Daryl and Carol found their way back to the group around dinner time. Shane was grilling again outside the ice cream shop.

"We voted to sleep in the theater one more night," Glenn told them. "But it's easier to cook close to the house. I'm dipping in for beverages. What'll it be?"

"I think I just need water," Carol said.

"Same," Daryl told him.

Carol settled at a two-person table with Sophia to eat while Daryl sat at his own two-person table. "Where were you all day, Mama?" Sophia asked.

"Mr. Dixon was teaching me how to use a knife properly for killing walkers."

"Well, Sophia did a great job today," Rick reported from the next table over, where he was eating with Carl and Lori. "We learned gun safety, and how to load and unload a handgun, a rifle, and a shotgun. And we did some dry firing. Tomorrow we're going to shoot for real. We're using the B.B. gun game range but with real guns, if you want to join us and practice."

"I think I will," Carol said. "I could certainly use the target practice." She'd only shot a single walker, after all.

"Thirty rounds each," Rick said. "Fifteen in the rifles, ten in the handguns, and five shotgun shells. That's not much for practice, but we have to ration ammunition. We have thousands of rounds from Fort Benning in the van, but who knows what we'll need when."

"Should go find a reloadin' press," Daryl suggested. "Gunpowder and bullets."

"There's got to be one in one of these semi-rural neighborhoods," T-Dog agreed, "in someone's garage."

Rick nodded. "Good idea. We can start reloading our spent casings."

"Maybe we could do that next week when we go looking for the seeds," Carol told him.

"We?" Shane asked, finally leaving the grill and sitting down with his food across from Andrea. "You're not going on a supply run."

"I am," Carol insisted. "So I can practice killing walkers."

Shane laughed. "Daryl, Glenn, and I will go on the run. Glenn because he can run fast and get in and out of tight spots and Daryl because…well, he's Daryl. Rick and T-Dog can stay here to keep you ladies and the kids safe."

Andrea crossed her arms over her chest and glared at Shane. "Keep us safe? I'm a good shot with a rifle now. You saw how well I was shooting by the end of that second day at Fort Benning. And I've had a handgun of my own since this started. I've been on supply runs before. To Atlanta. For the quarry camp. And where were you then? Back at camp."

"Yeah, and you came back missing Merle. You couldn't handle him out there."

"None of us could handle him out there," Andrea insisted. "Morales couldn't handle him out there. Rick couldn't handle him out there. T-Dog couldn't handle him out there. And I'm not the one who dropped the damn keys!"

Daryl's faced darkened as he chewed on his hot dog and T-Dog glanced warily at him.

"You aren't going on this supply run," Shane insisted. "And neither is Carol. It's going to be me, Daryl, and Glenn. Too many cooks spoil the broth."

"Carol's comin'," Daryl announced. "Ain't a discussion." He picked up a jalapeno and popped it into his mouth. "Y'all can fight over who else comes with us."

[*]

After dinner, they shut all the windows in the House of the Future because it looked like rain. They settled in for the night once again in the theater in Fairytale Kingdom. There were six mattresses on the stage, because it had been set for a musical version of "The Princess and the Pea." They had unstacked them to sleep on, with Carol and Sophia sharing one, Lori and Carl another. Four others got their own mattresses, leaving just Daryl and Glenn in sleeping bags on the hard wood stage. Daryl settled in not far from Carol and Sophia's mattress.

The theater was clothed in darkness, except for the glow of a solitary, battery-operated night light, which gave the kids some peace. Thunder rattled across the sky, booming and shaking the roof.

Sophia whimpered.

Carol slung an arm around her and gave her a little squeeze. "We're safe," she whispered, but a tree had once come through their house during a storm, and Sophia had ever since associated storms with that.

The thunder rumbled again, and again Sophia whimpered.

"Hey," Daryl hissed from his sleeping bag a few feet away. Carol half expected him to tell Sophia to "put a cork in it" as he had when she was whimpering back in the nursing home. But instead he said, "Sophia! Hey! 'S just angel's fartin'."

Sophia laughed.

"Yeah," he told her, "they get real gassy up there in heaven and then they just let a big one rip. Listen. Here it comes. 'Bout to rip out a big ol' fart."

The thunder shook the roof again, and instead of whimpering this time, Sophia laughed. Daryl rolled over, his back to their mattress, and soon enough, Sophia was asleep.

