Chapter 27: Give Me Quinoa or Give Me Death
It was funny, this long after the apocalypse, how she still wasn't used to the wrongness of an empty town. Carol shifted her bag up higher on her shoulder and tried to shake off her uneasy feeling. Empty was good. Most towns were crawling with walkers, but either someone had cleaned this one out, or a noise had drawn them off in a herd somewhere else.
"Been a long time since they've had a street sweeper," Hershel commented, stepping over the windswept heaps of leaves and trash that had collected on the cracked blacktop.
Glenn glanced back and held out a hand, waving it downward in a signal for quieter voices. Maggie looked embarrassed and narrowed her eyes at her father. Carol nodded to show she understood. Even though they couldn't see any walkers, voices could draw them in.
This was the first real run she'd been on, and she was eager not to make any beginner mistakes. The group had split into three—Lori, Beth and T-dog guarding the vehicles; Rick and Daryl taking Carl to hit the sporting goods store on one of the back streets. It was Carl's first run, too. Rick had let him clear a house or two since earning his gun back, but this was a much more dangerous proposition. The only way Lori would agree was if Daryl and Rick were in Carl's group. Which made Daryl unhappy about Carol going with just Maggie and Glenn, because he said they'd watch out for each other first. That had led to a lot of yelling until Hershel had ended the argument by saying he'd go along to help her group out.
Fortunately, once they were out of Daryl's sight, Hershel had told her in his understated way that he understood she didn't need protection. "But it's hard to convince a man of that, when the lady in question is special to him," he'd said.
Carol had very nearly blushed.
Now, the four of them headed down the garbage-strewn street, keeping close to the buildings. Glenn gestured toward the grocery store at the end of the street. "We'll go around back first, check for delivery trucks or untapped store rooms," he explained in a low voice.
Carol pointed across the street and tilted her head in question.
The sign said Sprouts: Health Food Products, with a leafy shoot for an S. It was small enough that maybe it could have escaped notice in the initial looting.
"Don't those just sell vitamins and stuff?" Glenn asked.
Maggie grimaced. "And tofu. That'll all have gone bad by now."
"We could use some vitamins, even if there's no food left," Hershel said. "Carol and I can look while you check for delivery trucks and then we can all meet up and clear the main grocery store."
Glenn glanced at Carol. "Maybe we shouldn't split up."
"Why? Did somebody tell you we shouldn't?" Carol gave him her have-you-been-stealing-cookies-out-of-the-pantry look.
"No." He flushed. "It's just uh, safer."
"Uh-huh." Carol folded her arms. "Well, tell Daryl it was my idea and you don't make my decisions any more than he does."
"It wasn't like that," Glenn said. "He didn't say anything. I just know if it were Maggie, he'd do the same."
His girlfriend took a sharp step back. "Oh really? Since when do I need you or Daryl to man-sit me? Do either of you two gorilla brains remember who defended the farm before y'all showed up?"
"I don't have to think you're weak to want to protect you—" Glenn started.
"This would be one of those times, son," Hershel interrupted, "when it would be best to go check the trucks."
Given the fire in Maggie's eyes, Carol was inclined to agree. She could hear their quiet bickering as they moved off together, and she was turning to Hershel with a wry smile when something moaned in the alley behind them. She stepped forward, her knife already out of its sheath, but the walker wasn't in sight yet.
"You go for your knife before your pistol," Hershel observed.
She glanced at him, but couldn't tell if he was criticizing her or not. "Quieter."
"A gun would be better until you're sure there's not more of them."
"If I use a gun, there will be more of them." On the heels of the argument with Glenn, her voice came out more tart than she meant it to, but Hershel simply smiled, his face crinkling under his beard as if he approved of her response, even if she was disagreeing with him. A single, rail-thin walker stumbled around the dumpster at the far end of the alley. Carol jerked her head toward the store. "I'll take this one. You go ahead and check for food."
"No, I'll take this one. You're probably a better match for all the ones inside the store." He slung his shotgun onto his back and loosened the hatchet from his belt. She stood a little straighter when she realized he wasn't making a joke at her expense; he was serious.
