chapter thirty three: yellow jacket creek
5814 words

The last time Daryl Dixon had slept under the stars, he'd held Lin in his arms as he drifted off, combed his fingers through her tangled red hair and marveled at how soft it still was, how long it had grown. Now, as the moon crept along the sky, cast beams of milky light onto the forest floor, Daryl slept alone. He wasn't truly alone in the sense that it was just him there in the leaves, Merle was sleeping just nearby, but he was alone in the fact that his arms were empty, his fingers lie still in his own lap.

He couldn't help but think of Lin. Even when he didn't, when he forced himself to listen to his idiot brother as he babbled mindlessly to no one but the trees, he saw a flash of her hair on the horizon, heard her whisper his name in the rustling of the leaves. She was haunting him and he supposed he deserved it. She deserved a better man than he could be and he deserved every bit of her ghost that followed him.

He was stubborn, had a hell of a temper, and she'd never take him when Merle was a part of the deal. None of the group liked Merle, not one of them, and he knew Lin wasn't going to pretend just for him. He'd see through it. He'd also been to see through bullshit like that, even when he was younger.

The sun peaked above the horizon, mocked him with the warmth of the morning turned mid-afternoon light. Merle woke far too late for Daryl's liking, left him alone to his own thoughts for far too long. The two of them set off again into the woods, an environment they knew best. Daryl Dixon was made of the forest, had tree roots for bones and sap for blood. He was born to be in the forests, moving and striding alongside the nature as it bloomed for him. Lin had seen that, had seen the man that lied under such a rough surface, under the dry toughened riverbed skin he'd grown. But he'd given that all up when a shadow of his past fell over him.

"There ain't nothing out here but mosquitoes and ants." The constant movement of the group, the continuous worry that something was right around the corner, morphed Daryl into someone who could not stand still. Merle, on the other hand, seemed to be taking his sweet time in emptying his bladder against the trunk of a tree.

"Patience, little brother. Sooner or later, a squirrel is bound to scurry across your path."

He wasn't wrong but the prospect of waiting that long for something so little didn't seem too appealing. "Even so, that ain't much food."

"More than nothing."

Hunting hadn't been great as of late and Daryl knew that. Without any of the food they had stocked in the prison, the Dixon brothers were on their own. "I'd have better luck going through one of them houses we passed back on the turnoff."

"Is that what your new friends taught you? Hmm?" Merle, finished with his business, strode over to his little brother's side. "How to loot for booty?"

Daryl bit his tongue. Merle didn't know about Lin, he couldn't. "We've been at it for hours. Why don't we find a stream, try to look for some fish?" Aching to just do something, Daryl lifted his crossbow, peered down through the scope.

"I think you're just trying to lead me back to the road, man. Get me over to that prison." If Daryl had been doing that, it had been an unconscious decision. The prison was home, as much of a home a couple of wounded survivors could create. Safety, shelter, supplies, people.

"They got shelter." Daryl kicked one foot over the other, crossed his legs at the ankles where he stood. "Food. A pot to piss in. Might not be a bad idea." Was he trying to convince Merle to go? It was worth a shot, enough of an opportunity for him to try.

"For you, maybe. Ain't gonna be no damn party for me." The hesitation he'd seen in Daryl's little group had been enough for Merle to know where he wasn't welcome. And of course, the mention of sweet little Lindsey Donnelly had been quite a surprise as well.

"Everyone will get used to each other." They had to. It wasn't as if anyone had a choice in that matter anyways. Petty disagreements and squabbles were supposed to be sidelined in favor of survival, of teamwork needed to keep a place like the prison secure. But Daryl knew that tossing his jackass older brother into the mix would surely ruffle some feathers in everyone.

Merle brushed his hand over the metal casting of his stump, pulled at the paracord strap around it. "They're all dead. Makes no difference."

Had Daryl heard him right?

