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4
Merle Dixon had this special talent for sucking joy out of a room. With just a few words he could create a vacuum where only awkwardness and a growing sense of unease remained. Sometimes he didn’t have to say anything at all. And you might not think it would translate to the adrenaline-fueled, post-apocalyptic world, at a campfire, surrounded by complete strangers. But it did.
“And where is Rick?”
The laughter died down. The talking stopped. “What?” asked Shane. The woman sitting next to him looked away like she hadn’t heard and put an arm around her little boy.
“Where’s Rick?” Merle asked again. “The way his name keeps coming up makes it seem like he should be here.”
Daryl looked over at his brother. He knew Merle was just trying to get a rise out of the Shane guy. It looked like he was in charge, and Merle needed to size him up. No surprise there.
“Well?” repeated Merle, when it seemed Shane might try to ignore him.
Daryl looked back to Shane. He was agitated. Mission accomplished.
“Why don’t you mind your own business?” Shane asked without actually asking. It was a threat. A small one, but historically, Merle didn’t take those well.
They had minded their own business well enough so far. Even now, they sat a ways back from everyone else. Just on the edge of the light from the campfire, out where the heat had a comfortable allure but couldn’t actually warm you. It was like the others had all forgotten they were there before Merle said anything.
“Don’t change the subject, now. You keep changing the subject real quick when you get to this Rick fellow.” Merle smiled. He leaned forward. “I thought I heard something about a hospital in there.”
Beside Shane, the woman was starting to look upset. She pulled her boy closer.
Upset women and children never really had phased Merle. “That it? Was poor Rick sick?”
“Drop it,” warned Shane, doing a decent job of reining in his anger. Daryl could tell what he really wanted to do was get up and tear Merle a new one.
Most everyone else was pretending not to notice, like something really interesting was happening in the dirt or off in the trees. The woman’s boy wasn’t, though. He was looking straight at them, but with this sort of distant expression that made Daryl uncomfortable.
Daryl looked at the ground. “Hey,” he said in a quiet voice, nudging Merle with his elbow. But Merle ignored him.
“Too sick to travel or-”
Shane stood up and set off a chain reaction. Daryl got up. Then some guy near the fire. Then several more people, men and women here and there. The woman with the boy took her kid by the hand and led him away entirely. Most of the other parents followed suit.
Merle just kept sitting where he was.
For a few seconds, it looked like things were going to get ugly. Shane came closer, and Daryl took a couple of steps forward . His body was surging with sudden energy, ready for a fight that never happened.
Instead, Shane stopped a few feet away and issued an ultimatum. “We’ve got a good thing going here. There’s safety in numbers, and I haven’t been inclined to turn anyone away from our number yet… But there’s a first time for everything. Walk away from this. Now.”
Much as with threats, Merle’s history with ultimatums was a long and bloody one. Daryl expected his brother to challenge Shane’s authority. But Merle just kept dogging him about a stranger, still smiling like it was a joke everyone but him was too stupid to get. “So you just… what? Left poor Rick? Alone? At the hospital? That’s cold, man.”
Shane’s body was tense. His mouth twitched, and he had to take a deep breath before he could say anything. “I went for him. He was already dead,” said Shane, response curt and mechanical, very practiced. “Satisfied now? Go on.”
Merle laughed, suddenly and hysterically. People started exchanging looks. The ambient noise of chirping crickets was replaced with collective whispers and murmuring. Shane stood his ground, the loathing in his expression stiff and unchanging.
They all stayed like that for a while; Merle laughing, Shane staring him down, everyone else whispering. Daryl finally turned to his brother. “C’mon,” he said, heading for the tent they shared. He put a hand on Merle’s shoulder as he passed, giving him a sharp tug backwards.
That stopped his laughing. Merle shrugged Daryl off angrily and stood. He headed for the tent too, well ahead of Daryl within seconds. Daryl kept a slower pace. By the time the campfire was a flickering smudge of light in the distance he could hear conversation picking up again.
Merle was never very forthcoming on the matter. At first he’d just shook his head when asked. When Daryl was a little older and knew better than to badger him (but did anyway), Merle’d taken to doing something mean like holding him up to the ceiling fan in the living room or locking him under the house and pretending he was going to leave him there forever. When Daryl was too big to be easily wrestled into submission and shoved inside a crawl space, Merle was at last forced to give an answer. “Bitch ran off,” he’d said. And that was his final word on the subject.
Sometimes Daryl still thought about his mother, though. He wondered what her hobbies were and which movie she liked best. He wondered why she had left and if it was because of his dad. Sometimes he wondered about the things she was doing right at that moment. He hoped wherever she was, she was miserable. Then he would feel guilty for hoping like that and take it back… usually.
If Daryl had been in his mother’s shoes, maybe he would have left too. He certainly wanted to get the hell out of Dodge sometimes. Unlike the fading idea of his mother, Daryl didn’t have to try and remember his dad. His and Merle’s dad was there, and even when he wasn’t you could always expect him back eventually.
Their old man had always been very dependable for being completely unpredictable.
It was like he didn’t even have kids some days. He’d stay gone for weeks at a time or bring a woman home. More than once he did both. The two of them would stumble in wasted, go to the bedroom, or just pass out on the couch if they couldn’t make it that far. Later their dad might regale his boys with a sketchy account of what had happened - always adding more details than Daryl cared to hear.
Other times he was a real hard-ass. To hear him tell it, he was the long-suffering father of two ungrateful little shits. And maybe they were, Daryl thought. It was always too hard to tell the days when you were just some kid who happened to live in his house from the days when you were supposed to pick up after yourself and call him “Sir”.
Then some days, if he was in a real bad mood, it didn’t matter what you did. You were on his bad side by default. It was best to try and avoid him entirely those days. Unfortunately, Merle was about as good at avoiding confrontation as Daryl was at being consistently polite. Merle might not have had anything to say about their mother, but he had plenty of things to say about their father.
“Christ. Where’s he storming off to now?” complained Merle when the screen door banged shut. “You still there, bro?“
“Yeah,” sniffed Daryl. He lifted one of the slats in the blinds down where he could reach. Peering out, he saw their dad’s pickup kick up dirt and peel out of the front yard.
“Was he drunk? Hope the fucker drives right off the side of the mountain.”
