They only had 38 more miles to Fun Kingdom (at least that's what the last billboard had said), but the sun was starting to sink, and the group certainly didn't want to clear something as enormous as an amusement park after sunset. So, they pulled into a two-story hotel situated just off the frontage road, a good eight miles from the last town they had passed, the kind of hotel where you stopped when you were being too cheap to stay in town, but not quite so cheap as to stay at a motel.
The hotel appeared to have been temporarily closed down for some internal renovations, and so it was uninhabited except for a few walkers who had once been painters, plumbers, and repairmen. Andrea and Shane stood guard over Carol, Lori, and the kids with rifles while the men entered the lobby. After her target practice at Fort Benning, Andrea actually knew how to use that thing now – mostly. At least she hadn't used it to blow out her brains just yet.
The men cleared the bottom floor as quickly and quietly as possible. Daryl used his crossbow. Glenn used the bayonet on his newly acquired rifle, which he'd found at Fort Benning, and Rick and T-Dog both used machetes, which were also souvenirs from their two-night vacation at the fort.
They checked every room downstairs. All of the doors were missing their handles, as the locks were apparently being switched out. None of them latched fully, and so they needed only to kick against the wood to send the doors slamming open to reveal any walkers inside. Daryl cut his arrow-recovery time in half by the end of the project, and Glenn was becoming far less skittish about sliding his bayonet into walker's brains.
They dragged the bodies out of a side door and left them piled by the construction dumpster. There might be more walkers on the second floor, but as the staircases were both at the far end of the hallway and between solid metal exit doors the walkers could not possibly get through, the men didn't bother to clear the upstairs. Walkers probably wouldn't be coming down the elevator to the lobby, even if there had been power.
When Rick gave the "All clear!", they unloaded the bed of the pick-up of what loot remained from Fort Benning and their other daily scavenging and left it in the lobby. They didn't expect any human looters to be rolling on by, but better safe than sorry. They made sure the lobby doors were locked, and then they dragged furniture in front of it to blockade it, just in case.
T-Dog and Glenn took a luggage cart and collected a dozen, free-standing battery-operated work lights from among the workmen's things. They put one each in the men's and women's bathrooms in the lobby. "The toilets might each still flush once," Rick said. "But they won't refill. So only flush if you do a number two. If it's yellow, let it mellow."
"Ewww…" Sophia crinkled her nose, and Daryl was surprised such a thing could still disgust her, after all she'd been through. Kids were weird.
"And don't forget to use the hand sanitizer in there," Lori warned Carl. The boy rolled his eyes, but only once his mother had turned away.
They claimed seven interior rooms (one to be shared by the Grimes family, and one to be shared by Carol and Sophia), all along the same hallway. They brought a work-light into each room and dropped their packs. The beds were completely stripped, but there were linens in the closets. After making their beds, they met again in the hallway to confer.
"Being in this empty motel reminds me of The Shining," Glenn said.
"Now why would you go and say that?" T-Dog asked. "Now I'm going to feel like I'm living in a horror movie."
"We are living in horror movie," Andrea told him.
"Mom, can Sophia and I have a sleep over tonight?" Carl asked. "Please!"
"No," Lori said. "We aren't going to be having any mixed-gender sleepovers, Carl. Absolutely – "
"- I don't know," Rick interrupted her. "If Carol doesn't mind, why doesn't Carl sleep in her room?"
"What?" Lori asked.
That poor man wanted to get laid something awful, Daryl thought. And Rick wanted to do it without having to stay quiet and buried under the covers so as not to wake the kid.
Rick looked at Lori pointedly. "Carl could sleep in Carol's room."
Lori was not taking the hint. But Carol did. "Carl's more than welcome to sleep over in our room," she said. "There are two beds in there. Sophia and I can sleep in one and Carl can sleep in the other. It'll be fine."
"I appreciate that offer, Carol," Lori told her. "But I really do think Carl should stay with us."
Both Rick and Carl's faces fell.
Sophia's stomach growled, so loudly that it sounded like a lonely bear. They hadn't eaten since breakfast.
"See if we can rustle up some grub," Daryl said as he headed down the hall toward the continental breakfast room.
[*]
Carol wished they hadn't wasted so much time on that wild goose chase to the CDC. What had Rick expected to find there, anyway? Or Shane at Fort Benning? The government, rising like a phoenix from the ashes?