"How can ya be so sure?" Daryl liked to believe Lin would understand why he left but to hear that everyone in the prison was dead? He faced away from his brother, kept his gaze directed to a tree where he'd seen Lin's ghost disappear behind, the flickering of the fire from the night they kissed painting her skin in scarlet light.

"Right about now he's probably hosting a housewarming party where he's gonna bury what's left of your pals." Daryl's own silence began to suffocate him. He thought of Rick dead, a bullet between his eyes, Carol hurt and limping to Judith's side to throw her body over the baby, batting away walkers with the tip of a broken knife. His stomach bottomed out, dropped down to his feet. He saw Lin bit, bleeding own from the gaping hole in her neck, Carl stood in front of her with his gun trained on the Governor. Daryl shut his eyes, heard a gun fire and a body collapse, and he knew it was not the Governor that had been shot. He'd done that. He'd left them all to suffer that fate.

"Let's hook some fish."

Daryl waited for reality to return around him, waited for Lin's labored breaths to leave his ears. But when they didn't, he began to realize it was the thudding of his own heartbeat drowning out the steady falls of Merle's feet. He exhaled, spat out the acrid taste in his mouth his own choices left behind, and followed after his brother.

Numb to the world beyond her cell, Lin slept whilst the rest of the group gathered in the common area. After being sternly asked to rest, she'd cried herself right to sleep, the tears drying on her cheeks. But even in her exhausted state she could bring herself to sleep for long at all.

With a piece of chalk, Glenn sketched out a rough map of the prison, asked Carl to direct where he and Lin had found Tyreese's group. Any chances of that group trusting them again seemed slim to none, and that lied in the fact that Rick fell the fuck apart at their feet. He started screaming at nothing, demanding answers to questions no one could understand. And when it came down to Rick waving his revolver in their faces, Glenn had them leave.

Glenn didn't want to let the Governor go unpunished, to let him walk unharmed in light of all the things he had done, the people he had hurt. But they didn't have the numbers, didn't have the advantage. The Governor was a goddamn psychopath in a king's crown, the leader of a clueless community of people. Cluelessness led to dependence; dependence led to blind adoration; blind adoration built the Governor's militia.

The boiler room was full of walkers, spaces they had already cleared filling up once again. The Governor was supposedly on his way. The crushing weight of the decision he had to make was making Glenn irritable, but amidst the way he clenched his jaw, he stood firm behind his beliefs that this prison was the best they were going to get. And he was right but they were all trapped between a rock and a hard place, the snapping jaws of the dead or the smoking guns of the living.

The sun was near blistering and Lin was sure the exposing skin of her forearms was going to burn but in the numbness left behind in Daryl's absence she found the ache of it all grounding. She hated it but watch wasn't going to do itself and all she wanted was to be alone, to avoid the pity. Maggie was in rough shape from the Governor. Carol was just a shade better than Lin in dealing with Daryl being gone. They were falling apart at the seams just desperately trying to ignore the threads snapping.

Daryl flinched at the branch that nicked his cheek. He was distractedly, enormously so.

Lin jerked when a walker rattled the chainlink fence.

Miles between them and it was still only each other they were thinking about. It was far from a blessed distraction as well. Lin scared easy, each few moments left to thinking about Daryl Dixon broken by the snarling of the dead. When the silence grew too loud and her pining lay still unspoken, Lin dropped her gun down at her feet, combed her hands back through her hair to give them something to do. Distractions. That's all her life was anymore, one distraction dragged into the next, the sting of the life she'd prepared for ripped away from her time and time again.

Freshly braided, Lin tossed her hair back over her shoulder. Focus. She was here and Daryl was out there. He could come back but all signs pointed to the negative. He had Merle and that's all he ever claimed he needed. Lin just had to believe him.

"Smells to me like the Sawhatchee Creek."

Merle was wrong. All that time spent licked the Governor's boots had turned him city slicker. The sun shone over their heads, beginning to fall on their right side.

"We didn't go west enough. If there's a river down there, it's got to be the Yellow Jacket." Named famously for the nests that permeated the nearby banks, Daryl was careful where he stepped.

