Chapter Twenty-Four

"Where's Maggie?" Was the second question Daryl asked me.

"She and Glenn left. They went with that Abraham guy to Washington." I knew the anger showed through in my voice, but I didn't care. "Why? You found Beth, didn't you?"

"Somethin' like that."

I bit back the urge to say 'I knew it', because I did. I was right. Daryl wouldn't leave out of the blue like that unless it was for Beth, because he still blamed himself and felt guilty for her disappearing.

Daryl introduced us all to the boy he was with, whose name was Noah. According to Noah, he knew Beth and as far as he knew, she was still alive. They had tried to escape a place called Grady Memorial Hospital together, but Beth had gotten caught. Noah was planning on going back for her when he ran into Daryl and Carol.

Noah also told us about a policewoman named Dawn who apparently ran the place. We listened to Noah's stories in the sanctuary of the church, all of us seated on a space on the floor not stained by blood. I don't think Noah even noticed all the stains that had not—and would not—be cleaned out.

"But where is Carol?" Rick asked. Daryl hung his head beside me.

"She's at Grady Memorial, too. They take people. They took Beth and they took Carol."

"Why take people?" Michonne wondered aloud.

"They make you think that they helped you, and guilt you up so that you think you owe them. That's what Dawn does. She's terrible. She lets her male officers beat people and come on to women, and if you complain, Dawn tells you that they saved your life and you owe all of them for that."

Obviously we needed to get Beth and Carol out of there, and the only way to do that was to take a little trip to Grady Memorial ourselves.

"With Glenn and Maggie gone with Abraham's group, it isn't going to leave a lot of manpower here at the church. If most of us are going to leave for this, we need to make the church safer for those who are staying behind," Rick said.

It was decided we would start preparing in the morning. For the night, we were to try to sleep the best we could.

I knew there was a slim chance of that for Daryl. When he slipped back out of the church doors into what was left of the night, I followed him.

"Hey," I said, coming up beside him where he stood staring into the woods and resting a hand on his arm. "We're going to get them back."

Daryl didn't respond to that. Instead, he was quiet for a moment before asking me, "What happened here?"

"Oh, geez," I said with a sigh. "What happened here? Well, Bob got bit, but we didn't know about that at first. And then you and Carol went missing at the same time Bob did. But Bob came back. He got kidnapped by Gareth and whoever else was left from Terminus. They gave him back after they realized he was bit, but not before eating his leg. Then they came here, for revenge or whatever. But they're all dead now, and so is Bob."

Daryl nodded his head. "That his grave then?"

I nodded at where Daryl was pointing to the wooden cross we'd sunk into the ground at Bob's head.

"Why did Glenn and Maggie leave?"

Daryl was full of questions, but this one I couldn't answer. I shrugged. "I'm not sure. They just told Abraham they'd go with them, and Rick didn't try to stop them. I don't think they should have gone, but whatever."

"You should try to sleep," I told him. I hadn't taken my hand off of his arm yet, and he'd covered it with one of his own.

"I don't think I'm gonna be doing any of that tonight. I was thinkin' of keeping watch tonight. You should try, though."

"No, I'll stay out here with you." Daryl didn't oppose it, so I sat down with him on the front porch steps where Michonne and Gabriel were sitting earlier.

"I knew you went to go find Beth," I told Daryl after a while, laying my head on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry I went without you. I didn't want to lose the car, the one I told you I saw the night Beth went missin'."

"It's okay," I told him. "You had to go."

There wasn't much of the night left. In the little patches where I could see the horizon through the trees, the sky was already turning gray at the edges.

I sat with Daryl and watched as gray turned to pink, then red and orange until the sun broke entirely from the horizon and it all faded to blue. There were still pretty things in the world, even if they were few and far between.

"I think you should stay here today," Daryl said once it truly was day.

"What? But y'all are going back to Grady Memorial, aren't you?"

"Yeah. We are. But I think you should stay. Someone's gotta keep little ass kicker safer." 'Little ass kicker' is what Daryl called Judith. "You'll be safer here, too."

"I want to help, though." I really did. From the way Noah talked, it didn't seem like it was going to be safe.

"You help all the time. And you're still hurt." Daryl said, pointing to the bite mark left over from the Terminus break. It had scabbed over, and it was hardly a mortal wound. I got the feeling that whatever was going on, it was important to Daryl that I not go. So I decided not to push it any farther.

"I'll stay here," I said. "But only this time. After this, wherever you go, I'll go."

Daryl kind of chuckled and threw an arm around my shoulders. "Alright. After this time."

To make the church a little more protected, we dismantled the pews and the organ and used the pieces to make a spike strip like we had at the prison. Those were great for trapping walkers and it made them easier to kill.

Gabriel was none too happy about that, but I thought it was kind of fun.

We also boarded up the windows, so no walkers or people would see us inside.

It was decided myself, Michonne, Carl, Judith, and Gabriel would stay behind. This made perfect sense considering Judith was an actual baby and Gabriel had the survival skill set of one. With Michonne, Carl, and myself there, surely nothing could go too wrong.

"Bring them back," I whispered to Daryl before they left. He only nodded.

While Michonne and Carl finished boarding up the windows, I was playing with Judith on the floor. Not far off, Gabriel was trying his damnedest to scrub some of the blood out of the floor of the church.

"That's not going to come out," I told him, pulling lightly on Judith's hands so that she was standing up. She was still too young to walk, but she would kind of stand if you helped her. Judith laughed a sweet little baby laugh when her shaky little legs gave out and I let her fall softly on her bottom.

"It's not supposed to be here," Gabriel muttered. He was talking more to himself than to me, I think. "It's not supposed to be here."

To say Gabriel wasn't all there would be an understatement.

