By the time Carol was back downstairs, Glenn and Rick had showed up in the pick-up truck. Introductions were made all around. Carol learned the names of everyone on this oasis of a farm: Hershel Greene, his daughters Beth and Maggie Greene, Beth's boyfriend Jimmy, Otis his farmhand, and Otis's wife Patricia.

Maggie looked Glenn up and down. "Female Zorro?" she asked.

Glenn laughed nervously and shrugged.

Hershel didn't recommend moving "the patient" for another 24 to 48 hours, but he also wasn't keen on house guests, especially armed ones. Carol could stay, however, to play nurse to her "friend," and Hershel would make sure she had linens so she could sleep on the living room couch.

"You have a real nice set up here," Rick told Hershel. "But we have a few things back at our camp you might not have. We should discuss trade. We don't have live animals, and we haven't got our gardens growing just yet."

"But we have lots of beer and wine," Glenn said. "Like a thousand cans of beer still. And I think Shane has three bottles of hard liquor left from that tavern. We could trade you some of that."

"I don't abide alcohol in this house," Hershel told him, "and I certainly won't have you bringing it in here."

"Okay, okay," Glenn held up his hands. "There's candy, too. And chips. And soda. And popcorn for popping…"

"Y'all got Cool Ranch Doritos?" Jimmy asked.

Beth rolled her eyes. "That's your priority in a trade?"

"What? I like Cool Ranch Doritos. So do you."

"I'll go back with them, Daddy, and see what they've got," Maggie told Hershel. "I'll decide what's worth trading for, and then we can load up some things and bring them back here and haggle over what to give them in exchange."

Hershel looked over Rick and Glenn suspiciously. "I don't know about sending you out alone with these men."

"I've already been to their camp to get Carol," Maggie reassured him. "They didn't shoot me then. They've got women and children there. They seem decent. And I won't be alone. I'll bring my .22 rifle."

"I wish you wouldn't insist on carrying that firearm," Hershel said.

"Well, which is it, Daddy? Do you want me to have company or don't you?"

He sighed. "Bring the .22." Then to Rick, "If my daughter is not back by nightfall, there will be hell to pay."

Carol wondered how Hershel planned on administering that hell with, apparently, no guns.

Maggie grabbed her rifle and followed the men out to the truck. Glenn opened the passenger side door for her and she slid onto the middle of the bench seat, and he climbed in after her, smiling.

[*]

Daryl slept away the day. Meanwhile, Carol had lunch with the Greene family in their dining room. Otis apologized to her for shooting "her man" at least five times. After lunch, Carol took a three-hour nap on the couch in the living room, not having slept the night before. When she woke up, Beth offered her a cup of hot tea, told her Daryl was still asleep, and asked if she'd like a tour of the farm.

The Greene family farm had five gravity fed wells, forty heads of cattle (including two bulls and eight calves) that grazed on grass ("Mostly dairy cows," Beth said, "but we butcher them when they got too old to give milk"), two chicken coops, each with sixteen hens and one rooster, a pen with about nine pigs ("We should have more in the spring," Beth told her), two horses ("A boy and a girl, thankfully. Hoping for a colt in the spring"), several fields of vegetables ("We're growing late fall vegetables now, but we rotate them"), and a small orchard of dwarf trees ("Mostly apple, but one plumb and two peach").

"How do you have power?" Carol asked her. She'd seen them take food out of the refrigerator, and a light come on inside it, and Patricia had made lunch on the stove.

"We use the fireplace and a wood stove for heat. Kerosene lamps for light at night. But we run a diesel generator on and off a few hours each day to be able to run electrical appliances, keep the deep freezer and fridge cold, to run the water pumps to fill the water storage tank and to pump the septic tank empty of sewage. We had a lot of diesel on hand for the farm equipment, and then Otis and my boyfriend Jimmy and my sister Maggie went to all the neighboring farms and gathered up what they had in storage." She sighed. "Because all those farmers and farmhands got the head sickness."

Is that what the Greenes were calling it, Carol wondered. The head sickness? Strange name.

"Except Otis and Patricia," Beth continued. "They joined us. They were living and working on the Brown farm before. There are five farms up here. We gathered what animals we could from the other farms, too. The ones that didn't run off or feed the head sick."

Feed the head sick. Carol supposed everyone had their way of talking about what was happening, but that seemed a rather mild way to describe the walking dead tearing into a horse.

"You've been lucky here," Carol told her. These farmlands were miles from the town, which was a small town to begin with. They were serviced by dirt roads and surrounded by acres of woods, with the nearest population magnet - Fun Kingdom – having been deserted at the time of the turn.

