"Hey, I forgot to tell you yesterday. I fixed your car." Glen was washing up in the bucket of boiled water while I sat cleaning my mom's .38 on the log next to Andrea.
My head came up. "You fixed it? You mean fixed it, fixed it?"
"Uh, yeah. I think so."
"Holy crap, Glen. Thanks. Ah... what was wrong with it?"
"You were out of gas," he said, one corner of his mouth turning up into a smile that looked a lot like a smirk.
T-Dog chuckled. I scowled at him. He shot Glen an amused look I had seen more than once on my ex (no, dead) boyfriend's face when I had struggled with his manual transmission. Something having to do with the technical limitations of women. I ignored it.
"You wanna take a little ride?" I asked Andrea quietly, after he'd moved away.
"You think that's a good idea?" Glen looked from me to Andrea and back again.
She looked over at me, her eyebrows up. "What did you have in mind?"
Two hours later we were pulling up back at camp, the trunk of the Mazda loaded with hot beer, a carton of Camel Turkish Silvers, enough nuts and beef jerky to supply a cattle drive, a Glock, a Marlin 1894 .44, a Colt .45, a Ruger Blackhawk, and a shitload of ammo. Plus about three pounds of stale candy bars. We were in excellent spirits. We'd backtracked up the road to a convenience store attached to a gun shop (only in Georgia, folks) that I hadn't had the balls to enter after dark the night I had broken down only yards away from Rick's camp.
We hadn't encountered a single walker. It was like Christmas.
Both had been looted, of course. The barred windows of the gun shop hadn't kept the needy out: the door had been run down, seemingly with a steamroller. But we'd found plenty odds and ends to make it worth our while, and enough ammo to keep us blowing away the dead until next Easter. Whenever that was. I'd guessed it was currently late August; Andrea thought it was mid-September. I felt a kinship with this woman: Lori had told me she'd lost her sister, and I'd gathered from Daryl that she'd had the same existential conflict about suicide I'd been going through. I'd wanted to ask her what had made her want to live, but didn't have the nerve.
"I'll never forget your face when you saw that Ruger," I said smiling, rounding the last curve toward camp.
"I didn't see it," she said, grinning in the passenger seat. "I was in the next isle. I thought you said you'd found a luger."
We were still laughing when I cut the engine. As we shut the doors the rest of the camp rushed us. Rick was boiling.
"Are you crazy?!" He shouted, grabbing Andrea by the arm. "You disappear without telling anyone? What the hell was worth your lives?"
"Back off!" She growled back before he was through talking, jerking her arm from his grip.
"Didn't you tell them where we went?" I looked to where Glen was standing, his hands in his pockets.
"Well yeah, but it didn't really help."
"We're only strong because we stick together," Rick said looking down, his thumbs hooked into his belt. He was such a cop. "You can't go sneaking off like that-"
"Relax, Rick," I said, pulling the trunk lock beneath the dash with a grin and circling around to the back. "It's your birthday." I pulled a plastic shopping bag out of the trunk, so heavy with ammo one of the handles snapped in my hand, spilling boxes of bullets on the pavement before I could catch it.
"Holy shit." At least T-Dog was appreciative.
There was a moment of awed silence.
"What the hell, people!" Spat Daryl finally. I looked over to find him, behind the others, draped with dead animals on a filthy string. A rabbit, three squirrels, and a rodent I couldn't name and would no sooner eat. "Y'all nearly went after them girls, didn't even know where they went. An' now you're gonna thank them like they're fuckin' Santa?"
"As I recall, you were the first to volunteer, Daryl," Lori said softly.
"Yeah, and I ain't thankin' them to get me killed, neither," he snarled. I met his eyes in surprise and found fury simmering there. Daryl was going to risk his life to come after us?
I wanted to be annoyed but I couldn't find it in me. He'd been the first to volunteer, Lori said. That strange feeling began to well up inside me again. I took in his ragged sleeveless shirt, the archaic weapon perennially in his hand, his tousled hair, the angular, angry face. He was all man. Braver and stronger than any I'd ever been with, I felt sure. He had been about to come after us. He would always come for you, if... I shoved the thought away. What was I thinking?
"What the hell is that thing, anyway?" I asked instead, nodding toward the curled-up dead thing on his chest. "Is that the chupacabra I keep hearing so much about?"
Someone repressed a snicker. I thought it was Glen.
"There's only so much canned stolen shit a man can stomach," he said, looking me dead in the eyes. "Bout time someone put something on the table you gotta work to get."
Ouch.
"Hey, that 'stolen canned shit' has kept you fed for three days, Daryl," Andrea said to his back as he walked away. Thanks, Andrea.
"Not no more. Gonna roast me some good ole' fashioned squirrel tonight," he shot back, disappearing behind the ruined wall to clean his kill.
