Daryl weaved around the packs of walkers in the parking lot on his motorcycle to draw them off the bodies, but every form was so badly chewed up as to be unrecognizable. The walkers must have been feasting through the night. They were down to the last scraps of muscle clinging to the bones. As he rode in weaving figure eights among the dead, Carol clung to him with one arm and shot her handgun whenever a walker drew too close.
The military truck came to a squealing stop. Daryl, completely oblivious now to whatever Dixon was doing, shot his bike toward the front gate, which he found wide open. The park was teeming with walkers inside, but he dove in anyway, weaved around them, and glided through the smoke that swirled about, past smoldering structures, shouting, "Sophia! Sophia! Sophia!"
Carol continued to shoot at walkers that lunged for them as Daryl made his way to the House of the Future. She dropped an empty magazine to the ground and slapped in a full one from her belt, gripping him with her legs until she could get an arm around him again.
The House of the Future was in shambles. Ash coated the ground, and little remained beyond the raw structure. Fading flames licked the steel under-skeleton. The little bit of remaining fire jumped to a lingering piece of wood, which crackled, broke off, and toppled, burning, onto Daryl's left hand. The fire-retardant aviation gloves protected him as he flung it away.
Daryl continued past the warehouse. It, too, had caught fire at some point, but the brick had withstood the flames, and only the remnants of the roof and whatever had burned up inside smoked now. The door was open. A pick-up truck was parked out front, the metal bed blackened by now spent fire, and whatever had been loaded into the bed had also burned up. The doors to the cab were both flung open, but no one was inside. They'd fled on foot, perhaps, when the supplies in the truck caught fire.
Daryl pulled his shirt up over his mouth and nose and weaved through walkers and smoke as he rode across ash toward the Royal Banquet. It too had been burned, and the fire still crackled around the edges, warming his flesh. The roof had caved in completely. Walkers were feasting on the burned-up bodies amid the dying flames, like they were at some kind of summer barbecue. Daryl couldn't make out how many bodies there were, especially not under the rubble, but walkers had crawled beneath it in search of prey. He tried to draw them off to evaluate the damage, but he nearly got bitten for his efforts.
Carol shot over and over as the walkers closed in on them, making a path for Daryl to escape. He made it out from the midst of the grasping creatures, but Carol was by now out of ammunition for her handgun. With the way Daryl was dipping and weaving to avoid walkers and flame, she couldn't grab her rifle and shoot two-handed, so she pistol whipped any monster that got too close while still holding onto her husband with one arm. She didn't have time to holster her weapon and draw her knife.
Daryl made his way free of the pack, but kept roaring through the park, weaving around damaged rides and buildings, searching for anyone still living, crying "Sophia! Sophia! Mika! Luke! Carl! Sophia!"
In the Kingdom of the West, walkers feasted in small packs on dead bodies here and there, but even when Daryl drew them off, he couldn't make out who it was. Some were small enough to be children. He could hear Carol sobbing behind him as she beheld the damage and beat off the grasping arms of the undead.
They rode through a field of burned-up grass near the train station and saw that a tree had been split by lightening down to its very roots, and the grass around it had been set ablaze and carried the flames to other trees. Before this storm, they hadn't had rain in two weeks, and everything was dry. The tanker hadn't helped. Someone had taken it out at some point, perhaps to fill fuel cans in the light of day, and had not returned to its hidey hole inside the darkened train tunnel. It, too, had been struck by lightning. The tanker had cracked and leaked and the spilled gasoline had been set on fire. The flames had consumed the tanker and left it a burnt-out shell and then traveled across the grass to the train station.
The fire had since died down in much of the park, probably because heavier rains eventually followed the lightening after what might have begun as a rare dry thunderstorm. Small tongues of flame still licked buildings and trees as they continued to ride through the park in search of survivors. Carol was coughing hard now. She buried her face against Daryl's back to keep from inhaling more smoke.
After one full trip around the perimeter and through as many areas as he could reach without allowing them to be burned or ripped off the bike by walkers, Daryl came back to a spot in the back fence where the pedestrian gate was thrown open. Someone had escaped this way on horseback. He eased slowly through the open gate, scouring the muddy ground for prints as he rode. A pack of walkers lurched after him, and he had to pick up speed.
