at the top of the hill. "Are you okay?" I asked her.
"Yeah," she nodded but she was all pale and looked like she was close to me. Maybe she was trying to be brave for me in the same way that I was for her.
Gunshots. Below us.
Mia stood up, eyes wide and horrified. I turned. Beneath the hill and between the trailers a figure that was probably Mrs Jones was firing a gun at an approaching dead thing. I saw the flashes of light with every shot, saw the dead thing crumple like Momma had done. Relief flooded me.
"Naomi," Mia whispered, pointing to the right of it all. I followed where she was looking and saw a group of six or seven of the dead coming up behind Mrs Jones. I raised my own gun, tried to pick off as many of them as I could but it wasn't enough. They were on her before I could get them all. We could hear her screams from all the way up the hill.
"Don't look," I told Mia, although it was way too late for that. We both turned away as they tore her tearing her apart. It was a good job we turned away, there were three dead things close to the top of the hill and coming right for us. The sound of my gun must've alerted them to our location.
"Run,"I grabbed Mia's hand again and ran for the trees. I could hear more of them. Or maybe they were living. I could tell and didn't want to hang around to find out. I stopped
"Climb." I told her and lifted her up to grab the lowest branch of the nearest tree. When she was safely on, I put her backpack on my back and threw the satchel until it caught on a branch. I pulled myself up. It had been a long time since I'd been tree climbing around these parts but it was like riding a bike; hard to forget.
Mia looked down at me through the branches.
"Keep going," I whispered. "High as you can."
She nodded and kept climbing. I was fairly sure tree climbing wasn't high on the list of things she and her friends liked to do but she was picking it up pretty well. We climbed out arms reach of anyone dead. They didn't climb up after us, I didn't think that would be in their skill set. If they'd taken me by surprise we'd have been fucked. There ain't many escape routes up a tree.
We stopped on two branches mid-way up the tree that were thick enough for us to sit on and feel secure that they weren't about to snap.
"Now what?" Mia asked. Dead things swarmed at the bottom of the tree.
"We stay up here, stay quiet and wait until something else comes along to distract them," I shrugged. "Sure it won't be long. They don't seem all that smart."
Mia nodded. It was a crappy and vague answer but it was enough for now. She leaned back against the tree trunk and didn't say anything. Neither of us did, hoping the quieter we were the sooner they'd go away.
I rested my bag on my lap, trying to remember whether or not I'd brought anything useful. And then I saw Kineval, smiling up at me like always. I ran my thumb over the smooth part of his shades. I thought about Daryl again and where he might be in all of this. I wondered if that charred and leather-clad body outside my old home had been him after all. Or if he'd been far away when all of this had happened, safe somewhere with Merle and Nate. I had no idea where they hung out these days, where they might have run to when things went to shit.
If you're out there, I'll find you.
I hugged the whole bag closer to my chest, sent up a silent prayer that he was still alive. Safe somethere. I tried to push the burned, maybe-Daryl body from my mind. But on the worst nights it would be in my nightmares and I'd wake up drenched in sweat and regret.
What a dumb fight not to resolve before the end of the world.
What a pair of fucking idiots.
Daryl
"Guess I should be thankful you did all that crazy hunting when you were younger, huh brother?" Merle chuckled. I glared at him, wondering if he were smart enough to work out that I'd only done it to keep myself alive while he fucked off someplace better and left me behind. "You know all this was gonna happen? You psychic or something?"
"Shut up." I threw another log on the fire. It had always been damn hard to shut Merle up. End of the world hadn't changed nothing.
"Although," he said, "I'm getting a bit sick of eating nothing but squirrel. If you could catch something else that would be great."
"You want something else, catch it yourself," I told him.
"Ain't there deer or something round here that you can get?"
"It's a waste to get one deer for two guys." I knew that were true because every time Naomi and I had done it, we'd shared with neighbors. Thrown a big cookout, talked well into the night.
"Alright, alright," he said. "I'm just sayin-"
"Yo, will you pipe down," I cut him off. "The Geeks'll hear ya."
"Nah, we're good, brother," he said. "We got all them crazy tin cans you've strung up around the joint, those'll start clanging around if something touches them."
"What if it's one of them Geeks with no legs?" I asked. "Y'know, the ones that drag themselves along with just their arms? They aint gonna hit the wires, they're too high up. I shoulda put 'em lower down."
