It's late afternoon. My dad and Rick are getting ready to leave when T-Dog runs up and tells them that he can't bring them Randall, like he was supposed to, because Randall is gone.

Gone. From his handcuffs, from the shed. Gone.

My dad tells me to get in the house. I do, but I run in so fast that Patricia is startled. She asks what's wrong, and I tell her, because she's a grownup, and then the next thing I know everyone in the house is running outside, and it's like that awful day when Andrea shot my dad, it's like that all over again, only now everyone runs straight over to the shed instead of standing and staring. My dad and Rick, T-Dog and Andrea, they're already there, and why has Andrea been out here? But that's not important, not important at all. The door of the shed is open and my dad's stepping out just as me and the others get to the shed. Dad, he barely look at us. He paces away, and I can't see his face, but his walk is strong and fast and I know it doesn't mean anything good.

"The cuffs are still hooked," Rick tells someone as he comes out of the shed, the dark, empty shed. "He must've slipped 'em." His voice is hard.

"Is that possible?" Carol asks breathlessly.

And now it's Andrea's turn to appear from the shed. "It is if you've got nothing to lose."

My dad's off a ways, with T-Dog. He's staring out at the woods with his crossbow in his arms.

"The door was secured from the outside," says someone, I think Hershel – my focus is on Carl at this point. He's with his mom, of course, and Lori, she has both of her hands on his shoulders. Carl's looking at the shed, the shed where Randall was, the shed we sneaked in to. And now Randall's escaped. Oh, God, did we do this somehow? Are we to blame for this, too?

No, no, that's stupid, that doesn't make sense. But how –?

"Rick!"

That yell grabs all of us, pulls us in, tugs our heads and eyes and ears towards the forest, to the figure striding out of it. Shane. "Rick!"

There's blood on his face. Rick brushes past me.

"What happened?" Lori shouts.

"He's armed!" barks Shane, striding nearer, hands in fists like mine are sometimes. "He's got my gun!"

And something my dad said, back when we had the bad fight, back when I told him I was afraid of him: He ain't a good guy, Little Bit.

And now he has a gun. Ain't-a-good-guy has a gun.

Carl's asking if Shane's okay, Shane's yelling that he is, that Randall just sneaked up on him and knocked him down. He's close enough to not have to yell, but he yells anyway, because all of this is bad, it's so bad, and Rick, Rick's yelling now, too.

"Alright – Hershel, T-Dog! Get everybody back in the house! Glenn, Daryl, come with us."

I don't like this plan, I don't like this plan. But Dad's loading an arrow into his crossbow.

"T." Shane moves towards T-Dog, pointing, "I'm gonna need that gun."

"Just let him go," Carol says hurriedly, her voice even higher than usual. "That was the plan, wasn't it, to just let him go?"

"The plan was to cut him loose far away from here," Rick replies darkly, angrily, "Not on our front step with a gun!"

Shane snaps up T-Dog's gun right next to me. He spins and moves away, hunched over, moving with a stiff kind of fury that scares me and that will surely put the fear of God in Randall if they find him. I look to my dad. He meets my eyes right away. He doesn't nod or smile or wink or anything. He just meets my eyes and turns, and I hate it, I hate it, and I have to work not to chase after him.

"Don't go out there!" Carol pleads. "Y'all know what can happen!"

The Walker Without a Doll.

Nobody listens to Carol. Over his shoulder, Rick orders – again – "Get everybody back in the house! Lock all the doors and stay put!"

"Dad . . ." I say, too quietly to hear, barely even a whisper, but suddenly – I'm sorry, Dale, I'm sorry – I wish they'd gone through with killing Randall, and a part of me screams that that's wrong but Randall's out here somewhere with a gun and my dad, my dad is going looking for him, and if Randall hurts Dad I swear to God –

"Hey!" Someone grabs me and pulls, pulls away from the woods and my dad. "Come on, Sydney, come on!"

It's T-Dog. I don't . . . I don't . . .

I'm no good out here.

So I follow the others back to the house, fast, because there's a maybe-killer on the loose.

. . . . .

This house has lost its charm. Its feeling of home, of safety, of nothing-bad-can-happen-here. All of that good stuff began draining out last night, with the conversation over whether or not to kill Randall, and now that good stuff is just about all gone. It's cold in here and it's not just because winter's coming.

The others keep busy. Start nesting. Rolling out sleeping bags, setting up cots, throwing blankets onto couches. Me, though, I ignore my dad's and my corner and walk around, keeping in the background of every scene, staying unnoticed but being noticed enough that no one has to wonder where I am. It's the best way I can think of to keep myself alone.

