That Valley Girl || Daryl Dixon

[ 005 ] Vatos

Merle was gone. We came all this way and he wasn't here. But I'm wondering how the hell he got out of those cuffs?

"No! No!" Daryl cried out, pacing.

He looked up to T-dog, hoping for some sort of answer to this. T-dog only shrugged.

I surveyed the roof, trying to answer my own question. I looked onto the floor. There was a bloody hacksaw and-

Merle's hand.

"Oh- God-" I choked out, gesturing to Merle's bloody, sawed off hand.

Daryl suddenly turned around, pointing his crossbow at T-dog. Rick quickly reacted, pointing his gun at Daryl's head.

"I won't hesitate." Rick started. "I don't care if every walker in the city hears it."

Daryl shakily but his crossbow down.

"You- got a do-rag or somethin'?" Daryl asked T-dog.

He took a piece of cloth out of his pocket and gave it to Daryl. Daryl walked over to Merle's hand, sighing as he bent down.

"I guess the saw blade was too dull for the handcuffs." Daryl said, picking up Merle's hand by the pinky finger, grimacing.

"Ain't that a bitch." He put the hand in the middle of the cloth and wrapped it up.

Grody. I thought to myself.

He stood up, walking over to Glenn and making him turn around. He opened his backpack and put the had inside. Glenn looked like he had just smelled shit.

"He must've used a tourniquet- maybe his belt. Be much more blood if he didn't." Daryl stated, looking at the trail of blood that Merle had left.

We followed him as he followed the trail of blood. He pointed his crossbow up and went back inside the building, where the blood led to. We were right behind him.

"Merle, you in here?" He called out, starting down the staircase.

We moved further into the building, following the trail of blood. Daryl shot at lingering walkers as we got further.

We walked into some room, looked like a break room to me. There was two dead walkers on the floor.

"Had enough in 'im to take out these two sumbitches. One handed." Daryl said as he looked down at the corpses, walking around them.

"Toughest asshole I ever met, my brother." He reloaded his crossbow with another arrow. "Feed him a hammer, he'd crap out nails."

"That's some comparison." I muttered, mostly to myself.

"Any man can pass out from blood loss." Rick spoke up. "No matter how tough he is."

I stepped over the bodies and we continued to follow the trail.

"Merle!" Daryl called out.

"We're not alone in here." Rick reminded him. "Remember?"

"Screw that. He could be bleeding out. You said so yourself." Daryl retorted.

We made our way into some kitchen, peering around the corner, we noticed that the stove was on. Rick picked up a piece of metal with some weird stuff of it.

"What's that burned stuff?" Glenn asked.

"Skin." Rick responded and I internally gagged. "He cauterized the stump."

"Told you he was tough." Daryl said. "Nobody can kill Merle but Merle."

"Don't take that on faith. He's lost a lot of blood."