Terminus
12:25 PM

From the woods beyond the chain link fence, through a pair of binoculars, Daryl scoured the camp nestled in the train station. He'd raced Dixon all the way here. They'd ridden two of the Saviors' Harleys. They'd wanted to try them out, and it was a more even match than their race to Woodbury because neither bike had a weight advantage like Dixon's racing sports bike. Still, Daryl had lost, but only by about three minutes this time. He blamed it on being 12-hours less recovered from the virus than Dixon.

Now, they were making sure they weren't walking into a trap. After that Trojan Horse of an eighteen-wheeler, they weren't taking any chances. There was one armed guard on the roof. That was it.

"Ain't much to look at," Daryl observed.

Dixon lowered his rifle. He'd been using the scope. "It's not Fun Kingdom," Dixon agreed. "But they have gardens and plenty of propane. You want me to sneak the meds up there and just leave them by the gate? I mean, we're not going in, are we?"

"We ain't gonna catch it again, but…I ain't interested in afternoon tea. Best to keep our distance."

Dixon snuck the medicines up to the gate. He left them in a small, black, zipped-up bag on the ground without even being noticed by the guard before he was back and buried in the trees again. Daryl tuned his handheld radio – Rick's old King County Sheriff's Department radio - to the frequency he'd used earlier to talk to Shuford. He tried three times over ten minutes before Shuford answered.

"Sorry. We don't have enough people who aren't sick to keep one on the radio. I just now heard it. Over."

"We put the pills in a bag outside your gate. Good luck. Radio when it's over. Over and out."

Dixon and Daryl watched from the woods as a teenage boy ran out of the train station. He was wearing a bullet-proof vest over his long-sleeve shirt and a bullet-proof helmet. The guard on the roof covered him as he ran, sweeping his rifle left and right as he looked through the scope. The boy seized the bag, turned, and jogged back.

"Terminus doesn't trust they aren't walkin' into a trap either," Daryl said.

"Well, the pills could be poisoned," Dixon reasoned. "They didn't think of that."

As they creeped back into the woods and began to hike toward their bikes, Dixon said, "We need to loot more antiviral medicines."

"Too late at this point. By the time we found any…" Daryl shook his head.

"I know that. But what if something like this happens next year? Or even just the regular flu? We need to replenish what we've burned through. Hershel said some of these medicines can last up to ten years if properly stored."

"Where is there left to loot?" Daryl asked. "Every pharmacy's been picked over. We already hit the veterinarian school. We've cleared the clinic of every high school in the damn county."

"I was looking into the maps and phone books in our library. There's a high school vocational center in DeKalb County. It had an agricultural program, which might mean they had veterinary meds on site. Better yet, they had a pharmacy tech program. It's worth a shot anyway."

Daryl nodded. "Yeah. In a week or two, Carol and me will go check it out, when this shit's sorted."

"I was thinking…me and Beth."

Daryl began throwing aside the branches that covered his motorcycle. "Beth ready to do supply runs?"

"She's got to learn some time. And…I think, you know…it would be good for us to get away. Alone. Overnight. Outside of Hershel's…purview."

"You wanna go on a supply run so you can get laid?"

"No!" Dixon threw the branches off his bike. "I mean, yes. But I also want to get the meds. And teach Beth some things so she's safer, you know? In the future. Stronger for this world."

"I get ya." Daryl straddled the bike and began to roll it, walking it with his feet, out of the woods onto the road. "But don't let your dick do your thinkin'."

"What do you mean?" Dixon rolled his bike while standing.

"Mean make sure she's ready."

"She said she was. In her letter. She said she wanted to, if I made it out of quarantine."

"Mean ready to kill lots of walkers. Do some knife practice with 'er over the next week or two 'fore you go."

"Oh. Yeah. We will. We already were before the sickness erupted." Dixon straddled his motorcycle.

Daryl sat back on his bike, one foot on the ground, one on the floorboard. "Carol would want me to give you an uncle to nephew talk here. 'Bout safe sex and respectin' women and all that shit. So, you listen up and you listen up good."

Dixon turned his face to him. "Yeah?"

"Have safe sex and respect Beth and all that shit."

Dixon laughed. "Good speech, Uncle Daryl."

"Seriously, kid, don't knock 'er up. She's too young and this world is a fuckin' mess right now. And, also…race ya!" Daryl suddenly kick started the bike and roared off down the road, gliding as far ahead of Dixon as he could, but damn if that kid wasn't right on his tail five minutes later.

