Two

"Apple."

"What? Nah, too easy."

"Dad."

"I gave you Appalachia. You gave me apple."

"It starts with an 'A!'"

"Fine. Apple. Uh…elephant."

"T…t…telescope."

"Better. Umm…energetic."

"Carburetor." One set of slow, easy footfalls came to a halt, followed by another. "What? It starts with a C."

"Hold on." Daryl Dixon slung his crossbow from over his shoulders and into his steady hands. He swung around just as one of the dead came out from behind a bush not ten feet behind them. Just before he could release a bolt from his own crossbow, a knife hit it right between the eyes, taking it down into the weeds where it belonged. "I had it."

"So did I." The girl stepped past him, her long hair pulled back in a long, brown ponytail. She walked right up to the body and pulled the blade out from its skull with a gristly crack. She took a red rag from the back of her pocket and wiped the blood from the blade. She slid the knife back into the sheath on her belt, holding out her hand while Daryl poured some rubbing alcohol into her palms. She rubbed her hands together before drying them on the front of her shirt. "How much farther? I'm hungry."

"Last sign we passed said six miles to the next town. I'm guessing another mile, mile and a half. Find a place to hole up for the night. Maybe a car with gas if we're lucky." He looked at the girl. "Let's stop for a bit."

"No, I'm ok. Really."

"You been on your feet all day. You're tired."

"I'm ok, Dad." She looked up at him with those big, brown eyes, and he chuckled to himself. She was a tough one. Always had been. Still, the kid was hungry, and while they'd been rationing their supplies, he could hear her stomach growling. So, he reached into his pack and pulled out a granola bar. "No, that's the last one."

"You're hungry. Eat it."

"We can split it."

"I ain't hungry."

"Liar," she muttered. Still, she took the bar from him. "Maybe we'll find a house with a pool. And a dog. Oh! Maybe a puppy…"

"Here we go again with the puppy."

"You were gonna get me one," she reminded him.

"Yeah, and the world ended." She rolled her eyes. "Look, I'll tell you what. If we find a puppy, it's yours. So long as it ain't sick and ain't aggressive, you can have it."

"Really?!"

"Yeah, but that ain't likely to happen. Most dogs around here are gonna be wild if they ain't been bit by the dead yet." He saw her face fall, and he cleared his throat. "But dogs are quick. They can outrun the dead faster than we can." Her eyes brightened again, and he caught a smile. They continued walking for a few minutes before the girl stumbled. "Hey. Let's stop."

"No, dad. I can make it."

"Lydia, I ain't asking." The girl stopped then, huffing softly before nodding her head. Daryl motioned toward and old log along the side of the road, and the two headed over to sit. Lydia took small bites of the granola bar, holding it out to her dad from time to time, offering him a bite he always refused.

They'd had a rough go of things. Not just from the fall but since the start. He never knew what the hell he was doing, long before the shit hit the fan. He sure as hell never counted on being a dad, but he didn't know where the hell he'd have ended up without her.

"How's your shoulder?" Lydia asked after a while.

"Ain't I supposed to be checking on you?" Daryl snorted. She made a face at him and cocked her head to the side. "Shoulder's fine. How's that ankle you twisted last week?"

"Hurts. But at least it ain't broken."

"Isn't."

"You say 'ain't.'"

"Well, you ain't me." He smirked when she rolled her eyes at him. He still wasn't sure how the hell Lydia had turned out so good. He hadn't been the best student in school, but everything seemed to come easy for Lydia. She was in the advanced classes at the junior high, and just before everything went to shit, the principal had been considering moving her up a grade. At thirteen, Lydia was doing work at a tenth-grade level. And on top of that, she had never been a trouble maker.

He could count on two hands how many fights he'd been in by the seventh grade. He'd never started one, but he sure had finished them.

Lydia shrugged her pack off of her shoulders, and she unzipped it to pull a book out. That was one thing she had gotten from her old man. A love of reading. Though some of the stuff she read went way over his head, he tried to scavenge books for her whenever possible. They could only carry so many, so she chose a book, read it, and found another to replace it with when she was done. He was pretty sure this was her sixth book in a month, and she was already almost through it.

"Good book?"

"Not really," she muttered. "But I have to finish it. Maybe it'll get better." She eyed him. "Will you try the radio again?"

"We gotta save the battery. Maybe in the morning."

