YOU SPEND LONG enough around someone and you learn to trust them. Trust had never been something Mya was good at - if your own family can hurt you, what's to stop anyone else? - but trust in strangers was something she'd had to learn with the world like this and she had trust in Glenn. That didn't mean she had much faith in his plan though. Perhaps hanging around an alley, with the dead roaming the streets in a morbid parade, wasn't her favourite way to spend an afternoon, but the bag of guns Rick had left in the street had to be worth it. Glenn was tough, Mya had known that from the get go and he had Rick, Daryl and T-Dog to protect him. She just wished she didn't feel like a sitting duck in comparison.
"Hey, just remember we need you alive more than we need weapons." Mya told Glenn, before he could go sprinting off. She worried, more than the rest of the group seemed to when they sent him into Atlanta over and over. "Don't die."
Glenn was nervous, she could tell, but he appeared glad to have someone backing him up, "Oh, I'm sure this'll be a breeze." He remarked, eyes frantically scanning what could be seen of the street from the alley they were in.
Loading a bolt into his crossbow, Daryl grunted, "You got some balls for a China man."
"I'm Korean." Glenn corrected him, visibly frustrated before running out into the street. Mya wished Daryl would think before he spoke, but the odds weren't exactly favourable.
She cast a glance towards Daryl sympathetically. They hadn't found Merle on the way here either, nobody wanted to tell him how low the chances of finding him were, she was sure he knew already. "I know it doesn't count for much, but I'm sorry about your brother." Mya acknowledged, knowing the blame he placed on the group for Merle's disappearance, "I'm not Merle's biggest fan, but nobody deserves to lose a hand, especially like that."
Daryl didn't offer much of a response back, but she hadn't really expected him to, "He'll be fine, he's tough." He reiterated, holding onto those same beliefs.
Still trying to keep her focus on the street ahead, although Glenn had ran off to the left - out of sight - Mya nodded. "Yeah, tough seems to be the survival criteria nowadays." She paused. Merle was tough, Rick was tough, even Dale could handle a rifle. She wasn't sure she particularly fit in with the rest of her group. "Turns out working in a department store doesn't prepare you for something like this."
He scoffed in response, "That's what you did before all this? Think I'd rather deliver pizzas." He commented, reminding her of Glenn's job. How does someone go from pizza delivery to feeding a group of survivors?
Mya rolled her eyes, but she didn't entirely disagree. Retail hadn't been her go to idea of a job, but managing higher education and a baby didn't sound ideal. "Money's money. I had to provide, not that it matters now." She pointed out, "What about you? What did you do?"
If he'd had any intentions to answer, he chose not to, instead grabbing her and pulling her around the other side of the dumpster. Before Mya could express her confusion, and slight annoyance, via yelling at him, he put a finger to his mouth, signalling for her to be quiet. It was only then that the sound of footsteps along the alley alerted her of what Daryl already knew, they weren't alone.
Daryl waited for the stranger to get closer before standing up, crossbow pointed at them. Mya only had a knife herself, but tightening her grip on it made her feel a lot safer, until she realised the person before them was practically a kid - around nineteen, she assumed.
"Woah! Don't shoot me! What do you want?" He pleaded.
There was no point in hurting someone unnecessarily, Mya knew that and could only hope that Daryl did too. "We're not gonna shoot you, but you need to be quiet or the dead will know we're here." She attempted to reason with him.
Much to Mya's dismay, Daryl didn't lower his weapon, "We're looking for my brother, he's hurt real bad. You seen him?" He asked the kid.
Evidently, Mya's attempt to calm him down fell short as he began to scream in a language neither of them seemed to understand. Spanish, was it? "Ayúdame!"
Eyes darting back towards the street, praying that no walkers had been alerted. "Hey, hey! Shut up! You're gonna get us killed!" She snapped at the kid.
Daryl didn't try to hide his annoyance, while Mya's was masked by her fear of the dead outside, "You're gonna bring the geeks down on us. Answer me." He ordered.
As though Daryl and Mya weren't even there, the kid continued to scream, "Ayúdame! Ayúdame! Ayúdame!" He repeated, drawing far too much attention to their location.
Understandably fed up, Daryl punched the kid. Mya took a step back, surprisingly enough, she hadn't expected him to do that - even if slapping the kid to calm him down had crossed her mind for a moment. "Daryl, he's a kid!"
