The "laundry truck" is a flat-bed farm truck and there are nine people, including Sophia and Carol, who hitch a ride to the stream on it this afternoon. There is only one other child helping, a teenager with pretty, dark brown curls and long lashes who says, "Hi, Sophia" and then gives Sophia a once over like she's judging her.
"Hi, Carina," Sophia replies quietly.
"What happened to the rainbow shirt you were wearing to school this morning?" asks Carina in a tone that suggests she disdains the rainbow shirt.
"My mom's cutting it up for scraps," Sophia answers.
"Ignore her," Carol whispers to her daughter. Then she looks around and wonders if these other women are all doing the washing for their "sponsors" and how the one solitary man sitting across from her with his arm around a wicker laundry basket ended up having to wash his own clothes.
As the truck rattles out the gate, trailed by the same armed cowboy on horseback they saw when they first arrived, the man across from Carol asks, "Is that your daughter? Your actual daughter?"
"Yes. This is Sophia. I'm Carol."
"Lucky," he says, his face clouded with anger or jealousy. "I lost both of mine."
"I'm sorry for your loss," Carol says simply.
When they're at the stream, people get to washing, three of the women together in a laughing group, two in another, and the gloomy man off on his own. Carina also picks a solitary spot. The man on horseback catches up to them and begins leading his steed back and forth over the bank, holding his rifle upward in the air, finger just off the trigger. The driver of the truck takes two, ten-gallon, blue, plastic storage jugs from the cab and comes down to the stream to begin filling them. Carol supposes the camp does that for emergency storage water. They plan well here.
As they begin washing, Carol's reminded of doing this work in the quarry lake with Jacqui, Lori, Amy, and Andrea. Amy and Andrea followed Shane when the group split, over Dale's protests. Dale went with them, because he didn't want to part with "his girls," but he would have preferred if they all went with Rick. Jacqui chose Rick, but then she chose death at the CDC.
After a while, the gloomy man comes over and sits on a rock next to Carol and puts his basket on another rock. He gets his washboard situated in the water. "Sorry I was rude earlier," he says. "I'm Ryan. Ryan Samuels."
"I'm Carol. But I already told you that. Carol Doyle."
Carol's about to say more when snooty Carina comes over and tells Sophia, "You can come sit and do your wash by me. I'll let you."
Carol raises an eyebrow. "You'll let her?"
"It's okay, Mom," Sophia hastens. "I'll go wash with Carina."
"You can share my laundry soap," Carina says. "Just bring your washboard and one of your baskets."
When Sophia's gone to join Carina at another spot in the stream, Carol mutters, "Let her."
"Your daughter's playing it smart," Ryan assures her. "She would do well to befriend Carina."
"And why's that?"
"She's Jefe's daughter."
"Oh?" That's interesting. The camp leader doesn't have a servant to do his laundry? He actually makes his mansion-dwelling daughter do it?
"You're not the only one who got lucky enough not to lose all your children in this world." Ryan grits his teeth together. "Sorry if I sound…it's just, it was particularly awful, the way I lost mine."
Carol's not sure how a loss could be particularly awful in this world. What's more awful than being devoured alive? But she doesn't ask. She just sets her laundry soap aside and wrings out one of Daryl's shirts.
"My daughter, Lizzie…" he says. "She just…she couldn't get it into her mind that they aren't people. The thrashers." He sighs. "And she wanted to prove to me they were." He shakes his head. "I'm sorry. There's no reason to burden a stranger with this." He scrubs violently against the washboard.
"How did you get stuck doing the wash with the women?" Carol asks. She's trying to lighten the mood with her quip, but she's also trying to size up this place. The gender roles seem fairly rigid here, despite the weapons training in school.
"I'm a sponsee. I'm doing my sponsor's wash. And my own."
"Oh. I didn't know men had sponsors."
"Everyone who came in after December 5th of last year had to have a sponsor. No entrance without a sponsor. And I came in January."
"A man volunteered to sponsor you?" Carol asks. "Is he outer circle or inner circle?"
"Neither. Just a hundred percenter. One of the original farmhands here. He gives me twenty-five percent of his rations for my service, and a roof over my head in his trailer, and, well…I gained entrance because he agreed to sponsor me."
"So there are no rules about how much a sponsor has to share?" she asks.
"No. That's between the sponsor and the sponsee. I mean, you can file a complaint with Jefe if you think you're being starved, but sponsors usually win those cases. And I get by. I trade where I can, for extras. A lot of people do here."
