"Y'all alone here?" Daryl asked them.
"At the moment," the taller one said.
The little one hissed, "No, Lizzie! Don't tell them!"
Lizzie set the tea pot down on the table. She lay her hands palm down on its surface and looked at her sister. "Mika, let me handle this." She turned her gaze to Daryl. There was something off about her eyes. They looked too old for her face, and there was a jaded light in them. "Our father has lots of guns, and he'll be back any minute now, so you had better not try to hurt us."
Daryl and Carol shoulder their weapons. "We don't want to hurt you, honey," Carol said.
"Where's yer daddy at?" Daryl asked.
"He went to find food," Lizzie replied. "Now are you going to sit down to tea or not?"
Daryl looked at Carol. Carol shrugged. Daryl pulled out a chair from the table next to Mika. It was a small chair, designed for a six to ten year old, and he felt like an awkward giant when he planted his ass on it. Lizzie pretended to pour him a cup of tea and then pushed it over to him.
"Ain't I gonna get any cookies with this?" he asked.
Mika nervously picked up a fake plastic tea cookie. It trembled in her hand as she set it down on his saucer.
"Mhmmm…" he murmured. He picked it up and pretended to chew on it. "How many guns yer daddy have?" he asked.
"More than you," Lizzie said disdainfully. She looked from Carol's rifle to his crossbow. "You only have one."
They had three, actually. He and Carol each had a handgun on their belts concealed by their long button-down shirts, but he didn't tell Lizzie that. "When's he gettin' back?"
"Now," Lizzie said, looking over Carol's shoulder toward the hallway.
Daryl followed her gaze to find a balding, brown-bearded man standing in the door frame. He was leveling a wooden .22 rifle, a bit shakily, at Daryl, his eyes flitting frantically about the scene. He must have returned and found the front door unlocked. Daryl had left it slightly ajar when Carol distracted him with the idea of finding the nursery. Daryl supposed the girls usually let their father back in when he'd been out scavenging.
Daryl slowly raised his hands. He stood, and, hands still raised, turned to face the drawn rifle. "We ain't bad people."
Carol raised her hands as well. "We just came here looking for formula. We have a baby back in our camp."
"Mika, Lizzie," the man ordered. "Get behind me. Now!"
Mika was clearly alarmed by the fear in her father's voice and dashed out of her chair and behind him the hallway. Lizzie was more languid in her rising, and she shot Daryl an I-told-you-so look as she walked out into the hallway.
"I could shoot you right now," the man said.
"You could," Carol said calmly. "But we both have weapons we can get to quickly. If you shoot one of us, the other one's going to go for a weapon and kill you while you're doing it, and your little girls are going to see two completely unnecessary deaths. Including yours."
"No!" Mika shouted.
"Lower your gun, and let's talk," Carol insisted.
The man looked from Carol to Daryl and then back. He let out a shaky breath and lowered his weapon. "So talk," he said.
Carol extended her hand. "I'm Carol."
The man shook cautiously. "Ryan Samuels."
Carol put a hand on Dary's shoulder. "And this is Daryl Dixon."
Ryan nodded to him.
"How many are in your camp?" Carol asked.
"We had fourteen when we left Jacksonville," Ryan answered, wrapping one arm around Mika, who had attached herself to his hip.
"Ya come all the way from Florida?" Daryl asked.
"We heard there was a cure at the CDC in Atlanta. But when we got there…it was just gone. The whole things was just...blown up."
Daryl glanced at Carol. That seemed a lifetime ago. Sophia was still alive. So were Lori and Shane, Dale, Andrea, and T-Dog. They drank and laughed and were just starting to hope when it all came to a screeching halt. That's how it was in this world. Just when you began to think you might have a chance...
"Six of our people were killed on the way from Florida. The rest when we were trying to get out of Atlanta. Me and the girls…we're all that's left."
"How many walkers have ya killed?" Daryl asked.
"How many what?" Ryan asked.
"Walkers," Daryl repeated.
"What the hell is a walker?"
"You know, these things that are lurchin' 'round all over the damn place?"
"Oh. We call them the Diseased."
"Well, how many of the Diseased have ya killed?" Daryl asked.
"Me personally, or our group?"
Daryl was getting irritated. "You personally."
"I don't know. Five maybe. We just try to avoid them most of the time."
"You shouldn't hurt them if you don't have to," Lizzie insisted.
"Shh!" her father told her, and Lizzie leaned against the frame of the open doorway.
Daryl looked at the girl curiously. What had she meant by that? Probably that it was better to avoid them so you didn't get bit or killed trying to kill them, and that probably was the best course for a girl her size and age. It wasn't as if Sophia had gone around stabbing walkers...though, then again, if she had, she might still be alive. Daryl returned his attention to Ryan. "How many people have you killed?"
"Why are you asking me this?"
"Because we want to get to know you," Carol said.
"That's a strange way of getting to know someone," Ryan replied. "Usually you ask, you know, what's your favorite food and things like that."
"How many people have you killed?" Daryl repeated.