I avoid Carl. That's the only person I avoid. I need to ask him about the gun, I know that, it's nagging at me and making me anxious. I need to see if the gun got to him so maybe I can have a little peace of mind. But Dale died last night, and no matter what my dad says, I know Carl and I are responsible. So Carl's just a reminder of bad things right now. And I'm not sure I have the energy to deal with bad things at the moment. So I avoid him.

It gets darker and darker outside until it's flat-out dark. My dad and the others are still out there. The three times I'm in the same room with Lori, I see her check out the nearest window a total of, I don't know, a hundred times. A hundred and one, maybe. Her face is tight, and when she smiles, it's forced.

Carol finds me five minutes after sundown, as I'm sitting in the corner of the living room, watching Maggie and Beth whisper over a picture of someone who I think is their brother, the brother who was in the barn. Carol says I should try and eat something. I know how it'll end, so I don't want to, but I told Dad I would, didn't I? I go into the kitchen and take a thin slice of bread that Patricia baked, and I get a water bottle, too, and then Carol and I go to the bathroom. She gets to watch me choke down five whole bites of bread before it all comes back up into the toilet. She holds my hair like Dad did, but it's different, and I want him here and I hate Randall and they should've killed –

I'm sorry, Dale.

Then I sit on the closed toilet seat and Carol sits on the edge of the bathtub. I want to leave, I want to be alone, I want to hide in the background some more, but the room is spinning. I'm tired and the room is spinning, spinning, spinning. I'm almost positive I see Carol's hand move an inch or two into the air once – into the air and closer to me? – and then settle back on her knee. Good. I don't know how her touch would have felt.

We nearly run into Lori in the hallway. Worry is all over her, in her eyes and lips and in her hands as they twist and untwist a pillowcase. "Hey, Sydney? You talked to Carl lately?"

I rub my temple, the way Mom used to when she got a headache. Like the one I have now. "Uh, no. I don't think so."

Except when I talked to him this morning to try and give him back the gun he stole from my father. Want to know about that, Lori?

"Well, um, he just went upstairs. I think . . . I think it might be good for him to have some company. Do you mind?"

Yes, I mind. I mind with everything I got, I mind. But this isn't the kind of question you can say no to. This is the kind of question a grownup asks you when they're trying to be nice about telling you to do something. So me, I nod. I be a good girl and I go up the creaking stairs into the quiet to find Carl. The Reminder.

It's not hard to find him. He's not hiding or anything. I get up the stairs and the first door on my left is wide open, and Carl's just standing there, by a window. He raises something to his eyes – binoculars. Then he puts them down. I watch him for another minute before I say, "Shane talk to you?"

He twists his upper body around, doesn't move his feet. If I scared him, sneaked up on him or what, he doesn't show it. At least, I don't think so. The moonlight from the window casts a shadow on his face, making it hard to see anything but his eyes. His calm blue eyes. "My dad did."

I tense. "Your dad? Carl, I swear, I asked Shane not to tell him –"

"Sydney, it's okay."

I've ended up in the doorway, my shoulder pressing against the frame, my body wanting to lean on it but not quite sure it's safe. I don't understand, which is nothing new.

Carl reaches for his waistband in a movement I, personally, have gotten pretty familiar with. Out comes the gun. The gun. "My dad gave it to me. He wants me to have it." Carl's hand clenches and unclenches the gun. Getting a feel for it? Testing its weight? I wonder if it's as heavy to him as it was to me. "You were right to tell Shane," he says. "Thanks."

I let my eyes fall to the ground as he slips the gun away. I've started leaning on the doorframe after all. It's easier. I'm all weak and trembling.

Carl turns from the window and rests against the wall beside it. We're facing each other now, totally and completely. The binoculars hang from his neck and make the rest of him look smaller. "I – I went over to the barn last night. Right when they were about to do it. Right when my dad was about to shoot Randall. My dad . . . He saw me, and he stopped. And he decided not to kill him. And now . . . Now if Randall hurts someone. . ."

My eyes stay on the floorboards. It's old-looking wood, the kind that might give you splinters but that feels wonderfully sturdy underneath your feet. Keeps you from falling. Protects you.

"That would be my fault," Carl says. "That would be my fault, too."

Too.

My mom was good at talking to people. Talking them up, talking them down. Making them smile or at least helping them not be quite so sad. Me, I'm not my mom. I'm just not. So I don't tell Carl it's okay, I don't tell him he's a good person, I don't tell him anything helpful. I'm quiet and still.

Then he says, "Dad told me Dale didn't die because of me. Of us."

His tone isn't happy. It's not hopeful.

Carl, he knows that's all bullshit.

