April 30-May 3, 2011
Waking next to Beth again is getting to be a habit that Glenn desperately wishes could continue once they get back home. It's not even entirely a sexual thing, although his body certainly is aware of the curves pressed against it. He's just afraid to say anything, because this isn't like the old world, where if a girl turned you down you could avoid them as much as possible. Carefully tightening his arm around her waist, he lets her sleep a while longer.
He doesn't feel much better than yesterday, but he also doesn't feel any worse. For now, he'll take what he can get when it comes to his health.
"You awake?" Beth says sleepily, wriggling to her back so she can look at him. She lands a hand against his cheek before trailing up to his forehead. "Still feverish."
"Yeah, I think so." Glenn leans into the touch. Her hand is cool against his skin, providing a little relief.
Beth sighs before sitting up. "You think you'll feel up to walking some more if we don't find anything to drive?"
"We only made it halfway yesterday. I'm not going to get any better staying here," Glenn tells her. It's too much of a risk to remain in a place hidden like this. There's not enough food, and it's so isolated it would be hard for the others to find them.
They both clean up the best they can and eat a little something while Beth boils water to replace what they drank the day before. A search of the property turns up a battered old Ford Ranger, but the small truck is out of gas and probably wouldn't have run anyway if there had been fuel in the tank. Neither of them mentions the children in the house, and Glenn figures Beth is avoiding thinking about them just as hard as he is.
Shouldering their scavenged packs, they trek back out to the road and keep following the road that parallels the river. Eventually, they reach State Route 91. Glenn hates to angle away from the river when the map says this will keep going north in the direction they need to go to get home. But the odds there's a pharmacy in the smaller towns along the way are slim. They have to go into Donalsonville and pray the pharmacies aren't wiped clean.
"Hey, Glenn?" Beth tugs at his elbow as he faces the part of the highway that goes west to cross the Chattahoochee. "I think that's a veterinary clinic."
When he looks at where she points, he makes out a weathered sign and laughs softly. "Trust you to spot one of those." He's wobbly and exhausted by the four miles they've walked so far. "Think we could get lucky enough it's so remote no one stole the medicines?"
"We can hope," Beth mutters, scanning the remote intersection critically. She's armed with the Glock they found at the ranger station, but they still approach the building cautiously. For all that they haven't crossed paths with any more groups like the one that attacked Maggie, everyone approaches places with valuables like this very, very cautiously.
Glenn's more experienced with a gun the size Beth has, but he's also dizzy and running a fever. "Hug the overgrown fence line," he cautions. "Can't be seen from the building from there."
The building turns out to be as deserted as most they've seen since the flood. A single walker, wearing coveralls with the office's logo on the chest, is stuck in the kennel area where the furry patients were once held. Beth puts him down, shivering as she checks each kennel and breathing a sigh of relief.
"They're all unlatched and empty," she tells Glenn. "I think he let them all go when he got sick."
Out in back of the building, they find further evidence that the vet tech set the animals free and cared for them the best he could after getting sick. Tattered remnants of dozens of pet food bags are caught in a fenced area, and the gate is unlatched, creaking softly as it moves slightly in the wind.
"Maybe they all survived. Lots of woods around here for them to hunt in and not a lot of walkers," Glenn suggests, hoping he's right. Not every domestic pet could survive on its own, even without predators such as walkers, but they've found enough stray livestock by now to hope.
"Like the kittens Shane and Rick found," Beth murmurs, studying the overgrown field.
"And the dog that Daryl brought back."
Beth looks away from the field, smiling wanly at him. "Let's go break into the medication locker."
They get lucky, because no one's bothered this place. Beth searches through labels until she makes up her mind, passing the bottle of doxycycline to Glenn. "Take two of those. We'll need to send someone back here to clear this place before it gets found."
Glenn nods, fumbling with the cap on the large bottle. He goes and sits down in a dusty office chair while Beth tucks a couple of bottles in her bag. "What are you taking?"
