Ed hit a cement road block on the highway twenty miles outside of town. Abandoned cars lay strewn in all directions on the other side of it, and dozens of those undead creatures lurched between them. "Shit!" he muttered, and quickly reversed the sedan, spun it around, and sped back down the road.
They ended up driving all over the place, looking for a side route to pick up the highway further up. Carol wanted to ask if Ed had any idea where he was going, but she didn't dare. He burned through his half- tank of gas and stopped to refill it from one of the four, five-gallon cans he'd brought.
Ed left the empty canister by the side of the road, slammed the trunk shut, and got back in the car, muttering, "Why'd you bring the goddamn ironing board! Ain't got no room in there!"
"Sorry," Carol said, not knowing why she'd done it herself. "You can take it out and leave it."
"Then I'd have to dig it out." He cranked the engine and drove on.
[*]
"Look at the tits on that one!" exclaimed Merle, taking a swig from the Southern Comfort bottle and pointing to the screen of the portable DVD player. He put the bottle down and tossed some trail mix into his mouth.
Daryl looked up from the handgun he was cleaning. The parts were scattered on the coffee table. "Yeah. Nice," he agreed, but he was getting really tired of the porn marathon. It was just the same damn sort of thing over and over. At least whenever Merle decided to jerk off, he took the DVD player back to the bedroom. But the rest of the time he just left it playing constantly on the coffee table, switching out discs here and there, and burning through batteries. Most of the time he watched, Merle was either getting drunk or high.
"Don't like anything smaller than a D, myself," Merle said. "How 'bout you?"
"They's all good," Daryl said as he reassembled his handgun. "Never met a tit I didn't like."
Merle laughed. "Guess beggars can't be choosers."
Daryl stood up and went over to the kitchen, which opened on the living room. He looked in the cupboards again and made a mental inventory. He looked out the window. He'd opened up the shutters to let in the light. There weren't enough geeks around here to worry about. He'd latch them at night, though. "Think I'm gonna go huntin'," he said.
"Why? We ain't near out of food yet."
"Just think I'm gonna go."
Daryl came back four hours later after killing three squirrels and two geeks who had probably been renting one of the several cabins along this ridge. Other than the stray geeks, nothing had changed in the forest, not really. The world might be going to shit, but the wilderness was still the same.
He sat down on the couch next to Merle, whose head was bobbing a little, whether because he was high or drunk, Daryl didn't know.
[*]
Night fell, and the Peletier family ended up sleeping in the car at the side of the road. Thank God it had dropped to sixty-five degrees for the night, though it was probably close to eighty in the car, with the windows rolled up except for a single crack in the window to let in air. Sophia stretched out on the backseat, her feet wedged beneath Ed's leaned back front seat.
They awoke an hour later to Sophia's scream. One of those creatures was growling at her window and sticking its fingers through the sliver of space at top.
Ed grabbed his hand gun from the console, threw open his door, and ran around to shoot it. "Quit your goddamn screaming!" he ordered Sophia when he got back inside the car. More frightened by her father than by the prospect of another monster approaching, the girl fell silent.
Ed drove on, looking for a way back on the highway toward Atlanta. Sophia, mercifully, went back to sleep. Carol's fingers curled around the side of her seat and her eyes darted in all directions for signs of monsters.
Ed dozed off at the wheel for a moment, skidded off the road onto the grassy shoulder, and woke up when Carol grabbed the wheel. The car jerked to a halt as he slammed on the brakes. She let go of the wheel, afraid he'd be angry that she'd taken over. He straightened out the car on the shoulder and clicked it off. "Too damn dark," he said. "We'll figure out how to get back on the highway somewhere tomorrow."
Carol glanced in the back seat. Sophia stirred, but she didn't wake up.
Ed leaned back his seat and closed his eyes. He slept with the loaded hand gun on his lap. Carol didn't sleep at all.
[*]
Merle was passed out again. Daryl wandered into the study to look at the books. He pulled out a biography of Robert E. Lee, sat down in the large leather chair behind the desk, and lit a kerosene lamp he'd found in the cabinet under the kitchen sink.
The book had lots of pictures and captions, and his eyes settled on a copy of one of Lee's letters. Something in the words troubled him: "I have been unable to make up my mind to raise my hand against my native state, my relatives, my children and my home. I have therefore resigned my commission in the Army." For some reason, those damn words made him think of the way he'd turned on and deserted Darlene.
Daryl shut the book with a whap and grabbed the Shooter's Bible instead. He paged through that until his eyes grew heavy. Then he turned the lamp down, lay his head on the desk, and fell asleep.
[*]
Cars honked wildly. They'd found the highway at last, around noon the next day, but after thirty minutes of driving, they hit a traffic jam. The air conditioning in Ed's sedan had stopped working, and they had all the windows rolled down. He turned off the engine, and all three slipped from the car.