I stood up to go fix it but Merle stopped me.
"Pretty sure we can outrun those ones," he said. I was gonna ask him what he thought about trying to outrun one that crawled over us when we were sleeping, but starting that kinda argument went against everything I was saying about keeping quiet at night.
We didn't bother keeping quiet in the day. We'd managed to get our bikes and they were loud but pretty good at speeding away from slow, dead, dumb bastards. You could get to places that cars weren't able to by taking the bikes off road, which was good because roads were clogged for a long time. Merle thought going in to the city might be a good idea because they'd have a lot of supplies and if any rescue was coming, that's where they'd go. I told him you'd have to be a real dumbass to go to the city. We'd seen on TV what kinda sate the city was in. So we agreed to just stay near Atlanta and keep an eye on things.
I could get food pretty easy but water was slightly harder. Can't hunt that. Heading to a quarry round the other side of Atlanta seemed like the best idea. I knew there was a freshwater lake there.
We were close when we saw something move through the trees. Knowing the sound would draw attention, we cut the engines and pushed our bikes the rest of the way through the forest. We could hear other engines, saw an RV pass by on a nearby road.
Merle and I looked at each other and then back in the direction that the RV had been heading in. It was the first time we'd seen a group of people for a while. At the start they'd been everywhere- clogging up the roads; dying all over the place. But for a while it had just been me and Merle and the woods.
"C'mon," Mere said, to my surprise he put down his bike and started walking towards them. I hesitated and then followed him. I heard the engines of the other group cut out up ahead. We moved slowly to peer through the trees at them unseen. Merle grinned at me, "Let's go introduce ourselves."
"Nah," I said and started to walk back to out bikes. Merle did not follow.
"Why?"
"We don't need 'em," I turned back to look at him. I could tell by the look on his face that his mind was already pretty set.
"They got a lotta stuff."
I glanced back at them through the gap in the trees. Someone was carrying pots and pans and other kitchen shit out of the RV. There was maybe even a working toilet in there.
"So?"
"So we need stuff," he said. Was that really all there was to it? A few weeks in the woods and he were missing creature comforts enough to play happy families with a bunch of strangers.
They seemed dumb too. I could hear one of them laughing real loud, like the world hadn't ended. None of them were even alert enough to spot Merle and I watching them. You'd think, with all of the dead now walking about, people would try and pay more attention to what was hiding around them. "Look like assholes."
"Yeah," Merle said. He sighed too, in a way I weren't expecting. Like it was me he was exasperated by and not those dumbasses. "They do. But they got stuff."
"So?" I said. "You wanna go play house with them be my guest."
"I ain't saying we gotta best friends," he said. "Although, I also ain't gonna pretend I'm not looking forward to talking to someone who ain't moping around all the time."
"Shut up, man." I said. But I knew he weren't wrong. The further we'd gone and the longer it had been since that night everything went to shit, the more numb I got to everything. Everything around me became like white noise, like static on the TV; empty nothingness that couldn't reach me. Except from anger, that feeling burned through. Like always.
"We ain't gotta be their best friends," he said. "We just get close enough to 'em to get their stuff. Then we take off."
It was like I could only argue with him for so long now. Like there were fight in me but it got bored easy and then was replaced by that static nothingness. I only felt good when I was hitting stuff. Killing Geeks got the anger outta me for longer than bickering with Merle.
"Fine," I sighed. A loud guy in a uniform walked past where we were lurking. I glanced at Merle to see if he'd clocked it too. "One of 'em's a goddamn cop."
"Ain't no cops now, little brother," he reminded me. "All of that shit's gone for good."
Merle was the first person I heard come to terms with the fact that the world weren't going back to normal. He was always smart like that. Adaptable. Like he could put on a different skin for any situation.
"Let's go," I said and stepped out of the bushes before I could change my mind. I was noisy about it but it still took the dumbasses at the quarry a second too long to realise we were there and point guns at us. We probably could have each taken out two of them out before they'd drawn on us. But we didn't. We came out of there with our hands up, all meek and quiet.
"You been following us?" the cop asked.
"Nah," Merle said. "We just came to get some water, that's all."
"Name?"
That's when I knew he didn't have the guts to shoot us. You don't ask a guys name if you're gonna kill him, you just pull the trigger.
"Merle Dixon," Merle said. "This is my brother, Daryl."