“I don’t think he’d been drinking all that much,” Daryl said, partly to calm the sudden knot of anxiety in his chest. He didn’t know what life would be like if their dad ever got seriously injured or killed or just failed to come back. It was the not knowing that worried him. Daryl watched the dirt settle.
“Hey… Hey, I know you ain’t crying in there,” said Merle. “Get in here.”
Daryl didn’t typically take orders from people, much less people who weren’t even adults. It was just that when their dad wasn’t there, control of the house shifted to Merle. Adult or no, he was bigger and older. Daryl rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and trudged into the living room.
Merle was sitting with his legs outstretched on the coffee table. He put his feet down when Daryl came around to the front of the sofa. “He getcha?”
Daryl rolled his eyes, feeling mutinous. Merle might have been in charge, but he was still just his brother. Daryl felt no obligation to report to him.
“You sure he’s gone?” asked Merle.
“Yeah,” answered Daryl.
Hearing that, Merle pushed the sofa cushion back and removed the beer he’d been hiding there. Merle wasn’t anywhere near old enough to drink and the can itself was probably warm now. He knocked it back anyway.
“C’mere.” Merle tossed the empty can onto the coffee table where it just rolled off to gather with the rest of the trash on the floor. He grabbed Daryl by the arm and spun him around.
Daryl’s shirt stuck and stung him when Merle lifted it off his back. He took a shuddering breath and blinked away some of the moisture gathering in his eyes.
“Don‘t be a pussy,” said Merle, dropping his shirt. “I got it way worse when I was your age and I never cried… Did you deserve it?”
“No.”
Daryl turned back around just in time to catch a hand to the side of his head as Merle shoved him to one side. “Out of the way. Commercial break’s over.“ Merle smirked. “So what was it you did?”
Daryl shrugged and tried to leave the room.
“Get your ass back here and tell me what you did.”
There was no point in hiding the truth anymore. It wasn’t like Merle was going to punish him too. “I hit the girl next door with a rock.”
That appeared to be marginally more interesting than daytime television. Merle turned away from it to look straight at Daryl. “Why?”
“It was an accident,” said Daryl, which was the truth. The neighbors had a girl about his age. At least, he thought she was about his age. He saw her in the hall at school sometimes, but she’d never bothered to introduce herself. What she had done was call him names from the safety of her own yard. Some tall girl Daryl didn’t recognize had been with her; laughing like it was the funniest thing she had ever heard when it wasn‘t funny at all. “It was just a clump of dirt. I didn’t know there was a rock in it.”
Merle got a good laugh at that. Daryl might have thought it was a little funny had he not just gotten punished for it. Hell, any other day of the week his dad might have found it funny, too. As it was, he’d just stood there looking like he was about to boil over as the neighbor woman stood at the front door, Daryl held firmly by the shoulder, accusations flying - most of it about the girl sniffling on the front lawn, some of it not. She’d had an awful lot to say to a man who wasn’t all that fond of listening.
“Can I go now?” asked Daryl.
“Don’t give me no attitude.” Merle’s eyes did a quick once-over on his brother, like he was sizing him up. “Once you can handle yourself in a fight, he won’t be so hard on ya. I‘ve got you covered ‘til then… Now, go on.“ Merle switched his attention back to the TV. “Go put some peroxide on that. Bathroom. Under the sink.”
Daryl left the room.
“You hear me?”
“Yeah,” said Daryl, making his way down the hall, past the bathroom, and out the back door.
Even if Merle didn’t actually intervene, if Daryl could somehow put himself next to his brother before their dad caught up to him sometimes - not always, but sometimes - it would just end. His dad would disappear, melt back into shadows of the house like a nightmare does if you wake up right when it’s getting really intense.
So Daryl would wait. He would cut through the woods behind the elementary school and make the fifteen, twenty minute walk to the alternative school Merle attended. It let out an hour later than his, so Daryl would lean against the chain link fence that separated all the delinquents inside from the rest of the world and wait.
Sometimes Merle would come outside and meet him there. They would walk home together. It was a fairly long walk, but there wasn’t much choice. Merle didn’t have a car and the school bus didn’t go up any narrow mountain roads. They had to walk down to a trailer park near the interstate to catch it in the mornings. Maybe they could have taken the bus back there, but Daryl didn’t think he could ride the one from Merle’s school without raising suspicion. Daryl thought Merle could have ridden it; but he never did, so Daryl never mentioned it.
Usually, Merle had somewhere to be. This meant Daryl made the walk alone. If his dad was home and in one of his moods, Daryl would try and slip back out unnoticed and bide his time in the woods until Merle made it back. If it looked like he was going to stay out all night, Daryl would eventually suck it up and head on in.
More than once he fell asleep waiting. One of those times, he’d woken up to his dad standing over him. Instead of going to school, he’d been treated to some markedly proactive, passive aggressive bullshit. Saying no more than need be, his dad had him gather the bedding and load it into the back of the pickup. Daryl’s mattress was wedged in after it, and they rode to the dump.
For three days, Daryl’s dad would just walk past and give him this look. It was a look like the empty space where his mattress used to be ought to teach him something - except his dad seemed to have forgotten what that lesson was.
It didn’t matter. Daryl got Merle’s bed a few weeks later anyway. After Merle got sent to juvy again.
Daryl would have rather stayed sleeping on the floor.
Daryl woke up in the passenger side of his pickup. He was slumped low in the seat, shins pressed against the dashboard so hard it hurt to move them. For a few seconds he forgot when he was.
The truck slowed down some. “If you ain’t one of them geeks, say something,” said Merle.
“What happened?”
The truck sped up again. “Well, ma’am, it seems you caught the vapors and had a bit of a fainting spell.”
“Shut up.” Daryl remembered when he was and what must have happened. He didn’t ask for details. Instead, he sat up straight. “You following them on purpose?” he asked, staring through the windshield at the back of the white RV driving a car’s length ahead.
“Yeah,” said Merle.
“Why?” asked Daryl.
Merle was quiet for a while. Finally, he shrugged. “Hot blonde bitches.”
That didn’t feel like a good enough reason, but Daryl let it go. “Where are they going?”
“85, I think, ” said Merle with a sigh, leaning back in his seat. “Bound to be people holed up around there somewhere.”
