Chapter Text
You had only ever been through Atlanta on a layover, never been to or even thought much about Virginia, and had only been to Ohio for work for a few days. So it’s a bit strange for you now to have called all of these places home at some point.
A layover is actually how you ended up in Atlanta in the first place when things started to go mad after the first confirmed cases of the wildfire virus hit the U.S. You had obviously been keeping up with the news like everyone else but the reports kept insisting the mysterious illness that was making a lot of people sick was just a new strain of the flu and would run its course.
Then when the zombie stuff starting happening in Europe, when people started waking up from the dead, the officials here kept insisting that it was unrelated and isolated to Europe and would all be over in a few weeks.
They said there would of course be casualties, as is the case with any new illness, but that we need not worry too much. Because again, it was isolated.
Why do always tell you not to worry?
Sure enough, before too long, the first known “incident” occurred in Los Angeles and was made public… and it went downhill faster than anyone could have possibly imagined after that.
All international flights had been grounded for a while but domestic travel was still being permitted. You had been on a long work trip in a very remote region near the Hudson Valley in New York and were trying to get back home to Texas when they “temporarily” banned all public travel, including planes, buses, and trains. If you wanted to get anywhere it had to be by car.
While you were waiting for a few days for all of that to get sorted, people started getting sick at the airport. No longer feeling safe, you were lucky enough to find a small group of seven other people that also needed to head out west; two to Oklahoma, two to New Mexico, two to Texas (including yourself), one to Kansas, and one more all the way out to California.
You initially took off on foot with them and before too long you found a delivery van in the long term parking lot with the keys in the visor and no one in sight. You all loaded up and saw your first walker in-person not too long after that at a gas station just outside town.
It was a woman, probably only a few years older than you, who viciously chased down an old man and bit him in the throat. Just tore his soft flesh right off. Then she went for his face.
Of course you had all seen a little bit of this on the news already, so it wasn’t that it happened completely out of the blue, but it was a totally different thing to see it in person. Right in front of you. After that, all hell officially broke loose. Similar incidents and ensuing panic everywhere you looked.
For some reason though, it seemed you were able to accept the way things were much quicker than all of your travel companions. Or at least you were better able to focus on what you needed to do in order to survive so that you could get home to your friends and family.
The others took way too much time either dwelling on the absurdity of it all or simply not believing their own eyes. Either way, they all kept making excuses that it wasn’t happening or that it would be over soon and that someone would be coming around to save us.
There was a lot of bargaining with God too. Maybe it was all the post-apocalyptic content you had consumed in your life that left you desensitized to such horrors, or maybe it was because you grew up without religion to rely on, or maybe you just had an innate ability to accept things as they were… whatever the case was, you never got too caught up in the “whys” of it all like the others and it seemed to serve you well.
Once you were fueled up and on the road, one of your new travel companions suggested we head to a nearby family member’s house in Macon, which was about an hour and a half southeast of Atlanta. At first, no one wanted to do it because it was in the opposite direction of our destination, but we were promised that they’d be well stocked with supplies, and eventually everyone agreed.
It was a good thing you went. That night, the U.S. army bombed downtown Atlanta, and presumably all other large cities across the country, forcing your plans for the next part of your journey home to change.
From then on, it would have to be less-populated towns and state highways.
It was going OK for a few days, but things fell apart with the group less than a week later when you were stopped somewhere trying to siphon gas and were attacked by a small herd.
This was also the first time you personally killed a walker while she was attacking your new friend, Steven. Steven was a young college student; a really good guy who was trying to make it back home to Kansas from Pennsylvania where he’d been attending college. You had stuck together and really looked out for each other in those first several days and had grown close. He reminded you of one of your favorite cousins.
He and another member of your group were both bitten, but neither of the injuries were so severe that you thought they’d die, so you all kept it moving together.
That is until they both became very sick with symptoms which mirrored the initial mysterious “flu”, bringing your travel plans to a grinding halt. At first you figured it was an infection from the bites. They both had high fevers and the wounds looked… well… infected. Steven’s arm was oozing green pus and blood and his veins were dark blue and swollen.
The group did everything we could think of to clean the bites and break their fevers and even managed to get our hands on some antibiotics, but nothing helped. Slowly, you watched both of them fade until they each passed away less than 2 days after the attack, one after the other.