The Sanctuary
3:25 PM

"Come on, boys, get the damn gum off your shoes!" Gavin called to the two Saviors who had stopped working to talk to each other. They glared at him but went back to work.

It wasn't like he wasn't in the thick of it with them. He grabbed a couple more nails, put one between his lips to hold it, and began hammering to secure a reinforcing plank.

At least the surrendered Saviors were strong men. It had required constant reminders to focus, but they'd gotten quite a bit of work done on the fence. If they kept up at it at this pace, they might have the whole thing fully reinforced in two days.

Gavin heard a whistle from the direction of the sawing bench, the way a man whistles when he catcalls a pretty woman. He lowered his hammer, with the second nail still between his teeth, and turned to face the sound. The Savior who had been sawing and who had whistled – at no woman, at nothing but the air - sneered at him.

And that's when Gavin felt it, like a ripple on the surface of a still lake. He felt what was coming. The assassination attempt. He spit the nail out of his mouth and crouched down just as the Savior behind him lunged at him with the sharp edge of a screwdriver. It had been meant for the back of his neck. If he hadn't ducked, that screwdriver would be driven through his flesh right now.

Gavin swiveled around and, as he rose, swung his hammer up hard, catching his would-be attacker between the eyes. The Savior stumbled backward and dropped the screwdriver. The crack of gunfire sounded as one of the volunteer coalition guards took out the whistling Savior who was now coming at Gavin with the hacksaw.

Gavin drew the handgun from his hip and shot a third Savior who was rushing him from the left with a pair of fencing pliers. The he turned forward again to shoot the man he had hit and stunned with the hammer, who was now recovering his dropped screwdriver. Laura, who was also on guard duty along the fence, dropped a fourth Savior as the man hurled an axe toward Gavin's head. Gavin ducked. As the axe thudded into the wood support beam behind him, Laura and the coalition guard fired again, and the last two Saviors dropped. Their weapons – a drill and a hammer - tumbled from their hands as they thudded to the earth.

Breathing in and out hard, and trying to calm the racing of his heart, Gavin looked around at the slaughtered Saviors. Laura, who had just come down from the fence, strolled toward him, surveying the damage as she walked.

"I'm usually pretty good about choosing my crew," he said when she came to a stop before him. "But this may not have been the wisest idea I ever had."

"Well," she said, "at least we don't have to worry about what to do with them anymore."

Fun Kingdom
3:40 PM

When Daryl and Dixon got back to Fun Kingdom, T-Dog let them inside. "Anyone sent to quarantine?" Daryl asked.

"Louis and Eliza."

"Probably got it from Molls," Dixon muttered.

"And Glenn," T-Dog added, "who might also have gotten it from Molls while interrogating her." Dixon wouldn't have, because he'd already been through it and developed immunity. T-Dog sighed. "And Maggie. Who probably got it from Glenn."

"And Soph?" Daryl asked anxiously. She'd been in the same room with Eliza last night.

"Mika?" Dixon added. She'd been in that room, too.

T-Dog shook his head. He pointed to the carousel. "Mika's playing with Andre on the horses. Michonne's watching them. She's got Judith, too. No one else got quarantined. Just those four. And Hershel's optimistic. They all had low-grade fevers. Not much of a cough. They got the medicine early. It'll get worse, he thinks, but then it'll get better. Everyone in the theater is getting better now. Little by little. Tara and one of the Woodbury kids are getting released this evening. But that kid Jody has taken a turn for the worse in the infirmary."

"And the others?" Daryl asked. After Dr. Stevens died this morning, he was on edge. Rick, Carl, Morgan, Duane, Patrick, and Tom were all still in the infirmary with only Bob to tend them.

"Holding steady. Morgan is actually symptom-free now, but he's going to stay until it's over because of Duane and to assist Bob."

"Good." Daryl nodded, and then he and Dixon rode on slowly through the park. When they passed by the castle tower slides, Daryl saw Carol was on watch and hollered up to her, "Hey there, Beautiful!" She waved back.

When they rounded the petting farm, Dixon stopped his motorcycle and dismounted it to go talk to Beth, who was gathering eggs from the chickens, while Daryl rode on to the House of the Future. He left the bike outside and walked through the door to find Sophia on the upstairs balcony, on her hands and knees, scrubbing at the bloodstains on the carpet and crying while she did it. She stopped scrubbing to squirt hydrogen peroxide on the stain and then went back to frantically and tearfully raking the brush across the carpet.

