The chocolate pudding container still rests in the street, on its side, empty and lonely. It tugs at me, asks for help, and then Harley kicks it as he passes by. The container skids away, lost, and I don't watch it go.

Joe figures out pretty fast that Lou's murderer followed the railroad tracks. Just as fast, he decides that the murderer is not alone. He has two other people with him. How about that.

I hang back and watch at first, Owen by my side. Soon it's clear that Joe isn't the only one who can track. Most of these guys seem to have some sort of knowledge, at least of the basics, except maybe Tony and the bald guy. We start walking, and five minutes down the railroad tracks, I mutter to Owen, "I need to slow them down."

He chuckles. "Yeah? How you gonna do that?"

"I don't – I don't know. Fake a sprained ankle."

"That won't slow 'em down. You're not worth it."

"Thanks."

He stops and reaches out an arm, fingers lightly grazing my stomach, making me stop, too. I move an inch back. It isn't the first time Owen's touched me, but he's not one of the people who are supposed to do that. He says nothing about me shying away, only watches the others drift farther down the tracks before crouching, putting his bow on the grass, and pointing to something just outside of the rails. A footprint slammed into mud. A place between my chest and my stomach draws together, hurts. The shoe that made that print is too short to be Rick's, too wide to be Michonne's. Carl. I suddenly realize I don't know where he got a new pair of shoes, after that walker stole his. How could I not know that?

"See this? This was made about two or three hours ago."

Closer to two.

"See how there's kind of a twist to it, with the mud shoved up back here? That means –"

"He was running," I mutter.

Owen looks up. "That a lucky guess?"

I'm sure there would be an advantage to lying – the less these guys know about me, the better – but Owen's already seen most of my cards. I stare over him, into the woods. "My dad taught me some things."

"Oh, that's right . . ." He stands again. "Forgot you had an entirely different life outside of Cannell Drive."

The name knocks the breath out of me. Cannell Drive. Cannell. 472 Cannell Drive. Home.

"So tell me, hotshot. If y–these guys were running at this point, and if they kept running, as much as they could, for a few more miles, or if they start runnin' again later, do you think it's likely –" He nods after his group, the men moving steadily on – "that we're gonna catch 'em before nightfall?"

The men may be moving steadily, but they're taking their time about it. Even from back here, I can see Joe's feet coming up a little higher than necessary. It's the walk of a man with all the time in the world.

"Maybe not."

"Definitely not. Speed ain't Joe's game. Consistency is. He don't care if he don't catch 'em fast. He just wants to catch 'em." Owen begins to walk again. I do, too, of course.

"Those gunshots I heard from the house," I say. "And the blood on the kitchen floor."

"What about it?"

"You said one of your guys broke the rules."

"Yep."

"Does that happen a lot? You guys killin' each other?"

"Nah. Mostly, you break a rule – you lie, or you steal – you just get your ass kicked."

I side-glance at him. Compared to how I have him fixed in my fuzzy memories, he's definitely grown a lot. He's almost six feet tall, and even though I've yet to see his arms, his shoulders are a lot broader, I think. But I also think he's still what you'd call lanky, and past the stubble, there's some stubborn baby fat clinging to his face.

"And no," he says, not looking at me.

"No?"

"Little Owen ain't exempt from the law. They don't give a damn how old I am . . ." He grins, gives a little shake of his head, sending hair into his eyes. "It's freakin' awesome."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, the whole system is." His grin dries up, though, and he sniffs and jerks his head. "Few weeks ago, your buddy Len there, he tried to cheat me in poker. Nearly got my last box of smokes . . ."

My, what the end of the world has done to the lungs of Cannell Drive.

"Caught him with an ace up his sleeve. Smashed his nose in. Nobody stopped me. Hell, they helped me whale on him some more. Teach him, Joe said. And we did. The son of a bitch ain't even played a hand since."

Len I can't spare any sympathy for. But . . . "The guy from this morning? What'd he do?"

"What's it matter?"

"Well, whatever he did, I guess I should avoid doin' it."

Owen trades his bow to his right hand, then back again. "He lied."

"About what?"

"Again I ask, what's it matter?"

"Help me figure out the kind of people I'm dealin' with."

"Ain't figured that out yet?" He pulls out a lighter and a box of cigarettes from inside his jacket. He taps one out, grabs it with his lips, lights up, puffs out smoke. "Len thought the guy was a fag."

I haven't heard that word since before everything went down. Only ever heard it from my uncle, and then I asked my mother about it, and she got pissed, told me what it meant but then told me never to say it. Then she had a drink, like she often did after a conversation. Any conversation. On any day.

I clear my throat. "You said he lied."

"Well, Len hounded him about it. The guy – Frank – denied it. A few times. But then Len decided Frank was checkin' him out."

