The Beauty and the Redneck

Stranger

        When they arrived at the place Merle was supposedly left by T-Dog, Daryl Dixon found out nothing but a hand remained out of his brother on that roof. That delusional motherfucker cut his hand in order to escape when he saw he couldn’t cut through the metal of the handcuffs with the rusty old handsaw that belonged to Dale. Daryl flipped out and almost put an arrow through T-Dog’s head but he was stopped by Rick. Because of these losers his brother was now somewhere out there, fighting off walkers while missing a hand. But he knew his brother was alive. There wasn’t that much blood on the floor and Merle was the type of guy who wouldn’t die from just the loss of a limb. After picking up Merle’s hand, wrapping it in a blue rag and placing it in Glenn’s backpack, much to the Asian’s displeasure, Daryl started analyzing the traces left behind by his big brother.  

“He must use a tourniquet. Maybe his belt. I’d be much more blood if he didn’t.”  He followed the trail of Merle’s blood.

                              At the same time, inside the same building

        “Damn those fuckers where did they leave the key? If they were about to leave me for dead they could have at least told me where they left the key to the storage room. Stupid…mother...fuckers!” I was talking to myself as I repeatedly kicked one of the paper bags that lay on the floor. Two days ago I was separated from the group of survivors I lived with since the refugee center in Atlanta fell. We established a base in a small grocery store at the outskirts of town. We rid the building of dead man, barricaded the door and the windows so that the only entry point was through the fire escape and we lived there for a while. Seven other people were there besides me, so we ran out of eatable food in a week. In order to survive we had to organize raids into town to grab food, water and whatever else was necessary.

One day during our raids we found a big convenience store which had a little bit of everything and a storage room packed with merchandise to the ceiling. This was the apocalypse we were facing. There were dead man walking the streets and everything we knew was gone. We were not about to share the precious food we found with other potential survivors, so our leader, private Ryan Wells, decided to lock the storage room and hide the key somewhere inside the building’s office in order for it to not get lost. But not every member of the group knew where the key was, so when I found myself alone in this crazy world once again, all I knew was that the storage room and the key existed. While I was furiously searching through all the drawers of every desk in the room I heard some voices I didn’t recognize. Instinctively I hid behind one of the desks.

“Had enough in ‘im to take out these two sons of bitches. One handed. Toughest asshole I’ve ever met, my brother. Give ‘im a hammer and he’ll crap out nails.” The guy who talked had an obvious southern accent. He seemed to be a rough, confident guy.

“Every man can pass out from blood loss no matter how tough he is.” Apparently they were searching for an injured man the second guy wasn’t so sure they will find alive. By what I could hear there were at least three of them in the same room as me. Who knows who these guys were and how the one they were searching for was injured. If I were unlucky they could even blame me for what happened to him. Or maybe they’ll take me prisoner for whatever reason. It’s not like living woman were a common sight those days and a man is a man even during the apocalypse.

 I wasn’t about to wait and see what was going to happen next so I tried to sneak around the desk and make a run for it, hoping they won’t chase after me. After all, I knew this place pretty well, running and hiding somewhere inside here was piece of cake for me. Still crouched I slowly made my way to the end of the desk. Right when I was about to make a run for the next room, I kicked a coffee mug. The mug rolled on the floor, hit the desk and made a loud noise.