“And?”
“And then you shut the hell up. How’s that?”
#
They drove until they hit traffic; long lines of abandoned cars, all quiet, all empty. “Keep an eye out,” said Merle. Daryl did.
Sometimes they stopped. One of them would get out and hike up into the woods a ways. The RV would stop too and, at first, someone would get out; the old man, one of the blonde women. They would ask questions, offer help. They would get rebuffed, dismissed, or flat-out laughed at. After a while they stopped asking altogether.
When it got dark, Merle stopped and cut the engine. He stretched out in the cab, forcing Daryl outside to take watch. It appeared their friends in the RV had constructed a lookout all their own. Daryl climbed into the back of the pickup and lay down. He forced himself to stay awake regardless of whether there were others minding the area for walkers or not.
Merle’s motorcycle took up a good bit of space. The truck bed itself was hard, ridged plastic. It was easy enough to keep himself awake. Not that Daryl hadn’t fallen asleep under worse conditions.
So Daryl lay there. He stared at the blackness and the stars and listened to the drone of conversation from the RV. Someone hummed a few bars of Dueling Banjos. Daryl wondered why the RV people were even following them if they were so much better than a couple of rednecks.
“We must be doing something right,” said Daryl quietly and to himself. He rolled over and faced the hard plastic siding over the wheel well. He half-wished he’d thought to bring a pillow.
The RV disappeared behind a corner. Daryl wouldn’t miss them. He was even a little disappointed when the bulky RV caught up, trundling up behind them along the gravel path.
“Up there,” said Merle, pointing to the edge of a clearing in the distance. “What you wanna bet?”
Daryl still couldn‘t work out why Merle was so set on this all of a sudden. They worked better, just the two of them. “What, that there’s a camp there?” he asked, giving the clearing up ahead an appraising look.
“No shit there’s a camp up there,” said Merle. “What you wanna bet some asshole’s declared himself leader of that thing and has no clue what he‘s doing?”
Daryl snorted and gave Merle a sidelong look. “I’m not taking that bet.”
-2
Merle believed in a lot of things. He believed in them loudly. He believed Georgia was home to way too many Mexicans, that it was his right to hunt with or without a permit, and that people, on average, were better drivers when drunk.
A high opinion of himself was what Merle voiced most often. Merle knew he was one tough son of a bitch. Daryl was inclined to agree with him, even when the evidence at hand disagreed with both of them. Like when he got his ass handed to him after he’d dragged himself home late one night. He’d won a fist fight with a classmate, but not by much.
Merle wasn’t a threat that night. When their dad laid into him, it was like he was unleashing years of pent up aggression.
It was the week before Merle went to juvy for the last time. Not because the beating dealt to him that night taught him some valuable lesson. It was just that, next time he’d be graduating to a real prison. Though Merle wasn’t as scared of that prospect as he should have been, just like he hadn’t been scared when he picked an impossibly stupid time to mouth off to their father.
Daryl wouldn’t call that night before Merle went to juvy the worst moment of his life. After a certain point, the worst moments of your life all bled together. They became more of a feeling. The worst moments of your life hurt like hell at first, then they weren’t anything at all. They were that surreal feeling of standing out in the front yard, bleeding but mostly just bloody, watching the neighbor turn off every light in her house even though it wasn’t even 9:00 p.m.
The worst moments of your life were the aching numbness that gave you time to check on your brother, to try and fail to drag him anywhere other than the foot of the steps, to just sit there for the rest of the night because you were too weak to actually do anything. Then to feel like you were about to cry, not because it was the worst moment of your life, but because you could already see another one just like it coming up ahead of you. Looming not all that far off in the distance like a brick wall, like all the walls that came before it. Like whatever you did, you couldn’t swerve hard enough to avoid it. So you never did.
Merle didn’t come home again after that. Not really. He went to juvy and finished out high school while he was there. He stayed gone a lot after they released him, more than usual. Then he enlisted. Daryl wasn’t surprised when that didn’t last long, and Merle got shipped off to prison.
Life went on, just a straight line. School, home and whatever was inbetween. The biggest difference between life with Merle and life without was that suddenly he was expected to be some kind of confidant. His dad had taken to pulling him aside, and not because Daryl was due some poorly-concocted lesson. He’d hand him a beer and unload a whole bunch of shit Daryl would have much rather remained oblivious to.
That wasn’t to say Daryl never learned anything as an unwilling drinking buddy to his father. He learned plenty - mainly that his dad was a miserable bastard. After polishing off his third or fourth drink he had a tendency to get uncomfortably sentimental.
“I know,” he’d say. “I know I’m hard on you and your brother. Got married too young. It’s tough. You’ll have kids of your own someday. You’ll understand.” Then his dad might try to pat Daryl’s arm or shoulder, hands heavy, clumsy. The details were often different, but Daryl’s reaction was almost always the same. He’d recoil and mask the act by finishing his beer. He’d just let his dad’s words hang there.
Sometimes, when sufficiently drunk, his father would slip up and call him ’Merle’. Daryl would let that one hang too but couldn’t bring himself to keep drinking afterward.
Daryl shrugged and stopped wiping down the arrows laid out on the top step. He was stretched out across the second. Merle had to step over him to get onto the porch.
Back and forth Merle went for a while. He brought out old pillow cases stuffed with assorted junk, couple of hunting knives, a pair of work boots. He jammed his life from that house into saddlebags, leaving only a shoebox full of papers behind. There was no telling what was in there or why he needed it; military pamphlets, legal shit, passed notes from past school days. Who knew?
“Won’t fit,” said Merle, and he waved the box in Daryl’s direction.
Daryl set the arrow he was cleaning aside. “So?”
“So get your ass in that bitch seat and hold onto it for me.”
“Don’t call me ‘bitch’.”
“Well, then don’t act like one, Nancy.”
Daryl glanced back at the house. Their dad was gone again. Lord knew where.
Merle shook his head and swore under his breath. He got on his bike, tossing the shoebox aside. The lid came off and skidded sideways through the dirt.
“Jesus, hang on!” Daryl shouted over the revving engine. He set the arrows aside and stood. “Give me a minute.”