After Andrea and I had apologized for sneaking away, the ammunition was distributed, and the guns passed around and appropriately appreciated. Rick seemed to forgive us for the scare, and in fact seemed to be in a great mood, telling Lori and Carl all about the structure and layout of the prison. Something about his demeanor didn't feel right, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was until we were about to sit down for dinner and Maggie knocked over a giant can of peaches. I watched the syrup spread into the dirt in dismay. I'd been looking forward to that, and it was the only can I'd had. But Beth exploded at her.
"Dammit, Maggie! Now we're going to have ants all over the place, on top of everything else!" She slammed down the unopened can she'd been carrying and started picking peach wedges out of the dirt. "It's not like there's an endless supply of this stuff, either," she fumed at the ground.
Maggie look startled. "I'm... I'm sorry, Beth. I guess I just wasn't paying attention."
"Yeah, well you should. You already put a hole in my shirt beating it against that damn rock this morning. Is there anything else you want to destroy while you're at it?"
Hershel put a steading hand on Beth's shoulder. "It was an accident, Beth," he said slowly.
Beth jerked up, eyes blazing. "Is that supposed to make it okay? Well it doesn't. No," she said as Hershel reached out for her again. "Just leave me alone." She stormed off up the ridge.
"What was that about?" Lori said after a moment of stunned silence.
I thought I knew. Buy as I looked around at the circle of blank faces, I saw that Rick look just as surprised as anyone else.
Daryl hadn't told him. I looked toward where he sat, skewering a parcel of rodent meat onto a stick, but he didn't look up.
I spent most of dinner wondering why Daryl hadn't told Rick about Beth. Maybe he hadn't gotten a chance. But that didn't seem like Daryl. When he wanted to do a thing, he went on and did it. Had he been reluctant to spoil Rick's optimism? That didn't seem like him, either. He didn't have any problem putting me in my place, at least.
When the remains of dinner had been cleared away and everyone began to settle in, talking quietly in pairs or threes around the fire, I climbed the ridge where Daryl had taken first watch, leaning against a tree and smoking one of the pillaged cigarettes.
"Hey," I said as I approached, wrapping my arms around myself, though the night was warm. "I uh... I was just wondering why you didn't tell Rick about Beth today. You said you were going to."
"Don't know there's anythin' to tell," he said, looking away.
"What?" The possibility that he might not have found me credible hadn't occurred to me. It stung. "You mean you don't believe me? Didn't you see her go off on Maggie over nothing earlier? That doesn't even make you suspicious?"
"What I seen is a girl get mad. Girls get mad." He shrugged.
"And what about my friend Amanda? And the guys I told you about on the way here?"
He gave me a hard look. "I ain't seen them at all. All I know's what you told me." He pulled at the cigarette.
"Are you saying you think I lied to you? Or you think I would just kill people, if there were any other way?" I looked at my feet, kicking the dirt. "You think I just murdered them? Or that I'm just crazy?" I wasn't sure I wanted an answer to that one.
"Naw, I jus' think you're a first-class moron, an' you proved it by takin' off all on your own today like you thought you was G.I. fuckin' Jane. You even think at all before you did that?"
That was a big gear shift. I thought we were talking about being infected.
"What?" I must have looked blank.
"You coulda gotten yourself killed. An' everyone who woulda come lookin' for ya, too."
"Daryl, nothing happened." I spread my hands.
"Oh, you knew that 'fore you went, huh? You a fuckin' psychic too, now?" His accent seemed to get thicker as he got worked up.
I sighed. He was really overreacting.
"Look, nothing happened. We didn't see even one of those things. Besides, I already apologized to Rick..."
It was the wrong thing to say.
"Rick ain't the only one here, ya know!" A couple of faces below turned up toward the sound of his raised voice. He turned away toward the water.
I stared at his back, furiously trying to work out why he was so angry.
Was he pissed that he almost risked his neck for a stupid girl? Was he jealous that we'd been the ones to find the cache of guns, and not him? Or had he been worried about me?
When he turned back, the terrible pain in his face gave me the answer. He hadn't just been worried; he had been terrified. Terrified that we'd die, that we wouldn't ever come back. That I wouldn't ever come back.
I felt an irrepressible urge to go to him. I wanted to close the short distance between us, wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him like I'd never kissed anyone before, tell him how sorry I was, that I would never put him through that again, that I was his. I wanted him to know how much I admired his strength, his fiery will to live, and his willingness to put his life in jeopardy for someone he cared about despite it.
But I was frozen where I stood.
"I'm sorry," I whispered. It was the only part of my absurd fantasy I could allow out.
He didn't respond. His eyes were still locked on mine, the plaintive pain in his face making his feelings as clear as if he had declared them aloud. Seconds passed between us in the gathering dark.
"I'm sorry," I whispered again, backing away. The words meant something entirely different, this time.
