An English Rose & A Redneck

Chapter 4 - Taken

A hand.

A bloody, congealed, tattered hand is all that was left of Merle Dixon. "NO!" Daryl's yelling echoed off the buildings. He pawed at his eyes as the tears fell. I won't lie and say I didn't feel sorry for him because I did. He just lost his brother. It's the worst feeling not knowing if your family are dead or alive. At least if you find them dead you have closure on the situation.

I knelt down to get a closer look at the scene. There was still blood dripping from the handcuff so he couldn't be that far away. Thinking about it, I don't know why he had to cut his hand off. I mean, surely its common sense that you only need to dislocate your thumb to get your hand out of a standard pair of police issue handcuffs, but if he is anything like Daryl, common sense obviously isn't something that would come naturally to him.

I stood back up to tell the group my findings to find Rick pointing his gun at Daryl, who was pointing his crossbow at T-Dog. Glenn stood there absolutely dumbfounded, obviously not knowing what the hell to do. I rolled my eyes and walked over to the scene.

"Ladies, please break it up. The blood is still wet, which means he could be still alive." All three boys cast their eyes toward me. "Now through process of elimination and the number of exit routes on the roof, my best bet is that he went in that direction" I pointed towards another door at the other end of the roof "and the more time we waste here waving guns around, the more time we waste in finding Daryl's brother"

It took a moment of Daryl looking between me, Rick and T-Dog for him to finally put the crossbow down and walk over to the hand. Rick nodded at me, to which I smiled in return. We waited for a moment whilst Daryl wrapped up the hand and stuffed it into Glenn's backpack.

I laughed slightly as he scrunched up his face at the thought of a dishevelled limb in his bag. We all headed in the direction that Merle went and judging by the small spots of dried blood on the floor, we were headed in the right direction. Daryl lead up front with me behind him, followed closely by Rick and the other boys.

He bust open a door and heading down the stairs he started shouting out his brother's name, just to get the sound of his voice bouncing off the walls thrown back at him. We continued through the building I had my sights trained down my crossbow, looking out for any potential dangers because I'm not going to lie, this building gives me the creeps with its lights flickering on and off, it's like something from a horror movie.

We finally came across a room with two dead walkers in the middle. It was obvious that there was a struggle because there were blood trails peppered all over the carpet, tables were knocked over and vases smashed. I've never met the guy we are looking for but by the looks of things, he's tough.

"I've gotta hand it to him" I laughed slightly when I realised what I had just said causing the boys to look back at me with a 'what the hell are you laughing at' look "You know, I've got to hand it to him... it's funny... because he's lost a hand..." I trailed off at the end when the expressions on the boy's faces hadn't changed. Now is not the time to be making jokes Vic. 

Please excuse me whilst I mentally slap myself in the face.

"Anyway, he has to be pretty tough to take these two down one handed" I blabbered on whilst Daryl carried on walking through the room.

"Toughest sum bitch I ever knew my brother" We all fell into place behind and started following him "Feed 'im a hammer, he'd shit out nails"

"Well, I wouldn't like to see that theory put to the test" I mumbled to myself as we continued to follow the blood trails which were now getting further and further apart. When we rounded the corner into what looked like a kitchen, the smell hit me first. Burning flesh. I scrunched my face up at the stench as we continued to the end of the kitchen where there was a stove, still lit with an iron sitting on the work top.