When they pull into the strip mall parking lot, there are only three lonely walkers bumbling around, stragglers who have lost their herd. Daryl takes one out with a bolt almost the moment he steps out of the cab. Carol shoots a second, and then Daryl, after recovering his bolt, whirls and uses it to stab the third.
Four chewed-over bodies lie in the parking lot, which may be why these walkers remained while the rest of the herd migrated away. They were trying to gnaw off every last morsel of the meat. Carol looks the carcasses over. She always does when she finds dead human bodies, wondering if she'll recognize some familiar feature, like Rick's silver revolver, Glenn's beloved baseball cap, Beth's golden curls, or Lori's heart-shaped locket. But there are no such artifacts, and these bodies are too far consumed, the remnants too matted and caked with blood to make any guess about skin or hair color.
"Hey," Daryl says softly. "You a'right?"
"Yeah." She looks away from the gnawed and bloody bones to scan the mall front. It's a small, one-story brick-front strip mall, just a single straight horizontal line with no turns. It looks worn and old and out-of-date. There's a barber shop, a FedEx Store, a BBQ joint, a shoe repair shop, a bail bond's office, a very old-school-looking dentist's office, a liquor store, and a tobacco shop. She nods toward the tobacco shop. "I see why you wanted to come here now."
"Didn't even know it was there," he insists.
"There's not even a convenience store."
"BBQ joint might have food."
"The bail bond's office might have a gun. The dentist might have pain killers and other useful medical supplies."
They split up and clear the perimeter again, like they did last time, meeting in the middle in the back, once again near a dumpster, but a blue one this time. There's banging and a rattling and growling inside, as a walker tries to stand up in there, and Daryl just closes the heavy metal lid on it.
They start on the left side of the strip. The barber shop is locked up tight, with no sign of life inside. "Should we bother with it?" Daryl asks.
"They probably have lollipops and soda to keep the kids calm."
"Always thinking."
"And we could probably use some extra scissors and straight razors." Her eyes flit over the stubble that lines his cheeks. "God knows you could."
He runs a hand along the side of his face. "Thought women liked the five o'clock shadow."
"Yours is more like a 2 AM shadow."
"Pfft." He ducks his head and smiles at her. "Could give me a shave like you gave me a haircut."
"You trust me that much?"
"Long as I don't mention Denim Dreams again, think I'll be safe."
She chuckles. "Then let's save the barber's shop for last, when we're sure everything else is clear."
They stroll to the FedEx Store. "Unless they got a shotgun under the counter…" Daryl mutters.
"They wouldn't. Not at a corporate chain like that. Let's pass."
They walk on to the BBQ joint, which has at least eight walkers that they can see and count through the glass and several feasted-upon bodies in booths and on the floor. The walkers soon spy them and lurch to the front door and windows and claw at the glass. More pour out from behind the counter. Carol counts a dozen total.
"Place must be unlocked then," Daryl says.
At least six walkers are piled directly on the door. "I'm not opening that door."
"Just keep 'em thirsty," Daryl says. "I'll go around and come at 'em through the service door if it's open." He draws his handgun.
"You don't want your rifle?"
"Close quarters. Rather have the handgun."
She raises an eyebrow. "How many rounds in that magazine, though?"
"Twelve. I drop it when its empty, draw my knife. It'll be fine. You just move out of the line of fire when you hear the first shot."
"Would you at least put on the protective pike cleaning gear I checked out?"
"Can't move fast enough in that shit." He drops the safety from his gun and racks the slide. "Be fine. Promise. Done more 'n twelve at once before. Just keep 'em up front."
Before she can argue, he's striding toward the end of the mall and rounding the back. Carol goes to the far edge of the window and pounds there to draw them all to one corner. They begin to peel off bit by bit to come her way, until only one lingers near the door.
Suddenly, a blast sounds, and the lingering creature's brains splatter against the glass door, which then cracks as the bullet continues through. The glass continues to crack-crack-crack like a growing spider web until the entire top and bottom panes instantly shatter and rains down on the sidewalk.
