10:30 AM
House of the Future
Carol was filling a glass of well water from the sink after returning from an hour of practice at the range when Daryl and Sophia walked in with a cooler full of recently scaled fish. "I got three, Mom!" Sophia exclaimed. "Dad only got two. Andrea got four she threw in our cooler. And that means we've already hit the max for the week."
They had a cap on how many fish the camp could collectively catch each week to prevent overfishing and endure the fish would continue to breed.
Daryl nodded to Carol. "'S on your agenda today?"
She laughed. "My agenda?"
"Eugene says it all the time," Sophia told her. "Dad's just making fun of him."
Eugene. At some point, Sophia had dropped the Mr. and Mrs. for most adults. She was beginning to think of herself as an adult, at only thirteen. And in a way, she was. She'd killed several walkers already, lived through a battle, cared for children, worked in the gardens, and now she was fishing to help feed the camp.
"Well, other than a couple of hours of helping Hershel at the farm and the afternoon Board meeting, nothing is on my agenda today. Why?"
"'Cause 'm takin' you on a date tonight, Miss Murphy."
"Really?" Carol asked. The last time they'd had a date, it had been at her needling.
"Don't sound so damn surprised. I'm a smooth operator."
Sophia chortled. "I put him up to it. You guys have been so busy with the hospital thing and getting people settled, I figured you needed some time to yourselves."
"Oh?" Carol asked suspiciously.
Sophia shrugged. "That and I'm having a D&D party tonight and I don't kneed you two hovering."
"Hovering? I don't hover," Carol insisted.
"Me, Carl, Patrick, Duane, and Noah. Dixon said he might play, too."
"Ain't you got any girl friends?" Daryl asked.
"Sure. Mika. But she gets bored with D&D."
"What about all them other girls in the Royal Banquet?"
"They're either too young, or they're boring," Sophia insisted. "They just like to talk about clothes and makeup and how they're decorating their divider walls and stuff. What do you care if all my friends are boys, anyway?"
Daryl opened his mouth to answer but was cut off by the crackling of the CB on the kitchen desk: "Egypt, come in. If you're there, come in."
Carol and Daryl exchanged a look of surprise, and then Carol picked up the microphone. "This is Egypt. Over."
"This is Gavin from The Sanctuary. Glad I finally caught someone. Listen, I overheard some traffic on the radio. It sounds like your group cleared out a hospital recently. Did you get any insulin? Over."
"Who fucked up?" Daryl muttered as he took raw, scaled fish out of the cooler and wrapped it in brown deli paper on the counter. "'Sposed to avoid locations on the radio."
Carol sighed. "Did they mention the name of the hospital? Over."
"No. They didn't say the name of the hospital. Or where it was. I'm not trying to get anyone in trouble. I'm just trying to get some insulin, as much as you're willing to trade for. We've got a young lady in one of the communities up here, she's just nineteen. And she's a type one diabetic, which means she'll die without it. We're just trying to acquire and store as much as we can. Over."
Carol glanced back at Daryl, who muttered, "Jesus. Nineteen."
"That poor girl," Sophia said. "We have to help her!"
"I'll go check with Bob," Daryl said. "He did all the medical inventory. Finish up the fish. Put it in the fridge after you wrap it."
"We're checking on our stock now," Carol told Gavin. "If we do have any, I'll have to get approval from our board as to how much to give you. Over."
"I'm willing to pay handsomely. We could meet somewhere, well outside both our camps. I'm sure you don't want to give up your location any more than I do, at least not on the radio. Corn, ethanol, and ammunition is the best thing I've got to trade. And honey. The Kingdom will pay honey. Over."
"The Kingdom?" Carol asked. "Over."
"One of the communities in our coalition. Over."
"We've got plenty of jarred honey, still, good for another year, at least. But ammunition we can always store for use. Bullets and gun powder, even more. We do our own reloading, and we're running low on bullets. Do you have any? Over."
"As a matter of fact, we make bullets. It's one of the few things the Sanctuary is really good at. That and making ethanol. If it's bullets you want, it's bullets you'll get."
Carol chatted with Gavin for a while about their respective communities, avoiding any details that would give away their precise location, until Daryl returned and told her they had about two years' worth of insulin for one person, and, as far as Bob knew, not a single diabetic in camp, though someone could always develop the disease.