"And what? Everybody else went along with it?"

Owen gives a slow exhale. A lungful of smoke dribbles into the sky. "Nobody else wanted to take the chance," he says evenly.

I feel a little sick. But I won't ask how much of a part Owen had to play in any of it. I don't want to know. Instead, I reach my hand out, towards the cigarette. "Wanna share?"

He has to bring himself back from someplace to hear me. I can tell, I see his eyes focus back in. "Don't tell me the daughter of the neighborhood health freak's gone and picked up a nasty habit like this?"

I wiggle my fingers. His mouth breaks into a thin grin as he hands the cigarette over. I take a drag, feel the smoke swirl in my chest. "That health freak had cigarettes hidden all over the house, you know."

"No shit."

Another inhale. "She'd hide one box and forget. Buy a new one, hide it, too. She was always trying to quit. Couldn't bring herself to throw a box away, so she'd put it out of sight. But then she'd get a craving and tear up the house. But she'd try to do it so I wouldn't notice . . . I always did."

The words flow from me as easy as the smoke does, and I realize this is the most I've spoken about my mother in months. Maybe since we first found her at Woodbury. Owen takes his cigarette back, and we walk in silence for a minute, which is more than fine with me. I watch the side of the tracks, see more footprints, mostly just showing up as crushed pieces of grass. But I've been taught well.

Then Owen asks how she died. My mother. I don't answer.

"C'mon," he says. "I made my confession to you."

I slip my bow through my arm, so it's hooked onto my shoulder, and I hold my elbows. It's a cold day. Yes, the days'll be getting colder. "How'd Tyler die?"

Now it's Owen's turn not to answer.

"That's right," I say, picking up the pace. "If you can't talk, don't expect someone else to."

. . . . .

Sanctuary for All. Community for All. Those who arrive, survive. Terminus.

This is what's written on the loose sign hanging from an abandoned train car we pass in the late afternoon, early evening. All the men ahead of me walked right past it, but I can't. I feel nailed to the spot. Some bell in my head is ringing. What bell?

Owen's stopped, too. "Think that's where your people are headin'?"

Come on, come on . . . What bell?

"If they are, it's a waste of time. Joe says the place is bullshit."

"And Joe knows everything," I say halfheartedly. I can't find the bell. But I feel uneasy. Rick may want to believe the sign. If he does – after he doubles back, and I meet up with them, and we figure out how to get these guys off our tails – we'll go there, to Terminus, and maybe it's real, maybe it's a safe place, but what if it's not? What if Joe's right and it's bullshit? What if it's like Woodbury?

"C'mon." Owen moves along. I snap-click my trigger and then move along, too.

"You were in the hospital," I say not long after the sign.

"What?"

I pull my hair out of its ponytail, redo it. I don't have much of a desire to talk to Owen anymore, really, but I'm barely on my feet. Fact is, my body's about had it – lack of sleep, lack of food, but no lack of activity. It's like a math problem I keep doing wrong. Anyway, I want distraction from that, and from worry over that Terminus thing, and Owen's my only option . . . and, fine. Now that this piece of information that's been buried among more important things has decided to dig its way up to my main stream of thoughts, I can't keep it to myself. Tyler never gave me details, and I'm curious.

"You went into the hospital. Like, a month before this all started. Can't remember you ever gettin' out."

"Miss me?"

"What was wrong with you?"

He scratches his head. "What'd Ty say?"

"Just that you were sick. That you were gettin' better." It's strange to think that an answer like that would have been enough for me less than two years ago. Maybe I was being polite, but now I'm pretty sure I would do my best to get out all the information I wanted. Especially from someone like Tyler.

And here, out of the blue, the Walker Without a Doll stumbles into my mind, so real that my head immediately shakes itself to get the image out.

"Yeah," says Owen. "That's about it."

"Well, what kind of sick?"

"Uh, it was this heart thing. It wasn't beating right." He slings his black heavy-duty backpack from his shoulders and searches through it without stopping. After a minute, something flies out of it, curves through the air, and lands in my hand, which jumped out by instinct. A bag of peanuts. I've barely had time to register that before something else is flying and landing in the same hand, on top of the peanuts, trapped in the nick of time by the tips of my fingers. A sandwich bag with strips of meat inside.

"Eat," Owen says. "Maybe you're less of a headache when you're not hungry."

"Thanks," I mutter. Awkwardly. I don't know what else to say. He puts the backpack on his shoulders again and I open the peanuts with my teeth, pour some into my mouth, chew fast, swallow fast, my usual. But my dad told me once that my body knows when it really needs food, so I think, at some point, my body can overpower my head, my depressed, angry, shitty head. Maybe I've reached that point.

"What'd you put in your bag?" Owen says, swinging his own back to its proper position.

