A month after being separated from the others, Shane hears a vehicle for the first time. He plants the ax in a chunk of wood, not even having to give the order before the kids snatch bags, puppies, and scatter. It's something he's drilled them on, along with making it safely to three different safe bolt holes without him. Hopefully, all in the same bolt hole, so he's not playing collect the kids across the county.
While he hopes it would be Rick coming down that driveway, there's no guarantee. He won't risk the kids.
More than a stranger would have been, seeing Merle Dixon climbing out of the passenger seat of the Humvee is a shock. Even more of a shock is that the man's in a crisp, clean Marine Corps battledress uniform, with sergeant stripes on his shoulder and his surname on his name tape. The appearance of two hands is surprising, until Merle lays his right hand on the gate post, and Shane gets a good look at metal and plastic.
"Well, it's good to see at least one of my old campmates alive and well," Merle drawls. "Don't suppose you've got my brother tucked away in your pocket somewhere?"
Shane shakes his head and opts for the truth. "Got separated from the rest by a herd and then a forest fire about a month ago. Decided staying put might be better than roaming around aimlessly."
"Sensible." Merle sighs, pulling off his cap and motioning toward the Humvee. "Got picked up by a fragment of surviving military myself, Marines from the Albany base. They got a Naval doctor in charge as the last officer standing at the base."
"And he's letting you go out looking for your brother?" Shane steps close enough to realize Merle's definitely as sober as he appears. His eyes are clear, and he's well groomed, including being clean shaven. When Shane looks to the driver of the Humvee, she's military, too, looking clean and alert, but relaxed.
"Theoretically, teams are looking for any civilian survivors. Commander says without any higher directives, saving lives is priority. No one's required to come in, but it's encouraged. Not everyone out here is friendly."
Shane chuckles, and as wary as the military makes him after the hospital massacre and napalming Atlanta, he's got to take a chance to get the kids somewhere safe. Merle was a douchebag, but Shane remembers him being reasonably decent to the camp kids. "You can say that again. Shit. Your guys gonna freak out if I set off a flare? Gotta signal the kids to come back."
"Guess that means you ain't staying put, deputy?"
"No real reason to. If you have a map, I can mark areas to look for your brother and the others." Shane opens the gate for the visitors and goes to signal the kids to return. His decision seems to be for the best when Merle spots Sophia trotting back, slightly ahead of her companions.
"The mouseling looks in a lot better shape than the quarry. Being separated from her old man is an improvement."
"He died back at the quarry, so I agree." Should have died sooner, but Shane can't change the past.
"Saw the graves and the burned walkers. Didn't think it was a good idea to desecrate the graves to see if we could figure out who was in them. Saw all my brother's things were gone and the motorcycle, so I assumed he wasn't one of them. Y'all might have taken the supplies or truck if he was dead, but not that bike."
Shane agrees on that wholeheartedly, remembering the swastika, and quickly fills Merle in on the events since the rooftop. By the time he finishes, the kids are anxious, and so is Merle's driver.
"Got a good amount of supplies in the house," Shane finishes. "Y'all gathering those, too?"
"Might as well. We don't specifically grab supplies until we're headed back. With kids, orders will be to do exactly that."
Six hours later, just as the sun is setting, Shane and the kids roll through a double set of checkpoints in the Jeep in between a pair of Humvees onto a peninsula point jutting off a mostly water protected piece of land south of Tallahassee. He has to admire the idea of setting up on what is virtually an island instead of sticking with the landlocked Marine logistics base.
His biggest concern is being separated from the kids, but no one even suggests it as an option. All three kids are reassured by the community doctor inspecting his healed gunshot wound, and he wishes he knew they'd been worried about it. Even his limp is gone now. Apparently, Hershel did well for his first human patient.
It isn't until she escorts them to an empty beach house that Shane actually puts two and two together. The kids dart past the house, enthralled by the sight of the water beyond the house. The cheerful and friendly doctor who told the kids to call her Cass? She fully introduces herself at the steps when she hands over a heavy binder that looks remarkably like his employee handbook from the department and the keys to the house: Naval Commander Cassidy Barrett.
"My apologies for the subterfuge, Deputy Walsh, but I've found newcomers are more comfortable with Cass than Commander Barrett doing their physicals, and I'm the only doctor we have at the moment."
"No offense taken. Probably helps you get a good read on people, too." It's a trick Shane can heartily approve of. It also makes Merle's care in never mentioning a gender of the military commander seem purposeful.
"There're over a hundred survivors on the island so far, gathered from Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. I'm responsible for fewer lives than I would wish to be, especially considering the populations that should be within easy reach of the Gulf Coast. I'll give you a few days to settle in, then we'll see what sort of work you would like to do. The children will have a combination of school and age appropriate jobs within the community."
"And the search for others?" Shane has to know, because the kids need their families back.
