By the time Daryl shuffled into the breakfast room, everybody was already eating. A white, styrofoam plate of food had been left for him at the spot between Sophia and Carl. Sophia pulled back the chair. "Here, Mr. Dixon!"
He wanted to grab his plate and take it to the countertop, or maybe even back to his room, but he also didn't want to disappoint the little girl, so he sat down. At least the spot wasn't right next to or across from Carol.
Someone had spread six fancy crackers with peanut butter and lined them up in two rows of three on his plate. Next to that, they'd dished out a serving of canned peaches.
"You like it?" Sophia asked, which lead him to believe she was the one who had done it.
"Mhmhmm…" He murmured as he swallowed down a cracker. "My compliments to the chef." He picked up a slippery peach with his fingers and tossed it in his mouth.
"I gave you a fork," Sophia said. He looked at the little plastic fork on the white paper napkin, and the plastic knife next to it. He picked up the fork and stabbed it into another peach, even though he didn't really see the point of utensils for most foods.
"The napkin goes in your lap," Sophia told him.
Shane chuckled. "Sophia's Finishing School," he said.
"She's never met a more difficult student," T-Dog added.
Daryl glowered at them, grabbed the napkin, and shoved it in his lap.
"You should unfold it first," Sophia told him.
"Ya realize we're livin' in a world where people's walkin' round dead, their flesh all slippin' off and shit?" he asked her.
"Doesn't mean we can't be polite."
Andrea snorted.
Daryl grumbled but unfolded his napkin.
"Does that mean I have to, too?" Shane asked.
"Only if you want to get laid later," Andrea said, which caused Lori to flush and Shane to laugh.
[*]
Daryl went to bed early because he hadn't slept well the night before. Sometime around midnight, there was a knock at his door. He'd gone to sleep dressed except for his boots and shoes, so he just picked up his handgun, slid the chair away from the door, and opened it cautiously. Carol stood in the half-painted hallway, her soft, blue eyes illuminated by the hazy glow of the flashlight lantern she held at her side. Over her shoulder, he could see Sophia leaning back against the opposite wall.
"Sorry to wake you," Carol said, "But Sophia is terrified. She can hear the walkers rattling around upstairs above our room."
"Ain't gonna go up the stairs to clear the second floor," Daryl said. "They cain't open that door and come down. Nothin' to worry 'bout."
"I know, but the sound's giving her flashbacks to the camp massacre and the herd on the highway."
Daryl sighed and tried to think what he could offer them that wouldn't involve going outside or killing any walkers. "Y'all wanna switch rooms? Cain't hear nothin' in mine."
Carol glanced back at Sophia and then met Daryl's eyes again. "She'd feel a lot safer if you were actually in the room. She trusts you to be able to protect her." Carol winced. "She doesn't trust me. Yet."
"So..." Daryl wasn't quite sure what she was suggesting. "Y'all want to sleep in my room with me still in here?" He wondered why she wasn't more repulsed by him, why she had sought him out instead of Shane or Rick for instruction and protection, why she seemed, almost, to want to be around him.
"If you don't mind," Carol said. "I'd appreciate it. Sophia and I can sleep in the second bed. We won't be any bother, I promise."
She'd be a hell of a bother. She was wearing that same damn jersey she'd had on last night. It was at least as long as a pair of shorts or a spring dress would have been, but it was the suggestiveness that rattled him, the idea that she was missing an article of clothing she'd normally be wearing. Jerseys went with pants. But Carol didn't have on any pants.
"Please?" Sophia asked from the hallway.
Daryl opened the door all the way. "A'right. Y'all come in. But you've got to make up the other bed." Daryl got back in his own bed right away.
Carol got the sheets out of the closet and set the lantern down on the end table. It cast a cone-shaped glow. Daryl tried not to look at her bent over the bed while she tucked in the sheets, and when the edge of her jersey rose up, he shut his eyes hard and fast.
The bed creaked as Carol and Sophia situated themselves, and then the room went dark. Sixty seconds later, he heard a snore that sounded like something straight out of a Popeye cartoon, and he snorted like he might have when he was a boy of six.
In the next bed over, Carol let out a girlish giggle. "Sorry," she whispered. "Sophia won't snore long. It's usually just the first few minutes after she falls asleep."
"Hope you don't snore, too."
"I don't." She was quiet for a moment, and then she said, "Thank you, Daryl, for letting us stay here. I know you don't like people very much."
"Like you well enough."
Sophia's cartoonish snore filled the quiet that followed. Then Carol asked, very softly, "Why?"
Daryl didn't know how to answer that. He wasn't fully aware quite how much he did like Carol until he'd said that out loud. "Well, uh...you...say nice things to me. And you're a good mama. And you're braver 'n ya think."
None of that had sounded creepy, had it? She sure was quiet over there in that other bed. He couldn't see much in the darkness that bathed the room.
"Thank you," she said at last, almost in a whisper.
