Sunday, November 15
The group agreed that they didn't want to leave Lori alone in Fun Kingdom with the three children. Lori carried a pistol now and knew how to use it, and Sophia had her wakizashi, and in case of emergency, Carl could use a rifle (though Lori still didn't let him carry one around alone on his own), but if anything happened while they were gone, one adult (especially if that adult was a pregnant Lori) would be insufficient to handle the situation. Rick agreed to stay behind, reluctantly relinquishing his assumed role as group leader to be the home-base protector of his family and the group's children.
Glenn took the wheel of the pick-up with Andrea sandwiched between him and T-Dog on the bench seat. Michonne, Daryl, and Carol piled in the bed, and Rick closed and locked the gate behind them as they rolled out of Fun Kingdom. As the pick-up lurched forward through the parking lot, Daryl stretched his arm across the rim of the bed and Carol leaned against his side.
"What did you do in the old world, Daryl?" Michonne asked as the truck turned out of the parking lot onto the road. "For a living? You've never said."
"'Cause it don't matter."
"Let me guess. Motorcycle mechanic."
"Mhm. For five months once. 'Til the boss found out I didn't actually have a license and fired my ass."
"All right, then construction worker," Michonne ventured.
"If you count me and Merle buildin' backyard fences for cash under the table from time to time."
"Hunting guide."
"Pffft. Think I want to stroke the egos of a bunch of rich prick trophy hunters?"
Michonne smirked. "Kindergarten teacher."
Carol laughed. "Daryl's actually pretty good with kids."
"Andre likes him," Michonne agreed. "But Daryl would probably just kick them all out on the playground all day long. It would be the Lord of the Flies School."
"Way it should be in kindergarten," Daryl muttered. "Fuck they got to learn in a desk at that age?"
Michonne shrugged with her eyes. The truck picked up speed and the cool wind whipped around them and Carol snuggled in against Daryl for warmth, inhaling the scent of his black leather vest.
When they arrived at the Greene Family Farm, they were right on time. Family worship would have started four minutes ago, according to the information Maggie gave them. Glenn hopped out at the front gate of the newly constructed fence. The fence was about six-feet-tall with wooden spikes at the top of the planks that had been wound with barbwire to prevent easy climbing over. The gate was made from two iron cattle gates stacked atop one another and had been topped with more barbwire. The gate was shut with a chain and padlock. Glenn reached through the bars to pull the padlock around and unlock it using the spare key Maggie had left him. Then he swung it open, got back in the truck, and they drove up the dirt road toward the farm.
The farm was quiet, except for the distant mooing of the cattle in the fenced-in fields, the quiet clucking of chickens, and the sawing of fall insects. They parked in front of the farmhouse and Glenn went up the porch stairs and opened the wooden deacon's bench. He rattled around in it for awhile before he found the Comet can, and then he had to pry off the top and unwrap the oil rag inside to reveal the key to the padlock on the barn. "Got it!"
They prowled together from the farmhouse to the barn, and when they drew close to the door, they could hear gnashing inside, like the hum of some monstrous beehive.
Carol felt an excited nervousness. She wanted this practice, but when that chain came off the door, who knew how fast those walkers would spill out. "We need to back up and take up position," she said. "Form a straight line for when they spill out so we aren't accidentally crossing each other."
Daryl agreed. "Glenn, you're the quickest runner. Take off the chain."
Glenn nodded nervously. He remained by the barn door with the key in his hand and his rifle on his shoulder while the others walked back several yards and formed a line. Everyone checked their weapons. T-Dog and Andrea made sure their suppressors were screwed on tightly and their firearms were cocked and ready with the safeties off. Daryl, who stood between them at the center position, loaded a bolt into his crossbow and raised it. Carol, who was on the far right, unsnapped both her sheaths and drew and flicked opened her throwing knife. Michonne, who was on the far left, unsheathed her katana from her back and, elbows bent, raised it.
"If ya move forward to kill," Daryl said, "stay outta the line of fire. Kill what's straight ahead of ya only, or for you two on the ends – whatever's to the left or right of the line. Call 'em if you can."
Glenn nodded back at them, took a deep breath, and inserted the key into the padlock. He released the lock, yanked the long chain from the door handles, and bolted back to join the line. He was breathing heavily when he stopped in the gap between T-Dog and Daryl and swung his rifle off his shoulder. He turned toward the barn and raised it, only to realize no one had started shooting yet and the barn door remain closed.
After a minute of tense waiting, when nothing stirred out the door, Andrea shouted, "Hello in there!"
"Come and get it!" T-Dog boomed.
The barn door rattled. It creaked open two inches and then drifted back. And then it flew open with a bang and two tall, overall-clad walkers lurched out, growling and chomping.
"Center," Daryl claimed.
"Left," Glenn called, and bolt and bullet went flying. The walkers collapsed, and Daryl swung his bow to the ground and held it by his boots to reload as more walkers spilled out the barn door.
"Right," T-Dog called.