Daryl rushed up the ramp to her. He got down on his knees behind her. "Soph, hey Soph. Stop, hey, stop."

"I can't get them out!" she cried. "Mom got them out of the balcony, but the stains just won't come out of the carpet!" She scrubbed harder.

Daryl snatched the brush from her hand, tossed it aside, and pulled her back until she was sitting back on her bent legs instead of leaning forward on her knees. "You ain't gotta," he told her.

"I don't want them there!"

"Hey, a'ight, they ain't gotta be there." He drew his knife and told her to back up from the stains. He crawled over to where the dark splatter began and stabbed his blade hard into the carpet. Then he sawed through the material with the knife, from balcony to door, across the door frame, from wall to balcony, and then along the balcony. He ripped up the entire section of carpet and rolled it up so the blood didn't show.

Sophia laughed through her tears and ran her arm across her face to dry it. "Mom's gonna kill you for tearing it up like that."

"Nah. She ain't gonna mind. 'Sides, hey…" He crawled to her, knelled beside her, and slung an arm around her shoulders to hug her in against himself. "We're gonna go shoppin'. Check out the gift shops. Find us an oriental rug in The Kingdom of Japan or some shit to put down right there. Wanna go shoppin' with your old man?"

"I don't know."

He ducked his head to catch her eye. "Maybe hit the candy store while we're doin' it?"

She smiled. "I'm not a little kid anymore, you know. You can't bribe me with candy." Then she winced and looked down at the bare floor where the bloody carpet used to be. "Definitely not a little kid anymore."

"Hell, I'm ancient and I still like the candy store. Need me some red Twizzlers. And a Coke. Bite the top and bottom off the Twizzler and make a straw out of it."

"It'll be like cherry Coke."

"Damn right."

Sophia smiled. "I could use a giant Pixie Stick."

Daryl stood and helped her to her feet. "Might need to get out the catapults and have us a circus peanut war while we're at it."

5:50 PM
The Sanctuary

Gavin looked up from his dinner as Laura set a tray down across from him on the metal table in the dining area of the Sanctuary marketplace. She slid onto the bench. "You get another temporary construction crew organized?"

"Yeah, but, when the applications are in tomorrow morning we'll solidify assignments. We got about an hour of work done. After dinner, we'll work until sunset."

"We need to talk about the Savior orphan. All the workers' orphans – "

"- Citizens'." Gavin corrected her.

"All the citizens' orphans have been adopted. But I've just been on the radio with Brandon at the Satellite outpost. You know, Andy and Allison's kid. He's fourteen. His parents left him at the outpost when they went with Simon to Georgia."

"And they were all killed."

Laura nodded. "There were two workers left there to maintain the outpost. Those workers have a lot of resentment toward Brandon because of the way they were treated by some of the Saviors in that outpost, including his father. And once they heard the Saviors were overthrown and Simon wasn't coming back? They turned the tables on Brandon and started working him hard. I think we need to move on closing that outpost right away. Call Brandon back here and send those workers onto the new trade post in Manassas. Keep them apart."

"Are they really working him hard," Gavin asked, "or are they just expecting him to work period, and he finds that hard, because he was used to others working for him?"

"I don't know," Laura admitted. "But either way there's a lot of tension there."

"All right, well, bring it up at the Council meeting tomorrow morning. We don't get to decide this alone, you know."

Laura nodded, lifted a fruit punch juice box, and sipped it through a straw.

"How much did that cost you?" Gavin asked. "One point?"

"Half a point. And at that price and the new higher wages, they're all going to be gone in two weeks."

"Which is why we need an inventory manager to adjust prices weekly to reflect supply and demand."

DJ dropped a tray next to him and sat down. "Hallowbrant's got fence duty," he said before tearing into his sandwich. After he swallowed, he asked, "Am I here permanently, or am I going back to the Kingdom?"

"I need you here," Gavin said. "You and Alden both."

"Fine. But then I want leave four days a month to visit my sister in the Kingdom. Because I doubt Jennifer wants to come back here."

Gavin winced, because he wanted Frankie to come back here.

"And I need respectable quarters," DJ insisted. "Me and Alden both. We've been staying in the harem, but if you're converting that for women with children, we need one of the old lieutenant's rooms. None of this camping down here shit."

