Make Damn Sure

Chapter Three

The house is completely silent as Beth sits alone at the dining table.

She doesn't exactly know how long she's been sitting there, the anxiety bubbling deep in her chest while she stares blankly at the greeting cards Abel had made that were proudly displayed on their refrigerator doors.

She and Daryl had had long discussions about enrolling their son in preschool at the beginning of the year when Beth had decided that she wanted to go back to school and finish up her degree.

She had been nervous at first since Abel was still so young, but he had taken to school like a duck to water and had made friends within his first week. The preschool was located on the Gordon State College campus, so Beth was able to take Abel with her in the mornings and Daryl would come pick to him up after work on the days she was on campus all day.

One of the cards that hung on the refrigerator was Abel's first handmade Father's Day card to Daryl; it was a standard-sized sheet of yellow construction paper decorated with bits of sequins, buttons, and glitter glue. The pre-printed greeting was sloppily colored in with green and blue crayon, and beneath it were the crudely drawn figures of Daryl and Abel standing victoriously over various dead animals.

His teachers had been a bit concerned when they saw her son's card, and Beth had to explain to them that her husband was an avid hunter and Abel enjoyed helping him dress all the game. She remembers the way Daryl's eyes had lit up when Abel presented the card to him, his lips quirking up and turning into that sweet little smile he reserved for them while they listened to their son explain everything on the card.

"I colored it green and blue 'cause you said they your fave'rite colors, Daddy. And thas me and you and all the aminals we catched."

Neither she nor Daryl had been able to make heads or tails of what animal each little brown blob represented, but they had nodded along and Daryl gave Abel a hug and a sincere thank you for the card. They had taped it up on the refrigerator next to the card Abel had made for her for Mother's day, and neither had been moved in the month since the holiday.

He's not going to preschool anymore, Beth thought resolutely as she remembered the emergency broadcast warning everyone about some fast moving virus spreading throughout the state.

Beth doesn't remember ever seeing the EAS warn about an infectious disease before, even when there was that huge bird flu scare all those years ago. Her mama had been so worried over it back then, and Beth can now relate to the fear of having her baby come in contact with something deadly and unknown and being completely unable to stop it.

She glances at the small clock that hung on the wall in their kitchen and saw that it was close to ten at night. With the long summer days, sunsets came at around eight thirty every evening; Abel's bedtime was around the same time, so after a few bedtime stories and a round of goodnight kisses, Beth and Daryl were usually able to spend a few hours relaxing. Or not, depending on the mood.

But not tonight.

Tonight is just worry on top of worry and it's to the point where Beth doesn't know where one started and the other ended.

Did Daryl get in some kind of accident over the weekend?

Or did he catch whatever bug was going around and was laid out in one of the hospitals outside of Barnesville?

If it was the latter, then the hospital should have notified her right away, right?

Beth isn't the type of wife who needed to know every move her husband made (hell, Daryl was almost programmed on a routine of work-home-hunting) but the anxiety she felt blooming from her chest left her with an ice-cold dread that seeped through her veins.

She had heard Merle muttering and scuffling around in the living room earlier before the front door opened and shut quickly, signaling that he had finally had enough of the stifling silence and took off. It doesn't matter that the government just sent out a statewide warning against going out unnecessarily, Merle is probably like Daryl, and Daryl sought out fresh air and the great outdoors whenever something got to be too much for him.

Maybe that was another characteristic all Dixon men shared.

Daryl's love for the outdoors was one of the first things she learned about him when she had first started seeing him. Despite the car grease that stained the coveralls he wore every day, there was always the underlying scent of the sun and woods on his skin. He used to tease and say that it was her nice way of saying that he stank, but she never once thought that the blend of soap, cigarette smoke, the woods, and Daryl's own unique scent was anything less than an aphrodisiac to her.

She had seen his crossbow and small collection of hunting knives in his living room the first time she had come over to his apartment, and he was always able to readily provide her with cottontails and swamp rabbits whenever she felt like making her mama's traditional Brunswick stew. Of course Beth suspected that his enthusiasm for going out and catching the rabbits laid more in his own craving for the stew rather than the thrill of the hunt.

And it was later, much later, in their relationship when he told her about how the woods became his refuge out of necessity after his mama died.

