Daryl groans in the passenger seat as Carol swerves the farm truck around a walker in the street. She's trying to drive while simultaneously holding open and reading the map on the dashboard. She has to get him help, and fast, because he's bleeding out. She did what she could using the first aid kit they brought. She cut him out of his shirt with the emergency scissors, poured alcohol on the wound, and covered it with gauze. But she's no surgeon and she doesn't have tools. She can't extract the bullet, and the crude tourniquet she made after cutting the sleeves off her new jacket doesn't seem to be working. Blood is already seeping into the denim.
Copper Creek is too far. It would take hours to get back there now. But she saw on the map that West Georgia Correctional Facility is just fifteen miles away. It's marked as a no-go zone for ten miles on all sides, but what else is there to do? Prisons have infirmaries. They'll have supplies. And maybe that camp will have a doctor.
She runs her eyes over the roads on the map, commits them to her mind like a photograph, and sweeps the map aside across the dash. It flutters into Daryl's lap, and she reaches over and applies her hand flat against his chest, to keep pressure on the wound.
"Hell you going?" he breathes.
"Don't talk," she orders. "You just have to trust me." Though she's not sure she trusts herself. She's driving straight to the front door of the camp that kidnapped Garrison, threatened to kill him, and then ransomed him back. But Daryl said they were only doing what they had to do to survive. And they got Garrison back alive, without any exchange of fire.
They won't kill us, Carol thinks. They'll patch Daryl up, and then they'll try to ransom them both back to Copper Creek. Jefe might not be willing to pay the price to get Carol back. After all, she warned Carol this was a frivolous run, asked Carol to talk Daryl out of it, and now her best hunter is shot. But Jefe will pay for Daryl, Carol's sure, and right now, that's all she's thinking of – saving Daryl. "Hold on," she pleads. "Hold on, Daryl. Just please hold on!"
[*]
Daryl's completely passed out by the time Carol's tearing up the dirt road that leads to the looming gray prison. But she knows he's still alive, can still feel the breath in his chest beneath the palm of her hand. She follows the fresh tire tracks already faintly pressing down the dirt. This must be the way in, she thinks. And the camp is still here, must still stand, if there are tire tracks leading to it.
She only slows when she nears the chain link gate of the prison yard, and then she eases to a complete stop. She has to take her hand off of Daryl to throw the truck into park.
His eyes fly open when she does, and he hisses in pain.
"Just hold on," she tells him. "Help's coming." She throws open the door of the cab and then throws up her hands, because she sees the reflective flash of a scope in the prison watchtower beyond the gate. She sees, also, out of the corner of her eye, bright yellow squash and orange pumpkins growing in the yard. The camp has successful gardens now, even if it didn't when they ransomed Garrison for pigs.
"Help!" she cries at the top of her lungs in the direction of the watchtower, not knowing if she can possibly be heard up there. "Help! My friend's been shot. He needs help! We'll pay! We'll pay whatever you want!"
It's too far to tell for sure, but she thinks she sees the rifle lowered and the figure in the watchtower raise a walkie talkie.
"Help!" she cries again, repeating her former plea word for word.
A blue metal door bangs open in the gray cinderblock at the side of the prison, and a short-haired, dark-skinned woman, about 5'5" and in her early thirties, strides out with a black, semiautomatic rifle in her hands. Beside her is another armed man, and for a moment, Carol doesn't even recognize him, because when she last saw him, he had a ballcap perched atop his head, his hair was much shorter, and he carried himself like a boy, but now he carries himself like a man. "Glenn!" she cries, feeling a sudden flood of hope well up and beat in her throat. "Glenn! Help me, Glenn!"
[*]
It's all a bit of a blur after that. Carol remembers Glenn grabbing a walkie talkie from his hip and saying something into it. Metal doors busting open again, the gate swinging open, someone with a stretcher. Strangers dragging Daryl from the bed of the truck. Carol being stripped of her handgun and knives. Glenn guiding her inside. Halls. Dank gray halls past black iron bars with flickering overhead lights driven by some generator. People in some of the cells, not prisoners, regular people in regular clothes, with the iron doors swung open, posters and decorations on their walls, writing desks, oil lamps and battery-operated lanterns. Bookcases. Children. They pass the open door of the prison library, and she sees five children sitting in a half circle around a pretty young blonde woman who is reading them a book and – "Beth?" she calls through the open door.
Beth drops the book and leaps up, toppling over her chair as she does so. The kids "Whoa!" and lean back. "Carol!" Beth cries and runs for the door.
The teenager hugs Carol tightly, but Carol pulls away. "Daryl," she says, watching his stretcher disappear around a corner. "Where are they taking him?"
"I'll take you," Glenn assures her. He nods to Beth. "You should get back to the kids. We'll all catch up later, I'm sure, but her friend's been shot."
Beth nods, still looking half in shock to see Carol returned from the dead.
In the infirmary, Daryl is transferred to a bed. There's a short African-American man snapping on blue laytex gloves and a white brunette in her late 30s scrubbing up. "Are you doctors?" Carol asks.
"Glenn, get her out of here," the man replies.
