"What should I be looking for?" T-Dog manages to ask the question without sounding too annoyed or doubtful about the mission. Even as he speaks, he seems to be keeping his eyes peeled on the horizon.
"Any sign of them at all, I suppose," Dale sounds calm, but Beth can see the worry in his eyes. "Maybe they'd go into town first, to look for supplies?"
There are only a few roads they could've taken. "Either way, they'll probably end up on the highway before long. Maybe we should try and head 'em off." Beth tries to estimate how far they could've made it.
"You know the area," T-Dog cocks his head at the road.
"Yeah. I'll tell you where to go, just keep straight for now."
"Right."
"There ain't no speed limit anymore," Beth resists the urge to smirk as T-Dog puts on the gas.
"Usually I'd argue with you about that, but under the circumstances… just be careful," Dale advises, "I imagine slamming into a herd of those things would ruin the car, not to mention, cost us our lives."
Beth keeps watching the horizon, she leans over Dale to get the passenger side window and roll it down, just enough that she can listen for another engine on the road outside.
To recall the last time she'd sat in the middle seat of this truck with T-Dog driving was all too painful. She'd been sandwiched between Lori and T-Dog, rather than Dale and T-dog, while they fled from the farm, the fire still hot at their backs. The spatter of Patricia's blood stained her clothes in little flecks, the scent of fire and blood pungent around her. They left the farm, and the dead together. Flames drove them away from her home. T-Dog, Lori, Dale… She'd outlived all of them in that other life, and now she had a chance to save them. Maybe even make sure they were never driven off this farm in the first place.
She doesn't know how it's all going to work yet. She has some vague plans. They need to build a wall, that's for sure. Maybe they can get some heavy-duty construction equipment from somewhere, and rip up the school and other nearby buildings for concrete blocks and other sturdy materials. They can create a huge rock-wall perimeter around her dad's property; it needs to be better than the prison. The dead had eventually broken through the fence. They need to build the Great Wall of China.
A moat wasn't a bad idea either. She'd been thinking about that last night at dinner. A dry moat, lined with walker-traps, just outside this hypothetical better-than-a-shitty-chain-link-enclosure wall.
If they get to work on it right away, could they have enough of it ready that they don't have to abandon the farm when the walkers come?
There had been so many of them. She wasn't even sure how many. It looked like they just kept coming, as far as the horizon allowed her to see.
It's worth a shot, but she can't do it alone. She needs everybody else to be in on this plan, especially the ones people look to and listen to. Rick, of course, Shane as long as they can catch him and as long as this stunt doesn't make anyone turn against him. They would listen to her daddy too…
Unfortunately, she has a feeling her daddy is going to be the hardest one to convince, even if Daryl and the others do manage to help him understand the true nature of the walkers.
So much of this plan relies on working together, and on working hard.
They need Shane and Andrea. She doesn't want to lose either of them, especially not earlier than they were ever supposed to. Mile after mile peals by on the road out the window, but they don't see any sign of them. No rubber burnt on the road, no rumbling engine echoing from the turns up ahead, it's all silent and tranquil. The world is a tomb.
Beth is just starting to panic that they've really managed to lose them, when they come upon that stretch of road where they lost Sophia. The message to her is still bright on the windshield of the old mustang. Shane and Andrea are loading the supplies they'd left for her on the hood of the car into a duffle bag. From a distance, they haven't seen them, but as they get closer, Shane's rounded shoulders poke up from above a car. He scratches at his dark hair, agitated. He must've seen who it was.
Andrea's blonde ponytail takes another minute to come up from behind the mustang. She's slow to move, arms already crossed, apparently reluctant to even hear them out.
"I wonder if they would've just come back on their own, once they saw that Fort Benning was a bust," Dale grumbles, "Maybe they just needed some time away to understand why we're better when we stick together."
T-Dog climbs out of the car first and Beth topples out after him, feet hitting the asphalt hard.
"C'mon," T-Dog reaches across the front seat and encourages Dale with a little nudge against his shoulder.
Dale wears a hard frown on his face. He never looks tired, Beth can't help but notice that sometimes her father just looks exhausted, like life has taken it all out of him. Dale never seems to tire, but all the same, he's slow to climb down, apparently having second thoughts about whether or not this will help or hurt the situation. Maybe he's right. Maybe Shane and Andrea would've made their way back in a day or two.
"Alright, is this gonna go faster if I let y'all speak your peace and then we'll shove off just like we planned?" Shane meets them halfway, muscular arms perched on either of his hips, and head cocked at them, a mildly disdainful smirk on his lips. He looks at Dale, though both Beth and T-Dog are several steps in front of him.
