1:00 PM
Atlanta

Daryl's motorcycle had enough gas to get all the way back to Fun Kingdom. For now, he'd hidden it inside the post office on the outskirts of Atlanta, and he and Carol made their way in on foot, over the ash-scattered streets, past the intermittently bombed buildings, weaving through back allies to avoid packs of walkers here and there. They grabbed a couple of bicycles from one of those rent-a-bike bike racks.

"Gonna look ridiculous on this," Daryl muttered as he shifted his crossbow on his back, tilted the bike, and put a foot on the pedal.

"It'll take us days if we try exploring this city only by walking," Carol told him as she cinched her pack to the luggage rack on the back of the bike. "And bicycles are quiet. But we can still outrun walkers."

"Not police cars, though."

"You want to bring that roaring engine of yours in the city?"

"Ain't ridden a bicycle since I was eleven!" Daryl grumbled.

"Well, it's like sex, Pookie, you never forget how."

He watched her take off in front of him, mounted the bicycle, and pumped hard, trying to keep up. They'd already used the map to identify the nearest police station, and it was there they were headed.

1:35 PM
The Kingdom

DJ leapt out of the bed of the truck when the pick-up pulled to a stop inside the gates of the Kingdom. Dianne spilled out of the passenger's side, and Jerry grinned and greeted her with a hug as the guard closed the gate. "Welcome home, boss," he said.

"I'm not the boss."

"I know. I know, you just…" Jerry laughed and shook his head. "You command respect," he told her.

"You hear that?" Dianne asked Gavin as he closed the driver's side door.

"I don't dispute it." Gavin's eyes, however were not on Jerry and Dianne but somewhere farther down the courtyard, where Frankie was laughing and petting a cat being held by Daniel, who was in his Kevlar vest with a rifle on his shoulder.

Gavin walked toward them. He was about a yard away when Frankie noticed him and looked up and smiled. "Hey, sugar!" she called. "Come see Daniel's cat."

Gavin didn't want to see Daniel's damn cat, but he came over and perfunctorily pet the gray and white creature as Frankie extended it to him. She handed the cat back to Daniel, and then hugged and kissed Gavin, which relaxed him a little.

"I need to get on watch," Daniel said. "See you at seven." He nodded to Gavin and walked off with his cat.

"Does the cat stand watch, too?" Gavin asked.

"No, but she's a good mouser," Frankie told him.

"What's happening at seven?"

"Daniel's massage," Frankie told him.

"I thought you were going to clear your schedule for the whole day."

"Well, I can't just drop everything every time you come into town, you know," she said with a slight annoyance. "And you have a meeting with Ezekiel and his advisors at seven anyway."

"I do?" he asked.

"To trade," Frankie told him. "And he wants a report on the status of the Sanctuary."

"I missed you."

She smiled, almost sympathetically. "I missed you, too. " She took his hand and tugged. "Come on, let's go catch up back at my apartment."

Not our apartment this time. My apartment. Gavin supposed he deserved that. He'd been here twenty-four hours in eighteen days, after all, and he would be gone again tomorrow evening. He just wished she'd make his apartment at the Sanctuary their apartment, at least until he could work his way off the council in August. He hoped by August, but that timeline wasn't looking realistic right now.

"There's a concert tonight," Frankie said as they walked. "From eight to ten. A string quartert. You're taking me, mister."

"Yes, ma'am." As he walked with Frankie, Gavin turned back to where Daniel was handing off his cat to Dianne, who frowned as though she wasn't sure why she was expected to deal with the feline charge. Dianne put the cat on the ground, and it meowed trotted off as she adjusted the bow on her shoulder and headed toward the stables.

4:35 PM
Atlanta Zone 5 Police Department

"Want to get high?" Carol asked. She waved a little plastic evidence baggie of pot at Daryl.

"I don't do that shit."

"But you'll inhale tobacco into your lungs?" she asked, slipping the marijuana into the pocket of her gray pants.

"Tobacco don't make me unaware."

"It doesn't relax you either," she said as he unfolded the paper map of Atlanta on a cop's desk. They'd picked up several maps from a visitor's center some months ago and kept them in the Fun Kingdom library.

