Eight Years Later…
The horses whinnied before the open front gate of Alexandria. Beth held the three-month-old baby with one hand while she adjusted the black cap she'd knitted Dixon with the other.
"It's not that cold," he assured her. "It's only November."
"But your ears get so red."
"I'll be fine." He kissed her and then kissed his baby girl. Then he lifted his eldest daughter, Patricia Annette, onto his horse before telling his son, "Mind your mamma while I'm gone."
"Why can't I come like Patty and Murphy?" Otis demanded.
"Because they're nearly eight."
"And I'm nearly five!"
"You'll get your chance to join the hunters," Dixon assured his son. "When you're older. And when you can shoot half as good as Patty."
"But you won't even give me a rifle yet!"
Patty turned back on her horse. "I didn't get mine until I was six."
Dixon reached out and ruffled the already unruly golden brown hair on Otis's head. The he whistled for Dixie before mounting behind his daughter. Dixon's loyal dog Daisy lay buried in Alexandria's grave yard. Dixie, now over eight years old, barked and ran to the horse's side. Merle was staying behind to chase rats in Alexandria's barn and play guard dog. Merle and Dixie had been inbred to produce several sturdy offspring, but those younger, less experienced dogs were with the other Coalition hunters who would be meeting up with them later.
Daryl mounted another horse, and Carol heaved their strawberry-blonde-haired son up between his legs. Until Murphy was born, Daryl hadn't realized Carol had once been a strawberry blonde. The boy had Daryl's eyes, though, and he squinted just like his father, too, whenever he was wary of something or someone.
"I'll be right behind you," Carol told them.
She and Rick would be driving the flatbed truck. The flatbed was one of only two functioning trucks in the entire Coalition, though they had four motorcycles that still worked. All had been converted to run on the limited supply of ethanol distilled in the Sanctuary, but the Coalition relied primarily on horses for transportation these days, along with rickshaws drawn by human-powered bicycles. But for this expedition, they needed the truck to haul their camping supplies and, later, their kill. They were going all the way to West Virginia.
Summer forest fires had driven too much of the wild game west, and the dry summer had meant a poor early fall crop yield. This would be the first time the hunters had ventured so far west outside of Coalition territory, but if this fall hunting expedition proved successful, they would all have enough meat for the winter.
Alexandria had fenced-in an additional fifty acres for crop land and had also built additional housing, rustic cabins with wood stoves and fireplaces and hand water pumps. The original houses were now packed with people, with the attic apartments full and garages used for apartments, too. The community still had solar power, and now it had a windmill a watermill on the pond that powered the gristmill. But there was no functioning battery backup storage anymore, and the community had grown so much that it put a lot of strain on the power supply. They were used to intermittent blackouts and power and water rationing. They'd learned to live in a more 18th century style.
So had all the other communities, the ones that still stood. The Audubon Botanical Gardens camp had moved north four years ago and rolled into Mount Vernon after blight had destroyed most of their crops and gardens. It was also difficult living so far away from the more northern communities, especially once the gas had spoiled. The Kingdom had collapsed five years ago from burst pipes and rot, and their survivors had been dispersed throughout the other communities.
The Sanctuary hadn't collapsed, but it had been downsized as people increasingly migrated to other communities in search of love and less dismal surroundings. The place was now a manufacturing outpost and trade center of sorts, which produced ethanol and ammunition and hosted a twice monthly flea market. A permanent population of only thirty-eight people meant less stress for Gavin, who had only managed to step down from his position of leadership for a single six-month period before being dragged, reluctantly, back onto the Sanctuary Council again.
The Coalition—Alexandria, Oceanside, Mount Vernon, St. Demetrios Monastery, the Hilltop, and the Sanctuary—now had a total of 968 people as of the last census. That was a lot of mouths to feed on fish, crabs, and eggs alone, and no one wanted to have to kill a horse, a dairy cow, or a laying chicken. This hunting trip needed to go well.
November 15
They made it a little over sixty-five miles the first day before setting up camp for the night in a grove of trees on an otherwise open field. The line of sight was good here—they'd see walkers coming, but Carol still established a quick barbwire perimeter, lacing the wire around the trees to form a sort of trapezoidal campground. By the time she and Rick were done building a fire, the horses and hunters had caught up.
