A/N: It has been wayyy too long. And that is all I'm going to say about that. I hope you enjoy the new chapter! :)

Lauren

Chapter Ten

As his eyes snapped open to meet darkness and silence and the bottom of the heavy oak table in the Greene family dining room, Daryl wasn't sure what had pulled his body from the depths of unconsciousness and to a brutally prompt awareness, his mind shaking off the dregs of early morning drowsiness to achieve instantaneous clarity. Before he could cast his eyes about in search of the source of his sudden alertness, however, the percolating of the outdated coffee maker in the kitchen reached his ears, pointing him in the right direction. He then couldn't help the huff that escaped his lungs as he saw the source of his wakefulness. Of course.

The dark form of his current suspicions stood silhouetted against the pristine paleness of the kitchen cabinets, clearly visible through the threshold between the dining room and kitchen. Katy stood in profile at the junction of cabinets in the farthest corner of the kitchen, her eyes cast down to the hands she left resting on the counter in front of her as she waited for her coffee. Taking in the forest patterns he could discern in the woman's clothing rather than the army digitals he'd seen her wear previously, Daryl quickly realized Katy was going to make good on what they'd discussed the afternoon before.

It had been odd—Daryl had decided that was the only appropriate word for it—to have someone, a near stranger at that, asking him about his hunting habits. This group simply accepted his work and didn't question it, trusting him to share his catches and do his part in helping keep them fed. They didn't care where he went hunting…how long it took him to scrape together everything he brought in…where he found game trails. Katy, on the other hand, had been full of seemingly endless questions, determined to pull every speck of information he knew about the hunting opportunities offered by the Greenes' vast acreage from the crevices of his brain.

With her standing in front of him with her arms crossed over her chest, her weight settled back on one leg as her hip jutted to one side, Daryl had nearly told the ex-soldier to scram and find someone else to put under the fire of such an inquisition about their chosen work. He certainly hadn't hesitated in letting her know he didn't need none of her help when she'd offered an extra pair of hands for cleaning the rest of his catch—an act he'd somewhat regretted, not that he'd admit it to anyone, once Katy had finished her questions and left him alone for the several hours it had taken to complete the gutting and skinning on his own. But as Abby's words repeated themselves and bounced around his skull, Daryl had bit down the urge to send the former officer running as their meaning snapped into place and provided a new clarity.

I never tried squirrel before…I've had rabbit, though. That admission…Abby's curiosity but not disgust as she'd watched him slice through the squirrel carcasses…Katy's keen senses and stealthy bearing…it had all made a sudden, certain kind of sense. Katy was a hunter.

Daryl had decided he should've realized it sooner. It was only logical, after all, that the former soldier would have the ability to find food for herself and the children she protected outside of potentially life-threatening raids on convenience stores or supermarkets. There was no way Katy would've risked leaving the children she watched after so carefully with no source of protection by way of her own death. Even with the plan she'd crafted for the disposal of the herd stumbling across the farm the day of her arrival, Katy had done everything possible to ensure the children's safety as well as her own survival, escaping the battle altogether unscathed.

So, Daryl had begrudgingly answered Katy's questions about direction, distance, and density of the wildlife filling the nearby forest. If her instincts found themselves at home in the dominion of the woods, who was he to deny her the clarity he himself craved and could only find in the shadows of the Georgia pines? And if a small part of him had conjured up the shady thought that maybe, if the group was lucky, some misfortune would befall the former soldier and they'd be free of whatever darkness it was in her that made the hair on his neck stand straight whenever his eyes met hers for too long…well, no one needed to know about it.

Shaking his thoughts and recollections away with a huff, knowing there was definitely no hope of him getting back to sleep now that his brain was coursing a hundred miles an hour, Daryl rolled out from under the table where he'd made his pallet, pulling himself up into one of the chairs. His movement caught Katy's attention as he set to putting on his boots, her body jerking around as her eyes found him. Daryl expected her to say something, but the former soldier kept quiet, turning back to dig in the cabinets until she found the coffee cups.

"Sorry…didn't mean to wake anyone up," Katy finally whispered once Daryl had finished with his boots and crossed the kitchen to stand beside her. Watching her fill a powder blue coffee cup with a chip in the rim with the strong, heady black drink, Daryl couldn't help the small huff that escaped his throat. Of course she hadn't meant to wake anyone up. The girl was worse than a damn ghost, not even tapping the coffee-filled carafe against the rim of the mug to make the slightest noise. "Coffee?"