"You have a stroke, boy?" Merle threw back at his little brother. "We ain't never even come close to Yellow Jacket." The way Merle was stumbling about through the brush, catching himself on a few scrawny trees made Daryl believe he wasn't the one having a stroke.

"We didn't go west. Just a little bit south. That's what I think." The sun told him he was right. He'd been tracked the way it ambled across the sky, how the shadows shrunk into the trees and appeared on the other side. It was there that merle stopped to look at Daryl, sure he was joking but at the firm lack of a smile on the younger Dixon's face, the eldest laughed, the sound a scoff more than anything else.

"Know what I think? I may have lost my hand, but you lost your sense of direction."

"Yeah," Daryl threw Merle's way, a noncommittal answer to the accusation pinned upon him. "We'll see."

Daryl. He heard Lin again, frowned and pressed his lips together. She wasn't here.

"What do you want to bet?" For a moment, before he regained any of his bearings on what was truly in front of him, Daryl thought Merle knew about Lin. Sure Merle knew about her, they'd both been in the quarry camp at the first time, the Dixon brothers introduced to the Donnelly sisters, but Merle didn't know about anything that happened after. He didn't know about the CDC or the farm, Andrea almost killing him or the car crash outside of town. Merle hadn't seen Cherokee Rose petals against soft auburn hair, the vest he'd left behind around thin sun-spotted shoulders, the way Lin smiled after Daryl kissed her in the prison yard. He'd seen none of that and amidst his faraway dreamings of the times past, Daryl somehow answered, mouth moving before he could catch up with it.

"I don't want to be nothing." And it was true. "It's just a body of water. Why's everything got to be a competition with ya?"

Merle could practically feel the hair on the back of Daryl's neck standing, his hackles rising in defense. Just about a year apart and Merle could barely recognize the man behind him. Defensive, know-it-all. The group had changed Daryl. "Whoa, whoa. Take it easy, little brother. Just trying to have a little fun here."

Daryl. Lin's voice was harsh, right against the shell of his ear, more a hiss than a true word. Daryl jerked his head to the side to try to force the sound away and in doing so, turned his ear to the horizons. A cry, shrill and fierce reached him.

"No need to get your panties in a bundle."

"You hear that?" Daryl asked him, stopping in place to listen closer. It was crying, distinctly infant crying. Judith never cried quite like that. She cried still as newborns did when they needed just about anything but this crying was frightened, a scared crying he was sure lingered in Rick's nightmares, not to mention Lin's as well.

"Yeah," Merle shrugged, "wild animals getting wild."

"No, it's a baby." Daryl would let Marle walk over him on the stupid name of whatever river they were coming up on but not this. He knew what babies sounded like.

"Oh, come on. Why don't you just piss in my ear and tell me it's raining, too? That there's the sound of a couple of 'coons making love, sweet love. Know what I mean?" At the vulgar motion Merle did following, Daryl knew Merle was far from taking any of it seriously. This was on him. He knew what a baby sounded like and this was a baby crying. He hurried through the trees until he reached the clearing of the creek, the carving of the running water through the forest.

When the Dixon brothers stopped at the bank of the creek. The cement bridge dropped in the middle of the creek was teaming with life, squirming with walkers and the lone human standing upon the rubble above. Gunshots screamed out from the lone figure's gun as he struggled to bat away the biters. There was a cry, human and older, a woman maybe. Daryl's foot sank into the mud of the creek bed. He remembered how Lin's scream sounded months ago on the bank of that shit-hole river.

"Hey! Jump!"

Daryl looked at his brother, darted past him to get up to the bridge.

"Hey man, I ain't waiting my bullets on a couple of strangers that ain't never cooked me a meal or felicitated my piece. That's my policy."

Daryl barely heard Merle talking. There was a baby up there. He wasn't going to leave it to die, not like this.

"You'd be wise to adopt it, brother!"