Daryl seemed unfazed by this, "What the hell else am I supposed to do?"
Her answer was cut short by two men, a lot tougher and meaner looking than the kid, came running into the alley. Neither of them hesitated to start beating on Daryl, managing to get him off the kid she assumed was with him.
Panicking and unsure of what to do, Mya shakily pointed her knife towards them. Daryl needed her help, she had to try, "Stop! Leave him alone!" She implored, gaining their attention.
One of the men began to approach Mya, almost hesitantly, as though contemplating whether he should attack her too. Stepping back as far as she could from him, Mya felt the brick wall collide with her back, she had nowhere else to go. Adrenaline, fuelled by the sight of the metal bat in the man's hands, filled all her senses, guiding her next moves. Without a thought, Mya swung her knife, slashing the man's arm so he'd drop the bat.
"Go away!" Mya pushed him back, as he let out a yelp of pain.
Hearing his friend cry out, the other man ran over, seemingly with more intent to attack Mya than his friend had. The realisation of what she'd done dawned on Mya and she froze up, her heart pounding against her ribs as her brain screamed for her to fight. Here she was, backed into a corner and all she could do was stare on in fear, waiting for the pain to hit her.
The other man suddenly screamed, before he could swing his bat down towards Mya. Beyond confused, but relieved to be safe, Mya pushed past him to run over to Daryl. It was only when her eyes fell upon the archer that she realised he'd had his crossbow pointed, she turned back around to see an arrow in the man's ass.
All Mya's relief soon turned to dread as Glenn came back around the corner with the bags, now the main target of the two men's fury. He hardly had time to react before the two had turned their anger onto him.
"That's it. That's the bag, Vato. Take it! Take it!"
In the same way they had Daryl, they began beating on Glenn as he cried for them to get off him and for Daryl and Mya to help them. All the fight Mya had previously had in her was gone, she could only watch fearfully as Glenn was attacked, Daryl trying to assist. Matters only became worse when a car pulled up behind them, the men abandoned the kid, instead dragging Glenn into the car with them as he screamed out.
"Come back here, you sumbitches!" Daryl shouted after the car, despite making an off hand comment earlier about how he didn't even like Glenn.
It was the sight of walkers trying to flood into the alleyway was enough to snap Mya back into action, she gripped onto one of the metal gates. "Daryl, the gate!" She called to her companion, gesturing for him to help her close the other gate.
The gate was shut before any other unwanted guests could make their way in. From the other end of the alley, T-Dog and Rick came running over, too late to help Glenn, but just in time to prevent Daryl from swinging at the kid, trying to land another punch on his jaw.
"Whoa whoa whoa. Stop it." Rick grabbed onto Daryl, restraining him to prevent another fight from breaking out. Most of the damage had already been done though.
Daryl was beyond listening to anyone, completely fuelled by his rage, "I'm gonna kick your nuts up in your throat!" He threatened the kid, who probably would've fled already if T-Dog didn't have a hold of him, telling him to chill out.
Angry and terrified at the same time, Mya reached forward, helping Rick to restrain Daryl. "Dammit, Daryl! Not now!"
"They took Glenn! That little bastard and his little bastard homie friends." Daryl explained in a series of yells as he tried to pull away from Rick and Mya, "I'm gonna stomp your ass!"
Rick glanced towards Mya, as though needing clarification on Daryl's words before he proceeded, Mya nodded. "They were trying to take the bag, they took Glenn instead." She elaborated briefly, too guilty to explain much more. How could she have just stood there and watched them take Glenn?
The dead began to push at the gate, fists clawing and clanking against the metal in a rhythmic crashing sound that caught the attention of T-Dog, "Guys! Guys! We're cut off!" He called out, informing the rest of the group that they had to move.
"Get to the lab. Go!" Rick ordered, picking up the bag as ushered for the others to run.
Mya took a final glance towards the gate, walkers beginning to pile up against it. Glenn was out there, God knows what was happening, and now they were going to cower away in the lab. If she'd just fought, maybe things could've been different. She couldn't survive in a world like this if she couldn't protect others, let alone herself.
Rick's grip fell upon Mya's forearm, grasping to pull her backwards away from the gate and ripping her mind away from thoughts that tormented her, "Mya, now! Come on!"
She responded with a small nod, following after the others, eyes still trained on where Glenn had once been, a head full of prayers that they'd at the very least keep him alive. He didn't deserve this, nobody did.