"I got watch anyway," Daryl noted, surprised when his nod of acceptance resulted in Katy sliding the mug she'd just filled across the counter to his waiting hand. Daryl kept an eye on the former soldier over the edge of his cup as she dug for another coffee mug and finally produced one of china white, green bands pin striping around the top and a large sunflower decorating the side. "You goin' out?" He didn't have to clarify what he meant by 'out.' It was evidenced enough in the head-to-toe camouflage shielding Katy's skin with patterns of fall leaves and bare branches.

"I thought I might try my luck." Katy shrugged as she returned the pot to the coffee maker and pivoted on her heel, leaning back to let the counter support her weight as she sipped at the mug clutched in her fingers. "It's still early enough I should be able to get out to that trail you told me about an' look around a bit 'fore the sun comes up. I shouldn't be gone too long past sun-up…Luke and Abby'll panic if I'm not back by noon."

Daryl simply nodded, not entirely comfortable with the idea of the former soldier stomping around the game trail he'd been staking out but not caring enough to put forth the argument. He already suspected Katy was just using his reports as a starting point and would quickly branch off and find her own areas to hunt, leaving his neck of the woods alone. It was what any proper hunter would do. But then again, the end of the world wasn't exactly made for proper people.

Katy finished her coffee first, cutting through the aching silence stretching between the mismatched pair as she rinsed her mug out in the sink, the sound of running water glaringly loud in the house that was silent aside from T-Dog's snores from a corner of the living room. Without a farewell or even a grunt of acknowledgement apart from a quick meeting of eyes, she swept past Daryl and out of the Greene house, shutting the door behind her with a stealthy silence that momentarily made the hunter question if she'd been in the house at all or if he'd imagined it and she was still asleep in that monster of a Humvee, though the coffee cup clutched in his hands said otherwise.

Quickly finishing his coffee and setting his mug in the sink with Katy's, Daryl dug the palms of his hands into his eyes, shaking away the last bits of tiredness that pulled at his bones. He had a watch shift to take. Returning to the pallet he'd set up under the table, the hunter quickly rolled the nest of blankets up and pushed them into an out-of-the-way corner before scooping up his crossbow and slinging it into place over one shoulder. His pistol found its home tucked away in the waistband of his jeans, resting its comfortable weight against the base of his spine, and then Daryl was leaving the Greene house as stealthily as possible, careful not to disturb the rest of the group so to let them gain what rest they could before they, too, had to rise and greet whatever the god-forsaken world had in store for them that day.

The forest was a place of cleansing. Peace. Understanding. Or at least it had always seemed so to Katy. From the moment she could walk farther than two feet without her chubby baby legs losing their balance and sending her to the ground, Katy had been at home beneath the clusters of trees and canopies of interlocking branches. The earthy smells of dirt, decaying woods, and sharp pines were as comfortable to her as her own skin, and as she breathed them in deeply every smidgen of tension sunk from her body and into the ground beneath her boots. As long as she was enveloped in the woods, Katy could pretend the world hadn't ended. She could pretend everyone she knew wasn't dead. She could pretend she'd simply gotten a free weekend off-base and chosen to use it to its greatest potential.

Of course, the minute she stepped to the edge of the woods and saw that farmhouse across the pasture, the world would crash back into place around her. The memories would come back none too gently, leaving her reeling and struggling to breathe. The death. The chaos. The regret. It always came back, never being shaken away for long. But that would be later. This was now. And now, Katy was on a mission.

Her eyes skittered among the leaves and twigs, searching for the slightest out-of-place sign that her quarry was nearby. It had been over an hour since she'd left the game trail to which Daryl had directed her, over an hour since she'd picked out the fresh set of tracks from the mass of hooved and clawed imprints decorating the banks of a stream a few miles north from where she'd disappeared into the tree line around the Greene farm. She'd been chasing her target for what felt like an eternity when trapped in the humidity beneath the canopy of trees towering above where only the smallest columns of sunlight managed to pierce the thick foliage and illuminate the forest's gloom, over fallen trees and through the corner of a bog, but she knew she was finally drawing close. She could hear her targets chortling to each other just ahead, could see a flurry of movement through the branches blocking an unobstructed view of the clearing where her quarry waited, unaware of their impending doom.

Carefully, silently, eyes never leaving the vague movement she tracked just ahead, Katy freed three arrows from the quiver locked to the side of the compound bow resting easily in her right hand. Clutching the arrows tightly and willing her movements to stay quiet, the former soldier crept through the undergrowth as quietly as possible. She kept her knees high to avoid scuffling any particularly crispy leaves as she went, guiding her feet to find purchase on the tree roots jutting across her path as she eased ever closer to her prey.

