The sound of gunshots died away slowly, the smell of powder hanging thick in the air. Deanna let her hand drop, gun still in her grasp; she didn't want to let go of it yet, not when the barn doors were still yawning open to reveal cavernous, seemingly-but-not-necessarily-empty darkness, not when corpses littered the ground like particularly morbid confetti. She wasn't fully certain what was going on - didn't know the people around her well enough to be sure - but she had at least a sense that something either very bad or very good had just happened, and no one was quite sure which outcome it was.

Hershel was still on the ground, one knee holding himself up in an awkward kneel. His hands were clasped in front of his face, covering his mouth and nose as though trying to drive away a stench. She wasn't sure if he was trying to block the smell of blood, of rot, or of gunpowder; she wasn't sure she'd blame him for any of the possibilities.

Something like a scream rent the air, the sound of thudding feet accompanying it. Deanna turned just in time to see something blur past her, and it took another pirouette to recognize the farmer's younger daughter as she hurried towards the bodies. Deann stopped herself from getting closer, from stopping the girl's trajectory before she ran in amongst the corpses; it wasn't her business what the Greene girl did no matter how dangerous it might be.

The girl slid to the ground, white shirt smeared with dirt in the process. She was crying, tears dripping down her face and spattering against the rotten skin of the creature underneath her, and Deanna would be willing to bet that she knew that particular walker personally… and then she was regretting her decision to not stop the girl as the corpse sprang to life, hand lifting to thread into her ponytail and yank. The girl fought it for a minute, but she wasn't going to win, not for long, and outside assistance was about the only thing that would make a difference.

She still had her gun in hand, so she lifted it, aiming at where the thing's head met its neck. It was far enough away from the girl - Beth, if she heard what her sister was shouting - that she wouldn't get hit, and they needed to act quickly. Yeah, maybe Daryl and Rick and the others would reach her in time, but it wasn't a risk to take.

Instead, she fired.

The creature thudded to the ground, hand dropping laxly out of Beth's hair. The girl was still crying, making panicked noises that were too quiet, too scared, too breathless to be screams and yet were well on their way there anyway. She scrambled backwards, hands and feet scrabbling for purchase until she was far enough away that she just collapsed.

No one talked. Rick stepped over to Deanna and reached out, patting her on the shoulder, but it wasn't any degree of comforting. It was a touch too heavy for that, a touch too ineffectual. It was more annoying than anything else when Hershel was still sitting there unmoving, when Beth was still sprawled in the dirt, when most people were still focused on the walkers. It wasn't a time for feelings or emotions from the group who just slaughtered the things Hershel viewed as people; it was a time for some of them the Greenes through their grief, and for the rest to be handling the walkers strewn across the property.

She wasn't the only one thinking so, either. Not if the way Shane was looking out at the bodies with calculation in his eyes said anything, much less the way Daryl still had his gun in a too-tight grip and the blonde one - Andrea, maybe? - still had her gun up.

Hershel was first to move, pushing himself into his feet and heading over to his daughter. If Deanna didn't know better, she'd wonder if he were a walker; there was something just wrong about the motion, something stumbling and numb. She didn't know him well - had only just met him, had only just met everyone - but she knew him well enough to know that it was very much not him, even as he helped Beth up and let her sob against his shirt.

"I want him gone." He didn't move when he said it, kept his eyes pinned on his daughter's hair as it splayed out against the no-longer-starched fabric of his shirt. "I want him gone." They knew who he meant. They all did.

Rick raised a hand, not seeming to notice or care that Hershel couldn't see it. "Now, wait a second-"

"Rick, I said I want him gone. I want him off of my property, you hear?"

"Hershel, I understand where you're coming from, but-"

Deanna couldn't help shifting in place, sucking in a breath because damn. They'd just found a place to stay and it was already being threatened, destroyed by a conflict between good values and shit diplomacy. Yeah, the barn wasn't safe, but that didn't mean Shane should have just killed them all, not when they were all indebted to Hershel for his hospitality.