But they'd been lucky at the quarry camp, too, until their luck had run out. At Fun Kingdom, they had defenses – iron fences, reinforced where needed; boarded-up tunnels, to keep crawling walkers out; daily perimeter checks; night watch; and lots of knives, guns, and ammunition.

They'd learned they needed to make their own luck.

[*]

When he woke up, Daryl was down from his high. Carol brought him dinner – steak and eggs and fresh apple slices - on a tray. She shut the door and pulled up a chair and cut up his steak for him, so he wouldn't need to use his left arm. "Do you remember anything you said to me when I first got here?" she asked.

He chewed a bite of steak and swallowed hard. "Was I an asshole?"

"No. You were surprisingly graphic about a particular fantasy of yours, but you weren't an asshole."

"What was the fantasy?"

"Not anything we'll be doing anytime soon. And probably not just because of your bullet wound. Also because of your plain vanilla girlfriend." She gave him a sympathetic pout. "Sorry about that."

"Told you. Love plain vanilla."

"That and I can't even walk in high heels."

"They got steak," he murmured with his mouth full. He pointed to the eggs. "And cheese. There's cheese in those eggs."

It was good to see he had an appetite. Other than that chicken noodle soup, he apparently hadn't eaten in over a day. "I know. Although Hershel said that's the last of that cow. Hopefully, Rick and Glenn can get us some good food in trade, though. They should be back soon."

"Trade? That asshole Otis shot me and left both my deer to rot or be devoured by walkers. They oughtta give us whatever we want as restitution so we don't light up this whole farm."

"I really think we should try to practice a bit more diplomacy, Pookie. This could be a good, long-term trade relationship. It only takes about forty-five minutes to get here the long-way round by truck, even faster on horseback through the woods. Of course, Maggie rides really fast." She rubbed a thigh through her jeans. "I understand why cowboys wear chaps now."

"Wanna bite?" He held out a piece of meat on a fork.

She smiled and shook her head. "They fed me, thanks."

Carol cleared his tray, and then he got up to go to the bathroom. When she got back to him with a stack of paperback books, he was looking exhausted from just that little walk down the hallway. He was sitting up in bed in nothing but a pair of blue checkered boxers, the covers thrown off, breathing hard.

"You need to rest," she told him. "Hershel said you lost a lot of blood." She glanced at the boxers. "I thought you always went commando?"

"They ain't mine. Patricia put 'em on me. Think she changed the sheets, too. I was like a mewlin' infant in here yesterday."

"Well, you're alive. That's what matters."

"She probably saw m'cock."

"That's really not what matters right now, Daryl."

He pulled the blankets back over himself, up to his waist, and rested back against the headboard. "When you bustin' me out of here, Miss Murphy?"

"Tomorrow maybe. Or the next day. Hershel says we shouldn't jostle you in the pick-up right now. But I'll be here. I'll be staying on the couch downstairs. I'd stay with you, but - "

"- 'S a'ight. Know. Like your space. 'Sides, last time I tried to sleep in the same bed as you, I woke up with a gun in m'face."

She smiled. "That's not why. It's not because I don't want to." Although she did still like having that freedom to slip away and back to her own room. Part of her still feared that if she spent all night in the same bed with him, at some point, there would surface that old, wounded part of her that felt somehow trapped there. "Hershel does not allow unmarried people to share bedrooms under his roof."

"You got to be fuckin' kiddin' me."

"No alcohol under his roof either. Or guns. Although I think he makes an exception for Maggie. Or maybe she carves out that exception for herself. I suppose Otis has a gun, too, if he shot you."

Daryl's eyes flitted to her belt, which was missing the holster. "You let him take your gun?"

"It was a condition of staying here with you."

"Never give up your gun. And where the hell's m'crossbow?"

"It's in the living room closet, along with my AR-15 and my handgun. I've still got my knives on me. And these people seem human. I know where my gun is if I need it. That closet isn't locked." She nodded to the stack of paperbacks on the nightstand. "I brought you books. You're going to be laid up awhile."

He took the first one off the stack, This Missing Man, and flipped through the pages. "What, no pictures?"

Carol laughed. "I brought you wilderness adventures, too. Since you said you liked Call of the Wild. They had White Fang. And some James Fenimore Cooper."

"Least the old man's got some books other than the Bible."

"I got them from Jimmy's room. He said they used to be Shawn's. That was Beth and Maggie's brother."

"Jimmy ain't allowed to sleep in Beth's room, huh?"

"No. Not until they get formally married."

"Yeah, how they gonna do that? Formally?"

"Before God I suppose," Carol said.

"Them girls don't look much alike."

"They're half-sisters. Do you remember what you said about seeing someone making a marionette out of a walker? A walker puppet?"

