I curled against the worn bench seat of Daryl's truck while he hunched over me and the ground shook with the blast of the CDC explosion. We raised our heads once we realized we were safe, and I stared at him, still in shock at Jacqui's choice and Jenner's revelations, and began to shake as the adrenaline of our escape wore off. Daryl started the truck and rolled forward to follow Rick's car but I couldn't stop shaking enough to fasten my seatbelt. In my peripheral vision, I could see him looking over at me as he drove and I tried unsuccessfully to breathe deeply and calm myself down.

Daryl's rough "Hey," broke through the fog in my brain and I looked at him, dazed. "Yer okay," he said in his low, steady voice, taking his eyes briefly off the road to meet mine. "We gotta keep goin'. You good?" I nodded, his words calming me more than my breathing exercises. After a few minutes, I was able to buckle the seatbelt and lean my head against the window, watching the abandoned streets of Atlanta roll by.

Jenner had told us that he'd been cut off from the outside when the military bombed Atlanta, but that while he thought the rest of the world would be more prepared for the infection, there was no way to stop it. The entire planet would eventually have to deal with it, and there was no way they were going to unlock the borders to the epicenter of the problem anytime soon. According to him, we would be trapped in Georgia for years, possibly forever, and he was certain that almost everyone in the state would die within just a few months. I couldn't accept that we would never get out, but even the thought of being away from my kids for years was enough that I understood Jacqui's choice.

We hadn't been out of the city long before T-Dog's van ran out of gas and we had to consolidate vehicles, with Daryl leading the caravan on Merle's motorcycle. I ended up in the RV with Dale, Glenn, and T-Dog, a despondent Andrea and a brooding Shane who bonded over guns, and I missed the quiet of Daryl's truck almost immediately. I thought the plan to head to Fort Benning was stupid - there was no chance the military had stayed in Georgia when it was obvious Atlanta had fallen - but I knew Rick felt like he had to give Shane's idea a try and neither of them would be interested in my opinion. The highways were a maze of cars to weave through, and progress was slow.

The RV broke down again partway through the afternoon and we began scavenging in abandoned cars while Dale tried to fix it. I didn't have much patience for Lori's irrational objections to taking stuff from other people's cars and wandered away from her just before the herd came through. Shane shoved Glenn under a truck and pulled me with him under another one just in time. I couldn't see Daryl and I was terrified that he'd been caught off guard, but there weren't any screams or sounds of the walkers finding food and it seemed like we were going to make it without a problem until Sophia ran into the woods.

There was nothing quite as awful as watching Carol fall apart when Rick came back alone. Lori tried to console her while Rick, Daryl, Glenn, and Shane went back into the woods to search, and Dale and I sat with T-Dog and treated his injuries as best we could. We were able to stop the bleeding but the cut looked dirty and we were worried about infection without proper supplies for cleaning it.

Shane and Glenn came back to report that Daryl and Rick were tracking Sophia, and we began clearing out a path through the maze of cars. Andrea tried to get me on her side in an argument with Dale about her gun and got frustrated when I refused to engage. "You know, the rest of us don't have Daryl to protect us," she snapped at me. "Not sure what you're trading in exchange for his attention, but maybe you should start thinking about what happens when he gets tired of you."

I stepped closer to her with my hands on my hips. "I'm just going to pretend you didn't imply that I'm sleeping with Daryl so he'll look out for me. He's a good guy, and he's watching my back because he promised my husband and kids that he would - that's all. I get that you're going through something really tough right now, but you need to figure out your shit, rather than lashing out at everyone else."

I'm not a huge fan of confrontation, but I've learned not to back away from it either, especially when you're in close quarters. I just hoped Andrea had been intentionally trying to piss me off, and that the rest of the group hadn't drawn the same conclusion about Daryl. He could be a hothead but he hadn't done anything to make them think he'd take advantage of someone like that.

I was getting more and more doubtful that the trip to Fort Benning was anything more than a suicide mission. It was clear that we weren't going to be rescued any time soon, and I thought we should start making plans for a future that involved more than just traveling from one place to another. I'm good at planning, and at keeping folks focused on goals, but I knew I'd need to get Rick on board before bringing it up with the group. In the meantime, thinking through possibilities provided me with a distraction from worrying over Sophia.

I couldn't imagine what Carol was going through, but I was frustrated when she blamed Rick after he and Daryl came back empty-handed. I was sure that if my kid had run into the woods I'd have been hot on their heels rather than waiting for someone else to go after them. I understood that she'd been conditioned to be helpless and defer to any authoritative male figure, but I had less compassion when that helplessness put a child in danger.

I caught up with Daryl wandering through the maze of cars and expressed as much to him, half expecting him to ignore me but too frustrated not to vent to at least one person. He looked at me, chewing on the inside of his cheek for a minute before responding. "Ya just ain't the same as her so ya can't understand. I heard you with yer husband and it's kinda obvious yer in charge."

"What does that matter?" I asked, and he straightened up after rummaging through another backseat. "She don' have people listenin' to her and givin' her respect like that. Been 'round women like her my whole life. It ain't her fault, but she is gonna have to make some changes now that ever'thing's different. She's gotta be a different person if she's gonna survive."

He paused for a minute and studied my face while I squirmed at the unspoken reprimand. "Maybe you can help her. Ya worked with people like her before, right?"

I sighed, knowing he was right. "Sort of, but in a different capacity. I mean, helping someone navigate a legal situation after abuse is kind of a narrow area of expertise. And honestly, she doesn't really like me, along with a lot of folks around here. But yeah, I get it. I'll see if I can get a little closer to her, tone down my judgmental side, and maybe we can talk a little."

He nodded and went back to peering in car windows. "Need ta find somewhere to sleep and then we can head out in the mornin' to keep lookin. Ya got a place?" I shook my head and he nodded to a pickup with a camper shell. "That'd work for a night if ya want. Plenty a room, better'n bein' stuck in the RV."

He was looking away, obviously uncertain about whether I'd prefer to be alone, and busied himself pulling stuff out of the bed of the truck to make space. "Yeah, that sounds good," I said. "I don't really want to sleep by myself in this graveyard, and the RV is starting to smell."

I lay in the dark that night listening to Daryl's steady breathing, thinking about how he got where he was. He'd told me about getting lost in the woods as a kid and no one looking for him, and I knew his mom had died when he was young. Clearly, no one was looking out for him except maybe Merle, and I couldn't imagine he'd made much of a role model.

I was pretty sure Daryl was around my age, maybe a little older, which meant he'd had at least 15 years of adulthood and in some ways, especially in this new reality, he had a lot of wisdom. Anything that involved survival, fixing things, tenacity, and hard work seemed to come to him naturally but with interpersonal relationships, he was more like a teenager. Try to manipulate him or exert authority and his temper boiled over immediately; try to talk about something difficult and he usually looked for a quick escape. But he'd had moments where he saw vulnerability in someone else and reached out of his comfort zone to help, like when he'd talked to my kids or defended Carol to me.

I rolled on my side and looked at the outline of him in the dark, just visible in the moonlight. I knew enough about shared trauma to realize I might be connecting with him more deeply than I should, but this was the end of the world, and the old rules just didn't always apply. Everyone needs personal connections, especially in a crisis, and I wasn't going to push Daryl away, especially if I was going to be here for years.