When they're out of their vehicles, a walker begins to lurch toward them from between two parked cars. Jackson raises his rifle to fire.
"Don't!" Daryl calls as he draws his hunting knife, rushes forward, and thrusts his blade between the walker's eyes. The blade slurps as he rips it out and the walker buckles and tumbles to the ground. Cleaning his knife, Daryl turns and walks back toward Jackson. "Gunshots draw more. Don't you know that?"
Jackson lowers his rifle, holding it one hand now. "Sure. But did you notice I have a suppressor? And shooting is the safest and surest way to kill them without getting bit. Why risk getting bit?"
"I ain't never been bit."
"Yet," Jackson tells him. He glances at Daryl's arms. "You don't even have leather on your lower arms."
Jackson has on a thick, black leather jacket, despite the 85-degree September afternoon. It's worn from long use, faded to gray, and soft in places. Daryl can see a scratch in the leather, where perhaps teeth have scraped before, but not penetrated. Addison has a similar, brown leather jacket, worn by sweat and rain in spots to a light, tan brown. Daryl's arms, on the other hand, are bare all the way up to the threads of his jaggedly cut-off sleeves. He feels strangely defensive. "Know what I'm doing. Don't wanna waste ammo."
"And I don't want to get bit and die like my little brother."
Addison swallows and looks at the pavement.
Now Daryl feels like an ass. "Sorry," he mutters. "'Bout your brother."
"Let's check out the plasma center," Carol interrupts.
Daryl nods, and they make their way across the parking lot. He wonders what Carol thinks of him now, of the fact that he had a son he never knew about, that he just knocked up some woman and walked out and never saw her again. Not that he knew about Jackson, but he also doesn't know what he would have done, back then, if he had known. He glances at Carol, but she's busy scanning the parking lot, not preoccupied with judging him. He doesn't know why he cares so much about her opinion. Things were easier back when he was just a simple asshole, he thinks. An asshole never has to care what others think of him.
But he does care now, and not just about Carol's opinion. He cares about what everyone back at camp thinks, to varying degrees. Rick is gradually becoming like a brother to him, and in some ways, a better brother than Merle ever was. And when Hershel gives him that solemn nod of his, like Daryl's done something right, he feels strangely proud. He liked the impressed look in Glenn's eyes when he came back from the woods with that ten-point buck last week, and the clap on the back he got from T-Dog for it, and the way Maggie said, "You're a much better hunter than Otis was," to which Rick, glancing at Carl, replied, "Yeah, I think we all know that."
But it's Carol's opinion that weighs the heaviest in his mind, and as he falls in step beside her now and then swivels to raise his bow as she tries the door to the plasma center, he can't help but fear he's tarnished his reputation in her eyes.
"Locked," she tells him.
Jackson taps the sign on the window, which reads, Closed due to staffing shortage. There are a lot of places like that, that didn't even try to stay open when the sickness began to sweep through towns. Those are the best one to loot because there are no walkers inside, unless they've been busted into and people died in there while looting, but this place is locked up tight. It was a while before anyone thought of medical supplies. Some morons were even looting TVs and Playstations at the start. And when they did think of medical supplies, they went to urgent cares, doctor's offices, hospitals, and school clinics – not too many were as clever as Carol, Daryl think, to come up with the idea of looting blood donation centers.
Carol's already swung her backpack off her shoulder to draw out the glass cutter. Once inside, Daryl and Carol split left and right. Each runs down a separate aisle of beds to clear the place, Carol then circling back to the hallway where the bathrooms and exam rooms are, and Daryl to the backroom. When they meet again in the foyer, Jackson and Addison are standing, guns on their shoulders, and looking at them with some amazement.
"All clear," Carol says.
"You two are quick!" Jackson exclaims.
"Let's pack up." Daryl shoulders his bow. "Snacks, drinks, gauze, rubbing alcohol, antibiotic ointment, band aids, bandages, cold packs."
"Toilet paper," Carol adds, "antibiotic soap. Saline. Some IVs and pouches, just in case we ever need to run one. And one IV stand. Can we put the stand in the bed of your truck?"
"Sure," Jackson replies, "Do you have a doctor in your camp?"
"A veterinarian," Carol tells him. "And I'm learning what I can."