"Nite." He rolled on his side, his back to her.
"Goodnight."
He didn't fall asleep right away. Sophia's intermittent snore wasn't the problem. It was soft and innocent and he could have slept through it easily. But he could hear Shane and Andrea going at it in the next room over.
Normally, Daryl could sleep through that, too, but with Carol in the room, the sound of sex took on a completely different meaning. He couldn't help but wonder if she was awake, if she heard it, and what she was thinking. He was relieved when the groaning and moaning and bedshaking stopped.
But then it started again.
Jesus, how did they start up again that fast? No way a guy could get a second hard-on that fast, unless he had superpowers. Gradually, Daryl realized the sound was coming through the opposite wall this time.
"Well," came Carol's amused voice from the other bed. "At least Rick is finally getting some."
[*]
They rose early the next morning, ate a quick breakfast, and left through one of the side doors. A few walkers had congregated in the parking lot outside overnight, and Daryl took them out swiftly while the others loaded up.
Before Carol could climb into the van, Daryl gestured for her to come over to his motorcycle. When she did, he reached around and pulled her handgun out of the back waistband of his pants and handed it to her. "Check it."
Carol dropped the magazine and then racked open the slide. "It's clear."
"Now load and lock it."
She slid the clip back in, racked the gun, and put the safety on.
"Don't use it unless you absolutely have to. You ain't got a silencer like me. It's noisy, and, besides, you ain't really ready. So unless you're gonna die, don't try nothin'. Leave it to someone else for now. Hear?"
Carol nodded. She looked at her waist and tried to figure out where to put the gun. She'd been carrying it in her pack, but she wanted it more accessible now.
"Here." Daryl took the gun back and dipped his hand into her waistband enough to pull it outward. She felt a sudden fluttering in the pit of her stomach. He pushed the gun inside. "Be best there. Get you a holster out the bag in the van later."
"Okay," she practically whispered.
Daryl mounted Merle's old motorcycle. Andrea climbed into the passenger's side of the pick-up – Daryl's old beater – that Shane was driving, and Carol took the passenger's seat next to T-Dog in the van, since it was still open. The caravan took off, Daryl in the front, Shane in the back, and the church van in between.
[*]
"You like the Neville Brothers?" T-Dog asked Carol as he pressed play on the CD player.
"I'm not familiar with them. But whatever you want is fine. You're driving."
T-Dog began grooving to the music as he drove. In the back, Glenn was arguing with Carl and Sophia about whether Batman or Superman would win a fight.
Carl said, "I wonder who would win a fight? My dad or Shane?"
"Carl!" Lori scolded. "Why would you ask that? They're best friends. Right, Rick?"
Carol glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Rick look warily at Lori. "Yeah. We go way back. But, Carl, to answer your question, I'd kick Shane's ass. Not with brawn. He's obviously bigger than me. But with this." Rick tapped the side of his head.
"You'd head butt him in the ass?" Carl cried.
Lori splutter-laughed, and Rick smiled. Lori leaned against her husband's side, and he draped an arm around her.
Carol returned her eyes to the road and watched as Daryl's bike sputtered to a stop before a cluster of abandoned and crashed cars. T-Dog slowed to a stop behind him. "We can steer around those," he said. "What's Daryl doing?"
Daryl had dismounted his bike and turned toward the van.
"I'll check." Rick threw open the sliding door on the side of the van. After talking to Daryl, he returned. "We're going to siphon off some gas and loot some cars."
"I don't know," Lori said nervously. "Remember what happened last time we did that?"
"We have a lot more guns this time," Rick assured her. "And it's easier to see what's coming on this stretch of road. We won't be long. But, just in case, T-Dog, keep the engine running and stay with the moms and kids."
Glenn stepped out of the van with an empty, five-gallon, red gas container.
Andrea and Shane jumped out of the pickup and Shane grabbed a crowbar from the bed. He strutted forward to the crowd of cars and began prying the trunk open. There were two walkers trapped inside the car, and they crawled over the front seat and began gnashing futilely against the rear window. Shane ignored them as he wrenched the trunk open. "She's all yours," he called to Andrea, who began rummaging through it as Shane walked on to another trunk.
"I'm going to go help loot," Carol said. Despite the horror of temporarily losing Sophia on the highway, she'd gain more confidence since those shooting lessons. "You stay here, Sophia."
"Be careful, Mama!"
"I will," she promised.
[*]
While the kids waited in the van, they played scissors, paper, rock. Daryl could hear them chanting as he paced the road, flitting his eyes in all directions, his crossbow loaded, cocked, and ready.
He remembered playing that game with his cousin Jax for almost an hour in the backseat of his Uncle Cletus's half-rusted 1962 Dodge Charger. They'd been waiting for their daddies to get out of the strip club. Daryl was almost nine at the time, and Jax was eight. The men had left the windows cracked, and Will Dixon had warned, "Don't y'all dare set foot out this car or I'll box yer ears good!"
