Her heart hammering in her chest, Carol ran the rest of the way across the log and looked down at the creek bed below. Sophia was lying stomach down, not moving, her neck raised to hold her face above the shallow, streaming water. Her screams echoed in the forest. The standing walker, ankle-deep in water, lurched toward her, while the other dragged itself by its arms in Sophia's direction.
"Sophia!" Carol shouted again. "Get up! Sophia!" But the girl only lay there, barely able to hold her face above water, crying out. The standing walker, jaws thrashing, stumbled closer. If Carol didn't get in between her terrified little girl and that lurching creature soon, Sophia would be consumed. And yet there seemed no quick enough way down, no way to rescue her only child.
Carol had played softball for two years in high school, in the days before Ed, in the days when she had friends and something of a life of her own. For some strange reason, she remembered that fact now. She scoured the ground for a good rock, pried it loose from the earth, and geared up as if pitching. The muscle memory came back to her, like riding a bicycle, and the rock soared through the air and thunked against the side of the walker's head. The hit didn't kill it, or even fell it, but the monster was startled enough to stumble back two steps and then look up at Carol. It turned, took one step toward the mother, but then decided the child was a more convenient meal, and thrashed back in Sophia's direction.
"No!" Carol shouted. "Over here!" She desperately scoured the ground for another rock with which to distract the creature and seized one. Even as she picked it up, she realized it was too small, and the hope seeped out of her. But that was when Daryl Dixon burst through the brush on the other side.
He came to a skidding stop at the very edge of the rocky hill above the creek that wound itself like a tentacle through the forest. Before Carol even saw him raise his bow, the arrow lodged itself in the back of the standing walker's head, and it tumbled face down in the water. Daryl loaded and shot again, killing the walker that was crawling through the creek bed.
By now, Rick had emerged from behind Daryl. He spied his wife and son and quickly made his way across the fallen log toward them. He almost slipped and tumbled over in his haste. Lori grabbed him on the other side, and Carl buried his face in his father's shirt.
Daryl meanwhile climbed clumsily and quickly down the bank, using tree roots and rock-holds. Partway down, his boot slipped on the soft, damp dirt between two rocks, and he lost his grip before sliding the last few feet. Carol thought he must have twisted his ankle from the way he landed, but he got up as though nothing had happened and splashed through the water to hunker down next to Sophia, who was still screaming.
[*]
"Shh!" Daryl ordered, his fear rolling out in a low hiss of anger. "Put a cork in it, girl! Y'll draw more of 'em!"
Sophia rolled onto her back in the shallow water, and that was when Daryl saw she wasn't screaming because she was still afraid of the walkers. White bone burst through the skin where her leg had been fractured from the fall. Blood flowed around the open wound. Sophia kept screaming.
Daryl ripped the red rag from his back pocket, the one he used to check oil. The leg was bad. Horrible. There was no holding it together with something as feeble as a rag. So he used it instead to make a gag to keep Sophia's screams from continuing to echo through the forest. Muffled cries drifted out around the red cloth as he scooped the confused child up in his arms.
He walked to the shore, looked up, and in the rising moonlight, saw the expression of Carol's face turn from relief to horror as her eyes fell on the bloodied bone protruding from her daughter's lower leg. Then Daryl saw the rustling of the trees behind her. "Walkers!" he shouted up at them. "Rick!"
Rick shot three times, bringing the creatures down. "We've got to get moving," Rick called down. "Sophia's cries drew them!"
"Cain't get all the way up that hill with the girl," Daryl called up. "Gonna move along the shore until it winds 'round to a shorter bank."
Rick nodded. "Head back toward the RV. We'll meet up. I'll get the women there."
"My baby!" Carol screamed.
Rick shushed her. "Daryl's got her!" He took Carol by the arm and led her forward on the bank above.
Trying not to let Sophia's muffled screams bother him, finding her heavier than he had expected, and ignoring the pain from his throbbing ankle, Daryl began to run.
[*]
Carol held her suffering daughter's hand tightly and stifled her own cry by placing her palm flat against her mouth. Daryl had gotten her little girl all the way back to the broken-down RV. Sophia now lay on the bed, writhing in pain, sweat breaking across her brow, as Rick stood guard outside with a rifle and Daryl rummaged frantically through Dale's cabinets for a first aid kit of some kind.
"Do you know what you're doing?" Lori, who was sitting at the RV's little table with Carl, asked him as he drew down a blue kit, threw it open, and looked at the contents.
"Why, do you?" he shouted.
Lori shook her head.
Daryl went back to rummaging through the kit. There was nothing but some gauze, bandaids, aspirin, bee sting ointment, surgical scissors, and a small tube of Neosporin. He held up the tiny roll of gauze and then looked at the bone protruding from Sophia's leg. "Fuck!" He threw the gauze angrily against the opposite cabinet and wedged a hand in his hair. He looked as desperate and helpless as Carol felt.
"We need to get Sophia help," Lori said.
"No shit!" Daryl yelled. "Shut up, ya dumb bitch! I'm tryin' to think!"
"Daryl," Carol said softly. "Lori's just trying to help."
"Well she ain't! She aint' helpin'!"
Lori stood up and began rummaging through some more cabinets. She pulled out a bottle with about eight ounces of vodka left. "Here, will this help? At least to prevent infection?"