"Addison took a nursing class at the high school career center."
"It was really basic." Addison sounds embarrassed by her brother's claim. "It was just introductory. I was only a freshman. I know CPR and first aid and some health rules. That's all really."
"Well, those are useful skills," Carol assures her.
When they get to work, Addison and Jackson go off on their own to pack.
Daryl turns over an entire cardboard box full of promotional pens and pads so Carol can begin loading Gatorades into it. "He sticks damn close to 'er."
"Well, she looks younger than Beth," Carol replies, "and she might be as sheltered as Beth was."
"Can't be. They been surviving alone."
"He's protective of his little sister," Carol says. "And I don't think he quite trusts us yet."
And why would he? Daryl thinks. Jackson probably thought Daryl was a shifty character when he met him at that diner, and now, after several months in an apocalypse? It's amazing he's coming back with them at all. It's a little unnerving, too. Daryl never thought he'd be spending time with this…son of his. When he left that diner, he knew Jackson was probably never going to call him up again. He never thought he'd have to worry about getting to know the kid.
And he doesn't want to worry about it now. "Ain't many snacks for heroes here," he grumbles.
Carol shrugs. "The blood centers have a lot more."
"Why?" He wedges an orange Gatorade bottle upside down between two right-side-up ones "This place's a lot bigger."
"Because it's for-profit. They only give you snacks on your first visit when you have the exam, or if you faint or something. It's not like the blood centers where everyone sits and snacks for fifteen minutes after. They have to think about the bottom line."
"But they paid you?"
"Like I said, I made $70 donating twice a week. Of course, they probably sold my plasma for $800."
"Fucking capitalist pigs," Daryl mutters.
Carol chuckles. "I'm sure they had a lot of overhead and labor costs to pay for, too. And I appreciated my secret spending money."
Eventually, Carol gets Addison to peel off with her to load up items from the bathrooms and exam rooms. Carol's got the harmless-woman-routine down pat, but Daryl's seen that she can be dangerous when she needs to be. But it's a trick she has, like an animal in the wild that's luring prey. Not that Addison's prey, but Daryl knows Carol's trying to get the newcomers to be comfortable.
Daryl joins Jackson by the beds. The young man is neatly stacking gauze in a plastic storage container. Daryl begins filling a box, not sure what to say to the kid-a "kid" who's not quite seventeen years younger than him. After that one meeting at the diner, he thought about it for days afterward, the fact that he had a son, and then he pushed all the jumbled feelings and thoughts away, closed Jackson out of his mind entirely, just as that woman had closed Daryl out of his life from the day she found out she was pregnant.
"Camps?" Daryl blurts.
"What?" Jackson asks.
"How many camps you been in?"
"Oh." Jackson continues his packing, moving onto IV pouches now. "We were only in the first one a few days. We took my parents there. They were sick, and we thought they could get treatment. But they died and turned. So did lots of other people. It became a death trap, that place. So we fled. Me and Addison and Grayson. We wandered three weeks, barely surviving. Grayson got bit and died. Then we found this other camp in a state park. It was okay. But it got overrun by a herd. Only seven of us survived."
"Been there."
"We wandered," Jackson continues. "Stayed here a few days, there a few days. After a while…we lost people. One by one. And then it was just me and Addie. We found another camp, in a school, behind barbwire. We were pretty desperate by them. It seemed okay at first. They took us in and fed us and treated some scrapes we had. But then we found out the price to be in the camp was that the men in charge expected hard labor of me, which I would of done, but Addie…" He swallows, and a line jumps in his jaw, the way it does in Daryl's when he's angry. "They expected her to have sex with them."
"Jesus. She's…"
"Fifteen now. She was still only fourteen then." Jackson eyes him guardedly. "There's nothing like that in your camp, is there?"
"Hell no!"
"Because if we find out there is, I won't hesitate to do whatever I have to do to get her out."
"Like Carol said, y'all can leave anytime you want. We got good people. We'll expect you to work, of course. Store water, farm, fish, garden, whatever-but nothing fucked up."
"You have gardens?"
"Trying to. Ain't nothin' ready to eat just yet. Still got some canned fruit and veggies though. And there's wild onions and wild raspberries growing nearby the shore."
