Carol grabbed the keys to the SUV, took the letter with her, dashed out the front door, and drove at full speed to the front gate to lock it. It couldn't have been open more than twenty-five minutes, she speculated, given the amount of time it had taken her to slide down, walk back from the slides, read the letter, and drive here. Still, she surveyed the entry area and parking lot with binoculars to make sure nothing and no one had gotten in.

When she got back to the house, Rick was awake and sipping a cup of coffee.

"Is Lori up?" she asked.

"Snoozing away. You made the coffee?"

"Yes," she lied. She intended to give the note to Lori. It was rather personal. Lori could choose how much of it to share with Rick.

"See anything exciting on watch?" Rick asked.

"An owl. I think it's made a nest in that spire at the top of the Royal Log Flume."

Rick set his empty coffee cup in the sink and grabbed his old deputy's hat from the counter and slid it on his head. "Well, I'm going to get in some gardening."

Carol let out a sigh when he was out the door. She was exhausted. She had to sleep. But first, she went and knocked on Lori's door and after that single warning, pushed it open. Lori stirred groggily in bed and sat up, rubbing her eyes. "What's wrong?"

Carol extended her Shane's letter. Lori read it, flung the covers off herself to reveal a pair of pink pajamas, and stood. She was showing clearly now, with a round baby bump under the soft fabric of the princess on her pajama shirt. "We have to stop him! We have to go get him and bring him back!"

"It's too late. He has to be at least thirty miles away by now, and who knows in what direction he went. It would be like searching for a needle in a haystack."

"Daryl's a tracker. He could track him,"

"Through the woods, maybe," Carol said, "not in a truck on the highway. He's not out there leaving a trail of bread crumbs as he drives."

Lori sighed heavily. "Carl's going to be devastated."

"I thought you should have the letter before Rick saw it. You need to tell him Shane's gone. Give him whatever explanation you want. I have to go to bed." Carol walked out the door, past the space room where Carl and Glenn slumbered – and Shane once did - and into her room, where Sophia was just getting dressed for the day. She took off her gear and belt and boots and crawled into bed in her clothes.

"Tired, Mama?"

"Exhausted."

"Did Daryl check in?"

"Twice. He's safe. He should be home with a buck this afternoon. Wake me up when he gets back?"

"Okay."

Carol didn't hear Sophia leave. She was already asleep.

[*]

Daryl crept along the blood trail. He'd shot this deer in the neck. It had managed to run on, but it wouldn't get far before it dropped dead in its tracks from a near-killing shot like that.

He hadn't gone an acre of forest before he heard that damn dog. Barking.

Daryl cocked his bow. He kept low and masked behind tree trunks as he crept toward the sound, which was coming from the top of a hill – in the same direction as the blood trail. He left his pack behind a rock for now, and then with his bow on his back, on his stomach, obscured by brush, he made a slow army crawl up the hill. When he neared the top, he took up position behind a thick tree trunk and peered around at the scene.

The boy was there. He had a rifle on his shoulder this time, a wooden, leaver action .30-.30 Winchester. He had his handgun holstered at his hip. He wore a light brown felt cowboy hat atop his unruly auburn hair, which curled out from under the hat on his forehead. The boy was cleaning a knife, which Daryl guessed he'd used to kill the walker that lay fallen and strewn over the neck of the deer. The walker had clearly been gnawing on the creature near its shoulder. Daryl couldn't see the bolt that had brought the deer down, however, because the walker's body was covering the neck area.

"Think we can just cut around that gnawed on part, girl?" the boy asked his dog.

The dog barked once.

Daryl had asked that question, back at the quarry camp, and Shane had said, I would not advise that. But this boy reasoned differently. "We probably can. Animals don't get infected. I've never seen one undertake the change. And once we cook it, that would probably kill the germs anyway."

The dog barked its agreement.

"Quiet. Don't want to draw more uglies."

