They went to the first town beyond the sparsely populated oasis of forest that housed Fun Kingdom, a semi-rural suburb of Athens, and to the nursery Rick had located in the yellow pages. Seeds were their first priority.
They eased to a stop in the parking lot, where just a couple of walkers were milling around. Carol dismounted and drew her jasmine knife as Daryl turned off the bike. Daryl smirked as he, too dismounted and drew his knife. "You ready to do this thing, Miss Murphy?"
She nodded. Glenn and Rick were getting out of the pick-up with guns drawn. "We got this," Daryl told them as they walked toward the walkers with Carol. He covered her closely, but she did the stabbing: first one, and then the other, as they lurched toward her several feet apart.
Glenn and Rick watched with faint, disbelieving smiles on their faces.
"Good job," Daryl told her as she sheathed her knife. He looked her up and down appreciatively. "You're getting to be a bit of bad ass."
"Well, I had a good teacher."
"Now you're gonna clear the greenhouse." He went back to grab his crossbow from the crate, strode up to Glenn and Rick, and told them to keep guard out front until they'd cleared the place and called them in.
"Just the two of you are going to clear it?" Rick asked doubtfully. "Without any idea how many might be in there?"
"She needs to learn. Be fine."
Rick shrugged.
Carol and Daryl jogged around to the front of the nursery, Daryl with his crossbow held up in one hand. When they were at the front door, Daryl tugged on it to see if was unlocked. It was, and he let it slide shut. "Draw yer knife," he told her, and she did.
"I open the door, you head in. Sweep left and right, front and back, and stab what you need to."
She nodded. She positioned her grip over the carved jasmines, just how he'd showed her, and then he jerked open the door.
When Carol swept in, the humidity hit her like a slap, as did the smell of fertilizer mingled with the stench of decaying flesh. The first thing she noticed was the walker on her left, between two tall potted plants with large green leaves that were decaying into brown. She went straight for the creature and stabbed it hard in the forehead. She felt a rush of adrenaline and power as she did so, but then she felt a withered hand clamp down on her shoulder and heard the growl of the walker behind her.
Terrified, she let go of her knife without pulling it back out.
The walker's growl was promptly followed by the woosh of Daryl's crossbow. As she whirled to shake off the creature's dead grip, it was already falling, with a bolt through its forehead, and Daryl was already reloading. He shot again, taking out another walker coming toward them from the other end of the greenhouse.
As he put his bow on the ground and held it with his boots to cock and reload, he yelled, "Throw at this next one! Ain't gonna load in time!"
Carol drew her rose-emblazoned throwing knife and flicked it open with a jerk of her wrist. The lurching walker coming her way was no balloon, but she tried to imagine its head was. The knife went soaring through the air, spun once, and lodged blade first in its left eye socket, the same second Daryl's crossbow bolt penetrated its forehead.
She breathed heavily. "Thought you said you couldn't reload in time."
"I lied. Now get your jasmine knife back."
Carol pulled her first knife from the forehead of the first fallen walker and readied it as they crept through the rest of the greenhouse. It was all clear. Carol collected her throwing knife while Daryl yanked his bolts out of the walker's heads and made another circle around the greenhouse.
Carol was standing by a dying, potted lemon tree, still feeling the adrenaline tingling in her veins as she cleaned the second of her knives when Daryl finally sauntered over. "Told ya. Gotta sweep both directions when you come in. Can't just go for the first damn walker you see. Got to know what's in front of you and to both sides of you!"
"I'm sorry," she said, feeling like a disappointment. "I suppose I failed the test."
"Nah." His voice softened. "Did good for your first time out really clearin'. Hell, you're learnin' still. Can make up for it later."
Carol smiled at his softened encouragement as she sheathed her knife. "Can I, Professor Dixon?" She fluttered her eyelashes, stepped closer, and hooked a finger through his belt loop. "Is there any way at all I could earn a little extra credit?"