He smirked. "I can think of somethin' that would relax me a lot more than pot."

"This is neither the time nor the place," she assured him.

The joking might seem inappropriate given the severity of the situation before them, but it was that little levity that kept them going through disappointment after disappointment, empty police station after empty police station, and silence upon silence from the radio.

Daryl grabbed a pen from a wire holder, heated the tip with his lighter until the ink loosened, and then checked off the Zone 6 Police Department, Zone 2, Zone 3, and Zone 5. They'd gone to all of those and discovered no sign of human life. Every armory had been cleared out so far, and the evidence lockers had been opened and emptied of any weapons or ammo, with only cash and the occasional stolen item left behind. The drugs had largely been cleaned out, too, except the baggie Carol now carried in her pocket.

Given the cleaned-out lockers and the fact that one of the stations had no cars at all, they believed the cops had relocated to a camp somewhere – maybe one of the other police stations they hadn't hit yet, or maybe some random building in Atlanta. And if they'd been the ones to clear out the lockers, they must have a lot of guns. But others had possibly looted these police stations, too – maybe the Vatos gang at some point, or the other gang that exacted them.

They had several more stations to check, however. "Boulevard Precinct next," Daryl murmured as he folded up the map. He nodded over her shoulder at a walker creeping through the shattered glass of the front door. Carol drew her knife, strode forward to stab it, and then began to run backward. "Let's go, let's go!" she cried. "Out the back!"

Daryl saw why as a small herd began to stream in through the glass behind her. He shot at the closest walker, and with no time to recover his bolt, ran for the back door of the station. Their bicycles were out front, so they would have to carry on through the streets on foot until they found another rack.

7:05 PM
The Kingdom

"Is this display really necessary?" Gavin asked as he stood in the pit before the stage of the high school theater. Ezekiel lounged in his throne, one leg pulled up, with Jerry on one side and Dianne standing straight on the other. "Can't we go to the library to talk shop?"

"But we have such wonderful acoustics here," Ezekiel exclaimed, raising a hand toward the bright lights hanging above.

"I wouldn't mind sitting down at a table myself," Dianne told him. "I've been on my feet all week. Guarding. Training guards."

"Oh, very well," Ezekiel boomed as he rose from his throne.

A few minutes later, they were at a circular library table discussing trades. Gavin didn't have much to offer at this point, but he did manage to get some fresh fruit for the Sanctuary. That was something they didn't have. Vegetables, yes, and even some goat's milk, but not fruit.

"Dianne tells me she thinks you need more support at the Sanctuary," Ezekiel told Gavin, "and that it would be in our interest to see that it's firmly established. So, after some discussion…I've agreed to lend you Jerry when you return. When you come back to the Kingdom in…another eight days, I presume?"

"That's my plan, yes."

"Then I'll give you Dianne for another week after your next visit here. After that, I make no commitment."

"And what do you want in exchange?" Gavin asked.

"An assurance of peace between our people, and that you will lend me at least six soldiers if we're ever attacked."

"Agreed." Gavin extended his hand, and the king shook. Later, as he walked out of the library with Dianne as Jerry remained to chat with Ezekiel, he said, "Thank you. For convincing him of that."

"You've done a lot," Dianne told him. "But that place is still hanging by a thread. And if that thread snaps...it's going to be a sad day."

8:30 PM
Atlanta

They'd searched two more precincts and found no signs of life. They'd seen no moving cop cars. They were battening down for the night. Carol had said, "I know a place," and they were there now. She did seem to know her way around the building, which was well secured, free from any military bombing, and even had bedrooms. But it wasn't a hotel or an apartment complex. "What is this place?" Daryl asked as she threw open the door to a room and dropped her pack near a bunk bed.

"It was a battered women's shelter," she replied. "I came here with Sophia once, when I was going to leave Ed. But I didn't leave him. I got scared of making it on my own. No job. Not much of a resume. I ended up going back, with my tail tucked between my legs." She sighed and looked around the room. "I wonder how our lives would have changed if I hadn't been such a coward."

"Wouldn't of ever met me, maybe," Daryl said.

