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He didn't know why he kept it when he didn't have a single good reason for taking it in the first place. Yet as he stormed out of the RV, his foot had accidentally kicked it out the door and before he knew what he was doing he had stopped, yanked it up off the ground where it had fallen, and shoved it forcefully once more through his belt.
Maybe he thought she wouldn't miss it, or wouldn't care. That wasn't Sophia, after all, that small, broken body wrapped in an old horse blanket, and if she couldn't bring herself to watch as they put her in the ground, what use would she have for a damn doll?
And so he took it, and it stayed there with him as one by one they buried the dead. No one noticed-or, if they did, no one dared to mention it-and when the last shovelful of dirt had been thrown on the tiny grave, he'd grabbed his bow, slung his pack across his shoulders, and trudged across the field with every intention of leaving the whole sorry lot of them behind for good.
His boots kicked up little clouds of dust as he picked his way through the draught-ridden soil, and still the doll stayed tucked in his belt, following close behind him like a little shadow, its stained and dirty arm waving haplessly in time with his strides. He had almost reached the edge of the property when it fell. If he'd kept up his pace, he'd have left it and the farm behind in a matter of seconds, but as soon as he felt it slip, he whipped round to retrieve it.
The grass had grown tall and unruly in the summer months, so the little thing was almost completely hidden amidst the undergrowth. He threw off his pack and crouched low to the ground. It didn't take long to find. He picked it up and brushed it off with a little more care than was warranted, then he sat back on his heels, kneeling amid the dying grass and the setting sun, and stared down into the doll's blue, unblinking eyes.
Sophia was dead.
He didn't know which stung more: that he'd failed, or that he'd talked himself into believing that he could succeed. He wasn't stupid. He knew as well as the rest of them that the longer she stayed missing, the less likely it was that they'd find her alive. He'd lived in the world long enough to know that clinging to hope when there was none was less than useless. But whatever it was that drove him back into those woods each day didn't die easily, and the sight of that little girl blindly picking her way through the decaying bodies that littered the ground around her was like an iron fist crashing into his solar plexus.
His eyes flickered darkly up at the farmhouse in the distance. He didn't need those people. He could hunt for himself, defend himself, tend to his own wounds himself-he'd been doing it his whole damn life, and as far as he was concerned there wasn't much difference between the world before things went to hell, and after. Merle had understood that.
Ain't nothin' in the world worth sticking your neck out for, little brother, when the only thanks you'll ever get is a fist to the jaw, or a broken rib.
Or, he thought bitterly, an arrow through the side, or a bullet to the head, or the torn and bloodied body of a little girl who was pretty much dead the minute she ran into those woods alone.
No. He didn't need any of them and, for all the difference it had made, they sure as hell didn't need him. It had only ever been him and Merle before the turn, and Dixons had always been better off alone.
But dead or alive, Merle was long gone, and the ratty object in his hands seemed suddenly to remind him that it had been a long time since he'd been truly on his own...
He got up, stuffed the doll unceremoniously into his pack, and set up camp.
It was a half-formed thought that had been tugging at the back of his mind for days, but now it seemed to grab hold of everything around him and take shape. Not once had he seen Carol leave the safety of the farm except to drive to and from the highway with fresh hope and supplies. But that night she crossed the open field as though she owned it, and it tugged even harder as she stared back at him with those same blue, unblinking eyes.
He tried to dismiss it and her, but there was something about the way she just stood there and took it that made his blood boil. She watched him silently, almost patiently, as he raged at her, trying furiously to rouse in her the same angry, unsettled feeling she'd left him with earlier that day. Things that had nothing to do with her, or Sophia, or any of them came rushing out of his mouth like water that had been held too long at bay, and like the shore, she simply absorbed what she could and let the rest wash freely over her.
In that moment, he hated her and her sympathy and understanding more than he knew what to do with.
It didn't matter when she'd gone. He could still feel her eyes on him as though she was out there somewhere, peering at him through the darkness as he paced about his camp. It was an unpleasant feeling, as if she had seen right through his skin all the way down to his bones, like she knew things about him that he didn't want to remember.
She'd never asked him about the scars that stretched across his back as though she knew too well the shame that came from other people's pity, and he knew that at the heart of all the unspoken things between them was a quiet recognition that they were the same. After having spent most his life trying to forget, it was a stark and haunting reflection to have to face.
And it didn't matter the distance he put between them because his own words kept ringing in his ears, and he knew: he was the one who was afraid.