Ryan turned. "Girls, go wait down the hall a little ways." The girls retreated. Ryan turned back. In a low voice he said, "One."
"Why?" Daryl asked.
"Because he was caught raping a woman in our camp. He was one of ours, had been with us since Jacksonville, but we all decided...we had a trial of sorts. We agreed...he was a threat, and he had to go."
"And why was you the one chosen to execute 'em?" Daryl asked.
Ryan looked down at the floor at gritted his teeth.
"'Cause it was yer wife?"
Ryan swallowed. "Afterwards...a few days later...she killed herself. The girls don't know how she died. They don't know any of it. They can't know."
Carol took in a shaky breath, and Daryl caught her eyes. She nodded to him.
"We got a place," Daryl said. "A prison. Secure. Gated up. Lots of people. Other kids, too. Some stored food. We's even growin' some crops now. Ya want to come back with us?"
[*]
The trunk was already nearly full from the items they'd found in the pantry, so they began loading things in the back seat. They'd pillaged the church of anything useful, and a few things that weren't. Daryl had snagged a pacifier, two rattles, a teddy bear, a stuffed rabbit, a play mat, and a bouncy seat.
"Don't you think you're going a little overboard?" Carol asked him as he crammed it all in the back seat.
"Little Ass Kicker deserves some toys," he insisted. "Promised her Uncle Daryl'd bring her somethin'."
Carol smiled.
Next, Daryl helped Ryan load the trunk of his own car. The girls slid into the backseat of their gray sedan while Daryl closed the trunk and turned to Ryan. "That all yer shit?" he asked. "Where's the other guns?"
"What guns?" Ryan replied, nodding to the rifle on his shoulder. "This is my only gun."
Daryl glanced at Lizzie through the rear windshield. "Yer daughter's got quite the poker face," Daryl told him. "Had me convinced ya had more."
"Yeah, well, that's Lizzie. She's hard to read." Ryan smiled a strange, sad smile that made Daryl shoot another look at Lizzie.
"Y'all stay close," he told Ryan. "And flash yer lights if yer fixin' to stop for any reason."
[*]
"Those girls are adorable." Carol glanced in the rearview mirror as she drove.
Daryl had the passenger's seat popped all the way back so he could stretch his legs. "Yeah, but there's somethin' off 'bout that Lizzie, don't ya think?"
"She's outlived eleven members of her camp, including her own mother. Of course there's something off about her. There's something off about all of us."
"Weren't even scared of me when I walked in that room. Asked me to sit for tea."
"I'll need to teach her to be more cautious, that's for sure," Carol said.
"Is that what ya do durin' story time? Teach the kids to be more cautious?"
She shot him a surprised look.
"Patrick told me, 'bout how ya train 'em."
"Don't tell Rick."
"Why ya care so much what Rick thinks of you?" he asked, a little peevishly.
"I don't. It's just...he's been living in fairy land lately. He thinks he's a farmer now. He thinks we can just...lay down roots."
"And ya don't?" Daryl asked.
Carol glanced at him quickly and then returned her eyes to the road. "Do you?"
"I think yer right to train them kids. They need to know how to survive. There's always gonna be threats. But I think Rick's right to farm too. This prison's the most secure place we been yet. Hell, it's the longest I've stayed in one place in years." It was also the only place he'd ever felt like he was respected.
"I didn't say he was wrong to farm. We need food. I just think he's gone a bit soft. If he knew I was teaching the little ones to kill, he might object."
"Rick ain't a dumb ass. Ya know, he's smart and well-toned."
Carol chuckled. "I really don't have a secret crush on Rick."
"Good," he said, and realize that might have made him sound possessive. "Because, uh...think Michonne might."
"Well I certainly wouldn't want to compete with Michonne for a man's affections." She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "I'd lose that fight for sure."
"Why?"
She laughed and shook her head.
He glanced in the rear view mirror to check on Ryan's car. In the back seat, Mika appeared to be singing, while Lizzie was rolling her eyes. "Why?" he repeated.
"Because she's gorgeous and strong and self-confident and..." Carol shrugged.
"Yer plenty pretty and strong."
"You think so?" she asked.
How could Carol not know these things about herself? "Of course."
She smiled, that little smile that always made the moths flutter in his stomach, just one side of her mouth, a little happy, a little sad.
In the rear view mirror, Ryan's high beams flashed on and off. Carol slowed the car to the stop. A foggy cloud of gray smoke rose from the engine of Ryan's car.
"Shit," Daryl muttered.
They siphoned off his gas into their car, abandoned the bouncy seat at the side of the road, rearranged the items in the trunk, strapped some things to the roof, and piled Ryan and the girls into the backseat before driving on.
[*]
A/N: I realize Mika and Lizzie may have been refugees from Woodbury, and that's probably the general assumption, but I don't recall that being explicitly said, and we know Daryl brought in several people between Season 3 and 4, so this is my imagining for how they joined the camp. If it was said they were from Woodbury, and I missed it...ooops. Thanks for the reviews. I love hearing what y'all think!