Daryl could take the thieving little bastard out right now. The boy had no idea he was here. He could leap up and shoot the kid straight in the heart, take his guns and whatever was in that pack on his back. But he suspected the dog wouldn't take kindly to seeing her master killed. She would likely attack Daryl, and he'd have to shoot the dog, too, and he didn't want to kill the dog.

And maybe he didn't want to kill the boy either, even though it would serve the thief right. The kid couldn't be much more than sixteen, and the death penalty probably was a bit much from the crime of theft.

The boy sheathed the knife he'd used to kill the walker and then pulled out another – a gutting knife this time. "To be safe, we'd better only use from there on down." He made a motion with his knife above the deer, slicing the air. "I bet we'd still have a good forty pounds of meat. We can quarter and hang it. Age it in the root cellar for seven to ten days. It stays below 38 down there. Should be fine."

So, he did have a permanent camp of some kind, Daryl thought. He knew what he was doing, too, when it came to aging the deer. Someone must have taught him about wild game. But why was he out in the world alone, with nothing but a dog, doing supply runs and hunting by himself? Where were the men in his camp?

The kid bent down to roll the walker off the deer. Then he stumbled back in fright. "Shit!"

The dog barked.

"That walker didn't bring it down. A crossbow bolt did. That man had a crossbow. You know, that couple we robbed." He looked around the woods nervously. "Think the Governor sent them after me? To grab me and take me back? First the housing complex, then the strip mall. Now these woods. It can't be coincidence. Think they've been sent after me?"

Maybe the kid really was all alone in this world. Maybe he'd run away from whatever group he was in, led by this so-called Governor. But what had the boy done to warrant the governor's wrath? To anger the man enough that the boy thought he might actually send someone to hunt him down?

"Maybe not," the boy told his dog. "Why wouldn't they have shot out my tires then? It doesn't make sense."

The boy looked around nervously again. Daryl molded against the trunk of the tree, out of sight.

"If they were sent by the Governor, this deer might be a trap to keep us busy. That man's probably blood tracking it right now. And I don't have a truck to drive off in this time. We best get out of here. Come on, girl!"

The dog barked one last time and trotted after the boy, who retreated through the forest, abandoning the deer. He looked around nervously in every direction as he made his getaway.

Daryl waited until the boy seemed a long way off to emerge. He didn't want to get caught up in a shootout, but he could track the kid, follow his trail quietly and secretly, scout out his camp and see if the boy was alone, or if he was with a group, and if he was - how many people there were and how many guns.

Daryl waited awhile longer, to keep his distance, and then he began to track the boy. But the young man was more clever than Daryl anticipated. Within two acres of forest, the boy's tracks – and the dog's - began to be covered - swept over with something as he walked, and then within another couple of acres, even the signs of the covering up began fade. Then, in a creek, the boy's trail simply vanished.

Daryl couldn't begin to guess which way he'd gone.

[*]

Carl was beside himself when he learned that Shane was gone. "You have to go after him!" he yelled at Rick. "You have to! You have to!"

It was that yelling that woke Carol up just four hours after she'd gone to sleep.

To appease his son, Rick took the SUV and, accompanied by Andrea – who seemed less surprised by Shane's disappearance than everyone else –went to look for Shane. Meanwhile, Lori took Carl and Sophia to the candy store as a distraction.

Carol couldn't get back to sleep, so she lounged on the living room couch drinking coffee and listening to The Band's Last Waltz on the fireplace CD player. (She'd checked the charge on the back-up battery first to make sure the frivolous use was acceptable.)

Michonne eased into the nearby chair, while Andre lay on his side on the circular rug in front of the warm vents of the fake fireplace and rolled a matchbox car back and forth. "I think Shane just took off because it's his night to cook dinner," Michonne said.

Carol chuckled.

The front door opened, and Glenn and T-Dog strolled in each carrying a large crate.

"What did you get?" Michonne asked.

"Two dozen eggs," Glenn said, "two pounds of cheese, two gallons of milk, two dozen apples, and a bunch of fresh veggies."

"And kicked off the farm. We also kicked off the farm, did you mention that?" T-Dog asked as he set his crate down on the kitchen's island counter.