T-Dog shrugs before he speaks, face a little steely, "Honestly man, I wanna hear your list of compelling reasons to take off," he shrugs again, "If you've got good ones than maybe I'll split too."
Beth's knee-jerk reaction is to protest, but there is something about T-Dog's demeanor that gives her pause, he isn't really offering himself as a third companion, he's forcing Shane to think. "I mean, what? You don't trust the farmer?" T-Dog glances back at Beth, pointedly looking her up and down, "You don't trust Rick's leadership? Maybe you're bugged that Rick is the leader, I mean the guy just shows up and he's your same rank, but there's an automatic de facto promotion in coming back from the dead? Right?" T-Dog rubs at the back of his head, in a gesture that Beth has come to associate with Shane, then lets his hand fall against his thigh with a smack, "You really think Fort Benning offers something worth having? You think you'll have less responsibility if it's just the two of you? Better chance of survival? More alone time?"
Shane nods without listening. Beth can tell by the way his eyes are unfocused, still flickering more in Dale's direction, he doesn't want to hear it. Won't believe what T-Dog says. They've got to make him hear it.
"You're going to die." Beth decides it's time to speak. If any of what T-Dog says has gotten through, then Shane will be trying to avoid the thought.
Looking up at her sharply, all Shane's little fidgeting movements quit in an instant and he's frozen, eyes cold on her face, but she doesn't flinch or look away.
"You're gonna die. But first, you'll get her killed." Beth only looks away from Shane's fierce gaze long enough to indicate where Andrea still hung back, shoulder turned towards them, face fixed in the opposite direction. "Thing's ain't like how they've ever been, and if you would think for a single second, you'd realize that. You'd figure out that this world is all about eating you up. People need each other now. When we get separated, we get killed. Just like Sophia, just like the people I lost and the people you lost. We're here 'cause lettin' you and Andrea leave is the same as letting you die. It's stupid. Being stupid gets you dead." That's all she has, and it's the utter truth. She can't make them stay, but she hopes it will be enough to fix the mistake she's somehow made. She doesn't understand why Shane and Andrea left, but it must have something to do with what she changed, because last time, they stuck around.
Shane seems to have been paying a little more attention to Beth, but his eyes still expectantly swiveled over to Dale, lingering behind them.
"I don't have anything to say to you," says Dale coolly. "I came to talk to her." They all know he means Andrea, but he doesn't make a move to approach her yet.
Unsuccessfully trying to hide a smirk, Shane shrugs and steps aside. "Go ahead and talk to her."
Dale slowly makes his way passed all of them and approaches Andrea as if he were approaching a wild animal, libel to bolt.
"C'mon," Shane cocks his head towards the other end of the road, "Dale's got a set of lungs on him, we might be here awhile. Might as well give you that shooting lesson you wanted."
They don't speak much as Shane stacks up an assortment of miscellaneous items from inside the various abandoned cars along the roofs of several cars in their line of sight down the road.
T-Dog takes a post half-way between both groups, probably so he can easily get the attention of either in case he sees something.
"You'll find if you exhale as you pull the trigger, it'll be easier to keep it steady," Shane nods as he checks her stance, leaning to the side a little to make sure she's not arching her back too far.
Beth pulverizes the empty soda can perched on the first car. The bullet gives a hiss as the can flies off the car and gently floats back down.
"Good!" says Shane and he actually does sound excited. "Real good. You got nice control of the kick too… here, let's try somethin'," he swings the nearest car door open and digs around in the cup-holding, coming back with a penny. "Try and kill the side-view mirror on that truck there, without making the penny drop." He sets it on top of the barrel of the gun.
He's picked a closer target so she can be less stressed about hitting the actual target and more stressed about whether or not the Penny falls. She exhales, just like he told her too, and just like he showed her the first time she learned to shoot, but her hand's not quite steady enough to completely avoid the kick. The penny chimes in a high-pitched whine on the asphalt, though the mirror is just a shattered memory.
"I think that's what we'll have you work on, for now."
"And later?" she asks, trying not to let her voice get too hopeful.
"You can't predict that?" Shane raises an eyebrow at her.
It takes her a moment to realize that he's being serious. She lowers the gun and surveys him carefully, trying to work out if he's really getting at what she thinks he's getting at.
