Rick drove the van under an arch labeled "Rock and Roll Kingdom" and around a standalone statue of an electric guitar and then another of a saxophone before parking in front of a place called The King's Diner. The group exited the van and followed him to the front door.
"They don't want our help cleaning out and scrubbing down the refrigerator?" Carol asked skeptically as Rick tried another key from the security guard's key ring on the door. The place was corner-to-corner glass windows, so they could see there were no walkers inside, unless they were in the kitchen.
"They said the rotting milk and meat smelled something awful," Rick told her. "And that walker had also been feasting on a couple of dead raccoons in there, so you might see some blood stains on the carpet when we move in. They're going to try to get up as much as they can. We'll just close off the room he ate them in. It's messy and that bed was apparently missing the mattress anyway."
"How did raccoons get in the house?" Lori asked.
Rick shrugged.
"I hope they aren't living in the attic," she muttered. "Remember our squirrel problem in our house?"
The next key worked. Rick opened the door and the group stepped inside. The booths were bright red, and black and white checker tiles lined the floor. The décor was all Elvis Presley related, with photos of him in various stages of his career lining the walls. A jukebox rested silently in the corner.
"Stay here while Glenn and I clear the kitchen and behind the counters," Rick told them.
"I'll clear with you," Andrea insisted as she unshouldered her rifle and took off the safety. Andrea, Rick, and Glenn disappeared behind the long red counter.
Carl ran to a stand-alone drink refrigerator.
"Stay close!" Lori warned him.
Carl jerked open the door of the refrigerator and took a lonely can of Orange Crush that was lying on its side and the last bottle of Coca-Cola. "Hey, Sophia?" he called. "Which Coke you want?"
Her eyes grew wide at the sight of the soda. "Orange!"
Carl tossed the can to her, and, laughing, she caught it.
"Open it!" he cried.
"Yeah right. Not until it settles." But Sophia grew impatient when she saw Carl guzzling his soda, so she extended her arms as far as she could and popped the can. It sprayed briefly, and fizz began to bubble over. She yanked it quickly to herself again and began slurping up the fizzy liquid before it could be lost.
When Carl had drained his Coke, he slammed it down on a nearby table and let out a loud belch.
"Carl!" Lori scolded him.
"I can do better than that," Sophia insisted. She made a face like she was swallowing air and then let out a long, loud, elephant-like belch.
Carl snickered.
Carol covered her face with her hand. "I did not teach her that." Neither had Ed, come to think of it. She lowered her hand. "Where did you learn to do that, Sophia?"
"Mr. Dixon taught me. At that CVS, where we found those three sodas and Carl found out he was going to be a big brother."
Sophia finished her soda and the kids ran over to examine the juke box, but now, the rest of the group was returning from clearing the kitchen.
"The songs are all by some guy named Elvis!" Sophia cried.
"Some guy named Elvis?" Rick asked. "Oh, are you going to need an education." He shook his head at Carol. "You haven't taught her about Elvis?"
"Ed didn't like him," Carol replied. But if she had a quarter right now, and this place had power, she'd put on Hound Dog and turn it up full blast. Fuck you, Ed.
"This place has been partially looted," Glenn said, "but it wasn't broken into."
"That walker looted it," said Rick. "Remember, he had the keys to everything. Security guard. Shane said he brought some stuff to the fridge and deep freezer in the house. There's still some frozen burgers and hot dogs and ice cream. Everything in the fridge rotted, of course."
"Find any food in the kitchen?" Lori asked.
"The stuff in the freezers and refrigerators is all rotten," Andrea answered, "because there's been no power here for…how long has it been now?"
They were all starting to lose track of time already. There were those first few weeks, when people started dying in mass, and yet some still clung to hope, holing up at home, thinking the military might get a handle on the problem. But then the power and water went out and people began fleeing for the camps that didn't, in the end, exist anymore. Carol had been in the quarry camp for over a month when Rick showed up. And then there was the wild goose chase to the CDC, followed by Fort Benning, the near-loss of Sophia, the hotel, and everything in between. "Three months, maybe?" Carol speculated.
"Yeah, so, the buns are all moldy," Andrea continued. "But there's lots of salt back there, ketchup, mustard, pepper, dry pasta, canned pasta sauce, potato chips, nacho chips, and blocks of Velveeta cheese."
"That stuff lasts a long time," Glenn insisted. "I'm not sure it ever goes bad."
"Any canned vegetables?" Lori asked. "Besides the pasta sauce?"
"Sauerkraut," Rick replied. "And jalapenos."
"Great," Lori muttered.
"But, hey, this is just one restaurant," Rick reassured her. "And Shane said the pantry at the house was full. The deep freezer had lots of hamburgers and hotdogs. We've got food for months in this place."