I didn't want to leave Judith in the church with him, but there was something I wanted to do for Sasha. She was so torn up about Bob, and I knew it wouldn't be a cure-all by any means. So I took Judith outside with me.

While looking through the church, I had found plenty of fake plants and flowers. I cut vines of leaves and blooms off of all of them and took them outside, too.

With Judith sitting in my lap and playing with the fake plants, I started to weave them together around the wooden cross that marked Bob's grave.

I had just finished the longer piece of the cross when I heard Michonne's voice behind me.

"What are you doing?" She asked.

"There's this holiday in Mexico called dia de los muertos," I told her. "It's a day where people honor and celebrate those that they've lost by decorating their graves. I know Sasha will probably never see Bob's grave again, so I wanted to decorate it while we're still here."

Michonne didn't say anything, but she stood and watched as I worked for a few minutes.

"We're going to board the doors when you're done." Michonne told me. I nodded and handed Judith to her. The baby was falling asleep sitting up.

"Here, take her back inside. I'll be done in a few minutes."

Sometime while I was outside and Michonne and Carl were distracted with whatever they were doing, Father Gabriel slipped out of the church. But we didn't know that until after we had boarded up the front door. I knew he was going to mess up and cause something bad to happen eventually.

The bad thing that happened was that Gabriel had attracted a small hoard of walkers while he was out and about. That caused us a bit of trouble, having to deal with them. The spikes helped a lot, and so did the hole in the floor that Gabriel had made to get out of the church. We were able to trap them inside the church, and we all sat outside to wait for Rick and the others to return.

"She's like a little papoose," I said, placing a sleeping Judith in the makeshift baby carrier Carl wore on his back.

"I'm not sure the door will hold," Carl answered. We had boarded the door and used a belt around the handles, and we had backed away from the door so that the walkers couldn't see, hear, or smell us. Carl was right to be concerned, though. They were still throwing themselves against the door.

"Where did you go?" Michonne asked Gabriel.

"The school. I had to see. I had to know." His words were punctuated by a bang as a piece of wood nailed to the church's front doors popped loose.

"Where will we go?" Carl asked. We didn't have anywhere to go. But this was also one of the few times we were lucky: We heard a car approaching, and lo and behold it was Abraham and the others who had left for D.C.

Abraham drove a fire truck right over the front porch of the church, effectively barricading the dead with the vehicle.

I forgot to even be mad about Maggie and Glenn leaving, because I was too excited for them to know that Beth was alive.

"You're back!" Michonne said to Glenn.

"Eugene lied," he answered. "He can't stop it. Washington isn't the end."

"No shit?" I said, before I could think about it. I had decided that Eugene wasn't a scientist when I was mad about them leaving, but I think a little part of me wanted to be wrong. I wanted a cure, too, no matter how improbable it was.

Glenn nodded at me before asking, "Where is everybody?"

Michonne glanced at Glenn before going to Maggie, a big smile on her face. I smiled, too. I was excited to have sweet Beth back.

"Beth's alive," Michonne told her. "She's in a hospital in Atlanta. Some people have her, but the others went to get her back."

"Do we know which one?" Maggie asked, her voice think with tears and her face crumpling.

"Grady Memorial," Michonne told her.

Maggie was so happy she laughed. It's been a while since any of us laughed.

"Let's blow this joint, go save your sister." Tara said.

We all loaded into Abraham's firetruck, sitting wherever we could find room.

"Um. Is he okay?" I asked, pointing to Eugene as I helped Carl get Judith settled.

"He's fine." Abraham said roughly. He said it in such a way that suggested there would be no further questions about Eugene. I figured it was a pretty sore subject for Abraham, a person who had dedicated his life to getting Eugene to Washington to find a cure.

It was a long, mostly quiet ride to Atlanta. On the one hand, there was the excitement of getting Beth back. But on the other, and heavy enough to put a damper on the excitement, was Abraham's brooding anger about Eugene.

When we finally did get there, we came out of the truck with weapons at the ready. But we didn't need them. Nobody was going to try to kill us. They had already gotten what they wanted.

Everyone in Grady Memorial wanted the same thing. They wanted the Dawn woman that Noah had told us about dead. And they got that, but it came at the expense of Beth's life.

Rick came out of the door at the front of the group, so that we didn't see Daryl at first. You could tell by Rick's face that something was wrong, and I knew before I saw her.

Sasha was behind Rick, and behind her was Tyreese and Carol. Tyreese was helping Carol walk.

And then came Daryl, Beth's little body in his arms, her blonde head lolling against his shoulder.

You could hear Maggie's heartbreaking in her yells as she fell to the ground, unable to handle seeing Beth this way so soon after seeing her father die.

Dawn shot Beth in the head, so there was no need to do anything further to keep her from turning. All we had left to do was bury her.

We took her back to the church. We cleared out the walkers. Glenn dug her grave. Gabriel read a Bible verse that Maggie said had been Beth's favorite. I don't think any of us had a dry eye, not even Abraham's group, who had never met Beth.

We buried Beth beside Bob, so neither would be alone.

Daryl did not attend. He secluded himself in the woods.

"Did you do that?" Maggie asked Sasha, pointing to Bob's flower-decorated grave.

Sasha shook her head.

"Livy did it," Michonne said. I nodded at Maggie.

"Will you do hers, too?"

"Of course." So I ended up decorating two graves that day. While I was twining flowers along the cross marking Beth's grave, I looked up to see Daryl standing just inside the tree line of the forest.

He had watched Beth's funeral, just in his own way. And now he was watching me decorate her grave.

A/N: Some scenes/dialogue taken from The Walking Dead season 5, episode 7 ('Crossed') and season 5, episode 8 ('Coda').