Tuesday, November 10

Daryl awoke about a half hour after sunrise and instinctively reached for Carol, but she wasn't there. He vaguely remembered Sophia knocking on the door and Carol leaving. He took a five-minute shower – he had it down to a conservative science - dressed, grabbed his pack and bow, and headed down the ramp to the kitchen, where he started the coffee, grabbed some snacks for lunch and shoved them in his pack, scrawled out a note, and slapped it on the fridge:

Miss Murphy –

You put the fun in Fun Kingdom.
Went to do the things I do.
Back by supper if not before.

- Daryl

He had just poured himself a cup of coffee in a travel mug when the front door opened and Rick and Andrea came in together, laughing. They'd been gone overnight looking for Shane. Rick nodded when he saw Daryl. "Glad you're back. Catch anything?"

"Three beavers."

"You can eat beavers?" Andre asked and Rick chuckled and looked at the ground.

"Why don't people know you can't eat beavers?" Daryl grumbled. "Course you can eat beavers. Beavers are fuckin' delicious!"

Now Rick snorted. Daryl wasn't being intentionally suggestive this time. He really didn't understand why so many people seemed to assume beavers were inedible. Almost no animal was inedible if you marinated it long enough. He wouldn't mess with an armadillo though.

"Take it you didn't find Shane?" Daryl screwed the lid on his travel mug as Rick and Andrea strolled toward the kitchen. Rick shook his head. "And how much gas you waste on that wild goose chase?"

"Only two gallons," Rick answered. "Remember that hotel where we stayed the night before we came to Fun Kingdom? We drove out there. We figured Shane knew it was already cleared, so maybe he'd camp out there for a night. We also just wanted to kill time without driving around all day and night wasting gas." He glanced up toward the closed door of the space room on the balcony. "So that Carl would feel like we really tried."

"We knew we weren't going to find him," Andrea said, "so we just camped out and left at sunrise."

Good thing Rick hadn't gone on that little overnight search trip with Michonne, Daryl thought. That would not have played well with Lori.

"We gathered some tools and nails and screws and things from the remodeling work in there," Rick said, "in case we need them for fence repairs and fortifications. We got some light bulbs for the house, too. And I snagged the fooz ball table for Carl and Sophia. It fit in the back of the SUV."

"Fooz ball?" Daryl asked. "Priorities, huh?"

"We took all the good stuff our first night there," Andrea reminded him. "And just so you know, – we siphoned off the gas from the work trucks out back, so we replaced those two gallons and then got two more. We came out ahead." She smiled at Rick. "In more ways than one. Thanks for letting me get all that off my chest about Shane."

"Yeah, you too," Rick told her. "I didn't realize how much I needed to get out."

"I got work to do." Daryl seized the silver travel mug and headed out the door.

He tried to fish for about thirty minutes, while sitting on the rail of the dock and smoking a cigarette, but they weren't biting. The weather was turning cool. The fish were descending for warmth. They probably wouldn't be able to catch any come December.

He gave up and went exploring instead. He walked through the Courtly Tunnel of Love with a flashlight, shining it on the heart-shaped boats stopped on the tracks in the murky water. He wondered if guys got a lot of first-date action on a ride like this. He thought about taking Carol in here, setting up a couple of candelabras on the side walkway he was currently wandering down, and rocking one of those boats. He wondered if she'd think that was romantic.

Once out the other side, he passed through Kids' Kingdom – that must be some kind of warning to keep it in your pants, he thought, to put Kids' Kingdom right on the other side of the Tunnel of Courtly Love. He walked by the little kid swings and then a circle of dusty fighte

He came across Glenn tooling along on one of the electric Segways near the fence line doing perimeter check, his rifle on his shoulder and a red baseball cap on his head. Glenn didn't notice Daryl as he crept under the wooden frame of the Little Prince Coaster. Daryl took careful aim with his crossbow and shot an arrow into a tree about fifteen feet in front of Glenn.

The Segway spun 180 degrees, jolted to a stop, and Glenn, reaching for his rifle, stumbled off it backward. He let out a relieved sigh when he saw Daryl walking out from under the shadow of the coaster. "What the hell, man! Why are you shooting at me?"

"Wasn't. Shootin' the tree. Just tryin' get your attention. It worked." Daryl looked the Segway over. "You look ridiculous on that."

"Yeah, well, it would take almost three hours to walk the entire perimeter of this park, and that's without stopping to inspect anything. And you won't let me take your motorcycle."