11:30 AM
Two miles outside Fun Kingdom
Daryl's bike lay leaned on its stand. Carol watched him as he paced down the shoulder of the asphalt road, back again to the bike, forward again, and then back again. He'd already gone into the woods twice, in two different places, and come back out.
"Talk to me," she pleaded hoarsely. "What do you see?"
"It's gone," he growled. "Trail is gone now."
"But there were horses? You're sure there were horses fleeing out that pedestrian gate?"
"Two of 'em." He paced again down the road, then turned and paced back toward where she stood by the bike. When he was a few inches from her, he hissed, "Didn't wanna go on no damn vacation. Shouldn't of stayed to fight those Redeemers." Now his voice gathered volume: "Wasn't our business! Weren't our people! Should of left 'em to themselves. Should of come back from Shirewilt the next day like I said!"
Carol swallowed hard. She might have sobbed if her tear ducts weren't already dry. She looked into his flickering eyes and nodded. "It's my fault," she agreed.
Daryl's jaw twitched. His eyes softened from fire to mist. He opened his mouth to speak but shut it again when the brakes of the military truck squealed and Dixon turned off the engine. He jumped out of the vehicle and strode toward them, rifle in hand. "Did you find anyone alive? Did you find any sign?"
Daryl told him about the hoof prints and the trail he'd lost. "You?"
"My bike was gone," Dixon said. He sounded like he was catching his breath. "I taught Beth to ride. Maybe she got out on it. She had to have gotten out!"
Carol looked at the blood coating his shirt. "Were you bit?"
"It's not mine. All walker. I ran through two magazines of ammo looking for Beth on foot. Then I had to fight my way back to the truck with a knife."
"I ain't seen the armored vehicle or the other military truck," Daryl told him. "You see 'em in the lot?"
Dixon shook his head. "They were both gone from where they're usually parked. That truck could hold up to twenty-seven people. The armored vehicle four. The horses up to four. The bike up to two. Maybe almost everyone got out!"
"Saw too many bodies for that to be true," Daryl murmured.
"But some of them," Dixon said. "Surely…Beth got out! Sophia. Luke. Mika. They got out. They had to get out."
Daryl glanced up the road behind the military truck. There were two packs of walkers lurching their way, in two directions, about to meet up with one another-one had been following him and Carol on the gravel road beyond the pedestrian gate, and were now coming across a grassy field toward the paved road, and one had been following Dixon on the highway. "Need to move."
They drove up the road a bit, and when they'd put enough space between themselves and the walkers, they stopped to refuel, reload, and re-evaluate. Carol and Dixon poured gas from fuel cans into the tanks of the motorcycle and military truck while Daryl disappeared into the woods again to look for sign.
After tossing the empty fuel cans in the back of the truck, Carol and Dixon reloaded their magazines, the ones they hadn't dropped while fighting off walkers. "All this time," Dixon muttered as he pushed rounds down angrily with the force a single thumb, "we've been preparing to defend ourselves against walkers and human enemies. All this time! And in the end, it was just Nature! It was just some indifferent force that devoured our home!"
When Daryl returned, Carol looked at him with pleading eyes, but he just shook his head.
"If Beth got out," Dixon said as he shouldered his rifle, "she may have gone to my old cabin to wait for me there. We always said if Fun Kingdom ever got overcrowded, she and I could settle there."
"It's back that way," Daryl muttered, nodding toward the walkers that were slowly catching up with them.
"We can plow through them in the truck," Dixon insisted. "We'll just put your bike in the back. There's a little room still."
Daryl pointed forward. "Horses probably went this way."
"I think Beth got out on my bike. I saw a bloody footprint near where I parked it. About her shoe size."
"If Soph was on one of those horses," Daryl replied, "and she might of been, 'cause she knows how to ride good now- she don't know the way to your cabin well. Only been there once. And she'd of wanted to put space between her and that herd. She'd of gone forward. We're going forward. Checkin' in the woods every quarter mile for sign."
Dixon glanced back. "With those walkers on our tail?"
"Can move on when they catch up. Just a few minutes in the woods each stop. To check for sign."
"We need to get to my cabin. Beth would have gone to my cabin."
"We're going forward," Daryl insisted. "In the direction of the horses."
"Fine. You go forward. I'll go back. Meet up at my cabin later. If it's burned down or something? Roof blown off? We meet at that gas station on Holtzclaw. You know the one I mean?"
