Love is in the Air

XX

It would have been a beautiful day, if it wasn't for the zombie hordes and everything. Being an expert at sneaking around in forests, Daryl had a pretty easy time getting most of the zombies distracted from the main group in the woods and following him instead as he returned to the highway. He even had some time to enjoy the scenery, poking around at the little creek bed and skipping a few smooth pebbles just before the zombies got close enough to take a bite out of him. He called out for Sophia a few times, but the girl didn't answer. Could be she was scared of him. Or it could be one of those zombies was carrying her along in its belly. Probably the latter.

Daryl said goodbye to T-Unit or whatever his name was when he got back to the highway. A lot of the guy was already zombie chow, but what was left had become a full on zombie - there was enough left over to find him on the highway, baking and congealing into the asphalt, trying to drag himself along with the ragged stumps of his arms, most of his lower body gone. It was a mess. Human roadkill. Daryl shot him in the head with a crossbow bolt and braced his foot against what was left of the body as he pulled the bolt free again. "Adios, T-Dog," he said. "Probably luckier than the rest of us."

He wondered why sometimes people got totally eaten, and sometimes they just got bit a few times before turning into zombies. Seemed like it wasn't very consistent. Didn't God, or the scientists, or whoever was responsible for all this crap spend a little time thinking about the rules? Apparently not. Maybe this was what happened when people stopped following the rules. He remembered some preacher on TV talking about people turning away from God, trying to kill the big guy in the sky with philosophy and science. Like those would be enough to do the job if God really existed.

But maybe that was it. Maybe God was dead. Maybe the big guy in the sky had been gone for a while. The walking dead were just a sign that things were busted. Like cracks in the wall of a big old house, which was breaking down because nobody was tending it anymore and keeping everything in its place. Life, death – it was all mixed up now. It was all a big mess of cosmic roadkill, like T-Pain on the road there.

Daryl looked up into the sky before he got into the camper. "Ain't like you ever did much anyway.".

It was time to head out and find the ranch where the rest of the group was headed. Trying to drive backwards through all those cars scattered on the highway was a real pain in the ass, though. He wondered why people left their cars like that – was there some herd of zombies that came up on them out of the blue, like what happened to them earlier, so everybody had to scram? He would have thought the cars would be in rows, at least, not scattered all over the highway. If Merle had been here, he would have said it was like a bunch of women drivers had run off to handle their lady business. Of course, seeing as Merle had crashed four or five cars himself – mostly stolen – maybe that was hypocritical.

Either way, once he got past the cars, he found the place to turn off the highway and find the ranch that girl on the horse had been talking about. A winding dirt road went a little ways though the forest, which opened up to a white-washed house with a big porch. A pickup truck was parked nearby. Daryl saw some horses off in the distance, and a barn across some fields. The place looked pretty nice; no zombies in sight, either. It reminded him of a place he lived with his brother and his father, before they had to sell it off after their old man lost all his money on gambling and whores - Merle took after the old man, when it came to that kind of thing.

This place didn't have any pink flamingos or old tires lying around in the yard, though. But it was pretty close.

An old man opened the screen door and walked down from the porch when Daryl got out of the camper. "Welcome to my home," he said. "Your friends are already inside. My name is Herschel."

"No kidding. Like the chocolate?"

"No, that's Hershey. I'm Herschel Greene. Please, come inside."

"Camper's okay there in the front?"

"You ran over my begonias," said Herschel. "But the Lord teaches us to forgive."

"Uh, yeah, alright."

Inside the house, Glenn and Dale sat around the kitchen table with some other people – probably Herschel's family, Daryl guessed. He saw Rick and Lori in a bedroom, tending to their kid since he got bit by one of those zombies earlier. The kid was lying in bed even though he just had a bite on the arm, while Andrea – who had been shot by that chubby rifle-toting hunter guy – was sitting on a chair nearby, gasping for breath. "Excuse me," said Herschel, popping his head through the door where Daryl was looking, "perhaps the two of you could offer the bed to that young lady? I'd like to take a look at her."

"What lady?" said Lori, poking at her son's arm injury despite his best attempts to wriggle away.

"The blonde woman sitting in the chair there."

"Andrea," said Andrea.

"Andrea," said Herschel. "She's been shot in the stomach by Otis, has she not?"

"But my boy!" screamed Rick. "He's been bit! Andrea wants to die, anyway! She almost got herself blown up at the CDC building until Dale dragged her out – remember that, Daryl?"