"Heard you got kicked off the farm."

"Uh…." Glenn shifted his baseball cap up and down on his head. "It's only temporary."

"Damn well better be. They got milk. And eggs. And cheese. Said you weren't gonna fuck this up! Hell happened?"

"Hershel walked in on us."

"In the attic?"

"We weren't in the attic this time of course. We were in her room. We thought he was out at the stables doing his animal doctor thing. T-Dog was helping Otis and Patricia chop wood. Beth and Jimmy were fishing together in the pond. We really thought we'd have some time. Alone."

"Guess you can give me that box of condoms back now."

"No! Look, Maggie said she's going to smooth things over. She's coming tomorrow afternoon on horseback to tell me how it all went. I'm supposed to wait for her at the gate at two. She doesn't do everything her father says. She promised we're going to keep seeing each other, even if he doesn't agree to let me back on the farm and she has to come here."

"She gonna bring milk and eggs when she comes?"

"Not this time, no, but, I'm sure we can keep trading."

Daryl looked him up and down and made an uncertain noise. Then he strolled to the tree and ripped out his arrow. He left Glenn to his perimeter check and went to check the traps in the woods by the train tracks, but nothing had been snared. He decided to stroll back to the House of the Future to see what Carol was up to, and when he walked into the foyer, he walked into the middle of a fight. Rick was trying to get Carl to go to the practice range with him.

"But I always did it with Shane!" Carl insisted.

"Well, give your old man a chance," Rick said calmly. "You know I was a sheriff's deputy, too. In fact, I was our office's range safety officer. I think I can give you a pointer to two, Carl."

"If it weren't for you, he'd still be here!" Carl choked on his next words: "You made him leave!"

Rick's calmness began to fade, at least in his face, but not in his voice. There was a tension in his jawline. "I did not make him leave, Carl. He chose to leave. Of his own accord. For his own reasons. Now I know you're going to miss him - "

"- You don't know! You don't understand! You were always sniping at him! It's why he left!" Carl ran out the door, past Daryl, who had to sweep sideways in the little foyer to stay out of his way.

Rick took in a shaky breath and wiped a hand over his mouth. Then he began to stride after Carl. Daryl put a hand on his chest to stop him. "Let 'em cool down. Kid'll say more he regrets if you don't."

Rick paced away from Daryl, back again, away, and then back. "No one ever tells you how hard it is to be a father. Or how badly you'll fuck it up."

"Pfft. Could write you a book 'bout fucked-up fathers. You ain't one of 'em."

"Could you talk to him, maybe?" Rick asked.

"Me?"

"He respects you, because of what you're capable of. Just tell him I'm not the bad guy here."

"Yeah? Who is? Shane?"

"No. I didn't say that. Why does anyone have to be the bad guy? I'm just trying to hold it together here. Hold my marriage together. Hold my family together. The world fell apart. I can't let that fall apart."

Daryl nodded. "Fine. I'll go tell 'em you ain't the bad guy. Ain't gonna promise it'll do shit." Daryl turned and walked back out the door.

He found Carl eventually, at the gun range, firing B.B.'s rapidly at a target. The boy stopped when Daryl approached, and when he lowered the air rifle, it was clear he'd been crying through his shots.

"Be better doin' that with a real gun," Daryl told the boy.

"I'm not allowed to shoot a real gun unsupervised." Carl wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "Shane used to supervise me."

"Sure your dad would be happy to supervise you."

"I don't want him to."

"Cut your old man some slack, huh? You're lucky. You got two parents, and they both love you. You know how many kids ever had that? Even in the old world?"

"Most of them," Carl muttered.

"Not me. And at least your daddy ain't an asshole like mine was. Or Sophia's was."

"He was an asshole," Carl agreed. "I saw him hit Ms. Carol once. By the lake."

Daryl tensed. "You did?"

"Yeah," muttered Carl, scrunching his freckled face like the memory physically pained him.

"You tell someone?"

"I didn't need to. People were there. Ms. Andrea and her sister and Ms. Jacqui. And Shane. Shane went over and punched him a few times. A lot of times. He bled a lot. I saw it all. From up on the hill. Shane said if he ever laid a hand on her again, he'd beat him to death."

"And where the hell was I?" Daryl muttered. He didn't know Shane had done that. Carol had never mentioned it. Suddenly, though, he liked Shane a lot better.

"You were in Atlanta. To get your brother."