"A different type of antibiotic, in case we have to walk all the way home. You'll take that one for a week, if it works." She sighs, eying one bottle before dropping it in. "Painkillers, in case things get worse. We need to x-ray your face, you know. Maybe something's broken, and it's not just the cut causing the infection."
They're still around two hundred miles from home, and that doesn't account for having to circle around the destroyed remains of Columbus. In a vehicle, they could be home within a day. On foot, with both of them recovering from the time in the river, and Glenn sick? She's right that it could take more than a week. At full health, they could push twenty miles a day, but there's no way they'll manage that.
"I doubt the generator will still work." They'd both seen the big diesel thing out back, one of the ones designed for a business that can't go without power.
"Won't know until we try, right?" Beth sets her bag on the desk where Glenn's sitting. "I'll give it a try. We'll run it long enough to power up the x-ray if it'll start. Too noisy to run for long, but there's a well out back, too. Think the place isn't on the town system. Too far out."
Beth disappears out back, and through the open door, Glenn hears enough quiet cursing to think that maybe she's been spending a little too much time around Merle considering her vocabulary. The cursing must be the magic needed, because he hears the generator clunk a few times before finally, the rough idling engine catches and chugs along. She dashes back inside, flipping a switch at a panel inside the door, and gives a little cheer when a flick of the light switch illuminates the work area.
"Don't know how long it'll run," Beth tells him, looking triumphant. "C'mon and let's get you x-rayed."
They get lucky in the end, because the x-ray machine is identical to the one Beth's father had in his office back home. They're even luckier that Glenn's x-ray shows no signs of fracture. As noisy as the generator is, they take turns showering in the clinic's tiny bathroom, one standing watch out back in case the noise draws walkers while the other showers. Dressed in a set of scrubs covered with cartoon kittens, Beth shuts the generator down after scrubbing their dirty clothes in a dog washing sink.
Glenn dozes on the couch in the tiny private office the veterinarian kept. At this rate, he's going to forget what a bed is like to sleep in. When he drifts off, Beth keeps guard as she has for days, but his fever spikes in the evening, worrying even him. His main memory of the next twenty-four hours is simply being woken to eat, drink, take more meds, and be guided to the bathroom.
On the morning his fever breaks, Glenn wakes to a pale, worried Beth smiling tiredly at him. "Hey, sleeping beauty," she intones softly. "You had me worried for a bit."
"Sorry," he mumbles, feeling heat of a different sort cross his skin as he blushes. "Have you slept at all?"
"Cat naps."
She's got her hand in his hair, petting it absently, and he wonders how often she's sat like this, watching, worrying, and caring for him. There's a very foggy memory that he thinks was a fever dream, of her also pressing soft lips to his forehead, along with telling him something he desperately wants to recall if it was real and not hallucinated.
"Thank you," he tells her. "What time is it?"
"About ten in the morning. May second." She sighs tiredly. "Still no sign of anyone. I used the last of the spray paint out at the intersection."
"There's a lot of ground to be covered," Glenn assures her, although even he's worried. They've been missing for five days now.
"Yeah." Beth stands, and he feels the absence of her gentle touch on his hair acutely. "I'm going to turn the generator back on so we can shower again. Once we get dressed, we can decide if we want to keep heading north or try to walk into Donalsonville to see if we can find a vehicle. Only one here won't start."
It doesn't take long for them to get clean and back into sturdier clothes than borrowed scrubs. They don't have enough food to stay here much longer, so despite it being smarter to stay put, especially when there's running water, they just can't. Beth reaches out and links her fingers with him, which draws up the fever dream again. Was it real? He can't decide, because she's held his hand before, intent on guiding him.
But he's not sick now, and she's still got his hand in hers, as if they are a long established couple, instead of him just being a very confused man with a crush he hasn't yet voiced. Still, he can't bring himself to jinx himself by asking about anything. Instead, he just enjoys the quiet patter of conversation thrown his way, mixed with bright smiles and the occasional flex of her fingers in his to emphasize a point.
When they reach the intersection of the river road and a U.S. highway, they find the first signs of looting they've seen so far. The cluster of businesses along the highway still has items they can glean, things missed when others rushed to grab essentials.
