Chapter 14

Several days after they found Merle but while they were still trying to decide whether or not to invite his group to come stay or to try to cooperate as somewhat distant neighbors, Carol sat at the mostly empty dining room with an old Farmer's Almanac on her lap and an array of seed packets spread out in front of her like the Russian Roulette version of solitaire. She was carefully not thinking about the state of their inventory. They had plenty, as long as they were careful, to last two people for a while longer, as long as the hunting went well.

Daryl was sitting across from her, whittling on what was probably more arrows. Right now, she was staring at seed packets and listening to him talk.

"Been wantin' to find a little store, y'know? Not one of them big chains, but some little shop owned by a person, less like to be overrun with Walkers. I mean, we better off than if we just had guns, but — y'ain't listening to a word I'm sayin', are you?"

"You need more broadheads. That's the sharp part, at the end of the arrow."

Daryl's lips twitched like he was trying to keep from laughing at her, and he shrugged, "It's one kind, yeah. What ya into over there?"

She blew out a breath. "I don't know what day it is. We only have so many seeds. I've never even kept a garden before, what if I plant them at the wrong time and there's frost? We can't live off of Hershel's cellar and what was in that store forever, we have to grow our own food, and I've got this book but — we should've been keeping track of the moon phases at least."

He frowned at her, then seemed to ignore the substance of her dilemma and focus on the small details. She'd noticed that he seemed to have a tendency to do that, to break big things up into smaller things and then tackle those one at a time. "You know how many months it's been though. Say, since we seen Rick?"

"I know that it's getting warmer, so it's Spring. The days all bleed together, though, and—"

"You lookin' at it wrong. Getting' yourself all worked up. How many months it been?"

"I. Don't. Know." He was looking at her like she was missing something fundamental and if he just stared long enough, she would pick up on whatever it was she was supposed to know. "You tell me?"

"I can't tell you, not for sure," Daryl said slowly, "but you can tell me." He looked, quite suddenly, a little uncertain, and color started creeping up his neck. "I mean, y'ain't just got 'em for trade, right?"

Oh. Oh. She took a moment to ponder. "Right. I'm an idiot. So if we saw Rick and the others at Christmas, then we're at the end of March," she said.

Daryl nodded, and the blush started to recede. "You the calendar. Could get a notebook if you want to count days. Time the sun, keep an eye on other stuff. Pick up the numbers and shit at the solstice. Count from there. I mean, if it means shit to you and stuff."

"I still don't know what I'm doing, Daryl."

He shrugged. "Gotta try. We can do it. Build a smokehouse, too. Do more runs." He shook his head. "Right now, I'm fletchin' some bolts. Sharpenin' what's dull. You figurin' out what goes in the ground first. We get that done, we go on to the next thing."

"What's the next thing?" She couldn't help but ask it. She was a planner. She always had been. Carol worked best when she knew what she was working toward.

"Whatever the hell comes next. Whole world could change by the time we get these here things done, Carol. We see what the world is when we finish these jobs? That'll tell us what the next job's gotta be."

He looked — patient. She wondered if any of their old group would have believed someone who used that word to describe Daryl Dixon. She would bet that Merle wouldn't be at all shocked. Daryl was never idle, and she would admit that there was a time she had confused that with being impatient, but that wasn't accurate.

"Well, you are the only one Zen around here," she teased.

He huffed at her, then went still.

"Y'hear that?"

Carol blinked.

From her position on the ground, all that she could see was glare from the sun. The white light seemed to pulse in time with the hammer beating against the inside of her skull.

Something happened. Something was happening. She couldn't hear anything over the ringing in her ears. Something slick and wet was running down the back of her neck. Her stomach was doing somersaults and it was a real effort to keep its contents where they belonged. Panic set in, even though her head was so fuzzy she couldn't remember what it was she was panicking about.

A hand closed around her left arm, pulling on her. She fought against it, but the movement felt weaker than she'd grown used to. The next breath, Daryl's face hovered over her, dripping with sweat and blood. His mouth was moving but no sound made it past the ringing yet.

It was his hand on her arm. He was helping her up. There was an urgency in his expression and his movements that somehow helped transform her panic into action.

"Can't hear you," she said.

He nodded at her, let go of her arm, and held out his hand.

Yes, that was much better.

He made their sign for safe, but there was a doubtful hesitance to it that made her unsure if he was telling her or asking her.

"I think I hit my head. What happened?"

Her feet were following his of their own accord, as she reached up to wipe the sweat out of her eyes. When she touched her forehead, though, pain shot through her head with an intensity that nearly put her back on the ground. Her hand came away red.

Daryl reached for her, an arm going around her waist and pulling her toward the house. They were outside. When did they come outside?

That's when she saw the bodies. There were two of them, and she got a flash of memory that— "I killed somebody."

Daryl ignored her, urging her toward the door.

Just inside the door, a largish man was hogtied on the floor. The sight of him pushed another wave of adrenaline through her body. Whenever her head stopped ringing and the world stopped spinning, Carol suspected she wouldn't like that person very much at all.

She blinked, and she was sitting on a closed toilet while Daryl hovered in front of her, dipping a rag into a bowl of water, his lips moving. As the ringing started to fade, she could make out his voice.

"You alright. You're just fine. You're alright."

She didn't think he was aware that he was speaking at all.

"I'm okay. I just hit my head."

He barked a laugh. "Damn straight. Just a little knock on the head. You back with me yet?"

"I don't remember what happened."

