The radio shack sat high on a hill of cleared farmland with a winding dirt path that headed up there. It was a thick bluestone cottage with windows and doors boarded up on the outside on the ground floor. It was one-storey, if you didn't count the attic, with a taller rounded building with a huge antennae sticking out one side that was all stone and whose door was also nailed over with boards. WALKING DEAD INSIDE was painted on several of the boards in white paint. A wooden sloping roof off one side protected logs from the rain and there was the edge of a motorcycle he could see behind it.
"Anyone up there could pick us off from awhile away with a good rifle," said Hershel as they approached.
"Then we won't all go up to it," said Rick. "Daryl, Andrea, you're with me. The rest of you stay at this distance."
"I want to go save Sophia," said Carl stubbornly.
"You have to stay with us," said Lori, hugging him to her.
"I should go," said Beth. "I knew the radio operators. They might still be there. They might have let pop play just to please So ... the little girl."
Hershel's lips thinned at that but he didn't say anything but, "Good luck," with a quick clasp on her shoulder.
Daryl didn't wait to hear more arguments. He just headed over to the front gate that was partially opened and looked down at the motorcycle tracks that headed up the path. They were recent. He started up the path, followed by Rick and the two women, though he kept his eyes mostly on the house.
There was an attic window that wasn't boarded up, though, and it stood on a vertical bit of wall above where most of the rooftop sloped away with red tiles. The guttering had been pulled away on that side, but there was no ladder nor things underneath it and it would've been a high seven foot jump to grab the eaves. What worried him were the cross-shaped holes someone had dug out of the wooden walls up in the attic, that would make for good firing lines.
There looked to be a few trenches dug here and there, though they were too shallow to hold walkers, so he wasn't sure what their purpose was. A few of them had camouflage nets over them, though, and that made his skin prickle.
"No one draw," murmured Rick. "We're not going to win a shoot out."
Daryl nodded, glad that Shane was dead because there'd be a chance he'd draw. When they were mostly to the house, Daryl started breathing a little easier. Maybe the place was just crawling with walkers – he tried not to think of Sophia as one – or maybe no one was on look out. Or maybe the survivors weren't planning on killing them. Either way, if they hadn't been shot by now it was a good sign.
"Those signs might just be a trick," whispered Andrea. "They'd discourage a lot of people from looting and if they did break in, they wouldn't be expecting an armed response. Maybe we should do the same wherever we end up."
"Let's just get out of here first," whispered Beth.
There were footprints heading back and forth from where the motorcycle was parked that didn't go up to the doors but instead stopped by someplace where something soft had brushed the soil. Rope? A rope ladder, maybe? The verandah was made of wood and looked like it'd creak. In fact, a lot of dead, dried leaves had blown across it – or been placed – and they'd snap as well. Besides, the windows were bricked up from the inside.
Daryl pointed up at the sloping roof. That was their best way in. He went over to Rick and leaned in close to whisper, "I'm a better climber than you."
Rick narrowed his eyes at the roof, then nodded and laced his fingers together to give Daryl a boost. Daryl gripped the side of the roof, testing it, but it felt secure. It'd sure been made of study stuff, and he hauled himself up, slowly swinging his leg up and over it. It made his old crossbow bolt wound ache and that reminded him of Sophia.
Don't get your hopes up, he told himself, as he slowly eased himself forward along the tiles.
He could hear someone moving inside.
His heart sped up. It sounded like a child. Oh god, did it sounded like Sophia.
He crept forward some more and peered in through the gap in the shutters. There was no window glass beyond it, though he glimpsed a rather nasty looking silenced sniper rifle sitting on a bedside cabinet only half a foot away from the window. He swallowed thickly, glad that there'd been no look out, and hooked his fingers into the gaps in the shutters, settling his crossbow across his chest yet still strapped over his arm, ready to grab it if he had to.
Then he pulled open the shutters like he was ripping open a bandaid.
It was Sophia.
Pale blue, dead eyes regarded him, though she was cleaned up and looked almost healthy but for those eyes. She stared at him, unblinking for a moment, then took a halting step forward, just as she had that day at the barn. He grabbed at the crossbow and she darted away, faster than he'd seen her move before, though not supernaturally fast. Just real quick.
Then there was movement from his left and a figure bashed into him, hands slamming into his chest, and he figured that this was it. There'd be teeth soon and pain and not much else. But then he was falling backwards, overbalancing, and he slammed against his tiles, his head cracking against them, and everything went dark for a moment, then he was sliding down and he realised that there was compacted dirt beneath him and he was going to land on his head.
Then someone had him by the boot and he looked up to see a woman with dead brown eyes regarding him, lips slack and slightly parted, and he knew she'd haul him in or bite down on his leg, but then he realised that she was making eye contact, she was looking at his eyes, and that wasn't something the walkers did.
