The men stop to search the trunk of a black sedan that has rolled hood first into the ditch at the side of the road. The driver probably died while driving because he's a walker now. Daryl smashes the rear window with a crowbar and Jackson waits for the walker to crawl out onto the trunk to stab it with his bayonet.
They score a red plastic cannister with about three gallons of gas, a bottle of oil, and a spare tire that should fit their sedan back at camp. Daryl also gets an unopened pack of cigarettes from the console. They aren't Morley's. They're Virginia Slims. "Girl cigarettes," he mutters, but he slides them into his front pocket anyway.
Jackson pours the gas into their tank and tosses the red cannister to the side of the road. Daryl lets the young man take over the driving so he can kick back and smoke, window down, boots up on the dash.
They reach the library first, about ten minutes later. Daryl sends a bolt thunking into a walker in the otherwise empty parking lot as they exit the truck, and Jackson bayonets one in the overgrown grass beside the cement sidewalk leading to the front door.
The library is locked tight. The book drop is stuffed full, all the way back up to the silver door, with one book half hanging out of the slot. A sign on the sliding glass door reads, "Closed Due to Staffing Shortages. Return times will be extended one week."
"One week to stop the spread," Jackson mutters. "People used to be so optimistic."
"This door ain't gonna be easy to open."
They find a glass side exit door instead and use the glass cutter to cut out a hole big enough to reach inside and turn the lock. They clear the place first, just to be safe. The men split up and run up and down aisles of the single-story, high-ceilinged library, sunlight streaming through the mostly glass ceiling and illuminating the dust particles in a glowing haze. They turn corners quickly with weapons poised and ready to fire, check the bathrooms and conference room, but don't find anything living or dead…except a single mouse that has found its way inside and croaked just beneath the water fountain outside the women's restroom.
"Eureka!" Jackson exclaims, now standing and starring at the two vending machines in the long hallway outside the bathrooms.
"Thought you couldn't eat and drink in libraries," Daryl says. Not that he knows. He's never set foot in one, not since he used to get sent to the school library during recess for misbehaving.
"You probably can in the conference rooms," Jackson says. "Or outside at those little tables on the back deck."
They try three different lock picks. Daryl and Carol looted a locksmith shop once, months ago, for all these breaking and entering tools. The locksmith shop, ironically, wasn't locked. The third pick works, and the back of the snack machine swings open.
"Microwave popcorn's mine!" Daryl snags the one remaining Act II with movie butter packet out of the machine. "And the peanut M&Ms!" He grabs all three of those packages. They'll be perfect for a movie date. Peanut M&Ms are Carol's third favorite candy. The candy clearly melted in the summer and then resolidified into a single mass within the packet, but they're probably still edible. It might be a little stale, but as long as there's no mold—chocolate is always a celebrated find.
Jackson finds some cardboard boxes from the large conference room at the end of the hall, and they start packing up – Pop tarts, cereal bars, trail mix, pretzels, potato chips, Sun Chips, Doritos, misshapen Snickers bars, little packages of Oreo cookies, and "Veggie sticks?" Daryl grunts. "Who the fuck eats those?"
"They taste like potato sticks, mostly, but not as good," Jackson explains. "They aren't bad, though. My mom used to put them in our lunch when we were little. She'd only let us eat healthy snacks."
They move onto the soda machine next, which is only one-third full when they get it opened. Jackson immediately seizes the single remaining Dr. Pepper, shouting, "Mine!"
"Calm down, there, pepper fiend."
"It's just…Michonne said it was her favorite type of soda."
"Hope springs eternal," Daryl murmurs as he loads up ten, twelve-ounce bottles of Mountain Dew.
"Pope."
"What?"
"Alexander Pope. You were quoting him. He was a neoclassical poet."
Daryl shovels nine regular Pepsis into a box. "Thought it was just a cliché."
"Hope springs eternal in the human breast. / Man never is, but always to be blest."
"How the hell do you know all this shit? And he's wrong. 'Cause we been blessed right now. Look at all this shit." They grab six Diet Pepsis, eight Mug root beers, nine Sierra Mists, and the rest is all bottled water. "Wish this coke machine had Coke in it, though," Daryl mutters.
When they're back in the library area, Jackson begins collecting books.
"Look for Denim Dreams numbers 5, 7, and 10," Daryl tells him.
"What?"
"Some series Carol reads. Those are the ones she ain't found yet."
"Who's the author?"
"All different authors."
"They're serial romances?" Jackson asks. "You know, that stuff is just porn for women."
"Well, good. 'Cause if she gets turned on, I'm right next door."
"It creates unrealistic expectations about romantic relationships, just like porn does about sexual relationships."
"Who told you that?" Daryl asks.
"My mom."
"Damn, no wonder you needed to get high to unwind. Just get the damn books. You know what? Never mind. I'll get 'em."
The library shelves, for novels at least, are labeled by genre and arranged alphabetically by author, which is good, because the card catalogs are all on computers that aren't working. Daryl goes to the Romance section and visually scans the spines of the paperback books as he walks down the aisle, until he sees a whole long line of denim-colored spines. He pulls one out and, sure enough, it's the Denim Dreams series. Number five has been checked out, but he snags seven and ten.
He wanders in the nonfiction section until he finds the books on hunting, but he doesn't see anything useful, anything that contains information he doesn't already know. He gets a tracking guide anyway, for teaching Jackson and maybe Carl one day. Hell, maybe he'll teach Judith one day. She's a blank slate. He could start training her as soon as she starts walking.