"It'll come back to you. Got a graze, too. It's a little deep. Might should have some stitches, but I ain't got the stuff for that," he grabbed her left hand and placed it on top of the folded towel that he was holding on the side of her head. "Hold this here. Press down."

"Daryl—" There were flashes now. Bits and pieces. Scenes in and around the house, jumbled together and, she suspected, out of order. "I killed someone."

"Defended yourself. Shouldn't'a had to. Gotta have a chat with the piece o' shit in our livin' room." Daryl grabbed her free hand and pressed his handgun against her palm until she relented and curled her fingers around it. "You stay here. Gonna close the door. You lock it behind me. Anybody comes through there that ain't me, you shoot 'em. Don't think about it. Don't talk to 'em. Just shoot 'em."

Not Walkers. Men. Daryl heard something and they had gone out and walked the fences. There hadn't been any sign of anyone, though, and she'd headed back toward the house and…she didn't remember what happened.

Later. She would worry about what was missing in her memory later. She needed to focus on the moment right now.

She killed a person.

Her head hurt. It hurt to breath. She was too familiar with what it felt like to have injure ribs, but at least that made her able to say almost without doubt that none of hers were broken. Maybe a crack, but no breaks. She kept her breathing shallow, one hand putting pressure on her head wound and the other pointing Daryl's handgun at the bathroom door. She waited.

She kept the gun aimed at the doorway. In case she had to kill another person.

Her stomach rolled.

She was pretty sure if she threw up her head would actually explode.

Like the head of the man that —

"'s me," Daryl said.

"Coming," her voice sounded better. Stronger. Less shaky. That was a good thing.

It took a long time to get to the door and turn the lock.

"Y'okay?" He was standing on the other side, less bloody than before, his hands at his sides, clenching and unclenching into fists.

"For now."

"We got a problem," Daryl said, shaking his head.

"Other than the man we didn't kill?"

Daryl erupted. "What the hell choice you think I have there? You think I just go around killin' people? Think I killed all kinds of people before? Dale weren't gonna live, and he—"

"You did the right thing. You helped Dale. You saved us today, because I slept through the whole thing. But the piece of shit in our living room? The one who isn't dead? He's a problem. That's all I meant." She didn't realize she was so sure until she was trying to convince him. "Do you think I go around killing people all the time?" Because she killed one of them. She remembered it. His arm was around her neck and there was a gun against her head and a knife in her hand.

She breathed deep, shoved the memory down where it belonged.

Daryl was staring at her like she just flapped her arms and squawked like a chicken.

"Hell no. Shit, I shoulda had him down before you had to—"

She interrupted him before the whole conversation spiraled. "Problem?"

"The one you said. And all the damned gunfire done drew a pack o' Walkers. Should run, they already got near half our stuff packed up in the bed of our own truck. But there's about twenty dead out there and this place took a hell of a beating when the big herd came through. Sound carries, and Walkers move slow. Could be a couple hundred in a bit. Could be all we gotta deal with are the ones here now."

Well, shit.

"And?"

"Think you need to see a Doc. Could be bleedin' into the inside of your skull. You seein' straight?"

"I'm fine."

"No bullshit. Anything blurry?"

"I got hit in the head—"

"And that answers my damn question."

"Daryl, we were going to take things slow with Merle's group."

"Won't stay there. Just let the Doc have a little look. Hell, rather find Hershel, to be honest, but they weren't at the damned storage units when we checked and I ain't got a clue what direction they mighta took off in from there. Least ways, it'll be somebody knows more than me to say if you got a concussion or a damn skull fracture. Still ain't joinin' up with 'em. We'll leave the farm like it is, let anybody comes back here see the dead the bodies, make their own conclusions. Wait out the Walkers. Come back, clean up, start the hell over."

"And as long as we aren't jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire, we should be fine," Carol said. "I'll drive the truck and you can take the bike."

"'s why I need to know how your head is."

She sighed. Everything hurt, and her vision came and went, really. There was still a faint ringing in her left ear, but she wasn't having any difficulty hearing or understanding Daryl. "I'll be fine. It isn't like there'll be a lot of traffic. What about…"

"Put a knife close to him. Give him a fair chance. He lives or he dies, either way he knows we ain't nowhere near here."

"There's something else."

"Ain't sure of a word of what I just said. We've got an hour, maybe a little less, and it'll be dark. Changes everything. Travellin' in the night ain't a good idea."

"There's no choice, though."

"Can't see one. Not one that don't end in us surrounded by Walkers or more of these guys' buddies."

"You're sure they weren't alone?"

"Truck's loaded with all the woman stuff and rubbers. Took it first, and we have a bit of food left."

"Shit."

"Yeah."

"Did they empty what we—"

"Naw. Just dumped the other stuff on top of it. Get the tarp back over it, get out of here. You good?"

Carol nodded. "Absolutely. We need to move." She realized she was still holding the towel against her head, and she hadn't addressed the way Daryl was favoring his right leg. "Are you good? Don't go thinking I haven't seen that you're hurt."

Daryl swallowed hard and leaned against the doorjamb. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's just a graze. Ain't looked too close yet, but I can walk on it." He opened and closed his mouth a few times, as if starting to speak and then changing his mind, then seemed to settle on, "You sure you okay to drive? We can leave the bike."

"Maybe we could go a couple of miles and find a place to hide it? That way we can pick it up on the way back?"

"Yeah. Yeah, that's a good idea. We gotta go—"

They both kept repeating the need to leave, but neither of them seemed capable of taking the first steps toward the door. As many times as they said they would be back, it still felt like they were leaving the farm behind forever.