"Stahp." That's what he said, but then he let his eyes fall to her chest before dragging them back up again. He smirked. "How badly you want to bring up that grade, Miss Murphy?"
Carol pulled him a little closer by the belt loop. "Very badly."
"Yeah? Might need to stop by my office later then."
"Do you really think I might be able to earn an A?"
He licked his lips and leaned in, his voice low and husky. "You're a naughty girl, Miss Murphy." He pressed his mouth down hard on hers. They were still kissing when Rick and Glenn walked in, guns drawn and pointed.
Daryl stepped away. "All clear," he said.
Rick, looking simultaneously amused and embarrassed, apologized for the interruption. "Just thought it was taking a while."
Glenn laughed slightly. "So, Carol really is your girlfriend?"
"'Course she is!" Daryl growled. "Think I was making it up?"
Glenn shrugged. He shouldered his rifle. "Everything looks half dead in here."
"It hasn't been tended," Carol said. "But there will be seeds and other things we can take."
They made a haul of garden tools, fertilizer, pest control, soil, and seed starter trays. They boxed up dozens of packets of seeds for peppers, carrots, peas, tomatoes, onions, green beans, watermelon, cucumber, cilantro, basil, spearmint, rosemary, and more.
Rick helped Carol find what they needed. "Do you garden?" Carol asked him with surprise.
"Yeah, I did have a little garden out in back of our old house. I found it relaxing."
"Does Lori garden?" she asked.
"Uh…no. That was more my quiet time."
As Rick walked on to take a full box to the pick-up, Daryl drew up to Carol and whispered, "So what the hell can Lori do?"
Carol smiled. "Don't be mean. She helps me with the laundry. She cooks."
"Lori's cookin' is shit. That's why I moved knife practice to two instead of three."
"So that I would be back in time to cook?" Carol asked with a raised eyebrow. She'd signed herself and Sophia up for five days a week of making dinner, put Lori and Carl down for one, and Shane – the group's grill master – for the seventh.
"Mhmhm. Feel sorry for Rick. Got himself a housewife without any house skills."
"Oh, is that what you think women should be? Good little housewives with house skills?"
"Think people should be useful in general. Bring home the bacon or fry it up. Don't matter which one. Long as they contribute. You got all them domestic skills. Admire that about you."
"It's nice to be appreciated," she said. "As long as you don't expect me to have your plumber's uniform ironed and pressed and your clothes laid out for you in the morning before you wake up."
"Pffft!"
Carol smiled. Then she laughed. The thought of Daryl expecting anything like that was ridiculous.
"Just like your cookin'. And I like that you make things nice for everyone. Me included. Didn't have none of that growin' up. Good food. Clean house. Made-up bed. Feels…dunno. Feels good is all."
Carol kissed his cheek, then his earlobe. "I like making you feel good, Professor," she whispered into his ear, and his lips curved.
[*]
The bed of the pick-up was three-quarters full with supplies from the nursery. "Don't know how much more looting we can do today," Rick observed.
Carol pointed to an SUV in the corner of the parking lot with a U-Haul trailer hitched to the back. "We could use that."
They emptied the U-Haul - which was only half full, mostly of boxes of file folders – into the parking lot and attached the empty trailer to the hitch of the pick-up. They siphoned off gas from the SUV into the pick-up and motorcycle, bringing the tanks to full. "Need to find fuel stabilizer," Daryl said. "Only got three more months tops before the gas goes bad otherwise." They had found some gas in storage at Fun Kingdom, probably for the work vehicles, parking lot train, and emergency golf carts. "Need to start collectin' more gas, too. Whenever we can find it."
"And stabilizer will give us what?" Rick asked. "Two years tops? I guess what we really need to find is horses."
"Yeah, good luck finding one alive. And then catchin' it alive," Daryl replied.
A fall breeze picked up and a few leaves broke off a nearby tree and floated through the parking lot, along with a yellow flyer that landed against Carol's chest. She caught it. "Hey, Daryl," she said. "Look at this. It's a flyer for a biker church."
