I am lying on the couch. I look up when I hear the door open. Two men walk in with Maggie. I stand up and walk over to them. "And who are you two?" I ask.
"Uh… I'm Glenn," one of them says. I look at the other man.
"T-Dog," he says. I nod. There is probably going to be a fairly large group of them. Who knows how that'll turn out.
"Well, I'm Rowan," I say. I walk back to the couch.
I walk into the kitchen to see Patricia stitching up T-Dog's arm. "You got here right in time," Patricia tells him. "This couldn't go untreated much longer." I stand next to Glenn. "Merle Dixon. Is that the friend that gave you the antibiotics?"
"No, ma'am," Glenn says. "Merle is no longer with us. Daryl gave us those- his brother."
"Not sure I'd call him a friend," T-Dog says. He is in a lot of pain but he's holding himself together. Personally, I couldn't get stitches without being numb. It'd be too painful.
"He is today," she says. "This doxycycline might have just saved your life. You know what Merle was taking it for?"
"The clap," Glenn says. I notice him and Maggie look at each other. "Um, venereal disease. That's what Daryl said." I try not to smile at how uncomfortable he got. It was obvious that he had regret choosing those words immediately.
"I'd say Merle Dixon's clap was the best thing to ever happen to you."
"I'm really trying not to think about that." T-Dog says. I see Glenn walk away. Only moments later does Maggie follow. I sit down where Maggie had been.
After a little bit I decide to go check up on the kid. I walk in to see Rick by Carl's bed with Lori behind him. Hershel is standing on the opposite side of the bed.
"And with the swelling in his abdomen we can't wait any longer," Hershel tells them, "or he's just going to slip away." Lori and Rick both stand up. "Now I need to know right now if you want me to do this because I think your boy is out of time. You have to make a choice." I lean against a wall, staying quiet.
"A choice?" Lori says.
"A choice," Rick says looking at his wife. "You have to tell me what it is." She cups his cheek.
"We do it," she says. They embrace each other for a moment.
"Okay, get the corner of that bed," Hershel says after Patricia walks in. "Let's get the sheets down. Get the I.V. bag on the sheet. On three. One, two three." We all pick up the sheet with Carl on it. We put him on the metal rolling cart. They put the tools on the cart beside Carl and turn on a lamp. "Rick, Lori, you may want to step out." Suddenly we hear a car. Rick and Lori walk to a window. "You stay here with him."
Hershel, Lori, Rick, and I leave the room to head to the truck. When we exit the house Glenn, Maggie and T-Dog join us.
"Carl?" Shane says.
"There's still a chance," Rick tells him.
"Otis?" Hershel questions. Shane mumbles something but I can't understand it. It hurts knowing we lost Otis. He was a nice guy, he didn't deserve to die. I definitely don't trust him now. "We tell Patricia nothing. Not till after. I need her." He walks back into the house and I follow him.
I am sitting in the living room when Hershel walks back inside the house. Him and Rick are walking to the kitchen. I see Patricia standing there. I pull my knees up to my chest and close my eyes, trying to ignore the sounds of Patricia sobbing.
I met Otis when I was 12. Everytime I visit this farm he was the first person I wanted to see. Him and I were always really close. He was like an uncle to me. Last time I saw him I was eighteen. Visiting the east coast with my brother. Of course, we stopped by here. Now I'm nineteen and everything is different. We weren't super close. I wasn't close to any of them but they welcomed me like family. It's going to be completely different without him here.
I stand up from the couch and walk outside to a group of people. I sit on the railing of the porch.
"How is he?" an older man asks.
"He'll pull through," Lori tells him. "Thanks to Hershel and his people." I let out a sigh of relief. The kid got lucky.
"And Shane," Rick adds. "We'd have lost Carl if not for him." I look over and see Shane in overalls that are way too big for him and his head is shaved. Why did he shave his head? There was no reason to.
Their group speaks to each other while I watch. There's a lot of them, more than I expected. None of them seem to be a threat but that is too many people. Big groups cause trouble and we don't need that. Hell, we don't even know these people.
