On the morning of the fifth day in the attic, Shane is shaken awake by Sophia, who is as excited as he's ever seen her. It's a definite change from the lethargy they've all experienced the last few days.

"They're gone, Shane. They left in the night!"

He sits up, feeling his shirt clinging to him with the sweat that never leaves them up here. Beth is sitting at the window looking as overjoyed as Sophia, and Carl is getting groggily to his knees. Keeping quiet by habit, Shane goes to peer out the window that faced the woods the walkers came from.

Nothing. Not even a damned straggler lost in the field full of overripe vegetables.

Feeling hopeful, he crosses the attic, tugging the other blanket out of the way carefully. Nothing here, either. Whatever distracted the herd in the night, Shane hopes no one out there died to bring about the end to their farmhouse siege.

"I'm going to slip downstairs and do a full parameter check. Keep an ear out at the attic stairs, alright?"

The kids nod almost in unison as he pulls his socks and boots on. Shane eases the folding stairs down and carrying his Glock ready, checks each room on the second floor as he passes. No sense in getting sloppy, even though he knows the odds anything got inside are damned low. With each check of a downstairs window, though, his hope rises another notch.

Feeling unease grip his gut, he reaches out and opens the front door, stepping out onto the porch. The exterior perimeter check reveals the same thing as the interior. No walkers. Not even a stray bobbing drunkenly behind.

Back inside the house, he locks the door. As wonderful as this news is, they aren't going to go running out of the house right away.

"Kids? Coast is clear. You can come down."

If their teenage brains weren't tuned so hard to caution about sound by now, Shane thinks they would cheer as they come down the stairs. The days in the attic gave them one advantage, because Sophia's ankle is healed, at least.

"Are we going to leave?" Carl asks, peeking out the kitchen window as if the outside world is something he hasn't seen this close for weeks instead of days.

"Yeah. But first, I want everyone to get cleaned up. I'm not sure a walker would take a look at us right now, as rank as we all are. I'll get the generator up so that the water tank doesn't run dry."

Carl follows him outside to check on the generator, watching apprehensively as Shane gets the propane powered thing going. It's not a quiet engine, never meant to be noiseless with the farmhouse so remote, so it's a test of whether the walkers are really gone. Inside the house, he hears the downstairs shower start up and figures the other girl headed for the upstairs shower.

Once they're back inside, Carl wrinkles his nose. "We're going to need something clean to wear. Otherwise, might as well stay dirty."

"Nah. Shower will cool us off, if nothing else, but yeah. Let's see what we can find." Shane hasn't forgotten that Sophia's shoeless, either.

It doesn't take long to improvise for the girls, at least. The lady of the house might have been many times their age, but she was small framed like both teenagers. The man of the house was built more like Otis. Shane can get by wearing his clothes, although the man was easily four inches taller, but Carl would look like a toddler playing dress up.

The boy sighs and goes to fetch clothing out of the woman's dresser. "Y'all will not mention this at all," he grumbles. At least her taste ran to blues, greens, and browns in solid colors, so once everyone's clean, Shane might not even guess where Carl's blue t-shirt and sturdy jeans came from if he didn't actually know.

They get doubly lucky, because the workboots in the mud tray by the backdoor are only half a size too big for Sophia.

Beth finds a spare set of truck keys in an upstairs desk drawer, so Shane backs the ancient little Ford Ranger to the back door. It would have been better to find the keys to the station wagon, but there's no success on those. Damn thing is too new to bypass the ignition, and his three rising auto thieves look way too disappointed that he can't teach them how to hotwire a car.

Unsure on how soon they'll find the others, Shane and the kids refill every single water container they can lay hands on and put them in the back of the truck. There's very little edible left in the house, but they take what they can and load the emergency bin that saved their sanity in the attic for good measure. By unspoken consensus, none of them suggest harvesting anything from the fields they watched walkers linger in for days.

"I got half a tank of gas in the truck. That should get us far enough to see if they were able to get back to the farm after the herd," he tells them as he shuts off the generator. "And if they aren't there, we can start searching safely."

Getting all four of them in the truck is like stuffing a clown car. A full size truck wouldn't have been too bad, since none of the teenagers are large framed. But the Ranger is definitely not full sized. After some giggling and debating, the girls decide that Beth perching in Sophia's lap is workable, wedging Carl in the middle of the small truck cab.

Even though it's a waste of precious gas, Shane spares miles to turn the air conditioning on, watching the kids bask in the artificially cool air as they pick up speed down the long driveway. Their grins make it worth it.

Only one stray walker is wandering down a roadside as he follows Beth's directions to her house, which aren't as straightforward as you would expect thanks to the weirdness of country property lines. It's not yet noon when they pull into the half-destroyed farmyard. Unlike their refuge, there are still walkers, so Shane does the fastest U-turn he's ever managed and hightails it the hell back down the driveway.

"Dammit," he grunts. "Definitely not there if there's still that many dead here."

"I think the scent of the cattle is confusing them," Beth says, looking back the way they came with a mournful expression. "The fences were down, but even with the cows escaping or maybe some eaten, everything always smells like cows here."

