Chapter 3.

Happening.

Carol.

God does not let us down. God protects us. God lifts us up. God keeps us warm.

Carol Peletier was awake for hours before the sun rose. She sat against the back wall of a ruined tobacco barn, her daughter curled up sleeping against her leg. She kept a hand on her, worried she would just disappear like her father. Her fear kept her alert, kept her aware, kept her together. It made the moving shadows around the barn into other people. One at a time, they joined her, awake and afraid, silent for fear of the darkness outside.

She fingered the cross around her neck, and repeated her prayer like a mantra, determined to make it mean something. God does not let us down. God protects us. God lifts us up. God keeps us warm.

Rick was the first to speak as the barn was lit by a gloomy dawn. He rose from his family, a tall, rugged man – first light illuminated the dried blood sprayed across his jaw. His expression was grim as he looked around at all of them.

"Everyone, wake up. Come on. Check yourselves for injuries, now that we have the light."

Carol had a gash on her thigh from getting whacked by a spike stick. It was red and angry this morning, the skin puffed up over the scratches, but it looked a lot worse than it felt. She quietly turned her leg to the side, hiding it in shadow. Sophia had tripped and hurt her ankle.

While the others got up, stretched, murmured to one another, Carol turned her attention to her daughter. It seemed cruel to let her lay there in the dirt, curled up like a lost puppy, but there was nothing better that Carol could give her. It stung, being so useless. She only had the power to let her sleep for the moment, until the sounds eventually forced her to stir. It was only an extra ten minutes, in the end, but it might mean the world to her later on.

Sophia groaned, turning her face up and peering at Carol. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying, reflecting the sunlight like glass. She had that beautiful green in them, the same as Carol, the same as her grandmother.

Carol stroked her short hair, giving her the best smile she could manage. "Hey, Button. It's okay. We're safe here. We're safe."

"Where?" Sophia rasped.

"Way out in the woods, in a barn. Do you remember?"

Sophia nodded sleepily, resting her face on Carol's thigh and sighing. She drew her leg up and winced, a single tear going down her cheek. "It still hurts."

"I know. I know it does." Carol looked over her ankle, finding it hot and swollen, but not broken She tried to keep her emotions to herself, but the relief was hard to hide. "Nothing is broken. Give it a few days to rest, or it might get mean."

"Like your wrist?"

"Mhm."

Rick was making his rounds, checking everyone out. He got around to them and crouched at a respectful distance, recognizing how afraid Sophia was. "Hey, your name is Sophia, right? I'm Rick. We met on the highway last night."

When she had tripped and twisted her ankle in the woods, Rick had been the one to pick her up and carry her the rest of the way. Carol was not strong enough.

Sophia nodded shyly.

"Do you mind if I check that ankle out?"

Carol was almost certain her diagnosis was right, but she knew men liked to take charge, knew there was nothing they liked less than a woman knowing more than they did, so she invited him to look again.

His exam was short and simple.

"I think she just sprained it. Nothing feels broken. She should stay off it for a while."

Carol nodded, "Thank you."

He tipped his wide-brimmed sheriff hat and moved on. Carol answered a few more questions for her daughter – why are we here? Where is Ed? Why did those people on the highway try to hurt them? How long did they have to stay here? – but she kept her eyes on the sheriff.

Rick made his last stop with a man who had stumbled into the barn, injured, in the middle of the night. He had been gasping too much to give anyone his name and he had slept, curled up, in the far corner, near the open part of the wall. Shane had been with him since dawn, a comforting hand on his back, whispering with him.

He was large, his torn clothes covered in blood. One of his arms was tucked into his stomach.

Rick crouched, and prompted him quietly, "Sir? Hey, can you hear me? I want to look at your wounds, see if I can help you."

"He says his name is Charlie," Shane supplied. "He hurt his arm."

Carol watched with bated breath. It seemed everyone had stopped to watch, to wait, to see what was going to happen here. She had seen many badly injured people on the highway, but how were they supposed to help them here? In the middle of the woods there would be no ambulance, no paramedics. Was the hospital even open? Was it still standing?

"We just want to check you out. Can we do that?" Rick prompted.

Long, long seconds passed with only the sound of his harsh breathing.

"Can you show me your arm?" Rick asked.

And then Charlie finally responded, "Yes. Help. Please."

He unfolded his arm and let it hang beside him. It was shredded, meaty, dripping blood along its length. It looked like someone had sliced up a raw sausage.

A barn full of people gasped. Jacqui turned and vomited. Sophia screamed. Carol staggered to her feet, sucking in a breath. Glenn seemed ready to bolt, but his legs were not working. He just bounced up and down on the spot.

Lori took a step toward her husband, "Rick…?"

For the moment, the sheriff was silent.

Shane tried to speak, but only uttered nonsense.

"Help," the man rattled again.