Yeah, well, that hadn't worked according to plan. He'd brought back only Merle's hand. And then the camp had been in disarray and they'd had to bury the bodies. He'd forgotten about Merle's hand until they were at the CDC and then he'd wondered what he should do with it. So he wrapped it in a bandana and put it in the freezer in the kitchen. It was blown to smithereens now. As for the rest of Merle – Daryl wondered where he was, if he was out there alone robbing people the way he'd wanted to rob the camp, or if he'd settled in with a group. "Wanna hunt?" he asked Carl. "Small game? In the woods by the tracks. With your rifle. Your real one."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

As they climbed through the abandoned train to the other side of the tracks later, Carl said, "Shane took me frog catching once."

They began walking through the overgrown grass toward the woods. "Frog giggin', ya mean?"

"What's the difference?"

"Y'all used a gig?"

"What's a gig?" Carl's freckled face scrunched up in confusion.

"A spear like thing. Four prongs. On the end of pole. You take it and- " Daryl slammed his fist down as if stabbing something.

Carl shook his head. "We used a stick and a bucket."

Daryl snorted. "Can't catch frogs in a bucket."

"I bet Shane could of."

Daryl opened his mouth but thought better of replying to that. "Well, we're gonna hunt fox squirrels. And maybe if you do a good job, and it's all right with your mama, you start caryin' that rifle round the Kingdom."

Daryl didn't think a pocket knife and B.B. gun were going to be of much help if a walker somehow made it through some unforeseen weakness in the fences. Sophia could manage to stab its head with her waza-whatever – she was getting good with that, because Michonne had her slicing up all sorts of walker-height targets, like the mannequins in the stores and the cardboard "you must be this tall to ride" signs. But Carl would just have to run after putting a couple of B.B.s in a walker's soft head and not penetrating the brain.

While they were hunting, Daryl got two squirrels. Carl, not so much. Now, as they spilled out of the woods on the north side, Daryl carrying the squirrels by a string over his shoulder, Carl walked sullenly and silently toward the fake ghost town of six little wooden frames that the train tracks sprawled past. Daryl wasn't sure how the ghost town fit in with the Kingdom theme.

Carl climbed up the two stairs to the porch of one of the faux houses and grabbed a fake skeleton sitting in a rocking chair and hurled it angrily aside. Then he dropped his rifle and plopped down in the chair. "I'm not any good at hunting!"

"Yeah, well, with that attitude you damn well ain't gonna be!"

Carl rocked in the dusty wooden chair. He flung aside a fake cobweb, and maybe a real one with it. "Shane didn't care if I was any good when we were catching frogs! We were just having fun."

Daryl fished a cigarette out of his front shirt pocket and lit up. He leaned back against the pole of the porch, which didn't provide much support. These weren't real houses. They were just facades. "Fun time's over," Daryl told him and blew out a string of smoke. "Got to learn to survive in this world."

"Did you have to yell at me though?"

"Yeah. 'Cause you were bein' a dumbass and not checkin' your target. You just swiveled and fired at sound. Could of shot someone."

"You're not supposed to call kids names."

"What name?" Daryl asked.

"Dumbass!"

"Oh." Daryl thought about as he smoked in silence. His father always called him that. Merle, too. He never liked being called that much himself. It always made his muscles tense. "Sorry, kid. Just want you to be safe is all. You were a pretty good shot, though." Shane had clearly taught him a certain degree of marksmanship, but he'd never been off the range before, shooting at real targets, hunting moving things. "That one time, swear you hit its tail."

"But I didn't get it. Your arrow did."

"Yeah, well, those things are small and fast. You'll get better though. With practice. Really got to check your target every time and not just swing and shoot 'cause you hear somethin' move."

"I know." Carl crossed his arms over his chest and looked sullen. "Shane told me. He just didn't shout it at me."

"Gotta toughen up, kid," Daryl insisted, feeling guilty, wondering if he had a son of his own, if he would get frustrated and then gradually, bit by bit, become his own abusive father. "Wasn't even shoutin'. 'S just my normal voice when I'm worried."

"It was not your normal voice," Carl said. "Your normal voice is a low mutter. People can barely understand you half the time. That was loud and clear."

Daryl sighed and slid down onto the porch and sat with his back to the pole and took a puff in silence.

"Sorry," Carl muttered. "I know you're just trying to teach me things I need to know. I just wish Shane were here to teach me, too. Why'd he have to run off?"