The camp sat around the crackling fire now, on packs or logs or sleeping bags, drinking hot herbal tree and eating their dinner rations. Murphy and Patty were done with dinner and now chased crickets. "Stay in the perimeter," Carol warned her son when he started to duck under the barbwire. Reluctantly, the boy backtracked.
Daryl broke off a piece of his hard biscuit and extended it to Carol.
"I'm fine. I've had enough," she assured him. That little gesture, which he always made during lean times, never ceased to warm her heart. And there were times when she had taken the offered food, during two particularly hard winters, because she had already given hers to Murphy.
Daryl shrugged and ate the biscuit himself. "Where's Ozzy?" he muttered with his mouth full.
Ozzy was not a hunter, but he typically joined the Coalition hunting expeditions in case they came across a wild horse—he was good at capturing and breaking those.
"The abbot's on his death bed," Rosita replied from across the fire. "Some disease of old age or something. Not that seventy-one was that old in the Old World."
Ozzy and Rosita had a marriage…of sorts. Rosita claimed she was "keeping her options open," but Carol suspected she was just keeping her heart guarded. She'd moved to Mount Vernon, after all, and three years ago, she'd given birth to Ozzy's child, whom she'd named Oscar Abraham. Ozzy, not particularly wanting to be regularly reminded of Rosita's former lovers, called him O, and pretty soon, Rosita did, too.
"Hell's that got to do with him?" Daryl asked. "They ain't on speaking terms."
"Well, his father sent for him," Rosita said. "Asked him to come. So Ozzy did. Maybe he'll get some closure finally. I hope he does."
"So who's gonna be the abbot, then?" Daryl asked.
"Who do you think?" Father Nicholas replied. The Orthodox priest was a hunter, and a fairly good one, too, a fact that had surprised Daryl the first time they participated in a joint hunt.
"Oh fuck, no!" Daryl exclaimed. "You can't be serious. Zeke?"
"Father Maximos has been the abbot's favorite ever since he became a novice," the priest replied. "He made him a schema monk in just four years."
When the Kingdom collapsed, and its inhabitants were scattered among the communities, Ezekiel had settled at St. Demetrios. Two months later, he was a novice, and the abbot had tonsured him under the name of Maximos, after the 15th century monk, Maximos the Greek. At the time, Daryl had said, Think he just likes the costumes and the title. Can't be King no more, so he wants to be Father.
"How are your kids?" Carol asked the priest.
"Still mad at me for marrying Carolyn," Nicholas replied. That was one of the three 'wives' Daryl had found in Dixon's cabin eight years ago, the only one who had left her 'husband.' "They weren't nearly as mad at their mother for leaving me. I guess they thought, as long as we weren't both with someone else…we might get back together."
"I didn't think the Orthodox could get remarried after a divorce," Benjamin said. The handsome blonde hunter, now twenty-five, had settled at the Hilltop with his younger brother Henry, who was apprenticed to the blacksmith.
When the Kingdom collapsed, there were fifty people to resettle. Tina and Noah were unfortunately not among them. No one had been able to manufacture a suitable substitute for insulin, and Tina was nine months pregnant when she was down to her last vial. Her young husband Noah, desperate to save her, had gone on a supply run to a hospital, hoping against hope to find usable insulin there, a prospect everyone had told him was highly unlikely—even if it was there, it would have gone bad. Still, three friends, including Zach and Benjamin, went with him on the futile errand. Noah somehow became trapped in a revolving door and was bitten by walkers before he could be freed. They got him home alive—just in time to see his baby daughter, who had been born in his absence. Tina died five days later. She named the girl Tanya, after Gavin's sister who had died in the Rebellion against the Saviors, and Denise and Tara adopted the infant, who had Beth for a wet nurse.
"The Church blesses the first marriage," Father Nicholas replied, "performs the second, tolerates the third, and forbids the fourth."
Benjamin chuckled. "How's Enid?" he asked Carol.
Zach smirked from beside him. "Still not interested in you."
"Enid's good," Carol told him. "She's on the council now. She's the youngest member to ever be elected. Just twenty-two." Carol turned to Dianne. "And how's Silas?" She liked these trips. It was her chance to catch up on all the goings-ons of the Coalition.