Daryl shrugged, not wanting to get involved.

"I kind of want to live now," said Andrea. "I changed my mind."

Rick and Lori grumbled as they reluctantly let Carl get up from the bed – they had been practically holding him down anyway – and made room for Andrea to take his place while Herschel took a look at her injury. Daryl couldn't help craning his neck when Herschel held up her shirt, but he didn't manage to see anything. Stupid old man. He noticed Dale, who had just entered the room, shoot him a disapproving look. Daryl shrugged innocently. He was just concerned about his attractive blonde acquaintance, that was all!

After a moment of faint clucks and whistles, Herschel shook his head ominously. "It doesn't look good," he said. "I need medicine and supplies that we don't have here in order to treat her properly."

"What," said Daryl, "you some kinda doctor?"

"I happen to be a veterinarian, but that does not necessarily mean I can do anything to help your friend here. This young lady is no spring chicken."

"Hey!" said Andrea indignantly. "I'm a lot younger than you!"

"No, I meant literally. I'm best with chickens. I am a farmer, after all."

"I thought you said you were a veterinarian?"

"I am a man of many talents," said Herschel. "I can tie a cherry stem with my tongue, as well."

Daryl shuddered at the mental image. By this time, Glenn, Carol, and a couple of Herschel's family members had joined the rest of them in the bedroom, watching Herschel as he poked at Andrea's wound. Once Herschel finished with his inspection, he stood up and looked at his guests. "Maggie," he said, "could you go into town and look for some medical supplies? And perhaps one of our guests could go with you."

"Glenn'll do it!" said Rick. "He used to be a pizza boy. Good at running around with stuff balanced in his hands."

"Wait," said Glenn, "I'm not sure I want to-"

Herschel shook Glenn's hand. "Wonderful," he said. "It will be dark soon, so you'll want to make a quick return, before the both of you are ripped from your horses and devoured by a hungry mob of the undead. Still, I hope they have what I need at the CVS pharmacy," he said as he walked over to a desk and began writing out a list of items. "Even before the zombie apocalypse, it was such a pain to get anything there without a member's card..."

"I think there was some kinda medical station set up at the high school," said Otis. "Maybe they got something there? It's the least I could do after I shot her. Even though she shot at me first."

Andrea rolled her eyes at the comment.

"That's what you say every time you're hunting deer and accidentally shoot an innocent stranger and drag him bleeding to the ranch," said Herschel, his voice tinged with gentle admonishment.

"Fair enough."

"The medical station sounds like a good idea. But you'll need a partner, too. Would anyone like to volunteer?"

"Shane'll do it!" said Rick, slapping his friend on the back. "He's always up for that kinda thing."

"Wait, what?" asked Shane. "I don't even know what that-"

"Wonderful," said Herschel, shaking Shane's hand. "Just in case any of you are eaten alive by zombies before the night is through, it was a pleasure being acquainted with you all. Good luck."

Carol choked back a sob as the two groups got ready to leave the farmhouse. "Wait a minute!" she said. "What about Sophia? She's out there in the forest, all alone-"

"She'll be fine," said Rick. "She's just gotta hide under a rock or something. We need to get something to eat and then get some rest, anyway – I haven't gotten much sleep on the road."

The group mumbled in agreement as they filtered out of the bedroom, heading off in the direction of the kitchen. Herschel looked annoyed that they were all about to raid his fridge. But hey, thought Daryl, they were all his guests. They had to eat sometime. Daryl wondered if there was any beef jerky in any of the cupboards. Just as he was about to take a look, he noticed Carol, standing there with her lower lip quivering. He felt bad for the woman, even if she was still doing pretty good compared to T-Dog, relatively speaking. But she did lose her daughter.

Of course, maybe Sophia was still alive, but, well – who was he kidding? That girl was poop through a corpse by now. It was a sad sight to see Carol crying, even if she kind of creeped him out after he saw her beat her ex-husband's zombie face into mush like forty times in a row. Sure, maybe it was cathartic, but at some point the face is just gone, and you can stop beating. But he still sympathized. He had been thinking about Carol's loss while he was heading back to the highway earlier, and he had found something in the forest he thought might pick up her spirits. Now was as good at a time as any to give it to her.

"Here," he said, pulling a white flower out of his pants pocket. It was a bit crushed, and it smelled like sweat, but it was still recognizably a flower. "I picked this off the highway for you."

