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He once thought that with the dead walking around like they'd inherited the earth he'd stop being afraid of things that go bump in the night. The same things that frightened him before the turn had become such a part of his reality that it seemed silly to worry about what imaginary creature might be lurking under the bed when there were monsters all around them.

After Sophia stumbled out of the barn, Carl had stopped caring completely. He stopped believing in stupid kid stuff like magic and miracles and heaven. He no longer wondered what treasure was waiting at the end of the rainbow because he'd seen it now, and he knew: it was bloodstained and dirt splattered. There were no such things as guardian angels, instead he believed in the 9 millimeter in his holster and the speed and accuracy with which he could draw and fire.

But months had passed since then, perhaps even years, and still he saw ghosts.

First it was Dale, a dark red smear in the periphery of his vision reaching out to him, wide-eyed and gurgling. Shane appeared soon after, though it was easier for Carl to look past the clean, black scorch-mark between his eyes than Dale's spilled entrails. At first, he was always at his shoulder, reminding him forcefully to line up his sights, and to grip the pistol firmly in his left hand while gently squeezing back against the trigger with his right. But Carl was a good shot, and after a while he simply hung back, nodding grimly as each round sunk into his target with a similar telltale scorch-mark, like a brand.

Lori never came to him, though sometimes in moments of weakness he wished she would. She was too busy haunting his father, and besides-there was nothing left unfinished between them. She had died, and he had ended it. It was real, and it had been final.

It was a fact of life that Carl had accepted: the dead would walk among the living no matter how many times they tried to put them in the ground, and like the dead, guilty consciences had a way of rising from their graves. He didn't waste time chasing them down, or try to eke out meaning where there was none. It nearly drove his father mad-striving to make sense of why they were serving sentences for crimes they'd had no choice but to commit-but Carl had long since understood. They were not men who slew monsters; they were all monsters in their own ways, and with that understanding he found that he was no longer afraid of them. They just became a part of him, like a second layer of skin.

No, the things that frightened him now were not the same things that had frightened him as a child. He'd once heard it said that the root of all fears was simply a fear of the unknown, and there was little left in the world that could surprise him. Instead, the thing that unsettled him most wasn't bloody or decaying or monstrous at all.

He caught his first glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye one cool clear morning, not as she had been, with torn flesh and hollow eyes, but as she might have been if he'd actually found her hiding out somewhere in the forest like he'd once hoped, instead of locked away in that dark, decrepit barn with the same monsters that had undoubtedly turned her into one.

Her hair had grown longer, her face was fuller. Her eyes were bright and no longer fearful. He still remembered the way she clutched his hand in terror back in Atlanta and he found himself wondering, if he'd been holding on to her like that on the highway, keeping her still and hidden for just a second longer, would she still be with them? Or was her fate inevitable? Would she have been torn from his hands regardless of what he did to stop it, and left him holding nothing but air? simply vanishing in a pillar of smoke, as Daryl's mother had vanished? It was circuitous questions like these which had no answers that he'd long ago given up asking, but now as she smiled and waved at him from beyond the fences he was haunted by them again.

If she had lived, would he have turned out differently?

She called out to him, and her voice was like a familiar piece of music playing behind a closed door at the end of a very long hall. Then she turned and ran once more into the woods, this time laughing and bidding him to follow her.

He never did. He knew too well what dwelled on the other side of those fences, and it certainly wasn't Sophia. Whichever plane her spirit and Shane's and his mother's dwelled in now, who they had been in this one was gone, and they were never coming back.

Instead he shouldered his rifle and took aim at the walkers that were clustered around the gate, gnashing and clawing at the each other like rabid dogs. He fired, and the shot rang out sharp and clear in the still morning air, cutting through the old familiar tune. A flock of birds that had found rest in one of the trees beyond swelled like a black cloud against the sunny sky, cawing angrily as they took flight.

Warily, his eyes slid back to the edge of the forest where Sophia had stood, but there was nothing more to see but the trees. Satisfied, he turned on his heel and walked away.

The world was quiet once more.