Okay! New chapter time!

Belladonna925: she'll go back eventually but there's going to be quite a few chapters about Carlin, Nary, and Kiri first

SaraLostInes: yeah, their reunion will be awesome XD

Lucy Freebird: yeah, when I wrote this I argued both sides. On the one hand, I like writing Carlin's interactions with Daryl a lot, but on the other I really wanted a chance to delve deeper into Carlin and the twins' personalities on their own, so that ended up winning for now haha

Azalia Fox Knightling: yeah, it was stupid for them to leave the security of the camp. Both Carlin and Kiri knew that, but Nary (being the domineering one, of course) wanted to go, so off they went.

gurl3677: XD Daryl isn't very good at expressing his emotion haha

Chapter Seven

They stopped that night in a copse of trees somewhere around the Tennessee/Kentucky border. They didn't dare light a fire for fear of attracting dead ones, so they ate some of the canned food Shane and the others at the survivor camp had sent with them.

Nary and Kiri exchanged anxious looks, glancing briefly at Carlin as they sat in the dark Explorer and ate from their aluminum cans.

Carlin sighed, spearing some cold green beans with her plastic fork. "I'm fine," she assured them shortly. "Stop worrying."

"We just didn't know you were into that guy," Kiri explained. "I mean, as long as we've known you, you haven't really shown any interest in anyone."

Nary nodded. "And that guy was old."

"Not any older than Shane," Carlin pointed out.

Nary simply shrugged. "That turned out to be a dead end anyway. I'm pretty sure he was sleeping with Lori. He politely ignored all of my advances." She frowned. "I'm hotter than some middle-aged mom, right?"

"Of course," Kiri answered solemnly.

Her twin rolled her eyes. "Anyway, like Kiri said, we didn't know you were into him." She paused. "It looked pretty serious."

"It doesn't matter. It's over now anyway." Carlin didn't want to discuss it. It was painful enough just thinking about it in her head.

Kiri hesitated, both arms wrapped protectively around her little belly. "We'll come back," she promised. "After we get to New Harmony and find whatever we find, we'll come back to Atlanta. We'll come back to Daryl."

"Thanks," Carlin muttered, setting aside her half-eaten can of green beans. She had no appetite. She was exhausted but she didn't think she could sleep. It was going to be a long night.

They were off again by nine the next morning, waiting until it was suitably light before heading out. They passed the rusty-looking sign welcoming them to New Harmony, Indiana a little after noon.

The town of New Harmony was just as deserted as all the others the girls had passed through since the outbreak. Storefronts had been decimated, everything looted. Abandoned cars sat parked on all sides of every road.

"Do you remember how to get to Grandma's house?" Kiri asked in a voice hardly more than a whisper. The town gave them all the creeps.

"I think so." Nary didn't sound as sure as Carlin would have liked.

They spent the better part of an hour traversing the narrow, clogged roads of the town. There were dead ones aplenty, but they were moving slow and the girls had no problems bypassing them in the Explorer. A few turned and tried to follow them along the cracked asphalt, but it wasn't difficult to evade them.

Eventually, just when Carlin was about to give up entirely, Nary let out a relieved sigh. "Finally. Here's the street." She made a right turn, putting on her blinker out of habit, onto a street lined with old houses. It would have looked like a fairly upscale neighborhood if it weren't for the trash on the lawns, the abandoned cars on the streets, doors standing wide open where people had evacuated.

They were silent as Nary turned the Explorer into the drive of a pink house with white shutters. It was a long, ranch-style home with what had at one time been well-manicured flower beds on either side of the front walkway. Keeping their weapons ready (and sincerely hoping they wouldn't have to use them), the trio exited the car and walked up to the front door.

Nary reached out and turned the knob, and the door creaked open. Even though it was unlocked, it didn't appear to have been forced. "Hello?" she called cautiously. "Grandma? It's Channary and Kiri!" There was no reply.