"The meat in the freezer isn't going to last that long," Lori insisted. "Not with ten of us."
Carol sighed with exasperation. "When we run out of meat, Daryl can hunt, and the house has a freezer to store it." She tried not to be irritated, but she thought Lori ought to be thanking her lucky stars right now that they'd found this goldmine.
"We need decent vegetables," Lori insisted.
"We could start a few small vegetable gardens," Carol suggested. "There are plenty of flower gardens around here, so they should have good soil. We'd need to find seeds, though."
"We could probably do a supply run to a nursery or something," Glenn said. "At some point."
It felt good to be making suggestions to the group that were being taken seriously. Carol felt like less of a burden and more of a contributor with each passing day. First she'd saved Lori, and now she was helping to make long-term plans.
Carl was now grabbing a giant Pixie stick out a small cardboard box by the cash register where several stood upright. "Hey, Soph, what color?"
"Green!" she shouted. He tossed it to her, but she didn't catch it this time. It landed on the floor, and she bent down to pick it up.
"Carl!" Lori scolded. "Not so much sugar before lunch!"
"Oh, come on, Mom! It's the end of the world!"
"Kid's got a point," Glenn said and went and got himself a pixie stick, too.
[*]
Flames licked the side of the mattress and what little was left of the body atop it. Shane and Daryl had dumped all the rancid food – and the walker - in the dumpster, but this they were burning in the parking lot. It felt wrong to throw the poor woman in the dumpster with her potential rapist and devourer. She deserved this much of a send-off, at least. T-Dog was back at the house, opening all the windows and scrubbing. They promised they'd be back soon to help.
"I don't guess anyone's going to want to stay in that room," Shane said, "with no mattress and all the bloodstains on the linoleum. And any lingering stench will be stronger there."
"Don't need to," Daryl said as he watched the strangely soothing pattern of the flames. "Plenty of rooms."
"That would leave six," Shane said.
"Yeah. Rick and Lori take the one with the crib. Carol and Sophia get the one with the trundle. T-Dog takes the queen downstairs. You and Andrea take the King. Carl and Glenn get the bunks in the space room. And I get the one with the two double beds."
"I don't want to share a bedroom with Andrea."
"Nah?" Daryl asked.
"I mean, I don't want her getting the wrong idea."
"The idea that you been fuckin' 'er?" Daryl asked. "Think she got that idea already."
"Two nights of fucking does not a relationship make," Shane assured him.
"So, you don't want to fuck her no more?" Daryl asked skeptically.
"No, I do. I do. I just don't want her think we're, you know, a couple."
"Huh," Daryl said. "Well, I ain't an expert in women, not by a long shot, but good luck with that. Good luck livin' in the same house with a woman and fuckin' her and her not thinking you're a couple."
Shane sighed. "Yeah, this is going to get complicated, isn't it? I really should have kept it in my pants."
"Maybe since the start."
Shane glared at him. "What's that mean?"
"Don't mean nothin'," Daryl insisted. But even Merle, he thought, who would fuck just about any woman on two legs – and maybe some that weren't – would not have fucked his best friend's wife. If he'd had a best friend. Which Merle never really had. He'd had associates more than friends.
So, what that assertion really came down to was that Merle never would have fucked Daryl's wife. If Daryl had ever had a wife. Which of course he never had. So, in reality, Merle's honor in the matter had never been tested. And, come to think of it, Merle had fucked Daryl's girlfriend once. At least, Daryl had thought she was his girlfriend, but the fact that she fucked Merle alerted him to the fact that he had probably been mistaken in that assumption. After that, he never imagined he had a girlfriend again. And he vowed he never would. He wasn't really boyfriend material, anyway.
"Let's grab a grill from the picnic area 'fore we go back in," he told Shane.
[*]
Shane and Daryl came back to the House of the Future with a large charcoal grill and four large, full bags of charcoal in the bed of the pick-up.
T-Dog's bald head was glistening with sweat where he knelt scrubbing the inside of the now empty refrigerator. "Hey, Mr. Clean," Daryl called. "What's left to do?"
T-Dog stood, shut the refrigerator door, and wiped his brow with the back of his arm. He was still holding a scrubbing sponge. "Ain't that just like a man?" he asked. "Wait until you've done it all to finally offer to help."
Shane chuckled. "Good job, honey. It already reeks a little bit less in here."
"I opened all the windows and turned on all the ceiling fans," T-Dog told him. "I got the blood out of the railing, but I couldn't get it off the carpet or out of the linoleum in that back room. And I sprayed a bunch of Kingdom air freshener I found in the pantry."
"Kingdom air freshener?" Shane asked. "What's it smell like?"
"Smells like royalty, according to the can," T-Dog told him. "I guess it does, if royalty smells like lavender. Now I'm taking a hot shower. Stench or no stench in this house."
