AN: Here we are, another chapter here. I'm just letting you know that we are going a little off script (as with the whole story), so please don't be too surprised by that.

I hope you enjoy! Please don't forget to let me know what you think!

111

Daryl had to give Carol credit. She was much better with hysterics, and keeping her head about her while hysterics were going on, than he was. She could organize people and move them from one place to another with much more ease than he could. As soon as the hysterics started, he felt like his whole mind and body shut down until there was a little more calm surrounding him.

If there had been anyone sleeping, they weren't sleeping for long. By the time that Daryl and Carol made it to the house, the hysterics that must have been mostly happening inside seemed to be happening everywhere. Daryl felt like he'd never heard so much screaming and confusion in his entire life, and the only thing he knew to do was to help Carol get some control of it so that they could figure out what had happened.

Carol took Jo to the kitchen and immediately put a kettle of water on to warm so that she could offer the woman something hot to settle her nerves. The old woman was pale and, frankly, didn't look well. Carol had supported her, physically, as she led her to the kitchen. Jo's two daughters were also present. Beth, the youngest, was in absolute hysterics, and the oldest one seemed torn between trying to care for her mother and trying to care for her sister, and she was having very little luck at doing an effective job of either.

Carol was doing her best to calm Jo, seemingly sure that everything else would take care of itself if the resident matriarch were calm.

Carol had given anyone who would take it the job of getting Lori out of the way—since she seemed to be somehow causing the hysterics to continue instead of dying down—and Dale and Andrea stepped in to pull her off to the side as everyone from outside trickled inside to see if there was anything they could do about a problem that none of them yet understood.

Daryl cut Patricia from the crowd and dragged her to the corner opposite of where Dale was trying to silence Lori with a series of hissing noises.

"What the hell happened?" Daryl asked Patricia. She looked dazed, but at least she wasn't hysterical.

"They killed them…" she said.

Her tone made it sound like a question, and her expression didn't exactly clarify things.

"Who killed who?" Daryl asked. "Somebody killed somebody?"

"He killed my son!" Jo yelled, coming back into herself, it seemed. Her outburst only started another round of hysterics all around.

"Walkers!" Lori yelled back while Dale tried to silence her. "Walkers!"

"What's this about Walkers?" Daryl asked. "What the hell is goin' on? Where is Hershel, and Rick, and Shane?"

"They could be in danger," Lori barked back at Daryl. "They followed him!"

This second wave of hysteria seemed to be slowly dying down a little better than the first had as reality seemed to be coming down on the people around them. Maybe everyone was simply tired and the hysteria used up too much of their depleted energy.

"Hershel left to go somewhere out there and they followed him," Lori said, calmer than she'd been even mere seconds before.

"He never would've left if they hadn't killed them!" Jo snapped back. "I want you out of my house! I want you gone from my home!"

"Wait a minute…we can work this out. We can talk about this," Daryl said. "Just—we gotta understand what the hell happened!"

Patricia seemed to be coming out of her stupor better than anyone.

"Shawn," Patricia said. "Hershel and Jo's son. Arnold—Hershel's nephew. And my nephew, Peter. Rick and Shane shot them."

Daryl looked at Carol, but she was doing her best to soothe the woman who, surrounded by her girls, had at least calmed to quiet and sincere tears.

"They were Walkers," Lori said. "They didn't kill them. They—they put them down. They weren't alive."

"You don't get to come into someone's home and take advantage of their good nature!" Jo barked. "You don't get to come into their home and take advantage of their kindness. Their hospitality. You don't get to come in, and take over, and decide that you can make your own rules. This isn't your home, and you're not welcome here!"

"What happened?" Dale asked. "I still don't understand what happened."

"I can tell you what happened," Jacqui said. She and T-Dog had been in the kitchen earlier, but their reappearance made it clear that they'd left the space, without being noticed, and were only now just returning. T-Dog hummed his agreement with Jacqui's words. In his hand, he held a flashlight that he still hadn't turned off, despite the fact that he was inside the house. It appeared that they might have slipped outside to do their own form of investigation. "Or—at least some of it."