[*]

The next morning, the rides in the park were covered with lingering drops of rain and the flower and tree beds were like shallow, murky ponds. But the sun was shining bright and the birds were chirping, and the air smelled fresh and clean. They opened all the windows of the House of the Future again, turned back on the ceiling fans, and had a practice day at the B.B. gun game range, only with real guns and ammunition.

Daryl didn't join them. He wandered off on his own again, to Carol's disappointment. She'd rather he be teaching her than Rick, but Rick was probably a better teacher for Sophia. He was patient and gentle and soft-spoken.

Rick talked them all through firing with live rounds. The kickback on the rifle was stronger than Carol expected. But by her last five rounds, she was getting all of her shots consistently within one or two rings of the bullseye, and a walker's head was much bigger than the bullseye. "Tight group," Rick said. "Well done. You learn fast."

"That's what Daryl said."

[*]

Daryl came back from his wanderings around four in the afternoon to discover that the gang had moved into the House of the Future. The two and a half days of airing, but especially the fresh after-scent of rain circulating through all the open windows from morning until afternoon today, had helped. He couldn't smell anything off-putting anymore.

The kids were playing Dungeons and Dragons – which they'd gotten from a gift shop in the Medieval Kingdom - on the coffee table in the living room with music blaring from the fireplace and the fake fire flickering on screen. The faux fireplace had a hard drive loaded with music and audio stories that could be selected using a touch-screen menu. He slapped the button that turned the whole thing off at once – music, picture, and heat. "Don't need that," he told the kids. "Got to conserve power. Ain't even cold out. Almost 70."

He went upstairs to throw his pack in the room he'd been assigned in the second hallway, the one with the two full-size beds, and he saw the door at the end of the hallway – to the evil room – was open. After tossing his pack, he crept down the hall to investigate. He found Carol in there, making up the bed, which now had a mattress suddenly. She'd put on brand new sheets and a comforter, and there were two fluffy pillows, and she was smoothing out the comforter now.

A large Persian rug had been lain down to cover all of the bloodstains on the linoleum floor, and there were new lace curtains on the open windows, which stirred as a fresh fall breeze wafted through. Scented candles in glass jars – which appeared to have melted and congealed again - burned on the little writing desk and dresser. It looked like nothing wicked had ever happened in here. It looked…homey.

"Hell you doing?" he asked.

She startled, put a hand to her chest, and sighed out. "I didn't hear you sneak up on me."

"Hell you doing?" he repeated.

"I couldn't stand it," she said. "The thought of it. So...I decided to blot it out. To make this a usable room. I got the rug from the gift shop in the Kingdom of Persia. The curtains from there, too. They're pretty aren't they?"

"And the mattress?"

"Kingdom of Sleep Giftshop. Remember that display mattress they had in there? It was made up to show off a bed set. T-Dog fetched it for me in the pick-up and carried it up for me."

"But why?"

She tucked in the corners of the comforter now. "In case we ever find other survivors," she said. "They'll need a room. There's still the two bunks in Glenn and Carl's room, and the extra bed in yours…but, just in case…" She looked at her handiwork and patted the comforter.

"We ain't likely to find people," he said softly. She was holding out a false hope, he thought.

"But if we do. If we do, it's ready."

Daryl winced slightly.

"I just feel better," Carol explained. "Covering it up. Papering over it. Making it…go away." She hugged herself and looked up at the light fixture on the ceiling. "Although that light bulb burned out. It was probably on for almost three months straight."

It was madness, he thought, but if it made her happy, hell, he could replace a damn lightbulb. "Saw one in the pantry. Replace it later."

"Would you?"

He nodded and gave her a bit-off smile tinged with compassion. Then he left to go bring in a few more things from the van into his room. He leaned his crossbow and extra quiver of arrows against a corner. After taking his clothes out of his pack, he shoved them haphazardly into the dresser drawers. Daryl unrolled his sleeping bag onto the bare mattress of the bed farthest from the door and closest to the window. He took down one of the slick pillows from the closet and tossed it – with no pillowcase – at the top of the sleeping bag. There. That would do nicely.

[*]

Carol unpacked their room after dinner while Sophia took a shower. She hung her and Sophia's clothes in the closet and folded some neatly into the drawers of the dresser. She carefully made up the queen bed and trundle bed with new, clean sheets and blankets and pillows from the Kingdom of Sleep gift shop. She'd snagged about twenty sets and had stored the extras in the hall linen closet. That would mean less laundry for her to do. Laundry would have to be done in the lake or creek using the washing board they'd had at camp. There was an industrial washing machine and dryer in Fun Kingdom to launder the House of the Future's linens, but they were in the park offices, not the House, and consequently they had no power. There was no way to hook up the washer here in the house, though she could probably plug in the dryer and find a way to vent it. That would drain too much power, however, and she could easily string a clothesline. She preferred airdried clothes anyway.

