Wednesday, November 11
Maggie hadn't come in the afternoon like she said she would. Glenn had hovered by the front gate for two hours, waiting. He now sat at the dinning room table pushing his pieces of grilled beaver around his plate despondently.
"Hey, man, maybe she just got busy," T-Dog told him. "She'll probably be by tomorrow."
"We need a doorbell for that gate," Glenn said. "How will I know if she's here?"
"You know, that's a good idea," Michonne said as Andre tried to feed her a piece of acorn squash.
"A doorbell?" Lori asked doubtfully.
"How would we do it?" Carol asked.
"Like the Mousetrap game," Sophia said excitedly. "Say someone steps on something, and then that makes a ball roll down a ramp or something, and then it hits a cup that topples over, and then on and on until eventually it rings a bell somewhere near the house."
Andrea laughed. "Good luck building that. And wouldn't the wind just blow it over?"
"It was just an idea," Sophia muttered with embarrassment.
"Could use that rich prick's long-range baby monitor Carol and me picked up," Daryl said.
"A long-range baby monitor?" Lori asked skeptically.
"Dunno. So you can leave the baby and go drink with the neighbors."
Michonne frowned sternly, possibly recalling her boyfriend neglecting Andre, but the little boy distracted her by feeding her another piece of acorn squash and giggling.
"The gate is a ten-minute walk," Rick said. "No way it goes that far."
"Box said 2,000 feet in open air," Daryl replied. "That's 'bout how far the front gate is as the crow flies. Just can't walk that way, through all the shit in the park. Could put the monitor by the gate and just leave it on. Would pick up anyone making noise out there. Be good security."
"We'd be blowing through batteries like water," Rick objected.
"Thing's solar-powered. Got rechargeable batteries. Long as we put it in a sunny spot, should keep runnin' for three or four years 'fore the batteries stop holdin' a charge. Great idea, Soph."
"It wasn't my idea. It was yours."
"Yeah, but your idea made me think of it. What do those rich prick business pricks call it? Brainstormin'?"
"Could you maybe reduce the number of pricks you insert when you're talking?" Lori asked.
T-Dog chuckled. "Phrasing."
Glenn snickered. "The number of pricks he inserts."
Lori sighed and rolled her eyes.
Carl looked from T-Dog to Glenn and laughed but then said, "I don't get it."
"You still haven't taught the kid about sex?" Andrea asked.
"We have," Rick insisted. "He just doesn't know that prick is a synonym for…"
"Jerk?" Carl asked. "Asshole?"
"Yes, it is a synonym for that, too," Rick said.
"Carl, don't use the word asshole," Lori told him.
"Can I use prick?"
"No!"
[*]
Carol snuggled close to Daryl after their loveplay and squirmed when he tickled her hip. "Stop," she insisted.
"Like it when you squirm against me."
"I've been squirming against you. It's cuddle time now."
"Mhmm…" he murmured and settled both arms around her.
Daryl seemed content with not having sex sex for the time being. But she wondered when waiting for it to happen when it happens would require more patience than he possessed. Then again, they'd been fooling around four days a week on average. That was a hell of lot more popping off, she imagined, than his former pop and stop lifestyle had afforded him. She was getting the impression that he really hadn't had very much sex, and the sex he'd had probably had not involved much intimacy. She drew away slightly from him so she could look at him. "What are you afraid of?"
"Ain't afraid of shit."
"I mean…sex wise. I know we tried and I seized up." She sighed. "But, you know, you've been really patient. Too patient."
His brow furrowed. "Want me to be a pushy asshole?"
"No. I certainly don't. I'm relieved you've been so patient. But…something's got you hung up, too. Care to share? You know my issues. I don't know yours."
"Ain't got no issues. Like fuckin'."
She lay a hand gently on his chest, over his heart. "Except we wouldn't really be fucking, would we?"
His eyes flitted away from her eyes. "I ain't never made love to a woman in my life," he murmured. "Just quick hard sex mostly. Never face to face. Never had to look at her."
"And is that how you'd want us to do it?"
He raised his eyes to meet hers again. "Nah. No. Wanna make love to you. Just don't know how. And I ain't sure I'm gonna last long enough to do a damn thing for you."
"Well…" She tapped his chest with a finger. "I'll tell you what. Let's keep doing what we've been doing for awhile longer. It all feels very good, and it's a lot of fun, and we don't have to worry about pregnancy or running out of condoms. Then …" She shrugged. "When it happens, it happens. And if when it happens the first time, you don't last long, you can finish me another way. And then we'll try again another day. And another. Until we figure it out. That sound good?"