Carol knows that. Bonnie was trading sex to Merle after all.
"There's a lady," Ryan continues, "a hundred percenter, who gives me two eggs a week just to give her foot rubs."
"Foot rubs?" Carol asks with a raised eyebrow.
He chuckles. "In this case, a foot rub really just means a foot rub. I'll give you one. Fifteen minutes for one egg. Anytime you want. I'm really good at it. I used to be a podiatrist in the old world."
"I'm not sure my sponsor would take kindly to me trading his eggs for foot rubs."
"Who's your sponsor?"
Carol scrubs the laundry soap over a pair of Merle's boxers. They have candy canes on them. She's surprised they don't have naked women "Daryl Dixon."
"Ah. A hundred and fifty percenter. Lucky you. And he even has that cottage! I'm surprised Jefe let him keep that now that Merle's dead. It made sense with them both in there, and both being in the outer circle, but with just Daryl now? Then again, he is the camp's most valuable hunter by far. Rumor is, he'd be inner circle if it weren't for his bad attitude."
Carol snorts. Water splashes up form the stream as she lifts her hand to try to hide the sound. Ryan smiles. "He is a little grumpy," she says.
"At least he's not as bad as Merle. Just between you and me…Merle was an asshole. He was useful for clearing thrashers and supply running, but a real asshole. Please don't tell Daryl I said that."
"I've had one conversation with Daryl. I don't think you have to worry about me running off at the mouth to him."
"He's not much of a talker," Ryan concedes.
"How important is hunting?" Carol wonders aloud, "On a farm like this?"
"Well, we keep the chickens alive for eggs and the cows for milk and the horses for work. And we have seventy people now. So it's pretty important. We did eat a horse in February. It broke its leg. And they're talking about putting an aging dairy cow out to pasture, if you know what I mean. But in the winter, especially? Wild game is important. You've seen the smokehouse?"
"No."
"Daryl will fill it this fall, and there will be venison for winter. Bear, maybe."
"So he's not just a squirrel hunter?"
Ryan chuckles. "No. But there are lot of squirrels. They evade the thrashers better."
"I'm glad you came over to do laundry with me," Carol says. "I'm learning a lot."
"Ask me anything. I've been here seven months."
"What do you think of Jefe?"
He's about to respond when a muted gunshot startles them both. It's just the horseback mounted guard, shooting a walker. His rifle has a silencer, but it only muffles the sound.
The man who had been filling water jugs earlier crosses the stream by hopping from rock to rock and then crawls up the other side of the bank to check on the corpse. He gives a thumbs up to the guard and then searches its pockets. Then he pulls off a boot, but a rotted foot comes off with it, and he winces and drops it.
Carol repeats her question.
"I think Jefe gets the job done. But forget Jefe. Have you met the butler?"
"Yes," Carol answers with a chuckle. "That was…odd."
"He worked for the family who used to own this place, apparently," Ryan tells her. "The owners weren't farmers, really. They just wanted to live on a farm. They found it romantic, I guess. They didn't even manage the place. Jefe was their farm manager. The owners made their fortune in the mining industry or something."
"What's the butler's name? Daryl just called him Jeeves."
Ryan snorts. "I wouldn't have taken Daryl for a reader of P.G. Wodehouse."
"Well, they also made a television show."
Sophia laughs at something, and Carol looks up and sees Carina smiling alongside her. Maybe Carina is not such a snobby little bitch after all. Maybe it's just hard being the elusive camp leader's daughter.
[*]
When they're heading back in the laundry truck to camp, rattling a bit in the bed, their wet clothes in baskets and ready to hang on lines when they return, the roar of a motorcycle reaches Carol's ears.
Daryl comes flying by her side of the truck, pushing the bike as hard as he can, gripping the handlebars fiercely. He weaves in front of the cab and speeds toward the iron fence, raising an arm, swirling a hand, and yelling, "Open up! Open up!"
The next thing she knows, a pick-up truck is on their tail honking loudly for them to move out of the way. Carol slides into Sophia as the farm truck swerves into the grassy shoulder to let the pick-up speed by, with Garrison at the wheel.
Cody lies flat on his back in the bed of the pickup with his head in the lap of a man Carol doesn't know. Cody's farmers-plaid shirt is ripped open, and the man's hands are pressed down onto a pile of gauze atop Cody's chest. Crimson blood seeps into the white cotton.