[Friday Morning]
Khalid and Rosita make their way on foot to the woods directly across from the Temple's fence. They hike at the edge of the trees, staying hidden while they observe the perimeter. Black iron bars make up the fence, and barbwire is twined from pike to pike at the top. Despite the two-inch opening between bars, they can't see through to the Temple grounds because of all the evergreen trees inside. After a mile, they still haven't spied a single guard tower or a gate.
They pass a walker bumping against the fence and wait to see if it's shot from some unseen watchtower, but it's not. It just slides its grasping arm between the bars and gnashes its jaws at a squirrel on a tree branch inside. The creature stops suddenly, stumbles back, and sniffs the air. Then it turns and lurches toward the woods where they hide.
Khalid draws his rapier and begins to stride toward it, but Rosita yanks him back. "Wait," she insists. "Let it come to us. Stay out of view, in case someone is watching."
When the walker is near, he stabs it through the head and jerks his rapier back out with a grunt, and they move on.
Eventually, they find a gate in the fence. To the right of the gate are parked four pick-up trucks, three large, white vans, and five SUVs. A thick layer of dust and dirt covers the rusty vehicles, and the wild grass grows tall under their front tires near the fence. There are no recent tire tracks anywhere along the dirt clearing. A rusted padlock hangs from the corroded chains that weave through the bars of the gate.
"I think maybe they haven't come out since the gas spoiled," Khalid says.
"What are they eating for meat? There can't be that much game only in the woods inside the fence."
"There's sure to be some small game at least. And maybe they have chickens."
"I haven't heard any," Rosita says.
"Perhaps they shoot birds when they fly over."
"I didn't hear any guns yesterday. Did you?"
Khalid shakes his head.
Rosita's stomach churns. "Did Carol ever tell you about Terminus?"
"What?"
"It was a community. It seemed so peaceful on the surface. They welcomed refugees. Lured them, really. And then killed and ate them." Khalid turns his eyes to hers and his cheeks puff in nauseous reaction before he swallows the air. "We barely escaped with our lives," Rosita concludes.
"Maybe they have a bunny farm," Khalid insists. "And they might be growing soy beans for protein on that roof. Or they could still have freeze-dried storage food. Some of that stuff has a shelf-life of over twenty-five years if you store it right."
"Let's keep hiking," Rosita says. "Finish the circle."
[*]
Daryl leaps over a fallen tree log, and his boots thud into a pile of forest debris. Sticks snap and leaves crunch as he pounds on. The wounded deer flees through the forest, with three of Daryl's arrows in its side. He follows the tracks on the ground until he can see the deer in the distance again. The animal slows, grows weaker, stumbles into a walk, and finally collapses to the ground.
Two walkers lurch out from behind the trees and toward his deer. Daryl runs and draws at the same time. His arrow soars through the clearing in the trees and pierces the head of one walker. The other draws closer to the deer as Daryl reaches back into his quiver and reloads. He stops suddenly several yards away, aims, and shoots. The second walker's head flings back, and it crumples like a rag doll.
The hunter breathes a sigh of relief.
[Friday Afternoon]
Rosita and Khalid have found a spot where most of the trees inside the fence line are deciduous. Because the leaves have fallen, they can see through to the grounds. They stay hidden beneath an evergreen and focus their binoculars to peer through the gaps between the iron bars and the barren branches to the Temple grounds.
Vegetable gardens have been planted in every spot that must have once held tree, bush, and flower beds. The gardens break up the grayish-white pavement that stretches to the Temple. Rosita spies a teenage boy fishing with a net in what appears to be a large, former fountain. He comes up with something flopping in the mesh and dumps it into an open ice chest.
"Well there's the answer to your protein question," Khalid says. "They must breed fish in that fountain."
Rosita's about to ask how they keep the water filtered, but she's distracted by the sight of six children riding bicycles and tricycles along the pavement between several gardens, and four women keeping watch over them. A man sits on a picnic bench, carving something from wood, but there are no armed guards anywhere.
A sudden mist of water covers the gardens. The fountain abruptly spurts up water. Two of the children drop their bikes and begin running through the spray whenever it hits the pavement. "Holy shit!" Rosita whisper-cries. "They have a working sprinkler system! And that fountain can turn on!"
"They must run it to filter it. To keep the fish healthy."
"Where do you think the water comes from?"
"It's pumped from the Potomac maybe," Khalid replies. "Not to sound conspiratorial, but I think maybe this place was designed to withstand an apocalypse."
The man who is carving stands, sheaths his knife, and leaves the unfinished wood on the picnic bench. He walks down the pavement to a little girl who sits crying on a stopped tricycle. He gets down on his haunches and appears to untie her shoelaces from the pedal. Then he stands, plucks her off the tricycle, and gives her a hug before setting her on her feet. The little girl takes off running, and the man gives playful chase down the long straight pavement toward the barren trees.