Finally, the clearing opened up before Katy, a few shadows and a majestic elm the only things keeping her separated from the open expanse, and she was given a clear view of her elusive prey. A dozen turkeys scuttled around the clearing some twenty yards before her, picking for bugs and seeds in a warbling mass of shades of brown and grey. Some hunters said turkeys were dumb creatures; some said they were smart. Katy didn't know which opinion was correct and, quite frankly, she didn't care. All she knew was that turkeys were unpredictable and one of the most entertaining species to pursue. She hadn't been sure what she'd happen upon in following those tracks from the banks of that stream, whether she'd be led to an empty roost or to a waiting flock. Now that she faced her quarry and knew her stalking hadn't been for nothing, adrenaline began flooding her veins and her heart pounded in her ears.

Keeping an eye on the flock before her for any sign she'd been spotted lurking in the shadows, Katy stabbed two of her arrows into the dirt by her foot and adjusted her bow in her hands so she could slip her pack from her shoulders. She needed to have as much mobility in her shoulders as possible, and stealth was key in ensuring her targets would stay put. Setting her pack against the trunk of the tree she stood beside, Katy studied the bobbing flock before her, her eyes picking out a fat tom on her side of the flock as her hands nocked her third arrow to the bowstring. Focusing her gaze on that target, Katy raised her bow, keeping her right hand relaxed against the grip as her left pulled back the string, the sights lining up before her eyes. The weight that would send her arrow flying rested solely in the first three fingers of her left hand, her fingertips just brushing her cheek over the corner of her mouth, and Katy took in a deep breath as she focused on her target and lined her sights up with the patch of red she knew was the tom's waddle. Her heart still pounding in her ears, the former soldier let the air whoosh from her lungs as her fingers released the bowstring.

Before she could even be sure her target had fallen, Katy clutched at her second arrow, setting it against the string as the flock began to scatter. Quickly pulling the arrow into position, she followed the flock's movement toward the opposite edge of the clearing, the tension of holding the bow upright settling its familiar weight across her shoulders. Accessing her diaphragm and the power it gave her voice, the former soldier yelped out the loud, three-note warble her grandfather had taught her years before, letting her arrow fly as she noticed one of the turkeys at the rear of the skedaddling flock hesitate at the hen call. After nearly two hours of tracking and stalking, the whole ordeal was over in an anticlimactic matter of seconds as the last bird disappeared into the trees on the other side of the clearing.

Her chest heaving with the adrenaline surging through her veins, Katy held back the whoop that wanted to explode from her throat, focusing on keeping her breathing normal as she pulled air in through her nose and released it from her mouth. No writers had been exaggerating when they spoke of the 'thrill of the hunt.' Very few things equaled that rush that came from pitting oneself against nature and coming out the victor, and even someone who had been hunting since they were old enough to hold a gun level, as Katy had, was not immune to the exhilaration.

Though tempted to go running into the field with a victorious fist thrust into the air at the sight of the two separate masses that could only mean she'd managed to bring down both of her targets, Katy waited several moments to move from her seclusion, not wanting to reveal herself too soon in case the flock of turkeys was on the verge of returning to the clearing. Only when all had remained quiet did she reshoulder her pack and pull her last arrow from where it stood upright in the dirt, fitting it to the bowstring but not pulling the string taut. If anything particularly unfriendly had been drawn to the noise the flock had made, she wanted to be able to respond to the threat quickly.

Katy kept her eyes sharp as she stepped from her hiding place, scanning her surrounding as she paced forward, occasionally pivoting around to face the way she'd come and make sure nothing was trying to ambush her from behind. Passing by her first kill once she knew the lopped off head ensured it wouldn't be trying to make an escape, she continued on to the second, grimacing as she approached. This had been a messier shot…an accumulation of action and reaction…and it showed in the scene before her. Her arrow had pierced through the tom's body at the top of the legs, pinning the bottom of one wing to its side and keeping the turkey from running or flying anywhere but failing to give it the quick and painless death she preferred. Instead, the gobbler was flopping around a pile of fallen leaves in a miserable display of pain and blood loss, her arrow jutting from its side.

"Damn," Katy said to no one in particular as she approached the crippled bird with a shake of her head. She quickly placed her boot on the jake's neck, grimacing as she shifted her weight until she felt his neck give beneath her boot and the turkey's frenzied flopping ceased. "Sorry, tom. I didn't want it to end like that. But I've gotta eat same as you, understand?"

In the past, Katy had several hunting buddies that had teased her about the way she talked to her targets in the event that something went wrong and her kill was not as quick or clean as she had planned. Katy had always taken the teasing in stride, hearing her grandfather's insistence that the spirit of an animal lingered after a kill and needed assurance that its death was not meaningless over her friends' banter. She didn't go as far as her grandfather did, thanking the spirit for its offering in the native language of his people, but she'd always figured a little superstition never hurt anyone. If her grandfather was right about spirits, then the last thing she needed was being haunted by the ghost of Bambi's mother.

