May 6, 2011
Three days after they escaped the wild boar and Beth finally threw caution to the wind and kissed Glenn, they reach the area where the dam failed. What used to be a forty-five thousand acre lake looks like marshland now, all the trapped water gone south along with Glenn and Beth on the wild journey down the Chattahoochee. She wonders briefly if any of it reached the Gulf of Mexico by now and whimsically hopes it did.
They can't see any tornado damage remaining, but most of that probably got dragged away with the rushing water, too. Maybe as they travel further north, getting past the flood zone, they may see the path of the twister, but right now, there's nothing to show that Mother Nature destroyed the man-made dam with furious might now that man is not capable of battling her for dominance over the landscape.
"I wouldn't be surprised if they left a lookout or something around here," Glenn says when they pause for a makeshift lunch.
Hunting with the appropriated ranger's gun isn't really feasible, but the woods are alive with spring greenery. They've set snares at dusk, finally having success this morning and landing themselves a lean little rabbit. Rabbit for breakfast was as tasty as any bacon and eggs Beth ever had. Lunch is less tasty, sharing a can of tuna between them and several prickly pear pads plucked from a growth they passed.
"Makes sense. They know we'd have to pass through here to get home." Beth sighs. "Bridge is gone, though, so we need to hope they can either see us or they're on this side."
They're both tired and grubby, both too heartsore after the trailer with the tiny children to venture into any of the remote houses they've crossed paths with so long as they have food from the little highway crossing store. There haven't been a lot of walkers since they got further away from the bridge, and she suspects the flood probably swept most away in this area, so close to the dam itself.
But why take chances? One night they slept in a hayloft, the next in the cab of an abandoned truck. Last night it was a treehouse getting rickety enough without maintenance that Beth thinks the next windy storm will take it down. The only consistency is that they sleep curled together, both for warmth in the still chilly nights and from the novelty that they can entice soft kisses from each other.
"Did you hear that?" Glenn asks suddenly, tilting his head. He stands up, leaving the unfinished tuna on the log beside him and steps closer to the paved road they've retreated from while eating.
"What is it?" Even though Glenn doesn't seem worried, Beth remains wary, putting a hand to her gun and flicking the holster open so she can draw quickly if needed. Just because all they've seen is wildlife and walkers, she will never forget Maggie's battered face and broken bones from when those monsters attacked her sister back in their hometown.
"I hear a dog." He grins brightly at her, and his excitement is contagious. "What are the odds some stray would find us when we're practically in the place we got lost?"
Beth grins broadly, feeling a surge of hopeful joy. "You think it's Xavier?"
"Not low pitched enough to be that big hound of Daryl's."
He's right about the dogs sounding different. The Dixons' original dog, the pitch black German Shepherd that Daryl's cousin named for the leader of the X-Men, just sounds like a normal big dog. The Walker hound that Daryl rescued from somewhere on the Alabama side of things sounds like a werewolf when he gets worked up tracking something.
As they both look west toward the sound, the best sight Beth's seen in nine days comes around a curve in the road. Xavier lopes toward them, his long legs covering ground faster than either Beth or Glenn could manage. He's excited, his barking turning to high-pitched yips as he reaches Beth and nearly bowls her over. She pets him happily.
"Holy shit! Xavier fucking found them!"
Hearing Merle Dixon makes Beth sink to her knees in relief, flinging her arms around Xavier as he calms and whines softly, snuffling against her skin. She probably has so many foreign smells the dog can't sort them all out yet.
The searchers turn out to be Merle and Micah, who take turns trying to squeeze every last bit of breath out of Glenn and Beth via hugs. Merle flings an arm across Beth's shoulders as he keys a radio from his belt, relaying to someone to get their ass down here with a truck. Ruffling her hair, he grins.
"Figured you two might be footsore if you've been walking for days. Damn, aren't you both a sight for sore eyes. Folks been going out of their minds looking for you both."
"We couldn't travel for a few days because Glenn was sick," Beth tells Merle, leaning into his bulky warmth as Micah inspects the stitches Beth put above Glenn's eye. She's halfway through a summary of their trip when one of the SUVs pulls into sight.
The relief of a ride home is completely overwhelmed when it's her father climbing out of the driver's seat. Beth flings herself into Hershel's arms, remembering those horrible hours in the river where she didn't know if she'd see her family again. His soft repetition of her name is the best thing she's heard in over a week.