She was almost more nervous when she crossed the street, not wanting to mess up after insisting to everyone that she could handle it. So she pulled her gun when she got to the health food store, and waited extra long after tapping on the window. Still, nothing stirred inside. The bottom half of the glass door was busted out, sunlight gleaming on the daggers of glass left behind. No walkers could be trapped inside.
She holstered her gun with a sigh. Walkers hadn't shattered that door—they always pounded up high, so they would have broken the top half. She could see their dusty finger smears along every window on this street. The signs of forced entry meant there was almost certainly nothing left inside.
She ducked in anyway, holding her messenger bag carefully so it wouldn't snag on the glass. Her hip brushed a long leather strip of sleigh bells, sending an oddly festive jingling throughout the shadowy store. The air trapped inside was redolent of rotten milk and dust, the floor scattered with ripped packaging and mouse turds. Carol grimaced, skirting the picked-over shelves. There had been food, once. Now, there were mostly essential oils and incense, and exotic-sounding supplements that might or might not have any nutrition in them. She dropped a few bottles into her bag. Anything that looked like it might have actual vitamins in it. The two bottles of folic acid supplements she snatched with a happy gasp. Lori would need those.
She spied a square poking out from under one of the displays and knelt to grab it.
It was a family-sized box of quinoa, chewed on one corner, but the mice hadn't gotten inside. A grin swelled across her face. Food. It wasn't much, but she'd gotten it for the group. She'd fed her family. She brushed a thumb across the label, suddenly understanding why Daryl spent so much of his time hunting.
Tucking it in her bag, she glanced toward the back. Maybe there was a store room…
The sleigh bells jangled. "Don't bother, Hershel," she said as she turned. "This place is pretty picked—"
The head that ducked in through the door was blonde and shaggy, not gray. She froze. A person. Oh shit, a live person. Where was his group? Where was Hershel? He should have finished with that walker by now unless there had been more than one.
The guy kept his gun on her as he straightened, dropping his backpack next to him. "Hands up."
She'd been busy with her bag and the quinoa, so all her weapons were holstered. She raised her hands, palms facing him, and every inch they rose away from her belt felt like a tiny death.
Gray Eyes. Frat Boy.
She better not have no wrinkled pussy.
She couldn't surrender. If he needed a gun to force her to submit to what he wanted, she was not doing whatever that was.
If she went for her pistol, could she get the safety off and pull the trigger before he got over his shock and shot her back?
Then Rick's voice came into her head. If it's a bad guy and you aren't willing to pull the trigger, they can see it in your eyes.
If she were the bad guy, what could she see in his eyes?
"Where's the food?" he demanded.
Carol blinked, trying to focus on his face. His eyes were set too wide in his face, giving him a slightly walleyed look. Thick freckles overlapped on his cheeks so most of his face was a dusty brown and his lips pinched together in a pale pink bow that didn't match the rest of him. His gun shook and he kept adjusting his grip on it.
He was scared. Carol's eyes narrowed.
"There isn't any food left," she said.
"Gimme your bag, then," he ordered. His gun may have been trembling, but he never looked away from her. She wasn't sure he wouldn't shoot her by accident, and definitely wasn't sure he wouldn't do it on purpose, but he was nervous enough that she wondered if this was his first face-off with another human since the turn.
"You don't have to do this," she said. "There's not even anything here for us to fight over. You can just go your way and I can go mine. Isn't there enough death in this world already?"
"Gimme your gun, knife." His gaze flicked over her. "Whatever you got. Lay it down. No, uh, I mean, bring it over here and then lay it down."
He was even worse at this than she was.
The folic acid and quinoa weighed heavy in her bag. It was dinner for her family, the first food she'd brought in since all this started. She wasn't going to die for it, but she wasn't going to give it to an idiot, either. This guy wasn't going to hurt her. He might shoot her, but he wouldn't try to take her.
She took off her bag, held it out in one hand as she eased closer to him. "You should go. Look, I know you're hungry and just trying to get by, but my husband…" She shook her head. "If he sees you pointing a gun at me, he'll kill you."
The guy's eyes flickered wider and he shifted his grip on the gun again, but he didn't drop it. "Shut up," he ordered.
He was tall, a few inches taller than Rick or Daryl and maybe thirty pounds heavier, though only about half of that was muscle. She dropped her bag right in front of his feet and reached for her weapons, moving slowly so he wouldn't get jumpy.