After fifty minutes of that dumb ass game, though, the boys got bored and slid out the backseat, snuck up like ninjas (or so they though) on the strip club, and tried to peer through the darkened windows. They weren't able to see anything, so they wandered back out into the parking lot, where they picked up rocks and started throwing them at the flashing, neon sign. They made a game of it, betting to see who could get closest to the garter belt on the lady's leg, not that they knew it was called a garter belt at the time. They knew she was a lady though, because the sign said Ladies, Ladies, Ladies!
Jax hit the lady's high heel, and there was a sound of shattering glass. The sign sparked and fizzled flecks of fire, and they went high tailing it right back to the car, where they sunk down low behind the front seats, cowering for another fifteen minutes until their daddies came out. Will and Cletus Dixon stood outside the car, arguing over which one of them was too drunk to drive. There was a scuffle, and, in the end, it was Will Dixon who got into the passenger's seat, wiping the blood that was dribbling out of his nose with the back of his hand and cursing, "Am not too damn drunk, ya goddamn Puritan!"
"Buckle up, boys!" Uncle Cletus said cheerfully as he started the car. When he began to weave his way out of the parking lot, Jax and Daryl looked at each other and then looked down at the seats, which had no seat belts.
"Yer uncle said buckle up, boy!" Will Dixon yelled. "Now buckle the fuck up!"
"Yes, sir." Daryl pretended to be pulling a belt across his lap, hoping it would be enough to fool his father. Jax, who had always had a talent for sound effects, made a clicking sound with his mouth, and they both suppressed a snort.
Now, as Daryl stood guard with his crossbow, keeping his eyes in all directions so that the others could begin siphoning off gas and looking for supplies without being set upon suddenly by a herd, he tried not to think of Jax. He tried not to think of all the people who were dead now, piled up behind hospitals, burnt to a crisp, or worse yet, risen again and walking around with their faces rotting.
[*]
Cautiously, Carol approached one open trunk and began rooting through it. Andrea was at a car to the right of her, doing the same.
"This is a graveyard," Lori said as she walked toward them. "I don't know how I feel about this."
"Then stay in the van," Andrea suggested. She yanked a red, Georgia Bulldgos cap out of the trunk and put it on her head. "These people are dead. They don't give a shit about your feelings."
Lori's eyes narrowed. "Do you have a problem with me, Andrea?"
Carol thought Andrea's problem with Lori might be that Shane was only with Andrea because Lori had dumped him. No one was admitting what they knew, but Carol was fairly sure they all knew it. Except the kids. And, well, maybe Glenn. Glenn had a sort of endearing innocence about him.
"No," Andrea told her and continued her looting.
"I guess taking a few things wouldn't hurt," Lori conceded and began walking toward another car farther up and toward Carol's left. Shane was at a car behind her, struggling to open the trunk, while Rick and Glenn siphoned off the gas.
Carol grabbed a school backpack and emptied it of the books and school papers and then began filling it with some things she found inside a suitcase: prescription and over the counter medicines, mouthwash, socks, and underwear still in its original packaging. That would cut down on laundry. She glanced to her left and saw Lori popping the trunk using the inside button because there were no walkers in the car.
Lori went around to the back of the car. As she lifted the trunk upward, a hissing walker reached out for her and clawed at her shirt. Lori gasped and stumbled back, tripped, and fell on her bottom. She started crab walking frantically backward as the rotting creature climbed out of the trunk and went after her.
Carol dropped the backpack. Before she even realized she had done it, her handgun was drawn from her waistband and she'd clicked off the safety. As the walker lurched toward Lori, Carol fired. The first shot tore into the rotting creature's shoulder, but then, as it turned toward her, she shot it straight in the head. The walker crumpled to the ground.
By now, both Rick and Shane had run over to the women and were frantically helping Lori up from the ground. Glenn stood from where he'd been crouched siphoning gas and looked at them with a half-opened mouth. The kids crept to the open sliding door of the van and peered out. But Daryl only glanced back behind himself and then looked forward at the road again.
Rick half laughed. "Thanks," he said to Carol. "I didn't know you could shoot. Didn't even know you had a gun."
"Daryl's been teaching me."
"Well, that was loud," said Shane, releasing Lori's wrist, which he had held when helping her up. Rick continued to keep a steadying hand on her as she regained her composure. "We better hurry up in case there were any walkers nearby that heard it."
Lori stared dumbfounded into the trunk. "Why was there a walker in the trunk?"
"Well, I hadn't exactly made detective yet before the world ended," Shane said, "but judging from the bullet wound in his chest and the shovel in the trunk, I'd guess he was murdered and stashed in there and the driver was on his way to bury the body." Shane walked off, twirled his finger in the air, and called, "Let's wrap it up and get moving! Before those gunshots draw visitors!"
With a few more gallons of gas and a couple bags full of other items, the group was soon back on the road.