Daryl wasn't going to let them die. And maybe it wasn't because he knew Lin would do the same but because he wasn't going to leave a family to die when he could have helped.

There were two men up on the bed of the stopped trucks, brothers maybe? One fended off the walkers with a pistol, each gunshot deafening and only due to draw more walkers in. Another group of biters lurked around a loaded car a couple dozen feet away, pounding at the windshield to get in. There had to be people in there too. In the flurry of movement and chaos, one of the men dropped the pistol, the metal barrel smacked against the pavement out of reach. A biter snagged a rotted hand in the other man's pant leg and began to drag him closer, jaws snapping in anticipation of the flesh beyond the khaki fabric. Scared and fighting for their life, the two pushed at the walker, tried to get away from it, but as the chipped teeth bared down on the man's ankle, they were both so sure it was over right there.

An arrow whistled near soundlessly through the air, piercing through the walker's head and dropping it instantly. The two men looks desperately down the way to their savior, the man holding the crossbow he had fired.

Daryl exhaled out through pursed lips, Lin's voice fading out from the air. He shrugged his bag down so no walkers could grab it. Arm held high, he fired the bow at the next walker, quickly grabbing the arrow to reload it. It was an endless fight, one that had been going on for nearly a year. The living against the dead, humans against walkers.

"Come on, man. I'm trying to help you out." Through the glaringly obvious language barrier, the men had been yelling in Spanish, one of them jumped down onto the bridge over the handgun, brining it up with a shaking hand to help their mysterious sleeve-less savior.

The walkers atop the car were easy bait, too distracted by the life inside to whirl around on Daryl. He fired the crossbow, took one out. When it tumbled away from the hood of the car, the archer could finally see inside. A woman, clad in trepidation, cradling her baby to her chest. He'd been right. Another walker down with a sift pull of his finger. Out of arrows and out of time to collect the ones he'd fired, Daryl rammed the butt of his bow against the walker on the window, crushing its skull into scarlet fragment streaked along the glass. Incessant groaning and snarling from inside the car told Daryl that one had gotten in. He rounded it to the open hatch, gripped tight to the walker's flailing legs. No arrows, no time to draw his knife. Arranging the walker at the very back of the car, he slammed the hatch down on it, splitting its head clean in half with no discernable pieces left.

Left with only the stragglers, Daryl went for his bow but with no arrows, he was stuck. He never stayed stuck for very long but it was the first few moments of stomach-dropping realization that made him nearly freeze. Merle stepped out from behind the car, strutting across the bridge like it was a damn runway.

"Daryl! I got ya!" He leveled his blaster with the walker on Daryl's heels and fired it. "Go!"

The man with the gun began to yell something at the brothers but with the barrier still strongly between them, there was no understanding of what he was trying to say. "Speak English," Daryl demanded, hastily reloading his bow. The rest of the fight was an easy trek. Fire, reload. Fire, reload. A walker grew too close to the other man and Daryl killed it with his knife, kicked it over the side of the bridge to tumble into the water below.

The action gone and all the walkers dead, the baby crying sounded infinitely louder. As Daryl stared down into the water, the reflection staring back at him in the rapidly calming water was not alone. He blinked at the figure beside him vanished.

Merle dragged the walker body off of the car, opened the back door with his gun in his hand. The oldest man, the patriarch of the family most likely, yelled at Merle to get away from the car, from his family, but Merle only pointed his pistol straight at the man, silencing him in a heartbeat.

"Slow down, beaner."

On the other side of the car, Daryl froze. What was he doing? He couldn't seriously want to rob these people, especially when they had a baby.

"That ain't no way to say thank you."

This wasn't right. They'd saved them. Robbing them set the nauseous pit inside Daryl aflame.

"Let 'em go."

Merle peered at his brother through the corner of his eye, smiled in the way that told Daryl whatever was about to happen was no good. Merle lowered the hammer of his pistol, somewhat unarming it, to tuck it away back in the waistband of his pants.