Removing her arrow from the bowstring and returning it to its slot in her quiver, Katy knelt down beside the tom and set her bow aside. Bringing one hand to press against the bird's body, bracing the turkey against the ground, she wrapped her other hand around her arrow shaft where it disappeared into the bird's wing feathers. With a firm yank, her arrow came free, the metal broadhead dulled in the jake's blood. She then grabbed the bird around its neck and picked it up in one hand, grabbing her bow in the other as she stood before returning to her first feathered victim.

After setting the two turkeys down together, Katy looked around the clearing, finally finding what she was looking for as she caught a glint of lime green fletchings among the browns, yellows, and oranges of the leaves scattered across the clearing. Retrieving her last arrow, she pulled her pack from her shoulders long enough to retrieve a rag from an outer pocket, cleaning the arrows off before returning them to the quiver of her bow, the six sets of lime-green fletchings paired with shining broadheads forming a menacing and foreboding image for any particularly tasty woodland creature she might encounter.

Studying her kill, Katy then decided she didn't want to dress or clean the birds in the clearing. The various tracks she'd seen suggested the clearing was a popular resting place for the animals that called this part of the woods home, and she wouldn't want to compromise hunting grounds with such potential. Nodding to herself in favor of her own idea, she scooped up the pair of turkeys by their legs before disappearing into the woods once again, quite satisfied with the morning's efforts.

As he stepped out of the direct sunlight of late morning and over the shadowed threshold of the crumbling barn that served as the best vantage point from which to keep an eye on the northern stretches of the Greene homestead, Rick couldn't help but hesitate at the edges of the shadows. It was from this barn that Sophia had stumbled a few weeks before, turned into a shadow of her former self that hungered for the flesh of her companions, and shattered all of the group's hopes that she'd be found safe and unscathed. It was in this barn where he'd planned to execute Randall and first realized the darkness growing in his son's soul, fostered by the new, merciless world they found themselves in. It was this barn he'd fled to in order to escape the hoard of undead swarming the Greene farm. It was in this barn that dozens of the herd had fallen to their final death, their starving moans and growls silenced amid the rat-a-tat of gunfire.

Death hung from every crossbeam and shingle of the dilapidated structure stretching above and around Rick, the smell lingering despite the breeze flowing through the doors left hanging open in attempt to air out the building. Nothing, it seemed, could erase the haunting traces of the deceased from the barn. Rick steeled himself and pushed into the gloomy interior, resolutely ignoring the dried blood still staining the walls and floor and instead focusing on the form descending from the barn loft with his back to the former sheriff's deputy, a familiar crossbow resting between shoulders hidden by sprawling angel wings sewn onto black leather.

"Is it still quiet out there?" Rick asked as the hunter's boots connected solidly with the barn floor and he turned to face his replacement for the next watch shift. Daryl nodded and Rick breathed a sigh of relief. His number one concern once the dust had settled from the first herd to stumble across the farm was that all of the gunfire from stopping that horde would bring another crashing through at any time, but two days later all remained silent. "Looks like we dodged a bullet."

"For now," Daryl confirmed with a grunt before gesturing over his shoulder. "And G.I. Jane is on her way back."

Rick followed Daryl's gesture out the double doors on the side of the barn that opened up to the north pasture to where he watched Luke dart under the fence and rush through the long grass out to where Katy was making her way across the pasture. "Looks like she was successful," the former officer noted as he watched Katy greet her charge and noticed the dark bundle hanging from one hand and the bow clasped securely in the other. Daryl had told everyone the brunette had decided to go hunting when they'd noticed her absence from the breakfast table. He didn't miss Daryl's scoff and turned to see the hunter taking in the same picture Rick had, but with his brows furrowed and his mouth turned down in a deep scowl. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Daryl returned quickly, but Rick wasn't convinced as the hunter crossed his arms over his chest and then dropped them, obviously on edge. "Everything. Hell, I dunno…I just know I don't like it. I don't trust 'er no further than I could throw 'er."

Rick put his hands on his hips, holding in a sigh. He had grown to respect and value the skills of observation he knew Daryl possessed, and so the hunter's warnings against the visiting soldier weren't something he could just ignore. But neither could he discount Katy's skills and training that he knew his group desperately needed to utilize. He could reassure Daryl that Katy's presence with the group was just temporary, but just the thought of doing so made him feel sick. The group needed Katy to stay. But if Katy were to stay, he couldn't have the dynamic of the group threatened by Daryl's hostility toward the former soldier. If the group wanted to move past basic survival and truly thrive, then he needed them all to work together as a cohesive unit, which couldn't happen if Daryl and Katy were to continually clash.