"My teams will continue to look. Merle will take a few days of rest for his team before returning to the field. If you want to join search teams, you're welcome to do so, but I suspect the children wouldn't be comfortable with their only guardian being gone for days at a time."
Shane agrees with that, and they're his responsibility. He isn't about to leave them with a stranger. "I'll leave it up to Merle. If he finds his brother, he's equally likely to find the kids' parents."
Commander Barrett bids him farewell, striding away back toward the place Merle indicated as headquarters. She's a pretty woman, but he would hazard a guess she's nearly his mother's age. Shane weighs the keys in his hand and shakes his head. Pretty women are a vice he no longer needs to be considering.
All of their things have been delivered to the small front porch. The Jeep is down at the motor pool, his to use as he needs it, but vehicles stay up in that central area because fuel is a regulated commodity. Supplies are delivered via golf carts. In addition to the clothes and such they brought along, there's three boxes of non-perishable food supplies, one of fresh vegetables and fruit, and a cooler that he checks to see has frozen items.
Taking the cooler inside, he finds that the refrigerator is still cooling off. Electric is limited, but they've got the kitchen, and that's the necessary room, he thinks. The orientation was a brief one, crammed around the physical exams. He'll need to make time to go through the binder, which he leaves on the counter.
The house is a nice one, probably a rental though, because he doesn't see the Marines the Commander has left removing any personal effects. This place is too tidy to be regularly lived in. There are three bedrooms upstairs, but he suspects he's going to keep up the same habit as his own house. Keeping Carl close by at night while the girls share seems like the best plan.
Making his way out onto the back deck that looms high above the beach, Shane spies Sophia sitting on the weathered wood, rolling a ball for all four of the puppies. It's amazing how trained she has them already, at least Cupcake and Not My Dog. She's giggling at their antics, so he does a quick check for the other two kids.
"Ah, hell," he mutters. At the water's edge, the missing pair are sneaking in a thankfully chaste kiss.
Sophia snickers. "They didn't appreciate the kissing song, so I decided to spare the puppies' innocent eyes."
Shane eyes Beth and Carl, but they're laughing and splashing in the water's edge. Christ, he has no idea how thorough a talk about basic biology any of these kids have been given. He can't imagine Lori telling Carl much of anything, and Rick? Hopefully he managed. Beth's family being religious is concerning, because that type of family often doesn't sign permission for the kids to attend the basic class about puberty.
His involvement with that was supposed to be making sure the bathroom was stocked for things the girls needed and hoping they sorted it out themselves. Couldn't hurt to have a little chat with Carl, he supposes. That part he feels qualified. Boy's not yet fourteen, so it's hopefully not needed, but the world's turned on its head. Better safe than sorry.
"Hey, Lollipop. Gimme that ball." Sophia's command draws him out of those thoughts, and he sighs. She's got Not My Dog in her lap, wrestling with him over the ball.
"That's not his name."
Sophia grins at him. "Better than Not My Dog, when we all know he's definitely your dog."
"Fine." Shane sighs and crouches, plucking the dog from her lap and making him drop the ball as he licks Shane's face instead. Turning the pup first one way, then another, he smirks. "Looks like one of those dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets Carl used to obsess over. Might as well call him Nugget. That work for you?"
The pup just wriggles happily, still trying to lick him. Sophia giggles. "Sure. Just don't let Carl eat him."
"Brat." Shane plops the puppy back in her arms. "Come help me see what's in these groceries they delivered to the front porch. Best get some food ready to keep him and Cupcake safe."
As he heads through the house, Shane's burden feels lighter than expected. Here, the kids have a support system if something happens to him. If he's lucky, the Marines will find Rick and the others, but until then, he's kept them safe. After all that's happened since the herd overran the farm, that's all he can ask for.
"Dammit. I was hoping."
Glenn sympathizes with Rick's frustration. They widened their search area since they found evidence that all the kids survived the herd. One of those little scorecards is riding around in Rick's shirt pocket. Today, sitting around a makeshift lunch on yet another abandoned farm, the idea came up that Shane might have led the kids back home.
"Don't think they've been here," Rick says. "Everything looks like it did when I first came here after the hospital."
"What about Shane's place?" Glenn asks. He has no idea of what kind of place the volatile deputy would have had. "Your place is awfully exposed."
The grimace on Rick's face makes Glenn worry. Maggie frowns. "Something wrong with Shane's place?"
"Only that it's in the backside of nowhere, and he just bought it. I hadn't even had a chance to go see it. Let me see if Lori updated her address book so we don't have to search the entire eastern side of the county."
Rick disappears somewhere in the house, leaving the three others on the porch. Andrea laughs from where she's leaning against a pillar. "Hell of a way to get out of paying a mortgage," she says when Glenn and Maggie look her way.
Despite the worry that never fades with missing children and others, Glenn has to laugh, too. End of the world definitely is one way to wipe one's debt clean.
The routine at his cousin's place is so mundane Hershel wouldn't know the world ended if it weren't for the walkers he and Jimmy encounter as they try to find any sign of the others. Well, the walkers and the complete lack of people.
