The way their camp looked now made perfectly clear that long weeks had gone by. After being there for almost exactly two months, the group of twenty had made the clearing, woods and tents home. The RV had the plastic roof constantly up, folding tables and chairs under it with their aluminum feet stuck into the dry earth. Someone had placed wild flowers in plastic cups, trying to make things feel homey; by one side, lines were extended from tree to tree, wet clothes and bed clothing hanging from them; improvised stoves on tripods hung above the constant fires; tents had been rearranged to their comfort, clothes hanging and pairs of shoes left in front of each.
Routine had been settled. Shane and Sam had separated with clear limits what was each one's job – Shane still took care of camp safety, organizing lookout shifts and guns, while Sam took care of pretty much everything else, like food and water supply, organization and maintenance of their gear, both previous possessions and new stuff Glenn would usually bring back with him from his weekly runs to Atlanta – but mainly, Sam took care of the people around. She had never known before, but she was good at listening and understanding problems they all would present to her, and with her common sense, was quite capable of finding solutions, or at least helping them find it themselves. Sam still didn't feel comfortable at giving other comfort. She wasn't a hugger or spoke softly: she was more the tough love kind of person, who would always be honest and give her opinion, no matter what it was.
Sam still hadn't lost the habit of keeping track of time. She knew exactly which day into the apocalypse they were – 59 days – and how far along she was with the accidental, unwanted pregnancy – 10 weeks. Still keeping it a secret, she had been feeling better these days, the nightly sickness reducing day by day to nearly nothing. She did feel hungrier now, but forced herself not to eat more than the others, thinking it wouldn't be fair. Conscious she wouldn't be able to keep it a secret for too long, Sam planned on how she was going to bring it up to Daryl, her decision to tell him first still firm, but still couldn't picture a good situation to do that. She could feel her lower belly a bit grown, but it still didn't show under her clothes.
With nearly two months into the end of the world, great part of their days were spent with hopeful attempts to get news, to get some contact over the radio, hoping Glenn would return from his last run bringing good news. None of it ever happened, though. The static of the radio was always their only response, and Glenn would always answer their hopeful looks with a shake of his head, tight lips, telling them he found nothing. He did bring back things – food, clothes, gas, and everything he thought could be useful. All, except for information and rescue.
The day before the next run Glenn would make to Atlanta, he gathered Sam and Shane so he could talk to them about it. He reminded them what he had informed the last time he returned; he had found an abandoned department store that was still completely untouched, filled with clothes, kitchen apparels, camping, fishing and hunting gear, canned food and maybe even more useful things he couldn't spare the time to take a look. This week, he planned on going specifically there, to this store, and thought maybe he could use an extra pair of hands.
"Do you have someone in mind?" Shane asked him.
"One of you guys, maybe?" Glenn told him looking back and forth between them, a little unsure.
"Nah, I ain't going." Shane crossed his arms above puffed chest, a definite tone on his voice. "Not leaving camp alone, all the people and stuff. I ain't going."
"I'll go." Sam said with the same tone. Shane looked sharply at her. "I think we all gotta know how to deal with a run, ya know? Actually, Glenn, I've been thinking… You're pretty good at it, I think you've killed more walkers than any of us at this point. Maybe you could take more of us with you."
"Oh, Sam, I don't know…"
"Look, I know you said you'd rather go alone." Sam interrupted him. Shane still had his arms crossed, just listening. "And I know you handle yourself well, but we all have to be able to do it. To go on runs, to get things back to camp, and most importantly, to defend ourselves and the others. We're not developing any of those abilities by staying in camp mainly sitting around all day."
"She's got a point there, man." Shane opined. "It's better if more than just one person's able to do it, we could have more than a group going on runs at a time, keeping things in motion."
"What do you think? You up for taking a group with you this time?" Sam questioned Glenn, who still looked uncertain.
"Alright…" he agreed reluctantly and then added a little bit more certain: "But you gotta make it clear to anyone who goes that I'll be in charge. They'll have to listen to me, if I say we move on, we move on. If I say we retreat, we retreat."