"Good morning."

Rick pulled himself from his inner turmoil to see that Katy had spotted the two men in the barn and made her way over to check in, her form and Luke's blending together to make a dark silhouette against the backdrop of a clear blue sky and pasture of yellow grass as they hesitated in the doorway. "Good morning," Rick returned easily, smiling at the duo as they entered the barn once their eyes had been given a chance to adjust to the dim lighting. "Was your hunt successful?"

"Moderately," Katy noted with a neutral hum, holding her catch aloft just long enough for Rick to see what it was she'd caught. "Just two toms."

"Turkeys?" Rick returned in mild surprise. It wasn't something he'd ever eaten, nor was it something Daryl had ever brought back to camp to his knowledge.

"I didn't wanna drag a deer back all by myself," Katy noted as she picked up the question in Rick's tone. "I don't hunt squirrel, and Daryl brought a whole colony of rabbits in yesterday."

"Ya know, Georgia doesn't actually have a fall turkey season," Rick noted as he pulled the information from a fading memory of the game wardens that would stop through the precinct on occasion.

"You gonna arrest me for poaching, officer?" A teasing lilt wove through Katy's voice as she cocked an eyebrow at the former police officer before her. "We're a little outside your jurisdiction, aren't we?"

Rick chuckled, "That we are. Can you turn those into anything edible?"

Katy glanced down at the turkeys dangling from her hand and back to Rick, reading his friendly challenge. "Please. By the time I'm through with these birds you'll be wondering why anyone buys turkey at Thanksgiving." Katy let Rick's brassy and comfortable laugh subside before she turned her attention to the redneck that had thus far remained silent. "I saw some deer tracks a little ways north of the game trail you told me about," she revealed, keeping her voice light and pleasant. "They were pretty deep impressions…might be worth teaming up and checking out."

Rick watched as Daryl's scowl only deepened, his already heavy-lidded eyes narrowing to suspicious slits of blue. "Ain't interested," the hunter growled. "I don't need no help huntin'…an' if I did, you sure as hell ain't gonna be the first person I ask."

Rick winced as Daryl quickly pivoted on his heel and marched out of the barn without another word. "He grows on you," he offered as he looked to Katy to find her simply standing there as if unsure how to react to the hunter's brusque words.

"I dunno about that," the former soldier returned, clearly skeptical. She then shook her head as if dismissing the exchange and turned to the young man at her side. "C'mon, Luke. Let's go see if we can find somewhere to pluck us some turkeys."

"Can you teach me to shoot a bow afterward?" Luke asked, perking up as he turned wide, pleading eyes on his guardian. "You said you'd teach me when we found somewhere safe to practice."

Rick watched as Katy seemed to mull over the proposal, her lips quirking to one side as she looked down at the boy in front of her who was already bouncing on the balls of his feet in anticipation. The dynamic between Katy and the children she watched over was an interesting one to observe. While for Abby Katy was more of a surrogate mother whose word was law and to whom disobedience had repercussions, the same deference wasn't quite there between Katy and Luke. For Luke, Katy was more like a favorite aunt, a figure who could guide him and discipline him but that he didn't have to submit to on the same level as a parent. He wasn't afraid to approach Katy about something he wanted, and the former soldier was eager to listen.

"I'll tell you what," Katy returned after a moment of thought, smiling at the excited eight-year-old. "You help me with these turkeys and afterward I'll see if Hershel has a hay bale or two he wouldn't mind us shooting at for a little while."

Katy and Rick both chuckled as Luke erupted in a cry of victory as he thrust a victorious fist in the air and whooped for joy. Rick was then left shaking his head as Luke half-dragged Katy out of the barn, gushing about how they needed to hurry, and left the former deputy alone to take up his watch shift.

As Rick settled in the loft, he couldn't help but replay Daryl's suspicion and harshness toward their guest. He understood the group's suspicion of outsiders considering all they'd been through, but how could they ever hope to rebuild their world without trusting any other survivors they might stumble across? If Katy could save the farm and still not be accepted by the group as a whole, then how could he hope for everything to work out long-term? What kind of future would there be for the children reared by this world? For Carl? Luke? Abby? Brooklynn? The child growing in Lori's belly that had yet to enter the world?

His entire mood soured by such melancholy thoughts, Rick buried his head in his hands, trying to chase the dark musings away with little success. Maybe there really was no hope left to be had?

A/N: Thanks for reading! Please review and let me know what you think! :)

Lauren