Eli-XD-O Judy is awesome!

Lizzie doesn't talk to us for hours. The house is so miserable that Carol decides to take me and Mika hunting, while Tyreese and Judith stay with Lizzie. I have a holster for my Glock now, which Carol found. Mika takes the rifle.

"Is it too heavy?" Carol asks her.

"Nah, I'm good."

Carol smiles out at the forest.

"Fire's still burning," she says.

I can smell it, almost used to it after the time since arriving. I see it, too, when I look up. "...saw the feeble flame rise and fall, climb the thin tower of smoke, linger at its top a moment, and then..."

Not knowing the end of the sentence but already knowing the end of the story makes me feel all ick and muddled, like it felt trying to read The Chronicles of Narnia in order of release rather than chronologically.

"Could've gone out," Carol adds.

"Nope," Mika replies. "The smoke's black. If it was white, the fire wouldn't be burning anymore."

Carol looks impressed.

"I miss science class," Mika says. "Except when we had to do stuff like cut up planaria worms."

"You gotta do worse than that nowadays, Mika," Carol says.

"I don't gotta."

"You do." Carol stops, so we do, too. "Lizzie's bigger than you and in some ways she's stronger. But you're smarter, and you understand these... things. You gotta look out for her. You have to—"

She was about to keep walking, but holds her arms out to stop us. Ahead, is another deer. It grazes, oblivious to us. Mika tries to hand the rifle to me, but Carol stops her.

"No, go ahead. You do it."

Mika looks at me. I shrug — in all honesty, she has a better shot than I do.

"Just like I showed you at the prison," Carol adds. "Go ahead."

Reluctantly, Mika takes aim. She's shaking. Ten seconds pass. Thirty. A minute... and still, no shot. Finally, Mika lowers the rifle. "I can't..."

The deer wanders off into the tree cover. We watch. Carol crosses her arms. She looks at Mika.

"We have peaches," Mika says.

Carol narrows her eyes, glances at me, then walks back to the house. "C'mon, you two."

As we follow, Mika stretches her stride to match mine. I jolt her shoulder, say, "Vegetarian..." and Mika giggles like it was a compliment — to be honest, I'm not sure it wasn't.

Later, a little before dark, while Carol and Tyreese are out getting water, I stay inside with the girls, and at some point, get the idea to teach Lizzie and Mika to play I spy. However, when I knock on Lizzie's door, she doesn't answer, and when I go in, she's gone. Mika and I look for her, and eventually, we find her heading for the tracks. When we get there, she's knelt beside the walker stuck in the beams. It growls and shrieks. I take out my gun, except... she's laughing. Mika suddenly grips my hand. I know why...

Lizzie holds out a little grey mouse from its tail. It dangles there, and she feeds it to the walker. I flinch, hearing tiny bone and flesh crunch and squelch.

"Don't worry," Lizzie tells it. "I'll get you more."

"Lizzie?" Mika finds her tongue first.

Lizzie looks at us. She waits for us to say something, but I don't know what to say. I just watch her and the walker.

"When we were giving them names," Mika adds, "we were just pretending things weren't bad. Things are bad. Those things, they're bad. They are. We can't pretend anymore."

"I'm not pretending," Lizzie says. "You were. I know... I can hear them."

No, I think. This is that thing, isn't it? That thing when some people aren't well, and they need a doctor and someone to talk to and maybe some pills if the things in their head upsets them enough.

Carefully, I reach down to help Lizzie stand, but again, Mika yells at her.

"They wanna kill you!"

Lizzie shakes her head. "They just want me to change," she says. "Make me be like them. Maybe I should change..."

"Stop it!"

Lizzie ignores her. She says, "I can make you all understand," and as she reaches out for the walker, I snatch her hand and yanking her back. "No!" she screams.

"Lizzie!" Mika barks.

Somewhere there is rustling, and while I struggle to hold Lizzie still, I manage to look around and see dead bodies coming for us. They're burned, from the fire. One, three, seven.

"Lizzie, they're coming!"

"Run!" I yell, and they do. The walkers chase us, smoke fizzling from their charred skin and clothes. I can smell them — like burned, rotten bacon. Another walker pushes through a bush beside me and I dodge it. There's a scream, and Lizzie's being yanked back by her sweater. By some divine intervention, I shoot it through the skull. We run until we can see the house. Lizzie climbs through the barbed fence, but as Mika follows, she snags her leggings and stumbles.

"Help me!"

"I got you! I got you!" But I don't. A walker grabs me by the back of my shirt and I twist away from teeth. I aim, fire, miss, and another walker snatches me and I'm suddenly a row boat getting swamped. The girls are screaming. My foot comes up, connecting with a rotten face, then I aim again and after two shots, I'm free.

I shoot the walker on Mika and it stumbles, allowing Lizzie to pull her inside the fence. She reaches out for me, then shouts, "Watch out!" and I twist around to a wide-open mouth coming at me. My arm comes up on reflex, catching under its chin. I pull my gun up to its temple and pull the trigger, but nothing fires, and I think I'm going to die until I hear a gunshot. It rings my brain and I collapse under the walker's weight, its exploded skull splattering my face.

"Get behind us!"