Rosita and Khalid sink back into the forest.
[*]
After depositing the deer with the butcher, Daryl returns to his tent, clears out everything inside it, and leaves his belongings temporarily piled on the earth beside the platform. Then he uses a dry towel to whip the dust and dirt off the planks, a wet one to scrub them down, and a dry one to dry them again. The towels are tar-black by the time he's done, and the platform only looks slightly better. He throws the filthy towels in the large laundry baskets in the foyer of the mansion and heads out to the supply shed.
It takes him awhile to find what he's looking for – the boxed air mattresses they took from that Target they looted before the gas spoiled. The store had no food left, of course, but it had a lot of other things. There are four mattresses remaining – a full-size, two twins, and a queen. People in the tents generally prefer cots, because it keeps them off the platforms, but there are several air mattresses in use in the trailers and in the mansion, where people sleep two or three to a bedroom.
Daryl briefly considers taking the queen. Carol has one, after all, but a queen mattress is going to make his tent look small and cramped. The full-size is already twice the width of his cot. It'll be big enough for two, if they cuddle, which Carol likes to do. He grabs the foot-operated air pump and looks at the sheets next – ten unopened packages still in plastic wrap. He goes for the burgundy, Egyptian cotton. Daryl doesn't know what's so special about Egyptian cotton, but the price tag makes him think it's more special than regular cotton.
Next, he returns to his tent, pumps up the air mattress, and struggles to put the fitted sheet on it, but it keeps popping off one corner. "Goddamn piece of shit fucking dumbass sheet!"
"Want some help?"
Daryl looks up from his project to see Sharon watching him with an amused smile.
"Thought ya was butcherin' that deer."
"That was over two hours ago. It's almost dinner time. Do you want some? Help?"
"Mhmhm," he mutters.
Sharon makes the bed up for him and neatly smooths out the wrinkles in the sheets. "Trying to impress Carol?" she asks.
"Nah. Ain't got to impress 'er," he mutters. "Hell, Carol's slept in a prison cell 'fore."
"Really?" Sharon asks. "I guess it kind of makes sense. I mean, she does have a reputation for being unusually tough. I've heard about the Wolves. What was she in for?"
"Nah! Don't mean she's been to prison! Mean we lived in one. As a camp. Back in Georgia. In the first year of all this shit."
"Oh."
"Carol look like the kind of woman been to prison to ya?" he growls.
"Well…I mean…"
"Do I?" he barks.
She smiles. Her eyes flit up and down his form. "You don't look like a woman at all."
Daryl doesn't know how to respond to that so he responds with a suspicious glower.
"Relax. I'm not coming on to you," Sharon says. "Not in earnest anyway. I can clearly see that ship has sailed."
Daryl's still ticked off about her slight to Carol. "That ship was never anywhere near the dock," he growls.
"Well you don't have to be a total ass about it. There wouldn't have been any harm in letting me think I at least had a chance at once point." She climbs down off the platform and looks up at him standing there. "It's not easy, you know, being the only woman at the Hilltop that no man is chasing. And you're welcome for helping you make up the bed."
She begins to walk away.
"Hey!" he cries.
She turns back.
"Ain't nothin' wrong with ya."
She laughs. "Thanks." She walks closer to the platform. "It's just, there's two women for every straight, single man here. Eduardo would have me, but I don't think I want to jump on that well-traveled bandwagon."
"'S always Eugene."
"Eugene's…." She walks a step closer to the platform and lowers her voice. "Eugene's kind of weird."
Daryl flings his arm up dismissively. "'S the problem with all y'all women. Always complain' ain't no good guys left but truth is y'all just don't want one ain't hot as hell." Only after he says it does he realize that kind of implies he's hot as hell. But, hell, maybe he is. Carol sure seems to think so. "'S also Father Gabriel. If ya ain't too good for a blind guy."
"Father Gabriel's kind of cute," Sharon says, "but there's that one small problem."
"'S that?" Daryl asks.
"You know, that part where he's a celibate priest?"
"Ain't Catholic. 'S 'piscopalian. They can fuck, can't they?"
"He is?" she asks in surprise. "I thought he was Catholic?"
"Nah. Don't think so. Pretty sure that church he holed up in said 'Piscopalian."
"Huh. Well. Maybe I should go to one of his services sometime. Thanks for the advice, Dr. Phil."
She turns to walk away, and he asks, "Who the fuck is Dr. Phil?"
Sharon turns back. "You ever hear of Oprah?"
"'Course I heard of Oprah."
"You ever hear of Jerry Springer?"
"Mhmhm." Merle used to watch the Jerry Springer show and make fun of all the white trash guests, as though he and Daryl hadn't grown up right next door to people just like that. As if they hadn't watched those kind of shouting matches play out in their own kitchen between their own mama and daddy every night for years.