"We do have insulin," Carol told Gavin. "I'll be back in touch with you with an answer tomorrow about how much we're willing to trade. Should we say 1300 hours?"
"I'll be at the radio. Thank you, Carol. Over and out."
"Told 'em yer name?" Daryl asked.
"Nobody listening in is going to find out where we live from my name. And I think we should probably be on a first name basis with our allies."
"That what they are?"
Carol stood from the chair by the kitchen desk. "I think so. They warned us of the trouble coming. They seem to want to make amicable trades."
"Yeah. For now. 'Til their starvin' or somethin', and then, hell, maybe they'll want to roll in and take over."
"Daryl."
"Gotta be careful, 's all I'm sayin'. Can't trust no one in this world. Not right away anyhow."
"We're being careful," Carol assured him.
At the Board meeting that afternoon, it was agreed they would kill two birds with one stone. Since Dixon, Noah, and Zach were planning to travel to Richmond, Virginia to check if Noah's family was still alive at Sherwitt Estates, they would agree to meet up with Gavin somewhere outside of Richmond to make the exchange. They would ask for 1,000 bullets and two bushels of fresh corn in return for 75% of their insulin – a year's supply. It was a small ask for the liquid gold, but that girl needed it far more than they did. They'd hold onto some just in case they did need, and if they hadn't used it in a year, they might trade that, too. It would only keep so long, even properly stored.
"What's that poor girl going to do when it runs out?" Glenn asked.
"Die," Hershel said solemnly.
"Can they make a substitute?" Glenn wanted to know. "Grow it or…something?"
"There's no substitute for insulin," Bob said.
"It's not easy to synthesize outside a modern lab," Milton agreed. "But maybe Eugene and I could do some research on it and…try, at least. What we learn from the process, at least, even if we fail, might help us make some other necessary medicines in the future."
5:00 PM
Daryl returned from checking his traps in the small woods with Carl, who looked at the figurines and D&D books spread out on the coffee table. "I thought we were playing after dinner."
"We are," Patrick told him. "I just like to get set up early."
"You're such a geek," Carl told him, shaking his head. "Duane'll be over at seven. And I invited a girl, so don't embarrass me." He ran up the ramp.
"Girl?" Rick called up the balcony to him as he disappeared in his room. He was standing behind the kitchen counter helping Michonne to prepare the houses common meal. "What girl?"
Michonne grinned. "Well, there's only one girl around his age beside Sophia, so take your guess."
Rick's brow crinkled. "Savannah?"
Michonne put a finger on her nose.
"But isn't she…sixteen?"
"Fifteen I think."
Rick snorted. "Well good luck to him. He thinks he twenty now. Have you seen his swagger?"
"Can't imagine where he gets that from," Michonne teased.
"I don't swagger."
"You've got that cop walk, though," Michonne told him. "I could spot it a mile away."
[*]
Carol closed the journal she was writing in when she heard Daryl click the bedroom door shut.
"Hell you always writin' in there?" he asked.
Carol pulled open the desk drawer, slid her journal inside, and shut the drawer. She half turned to face him, and arm slung over the back of her chair. "Don't go sneaking a peak like you used to do with Sophia's journal."
"Why? Put all your dirty fantasies in there?"
"You wish." She stood from the chair.
"You packed up yet?"
"Packed up? For what?" she asked.
"Our date. 'S gonna be an overnight date."
"Oh, we're going out out?" she asked in surprise. She assumed they'd take a pedal boat out on the lake after dinner. Daryl was pretty routine when it came to their dates. Every one of them so far had been a mirror image of the first one. A little wine, or a little beer, fishing poles, and paddle boats. Don't fix what ain't broke was probably his line of reasoning. She figured they'd watch the sunset, make out a little, have a drink, and then pedal back.
"Yeah. 'S an overnight date. So you know…" He smirked. "Pack somethin' sexy."
Carol chuckled. "Overnight? Does Sophia know?"
"Told 'er. She's gonna be playin' D&D til midnight anyhow."
"Well, when are we going?"
"Now."
[*]
The warm summer evening wind ruffled Carol's hair as the motorcycle tore down the highway. The scent of Daryl's sleeveless leather vest tickled her nostrils as she pressed her chest a little tighter against his sun-heated back and pushed her thighs in against him for a stronger grip as he picked up speed. In a few more minutes, he was turning up a dirt road and then finally puttering to a stop before an almost invisible wire stretched between two trees in the opening in the woods.