The front lawn was overgrown with grass and weeds. There was water damage on just about every surface imaginable. The holes in the floor meant for washer and dryer hookups had rotted around the edges and grown so wide, Daryl thought you could probably fit a person through them.
His first time there, Daryl helped bring Merle’s things from the house inside, where they were tossed unceremoniously on the kitchen table. They talked for a while, but not about Dad, not about the military, not about prison. When it was starting to get dark out, Merle told him he could crash on the sofa.
Daryl was reluctant. Merle said he wouldn’t give him a ride home. That made the choice easier.
#
The trailer was like a sanctuary - if sanctuaries were allowed to be filled with empty liquor bottles, drug paraphernalia, and the occasional wasted lowlife who happened to be passing through. Daryl never did stay too long. A week, two at the most.
“You live here,” his dad would remind him. “Don’t make me call the cops now.”
Sometimes it was even preferable to stay home, given the things he encountered at Merle’s. Once he walked into the bathroom to find some girl lying there. It wasn’t like Daryl hadn’t seen people passed out in their own vomit before. Usually they were related to him, though, or at the very least male.
This girl was lying motionless, face down on the yellowed linoleum. Her denim skirt was bunched up around the tops of her thighs. Her brown hair was fanned out in a matted halo around her head. For a few chilling seconds, Daryl was sure she was dead.
“Hey,” said Daryl, nudging her leg with his shoe to make sure. “Hey,” he repeated. When she didn’t respond, he kneeled down and pulled her by the shoulder, trying to flip her over.
The girl coughed suddenly, sputtered. She spit up something dark and viscous.
“Fuck,” Daryl swore, pulling his hand away so fast her head smacked back against the linoleum. “Aw… shit,” he swore again, this time apologetically. He reached for her shoulder, thought better of it, and pulled her up by the hood of her jacket instead. “Hey, you all right?” It felt like a stupid question to ask, but Merle wasn’t home, and he wasn’t about to call an ambulance if he didn’t have to.
“What?” asked the girl. At least, that’s what Daryl thought she asked. It was really more a monosyllabic slur that started with a ‘w’. She seemed to be coming around, though. Sort of. She moved one hand under herself and rubbed at her mouth with the cuff of her jacket.
“You all right?”
“Yeah,” she said, more coherently this time. “Yes… Yeah.”
She didn’t look okay; eye makeup smeared all to hell, a string of spit leading from her lips to the pool of vomit on the floor. “Do you want me to call someone?” asked Daryl, and that seemed to sober her up for a split second.
“No!” She sat up with considerable difficulty. “I’m fine… No. Seriously.”
Daryl stood up. He helped her up off the floor, pointedly looking away as he reached down to quickly unbunch her skirt.
“God,” she groaned, reaching down after the fact to smooth it out. She nearly fell in the process. Daryl barely got her seated on the toilet in time.
He left her propped there and went to the kitchen. Daryl had never seen any towels or washcloths around and doubted Merle owned any. Instead he dampened a wad of paper towels. By the time he got back to the bathroom, the girl had slumped over against the counter.
“I feel like shit,” she moaned.
“Yeah, well, you look like shit.” Daryl didn’t have much sympathy for people who didn’t know when to stop. Still, something about the miserable look she shot him made Daryl regret saying it. “Here.” He pressed the wad of paper towels into her hand.
She sat up as straight as she seemed to be able to manage. She dabbed around her mouth with one side and flipped the paper towel over. For a while, she just sat there, face buried in soggy paper. Daryl stood there and watched her, mostly because he still had to piss and this was the only bathroom.
“You’re not my brother’s girlfriend or anything, are you?” he asked after it had been a while and he thought maybe she had fallen asleep.
“Who’s your brother?”
“Merle Dixon.”
“Eww.”
That was a relief. Daryl thought she looked too young for him, but he’d thought that about some of the girls Merle had brought home in the past.
“No offense,” she added, lowering the paper towels and dropping her hands into her lap. Her eyes were watery and unfocused but she still managed to fix them on Daryl. “I know you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. What’s your name?”
“I thought you knew me… It‘s Daryl.”
“Daryl… You hit me with a rock, Daryl.”
“What?” The inner workings of Daryl’s mind had to spin for a bit on that one. “Oh.”
“Laney,” she said, then looked a little embarrassed for supplying her name when he hadn’t asked for it. “And I’m not holding a grudge… about the rock thing. I was a- was a brat. Probably deserved it… Like I deserve this - Shiiit.” Laney slumped over, cradling her head in her hands. “I feel…” There wasn’t a word for how she felt, apparently. She just trailed off.
“Come on,” said Daryl. He wasn’t going to wait on her anymore. Pulling her arm around his shoulders he half-dragged, half-carried her out of the bathroom and toward the sofa.
Laney’s head lolled first one way then the other, taking in her surroundings. “Shit, this is what rock bottom looks like. Isn’t it?” Laney heaved a sigh. “No offense,” she added.
“None taken,” said Daryl. Even though that was a blatant lie. He eased Laney down onto the sofa
“Fuck. I’m better than this,” said Laney, slurring her words at no one in particular. “I’ve gotta get my shit together.”
“You do that,” said Daryl before he left her there.
2
Daryl figured it was human nature. Some psychobabble bullshit about belonging or the need for order or whatever. He didn’t have to worry about that. He just had to worry about Merle.
It didn’t take, though. Merle was gone by the time Daryl woke up, and he was completely unsurprised. Unsurprised, but pissed. He let quite a few expletives fly as he kicked over a couple of folding chairs they’d found on the highway, a cooking pot, a bag full of whatever hunting gear Merle had left behind - anything that came within general kicking distance, really.
With his initial anger spent, Daryl righted one of the folding chairs and sat down. Merle would be back when he got back; Daryl would just have to wait. So he did. He sat there on their hill, in the sparse patch of trees that overlooked the highway and part of the city. There were a lot of buildings within walking distance. On the other side of that were more people. Some assorted city survivors that had gathered overnight, united solely by the fact that they were still alive.
Merle and Daryl had seen them forming their little group just that night. They’d had their eye on a sporting goods store, and now Merle had gotten it into his head that the people organizing had their eye on it too. Daryl had assured him that they could make a run in the morning and that even if they did get to it first it had probably long since been picked clean.