In one way, at least, this world was no different than the last one – you couldn't rely on the government to save you from the ugliness that surrounded you. The police had been at Carol's doorstep a total of three times in the first ten years of her marriage. Twice they'd only taken reports. Once they'd taken Ed, but he'd come back the next morning angrier than ever.
Carol pondered these things as she followed Daryl and the others to the breakfast room, where T-Dog set up one of the larger battery-operated work lights. The tables were covered in white drop cloths, and the walls had been half painted. Brushes, ladders, and paint cans still littered the area. Carol immediately busied herself with searching the cabinets for food, but they were empty except for filters, coffee cups, wine glasses, and juice glasses. She suspected they had probably cleared out the food when they shut down the motel for the renovations, but she'd thought it was worth a try. They'd probably have to hit the last of their MREs from Fort Benning.
Glenn picked up a plastic holder that sat on the breakfast counter and read the flyer inside. "They used to have a nightly wine and cheese," he said.
"At a cheap hotel?" Lori asked.
"Where do you think they kept the wine?" T-Dog wondered aloud.
"Maybe in here." Carol rapped her knuckles against what looked to be the solid door of a storage closet. "I think it's the pantry. But it's locked. Can someone open this?"
Daryl pulled his handgun out of the side holster he'd acquired from Fort Benning.
"You can't shoot inside!" Lori yelled.
"Got a silencer for it." He'd acquired that from Fort Benning, too. "Won't be too loud. Clear out if it scares ya. Just don't stand on the other side of that wall."
Lori cleared away, if not exactly out.
"Wait!" Glenn insisted. "Why don't we try a credit card first?" He fished a wallet out of his pants, opened it, and pulled out a credit card.
"You've still got your wallet?" Andrea asked in disbelief. "Why?"
"In case I ever need to pick a lock with a credit card."
The credit card, predictably, didn't work. Daryl shot the lock off in the end.
The pantry was largely stocked with paper products, but it also had a number of nonperishable food items - several large unopened bags of cereal, tiny individual packages of jelly and butter, jars of peanut butter, coffee grounds, bottles of apple and cranberry juice, Sunny Delight, canned peaches and pears, and, on the bottom shelf, about a dozen bottles of wine, several boxes of crackers, squeezable cheese spread, and a few packages of summer sausages that didn't require refrigeration.
"Cheese whiz," Lori said. "For a wine and cheese. And the wine's Yellow Tail. I think that's less than eight dollars a bottle."
"Shit, that's more than my mama paid for a whole damn box of wine!" Daryl exclaimed.
Carol snorted and Daryl glowered at her, but she had no way of telling him she was laughing at Lori and not him. Carol knew how to make productive use of coupons, to bargain and to thrift shop, to repair Ed's clothes and make Sophia's herself, and she could find a way to reuse almost anything. An $8 bottle of wine was an unexpected luxury on a Friday night when Ed was out doing whatever it was Ed did.
T-Dog clapped his hands together. "We are dining in style tonight!"
"I don't know," Glenn said. "Remember the last time we did this? The whole place blew up."
"If Debbie Downer over here ain't drinking," Daryl said. "I'll have his bottle."
"I didn't say I wasn't drinking," Glenn insisted.
They ripped the drop cloths off of two of the rectangular tables, shoved them together, and made themselves a banquet. Daryl sat off to the side, on top of one of the service counters, and drank straight out of his own private bottle of red wine. He still seemed reluctant to claim his rightful place among the group, a place Carol believed he had more than earned. He'd tracked Sophia through those woods, after all, and saved her from walkers. He'd taken the lead in the caravan for the last several days. "There's still a chair," she said, gesturing to the open chair between Carl and T-Dog, but Daryl shook his head.
Everyone else drank from wine glasses, except Lori, who was not drinking due to the pregnancy. Carl didn't ask for a sip this time, like he had at the CDC, but to Carol's surprise, Sophia did. Carol shrugged, took one of the bottles and poured Sophia two ounces. Carol was excited to be drinking openly with happy faces. Ed had never allowed her to drink, so she had only had wine when she knew he was going to be out all night, and then she would hide the evidence deep in the trash.
"That much?" Lori asked.