"A few books."

He laughs.

"What?"

"I tell you to get what you need and you get books."

"You gave me thirty seconds. And I don't need much to live on." But I know he's right. My dad would have my neck. I just wasn't thinking too straight at the time. Probably could have done better with a little more sleep and food. I eat more peanuts.

Owen sighs, a dramatic sigh that I guess is meant to tell me just how silly I am. Then he says, "Anything good? Give me a piece of meat."

I hold the bag out to him. "Never read 'em. Well, I started one. 'Salem's Lot."

"Stephen King?"

"Yeah. They're all Stephen King. The guy who lived in that house kinda had an obsession with him, I think."

"I know." His teeth tear into the meat. "Grabbed a few myself."

"You read?"

He chews. "Don't look so shocked. Gotta stay entertained somehow, don't I? Ain't usually in the presence of such a ray of sunshine. So you didn't think to grab a jacket?"

"It ain't that cold."

"It'll get there."

"Well." I drop my voice, even though it was probably low enough before, "I'll be back with my people soon, and it'll be their problem, not yours."

"Yeah, about that. You notice how we've been following these tracks, this trail, for a good four, five hours, and it hasn't gone anywhere but straight away from that house?"

I have noticed that. But Owen doesn't get how my people work. "We're really careful."

He nods, but he also mutters something, so softly I doubt I'm supposed to hear.

"And really naïve."

. . . . .

It's definitely more evening than afternoon when we run into the herd. The world is deep blue with streaks of purple in the distance, lighting up a happier place while the walkers creep into this dim one.

I say herd. There should be a different word for the smaller groups, which this one is, it has just eight or nine walkers. But when they appear out of the forest, attacking us as we stick faithfully to the railroad tracks (just like Carl and Rick and Michonne before us), it's enough to set off a round of swearing.

"Here we go," Owen says as the walkers near, singing their song. He takes an arrow from his bow – like mine, his has a place made for holding a few arrows, but unlike mine, it's actually used. I clip my trigger release onto my bowstring. "You can stay back if you want," Owen says, and I scowl at him and move past. For the first time today, I feel in my element.

Wait. Putting down walkers? That's my element? No. No, of course not. Hunting is my element. Carl is my element. I'm just used to putting down walkers, a lot more than I'm used to being with these people, and being without . . . others. The first rush I feel as my first arrow lands in the first head is just a release. I need this. Right now.

The second rush I feel as my second arrow lands in the second head – and maybe it's not a smart rush – comes from the look of hatred Len gives me when that walker falls to the ground with two arrows in its body but only one in its skull. The arrow jutting from the walker's neck is Len's.

At that point, all the walkers are down or about to be. By the time I yank my first arrow from a corpse, the bald man I think I heard someone call Dan bashes in the head of the last walker. As I go to get my second arrow, I can feel Len watching. I step on the walker's head, pull, my arrow is mine again. Then I do something a distant part of me tells me not to. Maybe because of adrenaline, maybe because I just do dumb things sometimes.

Or maybe because this son of a bitch slapped my face and unbuttoned my jeans.

I pull out his arrow, too, I pull out Len's arrow, and I force myself to walk to him, even though every step makes my heart pound more, in a bad way, the worst way. I hand the arrow to him. He snatches it.

"Might wanna practice your aim," I tell him. "I won't always be here to cover your ass."

Oh, the fire that flares in his eyes. "You little –"

"Bitch, I know," I say, backing up as he moves forward, and I hear Owen bark Len's name and I hear – laughter. From where?

Joe. A slow second, and then the other men join in, too. Except Len. Len looks at all of them, one by one, his face twisting more and more, and then crack!, he's snapped his arrow across his knee, and he growls like a walker and both hands fly towards me and that's when Owen's here. That's when Owen shoves Len back with both arms and hisses, "What part of claimed don't you understand?"

"You'd best get outta my way, boy –"

"Len, Len. C'mon, now, you know the rules." Joe comes over, a smile still on his face. "She's all Owen's. And anyway . . ." He meets my eyes. "I like her."

I think about nodding at him, would that be smart? But he's turned before I can. He waves at the woods. "Well, we already know this area's cleared out. Let's make camp."

So him and the others sink into the woods. Len, naturally, hangs behind. Owen doesn't move. I realize his hand is on my shoulder and figure it's probably not a good time to shrug him off. He and Len do nothing but stare at each other for one long moment and then another, until Len spits on the ground and walks away, careful to catch my gaze and look like a murderer on his way into the forest. I'm turning to keep an eye on him when the hand on my shoulder turns into an arm around my neck.

"You, Sydney damn Dixon, are an absolute idiot," Owen says as he half-guides, half-pulls me after the others. He'd be more convincing without the laughter infecting his voice. I roll away from him, hiding my own smile.