Jackson nods and goes back to packing.
"Addison uh…" Daryl glances over his shoulder and finds Addison and Carol emerging from the hallway with full boxes, which they go to set on the front counter. "They hurt her at that camp?"
"They didn't get a chance to. We said no thanks, we'll take our chances on the road. And then they said it's not safe out there, and we should think about it overnight – and they locked us both in a room in the school. We busted out a window, waited for the guard that patrols the perimeter to be on the other side of the fence, scaled it, and got out. I'd left my truck hidden a half mile back. Just something I thought I should do, checking out a new place."
"Good thinking."
"And then it was just us again. We went here and there. We were at that blood center the longest, though. You?" He glances at Daryl. "You been in multiple camps?"
As they pack, Daryl gives him a brief summary of the quarry camp and the CDC and tells him they all have the disease.
"Yeah," Jackson says, "we figured that out. Someone who survived our second camp died a natural death. Heart attack. We saw him reanimate. Well, we didn't see it, but it was obvious he did. He bit two others in their sleep."
Daryl tells him about he farm, though he doesn't mention Sophia. It's too painful, and that's Carol's story tell, if she wants to tell it. "And then we settled on the lake. Been there awhile."
"Not many deadheads?"
Daryl shakes his head. "Sometimes they stumble on shore, but we sail out on the water at night, and then we clean off any that have gathered in the morning when we dock. We've never had more than five stumble on shore overnight. Thinking of building a fence, though, to cut off part of the shore where we dock and where the gardens are."
"I can help build that. I did missions work the summer after my sophomore year of high school. All I did that summer was build fences on some charity ranch."
Missions work, Daryl thinks. This kid was doing missions work the summer he and Merle were running their door-to-door numbers painting scam. They'd collect money to repaint address numbers on the curbs, say they were doing the whole neighborhood at the end of the week, and then they'd never come back. "You religious?"
"My parents were. We had to go to church on Sunday morning and youth group on Sunday night. House rules."
Daryl wouldn't have made him go to church. Hell, Daryl probably wouldn't have made him go to school. The kid was lucky to be adopted, he thinks, even as it shames him to think it. He doesn't ask any more questions as he finishes loading up boxes.
The girls want to go clothing shopping at the Goodwill next door when they're done. The store has been partially looted, with shattered glass littering the industrial carpet inside, and half a dozen walkers amble around among the toppled racks.
"I guess we'll watch you clear them since you don't want me to shoot," Jackson says.
"Ain't many 'round here," Daryl tells him. There was only the one in the lot, and the others trapped in the cars. "Why don't you take one out?" He wants to see how well his son can shoot.
"No. Like you said, it would be a waste of a round." Jackson unfolds the eight-inch folding bayonet on his rifle, raises the firearm in ready position, strides to the nearest walker, and rams the bayonet into its forehead before jerking it back out. He stays a good twelve inches away from the creature's teeth that way.
Meanwhile, Carol whirls a knife at an approaching walker. Her blade hits the right spot this time, and her target crumples. She draws, strides forward, and slays another with her second knife. The rest of the walkers turn growling toward them. Daryl sends a bolt into one while Addison nervously actions her rifle.
"I got it," Jackson assures her before stabbing the walker that is jerking toward her with his bayonet. By now, Daryl has reloaded, and he finishes off the final creature.
"Have you ever killed a walker?" Carol asks Addison.
"You mean those deadheads?" she asks. "Twice. It took me three shots the first time. Two the second." She glances at her brother. "I didn't got to the range much with my dad. I mostly just let Jackson handle it," she admits.
"Well, our friend Rick can teach you to shoot better, if you like," Carol suggests. "He taught me. He's patient. And I can teach you about knives. Daryl taught me."
"Okay," Addison says softly, as though she's not so sure she wants to learn more about such things. But she did manage to sneak up behind them and put a barrel to his back, Daryl thinks, so she must act when she has to.
Daryl goes straight to the shoe section. He pulls out a sheet of crumpled paper from his pocket on which Lori listed everyone's shoe sizes. He finds a pair for Carl, finally (good thing, too. His boots are falling apart. These are one size too big, but he'll grow, and they can pad them in the meantime.)