"You got it." Sam nodded sharply. "I'll be there anyway, if anyone gives you a hard time."
"Good." Shane uncrossed his arms. "I'll go ask people who wants to go. How many do you think?" he asked to both Sam and Glenn
"Uh, I – Five. Yeah, about five. No, I don't know. Less than ten."
"Glenn," Sam stated firmly. "You'll be this run's leader. Make a decision and stay firm in it."
"Sorry, yeah, uh… Six or seven. Yeah, seven, at most."
"Seven it is." Shane mumbled before turning around and leaving.
As Shane walked around camp talking to each adult personally, Sam went back to the tents where she was about to gather a few of her stuff in a backpack to get ready to go the next morning. She was met by Daryl, returning from the most secluded area of the woods, where they had dig holes in the most sanitary way possible, and told him about the recent decision.
"You sure ya gonna go?" he asked her carefully when she told him she'd be going.
"Yeah, I'm sure. Why?"
"'Cause you was sick 'til two days ago."
"I'm fine nor, Daryl."
"Still think ya shouldn't go."
"I'll be fine, don't worry."
He stopped talking for a moment to watch her dive into her tent and return after a few seconds with an empty backpack in hand.
"Then I'm going too."
"Didn't you say you were going hunting?"
"It can wait."
"It can't, Daryl, you know it can't. We need food, real meat, not the canned crap we may find out there." Sam saw Daryl start to speak in answer, but cut him out. "You know Merle can't go hunting alone. He's not fine, he's withdrawing, and he'll want to do something. He'll want to go hunting or to go to this run, either way he shouldn't be alone. One of us should be with Merle; the others can't deal with him."
"So we gotta baby sit on a fuckin' grown ass man now?" Daryl asked bitterly, even though he already knew the answer was yes. "I don't like it, Sam. Don't want you going out there where I can't help ya."
"I know that, it's how I feel when you guys go out there hunting. I don't go with you when we all should stay together, from the beginning, like we agreed. Things are not like that, though, we can't have each other's backs all the time. I'll go on this run and Merle will let us know pretty soon where he'll want to be; hunting or Atlanta, and we'll go with it."
"How long do ya think it'll take?"
"A day, probably, we'll be back at night or in the morning, at most."
Before he could say anything, Merle's thundering, laughing voice broke into the tents' space. "Hey, Sam! I'm coming with ya! Not gonna let those fucker's get to ya, sweetheart! Got ya back!" and he turned around to leave once again, still shouting. "Atlanta, here I come!"
Sighing, Sam looked back at Daryl, his face showing just how annoyed and worried he was. She reached out to touch his arm. "We'll be alright, don't worry."
He shook his head and took a step back, opening space between them, Sam's hand dropping to her side. "Can't help it." He told her before walking away.
* * *
Sam had only been able to enjoy the other's company around the fire at night twice before. It had become a habit; some of them would take their spots on the lookout while the rest gathered around a low fire. Strong enough to warm the chill night but low enough not to be seen from a distance. There, they sat for about a couple of hours to eat and talk until sleep took them and quieted the camp until the next morning. Having been sick every night until a few days before, Sam had never been really able to enjoy it, and was glad now she could. They had had chicken soup – it had been thinned with salted water to serve more people, but it still had tasted good – and were now quietly talking, tin mugs being passed from hand to hand. Sam was mostly watching and listening to the others talk, observing how the other interacted.
She could see Andrea and Amy had become quite close to Dale, who seemed to be some kind of father figure to them, though she didn't think Dale thought of Andrea paternally. Shane was always close to Lori and Carl, Sam had noticed it from the first day, and it had been intensifying these days. Jim and Jackie were good friends too, closer to the Morales then to any others. Glenn got along with everyone, except for the Dixons, who didn't get along with anyone other than Sam. The Peletiers were always away, in their own little circle, Ed probably imposing that Carol and Sofia stayed with him, unable to get close to anybody else. Sam hated it, but she knew she could never force Carol to stand up for her husband, take her daughter and go sit with the others.