His Uncle Jess had taught him how to track when he was very young, and he had been the one to give Daryl his first crossbow on his sixth birthday. Where Will Dixon would get lit and use his kids as his personal punching bags, Uncle Jess would take the two boys out, especially after their house burned down, and taught them how to survive off the land. And when Daryl got older, it was all too easy for him to escape into the woods that surrounded the family trailer and avoid another lash to the back.

Beth glances at the small clock again and sighs. It was now four minutes past ten and she's completely exhausted, but she wanted to stay up and wait for Daryl to arrive home.

She makes her way out of the kitchen and down the short hallway to check up on Abel.

Their home isn't anything grand, a moderate sized master bedroom and two smaller rooms along with two full baths. They had a good sized living room and the combination kitchen and dining area led to their small backyard and the separate garage that they converted to Daryl's workshop.

The house was the same home Beth had been renting with two roommates when she first started college at Gordon State, and it was place where she brought Abel home to when he was born. His bedroom, her old room, was furnished with her old twin-sized bed and nightstand with the added baseball decor that Shawn had been insistent on buying. And even though Abel was neater than the average toddler, Beth still had to step over the errant matchbox cars that were scattered around when she quietly enters the room.

Abel is still in a deep sleep, he's always been a heavy sleeper and a bed hog, so the sight of him sprawled like a starfish on his stomach was nothing out of the ordinary. She had opened the window earlier to let in some of the cooler night time air, but the room was still uncomfortably warm so Abel slept in just his underwear. Just like Daryl was prone to doing during the summertime.

She perches herself onto the edge of his bed and gently swipes his sweat-damp hair away from his forehead before kissing him goodnight.

"I love you, baby."

Beth finds herself pacing in the hallway a few minutes later, clutching her phone tightly to her ear as she calls her husband one last time. The call goes straight to voicemail once again, and this time she decides to leave a message.

"Hey Daryl, it's me again. I don't know if you're gonna hear this, but I'm worried. You haven't texted or called me back, and I don't know if you're okay or lyin' in a ditch somewhere. There's this new superbug that's makin' it's rounds around the state and I can't lie, it's got me real scared. There was an emergency broadcast for it and everythin' and I'm prayin' that you haven't caught it."

Beth knew she was rambling at that point, but she feels the ball of nerves in her gut begin to unravel the more she talked it out.

"If you are laid up in a hospital somewhere, I'm gonna kick your ass for lettin' your phone die before you could call me. What'll your brother say about you then, huh? He'll probably say you aren't livin' up to the Dixon name for havin' a wife who nagged at you, but you know you deserve it at this point.

And yeah, Merle is here with us. I saw him hitchin' for a ride to town and I couldn't just drive off, especially since he recognized me. I know, you probably think I should've, but Merle seemed pretty eager to see you."

She lets out a yawn as she rubs her eyes with the heel of her hand. Their bedroom is a mess, it always was when Daryl was left alone; it was as if he automatically reverts back to his grubby bachelor ways the moment she and Abel leave, but at that moment Beth doesn't care that he had left his laundry piled on the foot of their bed because she fully planned on wearing his shirt to sleep.

"I'm heading to bed now… I pray that you're safe wherever you are. I love you and I hope you'll be here when I wake up."

Merle had to leave his brother's little house. It had felt like every molecule of air had been sucked out of the living room the second the emergency alert ended, and he saw the way Beth's back went rigid with fright before she walked back into the kitchen and slumped onto a dining chair.

She looked like she was in some kind of shock, staring at a random spot on the wall and not moving a muscle. Merle thought that she had taken the alert a little too seriously, and as the minutes passed and the nightly news came on, all the newscasters did was talk about the new virus spreading around.

He tried to watch the pretty little red-headed news reporter, but the bullshit fearmongering annoyed him so he shut the tv off with a huff. His old man always said that the government loved to scare the people into submission and maybe he'd been right.

He propped his feet onto the little wooden coffee table in front of the couch, not giving a damn that his muddy boots would probably dirty it up and continued to watch Beth as she remained sitting stiffly in her seat. Her face was becoming more and more gaunt as the minutes passed, and he was sure that she was thinking up a hundred nightmare scenarios all involving his brother.

How did Daryl live with such a jittery little woman? Didn't she know that Daryl was a tough piece of shit? He'd personally made sure of it after their mama died and they were left to the mercy of their father. Just because Daryl didn't come straight home like a well trained dog didn't mean that he was dead in a ditch somewhere.