As much as she expected Hershel to be the next to offer a rejoinder, it was Daryl who spoke instead. "Rick." Pretty much everyone turned to look, and Deanna could have predicted the way he stiffened before having to see it. It was never especially comfortable to have ten people's attention, and nothing made her think that he'd be one of the rare few who enjoyed it. "Ain't just Shane needs ta think 'bout leavin'."

Rick seemed to know what he meant, even though no one else did. "Fair point."

Lori looking from her husband to Daryl to Shane, oddly-hostile confusion on her face, and Deanna wasn't quite sure at whom that hostility was aimed. "Rick? What's he mean? What's going on?"

He didn't answer right away. "Carl. Sophia. You two don't need to hear this."

As, Deanna was swiftly becoming aware, was the status quo, Carl took offense. "I can take it."

"No." Rick's voice was flat, unyielding. Deanna hadn't heard it that way before, and definitely hadn't heard it aimed at a kid, much less his own kid, before. "No, Carl, I need you to listen. If you can handle being an adult, you're gonna go inside when I tell you. You hearin' me?"

"But-"

Benny stepped forward before Deanna processed it. "I can take him. And her. Right, Sophia?"

The little girl nodded, shooting a ghost of a smile at them. "Yeah."

Deanna could see a flash of worry pass across the mother's face - Carol, she remembered - and she would have intervened had Benny not seen it too. "Don't worry. I promise, I'll take good care of her." And then, upon receiving a hesitantly approving nod, she smiled her usual bright smile and tucked Sophia under one arm, Carl strolling sullenly on the other side. "C'mon, I'll show you a game I used to play with my sister…"

They were barely a few steps away before Lori was already asking again, "What's he talking about, Rick?" She didn't even last a second more before looking over at Daryl with a sharp enough expression that Deanna wanted to flinch (and she wasn't the one on the receiving end) before rephrasing, "What are you talking about?"

Rick stepped in, answering the initial question. "We, uh-"

Carol cut in. "We, Rick?"

He stopped, nodded. "That's fair, too." A shift, leaving his hand on the handle of the Colt Python dangling off his gun belt. "Last night, I decided to talk to Randall. I didn't wanna interrupt the good mood until the right time, and… well, this sure ain't the right time, but it's the only one we got." He sniffed heavily, passed his hand through his hair. "I asked Daryl to help 'nd we went over to… talk to him."

"Talk to him?" Dale sounded a bitter mix of skeptical and angry. "You don't mean talk to him, do you?"

Honestly, Deanna was surprised it had to be a question. And that they hadn't yet figured out Rick's decision for Randall. It wasn't exactly that hard to figure out, after all, Add together Rick and Daryl disappearing for a night, Rick's more-beleaguered than usual personality as he'd picked at his dinner and Daryl's more-reserved even than usual personality as he'd wolfed his down, and then the state of Daryl's hands when he was packing up to go track down Rick after he'd disappeared again that morning, and the picture was pretty damn clear.

Rick shook his head anyway, answering the question that didn't need answering. "We weren't friendly. But he told us what we need to know."

"And that took torture?" Dale's outrage was getting familiar, like a worn-out recording that ran the same paths so many times that it skipped a track occasionally.

"Look-" Rick sighed, dropping whatever he was going to say. "I ain't gonna apologize. It needed to be done; I did it."

Carol raised an eyebrow, and Deanna made a mental note to never cross her if she could avoid it. "You did it?"

He swallowed harshly. "I didn't-" He shook his head. "Yeah, I take your point. I asked Daryl to do it, but that ain't the point-"

Dale turned to Carol before Rick's sentence could even fade. "You knew about this?"

She shook her head, then shrugged. "Not in so many words. Came across 'em when Rick here was deciding not to tell us about it." She paused, eyes boring sharply into Rick's. Then, she turned to Daryl and asked, "What'd he say?"

The deputy spoke first. "Said-"

"Wasn't talking to you, Rick." Carol didn't bother looking at him as she said it.

Daryl shifted, and Deanna could practically see his discomfort, but he spoke anyway. "Got 'bout thirty men. Heavy artillery. They roll through here, our boys 're dead. 'N' our women 're gonna wish they were."