Daryl jumps slightly when Jackson emerges from around a row of shelves. The gait is human, so it doesn't take him long to settle, and he never reaches for his bow.
"Here," the young man says, and thrusts a black, long-sleeve leather jacket toward Daryl. "Think it'll fit. You're my build. Just shorter."
Shorter. He's two inches shorter, maybe. But he says "thanks," takes it, and prepares to drape it over his shoulder. He notices the angels wings on the back and says, "Hey, this is pretty bad ass for being in the Goodwill. Maybe Carol can take the sleeves off and make it into a vest for me. She can sew real good." Then he can wear it in the summer and spring and fall without getting too hot.
"The point was to protect your arms."
"I'll wear a thick, long sleeve canvas shirt underneath," he tells him, though he won't, not seven months of the year, anyway. Maybe starting in October.
Jackson shrugs. "I've heard it's better to look good than to feel good, but never that it's better to look good than to become a deadhead." He glances back at Addison and Carol on the other side of the store, looking at coats. "So Carol's a seamstress?"
"She's got skills."
Jackson returns his attention to Daryl. "Is she your wife? Girlfriend?"
Daryl blinks. "Nah."
"She said something about your houseboat?"
"Yeah. We're housemates."
"Ah."
Does Jackson really think he could get a woman like Carol to marry him? Daryl snorts.
"What's so funny?"
Daryl shakes his head. "Nothing…just, surprised you thought I could be married to Carol."
"Why? She's not that much older than you, is she? And you like older women anyway, right?"
"What?"
"My mother? Wasn't she like…five years older than you?"
"Oh." Daryl hadn't cared how old she was, or even really what she looked like. He was just glad he was finally going to shut-up Merle, who would always yap about him being a virgin every time he was home on leave. The sex wasn't even all that good. It hadn't been any better than jerking off alone, but, then again, that was all he had to compare it to. Daryl didn't know what it was supposed to be like, and he never wanted to take his clothes off anymore than he had to when they did it. He didn't want her to ask about the lashes, but they couldn't strip much anyway, doing it hurriedly in the backroom like they did, during smoke break. It gave her some kind of thrill, the possibility of being caught.
"You ever try it? Meth?"
This kid's brain leaps from topic to topic like some kind of magic jumping bean. Daryl supposes Jackson is thinking about the fact that his biological mother died of a meth overdose, which Daryl didn't know until Jackson told him. "Nah."
"Heroin?"
"Nah."
"Cocaine?"
"No," Daryl says firmly.
"LSD?"
"No! I look like an addict to you?" Of course Jackson must think he's white trash, but one thing Daryl's never done is mess with the hard stuff. The suggestion pisses him off. "Ain't never been addicted to nothin' but cigarettes."
Jackson shifts from one foot to the other. Daryl thinks it's the raised voice that's unnerved him, but apparently it's not. It's the confession he's about to make himself. "That's what I got addicted to, my junior year of high school. LSD."
Daryl's mouth falls slightly open. This was certainly not a subject that came up over the stale black coffee they sipped at that diner.
"My folks sent me to a rehab program that summer instead of the usual church missions trip. I wrecked my GPA that year, but after I got clean, I pulled it back up to a 3.2 by the time I graduated. That wasn't nearly good enough for Auburn, but they let me in anyway because of my SAT scores. I got a 1580."
"Is that good?" Daryl asks.
"It doesn't matter now." The young man turns and walks back down the aisle. Daryl slings the leather jacket over his shoulder and continues to search for more boots.
Later, when he's in the passenger's seat of the sedan, and Carol is driving back to camp, he glances in the rearview mirror at the pick-up truck trailing them. "Is 1580 really good?"
"What?" Carol asks.
"On the SATs."
She laughs. "Yeah. The most you can get is 1600. Maybe two percent of kids get a 1580. Why?"
"'S what Jackson got." His brow furrows in confusion. "His mama didn't seem that smart."
"Pookie, does it occur to you that maybe he got his brains from you?"
"Pffft."
Carol smiles, takes a left onto a minor highway, and says, "You really have no idea how smart you are, do you?"
Daryl turns his head slightly to look at her, and now his brow is even further knit in confusion. She doesn't sound like she's teasing. "Pfft," he repeats, and then turns his eyes to the road.