The weather grew warmer as winter faded into spring, but food was still scarce. I managed to find tender dandelion shoots and lambs quarters for us to eat, but animals were just starting to emerge from hibernation and Daryl hadn't had much luck with hunting. Lori was getting bigger every day, and clearly exhausted and malnourished no matter how much we tried to supplement her rations with our own.
After dinner one night, Rick came up to me where I was walking the perimeter. "Been wantin' to talk to you. Now you know I'm tryin' to find a place where we can stay permanently, and you used to be thinkin' about all those future plans back at the farm. I need to know if you still think we can do that and if so, I need your help figuring out where to look. I'm not good at strategy, I think on my feet and I react in the moment, and I can't seem to stop and think long enough to come up with a plan. I know you were strugglin' for a while there, but it seems like you've figured some stuff out and I'm hopin' you'll step up here." He rubbed his face tiredly after his speech and put his hand on his hips, looking at me hopefully.
"Yeah, I think I'd like that," I said slowly. "You're right, I was lost for a while and I couldn't think about making all new plans with no place in sight. But we can't keep doing this with Lori getting closer and closer to the birth, and food running out. Let's look at a map tomorrow and at least come up with a strategy for thoroughly covering ground in our search." Rick gave me a small smile and a pat on the back as he headed back to the house, and I took a deep breath, hoping we'd figure something out the next day.
The herds had driven us out further than where Herschel was familiar with the terrain, so Maggie and Glenn found a map at a gas station. Our biggest issue was that the walkers seemed to be congregating more and more as time went on, and we had to change direction every time we ran into them. We started marking off parts of the map where we'd searched, moving further and further out. I racked my brain for any type of building that would have walls - wealthy estates, gated communities, private boarding schools, prisons maybe. They weren't on the map we'd found, and no one knew where anything like that could be, so we were essentially looking for a needle in a haystack.
We continued to cover area on the map, one day at a time, and it helped to have some sort of focus on the future, despite the odds stacked against us. We did manage to collect some ammo, knowing that once we found somewhere we'd probably need to kill quite a few walkers in order to secure it. The only places I could think of with walls were pretty big, and heavily populated and there were bound to be a lot of bodies roaming around. We were washing our clothes in a creek when Rick and Daryl brought back news of the prison they'd stumbled across - the best news we'd had in weeks.
We took the field without any losses, and I lay in the cool grass that night and said my first prayer of thanks in months. I wasn't sure if there was anyone out there listening, but it couldn't hurt. Carol took over for Daryl on watch, and he sat down next to me while Beth sang a song by the fire. I propped myself up on my elbow and looked at him in the flickering light.
"You think this will work?" I asked. "'Gonna make it work" he replied simply. "Have to." I laid back down and shifted closer to him, closing my eyes and breathing the scent of leather, faint smoke, and the woods that always clung to his clothes. "I agree. It'll be a lot of work, but it's something we can focus on. Herschel thinks we can plant a garden and I think we could maybe raise some animals. It's just . . . hard not to assume the worst, after the farm. It's like I got too involved in making plans that got destroyed and now I'm afraid to make new ones."
Daryl pulled a blanket out of his bag and spread it on the ground before responding. "Rick needs you to do it" he said, laying down. "Yer stronger than you think. And you ain't alone." I smiled faintly at him and moved myself onto the blanket next to him. It was getting warm enough that I didn't really need him next to me, but I'd grown used to it and he hadn't said anything about changing our routine. "You're right, I'm not alone." I said. "We'll make it work and we'll be okay. More than okay." I curled my body toward his and pressed myself into his side, hopeful about the promise of the next day in the safety of the tall fences.