"Walker puppets?" Daryl asked.

"You said you looked out the window in the morning and saw someone walking a walker like a puppet on a pole."

"Pfffft. Why in the hell would someone do that?"

"That's what I thought. I figured it was the drugs talking." Carol smiled, reached out, and smoothed back the hair from his brow. She leaned over and pressed her lips softly to his forehead. When she sat back in the chair, she said, "I'm really glad you're safe. You have no idea how worried I was when you didn't come back last night. I didn't sleep."

Daryl looked down at the book in his lap and fanned the pages. He bit his bottom lip. "Sorry I worried you." He raised his eyes to hers. "Kind of nice, though, that you were."

She smiled gently. "Benito."

"Yeah. My folks named me after Mussolini."

"Bass. Like the fish."

"Nah."

"I get four more because I didn't get to make my guesses yesterday."

"A'ight. Fire away."

"Bruiser!"

"Ain't Bruiser."

She guessed Boomer, Bosch, and Boland, all no's. They talked a little more, and it looked like his eyes were getting heavy again. "I think I need to tuck you in again, Pookie."

"I just slept half the day. And most of yesterday I was completely passed out."

"Hershel said sleep is the best thing you can get right now. The blood loss really wiped you out. And if you're asleep, that means less pain."

Daryl scooted down under the covers and rolled onto his non-injured shoulder. Carol bent down to kiss him goodnight.

Monday October 25, 2010

In the morning, Glenn came into Daryl's room and asked him how he was.

"You ain't a pretty girl," Daryl said. "I want the pretty girl."

"Maggie?"

"Carol."

"Ohh! Yeah, she'll be up with your breakfast soon. I just wanted to check in on you." He sat in the chair by the bed.

"Carol said no one was here but her."

"I brought Maggie back from Fun Kingdom last night with a bunch of stuff for trade. She talked Hershel into letting me stay because it was sunset by the time we finished haggling. We need to conserve gas anyway, so I'm staying until it's time to take you home."

"You didn't sleep on the couch with m'girl did you?"

"Uh…no," Glenn said. "They have a mattress in the attic."

"What we get in trade?"

"Otis felt bad about shooting you. So, they threw in an extra three dozen eggs for that."

"'S what my life's worth?" Daryl grunted. "Three dozen eggs?"

"Well, you aren't dead."

"Made me lose two deer!"

"They gave us a sixteen-pound, bone-in ham for that."

"Would have been at least a hundred pounds of venison 'tween those two deer. Bone-out."

"Yeah, but…ham."

Daryl shook his head. "What else you get?"

"Two bunches of carrots. Four butternut squash. A big pumpkin. Two heads of cauliflower. Two heads of broccoli. A quart of blackberries. A quarter bushel of okra. A pound of cheese. Three pounds of butter. Two gallons of whole, raw milk. A half bushel of apples. And a quarter bushel of kale."

"Fuck's kale?"

"It's a dark green leafy vegetable."

"So…like collards?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Kale," Daryl muttered. "Hippies. What did you have to give 'em for all that?"

"Five pounds of sugar. Two pounds of flour. Three canisters of salt. Two canisters of black pepper. A few bottles of hot sauce. A gallon of fuel stabilizer. Forty boxes of candy. Fifty of those little bags of chips. A dozen sodas. Butane lighters – from the shops, you know, the long fireplace ones with the Fun Kingdom logo. Maggie wanted like ten of those. Six -packs of socks. Six sets of sheets from the Kingdom of Sleep. A dozen bath towels. A hunting knife from that shop. Oh, and six of those bathrobes. And some other random stuff from the shops. DVDs. Books. Music CDs."

"That's a fuckin' lot! You ain't much of a negotiator. What she do? Smile at ya?"

"None of it is stuff we really need," Glenn said. "How much sugar and junk food can we possibly eat before it all goes stale? And there's tons of it in that park."

"Salt. Need that."

"Yeah, and we have like a hundred pounds of it."

"Fuel stabilizer. Need that."

"It was just one gallon I agreed to. We still have nineteen, and you only need one ounce per gallon of gas." Glenn grinned sheepishly. He glanced toward the door, which he'd shut when he came in. "Maggie came up there last night. To the attic."

"In your dreams, pizza delivery boy."

"No, really, she did. I don't know why. But she did! She came up there and she said, all right, I've seen you looking, and I agree."

"Agree to what?"

"I'll have sex with you. That's what she said. There aren't many people left in the world, it's been a long time for me, and I have needs, too. So, I'll have sex with you."

"You're serious?" Daryl asked.

"Serious as a…serious person."