"Sounds damn good."
She leaned down and kissed him. "Thank you," she said when she pulled back, "for making Sophia feel less stupid about her Mousetrap idea."
"Be fun to build somethin' like that though."
"She really likes you, you know," Carol told him.
"Dunno why."
"Because she never had a father who made her mother smile. And you –" she stabbed him playfully on the chest with her fingertip. "Make me smile." She smiled now. "And because when I'm happy, I'm a better mother. That's why."
"C'mere," he murmured as he pulled her closer with his arm. "Snuggle in."
Thursday, November 12
Carol awoke to the sound of Daryl buckling his belt. "Mornin'," he drawled. "Gonna go huntin' in the big forest. Lock the gate behind me?"
"Again? You just went."
"'S kind of my job. And I didn't just go. That was four days ago."
"Three."
"Four," Daryl insisted.
"Okay, you left to go hunting four days ago. But you just came home three days ago."
"Can you get the gate for me or not? Can ask someone else."
She sighed and threw the blankets off herself, stood up naked, and looked around the floor. "What happened to my pajamas?" She knew he peeled them off her at some point last night. She couldn't remember where they'd ended up.
He grinned as he raked his eyes over her nude body. "Hid 'em. You'll have to find 'em while I stand here and watch. Gonna have to bend over to look under the beds."
Carol shot him a cool glare.
He snickered. "Likely under the covers," he told her.
Carol shook the covers until she found her pajamas and then pulled them on. "I need to shower and dress and then I'll walk you to the gate. But I still don't think you need to hunt again so soon. The freezer doesn't even have room for a whole deer."
"Gonna quarter and hang it in that root cellar where the park gardeners stored the flower bulbs."
"It won't spoil?"
"Stays 'round 35 degrees down there. In ten days, it'll be aged. Meat'll have firmed up and be better for butcherin', and by then, have more space in the freezer. Won't be gone more than one night."
Carol sighed, but she didn't try to talk him out of it anymore. Later, after she had walked him to the exit and kissed him goodbye and latched the gate behind him, she set down the baby monitor and turned it on. "Testing," she said into the monitor. "One, two, three testing!"
When she got back to the house, Glenn handed her a cup of coffee and said, "It worked. I could hear you loud and clear." The receiver was sitting in the bay window of the living room, behind the couch. Through it, Carol could hear a bird chirping.
[*]
"Daryl, come in. Over." Carol released the talk button on the walkie talkie and looked up at the Big Dipper.
"Hey, Miss Murphy, whatchya wearin'? Over."
Carol pushed one toe of her black combat boot against the porch of the Old Timey Theatre and let the porch swing creek and sway. Her battery-powered lantern sat on a small circular table, casting a bright glow over half the porch. She zipped up her Fun Kingdom windbreaker and pressed down on the talk button. "Nothing but a short black skirt and a pair of hot red high heels. Over."
"You serious?" Daryl's voice sounded giddy. "Over."
"Deadly serious," she told him. "And I'm standing here in that skirt with no panties and those red high heels and running my fingertips over the cool leather seat of your motorcycle just so I can catch the scent of you. I think I'm going to spread my legs wide and straddle the seat now. Over."
It was deadly silent on the other end of the line.
"Daryl? Are you still there? Over."
"Uh…I got a ragin' hard-on right now, but I don't know how this dirty talk thing works. Dunno what 'm s'posed to say back. Over."
Carol chuckled. She enjoyed flustering him. She pressed down on the talk button. "Just tell me how you're going to slide on that bike behind me," she said, lowering her voice to a slow breathy whisper, "bend me over those handlebars, hike up my skirt…." She went on for a while in graphic detail. She would never have talked like this to him face to face, but it wasn't so hard over the walkie talkie. "Over," she concluded after her long description of their activities on his motorcycle.
There was silence again, and she wondered if there had been interference and she'd been talking to no one. That idea did embarrass her. "Daryl? Are you still there? Over."
"Yeah. I'm here." It sounded like he was breathing a little heavily through the words, as if he'd just stopped running…or…Carol smiled at the thought of him at his solitary campsite in those woods, before a low-burning fire, taking himself in his own hand while he listened to her. "That was…" – a swallow and a breath and– "fuckin' hot. Over."
Carol pressed her thumb against the red button and held it. "Just to clarify, what I like in fantasy isn't necessarily what I like in reality. And that one was actually your fantasy. It's what you told me when you were high at the farm. Over."
"I said all that? Over."
"Well, you drew a rough sketch. You didn't use nearly as many details. I embellished it. A lot. Over."