"The least they can do is give us an enchilada or something, huh?" Merle ducked into the car, began to rifle through what little belongings the family had. Like a common robber, he look for something of use. "Easy does it, señorita. Everything's gonna be fine." As he pilfered the family's car for the only belongings they had, the woman cried, wept and held her child to her face.

This was wrong.

Daryl imagined what Lin would do is she was there with him. Smart and strong, she probably knew Spanish, could have cared for these people the way she did everyone that crossed her path. Daryl shifted in place, looked each member of the little family in the face before tightening his fingers around his bow. He raised it. He tapped Merle on the back.

"Get out of the car."

The baby cried.

"I know you're not talking to me, brother."

Daryl frowned, face twisted up in a frown. Eyes slanted over to the father.

"Get in your car and get the hell out of here." The family didn't move, not at first. But then Daryl yelled just a bit more and they got the message. They hurried around the car, ripped open to the doors to climb inside as Merle spun to stare down the barrel of his little brother's bow. Months ago, Daryl would have backed down the moment Merle straightened. He would have tucked tail and rolled over for his older brother but not anymore, not now. He firmed his brow, lips pursed the way they always did when he was angry. Arms flexed hard, he kept the bow up, even when Merle met his eyes from the opposite end. The car started quickly, backed up with the scared family in tow. Daryl Dixon wouldn't cower under his brother. He wouldn't follow him blindly, toss everyone else to the wind. Coming out here had been a mistake.

Merle brought his hand up to Daryl's bow, his intent on lowering it but Daryl jerked it out of reach, marched back to his bag on the ground. Yanking his arrow from the walker on the ground as he passed, Daryl kept straight out onto the road. He knew the way back to the prison, out off the bridge past the bull-hole riddled sign that read 'Yellow Jacket Creek,' through the forest to the North.

Merle caught up with Daryl in only moments, temper flaring in the way he spoke to him. "The shit you doing, pointing that thing at me?"

"They were scared, man." And they were. The family was scared, trapped between two roaming groups of walkers converging in the center of the bridge, the jaws of death closing in on them.

"They were rude is what they were. Rude and they owed us a token of gratitude." Merle was spitting bullshit from the mouth and Daryl knew it. In this world, gratitude meant nothing. Supplies were scarce, sought and fought after things people would rather die over than give away. Those that were strong pushed their strength on the weak, crushed them into nothing for a can of fruit or a few extra rounds. He was not that person. He was not that kind of man.

"They didn't owe us nothing."

"You helping people out of the goodness of your heart? Even though you might die doing it? Is that something your Sheriff Rick taught you?"

Daryl stopped, turned about to face Merle. It didn't matter what Rick taught him or even what Lin taught him as much as it influenced his behavior. He made the choice on his own without anyone whispering in his ear.

"There was a baby!"

"Oh, otherwise you would have just left them to the biters, then?" It wasn't an argument, at least not the one they were truly meant to be having. Daryl knew that. This irritation, that one question stemmed from something else that happened.

"Man, I went back for ya. Ya weren't there. I didn't cut off your hand, neither. You did that." He pointed at the stub of Merle's wrist with the fletched end of his arrow. "Way before they locked ya up on that roof. You asked for it."

And then Merle laughed, the chuckle guarded like the prison Daryl had left behind. He laughed at what his little brother was trying to tell him because Merle Dixon knew he was a shitty person and couldn't do much else when the one person he'd always had finally called him out on it. "You know- you know what's funny to me? You and Sheriff Rick are like this now." He raised his crossed fingers, the entwined digits pressed completely together. "Right? I bet you a penny and a fiddle of gold that you never told him that we were planning on robbing that camp blind." Daryl didn't have to be reminded. Of all the things that kept him awake at night, that hushed planned was one of them. Before Rick Grimes was ever a part of the group, before he showed his face up at that quarry, the plan had been to wait for the cover of night and make away with everything that group had. But like every other plan made, it went South. Merle got handcuffed up on that roof, took off in the van leaving Daryl alone. By himself he could have never gone through with something like that. Merle claimed himself the brains of the operation. It never would have worked.