Daryl grabbed it and poured it on Sophia's wound. The blood and skin bubbled around the opening where the bone pushed through. The girl writhed, and her screams seeped out around the gag. Carol's hand grew blue from the strength with which Sophia was squeezing it.
Lori handed Daryl a clean white dish towel next. He cleaned the wound as best he could, while Carol watched in horror, her chest heaving with repressed panic.
The door opened and T-Dog walked in. "We came back when we heard the screams in the woods." His eyes fell to the girl and his face contorted.
"Andrea?" Lori asked him anxiously.
T-Dog shook his head. "We didn't find her."
Carol was breathing in and out heavily now, her eyes on the bubbling mess around Sophia's leg. "Does anyone here have any medical experience at all?" she asked, her voice a quiet plea.
"Darlene!" Daryl exclaimed.
Hope and confusion mingling in her mind, Carol looked up at him. "Who?"
"Got to get Sophia back to Atlanta," Daryl said. "To the nursin' home. Darlene's got to have a better idea what to do than any of us, and they got medicines there. Antibiotics. IVs. Splints. All sorts of shit."
"We can't just leave Andrea," Lori said.
"I'll stay and keep looking for Andrea," T-Dog reassured her. "If Daryl will lend me his bike, I'll catch up with y'all in Atlanta."
"Fine," Daryl said. "But that bike's Merle's If ya put so much as a scratch on – "
"- Yeah." T-Dog nodded. "I got ya."
[*]
They moved some of the water bottles into the extended cab to free up more space in the bed of the pick-up. Daryl lugged the mattress from the RV so the little girl would have something better than the hard, metallic bed of the pick-up to lie on. T-Dog had already disappeared back into the woods in search of Andrea, after being handed an extra box of ammunition by Rick.
Rick and Lori climbed into the front seats of the pick-up and Glenn and Carl slid into the extended cab. As the engine started, Daryl jumped into the bed of the truck and wedged himself into a free corner, while Carol curled up on the narrow mattress on her side next to her daughter, held Sophia's hand, kissed her sweaty brow, and cried.
Daryl looked away from the tender scene as the truck picked up speed, but his eyes were drawn back, over and over. Carol was muttering softly as she stroked Sophia's hair, and it took Daryl awhile to realize she was praying over the girl.
Once, when Daryl was a boy, he'd fallen out of a tree and broken his left foot. He'd hopped home on one leg, trying not to cry whenever he lost his balance and his broken foot came down hard against the ground. No one had prayed over him when he walked through the door. His mother was annoyed that he'd interrupted her T.V. show and that she had to stop drinking to drive him to the hospital. She made him sit on the couch and wait twenty minutes, until her show was over before she would take him in, and while she drove, she muttered around her cigarette, "Jesus, Daryl. Do you know how much this is gonna cost?"
But this woman who lay across from him now had been ready to brain two walkers with nothing but rocks to save her child.
Carol stopped praying and put her ear to Sophia's mouth. She closed her eyes.
"She breathin'?" Daryl asked nervously.
Carol nodded. She sat up halfway and pulled a blanket up to Sophia's stomach. The weather wasn't cold, but maybe Carol couldn't stand to look at the girl's leg. "I think she passed out from the pain and the shock."
"Might be for the best."
"I just keep hoping and praying she'll be all right."
"Ain't no use, hopin' and prayin'."
Carol's eyes grew stern. Daryl didn't know the woman was capable of looking mean, but there was a hard, gray edge to her blue eyes at the moment. "You think she'll die?"
"Not what I meant. But prayin' ain't what's gonna keep her alive. We're gonna get this little girl to Atlanta. And Sophia's gonna be just fine."
Carol's lip trembled. She returned her attention to Sophia. Daryl tried not to notice how the bone in Sophia's leg pushed up and tented the blanket slightly, but his eyes kept being drawn that way.
"Your friend," Carol asked, not looking at him, "the one you think can help her, how do you know her?"
"Grew up together. Neighbors. Next cabin over from my daddy's place."
"And she's a doctor?" Carol asked hopefully.
Daryl chewed on his thumbnail. "Well…no." Daryl felt awful saying it because Carol's face fell. "But she's a nurse," he hastened. "Shit load of experience. Worked near twenty years at that job. And she knows how to get shit done in an emergency. Busted me out a cell once."
"A cell?"
"Uh…" Shit. He didn't want Carol to think he was a criminal. He wasn't sure why he cared so much what she thought, but apparently he did. "Case of mistaken identity." That sounded like a lame excuse when he said it, even though it was more or less true. "We was gonna be released in a few hours, but then everythin' went to shit. People started dyin' and turnin'. Got left for dead in there." He could feel himself growing more defensive, and growing angry in his defensiveness. "I didn't do noth -"
"- Thank you," she interrupted him.
"What?"
"Thank you. For rescuing Sophia from that walker. For carrying her all that way. For trying to help her now."
"Mhmm," he murmured. He didn't know what to say to that. He couldn't remember the last time a woman had thanked him – sincerely – for anything.
Daryl turned his body away from her, looked out over the bed of the pick-up, and watched the Georgia pine trees, growing tall among the foothills, passing them by, one by one by one. He wished Rick would hit that accelerator a little harder. He would have, if he was driving.