That’s when we really had to come to terms with how these things were made. It seemed it didn’t matter that you could survive the initial bite itself, you would eventually die from it anyway.
You had also learned by that point that to kill them, it had to be in the head. Like zombie movies you’d seen before, the brain had to be destroyed.
After Steven reanimated, Stan, an older guy in your group, tried to “put him down” by stabbing him in the chest and got himself bitten in the process. Someone else knocked Steven to the ground and kicked him repeatedly but he just kept coming. Kept hissing and grabbing with an insatiable hunger to bite. It wasn’t until you hit him in the forehead with the claw end of a hammer, just as you had done with the walker that was attacking him a few days before, that he finally went down for good.
You also had to be the one to put down the other guy and then Stan, and after a few more attacks like this, you found yourself all alone having killed at least two dozen walkers with your hammer or the large knife you had picked off Steven’s body. You kept the notes he had written for his family members and promised to deliver them on his behalf before you burned their bodies.
At first, you were petrified to be alone, so you tried to join other groups or families that you came across or just hitched rides when you could. But it always felt like you were camping out in one place for too long or going in circles, never truly making any good distance in the direction you wanted to go.
Some of the people that you met along the way were nice enough but some of them were just so clueless. And others were flat out dangerous; your safety had been threatened more than once.
You drew the line with one guy who wouldn’t stop following you around even after you let him know you weren’t looking for company. He kept insisting that he wanted to help you even though you said repeatedly that you didn’t want or need his help. He wouldn’t take no for an answer and you had the feeling he was just waiting for the right opportunity to try something.
And the way that he stared made it pretty obvious as to what that ‘something’ was.
Girls always know.
So after you finally shook him off for good, you decided to keep to yourself for as long as possible. Maybe you could do this alone after all. Maybe it would be better. Maybe other people were just slowing you down.
The daytime was usually OK. You did a lot of walking in tree lines so you could duck into the woods if a car or a herd came by.
You really tried to avoid walkers all together whenever possible but in addition to the hammer and the knife, you found a small hatchet and learned to use it. The best way to kill them quickly was to kick them in the knees and get them down on the ground first before striking them in the head.
The real trick was that couldn’t hesitate. Once you decided to kill one, you had to follow through with it and always assume another one was right behind you. And you needed multiple weapons on you at all times. One method of killing was never enough.
You were constantly moving from structure to structure (barns, houses, sheds, shops, garages) looking for anything useful. While picking through an abandoned farmhouse one day, you found loaded gun with extra bullets. You picked them up but you had no clue how to use a gun. You had never even really seen a real gun until now, nor had any desire to touch one. But times were changing and you changed right along with them and figured it out.
You were obsessive about tracking down water wells or bottled water to stay hydrated. You also used well water to bath and wash your hair a number of times. Because even in the apocalypse, keeping clean was important to you. The world had turned so ugly so fast, and there were so many different horrible smells in the air that finding things like soap, perfume, shampoo, toothpaste, gum, and lotion was a respite.
And if there was stream with flowing water and no imminent danger, you would get in it and scrub down one body part at a time whenever possible.
You ate any decent food that you came across because you never knew when the next real meal would be. Always checked cars for keys and gas. You weren’t afraid to off-road in order to keep hidden from the main roads and those who may be using them. You constantly stayed on the move and carried only what you needed.
All of that kind of stuff usually went OK. The problems started once the sun went down. Trying to sleep alone during a zombie apocalypse without anyone to watch your back was the worst part of everything by far, but you had decided that hooking up with the wrong type of people could be even scarier.
Because at least you always knew what the zombies wanted. With people, you were really taking a gamble. One would hope that going through something as insane as all of this would bring out the best in the few who survived. One also hope that people would stand together and help each other out as much as possible but you didn’t usually find that to be the case, at least not where you were.
The lack of sleep and lack of a reliable vehicle made your progress towards home incredibly slow. After a while, you started to second guess it all and you felt yourself longing to be with people you could trust again, even if it was just for a single night for a few hours so that you could get some real rest.
Your homemade sound traps (metal garbage and little jingle bells tied to strings and rope) usually worked, but it took a lot of effort to make them and carry them around with you with the rest of your gear.
It must have been three or four weeks in when you stumbled across the group at the quarry.
Well, actually Glenn and T-Dog stumbled across you. You had lost your hat and were limping along the side of a small state highway in the countryside… hurt, sunburned, thirsty, weary, and losing stamina, when they offered you a ride over to their camp where they said they had some medical supplies and could help bandage you up.