She lowered her voice to a whisper. "Please. He's not rational, not these days. Not where I'm concerned. He'll hurt you before he slits your throat."
"Give me that gun," the guy snapped. She was close enough to see the pulse beating wildly in his throat.
Hershel should have been back by now. He needed her help and she was stuck with this moron, who was robbing her for a messenger bag that hung so limp there clearly wasn't anything in it worth stealing.
Carol took her pistol out of the holster.
"Left hand!" the words exploded out of him so fast spittle sprayed her cheek. Her lip twitched a little. "Take it out with your left hand," he repeated.
"All right," she said soothingly, and took out her knife with her right hand, her gun with her left. Her fingers locked home in the brass knuckle hilt of the dagger. "I'm just setting them down now." Her eyes flickered to the side, then widened. "Oh god—run," she hissed. "Just run!"
He whipped around, bringing his gun to bear on the glass door. Nothing was there but dust and trash. As soon as he realized his mistake he cocked his revolver and spun back her direction.
His face rammed straight into a metal-clad fist. Bone cracked and blood gushed over silver loops of steel. He staggered back into a row of shelves and went down with a clatter of tin and a high shrieking moan of pain.
Carol sheathed her knife, stuffed her pistol back into its holster. Swept his off the ground and uncocked it before kicking the cylinder out to the side, and dropping its three bullets into the cup of her palm. She left his revolver by his foot and fisted the bullets into her pocket, sweeping up his bag with hers as she darted for the door and left him hunched over his broken nose.
The street sat empty as she sprinted across, but her heart was galloping a triumphant beat. She'd won. That guy had been nothing but an amateur next to her. She hadn't even had to kill him. Adrenaline still shrieked through all her limbs, but her feet were light as air as she ran.
She found Hershel in the alley, bent over and panting with his hands and bloody hatchet braced against his knees. The bodies of three walkers lay twisted around him.
"Glenn was right," he gasped when he saw her. "We shouldn't split up."
She grabbed his arm. "Let's find him then, and fast. Turns out, we're not the only game in town today."
#
As the sun set below the trees, Carol put on leather gloves to lift the pot out of the stove and carefully poured the heated water into a bowl. She'd gotten a lot better this year at cooking over an open fire. At first, there'd been a lot of burns—both of her and the food. Picking up the bowl and Hershel's surgical soap, she carried them past the parked trucks and motorcycle to where Daryl lay bleeding on a blanket.
He looked grouchy.
He had one rag clapped to the cuts on his shoulder, which he'd used to break the window, and another stuffed inside the rip in his pants, where he'd cut his leg on the way through the window.
The raid on the sporting goods store hadn't gone well. They'd come away with a good amount of ammo from locked cupboards in the back, a silencer that fit the pistol Carl had finally earned back, and a double handful of pre-fletched arrow blanks that could be cut down to fit Daryl's crossbow. Unfortunately, as they'd been coming out, they ran into a small herd: maybe 15 or 20 head. Since there were too many to fight, Daryl volunteered to draw them off so Carl and Rick could carry the heavy haul of supplies to safety.
Maggie knelt on the edge of the blanket, helping her father prepare the suturing kit.
"I don't understand how drawing off a herd ends up with you jumping out a second story window," she said. "You're like the girl in the horror movie, running up the stairs instead of out the back door."
"Goddanged house didn't have no back door. I's slamming doors the whole way through the house and they was busting through 'em just as fast. Last room I hit only had picture windas, not one o' them that opens." Daryl winced. "Wished I woulda had time to break it with my bow or something, though. Hurt."
Maggie burst out laughing. "Really? Breaking a window with yourself hurts? Who would have thunk?"
Daryl's eyes flared. "Funny thing, fuckin' herd didn't seem keen on waiting to sink their teeth into my ass. Shoulda just asked nice and polite, I guess. Why'n't you try that the next time you're swarmed and shooting 'em off with them bullets I got ya, huh?"
"Maggie, why don't you go and see if you can relieve Lori from cooking before she oversalts the stew again? She probably wants a little time alone with her husband and son, anyway, since Daryl saved them from such a close call today." Carol's voice came out sharp, and she had to make an effort to soften it. "I can help Hershel."