Carol tried to share some of their food with another family – a woman name Lori and her son Carl, and a friend of theirs named Shane. But Ed wasn't hearing of it. The boy smiled at Sophia, and Sophia smiled back. Carol's heart cinched at the small kindness.
Carol recognized Shane from the police interview on the television, but she didn't mention the fact. Ed would probably think she was flirting with him. In fact, she avoided looking at Shane as much as possible as they stood waiting and hoping traffic would move again. Still, she felt reassured by his presence, and especially by the badge clipped to his belt and the gun at his hip. Her eyes scanned the highway for any sign of those undead creatures.
"There's no way we're getting to Atlanta," Shane said to Lori. "We need to think about making camp somewhere where these things can't reach. On higher ground."
"We'll go with you," Carol blurted, and Ed narrowed his eyes at her.
But to her surprise, he didn't protest. "Yeah," Ed said. "Higher ground."
"We want to go, too!" a large Hispanic man called from one car over. He had a wife and two children with him. "Too many people. If they start dying and turning…" He shook his head and looked over the sea of cars and people. The man waled over and reached out his hand to Shane. "I'm Morales."
Shane shook. Then he nodded from Morales to Ed. "Let's take our families, turn around, and get out of this mess."
[*]
"Can you believe that?" Merle asked, gesturing to the porno that was currently showing. "Why's that girl got such short hair?"
Daryl dipped his spoon into the bowl of hot grits he'd just made. He'd heated the water in a kettle on the wood stove and added plenty of salt, but it could sure use some butter. "Hell ya care about their hair for, Merle? How can ya even notice that?"
"'Cause I like to pull on it," Merle said, "when I'm fuckin' 'em. Don't know why they'd put a short-haired chick in a porno. Looks butch."
"Looks fine to me."
"That's 'cause ya ain't got no standards, little brother."
Daryl shoveled the rest of the grits in his mouth. He stood and began to meander around the cabin. Eventually, he found himself in the study, where he picked up the phone and listened for the dial tone. Nothing. The receiver clicked when he set it back in its cradle.
He wondered about that little girl, if her daddy had hit her or her mother on the way out the door, if that was the smack he had heard. He wondered if she was in Atlanta by now, or if they'd all been devoured by geeks along the way.
Daryl walked around the study, running his fingertips along the shelves, before returning to the living room. "Think I'm gonna hike down to the stream," he said. "Go fishin'."
"Good idea," Merle replied, opening the bottle of Amaretto. The vodka, beer, and Southern Comfort were all gone by now. "Have us a fish fry tonight. Make sure ya catch us some big 'uns."
Daryl did catch some big ones. He also snooped around some cabins, killed three geeks, and snagged four six packs of beer. That night, after they ate the fish, Daryl joined in the drinking until he passed out on the couch. When he woke up at ten the next morning, with a splitting headache and an unsettled stomach, Merle had the DVD player going again.
[*]
Getting off the highway required some firepower, because those creatures seemed suddenly to appear everywhere. Ed and Shane used up much of their ammo, and Morales bloodied his baseball bat, but they found a park sign and the caravan of three vehicles began to climb a steep hill, away from all the teeming death below.
They found a campsite near a quarry. There were other survivors there already who had given up on making it to Atlanta, about two dozen – men, women, and children. T-Dog and the people he'd rescued in the church van were among them. "Told you Atlanta was a dumb ass idea," Ed muttered to him when they met again.
"Yeah, well," T-Dog replied, "I still got a lot of people out safely."
Ed grunted and walked away. He pitched a tent. They began to build a home among this strange hodge-podge of people – city folk and country folk, old and young, blue collar workers and professionals.
The women cooked and did the laundry, and Carol folded clothes on her "goddamn ironing board." The men patrolled the camp with guns, tinkered with the cars, and tried to hunt but caught very little. The children played. The canned food, bottled water, and MREs began to disappear bit by bit. The days passed in relative safety, with no real plan for the future. They were all just waiting, but waiting for what?
[*]
"Look at that ass!" shouted Merle from the couch.
Daryl was sitting at the kitchen table, tightening the strings of his crossbow after another morning of solitary and unsuccessful deer tracking. "Know what, Merle? I don't want to look at that ass. I don't give a shit about that ass! What the fuck are we doin' up here? Is this what we're gonna do for the rest of our goddamn lives? Watch porn and eat pork rinds and drink warm beer? Is this how we're gonna end it?"
"Well ain't you just a regular party pooper?"
Daryl tossed his crossbow roughly across the kitchen table top. "I'm bored!"
Merle leaned forward and slammed the screen of the portable DVD player down. "Fine. Let's go roamin'. Have us an adventure. Go further south toward Atlanta." He stood up and began to stagger toward his bedroom. "Soon as I take a nap. Hell, maybe we can even find us some pussy. There's got to still be some women survivin' out there somewhere. Bet they'd love a little protection from the Dixon brothers."