I gave them a nod. Couldn't wave or shake hands or anything because my arms were still raised in a surrender that felt pointless now.
"Alright, well you guys can come get some water but then you gotta get going," the cop said. "We ain't taking on any more mouths to feed and we don't want no trouble."
Trouble. That's all cops thought Merle and I ever were. Even now, when there weren't any laws to protect, we looked like too much trouble for these kinda folks.
"That's fine, that's fine," Merle assured him while I glanced down at my shoes to stop myself from sayin' something I'd regret. "We'll get outta your hair as soon as we can. Although… my brother here is a great hunter. We been eating like Kings in all of this."
I looked sideways at him.
Kings?
What happened to 'sick of eating nothin' but squirrel'?
"That so?" the cop asked. In the silence it took me a sec to realise it were me he was talking too. I looked back up at him and shrugged.
"I ain't bad," I said. "We get by."
"He's being modest," Merle said. "Ain't nobody that can hunt and track like my bro. What about you guys? You guys hungry?"
He turned his wolfish grin to the band of people standing nervously behind the cop. It's amazing, how Merle can make you like and hate him all at the same time. It leaves people too confused to know how to act with him. It leaves 'em weak. Not that I was immune to it, either. Here he was using my hunting skills to barter our way in to a group I didn't want to be part of and I weren't saying anything about it.
"Tell you what," the cop said. "You guys contribute food and you can camp with us for a bit."
He said it like it was his idea, even though I think everyone there knew it had been put in his head by Merle. Merle's arms were already lowered. "Much obliged," he said.
"I'm Shane," the cop said. "You guys got a tent or something?"
"Sure do," Merle said, pointing to his backpack.
"When you're done getting food and water, there's a place to pitch a tent over there." Shane indicated to somewhere behind the RV. Some old dude standing in the door of it was looking at us like we'd just taken a dump all over the dumb white hat he was wearing.
"Alrighty," Merle said. "Well, thank you kindly folks."
Some of them gave us the kind of little smile folks gave now; one that says 'aren't we fucking lucky to be here even though the world's gone to shit'. The rest were looking at us like we'd already stolen their shit, which to be fair was the plan, but they didn't know that yet. Merle grabbed one of my arms, which I only just realised were still raised. I lowered them, let him lead me to a path down to the lake. I kept my eyes on Shane, who watched us until we were out of sight.
"Still think this is dumb," I muttered to him.
"Well," he gave me a slap on the back. "Least now you can catch us all something bigger than a squirrel."
I wondered if he'd gone through all this just to force me into catching him a fucking deer.
It were hard for Merle and me to settle in at first. I wound up being glad that he'd promised I'd hunt for everyone because it gave me an excuse not to hang out with anyone. A few people tried to make an effort but most of them didn't trust us. It didn't help that Merle was kinda bad at keeping up his 'nice guy' act for any length of time. Especially with Shane, because he was such a huge dumbass. Just an asshole ex-cop creeping around a family that weren't his.
He was sniffing around Lori, who as far as I could tell had lost her cop husband and seemed down about it for all of five minutes. Then there was her son Carl, who I got to know too well to remember what my first impression of him was. I think he cried a lot. He weren't a badass yet. I probably ignored him for a while. He probably ignored me too.
Carol was the same, pretty much. Back then she was real quiet and she still had Ed and Sophia. I regret not making an effort with them earlier but I'm glad I never bothered with getting to know Ed. If I had, I might've killed him.
Dale was the old dude with the RV. Impossible to avoid because he kept sicking his nose in everyone else's business. He was sharing with two blonde chicks, Amy and Andrea. At first I thought they were his daughters but he had actually just met them along the way. Andrea was a little mouthy and self important but she was at least trying to get shit done. Amy cried a lot. And she weren't as young as Carl or Sophia so it was actually just real annoying.
There was the Morales family; Louis, Eliza and Miranda. They seemed alright but Merle got in a fight with them pretty early on over something dumb so they wound up being pretty hostile.
Glenn and T-Dog hadn't known each other before any of this but had pitched up to the camp together, far as I could tell. T-Dog and Merle butted heads almost right away. Glenn was quieter, which made him great at getting in and out of the city while staying alive.
None of them could hunt for shit. Not even Shane with all of his ego and mouthing off about how great he was. He was too busy talking too loud about how good he was at catching frogs or skinning rabbits to actually go and do either of those things. Frogs probably would've heard his big, dumb loud voice coming and hopped right outta there.