Merle was on his watch duty, which he always accomplished by complaining a lot, but did his job. Daryl was around, sitting on a log a bit outside the circle, close to Sam and only listening, as usual. By Sam's side, Amy took a sip of a drink on her tin mug and then offered it to her, the blonde, young woman nodding wordlessly in her direction. Sam took it with a smile as a thank you and kept listening to Dale tell the circle about his late wife and the time he gave her a kitten for her birthday, to only then find out she was allergic to cats.
Smiling as she thought of how she had never had any kind of pet in her life, Sam brought the mug to her lips to take a sip. The smell of wine hit her strongly, like a punch on her nose, and the liquid touched her lips, the nectarous burn of the cheap sweet wine making her mouth water, her taste buds coming hungrily to life, starving, ordering Sam's brain to demand for more, for a full gulp, for the whole mug, for the entire bottle. Deciding she should just drain it, drink it all, fall around drunkenly forgetting all the worries, all the walkers, the pregnancy, the responsibilities, the ghosts from the past.
Instead, as soon as the wine touched her tongue, Sam spit it out. She spit it strongly, loud noise coming out as the red liquid sprayed towards the center of the circle. All heads turned to her, startled. Behind her, Daryl nearly got up but refrained, remained sitting but attentive to his friend.
"What the fuck!" She yelled, a hand rubbing at her lips to clean them. "That's fuckin' wine!"
"Sam?" Shane was the one to ask as he stood up just as Sam did, her body language foreign to all of the group. "What's the matter?"
Instead of giving him any attention, Sam looked down at Amy, who had the same startles expression the others did.
"Did you just give me a mug of wine without telling me what it was?!" she yelled and then threw the white painted tin mug to the ground, making Amy flinch, eyes wide in shock. "What the fuck is wrong with you?!"
Amy stuttered, trying to answer, but her older sister was already by Sam. "Hey, back off!" Andrea told her. "What's the problem?"
"The problem!" Sam carried on yelling. Daryl was also up, as most of the circle was now, and approached her slowly, fully aware of Sam's and everyone else's movements. "The fuckin' problem is that you don't just give fuckin' alcohol to people without warning them what the fuck it is! I thought it was tea!"
"So what?!" Andrea still countered, now standing in front of her young sister.
"What the fuck is the problem, Sam?" she also heard Shane ask her and saw him approach with puffed chest. On her peripheral vision, she saw Daryl get closer, now by her side rather than behind her.
"The fuckin' problem is that this was the first time in three fucking years," she paused and moved on, "three years, four months and seventeen fuckin' days, that I've had any real contact with any drink! That's what's the fuckin' matter with it!"
Nobody spoke. Sam saw the awkwardness fall over them replacing the astonishment like rain, people exchanging uncomfortable looks. Andrea turned back to look at Amy, who looked down. The only noise was the fire crackling softly and Sam's ragged breaths and sniffs.
It didn't take more than five seconds for Daryl to reach out and hold Sam's arm just above her elbow and, with a gentle tug, pull her with him. Unthinkingly, Sam moved, allowing Daryl to guide her out of the circle towards the tents. She had moved halfway there with him still holding her arm when he felt her stop walking. He stood by her, watching her face. She had closed up, a single tear path on her face, eyes lost onto the words. She turned around then, Daryl let her go, and took a few steps back towards the circle, but didn't return there. She stopped only close enough to be heard.
"There was no way you could've known," she started and lifted her lowered hear to look at Amy. "I'm sorry. You didn't do anything wrong. I'm sorry I yelled at you."
With that, without waiting for any answer or gesture, Sam turned around again and walked over to where Daryl was waiting for her, and together they moved out of everyone's sight, silence falling over them. Sam sat down heavily in a log close to the tents, her both legs shaking, elbows resting on them making her whole body tremble. She breathed hard, licked her lips, dried the sweat from her face.
"Fuck!" she yelled suddenly, head falling between her knees. "Fuck, why did it have to…" and she didn't finish her sentence, though Daryl understood.
"You didn't want nobody to know," he affirmed.
"No," her answer came out muffled by her hands that covered her face. "Nobody had to know. Ain't nobody's business. But I bet you knew."