"Still ain't sure what 'm s'posed to say back. Sorry I suck at this. Over."
"You don't have to say anything back except that you miss me and you'll be home tomorrow in time for dinner." She wasn't about to stick her hands down her pants on the porch of the Old Timey Theatre, when anyone taking a night stroll might walk by, even if she was tingling between her legs. "Over."
"Miss you. Be home 'fore lunch, actually. Shot m'buck already, hung and field dressed it. Just got dark and I can't hike easy in the dark. Got me a ten-pointer. Probably hundred and sixty pounds on the hoof. Should yield seventy pounds of meat. Over."
"Now that's hot. Over."
They chatted a little longer, and then Carol made her way back to the House of the Future, smiling. Glenn was on the couch, fiddling with the volume on the baby monitor's receiver. There was nothing but static punctured by the occasional hoot of an owl.
"She won't come at night," Carol told him. "But she will come."
"What if she doesn't?" Glenn asked.
"If she doesn't come tomorrow, then you go over to that farm on Saturday to check on her. What's Hershel really going to do? Shoot you?"
"He does actually have a shotgun," Glenn said. "That's what he chased me out of the house with. And then T-Dog had to be the diplomat to make sure we came back with some eggs and milk and things, and Hershel said that would be our last trade."
"But that's not what Maggie said. She'll be here. Soon." Carol patted him on the shoulder and headed up to bed.
Friday, November 13
Daryl returned with his buck and went to work quartering and hanging it. Then he took a nap because his perimeter alarm had awoken him three times last night and he'd had to kill three walkers.
Meanwhile, Maggie did show up at the front gate. Lori heard her on the monitor and sent Carl to find Glenn and let her in. Her horse was now being stabled at the three-stall stable by the pony ride ring. The stable had likely been used to rotate out and rest the ponies between rides, though it was empty except for some hay and a drinking trough when they arrived.
As Carol came into Daryl's room now to tell him that dinner was ready, he was awake and sitting up on his bed and sharpening the blade of one of his bolts. The deer's antlers were on the wall above the writing desk, fastened to it with copious amounts of gray duct tape over the center bone.
"Did you hang yourself a trophy?" she asked, trying to suppress her smile.
"Mhm."
"Looks nice there." It didn't, but he was clearly proud of what he'd brought home for the family, and she wanted him to know she appreciated all that venison that would soon be in the freezer after he had aged it. "Would you like me to try to mount the antlers without all that tape? I'm sure I could find some crafting supplies in this park."
"Sure. You'll make it nice."
"Dinner's ready. And Maggie's joining us."
He lay his bolt aside on the mattress and stood.
[*]
Maggie sat in Shane's old chair. She had brought a sweet potato casserole to contribute to the dinner, which Carol warmed for her.
"Where are the marshmallows?" Daryl asked as he forked up a bit.
"We don't exactly have marshmallows," Maggie told him. "I don't know if you noticed, but we're in an apocalypse."
"We have marshmallows," Glenn told her. "Bags of them, from the cafes that served hot chocolate. Of course they all melted in the summer and then congealed together when they re-solidfied, so now they look like mangled chunks of the State Puff Marshmallow Man after the Ghost Busters exploded him. I can send you home with a few bags tomorrow."
"You're staying the night?" T-Dog asked. "Does Hershel know?"
"My father knows and does not approve," Maggie said. "But I'm a grown woman and he's not going to kick me out of the house over it."
"So…what's the rooming situation tonight then?" T-Dog glanced at Andrea and smiled. "Want to shack up in my room and let Glenn and Maggie have yours?"
"Eww," Andrea said. "No. We can shack up in my room, and they can have your bed."
"Why can't Maggie just stay in the space room?" Carl asked. "We have two extra bunks in there."
Sophia rolled her eyes. "My God. You are so naïve."
"What?" Carl asked.
Sophia leaned over in her seat and whispered in his ear, and his eyes grew wide and his freckled face flushed red.
Lori said, "Maybe we could save these discussions for after the children are dismissed from the table."
As dinner was wrapping up, Sophia brought Andre to the living room to do puzzles with him while Carl and Lori cleared the dishes. It was their night to wash up. Rick was beginning to push back from the table when Glenn said, "Stay. Everyone stay." He glanced at Maggie. "We uh…we have something to discuss."
"I hope you didn't knock her up!" T-Dog exclaimed. "Were those condoms Daryl gave us defective?"
"No!" Glenn flushed and shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Maggie just needs to ask a favor of us."
"Not a favor. I'll pay in eggs and milk."
"All right," Rick said. "Let's hear it."