The few days we all said we'd be at the quarry for turned in to weeks. The woods were pretty safe from all the Geeks in the towns and cities. All these folks seemed like they'd been better off than Merle and me. While our access to electricity had been pretty much cut on day one, most of them had been able to get the news until it stopped. Apparently they'd all been told to head to the cities, that the government would be able to protect everyone better if they were all in one place. It was the opposite of what Merle and I had thought we should do and maybe we'd been right to stay away. Glenn said Atlanta belonged to the dead now.
They were all still hanging nearby it in case help came but the longer it went on, the less likely it seemed. When Merle told everyone at camp that he didn't think anyone was coming for us it caused a big argument. So I was pretty surprised when he came looking for me and said, "People are heading into town."
I was in the middle of skinning a squirrel. I liked to do it sitting away from camp because the kids got grossed out if they saw it.
"Okay," I said, looking up at him, wondering why the hell he was telling me any of this and when I might have accidentally given him the impression that it was something I cared about.
"Town," he said again. "Like, downtown Atlanta."
"Why?"
"Get supplies and stuff," he shrugged.
"That's dumb, ain't Glenn just going?"
"Nah, I think folks want more than that."
"Okay." I sat back because I thought that would be the end of it.
"I'm going with 'em," he said. I looked back at him.
"Why?"
"See what's there," he shrugged again. "You coming?"
"Nah," I sat back again, stared at the grass.
"We might get some food an' stuff."
"I can get food and stuff right here," I said, gesturing to the forest around us. "Whole damn world's an organic farm now."
"That mean you finally gonna get me a damn deer?" he asked. "Because we've been with these clowns for weeks and you still ain't produced it. Maybe you can't."
'Course I can," I said. "Maybe I just don't wanna feed these assholes."
"Maybe," he said. "Or maybe it was actually Naomi who was good at getting the bigger shit and you've just been taking credit this whole time."
The mention of her name made me spring to my feet, like he'd lit a fire under me. Without thinking, I grabbed him by the collar. Her name felt like a secret I'd been carrying deep in my bones. Now he'd ripped it out from right under my skin and hearing him say it out loud in this new world felt wrong somehow. Like he'd tainted it. She belonged to the world before it became… this.
"Easy, brother," he said but I knew he was getting a kick from getting a rise outta me. "Just a joke."
I let him go. Turned away for a sec. Took a deep breath.
"Have fun in Atlanta," I told him and walked off.
It was easier to be with Merle than with the group of assholes we planned on robbing. But it was easier to be alone in the woods than with Merle. Quiet. I felt like I could breathe right. I stayed away so long it started to get dark.
I was gonna turn back but then a set of tracks caught my eye.
A goddamn deer.
Like Merle had willed one into existence. Tracks looked fresh too.
I almost didn't follow them because of how late it was getting. But I thought about going back to Merle without it and having to listen to him bug me about it until I found another one. So I kept real quiet and followed the trail. It got harder, the darker it got but the thought of Merle's damn annoying voice kept me going. My eyes got used to how dark it was, it got easier to pick out the way the deer had gone. I thought about dragging the deer's corpse back to camp when I finally got it and stuffing it in a sleeping bag next to Merle so he could wake up with it.
I took a couple of breaks but wound up tracking the deer in a big circle right back to camp. Another thing to file under 'waste of damn time'.
I listened.
Deer are real quiet so you gotta know what you're listening for. They hear good too so you have to try to be quieter than them, try and stay downwind so they don't smell a predator. There was a rustle not far off. I stopped moving, tried to train my eyes to see through the relative dark. Gaps in the trees let in light from the night sky.
There it was.
I saw it through a gap in the bushes. Took aim. Took a shot.
I got it but it weren't a fatal shot.
It ran off, wounded. I suppressed the urge to swear because I didn't want to draw out anything else that might be lurking in the dark.
I followed it slowly, knowing the deer wouldn't be able to get far with that injury. The sun started to come up. I passed a few squirrels. They were slower, not as awake and alert as usual. I stopped to catch a few, knowing the deer could wait, it would bleed out somewhere.
It was quiet. Morning was starting to break. I felt good that I'd managed to get so much done as the sun was coming up.
