Born 2 Be Wild-A Merle Dixon love story

Chapter 50

 I dozed off a couple times during the night, but otherwise I didn't sleep. They should have been back by now. When the sun was up Hershel wanted to see if any of the people that came in here yesterday needed medical attention. So I joined him, Carl, and Axel in commons area. I felt like I'd been drug through the mud by a wild horse, but I was still standing. I stood in the corner with my pistol at the ready. I didn't listen to anything they were saying, my mind was elsewhere. Beth brought the baby in and I watched the people for their reactions.

"How old is the baby?" The woman named Sasha asked.

"Barely a week." Hershel answered.

"To be honest, I never thought I'd see another baby. She's beautiful." Sasha replied.

"Thanks." Beth told her.

"How are you feeling?" Sasha asked her.

She thinks the baby is Beth's.

Beth looked at her confused for a minute before it sank in. "She's not mine."

Sasha pointed to me. "Are you the mother?"

I just shook my head no.

When no one said anything, she realized that her mother is gone. "I'm sorry." Sasha said.

"Man, you people have been through the mill." The man who introduced himself as Tyreese said.

"Haven't we all." Hershel replied.

"It's only getting worse out there. Dead are everywhere. And it's only making the living, less like the living." Tyreese told him.

"You're the only decent folks we've come across." Sasha said.

"You've been out there all this time?" Hershel asked them.

"Our neighbor Jerry, he was one of those survivalist nuts. Everybody on the block thought he was crazy. Always preparing for the end of the world." Tyreese answered.

"Who knew?" Hershel asked.

"Jerry knew. He had a bunker under his shed in the backyard. Sasha and I stayed there until we ran out of supplies. Allen and Ben were the first two people we ran into when we finally crawled up out of that hole around Jacksonville. Used to be a bunch of us, 25 at one point." Tyreese said.

I nodded my head. We knew all about losing people here.

"Our camp was overrun six, seven weeks ago." Sasha added.

"And... and Donna, she, uh..." Tyreese started, but stopped. Unable to find the words.

"We'll see that she has a proper burial." Hershel assured him.

"I appreciate you taking care of this. For a while, we didn't know who we were dealing with." Tyreese told him, glancing at me and Carl.

"Neither did we. We've had our problems with people." Hershel said in our defense.

"I must be the first brother in history to break into a prison." Tyreese said.

That made me laugh. I smiled at him after that.

"Makes me the first white boy that didn't wanna break out." Axel said, joining in.

I laughed at that too. "I'm the first member of my family that likes being in prison." I added.

Tyreese chuckled.

"Tyreese. Like I said, we have a much larger group. A close-knit group. I wouldn't get too comfortable here." Hershel said before hobbling to the door on his crutches.