"We both can," T-Dog said. "There's a barn out back. A little one. Beyond where we've been packing the food."

"Storage barn," Daryl said. T-Dog nodded. Around the farm there were quite a few barns with quite a few purposes. There were even more structures now that they were preparing the farm to support the lot of them over the winter. The little storage barn was built out on the back part of the property and, honestly, Daryl had only ever been near it once since he had very little reason to go out that far. It was locked with a heavy chain and padlock. The only time he'd so much as mentioned it to Hershel was when they were discussing where to place their rabbit hutches for the winter. Hershel had told him the barn was full, and he'd rather it not be disturbed. This was Hershel's farm. That was the end of the discussion as far as Daryl was concerned. "What about it?"

"It's what the hell was being stored in there," T-Dog said.

"Someone left a lamp out there," Jacqui said. She held her hand up to show the lit lantern. The flame, though low, still flickered inside the lamp.

"Coulda started a fire," Daryl said.

"That aside," T-Dog said, "there were three Walker bodies out there."

"We have to bury them!" Jo said, clearly overcome with grief suddenly. "We have to bury them…we can't leave them. We can't leave them like that!"

Carol was patting the woman's shoulders while her daughters comforted her, too, to the best of their abilities.

"We'll—bury them," Carol said. Daryl could tell she was as confused as he was, but she continued to soothe Jo with the promise of a proper burial for the Walkers.

"You had no right!" Maggie, the oldest daughter, barked in Lori's direction. "None of you! You had no right!"

"Walkers are dangerous!" Lori yelled back at Maggie. "They're a threat. To all of us. To you, too!"

"They weren't dangerous! That was my son! You had no business. They had no right! He was my son!" Jo yelled back at Lori. "You weren't threatened. You never would have known they were there if your son had been in the house—if you'd known where he was. If he'd been sleeping like he should have been at this hour!" Jo stood up, pushing past Carol. "It's no wonder he got shot! But we saved your son. You had no right to take ours away from us!"

Jo left the room quickly with her daughters right behind her. It didn't take long to hear the slamming of a door, indicating that she'd closed herself in her room. Daryl assumed that her daughters were with her when he heard no other movement from that part of the house.

He looked back at Patricia. She looked tired, and very much like the air around her, even, was heavy.

"So—Carl shot 'em?" Daryl asked her.

"He only found them," Lori said.

"What the hell was Carl doin' at the barn at this damn hour?" Daryl asked, fully aware that Sophia was hovering just outside the door in her nightgown, holding her doll, because he saw her every now and again when she peeked in to make sure that everything was OK. She'd come in with Andrea, and she'd been sleeping up until the chaos had woken everyone. Carl, though in question, was nowhere to be seen even now. Lori didn't answer Daryl's question directly.

"He found the Walkers in the barn. He told Shane about them."

"So, Shane killed the Walkers?" Daryl asked.

"There was a fight," Patricia said with a heavy sigh. "An argument. About what to do."

"There's nothing to discuss," Lori said. "Walkers are dangerous."

"When they first got sick," Patricia said, "nobody knew what to do. When they—were like that…we didn't know what to do. It was clear that they weren't well, but…"

"They were monsters," Lori said.

"Hershel thought—maybe they'd get better," Patricia said. "Maybe there would be a cure. Something they could do. Even though it's been clearer and clearer for a while that, maybe the government isn't looking for something…we didn't know what to do. It was Shawn, and Arnold, and Peter. What could we do? We've been taking care of them as well as we could."

"You been half-grievin'," Daryl said. "But not all the way."

Patricia nodded.

"Like—maybe they're dead," Andrea said. "But you want to hold out hope that—maybe they're not."

"All they did was eliminate the threat of Walkers," Lori argued. "I understand that they were people that you knew, but they're not those people now."

"Sometimes people aren't ready to hear you trivialize their losses," Andrea snapped at her. "Especially when you don't even know what it feels like to lose a single damn thing!"

"Fighting among ourselves isn't going to accomplish anything," Carol said, stopping both women before they could really get started going for each other's throats. "Patricia—what happened with Hershel?"

