Eli Thanks, amazingness! Love your support!

The next morning, the warm sun sparkles pink and yellow through the edge of the tree-line, twinkling through the leaves, while I sit in silence on the train tracks with a numb ass and aching arms and legs. My back is hurting, too, and my front, and my up and my down and my upside down and inside out, though, out of everything my temple is probably the worst place of pain. The bandage is gone. The one on my abdomen, too.

I've been staring ahead at the tracks, so I don't expect someone to touch my shoulder. I lash out, and Lizzie jumps back. She apologises, and I don't look at her. A few yards behind her, Judith is in Carol's arms, drinking formula, and Mika and Tyreese are asleep. Carol watches me.

"Everything okay?"

I don't say anything, just shrug.

Lizzie leans into my eyesight, puckering to chew the inside of her mouth.

"Are you still hurting?" she asks.

I shut my eyes.

"He's hurting," Lizzie says.

Then Carol is here, putting Judith in Lizzie's arms. She sits next to me. She doesn't try to touch me. She just asks, "Where does it hurt, sweetie?"

After a second, I point to my temple.

"Looks sore," Carol says. When I don't say anything back she says, "We'll fix you up. Your asthma's better now, right?"

I nod.

"We cleaned up your wounds, last night, but your bandages were too dirty to reuse," she tells me. "We don't have anything else yet, but we will." She sighs. "That inhaler. It your last one?"

I nod.

"We'll find a drug store or somewhere soon, get you some more. But in the meantime, try to use as little as possible. Think you can do that?"

Another nod.

"Good." Carol smiles. She taps Lizzie on the shoulder. She was catching a moth, but it gets away. "Sweetie, you wanna help me find some tree sap for Oliver?"

Lizzie nods.

When Carol sees me grimace, she says, "It'll help fight any infection."

Lizzie hands me Judith and they both head off across the tracks and up into the banked woods ahead. To my right, Tyreese is curled up on the train track with Mika's small form huddled close behind him so that their spines are pressed together for warmth. It's a little nerve-wracking to hold Judith again, but I manage, not rocket science and all, and then I'm hugging her, and she's purring away into my ear.

Tyreese starts mumbling in his sleep, waking Mika up. She sits up and watches him, then gently taps his shoulder. He shudders.

"Ty?"

He gets worse.

Mika pushes him and he sits up, mumbling about Karen, and then he looks at us and calms down. His eyes are wet. I've never seen Tyreese cry before. It's sort of like what I imagine watching a tsunami must feel like to a bird while flying. There isn't anything you can really do but watch and never forget.

"I'm sorry for waking you," Mika says.

"It's alright." Tyreese sighs. "Sorry. Bad dream." He wipes beads of sweat away from his face with his beanie. "Jus' another nightmare."

With my free hand, I grab my own beanie and put it on over my hair, which is so messy it's almost matted now, and all dirty and sweaty. Then Carol and Lizzie return. Tyreese has a fever and is taken care of first. He cut his arm, back at the prison, and the infection looks pretty bad. She wraps his wound with the reused bandage he was wearing before. Mika sits to my left, picking at weeds that stick out from the tracks. Further down the track, close by, Lizzie is pacing, keeping watch for us with her hand on her knife. I think of my machete, almost reach behind me for it, but I remember it was claimed and stop.

"What do you think? Three days out? Four?" Tyreese asks Carol.

"We haven't seen any of those maps at the crossings... so, I'm not sure."

They talk about the girls but I'm not really listening. A while after their conversation dims down, I ask, "Where are we going?"

"There's a sanctuary," Tyreese answers, "at the end of the tracks. Put signs around for miles. First one we found was outside a suburb."

I look at the floor.

Carol says, "Place. It's called Terminus."

She leaves to find more tree sap for me.

"Been following the tracks for a few days, maybe more," Tyreese explains. "I'm not sure. We were just getting going yesterday morning, when we found you. Mika thought you were a walker. I did too. We were going to stop, too, to rest, but... seemed like you were runnin' from somethin', so... I carried you, and we kept going until we were somewhere safer."

"You... carried me?"

He nods. "No big. You don't weight very much."

I want to ask where Carol went. Why she never came back. But I don't need to because Tyreese tells me anyway.

"Rick and Carol found another car, that day they went to find medicine," he explains. "Carol stayed behind to look for more supplies, while Rick came back with what they'd found. Carol got back later the next day. But, everything'd already happened. It was too late. The place was burning and we were all gone."

"Her car," I change subject, "is it around? We c—"

Tyreese shakes his head, so I stop.

"How'd she find you and the girls?"

"Ran into us in the woods a couple miles from the prison. Some traveller told us to follow the tracks."

"What happened to him?"

Tyreese looks over his shoulder to the tree Carol is harvesting from. "Died."

Carol is coming back, and she kneels in front of me. "Have you been taking anything for your wounds?"

I nod. "Antibiotics. Pain killers."

"Good." The sticky brown syrup dribbles along her blade. She twists her hand it doesn't drip off. "Lean forward, please?"

Lizzie takes Judith for me, sitting beside me while Mika goes to keep watch, and I do as Carol said, tilting my head and tipping forward. It's okay while she touches her little finger to my cheek bone to keep herself steady, but when her other hand reaches out and holds my neck, I make a noise and push her away.

"Wait," I tell her, and I tell myself to deal with it, but I can't because I'm breathing too fast and my heart is trying to escape my body. Carol sits back, which makes me feel better, so I ask, "Can — Can you do it without touching me, please?"

She does. I stay absolutely still while she lets the sap drip onto the cut on my temple. It hurts, and I have to hold my breath and dig my fingernails into the wood on the tracks, but it's over quickly.

"It'll get the swelling down, too," she says. "Just leave it like that. It's the best we've got."

I sit back when she's done.

Carol motions to my stomach. "Can you lift your shirt?"

No, I think, but say, "It's bad."

"I know, I saw it yesterday."

I think about that, and I get all angry and disgusted in myself for too many reasons to think too hard about, then I pull the hem of my shirt up and look away — seeing it once already was enough. Lizzie is looking, leaning past me. She grimaces. I push the shirt down again.

"Don't look," Carols tells her. "Go and sit with Mika." Lizzie moans reluctantly. She even tries to get a better look, but Carol says, "Lizzie... you don't wanna see this."

Lizzie gets up and sits nearer her sister. Carol looks back to me, gesturing to my abdomen.

"This is gonna hurt," she says. "You ready?"

"Yeah." I grit my teeth. "Can you, err..."

"I won't touch you."

I sigh, nod. "Let's get it over with."

Later, we're walking along the tracks. Carol and the girls are talking about storytime.

"Does Tom Sawyer have a happy ending? We never got to finish it."

"Tom and Huck, they, uh, stop Injun Jones and his partner and wind up getting all his gold."

"They wind up rich?"

"M-hm, and the widow Douglas adopts Huck."

"Like you adopted us?"

"Yeah," Carol says, "jus' like the widow Douglas."

And Mika says, "And I'm Huck Finn."

And Lizzie says, "I think you're more like Tom Sawyer."

"Yeah. You're right. You're not even grossed out by dead rabbits."

Lizzie looks at her, then me. "Who do you think you are, Oliver?"

"I'm not sure."

"You can be our friend..."

We keep walking. Lizzie takes my hand, and I let her.

"Forgot you used to read to'em," Tyreese says.

Carol glances back at him, Judith in a baby-carrier on her back. "I did."

Notes

Happy reading.