The newcomers sat around the dining room table eating the quick lunch of rice and vegetable soup Carol had thrown together for them. They ate greedily, as though maybe they hadn't touched food in a while. From where Carol sat at the head of the table, she could actually hear the big black man's stomach growling. He'd introduced himself as Tyreese Williams, and the woman was not his wife, but his sister Sasha. She seemed to be in charge of the trio.
Glenn was in the watchtower now, and Andrea and Beth were still out somewhere fishing, but the rest of the camp was gathered in the kitchen. The kids had talked Carol into making them hot chocolate and also sat at the dining room table. T-Dog, who was leaned back against the closed pantry door, crossed his arms over his chest. "So let me get this straight, Roscoe. Merle and Daryl's father was your father?"
To Carol, Roscoe looked at least five years younger than Merle. He had blue-green eyes and near-black hair, but there was something in the Neanderthal-breadth of his forehead that reminded her of Merle.
Roscoe paused in his eating. " Same daddy, different mama. Me and Merle were born three months apart."
Carl's young brow knitted in confusion.
"It means Daryl's dad cheated on his mom," Sophia explained to him.
"Cheated in what?" Carl asked.
Sophia shook her head. "You don't know anything, do you?"
Darlene, who leaned against the nearby kitchen counter, changed the subject quickly. "So how'd Nashville work out for you, Roscoe? No one ever heard a word from you once you left Georgia."
"Got a record deal eventually. But then the label went bankrupt before I finished recording it. Ended up being a song writer. Also playin' in clubs and bars and teachin' guitar to spoiled rich kids."
"And you never thought to visit your people again?" Darlene asked.
"What people?" Roscoe asked. "My mama took off three years after I was born. Grandmama was a peach to raise me, but she died when I's seventeen. Will Dixon ain't never really acknowledged I was his. Merle just harassed me every time we saw each other, and I hardly knew Daryl. He was a kid when I left, and he was always hidin' from folks or driftin' 'round barefoot like Huck Finn."
"But you remember me?" Darlene asked.
"Yeah, well, you're hard to forget."
T-Dog glowered, but Roscoe didn't seem to notice. He just lifted his soup bowl and drank the last of it down before letting out a long "Aaaaaaah!" He set it down with a clunk and looked at Carol. "That's some damn fine cookin' on short notice. Are you married, ma'am?"
Carol smiled indulgently.
"She's with Daryl," Darlene told him.
Carol was a little taken aback by the announcement. They hadn't actually told anyone they were together, but there was no surprised reaction from Maggie, who stood with her back leaned against the kitchen wall, or from T-Dog or Carl. Carol looked at Sophia, who seemed so unfazed by the comment that Carol wondered how long her daughter had simply assumed they were together.
"Really now?" Roscoe looked Carol over. He shook his head and laughed. "Guess the boy's been domesticated."
"Well I don't know about that," Darlene said. "Maybe tamed a little."
"This is a nice set up you have here." Sasha looked around the kitchen. "Sturdy cabins. Running water. Wood stoves. Supplies. A look out. A barrier of vehicles."
"And we didn't see a single walker all the way up the mountain," Tyreese added.
"How did the three of you meet up?" Darlene waved a finger from Sasha to Tyrese to Roscoe. "Y'all seem an unlikely family."
"When it started," Sasha said, "Ty and I were in Jacksonville. We survived the first few weeks in our neighbor Jerry's bunker. He kept taking in people, and the food was starting to run out. One night, Jerry died and turned in his sleep, killed the others, and Ty and I barely got out alive. The whole town was overrun by that time. We started driving north, hoping to find a refugee camp."
"Instead we found Roscoe," Tyreese said with a shrug of his eyes. "Near Macon."
"Macon?" Darlene asked. "What were you doing there?"
"Fled Nashville when it started," Roscoe said. "Those blood-lickers was everywhere. Stayed in a camp near Chattanooga for a few weeks, but it fell apart. People dying, turning, fleeing. So I moved on alone. Drove down through rural Alabama. Figured better to go someplace ain't too populated. I was just scavengin' and survivin' when I heard somethin' on the radio 'bout this place called Terminus. So I cut over to Georgia."
"Terminus?" T-Dog asked. "We heard about that on the radio, too. A refugee camp, with electricity. Did you find it?"
"Oh, I found it all right."
"We were headed there when we found Roscoe," Sasha explained. "We saw the signs in south Georgia as we were heading north from Jacksonville. He told us there was nothing good in Terminus. So we all headed for Atlanta."
"What was wrong with Terminus?" Maggie asked.
Roscoe glanced at Sophia and then Carl. "Ain't really a PG story."
Carol told the kids to go play at the park, under Glenn's watch in the tree house, and they reluctantly took off.
"I could tell bad guys were in charge when I got there," Roscoe continued. "I watched from a distance for a bit. They was all armed and keepin' the people locked in cattle cars. I heard them rapin' the women." Carol felt sick and was glad she'd made Sophia leave. "I was out of ammo. Not much I could do on my own with just an empty handgun and a harmonica. So I waited until the middle of the night, when most of the men was asleep, and then I snuck in quiet as I could, past the guard, and let them people out the cattle cars. They overtook the bandits and got their guns and took the place right back over."