On the nights it kept him awake, Daryl dwelled on what could have been had he gone through with it, Merle or no Merle. Devoid of food and guns, he imagined Sophia and Carl starving, heads buried in their mother's shoulders. He imagined Shane rampaging his way to Fort Benning, leading the group into a death trap. He imagined Lin alone, dying with empty hands and an empty gun. On those nights he'd hold her closer tangle his fingers in her hair a little tighter and she was none the wiser.

"It didn't happen." And it was a good thing it hadn't.

"Yeah," Merle huffed. "It didn't 'cause I wasn't there to help you."

"What, like when we were kids, huh?" Daryl leaned into Merle's space, grievances he'd buried long ago clawing to the surface. "Who left who then?"

"What?" Merle spat. "Huh? Is that why I lost my hand?"

Tempers meeting, brows furrowed in anger, the Dixons fought. "Ya lost your hand 'cause you're a simpleminded piece of shit!" And Daryl turned away, nothing but the prison on his mind.

"Yeah?" Merle shouted as he lunged for Daryl, only capable of depicting his anger physically as he gripped tight to the back of Daryl's shirt and promptly tore the back off in one hard jerk. "You don't know!" Daryl fell down to his knees as Merle did, teeth sinking into his lip to keep from shouting at the sudden action. As loud as Merle had been, as deafening as the rip of Daryl's shirt as it tore clean in two, the silence that followed bottomed out Merle's stomach.

Daryl jerked out of Merle's touch as the eldest looked on in horror at what he'd discovered. Parallel and adjacent lines crossed Daryl's back, scars of old poorly-healed flesh shifting violently as Daryl tried to reach for the pieces of his shirt. Convinced that he wouldn't be able to do it, and rushing to hide the scars from his brother, Daryl went for his backpack, slinging it over his bare back.

"I- I didn't know he was-"

"Yeah, he did." Afflicted with the past suddenly brought back for him to suffer through, Daryl wanted nothing more than to get back to the prison. His voice pitched high, flashes of memories passing in front of his eyes.

Daryl.

"He did the same to you. That's why ya left first."

Daryl gathered his things, caring not for the mud stains along his knees.

"I had to, man." Merle remembered that day clearly. He remembered not if he was walking, driving, hell riding his bike. But he remembered putting that house behind him and not looking back. He remembered thinking of Daryl, scared and alone, young and broken by the hand of their father. Merle's own scars were still fresh. "I would have killed him otherwise."

Daryl walked. This time he would not stop. He wouldn't stop until he was in the prison and Lin was back in his sights. Whether she took him back or not, seeing her there, safe, that was all he found himself caring about. He'd change his shirt along the way, it was just a dirty rag anyways, he'd give her her arrows back. He'd tell her the truth should she want to know. She'd seen the scars but he hadn't told her anything about them. It was time she knew.

"Where you going?"

"Back where I belong," the way his voice cracked made Merle think his heart would have shattered had he had one. Something else was at the prison, something more than just Rick to make him sound like that.

"I can't go with you." Merle knew he was a piece of shit. That prison would never take him in, not willingly. He'd never be one of them and he'd be back on the road like he'd always been. Just him and no one else. "I tried to kill that black bitch. Damn near killed the Chinese kid."

Daryl exhaled. "He's Korean."

Merle gritted his teeth, caught in his negligence. "Whatever. Doesn't matter, man. I just can't go with you."

Daryl stared down at his own feet. If he looked up he'd seen Lin, that much he knew. It wasn't hallucinations as much as it was his own mind reminding him of what he'd left behind, of what he'd done. "Ya know, I may be the one walking away but you're the one that's leaving, again."

Merle stood there alone in the foliage, watching his little brother walk away by the scars on his back. He'd done this. He'd left Daryl to the hard hand of their father. He'd left Daryl in that group alone to think he was dead. He was an asshole through and through a piece of shit who had done a whole lot more harm than good, but he would be a fool if he were to let Daryl go again.