A quick check of the house revealed there was no one there, living, dead, or undead. Kiri sat down heavily on the purple love seat in the living room, blowing a strand of hair off her forehead. "So what now?"

"They may still be around," Nary pointed out. "The house doesn't look like it's been looted or anything. There are clothes and stuff missing, like Grandma packed up and left or something."

Kiri pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Maybe she went to stay with Aunt Hester and Uncle Peter? They don't live far from here. It's worth checking out, at least."

"It was all I could do to get us to Grandma's house." Nary shook her head. "I'll never be able to find Hester and Peter's."

Carlin was looking under the end table beside the sofa. "What about this?" She held up an agenda, faded and obviously well-used.

"Grandma's address book!" Nary exclaimed, grinning. "That'll definitely have their address. Then all we need is a map and we should be fine."

So the girls scrounged up a road atlas and, with the twins' grandmother's address book in tow, piled back into the Explorer. As products of the electronic age, being solely dependent on a GPS that hadn't worked since the satellites went down shortly after the outbreak, the twins knew nothing about reading maps. Carlin, who had grown up in a much smaller town, was put in charge of navigating. Even so, it took them about two hours to make what should have been a twenty-five minute trip.

Eventually, Nary turned the car into the paved drive of a quaint two-story cottage with a wraparound porch and a tire swing hanging from a tree out front.

"Be on your guard," Nary warned the others, unnecessarily. They had been nothing but careful these last several weeks.

The three of them slipped quietly out of the Explorer, their weapons ready, and crept towards the house. Unlike the twins' grandmother's house, there were obvious signs of looting here. The front window in the living room was busted out, and the front door had been kicked in.

They moved cautiously through the house, checking for dead ones and any signs of Nary and Kiri's family. The entire bottom floor of the house was a disaster, having been stripped by looters, but the upstairs seemed untouched. Nevertheless, there were no signs of the twins' aunt and uncle.

"I guess-" Kiri began. They had reached the last bedroom at the top floor, only to find it empty. Kiri was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked.

"Put your weapons down," a small, feminine voice ordered coldly. "And turn around. Very slowly."

Carlin felt the familiar flutter of panic in her chest that came when dealing with unknown humans. She carefully laid her aluminum bat on the ground, next to Kiri's axe and Nary's hoe. Then they cautiously turned around.

The girl leveling the rifle at them couldn't have been more than eleven or twelve. She had strawberry blond hair and green eyes and a harsh expression. And then suddenly she lowered the gun. "Kiri? Nary?"

"Lauren!" Kiri exclaimed. "Oh my god! We thought you were all dead!" She threw her arms around the girl's shoulders.

The girl hugged back numbly. "We thought you were dead! What on earth are you doing here?"

"We came looking for you and the rest of the family," Nary explained, unable to keep a goofy smile off her face. "Are you staying here?"

Lauren shook her head, resting the barrel of the rifle over her shoulder. "Naw, we're staying with a group of survivors in the middle of town. There's a fortified warehouse we've been living in. The guy who runs the group is a little crazy, but it's really safe. Where's Sam? And Uncle Dan and Aunt Yvonne?"

Nary turned stonily silent and looked away, so Carlin said quietly, "They didn't make it."

Lauren turned to look at Carlin for the first time. "And who are you?"

"This is Carly," Kiri explained. "She was Nary's roommate at school. She was with us back in Groveland when..." She trailed off. There was no need to explain it anyway. Lauren already knew. "What about everybody here? Did you all make it? What about Grandma?"

Lauren slowly shook her head. "Dad got Grandma out of her place when it first started, but she didn't make it long. Couldn't move fast enough, you know? She was one of the firsts."

"What about everyone else?" Nary forced herself to ask.

The twins' cousin looked down at her shoes. "There's not many of us left. Dad, Grant, Megan and I are all that's left. They're all over at the warehouse."

"And what are you doing out here? All by yourself?" Kiri asked, putting her hands on her hips. "It's dangerous, Lauren!"