Then it occurs to me that I'm smiling after a day like this and the smile disappears for a whole lot of reasons.

What am I doing?

"Owen."

"Brat."

"That trail's fresh enough. I wanna – I need to go after them tonight."

We stop just outside the tree line. Owen watches his men – God, I hate that these are his men – blend into the gray before looking back to me. "Haha. No."

"It's not an option."

"Mmm, yeah it is. Don't worry, Joe won't catch 'em tomorrow."

"Owen –"

"How much ground did we gain on them today, huh?" He leans closer. In this light, his eyes look black. "Not much at all. I told you – Joe does not care about speed. We'll get up in the morning, all of us, and we'll go, just like today. Joe'll take his sweet time. Maybe we catch up some, maybe we don't, but Joe'll keep on the trail and keep us close enough."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why does he do it like that? Why does he take his time? R – my guy, my guy killed one of yours. Why isn't Joe chasing him down?" It's a dumb thing to go off about, but I can't understand this, what Joe's doing. If Rick was ever in a position where taking revenge made sense – I don't know what that position might be, but if – he wouldn't stop for breath.

"My God," Owen says. "You really think this is about Lou?" A low chuckle I don't like. "Lou was an excuse, Sydney. Or, a reason. Hell . . . a ticket."

"A ticket."

"A ticket right into the game. That's all this is to Joe, Sydney, a game. And I've seen him play it before. He's gonna draw it out for as long as he can."

"He doesn't care about Lou at all?"

Owen's teeth flash, and I'm suddenly thinking of my uncle. I never knew anyone else to smile so much when it's clear happy ain't what they're feeling. "Hell no," says Owen. "All my life, I've never known Joe to care about anyone."

There's something in that, a trickle of something in his tone, that holds me to the spot, staring at him. Then he pops his jacket collar.

"Trust me, brat. Your people'll be fine."

My eyes slide to the railroad tracks. Owen sighs. "Sydney, I promised you. I promised you I'd help get you to your people, when the time comes. It just hasn't come yet. But I'm a man of my word."

"Good," I say, turning back to him. "I'm a woman who'll hold you to it."

I've never called myself a woman before, and once the word's out of my mouth, I feel stupid. But Owen doesn't so much as smirk.

Later, I'm trapped in a square, shaped out by a temporary line of protection the men made by wrapping the barbwire around some trees. A tiny fire is in the middle of the square, it's mostly embers. Still, I sit as close to it – as close to the others – as I dare, and it's cold anyway, right until Owen hands me a blanket.

"You have to share," he says, while the others unroll blankets and sleeping bags and belch and scratch things. "That's the only one I have."

I snort and hand it back.

"Seriously? You'd freeze instead of sharing a blanket with me?"

"I'm not freezing." I quit rubbing my hands.

Owen crouches down, whispers. "Listen to me. I swear on my brother's grave that I will not touch you, but you need to stay close to me tonight."

The air gets even colder. "Thought I was claimed."

"You are." His gaze slides to the others. "But horniness can have quite the effect on a man's sense of law of order."

I trace my fingers over my bow, over the arrow hooked onto it. Owen tilts his head to a corner of the camp and stands. I stare into the fire and listen to his footsteps. It's Len dropping his bag a foot from me that drives me to my feet.

We're a good yard-and-a-half from the barbwire. Owen's closer to it. We use our bags as pillows. I pull my half of the blanket over me and I feel the heat from Owen's body warm mine, feel his breath on my skin.

The men all lie down, one by one. I close my eyes and pretend the warmth is Carl's. Carl would slide his arm around me, find my hand.

My dad's just being really careful, I can hear him murmur. He'll start doubling back tomorrow. He hated leaving you, but he thought he had to. He did it for me.

I dig my fingernails into my bag. You don't have to lie, I say back, surprising myself. But I keep going. In my head, I keep going.

I know when you're lying, Carl. Maybe he hated leaving me, maybe he had to, and I know for sure that he did it for you. But he's not doubling back. He wouldn't have gotten this far if he was. He's not doubling back.

And you're not making him.

I do a good job of stifling the sob, I think. It's just one, and I barely hear it myself. But it's right after that when Owen squeezes my forearm, so maybe I'm not as sneaky as I think I am.

Rick's left me, hasn't he?

And so have you, Carl.

So I guess I've been found out. I aimed a gun in on my boyfriend's father, my leader, my friend. And I guess that boyfriend must know.

What was it Merle said? Or the Merle my head spat out?

I'm like my daddy. A tiger don't change its stripes. And no matter how much I play pretend that I'm one of the good guys, it's just not in my blood. It just ain't in my blood.

Merle would fit in quite nicely with these men, I think.