May 24, 2011

~*~ DD ~*~

It turned out finding the children's camp was pretty damned easy, simply because like one prior group, their group fled the falling refugee camps for a state park.

The evidence of the carnage is still there, in darkened splashes on buildings where even Georgia weather hasn't washed the evidence away, and in the bullet holes in the cottages and vehicles. Eerily, there are no signs of walkers even as they sit and idle the engines.

As the teams unload and begin a methodical search, Daryl's glad they did retain so many cops. Each one has at least two former officers, and when Shane insisted on a partner for Daryl for the trip, he brought along Elias. The young ranger was less than a year out of training when everything fell, so he doesn't have the experience of the older game wardens. But he's eager to learn and Daryl trusts him at his back.

He exits the truck and settles his crossbow against his back, waiting a few minutes for Elias to exit and settle his own bow in place.

Shane leans out of the driver's window. "Gonna set a watch and keep the cops on standby for you."

He nods, assessing the area. There are six cottages on this side of the road, with a single across the way. According to the kids, their people only stayed in these, but stored supplies in the five cottages further down the road. It's not how Daryl would have chosen to set up a community, especially since no one seems to have managed a true fence around the location.

Elias is near silent behind him as they circle the first cabin. There's little sign of the occupants or attackers anywhere but the front, so Daryl rattles the closed screen door until nothing responds. He eases it open, dropping into the almost forgotten analytical mindset of his old job as he points out the signs of a struggle inside.

Whoever was inside the cottage didn't go easily, but they were killed outside, not in. It fits with the teenage boy's statement that the leader of the group was entertaining himself by terrifying his captives.

Finding nothing inside or out to particularly identify the attackers, he leads Elias back outside and signals Shane. The former deputy sends one of the officer pairs in to make their own assessment as Daryl and Elias move on to the next cottage.

The scene repeats for all six cottages. In the last one, the one where the children were hidden underneath, they find evidence outside that someone waylaid an attacker with a hot cast iron pan. Daryl hopes the man actually survived to endure the burns as long as possible.

The two older unwounded children had managed to drag their dead from where they fell to a clearing between two of the cabins. Too young to bury them, they covered each body with bedding from the cabins.

"Christ," Elias mutters as they carefully survey the bodies, with Daryl cataloging how each died and his guess on age. Seven children escaped, but they weren't the only children here.

"Those kids are barely older than my Abby," Daryl says softly. It's more nightmare fuel for the young. "However this goes down, this guy needs to suffer."

Elias agrees, his young face anguished. It's not the first encounter he's had with predators like this, since Quinton's group took down two bandit groups before coming to Homestead, and Elias took part in putting down the Wolves in Virginia. But shit like this doesn't become commonplace.

Because these dead didn't turn, they didn't decay as quickly as downed walkers do, but it's been long enough that they're mostly down to bone and inorganics like clothing.

He and Elias step aside to let Shane and Rick look over the bodies.

Rick takes longer than Shane, but Daryl expects that from Rick's gentler personality. He's going to memorize these people, whereas Shane is already thinking ahead and beyond this horrific moment.

"Any idea how many?" he asks Daryl, keeping an eye on Rick as the other man works carefully, tucking the sheet around each body as he finishes.

"Can't say for certain, since the men could have carried multiple weapons, but I've got at least eight different weapons used, mostly handguns. One bow." He flicks the fletching end of the arrow he broke off. He hopes the bastard keeps to a pattern on his arrows.

"I suppose we should be grateful that they don't put down the walkers they potentially create."

Two of the surviving children are alive simply because the attackers didn't bother. The dark side of that is that on the three people not killed by a headshot, the children themselves had to put down people they knew and loved.

"We should bury them," Rick says as he rejoins them, voice hoarse with emotion.

Shane thinks it over and shakes his head. "Not here. Take them back to Homestead."

It'll mean more to the kids to have them nearby, instead of a remote state park. It'll also leave less evidence of survivors in case anyone unfriendly comes back by the place. Missing bodies can be attributed to walkers or scavengers. Graves? That's human interaction.

The park's thirty miles north of Columbus and the children travelled a further sixty miles north in their search for supplies and safety. Still, no one wants to lay a trail back to Homestead if they can avoid it. The tracking difficulty due to vehicles and pavement that makes it hard to find these bastards also helps keep Homestead hidden.

Amanda and Abraham set their teams to carefully wrapping each body for transport in one of their trailers. Shane's team trails Daryl and Elias as they go to search the skeletal remains of the two fallen attackers.

What should have been a jackpot find - a map in one of the men's vests - is less helpful after months in the weather against a decaying body. It does give them a clue of other locations looted or attacked, if the marked off places that survive on the ratty map match up to locations like this.