Daryl nodded. "Be careful."
"You, too." Dixon squinted down the scope of his rifle and shot two nearing walkers before jogging to the driver's side of the truck. Carol took out a third and fourth walker as he jerked opened the door and climbed inside. Daryl had already started the bike. Walking backward, she took out a fourth monster before turning and mounting behind her husband. When she wrapped her arms around him, his muscles were as stiff as a starched shirt. The bike jerked forward just as a walker reached for her shoulder.
12:29 PM
Daryl had driven slowly in order to keep an eye on the road and shoulder, which meant the lurching walkers were only about two blocks behind them. He finally picked up the trail again, on the shoulder of the highway, and he puttered to a stop, kicked down the stand, and dismounted. "The horses went in the woods."
Carol didn't reply. She hadn't said a damn word to him since saying, "It's all my fault." Now, she marched back toward the pack of walkers, raised her rifle, and began clearing them one by one, shot after angry shot, until she'd spent all of the twelve bullets in her rifle's magazine and the thirteenth in the chamber. She dropped the empty magazine with a clatter to the road and slid in another pre-loaded one.
"Stop," he demanded. "Don't waste bullets." He let a crossbow bolt fly into the head of a walker and then reloaded.
Carol scooped her empty magazine from the road, slid it back into the pouch on her belt, and then shouldered her rifle before drawing a throwing knife, which she sent with a flick of the wrist and an angry grunt soaring into the head of a walker. Daryl sent another bolt flying.
They were close now. Daryl didn't take the time to reload. He swung his crossbow to his back and drew his hunting knife while Carol also drew hers. Together, they marched forward and stabbed until the last of the pack lay dead on the road beneath the heavily beating sun. The asphalt was dry of rain now but wet with blood.
"Thanks," Daryl murmured. "Be easier to track without them on our heels."
Carol didn't reply. She was angry about what he'd said, or maybe more hurt than angry, but he didn't know how to fix it. The only way he could to think to fix it was to find their daughter.
He rolled the bike alongside the hoof prints on the shoulder and into the woods, where the prints faded but could still be made out faintly on a beaten trail. Carol followed silently. After a few minutes of rolling his bike along the trail, he came to a fork in the beaten path. The horses appeared to split off from one another, down two different trails. They'd been set upon and separated by walkers. There were walker tracks going after the horses in both directions, and three walkers lay dead on the earth at the fork. Daryl examined them. "Think maybe Soph killed these. Incision looks like it coulda been made by her waza thing."
He left the bike for now and followed the trail to the east first, Carol walking silently and tensely behind him. The trail vanished in a creek, and no matter how many times he paced up and down the shore and examined the bank, he couldn't pick it up again. "We go back," he said when he rejoined her. "Walk down the other trail."
Carol was biting her bottom lip, and when she released it, a sob ripped out from somewhere deep within her. That cry shot straight through Daryl's heart. He grabbed her by one hand, dragged her to himself, and wrapped her up in his arms. "Shh! Shhh!"
"It's all my fault," she sobbed.
"'M sorry." He kissed the top of his head and murmured, "' 'M sorry, Carol. Didn't mean it. Didn't mean nothin' I said back there. I'm just scared is all. 'M sorry. Ain't yer fault."
"It is. It is my fault. If I hadn't stopped to shop—"
"-Wouldn't of mattered. They're hours gone from Fun Kingdom. Got overrun in the middle of the night. Wouldn't of mattered."
"If I hadn't wanted to stay to see the Kingdom, if we'd left straight from the monastery—"
"Couldn't of. Had to go back for Dixon and the truck anyhow."
"If I hadn't wanted to help return the supplies to the monastery—"
"—Stop!" he hissed and pulled back. "Just stop. Ain't yer fault. 'M sorry for what I said." God, if only he could take those words back. He'd lashed out in his terror and hurt her in a way he never intended to.
"You blame me."
"No! Carol, I love you." He ripped off his blood-stained aviation gloves, dropped them to the ground, and tenderly placed a bare hand on either side of her face, forcing her eyes to meet his. "I love you, and we're gonna find Sophia. We're gonna locate our little girl. And she's gonna be just fine. You hear me?"
Carol swallowed and nodded. With his rough thumb, he brushed away the tears on her left cheek before he leaned in and kissed her forehead. "C'mon," he said as he drew back. "We follow the other trail now."