"Well, Dr. Phil is kind of like a cross between Oprah and Jerry Springer."
Daryl's brow furrows as she walks off, but he returns to re-organizing his tent. First, he straightens his stack of hardback books and turns it into a nightstand, on which he places his oil lamp. Then he gets a second camp chair from storage and set it up on the other side of the TV-tray. It's not exactly a love seat and coffee table, but they can put a couple of drinks on the tray and sit in the chairs and talk.
He's just sat down to test the new camp chair when Tara stops by. God these women won't leave him alone. He should have lowered the flaps.
"I see you've done some remodeling," she says. "Trying to impress Carol?"
"Carol don't care," Daryl insists. "She's slept in a prison cell."
"Then why are you making so much effort?"
"Just though it was time to clean up is all."
[Friday Evening]
The fire crackles and pops and sends up a dusty tentacle of smoke. Khalid and Rosita sit side by side on a fallen tree log. Their boots and socks dry by the fire, wet from a creek they walked through in order to evade some walkers on the way back to camp.
"God, my feet hurt," she mutters. "How many miles did we walk today?"
Khalid slides down off the log onto the sleeping bag that lines the ground, draws her bare foot over into his lap, and begins rubbing it. "You need better boots."
She moans. "That feels fantastic."
"Not too intimate for you?" he asks.
"What?"
"Me rubbing your feet. It's not too intimate for you?"
"We've fucked," she reminds him. "Several times now."
"Yes, we have. But I gather fucking's not a particularly intimate act to you."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"Nothing," he mutters, and works his way down the middle of her foot in satisfying circles. She wants to argue more but it feels so damn good she forgets what she wanted to argue about. After a while he says, "Other foot."
Rosita slides across the log until he's sitting between her legs. She puts one foot down on the sleeping bag and bends at the knee to put the other in his lap.
He begins to rub it. Eventually, he slides her foot out of his lap and sets it down on the sleeping bag. He looks up at her. "My turn?"
"Feet?" she asks.
"Shoulders, please."
He droops his head downward when she begins to rub. "So," she asks as she massages his shoulders, "how intimate was sex for you when you were fucking Cassandra?"
He sighs. "I thought I'd successfully avoided that argument."
"Nope."
"And that's like two different arguments at once. You're quite good at this, really."
Rosita chuckles. "All right, screw it. I don't really want to fight right now."
"Mhmmm….Good…." Khalid closes his eyes and relaxes back into her.
"I'm going to miss Liam and Enid's wedding tomorrow," she says.
"If you leave at sunrise," Khalid assures her. "You'll be back in time. Do you have a bicycle for the road?"
"I buried it at the bottom of the hill. But, you know…maybe I don't really need to see the wedding. I mean, Enid's 18, and he's barely 21. You know it's only going to last three years."
"If they're lucky, it will only last three years," Khalid says, "instead of lasting three children."
"Or maybe we're both just a couple of cynical assholes," she says, "and it will last a lifetime."
"Maybe." He opens one eye, tilts his head back, and peers up at her. "So you don't want to hurry back for the wedding?"
She slows her rubbing of his shoulders, leans down, and kisses the top of his head. "I think I'll stay another day or two. Scout some more with you."
Khalid smiles, closes his one open eye, and droops forward again.
[*]
The oil lamp flickers on Carol's coffee table as she checks her backpack a second time to make sure she has everything she needs for her trip to the Hilltop. Through her window, which she's opened to air out the trailer after a mishap with the wood stove, she can hear the whooping and hollering of the young men drifting all the way from the gazebo in the court yard. The "young men" range in age from fourteen to twenty-seven, and Brother Ignatius has too generously supplied them with mead. She sure hopes they don't get her little Henry drunk at this stag party. He was far too thrilled to have been invited for her to try to talk him out of it.
Carol stays up late, partly because she's excited about seeing Daryl tomorrow, and partly because she's worried about Henry. Intermittently, she peeks out her own window in the direction of his trailer. Eventually, she sees him with his roommates Jake and Matt. Matt has an arm around Henry's shoulder, and one around Jake's, and the two appear to be propping him up, though Jake isn't much help because of his own staggering.
Matt slides his arms off of them both and begins to stumble-run toward the back of the trailer. With his palm flat on the siding, he pukes into the gravel on the other side.
"Ewwwwww!" Henry cries. "Clean yourself up before you come in, dude!"
Dude. Carol chuckles. Henry's picked that up from Jerry.
Henry climbs up the stairs and into the trailer, a little unsteady on his feet, but not too unsteady. Jake, laughing, crawls up the stairs on all fours behind him.
Well, Carol muses as she shuts her window for the night, at least she can pride herself on Henry's moderation. He's clearly the least intoxicated of the three.