"Well that's good, right?" Maggie asked.
Roscoe shook his head. "I was gonna stay with 'em, but then they started talkin' crazy shit 'bout how they were never gonna let somethin' like that happen again."
"What's crazy about that?" T-Dog asked.
"Well, how they were gonna do it. They decided anyone who showed up - man, woman, child, good or bad - they were gonna kill 'em. And then eat 'em."
"Eat them?" Carol exclaimed.
"Continuous food supply," Roscoe said. "I ain't into murder and cannibalism myself, so I got the hell out that place 'fore they started eatin' people. Took a backpack full of food and some ammo and snuck out one night. Ran into these folks."
"So, they're eating people now?" Maggie asked.
"I reckon."
Maggie shook her head. "And you didn't try to stop them?"
"Two dozen armed people at least," Roscoe said. "Determined to kill anyone who sets foot in Terminus. That's not a shitstorm I've got an umbrella big enough to handle."
"But we spray painted over all the signs we saw on the way north," Tyreese said. "Warning: Danger."
"Well, they're still broadcasting," T-Dog told them.
"Not my rodeo." Roscoe pushed his empty bowl forward. "Not my bull."
"We just want to survive," Sasha agreed. "You've got to pick your battles in this world."
"So we headed for Atlanta," Tyreese said, "hoping the military would be in charge there, but it had been bombed."
Carol nodded. "We know."
"So we drove on northeast toward the mountains," Sasha explained. "Looking for higher ground. Hoping to find a camp with decent people. And I spied those tire tracks coming up this mountain."
"We need to start raking over those when we make supply runs," Carol mused aloud.
"So you ain't welcomin' new people?" Roscoe asked.
"Y'all can stay with us," Darlene said. She looked around at the others. "Right?"
"You took in me and Beth," Maggie said. "And Zach."
"If you want us to consider taking you in, you have to contribute." T-Dog looked at Roscoe pointedly. "What can you contribute?"
"Fifteen boxes of powdered milk and two jars of pickles."
"I think he means what skills we can contribute," Sasha said.
They could use the milk, though, Carol thought. That was one thing they didn't have.
"I can play the harmonica like you wouldn't believe." Roscoe tapped the silver instrument attached to his belt. "I'm a virtuoso on the guitar. Play a mean piano, too." He shrugged. "And my fiddle's passable."
"I don't think that's what she means either, Roscoe," Sasha said with a roll of her eyes. She looked straight at T-Dog. "I'm a good shot. I can keep watch, and I can go on supply runs. Tyreese can build things."
"And I suppose you can hunt?" Carol asked Roscoe. He was a Dixon, after all.
"Can't hunt worth shit. Another reason Will Dixon never owned me. But I'm handy as hell. Can fix all sorts of things."
"I'll vouch that Roscoe is handy," Darlene said. "My mama used to hire him to repair stuff around our cabin all the time when he was in high school." She smiled at him and T-Dog frowned.
The cabin door opened and Beth and Andrea came in with four fish, which they lay on the counter.
"Y'all women can fish?" Roscoe asked. He tipped his cowboy hat at Andrea. "Are you married, ma'am?"
"Who the hell is this?" Andrea asked.
Further introductions were made and all the stories were re-told. "You were a country music singer?" Beth asked Roscoe with a hint of awe in her voice. "I always wanted to go to Nashville."
"Well you sure got the look for it, little darlin'," Roscoe said. "How old are you?"
Before Beth could answer, Maggie stepped closer to the table. "She just turned seventeen. And she's got a boyfriend. He's on this supply run with Daryl and Rick. And he's an expert marksman."
"Hey, I never said Zach was my boyfriend!" Beth exclaimed. "I've known him like three days. We kissed a couple times. That does not make him my boyfriend."
Maggie kept her eyes on Roscoe. "Seventeen," she repeated. "Barely."
"Christ, woman, just asking." Roscoe held up his hands in a self-defensive posture. "I wasn't asking for any nefarious reason." He looked at Andrea. "You got a boyfriend you want to threaten me with, too, sugar?"
"I don't know," Andrea said. "It depends. Are you asking for a nefarious reason?"
"You want me to be?"
Andrea laughed. "In your dreams, cowboy." She nodded to his hat. "Have you ever even ridden a horse?"
"No," Roscoe admitted. "But I ate one in rural Alabama when I ran out of canned goods."
"I think we need a conference," said Carol, looking from T-Dog to Maggie to Darlene.
"Why don't I show y'all guests around outside?" Darlene suggested. The newcomers rose to follow her out.
[*]
When Rick and Daryl rounded the back of the building, a svelte, dark-skinned woman stood with the point of a curved, single-edged sword pressed lightly against the base of Zach's throat. His rifle was shouldered because he had the boy in his arms.