"Maybe we should have stuck with Darlene and Marcus." Daryl said it so quietly he didn't think Merle could have heard him, but apparently he did.
"Yeah, maybe yer right, little brother. Bet she'd have let all three of us take turns eventually."
Daryl gritted his teeth. "Ain't what I meant." Through the open door of the bedroom, Daryl watched his brother pass out face down on the bed.
[*]
"Catch anything?" Andrea asked as Dale, Ed, and Shane re-entered the camp. She and Carol were hanging clothes to dry.
Dale shook his head solemnly.
"Walkers must be driving off the game," Ed muttered. Ed had picked up the term walker from some of the people at the camp. Carol thought it was a strange description for these undead creatures, which lurched more than strolled, but she'd started to use it too. Ed walked off, grumbling, toward their tent.
"We'll get something tomorrow," Shane assured the women before walking on himself.
Carol watched Shane stride toward Lori. She thought those two were likely having an affair. It was all in the body language. She wondered what kind of man Lori's husband had been, if she could move on from him so quickly. The boy didn't know though. Carl treated Shane like a fun uncle. In fact, at the moment, Carl was poking the handsome cop playfully with a stick. Shane plucked another stick from the ground and began to sword fight with the boy while Sophia and Eliza Morlaes watched and giggled. Meanwhile, Dale disappeared inside his RV.
Carol handed Andrea a wet shirt. "I hope they catch something soon. We're almost out of MREs."
"If they don't," Andrea told Carol as she clipped the shirt to the line, "Amy and I are going to have to go fishing."
"Do you know how to fish?"
Andrea nodded. "My dad used to take us. I haven't done it in a while, though. I suspect I'm a bit rusty."
Ed emerged shirtless from their tent in the distance and shouted, "Carol! Where the hell's my green shirt? I told you to wash it!"
Andrea looked disdainfully in Ed's direction, and Carol made her apologies. "Sorry," she hastened. "I'll be right back." She scurried off to help her husband find his shirt.
[*]
While Merle was sleeping, Daryl loaded up the pick-up truck. A mangy dog ran out of the woods, past the truck, and up the stairs to the front porch. It barked three times at the door. Daryl wondered if the mutt lived here and, if so, where it had been until now. He took a few steps closer. "You a good huntin' dog?" he asked it. "Bird dog, maybe?" The dog growled at him and then ran back off into the woods.
Daryl shrugged and went back to work. He emptied two of the five-gallon gas cans into the nearly empty tank of the pick-up. Then he took the empty cans, drained the generator they hadn't used, and refilled them. Next he siphoned off the rest of the gas from the old man's Buick to top off Merle's bike.
After that, he went inside and looked around the cabin for anything useful to take, searching every nook and cranny. That was when he found the hand-cranked radio. Daryl took it to the kitchen table and turned the lever round and round until he heard Trace Adkins singing:
She grew up in the city in a little subdivision
Her daddy wore a tie, mama never fried a chicken...
Darlene was right. That one station just kept playing the same song on an endless loop. He turned the knob through some static and stopped when he heard the loud buzz of the early warning system. It was followed with a recorded voice saying, "All survivors should head toward Atlanta. The city is under military control. Refugee camps have been established." Then there was the buzz again, followed by the same recording.
Daryl kept tuning and finding only static until he worked his way back to the first station again:
...They raised her up a lady, but there's one thing
They couldn't avoid -
Ladies love country boys...
Daryl clicked off the radio, walked into the living room, slumped down on the couch, and stared at Merle's last bag of meth on the coffee table. It was a big bag, and had likely been evidence in a major case. It would last Merle a long while.
Without really thinking, Daryl found himself fingering the smooth wood of his pocket knife. He slid it out of the pocket of his pants and pried the blade open. A puff of air escaped when the knife drove into the plastic bag. Daryl tore a jagged line down the front, and then he did it again and again before taking the bag and leaving a very light trail of crystal powder over the floorboards toward the front door of the cabin, over the porch, and down the stairs to a spot near the pick-up truck.
Next, he held the bag closed in two hands, so it wouldn't spill over, backtracked to the porch, crawled underneath it, and dumped the rest of the contents, which he buried beneath the dirt. The empty, torn bag he left near the pick-up truck where the trail ended. Daryl wrapped one corner around a rock so the bag wouldn't blow away. He'd tell his brother he left the front door ajar by mistake and the dog had wandered in, grabbed the bag, and dragged it off. The dog's tracks were already all over the porch and in the dirt near the truck anyway.
After that, Daryl wandered around the cabin listlessly for a while and then walked out onto the back porch, where he slid into the old man's rocking chair. He looked out over the trees growing high along the hills and breathed in the piney scent. Then he fished a cigarette out of his front pocket and lit up. As he exhaled, the smoke curled out over the porch rail, drifted up toward the clear blue sky, and vanished like the past.
