Daryl parks on the gravely shore of an inlet that serves as a shortcut to Oceanside. When the truck engine dies, the sound of water can be heard lapping against the nearby dock. Two tied rowboats rock gently on the black surface of the water. "Stay with Henry," Carol tells Daryl. "I'll row over myself."
"Don't like ya goin' it alone."
"Well, they don't like men." The Hilltop always sent women to trade. Well, women and – sometimes - Aaron.
"Thought ya wanted to get help for Henry!"
"I'll bring the doctor back here if she decides she's willing. But you know how they are."
"What 'm s'posed to do? Sit here and twiddle my damn thumbs?"
"You could play cards with Henry," she says as she exits out of the passenger's side. "There's a deck in my pack." She opens the door to the extended cab and slides out the AR-15 that is on the floor. Henry sits with both legs up on the bench seat. "Be good for Daryl," she tells him.
Daryl jumps down from the driver's side and paces around the front of the truck as she heads to the boat. "So 'm the babysitter now?"
"For the time being, yes," she says as she shoulders her rifle, steps down into the rowboat, and situates herself. She grasps the oars. "Untie me, will you?"
"We ain't even got walkies. Ain't gonna know 's happenin' to you. Can't reach me if ya need to."
"I won't need to. Untie me."
Daryl grunts with frustration, but he unravels the rope from the dock. "If yer gone more 'n two hours," he calls after her as she rows away, "'m comin' after ya!"
"Yes, Daddy!" she calls back and Daryl shakes his head and walks back to the truck, where Henry, with the door to the extended cab still open, sits waving the pack of cards. "You ever play Go Fish?" he asks.
"Ain't playin' no dumbass kids game," Daryl mutters. "Yer learnin' five card stud, boy."
[*]
"So, when are you going to pop?" Rosita asks Michonne as she drives the pick-up down to the fence line just below the tasting room where Rick, Morgan, and Tara are hard at work. The bed is full of spiked planks and welded stacks of sheet metal.
"I'm not sure. Probably late May or early June."
Rosita jerks the truck to a stop, hops out, and goes around to the bed and begins untying the ropes that hold the material in place. She takes one end of a large piece of sheet metal while Michonne takes the other.
As they begin to slide it out, Rick comes around to the back of the truck. "I'll get that," he insists, putting his hands on the metal just above Michonne's. "You shouldn't be lifting anything heavy."
Michonne smacks his hand away. "I can handle it."
Rick holds his hands up and takes a step back.
[*]
Carol drags the row boat onto shore and approaches the line in the sand. It's not a literal line, but she knows the fallen, hollowed out log that marks it.
There's something new beyond the log, separating the shore from the forest: eleven pikes rooted in the sand. Each pike is positioned about three feet apart, and atop each one sits a decapitated human head.
The wooden spikes pierce the brains of the men and emerge from their scalps. The dead, glassy eyes stare straight at Carol, a grisly warning to any who might dare cross into the woods.
[*]
Henry peeks at his card, which is face down on the open tailgate of the truck. He sits with his broken leg stretched out on the other side of the betting pile and his good leg dangling down, while Daryl merely stands and leans back against the tailgate. The boy has two pairs showing, but Daryl has three of a kind, with his third nine hidden face down.
"I can't remember," Henry says. "What it's called again when you have three of one kind and two of another?"
"Full house."
"Is that good?" Henry asks innocently.
"Yeah. Beats every damn thing 'cept four of a kind, a straight flush, and a royal flush."
"Oh, okay. Then I'll raise you half a shell, a skipping stone, and a penny." Henry pushes them all in the pot.
"Hell," Daryl mutters. "I fold!" He slides his cards together and shuffles them back into the deck.
Henry grins. "Too bad I don't have a full house." He scoops all the rocks and seashells and coins in the pot toward himself.
"Shit, kid," Daryl says with a thin smile, "don't tell me that next time. I wouldn't of known ya was bluffin'." He folds Henry's cards into the deck and deals out one face down and one face up to each of them.
"Ante up," Henry says and slides a rock into the pot.
Daryl flips his own rock in like a coin. "I'm glad yer alive, kid."
"Yeah, I know," Henry says matter-of-factly. "Because Carol would be really sad if I was dead. And you love Carol."
Daryl's hand freezes on the card he's about to look at. How in the hell did the kid know that? Daryl didn't even know that about himself until some time last night. "Yeah," he agrees. "Yeah. Do love Carol. But that ain't the only reason I'm glad yer alive."
"It's not?"
"Nah. I really been lookin' forward to kickin' yer ass at poker."
Henry laughs, peeks at his card, and says, "Too bad, then. Because I've got a pair of aces already."
[*]
The book Lord of the Flies keeps creeping into Carol's mind as she stands rooted in the sand studying the heads. They're fresh. They can't be more than a day old.