"He's been her boyfriend for less than a week and she's already trying to get him to go to church," Rick told Glenn.
Carol rolled her eyes. "No. It says its located next to a motorcycle repair shop. They might have oil, gas, and stabilizer. And it also says the church has been collecting donations of canned goods for a food pantry and to please bring two cans when you come."
"Let's hit it!" Daryl agreed. He turned and strutted toward his motorcycle. "Saddle up, Ms. Murphy!"
[*]
The biker church was in a stand-alone brick building next to a small motorcycle repair shop. They scavenged the repair shop first after walking in through the wide-open garage.
"Sorry, Bob," Carol said as she pulled the blade of her knife out of the head of a walker that had been trapped inside the office. This was her seventh walker kill, not that she was counting.
"What the fuck ya name 'em for?" Daryl asked.
"I didn't." Carol motioned with her blood-soaked knife to the red letters spelling out Bob on a white background on the mechanic's uniform.
"Oh."
Carol cleaned her knife and sheathed it. She appreciated that Daryl was letting her do most of the killings. Not only was she gaining confidence, but she was silencing any doubts Rick or Glenn had about her. She wished Shane could be here to see it, but if he were, he'd probably have inserted himself and shot the walkers.
Glenn stared at the calendar on the wall of the open garage office, which featured a stark naked, blonde-haired, buxom Miss May. "Who puts a nude calendar in a place of business?"
"Want it?" Daryl asked.
Glenn flushed. "No, I don't want it. What for the space room I share with Carl?"
"I'd rather you not hang calendars of naked women in my son's room," Rick said.
"Yeah, that's what I just said," Glenn told him.
Rick began rummaging through the drawers of the large metal desk in the office.
Daryl strolled up to Glenn, who was still gawking at the calendar. "Just take it, kid. Can hide it under your mattress. Ain't gonna see the real thing anytime soon."
Glenn flushed and went to help Rick search the desk.
Carol came and stood beside Daryl, arms crossed over her chest. "You like her?" she asked.
"Nah. Fake tits. Too big. Like the perfect handful."
She chuckled. Daryl walked over to the slain walker, rolled him over and fished a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket.
Rick pulled the center drawer of the desk all the way open. "Bob had a secret stash."
"Of drugs?" Glenn asked.
"Protein bars! Three crunchy peanut butter, four blueberry, and one macadamia nut."
Carol glanced over her shoulder and saw Daryl rummaging through Bob's wallet. He dug out a string of four, foil-wrapped condoms and quickly, furtively secreted them into his own back pocket. When he looked up, she looked away so he wouldn't know she'd seen him do it.
She wondered how soon he expected to be using those. The thought gave her a little thrill, but also a flutter of anxiety. She needed time - time to heal from the discomfort she'd come to associate with penetrative sex because Ed had never much cared how ready her body was, time to enjoy taking pleasure from Daryl in a less intrusive way, time to grow and bloom like the jasmine.
She hoped Daryl would be understanding, that his ain't gotta extended beyond cuddling to sex. She wondered if, when she had started playing with him, she had started playing with fire.
[*]
The group managed to gather enough oil, coolant, gas, fuel stabilizer, and car batteries from the repair shop to fill the rest of the pick-up truck and half of the U-Haul trailer. As they walked next door to the biker church, Daryl could feel the condoms shifting loosely in his back pocket, and he wondered if Carol would want to have sex soon. Their sexual escapades so far had been a bit furtive, like two teenagers in the backseat of a car. He hadn't even had her shirt all the way off. He'd felt – but not seen – her bare tits.
Not that he'd had his shirt off either. Maybe she was as uncomfortable being undressed as he was. It wasn't just the old scars he hated to have exposed. He always felt like he had to be dressed so he could be ready to run. As a kid, he'd never known when his father might come after him in a rage, and he'd have to fly out the front door, lose himself in the woods. He'd never slept naked, or even in just a pair of boxers. Hell, he'd never even slept without a shirt.