Sophia hugs Beth. "Something got in the house," the older blonde states hesitantly.

They all saw that, the front door wide open and windows damaged. Shane just hopes it was carelessness in shutting the door and not the dead breaking in to find someone trapped inside. He doesn't mention that the little lean-to barn that Randall was locked in was smashed up. If the little asshole got left behind and eaten, that's just fucking karma as far as Shane's concerned.

"Most of the cars were gone," Carl pipes up. "Dale's RV, the big Suburban, Daryl's motorcycle, most of the others."

That's a good sign, Shane thinks. "We'll check the place on the highway where the RV broke down. Hopefully, they went there first and maybe left some sign of where they might go next."

The highway itself is too open and vulnerable, so Shane can't imagine that five days later, their people would be still camped out there, even with the RV. When he pulls the Ranger over, he cautions the kids to stay in the truck. "Anything happens, Carl, you can figure out how to drive this if you need to, right?"

Carl nods, eyeing the gear shift and sliding over so Beth can sit in the seat. "Since they aren't here, are we going to look for supplies?"

"Probably not, other than the water if there's any left on that water truck. I think it's mostly been picked clean." That's why there's no reason for the kids to risk leaving the truck.

Shane walks the area, seeing signs that he was right they came back here. There are cans and wrappers too fresh to be from their first sojourn here, as well as the remains of a campfire just off the pavement where its light would be better hidden. The water truck is empty, so at least they stocked up. He remembers there still being at least six of the big bottles of water left. Several of the newer vehicles have the acrid stink of spilled gasoline, and a check under one shows a drilled tank. It would make him laugh, if it weren't for it making it futile for him to find gas.

Remembering the shoe polish message they left before they realized Sophia was safe, Shane checks windshields. The old message on the Mustang is lost to weather, just white smears. Seeing the bottle of shoe polish in the driver's seat, he renews the message.

Kids safe. Will check back for messages.

Since they can't stay here with the safest supplies picked clean, Shane makes his way back to the Ranger. The kids rearrange to let him inside, looking disappointed.

"At least we know they were here," he tells them. "We'll go from farm to farm if we have to."

Beth nibbles at her bottom lip. "Maybe we should try town? Even if they didn't go that way, we could probably find food and supplies easier there than going from farm to farm. Eventually they would go into town, right?"

It's as good an idea as any, and Shane wasn't looking forward to dragging the kids from farm to farm, probably going in circles and missing the others in the process. "Give me a second."

Clambering out of the truck, he jogs back to the Mustang and adds: Going to Farm Girl's Supply Depot. With any luck, the nickname he and Daryl both have pitched at Maggie at different times will remind them of the pharmacy and market that Maggie gleaned supplies from, without alerting any unfriendlies.

Granted, that's where they found that squirrely little bastard and his friends, but hiding in town should be easier than out here, if he's really careful.

Keeping their eyes peeled, they make it to the pharmacy, where Shane leaves Carl in the driver's seat again and slips inside. Nothing seems disturbed, with shelves still holding more supplies than they would have if Shane had been in charge of runs. Hershel and his rules about leaving it for other survivors makes him feel just pissy enough that he clears out everything he thinks they might use.

The kids grin when he tosses them the bags of chips and sets the bags of supplies in the truck bed. There's not a lot beyond snack food for them to eat, but now they've got a good chunk of medical supplies at least.

"Hey, Beth?"

She looks up from where she's sharing a bag of Doritos with Sophia. "Yeah?"

"Any of the churches in town run a food bank?"

She gets the idea quickly and grins. "Yeah. Methodists over on the east side of town."

Figuring no one really looks toward churches to find supplies, especially those of the sort of intent a group like Randall's would have, Shane finds the church easily. Parking the truck nearest the door Beth indicates they issue the pantry from, he lets the kids get out this time. There's only one walker inside the building, even checking all the classrooms and nooks.

Beth covers the body of the minister gently with choir robes and closes the office door. "Seems a good place for a pastor to lay to rest."

The church is as hot as any other southern building without air conditioning, but it has a second story that seems designed for easy air flow. Cracking several of the windows, he doesn't have to warn the kids to be quiet by this point. His estimate that the food pantry might be useful is correct. It's not an endless supply, and they're going to get really fucking tired of beans of all types, but he can keep them fed for a week here.

"Alright. Come cover me while I siphon the two cars in the lot and then check the yards around for cars with either gas or keys."

Teaching the kids the trick about punching the gas tanks from below works well enough to fill two five gallon gas cans found in the vehicles, plus the one in the Ranger, after they top out the tank. The house directly behind the church looks too fancy to be the parsonage, and breaking into the garage yields more gas, but no damned keys.

"I wonder how many walkers are halfway across Georgia with their car keys still in their pocket," Carl muses.

Beth giggles. "I've seen lady ones with those backpack purses still hung on their arms."

At least they're finding some sources of amusement, he thinks. The house seems to be empty, initially, until they hear the weirdest noise at one of the bedroom doors. Sophia touches the knob, before hesitating. "I'm hearing a dog, right? A puppy or little dog?"