"I say we hole up in the ranch store for the night," Beth suggests after they've found a dozen or so canned goods scattered around the small dollar store. Cans and a few bottles of some sort of enhanced water are all that seem safe. Whoever carried off the majority of the goods was careless, stomping on boxes and bags of more fragile items they weren't interested in.
The only vehicle in sight is completely out of gas, and by now, Glenn should be getting used to these ghost towns, but he hasn't. He nods in agreement, but detours to collect a couple of cans of spray paint since Beth used the last back at the intersection near the vet clinic.
"Gonna start leaving a date on the paint." He wishes he'd thought of it sooner, because even if they find the messages, there's no way for Quinn to know when they left them. The others could pass right by them by accident.
The night turns chilly, and unlike everywhere else they've stayed, there's no couch, but Beth's not a farm girl for nothing. She empties feed bags of livestock food gone bad, stuffing them with soft clothing from the western store side of things. They sleep in shifts, neither of them feeling safe next to a highway in an area that could have something worse than walkers around.
Beth takes first watch, waking him with the same gentle caress of his hair she used earlier. "It's been really quiet," she tells him as he sits up, yawning. It's half past one in the morning, and she looks tired, reminding him of how little sleep she's been getting since he's been sick.
"Quiet is damn good," he tells her. She doesn't take his spot on the improvised pallet the way he expects, instead curling up against him. "Uh, Beth? I've gotta get up to keep watch."
Making a disgruntled noise, she eases her arm around his waist, clinging in a way that would make it impossible for him to get up. "It's cold. Go after I'm asleep, please?"
He sure as hell can't resist that softly spoken 'please', so he stays put, even as she settles her face into the crook of his neck and dozes off. The soft flutter of her breath on his skin makes him yearn for more, but this is not the time nor the place. Eventually, reluctantly, he eases her to the pallet, covering her with the coarse blankets from the ranch supplies in the store.
Glenn's glad they do keep watch, when he watches a small herd of fifty or so walkers shuffles by in the night coming from the Alabama direction, where his map shows a town that was easily over fifty thousand before the virus. They seem to be headed toward Donalsonville in the east, so he's glad they nixed the idea to go into the larger town. No one's been able to determine why they cluster up the way they do, not yet, but he's just glad that they aren't smart enough to purposefully deviate from easy paths like paved roads.
When the sun starts to lighten the sky, he shakes Beth awake. "I think maybe we need to take to the woods for a while," he suggests, telling her about the walkers. "Anywhere near this highway might be crawling with the dead."
Wide-eyed, Beth nods, helping him gather up anything useful in the dimly lit building. By the time the sun is fully up, they're across the highway, directions sprayed that they're continuing north. Glenn isn't sure how to indicate cross country for the vocabulary Quinn has, so he settles for painting a crossbow tipped northwest when they leave the pavement behind for farm and woodland. They do have a compass, so they shouldn't get lost, he hopes.
They move at such a fast pace, both wanting to get far away from any potential herds, that Beth's no longer holding his hand, and Glenn misses it. He wishes he'd worked up the courage to ask her about all the touching she's been doing. She's always been tactile, hugging anyone who stands still long enough, but now, even as oblivious as he can be sometimes, Glenn is almost certain she's flirting with him.
It turns out that getting lost isn't exactly the problem. It's also not walkers, bandits, or Beth's special fear, alligators. As they cross a creek and climb the bank, Beth freezes ahead of Glenn. "Uh, how fast can you climb a tree?" she whispers, her hand reaching for a slim hickory near her in a slow motion that makes him wonder what the hell she sheets.
"Pretty fast." Glenn eyes the nearby trees, assessing a likely one.
"Alright. Back up slowly, back across the creek, but be prepared to climb," she tells him, her slim form already easing backward step by step.
There's an ear-splitting squeal, and the second Beth bolts for a tree, Glenn scatters as well. He doesn't need to see the massive feral hog to know what it is, but from fifteen feet up a tree, he almost wishes it was a walker. A walker they can handle easily. This three hundred pound behemoth? Hell no.
