House of the Future
7:15 PM
Carol had initially planned to join the soldiers. She'd been on several looting missions now outside the gates, had helped to empty Hershel's barn, had been a big part of fighting off the Governor, and had joined the initial search team for Beth. She was an experienced soldier. But considering how relieved Sophia had been to see her and Daryl return alive from Atlanta, she'd had second thoughts about turning around and immediately leaving again. And then there was the issue of Fun Kingdom needing experienced guards when the bulk of their fighters were gone. What was more, most of the Governing Board would also be absent. Conflicted, Carol had chosen to remain at camp.
The choice to stay, she thought now, was harder than the choice to fight. Her gut was a ball of tension, and every hour had been one of anxious waiting. Her mind had sometimes been distracted from the worry, but never for long. So now, when she heard the CB crackle with Rick's voice, her heart leapt into her throat. She set aside the final dish she was drying, walked over to the kitchen desk, yanked out the chair, sat down hard, and stared expectantly at the radio.
She listened as Dixon replied to Rick's call: "All the gunfire in the building drew a herd toward you. We plowed down enough of them with the machine gun mounted on the armored vehicle that we were able to barrel through the middle of the herd once we shut the hatch. It sure was a bumpy ride, but we're out ahead of the herd now. They've turned to follow us. We're drawing them away from you. We're driving at just three miles an hour and Beth's stuck her head back up through the hatch again, and now she's taunting them." Dixon laughed. "I never knew she was such a good trash talker."
Dixon and Beth could have simply fled the herd and gotten out the city in the armored vehicle another direction, Carol thought, but instead they'd gone straight through it to make sure the others weren't trapped in that building. It was foolhardy, but it had apparently worked.
"You might get a few stragglers still headed toward you," Dixon warned, "but most of them are taking our bait. They're following her voice. We're headed north. We'll move them far away from the building. Over."
"Damn good job!" Daryl's voice was on the radio now. He'd clearly taken the radio from Rick's hand. Carol felt her heart swell with relief and affection, and she turned up the radio a little more to hear him better. "Draw those ugly fuckers a few miles away. Then y'all hit the accelerator and head on home. I know Hershel's anxious to see his baby girl. Over."
"Is everyone safe?" Dixon asked the question on Carol's mind. "Over."
"There haven't been any losses for us." Rick's voice again. "A few injuries, but nothing that can't be recovered from. And those cops are all gone. Every last one of them. But we've got to patch over those first-floor exit doors quickly before any walkers get in here. We've got some people working on it as I speak. Over and out."
Carol broke in after Rick dropped: "When are you coming home? Over."
"Hey, Miss Murphy," Daryl replied. "Dunno yet. Not tonight. Got to clean up this mess and figure out where the hell we go from here. Be in touch. Love ya. Over and out."
Carol let out a long sigh of relief. When she turned, Carl and Sophia were standing behind her, grinning at having heard the sound of both their fathers' voices. "My dad did it!" Carl said proudly.
"And my dad," Sophia insisted.
"They all did it," Carol assured them.
Duane and Patrick came up behind them, having left the dinning room table to follow their friends. "Well," Duane said, "I think this calls for celebratory ice pops from the freezer. I get the last green one."
"Red!" Carl called.
"Sophia likes the red," Patrick told him. "So only if there are two reds left."
"You want one, Mom?" Sophia asked.
Carol chuckled. "No. I have to go relieve Morgan on watch. But make sure Andre gets one. He's out back with Hershel. And let Hershel know Beth's safe."
9:00 PM
Rt 29, Georgia
The headlights of the armored vehicle cut across the highway. Now that they were going about 55 miles per hour, it wouldn't be long before they made it back to Fun Kingdom, but it had been a long slow roll out of the city. The walkers, however, they'd left far behind, and far away from Grady Memorial.
Dixon now glanced at Beth in the passenger's seat. "How are you doing?" he asked. She'd been quiet ever since coming down from the hatch. "Are you hungry? There's some MREs back there."
"I'm fine. They'll let Noah move to Fun Kingdom, won't they?"
"I don't know what the plan is," Dixon replied. "That hospital has power and running water. Food, too. They have to fix the doors, but, it's a pretty good camp."