"Think this asshole was counting kills," Daryl states unhappily. He passes a pocket notebook to Shane. It's survived more or less intact, although heavily stained.

He has to agree with the older man's prolific cursing as Shane and Rick match the notebook to the map.

"Wish the bastard kept a better diary, morbid as it seems," Shane says at last. "Be nice to know if it's one group we're tracking or more."

Once he's got everything he needs from the bodies, Daryl kicks the remains around, scattering them into the edge of the woods. Their own prints will be gone in the next good rain, and these men don't deserve to lie here undisturbed.

"Gonna check the cabins the kids indicated as theirs for keepsakes. Doubt they took everything trying to get out of here, not with a toddler and two wounded."

It's a testament to the will to survive that a sixteen-year-old girl with a bullet embedded in her leg drove the kids to safety. Now it's Daryl and the others' jobs to make sure the people that made that necessary pay for it.

~*~ SW ~*~

This close to Columbus, they opt to head southwest, even though the odds are low that the marauding group are near the fallen city. Considering how long other groups clung to Atlanta despite it being a major hot zone of walker activity, it's possible they'd risk the danger for larger caches of supplies.

The monsters didn't even clear out everything at the destroyed camp. While all the cottages showed signs they were searched messily, only half of the supplies from the storage cottages were taken. He guesses they didn't have enough vehicle space to take it all, but why leave it? Murdering fifteen people and leaving valuable supplies behind just doesn't make sense.

Rather than risk alerting anyone they were there, he gave the order to leave the remaining supplies untouched. They know where the camp is to return later, once the infestation is taken care of, and in the meantime, there could be other survivors needing them.

He glances to his watch as they make their way sedately down the highway toward Columbus. They've shifted drivers, with Danny and T-Dog taking the front and rotating him and Rick to join Daryl in the back. He registers the date for the first time and grimaces.

"There a problem?" Rick asks, catching the expression from his spot in the middle seat.

"It's May twenty-fourth."

So much has happened that his brother doesn't even comprehend the significance of the date. Even with the evidence that Rick survived right here beside him, warm and breathing, he suddenly feels like he can't breathe.

"Been a full year since you got shot."

"Oh." Rick reaches across and snags his forearm in a firm grip, his other hand covering the watch face. "I beat the odds, Shane. That's all that date needs to mean."

Another hand covers Rick's and he looks up as the panic attack passes and he gets a good breath. Daryl's expression is as steady as Rick's.

It's a reminder that his brother lived and he's gained even more family since.

~*~ SP ~*~

Sopha is halfway toward the house for a shower after her shift helping with the never ending job of fencing when she sees the new group of kids at one of the picnic tables near the sports field.

It's a hot day, and while part of her thinks voluntarily being outside is a bit wonky, these kids are probably just enjoying being outside and safe for the first time in a long time. They look isolated and a little lost. She dusts herself off as best she can and changes directions.

The looks from the older kids are curious, so she introduces herself and does her best to memorize their names. "They just kind of leave you to your own devices?"

Natalie shrugs. "Denise was needed for an appointment she couldn't reschedule."

Noticing the stuffed bunny one of the younger girls has, Sophia has an idea. "Want to see some real rabbits?"

It gets the younger kids interested, so she motions toward the big rabbit barn not far from the original barn. "Follow me."

The big fans give off a mechanical hum as they approach, and the massive sliding doors are open at either end to let air circulate. It doesn't entirely dissipate the scene of rabbit excrement, but Sophia is too used to animals by now to be bothered.

""That's a lot of bunnies," Toby, the only boy other than Jeff, says.

"We raise them here," she explains. The oldest kids understand without being told about why. But it isn't the big white meat bunnies she's bringing the younger kids to see.

She isn't surprised to see Jazz in the barn, despite it being his day off. He's making notes on a clipboard, so she assumes he's working his way through a vet check. When he sees her, he glances at his watch and hangs up the clipboard on a support post.

When he's close enough, she indicates her group. "Are the new babies big enough to handle yet?"

"One litter is. Follow me."

He leads the way to the right side of the barn, where all the angora rabbits are housed. Unlike the big New Zealand rabbits raised for meat and pelts, the Angoras are raised for fiber.

The excited squeals of the smallest kids as Jazz opens a cage and lifts out a small bunny makes her grin.

"It looks like a stuffed animal," Natalie says as Jazz helps one of the little girls tuck the rabbit in her arms and shows her how to gently stroke the fur.

"It's so soft." Tory sounds in awe as her fingers slide through the puffball's fur.

"These are Angora rabbits," Jazz explains. "They produce wool, sort of like a sheep, and we take the wool to spin into yarn."

Sophia actually has a scarf made of the material spun by the woman originally from the rabbit farm. It's so soft she actually wanted more colder weather to enjoy it.

