Ch. 30

Thank you for reading!

Nothing ever went how they planned.

Merle was walking down a dirt county road with Carol by his side and Maggie and Glenn behind them. A herd overran the car a few days earlier and Rick and Michonne had gone one way, and they had gone another as they tried to get away.

They hadn't met back up yet, but they all knew where they were going anyway.

It was starting to get really cold, though, and no matter how much they walked during the day, they didn't stay warm. They were all skin and bones, and there was no food anywhere. They had no weapons but their knives, and it took too long to set up a snare and wait for the food.

"There's a house up on that hill," Carol said quietly. "Maybe we can find out where we're at."

"We're still in South Carolina," Glenn said. "I think we're always gonna be in South Carolina."

Maggie hummed in response. In another time, it would have been more like a laugh, but now they were just all too tired to try.

"Maybe there's a car then," Carol said, her voice was breaking a little.

Merle looked out of the corner of his eye at her and watched her wipe her cheek before walking faster down the road. Over the last couple of days, she had started to break. He wasn't surprised by it, everyone had that moment eventually, but it hurt him to see her fall like that.

He didn't move to catch up with her. Instead, he slowed down to walk beside Glenn. He would have never thought when all this started, he would have considered these two his friends, but now he did. That was mostly due to their forgiving natures and the hand of God slapping some sense into his ass, or maybe it was just a sweet, southern girl with blonde hair and kind smile. He didn't know. It didn't matter.

"Y'all think we should settle for the winter?"

Maggie closed her eyes and took a steadying breath. "I don't wanna stop. I wanna go home."

He nodded and looked to Glenn. "It makes sense to stop. We're worn out. We have no food."

"But I need to get home," Maggie said again.

"Do ya wanna get there alive or only in your head?" Merle asked.

"I just wanna scream," she whispered. "If we had this much trouble, what happened to them?" She asked in a soft voice. "What about Beth? She wasn't well. And they had Judith with them. What happened to her?"

Merle clenched his jaw tight to hold back saying anything dismissive. He wanted to say they were all fine and dandy. That his baby brother could move mountains and take on hordes of walkers with just his bow. That Carl and Enid were well-trained little badasses that would stand at his brother's back.

For the first time since the safe zone fell, so did Merle's blinders.

"We might never know," he said then cleared his throat. "Just gotta worry about ourselves right now."

Glenn put his hand on Maggie's shoulder, but she shrugged him off and walked away.

"I remember when I woke up at the prison, after it had gotten blown to hell, and I was the only one there besides Tara. Maggie was gone, and I didn't know how, but I knew she had gotten out. I never once felt like all hope was lost, you know?" He glanced at Merle and met his stare. "I feel empty right now. I feel no hope at all."

"Yeah," Merle said with a nod. "I know what ya mean."

The house on the hill was dusty and needed a good airing out, but it was solid. It had decent vantage points, and he could set up snares.

There were no walkers inside and the windows had been boarded up, so it seemed at one point it could have been a safe house, but the people hadn't come back one day.

It wasn't unusual really. When things went to hell, people would prep their homes then brave the towns for supplies, raid grocery stores or pharmacies, but they'd never make it back.

Before him and Daryl had found the group in Atlanta, they'd stayed the night in a few homes like this one before sticking straight to the woods. It was safer there, at least in the beginning. Nowhere was safe now. The only hope would be that if the walkers stopped getting food, they would deteriorate and eventually waste away into nothing.

"Can we light a fire?" Maggie asked as she huddled on the couch.

"Don't see why not," Merle answered. "It'll just be the smoke that goes out and it's dark. Ain't seen a person in days."

"I can get the wood," Carol said and started toward the door.

"I'll go with ya." Merle stood up and followed her outside.

They walked together in silence as they gathered up the firewood. On the way back to the house, Carol stopped and he almost ran into her back.

"Somethin' wrong?" He asked. "Ya hear somethin'?"

"No," she whispered. "I just don't think it's been this quite in a long time. That's not usually a good thing."

"That's true," he agreed. "We'll just get inside and wait it out. I'm about to freeze my ass off out here."

They got inside and started the fire then blanketed the windows with thick comforters they found upstairs to keep any flicker from being seen from the outside. It didn't take long for Maggie and Glenn to fall asleep, but him and Carol stayed awake, watching the fire and listening for anything unusual.

After a few hours, Carol fell asleep, too, and he was the only one left to keep watch. Nothing ever came, though. They had a warm place to stay, and he fell asleep sometime in the night only to wake up late the next day with everyone still accounted for and safe.

"We'll just stay here," Carol said as she straightened up the blankets they had used the night before.

"Just a few days," Maggie said quietly. "We still need to get back home."

Merle watched the interaction, knowing that there was nothing he could say that would make them feel like they were making the right decision in waiting to move on. He didn't even think Carol was all that worried about the people they were looking for. He watched her move all over the place, fixing things that didn't need touching or reorganizing her pack.

If she stopped, she would fall apart, so she kept on moving.