"It's in the middle of a city infested with walkers! And it's a prison."
"Not anymore," Dixon assured her. "It's been liberated. And there's badly injured people there. They won't be easy to move. Why do you care so much if Noah is at Fun Kingdom, anyway? You've known him for like…48 hours."
"He was my orderly before they put me to work. We talked a lot. And he risked his life to save me."
"I risked my life to save you," Dixon muttered, feeling a flash of petty jealousy tinged with fear. "He left you there and fled."
"Because I couldn't run! Not with this brace. And he took the blame for the man I killed. If they'd found Noa…he'd be dead. But he found you first. Like he promised he would. He doesn't deserve to be stuck at that hospital. Besides, eventually, he wants to go look for his family in Richmond, Virginia. Maybe Fun Kingdom can help him with that."
"Maybe," Dixon murmured. He chewed on his bottom lip. How close had Beth and Noah gotten in just two days in that damn hospital? As close as he and Beth had gotten those two days she was learning to shoot at the Fun Kingdom range, before she'd officially broken it off with Jimmy? He glanced at Beth and then returned his eyes to the road. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "Noah seems like a good guy, I just don't know what the plan is. And I'm sorry I was a bit of an asshole when you told me you didn't want to go to the cabin. I'm sorry I didn't…that I wasn't…maybe if I'd been paying more attention to you, instead of worrying about my own disappointment, that cop car wouldn't have – "
"-None of that was your fault, Dix!" Beth interrupted him. "Neither of us saw that car coming. And thank you for coming after me. I knew you would." She reached over and put a hand on his knee and squeezed.
The affectionate gesture relaxed him. He dropped his right hand from the steering wheel and covered hers and squeezed.
"Both hands on the wheel, mister," Beth told him. "It's late and there may be walkers." When he returned his hand to the wheel, she said, "You must be so exhausted. Do you want me to drive?"
"With that ankle brace?" he asked.
"I can stand and walk with it. I can certainly drive."
"No, you were standing up in that hatch for an hour. You should rest. I'll be fine." He glanced at her again, then back at the road. "I was so worried. It made me realize how much…" He trailed off and sighed. "I really love you, Beth."
"I love you, too," she whispered and tilted her head to settle it on his shoulder. The headlights cut through the darkness before them as the armored vehicle sailed on.
April 12
9:30 AM
Grady Memorial
Daryl knocked on the door of the hospital room where he knew Rick had gone to bed last night and stepped back in surprise when Michonne swung the door open.
Michonne had insisted on joining the soldiers because she seldom joined risky missions, given that she had Andre to care for. She'd been to visit Woodbury a few times, but had returned home to Andre rather than staying to fight for it. She'd helped to clear the barn, but hadn't gone on any of the dangerous looting missions, and she hadn't joined the initial search party for Beth. But when it came to yesterday's fight, she'd insisted on stepping forward. Daryl thought maybe she'd done it so Carol wouldn't feel so obligated to supply one more body to the army's count. But, hell, maybe she'd only done it for the chance to shack up with Rick for the night.
"Uh…hey," he said. "Rick in there?"
"Yes. He's still sleeping."
It had been a long night. About a dozen walkers had made it to the hospital from that herd Beth and Dixon had otherwise turned. Soldiers had taken them out while the back exit doors were boarded over. Fortunately, two floors of the hospital had been under construction in parts, and they had plenty of tools and wood. They'd triple boarded them – plywood crossed with 2X4s then more plywood crossed with 2X4s. Nothing could easily bust through them.
Rick, for his part, had spent hours interviewing the patient and orderlies, getting their version of what had happened here, and asking them where they wanted to go from this point forward. They were careful not to tell any of them about Fun Kingdom, not yet, and Beth hadn't either, though she had mentioned "her people" who would come to rescue her, and had mentioned Dixon by name.
"Well, uh, those of us on the Board are meetin'," Daryl told her, feeling incredibly awkward. "Conference room. Ten minutes."
"I'll wake him up and send him your way."
"Uh-huh."
Michonne smiled. "Is there something you want to say, Daryl?"
Daryl shook his head. "Ain't my business to say a damn thing."
"Rick and I - we both had a day," Michonne told him.