And if Merle was a better man he would've reassured her that Daryl was just fine, but he wasn't, so he left instead.

Merle looks around the quiet neighborhood and sneers at how ridiculously suburban it all seemed. The front yard looks like it came straight out of a goddamn magazine with its neatly trimmed grass and flowers lining the concrete pathway from the sidewalk all the way up to the front door.

The house is on the corner of the block, and Merle is able to get a better view of it from his spot under the street light. There isn't anything particularly awe-inspiring about the small home: the wood cladding that surrounded the exterior was painted white and the window shutters green, but Merle can see the care and maintenance that Beth and Daryl had put into their home. He remembers being assaulted by the fragrant aroma of the jasmine flowers that grew on the simple portico when they had arrived earlier in the evening, and that scent wafted out to him as he made his way down the street.

All the other houses are similarly well maintained, and none of them looked remotely similar to the shithole shack he had grown up in. There were no dead brown lawns surrounded by rusty chainlink fences, no piles of spare car parts littering the yards, and definitely no sounds of yelling and fists meeting flesh emanating from the other houses.

It's the middle of summer so it's still hot as balls even though it's almost eleven at night, and the only sounds to be heard are that of cicadas and frogs. Merle is about five blocks away from his brother's house when he feels the hairs on the back of his neck go up at the sound of the frightened shriek that rips through the quiet night.

Guess suburbia ain't all that great after all, he thinks.

Suddenly the door of the house on his left bursts open and a girl comes tearing through. She's young, around Beth's age, and has her right arm cradled to her chest and it's only when she gets closer does Merle notice that it's covered in blood. She shoves past him without a care and continues to run like a bat out of hell, not giving a damn to the fact that she's barefoot and in her pajamas.

The girl is already on the next block down when Merle hears a loud guttural moan. The source of the sound is a boy half his age, dressed in only his boxers and covered in blood, but the source of the blood isn't from a flesh wound like that girl. No, the boy has blood dribbling down from his open mouth like a waterfall: his chin, neck, and chest absolutely covered in the viscous fluid.

The kid lumbers toward him slowly and stiffly but with purpose.

"What the fuck…?"

Merle already has his pocket knife brandished and ready in his hand by the time the bloodied boy is within arm's length and Merle is quick to threaten him.

"Ya stay outta my way, ya sonofa bitch. Ya don't wanna mess with ol' Merle."

He gets no response other than another low groan, and Merle feels a sliver of fear burn down his spine when he meets the boy's eyes. There are dark spots surrounding his pupils and they look odd… deflated, but its the fully dilated pupils and the milky blue haze that seem to blanket them that really scare Merle; he'd only ever seen those eyes on dead men.

The kid is snarling and snapping his jaws at him like a rabid dog as he continues to approach, and Merle soon feels cool fingers grasp at his shirt. He pulls his body away from his assailant and slashes quickly with his knife.

The stranger gives no reaction as the blade slices through his bare chest, instead he continues his hold on Merle's shirt and pulls the older man closer to his open mouth. Merle quickly goes for the boy's knee, slamming his heavy boot onto the inner side of the joint and backing up as the kid crumples heavily to the ground.

The bones of his left leg are gruesomely distorted at the joint, and Merle sees the unnaturally slow flow of blood seep out from the guy's chest wound. Merle is rooted to where he stands, watching in disbelief as that boy, that freak, continues to struggle to get to him despite being bloody and battered.

Whatever fleeting thoughts he had of leaving and getting the hell out of dodge earlier has left him when he jogs back to Daryl's place.

What the fuck is going on? It's the question that plays on loop in his mind as he mentally replays what's happened.

Some girl had come racing out of her house, looking like she got attacked by a rabid animal. Some boy had come out of the same house, looking like he was that rabid animal.

That same boy looked like something out of a horror movie and doesn't make a peep when he cut him and dislocated his knees.

It all sounds crazy, but the few drops of blood on his shirt confirm what had just happened.

Daryl and Beth's house is all dark by the time Merle gets back. The front door is locked, but Merle is quick to pick the lock and he slumps heavily against the door once he's inside. His heart feels like it's trying to pound its way out of his chest, and he's running high on adrenaline.

What the fuck is going on?

AN: Hurray I've finally updated! I apologize profusely for the delay, and I really appreciate every review I've received. I had half of the chapter written for some time, but I hit a minor writer's block that I finally powered through. Please review!