The day before, you had taken a bad fall on the asphalt trying to escape a small group of walkers that caught your scent. It must have been over 100 degrees that day so you had changed into your hiking shorts. So now your shins, knees, thighs, hands, and face were all scraped up pretty badly and you had already started to bruise in places.
Normally you wouldn’t have accepted a ride from two strange guys like that, but you got good enough vibes from them and you were wounded and above all, desperate for some real rest. If they could help you get even at least two or three nights’ sleep you swore you’d be on your way after that.
Little did you know then that this one little decision, to go with these two strangers, would completely alter the course of your life as you knew it.
—
The group at the quarry had a strict policy of keeping to themselves and not messing with strangers, even though they themselves were mostly strangers to each other only a month ago. Shane, the de facto leader, didn’t like that Glenn and T-Dog had offered to take you in without at least talking to him first and he let everyone know it.
But after he cooled off and you had shared some of your experiences and struggles with the group, and after you promised to be a hard worker, and after Lori, T-Dog, and Glenn did some convincing, Shane relented and allowed you to join on a semi-permanent basis on the condition that you pulled your weight and contributed as soon as you were able. You assured them that even as injured as you were, you would be able to do some things to help out and that you just wanted a little time with normal people to rest and recover and would be on your way soon.
And at the time, you meant it.
You wanted to stay for a bit, get some sleep, get your bearings, then leave.
At that point, you still really needed to know if anyone in your family had made it. If any of your friends had made it. If anyone you knew from before was alive. The last time you had heard from anyone you knew was right when you landed in Atlanta. Cell service must have gone down all over the country at that point because it was radio silence ever since. So your plan was to make nice with these people until you started feeling better and then get up out of there.
You were thinking four or five days… a week tops.
It was your second morning at the quarry when Daryl and Merle Dixon returned to camp from a hunt with squirrels in hand. You had already been warned about the Dixon brothers by everyone. Glenn and T-Dog told you they were not only loaners, but also abrasive rednecks and could be downright cruel for seemingly no reason. This was often met with some kind of caveat from someone amounting to “well, Daryl is OK, but Merle… he’s always an asshole.”
At first you wondered why they put up with Merle if he was really that bad, but everyone was quick to also tell you what assets they both were “out in the bush” (as Shane put it).
Merle was former military and they were both expert trackers, hunters, and survivalists. They knew exactly how to make it out here and the group wasn’t about to kick people like that to the curb. They said the brothers provided food when no one else seemed able to.
Of course you asked them how the group all met up. Glenn explained that they were in their cars fleeing Atlanta or the surrounding areas and were stuck on the highway when the bombings happened. Shane and Lori pulled off the highway and a handful of cars followed them, and that’s who made up the group.
First there was Glenn- he had been a pizza delivery guy in Atlanta and when things started to get bad there, he decided to try to leave the city to check on his parents and just happened to stumble across T-Dog who was frantically driving around a church van evacuating elderly people. T-Dog saw that this kid was in a tight spot and offered him a ride out of the city and they had been together ever since.
Glenn was cute, and even though you were close in age (you were only a few years older), he seemed so much like a kid. You’d had a solid career and had lived so much life in comparison. He was sweet, but not your type.
Lori and Shane had known each other from before and were evacuating together with Lori’s young son, Carl. Shane had been a police officer in a nearby county and they had just recently lost his partner, Lori’s husband (Carl’s dad) in a shooting a few weeks before the virus took hold in the states and Shane had been helping her out ever since.
Carol and Ed were a married couple in their early 40s with a young daughter named Sophia who was about Carl’s age. Carol and Lori had become super tight since meeting and it was good that Carol had her, because from what you could tell, Ed was a real piece of work, similar to Merle. But at least Merle kept his hands to himself, at least as far as you could tell.
You couldn’t say the same for Ed.
The proof was all over Carol’s arms and in the way she seemed to be almost a ghost of a person when he was around. Accidentally ending up in a relationship like that was one of the main reasons you tended to stay out of them all together.
Then there was Dale- a man in his late 50s who owned an RV and seemed to be the group’s moral compass and voice of reason. He knew a lot about everything and wasn’t shy in doling out sage advice or offering up some anecdote from his youth. He had met Andrea, a civil rights attorney in her 30s and Andrea’s younger sister, who was still in college, the day before the bombings and they were trying to hitch a ride with him out of town in his RV.