Again, Lauren shrugged. "I was coming to get some clothes. We've got no way to do laundry at the warehouse, so all of our clothes are really dirty. Dad didn't want me to come, but Marshall said I could."

"Marshall?" Nary repeated.

"He's the guy that runs our camp," Lauren explained. "Ex-marine or something. He's super strict and paranoid, but it's kept us alive this far. Most of us, that is. Come on, I'll take you there."

"Did you drive here?" Kiri asked as they went back down the stairs. Even if it was the apocalypse, an eleven-year-old driving didn't seem like a great idea.

"Naw, Dad wouldn't let me," Lauren explained. "I rode my bike. It's still faster than the munchers, and it makes less noise than a car anyway."

So they loaded Lauren's bike into the back of the Explorer among all their bags and supplies and headed out, with Lauren giving directions from the front seat. The warehouse was in the heart of the industrial park of New Harmony, a good thirty-three minute drive from the twins' aunt and uncle's house. It was a wonder Lauren had biked the whole way.

There were several automatic weapons trained on them as soon as the Explorer pulled up outside the fortified metal doors leading into the warehouse. The girls saw the guards posted atop the building, training their weapons directly at them.

"Don't shoot," Lauren called in a whisper that carried. "It's just me! Let us in!"

"Who's that with you?" a gruff, masculine voice called back from the roof. There was a distinct accent in the voice, but Carlin couldn't quite place it.

Lauren shaded her eyes. "My cousins and their friend. Now open the damn door before we get eaten by munchers!"

Kiri frowned at her young cousin. "Where did you learn that kind of language?" she demanded. "Your mom would skin you alive if she heard you talking like that."

"Well she's dead. Doesn't matter much now, does it?" Lauren replied dully.

Kiri looked stricken and might have said something else but there was a loud scraping noise then and the enormous metal doors were opened from the inside. Lauren ducked inside quickly, the bag she'd brought from her old house over one shoulder. The twins and Carlin had no choice but to follow her. The two burly men who'd opened the door shut it at once.

The inside of the warehouse was essentially one enormous, cavernous room. There were several tables set up in one corner like a kitchen, and there were makeshift beds set up everywhere else. There were three doors leading off from the main room, and a little walkway that surrounded the top but didn't seem to lead anywhere other than the roof.

There were about fifteen people in this camp, not including those on the roof. Most of them were young, no more than sixteen or seventeen at most. Besides the two men who had opened the door, there were only two women and one man.

The man and one of the women approached them immediately. The man had tears sparkling in his eyes. "Channary! Kiri!" he exclaimed before drawing them into a hearty embrace. "God, we thought we'd never see you alive again!"

"How on earth did you get out?" the woman, who had the same strawberry blond hair as Lauren, asked.

"Lots of running. We've basically been on the run since we left Orono forever ago," Nary muttered. "Thank god you're still alive though. Carly, this is my uncle, Peter, and my cousin Megan. This is my roommate from college, Carlin."

"Nice to meet you." Carlin shook their hands awkwardly. "I wish it could have been under other circumstances."

Peter's smile was grim. "I know what you mean. I-"

He was interrupted by a great hulking beast of a man tromping down the rickety metal stairs from the roof. He was wearing dirty army pants and a sleeveless undershirt. He was wearing an eye patch and smoking a cigarette despite the abundance of children in the badly-ventilated warehouse. He pushed right up to them, no idea of personal space. "And just who the hell are you?" he snarled in that strangely unplaceable accent.

Peter stepped in to try and smooth things over. "These are my nieces, Channary and Kiri Clark. And this is their friend Carlin."

"They came to find us," Lauren piped up timidly, half-hiding behind Megan.

"They're safe," Peter added.

The man sneered at them with his one good eye, blowing cigarette smoke right into their faces. "What the hell kind of names you got?" he demanded gruffly. "They don't sound American."