Rick shook himself, his voice returning, "He's lost a lot of blood. Does anybody have an extra shirt or a towel or anything? We need to wrap this wound."

It was hard to watch them work, to hear it. Rick sent everyone else out of the barn, and the group gathered at a brick pile just a dozen yards away. It was impossible to go far enough in those woods to get away from the screaming.

Rick came out half an hour later, trailed by Shane. Both men had blood all over their hands and forearms, and dark looks on their faces.

"Charlie is stable for now," Rick said, sighing heavily. "But, without a doctor he won't make it. That's just the truth. Shane and I are going back to the highway to find help. If anyone wants to come, you can, but know that it might still be dangerous out there."

Carol asked, "Will you look for Ed?"

Rick nodded, "I'll look for him. You have my word." He looked almost reflexively at his wife, and then at the ground, "If I don't come back…"

"You have to," Carl said in a high, whining voice. "Dad…"

Rick handed the boy his hat, whispering, "I need you to keep this safe for me until I get back, okay? I'm comin' back. I am."

Dale cleared his throat and crossed his arms resolutely, "I want to come with you. I have to look for Andrea and Amy – and I have an RV. It might have something useful in it. I was heading out of the city, so the road is mostly clear around it."

It was decided. Rick, Shane, and Dale left for the highway. Shane gave his spare gun to Lori, and she sat down beside Carol with it sitting in her lap.

It had only been quiet for a moment when Carol said, "Do you think Ed…?"

Lori looked at her, sympathy in her dark eyes. "Ed is fine. He probably found somewhere to stay overnight, just like us."

Carol managed a smile. "How long have you been married?"

"Going on fifteen years. How old is your Sophia? Carl just turned twelve."

"Just about the same."

Lori was quiet for a moment, gazing at the forest, a bit of distance in her eyes, and then she said, "Rick took us camping once when Carl was little. I hated it. I got eaten alive by mosquitoes, and Carl got sun poisoning. He cried and cried. When we got back home, I wouldn't talk to Rick for three days. I think he got the message, because he sold all our camping gear and never brought it up again. But we laugh about it now."

Silence.

"Despite everything that happened, you have to admit it's beautiful out here."

Happened, or happening? Carol thought. She imagined the monsters on the highway, the groaning, the clicked jaws, as she looked out into the quiet woods. It was as pretty a morning as Georgia could have, but she still hated it, hated this place. She wanted to be home. She wanted her daughter to be safe. She wanted Ed… well, she was uncertain about that.

She changed the subject.

"Do you know how to shoot?"

Lori looked down at the gun in her lap, as if she had just noticed it there. "Yeah. I take refreshers every few years. Rick wanted to teach Carl, but I just wanted him to have a few more years without a gun in his hands, you know? He already wants to be a police officers, like his dad."

"Let kids be kids," Carol agreed.

"Exactly. Do you shoot?"

"Oh, no. Ed doesn't… well, Ed has a collection, but I'm not… I don't like guns."

Carol danced around the truth and hated herself for it. Ed had a gun collection that she was not allowed to touch. Sometimes she went into his private room when he wasn't home and pulled them out, loaded in the bullets, and sat with them for a while, half of her hoping that he would come into the room and start shouting. She lay awake thinking of moments like that, praying, trying to decide if she was the wicked one, or if he was, for making her feel that way.

She looked away, down, to keep her thoughts to herself.

Lori responded softly, "Rick being sheriff, we had to get used to it. But I never liked having guns in the house. I hate the thought of Carl getting hurt."

Carol smiled suddenly, remembering her second date with Ed. She was still in high school, a sophomore, and he was a senior. He had taken her to the shooting range and put his arms around her to show her how to aim. When their daughter was born, Carol had fantasized that this sweet version of him would return. She waited for it every day. But so far Ed had shattered that life she imagined. He liked them to be quiet. He liked his loud friends. He liked his private rooms.

And now he might be dead.

She might be raising Sophia on her own.

Everyone started to grow restless as the morning passed into afternoon. Carol and Lori chatted about everything and nothing, and others joined and left the conversation. She learned the Lori was a stay at home mom, like her, and that Jacqui worked in the office of city planning in Atlanta. If he was asked a direct question, Glenn would respond, but he was busy pacing the perimeter, alert to every sound, stopping to ask himself, again, what was going on. He was responsible for checking on Charlie, and each time he came out of the barn, his face was paler.

It got hot the longer the afternoon went, as hot as Carol could remember it being, and everyone was hungry and thirsty. Her stomach growled, beginning to ache, and Sophia and Carl complained constantly – there was nothing to feed them, to feed anyone. Carol and Lori tried to keep them occupied, keep their minds off of it, but it never lasted long.

Glenn went off looking for water in the late afternoon. He never went far, as nervous as he was, but he probed the area all around the barn and seemed guilty when he brought nothing back.