"Mama, mama!" the boy cried.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Rick said as he holstered his revolver.
Daryl kept his crossbow trained on the strange woman. She looked like she'd stepped straight out of a fairy tale about an African princess into a Mad Max movie and then come out the other end some combination of the two.
"If that's your boy," Rick assured her, "we aren't trying to hurt him. We just rescued him from a herd of walkers in the diner. If you'll just step back, Zach will hand him to you."
The woman drew her sword away so quickly that, for a moment, Daryl feared she'd slit the frat boy's throat, but Zach was unscathed. She slid the weapon into a sheath on her back and then gathered the child into her arms and kissed his face. The boy wrapped his little arms around her neck.
The woman turned her worried eyes on Rick. "Where are the men he was with?"
Daryl finally lowered his crossbow. Rick seemed speechless. He was probably looking for the kind of words he'd used as a cop when he broke the bad news to a victim's family. But Daryl felt no sympathy for this woman. Who the hell left a three-year-old alone with a couple of potheads in an apocalypse? "Got overrun by a herd," Daryl said coldly. "They's both dead now. But that's what happens when you get high and don't give a shit 'bout yer kid."
The woman's bottom lip trembled. Her eyes flashed fire. She shook her head and ran with the child toward the front of the building.
"Shit, man!" Rick cursed. "Why'd you tell her that? She didn't have to know they were high. Now she's going to feel guilty!"
"Should feel guilty. What the fuck do you think she was out doing? Probably lookin' for more pot."
Rick jogged after the woman.
Zach followed, but Daryl made his way more languidly there. When he arrived on the scene. The woman had the child's eyes pressed to her shoulder, which was rising and falling as she tried to suppress some emotion that seemed more like anger than sorrow.
"They were smoking?" she asked, and the look in her eyes told Daryl that she hadn't expected it. That was when he noticed the walker blood staining her dark jeans. Wherever she'd been, it probably wasn't to help those men get more drugs. She'd been slashing through walkers with a purpose.
Rick nodded. "I'm sorry. When we got here, they were already..." He shook his head. "We saved the boy, though."
The woman bent her forehead against the forehead of her child.
"May I ask where you were?" Rick's voice was calm, friendly, non-accusatory. Daryl wondered if that was how he always started his interrogations when he was a cop.
The woman walked away from the diner and further into the paved front parking lot. She let her knapsack slide from her shoulder and squatted to the ground to set her son on his feet. Silently, she unzipped the pack and pulled out a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, which she set on the ground. Then she pulled out a tube of antibiotic ointment, a roll of medical tape, and, finally, gauze. "I was finding these things for my son."
She pulled off the boy's sweatshirt to reveal blood-spotted washcloths secured with duck tape across his belly. He whimpered when she peeled them off. Two gashes spread across the space below his belly button. There were also scratches on his chest and arms. "We were in a refugee camp near Atlanta, but things got bad," she said. "It started spreading. Food ran out. So we left. We've been roaming ever since. Last night, we got run off the road near this diner. Our car flipped over. Before I could get my son, he crawled out through the glass and cut himself up. We hunkered down in the diner for the night, and I left him with Mike and Terry this morning to go find something better to treat his wounds. I don't want him to get infected."
The boy whined softly as she began cleaning his cuts and scrapes and coating them with antibiotic ointment, but he didn't pull away. He was one tough little kid, Daryl thought.
"Who ran you off the road?" Rick asked. "And why?"
"Two men. I didn't pause to take down names. I just pretended to be stunned until they got close enough for me to kill them." Rick raised an eyebrow, and she said, "No one runs a family off the road just to have a nice chat with them."
"True enough," Rick said. "And then you went to the diner?"
"It was unlocked. There were six of those things inside. I killed them and hauled their bodies out and burned them."
"Seen that," Daryl told Rick. "By the dumpster on the right."
"So is there still food in there?" Zach asked.
"Yes," the woman answered. "We thought we'd camp here for a while and live off of it."
"Why did you go for the medical supplies?" Rick asked. "Why didn't your husband go?"
"My boyfriend. And I went because I'm much better at killing walkers."
"With that sword thing?" Rick asked.
"It's a katana. And yes. I've gotten a lot of practice killing those things with it." She slid the boy's sweatshirt back on, put the medical supplies back in her pack, and gathered her son up in her arms again.
"Can you show me the car that got turned over?" Rick asked. "And the bodies of the men you killed?"
"Why?"
"So I can know if you're telling the truth. So I can decide whether or not to invite you back to our camp with us."
"And what makes you think I want to join your camp?" she asked.
"You're alone with a child," Rick answered. "We have a nurse. She'll make sure those cuts don't get infected. There are several other women in our camp. Kids too. I have a son." Rick made direct eye contact with her when he said that. "He's just twelve. I know how hard it is to protect a child in this world without help. So why don't you show me the car?"
The woman nodded and began walking away from the diner.
The three men followed.again. Back after sunset. Save me some grub."
