While Shane is healthy enough that he doesn't really need to settle on the Greene porch much anymore, one thing his early convalescence taught him was that the porch swing gives him an excellent overall view of the property. It's probably why Hershel put it here, so that he could relax and see that all was well with his land. If Shane sits here with a puzzle book in hand, he can observe all that he needs to.

Rick's return and the upheaval it brought taught him one thing; their group is too fragmented and untrained to survive if they keep on the way Shane allowed at the quarry. Back then, the idea that rescue would come lingered too much, even for him. He'd spent his entire adult life working for the government, so it was a natural instinct in some ways. But as time passed, what he should have been remembering was the failures of the government, like what happened after Hurricane Katrina.

His people are improving now, learning the things he should have taught them before. Yesterday's improvised gun range at an abandoned industrial building Maggie recommended proved a good place to begin the shooting lessons. Rick had been surprised that their best shots hadn't been the men, but it's a common assumption most men make because of the dominance of men in professions requiring marksmanship.

Shane's been an instructor long enough to understand that the attention to detail most women seem to be born with conveys well to shooting. When their best shots of the trainees, the absolute naturals with the guns, turned out to be Andrea, Beth, and Carol, he wasn't surprised at all. The rest will get there with time and practice, but at least now he's not afraid they'll accidentally hurt themselves or others.

"Are you really working on that puzzle or just thinking?" Beth sounds amused as she plops into the spot beside him.

"A little of both." Although he realizes he hasn't put pencil to paper in probably a good five minutes, which is probably why Beth asked the question. "Did you need something?"

She worries at her bottom lip with her teeth before sighing. "Nothing is ever going back to normal, is it?"

Shaking his head, Shane closes his book, leaving the pencil as a bookmark. "No, honey, it isn't going to ever be anything like the world used to be. Even if some sort of government or military showed up now, everything has changed too much."

"Do you think there will ever be a cure, like my daddy believed?" There's a plaintive note in her voice that makes Shane tense, worry intruding quickly.

"I don't know. The CDC lost all contact with others, but that could have been a failure of their communications equipment, not necessarily that everyone else was gone." Not to mention that Jenner had been nuttier than a goddamn fruitcake, suicidal and willing to take others down with him. But not every area necessarily had their scientists get lost to despair like Atlanta, he thinks. Jenner's tale of the French was so much more promising than his own, if the man had been telling the truth. "There are all sorts of labs around the country. I imagine all of them converted to looking for a solution."

Beth's fumbling with a leather cuff on her arm, one he's noticed she always wears. "I remember in science class that sometimes vaccines are created from people who are immune to the disease they're trying to cure. They figure out why those people can't get the disease, or take the antibodies if they survived it, right?"

Worry solidifies in Shane's gut like a rock. "Beth? No one survives this virus. Some people don't get sick, but if we get bitten, everyone dies. If we die of other causes, we turn just like we've been bitten."

After Shane had been shot, Rick had admitted he'd stood guard during the time they hadn't known if he would survive. The guilt his brother displayed as he told Jenner's secret reminded Shane of just how innocent of this world Rick was. No one in law enforcement or any medical personnel treating those who died on their watch hadn't figured out that everyone turns. It's not something he spread widely among his people, but those who needed to know had been told. Walkers aren't the only way to die out there, after all.

"Not everyone dies if they get bitten."

Beth sounds so utterly confident in that statement that Shane stares at her. "How do you know that?"

"Because my mama bit me, and I never got sick." The teenager unlaces the cuff from her arm, and the pretty leather falls away to reveal an ugly scar that is unmistakably a human bite mark. "It's why Shawn got bit. He was trying to save me."

When she holds her arm out, Shane runs the fingers of his left hand over the ridges of the scars. "You never got sick at all?"

"Not even a fever. It hurt a lot, and Daddy almost had to stitch it up, but it was no different than any other bite Daddy ever saw." She secures the cuff again, resting her arm against her knee. "I just keep wondering, if there are more people like me. Maybe it's in my blood..." Glancing to Shane, she flicks her gaze to his still immobilized shoulder and collarbone.

Jesus Christ. Shane's had a double blood transfusion from the girl, so he understands her confusion and worry. "I don't think we want to test it out like that." He keeps it light and teasing, because there's no way innocent little Beth would see him as a science experiment that could kill him if the theory was wrong.

Her reaction is a little horrified. "Oh, God, no. Please don't get bitten." She surprises him a little by scooting close and easing her arms around him, hugging him in a way he knows is allowing for his injuries. He's seen the powerful hugs the girl doles out to those she thinks need them, so her care is as touching as the hug itself.

"No, honey, I didn't think you were considering that at all. I was just teasing, and I'm sorry. I was an asshole to tease like that."

"Yes, you were."