"Wasn't sure." They were silent again for a moment and Daryl took the time to sit by her side, on the other end of the log. "Was just alcohol?"
Sam took a deep breath, hands releasing her face, and popped her neck. "Was mostly alcohol, whatever I could get my hands on. Cheap wine was the main choice… Just like the one I tasted just now. But… Drugs too, on occasion."
Daryl nodded slowly, saying nothing else, and started biting on his lower lip. He understood her problem really well. He had Merle, his admittedly addict to every drug that was illicit and licit brother, and his own father who had been heavily alcoholic until his liver exploded, not to mention tens of friends and acquaintances.
"I had enough examples at home not to get into it too deep," he heard himself sharing, having not planned on it. He saw Sam turn her head to look at in, interested, maybe glad to have a distraction, so he moved on, even though he had no idea what to say. "Father died of cirrhosis, he drank so much… And Merle, you know Merle."
"Yeah…" she answered in a whisper that was for his ears only. "Good… Good that you didn't…"
"Almost did, though… There was a time… But then I started seeing a lot of old Will on me so I backed out," he confessed and snorted a laugh. "Merle called me all kindsa things."
Sam smiled with him. "Yeah, he would."
They shared one more long moment of silence before Sam spoke again. "My dad was a nice guy. Never saw him drink a drop of alcohol. Died of cancer."
"Life ain't fair." Daryl told Sam, knowing where her thoughts were going.
She nodded, looking down with a sad smile, her legs no longer trembling so much. "Spot on."
"Well, at least in the apocalypse ain't gonna be too easy to come across temptations…"
Sam smiled again and looked once more at Daryl. He looked shy, lips pressed together, self-conscious about his attempt to cheer her up a bit. The sight made her smile more.
"Yeah, I don't think people will offer me mugs on unknown drinks too often."
"You know what them parents say: never accept a drink from strangers." Daryl mumbled lowly, his voice grave but amused.
Sam laughed aloud now, a strange feeling on her chest that had nothing to do with the abstinence syndrome that had threatened to overtake her. Her heart swelled at the knowledge of Daryl trying to cheer her up and comfort her, and she just couldn't help but allow a large smile to lighten up her face.
"I think it was candy!" she told him, laughing. "Don't take candies from strangers."
"Yeah, well, ya had a nice guy for a dad. Mine said that about drinks."
Sam knew how sad this thought was, deep down, but still smiled. He did too, for a moment, and she could actually see teeth, something she wasn't used to see too often, but he hid the larger smile again, looking down embarrassedly.
Silence fell again, but not at all uncomfortable. Sam still wanted to smile, but she still tasted the wine on her tongue, her mind confused about how she felt at the moment. She wanted to thank Daryl for talking to her, distracting her, and she wanted to ask more about his life, but was afraid to scare him away. She desired to go back to the fire and take the rest of the bottle wine and drain it down, and she wanted to scotch over closer to Daryl and just be there. She didn't do anything, though, instead she looked back over her shoulders, just like Daryl, at the sound of feet crunching dry leaves, and saw Merle approach, his imposing presence worsened by a thousand by the presence of a full bottle of whiskey loosely held on his left hand.
"Hey there, Boozer!" Merle thundered as he stepped over the log between Sam and Daryl and stood in front of them. "How come ya didn't tell me, we coulda shared some vitamin water!"
"Oh, fuck off, Merle…" Sam said resting her elbows on her kneed and hiding her face on her hands again.
"Oh, come on, Alkie! I know ya want it!" he sing-songed shaking the whiskey bottle.
"Yes!", she yelled shooting up from the log. "Ya know I want it, so why are ya doing this?!"
"The fuck ya doin' Merle?" Daryl was up too.
"It's the end of the fuckin' world!" he laughed and opened the bottle lid. "Bit won't hurtcha!"
"But it will!" she yelled and took a step back from him and his bottle. "Ya know it will, ya know what'll do to me if I take a sip."
"I know. Ya gonna fuckin' relax, is what's gonna happen!", and with that he took a long gulp out of the bottle, a deep, unpleasant 'ah!" sound following it.