So, here he was. In the dark. His turn to keep watch with no one to keep watch for.
Daryl kept himself entertained by mulling over what a complete and utter asshole Merle was for the first hour or so. It was around hour two that things got interesting. Suddenly there were the distant sounds of screams and gunshots, and pinpoint specks of muzzle flash lit up the horizon.
Daryl stood, shouldering his crossbow. That much noise was going to draw a lot of walkers. He was probably plenty safe up where he was, but down there? “Shit,” breathed Daryl, glaring in the general direction of where he’d first spotted the sporting goods store.
Suddenly, Daryl didn’t feel so comfortable just waiting around for Merle to get back. “Shit,” he repeated and started down the hill.
The streets were crowded. There were some living people on them, but mostly they were just crowded with the dead. It was bad. Screams turned into wet gurgles. People trying to escape in vehicles bumped into one another repeatedly and futilely. The asphalt looked sticky and shiny in their headlights.
Daryl stayed low. He took back alleys when he could. Three times he had to cross out into the open, but it was easy to find cover among the cars.
The screaming got nearer. He could have reached out an arm and touched some of the people doing it by now. Their own arms were flailing, reaching for help, any kind of help. They struggled to the last, even while their body’s convulsed, threads of sinew snapping apart against the gnashing of teeth. It looked like an awful way to die.
Daryl wouldn’t help them though. He couldn’t, if he wanted to survive. And Daryl planned on surviving for as long as possible.
The sporting goods store was on a crowded corner. The front door was shattered. A woman’s body was down and twitching on the broken glass. Two walkers were hunched over her, feasting. Any others nearby all seemed to be after fresher meat, the kind that was still running and screaming.
Daryl moved in quick. He felled one with a well-placed arrow to the head and the second with the upward thrust of a hunting knife. Reclaiming the arrow, he moved into the store. Glass crunched beneath his feet, and then a second pair. He spun around, still holding the knife ready, but it was just some girl.
The girl gasped and threw up her hands.
Daryl gave her a quick once over. There were no bites taken out of her that he could see. He lowered the knife and got back to business.
“Merle?” called Daryl, keeping his voice low as he crept toward the back of the sporting goods store. A sporting goods store that didn’t even seem to carry guns - so, if Daryl got killed over this, that would be real damn insulting. “Merle,” he repeated.
Daryl wasn’t sure what he was hoping to find. He probably should have just waited. All this end-of-the-world-shit had his brains scrambled. For all he knew, Merle was back at their campsite now.
Daryl moved back toward the door, intending to head back to the hill, when he spotted the adjacent liquor store. There weren’t too many walkers between him and it. Might as well try in there, he thought with a long, low sigh of resignation.
Daryl raised his crossbow but didn’t need it. When the street was clear, he just ran and hoped the door would be unlocked. It was. Daryl did a quick sweep of his surroundings and nearly shot the girl this time. “The hell?”
The girl hadn’t gasped this time. She had thrown her hands up. In one of them she was holding a recently acquired golf club. She was blonde, early to mid twenty-something, maybe. “Uh,” she began when he lowered his crossbow. “You look like you know what you’re doing.”
That gave Daryl pause, but there wasn’t really time for him to work out the finer points of telling someone to ‘fuck off’ in this particular situation without sending them to their death. “Whatever,” he said instead, but there wasn’t even really time for that.
A geek lunged at Daryl from behind a shelf of boxed wine. A mouth full of discolored teeth got entirely too close for comfort before Daryl shot it point blank. The thing crumpled. The girl let out a muffled whimper. Daryl moved toward the back of the store.
It didn’t take him long to figure out no one was there. He called Merle’s name a few times anyway. Nothing. He really should have expected as much.
The girl was clutching the golf club to her chest and staring at the door. Daryl realized a safe retreat wasn‘t likely. The crashing of shelves had attracted walkers. Lots of them. The numbers of survivors outside must have been dwindling.
Daryl mentally berated himself for being so stupid, so impulsive - even though he really couldn’t picture himself still sitting up on that hill just waiting for his brother to get back. Not that this had done either of them much good in the end. “Christ.”
Daryl could see the sky lightening just a little over the heads of the horde outside. It would be day soon, and walkers didn’t seem to much like being out in the heat. Maybe he could wait them out and look for Merle in the morning.
“There’s a door back here!” called the girl. Daryl heard her crack it open. “It leads outside! Locks from the inside, I think!”
“Leave it shut!“ Daryl gave the shelf nearest him a shove. It crashed to the floor. More shelves followed it. Daryl shoved them all down, working his way backward until all the bits of glass on the floor were adrift in a shallow sea of booze.
All the overturned shelving made for a half-decent barricade, Daryl decided. He locked himself in the back room, pushing a metal desk in front of the door for good measure.
The girl was standing near the door, poised to fling it open and run. She looked scared. “What do we do now?” she asked.
“I’m waiting until shit dies down out there,” said Daryl, going to a pallet stacked with cardboard boxes, undoubtedly full of more alcohol. He got one open easily enough and pulled out a bottle of what appeared to be rum. “What are you doing?”
She answered his question by crossing over to him and claiming a bottle from the box for her own.
“Fair enough,” said Daryl.
The girl was asleep nearby, sitting up with the rum bottle between her knees, still mostly full. She snapped awake when Daryl kicked the back door open.
There was an alley just outside. Thankfully, it was clear. Daryl took it slow anyway. He raised his crossbow and moved to the street. There were walkers here and there, but most of them were gone. The ones that remained seemed sufficiently distracted by the recently deceased. He’d be able to make it back to the hill. He just hoped Merle was there.
Daryl picked his pace up. He was mildly annoyed when the girl fell into step behind him.
It must have been obvious. “I’m not following you,” she said in her own defense. “I just have people I’m supposed to meet this way… If we got separated… And we did.”
Everything was looking good until they got a block over and realized the walkers hadn’t dissipated so much as they’d all just migrated about a hundred yards north.
“What do we do?” whispered the girl before rephrasing the question with added sarcasm. “What are you going to do?”
Daryl watched the scene for a while. The walkers hadn’t noticed them yet. They were just standing there. Standing around and rotting. He didn’t understand them. He wasn’t sure he was supposed to, but it still frustrated him. It would make things a hell of a lot easier if he could get a better idea of what was going on inside those semi-exposed brains of theirs. “Go around,” said Daryl and headed for another alley. He needed to get up to that hill. Any longer and he risked getting separated from Merle for good.