Sophia was over the moon to see so many nice, new things when she came back from the shower, drying her hair. Carol got her settled in bed.

When she heard the upstairs shower stop again a few minutes later, Carol gathered her toiletries and a Fun Kingdom beach towel and left Sophia reading a book from one of the gift shops – an illustrated collection of the legends of King Arthur.

On her way to the bathroom in the second hallway, she paused before the open doorway of Daryl's bedroom. He'd chosen deliberately for himself, she thought – around the corner from the others.

A three-prong, silver candelabra sat aglow on the end table between the two full-size beds – no electric lights from sunrise to sunset, they'd agreed, to conserve energy, but Daryl had taken it one step farther and snagged that from the dining room for the nighttime. The taper candles were a little misshapen, probably having melted some during the summer and then solidified again.

He was sitting on a sleeping bag he'd stretched out on top of the bare mattress, wearing a white muscle shirt and a pair of black sweatpants with Fun Kingdom written down the side of one leg in silver letters. He was scratching his bare foot with the tail of his crossbow bolt. His hair was damp from his recent shower.

"Leave any hot water for me?" she asked.

"Me? Stuck to the seven-minute rule, unlike Glenn. Kid's been in one of the downstairs showers for a fuckin' hour."

"I'm sure it hasn't been an hour."

"Long enough," he muttered.

"There are fresh sheets and blankets and pillowcases in the closet if you want to make the bed. Or I have some nice new ones from the Kingdom of Sleep if you don't like those."

"Nah. Sleeping bag works."

"You should at least put a pillowcase on that pillow, though."

"Why?"

"Well, because it keeps it cleaner."

"I'm clean. Just took a shower."

"Yes, but, over time…dead skin accumulates on anything you sleep on."

"Ain't afraid of a little dead skin."

"I can teach you to make up a bed if you want," she suggested.

"Know how to make a damn bed! Ain't rocket science."

"The fitted sheets can be a little tricky. Especially by yourself. But I know a quick way to do it all. You taught me to use a gun and a knife. I don't mind, really. I'll teach you, when I'm done with my shower." She walked away before he could say no.

After she was clean and mostly dry and in her own Fun Kingdom sweatpants – and a Fun Kingdom sweatshirt because the temperature had dropped to 50 at night – she came back to his room, half expecting he would have shut the door as a signal to leave him alone. But he hadn't. It was wide open.

He was still sitting on top of the sleeping bag, with the candelabra bathing the room in flickering light, but now he was sharpening one of his knives against a gray sharpening stone.

She leaned back against the wall by the open closet. "Boz," she said.

"Boz?" he asked.

"Boz. For your middle name. It was a penname Charles Dickens used to write under for newspapers and magazines."

"How you know everyone's nicknames?" he asked. "Hank Williams. Charles Dickens."

She shrugged. "I read."

"Ain't Boz."

"Boaz then."

"Boaz?" he asked. "Where you come up with these names?"

"He married Ruth. In the Bible. It's a very romantic story. She was young and widowed and poor and would come to glean the fields he owned, you know, like the poor did back then, taking the bits that had fallen to the ground during the harvesting. But he noticed her for her virtue."

Daryl snorted. "Oh, for her virtue? Not for her tits?"

"Yes! For her virtue. He'd heard how she'd been loyal to her mother-in-law Naomi and stuck with her and taken care of her after both became widows. So, Boaz told his workers to leave extra gleanings for her, to make sure lots more fell to the ground when they were harvesting than normally would. She was young and virtuous, and he didn't expect her to want him, an older man. But one night, she made a bold decision. She went in and lay down on the threshing floor and uncovered his feet."

"Uncovered his feet?" Daryl blew on his knife and then continued his sharpening. "That some kind of church lady euphemism?"

"And then Ruth told Boaz, 'Spread your cloak over me.'"

"So she fucked him?" Daryl asked. "Is that what you're saying? In this romance story in the Bible? The poor, young, hot widow with big virtues got down on the threshing floor and took out his dick and fucked 'em?"