Merle Dixon cursed under his breath and followed Daryl through the trees, back to the prison, back to a home. Whether they took him in or not it was not a decision he could predict the group making. What happened would happen. He just hoped he would catch the chopping axe on its first downswing.

Glenn tore out of the prison yard like a bat out of hell. Lin shut the fence behind the truck, almost missing the chance to open it in time for him to get out without taking the gate with him. With Crazytown population Rick still a thing and Daryl gone, leadership somewhat fell onto him. And even then she guessed that she would share that role with him. Two of the longest members of the group, bearing in mind Carol was still there too. She just didn't want to put everything on him, not after Woodbury. A whole group out of commission was quite the sight.

As Lin peered up into the courtyard, it was Carol and Axel together that she spotted. And the pleasant warmth of the sight was unexpected to say the least. Maybe the sudden shift in his focus should have unnerved her but Carol could handle herself. Axel pulled something jerky Lin was sure than Carol could take care of it appropriately. She was strong like that.

Hershel stood at the other end of the yard, the chainlink fence all that separated him and Rick. As welcoming as Carol and Axel had been, this dropped Lin's stomach. Rick still wasn't coming inside. He was manifesting Lori around him, hallucinating where he was able to heal. And Lin couldn't help him. He wouldn't let her.

She thought of Daryl again, walking the fence line with the rifle in her hands. She'd gotten everything back but her arrows, that archer taking them but leaving everything else in the car inbound to the camp. Little comforts, a method of material want to remind her of the world before. She liked keeping the same gun if she could but all of that seemed moot at the moment. Rifle, pistol, bow, what did it matter what weapon it was when she was protecting a broke camp. She supposed they'd always been broken. From the quarry, from the moment Rick set foot out of that truck, the group split. It wasn't his fault, not really. Merle was always an asshole and Shane has always been a dick. With or without Rick they would have cracked the way they did.

Lin breathed, shut her eyes and tipped her head back into the sun. Unfiltered warmth, a reprieve of sorts. She took what little she could get.

The first gunshot seemed like a warning. Lin thought it was at first, ducking down onto her knees, until Axel's body tipped and fell against Carol, his blood streaked across her face like some macabre painting. On the outside of the fence, down a ways from the guard tower, a single car parked at the treeline. She hadn't even heard it pull up. One man stood on the driver's side, the sniper lowering down from the one good eye he appeared to have. Was this the Governor? Lin thought he fit the Jim Jones type Michonne had described him to be but other than that he just looked like a normal man, maybe a little short by the faraway look she had of him. She had a clear shot, if only she could get her rifle up in time.

She was given the chance to even reach for it. Bullets riddled the gravel under her feet, soared past her in a wide arc. Wasting no time, Lin bolted for the tower. Head ducked between her hands she ran. She slammed against the door, opening it and ducking inside. She could hear the bullets thudding hard against the cement walls but knew they wouldn't pierce it. Heart in her throat, Lin desperately checked the clip of her rifle. She barely had enough bullets to answer. Breath stunted, nerves skyrocketing, Lin began to rapidly climb the guard tower stairs. And to herself, she had to laugh. Whoever shot at her had shit aim.

an: so first of merle says some/ a whole lot of things i dont agree with so there's that. but also hi, it's been a while. i want to thank everyone for how sweet and how kind you've been in supporting this book. i received so many questions on whether or not i was continuing this book and it's just so heartwarming to know that people do enjoy this book as much as i do as i write it. it's been a while, nearly a month, but im super happy to have these two back and i will hopefully be writing more for them so there isn't another month long gap between updates.

AND!! today's meme is actually a meme submitted to me!! summilkplease sent me this meme wayyyy too long ago and i wanted to feature it in my next update because it truly made my entire summer. thank you so so much!! (any other submitted memes will be lovingly featured as well ;)) )