"Mine and Nary's names are Cambodian," Kiri tried to explain. The man looming over them was giving them all the creeps. "Our mom was a missionary nurse there years ago, and our dad was stationed there during the seventies. And Carlin's a foreign exchange student from Scotland."

The man seemed to think over this explanation for a while. For three full minutes there wasn't a single sound besides two kids about four years old playing with some battered toys in the corner of the room, watched over by the second woman. Finally the man dropped his cigarette to the concrete floor and crushed it with the heel of his army boot. "What the hell do you want with us?"

"We were just looking for our family," Nary said, her temper inevitably flaring. "Where the hell do you get off-"

She was cut off shortly as an enormous hand clenched around her windpipe. Her eyes bulged and she tried to get loose, but the man was too strong for her. Kiri let out an anguished cry and threw herself at the man, but he flung her aside like a rag doll, ignoring the fact that she was pregnant.

"Marshall, stop!" Peter practically begged. "She didn't mean any harm! She's just a kid! Please, let her go!"

The man seemed to think about it for a moment, and eventually he released his hold and Nary crumpled to the floor in a heap, coughing loudly. Carlin was at her side in an instant, helping her sit up, cradling Nary's head in her lap. She was overcome with an instant dislike; she hated this man even more than she hated Merle Dixon.

"Are they staying?" Marshall directed his question to Peter, as if the girls weren't worthy of him.

Peter shrugged meekly. "I guess so?"

Marshall shot them a look from behind his eyepatch, a look of deadly loathing, and stalked off without another word. He tromped back up the metal stairs and was gone. As the door to the roof closed behind him, there was a collective sigh as if everyone had been holding their breath in his presence.

Peter and Megan helped Kiri up while Lauren and Carlin got Nary to her feet. Then they all hobbled over to a series of blow-up mattresses and crates of clothing that had been set up in one of the corners.

"That guy is fucking crazy," Nary complained hoarsely as Carlin helped her sit on one of the mattresses.

Peter nodded sadly. "Yeah. He spent the last several years in Afghanistan. It must have done something to him. He was in New Harmony on leave when the outbreak happened."

"Why do you stay here?" Kiri asked bitterly, one hand on her stomach as if trying to feel if any damage had been done. "Especially with all these kids? He's liable to snap one day and kill everyone."

Megan shook her head, beckoning to one of the four-year-olds playing with the toys. A little boy got up and made his way over to her. "No, it's not like that at all. It's adults Marshall hates. That's why there's so few of us here. He doesn't trust us. Even those like Perry and Valerie," she gestured to the other woman and one of the men who had opened the door, "and they've been with him since the outbreak started. He doesn't mind the kids. He likes them better."

"The really little ones, she means," Lauren piped up bitterly. "He hates me."

"That's because you're too smart for your own good," her father told her, ruffling her blond hair. She jerked away in annoyance.

Megan fixed Kiri with a sad smile. "So you're pregnant? How far?"

"About four months or so, as best as I can guess," Kiri answered. "I know it's possibly the worst time ever to have a baby, but what can you do?"

"Make the best of it, that's all," Megan said, pulling the little boy to her. "Grant, do you remember your cousins Nary and Kiri? They're here to visit. And they brought a friend. This is Carlin. Can you say hi?"

The little boy grinned shyly and hid his face in Megan's arm, refusing to speak. "This is my son, Grant. He's a little shy sometimes."

"So what happened to your parents?" Peter asked softly.

Nary grimly repeated the story for her uncle and cousin, which they listened to with stony faces. With everything that had been going on lately, they must have expected it. When she concluded with her mother's suicide and their decision to head to Indiana, Peter sighed heavily.

"At least you girls made it out. That's more than a lot of people can say," he muttered. "You're safe here. We can set you up some pallets near ours."

Kiri frowned, hands still on her abdomen. "You can't be serious, Uncle Peter. We can't stay here! Not with that maniac!"

"He may be harsh and he doesn't really trust people," Peter conceded. "But he's really good at keeping us safe. It's our best option."