The woman is less brusque. "Bob was an Army medic. I'm a nurse. We're going to the best we can for your friend." The nurse wheels an IV stand to the bed.
Glenn takes Carol by the arm and tries to guide her out, but she won't budge. "Come on. It's better this way," he says softly. "He's in good hands. As best as you can get in this world." When he urges her again, she follows him.
In the hallway, Glenn gets on his walkie talkie. "Sasha, come in."
"Sasha," comes the responding voice.
"Bring in their truck, would you? And lock the gate."
"Already did. We're searching the truck for explosives."
"I told you I know her." Glenn glances at Carol apologetically as he releases the talk button.
"You knew her. I'm just being through. We don't want to let in a Trojan horse. They have several weapons in that truck. A .308 rifle, a crossbow, a 11-gauge shotgun, and a bloody handgun someone just threw in the bed. Lots of food, too. And furniture. Got to wonder what's up with the furniture. So we're cutting it open to check for bombs."
"No one's trying to invade us," Glenn replies. "She came for help. Her friend was shot."
"Better safe than sorry," comes Sasha's crackling reply.
"When Maggie's off watch, send her to the infirmary. There's someone she's going to want to see."
"Maggie?" Carol asks. "She was the one in the tower?" From that distance, she'd thought it was a man.
Glenn smiles, holds up his hand, and wiggles his fingers. That's the first time Carol sees the gold wedding ring. "We're married now."
It all seems so surreal. Glenn's just a kid. Was just a kid. "You're a married man?"
"She's the love of my life," Glenn tells her.
Carol laughs, feeling a wave of ridiculous joy in the midst of a sea of anxiety. "I'm really happy for you, Glenn. You deserve happiness like that."
"So do you. But…" His face clouds with compassion and sadness. "Sophia's not with you anymore?"
"No, she's still with me! She's just not with me here. Sophia's safe, back at our camp."
When a huge smile breaks across his face, that's the Glenn she remembers. "Carl will be so happy!"
"Carl got out, too?" Carol practically shouts. "Who else?"
He nods over her shoulder, and Carol turns to see Lori walking her way, a baby riding her hip. The little boy must be about six months old, and he has Shane's thick, dark hair but Lori's hazel eyes. He sucks his thumb as he cranes his head back to look curiously at Carol.
"Beth told me you were here," says Lori, smiling and shaking her head. "And I didn't believe her!"
As the two women hug, the baby squeals.
Carol steps away and smiles down at him. "He's so big! What's his name?"
"Rick, Junior. But we call him RJ."
"That's…"
"I know," Lori says. "It's not usually the second child you make the junior. But it's what Rick insisted on naming him. And then we lost him." Her voice cracks. "We lost Rick, Carol." Her last word is a sob, and she breathes in deep to swallow it.
RJ looks up at his mother and puts a hand on her cheek. Lori hugs him in close.
"I'm so sorry, Lori. So sorry," Carol tells her. She hugs the woman again, careful of the baby.
When Carol pulls away, Lori says, "I'm going to go put RJ in the library with the other kids and tell Carl you're here. He's working in the garden."
"I didn't see anyone in the garden," Carol says.
"He probably dropped to the ground when you pulled up. That's what we tell people to do, until the guard has an idea of the situation."
When she's gone, Glenn tells Carol that Rick died in April, two months after RJ was born, in a war with a nearby town called Woodbury.
"I know about Woodbury," Carol tells him. "Daryl told me. He said it was his first camp but he escaped when the Governor tried to execute him."
"When was that?" Glenn asks.
"It would have been about a year ago now."
"So well before we had our run in with the Governor," Glenn says.
Glenn tells her how, as people started to realize the Governor was crazy and decided the prosperity of the town was not worth the risk of living under him, they left Woodbury, bit by bit, a person or a family at a time, until the Governor locked the gates for good. Some of them, like Sasha and Tyreese, found the prison, and Rick took them in. The Governor called those who left "defectors" and declared the prison camp a "harbor for traitors." In April, he attacked the prison. Rick died defending the camp. Several Woodbury soldiers defected to the prison camp's side during the battle. The Governor was forced to retreat. When he returned to Woodbury with the troops who were still loyal to him, he set the whole place on fire. "I guess he knew it was all slipping from his fingers and he didn't want anyone else to have it," Glenn says.
Glenn explains how the nurse who is now treating Daryl, Lilly, was working late one night in the Woodbury infirmary, and she saw through the window the Governor pouring trails of gasoline. She realized what he was about to do, and went out and stabbed him with a needle full of sedatives to try to stop him. But it was too late. While he was losing consciousness, he lit the first flame. It caught, and he'd poured so many trails before she spied him, that the town was soon ablaze. The Governor, however, passed out from the sedative. He burned up at his own hand, in the town he had founded. Lilly escaped, along with her daughter Meghan and her sister Tara. "But a lot of people died in that fire. Those who survived, we took in, along with whatever we could salvage from the town when the flames were out."
"How awful." Carol's not much interested in Woodbury, though. "What about T-Dog? Patricia? Jimmy?"
Glenn shakes his head. "Patricia and Jimmy got trapped in the fire at the farm. And T-Dog…he died helping the rest of us get out alive. He sacrificed himself to that herd so we could get away."