Carol felt instantly judged. She was certain Lori thought she was a bad mother – for having been married to Ed, of course – but probably for a dozen other reasons, too.
"O come on!" Shane cried. "She's not getting drunk on a third a glass!"
Shane had been a lot less friendly with Lori ever since the CDC. Carol wondered what had happened between them, there. She suspected they'd been having an affair before Rick made his sudden reappearance. Maybe Shane had made one last play for Lori and been permanently shot down.
Sophia tried the wine. She puckered her lips, smacked her tongue like you might when something is tart, and then took another little sip. And another. "Not bad," she said, and everyone laughed.
Even Andrea was laughing. The wine had cut through her gloom, apparently. Maybe she wanted to live now, at least long enough to eat summer sausage and get buzzed.
Daryl squeezed cheese whiz straight into his mouth and swallowed it down with a satisfied "Mhmmmm!"
Carl's eyes got big and he grabbed a can, shook it, and began to do the same thing, but Lori grabbed it out of his hands. "That's really gross, Carl," she said.
"Daryl did it."
"Well Daryl is not the best example of etiquette. At least squeeze it on a cracker."
Carl did, and then he popped the cracker in his mouth.
The drinking continued, and more bottles were opened.
"What the hell's on these crackers?" Daryl asked, drawing one out from a box that said, simply, Fancy Crackers.
"Seeds and cracked pepper," Carol told him.
Daryl flicked off what he could of the little flecks before biting into it.
"You need to expand your pallet," Carol teased.
"Y'all need to shrink yours," Daryl replied. "Got to be willin' to eat anythin' in this world." He squeezed more cheese whiz in his mouth.
"Says the man who won't eat a cracker just because it's fancy!" Once again, Glenn seemed a bit more buzzed than the others, even though he'd only had about two glasses of wine at this point. He laughed hard.
Daryl smiled, or at least his lips got as close to a smile as Carol had ever seen them reach. He leaned forward and said, "Let's see how many glasses you can drink before you're on the floor."
Glenn laughed, shook his head, and took another sip while Daryl guzzled from his own bottle.
"Cheers!" T-Dog raised his glass and clanked Andrea's with it. Then he clanked everyone else's too.
"Boo-yah!" Daryl thrust his bottle in T-Dog's general direction in a violent, empty-air toast before bringing it back to his lips, only to pull it away with a dissatisfied look, turn it upside down, and watch a single drop drip to the floor.
Andrea opened another bottle of wine and refilled her empty glass, Shane's, and Glenn's before sliding the bottle to the end of the table for Daryl. He seized it and took it back to his private throne.
They drank for a few more minutes, joking and laughing. Glenn told a joke that made the kids laugh. Then Daryl told one: "How do you spot a blind man on a nude beach?"
"How?" Glenn asked.
"It's not that hard."
Carol flushed, Shane laughed, Rick and Andrea chuckled, and T-Dog groaned. Glenn looked momentarily confused before smiling in understanding. Lori just looked peeved.
"I don't get it," Carl said.
Lori rose. "I think it's time to be getting to bed."
Rick made a move to linger with the others by picking up his glass, which still had two ounces of wine in it, and generally acting as though he thought Lori was speaking only for herself. But a single glare from his wife was followed by the clink of his glass against the table. "See y'all in the morning," he mumbled, waving to them as he rose and obediently tripped after Lori and Carl.
Daryl watched the poor bastard follow his wife like a puppet on a string. When Rick had disappeared from the breakfast room, Daryl made the sound of a whip cracking and flicked his wrist.
"That's mean," Carol said, but then she chuckled. "Oh, my." She looked at the last ounce of wine in her glass. "I need to stop drinking."
Sophia smiled. "You only had two glasses, Mom."
"She did?" Andrea looked with some surprise at the empty bottles littering the table.
Carol stood up. "Come on, Sophia, let's get you to bed."
"I'll walk with you," T-Dog told her, rising from the table. He shot back his last two ounces of wine and set the empty glass down on the table.
"Their loss," Shane said when they were gone. "Still plenty left." He opened yet another bottle of wine and topped off his glass, Andrea's, and Glenn's, a little sloppily, spilling some on the table. Then he pushed the bottle over to Daryl.