“Can we cut around from here?” asked the girl.
Daryl shrugged, indicating she didn’t have to follow him if she didn’t want to and, no, he had no fucking clue whether this cut around the geeks or not. He wasn’t knowledgeable enough about cities to stealthily and confidently navigate their back alleys. He wasn’t even knowledgeable enough to make an educated guess. This was just a regular guess.
A regular guess seemed to be enough for the girl to stake her life on. Daryl thought she was kind of an idiot for it, but it was her choice. She could do whatever the hell she wanted.
Daryl kept his crossbow up. They cut up behind a bank and turned left behind a tall office building with tinted windows. Someone was shouting far away, a woman’s voice. The girl must have recognized it even at a distance. When she shouldered past Daryl and rushed on ahead, that was the third time he nearly killed her by accident. More curious than annoyed, he followed after her.
“Amy!” That’s what the woman was shouting. “Amy!” And from the sudden change in tone, it sounded like she had found her.
A white RV was rolling to a stop in the intersection. Someone had already jumped out of it, a blonde woman. The girl who had been following Daryl all but collided with her. Daryl guessed that was sort of nice; that they knew each other and that they’d found each other. More importantly, they were drawing the attention of the walker horde. That was also nice.
He’d probably be able to make a run for it now. Daryl turned around and immediately found that to be impossible. An outstretched hand raked his arm. Daryl stumbled backward. Teeth came at him next. He dodged to avoid them and lost his footing. Daryl’s hands fumbled for the knife on his belt even as his head cracked against the asphalt.
There was nothing but darkness for a few precious seconds. The darkness shrank down to black splotches, smaller and smaller until Daryl could see the walker behind them getting closer and closer.
Terror and adrenaline made Daryl cold all at once. He brought the knife up instinctively, elbows scraping across the grit of the blacktop. It punctured the geek’s neck. The thing made an awful gurgling sound and showered him with gore, but it didn’t die.
Daryl pulled his knife out. He inhaled sharply, composed his thoughts, and stabbed again. The walker went limp. Its head slid downward until its eye socket rested heavily against the hilt. It was dead, but Daryl didn’t get a chance to find any relief in that. Suddenly, he was very aware that he wasn’t in the alley anymore. He was in the street.
One of the geeks nearest him descended. Daryl tried to make himself small beneath the dead walker on top of him. He gripped the carcass by the front of its shirt and shielded himself with it. With one hand Daryl shoved it at the descending geek. It staggered. That bought him some time, but not enough. He could see feet. A lot of them. All closing in. With his free hand Daryl tried to work faster, tried to free his hunting knife from the dead walker’s eye socket. The handle was slick, though, and his head was spinning. And the black splotches were widening. And his hand was fumbling.
The next thing Daryl knew, the walker was pulled off of him. He expected to be eaten, instead he was yanked upward by the arm.
“Get up,” said Merle. Then someone kicked him in the side. Probably Merle.
A couple of gunshots cracked above him. The situation was obviously dire, but Daryl couldn’t think. He shook his head a couple of times like that would help clear it.
“Shit.” Merle leaned down again and pulled Daryl’s arm so hard it nearly came out of its socket. “Don’t be a pussy. Get up!”
Daryl got to his feet, and it felt like the whole world moved with him. Everything simultaneously rocked left, then right.
“Over here!” shouted a voice. Daryl looked toward it and saw the woman who had been shouting for ‘Amy’. She and the girl were clutching one another tightly. She had one foot outside of the RV and one arm holding a handgun, making sweeping gestures for them to hurry up.
Daryl staggered about halfway there - or thought he had. The RV might as well have been a mile away. He looked back to Merle who was still shooting occasionally, taking one step back for every few walkers that advanced.
“Pick up the pace,” ordered Merle.
The last thing Daryl remembered was trying to.
There was nothing quite like waking up on the sofa, still coming down from an ill-conceived cocktail of alcohol and prescription medicine, and sitting up just in time to see some poor SOB’s head go through the wood paneling.
Most of it was initiated out in the world though. In bars and parking lots and once in the back seat of a moving vehicle. Daryl was more backup than instigator. He was pretty good at it too - though, he couldn’t be sure if this was because he really was good at fighting, or if life had left him with high stamina and an even higher threshold for pain.
Merle taught Daryl how to hunt and track too. Starting from before he could remember, and in much the same way he had taught him to fight.
Both skills taught Daryl one big, overarching lesson. You couldn’t depend on Merle Dixon. And while the circle of people Daryl knew well really only extended about as far as Merle, he figured the same rule could be applied to most people. Not that he couldn’t appreciate or put to good use what Merle had taught him.
Daryl was seventeen the first time he ever hit his dad back. It felt wrong but exhilarating. So he did it again, and what would have been a beating turned into an all-out fight. It didn’t take Daryl long to realize he had the edge. His dad was drunk. Daryl won.
After that, he walked, bleeding, all the way to Merles’, feeling some weird combination of pride and awful shame. Merle was home. He listened to what had happened and asked what the hell had taken him so long. Daryl didn’t have an answer, but Merle didn’t seem to expect one.
For years Daryl shared a place with Merle. They moved three times, progressively further each time, like they were sliding down the mountain and away from their old man. What had been “Merle’s place” gradually became more Daryl’s.
Merle wasn’t around much even then. He went to jail several times and once more to prison. Daryl kept mostly to himself when Merle wasn’t around. He worked jobs where they didn’t care if he hadn‘t bothered with a GED; manual labor usually, construction mostly. Sometimes he helped with Merle’s work, though he wasn’t a big fan of it. Prison had done some things to Merle that Daryl didn’t want to experience firsthand.
Daryl didn‘t see his dad often. He assumed Merle didn’t either, though they both heard things. Once or twice a year Daryl would get a call from a store security guard or an annoyed-sounding restaurant manager asking him to come collect his father. He usually went. He had trouble sleeping if he didn’t.
The ride home was usually quiet, punctuated by forced attempts at conversation if his dad was sober enough.
“How’s Merle?”
“Fine.”
“You got a job?”