"Yeah, you are." Shane moves to take point. There's a distinct yip at the sound of his voice near the door. The kids drop back just a little as he turns the knob.

The first thing that hits him is the god awful smell. It's not the first time Shane's encountered the distasteful funk of a dog kept indoors without proper sanitation, but damn, he wishes those days were far behind him. A ball of hyperactive fluff tumbles out the door, and it takes Shane a minute to recognize it as some sort of really small puppy.

It also gets almost immediately picked up by Sophia, but since that quiets the cream colored ball of fur, he doesn't object. Stepping into the room, he realizes that some of the stink is a deceased dog. "Stay out of the room," he calls back, not wanting the tenderhearted girls to see the poor thing. Walkers are bad, but he knows girls and small fluffy dogs.

Searching the room he locates three more puppies, all seeming half starved and bony. He doesn't think the mom has been dead long, because it doesn't take long for pups this small to starve to death or die of dehydration. He's just glad they weren't big enough to reach the toilet in the bathroom and fall in to drown. The reason for the mom's survival this long is revealed in a not quite empty automatic dog feeder.

They take the four tiny critters to a different bathroom and scrub them clean, letting them drink in small quantities. Beth cautions the other two. "Don't let them drink too much at once. They'll just get sick."

"You think they're big enough to eat regular food?" Shane asks Beth. She's got an expensive powder blue bath towel tucked around a multicolor pup and a brownish one, while Sophia still has the cream colored pup, and Carl seems to have taken over a little merle colored one.

"Maybe. I haven't really seen a lot of Pomeranians this small, so I'm guessing, but we can try to feed them something from the food pantry and see if they eat it. If not, we could try the farm store. I bet they still have milk replacer. No one would collect that up nowadays."

Shane wants to say they can't keep the four little puppies, but even Carl has the most pleading expression he's ever seen on a kid. All this death around them, and now they're holding tiny new sparks of life. He can see the appeal, in a way. Sighing, he searches the house and finds two backpacks.

"Need to keep your hands free. Put the pups in the backpacks, separate so they aren't overcrowded."

"Put a towel in first," Beth cautions. "They're probably little enough to potty at will."

Lovely. Unhousetrained pups. The damage is done, because both girls have the backpacks on with their wiggly cargo. Carl's in the kitchen, rummaging in the pantry and tossing cans in a reusable shopping bag. "They had a cat, too. Did we find a cat?"

In all the searching, Shane didn't turn up anything else, live or otherwise, so he's hoping the cat escaped somehow. Felines are at a decided advantage in the wild, as long as some prissy owner didn't declaw it. "Bet the puppies can eat the cat food. Load it up."

Checking outdoors, Shane gathers the gas cans and leads his little troop back to the church. "Test and see which of the rooms seem the most soundproof and put the pups in there. We don't know how noisy they might be."

The girls head upstairs, Carl following. Shane drags a tarp over the Ranger where it's half hidden in an untrimmed privet hedge and locks the door for now. He wants to get out and search for the others, but staying put in a central location is probably smarter than wandering.

By the time he gets upstairs, the kids have taken his caution for quiet to heart. The puppies are in an oversized closet, little tongues lapping up moist cat food from giggling children who are dipping their fingers in the food and coaxing them to eat. Remembering Beth's warning about them getting sick, he figures the girl knows to do the same with their food. He tosses each of the kids a raspberry flavored breakfast bar from the downstairs pantry to tide them over and props himself against the wall outside the closet.

They're better off today than they were the past few days, and everyone's still safe. If his responsibilities just multiplied again, Shane will figure it out just like everything else. The sheer joy on the kids' faces is worth the anxiety of tiny canine mouths to feed.

By nightfall on the fifth day after the farm fell and they lost the kids, everyone in the borrowed house is losing hope. Yesterday evening, a group of ten walkers passing through the highway camp sent them scurrying to find something less open and dangerous, so they're in the small neighborhood of related people that Glenn and Maggie cleared earlier in the search. Daryl can't stand the oppressive sense of mourning inside the house everyone crowded inside, so he's hiding on the back porch.

Standing watch, he claims, but his mind is caught in a nightmare spin of the still missing kids and deputy. The hunter wants to be optimistic and claim the kids all are out there okay somewhere. His faith that Sophia would be okay turned out to be true. But with Sophia, they never found bloody clothing, and the girl didn't have to outrun over a hundred of the fucking dead monsters.

Biting at his thumbnail, he resists the urge to punch something. His knuckles are still bruised and scabbed from punching the tree when he found the shirt and shoe. Breathing deeply, he tries to ignore that he can hear Lori Grimes crying softly inside. As much as the bitchy woman annoys him more than any other female in camp, he wouldn't wish this on her.

If he went inside, Daryl knows she isn't the only tearful one. Even Glenn's spirit is dimming, as they cover ground north and east of the farm and still find no evidence that anyone escaped the herd.

They'll just keep looking. With no evidence of anything happening to the littlest Green or Walsh himself, there's still hope.


A/N: Geographically, Rick's group is up north and east of town, following logic that they stayed on foot and kept running away from the herd.

Shane and the kids won't stay in town for long, but at least they have better plumbing than a bucket for now, right?