"Carol?" She rose from behind the car into his line of sight. Daryl stood frozen, his body rigid with surprise and tension. She splayed her hands, holding them out from her body to show she wasn't carrying a weapon, and moved out onto the open concrete. His face was nearly white beneath all the dirt.
She wanted nothing more at that moment than to run to him and throw her arms around him, but something in his posture told her to hold back. "Daryl, I'm okay -" but he interrupted her.
"What the fuck are you doin', tryin' to get yourself killed? I coulda been anybody." He took two steps toward her and stopped. "Ain't safe out here. We already lost so many, you can't be that stupid. Governor could have more people we don't know about. Where's your weapons? Ain't you learned better than that?"
She tried again, "Look, I'm just fine…" and he threw a hand up, cutting her off.
"Shut it."
He opened his mouth, and a torrent of words poured out of him, more than she'd ever heard him say in one go, a nearly incoherent stream of anguish. Whatever had happened, all she could do was remain as still as possible and ride out the storm of Daryl's turmoil.
Out of his ramblings she picked up some threads of meaning - the prison once again attacked by the Governor, walkers, everyone scattered to the winds. He had come away from there with only Beth, and the girl wasn't doing well, apparently having retreated back into her mind as she had done once before, after Shane had forced the revelation of what her family had been concealing in their barn.
They were both so distracted they nearly missed the sound of lurching steps until three walkers stumbled around the side of the house. Daryl whirled and fired off a bolt, embedding it in the skull of the closest. Carol dragged her knife free of its sheath and waited until he stepped clear, then drove her foot into the knee of the one closest to her, toppling it to the ground. Daryl raised the empty crossbow and smashed in the head of the one still upright, and Carol went in low to stab her knife up under the jaw of the one at her feet.
"Inside," Carol said, breathless, and Daryl nodded and followed her into the house.
"Get your things, we're leavin'." He grabbed her arm and half-pushed her toward the pile of bedding on the couch, moving to scoop up the few items she'd left on the table. Most of her supplies were still in the car, in the event she'd need to beat a hasty retreat.
"Wait just a minute, Daryl. Where are we going? Back to the prison?"
"Shit, ain't you been listenin'? Ain't no prison left, Carol, what the hell d'you think I been tryin' to tell you?"
The prison was gone? Somehow that detail had failed to get through to her. She had been too caught up in watching him, trying to read what lay behind his agitation, bemused by the gift of simply having him within reach again.
"I'm sorry, Daryl." You weren't making much sense. "I - I think I just wasn't able to focus on everything you were saying. Can we sit down for a minute, and you can tell me again what's happened?"
"No time for that. I gotta get these supplies back to camp. Bob's got a gunshot wound that ain't gettin' any better, and I only came out to try to find some antiseptic, antibiotics, stuff like that. Got some peroxide and rubbing alcohol, and a bottle of pills that says it's supposed to reduce fevers, but that's all. Maybe you can figure out what to do for him." The urgency of the need focused him, brought him back to something like normal. It helped Carol, too, damping the siren that wailed in her brain, no home. Her family, missing or dead. The children. It all felt sickeningly familiar.
But Daryl was beside her, and there was work to be done. She'd figure out the rest of it as they went. She grabbed her bag and began stuffing her few belongings inside.
Daryl led the way, back toward wherever it was he'd left the others. Sasha, Bob, Maggie and Beth - so few, Carol thought, not knowing whether she should grieve for the rest, or hold out some hope. She kept the station wagon close behind him, trusting him to get them both to their destination.
Some miles down the road, she spotted a condominium development, and flashed her lights to signal him. He immediately pulled over and waited for her to come alongside.
"We should check out these places for meds for Bob," she said, and he swung an arm to motion her ahead and waited for her to pull into the drive before guiding the bike in behind her.
"Why here?" he asked, curiously, as she got out of the car.
"Single story, plus that silly 'Grandma' thing on the door - suggests older folks, and the elderly tend to stock up and hoard medication, even after they quit taking it." She checked her weapons and moved toward the front door of the first unit, not even needing to look to know he was right behind her.
"Smart," he said, and Carol felt a flush of pride.
"We'll see. Just thinking my way through things, like you taught me," she said, glancing over at him. Lessons like that had kept her safe through the days on her own. She'd have to remember to thank him, once they got where they were going.
The door gave easily to Daryl's kick, and a bolt from his crossbow downed the first of the condo's former residents. As he reloaded, Carol stepped to the side and slammed her knife solidly into the eye socket of a second. He nodded in approval as she wrestled the knife free, and said, "You never needed my help with the thinkin' part. That's all you."
They swept the rest of the place and found it clear, and Carol headed into the bathroom to check the medicine cabinet. Lipitor, a vial of tiny nitroglycerin pills - she took the latter and left the former, figuring high cholesterol was the least of their problems these days, but the heart medication might do someone some good down the road and would take barely any room. Finally a bottle labeled "Keflex" came to hand, and she smiled and called to Daryl, "Got it." She went into the bedroom and checked the bottles on the bedside table, but none of the names was familiar to her, and she didn't want to drag along anything more than was going to be useful.
Daryl had scoured the kitchen and come up with some canned goods and a couple of unopened boxes of cereal.
"Don't suppose you found a bottle of milk to go with that?" Carol said, teasingly. "I never could stand to eat my cereal without milk." Her attempt at humor seemed to pass right by him.
"Time to go," he said brusquely. "Don't wanna get caught out here after dark."
Once they got to the makeshift camp, Carol felt even more tension. Maggie obviously had been told something of what Rick had done, and why, and was distant and wary. Sasha hugged her, unexpectedly, and escorted her quickly to the tent where Bob lay flushed with fever, his eyes glazed.
The bullet had gone straight through the meat of his shoulder and missed the bone, which was lucky, but it had clipped a sizeable piece of flesh from him and would likely be a long time healing. They hadn't been able to keep it very clean, and it was obviously infected. Carol sniffed carefully at the wound, and was relieved when she didn't detect even a hint of the spoiled-meat smell of gangrene.
With Sasha assisting her, Carol flushed the site with peroxide and probed it for debris, and Bob's face was gray and drenched with sweat by the time she was satisfied. "What have we got to cover this?" she asked Sasha. The young woman handed her a torn length of a sheet, the remainder of which they had already used for dressings. They would need to do another run soon to find more materials for wound care if they were going to get him healthy again, Carol thought. Meanwhile she bound up the shoulder as best she could and dosed him heavily with the antibiotic and a couple of the fever reducers.
"You have no idea how happy I was to see you come in with Daryl," Sasha said. "I think we could have done this without you, once Daryl got back with what he found, but it makes me feel better to have someone here who has some idea what they're doing. Not to mention…" Her voice trailed off, as though she was hesitant to go further. "He's needed you here. It's been… hard on him."
"You mean Daryl?" Carol was mystified. Daryl was about as competent at dealing with crisis as anyone could be.
"He's been a mess, Carol. He's not talking to any of us any more than he absolutely has to, and I'm not even sure he's slept since we left the prison. It's like he thinks it's all on him to keep us alive, and he can't let his guard down for even a second. I don't think he really trusts me, and Maggie and Beth and Bob… well, I'm just saying it's good you're here. Maybe you can get him to at least let us take watch so he can get some sleep, before he passes out from exhaustion."
They sat with Bob for a while longer, until he fell into what seemed to be a restful sleep. "Thank you for telling me, Sasha," Carol said. "I'll see what I can do - although I'm not sure I'm the person he'll listen to right now."