Aim for the Brain

She tried to keep Sophia talking while Merle was gone, something to make her brain realize she wasn’t alone. But Merle had been gone for hours now, and once darkness had begun to creep its way into the sky, Frankie knew she couldn’t wait any longer; she had to look for him. But the moment she put her foot out the door the world seemed to spin. She stepped back inside to see Sophia watching her. The puzzled look on the little girls face was enough to embarrass Francis into stepping back out onto the porch. Looking out into the tree she hoped to see Merle reveal himself, but after time, the spaces just became darker and darker.

Then the gunshot was enough to send her off into the thickness of the dark trees.

He had been gone too long, and that shot came from far away.

How did she even know it was him? What if someone had shot at Merle? What if he was hurt, or dead?

She bounded around the thick tree trunks, and over rotting wood. Her sneakers were built for running and her adrenaline put her body’s sickness to rest for the time being. She felt that leaving Merle had been a stupid idea. But she couldn’t leave that sweet innocent girl. She couldn’t leave someone else’s child.

Francis was deep into the woods, the trees covered the sky and all she could hear now was the snapping of branches as she ran.

“Merle!” she would yell, “MERLE!”

Eventually her breath became shallow and she began to panic.

She stopped, dead in her tracks. Clutching the side of a tree she stopped to regain her breath, her chest was tight, and her nails began scraping at the bark of the tree while she tried to control her breathing and keep her eyes from spinning.

She had instinctively responded to something she thought was wrong, but it had been a mistake, she hadn’t taken anything with her, she couldn’t see, and Merle was nowhere in sight.

“MERLE!” she yelled again, her voice cracking at the end.

With her back against the tree she clutched her chest, it was rapidly rising and falling as her shallow breaths tried to compete with her nervous and panicked breaths. She looked around, hearing so many different noises, and she cried “Merle!” once more before tears erupted from her eyes and began to make her choke from the sobs. She was trying to steady her breathing with placing her shaking hands across her chest. She ended up on the cold earth ground, curled in a ball, still spinning, still choking.

Daryl Dixon was a slightly different type of Dixon. Like Merle he was tough, tactical, and a brute. He found comfort in the woods, hunting, stalking, and killing. It helped him relax – it helped him get away from everything else.

However this was the first time he wanted to find his prey alive, and keep it that way. Finding a scared little girl in the Georgian woods was no easy task, but he had taken it upon him nonetheless. He felt that he had to find someone, in this shit hole; they were all lost in some way. Daryl knew what it was like to have your only bit of flesh and blood lost to the wilderness – to the dead. If he had any hope for failing his brother it was to find Sophia.

His boot slid against the mud that had been created the previous night before. The surrounding logs were wet, soaked with rainwater. But it also left the hair hot and humid, he could feel the sweat beads falling down his arms and back. The trigger on his crossbow was always being delicately fingered, ready to send an arrow into the next walker that tried to make him their next meal.

He stopped to scrape off the clump of mud that had now begun to cling to his boot. He noticed however that he could see a head of wet stringy hair a few feet in front of him. The rain had washed away any evidence of a trail, but it had also left perfect means to create a path – which meant that this thing, whether walker, or person hadn’t moved in some time.

“Sophia!” he said softly. He could feel his heart begin to pound. He was almost excited; he prayed that he had actually found her. “Hey, Sophia.” he said again. He watched the head sag. He hair was soaked completely clinging to the body beneath it, but now he could see it was too long to be Sophia’s. He slowly circled what he thought was a corpse. Keeping his crossbow aimed directly at the brain.

The skin was pale and sickly. It was an obvious walker. Daryl gave the body a kick to the shin. It moved from the motion of the kick… swaying for a moment before the head lifted.

Daryl’s crossbow was still aimed.

The head lifted, now he could see the face of a girl, not Sophia.

She had fox-like features, a thin face, a thin body, thin everything, she looked sick. She opened her eyes in a flash, while she seemed to try to focus on something in front of her. Daryl could see the whites of her eyes, no sickly yellow, just a deep amber iris. Her eyes were the only thing normal about her. She seemed to be unaware of Daryl, of where she was, or how she became lying in the mud.

”Merle?” escaped her lips in a soft squeaky whisper. She could talk, meaning she wasn’t dead yet. Daryl’s crossbow was still raised, ready to kill. But the uttering of his long lost brothers name left him motionless, and frozen. Her head fell again, now Daryl could see her chest rising slowly. He lowered his weapon, looking at her pale skin her didn’t see any bite marks, nothing out of the ordinary but the color. With his left hand he reached out and touched the girl in front of him, first he placed his hand to her neck; it was icy, and completely wet, but he could feel the soft dub of a heart beat.