And then screaming cut through the quiet. Sounded like a kid. I started to run back to camp. It stopped but that didn't mean that whoever was screaming was out of trouble. I could hear a bit of a commotion. And then silence again.
I burst through the bushes and stumbled on what felt like everyone from camp turned to look at me. I hadn't been expecting so many people. Carl was clinging to his Momma, looking real upset. It was probably him who'd screamed. I stared back at them all, saw they were crowded around my deer. Was that what had made the kid scream? Little bit of gore?
Then a gap in the group of people showed a Geek's decapitated body and a huge chunk of the middle of the deer all bloodied and eaten. Its guts spilled onto the forest floor.
"Son of a bitch, that's my deer," I said. "Look at it all gnawed on by this filthy, disease bearing, motherless, poxy bastard."
I spat at the dead thing even though it were dead. Started kicking it just to make myself feel better.
"Calm down, son," Dale said. "That's not helping."
Neither are you. Didn't see you catching nothing.
"What you know about it old man? I've been tracking this deer for miles," I said, walking around it and trying to assess the damage. "Was gonna drag it back to camp, see if I could cook us up some venison. What do you think? Think we can cut around this chewed up part right here?"
I pointed to the bits that might be clean.
"I would not risk that," Shane said. Didn't like the guy but I could admit when he was right.
"That's a damn shame. I got some squirrel about a dozen or so. That'll have to do."
Nobody replied but I could hear something, I looked down at the Geek's head. It weren't attached but it were still moving, the gross mouth snapping like it could still get some of my deer. These idiots couldn't even kill it right. How'd they survived so long? I took an arrow and drove it through the brain, glaring at those dumbasses while I did it.
"C'mon people, what the hell? It's gotta be the brain. Don't y'all know nothing?" I walked away from them and strode back in to camp, calling for Merle. "Merle! Get your ass out here. Got us some squirrel."
I couldn't wait to show him the half-eaten deer, just to prove to him that I'd been able to do it and then have the smug satisfaction wiped off his face when he realised we couldn't eat any of it.
"Daryl, slow up a bit I gotta talk to you," Shane called.
"'Bout what?" I asked, hardly turning to look at him and hoping all the while that he'd realise it weren't nothing urgent and let me go about my business.
"About Merle," he said. What he do now? "There was a, eh, problem in Atlanta."
Problem.
Nothing but problems these days.
I knew what "problem" was code for, though. "He dead?"
"Not sure."
The fuck kinda answer is that?
"He either is or he ain't," I snapped.
"No easy way to say this so I'll just say it," a guy stepped forward, all curly hair and sad eyes and dressed up like another damn cop. They way he held himself was like a cop too. I'd heard his tone before. They usually used it on Merle when he were acting up. Now, I'd been doing my best to stay out of everyone's business and not get to know anybody but even I knew I hadn't seen this guy around before.
"Who are you?"
"Rick Grimes."
"Rick Grimes," I repeated, just to be sure he hadn't said Rick Rhymes like some kinda lame DJ. "You got something you wanna tell me?"
"Your brother was a danger to us all," Rick said, sticking out his hand the way I do when I'm trying to calm and animal, the way cops do when they're talking to people they think will be unreasonable. "So I handcuffed him on a roof, hooked him to a piece of metal. He's still there."
"Let me process this," I said. Story was too damn bizarre to take in all at once. "You saying you handcuffed my brother to a roof? And you LEFT HIM THERE?"
"Yeah."
I threw the squirrels I'd caught and lunged at him. Before I could land a punch, Shane had brought me to the ground. I dislodged him, managed to grab at my hunting knife for a second before Rick got it off me. I was on my knees. Shane's arm went around my throat. Squeezed tight. I thought my neck might snap or my head might pop off.
"Best let me go," I warned, trying to tank his arm away from around my neck. "Choke holding's illegal!"
"You can file a complaint," Shane said. He were squeezing tighter. Thought I was gonna pass out. "I can keep this up all day."
Fucking cops.
Rick bent down to eye level with me, the way people talk to misbehaving kids. "I'd like to have a calm discussion on this topic, you think we can manage that?"
I wanted to spit at him but Shane was holding on too tight. He threw me down. The first breath in hurt like a bitch.
"What I did was not on a whim," Rick continued in his kid-calming voice. "Your brother does not work and play well with others."
No shit.