"There was a man in our group, died just a few days ago. Thing is, right before the attack when he got bit, he was acting real strange. Turns out, he'd had a dream, the night before, about all of it. He saw our people dropping, swarmed by those things." Shane sniffs and checks the landscape with a quick brush of his eyes, as if nervous someone might hear him. "I ain't usually the type of guy who'd pay any mind, but the fact is, the dead are rising from the ground. The world is all kinds of screw up right now, and I'd say I'm more willing than ever to believe that some people might have…" he cringes, clearly not able to bring himself to allude to psychic powers in any kind of direct way, "warnings." He finally finishes his thought. Still not quite able to own it, he scoffs.
"It's kinda like that, yeah," Beth can't tell him. He'd think she is crazy, not to mention he'd probably tell her dad, if he does come back, which she hopes he will. "How'd you guess that?"
"Ah, hell girl," Shane snorted, "I saw your face when you walked into the living room and tossed that stuff down, the exact equipment we happened to need to save Carl's life? I mean, I believe in luck, but either that was a bonafide miracle, which is a little tougher to chew, or you're like him. Like Jim."
Beth knows she's gotta own this. It might be the only way to convince him to come back.
"Thing is, if you really knew the future, then it wouldn't matter whether I came with you or came back. You saw me die, so I'm dead right?" He tries to hide the nervousness through another veil of male bravado, chuckling and a crooked smile, but he can't quite manage it. Some part of him is legitimately scared. "So why not die on my own terms?"
"Your terms are to run away and abandon your friends? You wanna die alone out there, getting someone else killed too?" Beth takes aim at another side-view mirror, further off this time and squeezes the trigger.
"That what you see?" Shane leans in to look at her close, hovering above her eye-level.
Beth takes out two more mirrors before she answers, she's still got seven bullets in the clip. But she doesn't want to waste more than she needs on practice. Just enough to convince him that she's competent with a gun. "I don't see you dying Shane. I didn't have some revelatory dream like your friend. I just know. If you leave, you'll die. If you stay, maybe you'll live." The dark thought that she's lying crawls across her mind. She doesn't know he'd for sure die out there on his own. It just felt so likely that she had to say it.
"But you did know about Carl, before it happened?" His eyebrows raise slightly as he glances over at the shattered empty eye-socket where all those mirrors once were.
"Yeah. I knew that before. I saw it happen. I knew he needed that stuff."
Shane nods, looking pensive for a long time at the stretch of road. When he finally does speak again, the hushed secretive voice that he's adopted during their conversation falls away and he sounds relaxed, nearly bored as he states simple and clean, "We'll have to work on moving targets next time."
There is going to be a next time. She's won.
Convincing Andrea is actually harder. Once they tell her that Shane is going back, she nearly weeps right then and there. Beth can see it in her face, she's furious with him and furious with all of them for coming after her, nearly to the point that tears are threatening to fall. She won't even look at Dale. Their little two-car caravan goes back down the road towards the farm again, and Beth finally lets exhaustion overwhelm her. When is the last time she properly slept? Not since she'd come back in time, surely. Before that, she slept poorly or not-at-all while she was in Grady.
The last good sleep she'd had was in the funeral home, she realizes. Daryl had been utterly serious about sleeping in the coffin, until Beth had said that she wanted to sleep in the queen upstairs. Daryl had followed her, at first just offering to stand sentinel outside her door, but they never have a watch schedule between them before, and they'd been sleeping very close. It was the only thing that made sense. She didn't want that to change just because they had four walls and a roof. They had the alarms set up, the house was old and creaked with slight changes in pressure. It would be hard to sneak up on them, especially on the second floor. Better to stay close. Daryl saw it her way fast enough, but wouldn't take his boots off. The man couldn't lay his weapons down. He wasn't ready for that yet. She left hers on too, just in case they had to run.
But she felt utterly safe, lying next to Daryl Dixon in that bed. Boots knocking in only the very most chaste and literal sense. Maybe tomorrow night we'll feel alright to let our guard down. Maybe that tension all through his shoulders and my back will loosen and I'll fold myself right into his chest and feel that heartbeat up close. They wouldn't have to run again, or so she thought. They could stay there for the rest of their lives. She could sleep there. With him.
Now she sleeps, not because she feels safe, but just because the car is hot, the static grumble of the engine and the wheels against the road is soothing. T-Dog is out in a matter of seconds with his head propped up against the window, leaving his shoulder open for use. She sleeps for all of twenty minutes before the last turn towards their property wakes her up.
Rick and Glenn come out to meet them. The air is thick with tension. Andrea doesn't stay to talk but marches into the house, eyes pointed straight ahead and furious. Shane looks directly at everyone but Rick, then swears under his breath and turns to unpack his car.
"We might need to hold… a meeting," Dale says lamely, looking between Shane and the front door of them house, where Andrea disappeared. "I think there are some issues that could stand to be discussed."