There was Jacqui, a city planner who was on her own and had been trying to make it to her sister’s house. Jim was also alone; he was a mechanic who had recently lost his family to the walkers. Lastly, there was Morales and his wife Nancy and their two young children. His family seemed nice but you didn’t get to know much about them other than Nancy was itching to leave and get back home to her parents who lived a few hours outside of Atlanta.
Once the Dixon brothers had returned and began to settle back into camp life, you found out quickly that the group was right about Merle; he was indeed a jerk. More than a jerk though… he was a racist, misogynist, bigoted asshole.
When he realized there was someone new at camp, he looked you up and down with a snarled lip and bellowed “and who’s this??” Shane, of all people, was the first to defend you and get him to back off. He explained that you were just here for a little while until you recovered, then planned to leave.
“Thought we agreed to not take in any strangers. Or does that rule not apply if it’s a pretty, young thang like this?”
Merle postured as he puffed out his chest towards you and Shane.
“Back off” Shane warned as he leaned in, doing some posturing of his own.
“Just what we need… another mouth to feed,” Merle scoffed back.
He then hocked back some phlegm and spit it out right at your feet in disapproval, narrowly missing your boot. Shane pushed him back with two fingers and demanded that he “back off” again.
“Just ignore him... we all do,” T-Dog advised you.
Merle then hurled a racial slur at T-Dog and Shane had to physically restrain and separate them. Glenn pulled T-Dog back and Merle stomped off back to his tent which was a little ways off from the main camp.
The younger of the two brothers, Daryl, watched it all go down in silence. You tried to catch his eye to see if he might have any kind of reaction to his brother’s little tantrum but instead he hung his head low and never met your gaze.
Yes, Daryl was decidedly much more restrained than the older Dixon.
Daryl seemed to be about ten years older than you, give or take a few years, and probably about ten years younger than Merle, best you could figure. He was wearing a cutoff tank top so that his tanned, semi-tattooed biceps were on full display. He had short light brown hair and thin blue eyes with a little bit of scruff. Handsome but guarded and rough around the edges. Probably a little antisocial, even. His weapon of choice was a crossbow- it seemed he hardly went anywhere without it.
From even as early as the very first day you saw him, you thought there could be something there. Possibly. Something that at least made you a little curious, anyway. He instantly reminded you of some of the small town guys you had always been friends with from home and there was a little tinge in your belly.
Neither of the brothers paid much attention to you after that first interaction though, nor you them. Even with that initial piqued interest in Daryl you thought it was best to avoid them and stick to the more even tempered members of the group, which at that time were mainly Glenn, Lori, and Carl.
But several days in, while you were trying your hand at fishing in the large pond at the bottom of the quarry, Daryl surprised you by approaching to formally introduce himself and to give you a few tips. He was concise and kind, and you ended up catching several that afternoon thanks to his advice.
Once Carol had the fish cooked up and ready to serve, you proudly walked over to Daryl and Merle’s tent to let them know they could head over to the larger group campfire if they wanted some. Then you thanked Daryl for helping you out earlier. It was the first time you had spoken in Merle’s presence since the day you’d met. At that point, he made a sexist comment under his breath, something about women belonging in the kitchen, and to your great surprise, Daryl shut it down immediately.
“Man, do you ever just shut the hell up?!”
You and Merle were caught off guard by this. You got the distinct feeling he didn’t stand up to Merle very often.
“Excuse me, little brother?” Merle countered.
“Just back off, why dontcha? She worked all afternoon to catch those fish and you’re gonna turn around and say that kinda shit?! Why don’t you just say, ‘thank you’ and move on?!” Merle was rendered speechless.
“Thanks,” Daryl mumbled to you, “we’ll be over in a minute.”
You gave an awkward smile and nodded before turning to walk away. That small interaction was clocked by Merle, and you were officially on his radar after that night. Because from then on, he never missed an opportunity to make some derogatory comment about your good looks to see if he could get under your skin or to make fun of Daryl for having a little crush on you. Instead of reacting how you really wanted which would be to tell him off, you chose to kill Merle with kindness or sometimes to dole it right back to him.
You knew people like him back home. Lots of bark and almost never any bite.