“Yeah.”
“Would it kill you to show me some respect, boy?”
That last one almost always worked its way in there somehow; a question that implied Daryl should still call him ‘Sir’, that he and Merle were failures despite his impeccable parenting, that real men respected their fathers. The questions must have been rhetorical, because Daryl sure as hell couldn’t answer them. Not without stopping the truck and telling his dad to get out and walk the rest of the way. He was sorely tempted to often. He never did.
Every year, his dad got a little older, a little more pathetic. It got harder and harder to believe that he’d ever been a threat at all. Somehow, it got harder and harder to keep doing him favors too. Daryl kept answering the phone calls anyway. It was nothing he wouldn’t have done for Merle. Hell, it was nothing compared to some of the things he’d done for Merle.
The bar was lit with brightly-colored glass lamps. There was handmade kitschy shit on the walls. The bartender had his shirt tucked in. No, they were definitely here to wait for someone. Probably without that person’s knowledge. There was a 70-80% chance some sort of violent altercation would follow. Daryl took a seat, slumped over the bar, and dropped his face to his hands. “God-fucking-dammit.”
Merle took a seat beside him and ordered a drink. The bartender asked Daryl if he wanted anything, but he didn’t even bother to pick his head up.
“Daryl?” asked a voice that wasn’t Merle’s. The hint of recognition in it made Daryl tense up. He didn’t like it when people from his past recognized him. There weren’t any people from his past that he liked. He lifted his head anyway.
“Daryl,” repeated the voice, sounding more confident this time. It was a woman. She had short brown hair and a wide smile. She was wearing black dress pants and a silky blouse. She was sitting further down the bar with a group of several other men and women all dressed similarly. One of them, a woman, nudged her and whispered something. The brunette elbowed her friend back, rolled her eyes, and stood. Much to Daryl’s horror, she headed his way. “Mind if I sit here?”
Yes. He did. But actually saying so didn’t feel right.
The woman sat beside him. “Laney. Remember? From that one night.” She went on to add little louder, “When I was shit-faced and you helped me up off the floor and then I went to sleep on the sofa.” Merle must have given them a look.
Daryl recognized her. Barely. She looked different.
“You hit me with a rock…” Laney offered helpfully when the silence stretched on.
“I remember you,” said Daryl, hoping that would be enough but doubting it.
“God, it’s been forever.” Laney breathed a dreamy sigh. Her eyes grew distant. “I was an entirely different person then, wasn’t I? I have a job in an office now. Seems weird. I would have hated that back then. I would have expected to be… Shit, I dunno. A racecar driver, or something. I didn’t think that far ahead… Wow. I was an idiot.” Laney composed herself and focused back on Daryl. “And still an idiot, apparently… Just… rambling… What is it you do?”
He sat in bars, waiting to help his brother ambush people. Jesus. This was it. This was how he went to prison. Recognized in a bar by some chick he hit with a rock decades ago. “I don’t know,” he answered, and heard Merle snort with laughter. Too late, Daryl realized he’d made a horrible mistake because, no, he was in fact aware of what he did for a living.
“Okay…” said Laney, slowly. She regarded Daryl with a bemused smile. “Can I buy you a drink?”
Merle snorted with laughter again. Laney ordered two anyway; keeping one for herself and sliding the other to Daryl. He stared at it, knowing his brother would just have to weigh in on this and dreading it.
“Somethin‘ wrong with the drink, Darleena?” Merle sneered, reaching over and taking it for himself.
“Fuck off,” Daryl snarled back.
“I would have ordered you one too,” said Laney, taking it all in stride. “You coulda just asked.”
“No thanks, sweetheart,” said Merle, smiling sardonically and raising his glass to her. “I’m good.”
“I can see you haven’t changed at all, Merle.” Laney gave Merle a patient look that reminded Daryl they’d run in the same circles. “How’s your dad doing?”
The mood changed so fast it was almost physically jarring. “Don’t see him much,” said Daryl.
“Just as well.” Laney lowered her voice. “If I remember right, he was a real…”
“Asshole?” Daryl suggested when she trailed off.
Laney gave a mirthless laugh. “Yeah. I suppose that was the word I was looking for.”
“It better not have been,” warned Merle, even though Daryl knew he wouldn’t do shit about it. He wouldn’t want to get kicked out of here until he’d found whoever it was he was waiting for.
“Maybe not,” said Laney, easing off a bit. Her eyes went a little distant again. Daryl watched her well-manicured nails trace lines in the wood of the bar. “He used to come over sometimes. He was sleeping with my mom, you know?”
No, Daryl hadn’t known. Though, now that she mentioned it, it seemed kind of obvious. He spared Merle a glance, but Merle seemed to be determinedly focusing all his attention on the front entrance.
“Oh, God. It was so gross,” continued Laney. “Because the place was small and the walls were thin.” She gave a small shiver and made a gagging noise for show. “They still live right next to each other too, don’t they? Yeah… Yeah they do. God, I bet they still do it.” The gagging noise seemed less for show this time. She finished her drink. “Sorry for that mental image.”
“So am I,” said Daryl.
“Went on for as long as I can remember though. Didn’t think much of it until I was older.” Laney paused, seemed to just sit there and think for a few beats. “I remember this one time, your mom confronted her about it. That was… forever ago. I remember thinking I was in trouble about something and hiding in my bedroom… She moved out a little after that, I think. Do you still keep in touch with her?”
Daryl shook his head.
“Ah.” Laney nodded. She was tracing the lines on the bar so hard now it had become audible. “Your dad was an asshole… still is an asshole, I’m sure.”
Daryl glanced at Merle again, but he was still just watching the door.
“He…” Laney began, her tone a little weird; like she had lost her normal speaking voice and couldn’t find it again. “Um… He, uh… He got me presents sometimes. For Christmas and birthdays— Not in a creepy way or anything! More in an awkward way. And not, like, all the time… Like, twice maybe, but ah- And it was this cheap, convenience store shit still in a plastic bag, but…”
Right at that moment, Daryl wanted her to stop talking more than anything else in the world. He just wasn’t able to open his mouth and tell her that.