A couple of weeks after they found the house, they were all well rested and had managed to eat a decent bit of game from Merle's snares.

"We all know the walkers move slower as it gets colder," Maggie said after they ate dinner one night. "I think that it's probably as cold as it'll get, and we should start movin' again."

Merle and Glenn nodded, but Carol stayed silent, pushing around a piece of rabbit on her plate.

"Game's gonna get harder to find up this way," Merle said. "Colder it gets all the little ones stay outta the weather."

"We found that map in the bedroom," Glenn spoke up. "We know that we've got a good two days of walkin' before we get inside the Georgia state line. I've got a route all mapped out for us. Along the way, we'll find a car. There's gotta be one."

"We can be at my daddy's in three days if we have to walk the first two," Maggie said quietly.

"What if no one's there?" Carol asked. "What if we get there, and there's another note that says they've gone back to the prison or somewhere else? What if they're dead? What if they got overrun just like we did all the way back in Virginia, and they've been gone for weeks, and we'll never know?"

Merle opened his mouth to speak, but Carol kept on talking, her voice getting a little more hysterical with each word.

"My daughter was in barn a pasture away from me for weeks, and I never knew it until the day Shane busted open those doors. It's not like their deaths would be a moment we can feel. That doesn't happen like it does in books. Like you know they're gone. Beth could've split her stitches and bled out. Judith could've cried and brought down a herd on them one day, and they couldn't get away. Daryl could've gone huntin' and fallen down a ravine again. Or maybe the Wolves got 'em as they were leavin' the cabin."

"Stop!" Maggie hollered and slammed her hands onto the tabletop. "Shut your mouth!"

"We can't just live in some fairytale world where everythin' is okay," Carol said and shook her head. "We've been doin' that for years, and every time somethin' bad happens, everyone falls into a depression. It happened after the farm. It happened after the prison. It happened after Alexandria. And you can bet your ass it'll happen again after we get to the farm, and we're the only ones there!"

"Stop it," Merle said and grabbed her hand to keep her from throwing her plate across the room. "Ya need to calm down."

"I'm calm!"

"No, you're actin' crazy. What's goin' on with ya?"

Maggie and Glenn got up and left the kitchen table quietly. Both of them seeing that it was finally happening, and neither one wanting to be around for it.

"Nothin'. I'm just tryin' to wake y'all up!"

Merle sighed and stood up, walking to the counter and leaning against it. "No, ya ain't. Just let it out. Just cry or scream or somethin', but don't push it back down again."

Her breath was coming out in harsh pants and finally tears fell down her cheeks. "Nothin' I've done has mattered at all," she whispered. "I tried to keep us safe. I'd always make her go and hide when he came home. I knew how he looked at her, and I knew what was goin' to happen one day, but I stayed. I couldn't even protect her when there were no walkers, so what made me think I could once it all happened?"

Merle started chewing on his fingernails, the action instantly making Daryl flash across his thoughts. He hadn't protected his brother either, but he had just been a kid himself.

"I killed Karen and David because I thought it would stop the virus, but it didn't. Then I tried to toughen up Mika because she was so sweet and good, but Lizzy ended up killin' her. Then I had to kill Lizzy." She paused, taking in a harsh breath. "She was crying, Merle, right before I did it. She thought I was mad at her for pointin' a gun at me, so she was cryin' because she thought I was mad at her. I shot her in the back of the head, and she was cryin'.

"When Terminus happened, I just wanted to see y'all safe, but I couldn't leave you again. I missed you, so I stayed, and I kept thinkin' I had so many things to atone for. When we got to the safe zone, I kept tryin' to fix things, to keep us safe. I pushed and pushed. I forced you away and ended up bringin' Pete closer. And Beth. How would I have looked Daryl in the eye if she had died? Or you? Or Maggie? I love all of y'all, even Rick, but I just keepin' lettin' y'all down."

"It's not your job," Merle said, his own voice thick with emotion he was unfamiliar with. "Ya can't do it all on your own. You're not meant to."

"We've lost so many good people, but I'm still here. Tyreese was a good man. He took three little girls from a prison that was burnin' down around 'em. He kept 'em safe."

"Tyreese was soft," Merle argued. "He was a good man, but he wouldn't have lasted without ya with him. He wouldn't have been able to take care of what needed to be done with Lizzy after Mika."

"And what does it say about me that I could? Am I heartless?"

Merle crossed them room and gathered up her up in his arms. "Nah," he said. "Ya've got a heart, ya just wanna pretend it ain't there."

"I can't pretend anymore," she cried. "I can't. It hurts. It hurts so much, and I'm so tired."

"I know," he whispered and rocked her a little.

She didn't say anything else, and she finally cried herself to sleep on his shoulder a little while later. Merle carried her into the living room and laid her on her pillow. Glenn and Maggie didn't say anything at first, but finally Maggie asked, "Will we leave tomorrow?"

He nodded. "Yeah, it's time to go."

"Will Carol be okay with that," Glenn asked.

Merle sighed. "She will be."