At least up the trees, they don't have to be all that quiet. Beth is astride a branch, looking down at the confused boar. "Do you ever wonder what it's like to not look up to find danger?" she muses.
The odd question is jarring, but so obviously whimsical Beth, that Glenn can't help laughing as he wrangles himself to get astride a branch, too. "That sounds like half the horror movies ever written. No one looks up."
The boar is snuffling around still, making his way down to the creek and back again. Beth studies him for a moment. "I'd shoot him," she offers, "except it seems cruel and wasteful. He probably thinks we're walkers, so that's why he charged us."
Considering various hunting teams have witnessed sounders of feral pigs not just defending themselves from walkers, but actively attacking small numbers of them, it makes sense to Glenn. "I guess it depends on how soon he gets bored and leaves. We can't stay up here all night."
Hell, they're still within three miles of where they spent the night, by his best estimate. He checks his watch, glad the sturdy little gadget survived the river, and that Quinn and Shane insist people wear them. "Give him ten minutes?"
"Yeah." Beth eases back toward the tree trunk, quiet as a cat, and hangs her backpack on a different branch. "Gonna climb a bit higher. See what I can see."
Since her tree is considerably larger than the one Glenn climbed, she ambles up the huge beech tree, gaining a perch that he thinks would make even him dizzy. She stays aloft the past the time he proposed for the boar to leave, finally making her way back down with a pensive look on her face.
"Something wrong?" he asks. Their unwelcome visitor had gotten distracted and left well before the ten minutes were up, so they could climb down, but something about her posture concerns him.
"There's still a lot of flood damage this far south up close to the river. It may be why they haven't found us. If they're searching the river banks, that's going to take them forever."
Glenn thinks it over. Down at the fishing camp, the only evidence of the failed dam was the flood line. The further north they go, he imagines they'll keep finding more and more signs of actual damage to the trees and any structures along the river bank.
"Do you want to backtrack and see if the highway bridge survived?" Part of him doesn't want to consider the force of the water and debris taking out a full-fledged highway bridge big enough to be maintained with federal funds. The other part of him remembers that the dam that failed was just such a massive structure. Just because he saw walkers coming from that direction doesn't mean the bridge is still standing.
"No. Too much risk if it isn't, going near a town that size on foot with just the two of us."
When Beth climbs down, Glenn follows. He knows he used to risk Atlanta all the time, but he wasn't coming off multiple injuries and a days-long fever that sapped his stamina. She's right that it just isn't safe. Keeping a wary eye out for any more unwelcome visitors of the wildlife type, they concentrate on heading for home.
Her hand finds his again as they cross an open field, and he simply can't stand not knowing anymore. "Beth?"
"Yeah?" She's intent on the overgrown field, probably trying to figure out what the last crop was, since many of the grain crops reseed themselves. Right now, they're just in a bunch of calf high greenery that he doesn't have a clue about.
"What does this mean?" He squeezes her hand, which draws her attention to him.
Glancing down at their joined hands, Beth smiles, blue eyes sparkling with mischief. "Never had a girl want to hold your hand before?"
The open admission makes him stumble to a stop. He knows blinking mutely at her isn't the best response, but she just studies him with that intent air of patience that he finds so intriguing. Normally, she's so bright and vivacious, moving through life like a busy hummingbird, that when she stops and focuses on something like this, it's just breathtaking.
He wonders why the hell he can't manage to put that into words. Clearing his throat, he tries to laugh. "Yeah, I have. I just wasn't sure what you meant by it."
Beth sighs, tilting her head. "I guess Maggie was right and I really do have to spell it out for you, don't I?"
"Spell what out…"
Glenn doesn't get to finish the question, because Beth reaches up with her free hand, drawing him into a kiss that's both clumsily innocent and laced with promise at the same time. When he responds, deepening the kiss and cupping his hand to the nape of her neck, she makes the happiest little noise, and he can feel her smile.
They still have miles of rough terrain to travel to reach their home and families, but Glenn finds he can no longer regret the events that scattered them so far away. Not when it brought him this.