This news sends Carol's back slamming against the cinderblock wall of the hallway. "No…" Of all the people least deserving death in this world…"T-Dog?" She grits her teeth and gets ahold of her emotions. Patricia. Jimmy. T-Dog. And later Rick. It's a huge loss, but so many more have survived than she ever dared hope. And now there's a new life, a brand new life in this world, a sign that it humanity will press on. The joy trumps the sadness.
"Did you ever come across any of the other group?" Glenn asks. "Shane? Dale and Andrea and Amy? The Moraleses?"
Carol shakes her head. "My new camp says Fort Benning was overrun when their scouts looked into it. Wherever they settled, it wasn't there. Unless it was overrun after they settled there, in which case…."
"They're gone," Glenn concludes. "Where is your new camp?"
"Well… I'm in a camp whose people you've encountered before. You remember ransoming a man named Garrison?"
"Oh shit." Glenn glances back through the infirmary window. "We kidnapped one of yours?"
"I've only been in that camp a couple weeks, but, yes. Daryl's friends with Garrison. I guess you didn't see him during the ransom?"
"If he came, I wouldn't know. Rick and Oscar went out to make the exchange. I was down with the flu." Glenn nods at the window. "Is your friend Daryl going to be pissed off when he wakes up and finds out where he is?"
The infirmary door bursts open before Carol can answer, and Bob steps out. Carol's stomach churns when she sees his blue smock is smeared with blood. "What's Daryl's blood type?" he demands.
"I…I don't know," Carol stammers.
"What's yours?"
"I don't know that either. I just know I'm CMV-." She remember that from her pregnancy. The OBGYN needed to know for some reason, but that's all a faint memory to her now. "But I don't remember the type. Does Daryl need a blood transfusion?"
"We're out of blood typing tests. We have no way to type him," Bob replies. "Get Tyreese," he tells Glenn. "He knows for a fact he's O-. Universal donor. He was in 50-Gallon Club in the old world." And then he disappears back in the infirmary.
Glenn gets Sasha on his walkie talkie and tells her to get her brother to the infirmary.
Carol turns back to the infirmary window. "Can I go in and see him now?"
"We better wait until Bob lets us back in."
Carol stands on her tippy toes to try to see better through the window, but she can only make out the counter and sink and a half open medical cabinet from here. A pair of bloody surgical scissors lie on the counter.
"This guy?" Glenn asks. "Daryl? Who is he to you?"
"He's my sponsor," Carol says, falling flat on her feet again and turning to him.
"Your what?"
"He's my friend," Carol tells him. "He's my very good friend."
Glenn puts a comforting hand on her shoulder. "We're going to do everything we can, Carol. I promise you that."
"And then you'll let us go?" she asks.
Glenn laughs and takes his hand away. "We're not going to ransom you if that's what you're asking. That thing with Garrison…" Glenn shakes his head. "It was Rick's idea. It was winter and we were out of food and Lori was eight months pregnant and he was desperate. There were the five of us to feed, the baby coming, and then also these three men we found locked in the prison cafeteria when we got here. Well, there were five men, but…anyway, that's another story."
Rick and Maggie went on a supply run, Glenn explains, and they lay low when a pair of men entered the country store they were looting. They listened to their conversation and learned the men had a prosperous camp. They were talking about how they were going to be able to eat a pig since they had six now and maybe they'd have it with a bunch of pineapple and canned spinach after their latest score of canned food.
"And then Rick just jumped Garrison," Glenn says. "Jumped him and put a gun to his head. Maggie was like – What the hell, Rick! in her head, you know. But he'd already acted, so she felt she had to back him up to prevent a worse situation. So she came at the other man– Day John, I think was his name – "
" - DeShawn," Carol says.
"Yeah. Anyway, Maggie disarmed him from behind. And then Rick told Day John that if he wanted Garrison back, he'd have to come back with three pigs and a bunch of canned spinach and pineapple. Lori was pissed when they came back with Garrison. She kept going on you know, What if they send an army? What if they kill us all? Why couldn't you just offer to trade them for the medical supplies in our infirmary? But it was all too late. We had to see it through." Glenn shrugs. "And it worked. We got the food, and we made it through the winter. But the point is, we don't do that sort of thing typically. Certainly not now. We have gardens and more supplies we've looted. Two of the refugees we took in from Woodbury know how to hunt. We're doing okay, and we just want peace. You'll be free to go anytime you want." He puts a hand on her shoulder again and looks at her directly. "Or free to stay. You were one of us once, Carol. You could be again."
That's a possibility Carol has not even begun to consider. She's started to think of that little cottage as her home, and she's probably said more honest things about herself to Daryl in the past two weeks than she ever said to Lori or Glenn in any of the three months from the quarry to the CDC to the farm. Sophia has already made good friends in Ivan and Carina. As desperate as she was to find Rick and Lori and Glenn and the others after the farm burned down, this chance meeting feels more like a high school reunion than a coming home: a temporary reconnection with transformed people from a fading past.
She was one of them once, it's true. But she's not so sure she can be again.