“It’s another one of those things I didn’t really think about until I was older. But it, uh… Well, it started bugging me when I, you know, added up the facts, did the math… Do you think…” Laney trailed off. She looked at Daryl, then at Merle. She frowned thoughtfully for just a second. “Never mind… Shit, it doesn’t matter.” Laney motioned over the bartender and ordered another round of drinks. “Three this time.”
Daryl actually drank his. He threw it back and probably would have let her order him another had Merle not gotten up off his barstool.
A young man had just come through the door. He looked like some idiot college kid that probably owed Merle money. When he saw Merle, he tried to get back to his car. He made it to the sidewalk before Merle caught up with him.
People made startled noises inside. Some pulled out cell phones. A small group of college-age boys at the back of the bar all rushed to the front to aid the young man Daryl assumed was their friend. Merle was going to need help.
Daryl started to get up, but suddenly Laney had him by the arm. ”Don’t help him,” she implored. “Seriously. He’s never going to learn. If I know that, I’m betting you do too.”
“Get your hands off me.” Daryl jerked his arm away and went outside.
“Where are you going?” asked Daryl, who’d given Merle his keys despite his better judgment. They had cut it pretty close. Daryl had been afraid arguing with his brother would keep them there until the cops came. “We got your money.”
Merle didn’t say anything. He still looked angry even though he’d nearly beaten the college kid right into the sidewalk. Daryl was pretty sure Merle would have killed him had sirens not sounded in the distance.
“Hey, shit for brains. Turn. Around.” Daryl was beginning to get worried; more so as the landscape out his window grew more and more familiar. “No. Merle. The hell are you doing? Turn around.”
Short of grabbing the wheel and potentially killing them both, there wasn’t much of anything Daryl could do but sit and ride and try to talk Merle down.
When they stopped, Daryl was quick to get out of the car. “Come on, man. Merle. Don’t.” Trying to pull Merle away from the front door earned him an elbow to the face. The next thing he knew, Merle was inside, doing to their dad what he’d done to that college kid. Merle seemed weirdly detached from it too. Like he’d rehearsed killing their old man a million times in his head. Like all this time he’d just been looking for an excuse.
But Merle didn’t kill him. He let up after a while, stood, and headed back for the truck. “Come on,” he said to Daryl, but Daryl couldn’t move.
“Come on,” Merle repeated, stopping at the door. Daryl heard him swear under his breath and leave a few seconds later. The truck started up outside and pulled away while Daryl called an ambulance.
“Well, fuck you too little brother.” Merle kicked at the cab from where he stood in the back of the truck. He raised his hunting rifle and took aim again.
“You’re wasting ammo,” said Daryl.
“I gotta do something, don’t I? To save myself from boredom. Maybe if you’d man up and run over a few of these fuckers. Get to the highway. Get going fast enough. Won‘t be able to shoot anything then, will I?” Merle shot another walker in the head. “I recognized that one… This is great.”
Daryl wanted to speed up. He wanted to get out of this town ASAP. The streets weren’t too full of walkers. There wasn’t any immediate danger. At worst their wandering around was blocking traffic. Daryl was still having a hard time wrapping his head around all this.
“Look. There are two up there. Two. This truck can take down two and keep going easy… Come on. That’s it.” Merle pounded the roof with his fist when Daryl slowed and swerved around them. “What is this, your driver’s test? Those aren’t traffic cones, those are dead people. Dead people that are walking around and want to snack on you ‘cause you’re so fuckin’ soft… Jesus.”
Merle went back to shooting until Daryl hit the brakes again. “Shit,” he swore, stumbling and firing off into the sky. “Don’t do that again. I ain’t kiddin’… The hell?”
Daryl had gotten out of the truck. He groaned and squinted against the daylight. He hoped he was just seeing things. He wasn’t. “Dammit… Hand me the gun, Merle.”
“Right on, little brother.“ Merle handed the gun over with a grin. “Go on, then. Pop your cherry.”
Daryl ignored his brother and walked toward the sidewalk. He kept a brisk pace. Too slow and they might swarm.
“Where you going?” called Merle from the truck.
Daryl stopped on the sidewalk.
“See someone you recognize?”
Laney moved at him slowly; dragging one leg, making a wet rasping noise when she bared her teeth. “No,” Daryl concluded and put a bullet between her eyes. He headed back for the truck.
“Good job,” said Merle, reaching out for his gun. “What gives?” he asked when Daryl got back into the truck with it.
He put the gun across the passenger seat. “You’re just wastin’ ammo.” Daryl hit the accelerator. Soon they were going too fast for Merle to shoot anything anyway.
“What do we do?” Daryl had asked when they didn’t have to watch the news to see walkers anymore.
Merle had just shrugged. “We survive.”
When it came time to leave, Daryl had asked the obvious question he didn‘t want to ask. “What do we do about dad?”
Merle had thought about that one for a while. “I’ll deal with it,” he’d said.
Merle stopped outside their dad‘s house. It was the first time he’d been there in more than a year, since he’d nearly beaten the man to death. He seemed older than ever now.
“Wait outside,” said Merle. “I won’t be a minute.”
Daryl waited at the bottom of the stairs without argument. True to his word, Merle was back outside in less than a minute. “Let’s go,” he said.
“Come back in here now, boy!” their father shouted from inside.
Daryl turned to watch Merle heading for the truck. “We can’t just leave him!”
“Sure we can,” said Merle. “Now, c’mon. We gotta get movin’ before it gets dark.”
“I said, come back in here now, boy!”
Daryl turned back toward the house, at a loss. His dad kept shouting. He dropped the word ‘boy’ first, then several more, until it was just, “Come back!” Outright pleading, “Come back!” over and over.
Merle made a grab for Daryl’s keys, but Daryl wrestled them back. “Just get your motorcycle down off the truck. You’re not taking both.”
“Like hell I’m not taking both.” Merle made another, more forceful grab for the keys. He grabbed Daryl by the shoulder and steered him toward the truck. There was a short struggle, then Daryl gave up. He climbed in on the passenger side. He slumped down in his seat and let Merle drive them back into town.
“You all right?” Merle asked after a while. He sounded uncomfortable using those words in that order.
Daryl shrugged and went right on staring out the window. “He was family.”
“That asshole wasn’t family. I’m family.” Meryl gave Daryl a rough pat on the shoulder. “Hell, I’m the only family you got.”