succumb - glenn rhee

[SEVEN] taken

CHAPTER SEVEN // TAKEN
"THANKS, I BET MY BALLS ARE
BIGGER THAN YOURS."

ִֶָ 𓂃⊹ ִֶָ

Jade was sat in the passenger seat of the van, Glenn beside her in the driver's seat, with the rest of the group sitting in the back. Daryl and T-Dog had been bickering as they spoke about whether or not Merle was alright. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Jade wished that Merle wasn't alright. That the geeks had gotten to him, that they wouldn't have to bring him back to wreak havoc on the group.

But, he is still a person. He is a living, breathing, human being. He didn't always act like it, but he is. Jade felt guilty for leaving him behind as they drove through the outskirts of the city to a place where Jade and Glenn had cut a hole in the fencing in order to get through. The ride was bumpy as they moved over the train tracks, the wrench attached at her belt softly knocking into her thigh, assuring that her trusty weapon was there with her. Dale's shotgun was resting between her knees, her left hand wrapped around the barrel to keep it steady.

The van slowly came to a stop, Glenn pulled the keys out of the ignition as he turned to look back at the other four people in the van. "We walk from here." He proclaimed as Jade opened her door, Glenn quickly doing the same.

Jade slung her pack over her shoulder before putting the shotgun's strap on, the sound of the door to the back of the van sounded, the crunching of leaves following soon after. The rest of the group made it to the front of the van where Jade and Glenn were standing, waiting for them so they could lead the way.

Glenn was the first to move ahead, Jade following behind him with the rest slowly keeping up with the pair that were so accustomed to the area. The pair lead the way, weaving through buildings and slowly past small groups of geeks to get a better chance of making it through the city.

Once they made it to the building they had been in the day before, Jade moved in first, noting the lack of geeks within the building. Taking it as a good sign, she waved the rest of the group in before they quickly filed up the stairwell to the roof. T-Dog took the lead with the bolt cutters with Daryl close behind him, shouting for him to hurry up.

T-Dog barely had time to yank the chain off before Daryl was kicking the door open, antsy to get to his brother after seeing that the door was still chained shut. Daryl ran out, shouting his brother's name, but what the rest of the group noticed was that Merle wasn't where they had left him. His upper torso was peaking over the pipe, he wasn't standing after hearing Daryl's shouts from the stairwell, he was simply gone.

The group slowly made their way out of the stairwell and onto the roof, Daryl's cries in protest could be heard as Jade made her way closer to where Merle had been, looking down their was a small blood splatter on the ground beside a disembodied hand. Merle's hand.

Jade let out a shaky gasp before instinctively reaching forward and grabbing onto Glenn's hand, without thinking the two intertwined fingers, simply needing some feeling of comfort at the sight before them. Nick had placed a hand on Jade's shoulder, squeezing it slightly as he looked up at the sky.

Dale's saw was discarded beside the hand, and the handcuffs still hung from the thin pipe, each bloodied. The sight made Jade's stomach churn at the thought of how painful it must have been. The brunette had slowly been numbing herself to the look and the smell of the dead that now roamed the Earth, but she hadn't grown accustomed to people getting hurt, she never had.

She may have hated Merle Dixon, but she couldn't imagine, and didn't want to imagine, what pain he might've gone through in order to survive them leaving him.