Survival of Two

The Dead Things

Merle laughed at me. "Oh, you shoulda seen the look on your face. The 'I just crapped my pants' kinda look. Oh haha."

"Glad you find the end of the world amusing."

"Well at least one of us can have a sense of humour. And let's not get ahead of ourselves - the world's not ending, little brother."

"Sure, because a walker just didn't try to eat me alive?"

"A what?"

"A walker, the dead things."

"You're overthinking it, just sit down with me and have a drink," I did as he said. I needed a drink after what I just saw. "look on the bright side - at least you can have target practise on something bigger than a watermelon."

"You're a psychopath." Merle was always like this, even when we were kids. I remember one time we found a dead rabbit whilst playing in the forest. He got a stick and started to poke at it. 'Daryl, look at its guts!' he said, with a ghoulish smile on his face.

"What are we going to do?" I tried to make conversation with him because it was getting awkward.

"What are we supposed to do? We just live on like we did before, except now we kill some crazy sons of bitches along the way. Daryl, stop being a girl about it."

"Don't say that." Merle groans. Unlike Merle, I was thinking straight, and I knew that something was off. My gut was telling me that something bad was brewing. I got up, went to my room and started to pack a few clothes, some cans of food and my motorcycle keys. "Where d'you think you're going?" Merle was already drunk from just a few drinks. I was going to leave him - yes, he is my brother, but I'm not going to survive with a drunk sociopath. Survival, especially now, is the most important thing. I'm fairly confident that he can do just as well without me as he could with me. "I'm leaving you. You're not taking this seriously, and I don't know about you but I want to live."

"Oh haha. You won't last long without me," He tries to walk closer to me but stumbles. "But it's your choice, little brother."

"Until we meet again then." I walk past him, still on the floor, struggling to even stand up.

"You'll regret this sooner or later."

//

I headed 50 miles east, towards the country side - I figured, since it's a rural area, there can't be that many walkers there. Also, there can't be that many people there so there's a chance I can scavenge some food, or if I get even luckier, an abandoned home I can occupy.

Whilst I was driving past some farms, one sticks out like a sore thumb. It was being overrun by a herd of walkers. As I got closer, I could see some people helplessly shooting at walkers. My first instinct was to just drive past and mind my own business, but I couldn't do that. I saw two girls, who looked young; they don't deserve this. I made a left turn onto the farm and drove right through poorly-boarded up fence. The walkers hear this, and start to shift their attention from the girls to me. 'Why did I do this' I sighed but then swung my crossbow around and started to fire.

After a while, the girls managed to shoot the rest of the walkers up. They figured out that shooting them anywhere but the head didn't work, and the herd shrunk to just one. I hop off my bike and took out my knife and rammed it into the side of the walker's head. It drops to the ground, and I run to the two girls. "You alright?"

The blonde one speaks up, "Yeah, we're all good. Thanks for helping."

"Yeah. I'll be going now then-" she interrupts me.

"No, wait. You seem like you're alone. Do you need a place to stay? We have a few spare bedrooms if you want to stay the night or a couple of nights. It's the only way we can repay you for helping us."

"No, I'm fine, really. That's real kind of you but I really have to go."

"I beg, let us accommodate you. At least for a little while anyway." I finally give in, only because I didn't really have anywhere else to go. Although, I didn't really like the idea of staying with some strangers that I didn't know. I wasn't the social butterfly type in the first place anyway, so this didn't make matters any better. "Name's Daryl."

"Well, thank you Daryl. I'm Beth. This is my sister Maggie."