Daryl slid off the counter to get it, found himself more unsteady on his feet than he'd anticipated, and plopped down in a chair at the table. He seized the bottle by its neck.
Glenn's head bobbed as he looked at the empty bottles and asked, "Wait. How many glasses are in a bottle?"
"The way we've been pouring?" Andrea said. "Who knows?"
"There's six...seven...eight...empty bottles there. And only ten of us. And the kids and Lori didn't have any. And Carol only had..." Glenn pushed back from the table. "I think I'm going to be sick." He put a hand on his mouth and ran off.
Shane chuckled.
"Poor, thing," said Andrea, watching Glenn go. "I think he needs a girlfriend."
"Yeah? Who's that going to be?" Shane asked. "You? Because you're the only non-married, attractive woman here."
"Carol ain't married no more," said Daryl before taking a sip straight from the bottle.
Shane raised an eyebrow at him. "Sorry. No slight meant to Carol." Then he returned his gaze to Andrea. He draped an arm over the back of her chair.
"He needs a college girl," Andrea said. "Isn't that what all the men want?"
"Not me," Shane averred. "I much prefer a woman with experience."
Andrea chuckled. "Is that so?" she asked.
Shane, grinning, leaned in closer to her. "That is so."
"Walk me back?" Andrea asked.
Shane tilted his head slightly, nodded, and stood.
"Fine!" Daryl called after them when they were leaving the breakfast room. "Have my own damn party! Alone! Like I like it!"
He drank the rest of the wine in the bottle, ate a few more fancy crackers, cursed at the cracked pepper on them, spooned some peanut butter into his mouth, and finished off Glenn's final glass. Then he headed to bed, stumbling his way through the lobby to the hallway.
When he attempted to round the corner, Daryl slammed his forehead against the wall. "Motherfucker!" he yelled and then whispered to himself, "Shhhh! People are sleepin'!" He shook off the pain, eased his way carefully around the corner of the wall, and concentrated very intensely on walking the next twenty-five steps.
Daryl pushed open the door he thought led to his own room, but he was confused to find candles flickering on the nightstands between the two twin beds. He hadn't left any candles burning, had he? Where did those candles even come from? Who had looted candles?
"Daryl, get the fuck out!" Shane shouted.
He saw a flash of skin on skin as Shane yanked the sheets up over Andrea's bare ass.
Daryl blinked. What had happened to Andrea's battery-powered work light? Why did she have to light candles? And what was Shane doing in her room? More to the point, why was Andrea sitting on top of Shane? What the hell was going on in here?
"Oh!" he exclaimed as the revelation penetrated his wine-clouded brain.
"Out! Now!" Shane barked.
"Oh...oh ho ho hah!" Daryl laughed. "Hope you're using a rubber, Andrea! You don't know where he's been!"
"Fuck off, Daryl!" Andrea shouted.
Shane lifted Andrea by her hips to move her off of himself. He looked like he was about to climb out of that bed stark naked and charge Daryl.
Daryl held up a hand. "Leavin'! Leavin'!" He sputter-laughed his way out of the room and had to pull the door shut by putting a finger in the hole where the handle used to be. It bounced in the frame and opened partway again, but he left it like that.
He knew he'd claimed a room two doors down from Andrea's, so he counted one...two...pushed the door open and stumbled his way to the bed. The mattress bounced like a tiny ocean wave when he sat on the edge. After wrestling off his boots, Daryl slid under the covers and promptly passed out.
His counting would have worked, too, if the couple hadn't actually been in Shane's room.
So, Daryl was more than a little surprised when, some hours later, a light flashed on and he opened his eyes to find himself staring down the barrel of a wavering, black, 9 mm handgun. From behind the shaky barrel peered a pair of nervous, blue eyes. Carol was standing by the bedside. "What are you doing in my bed?" she asked.
Daryl wasn't drunk anymore - he must have slept a few hours - but his head sure throbbed, and his stomach felt a little off. "Careful where ya point that thing," he hissed quietly. "Ya ain't got control of it."
The gun shook.
In the flick of a wrist, Daryl snatched it by the barrel and disarmed Carol.
She gasped at his speed, or maybe at finding herself weaponless. "Why are you here?"