They can't go far, because leaving the ladies alone for long, even as secure as the little compound is, worries Hershel too much. Neither woman is a fighter, and Carol is getting better, but she is still more fragile than Hershel likes. As they head back after another day without any luck, he hears Jimmy sigh.
"What if they didn't outrun the fire?" the teenager asks forlornly. Hershel wonders how long he's been thinking that.
"I won't lie to you, son. It's not an impossibility. But we keep as we are for now. Do our best to find them. And if we don't, or we find evidence of the worst happening?" Hershel reaches out to squeeze the boy's shoulder. "We keep your mama and Carol safe."
"That's what we do?" Jimmy's tone is plaintive, and Hershel can't blame him. His own father isn't fit to be called the name, but Otis? He's loved Jimmy like a father should since he and Patricia adopted the boy as a skinny, wary ten year old.
"That's what we do."
Hershel hopes it stays an unknown, if they never find the others. He would rather imagine them out there somewhere surviving and thriving, rather than face the grief of knowing he's lost another child.
The first few days in Florida, Lori wanders the beach in front of the row of small houses. They could have gone to closer places when they crossed the state line, but Lori drove here. A few miles east of Panama City, to the place they rented on the one vacation they did what she wanted instead of what Rick's parents or Rick's job required.
She's not brave enough to stay in that same little house. Daryl picked one at random, after she said any one except the one that acts as a ghost in her mind. Luckily, there weren't so many walkers here that they've had difficulty putting them down. Even with Daryl's broken arm, she's gotten good at using her machete.
But after the third day, there are no more walkers. The area didn't have much of a population without tourists or the air base nearby. There's no signs of any military in the area, so she assumes they evacuate here like they did the one north of Atlanta.
"Lori!" Daryl's voice is gruff as he limps across the road that separates the row of houses from the actual beach. He's healing, slowly but surely. Even the lack of real medical care doesn't phase him. She suspects it isn't the first time he's mended a broken bone without assistance.
Placing the shell she just picked up in the basket she's carrying, Lori heads toward him. The sand is hard for him to navigate, and she knows he will if he has to. It seems unnecessarily cruel to make him do, since he came on this crazy trip just to soothe her.
"Is everything okay?" she asks, automatically visually checking him for any sign of issues with his wounds.
"Yeah. Got supper ready." He makes that uneasy shift of his weight from one foot to the other that he always does when he's done something nice for her. Daryl's not especially fond of the beach. It's not his world, a place so open and devoid of woods to hide himself away in. He watches her walk the beach from the house, like a guardian angel with a broken wing.
"Thank you." Her fingers find the edges of the shells in the basket, counting them absently. It's later than she thought it was, but she needed to find just the right shells. "Will it hold for another half hour or so?"
"It's stew and biscuits. It'll keep just fine. Where you going?"
Lori faces the small blue house and squares her shoulders. Daryl follows her line of sight and sighs deeply.
"A'right. Lead the way."
She doesn't try to argue. He's not going to let her go alone, and it's not time or daylight she wants to waste. At the door, she turns the knob with a shaking hand, making her way unerringly to the stairs and the front bedroom that overlooks the ocean across the road.
One by one, Lori arranges the shells on the windowsill in the fading sunlight. Each one turned just so, as best as she can remember from all those years ago. Once the last one is set into place, she kneels at the window. "Carl would sit here, staring out the window, waiting on one of us to take him across to the beach. Every single morning."
"Boy liked the water?" She's a little surprised that Daryl responds to her little bit of shared information. Her lost boy is a subject they normally both avoid as much as they ignore the baby she still hasn't confirmed but knows exists.
"God, did he ever. We must have went through a gallon of sunscreen while we were here. Most kids beg to go to Disney World. Carl? He always wanted to come back here."
Her voice cracks as she thinks of all the times what Carl wanted slid to the wayside. The world ending didn't ruin his world the way it did for adults. Her baby boy could have adapted, if anyone could have. He deserved to have seen a beach again, at least one more time.
Lori cried until she couldn't cry anymore when Daryl found those scraps of Carl's shirt. She hasn't been able to cry since then, eyes dry no matter how much her heart aches for her baby boy. It seems like the dam is breaking now, because her body rocks hard as she sobs. Her fingers cling to the windowsill as she rests her forehead against it. That deep seated wish to be gone, to join her son, rears up and grips her.
When a hand comes to rest awkwardly between her shoulder blades, some of the pain recedes. Surprisingly, when she shifts and turns, needing the reassurance that Daryl's alive and well, the hunter doesn't flinch away. He lets her cling to him and allows her to cry.
It's a reminder that if she'd given in to that dark impulse before, Daryl might not be alive. She wouldn't be so certain that there's another life depending on her to enter this world. Carl would want that, to have his sibling grow when he cannot, so she will make it happen.
A/N: Poor Rick, missing them by hours...