Carol jogs quickly backward, out of the line of fire she knows Daryl will soon unleash. She raises her own rifle because a walker has turned back to the door and begun crawling through the bottom half below the metal support bar. She waits until it's halfway out to shoot it in the head. Meanwhile, shot after shot erupts inside, and then Daryl's gun goes silent.
When it does, Carol runs for the front door, jerks it open, and flies inside. She finds Daryl backed against the drive-thru window on the kitchen-side of the counter by the last of the living, snarling walkers. His empty handgun, slide racked open, lies next to the cash register, and one of his knives is stuck deep in the head of a walker that is slumped face-down on the orange counter. Daryl kicks the approaching walker back and draws his second knife, but Carol's not taking any chances. She closes one eye, aims, and sends a bullet straight through the side of its skull before it can lurch one more step toward him. The round takes off the top of the creature's head, and brain matter splatters Daryl's face. He closes his eyes and frowns.
Carol shoulders her rifle, hurries through the swinging door in the counter, and steps over the fallen walker. She reaches around Daryl and flicks his red and blue bandanna out of his back pocket. Then she uses it to wipe his face clean.
"You're such a mother," he tells her. "
"Sorry, instinct." She hands him the folded, bloody kerchief.
"Gonna wipe my ass next?"
"You've got some weird fetishes."
He snorts.
She smiles. She can't stop. She feels like she's in high school all over again, flirting by the lockers, back when her world still seemed limitless. So she teases him again, "You're welcome."
"For wiping my face?"
"For saving you from that thrasher that was about to bite you."
"You shouldn't of shot," he says. "Was drawing my knife, 'bout to stab it. A tenth of second's difference, and you'd have shot through my damn hand."
Carol's not smiling anymore. "I didn't shoot your hand. I shot that walker. I brought it down because it was about to take a bite out of you."
"It was 'bout to get a blade in the side of its head."
"I hit the target."
"Got to think about your target and what's beyond it. Not just your target. Seriously could have taken my hand off."
"Fine. You're right. It was a shit shot."
"Didn't say that. Ain't what – "
She turns away from him. Her voice hitches as she says, "Let's just see what we can find."
"Hey," he reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder to keep her from walking away. "Hey," he repeats, and squeezes. He slides his hand away, and she turns around. "Was a good shot. Ain't saying you can't shoot. Just something to think about. You ain't used to clearing places with other armed, capable people. Been out on your own, doing it all on your own with a kid. But you can't do things without people anymore."
"I know. That's why I came back to Copper Creek with you."
"So you gotta think 'bout where those people are when you're clearing. That's all I'm saying. But, yeah, you hit your target. You got good aim. And you hit that one that crawled out the door, too, didn't you? Even with all that gunfire going off in here, glass shattering, that thrasher crawling at you – you kept your cool."
She nods.
"I ain't trying to be an ass. Trying to – "
"- You're trying to help me get better at this. I appreciate it. I'm sorry I was peevish." She wasn't at all peevish with Noah or Garrison when they were teaching her to shoot. Then again, she wasn't trying to impress either of them. "And I'm sorry I almost shot your hand," she says to lighten the mood. "That would have been a tragedy. You'd have to give up your one-handed reading."
He snorts. "I got two hands, you know."
"But you need one to hold the book."
"Could get one of them books stands." He ducks his head and peers up at her, and she catches his eye and smiles, which makes him smile before he looks away. "Let's check out the cupboards."
They have to pull their shirts up over their noses to tolerate the stench of rotting food in the kitchen, but they find some that should still be edible: unopened tubs of barbecue sauce, mustard, and ketchup, large jars of pickles, several gallons of vegetable oil, a dozen, 65-ounce cans of okra, bags of cornmeal probably used for frying the okra, and cannisters of salt and pepper. They also score several 117-ounce cans of Bush's baked beans. "Used canned okra instead of fresh!" Daryl mutters. "Didn't even make their own damn baked beans. Bet this place had shit barbecue."