"Sorry." He pulled himself into a sitting position. Where Carol stood, she was half blocking Sophia in the other bed. Despite the sudden, bright glare from the battery-backed work light, the little girl was sleeping hard. "Thought this was my room." Daryl threw off the blanket. "Stumbled in. Passed out. Didn't even know ya was in this bed. Didn't mean to scare ya." He slid out of bed and stood. "Didn't touch ya! I swear. Gonna get goin'. Right now." He stepped into his right boot.
Carol wasn't wearing any pants. A long, dark red sports jersey stretched to just above her knees. He loved it when women wore jerseys. He didn't know why. Something about it just turned him on. He concentrated on getting his boots on instead of looking at where the v-neck of the jersey dipped and revealed the barest hint of cleavage.
"Ya believe me?" he asked, thinking she probably didn't. She probably thought he'd crawled in and was going to try to have sex with her, or that he'd fondled her in her sleep, or done something equally despicable and pervy.
"Of course. I'm sorry about pointing a gun in your face. It's just...I didn't know what was going on. I rolled over in my sleep and landed on you. It really startled me."
"But you do believe me?"
"Why wouldn't I? I've never seen you make a pass at any woman in the camp. I'm sure you wouldn't do it to me. I'd probably be the last woman to interest you."
Now why in the hell would she say that? He looked at her curiously as he wiggled his foot into his left boot. Ed had probably told her she wasn't pretty.
"Can I have my gun back now?" Carol asked.
Daryl looked at the gun he still held in his right hand. "Where'd you even get this?"
"From Fort Benning. I found it and I put it in my pack. I need something." She looked back at Sophia, who was sleeping on her back. "I couldn't do anything to protect her when she ran away from those walkers over the side of the highway."
"Shootin' off a gun sure as shit wouldn't of helped in that situation."
"No. But it might help in other situations. So, can I have the gun back?"
"Nah. You obviously don't know how to use it. Your grip was all wrong. Couldn't hold it steady. You ain't even snapped the magazine in all the way." He pulled out the magazine and slapped it all the way in until it clicked. "Liable to get yourself or someone else killed."
"Then can you teach me?" she asked. "To use it?"
Daryl flicked on the safety with his thumb and slid the gun into waistband of his pants. "I ain't no teacher."
"Please? I'm tired of being defenseless. I'm tired of having to rely on a man."
"Think I'd just let you or the little girl die? Feed you to the walkers?"
"That's not what I said. I want to be able to defend myself and Sophia. Andrea can defend herself now."
"Yeah, well, Andrea could use some more training, too."
"So, will you? Teach me?"
He sighed. He supposed he owed it to her, given that she wasn't flipping out over the fact that he'd crawled in bed with her. And it was a good idea for her to learn. "When we make camp somewhere where there's some space, yeah, okay, I'll teach you. Until then," he patted the butt of the gun. "I'm holding onto this. So as you don't shoot your own damn foot off." He eased out her door, grateful he hadn't awoken Sophia.
When he turned around, Andrea was standing in the hallway in nothing but Shane's dark blue, button-down shirt. She must be on her way to the lobby bathrooms. They were avoiding using the ones in the hotel rooms because, well, the toilets had been removed.
"What are you doing sneaking out of Carol's room at five-thirty in the morning?"
It was five-thirty already? "Just got confused 'bout the rooms. Stumbled in the wrong one. Passed out."
"Is that so?" Andrea asked skeptically.
"You really want to have this conversation?" Daryl looked her up and down in Shane's shirt. "What? Couldn't put back on your own clothes? Had to claim a trophy?"
"What the hell was that shit about not knowing where Shane's been?"
"Well…you know. I mean, you're – what's that word with three whole syllables? Observant."
"That's over," Andrea insisted. "Shane told me as much."
"Over for Lori, maybe," Daryl muttered.
"Over for him, too. He's moved on. To greener pastures."
Daryl chuckled. "With less thorny bushes?"
"Screw you."
"So how good in the sack was he? Still want to kill yourself?"
Andrea smiled. "Not today." She turned and walked away.
Daryl went into his room and made extra sure it was his room this time. He grabbed an extra pillow from the closet, took off his boots, and lay down. He didn't wake up for another four hours, when Sophia's cry pierced his weird dreams. He snorted, rolled out of bed, and seized his crossbow. In stocking feet, he bolted from the room and ran toward the sound of the scream.