It was almost evening when the quiet spell of the woods was broken.

Jacqui heard it first, saw it first. She was sitting against a tree near the barn entrance and she jumped up suddenly, screaming, falling over her feet trying to back away.

Everything stopped all at once. Carol stopped thinking, stopped breathing. She was on her feet, eyes wide and searching, heart racing, before the fear could process. Lori was right beside her, and the two of them formed a protective barrier in front of the kids.

He was there, limping out of the barn. Charlie. His eyes were lifeless. His skin was sallow. His bandaged arm hung limply at his side. He uttered a terrible, long groaning sound that cut off and restarted with each step. He seemed pointless, directionless, and then his body turned toward Carol and Lori, who were closest to him, and his eyes seemed to try and focus on them.

He walked, one unsteady step at a time, a halting motion.

Carol was briefly overwhelmed with terror. It was happening again, just like on the highway. Only her husband was not here this time to yell at her to get into the car. She had to make a choice, to save herself, and her daughter.

She twisted, grabbing Sophia under the arms and hauling her upright. "Go! Run!" she screamed. Carl was already on his feet. She shoved them both, "Get back!"

Lori was backing away, leveling the gun at him, barking commands, "Stay back! Stay there!" Her voice cracked. Carol staggered on the spot, unsure if she should go to the kids, or stay and help. "Jesus," Lori gasped, "Please, Charlie, please stop!"

But he just kept coming, like he heard nothing, like he knew nothing.

Like he was nothing.

"Shoot him! What are you doing?" Glenn shouted.

Lori faltered, trembled, and then fired. She clipped him in the jaw. It was ripped sideways and hung off of his face. He stumbled but did not stop. She fired again, and the bullet tore through his neck, nearly taking his head off, blowing flesh and blood backwards into the barn.

She fired again, one final shot to the head, and Charlie dropped to the ground.

He was still this time – still as death.

Carol went to the kids, who had only gone to the first tree to hide and held them both in her arms like a terrified mother hen. Glenn was pacing again, saying to himself, "Oh my God, what is going on? What is going on?"

"Mom?" Carl called.

Lori shook herself, like her husband had that morning, and came over to them. Her eyes were glassy. Carl broke away to embrace her. Lori held her boy, the gun hanging limply behind his back. She let out a single sob and shut her eyes, and a single tear went down her cheek.

"He was…?" Carol said, though her words fell on deaf ears. Sophia was holding her waist so tightly that her knuckles turned white. "He died… He died."

Glenn approached the body, his voice low and purposeful, "He was bitten, all over his arm. Whatever this is, if you get bitten, you get infected and you… you become one of them." He cleared his throat, cleared his husky voice. "I think they were trying to figure out if it was airborne, or came from sneezing, or whatever, but this tells us. You have to get bitten."

"It could still be spread other ways," Jacqui said, gradually coming back toward them. She never took her eyes off the body. "We shouldn't touch it."

"O-O-Okay just everybody stay here, stay together," Lori said, finding her voice. She let go of her son at last and turned to stare at the body, fear and regret all over her face. "We'll wait for the others to get back – we'll wait for Rick to get back."

It was getting dark when the men returned. Rick called softly, "It's us, don't shoot," and then they emerged from the forest behind the barn. But there were more of them now.

Rick was first, more haggard than he had been this morning, and a little sunburnt, and then six strangers came behind him. Dale was mixed among them. Shane was at the rear, a large hiking backpack on his shoulders. He looked spooked.

"What happened?" Rick asked, as everyone came around and noticed the walker.

Lori went to him and put her arms around his neck, whispering, "Charlie… he was one of them. I had to shoot him. I didn't know what else to do."

"She saved us," Carol added.

"You did the right thing," Rick assured her, his eyes fixating on the walker over her shoulder, probably feeling the gravity of the situation. It could have gotten his wife, or his son. He pulled away from Lori to address the group, "We have to find a safer place to stay. Out here, we're too exposed, too vulnerable. We can't possibly watch all angles, and if more than one of them comes this way, we might get overwhelmed. We scouted a quarry a few miles north of here. It looks like we can get a few vehicles up there as long as they come from the southbound side of the road. It'll be more defensible than this, with access to fresh water."

Carl wormed his way between his parents, "Did you find food?"

Shane shrugged off the backpack, "We got a few things. It was what was left in Dale's RV."

"Sorry if it tastes like can," Dale added.

"Some water bottles, too. Pass those around."

Rick distributed the cans, "Everyone take one and share it with someone. It's the best we can do right now. We'll spend another night here. Dale and I will go out at first light and start moving cars up to the quarry and see what we're dealing with up there. If it's safe, I'll come back and take you all there through the woods. I don't want to risk everyone going back on the road right now."