Carol is here. Tyreese, too. I shove the walker off, crying out, then clamber to my feet and scramble through the fence. Tyreese takes my shoulders and I shove him off, feeling sick, telling him I'm fine, and then he's handing me a magazine and I load my Glock — shoot, shoot, shoot... Walkers drop like rocks. The noise is deafening. Soon, they're thinning out, until finally the last walker goes down and the grove rings in quiet. We all stand here, panting and rigid and staring out over the dead.

Lizzie bursts into tears.

"It's okay." Carol holds her. "You did it."

Mika touches my hand. I flinch, then tangle our fingers. After a moment, something stings, and then I realise my shirt is wet — soaking red. Carefully, I lift the hem of my shirt. Mika gasps. There's so much blood. I don't know if I've ever bled this much. I try to wipe it away but more trickles down faster. My hands drip, and someone says my name and I look up and Carol is talking but I'm not hearing her and then my eyes aren't working or my legs or my fingers and my gun is on the ground and then I am, too.

The next time I open my eyes, I'm lying on the couch and it's night-time. A candle is lit on the coffee table, the burning fire behind it. Carol is kneeling beside me on the floor, Judith is in her cot across from the couch, and Tyreese is asleep in the armchair.

Carol notices me.

"Hey," she whispers. "How're you feeling?"

"Where — Where are the girls?"

"Sleeping. They're okay."

I can smell the burning walkers outside. There are things wrapped around my stomach and head — not bandages, but torn-up shirts. It hurts when I breathe deeply. I must look like a mess, with a cut up abdomen, mouth, and temple all at the same time.

Carol leans over, reaches out, but I push her hands away.

"Oliver..."

"I..." I gag. "I'm... I'm gonna yack."

She rushes across the room and grabs a bucket, tossing the water out into the sink, then all but flings it at me. I snatch it and throw the whole garden up into it. Carol takes my shoulder and I throw up more, until it's just bile.

"Stop!" I beg. "Don't touch me —hurrkk!— Don't."

"I'm sorry. I won't I won't. I'm not gonna hurt you. I'd never hurt you."

I take deep breaths.

"You're okay, sweetie."

I lie back, exhausted, wiping my mouth with my wrist. I don't know where my shirt went. Carol takes the bucket away. Tyreese is awake now, too. I don't look at him, feeling embarrassed and small and weak.

"You're okay," I'm told by him.

And I say, "I know. I know."

"Sweetie..." Carol is back. "Look at me."

I do. And I cringe. "God, you gave me one job, and I..." I take a breath. "I messed it up. I messed up so hard."

"They're kids." She shrugs. "They're gonna run off. It's not your fault."

I sigh and shake my head, covering my face with my arm.

"Jesus," Carol says, "if you think this is bad I'm glad you weren't around back when Carl used to run off without us. 'Stay in the house'. 'Stay in the house'. Nope. Not him."

I laugh. I don't know what my face is doing but I know I have to hold back my tears.

"N'the last few months, if he was ever laughing, it was with you." Carol tilts her head, smiles. "Get some rest, okay?"

I sniff. "Okay."

Later, I wake up and Lizzie and Mika are sitting at the table with the jigsaw, and Tyreese is asleep again. Carol gives me a new shirt. It's baggy, like an old pirate's shirt; I have to tuck the hems in and pull the collar up when it falls down my shoulder.

I sit at the table and help Mika with the jigsaw. Lizzie hasn't said anything to me, or anyone, I don't think. Carol gives me a worried look. I look away, thinking I should tell her what I saw today. I think of Mika and her plenary worms, figuring the walkers are just Lizzie's type of plenary worm, and that she learned today that it's not okay to play with them, perhaps, so I keep my mouth shut and find where this corner piece goes.

Lizzie must know we're thinking of her, because after a while, she says, "I had to help stop them."

"Do you understand what they are now?" Carol asks.

"I know. I know what I have to do now," she says. "I know."

"It's ugly," Carol says, "and it's scary. And it does change you... That's how we get to be here. That's... the cost. That's growing up now."

"I don't wanna hurt anyone," Mika says, Grazelda Gunderson in her lap, "I don't wanna be mean."

"You have to be sometimes," Lizzie replies, "but just sometimes."

Just then, Tyreese starts mumbling in his sleep. We know not to wake him.

"You know," Carol says, "we have a lot of pecans here."

"Tonne," Lizzie says.

"You getting sick of them yet?"

"Nope," Mika grins.

"I am," I say.

"C'mon, I got an idea," Carol says, and a few minutes later, we're in the kitchen cracking open as many pecans as we can fit onto the baking tray. Lizzie finds the nut-cracker difficult and keeps rocketing pecan shards through the kitchen. It makes us laugh.

"I used to make these with my grandma when I was little," Carol tells us while I search for the edible parts of an exploded pecan. Mika dips them into the sugar and cinnamon, then puts them on the tray.

"They smell good," she says.

"There you go," Carol praises us. "All right. I think you guys are ready to start doin' the cooking around here." She takes the tray to the oven, glancing at us. "Who wants to put them in?"

The girls leap from their stools, and once they're done, for a while, as we wait for the pecans to bake, I teach them to play I spy, and the game goes on quietly until the pecans are ready and we pause the game on something beginning with C.

Notes

Happy reading.