"But it's good for us they did. Look at all this!"
They box it up and use a dolly they find in the supply closet to roll out the boxes. It takes three trips. Carol climbs up into the bed of the truck and organizes while Daryl hands her things. She unpacks one of the boxes to load as much as she can into the drawers of the coffee table before tossing the empty box to the parking lot. She puts other boxes under the armchair, on top of the couch, and in the nooks and crannies of the truck bed, turning them this way and that to maximize the space.
"You're really good at fitting stuff," Daryl says.
"Well, someone once said I'm a fucking feng shui jigsaw magician."
"Who told you that?"
"Jefe."
"Well she stole it from me."
Carol laughs. "I know. She was quoting you."
He holds out his hand to her to help her down from the bed.
"Well aren't you a gentleman," she teases. She slips her hand into his and hops down. When she lands, they're face-to-face, and it's like something right out of one of those silly serial romance novels, the bashful way he smiles as he locks eyes with her, but she knows from her former miscalculation in the furniture store that he's not actually going to kiss her. So she kisses him.
It's just a light, teasing press of her lips, what she plans to be a quick peck that she can pass off later as a joke, but then he kisses back. Still holding the hand he took to help her down with, and pressing his other hand to the small of her back to draw her in, he kisses her back. Not a light press of his lips either, but a hungry one, and she can feel the nerves start to tingle all the way from the tip of her toes to the top of her head. She gasps, and when she opens her mouth, his tongue slips in for a scorching second before he suddenly drops her hand and the heat of his mouth tears from hers. His fingers slip from the back of her denim jacket and he says, "Sorry. Sorry. Didn't mean to do that."
Didn't mean to do that? Didn't mean to? How does someone accidentally give you the best kiss you've had since the first kiss you ever had, when kissing was still exciting and new and a little bit verboten? "It's okay," she says.
"Nah, no, I shouldn't of. Forget I did it. Please. 'M sorry."
"But…I liked it. I kissed you first."
"But you didn't have to," he mutters. "You don't have to do that. You don't have to do any of that. I'm gonna renew. No matter what, I'm gonna renew, a'right? Sophia deserves a roof over her head. And Copper Creek's gonna get a lot out of having you there. And I don't need half the shit I got anyway. So I'm gonna renew when the trial period's up. And you don't have to do a damn - "
"- Daryl, that's not why – "
"Claim! The woman!"
Carol freezes at the sound of a strange voice behind her, at the lecherousness in its low assertion. Her muscles grow as tense as tightly wound ball of string. And then she feels Daryl's arm shooting out across her side. His arms hits her hard, sweeps her behind himself and between his back and the truck, as he raises his crossbow in his other hand. She's not even sure when he got that crossbow into his hand, but the bolt is already flying. It rips through the neck of the armed man directly in front of him – for a second Carol thinks he's shot Kris Kristofferson, because that's almost exactly who that man looks like.
As Kris Kristofferson's falls backward, the man beside him fires a handgun straight at Daryl, who is heaving his now unloaded crossbow into the man's face to free his hand to draw his handgun. The bullet tears into Daryl's chest, and he jerks back with the shot just as the bow hits their attacker's face. The attacker stumbles back, which throws his second shot upward into the air. At the same moment, Carol, drawing her handgun, slides out from behind Daryl and shoots the third and last man square in the forehead before he can fire. Daryl, having now drawn his handgun, shoots the second man, who is recovering from the bow to his face and is about to fire a third time.
With all three men now dead on the ground, Daryl stumbles back against the tail of the truck, hits it with a bang, and puts two hands over his bleeding wound. "Those are the fuckers me and Garrison ran into at the vet clinic. The ones - " He coughs, and blood splutters out of his mouth.
"Don't talk!" she cries as she runs to him.
The adrenaline now subsiding, he seems finally to feel the pain of his wound, and he closes his eyes and sinks as Carol grasps for him. His back slides down the tail of the truck as the blood seeps through his fingers.