Merle's hunch is right; it does, indeed, get on her nerves. He has an uncanny skill for it, damn him. She liked to think herself unflappable, usually. No one's gotten under her skin this often since her whole family died, and there's a comparison nobody wants. His hair isn't nearly the right color, even if he is, probably, ugly enough to fit in a group photo. His smile is certainly the right kind of cruel.
They see-saw into a pothole, and the engine makes a sound that isn't quite purring. Joan groans.
"You gonna tell me about it before or after I get the special tour?" She says. Her eyes are carefully on the road, though that does nothing to hide her expression, generally displeased, or her tone, generally matching. "You know, the gunpoint tour."
She's not dropping that. It can't be denied, and it's something Merle apparently has no anxiety over. She can harp and grouse over it without fear of fatal retribution, which is good, because meekly accepting it would be just as bad. Shit, that might kill her.
All it earns is a snort of laughter. Truth is he might've put it away but he's enough of an asshole that keeping her on edge is its own reward.
"I left you yours," he reminds her instead. Damn stupid move on his part, no matter what-- you're always better off if you're the only one armed, that's just plain sense-- but so far she's been smart. He appreciates that, and not only because it saves him the mess. Should've, could've demanded it, but he thought maybe keeping it would put her at ease.
"Tour guides'll make you leave it at the gate. Probably trade you a cold Coke for it."
"Yeah," she says, rolling her eyes in the rear view mirror, "and the second I touch it, you shoot me. Mother Theresa'd be proud as shit."
She moves the car to the center of the road, avoiding a gaggle of undead lunatics clawing at the sound of their talkative motor. This hunk of junk will get them a few miles strong, to Fairyland or Woodbury or wherever, but it'd need more care to get much farther. Joan had been intending to put in the effort, before the ghost of jury duty past had shown up.
"Oh, so you're not giving the tour?" Her smile is a little hard around the edges. "But you're so friendly."
That gets a crow of laughter, nothing more or less. She's not wrong. He's had an eye on her gun the whole time, but the fact remains, he could've taken it. Oughta count for something, right? But rather than push the issue he just watches the road roll be, sneering pointlessly at the biters struggling and failing to keep up. He hasn't pointed out the obvious, yet-- that this car's done for before they get there, that they're gonna have to ditch it and run no matter what, or they'll be bringing home a herd.
"It ain't what you think it is."
Doesn't much matter what she thinks. He's pretty sure she's wrong.
That gets the tension right back into her shoulders. She was trying to distract herself, she realizes. Trying to forget about the horrible death she's driving herself toward. What a fucking idiot she is, Christ. It'd be a miracle she was still alive, if she didn't know exactly how she'd gotten this far. Was she really paying back her continued existence with these clowntown fuckups?
Her tone is a bit lower, a bit more wary, but she refuses to be entirely scared. Not while she's in front of this asshole. "But lemme guess," she says, "you're not gonna tell me shit."
He shrugs, likely enough to be visible even if her eyes are on the road. Still has a gun pointed at her, sure, but he's less and less inclined to use it. The closer they get to town, the more eager he is to turn her over to whoever's on welcome duty and go on his way.
Joan shakes her head, eyes briefly rolling upward. "The poor-pitiful-me thing doesn't work when you're the one with the gun." And about a hundred pounds advantage in a fistfight. Lucky for Joan, she fights to have fought, not to win.
"Lying wouldn't get you anything," she says after a moment. She wants him to be lying, it'd back up her low opinion of the scuzzy asshole, but when she looks at it with the rough, raw logic Luke had valued, she can see the futility of it.
Again, he huffs a laugh. Fuck, he wouldn't wanna see what it'd take to get her to shut her stupid mouth. Might be nothing will til she's dead.
"Not a thing," he agrees, leaning back against the door, getting comfortable. Best you can, anyway, in a piece of shit rustbucket that smells like something died in it because something did. Hardly notices it anymore, really.
Joan looks sidelong at Merle through the rear view, studying his lumpy profile. He reminds her of the kind of men her father hung out with, the kind of person her father occasionally thought he was. Merle has proven, to Joan's own fear and shame, that he's much smarter than her father ever was, and a lot more cunning. A lot more cruel. Could Peter Dority have turned his gun on a kid caught out alone? Maybe if there was something to steal, but never for as long a haul as this. No, Merle has the casual cruelty of her father, but he also has something deeper and meaner.