"Left," Andrea shouted, and two more shots went off.
Daryl's muscles flexed as he cocked his bow and swung it up again. By now, there was no more calling the walkers. They were spilling out in threes and fours and jerking like possessed marionettes toward their sought-after meal.
Carol flicked her wrist and her knife flew through the air, spun once, and sunk into the forehead of a walker. Daryl's bolt landed in another. Michonne peeled off after one that had drifted away from the barn to the left at her end of the line, and swung her katana to decapitate it. The head went flying, and she finished it off on the ground.
Carol now drew her jasmine knife and strode forward in a straight line to stab a walker that had drawn very near, while muffled gun shots went off to the side of her. She yanked her knife back out with a grunt, and when she stepped back into the line, everyone had their weapons lowered and were surveying the fallen walker bodies. Several bodies were piled near the barn door, but others were strewn across the field. Three had bolts in their heads, and three were missing their heads.
"Uh…guys?" Glenn looked around at the fallen bodies. "I only count twenty-one."
Michonne began pointing the tip of her katana in the direction of each of the bodies and counting silently. "Me, too. Only twenty-one."
They all looked toward the barn door, which had swung closed again. The door shuddered in its frame, and they all readied their weapons.
With a booming creak, the door burst open, and a massive walker sniffed the air, growled loudly, and stomped out, but no one fired.
"Oh God," Andrea said.
"Is that?" Glenn asked.
"It's him," T-Dog answered.
Carol looked at Daryl, who slowly lowered his bow in stunned silence.
The hissing walker lurched forward, unimpeded by bolt or bullet. At the end of its right arm was some kind of tin cylinder, strapped to its arm with black bands, and affixed to the cylinder was the blade of a knife. It's blue, glassy eyes widened with hunger.
"No," Daryl said numbly. "No." Then he cried, "No! Merle, noooooo!" He dropped his bow to the ground and ran toward the thing that had once been his brother, with no weapon drawn, unarmed by anything but grief.
Glenn, swallowing, looked at Carol as if for permission, and she nodded. Glenn raised his rifle, moved quickly to the side and forward to avoid shooting Daryl, and shot the lumbering walker before Daryl could reach it.
The walker took the shot to the head as if merely stunned and annoyed, stood steadily in place a few seconds, and then stumbled forward one step, reaching out its arm for Daryl. Glenn shot it again, and the walker collapsed.
"Nooooo!" cried Daryl, crashing to his knees beside the now fallen body.
Carol ran to him and flung herself on her knees beside him. Daryl was moaning in grief, murmuring, "No, no, no…" Carol swept him into her arms, turned his eyes away from the glassy-eyed specter of his brother, and buried his bent head against her chest. She rocked him there, on the hard, dusty ground, while his tears soaked her shirt.
[*]
Glenn opted to stay behind to help Maggie deal with Hershel when the religious man saw the desecration scattered across the field and to help dig graves for Maggie's stepmother and half-brother and the other friends and neighbors. "I'll find my way back," Glenn assured them. "Maggie will bring me. This evening or tomorrow."
"Find out when they caught Merle," Daryl told him. "And where they caught him. And whatever they know about where he came from."
Glenn nodded.
They hauled Merle's body into the bed of the pick-up because Daryl wanted to bury him "at home, not in some fuckin' walker-keeper's field." Andrea suggested they should leave the body here to be burned or mass buried with the other walkers, but one hard look from Daryl silenced her. Glenn, to reassure Daryl, said, "We bury our own. In their own graves."
No one dared say Merle wasn't Merle anymore, that the thing Daryl would bury was not his brother. It didn't matter, Carol thought. He needed to bury something.
The shot-up head had been covered with a burlap sack, but the rest of the body was exposed where it lay in the bed of the pick-up. Carol and Daryl sat in the bed with the body, shoulder to shoulder, against the back window of the cab, while T-Dog drove back to Fun Kingdom with Andrea and Michonne piled in the cab with him. As the truck was pulling through the cattle gate, which Glenn would close behind them, Carol could see the Greene Family in the far distance, returning from the chapel, Beth suddenly running toward to the scattered bodies, Hershel picking up his pace, Maggie keeping pace with him, and Patricia and Jimmy lingering warily behind. Carol didn't envy Glenn his task.
As they wound down the dirt road to pick up the one-lane paved road that would eventually lead to the highway, Daryl sat there, arms on his pulled-up knees, staring almost angrily at his dead brother. "Really thought he was alive this whole time," he muttered. "Thought he'd probably be in charge of some gang somewhere by now. Not a real bad gang. They wouldn't rape no one. Wouldn't kill no one who didn't need killing. They might rob some shit. But he'd take care of his own, you know. Make damn sure they survived. And then we'd cross paths again one day. And he'd say…." Daryl choked and then almost whispered, "Hey, little brother."
Carol put a hand on his knee and squeezed.
"This whole time," hissed Daryl, teeth clenched, "This whole fuckin' time. He's been in that cocksuckin' hippie's barn."