And me, I know I was right to ask Shane to get that gun to Carl. It's changed him already. Somehow. I didn't get the blame off his shoulders, no, that plan didn't work. But maybe, maybe now he can handle it. Shoulder the blame and keep going.

Carl's watching me. Does he want a reply? I give him one – a long stare, to which he finally nods, looking over his shoulder and out the window again.

We get each other, don't we?

The blame's all even now.

Thirty minutes later, Carol calls me downstairs and I eat an entire slice of bread and an apple and none of it comes back up.

. . . . .

"How's it feel?" Beth asks.

It feels like there are way too many people watching me right now. But she means the jacket, which is the reason they're all watching me. I'm trying on Beth's jacket, a thick denim coat she outgrew last year. It's too big, but not by a whole lot, not as bad as that shirt of Dad's I was wearing, which is now draped over the back of the couch. I just have to roll up the jacket sleeves a little and it's fine. It's warm, at least.

"This is good," I tell Beth, closing the jacket over me. "I like it. Thanks."

She smiles. She has a good smile, Beth. A little shy but very kind, the kind of smile that makes her into the kind of person that you want to hug. But I don't. Jimmy does, though, or at least he puts his arm around her. Dad used to do that with Mom.

Then it's silence. Beth and Jimmy separate, Beth sits down on the couch, next to Andrea. Jimmy goes to a wall and leans on it, like men do, like T-Dog's doing, like Hershel's doing. Lori's sitting in a chair in the corner. Patricia and Carol are standing with their arms crossed in that baby-cradling way. Carl hasn't come downstairs.

I want to sit down, I want to stand, I want to lean, I want to go back to Carl, I want to go outside and look for my dad –

"I'm going after them," Andrea's saying, standing up, stepping across the room. Yes, yes, I knew I liked her.

"Don't, they could be anywhere," says Lori. She sounds tired. "And if Randall comes back, we're gonna need you here."

Andrea's stopped. My heart sinks a little. Lori's right, of course she's right. Andrea can use a gun and the house might need protection. But my dad's out there . . .

I touch the revolver at my waist.

The door opens, the front door. It creaks and slams, the way it always does, and then my dad and Glenn appear in the archway next to T-Dog.

I loosen up everywhere inside. I end up on the couch, my arms crossed over the back of it and my knees holding me up. My dad's hand – the one not holding the crossbow – finds my head, and that's perfect.

But his eyes go over the room and he asks, "Rick and Shane ain't back?"

"No," Lori and I answer at the same time. Dad's hand slips off of me.

"We heard a shot," he says as I glare at his hand, willing it to come back, let me know everything's fine.

Wait, wait, a shot?

"Maybe they found Randall," says Lori.

"We found him."

"Is he back in the shed?" Patricia asks.

Dad's eyes are on her but his hand comes to me again, this time to my neck, and he starts kneading it as he says, "He's a walker."

Walker.

After all this, after the debate last night, after Dale going to so much trouble to try to keep Randall alive . . . He's a walker.

The guy with the gap in his teeth who begged Carl and me for help is a walker.

Was a walker. My dad and Glenn wouldn't have let one be.

I stare at Dad's crossbow.

"Did you find the walker that bit him?" Hershel asks after a weighted second.

"Weird thing is," says Glenn, softly, like he's delivering hard news, and is it hard news? "He wasn't bit."

No. No, that doesn't make sense . . .

But Dad nods. "His neck was broke."

"So he fought back," Patricia says matter-of-factly.

"The thing is, Shane and Randall's tracks were right on top of each other," Dad explains to the room. "And Shane ain't no tracker. So he didn't come up behind him. They were together."

But Shane said . . .

My stomach hurts. I want to sleep. I want to get Dad and go somewhere and talk about this just with him so he can make it all make sense and then I want to sleep.

But Lori's coming around the couch, coming right up to Dad. "Would you please get back out there and find Rick and Shane and find out what on Earth is going on?"

He doesn't even pause. "You got it."

"Thank you."

No . . .

Dad squeezes my neck one last time. Then he and Glenn are gone. Andrea, too.

I follow them. I'm sick of being inside the house and I want my dad, I want my dad like I'm just a little kid again, and I don't know what my plan is but I go out the door before anyone can stop me.

I find the three of them out on the porch, standing still. Facing away from the door, out at the farm.

Something's wrong.

I almost ask Dad what, but I don't. Instead I edge up behind them, and up next to Dad, and he doesn't say anything about it. I grip the railing and look out.

They're like ants from here. Little black ants, coming for that piece of pie you dropped at a cookout. Only it's night and the pie is the house and the ants are walkers.

A million walkers.