A three-day trip turned into five due to not finding any good cars and a group of walkers that they had ran into. Still, they accomplished their goal and arrived at Hershel Greene's driveway.

Maggie stopped and placed her hand on the gate. Merle could see she was shaking and waited for her to pull it together to let them inside.

Carol was standing quietly beside him. She had been that way since she had woken up the morning after her breakdown, but each day, she seemed to be getting better. She wasn't hard all the time anymore.

She reached out and twisted her fingers with his, finally taking the support he offered her freely.

Maggie opened the gate, and they all walked in, making sure to lock it up tight behind them. Nothing down the road screamed to him that anything was out of the ordinary or that people were around. They could have easily come in the back way through the woods, though. Even covered up their tracks if they used a car.

Merle had never been to the Greene farm, but when it came into view for the first time, he could instantly picture Hershel on the porch, and Beth and Maggie as little girls running all over the yard.

It still looked like something out of before even though the barn was burnt down, and there were decaying bodies near it and in the pasture.

He didn't let that ruin the thought of Daryl being there, though. The decay would cover up their smell, so his brother wouldn't have moved the bodies or changed much of anything. He hoped he was right at least.

When they were in front of the house, the door opened slowly and Daryl walked out onto the porch, his crossbow hanging at his side. He stared at them for a long time it seemed like and none of them moved. The door opened again, and this time, Carl, Enid, Michonne and Rick, who was holding Judith, spilled out.

"Where's my sister?" Maggie asked and started walking toward the porch.

Merle wanted to tell her that she was fine. If she had been dead, Daryl wouldn't have been there waiting on them. As soon as Rick had shown up, he would have handed over Carl and Judith then slipped off. It wouldn't have mattered if Merle was on his way or not had she ended up dead along the way.

"Upstairs," Daryl said quietly as she stopped beside him. "Sleeping'. Stitches popped on the way outta Alexandria. Once we got here, I sewed her back up with your dad's kit. She's sore still. Not infected, but it hurts."

"Ya did the best ya could," Maggie said. "Is it the same?" She looked between Rick and Daryl. When they both nodded, she let out a shaky breath. "Daddy woulda been so mad if someone had messed with it."

"Well, one thing we managed to do was shut the door when we left, at least," said Rick as he switched Judith to the other arm and drew Maggie in for a hug. She squeezed him then touched Judith's back before going into the house.

Glenn walked up the steps of the porch and hugged the others. His brother didn't even flinch when Glenn patted his shoulder. Once he was inside, Merle met Daryl's eyes and smirked, "Looks like the guest of honor finally arrived, huh?"

Daryl snorted and shook his head. "Thought you was dead," he said.

"Can't nothin' kill a Dixon but a Dixon, baby brother." He drug Carol along behind him as he went up to stand on the porch beside Daryl. "Ain't I taught ya nothin'?"

"I know," Daryl said but didn't really look like he was paying attention anymore. He was looking out over the pasture, past the burnt out barn and decaying bodies, and Merle thought he sounded a little emotional, but he couldn't tell from his face.

"Anyone know about the others?" Rick asked. "Never saw Sasha and Bob, and when we got to the cabin their names weren't there."

"Didn't see 'em along the way," Merle said. "They don't know what 'Hershel's' is, so if they did make it out, I doubt we'll see 'em again."

"I didn't think about that when I wrote it," Daryl muttered. "I's just thinkin' about gettin' her back someplace familiar and safe."

"It's okay, Daryl." Michonne said.

"It ain't. I hung 'em out to dry."

"Abraham and Rosita were at the cabin with Morgan and Noah. Morgan who knows the general area of where Hershel's is, but they chose to go on," Rick said and looked over at him. This seemed like a discussion they had before, but no amount of pounding would get it through Daryl's thick skull. "They might have chosen to go on, too. Besides, we didn't think to add to the door either. Ya can't take all the blame."

"We'll never know 'cause we never gave 'em the choice," Daryl muttered.

"No, we won't." Carol's voice caused Merle to turn around and look at her. "It's in the past, though. There's nothin' you can do about it now. It'll eat you up if you let it."

"Look at ya," Merle snarked. "Makin' sense and shit."

Carol rolled her eyes and shook her head. She let go of his hand and walked forward to hug Daryl. His brother hugged her back, and he swore that Carol whispered something as she pulled away, but Daryl didn't say anything to her.

"Well, what do we do now?" Merle asked and took a seat on the railing of the farmhouse.

He watched as everyone looked around the group. No one seemed to know how to answer that. It wasn't like they needed a plan in place at that exact moment, though.

They had time.

Not too much, but enough for them to get their shit together before the next storm blew in. And maybe next time none of them would make it, or maybe nothing would ever come their way again. He didn't know the answers. He was never good with problem solving like this, so he would sit back and wait.

He thought back to when he was younger and a saying that someone had told him, that if you couldn't figure out the answer, just go back to the beginning. In those terms, being back here made sense for a lot of them.

This was as close to the beginning as they were going to get.