"But you're not trained to—"
"I think that would be a fine idea, Maggie," Hershel said. "Go along now." He peeled back Daryl's makeshift bandages enough to get a closer look with the flashlight, and his frown grew more disapproving the longer he looked.
Carol couldn't stop herself from giving Daryl's uninjured calf a tiny pat. "Do you want me to grab you a few Advil before we start? We can spare them."
"Ain't worth it. 'S gonna hurt either way."
"Next time, try harder to find a house with a back door," Hershel advised. "You're going to break your legs one of these days, and those, I can't sew back together."
"Didn't jump out the winda to the ground. Jumped out the winda to the carport roof. Christ, how stupid ya think I am?" Daryl's voice was starting to get louder.
"I don't think you're at all stupid. I expect most of the stupid people are dead by now," Hershel said. "What I do think is you sacrifice yourself before considering the other options, and sooner or later, you're going to get hurt badly enough you can't drag yourself back to camp for me to piece you back together."
"I'm takin' care of the group, asshole!" Daryl hurled his bloody rag into Hershel's face. "Less'n you're volunteering to take my spot on the front lines, get to stitchin' and quit yer bitchin'."
Hershel threw up his hands. "That's it. I'm done." He pushed up to his feet and walked stiffly back toward the fire.
Carol grabbed a clean towel she'd brought for Hershel and pressed it to Daryl's freely bleeding wound.
"There's more than one way to take care of the group," she said, holding his eyes as she steadied his shoulder from the back and the front to keep pressure on the wound. "Part of that's keeping yourself in one piece. As bad as they are at communicating it, that's what everyone is trying to say."
She rolled her eyes tolerantly. His lips twitched like he wanted to smile, but his eyes were still suspicious.
Carol sucked in a breath and put on her Mom voice. "Hershel, you stop it right now."
He halted, then slowly turned around.
"The cuts are too deep. You know very well you can't leave them without stitches."
He hesitated for a long moment, then moved back toward them.
"He'll be quiet the rest of the time," she said. "I promise."
"Yes, he will be," Hershel grumbled. "Because you're going to do the stitching. Get your hands washed up."
"What?" Daryl stiffened. "She don't know what she's doin'! She can't sew me up!"
"Calm down, Daryl. She sews better than I do," Hershel said.
Carol passed off the bandage to Daryl, letting him hold pressure on his shoulder with his good hand, while his bad hand kept pressure on his bad leg. She started to wash her hands, casting worried glances at the old veterinarian. "I'm happy to learn, but I'd rather practice making sutures on an orange or something. Not a person."
"We've got more people than oranges." Hershel lowered himself slowly back to the blanket, his bad knee obviously protesting. "I don't know why I didn't insist on this before. Daryl's the one who needs patching up the most often, and you're always hovering when he's hurt. You might as well learn to fix him yourself."
"Okay, but I should still practice somehow before I do realstitches, don't you think?"
"This is practice. If you can ignore the cursing, Daryl's the easiest one in the group to stitch. He doesn't cry, and he doesn't squirm. Getting him out of his clothes is half the battle, and you're already the best at that."
Carol glared, and Hershel just smiled, clearly pleased with his little joke. At least it shut Daryl up. He started fidgeting with the blanket, suddenly very interested in the forest beyond.
"Let's do the shoulder first, son." Hershel reached to help Daryl, his voice kind again. "If you unbutton a couple of buttons, you should be able to slip your arm out like you did last time."
Abruptly, Carol realized why Hershel always worked on Daryl at the far edges of camp, even though the fire would provide better light. She averted her eyes, embarrassed to be contributing to his discomfort.
Daryl gritted his teeth and threw himself up to sitting, then practically ripped the buttons off his shirt taking it off. He flung it to the ground. "What?" He barked at Hershel, who was giving him a quiet, sympathetic look. "I got nothing you or her ain't seen. Ain't no girl. Not gonna cry bout gettin' nekkid."
"Of course not." Hershel laid a clean blanket over Daryl's good shoulder, wrapped it across him and around his waist. "Keep this on, though. It's chilly, and blood loss and shock makes you more susceptible." Behind Daryl's back, Carol gave the old man a grateful smile as he tactfully draped their wounded friend from the prying eyes of the group.