Which is all a lot of pretty words for something more simple than it feels. Like it or not, simply by the virtue of lowest common denominators, Merle Dixon is the key to Fairyland.
Doesn't bother him, the way she's watching him, long as she don't miss anything on the road. Last thing they need is to wreck this thing. (It's crossed his mind she might do it out of spite, but he doesn't think she's the type. If she was gonna check out she'd've done it. Wouldn't have come this far.)
"Shit," he murmurs, shrugging. "Who'd say no?"
Present company excepted, of course. He shifts to shrug his shoulder, lifts his bad arm just a little.
"Found me after this. Cleaned me up, got me back on my feet. Seemed worth stickin' around."
It's a more earnest answer than Joan was expecting. That, more than anything, unsettles her. The idea of him as a person, giving her an honest answer and not more bottom line bullshit- well. She doesn't know what to do with it.
She keeps watching him out of the corner of her eye.
"How'd it happen?" She doesn't think she'll get a real answer, but she's curious to know what he'll do when he's asked so directly. Probably hit her. The last time that happened while she was driving a car, the world hadn't ended. The more things change...
The honest answer served his point. Besides, it's hard to be too shy about the arm. It's usually the first thing people see. (It's the last thing some see, too; certainly the last a couple hundred biters saw, if their eyes were still intact.) Dancing around it just makes it worse.
Besides, he figures it'll keep her off guard. She asks the next question-- the obvious question-- and in spite of himself he grins.
"Did it myself." Again, the truth. "Hacksaw. Rusty piece'f shit."
Something about that answer feels right. The desperate violence of it-- you don't chop off your dominant hand if you've got other options-- seems like the sort of thing she'd approve of. She does, she realizes, approve of it. It's a strange, distant realization. She never expected to approve of him. She's pretty sure she never approved of her father, or her stupid brothers.
She feels unsettled with herself, a highly unwelcome sensation when she was so sure, before.
"Maybe a month, two, after shit got bad. Sonofabitch left me handcuffed on a roof in Atlanta."
Thinking about it even now, he feels a curl of warm, familiar wrath coil through him, a well-nursed hatred that feels like an old friend. Give him a chance today and he'd skin that fucker alive. Leave him to turn. If he ain't already; if he's still out there.
It's what passes, for Merle, for a constructive response; he dwells on that, rather than the less steady feelings it brings up: the lonely certainty that he was gonna die of thirst up there, slow and ugly, end up a withered husk snapping yellowed teeth at pigeons. (Shit, back then they didn't even know. Thought you had to get bit.) All by his lonesome while God laughed out of a clear blue sky and his baby brother had no one to watch his back.
Joan is well-versed in catching the signs of anger rising in older men. Some part of her tenses, preparing for the next stages. Her foot hovers over the break, because she won't be able to see, but she can't stop the car now, or she'll give up her chance to strike back, and end up defending, uselessly cornered before she's been pinned down. She waits, and the cues rise and fall. His anger doesn't extend to her.
She's not sure how she feels about that, either. But it's sharpened her focus, at least; the little rush of adrenaline makes her mind move quicker. She sets aside the philosophical concerns she was childishly chewing at-- could she ever be that angry at someone for hurting her? Luke, sure, but her? If it was family, maybe, but if it wasn't? And who's to say whoever chained Merle up wasn't family? That's the kind of personal stuff you keep between relatives-- and focus more on her driving. She angles the rustbucket around a larger group of loons, probably on their way to herd up with the cluster from earlier.
Whatever the truth of Merle's story is, she decides she doesn't want to know any more. Not now, anyway. It's not that his tales are gruesome. It's that they aren't.
"And now you round up stray orphans out of the kindness of your heart?"
"Yeah, 's me. Goddamn good Samaritan," he chuckles.
There's something funny about her-- about the questions she asks and the ones she doesn't. It's a passing curiosity, that's all; these days anyone who's left is bound to be fucked up. Part of why he doesn't mind admitting to the fucked up shit he's been through. It's just how things are.
Maybe if she makes the grade, someday, he'll figure out what the hell's up with her. (Easy enough to brush it off, now; he doesn't give a shit, he's just got nothin better to do on a car ride than wonder.)
"Whatcha gonna do if you don't stick around?"
Now that, it's gonna be pure fantasy on her part. But no matter.
"I'm not sticking around," Joan says immediately. That's important to say, not for him, not even for herself. It's just a declaration of intent. She won't be broken by ease, and she won't hide her aims. She won't be broken.
