Mercy

“Mercy! Behind you!”

The blonde turned her head, eyes widening in fear as she saw a pack of walkers in dangerously close proximity to herself. She didn’t blink as she took aim at the closest one’s head and pulled the trigger. Instead of a bullet launching into the rotted skull, the sound of an empty click met her ears and shit hissed as she reholstered the gun, reaching for her knife.

She didn’t flinch as she stabbed it first through one skull, and then another as the teeth of one of the walkers came close to biting her arm. She kicked it back away from her and took a few steps back, turning to see her group headed for the old red truck they’d stolen off another group a few weeks back.

“Wait! Wait for me!”

She made a run for the truck and jumped in the bed just as it started moving. She breathed deep and turned to face the small girl sitting across from her on the other side of the truck bed. She couldn’t be any more than six or seven, but the haunted look in her eyes told Mercy that the girl had seen more horror in this world than any child should ever have to see.

Of course, the world had gone to shit and things like that could no longer be avoided. Horror wasn’t just a movie and book genre anymore; it was real life for everyone left over from the start of the plague.

“Don’t worry,” she murmured to the girl sitting across from her. “Nothing’s gonna get close to you. Me and Derek aren’t gonna let you get hurt.”

The girl didn’t say a word. Mercy really hadn’t been expecting much else. She hadn’t spoken a world since she and Derek had found her holed up in an abandoned farm a month or so ago. They didn’t even know her name, though Derek had taken to calling her Annie.

She just shrugged and looked down at the dirty bed of the truck and Mercy bit her bottom lip as she watched the passing scenery. There were a few walkers wandering aimlessly through the peach tree orchid they were driving past, but there weren’t enough of them to warrant the use of a bullet and Derek continued driving towards camp.

“You know, my Mama used to make amazing peach cobbler,” Mercy murmured to Annie, a small smile on her face as she looked back at the little girl. “I find myself thinking about it more and more these days.”

Annie still didn’t speak and Mercy stayed quiet for the rest of the thirty-five minute drive to camp. She already knew it would be a tense night there tonight. She and Derek were all that were left of their group; everyone else had already been killed by outsiders or turned and put down. Annie was with them now, but Mercy had her doubts that the girl would stay put.

She seemed to be the type to run. A soft look formed on her face as she looked at the little girl again. She had blue eyes; the same blue as a little boy Mercy had once known in the mountains of northern Georgia as a child.

That boy was a man now. Mercy knew that he wouldn’t have died in the apocalypse and she doubted that he or his brother had been turned, either. Daryl had been too smart for that; too good at hunting and tracking and far too strong to let something like this take him out.

The truck rolled to a smooth stop outside the old train car that Derek had found for them to set up camp in. It was as secure a location as anyone would be able to find in this mess of a world, with four steel walls and no windows to worry about boarding up. Its door had been broken whenever it had derailed during the beginning of the outbreak, but Derek had fixed it up so that it could be slid shut in case walkers came near in the night. Derek had also used the axe he’d been hauling around with them to make holes on both the outer walls of the train car so that they wouldn’t have to leave the safety of the car to shoot walkers that came too close for comfort.

It wasn’t comfortable but honestly, Mercy doubted she’d ever have a comfortable place to live again. Those days were gone and this was what she had to look forward to for the rest of her life.

“You take Annie inside, I’ll see if I can catch a couple rabbits or somethin’,” Derek called to Mercy as she helped the little girl crawl from the back of the truck bed.

“You sure you don’t want backup?” She asked him, placing her hand on Annie’s shoulder. “If we keep the door closed, she’ll be fine in the—”

“Just do it,” he muttered, swinging a rifle over his shoulder. Mercy bit her bottom lip and led the girl towards the train car. She knew better than to argue with Derek when he was in one of his moods. He still hadn’t gotten over their most recent loss. His girlfriend, Eva, had been bitten and it had been his duty to put her down.

He hadn’t been the same since then and to be honest, Mercy was worried about him.

But she said nothing. She wasn’t going to jeopardize her safety with him by asking questions she didn’t know if she wanted the answers to. So she opened the door to the train car and lifted Annie up inside, telling her to sit tight with one of the blankets they had while she started stoking a fire for the night.

When Derek didn’t come back by the time the sun started to set, Mercy became more than a little nervous. They had an unspoken rule; that no one in the group was out after dark because of how hard it was to get a kill shot on the walkers and how easy it was for them to sneak up on a person; how easy it was to simply get lost in the thick Georgia trees.

“Annie, stay here, okay? Don’t come outside of that train,” Mercy told the little girl as she got up once the fire had been lit.

She pulled the machete she kept on her back and placed it inside the train, keeping her eyes on Annie. She knew the little girl could use it if she had to; she’d already seen the child take out one walker since she’d joined them.

“Don’t leave,” she whispered the words again. “I’ll be back soon.”

Annie nodded once, her eyes wide with obvious fear. Mercy didn’t say anything else as she turned again, grabbing a box of ammo to reload her handgun. She grabbed another rifle for added precaution, and then grabbed the hunting knife from her boot and placed it on the other holster on her thigh.

Derek had to have run into trouble if he was out there this late.

She began walking into the woods, making sure her feet didn’t disturb the twigs and leaves that were on the ground below her. The further into the woods she walked the more anxious she became. Derek rarely ever went this far out for food; even if he was tracking it. It was too dangerous, and especially by himself.

But she didn’t dare call out his name. She knew better than that; any noise at all in the woods would attract the walkers, and that was a fight she wasn’t prepared to deal with right now.

She got a little further and then stopped when she saw Derek in front of her. Only, he wasn’t the same Derek she’d seen a few hours before. He wasn’t even standing.

This Derek was dead. It looked as though he’d fallen and hit his head on one of the rocks that lay hidden beneath the dead leaves. She crouched beside him, a pained look on his face. She wasn’t particularly saddened by his death; the two of them had never been too close.

But with his death meant her safety – and Annie’s – was jeopardized. She grabbed the gun he’d been carrying with him along with every knife he kept concealed before she reached up, closing his eyes with her hand before she closed her own.

Now came the part she hated most.

“I’m sorry, Derek,” she whispered. “You were a good man.”

The sickening crunch of a blade slicing through a human skull filled her ears as she drove her hunting knife through his forehead. She didn’t look at him afterwards; just stood and covered his body with leaves. It wasn’t much of a burial, but with her sore leg and the walkers lurking in the surrounding woods, Mercy knew it would be best to leave him for now and return to the train car and figure out what she was supposed to do for survival now that she was on her own.