"You fucked the farmer's daughter last night? In the attic? The daughter of the devoutly religious farmer? You fucked her?"

"Shhh!" Glenn pushed his hand down like he was pushing down Daryl's volume.

"You know, kid, this is how every story starts that ends with a shotgun blast to the ass."

"I'm not saying it to brag," Glenn insisted. "I really like her. I'm only telling you - no one else – just you – "

"- Why? You think I got stickers? Wanna gold star on your Good Job! chart?"

"No! I'm telling you because I know you won't say anything to anyone else. Everyone else gossips! And I'm telling you because…those condoms you gave Shane? I was hoping maybe you had some more. Because Maggie said she only has two left."

"Oh, you think it's gonna happen again?" Daryl asked.

"Well…it might. She's coming to trade once every seven to ten days, she said. And it wasn't like…I mean, she enjoyed herself. I assure you."

Daryl chuckled. "All right, then. Congratulations, little man."

"So you have some condoms you can give me?"

"Oh, no. Gave all those to Shane. Pretty sure he's blown through 'em by now."

"I…uh…saw you take some from that mechanic's wallet. Back in the garage. Are you going to use them all?"

"Hell you think?"

"Yeah, I guess you would. Probably already have."

"Didn't say I did!" Daryl hastened. "Didn't say I used any of 'em!" He didn't want Glenn to say some dumbass thing that made Carol think he was going around telling everyone they were having sex when they weren't. "But those wouldn't fit you anyhow."

"What? What do you mean?"

"They ain't…you know…they're the large size. And you're Asian."

Glenn's mouth fell open in a huff. Then he closed it and shook his head. "You know, I'd expect that kind of comment from Merle. That's a complete stereotype. I suppose you think T-Dog can only use extra large condoms?"

Daryl shrugged. Then he winced because of the movement of his shoulder. "Look, whether you fit the stereotype or not, man, you ain't gettin' my condoms. Find your own."

"You really haven't used them yet?" Glenn asked with an amused smile. The smile faded in response to Daryl's stern glower. "Umm…so, where did you get the ones you gave Shane? If not in the Fun Kingdom bathroom?"

"That work truck out front." They couldn't get it started – no keys, and none of them were expert hot wirers, so they just siphoned off the gas and took the tools and ladders. But there was a work pick-up truck inside the gates – used by the gardeners - that had the keys under the visor which they had added to their vehicle collection in case they should need it one day. "Glove compartment."

"Were there anymore?"

"No. Why would I have left 'em if there were? Could always make a supply run. Sure there's plenty 'round if you want to risk a pharmacy or a grocery store."

"We should have thought to grab those at the CVS," Glenn said.

"No one was fuckin' back then. Except Rick and Lori. And she was already knocked up."

Glenn sighed. "Next trip, I'll look. When do you think we'll go on one?"

Daryl nodded to the gauze on his shoulder. "Well, I ain't. Not this week, that's for damn sure."

Glenn smiled. "Glad you survived, man. I'd have missed you."

[*]

Carol brought Daryl breakfast and then changed his bandage after he'd eaten. He hissed as she washed the wound, using warm water from a basin. He looked down at the thick black stitches holding the skin together. "I look like Frankenstein," he muttered.

"Frankenstein wasn't nearly as handsome."

"I ain't never been accused of being handsome 'fore."

"Well, I'm accusing you." She set aside the wash cloth and gently spread some topical antibiotic over the stitches.

"It's nicer when you do this than when the veterinarian does."

She smiled. "Even though my fingertips are probably callused from sewing?"

"You got prettier eyes."

His eyes flitted away from her eyes when he said it. It was a rare attempt at a calculated compliment, Carol knew. He complimented her, but not usually in a calculated, flirtatious way – more as if he was making factual observations.

"Thank you," she said softly. "I like your eyes, too. When your not hiding them from me." She reached for the fresh gauze, cut the proper size, and taped it over his wound. Then she kissed the bare skin of his shoulder just above the gauze.

"How's Soph?" he asked when she pulled back.

"Relieved you're alive. The Grimes are keeping an eye on her. And she's supposed to have her math homework done by the time I get back and a book report for me."

"You make her write book reports?"

"She has to practice writing. And she loves to read anyway."

"Why she got to practice writing?"

"Because…well…people are still going to have to write!" Carol hadn't really thought about what Sophia would use her writing skills for in this world. She just wanted the normalcy, maybe, the myth of a continued civilization. "It's good for her." She leaned forward and kissed him. "I promised to help with some chores. I'm sorry I can't stay to entertain you, but you do have the books. I'll be back."

She took his breakfast tray and he sighed and grabbed a paperback from the stack.