"He was upset," Patricia said. "Rick and Shane were fighting among themselves. That's when things started to get out of control. They were fighting about what they would do. What they should do. Who would do it. He forbade them to touch the barn. To hurt—to…"

"It's OK," Carol said, crossing the room. "It doesn't matter. And you don't have to defend yourselves. He told them not to do it, and they did."

"He was angry. He left."

"Do you know where he went?" Dale asked.

"There's a bar he goes to," Patricia said. "But not much. Not often. He probably went there."

"Doesn't matter," Daryl said.

"Doesn't matter?" Lori snapped.

"Doesn't fuckin' matter!" Daryl said, turning to yell at her. He was glad, at that moment, that Dale was between them, because he was starting to lose his patience, and he didn't even want to clearly see her face for fear that it would make him angrier than he wanted to be in front of everyone he cared about. "What's done is done, and he's gone where he's gone!"

"You have to go after them," Lori said. "They already said the surrounding towns are dangerous. They could run into trouble."

Daryl laughed quietly at the audacity of the woman and shook his head.

"The only damn thing I ever had to do was live, die, an' pay taxes. And now, I ain't payin' a whole damn lot of taxes. I sure as shit don't have to take orders from your ass. Listen here, Olive Oyl—Rick and Shane got Rick and Shane into some shit. Now if they done that because they wanted to do it, or because they were doin' it for your ass, I don't know. At the end of the damn day, though, this is their pile of horse shit. It ain't mine."

Daryl sighed and looked around. He had a pounding headache. He would love to have some of whatever Hershel was drinking at his chosen bar and a few Tylenols to wash down with it. Instead, he patted Patricia's arm.

"It's alright," he said to her. "Go check on Jo. See if you can—get her somethin'. Get her to bed. Get what sleep she can. Tell her—tell her we'll take care of it. Tell her—we'll handle it tomorrow. When Hershel's back."

Patricia nodded, looking very much like she might just pass out where she was standing and sleep on the kitchen floor. She walked off with audibly heavy steps, and everyone let her pass.

Daryl turned to Carol.

"Get everybody to bed?"

She nodded.

"Don't be too long?" She responded.

"What are you going to do?" Lori asked, directing her question to Daryl.

"Do what the hell damage control I can do," Daryl said. "T—Glenn? Come with me. We're gonna need that flashlight and prob'ly that lamp."

"What are you going to do?" Lori asked again.

"We're gonna go out there and drag them bodies back into that barn," Daryl said. "We're gonna chain the damn thing up again where the buzzards, and animals, and any damn thing else can't get at 'em and pick apart the corpses of that woman's kid and the rest of their damn family. Then, tomorrow, when Hershel is back, we're gonna bury the bodies and hope to hell that they decide not to put all our damn asses out the door because your family can't mind their fuckin' business."

"You were happy to have Walkers here?" Lori asked. "On the farm? Right here where your family was?"

"All I'm sayin' is the Walkers been in that barn since this shit started. You heard Patricia. Think about that. Since…we were at the fuckin' rock quarry. Since the shitty damn day I met your skinny ass and accidentally got involved in what the hell we woulda all been better off without. They been in that barn that whole damn time. And we been all over this farm workin'—which you wouldn't know shit about—and ain't not a damn one of us knowed or give a shit that there was three corpses in that barn. Not 'til now. Not 'til tonight. So—that's all the hell I'ma say about that." Daryl didn't care that Lori looked absolutely offended by his truth. He turned to Andrea. "Andrea—take my niece or…or my nephew…an' my daughter to bed. Dale—see she gets some sleep. Carol…?"

Carol gave him a reassuring smile.

"I'll clean things up here," Carol said. "And Jacqui and I will make sure you've all got some clean water to wash with when you're done."

Daryl hummed and nodded.

"You're a good woman," he said. "Too damn good. Take good care of me." Then he gestured toward T-Dog and Glenn who were waiting for his word to get to work. "Come on—and…just remember, they're Walkers, but…they were ones they loved, so we gonna treat 'em as such."