"That's one way to interpret it, I suppose," Carol replied. "But the whole feet and cloak thing may have just been a metaphor for asking Boaz to marry her. Throwing his cloak over her might be symbolic of taking her under his protection."

"Naaah," Daryl said. "She fucked him."

"Well, it worked, either way. They got married."

"Must of fucked his brains out."

"And they lived happily ever after," Carol continued. "And had lots of children. And from them, King David was descended."

"You mean she kept fucking him even after they were married and she had all his cash? Hmmm…Maybe it is a romance story."

Carol chuckled. "I take it your middle name is not Boaz?"

"No. One more guess. If you're still rationing to three a day."

Carol put a finger on her lips and tapped them. Then she ventured, "Budweiser. You were named after the beer."

Daryl snorted. "No. Though my granddaddy was called Bud. Which was short for Buddy. Which was a nickname for Robert."

Carol began to take the sheets down from the closet. She lay them folded on the second unmade bed. "So where were you all day?" she asked.

"Killin' the walkers y'all drew from the woods with that loud ass shootin'. They was lingerin' near the fence line."

"Sorry. Were there many?"

"Nah. Just three I saw. Pretty damn remote out here, but they come from the woods here and there. Walked the perimeter, too, of the fence. Found a weak spot – there's a chain link section back by the woods where the train runs through. Ain't strong. Ain't iron. Need to reinforce that section. Guess they didn't think any people would sneak in through all them woods, but walkers might."

"Thanks for thinking of all these things. I wish Rick or Shane would. Or me. I wish I would. But I think of stupid stuff." She waved at the sheets. "Like making beds."

He looked up at her. "Ain't stupid," he said.

"You think it is."

"Ain't what I said." He swiveled so his feet were on the floor and set his knife and stone on the end table. "Go on then, Miss Murphy. Show me how it's done."

She smiled and showed him how to make the bed up quickly and smoothly, narrating as she did so. As she was fluffing the pillow toward the end, she said, "You'll have to teach me to sharpen knives someday." She set the pillow down. "Now it's your turn. You make that bed you're sitting on."

"Why?"

She pulled down more folded sheets from the closet. "So you can practice making one. I know bedmaking isn't exactly a survival skill. But it's a civilization skill. I can't teach you how to survive in the wilderness, but I can teach you how to get along with others in society. It can help you win friends and influence people."

"Pffft."

"You can't do things without people."

"Do things without people all the damn time."

"Not big things. And even when civilization skills don't come in handy for forging alliances, well…it just makes life more pleasant to have a nicely made-up bed."

He looked at her seriously for a moment. "You really do like things to be pleasant."

"Is that so awful?"

"No. Ain't awful at all." He stood. "Toss me the sheets."

He went to work with confidence, but then every time he tried to get the fitted sheet over one corner of the mattress, it pulled off the other. He growled in frustration each time it happened, and Carol chuckled. "Use the trick I showed you," she suggested. "When I was putting them on the other bed."

"Wasn't payin' attention when you did it," he admitted.

"You were watching me."

He ducked his head. "Mind was elsewhere."

Carol had noticed that. She'd noticed his eyes were occasionally elsewhere than on her hands making up the bed, too. She hadn't minded. He was subtle about it, and it was flattering to be appreciated. Ed had told her that her breasts were too small. "Need help?" she asked.

"Gonna make me say it?"

"No." She smiled, came over, and helped him to put on the sheet, making him work with her to do it.

When the bed was fully made – fitted sheet, flat sheet, pillow case, and fuzzy brown blanket and all - he threw himself back-down atop it. The bed bounced slightly. "Does feel kind of nice," he admitted.

"And it'll feel even nicer under the blanket later."

He rolled on his side and propped up his head to look at her. "You make things real nice," he said. "Didn't mean to belittle. Ain't unimportant. The little shit."

"Even in an apocalypse?" she asked.

"'Specially in an apocalypse," he said. "Gotta have some light. Guess I just…dunno. Didn't grow up with anyone who gave a shit 'bout makin' things nice. But it's nice…when things are…nice."

He huffed at his own inability to express himself, and she smiled. Then she stretched back her arm and winced at the pain in her neck and shoulder.

"Somethin' wrong?" he asked.

"No, it's just the kickback from that rifle I was training with today. I'm not used to it. I wasn't expecting it to make me so sore."

"C'mere." He sat up cross legged on the bed and patted the mattress in front of himself. Surprised at the offer, she sat down in front of him, also cross-legged. He began working at the knots in her neck and shoulders. The candlelight flickered against the opposite wall, painting shadows.