"What?" Carol asked. "Why?"

Glenn set his crate down next to T-Dog's and smiled sheepishly.

"Because Glenn got caught in bed with the farmer's daughter," T-Dog said.

"Is that so?" Michonne raised an eyebrow. Andre raised his head up from the rug. "Cover your ears, baby," she told him, and he lay his head back down and rolled his car.

"Hershel said this was our last trade trip," T-Dog told them.

"He's just upset," Glenn insisted. "Maggie's going to talk sense into him. It won't be the last trade trip."

"It better not be," T-Dog said. "Daryl will kick your ass if he knows you ruined this deal. If Shane doesn't kick it first."

"About Shane…" Carol delivered the bad news.

Glenn's mouth fell slightly agape. "Wow."

"Good riddance," T-Dog muttered.

"What?" Glenn asked. "Come on, man. Think how this is going to upset Carl. And Shane was useful. We're down one good fighter. You're just glad you don't have to worry about Andrea getting back together with him now."

"I wasn't worried about that anyway," T-Dog insisted. "But I am sorry for Carl. And we're going to have to rework the schedule for night watch and perimeter check and all that. I don't think he considered the inconvenience."

"He's out there completely alone, and you're worried about the inconvenience?" Glenn asked.

"I assume he took some weapons and ammunition. I doubt he's strolling around an apocalyptic wasteland with nothing but his good intentions."

"He took the work truck," Carol said. "A shotgun, a rifle, and a handgun. Five hundred rounds of ammunition and three weeks' worth of food."

T-Dog whistled.

"It's nothing he wouldn't have consumed by January if he had stayed," Michonne noted. "And, hey, this way we should all get two extra minutes in the shower a week."

T-Dog laughed. "I like the way you think, Michonne." He began putting the milk in the fridge. "Where's Andrea?"

"Out looking for Shane with Rick," Michonne told him.

T-Dog slammed the door of the fridge shut. "Are you serious? She's looking for him?"

Glenn pulled a yellow gourd out of the crate. "I thought you weren't worried she still had a thing for Shane?"

The walkie talkie Carol had left on the coffee tabled crackled, and Daryl's voice leapt through, low and husky: "Whatchya wearin', Miss Murphy?"

Carol flushed as everyone in the room laughed. Andre rolled on his back on the rug and laughed, too, even though he didn't know what he was laughing about. She seized the walkie talkie and walked outside of the house and pressed the button as she walked. "Did you get your deer? Over."

"I'm at the gate, if you want to let me in. Over and out."

Carol drove Daryl's pick-up truck to the gate so he wouldn't have to keep dragging that deer through the park to the butcher's table. When she let him in, however, he didn't appear to have a deer. He was dragging something wrapped up in a tarp, but it certainly wasn't big enough to be a sixteen-point buck. As she latched the gate shut again, she asked, "What have you got there?"

"Damn walker got my deer. Found a beaver den in the creek, though. Got three of 'em."

"Are beaver's edible?" she asked.

He dropped his eyes to just below her belt and licked his lips.

"Stop! That's not what I meant."

He swept her against his chest with one arm and nipped at her neck. In her ear, he murmured, "Missed ya. Gonna come over tonight? My room? So I can show you just how edible beavers are?"

"Maybe," she teased. She gave him a slow, lingering kiss hello on the lips and then stepped away.

There was no maybe about it. She'd been thinking about it all night last night on that watchtower, how good it had been, how much better even than any regular sex she'd had in her life, and when she could get him to do it again.

Daryl lowered the tailgate of his truck. She helped him wrangle the tarp-wrapped beavers in the bed, asking, "Can you make Sophia a beaver skin cap? She's always wanted one ever since she saw some movie about Davey Crocket in grade school."

"Think I can manage it. Gonna take a few weeks to tan the hide, though."

"It would make a great Christmas present." She nodded to the tarp. "So what does a beaver taste like?"

"Can kiss you right afterward tonight if you really want to know."

"Those," Carol replied, pointing to the wrapped kill in the bed of the truck. "Not mine."