Beth doesn't immediately move away, so Shane rests his good arm along her shoulders, just like he would for Carl or Sophia. "I imagine there are ways to test it that don't involve me being bitten, but that would take more scientific knowledge than we have here."

If Hershel were capable, Shane can't imagine the man not working feverishly on it. Then again, maybe the man draws the line at his daughter being the basis of experimentation. He suspects this is the secret that made Maggie want them gone so badly, not the walkers in the barn.

"We would have to leave the farm, where it's safe."

Shane glances around the open fields, barely fenced enough for cattle. Those fences would never withstand a herd the size of the one that passed them on the highway, much less if more came out of Atlanta to join them. The farm is no safer than the quarry, only seeming to be for the same reasons; it's remote and the terrain makes cross country travel difficult for walkers. But that isn't a discussion for Beth.

"You want me to talk to your father and Maggie about leaving."

Beth nods, still curled against him like she's six and not sixteen. "The farm isn't going to be safe forever, is it? Once your group leaves, we just don't have enough people to stay here forever."

"There's no guarantee that Fort Benning will work out, either," he tells her. He'd been so sure it was a solution, back at the quarry, but they're even closer to the military base now and still no sign of anyone. It's an eerie feeling, which reminds him of the Guardsmen slaughtering people in the hospital corridors. Maybe there's a reason those men lost their nerve or were ordered to do the unconscionable.

"But it's doing something. Not just sitting around, feeding animals, and hoping a miracle happens to fix everything." She sits up, expression as earnest as her words. "I'm tired of doing nothing, Shane. Especially with this." Flourishing her wrist, Beth gets back to her feet just as Maggie approaches the front steps.

From her foreboding expression, Maggie's clued in that Beth's told him about what lies under that protective cuff. "Beth? I think you need to go inside. Help Patricia with lunch."

The teenager doesn't argue with her sister, which is probably good with that icy tone Maggie is using. She disappears into the house, while Shane stands.

"Let's take a walk."

Maggie doesn't argue, instead leading him out behind the now empty barn, staying silent the entire way. Once they're out of sight of the others, the young veterinarian whirls on him. "Why the hell does she keep coming to you instead of her own family?" she demands. It's not just anger coloring her voice, but a deep seated hurt.

"She misses her brother." It had taken Shane a while to assemble the clues, but once he'd seen that notebook chronicling Shawn Greene's post-death deterioration, the idea took root. Beth telling him that Shawn was bitten defending her? It completes the story for him. Shane had been willing to die to protect Carl. Half-grown she may be, but child logic still applies as often as adult logic, and he's seen the same behavior in all four kids. They trust a man who go that far. "How close were they?"

"Closer than me and her." Maggie rubs at her arms as if she's cold despite the summer's heat. "I've been at college long enough to miss a lot of years with her. Shawn had his troubles, so he never left home, not really."

Troubles. It's the popular euphemism for a family member who battled addiction, one Shane's heard dozens of times before. "Did he ever get sober?"

"Yeah." Maggie's smile is a sad one. "But he always wanted to be a veterinarian like Daddy, and you can't do that once you've had a felony drug conviction. He wasn't about to risk eight years of schooling to find out they wouldn't waive it as a youthful indiscretion. We get too much access to controlled substances, you know."

"What did he do instead?" Shane knows so little of the Greenes aside from Beth, who shares things about herself as easily as she breathes. Aside from the fact that Maggie was on her way to being her father's veterinary partner, Patricia worked as his combined vet tech and office manager, and Otis was a farm hand, no one's really shared.

"He joined the county road crew and helped Mama and Otis with the farm. Coached Beth's Little League softball team until she stopped playing to join the high school softball team." Sighing, she studies him closely. "Why did she show you her bite?"

"Beth wants your family to travel with us when we leave. She wants to find someone capable of finding out if her immunity can be passed to others."

"I don't want her being someone's guinea pig, Shane! You know that's how it would turn out if people find out."

It's always possible, particularly if there are more people out there like Jenner who have completely lost their minds, so he understands the wary caution. He'd be the same way if it was Carl. "Then we don't tell anyone," he tells her. "Not until we know we can trust them. But staying here? It's just a matter of time until the farm isn't safe with just four adults and a teenager, Maggie, and you know it."

"You could stay here," she offers, sounding hopeful. "Help make it safer. With more people, we can build better fences. There's the livestock and the gardens, and with help, I can actually bring in real supplies."

The thing is, it's not a bad solution, to hunker down on the farm and make it secure. Shane's mind has spun ways to do it, but in the end, they have both too few and too many people. Too few to really make the place the sort of fortress that's needed for this world. Too many to actually live on the farm, because Shane's people can't live in tents forever.

"We really do need to find out what's going on at Benning," he tells her, and her expression falters. He thinks of the risks of taking the children out on the road, how they lost Sophia once and could have lost Carl, and how they don't have anyone remotely trained enough for medical emergencies. "But maybe that doesn't need all of us."