For a moment, she considers turning around and going back, but in the end she decides to let out a birdlike whistle in a pattern that rises and falls and rises again. It's the whistle Hilltop traders always give when they come to exchange goods with Oceanside.
There's silence, and then the trees that line the shore rustle, and three armed women emerge between the pikes.
"Carol," Cyndie, says. She looks over Carol's shoulder at the empty rowboat. "I see you didn't come to trade."
Carol's eyes go from Cyndie to Beatrice to Kathy. "I came to talk. About the men who attacked Oceanside and the Hilltop."
"Are you alone?" Cyndie asks.
"Daryl is back at the dock, with a boy, Henry. The boy's leg is broken."
Beatrice tilts her head and confers with Cyndie. Cyndie nods. "Go back," Cynide tells Carol. "Bring Daryl and the boy over. We'll treat the boy. We'll feed you dinner. You can stay the night. But only the night."
[*]
Aaron has taken watch during dinner.
"He's anxiously awaiting the return of Jesus," Ezekiel says as he cuts his canned Vienna sausage into smaller bites.
Nabila chuckles.
Tara reaches for her can of Sprite, which came from the arcade vending machine. "I hope he brings back some wine."
"If not, I can probably get Javier to bring us some," Rosita says.
Nabila glances at Ezekiel, and both dip their heads to their plates and hide their smiles.
"We're eventually going to have to give him something substantial in return," Morgan says, "for the help he's given us lately."
"Oh, he's getting plenty," Rosita assures him.
Morgan eyes her over the rim of his can of Coke as he takes a calculated sip. He sets it down with a clink. "I see."
"Don't judge," Rosita tells him.
Judith's eyes are ping ponging from adult to adult, but it's clear she doesn't follow their conversation well.
"If I were you, Rosita," Morgan says, "I wouldn't expect to milk that cow forever."
Rick raises his can of Orange Crush to his lips.
"I don't need to milk it forever," Rosita replies. "Just long enough to get us through the winter."
"Fuck wes!" Judith exclaims, and orange soda comes spewing out of Rick's mouth.
[*]
Daryl and Henry are sitting on the tailgate and playing five card stud when Carol docks. Daryl walks over, ties her boat, and helps her up. Carol fills him in and says, "Let's bring the bottle of wine and a few liters of soda for trade. And a full box of the ding dongs."
"Not the ding dongs!" Henry pleads.
Carol ignores him. "We can probably get ammo for them. And then we can get fresh food for the ammo from Dead End."
Henry seems even more disappointed to have to quit the card game than he was about the ding dongs. Daryl rows Henry ashore in the second rowboat and then drags the boat onto the sand with Henry still in it. Carol tries to get the boy to look away from the heads on the pikes, but Henry can't stop staring at them.
Daryl whispers to her, "When'd they go all Heart of Darkness?"
"About the same time we all did, I suppose."
[*]
Aaron watches the pick-up truck climb the hill and can just make out the familiar vanity license plate: BIGDIK. He wonders how the original owner got that one past the DMV. Aaron quickly climbs down the ladder of the watch stand and jogs to greet the approaching supply runner. "Bring me anything special?" he asks as Jesus shuts the driver's side door.
Jesus opens his long, black, London fog coat and reaches into the deep inside pocket. He hands Aaron a box of condoms.
"I don't think we're going to need these," Aaron says. "Unless you've got a history of STDs you're not telling me about."
"Look inside the box."
Aaron does. It's full of rare baseball cards.
Jesus smiles. "You told me you collected them when you were a kid."
Aaron laughs. "Yeah. But I used to hide my condoms in my card boxes, not the other way around."
"Come on." Jesus jerks his head toward the back of the truck.
When Aaron gets to the bed, he see it's overflowing to the point that Jesus has had to tie the stuff down with three bungee cords. There's six red, five-gallon gas cans, a large blue Dillion precision reloading press, several boxes containing bottles of gunpowder, at least twenty firearms, and lots of green metal cases full of – "Ammo?" Aaron asks hopefully.
"Some have ammo, and some have reloading bullets and some just have spent brass. With the press we can reload. Between the existing ammo and what we can make…I think we're talking 4,000 rounds. Each. Of three different calibers."
"Where in the - "
"- I went to all the other vineyards in a ten-mile radius."
"But Dead End looted them all," Aaron says.
"I found a false wall in the main house of one of them. And all of this was behind it. They missed it."
Aaron smiles and shakes his head.
"There's more in the cab," Jesus tells him. "More guns. Matches, kerosene, and bottled water."
"Did you find any prenatal vitamins?" Aaron asks.
"Not at that vineyard, but in three of the houses in Bluemont, I did. I got enough for twenty months for Javier's niece."
"I don't think she's an elephant," Aaron says.
Jesus chuckles. "Well, we can always use vitamins."
"Yeah," Aaron tells him. "For Michonne."
Jesus's eyebrow goes up under his black knit cap. "I miss all the gossip."