But that's what girlfriends and boyfriends did, wasn't it? They slept naked together in bed, all wrapped up in each others' arms, after the thrill of sex. He thought about what it would feel like to cum inside her and worried he wouldn't manage to get her to climax before he completely lost it himself.
He worried, too, about the sheer intimacy of it, though he couldn't put it into quite those words in his mind. He'd never thought of sex as intimate before. It certainly wasn't intimate the way he'd done it in the past. But with Carol…with Carol, it would be.
He'd never screwed a woman face-to-face before, never actually been inside a woman while she was looking at him or he was looking at her. He was certain Carol didn't want him bending her over a desk and pumping in and out of her from behind, all that sexy teasing about extra credit aside.
No, she had wanted him to do everything gently so far. She would want this gently, too, at least the first few times. He just hoped he didn't fuck it up when it did happen and turn her off of him for good. Because right now, she sure seemed to like him. And he liked her. A lot.
A whole goddamn fucking hell of a lot.
[*]
One of the church windows appeared to have been busted through from the inside – walkers working their way out, most likely. There was no one – alive or walking dead – inside, but there were two large donations boxes on either side of the open doors to the sanctuary, full of food.
"People donate their worst stuff." Glenn fished out a small blue box. "Meat in a box," he read. "Just add water and your imagination."
"Better have a lot of fuckin' imagination," Daryl muttered.
Rick picked up a can of water chestnuts and showed it to Daryl, who shook his head.
"I can put it to good use," Carol said.
"Ramen noodles!" Glenn exclaimed happily. "I used to live off this stuff my freshman year of college."
"College?" Daryl asked. "Thought you delivered pizzas?"
"Well, yeah, I didn't quite make it past my freshman year of college. I lost my scholarship for bad grades. Never did tell my parents. They still think I'm an accountant. I mean, they would, if they were alive. Maybe they are alive. They retried to Florida."
"Hell ya retire to Florida from Georgia for?" Daryl asked. "Just as hot and ain't no cheaper."
"Beaches," Glenn said.
"Georgia's got beaches," Carol told him. "I think it's probably the lack of state income tax. There is some good stuff in here, though." She sifted through the cans. "Potatoes, garbanzo beans, corn, black beans, tuna, artichokes."
"Ugh," Daryl said. "Chokes is right."
"Oh, wait to you see what I do with them. And I'm loving all these condensed cream of soups. I can make a lot of my easy recipes with those."
"Rice-A-Roni!" Glenn exclaimed. "And Hamburger Helper!"
"You poor thing," Carol told him. "It sounds like you used to live out of a box before the apocalypse."
"Who knew I was working on my survival skills." Glenn returned the Rice-A-Roni and lifted the large carboard box of food. "Someone cover me while I load this."
Rick took the other box while Daryl and Carol covered, and then they returned to check out the rest of the church. In a supply closet they found a box of 1,000 communion wafers.
"Unleavened bread keeps for years," Rick observed and began lifting the box.
"I don't know about that," Carol said. "I'd feel weird eating communion wafers like crackers."
"You won't if you're ever starving," Rick told her.
"Well, if we're takin' Jesus's body," Daryl said, "Might as well snag his blood." He kicked a box with his foot that was labeled TrueVine Prefilled Fellowship Cups. "Five hundred shots of red wine right there."
There was still a little space in the U-Haul when they were done loading, and they could tie some stuff to the roof of the truck's cab, too, maybe stack it a bit higher in the bed.
"There were coupons on the fellowship table for a breakfast diner just up the road," Carol suggested. "From the address. From the photo on the coupon, it seems it's not a part of any strip mall. Just off on its own. It may not be overrun, and it may have canned food or juice."
"You, Miss Murphy," Daryl told her, "are on a roll. Let's move on out!"