"There are a lot of bunnies here. Are they all for yarn?"

Jazz shakes his head and crouches so he's on eye level with the girl. "You know meat comes from animals, right?"

She nods, eyes wide as she looks around her. "Like chicken and pigs. Farm animals."

"Exactly. Rabbits are farm animals too. Different types of animals are used for different things on a farm, and Homestead is a really big farm."

"So you eat the not-fluffy bunnies and get yarn from the fluffy ones?"

"That's correct. But all of the bunnies are special for the gardens too. We take all the bunny poop and use it to make plants grow stronger to grow food for us and the bunnies, too."

"That's kinda gross."

Jazz laughs. "Just be glad you don't have to get the poop out of the barn and down to the gardens for a few years yet."

Tory carefully passes the bunny to Toby, who holes it close enough for Claudia to guide the toddler to pet it as well.

"There are lots of animals here, aren't there?" Tory asks.

"Just about every type of farm animal you can think of."

"Any more babies?"

Jazz laughs. "Quite a few actually. Have you ever held a baby chick?"

Sophia catches Natalie's eye and grins, while the older girl actually laughs at Tory's enthusiastic response to the idea of other animal babies.

Jazz has a new devoted little duckling, she thinks.

~*~ LG ~*~

"You could just sleep on the couch," Lori tells Scout.

It didn't surprise her at all when Scout offered to stay over while Daryl was gone. The younger woman swung by her own cabin for clothes and toiletries for her and Anaya, showing up with a camp cot for herself.

Scout shrugs. "I've slept on far worse in the past. It's actually pretty comfortable."

Lori supposes as a Marine in the field, she likely has, and the cot's a nice one. Scout and Shane shared an air mattress here in the early days after Judith's birth. "I guess after months on an air mattress in camp, I'm still wary of camping equipment."

"Can't say I'd really want to crawl into a sleeping bag anytime soon."

"Girls are both in bed." They only managed to convince her of one extra chapter of the book Daryl's been reading with Abby. "Judith give you any trouble?"

The four-month-old is such a happy baby that Lori doubts it. Even in her crankiest moments of growth spurts, she's a good sleeper. She's got so much hands-on attention in the large blended family that Lori figures it's one of the key differences between her daughter and Carl at the same age.

With Rick slogging through his rookie year with the sheriff's department, she ended up on her own with the baby at night quite a bit. He and Shane weren't partnered yet, not until midway through their second year as deputies, but Shane had the crap shifts too.

"Nah, she dozed off almost before I could walk down the hall. The girls did a good job of tiring her out tonight."

Scout shuffles in her duffel for a jar of moisturizing cream and drops it on the cot as she sheds the compression sleeve off her left arm. Even after all this time, the scarred flesh makes Lori flinch just a little, and her stomach roil with old guilt of her initial selfish reaction to seeing the damage.

"Do you need help with that?" she asks.

It gets her a surprised look from Scout as she rubs a hand over the scarred shoulder and flexes it. "I can reach most of it. Just harder to do the massage."

"But it's easier with help, right?"

"Yeah. Let me grab a shower first." She rummages in the duffle to snag a change of clothing and disappears down the hallway.

Lori busies herself by first checking on Judith and calling up to Carl a reminder not to stay up too late just because tomorrow is an off day.

By the time she's repacked Judith's bag for tomorrow, Scout's back. She's wearing a pair of comic book boxers Lori recognizes from prior presents to Shane and a tank top, her damp hair loose.

"You know, I never realized your hair is curly," she remarks. It shouldn't surprise her, because Merle and Jazz both have curly hair. All of the girls keep their hair braided for the most part.

Scout makes a face. "I used to get frustrated and cut it short, but after it grew back after the hospital, I haven't felt the urge."

She twists the hair into a topknot and sits on the end of the cot, offering Lori the jar.

Lori's seen Shane and other family members massage or touch the scars before, so the logical part of her brain knows they don't hurt. The emotional reaction can't imagine how it doesn't.

"Will this actually reduce the scarring?"

"Not likely at this point, but my skin there can't moisturize itself there anymore. I lost the glands there since the burns were so deep. It's the same reason the worst parts didn't hurt as much as the lighter areas."

It's hard to imagine being burned so bad that there are no nerves to generate a pain signal. She opens the jar, catching a whiff of something citrusy. "Now I know what your perfume actually is."

Scout laughs as she edges the strap of her shirt out of Lori's way. "I'm not sure I remember the last time I wore makeup or perfume."

"Not even at the wedding?" Lori just assumed, since she was too busy trying to fade into the background.

Remembering what she's supposed to be doing, she slowly massages the cream into Scout's shoulder and arm. It's not really any different than what she's done in the past for Rick or Daryl with a pulled muscle. The texture is similar to stretch marks in many places.