But his question's a good one. She doesn't say the first thought that pops into her head, I'm gonna get the hell away from you. There's just no point in antagonizing him. She can tell he's not the kind of person to hit when he could do something worse, and she hasn't gotten to worse yet, but it's probably either fatal, or the kind of thing you wish was.
(If she was a good daughter, she'd say, I'd find out of mom's still alive, but she's not, so she doesn't.)
"And I dunno," she says, "but whatever it is, I'll be in charge of it."
Funny thing is she doesn't say it, but he could guess it. Her dislike is radiant; she's like a cat with all its fur puffed up, whether or not she glares out of the corner of her eyes at him. If that kinda thing bothered him-- well, if it did, he wouldn't be the sort of man to more-or-less kidnap her for Woodbury, so who gives a shit.
She's got a lot of fight in her, and more than warm bodies or mechanic skills, that's what they need. The town is full of good folk but a lot of them, they've never been fighters. They got lucky and found somewhere that hasn't fallen yet. And what they do, the way they keep normal alive, it's important-- but they need defense, too.
"Probably've said the same thing myself," he says at length, with a chuckle. Mostly to annoy her, if he's honest.
It annoys her, but in an unexpected way. Merle is a dangerous man, but Joan can deal with dangerous men. The fact that he ascribes, in some way, to her personal philosophy just backs that up. She may not like it, but she belongs, in her mind, to the same breed of creature he is. It fits, because she never liked who she was anyway.
But what rankles is the inconsistency. If he cares about living under his own banner, making his own life truly his, then that means... she'd guessed he was comfortable in the kind of place they're going, but she'd hoped to Christ Almighty he wasn't in charge of it.
She tries to keep a note of fear from her voice, covering her tone in disdain instead: "Don't tell me," she says, "you're King Big Dick of Fairyland."
Rolling his eyes, he glances out the window, then back at her. Makes sense that she'd ask, maybe; he's close enough to the Governor to be in the habit of assuming some authority. But he's not in charge of anything, not really, not without orders.
He never used to do well with authority, hierarchy. But shit's different now and he's not dead, which means he's not stupid.
"I owed 'em," he admits. That's not his favorite thing to have to say, but it's true enough that it's not worth lying. "'Sides that, it worked out."
Joan opens her mouth, and then promptly closes it. For once, she admonishes herself, think before you fucking talk.
Because, loathe as she is to admit it, there's honor in paying your dues. If you end up under someone's thumb because they saved your life, it's not the same as being someone else's chewtoy. She can relent, at least, to the logic of it.
And at least she knows not to dig around deeper about owing people. She doesn't want more of his sob story, from fear that she's goddamn empathize with him. Again.
"So who is in charge?" Someone who could keep Merle Dixon in line, is who. Someone smart, and strong, and fucking patient.
It gets something closer to a real smile, tight-lipped though still totally fucking obnoxious, like he knows things she doesn't. Because, you know, he does. Mostly he knows she's really not prepared for where they're going, no matter how much she tries to steel herself for it.
"Call him the Governor. Probably be the one to give you your tour."
Joan scowls at him through the rear view mirror, not liking one bit the victorious expression on his fucking face. She isn't sure exactly what that means, only that it's definitely not good news for her.
Maybe this one isn't the rapist. Maybe it's his shithead friend. Or maybe they're cannibals. Maybe they just like to torture kids for kicks. There are all kinds of reasons he could want to drag her back to his weird little enclave. Fucking Woodbury. She hates how unassuming it sounds.
If-- when?-- they try to take her gun, she'll claw out their eyes.
"Shouldn't he have better shit to do? Or is he running low on teenagers to boss around with you gone so long?"
Of course, when she's scared, she bites. Christ. At least if she dies, she'll probably deserve it.
Weirdly this is probably the calmest Merle could be in this situation. He's always taken a certain malicious joy in setting people off-balance; these days he's just better about not being a total prick of it. All it took was the apocalypse to make him sort of almost capable of being a team player.
Sometimes.
"Wouldja feel better if I told you he files his teeth sharp and wears thongs made'f human skin?"
She gives him an unimpressed glare, her expression flat and annoyed. She wants to say something like, 'I'm not a little kid', except she's suddenly reminded of a scene in that David Bowie movie Luke liked, and it makes her want to bang her head into the window. This is all such a pointless, stupid, messy way to die. At least nobody in her family's alive to see it.