"Just for a second?" Daryl chewed his lip for a moment before nodding. After all, what could a couple of seconds hurt? They turned the radio on once a week to listen for anyone else, but they hadn't heard much in over a month, and it was getting hard to find places with enough juice in a generator to get the power going long enough to charge the battery.

He turned the radio on, and static hissed over the waves.

"Rick? It's Daryl. You there?" He listened intently, waiting for any interruption in the static. But there was nothing. He watched the hope fade from Lydia's eyes, and he turned the walkie off before stuffing it back in his pack. "We can try again in the morning."

"What if they're gone?" she asked.

"Your Uncle Rick's tough. He's probably just out of range. We're just another thirty miles or so from where we agreed to meet. If he ain't there, we keep going west. Right? We stick to the plan."

"Stick to the plan," Lydia nodded, her voice softer now. She popped the last bite of granola bar in her mouth, stuffed her book back into her pack and shrugged it over her shoulder. She stood and Daryl looked up at her. "Let's keep going."

"You feeling up to it?"

"Yeah. I'm ok. Another mile, right? I can make it. Besides, I wanna finish this book before it gets dark. Maybe find something better." She reached for her dad's hand, and he took it, standing up and pulling her in for a hug.

"You get tired, you tell me, ok? We can stop, find shelter off the road somewhere. Ok?" Lydia nodded. "Alright. Let's get outta here."

...

The old Jeep Cherokee was loaded down with boxes of shelf-stable food, medical supplies, clothes for the upcoming cooler weather and, of course, ammo and weapons. Two shot guns, two small pistols and a set of hunting knives that were great for piercing the skulls of the dead.

Henry's bassinet was wedged between the seats on the floor board. His car seat sat securely in its base, and a half-full box of diapers had dumped out on the seat next to him. Today's goal was to find more diapers and maybe some warm clothes for him. He was growing more and more every day, and the few newborn outfits Carol had for him were becoming too snug.

They'd been driving for nearly an hour when Sophia perked up in the passenger's seat.

"I see a StopMart." Carol eyed the area, seeing a few cars abandoned along the side of the road. She didn't see much movement in the area, so she pulled off into the drive for the once popular chain store.

"Ok," Carol agreed. She pulled up in front of the main doors. They were filthy with bloody handprints. The signs hanging on the front windows were faded from the sun, but Carol could just make out that the last big sale they'd advertised had been twenty percent off of diapers. She looked at Sophia, and Sophia shrugged.

"There might be something left." Carol cut the engine and reached into the glove compartment for a small handgun. Sophia started to reach for one too, but Carol gently pushed her hand away. "I want to help."

"I need you to stay here with him." Carol nodded to the sleeping baby in the backseat. "I'll be ten minutes, tops. I need you to get in the driver's seat. What's the plan."

"No more than ten minutes. If you're not out in ten, I start the car and wait five more minutes. If you're not out by then, I leave. I know. But I can help."

"I don't know how many of those things are in there. It'll be quicker for me to go in, grab what I need and get out. If Henry wakes up, you need to take care of him until I get back. If walkers come, you don't get out of the car. Roll the window down enough to get your knife out. If you can't safely take care of the problem, you wait for me. Don't fire your gun unless you have no choice." Sophia took a deep breath and nodded. "If you see anything else, you tap the horn twice. I'll hear you. I'll be close. Promise me."

"I promise," Sophia nodded. She looked over her shoulder at the car seat before looking back at her mom.

"Ok. I'm getting out. You slide over when I'm out." Carol reached over to hug her daughter briefly before slipping out of the Jeep and closing the door.

Sophia watched her mother bang twice on the front sliding doors before using her knife to pry them open and slip inside. She closed her eyes, looked down at the watch Carol had hung around the emergency brake and memorized the time.

The baby grunted in his sleep, and Sophia leaned over the back of the front seat to peer at him.

"Don't wake up. Don't wake up," she whispered. "Don't worry. Mom's coming back."

Broken glass and overturned shelves created a dangerous path from the front of the store back to the baby department. Carol grabbed a shopping cart from the bay just inside the door and headed back, keeping her eyes trained on her surroundings.

Sun rays filtered in through dirty, debris covered skylights, creating spotty lighting, and Carol could hear rasping and shuffling coming from somewhere toward the back. There was definitely a walker inside, but from the sounds of it, it was trapped. If it wasn't, it would've made an appearance by now.