I glared up at them both, hating them and their Good Cop, Choke-Hold-Cop routine.
"It's not Rick's fault," T-Dog stepped forward. It was hard to keep track of exactly how many people had been involved in this damn pantomime that had left Merle chained to a goddamn roof. "I had the key. I dropped it."
Lame excuse.
"You didn't pick it up?"
"I dropped it in a drain," T-Dog explained.
I stood up. "If that's supposed to make me feel better, it don't."
"Maybe this will," T-Dog said. "I chained the door to the roof so the Geeks couldn't get at him. With a padlock."
"That's gotta count for something," Rick said, like one padlocked door made up for leaving a man to die on a roof.
"Hell with all y'all," I said. "Just tell me where he is so's I can go get him."
I had no fucking intentions of coming back to deal with any of them. Geeks or starvation could have them now.
"He'll show you," Lori said, glaring pointedly at Rick. "Isn't that right?"
It felt way too loaded for them not to know each other. But I weren't invested in either of their lives enough to care what kinda domestic fight Good Cop had managed to stir up in however long he'd been here.
"I'm going back," Rick said, like he were some kinda hero for feeling guilty about leaving a man to die on a roof. I nodded, not wanting to waste any more time discussing this. There was a moment of quiet while Lori huffed and Rick started to gather supplies for the trip. It weren't a peaceful quiet, though. There were a lot of people who were bristling with anger at Rick's plan, not just Lori.Merle and I had been planning to screw them all over but they weren't exactly proving to be upstanding citizens themselves.
"Why would you risk your life for a douchebag like Merle Dixon?" Shane asked.
"Hey! Choose your words more carefully," I warned.
"Oh, I did. Douchebag's what I meant." Shane snapped back. Asshole. "Merle Dixon… that guy wouldn't give you a glass of water if you were dying of thirst."
Shitty assumption to make.
Merle weren't in the habit of giving people what they wanted. But something they needed? Something life or death? That was a different story. Not that none of these bastards could be bothered to learn the difference.
"What he would or wouldn't do doesn't interest me. I can't let a man die of thirst. Me," Rick said. "Thirst and exposure. We left him like an animal caught in a trap, that's no way for anything to die let alone a human being."
Pricks.
I wanted to punch them all over again.
"So you and Daryl, that's your big plan?" Lori said.
Rude.
Could do it alone if I knew the way.
Rick looked at Glenn.
What? Him too?
"Aw, come on!" he protested.
"You know the way," Rick said, which was actually a good point. It stopped me from telling Glenn to fuck off. "You been there before, in and out no problem. You said so yourself. It's not fair of me to ask, I know that. But I'd feel a lot better with you along. I know she would too."
He looked at Lori, who still looked pissed.
"That's just great now you're gonna risk three men huh?" Shane asked.
"Four," T-Dog stepped forward.
Fucks sake.
"My day just gets better and better don't it," I spat at him.
"You see anybody else here stepping up to save your brother's cracker ass?"
Ain't nobody forcing you.
"Why you?" I asked. I could do without him if all he were gonna do was bitch about Merle.
"You wouldn't even begin to understand," T-Dog told me. "You don't speak my language."
Fuck you, ya uppity prick.
"That's four," Dale announced, probably because he thought I were too dumb to count.
"It's not just four," Shane said. I didn't think for a second that he was volunteering. I just thought he might actually be the one here who was too dumb to count. "You're putting every single one of us at risk. You saw that Walker. It was here. They're moving out of the cities and if more come we're going to need every able body we got. We need em here. We need em to protect camp."
All this talk was doing my head in. I was close to telling them all to shut up, that I was fine going it alone as long as someone just told me where my damn brother was. Every second spent wasted in pointless chat was a second longer Merle was fending for himself.
"Seems to me what you really need most here are more guns," Rick countered.
"Right, the guns," Glenn sighed like the guns were something we all knew about instead of just more bullshit to discuss.
"What guns?" Shane asked
"Six shot guns, two high powered rifles over a dozen handguns," Rick listed them off. "I cleaned out the cage back at the station before I left. I dropped the bag in Atlanta before I left, I dropped it when I got swarmed, it's just sitting there on the street waiting to be picked up."
"Ammo?" Shane asked.
"700 rounds, assorted."
"You went through hell to find us," Lori said to Rick. Everything kinda fell into place at that moment. Rick was the cop husband she'd assumed was dead. "You just got here and you're gonna turn around and leave?"