She could see the moment the news finally sank into everyone, the way everyone's faces turned into their own respective blend of fearful of the potential for an oncoming assault and angry, presumably at Rick for not telling them… well, any of this. Hell, she couldn't blame them; maybe she wasn't justified in it because she had only just joined the group, but they'd been trusting him - by default of him being the "leader" of their new group - and he'd been lying to them? Omitting a kinda crucial fact that had the potential to damn them all? That was shit leadership, especially in the brave new world they found themselves in. (Although, judging by the fact that she could see similarly disgruntled-ranging-to-furious expressions on other people's faces, maybe she wasn't unjustified after all.)

Lori looked a little squeamish, but she still asked, "What's that got to do with what you said? Something about leaving?"

Deanna tried not to roll her eyes. "You mean the shooting, right?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

Lori blinked, and Deanna decided to take the burden of explaining. "If those guys were followin' us, they're bound to've heard us firing. The screaming, even. Walkers' 're gonna be comin' either way. This place ain't gonna be all that safe anymore."

Daryl nodded. "We gotta at least think 'bout leavin'." He looked at Hershel, who was, at least, still tuned in to the conversation. "You too. 'F we're leavin', you and yours might wanna tag along. Ain't much bad 'bout havin' a vet 'round. More people, neither."

"That's a good point." Rick nodded. "Hershel?"

"This is my home, Mr. Grimes. My farm. I'm gonna die here, and that's that."

Deanna could see Rick's expression flip into annoyance for a split second before reverting to something a little more deferent. "I understand that, Hershel, but this ain't something to just blow off. Thirty men. And yeah, you might die here, but it'll be different for your daughters."

Hershel looked up, and the expression on his face was somewhere north of flinty and somewhere south of pissed the hell off, buried beneath his usual countenance. "Are you insinuating-"

"I'm not insinuating anything. I'm telling you outright that you've gotta think of your daughters."

For someone still in the midst of a rather serious existential crisis - judging by the way he kept looking at the dead bodies from the barn sitting in front of him, the way his hands were shaking as they carded through his daughter's hair, from the hollow way he was speaking - he was following the conversation remarkably well. "And you're sure of this?"

Deanna cut in. "Yeah." She nodded. "They've tried it before." She didn't go into details.

He didn't ask. "Are you one hundred percent positive they're gonna come by here?"

She shook her head. "No. But what's a certainty anymore? The question is, are you willing to take that chance?" He opened his mouth to speak again, and she interrupted, one last thing to say. "Seems to me you've got a choice here. Rick's telling you what he'd do; he'd leave. Rick also told you that those things - those walkers - were dangerous. That they weren't people, weren't just sick. And call me crazy, but I'm pretty damn sure you're realizin' that he was right. So you need ta ask yourself: you wanna go against another threat he's warnin' you about? When you're gamblin' with your life and your daughters' and your family's?"

He shifted, arms tightening around Beth as she lay on the ground. "I'm not crazy about how you're speaking to me…" He fixed her with a glower, bringing the unfortunate feeling that she was back in class and the teacher was correcting her tone, before turning that glower onto Rick. "But there are a lot of things I'm not crazy about that seem to be happening anyway."

Rick looked between the two of them, and Deanna would be willing to bet that his expression was firmly surprised. "What does that mean?"

"I didn't want to believe you. You told me that there was no cure, that those people were dead, not sick. I chose not to believe that. But when Shane shot Lou in the chest and she just kept coming… That's when I knew what an ass I'd been. That Annette's been dead for a long time and that I was feeding a rotting corpse!" He didn't stop staring at the body the entire time he said it, eyes fixed on the walker Deanna had put down not long ago. She stifled the instinctive flare of guilt. She'd had to, after all. "But you found that girl. Sophia. You found her."

Rick shifted awkwardly, looking at Carol with a sheepish expression on his face. "Yeah, Daryl found her."

"Despite the things - the walkers, you call 'em - being out there. Despite the people, and the food shortages, and all the odds against it… Sophia's back. She's in that house, right there." He gestured. No one really turned to look; they all knew what he meant. "I wanted there to still be hope. I needed there to be hope. And I looked in the wrong place." He was quiet for a second before adding, "I can't profess to understand God's plan. For all I know, He sent you to me to rectify that. Maybe He sent you to lead me to the next stage of my journey."