"My big brother skipped town when I was 'bout your age," Daryl told him. "Well, couple years younger. I hated that he left. Missed 'em somethin' awful. But I understood he had to do it."

"Why did he have to?"

"Work," Daryl said. "Joined the army." It wasn't the first time Merle had left home. He'd done a six-month stint in juvie when Daryl was six. But that record had been expunged, and he'd joined the military at the age of nineteen, after losing his welding apprenticeship for coming onto the boss's daughter.

"Shane didn't go off to join the army."

"In a way he did," Daryl said. "He's out there lookin' for civiliazation. For some place the Army's got secured from all these monsters and shit. And when he finds it, he's gonna come back for you. For us."

"You really think so?"

"Sure," Daryl lied. He believed Shane would come back for Carl and Lori and the baby, at least, if he found civilization, he just didn't think Shane would find it. "In the meantime, you know, he needs you to look out for your little brother. Or sister. Whatever this one turns out to be."

Carl nodded.

"Gotta step up," Daryl told him. "Be a big brother, you know."

"I hope it's a boy. But, I mean, a little sister would be okay, too." Carl rocked for awhile as Daryl finished his smoke, flicked the stub off the porch into the brown grass, and lit up another one. "Can I try?" Carl asked. "A cigarette?"

"Filthy habit," Daryl told him.

"Then why do you do it?"

"'Cause it makes me look cool."

"My mom says they make you look stupid."

"Does she now?"

"Not you. Just people. In general."

Daryl took a puff and then turned the cigarette around so the glowing tip faced himself. He stretched it out toward Carl. "Go on. Try a puff."

"Seriously?"

"Just don't tell your mama."

Carl grinned and took hold of the cigarette. He put it between his lips. "Do I look cool?" he asked around it.

"Fuckin' badass," Daryl told him.

Carl took it out of his mouth, looked it over, put it back in, and sucked. Then he coughed. Then he hacked. Then he said, "Ewwwww!"

Daryl laughed. "Hand it back."

Carl did and Daryl took another drag on it. "See. Now you know. This shit's bad for you. Stay away from it. Give you cancer and shit."

"Why aren't you worried about getting cancer and shit?" Carl asked.

"I get cancer, I'll just go out fightin' walkers. But you," he pointed at Carl with his cigarette, "you gotta stay alive to take of your little brother. Sister. Whatever. You gotta stay alive and build the whole next generation." Daryl took another puff, stubbed out the cigarette, and flicked it. He stood. "Come on. Let's take these squirrel back to the butcher's table and I'll show you how to skin 'em."

[*]

Later that evening, Daryl went outside for his after-dinner smoke. People grumbled if he lit up in the house, and that house was crowded anyway. Smoking was a good excuse to get away from people.

He sat at one of the tables in front of the ice cream shop across from the House of the Future, his feet up on the glass circle tabletop, blowing smoke and gazing up at the half moon. He turned his head to the left when he spied something glowing a bright neon green.

Sophia was coming his way, twirling a glow-stick baton of some kind. She pulled out the chair on the other side of the table and sat down. "Hey, Daryl."

Daryl swung his feet off the tabletop and sat up. "Hey, Soph."

"Guess what?"

"What?"

"I started my period yesterday!"

"Uh…" What was he supposed to do with this information? "Congratulations?"

"Mom made apple pancakes to celebrate. Too bad you weren't here this morning to eat one. They were really good."

Was that something a person was supposed to celebrate? Bleeding from your crotch? "Huh."

"This means I can get pregnant now. Biologically speaking."

Shit. Suddenly, all those jokes he had once made to Carol about Sophia's choices for future helpmates didn't seem so funny anymore. Someday, some boy – most likely Carl – but maybe a teenage Andre or even that Jimmy kid over at the Greene Family farm - really was going to try to get in his little girl's pants.

Carol's little girl, he meant. He didn't know why his mind slipped like that. Sophia wasn't his.

"Because now I'm ovulating. Well, not right now. I did. And then I will again in about fourteen days. And then about fourteen days after that, I'll have another period."

"You ain't shy like you used to be," he said.

"You're easy to talk to." No one had ever accused him of being easy to talk to before. "But I didn't mean to invade your space. I know you like to disappear." She stood up and began twirling her glow-stick baton again. "But will you play D&D with me and Carl for a little when you come in? Like thirty minutes? I made a new dungeon."

"Yeah. Sure." Daryl took a slow drag of his cigarette as he watched the glowing baton twirl across the pathway toward the House of the Future.