"Growing like a weed," Dianne told her.
Dianne had given birth to a child two years ago. The pregnancy had caused some temporary upset in her relationship with Gavin. He thought she'd cheated on him because he'd had a vasectomy in the Old World, but Dr. Emmett Carson confirmed the vasectomy had, in rare fashion, reversed itself.
"Hell kind of name is Silas?" Daryl asked. "Like the miser? With his gold?"
"I never took you for a reader of classics," Dianne replied.
Daryl shrugged. "Used to watch the classic movie channel a lot."
"It was my father's name," she told him.
"And how come ya didn't name Carl Rick Junior?" Daryl asked Rick.
Rick winced slightly. It had become increasingly possible to talk about their lost children without pain, but sometimes that loss still stung. RJ was almost five now, and he was home in Alexandria. "Lori wouldn't hear of it. She thought it was pompous, naming your kid after yourself. But Michonne was agreeable."
"And Nabila and the kids?" Carol asked Jerry.
Jerry grinned. "She's pregnant again!" He reached over and slapped Dixon on the shoulder. "We're going to beat you guys now. Four."
"Didn't know we were racing," Dixon replied.
"Well, since we're all bragging about our swimmers," Zach said, "Kylie's pregnant."
Carol congratulated him. She wasn't particularly surprised that he'd eventually ended up married to that poor girl in the Redeemers harem, but she was surprised by how patiently Zach had wooed her. After what she'd been through, it had taken years of friendship before Kylie was open to a romantic relationship.
Murphy came running wildly toward her now, weaving just in time to dodge the fire, and plopped down between her legs where she sat on a log next to Daryl. "I caught four," he said, holding up the mason jar in which the crickets hopped madly around.
"You should let them go before they die," Patty insisted as she sat down on an unrolled sleeping bag next to Dixon and lay her head on her father's shoulder. She had Beth's bright blue eyes but Dixon's auburn hair, which fell in curly waves to her shoulders. "I thought we were just catching them for fun."
"They're going to die anyway!" Murphy returned. "They always die before winter. And we can eat them!"
"Ain't that desperate yet," Daryl told his boy. "Gonna come home with a truck full of meat."
"But they make good flour!" Murphy insisted.
"Those were cicadas," Patty told him. Last year, the seventeen-year cicadas had littered the trees and gardens and fields of the Coalition. They'd collected them and turned them into a protein-rich flour. They still had a couple of bags left. It was what tonight's biscuits had been made from.
"I'll take first watch," Maggie announced after making sure she had a round in the chamber of her rifle.
"Why didn't Hershey come hunting with us?" Murphy asked.
"Hunting's not really Hershel's thing," Maggie replied. She hated that the kids called him Hershey, and that Daryl did, too. "And his daddy's taking him to the Sanctuary this weekend so Mr. Eugene can start teaching him how to reload ammunition."
"Cool!" Murphy said. "Hey, I want to do that! Pa, I want to do that!"
"Can do it in the spring," Daryl told him.
Maggie stood and slung her rifle over her shoulder.
"Time to get to bed," Carol told Murphy. "You've got a long ride ahead of you tomorrow."
November 16
They rode another sixty-two miles the next day, with Rick and Carol driving slowly behind the horses. Murphy and Patty decided to climb into the mostly empty bed of the truck instead of riding with their father's today. They played scissors-paper-rock and twenty questions while they rattled around back there, as well as some game with fingers they called chopsticks that Carol had never understood. Because the horses could navigate shortcuts the truck could not, the group occasionally stopped to map out a meet up point and diverged form one another.
That night, they camped out on the extensive porch of an abandoned Catholic church. It smelled too much inside the sanctuary from the decayed bodies littered there, but the portico outside gave them access to the fresh air while still providing shelter from a heavy rain. There was even a stone fireplace outside, built to vent through the porch's roof. Murphy had a blast seeing how fast he could get one of the wicker rocking chairs to rock. He and Patty raced each other, rocking so hard the chairs leapt forward step by step along the porch.
Daryl slung an arm around Carol's shoulders as they watched. "Is cousin marriage legal in Alexandria?"