"I… I don't want you to go," Carl said. It might have been a nice moment if I hadn't been too busy worrying about Merle to give a shit.
"To hell with the guns, Shane is right. Merle Dixon? He's not worth one of your lives even with guns thrown in," I glared at her, wanting to say more but getting in any kinda yelling match with her would do nothing but waste even more of our goddamn time. "Tell me. Make me understand."
Rick fed her some bullshit about a father and son who'd helped him get to Atlanta and who he'd promised to meet up with in Atlanta. But his walkie was in the same bag as the guns he'd left there. I dunno what had happened to him in Atlanta but it was starting to sound like maybe Rick weren't the best person to be following into the city. No wonder he'd wanted Glenn to come. While they were bickering and arguing about it, I went to get the van and all of my shit ready. I took everything that I might be able to use as a weapon, which at that point was really just my crossbow and my hunting knives. Looking at them, a bag of guns didn't seem like such a bag idea. I knew Merle would definitely want them when he was back and we could raid these assholes and take their shit.
Which I had been starting to feel kinda bad about but now they'd left Merle to die on a goddamn roof… they deserved what was coming to them.
Rick and T-Dog got some bolt cutters from Dale so's we'd be able to cut through the chains T-Dog had used to keep the door shut.
"He better be okay," I said to T-Dog when he joined me in the back of the van. "That's my only word on the matter."
"I told you, the Geeks can't get a t him," T-Dog said but he didn't look so sure. "Only thing that's going to get through that door is us."
He held the bolt cutters up and shook them at me, like that would bring me any sort of comfort.
For the first time, I thought about what it might be like if Merle weren't on that roof. If we got there and he was dead… what would I do? I'd have to take out T-Dog, that was for sure. I knew avenging Merle would be exactly what he'd want. I knew Glenn weren't a threat but could I take out the cop before he got me? Did it matter?
Glenn stopped the van on the train tracks just outside of Atlanta, told us we'd have to walk in from there. I guess the city was too full of Geeks to risk running an engine.
The department store had its front windows all broken in, like the Geeks had thought it were Black Friday or something. Some of them were still in there, walking around all aimless and brainless. No different to regular shoppers really. We took care of them, quickly and quietly. An arrow through the brain'll do it nicely.
Once we'd cleared the ground floor, the route to the roof was fairly safe. The Geeks ain't so good at climbing stairs. There's a lot fewer of them the higher up you get.
The roof was worse than I'd imagined it. A big, wide open space with hardly any shelter from the heat of the Georgian sun. Rick weren't wrong, a man could die from thirst and exposure out here in no time. Sunstroke alone would be enough to drive you mad.
"Merle! Merle!" I yelled. But the roof was such a barren wasteland, I already knew he weren't there. I saw the pipe they'd most likely chained him to. "NO! NO!"
A bloody hand. A bloodier saw.
Fuck.
Fuck I'm too late.
I fixed my crossbow on T-Dog. Seconds later I heard Rick's gun click as he pointed it at me.
"I won't hesitate," he said. "I don't care if every walker in the city hears it."
I wondered for a moment if I even gave a shit about getting shot. Naomi was dead, Merle was gone. What was left for me in a world like this? Was it worth dying to take out my brother's murderer and bring a City of Geeks down on these two assholes?
But Merle was only gone. He weren't dead
Merle was always gone.
He'd been gone most of my life. Always came back.
It wasn't like he didn't know where I was now, he knew the way back to camp. He'd come back this time too. My brother would find me, I was sure of it.
Unless I found him first.
I lowered my crossbow, crouched down to take a look at Merle's severed hand. "You… you go a do-rag or something?" I asked them both.
T-Dog handed me a blue handkerchief. I wrapped up the hand, taking a moment to study the way he'd cut it. Tried to show it to Glenn but he looked like he might hurl.
"I guess he saw blade was too dull for the handcuffs. Ain't that a bitch?" I said, hoping it would make Rick and T-Dog feel like shit for being the grand architects of all that pain. I put the gross little package in Glenn's dumb backpack. He tried to protest about it but I just acted like I hadn't heard him. I went back to where the hand had been, noticed it was cleaner than you'd expect for hacking off a chunk of your body. "Must've used a tourniquet. Maybe his belt. Be much more blood if he didn't."