He dismounted.
"Dixon's old cabin?" she asked. "That's where we're having date night?"
"Yep," he said he removed the trip wire. "Thought we could use a night to ourselves, you know, with more space to move 'round. And make noise."
She smirked. "What kind of noise do you expect me to be making?"
"We'll see."
Carol rolled the motorcycle toward the cabin as Daryl reset the wire. They circled the cabin to check for walkers first but found none. When they went inside, Carol gasped to see the small table inside covered with a white tablecloth, China place settings, and a silver candelabra with white taper candles. "Someone's here!" she reached quickly for the handgun on her hip.
"Relax! Did all that m'self. Earlier today. 'Fore the Board meetin' when I said I was doin' perimeter check."
"Then who did perimeter check?"
"Got Glenn to do it. Relax."
Carol laughed. She let go of the butt of her handgun. "This is…unexpected," she said.
"Then you really ain't gonna be expectin' that nice bottle of wine for." He pointed to a bottle on the countertop. "Or the venison steaks." He pointed to a cooler sitting on the counter. "Just got to heat 'em up."
"Did you check all that out of inventory? Is it within our qo-"
"-Relax. Enjoy."
Carol smiled and looked around the cozy cabin. "You know, when Sophia's grown up, you and I could retire here an open a bed and breakfast."
"Stahp. Get comfortable. Gonna go light that grill Dixon left out back."
8:00 PM
The Sanctuary
Gavin was relieved that it sounded like that Carol woman might be willing to trade. He'd find out for sure tomorrow afternoon. It was only buying a little time, but it would be precious time for Tina. And maybe Dwight would come by the Sanctuary a little more often to help Gavin out of gratitude for the help he was giving the man's sister-in-law. Not that he was expecting tit for tat, but, well…the possibility had occurred to him.
The possibility of waking up half naked in bed with Dianne had not, however, occurred to him. And he'd done a pretty good job of awkwardly avoiding her for most of the day. But now it was almost quiet hours inside the Sanctuary, and the shift she was covering for DJ was over, and here they both were in his quarters again, dancing around each other as he took out a blanket and pillow from a cupboard and set them at the end of the couch. He was supposed to have slept on the couch last night. He'd make sure to do it this time.
"Just need to brush my teeth in that bathroom and then it's all yours," he said. The bathroom was through the bedroom. When he returned to the living room, Dianne was leaned back against the little circular two-person kitchen table, palms down by her sides, looking contemplative.
"It's really been bothering me," she said. "That I can't remember."
He sighed. "Maybe nothing happened."
"But it's making things awkward between us, and I don't like awkward. I like calm. I like predictability. I like knowing things."
"I'm not surprised to hear that."
"So let's just go ahead and fuck tonight then."
Gavin blinked. "Pardon?"
"Then we'll have done it, so we won't have to worry about whether or not we actually did it, because we'll know we did it."
"Are you joking?" he asked.
"Do I look like I'm joking?" she asked.
"No, but you deadpan like no one I've ever seen."
"I'm not joking. It would really make me less stressed. I think it would relive the awkwardness, too. So do you want to? Fuck?"
"Uh…tonight?"
"The sooner the better," she replied.
He laughed. "Sober?"
"You think it's going to be that bad you need to get liquored up to enjoy it?"
"No! No. I just…I'm…wasn't…" Gavin wiped a hand over his mouth and laughed again. "I just wasn't expecting a proposal of this kind."
"But you're game?" asked Dianne, standing straight.
He'd never really thought about it before. She was an attractive woman, but he was with Frankie, and then he was smarting over Frankie dumping him, and then there was always the distraction of trying to survive, trying to make the Sanctuary into something. He respected Dianne and enjoyed her conversation, more than most people's, but she wasn't his usual type when it came to women. Not that he'd had much of a type. Not that he'd been with a lot of women. But Dianne was…different. He nodded.
"Well don't look so frightened," she said as she walked toward the open bedroom door. "I don't bite." She turned back to look at him. "Unless you like that sort of thing." She reached a hand behind her head and pulled her hair loose and shook it until it spilled out in long flowing tresses.
Still a little stunned, Gavin followed her into the bedroom, and, even though there was no reason to, shut the door between it and the little living room.