Everything has been uncertain between her and her father since she and Maggie left the farm and Hershel behind. Although the separation hadn't lasted long, all that led up to the need for the girls to leave home without Hershel left barriers between them that time had not yet eroded, especially for Beth after she chose to continue living with Quinn and her kids when Hershel finally left the farm. But now, all she can do is feel grateful that her story didn't end while things were still unresolved between them.
When he finally lets her go enough to really look at her, Hershel has the most rueful smile she's ever seen on his face. "All this worry I've been doing, and I should have known you'd make it back to us, Bethie. You take after your mama too much to not take on the world and win."
She smiles despite the lingering fatigue of days without enough real food or rest. "I'll always come home, Daddy." It's a promise she intends to always keep, apocalypse or no.
The journey that would have taken another week on foot for Glenn and Beth takes less than two hours. Merle drives them back, while Micah coordinates everyone else returning home. They'd been one of six small teams out searching a grid from here to Florida, and it's just needle in a haystack luck had them miss rescue further south. Beth falls asleep on her father's shoulder in the back of the SUV, with Glenn's fingers twining with hers and Xavier's warm bulk pressing against her legs.
Being home is almost overwhelming, making nine days feel like nine weeks, because she's forgotten just how much noise comes from even a community as small as theirs. There's almost always someone talking, and where once she would have wandered off to the lakeshore if she wanted some solitude, there's a tenseness lingering for everyone when they look at Beth and Glenn. It doesn't seem fair when everyone who loved them spent that same time thinking they might be dead.
Maggie can't seem to go more than two feet away from her, and Beth thinks Hershel is only managing because Maggie's practically underfoot. Glenn is similarly crowded, with Harper and Sophia crammed so tightly against him at supper it's a miracle he managed to get an arm free to eat food. Everyone reluctantly retires for the evening, with Shane practically having to carry Maggie off over one shoulder after Beth finally reached her limit and got exasperated that Maggie wanted to sleep in the bunkhouse, too.
Lying in her bed, Beth can't sleep, which is ironic because she'd sent Maggie off precisely because she was exhausted and didn't want her sister hovering all night. Jesse and Harper seem to be deeply asleep in the bunks across from her, but the sheets are too soft and the room too warm for Beth to get comfortable. Restless, she gets up to see about opening a window, knowing neither of Quinn's kids will mind as long as she doesn't leave it open all night.
Lightning in the distance makes her skin crawl just a bit, and she wonders if her restlessness was a sense of the slow rolling storm. She and Glenn had been lucky to not have to dodge any serious afternoon thunderstorms on the way back, but the idea of one coming in the dark makes her shudder. She leaves the window closed, going to slip her feet into her boots instead, but uncertain where she's actually headed.
"You okay, Beth?" Quinn is standing in the doorway of the little room meant to be for a camp counselor or similar bunkhouse supervisor.
Maybe waking Jesse and Harper is hard, but Quinn could be disturbed by a feather falling, as she's proved more than once since Beth's been under her responsibility. There's no light on in the room behind Quinn, so she wasn't just up reading. Beth wonders if it's a mom thing or years of working as a paramedic. Probably both.
"Storm's coming," Beth mutters, rubbing her arms. Goosebumps are raised all along her skin. She used to like storms, standing on the porch like every other self-respecting Southerner even when the television was screeching out tornado warnings.
It's different once you've lived through one that caused the destruction that ripped out an entire Army Corps of Engineers dam.
"Yeah. Barometric pressure has been dropping since just before dusk. Don't think it'll be a bad one, but watch will be keeping an eye out." Quinn studies her for a moment before continuing. "You could go sit watch, if it makes you feel better. It's Daryl until midnight, then Jacqui til dawn."
Beth shakes her head. Watching the storm isn't going to help and her sitting there worried will just drive Daryl crazy. He's one of the most patient men in the place when working with any of the younger residents, but even he has his limits with fidgeting. Going back to bed doesn't appeal, either, and she can't settle enough for reading to seem like a viable option.
"Or you could go see Glenn. Can't imagine he's any fonder of storms rolling in than you are right now."
The funny thing is, once it's mentioned, Beth can't imagine anything better, but she'd sort of figured that continuing to sleep curled up with Glenn was probably not going to be encouraged once they were back home. Biting her lip, she thinks about how she's been able to fall asleep listening to Glenn's even breathing. She's so damned tired, and for once, neither of them has to stay awake to keep the other safe.