"Daryl!" shouted Andrea, down below.
He glanced down and saw them spreading out, moving back so they could see him and her, and then they drew their guns.
She let his foot go and ducked. That wasn't what walkers did.
His momentum checked by her original grab, he gingerly started to get up.
Then she was back up and she had the sniper rifle in her hands, arms braced like she knew how it could kick, and she'd ducked behind the wall. "Get off my property!" She had an Alabama accent.
She fired a warning shot. It'd been quietened by the silencer but it was still loud enough to make his blood curdle.
Daryl glanced down and saw the others scamper for cover beneath the verandah and realised that he was still standing there on the tiles. Of course, if she were going to shoot him, she'd have done it already, and cold-blooded murderers don't grab your leg and keep you from falling when you've just attacked them. So he took a risk. He took off his crossbow, slow so she could see him, though faster than he probably should have because he was angry that she'd had Sophia all this time, and maybe a cure, and hadn't told them. He tossed the crossbow down to the ground.
"Daryl, you all right?" called Rick.
"Yeah, I'm all right." Daryl eyed the woman with her black curly hair cut short past her ears and her dead, brown eyes.
She looked pretty healthy too aside from the eyes and the fact he could make out the edges of fangs top and bottom as she gritted her teeth and looked at him.
"You a vampire?" asked Daryl.
Her eyes widened and she chuckled bitterly. "Yeah, I'm a vampire, so if you step a foot closer I'm gonna drain the blood from your bones." Her talk revealed more of her teeth and he saw they didn't look dainty like vampire fangs. They looked more like a big cat's. Like someone whose teeth could tear your meat off. Besides, her hands had been sunlit when she'd grabbed his leg.
"We don't want any trouble," said Rick.
"Yeah, I hear you," she said. "That's why I ain't shot you yet so you all play nice and head back down to the road and I won't trouble you with a bullet."
"How about we just introduce ourselves?" Rick asked, stepping back into view, the gun in his hand.
"I know all about you, Rick," she snapped. "I know how you were gonna string up some kid you tortured based on no evidence."
"If you knew that, you know we didn't shoot him," said Rick. "You with his group?"
"Don't have to be to think what you almost did was wrong."
"How'd you know what we almost did?" asked Daryl.
"I listen and I learn," she said.
"We're hear about the message from Sophia," said Rick. "We just want to know if she's all right. Can we just see her? Check that she's okay?"
There was movement behind the woman and then Sophia peeked around her shyly. "Please don't hurt them," said Sophia, tugging on the bottom of the woman's shirt.
"That Sophia?" asked Rick, shifting weight from foot to foot.
Daryl just stood there, content to let Rick talk. If he angered her, maybe the woman would point her gun at him and away from Daryl and that'd give Daryl a chance to grab the gun. Besides, he didn't want to scare Sophia away. She was alive. He'd found her. But how could she be alive?
"Nope, just a girl who looks like her," said the woman. "I don't want any trouble but you're the lynching kind. That boy weren't a good boy but you couldn't know that but you were going to kill him anyway. Hell, with a few nice words and a safe place, he might've turned over a new leaf. People turn all kinds of ways these days."
"We're just here for the girl," said Rick.
"Forget about it, no kid-killing group's a place for children."
"We didn't kill him," said Andrea. "We let him go."
"You all agreed to kill him, 'cept for the old man," said the woman. "I'd snuck by when you were talking about it and I waited by the barn to see if you'd do it and the only reason you didn't was because your boy walked in and shamed you."
"You're right," said Rick, nodding. "He shamed me and I realised I was wrong to do what I was gonna do. We were just scared, that's all. Scared and trying to protect our own."
"Well, there ain't any of your own in here," said the woman.
"I'm looking at Sophia right now," said Daryl.
The woman snapped her glare back at him.
"You were really going to kill a kid?" asked Sophia.
That made Daryl feel guilty and damnit he shouldn't have to feel guilty. "He'd shot at us first and he weren't no kid."
"That's Sophia, all right," said Rick. "And we're not going to leave without her."
"Then you're not going to leave," said the woman. "I got one of your own right here in my sights and unlike you's I got evidence that you're bad people. You're the killing kind and I gotta protect my own."
"She's not yours," said Rick. "Her mother's waitin' for her and she's been real messed up since you stole her daughter from her. We all thought she was a walker."
"You wearing contacts?" asked Daryl. "Cause somethin's wrong with your eyes."
The way she looked at him made him realise that his guess about contacts was wrong.
"So you have a cure," said Daryl.
"Get off my property," she said breathlessly, reaching to draw the shutters closed.
The conversation was over. The toing and froing was pointless. He should've known that from the start. There was only one thing left to do. Daryl charged, hoping he hadn't misjudged her.