She keeps driving. "It'd make me feel better if you said something actually useful," she grumbles, "but then you'd probably be lying. How far are we?"
Might as well get her gruesome murder over with. Prepare for the worst, hope they don't take your gun.
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what_wings_dare2014-10-20 06:48 pm
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They see-saw into a pothole, and the engine makes a sound that isn't quite purring. Joan groans.
"You gonna tell me about it before or after I get the special tour?" She says. Her eyes are carefully on the road, though that does nothing to hide her expression, generally displeased, or her tone, generally matching. "You know, the gunpoint tour."
She's not dropping that. It can't be denied, and it's something Merle apparently has no anxiety over. She can harp and grouse over it without fear of fatal retribution, which is good, because meekly accepting it would be just as bad. Shit, that might kill her.
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"I left you yours," he reminds her instead. Damn stupid move on his part, no matter what-- you're always better off if you're the only one armed, that's just plain sense-- but so far she's been smart. He appreciates that, and not only because it saves him the mess. Should've, could've demanded it, but he thought maybe keeping it would put her at ease.
"Tour guides'll make you leave it at the gate. Probably trade you a cold Coke for it."
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She moves the car to the center of the road, avoiding a gaggle of undead lunatics clawing at the sound of their talkative motor. This hunk of junk will get them a few miles strong, to Fairyland or Woodbury or wherever, but it'd need more care to get much farther. Joan had been intending to put in the effort, before the ghost of jury duty past had shown up.
"Oh, so you're not giving the tour?" Her smile is a little hard around the edges. "But you're so friendly."
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"It ain't what you think it is."
Doesn't much matter what she thinks. He's pretty sure she's wrong.
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Her tone is a bit lower, a bit more wary, but she refuses to be entirely scared. Not while she's in front of this asshole. "But lemme guess," she says, "you're not gonna tell me shit."
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He shrugs, likely enough to be visible even if her eyes are on the road. Still has a gun pointed at her, sure, but he's less and less inclined to use it. The closer they get to town, the more eager he is to turn her over to whoever's on welcome duty and go on his way.
"Any god damn thing I say, you figure I'm lyin'."
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"Lying wouldn't get you anything," she says after a moment. She wants him to be lying, it'd back up her low opinion of the scuzzy asshole, but when she looks at it with the rough, raw logic Luke had valued, she can see the futility of it.
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"Not a thing," he agrees, leaning back against the door, getting comfortable. Best you can, anyway, in a piece of shit rustbucket that smells like something died in it because something did. Hardly notices it anymore, really.
"So whatcha wanna know?"
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Which is all a lot of pretty words for something more simple than it feels. Like it or not, simply by the virtue of lowest common denominators, Merle Dixon is the key to Fairyland.
"Why d'you live there?"
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"Shit," he murmurs, shrugging. "Who'd say no?"
Present company excepted, of course. He shifts to shrug his shoulder, lifts his bad arm just a little.
"Found me after this. Cleaned me up, got me back on my feet. Seemed worth stickin' around."
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She keeps watching him out of the corner of her eye.
"How'd it happen?" She doesn't think she'll get a real answer, but she's curious to know what he'll do when he's asked so directly. Probably hit her. The last time that happened while she was driving a car, the world hadn't ended. The more things change...
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Besides, he figures it'll keep her off guard. She asks the next question-- the obvious question-- and in spite of himself he grins.
"Did it myself." Again, the truth. "Hacksaw. Rusty piece'f shit."
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She feels unsettled with herself, a highly unwelcome sensation when she was so sure, before.
"Shit," she mutters. "How long's it been?"
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"Maybe a month, two, after shit got bad. Sonofabitch left me handcuffed on a roof in Atlanta."
Thinking about it even now, he feels a curl of warm, familiar wrath coil through him, a well-nursed hatred that feels like an old friend. Give him a chance today and he'd skin that fucker alive. Leave him to turn. If he ain't already; if he's still out there.
It's what passes, for Merle, for a constructive response; he dwells on that, rather than the less steady feelings it brings up: the lonely certainty that he was gonna die of thirst up there, slow and ugly, end up a withered husk snapping yellowed teeth at pigeons. (Shit, back then they didn't even know. Thought you had to get bit.) All by his lonesome while God laughed out of a clear blue sky and his baby brother had no one to watch his back.
Yeah, vengeance is the way to go.