Carol didn't know what to say except, "I love you, Daryl."
He crouched forward, which swept her hand from his knee, and began digging angrily through the pockets of his brother's black leather jacket. Carol saw the bullet wound in the walker's chest – which ripped apart his dirty white t-shirt - when Daryl opened the jacket to dig in an inside pocket.
That wasn't one of their shots. Glenn had made only two, both to the head. Daryl stared at the shot for a moment, and then yanked out a pack of cigarettes from one of Merle's pockets. He stuck one between his lips and fished out his silver butane lighter to ignite it – the lighter with the initails DBD - the one he'd gotten as a best man's gift from his brother's wedding. He inhaled and then sighed out a stream of smoke as he sat back beside her again.
"You saw the bullet wound?" she asked quietly.
"Yeah, I saw it."
"And that hand contraption. So he didn't bleed to death from cutting off his own hand to escape those cuffs."
"And Rick's damn lucky he didn't," Daryl muttered. "Or he'd be a dead man when we got back."
"He wasn't in that barn the whole time," Carol observed. "That's a cold-weather jacket. He wouldn't wear it sooner than mid-October." And knowing how hot Daryl ran, if Merle was anything like his brother, not before November. Even now, Daryl wasn't wearing a long-sleeve jacket, though he was wearing a long-sleeve canvas shirt beneath his angel wings vest.
"Taste this," Daryl said, handing her the cigarette.
Carol had smoked before she met Ed. Ed had wanted her to quit, had told her it was unladylike, and she had, even though Ed kept smoking. Ed had done that much good for her, she supposed. She had no intention of resuming the habit now. But Daryl had just watched his walker-turned brother shot down, and if he wanted her to taste his cigarette, she would, even if she didn't know why he was offering.
She took a puff and slowly sighed out the smoke. She'd forgotten how good that could feel and didn't want to take another puff for risk of wanting to taking a third and a fourth…and then a pack. She handed the cigarette back to him.
"Notice?" The tip of the cigarette glowed orange as he took another drag.
"Notice what?"
"Ain't that stale. Pack was opened. And it ain't that stale. Nine days open at most."
"He must have been the one that bit Otis," Carol said, and then wished she hadn't. Daryl didn't need that picture in his mind, of his brother's walker tearing into a man's flesh.
"Serves the fat asshole right for shootin' me," Daryl muttered.
Carol glanced at him. He didn't mean it, she knew, but it helped him to say it.
"Merle's revenge." Daryl puffed again. He turned the cigarette and examined it. "Nine days open at most." Carol didn't know how he could tell that from the taste, but she took his word for it. "And Otis was bit Wednesday. So that means Merle's walker had five days tops to make its way to that farm on foot. Had to have been shot within eighty miles."
And it couldn't have been Dave or Tony or Randall who shot him, Carol thought. Or those three Claimers Michonne had decapitated. But it could have been some other member of either of those gangs. Or the Governor the boy and his dog seemed to be fleeing, or someone in the boy's camp, if Merle had appeared to pose a threat to it. Or the boy himself.
"Would have had to get him with his guard way down," Daryl said. "Whoever done it. No one kills Merle but Merle. Well, and whoever the fuck did kill Merle, I guess. If I ever find that cocksucker alive, though? Beat him to death real slow."
[*]
When they returned to Fun Kingdom, T-Dog hollered in the baby monitor for Rick to open the gate. The group put Merle's body in a coffin from the Haunted Castle attraction and buried him in the fake graveyard out back – which was built on real earth. Sophia fastened together a cross from two branches, painted Merle's name on it with paint from the Kids' Crafting Corner in Kids' Kingdom, and brought it to Daryl.
He blinked when she gave it to him, put a hand on the back of her head, and stroked her hair for a brief moment before drawing his hand away. It was a small but tender act of affection Carol had not seen him extend her daughter before. He'd returned her hugs, awkwardly, but this was his first time he had reached out to her.
"Thanks, Soph," he murmured, and walked forward to the freshly lumped earth over Merle's grave and drove the cross into the ground. Then he walked past everyone without a word to dissapear alone with his grief.
A couple of hours later, Carol used the last of the okra for dinner to make Daryl's favorite vegetable – fried okra. They had plenty of oil from the many kitchens still. She fried up the last of the alligator, too, in small chunks, using crushed Doritos for the batter, which she'd learned was a hit with the kids and Daryl and well - nearly everyone. She preferred cornmeal.
But Daryl didn't return for dinner, and eventually, Rick told her, "The kids are getting hungry."
Sophia pushed her food around her plate at the dining room table. "Where's Daryl?" she asked.
"He needs some time alone, Sweetie," Carol assured her.
"I guess I should probably cancel that tea party for tomorrow."
"I wouldn't expect him to attend, no," Carol told her. "He might not be in the mood for tea parties for a long while."
The front door opened and closed. But Daryl didn't come into the dinning room to join them. His bootsteps clomped up the ramp, and the door to his bedroom slammed shut.