It clicks into place for Maggie like it did for him. "You could send a smaller group. They could move faster than a large one."

Shane motions at the peaceful fields around them with his left hand. "Kids can stay here. I'll talk to Rick about sending out a team of four to see what happened to Benning. Solves both issues to buy a little time."

"But it's not a long term solution, is it?" she asks, sighing.

"No. The farm isn't meant to support this many people in the long term, and maybe communities started out like that hundreds of years ago, but they didn't have swarms of the dead to contend with. I know this has been your family's home for generations, Maggie, but there's going to come a time where it's no longer the best option."

He lets that set in for a bit before he continues. "And there's going to come a time when Beth won't accept being sheltered over finding out answers as to why she survived when her brother didn't. Would you be able to, if it were you instead of her?"

Maggie stares at him, and Shane isn't sure that she's ever considered the implications of it. "That's why she was doing those observations, isn't it? Looking for answers. Oh, God." She paces in agitation. "I don't know how to fix this, Shane. Nothing seems to be the right answer. Staying is dangerous. Leaving is dangerous. I have to keep my sister safe!"

"We'll do that, Maggie. We'll figure something out." Shane means it, too, because he hates the idea of anything happening to sweet, cheerful Beth. When he catches Maggie's elbow, he just wants to reassure her. He certainly doesn't expect her to spin toward him and kiss him thoroughly, hands coming up to grip his face. Surprised, he doesn't respond, and she backs away.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have…"

Shane waves off the apology. "Don't apologize. Why, though?" It is an odd response to him saying he'd help, not that the world isn't full of odd responses now. His entire affair with Lori is one of those, if he's entirely honest with himself, an inability to cope with grief and terror combined.

"I've been going out of my mind trying to come up with a solution, with no one to help." Tears glint in her eyes, and she goes back to rubbing at her arms again. "Daddy was lost in his own world. Otis and Patricia are good people, but this is so far beyond their scope of knowledge I might as well be asking them to plan a trip to the moon. The kids… I sure as hell wasn't leaning on the kids."

"So it was a thank you for being willing to help?"

Maggie shrugs, looking embarrassed. "Maybe."

"Well, as a thank you, it was a nice one. It would have been better if I knew it was coming." When she meets his gaze, he gives her a half smile. Despite the way they've butted heads when she was in super protective mode over Beth, he has noticed that Maggie is an attractive woman.

She narrows her eyes at him. "That sounds like you're angling for a better version."

"And if I am?"

His answer is a kiss he's actually expecting this time, because Maggie backs him slowly, right up to the back of the barn. The sun-warmed wood is rough on his back, but he doesn't mind one bit, because she presses her curves against his front, seeking entrance to his mouth and exploring with a thoroughness that has him wanting it to be more than a thank you. The first kiss had been fairly innocent, but this one? If a woman kissed him like this months ago, he'd know clothes were about to be shed.

He finds he's more than willing to have that happen, but of course, they're in the wrong place for that kind of privacy right now, since he hears his name coming from a distance. She breaks away from the kiss, glancing down his body to smirk at his reaction as she backs away. "Sounds like they've noticed you went missing," she teases.

Shane can hear Rick calling his name, again, and groans. "They always do. Come back to camp. Let's figure out a game plan."

"I don't want everyone knowing about Beth." Maggie's stern look brooks no argument.

"No one needs to. It doesn't affect their safety, and as long as it doesn't, I'm not even telling Rick." He means it, too, because something like this is Beth's secret to tell, not his. She trusted him, and he isn't going to betray that.

Rick is getting closer now, so he eases away from the barn and heads toward the direction he can hear his partner. Maggie falls into step beside him, looking as cool and collected as he's ever seen her. Just before they are in earshot of Rick, she glances sideways at him. "Next time will be more than a thank you."

Shane is still processing that quip when they reach Rick, and when Maggie saunters on by his brother, he just watches her go, gaze intent on the sway of those jeans-clad hips until Rick nudges his arm.

"Well, I guess I don't have to ask why you two disappeared behind the barn," the other man says, smirking when Shane looks his way.

Clearing his throat, he just laughs. "It is an enjoyable way to bury the hatchet."

For now, Rick can settle for it all being about the same thing Shane disappearing with a pretty woman would have been about in their past life. He'd meant what he said when he said no one else needs to know. Until they find a solution to the dilemma, it's not important to anyone but Beth herself.

It had been the fundamental truth for Shane until this afternoon. You got bitten; you died. Rubbing at the soft skin in the crook of his elbow, where the marks from the blood transfusions have long since healed, a spark of bemused hope awakens in him.

This changes everything.


A/N: The whole group won't be told just yet, not until they cross paths with Abe's group. Everything is just about to align. :)