She smiled faintly at him. "You could be right about that. It was Ed who got us alive to that camp. Come on. Let's go see if there's anything left in the shelter's canteen."

They left their bags but brought their weapons. As they walked toward the canteen, Daryl could hear the scratching of walkers behind a door. Carol paused in the hallway and drew her knife. She looked through the vertical window and winced, because one of the walkers inside was only tall enough to just barely rise above the bottom of the window. Only it's gnarled hair and glassy eyes showed. A child and its mother. A child of about Sophia's height when Daryl had first met her, though his little girl had sprung nearly three inches in the past nine months, like some kind of unpredictable weed.

Daryl put a hand on the doorknob over Carol's. "You ain't got to. I'll take care of it later."

"While I appreciate a man who offers to kill all the bugs in the house," Carol said. "I can handle it. Really."

"Know you can. Said you ain't got to."

"I know I don't have to. But you don't have to either, Daryl. It doesn't always have to be you, taking every weight on your shoulders. You've already had to…" She swallowed and didn't finish, didn't mention Eileen's baby in that quarantine theater, but it was clear from her eyes that she knew, knew he was the one who had to keep tiny Eve from turning. "You can't always do the dirty work, Daryl. You need a break sometimes, too. So let me do this for you. This time."

Daryl's hand slid form hers. He sucked in his bottom nip and nodded silently. He walked the rest of the way down the hall, his back to her. He heard the door open, the hiss of the walkers, and the thunk and slurp of the knife. He waited in the open doorway of the next hall for her to join him again and show him to the canteen.

There, they found small plastic bottles of apple juice, sodas, and bags of snacks - potato chips, miniature chocolate chip cookies, trail mix, and sunflower seeds. It wasn't the healthiest dinner ever, but they were holding onto their two MREs. They didn't know how long this exploration would take…or how long they would press on before they gave up the search. That was a subject not yet to be discussed.

Daryl had just tossed a peanut into the air and caught it in his mouth when the radio crackled with Maggie's voice. "Come in. Bowman, come in. What have you found? Over."

"Bowman?" Carol asked with a chuckle. "Did you pick that call sign?"

"Fuck no I didn't pick it. Lame ass call sign. Guess Maggie did." He grabbed the radio, which was sitting upright on the table, and pressed the talk button. "Ain't found nothing," Daryl replied. "Sorry. No sign at all. Are you sure they're from...where we went to? Over."

"Your nephew's conscious. He confirmed it. That was the writing on…the wall." On the cop car, that was. "He's packing right now. He's not in the best shape, but he's insistent. It's all we're going to be able to do to hold him back just until sunrise. Then we're coming. Where should we rendezvous?"

Daryl raised the radio to his mouth, trying to think how to pick a spot without revealing the location to anyone who might be listening in. He thought of the nursing home where they'd encountered the Vatos gang. "Where G used to live. Ask Rick. Or Andrea. They'll know. Over and Out."

They finished up their late, snacky dinner in silence and made their way back to the bedroom where they'd left their packs. "I get to be on top," Carol said as she shut the door.

"A'ight. I'll keep first watch."

As he turned toward her, Carol pulled him close by the belt buckle. "I mean I get to be on top."

He smiled uncertainly.

"We don't have to," she said. "I know it's a weird time. A tense time, and you're worried about Beth and Dixon. I'm worried about them. It's just…I'm upset, and I feel like it will help me to sleep tonight if - "

"Ain't got to convince me," he murmured as he lowered his head to kiss her.

She fell asleep afterward, half on top of him and half on the bed of the bottom bunk, her warm, familiar breath heating his skin. He slid out from under her and pulled the sheet up to her shoulders. Then he yanked on his pants and walked over to look out the window at the blackness of the city. It was strange – a city with no lights. He searched the horizon for a light somewhere, anywhere, the sign of a camp where Beth's captors might be holding her. But Atlanta was expansive, and though some of the buildings had crumbled from the bombings, others still stood tall and strong, blocking his line of vision.

There were no artificial lights on the horizon, not that he could see. No sign of life in this desolate world, except the undead dead, lurching and growling in the streets below. But Beth was out there somewhere, in that sea of concrete, bruised and terrified.