"Ew," Carol replied. "You set one foot in West Virginia and suddenly you're adopting the culture."
Daryl chuckled. "They ain't but second cousins."
"I think they're first cousins," Carol insisted. "Your parents were Murphy's grandparents and Patty's great-grandparents."
"First cousins once removed at best," Daryl said.
"Either way - still ew. There are plenty of unrelated girls in the Coalition."
"Yeah, but ain't none of 'em can shoot like Annie Oakley there."
"Judith is going to be a great swordswoman one day." The almost nine-year-old had stayed in Alexandria, where she was learning to kill walkers and keep watch with Michonne. "And your son might not marry a soldier or a hunter, Pookie. He might marry an engineer. Or an artist."
"Damn well better not marry an artist."
Carol chuckled. "He might marry a boy."
"He might become a monk."
Carol outright laughed this time. "Now we both know that will never happen."
November 17
The next morning, they rose with the sun, and after a light breakfast of hard cicada flour biscuits smothered with peach preserves and a strong, hot tea—coffee beans were impossible to grow in the Virginia climate—they moved on. Once they were just outside the state forest they'd been seeking out, Rick and Carol stayed behind to set up and guard the new temporary camp.
Meanwhile, the dogs nipped on the heels of the horses as the hunters thundered toward the forest that climbed in a sweeping tapestry of red, orange, and yellow over the foothills of the West Virginia mountains.
The hunters split in three directions, to cover more ground and secure more game, with Daryl and Dixon driving straight ahead toward the sound of rushing water in the woods.
"Hi-ya!" Murphy shouted from between his father's legs and kicked the horse, but it was Daryl who really spurred it forward. This was Murphy's first true hunting trip, and Daryl was fiercely proud. Daryl had taken him into the Alexandrian woods before, to hunt small game, but this was another adventure entirely. The boy's excitement made Daryl smile, but that smile pulled into a wince, because Sophia wasn't here to witness it. It hit him sometimes, her loss, like a dagger in the heart, twisted at his happiest and proudest moments.
When the horses reached a stream in the woods, the riders dismounted, and Dixie sniffed the ground. Daryl spied the deer tracks before the dog hit them. Dixon saw them, too. "Venison coming right up!" he said and smacked his lips at his daughter.
"Right up!" Murphy echoed Dixon. The little boy followed the tracks, and Dixon and Daryl held back to let him. But then he stopped and looked confused. He walked slightly to his left. He turned back to his father and called, "I think there's a horse, too!"
"Too bad we don't have Ozzy to catch and break it," Dixon muttered.
Daryl walked over to his son, got down on his haunches, and examined the tracks. He stood abruptly and swung his crossbow off his shoulder. Murphy reacted to his father's sudden tension by unshouldering his own rifle and gripping it in his little hands. "What's wrong, Pa?"
"Ain't a wild horse," Daryl said. "It's shoed."
"And that means people!" Patty said excitedly. Last year, Alexandria had taken in a group of strangers who had lost their last camp. One of those refugees became Patty's best friend, so the prospect of running into new people excited, rather than frightened, her.
The same could not be said for her more cautious father, who had to kill more than a few strangers in the past eight years, before they could harm Alexandria. "That means people," Dixon agreed as he flicked the safety off his rifle.
"Stay close," Daryl order Murphy as they began to follow the tracks.
They found the horse, riderless, drinking from a creek. Daryl's eyes swept every inch of the bank and the trees on either side, but there was no sign of a person. The stallion was saddled with heavily worn leather, but its silver stirrups were well cleaned, and its black coat looked recently brushed.
Daryl crept cautiously toward it. "Hey there," he said gently, and reached out a hand slowly. The horse snorted and raised its head, but then it let Daryl stroke its mane. He took the horse by its reins. His fingers tightened around the leather and his heart began to beat faster as he looked over the creature. The stallion was years older now, a little less well groomed, but….How in the hell? Daryl's eyes fell to the fender of the saddle, where the faded brown leather was etched with the initials B.G.
Dixon, who had been paying attention to the trees and still searching for sign, now turned and stared at the horse. "Is that Beth's old stallion? Is that Magnus?"
The horse whinnied, reared its head, raised a single foot, and stomped the ground.