Carol sniffed and took the flower. "Really? That's so sweet of you." She smelled the flower and smiled tentatively. "What does it represent?"

Daryl was at a loss for words. He scratched his head and wracked his brains. Represent? He had just picked the thing because it looked kinda pretty. What the hell was she talking about? "Um, it's – well, it's uh," - he stammered, stumbling on his words - "it's some kinda Indian thing. Yeah, that's it. There was this old story – see, the Indians, they lost some kids or somethin', but then the flower grew where the kids were. Not that the Indian kids were dead – I'm not sayin' your kid is dead or nothin', I'm just sayin', with the kids, it's sorta like-"

"It's alright," said Carol with a smile. "I understand."

Daryl breathed a sigh of a relief. He wasn't so good with the storytelling. Merle was better at that, although his stories got kind of scary when he was tripping on whatever he had bought last from Murray, their local drug dealer. Carol looked like she was feeling a little better, so Daryl nodded and left her in the bedroom with Carl. Come to think of it, that kid had been looking at the two of them like he was really hungry or something. Definitely a good idea to leave the bedroom. Daryl's stomach grumbled. There had to be some beef jerky in the house.

XX

"So where are you from?"

Glenn almost missed Maggie's question, but it registered after he noticed the girl staring at him from the corner of his eye. He had been trying to avoid looking at her directly - not because he didn't want to, but because girls that pretty had a way of making him self-conscious. He had never been very smooth with the ladies, and this one was quite a lady. "Atlanta," he said. "What about you?"

"Here. Lived here all my life."

"Atlanta was a pretty cool place. I mean, before it turned into a death trap filled with zombies clogging every street. Not that it was much less crowded when everybody was alive. But people tipped pretty well, at least."

"Tipped?"

"Yeah. I used to deliver pizzas."

Maggie laughed. "There's our pizza place, right over there."

She pointed to a building to their left. A round, neon pizza sign hung inside the plate glass window, although Glenn doubted it would be glowing when the sun went down. While it was still afternoon at the moment, he wasn't looking forward to the evening. He had no evidence to support his hunch, but somehow Glenn felt like zombies were probably more active at night. It just seemed appropriate. That was when they could leap out at you from corners without you noticing until it was too late, after all. At least Maggie knew the way back. Rick had volunteered him because he knew his way around, whatever that meant, but it wasn't like some small town in the middle of the boondocks was the same thing as downtown Atlanta.

"Here we are," said Maggie. "The drug store."

Glenn was glad they were here. Hopefully, they could find what they needed and get back to the farmhouse before night fell. He had to look for some general medical supplies for Andrea and Carl's wounds, but Lori had also taken him aside earlier and asked him to look for some feminine products. A pregnancy test, and – if the plus sign turned up, he supposed – some morning after pills. He didn't have the heart to tell her that morning after pills only worked the morning after.

Or at least he thought they didn't. Glenn had never needed to do much research on that kind of thing, being a guy and all. And not a guy who got girls pregnant, either. He hadn't really been with any girls in the past, and while taking a job as a pizza delivery guy had given him high hopes about unexpected sexual situations, it turned out that real life didn't work quite like it did in the pornos. Glenn had even tried to make double entendres a few times when beautiful girls showed up at the door, but as he soon learned, lines like 'I have an extra big sausage' only led to a whole bunch of confusion about why he had gotten the toppings mixed up when the lady had clearly asked for ham and pineapple.

The two of them crept silently into the drug store and took a quick look around. The coast looked clear, Glenn thought. Time to focus completely on the shelves for the next few minutes; maybe it was best to look at the ones out here in the middle of the store and turn his back to that really dark back room over there. Yes, that seemed like the best idea. Glenn picked up a few things from the "feminine products" aisle, looking at the boxes in confusion. He had no idea what half of this stuff was for. Women were so confusing. Even when they weren't talking.

"What are you lookin' for?"

Glenn jumped at the feeling of a hand on his left shoulder, accidentally knocking some of the boxes to the floor. He dropped to his knees and tried to pick them up again, but it was too late; Maggie had already seen them. She raised an eyebrow as he fumbled with a pregnancy test boxed kit, along with a roll of condoms he had somehow picked up unintentionally. Thank God they were magnums, at least. "You know," she said, "if you got a girlfriend who's pregnant, maybe you should read those condom directions a little closer."