"I'll clean it first, right, Hershel? If you could just hold the flashlight, that would help." Carol wet a clean cloth and dabbed antiseptic on it. The flashlight beam cut through the gloom as she reached to clean his shoulder, but Daryl dropped his bandage and grabbed her right hand before she could touch him.
"The hell? You're all skinned up." He frowned at her scraped knuckles.
"It's fine." She tried to pull her hand back but he didn't let go.
"Ain't fine. Who'd you have to punch?"
Carol winced, not looking forward to this conversation. But of course the brother of Merle Dixon would recognize the particular pattern of knuckles scraped from a fist fight.
Daryl looked murderously toward the main camp, but then faltered, apparently struggling to guess who in their group would do something bad enough that Carol would punch them.
"Some poor fool tried to rob our Carol in a health food store." Hershel chuckled.
Carol smiled sardonically. "Fought me over a box of quinoa, if you can believe it." She scooted closer and started cleaning the blood and dirt away from his cuts.
"He what? Did he hurt ya?" Daryl grabbed her elbow, trying to hold her at arm's length so he could check more closely for injuries.
"Would you stop?" She batted his hand away. "You're bleeding all over me." And down his arm and onto both blankets. Hershel held up the suturing needle, pointing out the way it was threaded for her to note for next time. She nodded, then said to Daryl, "Don't worry. That knife you gave me punches just as well as it stabs."
She leaned in and kissed his cheek.
He stuttered into silence and she slipped the needle in, taking the first stitch before he could recover.
Hershel chuckled. "See? You're a natural. You could be a deal of help to Lori, too, when the time comes. You have the right temperament and you're the only other one in the group who's ever experienced childbirth."
The thought tugged at Carol's mind and she stitched quietly for a moment, forgetting the argument.
Daryl, however, did not. "Why the hell'd you punch him, not stab him?"
"He tried to take my quinoa, not my life." She gave him a look. "I wasn't going to kill the man."
"He coulda done a lot more than that."
"Not really. He was pretty busy trying to hold the pieces of his nose together." She turned to Hershel. "Goodness, you're right. He is easy to stitch. Do I need to do anything special at the end?"
"You're finished already?" Hershel chuckled. "You're a wonder. I didn't have to tell you a single thing, you've watched me sew him up so many times. Tell you what, you get his pants off, then I'll tell him about the gun and we won't even have to give him a pain pill for the second round of stitches."
"What gun?"
Hershel was dead on. Daryl was so busy cursing a blue streak at her about leaving her attacker with a weapon that she was finished with the stitches on his leg before he hardly noticed.
"May as well just give me the pants." She held out her hands and wiggled her fingers when he went to pull his pants back up. "I need to sew them back together as well. Hershel, will you please get his spare pair from the motorcycle?"
As soon as Hershel left, she leaned down and took Daryl's hand, and squeezed it, finally serious as she met his frantic eyes. "I'm fine, Daryl. I'm not just saying that so you won't worry. He never laid a hand on me. You're the one who went through a second-story window."
He looked unhappy, but he squeezed her hand and finally looked away to examine the wound she'd just closed in his strong thigh. He nodded and threw the blanket over himself before he shimmied the rest of the way out of his pants.
"Good stitches," he grunted. "Damn near better than the old man."
She rinsed her hands in the bowl, an oddly full feeling taking over her chest and a smile playing around her lips. "Gotta be. Something tells me you're going to give me a lot of practice."
He was too quiet, so she looked back to check on him. He was propped up on an elbow, laying on his side with the blanket pulled up to cover everything below his chin. He studied her like she was a book and he'd just discovered there were words inside.
"Hershel's right," he said abruptly. "You can do a hell of a lot more than laundry."
Author's Note: I was trying to go to sleep one night and I heard Carol say in my head, "He fought me for a box of quinoa, if you can believe it." And then she snorted. So that's where this chapter came from. Depending on how much I get done this weekend, I may have to slow down the updates for a bit. I'm catching up with what I've written, I'm still not done with the mega-epilogue, and I don't want to rush myself and risk shortcutting the editing.
Guys, I'm completely loving the little bits of trivia from interviews and McReedus lore you're leaving in the reviews! Please always feel free to share since I'm a newbie to the fandom and have missed lots.
Next up, the story of where Daryl got his poncho!