"Ain't ya trying to quit it?" Daryl asked him as Sam turned her back to Merle, arms crossed.
"Quitting on crystal and coke. Ain't never said I'd stop the booze." Another gulp followed it.
"Just leave me alone, Merle." Sam told him quietly.
"Why? Yeah, I know why!" he drawled walking over to her. "Is cause ya know ya want it more than any fuckin' thing right now. Ya want it more than ya want to breathe!"
"Merle!", Sam heard Daryl say in a firm, angry voice. He stood between his brother and Sam's back right before he reached her. "Back the fuck away from her."
Before Merle could say anything else – which, by the look she saw on the older Dixon's face when she turned, would be a pissed-off remark, the beginning of a fight between the brothers, which would make the situation even worse – Sam interrupted them both.
"I want you away from me, Merle." She started and the dry tone of her voice made even Daryl turn and stare. "I thought you had become my friend those month, but I was fucking wrong. You are the worst person someone could have their life. I've met horrible people, Merle, and you have just proved to be one of them. This thing you did now, it's despicable. Ain't something you do to your enemy. This thing here, that we had - this 'friendship', it's over. Ya ruined it. Get the fuck away from me, Dixon."
She didn't wait to see or listen to any reaction. She rounded him and walked away a few steps, but didn't leave the tent area since it was dark and unsafe to go wandering too far. Silence followed her where she stood, arms crossed, unseeing eyes staring into the darkened woods, trembles returned to her legs. After a moment she heard the leaved being crunched under careful, gentle feet. This information alone told her it was not Merle. Daryl entered her eyesight and stood there with her, silent.
"I didn't think ya should go on that run tomorrow," he started with a whisper. "Now I'm sure ya shouldn't go."
"I'm fine, Daryl…"
"I know ya fine. Ya gonna be alright. I mean 'bout Merle."
"What about him?"
"He's goin'. You said ya'd be the only one to look after him. Ya can't now."
"I'm still going. Glenn gonna need me there. I gotta be –"
She stopped talking when they heard steps again, both turning to look in silence. Among the tents, in the darkness, they saw as Lori tiptoed from her own tent towards the neighbor one – where Shane lived. Lori stopped there, looked around, her eyes sweeping over the spot where Sam and Daryl stood, not seeing them. Silently, the tent's zipper was opened from the inside and they could see Shane's head come out of it, look around quickly as well, before his hand reached out to take Lori's, pulling her with him inside. They heard the zipper being closed once more, and then he silence returned to the sleeping area.
"Yeah, they all'll need ya." Daryl broke the silence once again, turning to look at Sam again. He whispered impatiently, but softness still coated his voice. "But what ya gonna do when Merle starts actin' out? Ya know he gonna."
"I know that." She told him, exhaustion taking her tone. "But that's exactly why I wanted to go, and I still go, 'cause of that. Fight or no fight, him being a fuckin' asshole to me or not, nobody there will be able to talk him out of it."
"And you will?"
"I don't know, Daryl, I'll just, I don't know… I can't…"
"You ok?"
"No, I need to lie down. I'm going to bed."
She turned to go and Daryl followed her automatically until they stopped in front of her small, bright orange tent. Arms crossed, Sam looked down.
"Thank you, Daryl…"
"For what?"
"Staying with me and talking and… Distracting me of the... You know."
"'S nothin'."
"It ain't nothing and you know it." She whispered decisively and looked at him. "And, I mean, mostly for trying to protect me from Merle."
He smiled that shy, tight lipped smile Daryl had. "Ya hardly need protection, especially from Merle."
She returned his smile. "I know. But ya did it anyway and…" she shrugged, looking down again. "Is nice." She told him in a gentle whisper. He didn't answer and, looking at him again, Sam knew he was embarrassed wordless. She smiled at the notion, again, and moved to the tent. "Goodnight, Daryl."
She entered then and, just as she zipped the tent closed, she thought she heard him say "Goodnight, Sam," but it was so quietly she wasn't sure. As she lay down on her folding bed, her trembling legs and painfully pounding heart had given way to fluttering butterflies in her stomach.