"Not even then, much to Honey's displeasure. She thought she was going to get to play makeup artist."

"I still feel weird not wearing makeup all the time." No one really bothers, except for special events or the Friday dancing.

She caps the jar and hands it back to Scout.

"Remind me to dig some of my old stuff out of the attic. I should have Polaroids of Daryl in makeup. He was a sucker as a teenager for letting me and Cricket practice on him."

Lori giggles. "And how much did you actually need practice?"

Scout just grins. She steps away from the cot and stretches before dropping into a yoga pose. Lori watches curiously. She's taken the class one of the women offers, so she sort of recognizes the poses.

"Do you do the poses every night?"

"Depends."

"On?"

"Whatever other exercise is happening." The accompanying grin says she meant it as risque as it sounded.

Lori's lost all the baby weight and she's worked her way back into the same shape as before, but she's not an athlete.

"Scout? Would you be willing to train me?"

Her question is unexpected enough that Scout stills as she unfolds her limbs. Her expression is serious, reminding Lori that Scout does some of the self-defense classes, but not the beginners.

"Are you sure? I push my people through Marine training."

And it's almost brutal in how hard she pushes, but all of the people end up capable. Lori wants to be that capable. She knows she could ask Daryl or even Rick, but they'll hold back.

"Yes, I'm sure."

"Alright. We'll start tomorrow. See if Maggie or Carol can watch Judith."

"One on one?" She isn't sure if that's reassuring or intimidating.

"Best way to get started."

"Okay."

Scout pats the rug next to her. "C'mon. You know these poses, and they'll help you sleep when you're worried about Daryl being away, like they do for me."

It's the first time she thinks she's ever heard Scout hint to worrying about Shane when he's gone. As she mirrors the pose, she catches the blue eyes so similar to Daryl's and smiles softly.

They'll worry, but at least they aren't doing it alone.

~*~ Denise ~*~

Denise lays in her bunk near the door, pretending to read, but really just listening to the tone of the children's conversations as they get ready for bed.

Last night was a rough one for the kids. Natalie and Jeff were still to hyperaware to just lay down and sleep on a regular schedule. Their visible relief when she told them to just keep watch like they usually do is heartbreaking.

She tried to make their adjustment slow and gradual today, because she remembers how overwhelming the bustle of Homestead was at first to her. But they were still uneasy about their surroundings, Jeff and Natalie reaching for guns that are no longer there at any odd sound.

She hated having to leave them to work Gia through the panic attack, but it seems to have worked out for the best. Hearing the radio crackle out that Jazz and Sophia were taking them on a farm animal tour makes her wish she remembered Jazz had the day off.

Natalie thumps onto the bunk across from Denise. The other kids are all tucked into bunks, although they all share. She knows if last night's pattern holds, Natalie will wake Jeff halfway through and trade places with him in the bunk with six-year-old Toby.

"Did you all have a good afternoon with the Dixons?"

Considering they joined Jazz, Sophia, and others for supper, she already has her answer.

"Is he really already halfway to being a vet like Sophia says?"

"Probably, although I would have to ask Hershel about the timeline for his apprenticeship."

"That's why Carol says I could probably have my own place, isn't it? Because they let you decide earlier what you want to do."

"The general idea is to base it on individual maturity for those under eighteen, yes. Typically, they prefer the younger kids to take a while to explore before apprenticing, but one of the fourteen-year-olds is currently at another community learning to be a blacksmith."

"But you can wait to decide, too?"

"Of course. There's no deadline. If you still don't feel a need to apprentice by the time you're eighteen, you'll just be added to the job roster to see where you fit best."

"Jazz was armed today, more than Sophia. She just had a knife. Is that an age thing?"

"More of a personal choice. Sophia's qualified and permitted to carry weapons, but typically doesn't carry a gun except when she's outside this part of the property. She probably checked hers in at the armory when she returned."

Denise knows Jazz's preference is enhanced by Shane's focussed training on his young brother-in-law. The teenager isn't shy at all about meeting with her for counseling every other week. She agrees with Shane's assessment that Jazz's natural need to protect should be honed to reduce the youth's stress levels.

"I guess I need to figure out how to get officially qualified for my gun here, don't I?"

"They have a class on Saturday. Whoever is on duty for the class can get that done for you. But don't be discouraged if you have to have more training first."

The teenager nods. "I wouldn't mind lessons, actually. I'm going to join the self-defense classes too."

Denise is glad to see Natalie's proactive about moving forward. It'll make settling in easier and set an example for the younger kids.

The girl smiles and snags her own book, which Denise can see is one of the foraging guides. She reminds herself to introduce Natalie to Daryl when he returns, if that's where her interests lean, and returns to her own medical text.

Being trusted with responsibility for seven emotionally fragile children seems less intimidating tonight.