Rick nodded. "And that means?"

"That means that you've got an impressive orator right there, Rick. And she makes a good point." Hershel continued to look like he was barely hanging onto his sanity by a thread, but he still nodded. "I don't like the fact that you decided to keep this from us, from your people… But we'll follow your lead."

Another nod from Rick and he was turning to the others. "Well, then. We need to make a decision now. Do we stay or do we go?"

Carol fixed him with another of her pointed expressions. "You mean you're actually asking us?"

Rick met her eyes with something that might be termed bravery but was probably termed stupidity. "I told you, that was… that was extenuating."

She nodded inscrutably. "I know what you said."

For the first time since the conversation started, Shane moved. "Well, Rick. You know, I'm actually impressed. Finally movin' past that soft shit, huh?"

Rick wasn't amused. "Shane, you're at least part of why we're in this mess, so you shut the hell up and let us solve it. Okay, brother?" A grudging nod. "So, I'm askin'. Who's for leavin'?"

– – –

The consensus was reached pretty quickly. There was the occasional issue that had to be resolved (which usually had Deanna rolling her eyes because holy crap were these people naïve), but the decision to leave the farm was still made remarkably efficiently.

What was not handled efficiently was the entire rest of the plan to leave. The decisions about vehicles and supplies, packing and the distribution of where people would sit in the cars. Some of them mattered - making a plan was, at least, a good sign, and Deanna had also made quite certain that they'd have a rendezvous in case anything went wrong - but they had to be moving stat and overthinking everything really wasn't helping anything.

Of course, the question of transportation was an unfortunately complicated one and one of the ones that actually mattered. The fact of the matter was that they had to balance cramped quarters and gas mileage in one big mathematical word problem that held zero margin for error.

Luckily, that, at least, was something Deanna could help with. So she interrupted their latest round of what-if this and what-if that to add, "Hey, look… We've got some vehicles stashed somewhere out there… At one of the farmhouses near where Daryl found us. Not many, but they might help."

Rick nodded. "They end up being useful, we could go out and get 'em. What are they?"

"Bikes. Two of 'em. One for me and Benny, one for Dad. We'd just filled 'em up when we stashed 'em to scout the area."

"Daryl?"

He shrugged. "Could be useful. They in good shape?"

"Yeah." She nodded. "Got mine before the apocalypse. Dad found his after, but it's still pretty decent."

"What kind?"

"Mine's an '88 Virago. Dad's got a Harley Ironhead."

Daryl nodded at Rick. "Maneuverability's better'n a car. Three scouts, not just one. Gas-per-mile's better, too. And… figure two people a bike, that's six people don't need a spot in one o' the cars."

Rick shifted, looking out at the trees. "How far away did you hide 'em?"

Wes shrugged. "As the crow flies? Dunno. Stashed 'em at a farmhouse, like she said, so Hershel might have a sense."

He was still outside with them, Beth held tight to him but no longer crying. He was still oddly calm. "Describe it."

"Kinda like yours. Red trim, though, not green. One story, not two. One chimney, I think?" Deanna nodded at her father. "One chimney. Door was dark brown, almost black."

Hershel nodded. "The Brooks' place. Not far from that farmhouse you thought Sophia might have stayed in. About five minutes closer, actually."

Rick nodded. Twice. "Okay, then. Sounds like a plan." He reached over for the paper he'd been using to keep track of… well, everything. "That puts us at everything else on this list and three bikes… and nineteen people to sit-"

Dale chose that precise moment to interject. "Nineteen? Aren't you forgetting Randall?"

Rick shook his head. "No. We're leaving precisely because of his group. He's not coming with us."

"You don't think we should have a say in that?"

"It's not… Look, it's not like we're gonna kill him." He huffed out a frustrated sigh (and that particular Rick Grimes sigh was fully justified, in Deanna's opinion, since she felt like doing a lot worse) and bowed his head. "Fine. Is there anyone who wishes to put in a word for bringing Randall along?" No one even moved. "There we go. He's not coming."