[*]
While T-Dog took his shower, Daryl grabbed one of those nutty cones from the freezer and went to read over the exhibits in the display room that explained everything about the house. The buttons would cause some exhibits to light up and move, or they would cause a recorded voice to speak.
When he'd read up on everything, he walked outside and found Shane sitting at one of the outdoor tables across from the house and in front of an ice cream shop. He was eating a creamsicle. Daryl strolled over, saying, "Hey! Save some for the kids!"
"There's plenty for the kids." Shane pointed with his creamsicle at the ice cream shop. "Think he got them from in there. He should have brought over and plugged in an extra freezer or two at the house, so everything wouldn't go bad. I bet it reeks of spoiled milk in there. Learn anything at the museum?"
"We're gonna have to conserve power," Daryl insisted as he pulled back a black metal chair and sat down. He slouched in the chair, his legs spread comfortably wide. "Those panels on the roof only generate so much power when the sun's not shinning. Then the solar storage battery kicks in. But when that battery is drained down, it takes a long fucking time to recharge. Secret is, they only rent this place out Wednesday through Sunday and then turn off everything from Monday noon to Wednesday noon and wait for that battery to get a full recharge."
"Seriously?"
"When the power goes out, the septic pump won't work, and neither will the water pump."
"So no sewage or water?" Shane asked.
"Can still use the toilets for a bit because of the sewage tank, but then it's got to drain or it'll back up. Need power to the pump to drain. The water storage tank will also get us by for a bit while the battery recharges so the pump can run. But point is…we can't be riding no ramps up the stairs, and we got to open and close our own damn closets and blinds, and maybe don't use too many electric lights. Short showers so the water pump's not running too much. First priority is power to the two pumps, always, then the heat when it's winter. Place ain't got a real fireplace. That thing's just like a video, makes noise like a fire, plays music if you want, and then electric heat comes out the vents. There's air conditioning. That'll suck the most power. Got to use that real sparingly, keep the windows open and fans on instead most of the time."
"How long will that solar battery last before it dies completely?"
"It was just installed six months ago. They last anywhere from five to fifteen years."
"That's a huge range."
"Yeah. But you still get some power from the solar panels even without the backup battery. Just only when the sun is shinnin' bright. But five years is plenty of time for Lori to have that baby, train it, get it steady on its feet and all that shit."
"Steady on its feet?" Shane asked with a laugh. "Train it? A human baby is not Bambi."
"Potty train it, I meant!" Daryl growled. "And teach it basic gun safety and how to mind. Five years is enough for all that to happen, so if we need to hit the road again after that…We'll be better able to do it."
Shit. Was he really thinking about living in this park, with these same people, for five years? He'd never lived anywhere for five years, at least not since he was nine, and his mother burned down their cabin and herself with it.
But what else did he have to do? Who else did he have to live with? Merle was gone now, thanks in part to some of these people, but he didn't hate them for that anymore. He could go it alone, but, the truth was, he was starting to appreciate some of the company.
Not Lori. And Andrea still got under his craw sometimes, but even she was growing on him. Glenn was harmless. Shane was at least a man. T-Dog – even though he'd dropped those keys to Merle's cuffs down the drain – was just damn hard not to like – and Daryl had tried not to like him. Carl was annoying sometimes, but he also reminded Daryl of himself at a younger age – younger than Carl was now – before the world and his father beat all the innocence out of him. Rick was a good husband and father, and that was a rare thing in this world in Daryl's experience, so he could almost forgive Rick for cuffing his brother to a pipe. Sophia needed toughening up, but she was cute with those freckles and that snort laugh of hers. And Carol…
Well, Carol.
Carol acted toward him as if he weren't some backwoods redneck to be wary around. As if he was no different than Shane or Rick, as if he was every bit as good as either one of them, every bit as much to be trusted and respected. He'd never met a woman who treated him like that before.
He could get used to being treated that way.
And he liked Carol's company, more than he wanted to admit - the way she smiled when she was happy, that little twinkle she got in her blue eyes when she was telling some dumb joke, the way her firm little ass had felt against his cock when he'd yanked back that rifle, but, well…it was best not to dwell on that.
Still, he could make do a few years here, at Fun Kingdom, as long as he could slip out the gates and disappear in the forest sometimes, two days here, three days there, to get away from them all, to get his head cleared. And he could come back with a deer or something that would give them fifty pounds or more of meat. And they'd appreciate it. He'd have a purpose.
T-Dog came out of the house freshly showered and wearing a new set of clothes – blue jeans and a white undershirt. His backpack was slung over one shoulder, and he was sucking on a red, white, and blue bomb pop. He slurped the pop from his mouth and asked, "What now, gentlemen?"