Carol blinks. His son? Daryl never mentioned a wife. A child. There's no way Daryl's ever been married. No way. And given Jackson's apparent age…Daryl must have been a teenager when he was born.
"You made it," Daryl says.
"Yeah." Jackson lowers his rifle and jerks his head toward the redheaded girl beside him. "This is Addison. My sister."
Addison doesn't lower her rifle, a wooden, bolt-action .22. Daryl nods to her. His eyes flit to the blood center's window. "Y'all been camping in there?"
"For the last two months anyway," Jackson answers. "There was food. Water. Gatorade. Even a backup battery generator, but it died last week."
"It's just you two?" Daryl asks.
Jackson opens his mouth to answer, but Addison hisses, "Jack!" and he closes it again.
"We aren't any trouble." Carol drops her arms now, because they've allowed Daryl to do so. "We have a small camp with good people. We even have a couple of kids Addison's age." Carol uses the name she's just learned to seem reassuringly familiar. "Beth is sixteen. Carl is almost thirteen. You can come back with us if you're alone." She glances at Daryl. "Right?"
Daryl shrugs. "Sure."
Addison finally lowers her rifle. She's wearing Carol's handgun now, in her waistband at the front of her pants, and Daryl's at the waistband in the back. Daryl's crossbow, which she's slung on her shoulder when disarming him, reaches down to her thighs. She's only about five-foot-two, but she likely hasn't finished growing yet. "Can you trust him?" she asks Jackson, glancing side-eyed at Daryl.
"I don't really know him," Jackson replies. "And even if I did…we both know this world changes people. But he's with a woman." He studies Carol through his steel blue eyes. "She doesn't seem under any kind of duress." He turns his eyes to his sister. "So it's got to be better than that last camp."
"And we're out of food," his sister agrees. "We need to move on somewhere."
"If you don't like it when you see it," Carol assures her, "you're free to leave at any time."
"Or so you say," Addison replies. "That's what the last camp said, too, and it wasn't exactly true."
"It's your call," Daryl said, "We ain't gonna force ya."
The two siblings bend heads, speak in whispered tones, and in the end decide to return with Daryl and Carol. They give them back their weapons and then go inside the blood center to pack up their own things, which isn't much. Each of the siblings has a stuffed backpack, a sleeping bag, a blanket, and a pillow. They have one shared crate of extra clothes, a single crate of food, two rifles, three boxes of ammunition, one handgun, four knives, and a plastic shoebox-size storage container of utensils – forks, spoons, can opener, etc.
Jackson has his own working vehicle, a black, 2008 Dodge pick-up truck with a two-seater cab and a short bed, which he says was his high school graduation present from his "parents." By that, it obvious he doesn't mean Daryl. It's parked in back of the strip mall, which was why they didn't see it when they drove in.
Carol tells them they're going to loot a plasma donation center nine miles west, and then they'll head back to their camp. The youth slide into their pick-up truck and begin to follow them out of the strip mall parking lot, with Carol driving the beat-up brown sedan this time, because she knows where she's going.
Eventually, without looking at Daryl, she asks, "So…a son?" Not a son he seemed particularly elated to see alive. Not a son he embraced with desperate gratitude.
Daryl grunts some kind of affirmative reply.
Now Carol does glance at him. He looks uncomfortable. Embarrassed. She returns her eyes to the two-lane roadway ahead. "Are you going to fill me in, or are you just going leave me to make up my own background story?"
Daryl shifts in his seat.
"Because I'll make up a good one."
"Was working at a feed store in town when I was sixteen." He repositions the bow that's resting upright on the floor between his knees. "Loaded the customer's trucks. She was twenty-one. Worked as the cashier. I never knew how to get girls. But she made it easy. She was…aggressive."
"Sounds a bit predatory. She could have been prosecuted for statutory rape."
"Not in Georgia. Not with me being sixteen. And I wasn't exactly unwilling."
Not exactly? What does that mean, Carol wonders? Was he vaguely unwilling?
"Anyhow, boss found out. I got fired."
"You got fired. Not her?"
"Merle was discharged from the Army, came back home, moved us out of town for some job of his. Job didn't last. Looked her up when we came back to town six months later, but I couldn't find 'er. Heard she'd moved to live with her nana in Pine Mountain. Guess I knocked 'er up, though. But she never told me."
"How'd you find out?"
"She put my name down on the birth certificate. Then she gave him up for adoption when he was six days old. Got adopted by a nice upper-middle-class couple in Atlanta. They moved to Birmingham a year later. His folks told him he was adopted when he was 'bout twelve. Day he turned eighteen, he got the adoption records unsealed. Got my name and his mama's name and her last known address. Hired some PI. Don't know how the fuck he did it, I ain't exactly stayed in one place too long, but he tracked me down. Well, he tracked down Merle first. Anyhow, Jackson asked to meet me. Met for lunch at some diner in Macon about five weeks 'fore the dead started walking."
"So this is only the second time you've ever seen him?"
"Yeah. Merle told me not to go meet him, said it was probably some scam, that he probably wasn't my son, was gonna ask me for money. But I went anyway. Just wanted to know, I guess. When I sat down 'cross from him… I just knew, somehow. Knew he was mine."