Maggie and Glenn exchanged a glance. Glenn gave her an encouraging nod, and Maggie laced her fingers together and leaned forward on the table. She paused like that for a moment before she began, "My father still holds out hope for a cure. He thinks that friends and family who turned into…what y'all call walkers…will be able to get some kind of medical treatment one day and turn back."
"That's absurd," Andrea said.
"I know it's absurd. So does Patricia. Especially after what happened on Wednesday. It's why I couldn't come when I said I would."
"What happened?" Rick asked warily.
"My Daddy's been keeping walkers in the barn, Neighbors, family members. He and Jimmy and Otis have been wrangling them into the barn using catch poles."
"What the fuck?" Andrea asked.
Carol turned to Daryl. "You weren't hallucinating the walker puppets."
"Shit," Daryl muttered.
That also explained the padlock and chain Carol had seen around the barn door handles.
"We've been feeding them chickens," Maggie said.
"Chickens!" Daryl practically roared. "You've been wastin' perfectly good chickens on those ugly skanks?"
"What you said to Patricia," Maggie told Carol, "and to me, it got us both thinking. About safety. Jimmy and Otis and Patricia and I built a fence. A good one, to keep walkers and people out. And lately, we've been talking about the walkers in the barn." Maggie swallowed. "Anytime a walker stumbles on the farm, an old neighbor…even a stranger….Otis and Jimmy help my Daddy wrangle it in the barn. Well, we got a particularly nasty one on Wednesday. And Otis couldn't handle it. It broke the pole. And it bit right into his shoulder."
"Oh God!" Andrea exclaimed.
"Jimmy managed to push it the rest of the way in and got the door shut without getting hurt. But it was too late for Otis. My daddy treated him, but he got infected, and he died Thursday morning. And Patricia…she didn't want to see him change. So…she took a big, long, sharp veterinarian's needle, and she pierced his brain after he was dead. She did it in the back of his head where my daddy wouldn't see. Covered it up as best she could. And when he didn't rise again, we buried him."
"Poor Patricia," T-Dog murmured. "She must be devastated."
"Jimmy and Patricia and I are all agreed now," Maggie continued. "That danger in the barn must be eliminated. And my daddy, he's a religious man. And his conscience can't take killing them because he still believes there's hope for them, that their humanity is redeemable. And my little sister can't take seeing them killed, because her mother and our brother are in that barn."
"So, what do you want from us?" Rick asked.
"I want you to kill them all on Sunday morning, while our family's at chapel. There's a little chapel just outside our farm. The four farming families all used to go there together. Now it's just us. But my daddy still goes every single Sunday morning, and we have a little family service. Y'all are experienced walker slayers, from what I hear, and you can do it quietly, while my family is at worship. And he won't have to see it happen. And he won't have to consent to it."
"And how's he going to react," Rick asked, "when he finds out we killed a bunch of walkers he thinks of as human?"
"You can leave that to me. Your people can be long gone by the time we get back from church. And I understand from Glenn you can do it fairly quietly. Michonne has her katana. Carol has her throwing knife. Daryl has his crossbow. Glenn says you have three suppressors, too, that can at least muffle the gunshots. I doubt my daddy will hear them all the way at the chapel."
"How many walkers we talkin' 'bout," Daryl asked, "and how much you gonna pay us?"
"Twenty-two. And after it's done, I'll bring you three dozen eggs, two gallons of milk, a pound of cheese, and a dozen pears."
"Dunno," Daryl said. "Walker slayin's risky. Think you can do better than that."
"Daryl!" Glenn exclaimed.
"We're the one's who'd be puttin' our necks on the line here," Daryl told him.
"In December," Maggie said, "I'll bring you another two dozen eggs and another two gallons of milk."
"Throw in six pounds of ground beef," Daryl said.
"Daryl, we haven't even agreed to this yet," Rick said. "Maybe hold off on the negotiating until we do?"
"I'm agreed," Carol said. "They can't be living on that farm with a barn full of walkers."
"I'm in," Michonne said. "I haven't killed one of those things since I settled here. I'm getting soft. I need the practice."
"I'm in, too," Andrea insisted. "I could use some live range practice. T?"
"Sounds like a decent pay out for half an hour's work," T-Dog replied. "Seven of us and twenty-two of them? That's only three or four each."
"As long as we can get the door open without being bit," Rick muttered.
"I'll leave the keys to the padlock on the front porch," Maggie said, "in the deacon's bench in the Comet can. Just unlock it, pull off the chain, and step back. They'll make their way out."
Rick looked around the table. "Then I guess it's decided. Sunday morning, while Hershel's in church, we do the Lord's work."