Beth adds a rock while we're all gathered around. "Blessed be God, father of our lord Jesus Christ. Praise be to him for the gift of our brother Otis, for his span of years, for his abundance of character; Otis, who gave his life to save a child's, now more than ever, our most precious asset. We thank you, God, for the peace he enjoys in your embrace. He died as he lived, in grace. Shanke, will you speak for Otis?"
"I'm not very good at it," he says. "I'm sorry." The guy was with him when he died. He should say something, even something small.
"You were the last one with him," Patricia says. "You shared his final moments. Please. I need to hear. I need to know his death had meaning." The poor woman is heartbroken. All she wants to know his death did some good. She loved him so much.
"We were about done," Shane says. "Almost out of ammo. We were down to pistols by then. I was limping. It was bad. Ankle all swollen up. 'We've got to save the boy'. See, that's what he said. He gave me his backpack and shoved me ahead. 'Run,' he said. He said, 'I'll take the rear, I'll cover you.' And when I looked back…" Him and Patricia make eye contact. I start messing with my dog tags. It has been a nervous habit of mine for the past couple weeks. Shane walks up to the pile and grabs a rock from the wheelbarrow. "If not for Otis, I'd have never made it out alive. And that goes for Carl too. It was Otis. He saved us both. If any death had meaning, it was his." Shane adds the rock to the pile.
"How long has this girl been missing?" Hershel asks. We're talking about how a little girl named Sophia is lost in the woods. Apparently she never came back to the highway.
"This'll be day three," Rick tells him. Maggie walks up to the truck and places down a map.
"County survey map," Maggie says. "Shows terrain and elevations."
"This is perfect," Rick says. "We can finally get this thing organized. We'll grid the whole area, start searching in teams."
"Not you, not today," Hershel says. "You gave three units of blood. You wouldn't be hiking five minutes in this heat before passing out." He then looks at Shane. "And your ankle. Push it now and you'll be laid up a month. No good to anybody."
"Guess it's just me," a man named Daryl says. "I'm gonna head back to the creek, work my way from there."
"I could still be useful," Shane says. "Drive up the interstate, see if Sophia wandered back."
"All right, tomorrow then," Rick says. "We'll start doing this right."
"That means we can't have our people out there with just knives," Shane says. "They need the gun training we've been promising them."
"I'd prefer you not carrying guns on my property," Hershel says. "We've managed so far without turning this into an armed camp."
"All due respect, you get a crowd of those things wandering in here…" Shane says. It's fair that he is worried about that. These days, you need a gun with you at all times. At least they'll have knives still.
"We're guests here," Rick tells Hershel. "This is your property and we will respect that." He puts his gun on the hood of the truck, Shane does the same thing. "First things first: set camp, find Sophia."
"I hate to be the one to ask, but somebody's got to," Shane says. "If we find her and she's bit? I think we should all be clear on how we handle that."
"You do what has to be done," Rick tells him.
"And her mother?" Maggie asks. "What do you tell her?"
"The truth," Andrea says. I notice Maggie and her father give each other this look.
"I'll gather and carry the weapons," Shane says. "Make sure no one's carrying till we're at a practice range off site. I do request one rifleman on lookout. Dale's got experience."
"Our people would feel safer," Rick explains. "Less inclined to carry a gun." Hershel nods his head. "Thank you."
"That stuff you brought," I say. "Got more antibiotics, bandages, anything like that?"
"Just what you've seen," Andrea says. Everyone starts walking away.
"We're running short already," Maggie says. "I should make a run into town."
"Not the place Shane went?" Rick says.
"No, there's a pharmacy just a mile down the road," she says. "I've done it before."
"See our man there, in the baseball cap?"
We all look at Glenn. He's helping Lori set up a tent. "That's Glenn," Rick says, "our go-to-town expert. I'd ask him along just to be cautious." With Hershel's approval Maggie walks off.
By the time I get back from walking around the farm it's already getting dark out. I walk inside the house. I decide to go into the room Carl is in to check up on him. I see Carl wearing Rick's hat while his dad is sitting beside him.
"Carl, this is Rowan," Rick says. I walk over and crouch down beside him.
"I like your hat," I say. He smiles at me. "I'd love to borrow it sometime." He stays silent but is still smiling. "Well, I'll let you get some
sleep. Goodnight, Carl."
I know it isn't that good but I'm learning to be a better writer.
-Salt