Merle wasn’t a problem for long though; he ended up getting separated from the group about a week after you first arrived. Half of the group had gone into the city on a supply run and while trying to get out of a sticky situation, ended up picking up a man named Rick Grimes who had also run into some trouble. After Glenn had stuck his neck out to help Rick, things started going even more sideways for them. At that point, drunk and sensing that the group was trapped, Merle started to get belligerent and dangerous. He yelled out more racial slurs to T-Dog and even included Glenn this time.
The racism and bigotry could be dealt with but shooting off rounds in every direction, claiming they were all going to die anyway so “might as well have a little fun on the way out,” was a step too far for Rick.
Merle was wasting precious ammunition and calling walkers from every direction, making an already bad situation ten times worse. He even threatened to kill them all and then kill himself when it appeared they were surrounded. That’s when Rick, who happened to be a sheriff’s deputy in uniform, temporarily handcuffed Merle to a pipe on the rooftop of the department store where they had been hiding out. And then when it was time to put their escape plan into action, T-Dog accidentally dropped the key down a drain and they were forced to leave Merle chained up as they left.
Finding Rick Grimes that day was probably the single most fortuitous thing that could have happened for the group. Turns out, Rick was Shane’s best friend from before, Lori’s husband, and Carl’s father.
Against almost insurmountable odds they had found each other again.
Rick had woken up from a coma in a nearly abandoned hospital in his hometown, severely dehydrated and confused. Knowing nothing of the virus or the ensuing apocalypse, he had traveled by bicycle back to his house to look for Lori and Carl and then to his old police station hoping to find Shane. Which was where he also picked up a big bag of guns and ammunition, as well as his old uniform. Then, on advice from someone he met along the way, he headed to Atlanta on horseback hoping to find answers. To find help. To find his family.
Not realizing the big cities were the last place you wanted to be, he got trapped under an army tank in the middle of downtown and was surrounded by the walking dead on all sides. Glenn found him there and then they helped each other escape.
You saw Daryl’s feral aggression for the first time when they returned and had to explain what had happened and how they had to leave his brother. At first he tried to fight Rick over it, but Shane and T-Dog broke it up and T-Dog took the blame.
Daryl had scared you a bit in those moments, no doubt, but the anger was somewhat justified you thought. You knew how upset you would be if it was your sister in the same position, and you can’t say you wouldn’t have acted similarly. But Daryl was a lot more imposing than the average person, so his threats of violence against Rick came off as credible.
They did go back for Merle the next day but all they found was his severed hand still attached to the handcuff, and all anyone could do was hope he made it somewhere safe. You were incredibly surprised Daryl stayed with the group at all after that.
The night that they returned without Merle, you noticed that Daryl was the only one not sitting around the campfire, so you brought his portion of fish and beans to his campsite. He had a small fire of his own going and was sitting on the ground beside it, poking it with a stick with a glazed-over look in his eyes.
“Here. Sorry about Merle,” you held out the plate to him.
“What’dyou care?” he said gruffly without even looking up at you. You sat down cross-legged next to him.
“Merle is a grade-A asshole… Daryl glanced up at you with a look of warning in his eyes, “…but he’s your brother…”
“That supposed to make me feel better?” he snapped, cutting you off.
“No. I just mean… I kinda know how it feels. Not knowing what happened to him. My sister and I didn’t always get along… we were so different. But not knowing if she’s alive or not… let’s just say I can relate.”
Daryl’s face then softened as if he felt ashamed for being rude and maybe also about the situation you both found yourselves in. He took the plate from you and began eating the fish as you continued.
“Y’all said it looks like he got off the roof right? Maybe he’s on his way back here now, then? There’s gotta be a million different ways to get back,” you offered, “we could have just missed him.”
Daryl dropped his gaze and let this thought linger in silence. You could tell he wanted to be alone.
“Anyway… I hope he’s OK. And I hope we find him soon,” you gripped his forearm for a moment to comfort him and then got up and started walking away.
“Thanks,” he said in almost a whisper.
You nodded in return and then went to the main campsite where everyone else was gathered. It wasn’t exactly a connection, but it wasn’t nothing either. You think if it had been anyone else, he would have told them off with a few choice words or not accepted the fish at all.
But you noticed that even back then, even in those very first days when he didn't know a thing about you, he was different with you that he was with the others. Kinder. More patient. Maybe not as closed off.
Maybe there was something to this guy.