He was much gentler than she'd expected, and despite the cool of the evening, his fingers felt warm on the bare flesh of her neck and then strong on her shoulders through the sweatshirt. She relaxed into his touch for a while. Eventually, she turned back to smile at him. This time she wasn't even trying to flirt. It was a purely genuine smile of gratitude for something that felt so good after a long day.

Daryl's hands froze in place. He looked suddenly nervous. He squeezed her shoulders one last time and then his hands slid away. He scooted back and swung his legs over the bed. "You better get goin'," he said as he stood up. "Sophia's gonna wonder where you are."

Carol tried not to feel hurt, but it felt like a rejection, as if he were running away from the seriousness of the moment, and so she tried to make the moment seem less serious, less genuine, with joking: "Sophia's engrossed in her book," she said as she stood. "I've got a few minutes. And that candlebra's pretty romantic. Wanna screw around?"

"Pffft!"

That worked, Carol thought. He wasn't taking her seriously anymore.

He grabbed the candelabra. "I'm going down."

She smirked. "Even better."

"Stahp. Meant I'm going downstairs. Got to make sure no one left any lights on after the showers."

"Admit it," she said as she began to walk out of the room in front of him. "You just don't want to have to change the sheets again."

"Stahp."

Carol chuckled as she slipped into her own bedroom.

[*]

Someone had left a light on downstairs, of course, even after going to bed. It was a light in the kitchen, the little one over the sink. That's why Daryl had to check. You couldn't trust these people to conserve.

Now he was back in bed, with the candles blown out and nothing but a little starlight seeping through the half-opened blinds. He lay under the crisp clean new sheets and the fuzzy warm blanket, which, he had to admit, felt pretty damn nice. But not nearly as nice as it felt to jerk off underneath them, in the dark privacy of his closed-door room, as he thought of that massage he'd just given Carol. Not the massage, so much, as what it might have felt like if he'd dared to let his hands slip down, down, and then under that sweatshirt, and around…and then up again to cup her bare breasts, to squeeze them from behind while he raked his teeth over her neck…to toy and play with those sweet firm mounds, to pinch her nipples until they were hard and peaked and she was moaning in pleasure.

"Ahhh….fuuck…" he moaned as he threw off the sheets and blanket and spilled hot into his own hand. He hastily grabbed a hand towel to wipe up before the sheets could get dirty.

Well, that hadn't taken long at all, had it, Mr. Pop and Stop? But it was her damn fault for joking about screwing around like that. Why did she have to put those ideas in his head right before bed?

And she had been joking about the screwing around, he was sure. But there was a moment, when she looked back at him while he was rubbing her shoulders, when she didn't seem to be joking at all. She'd just looked so pleased, so content, so…happy to have him touching her. It had thrown him for a loop, that look. He hadn't known how to respond to it.

That wasn't a joke, he didn't think, but the rest of it probably was. Oh, she was flirting with him. He wasn't so dense he didn't know that. She was definitely flirting with him, but it was just a way for her to pass the time. Amuse herself. She probably didn't expect him to make a real move on her in response. And if he did make a real move on her…he'd ruin this. Whatever the hell this was. This inexplicable respect she seemed to have for him, this trusting openness, this seeming desire just to be around him.

Normally, if a woman gave him any kind of indication of sexual interest – which admittedly didn't happen often - he'd try to fuck her right away. The fuck was all he wanted, anyhow, and with women, Merle had taught him, fucking was mostly a numbers game. Ninety percent of the time they would said no, but ten percent of the time they'd said yes. Either way, you didn't waste any time. You either got what you wanted, or you got slapped down and got to move on quickly without having to pretend to be social.

So he had played the numbers game Merle taught him, and it had worked on occasion. Mostly on trashy women, but those were mostly the types he'd tried it on. And it hadn't bothered him to play the numbers game, because if he got shot down, all that meant was he never saw that woman again, or, if he did, she avoided him. That was no loss either way.

But he didn't want to play the numbers game with Carol. Because the trade-off wasn't the same this time. The trade-off here…it would be immense. He could lose her respect, her friendship, her laugh, her smile - her simple, easy presence.

No fucking way he was taking that gamble.

Daryl flung the towel into a corner of the room with his dirty clothes and crawled back into bed. He turned his face to the window and almost instantly fell asleep, still half thinking of Carol.