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She's not sure how she feels about that, either. But it's sharpened her focus, at least; the little rush of adrenaline makes her mind move quicker. She sets aside the philosophical concerns she was childishly chewing at-- could she ever be that angry at someone for hurting her? Luke, sure, but her? If it was family, maybe, but if it wasn't? And who's to say whoever chained Merle up wasn't family? That's the kind of personal stuff you keep between relatives-- and focus more on her driving. She angles the rustbucket around a larger group of loons, probably on their way to herd up with the cluster from earlier.
Whatever the truth of Merle's story is, she decides she doesn't want to know any more. Not now, anyway. It's not that his tales are gruesome. It's that they aren't.
"And now you round up stray orphans out of the kindness of your heart?"
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There's something funny about her-- about the questions she asks and the ones she doesn't. It's a passing curiosity, that's all; these days anyone who's left is bound to be fucked up. Part of why he doesn't mind admitting to the fucked up shit he's been through. It's just how things are.
Maybe if she makes the grade, someday, he'll figure out what the hell's up with her. (Easy enough to brush it off, now; he doesn't give a shit, he's just got nothin better to do on a car ride than wonder.)
"Whatcha gonna do if you don't stick around?"
Now that, it's gonna be pure fantasy on her part. But no matter.
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But his question's a good one. She doesn't say the first thought that pops into her head, I'm gonna get the hell away from you. There's just no point in antagonizing him. She can tell he's not the kind of person to hit when he could do something worse, and she hasn't gotten to worse yet, but it's probably either fatal, or the kind of thing you wish was.
(If she was a good daughter, she'd say, I'd find out of mom's still alive, but she's not, so she doesn't.)
"And I dunno," she says, "but whatever it is, I'll be in charge of it."
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She's got a lot of fight in her, and more than warm bodies or mechanic skills, that's what they need. The town is full of good folk but a lot of them, they've never been fighters. They got lucky and found somewhere that hasn't fallen yet. And what they do, the way they keep normal alive, it's important-- but they need defense, too.
"Probably've said the same thing myself," he says at length, with a chuckle. Mostly to annoy her, if he's honest.
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But what rankles is the inconsistency. If he cares about living under his own banner, making his own life truly his, then that means... she'd guessed he was comfortable in the kind of place they're going, but she'd hoped to Christ Almighty he wasn't in charge of it.
She tries to keep a note of fear from her voice, covering her tone in disdain instead: "Don't tell me," she says, "you're King Big Dick of Fairyland."
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Rolling his eyes, he glances out the window, then back at her. Makes sense that she'd ask, maybe; he's close enough to the Governor to be in the habit of assuming some authority. But he's not in charge of anything, not really, not without orders.
He never used to do well with authority, hierarchy. But shit's different now and he's not dead, which means he's not stupid.
"I owed 'em," he admits. That's not his favorite thing to have to say, but it's true enough that it's not worth lying. "'Sides that, it worked out."
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Because, loathe as she is to admit it, there's honor in paying your dues. If you end up under someone's thumb because they saved your life, it's not the same as being someone else's chewtoy. She can relent, at least, to the logic of it.
And at least she knows not to dig around deeper about owing people. She doesn't want more of his sob story, from fear that she's goddamn empathize with him. Again.
"So who is in charge?" Someone who could keep Merle Dixon in line, is who. Someone smart, and strong, and fucking patient.
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"Call him the Governor. Probably be the one to give you your tour."
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Maybe this one isn't the rapist. Maybe it's his shithead friend. Or maybe they're cannibals. Maybe they just like to torture kids for kicks. There are all kinds of reasons he could want to drag her back to his weird little enclave. Fucking Woodbury. She hates how unassuming it sounds.
If-- when?-- they try to take her gun, she'll claw out their eyes.
"Shouldn't he have better shit to do? Or is he running low on teenagers to boss around with you gone so long?"
Of course, when she's scared, she bites. Christ. At least if she dies, she'll probably deserve it.
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Weirdly this is probably the calmest Merle could be in this situation. He's always taken a certain malicious joy in setting people off-balance; these days he's just better about not being a total prick of it. All it took was the apocalypse to make him sort of almost capable of being a team player.
Sometimes.
"Wouldja feel better if I told you he files his teeth sharp and wears thongs made'f human skin?"
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She keeps driving. "It'd make me feel better if you said something actually useful," she grumbles, "but then you'd probably be lying. How far are we?"
Might as well get her gruesome murder over with. Prepare for the worst, hope they don't take your gun.
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