Rick nods, though the grimace on his lips tells Beth he'd rather have all his teeth pulled out than hold a meeting to talk about their feelings. "Yeah, we probably do. Hershel isn't willing to listen to any more right now," Rick turns his attention to Beth, looking even more grim, "I don't know how much longer he'll let any of us stay." He shakes his head.
Beth's heart drops, "He didn't threaten to make you leave?"
"Not in so many words," Rick swallows, "But he kicked Daryl off the property early this morning. He went too far. The barn. Do—you know?" Rick falters over his last few words, eyes hard on Beth.
It takes Beth a good five seconds to fully process what Rick just said. Then it hits her. He doesn't know she was in the barn killing them. Which means Daryl didn't say anything about her. He pretended to act alone. "He kicked Daryl off?!"
"Can't say I blame him," Rick's hands in fists on either side of him suggest he's not at all at peace with this.
"I sure as hell can," Beth breathes out, feeling dizzy, "When did he leave? Do you know which way he went?"
Alarmed, Rick's eyebrows arch at her, but he shakes his head. "He took off early, probably right after Shane and Andrea. If you didn't see any sign of him…" he trails off, "He's a tracker. I imagine he knows how to not be followed too, if he doesn't want to be followed."
Shit. Shit. SHIT! Beth turns on her heel and sprints towards the stables.
"Hey—where are you going?"
"After him!" She hears their protests, but only quickens her pace, to avoid being caught. They let her go, but she knows that someone will be going to the house to get her dad. Her stomach sinks thinking about facing him, but her heart pounds and sweat breaks out on her forehead as she imagines what could happen to Daryl.
Why didn't I think this through? She swallows the lump in her throat as she gets her horse Nelly ready for a ride, fast as she can. Nelly gets nervous and can sense Beth's anxiety, but she hasn't thrown her yet, Beth knows how to steady herself even when she's in absolute turmoil. By the time she's able to mount the horse, everyone has caught up to her.
She heard them converging on the stables as she worked, heard her father's voice even, but she didn't stop. As she rides out of the stable, Beth nearly colliding right into Glenn and Maggie before the horse rears up and takes an anxious series of steps to the side. "Easy," Beth soothes her horse.
"Beth—what are you doing, get down! Get inside the house now!" Hershel's face is bloodless already, he's been through hell this morning.
Her throat's all tied up and for a moment she loses her resolve to confess before she goes, but it's the right thing to do. They've gotta understand. "I'm going after Daryl. We need him."
"Honey, let's talk about this," but he's still using his firm voice, still walking towards the side of the saddle, however cautiously, like he think he's going to pull her off and drag her into the house.
"I went after Shane and Andrea and now I'm going after Daryl and none of you get it." Her frustration starts to mount, momentarily helping her forget her guilt and grief. "What do you think people are like now? What do you think this did to them?" Luckily, it seems that both she and Nelly are united in their desire not to let Hershel get near. The touchy horse circles around the old man rather then let him so much as touch the saddle or her rider. "There are still good people, but the good people have to stick together. You go off on your own, you die. I'm not letting Daryl die."
"You don't understand what he did," Hershel's voice breaks as he starts to take on a tone she can't stand, a tone like he's begging.
"Daryl only helped me kill them!" Beth finally blurts out. Maggie's got her face buried in Glenn's shoulder rather than look at her father right now and Beth wishes she could look away too, as the rest of it spills out. "I went into the barn alone to put them down. I couldn't do it," her voice cracks, but she pushes through it. "I dragged Daryl out of bed so he could help me finish it."
Hershel's knee weaken beneath him as his face collapses into his hands. He shudders under the weight of what she just told him, but tilts his head back to look at her, he can barely stand to do it for more than a second before his face falls again.
She's just stabbed her own father right in his already shattered heart, and part of her wants to break down rather than keep going. "I've gotta get Daryl back. Because he's a good man. Because he's gonna save all your lives." Because I can't lose him again. Beth pulls Nelly onward, urging her to quicken to a gallop as quickly as possible. The rest of the group part around her.
Okay, so now the butterfly effect stuff is really starting to kick in. There is still going to be correlation between S2/S3 events and what I've got planned, but keep in mind that this is officially a different universe. She's changed too much now. Thank you all SO MUCH for your love and encouragement! I'm so overwhelmed because you guys are SO SWEET!
Law school is very much my life right now, and I'm pretty swamped, but I'm trying to take frequent healthy breaks for writing fic. You know. For sanity. I apologize for the delay between updates in the mean time.
Shattered & Hollow - First Aid Kit