"Rick-"

"No." Deanna interjected, shaking her head. "No." Dale at least looked properly chastened for a second, but he still tried to interject. She didn't let him. "I said no. You lost the vote, and you weren't there. We-" She gestured at her dad, glad that he wasn't looking at her, and then back at the house. "-were. We know what it was like. The answer. Is no."

"But-"

Rick shook his head. "We have nineteen people to seat… and we've got more seats than we need. We're lucky. It'll be relatively easy."

"Nah, ain't easy." Daryl reached over and tapped the paper. "Gotta think 'bout family units. You, Lori, Carl: that's three. Carol's prolly gonna stick with Soph-" He looked over at her, and Deanna followed his eyeline to see the resulting nod. "So that's two. Glenn 'n' Maggie." Another brief pause, and then he was looking at Deanna herself. "You're gonna ride with Benny, ain't ya?"

She nodded. "You bet your ass I am."

If she didn't know better - and she wasn't sure she did know better - he snorted once before saying, "That's two."

Rick nodded. "How do you see it working out, then?"

"Deanna 'n' Benny use th' Virago. Hershel's got his Silverado with four other seats, so that's Glenn, Maggie, Beth, and Jimmy. Hyundai's got good mileage 'n' five seats, so that's got you 'n' Lori 'n' Carl. I've got my bike, so I c'n take someone. Wes, you good sharin', too?"

He shrugged. "Sure."

"So that's two more folks seated on bikes, 'n' two empty seats with you 'n' Lori. Gonna need one other; truck 'd do best. Three seats, storage, the works."

"Shane's gotta ride with me." Rick shifted, marking the name down beside their rather-limited notes. "Where's the RV in all this?"

Dale shook his head. "It's just a matter of time until that hose breaks again. It's still jury-rigged, and that's without being on the road. And besides, the mileage is horrible."

Rick blinked. Deanna gathered - from that particular expression, as well as from the name Horvaths scrawled in paint on the RV's wall - that the decision was a significant one. "You sure?"

He shrugged, with less than full conviction, but not enough hesitance to prompt a change. "'Bout time she got a rest. This place seems as nice of one as any. I'll ride with you, Rick, if that suits."

A nod. "Sure, that's fine."

Daryl shifted, lifting the pencil from Rick's hand and marking something down that Deanna couldn't see. "That's the Hyundai filled. Five open seats, five ta place. Bikes 're hardest, so… Two seats 'cross two bikes."

Carol stepped over, peeking at the sheet. "Soph's been a bit… freaked out, lately. She never really liked closed spaces, but it's… she's worse than I've ever seen her. Any chance we could share on a bike instead of the truck?"

Rick looked over at Daryl. "You got enough room for Carol and Sophia on that thing?"

He paused for a calculating second, but eventually, slowly, nodded. "Yeah. Should work. Ain't got a helmet f'r th' li'l one, though."

Deanna nodded. "I've got one. Never wear it myself. Might be a bit big, but better'n nothing."

Carol smiled, and it was the first time Deanna had seen that expression on the woman's face; it suited her. "Thank you both."

Deanna almost didn't notice Daryl shifting uncomfortably under the statement because she was almost too distracted by her own shifting uncomfortably under the statement. She ended up settling on, "Yeah." (Judging from the way it sounded a bit echoey, she was reasonably confident that Daryl had chosen that particular response as well.)

Rick interrupted the ensuing awkwardness with, "Well, then. T-Dog, Andrea, Patricia." He turned, looking at those in question. "Y'all got any preferences on truck versus bike?"

Whatever the first two were going to say, they were interrupted by Patricia. "I've…" She laughed lightly to herself, interrupting herself temporarily. "I've always wanted to ride on a bike before, if that's alright with you."

Wes shrugged, smiled. "Sure, no problem."

Rick looked over at the other two. "Y'all good with the truck?" They nodded. "Okay, then. Guess we've got a plan." He paused, folding up the slip of paper and tucking it into a pocket. "Hershel: we need you to show us how to get to that farmhouse. Daryl: you, Deanna, and Wes need to go get those bikes. We'll start packing in time for y'all to get back. Good?" A general consensus of nodding passed around the room. "Good. You three be safe out there." A moment of silence, then, "Alright, everyone, let's move."

And so they did.