"I noticed the resemblance right away," Carol tells him.
"And he showed me the birth certificate."
"That was the last time you saw him?"
"Yeah. Mean, he was already eighteen. Had a mom and dad his whole life. A sister. Think he said he had a brother, too. Guess he's dead. Jackson wasn't looking for another daddy. Didn't need a relationship with me. Was just curious. Had a lot of questions. Wanted my whole damn health history. Didn't know what to make of it when I said I hadn't been to a doctor since I was seven and broke my arm."
"So just the one lunch?" Carol asks.
"Yeah. It was…weird. Think maybe he was…dunno." Daryl winces. "Disappointed."
Carol offers him a sympathetic, thin-lined frown.
"Don't know what he expected. Whatever it was, sure as shit wasn't me."
Carol drives silently for a while, not wanting to press him. It's a lot for him to tell her in a short time. She's learned a little bit about him over the months since the farm. He drops bits of information here and there, which she puts together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, trying to form some picture of him. But he doesn't usually share that much information at once.
Daryl draws his knife, rolls down the window, and tells her to slow. He's just upset and wants to stab something, she thinks, so she does slow, to a mere creep, enough for him to stab the walker in the roadway, and then she speeds up again, glancing at Jackson's following pick-up. She slows to a crawl again when she sees the pick-up stop in the road. Addison leaps out of the passenger's side, searches the walker's pocket, takes something out, and gets back in the truck, and soon they are trailing them again.
Daryl rolls up the window and cleans his knife. "Uh…case it comes up," he says, "I made up some shit. Told him I had a technical degree from community college. That I was in HVAC repair."
Carol turns slightly from the wheel, looks at him curiously, and returns her gaze to the road.
"Didn't want 'em to think I was a lowlife."
"Well, Ed was in HVAC repair, and he was a lowlife. And you're not."
"Asked me where I went to college," Daryl tells her. "Like it was some kind of a given that everyone goes. Asked me where I went to college and what I did. Didn't want to tell him I was just doing odd jobs. Hell, when we met at that diner, wasn't even doing odd jobs, really. Me and Merle were working a welfare scam."
"What kind of welfare scam?"
"Does it matter now?"
"No," she replies. "But, hey, you've got a job now. Your Head of Security and Meat Acquisition for the Houseboat Camp."
"Pfft. Thought Rick was head of security."
Carol steers the sedan around an abandoned car. "He thinks he is anyway."
"And I ain't the only one supplies meat. T-Dog found all that Spam. And you and Maggie have been getting pretty good at fishing."
"None of us would have survived as long as we did without you. And that's just a fact."
Daryl looks down at his bow. He fiddles with a string.
"You never met Addison?" she asks.
"Nah. Jackson came alone. Said he hadn't told his folks what he was doing. Didn't want to hurt their feelings, let 'em know he'd been looking for his birth parents. Found his mama first. Well, found out about her. She was dead. Died in her early thirties, it turns out. Meth overdose."
Carol's eyes widen.
"She wasn't using when I knew 'er. You'd think he would have figured out I was white trash 'fore he met me, but he still asked – where'd you go to college?" Daryl snorts bitterly and shakes his head. "Said he was a freshman at Auburn University. Was gonna major in Philosophy."
"Philosophy?" Carol's not saying much. She figures an occasional short response is the best way to keep him talking.
"Yeah. Asked him if he was gonna work in the philosophy factory after he paid off all his loans."
Carol chuckles.
"Said he didn't have no loans. Said his mom and dad were footing the whole damn bill. And I thought, ain't he glad she never told me 'bout him, that I never tried to lay claim and fuck up his life."
"Daryl," Carol says softly. Then she doesn't know what else to say. You would have been a good father? She doesn't believe that, not then. "You were sixteen."
"Hope they ain't homicidal maniacs."
Carol gives him a look that says he's being ridiculous. "They don't seem like homicidal maniacs."
"Put a gun to the back of your head. And mine."
"Because we were getting ready to loot their camp. And they didn't know if we were dangerous. Frankly, I'm a little embarrassed a couple of teenagers got the drop on us."
"Must have been watching from somewhere."
"They must have good survival instincts," Carol suggests. "If they've made it this long." They'd already seen two camps destroyed themselves-the quarry and the farm. Then they'd wandered three weeks before settling on the lake. "I guess Jackson must be nineteen now?"
"Yeah. Reckon."
"He has survival skills?"
"Said he ain't never been hunting in his life when we met. But his daddy taught him to shoot. Was a postal inspector. Guess they carry guns. And Jackson said he was a Boy Scout. Guess they might have actually taught him something."
Daryl sure seems to remember a lot of details of their one conversation, for a man who seemed uninterested in whether or not his son accompanied them back to camp. Carol turns now into the large parking lot of the strip mall where the plasma donation center is located, right between a Goodwill thrift store and a pawn shop.
There are about two dozen abandoned cars scattered through the lot, some with walkers trapped inside. They thud against the windows when they hear the sound of the engines. She can already see the shattered glass of the pawn shop, but the plasma center looks locked up tightly. "We might have some good luck here," she says as she turns off the car.
Jackson eases his truck into the empty spot beside her, and the purr of its engine dies.