"Red meat. Rich. Pretty damn good, actually. Cost you $30 bucks to get a pound of ground beaver burger in the old world."

"I'm sure I've never seen ground beaver in the grocery store."

He chuckled. "I'd happily grind your beaver. Good and hard. In the grocery store or any place you want."

Carol smacked him playfully on the shoulder. "I've created a monster. Teach you to flirt and you go whole hog."

He looked up as if thinking.

"You're trying to come up with a sexual pun on whole hog, aren't you?"

"Gotta be one I'm missin'."

Carol chuckled. She put a hand on each of her hips and looked at the tarp. "Could you really buy beaver burger in the old world? Serious question."

"Sure." He swung his backpack into the bed of the pick-up. "Could get 'em special order. They sold 'em to rich, dumbass pricks. Called it exotic meat. $55 for a two-pound bone-in hind leg. $65 for the backstrap."

"You're making this up."

"Nah. I used to sell my game to one of them exotic game retailers, under the table, for cash. Mail-order business. They'd give me a third what they resold it for. They charged $45 for the testicles. But that's the full set. Both balls."

"Now I know you're making it up."

"Nah, hell no." He raised the tail of the pick-up and clicked it shut. "Beaver testicles are a real delicacy."

"I am not eating testicles."

He grinned. "What if you just lick 'em a little?"

"Stop!"

He ducked his head and smiled in that half-shy way she was really growing to love.

She smiled, too. "Are you being serious? About the beaver meat I mean?"

"Yeah. It's good. High in protein. Tastes decent if you marinate it and cook it right."

"How many pounds will these yield? All together?"

"Twenty-five, thirty maybe."

"Not bad," she said.

"Less than half that deer would of been, though," he grumbled.

"And were you serious about the testicles?"

"Well, I ain't eatin' 'em. But they're supposed to be good. You can serve 'em up to Lori and Shane. Don't have to tell 'em."

"Yeah, about Shane…" She jerked her head toward the cab of the pick-up. "Let's talk while we drive back to the house."

She told him about Shane, and he told her about the boy and his dog. "Sounds like he really is alone," she said as she threw the pick-up into park near the butcher's table. "Why do you think he ran away. And why do you think he thinks this…governor…is after him?"

"Dunno. Must have done somethin' real bad. Why else would he think the man wanted to track him down?"

"Unless this governor is the one who's bad news," Carol said as she drove through the entrance to the Kingdom of France. "And the boy's afraid of him because of it. I mean, who the hell calls themselves the Governor? When they're just the leader of a band of survivors?"

"Does sound like a prick," Daryl agreed. "But the kid's a thief, Carol. Maybe he stole shit from 'em."

"Say he did steal from the man. What kind of vendetta-crazed man hunts down a boy all over east Georgia for theft?"

"Who says the governor's actually huntin' the kid? He just thinks that's what's happening. But it ain't the governor sent us."

"I know, but, why would he think that?" Carol asked. "Unless the governor gave him some reason to think he had better cover his tracks?"

"Damned if I know."

[*]

The group didn't eat beaver that night – it had to soak for 24 to 48 hours in broth before it would be good – but Carol made sure Daryl did.

She was a little less shy about opening her legs for him this time, and after he'd brought her to trembling, he kissed his way up and claimed her mouth in a deep kiss. Then he nibbled her lip, nipped at her earlobe, and asked, "Like the taste?"

"Not as much as you seem to," she teased as she trailed her fingers down his bare, muscular chest, feathered them over his abdomen, and then closed her hand over his erection. "What do you want?"

She waited to see if he would ask to try sex again, but instead his eyes dropped to her bare breasts. He trailed a finger between the mounds and growled, "Here."

"Here?" she asked.

"Fine if you don't want to. You can just do one of your magic handies. Be happy either way."

"It's not that I don't want to. I don't know what you're asking. You should try using more words," she teased. "Five or six maybe? For clarity."

"Wanna cum 'tween your tits."