"Would that be okay?" Being eighteen in this world sucks. Even in the old world, she'd be moving toward independence, her high school graduation only weeks away, with living in a college dorm on the horizon come August. But she can't imagine her father being happy about her staying over with a boy even if the world hadn't ended. Even Maggie didn't try anything like that until she was far away at college. If she's honest, she can't imagine either of them being happy with it now, no matter how cute Maggie thought Glenn's crush was.
"I have no objections. You're not in high school anymore, Beth. The last year has made all of you grow up way too fast, and I'm not going to treat you like you're Harper's age. It's no different than Micah having his own place."
It's a reminder that Quinn let Micah move into the cabin adjacent to Merle's before the other teenager was actually eighteen. He's older than Beth by less than two months, but she forgets that sometimes, because he's Quinn's brother, not her kid. Micah always seems like he's a few years older, thanks to his life never being as sheltered as Beth's. Sometimes, even Jesse feels older, despite Quinn's son only being fifteen.
"I don't know that I want my own cabin." There's a part of her that still enjoys being the eldest in the bunkhouse versus always being the baby of the Greenes. Having Jesse around soothes some of the lingering ache of losing Shawn, even though he's a decade younger than Beth's brother was. Harper is everything Beth ever imagined would be fun about having a younger sister. It's funny, that Beth's contributing her own sense of no-man's-land between teen and adult, she supposes.
"Going to see Glenn tonight doesn't mean you have to move out." Quinn is smiling, obviously amused, but it fades a bit when she speaks again. "You two are being careful, aren't you?"
Despite all the kisses and hand holding, apparently Beth can still blush at the thought that Quinn just assumes they've gone beyond that. Considering what many of her classmates had gotten up to by junior year of high school, Beth understands. She's not yet ready to have that particular talk with Quinn, so she nods.
"Real careful." A part of her wants to giggle and add 'so careful nothing like that is happening', but that really would launch the conversation she's sidestepping. Beth figures it'll happen sooner or later, because if she does want birth control, Quinn's the person she has to see.
"Alright. Well, I'd get moving, or you'll be walking in the rain."
The wind is picking up, blowing in the storm clouds quickly, so Beth grabs a few of her things, tucking them in a bag, and hugging Quinn on the way by. The older woman doesn't release her easily, and Beth remembers that Quinn had trouble letting go of both her and Glenn when Quinn arrived right at supper time. She'd been part of the team searching around Lake Seminole when they reached it today, and she'd told them how proud she was of the signs they'd left at the fish camp.
It doesn't surprise Beth one bit that Quinn steps out on the porch, watching Beth as she walks down to Glenn's cabin. Their bunkhouse is the center one, with the one to the south set up as their infirmary. Then there's the cabin duplex housing Merle and Micah, followed by Daryl and Carol's place, before she reaches Glenn's.
Beth knocks on the door, hoping she isn't waking Glenn from some well-deserved rest, but he answers the door way too quickly to have been in the bedroom, dressed in an oversized t-shirt and sweatpants, feet bare. The relieved smile on his face makes her want to kiss him, so she does. He's startled, but slips his arms around her waist, keeping the kiss light and sweet, gentlemanly appropriate for the front porch of a place in view of both their families.
"A bit late to visit," he remarks, glancing further down the row of cabins to where Beth's family resides. Jacqui lives in between Glenn's place and Shane and Maggie's, with Hershel one past Maggie.
"Storm's coming." Beth leans against him, enjoying that he no longer smells of rough living and lingering illness. Both of them had certainly used far more than their fair share of hot water when they got back home. "I can't sleep."
"Oh."
Glenn's attention shifts again, but he's looking the other way now. When Beth looks up, she sees Quinn wave before stepping back inside the bunkhouse. Taking his hand, Beth leads Glenn back inside. They don't head for the bedroom, and certainly neither of them seem like pushing that line that Quinn told her to be careful about.
Instead, they curl together on the couch in the cabin, watching the DVDs that were Glenn's way of dealing with his own inability to let go of the hyperawareness of being in unsafe territory for so long. Eventually, Beth knows they've got to talk about this a little more and do more than drift along like inept high schoolers, but for tonight, she just wants to curl up against Glenn and just enjoy that they're safe at last.
A/N: One, maybe two, chapters to go.