They were all looking at me like they were surprised I knew that. As well as hunting, it seemed like none of them could track for shit. Surprised me that the cop couldn't do it, you'd think that would've been part of the job. Maybe this kind of tracking was only good for homicide detectives, or maybe he couldn't do it without one of those weird white overalls they always wear on TV crime shows.
I followed the trail of Merle's blood through another door on the other side of the roof.
"Merle!" I called into the empty stairwell. "You in here?"
Rick followed, kept tryna shush me and giving me a look like I was a dumbass for thinking I was gonna find him alive. I thought he was a dumbass for thinking anything different. Drops of blood went down a few flights of stairs and through to an abandoned set of what were probably once offices above the department store. Two dead Geeks lay on the floor, their heads done in and their dark, congealing blood splattered all around them. The bright red blood around them told me it was Merle who'd done it.
"Had enough in him to take out these two son of a bitches, one handed," I pointed out. "Toughest asshole I ever met, my brother. Feed him a hammer and he'd crap out nails."
"Any man can pass out from blood loss," Rick said. "No matter how tough he is."
Not Merle. His blood's too stubborn for that.
"Merle!" I called again.
"We're not alone here, remember?" Rick said. My hollering was clearly getting on his nerves. Wimp.
"Screw that," I said. "He could be bleeding out. You said that yourself."
The tracks lead me to room that smelt weird. But also kinda familiar. Like a real bad barbecue.
It was a kitchen area, probably so the assholes who used to work there had a place to go and make coffee as an excuse not to do whatever mind-numbing shit they were employed to do. There was a gas burner that was switched on. It couldn't have been on the whole time, it would have run out of gas in a few weeks or burnt the place down. It had to have been Merle who'd turned it on. Next to it was an iron, covered in sticky, burned flesh.
I felt queasy for a second while I remembered why that bad barbecue smell was so familiar. Naomi had smelt like that sometimes, when her Momma had been real bad. She'd never shown me where the cigarette burns were but I could guess.
"What's that burnt stuff?" Glenn asked.
"Skin," Rick said. "He cautorised the stump."
"Told you he's tough," I said and felt proud that my brother had proved this smug cop wrong. "Aint nobody can kill Merle but Merle."
"Don't take that on faith," Rick said. "He's lost a lot of blood."
"Yeah?" I said, following all signs of my brother to a broken window. "Didn't stop him from busting out of this death trap."
"He left the building?" Glenn said. "Why the hell would he do that?"
"Why wouldn't he?" I said. "He's out there alone as far as he knows, doing what he's gotta do. Surviving."
"You call that surviving," T-Dog said. "Just wondering the streets, maybe passing out? What are his odds out there?"
It was weird, that even with the world as shitty as it was now, nobody here understood survival like me and Merle. We knew that no matter what happened, no matter what pain you were in or how much you were bleeding or who it was that caused that pain, as long as you made it to your next breath then you were winning. Breaking it down into chunks like that meant you could get through anything.
"No worse that being handcuffed and left to rot by you sorry pricks," I said. I looked at Rick. "You couldn't kill him, I ain't so worried about some dumb dead bastard."
"What about 1000 dumb dead bastards. Different story?" he asked.
I shook my head. You take things one breath at a time and you don't see 1000. You just see that one that needs killing in that second.
"You take a tally, do what you want," I told him. "I'm gonna get him."
I went to climb out the window but the cop put his hands on me, "Daryl, wait-"
"Get your hands off me!" I shoved him. "You can't stop me."
"I don't blame you," Rick said. His sensible cop voice was out again, like he was trying to calm down a rioting crowd. "He's family, I get that. I went through hell to find mine. I know exactly how you feel. He can't get far with that injury. We could help you check a few blocks around, but only if we keep a level head."
I could do that.
"Only if we get those guns first," T-Dog said. "I'm not strolling the streets of Atlanta with just my good intentions, ok?"
Frustration that rose inside me was white-hot, had to bite my tongue to keep it down. I was sick of all of hearing all these excuses not to find Merle. But I knew I needed all of them. More eyes on the streets out looking for Merle, the more likely I was to find him. Guns wouldn't hurt either. If we didn't find him and bring him back, I knew he'd find me. And I didn't want that. If he got back to camp before we got to him, before he knew that me and the others had come to make things right… I didn't know what kind of revenge he'd unleash on the camp.