"Yeah, we all had a day," Daryl agreed. "Ten minutes," he said as he turned and walked away.
It was fifteen minutes before Rick joined them in the conference room, looking as sleepy and haggard as the rest of them. Eight of the board members were here. Sasha wore a sling around her broken arm, while Tara sat stiffly straight with a bandage beneath her shirt over her wounded shoulder.
"Angela told me the emergency solar-generators should last another twelve to sixteen months before the batteries no longer hold a charge," Rick said, "if we continue to power only the first and sixth floors." Currently, all of the patients were on the sixth floor, while the kitchen and cafeteria were on the first. "She said the water should last anywhere from twelve months to two years depending on rationing."
"How she know all this?" Daryl asked.
"Apparently she was one of the engineers who designed the hospital forty years ago," Rick answered.
Rosita looked skeptical. "When she was fifteen?"
"She's sixty-six," Glenn told her.
"Damn. I hope I look like that at sixty-six," Sasha murmured.
"That's going to be a challenge," Bob told her. "Given the difference in skin tone."
Sasha rolled her eyes but then smiled at him.
"You'll be beautiful," he insisted.
"Why didn't they just put everyone on a lower floor so they didn't have to use the elevators?" Andrea asked.
"Not enough rooms on the first floor," Rick told her. "An electrical problem on the second and third. Construction on the fourth and fifth."
"There's one functioning ambulance and a van that's a makeshift ambulance," Bob told them. "And of course our military truck. So we could conceivably move patients and equipment little by little to Fun Kingdom if we decided to. But I think it would be easier to let them all heal up here. Besides, Fun Kingdom only has two buildings with power."
"Can we move the hospital's solar generator?" Sasha asked. "And hook it up to a building in Fun Kingdom?"
"I think that's something we'd have to have Tom check out," Andrea replied. "It's big, though, isn't it, and the panels are separate, on the roof?"
"What about the herd?" Rosita asked. "That's my first concern."
Daryl stretched out a leg under the table an relaxed back in his chair. "Dixon checked in this mornin'. Said they successfully ditched it. Backtracked on some side roads, picked up a minor highway home. Herd probably kept on moving straight, away from both Atlanta and Fun Kingdom. Ain't somethin' we got to worry 'bout."
"What's the food situation here?" Andrea asked.
"The orderlies say they have ten to twelve months left of food," Rick continued, "depending on rationing, if everyone stays."
"This hospital is in the heart of the city," Tara said. "Walkers everywhere. It won't be easy to keep secure."
"The cops secured it this long," Glenn reasoned.
"If we leave these people here," Tara insisted, "We can't leave them without guards. The patients are in no condition to defend themselves until they get better. And do any of the orderlies know how to shoot?"
"Noah does," Rosita replied. "And Zach said he was in Georgia Tech's marksmanship club."
"Zach?" Daryl asked. "That the frat boy who wanted to know if Beth really had a boyfriend?"
"Well, he's a decent shot anyway, or so he says," Rosita replied.
"I can move here for a while," Tara volunteered. She glanced at her wound. "I need more treatment anyway. And I can be a guard, even like this. I can shoot if I have to. And I can help them run this camp."
"Really, you wouldn't mind?" Rick asked. "What about your sister Lilly? Your niece? Meghan?"
"I'm not saying I'd leave permanently. But ever since I lost Alisha…I don't know. I need a sense of purpose. This could be it. Leading this place for a while."
"Well, based on my interviews, no one really has anywhere else to be," Rick said, "or any desire to forge out on their own given what the world is like out there. Except Noah. He wants to go see if his family is still alive in their old neighborhood, but he said he's willing to put that off for a few weeks if we need his help here."
In the end, the Board voted 8-0 to maintain the Grady Memorial camp until all the patients healed up, and then they would re-evaluate. Tara would stay to help lead the camp. The hospital would be an emergency resource if anyone in Fun Kingdom needed it during that time as well. Eventually, though, because of its precarious position in the heart of Atlanta, because of its lack of gardens or livestock, and because of the inevitability of the food running out, they would need to close down the camp and roll all of the people into Fun Kingdom. It wasn't a question of if. It was only a question of when.