"What?" laughed Glenn. "No, I don't have a girlfriend. Don't be ridiculous!" Maggie frowned as he made a nervous hacking sound in his throat; this was getting more embarrassing by the minute. He nervously tried to place some of the boxes back on their shelves, although he was knocking more off than he put back on. "I just like condoms a lot, that's all. Sometimes I blow them up like balloons, if it's a slow ni-"

Glenn jumped at the feeling of a hand touching his right shoulder. Maggie was sure touching his shoulders a lot. He turned and looked at her, thinking she was making some kind of move on him, but then grew confused. She wasn't touching him. He turned and saw that the other hand belonged to a man standing beside him. That explained it.

"Grarrgh!"

Whoops. That was a zombie.

"Watch out! It's a zombie!"

Glenn stumbled back as cold fingers clutched at his shirt, trying to pull him closer as the zombie opened its stinking maw. His feet slipped beneath him as he tried to scramble back further, and he hit the shelving unit with a painful thud. The zombie drew closer, moaning with hunger. Just as it was about to sink its teeth into his throat, Glenn threw his roll of condoms straight into the zombie's mouth. The thing choked for a moment, its eyes widening in surprise before it finally managed to spit the condoms out again, giving Glenn and Maggie enough time to get back. "We need something to kill it with," said Glenn. "Did you bring a gun?"

"No, I didn't think we needed guns – nobody ever wanted to hang out in this stupid little town even when they were alive!"

Glenn looked around wildly as the zombie approached. It was knocking merchandise off the shelves as it swung its arms wildly, as if it could grab its prey if it tried hard enough, no matter how far away it was. Something on the floor caught Glenn's eye: a nail file! Suddenly, he was filled with a new appreciation for women's hygiene. He leaped forward, grabbed the file off the ground, and tried to pry it loose from its packaging.

"Hurry up, Glenn!"

"It's these stupid anti-theft packages they have nowadays! This plastic is unbreakable!"

Maggie tore the package from his grasp and opened it with one swift move. The zombie was almost on top of them now, and just before it attacked again, she clenched the nail file's handle in her fist and dove forward, stabbing the zombie repeatedly in the chest. Its jaws opened and shut angrily as she pounded the nail file's blade into its rotting flesh, tearing away chunks that spattered against her shirt and face. Glenn wrinkled his nose at the sight.

"Die, Mr. Willard, you judgmental zombie bastard!"

Apparently Maggie knew whoever the zombie used to be. Her attack was so ferocious that the thing hit the side of a shelf as it stepped backwards, tumbling to the ground and pulling Maggie down with it. Glenn dashed forward and tried to help her up as the zombie strained its head upwards, trying to bite her. "Go for its head!" he yelled.

"Oh, right."

The blade freed itself from the zombie's chest, and Maggie brought it up in a wide arc, almost catching Glenn accidentally as she plunged it down straight into the zombie's eye. She tore it out again, plunged it down, pulled up, thrust down, up, down, and, well – Glenn had to admit there was something kind of arousing about the whole scene. Finally, the zombie's writhing and twitching died down just as Maggie inadvertently dropped the nail file, which had become slick with gore. She sat on the corpse for a moment longer, breathing heavily.

"I think it's dead," Glenn said. "Uh – well, deader."

He helped Maggie up off the zombie's corpse. Which was a strange way of thinking about it, now that he thought about it. What was a zombie when it died again? A corpse corpse? Maggie wiped a couple chunks of zombie off her shirt and turned to him with a strange glint in her eye. For just a moment, Glenn thought she was about to attack him, too – but then her lips twisted into a wry smile.

"Something about all that stabbin' got me into a mood."

"A mood?"

"A mood."

"What kind of mood?"

Maggie looked around the floor for a moment. "You still got those condoms?"

Score.

"Really? You'd want to do it with me? Why?"

Glenn realized that a stupid thing to ask, seeing as it made him sound like a total loser.

"I dunno," she said, looking him up and down. "You're a guy, I guess. Not many of those left."

It was the nicest thing he had ever heard.

As the two of them leaned into each other and embraced, Glenn felt the moist, room-temperature chunks of corpse flesh still remaining on Maggie's shirt, pressing against his body as her tongue pressed against his own. He felt happier than he had felt in a long time. And he was feeling something else, too. There was just something about those pregnancy tests, Lori's abortion pills, and the dead guy, Mr. Willard, lying the floor; or maybe it was just that gorgeous sunset outside the store windows, bathing them in a soft orange glow that helped mask the blood streaks on Maggie's face. Whatever the reason, there was definitely love in the air.