His words were hardly comforting. Carol took a can of corn and sat with Sophia, watching the dark grow around them as the girl ate her fill. It was not enough for both of them, not really, so Carol insisted Sophia finish it. She was feeling sick anyway. Her eyes kept going back to the corpse, the body that used to be a man, and wondering if that was what was in store for them all – either the predator, or the prey. It must have been awful, getting bitten like that, and then suffering on into the next day, only to die and become the very thing that had hurt him.

Rick made the rounds again, and he got to them when it was almost too dark to see. He crouched and put a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, Carol, Sophia, how you holdin' up?"

"Fine," she lied.

"I went looking for Ed, but I didn't find any sign of him on the road. He must still be in the woods somewhere, maybe towards the quarry if we're lucky."

Carol breathed deeply. She was still uncertain how she felt about his disappearance. She wanted him back at first, because that was a normal thing to want, but lately her only real concern had been for her daughter. "What did you see out there? On the highway?"

His eyes were dark, clouded, "I want to talk about that with everyone. I want to get the barn shut up for the night. Will you and Sophia come inside?"

She nodded, her throat a little thick as she said, "Come on, honey."

Rick and Shane dragged a rotting piece of drywall over the hole in the side of the barn. It was dotted with holes where the mold had eaten through it, letting in odd dots of moonlight, but the cover put the group at ease. Rick lit a meager fire and they all sat around it, their faces illuminated. It was not large enough or tall enough to be very warm, but the light was enough.

"I want to make some introductions to start," Rick said. He motioned to the new people, naming them in turn, beginning with two blonde women that sat with Dale, "Andrea, Amy." He moved on to an elderly couple who sat holding hands, "Marshall, Edith." And the man beside them, who looked very much like them, "and their son, William." He came last to a black man sitting beside Shane, who stared quietly into the fire, "Theodore."

"You can call me T-dog," the man corrected, flashing a tense smile.

"Right. T-dog." Rick then started naming everyone else. "You know me, Rick, and Shane, and Dale, and this is Lori, my wife, and my son Carl. Glenn. Jacqui. Carol and her daughter Sophia."

It was a strange group, a strange place to meet, a strange night to try to know each other. But the strangers still smiled hesitantly and stopped being strangers.

"We found these people along the highway," Rick said. He made a space for himself beside Lori and put his arm protectively around her shoulders, his other hand on his son. "It was… abandoned. No people and hardly any walkers."

"No police?" Glenn asked.

Rick shook his head. "I think – and I hate saying this – but I think we're on our own for now."

Shane added, "But as long as we stay together, we might have a chance. You folks could have scattered when that walker came out of the barn, but you stuck together. That's what we gotta do. We gotta stick together."

For a moment, everyone was silent.

Jacqui asked, "How are we going to get food? Water?"

"Once we get to the quarry, we can go out looking for food," Shane said. "We can forage, see if the abandoned cars have anything useful in them, maybe set some traps. As for water, the quarry has a lake in the middle, but we have to boil it before we drink it, just to be on the safe side."

He got blank stares in response.

Sophia looked up at Carol, whispering, "I'm hungry."

"We all are, sweetie," Carol responded softly.

Rick frowned to himself. "What you guys saw today with Charlie, we saw something like that back in King County a few days before all this got started. I didn't want to believe it at the time, or maybe I wasn't ready to believe it yet. One of the residents, guy named Henry, local drunk, always getting into trouble, got detained and thrown in jail after a fight with another man. Well, the other guy was shot dead at the scene because he was… he was biting him, not listening to commands, shred the skin on his arm just like how it was with Charlie."

He glanced at Shane, and there was a long pause in his story. No one spoke.

"Paramedics patched Henry up and put him in our jail for the time being. He got real sick overnight and the deputy noticed 'round the morning. He opened the cell to render aid, and Henry just lunged at him, like an animal, rabid as anything. He just…"

He paused, and Shane finished, "He killed him, took his damn throat out."

Carol looked down at Sophia, who was drifting in her arms, thankfully not paying attention to this chilling story. She had seen it firsthand now, but those words still frightened her.

"I guess that confirms it," Rick said. "He got bit, and then he became like them. I wish I had made the connection earlier. I put you all in danger by letting Charlie come in. I'm sorry for that."

"You didn't know," Lori murmured, rubbing his arm.

Shane plucked his hat off and ran a hand through his thick hair. Carol was starting to think he only did that when he was stressed. "Everybody got that? You see one of those things, you run in the other direction. Do not try to fight them, or talk to them, 'cause they don't talk back. They're gone. They're dead. There ain't nothin' left in that head to reason with."

It was quiet for a while.

Carol rocked gently back and forth, humming, and Sophia fell asleep in her arms. People talked amongst themselves, but the conversations died away. Gradually, they laid down to sleep, staying close to the fire and close to one another. Carol did her best to stay up, to stay aware, but exhaustion overtook her and she slipped away.