The pregnant blond looked around the warehouse with disgust. "This? This is your best option?"

Peter's look was grave. "Look, Kiri, I've got to do what's best for what's left of my family. I'd love for you to stay here too, but you're a grown woman. You make decisions for yourself."

Kiri glanced briefly at Nary, but her twin, after a quick look in the direction Marshall had gone, shook her head. "I'm staying with Uncle Peter and Megan."

Kiri looked at Carlin next. "I go where you guys tell me," she answered, trying to keep her thoughts from flashing back to Daryl and the survivor camp outside of Atlanta. It seemed like it had been ages since she'd seen him instead of a few days.

"Fine," Kiri finally agreed with an explosive sigh. "But if that guy tries anything else to hurt anybody, we're out of here. All of us."

So Perry and the other man, an African-American guy by the name of Walter, opened the big metal door again and Nary, Carlin, Kiri, Megan, and Lauren grabbed all of their belongings out of the back of the Explorer. Though they left the tent behind, they grabbed all the sleeping pads, pillows, and blankets they had been given at the last camp.

They were making their beds when a few of the survivors came over to introduce themselves. The other woman's name was Valerie, and she had been an elementary school teacher before the outbreak. Then there were Perry and Walter, who seemed to be good friends despite having not known one another before. Besides Grant and Lauren, there were about eight kids. Grant seemed to be the youngest at four. David, Perry's son, was seven. Brittany, Nicholas, and Tina, who were Walter's children, were nine, eleven, and fifteen. Faith, thirteen; Ryan, sixteen; Betsy, five; and Patrick, nine, were all orphans who had stumbled into the group somehow.

Despite her intense dislike for Marshall, Carlin couldn't help but appreciate his taking care of all these kids. She wasn't a kid person herself, so it wasn't something she would have been able to do.

Though Marshall didn't come down again for several hours, it wasn't long before Perry and Walter headed up to the roof and the two men who had been on guard duty came down. They were introduced as Ben and Oliver. It wasn't five minutes after they'd come down that Nary was flirting profusely with Ben.

"Guess she's not so caught up on Shane," Kiri whispered to Carlin.

There was no stove or oven (or electricity or gas with which to use them even if there had been), so cooking dinner became a primal activity. There were three doors leading away from the main part of the warehouse. One led to what had at one time been an office but was now Marshall's private sleeping quarters. Another led to a public restroom. The last led to an enclosed courtyard that was completely protected from the dead ones, even if it was very small. Here Peter and Oliver built up a fire and they cooked canned goods for everyone.

Carlin found herself sitting next to the man called Oliver while they ate baked beans and grilled chicken. He looked at her over his paper plate with warm brown eyes that crinkled when he smiled. "So, Carlin, right? Where are you from?"

"Scotland," she answered, pushing beans around her plate with a plastic fork. "I was doing an exchange program here when the outbreak happened. What about you?"

"I'm from Wisconsin originally, but I was living in Jersey when everything started," he explained. "I was traveling through New Harmony for business but I got detained, and I've been here since."

"And what is it that you do for a living, Oliver?" She was smiling too.

He set his empty plate aside. "I was a CPA. Now I'm a survivalist." He flashed her a grin. "I guess we all are."

There were only camping lanterns inside the warehouse, since the electricity hadn't worked in nearly two months. It seemed that, even though some of the kids belonged to Perry and Walter, it was Megan and Valerie's job to put all the kids to sleep. Now that the twins and Carlin were there, Megan asked them to help out too. It was easy for Kiri, who, especially now that she was expecting, had a warm and mothering nature anyway. It was a bit tougher for Nary and Carlin, but they tried. Eventually all the kids were in bed, even the older ones, and the adults could go to sleep themselves.

Carlin curled up on her air mattress underneath piles of blankets (it was getting much colder now that October was coming to a close and the warehouse certainly wasn't heated), but she couldn't sleep. She wondered what Daryl was doing.

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