"We gave those room to the Council members," Gavin said.

"Well, sort it out," DJ insisted. "Or I'm not staying. We're working our asses off here. We deserve good quarters."

"Gina could share my quarters," Lauren suggested, "and then DJ and Alden could have hers. And to be fair, we could put José and Gordon in an old lieutenant's room together, and then convert Jed's old quarters into more worker – I mean citizen - housing."

"Or Dwight and Sherry could have it," Gavin said.

DJ laughed. "You think you're going to talk Dwight into coming back here?"

"I'm going to try," Gavin said. "We need him."

"Gina and Gordon and José aren't going to be happy," Laura mused. "A private room was supposed to be a perk of council membership. But maybe we can raise council pay from 15 to 20 points a week to make up for having to share a room."

Gavin sighed. "Well, we'll sort it at the meeting tomorrow. Along with the hundred other things we have to sort."

7:30 PM
House of the Future

No one in the House of the Future commented on the giant, golden welcome mat (with the white words - Welcome to My Castle) that had come to rest outside of the door of Sophia's bedroom in the space where the carpet once had lain.

As she did the dishes from dinner, Carol could hear the muffled, after-dinner chatter in the dining room, where Tara, now free of quarantine, was a guest for the evening. Daryl emerged from the dining room through the living room bearing another plate. "Last one." He set it on the counter by the sink.

"Thank you for spending all that time with Sophia today," Carol said as she rinsed a dish. "She really needed her daddy."

"Ain't easy, killin' a man," Daryl said. "'Specially one who used to tell you terrible jokes over the campfire. She knows he snapped, knows he invaded, knows he was a threat, but…there was a time when he was top dog. The one keepin' her and you and the whole damn camp safe."

"At the quarry?" Carol asked. "I think maybe that was always you keeping us safe. You just didn't take the top dog title."

"Yeah, well, lot of baggage comes with that title," Daryl muttered.

"And who's top dog now, would you say?" She handed him a plate to dry and he grabbed a hand towel and obliged.

"There ain't one."

"We need some kind of governing committee or council or cabinet," Carol insisted. "When this all shakes out." When we know who's left alive, she thought, but didn't say it.

He put away the plate he'd just dried, wrapped his arms around her from behind, and nuzzled her neck. "You gonna run for Mayor of Fun Kingdom?"

She squirmed. "No. But we need something." She turned off the water, turned to face him, wrapped her arms around him, and kissed him deeply.

A voice on the CB interrupted them – Laura, from the Sanctuary. Carol walked over to answer it.

"We were wondering if you could share any news with us about Shane and those ten Saviors," Laura said. "Did he ever make it down to Georgia? To Woodbury? Over."

Carol told her what had happened. Laura seemed shocked, saddened, and relieved by the news all at once. "So that's it, then. It's over. We're the last of the breed."

When Carol asked her what she meant by that, Laura told her there were now only fifteen former Saviors still living out of a group that had once numbered over one hundred. "And that's if you count all four of Negan's surviving former wives and the orphan."

Carol caught Daryl's eyes, and he said – "Four wives? Survivin'? How the fuck many wives did he have?"

Carol shook her head.

Laura continued, "It's all so strange. Shane's actually a hero up here, to the coalition. They'll probably build a memorial to him, the Great Liberator, who threw off the chains of the Saviors from their communities. That's how I thought the Sanctuary would see me and Gavin. But we mostly just get to deal with mountains of bullshit now. That's what happens when you don't immediately take off after toppling a tyranny, I guess. And now Jesus has to deal with the Hilltop. I'm rambling. Sorry. It's been a long day. You don't care about any of this stuff. Thank you for the information. Best wishes to your communities down there. Over and out."

"She's talky," Daryl said as the light went out on the radio. "Women. Got to get all their words out."

"Stop." Carol picked up the hand towel and slapped his ass with it. He seized the towel and yanked her toward himself with it and then kissed her.

"Think we might need to go to bed early tonight," he murmured between kisses, and Carol was all agreement. They were saying their goodnights to Sophia and Mika just a half hour later. It was an early bedtime for the girls, but they were exhausted from the recent events, and they went to bed in the glow of a night light – Mika had asked for one - whispering and talking.

Downstairs, in their own bedroom, Carol and Daryl made love, lost in the moment and each other, forgetting, for a brief time, the cloud that still hung over Fun Kingdom and the fates that still hung in the balance.