"Oh." Well that wasn't certainly clear. Mostly, except…"I've never done that," she said. "What do you need me to do?"

He was fondling one of her breasts now, gently. "Gonna kneel over ya. Just hold 'em together while I rub 'tween 'em. Tight."

She nodded, and the she gasped when he unexpectedly dipped his fingers into the wetness he'd left behind after bringing her to orgasm. He used that as lubrication, sliding his own hand over his erection before sliding it between her breasts.

It must have excited him, because he was very quick. He apologized afterward, maybe for the quickness, maybe for the loud growl of "Fuck yeah!" that probably pierced the wall, or maybe for the mess he'd made, which she wiped up with a hand towel.

Feeling a little cool now, Carol scooted under the sheets.

He let out a breath that sounded like a "Whooo!" and then got under the sheet with her, settled on his back, and patted his chest. She took the hint and was soon curled around his side with her head on his shoulder. He let his other arm drape loosely around her.

"I guess you liked that," she said.

He laughed. "Yeah. Sorry I didn't last long. Think I got worked up workin' you up. And I ain't never done that before. Didn't know what it would feel like."

"Really?" She'd assumed he'd asked because he'd done it with other women.

"Nah. Just seen it once. In a porno, I mean."

"Well, I assumed you weren't peeking in windows."

"Ain't like I watched a lot!" he hastened with a flush. "Just, Merle had it on once and – "

"- You don't have to explain, Pookie." She kissed his cheek. "I know you weren't an angel, remember?"

He bent his head to press his forehead against hers. "Thanks for lettin' me."

She smiled. "My pleasure."

"Yeah? You liked it?"

"Well, I liked my turn. A lot. A whole lot. That…didn't really do much for me, personally, but I'm fine doing it again sometime if you want. It makes me happy to make you happy. Just try to keep your happiness out of my face, please."

"Did I get you?"

"No. Close though."

"Try not to go all Mount St. Helens on ya next time."

Carol laughed. He gave her a half-hug. She settled in and enjoyed the feel of his lightly callused fingertip sketching pictures on her bare back. "Heart," she guessed.

"'S a bow!"

"And here I thought you were being romantic."

"Fine. Cupid's bow, then."

She smiled, closed her eyes, and soon drifted off to sleep, She was awakened by a very gentle rap on the door, which caused Daryl to snort awake also, only he sat straight up. Sophia's voice came softly through the door. "Mama? Are you in there?"

"Shit," Carol muttered. The blue-green numbers of the solar powered alarm clock glowed 1:05 A.M. When she came to Daryl's room, she usually went back to the room with Sophia by 10:00 P.M., and Sophia turned her light out and stopped reading at 10:15 P.M.

Carol began scrambling for her clothes in the dark. Daryl hit the lamp, which was on the lowest setting, but gave enough dusky light for her to find and pull on her underwear, sweatpants, and tank top. "Goodnight," she whispered to Daryl and kissed his cheek. She didn't know why she was whispering. Sophia knew she wasn't in this room alone.

"Nite, Miss Murphy."

Carol slipped out the door and clicked it shut behind herself. Sophia was carrying a battery-operated lantern, which set the hallway aglow halfway back to Michonne and Andre's room. "Mr. Dixon and I were talking and I just dozed off," she said.

"Uh-huh," Sophia replied and seemed to suppress a laugh. "I wouldn't have bothered you," she said as she began walking down the hallway toward the bathroom at the end, before the balcony hallway began. "I don't mind if you sleep there. It's just…" She stopped. "It started."

"What started?" Carol asked.

"My period."

Carol blinked. Of course Sophia was about that age – she had recently turned 12 – and they'd talked about puberty before, but with everything that was going on, the potential imminence of it had entirely slipped Carol's mind. Besides, Sophia was just a little girl. Her little girl.

Except Sophia wasn't really very little anymore. She'd grown so much in these past five month. Not just in height – though she had sprung up an inch – but in boldness, in courage, in character. Her little girl was blooming. Carol put a hand on her shoulder. "Come on. I'll show you what you need to use. We have some in the bathroom."