Welcome To Evangrove - A Walking Dead ff

Chapter 15 - We All Have Choices

It's a chaos Merle hasn't seen in years, not since the world first began to end. Person upon person, young and old, clamoring away from these explosions, these loud noises, these gunshots; like when the highways were full and the bombs just started dropping. He's in awe, and for what feels like years he stands by that door and watches them. The world seems to be silenced, in these few moments, a surreal experience unlike any other.

A shot too close to his head for his liking wakes him from his stupor, and through a crowd that's pushing to escape, Merle struggles through for his brother. He can see, through bobbing heads and the dust of road and debri, Daryl's limp body still chained up to his crude imprisonment. Isaac isn't there, nor were the lackeys that once guarded him, just Daryl. Just his brother.

Guilt wasn't an emotion worth feeling right now, but it still settles and swells in the pit of his chest as he nears him. Guilt for a childhood wasted, guilt for their dead mother, guilt for leaving him there when he knew each scar Dad gave him, would match on Daryl's then-young flesh. The world is still in disarray around them, when Merle's hand makes quick work of the binding that kept his brother in place, and it continues to be just as chaotic when Daryl falls to the floor, eyes half-lidded as Merle cradles him.

"You're okay, baby brother. I promise you. You're jus' fine, alright?

Lookit' me, y'stupid little -- please. Please, Daryl."

An eternity passes before those eyes glance up, and he looks at Merle. Weak, but that spirit, that fire burned even then. Merle touches his forehead against Daryl's, and there's a tender, almost wheezed laugh that he exhales. Relief. His single hand curls into Daryl's jacket, and Daryl simply sits there, enjoying the confirmation that his brother is alive just as much as Merle is. To need someone so much is a painful, miserable feeling, but in the same respect it's all that matters.

"L-Leave. We need t' leave."

"Can you walk?"

Merle hoists his brother up and yes, Daryl can, but he uses his arm to assist his little brother regardless. They look around each other, linked together as they know to do, and now realize where all this chaos is coming from. To the left of them, part of the giant walls placed around this miserable excuse for a town were shattered, the thick concrete covering the ground, lodged in buildings and thrown just about anywhere it'd reach. Behind it, and nearing entrance, was a tank. Another one. Trucks, two or three, sat behind them, and men in uniform were all around, the colors of their costumes grayed and faded with the years that've gone by.

Merle is speechless, stunned into awed silence. The military was a joke, a fairy tale of long ago that offered no comfort even then, and now they're here, like a mythic cavalry. Daryl shares his brother's sentiment, but for much shorter time, and tugs him in the opposite direction, still struggling to walk.

"We gotta leave, now. Now, Merle. C'mon."

"Where's -- Where's Quinn?"

A glance to the roof reveals nothing, squinting through the sunlight. No gun, no girl, and Merle's chest swells with guilt all over again.

"Not again." He mumbles, blue eyes staring up at that roof, unblinking. "Not again. Please lord, not again."

Daryl sees this and coupled with the general falling apart of society around them, chooses to ignore it. His own, confused feelings about Quinn aside, survival is the goal, the only option, and he continues tugging Merle further away from the town's would-be intruders.  The pair hobble after others, who are now diving into buildings or alleyways, anything to get away from threat behind them. The pair themselves are at a loss for what option to take, but Merle considers Daryl's wounds and decides holding up in a building at the far end of the town would be better than anything, hide themselves there and plan their next step, how to find Quinn.

Time passes, and the two sit in the shadowy, unlit building near the shore as they decided. Daryl sits with his back against the wall, facing the door, and his face seems aged and solemn, moreso than before this all began. Merle shares this sentiment, pacing the floor in front of him. 

"It's dark out, an' it's quiet, now. Them -- that military convoy, or whatever th' hell it was, they ain't got back here yet. The town hid out in their own homes, stupid, an' that's -- that's what's keepin' 'em up there."

Merle rambles, still pacing back in forth in a repetitive, perfect pattern. Daryl watches him in silence, both because he knows not what to say in return and because Merle needs to be heard, not spoken to. Right now, anyway.

"She's smart. She wouldn'ta stayed up there near them, an', an' I know she got down. She has t' be back here, near th' shore like we are. She's smart."

"So is he."

Merle stops dead in his tracks, and the brothers meet in stare. Merle knows he's right, and the fear in his eyes, something Daryl hadn't been able to see until now, is encompassing. Daryl shifts in place, but the pain of the surely broken rib & bruises keep his mobility to a minimum. 

"He's like th' Governor, an' you know that. Men with passions, sick men. He's smart, an' he was only doin' what he did t' get her, maybe you too. He'd burn this whole place down t' kill her, he don't care."

"What're you sayin'?"

"Wherever she went, if she came back here, he followed."

"She's not dead."

Merle's voice is defiant, and Daryl simply stares back. Maybe she was and maybe she wasn't, but it wasn't his place to fight back with Merle on this. They came here to see if this town was real, and it was, but they stayed for Quinn. For the girl, for Merle's girl. They wouldn't leave without her, Daryl knows this.

"Let's go an' find her, then."