When he sees Jackson again, the young man has filled three entire cardboard boxes with books. They're stacked one atop the other on a dolly he's found and is rolling around. "Those boxes are going on the side of the road if we don't have room after looting the housing complex," Daryl warns him as he tosses his books into the top box.
"They aren't all for me. I got a biography of Ella Fitzgerald and a couple of art books for Michonne. Some board books for Judith. A medical guide for Hershel and Carol. A car repair book for Glenn. He's been trying to learn more mechanics. Lois Lowry books for my sister. The fourth book in the Twilight series for Beth." He shakes his head. "I don't know how she can read that crap." He points to the boxes. "A couple Rick Riordan books for Carl. A parenting book for Rick and Lori. And What to Expect When You're Expecting. You know. For Andrea and Maggie."
"Nothing for T-Dog?"
"A book on the Atlantic Falcons."
"Damn. You thought of everyone. DVDs next."
Daryl heads off to the DVD section and Jackson wheels the dolly after him.
"What's a good date night movie?" Daryl asks as he surveys the spines of the DVD cases.
"What does Carol like?" Jackson asks.
"Little Shop of Horrors."
"That's it? That's all you've got to go on? So she likes musicals? Or comedies? Or Steve Martin movies?"
Daryl shrugs.
"She probably likes romances," Jackson suggests. "Given the books."
Daryl wanders down the row to the romance section and tilts a few DVD cases forward one by one to see the front. He pulls a DVD free from the row. "This one's got cowboys. Some of them Denim Dreams books got cowboys on the cover. Bet she'd like it."
Jackson snorts.
"What?" Daryl barks.
"Nothing," says Jackson. "I was just thinking of something else funny. You should definitely bring her Brokeback Mountain. You should absolutely make it your date night movie."
Daryl eyes him suspiciously, turns the DVD over, and reads the blurb on the back of the case. "Fuck you!" He tosses the CD at Jackson, who catches it, laughing, against this chest.
[*]
Highland Village Acres is not an upscale housing development after all. It's a small, one-story assisted living facility. The parking lot is a scene of carnage. There are three picked-over bodies ond the ground, little more than skeletons now. A walker has been mowed down by a car, its head run over, and a tire track of long-dried blood paints the asphalt. Two other cars have crashed into each other, likely because the people driving them were badly bit and lost consciousness while fleeing. Their walkers thrash around inside the vehicles, snarling as Jackson and Daryl walk past and peer inside the windows.
"Should be antidepressants in this place," Daryl murmurs as they reach the front entrance with the sliding glass doors.
A walker is trapped between the closed doors, as if they slid open automatically and then slid closed on it just as the power died. The creature is ravenously hungry, probably having been trapped for months. It grasps at the men desperately with a single arm and growls and chomps with its caught, half-squished face.
Daryl pins the creatures grasping arm out of the way so Jackson can better position himself. Cautiously, keeping away from the walker's teeth, he slides his bayonet sideways into its partially protruding head until it pierces the monster's brain and hits bone on the other side of the skull. When he yanks it back out, the walker is dead.
Daryl puts a hand against the glass to peer inside. There's a small dining room or common area, off either side of the entry way, with chairs and circular tables and a couple of empty wheelchairs. Straight forward is a short hallway with two rooms off of it. The gold signs in the doorways read office and kitchen. Two hallways stretch out in either direction from the common room. "Can't be more than forty bedrooms in here. Let's case the place from the windows ' fore we go in."
They run in opposite directions around the building, looking in all the windows, and meet in the middle. "I couldn't see in all the rooms," Jackson says. "Some of the blinds were closed."
"Same here. Eighteen rooms. Seven with walkers trapped inside. Six empty with open doors. Five, couldn't see."
"Twenty rooms in my hall," Jackson tells him, "seven empty with open doors, seven I couldn't see inside, the rest with trapped walkers. So if a walker got out of every single room we couldn't see, we're talking up to twenty-four wandering around free inside? And maybe a few workers?"
"Think the workers all fled. And some walkers escaped after 'em through the automatic doors. Ate some of 'em in the parking lot. And we killed that one. Can't be more 'n twenty in there."
"Well, let's go make some noise and find out."
They pound on the glass door, and only seven walkers congregate there, scratching the glass and growling for food. One manages to get a finger through the crack in the door above the head of the dead walker. Daryl tells Jackson to keep them busy there while he breaks in through the window of one of the rooms with an open door and comes at them from behind.
"Take my rifle then. You can't reload that bow fast enough." Daryl does, but not before glancing at Jackson's hip to make sure he brought a handgun.
When Daryl makes it through the window and into one of the empty rooms and begins to move forward, a walker lunges at him from behind a curtain that closes off the bathroom. Its decaying hands grip his shoulder and Daryl kicks it back. When it lunges forward again, his heart racing, Daryl rams it through with the bayonet.
His heart begins to calm as he walks through the open door into the hallway. He can hear Jackson raising holy hell to keep the walkers at the front door as he creeps down the hallway. Jackson doesn't have to be that loud. He's screaming his head off, so loud Daryl can make out him calling his name followed by "Watch out, there's – "
There's more. Way more than Daryl realizedthere would be. More than a dozen walkers, turning the corner form the common room and streaming down the hallway toward him. He turns to gauge his retreat to the room he came in through, only to see eight more walkers coming his way, streaming out of through the open door of one of the rooms they couldn't see into.