The closer she neared to the baby department, the further away the shuffling became, and Carol could see—just through a dusty beam of light—a spindly, outstretched hand clawing at the air from behind a heavy metal shelf that had fallen against a wall.

A year ago, shopping in a grocery store sometimes made her claustrophobic. Too many customers. Too many people working, blocking the aisles or the product she needed. She remembered feeling tired after each excursion, ready to get home and curl up with a good book before Sophia got home from school and Ed got home from work. She remembered being anxious all the time as her marriage slowly began to crumble.

She still felt anxious these days, but for different reasons. Now, feeling anxious and being keenly aware of her surroundings was part of what had helped her survive. She couldn't count how many close calls she'd had, but there had been many.

The difference between then and now was that she'd anchored herself in that desperate fear and pulled herself through and out the other side to evolve into the person she needed to be to keep her family safe. She never would've thought she'd be a great shot or that she could get enough strength behind a knife to pierce a skull. She never thought she'd be able to track or hunt or kill or skin an animal for survival. Maybe weeks of surviving on jerky and stale popcorn had woken up some dormant trait from an ancestry that lived thousands of years ago. Whatever it was, fear and hunger had saved her life, and she greeted the memories of her old life and her old self warmly, like old friends.

The wheel of the shopping cart caught the edge of a piece of glass, and the scraping noise against the cement floor grated on Carol's eardrums. She winced, and the rasping growls from the trapped walker became more agitated. She pressed on, turning up the diaper aisle. The cloth diapers were all picked over, but a few receiving blankets lay strewn on the floor. She grabbed the ones that weren't stained up, and she found a box of diapers, bent up and stuffed under a lower shelf. There weren't many in it, but they looked about the right size, so she figured it was better than nothing.

She'd gotten creative since Henry's birth, using small towels and old t-shirts to diaper him with, but the cloth diapers were ideal. Disposable diapers were even better these days, especially if they were going to be in the car a lot.

She turned down the next aisle, only to smack her cart right into the leg of a walker pinned under a fallen shelf. The walker reached for her, snapping its decaying jaw in her direction. Spindly fingers curled around the wire grid of the shopping cart, and Carol jerked the cart back, grabbed her knife and plunged it firmly into the walker's head. It went still, and she removed her knife, wiped it off and tucked it back in the sheath on her belt.

With a heavy sigh, she resigned herself to carefully stepping over the body and the fallen shelf to retrieve some diaper rash cream and some infant fever drops. She checked the expiration before tucking them in her pack. Returning to her cart, she moved on to the clothes, picking out clothes in the next few sizes Henry would undoubtedly grow in and out of quickly.

Despite living at the end of the world, Henry was a good eater, and Carol felt like he grew a little more every day. She remembered Sophia being so dainty and small, even up through her first birthday. Henry already had a little plumpness to his cheeks, his little belly pudgy after a good feeding. She was just grateful he'd taken so easily to breastfeeding. She'd had a difficult time with Sophia, and her milk just hadn't come in as much as she needed it to. She'd worried so much about Henry going hungry, but that hadn't been an issue so far.

Still, she found herself perusing the formula aisle. It was mostly picked through, too, but she was able to find a few cans. Maybe she'd never need them, but she had been preparing Sophia for anything since the day she found out she was pregnant. Carol knew that if something were to happen to her, Henry would still have to eat, and formula would be Sophia's only option to care for her brother.

She hated even thinking about leaving her twelve-year-old alone in this world with a newborn, but it was a very real possibility these days, and there would be nobody to come and take care of them.

Time was running short, so Carol grabbed the few cans of formula that were left before starting toward the front. The walker that had been trapped before snarled and snapped its rotten teeth in her direction. She wondered who that walker had been. It looked like a woman. Maybe it had happened in the chaos at the end. Maybe she'd been pinned there until she died, forever stuck between a wall and a metal shelf, unable to taste flesh it so desperately craved.

But before she could go over to put the walker down, Carol heard something that made her blood run cold. Blaring through the grubby department store doors was the frantic, rapid sounding of the Jeep's horn beckoning Carol out. She swallowed the hard knot in her throat and took off running, rickety cart clattering against the old tile floor as the trapped walker clawed aimlessly at the air behind her.