We stop only when the other car stops, at a dead stoplight among dead buildings outside of the dead city.
My hand is tight and white on my bow. It has been for a while. "The hell's he waitin' for?" Dad mutters. He's turned our car off.
As for the other car, its taillights go off. Which means the car has, just like ours.
We wait. Owen's finally straightened up. Still looks bored, but he's watching. He's aware. Ready.
One shape comes out of the car's passenger side.
"There's two of 'em," Dad breathes. Yes. A driver, a passenger. May be even more, in the back, but I don't say it. I get up close to his seat again. It's a tall man out there. And there's something strange about his outfit. Dad nails it. "Is that a cop?"
Carol moves some, and Dad looks at her and she looks back. "He might've seen us," she says simply, and I don't know what she means until something catches moonlight in her lap. She's pulled her gun.
The man – the cop – walks down a sidewalk and behind a building.
Time, then a little more, and Carol sighs and then something slams against her window and I don't think any of us have a problem with adrenaline after that. It's just a walker, though, snarling at her and pounding on the glass, hungry, or just doing what it's supposed to do.
The cop comes back again, carrying two bikes. He drops them under a streetlight right by his car. Then he drags something, probably a body, out of the street and dusts off his hands. Starts back for his car. Stops right next to it. Stares at us.
Or, more likely, at the walker dying to get into just another lifeless car.
But then, slowly, the cop gets back into his own vehicle. The taillights come back on. The driver drives them away, turning right, vanishing behind the same building the cop vanished behind when it was just him.
Dad twists the key, but our engine makes the kind of vrvrvrvrvrvrvrvr! sound you never want an engine to make. "Shit!" Dad whacks his hand on the wheel. "Tank's tapped . . ." He falls back, and I rest my chin on his seat and look at the empty space ahead of us, then check the rearview mirror, look at the empty space behind us.
Just to Carol, Dad whispers, "They'da takin' the bypass, and they didn't, they must be holed up in the city somewhere."
She doesn't answer.
Then Owen speaks up. "Anyone else hear that?"
And, when we're listening, we do. I do, anyway. Between the growls and bangs from Carol's walker, there are even more moans to be heard, coming from all around us, like the car's haunted by tired ghosts.
"Probably be a good idea to move," Owen says.
"You think?" Dad twists, searching behind Owen and me, then untwists, says, "We gotta find someplace to hole up till sunlight."
"I know a place," says Carol. "Just a couple of blocks from here, we can make it."
And we do.
. . . . .
It's the kind of place that you know was pretty nice, before. A big lobby, with still-shiny tile and even a plastic plant that's managed to stay upright. Carol gives Dad a flashlight. He leads the way across the room. There's a dead body slumped against a wall. Dead-dead, I mean. That's where we get lucky. Dad finds a set of keys on the corpse.
Down a hall, a hall that reminds me too much of the one at the vet school, just as dark and dangerous. Just as many mystery doors. But we make it through without any problems. Carol's behind Dad, I'm behind Carol, and Owen's behind me. I trust him enough to turn my back on him – trust him with my life, remember – but I may want him to go anyway. Or, need him to go. The whole damn situation is twisted as hell, and this little side-trip has only made it worse.
Because I am a bad person.
Why didn't he just go back to the church? Why did he even bother to listen when Dad said to get in the car? I don't think Dad would have cared if Owen had bailed out. Might have preferred it.
But Owen didn't.
At the very end of the hall, Dad unlocks a door and Carol cuts him and goes through first. The door has a glass window and there are big words written on it, but I only catch one before the flashlight beam leaves it alone: CENTER. Me and Owen, we follow the grownups through and now we're in an office sort of room, with file cabinets and a desk. I guess it is just an office, plain and simple – or, was. Sometimes it can be hard to tell exactly what a room was, though.
"You use to work here or somethin'?" Dad asks Carol.
"Somethin'." She has her knife out and ready, but she looks around calmly. Catches my gaze once and acts like she doesn't.
"Owen." Dad nods at the desk. "Gimme a hand with this."
Owen, to his credit, wordlessly helps dad push the desk against the door. Dad locks it, too. Pretty good security, considering what we've lived with in the past.
Not counting the prison, of course.
There's a second door in the office. Carol looks at Dad, he says Oh, here, and gives her the keys.
Another hall. This one is different, though. Less spooky. Probably because of the bright colors on the walls, colors that still pop even after so much time, even in the dark. And it's not as . . . touched here. In fact, it's one of the least-touched places I've seen in a while.
We're all following Carol now. I stick close to my dad, for the benefit of his flashlight. He shines it through one open door, I see a couple of bunk beds. Through another door, a bathroom, clean.
Carol finally gets to a door she likes, a door that's already open, too. Dad, Owen, and me, we follow her through it.
This room. It's as neat as the rest of the place. There are four bunk beds pressed against the wall to my right. Directly across from each one of them is a window. There's a desk by the door, close enough that I could touch it. Its twin sits across the room. Both have books and pink lamps on them. And the covers on the beds? Pink, light blue, yellow – happy colors.
"What's this place?" Dad murmurs.
"It's temporary housing." There's no emotion in Carol's voice.
I walk across the room, scan each bunk bed, top to bottom. No walkers, no bodies. Just a couple of teddy bears. Each bed, it's made. Just waiting to be used.
This is creepy.
Temporary housing.
I turn back, and from this safe distance, ask Carol, "You came here?"
She unshoulders one of the bags she and Owen had all packed and ready when we found them. "We didn't stay."
We.
The Walker Without a Doll plunges into my mind, and I rub my temple and duck my head, sending the thing back to its barn. And then I burn the barn down.
Here. Now.
Down with the bags, the weapons. Not where we can't reach them, no, never where we can't reach them.
I take the bottom bunk at the very end of the room. I check the thing over one more time, make sure there's no monster under my bed. I settle my bow next to the pillow, with an arrow latched on and ready to fly. And of course I keep my trigger strapped to my wrist.
Owen tosses his bag on the top bunk of the bed next to mine.
I grimace at him from where I sit, squeezing and releasing this surprisingly comfortable mattress. "Really?"
"What? Best seat in the house. Far from the door, vantage point . . ." He hauls himself up to the bed and sprawls out with an exaggerated sigh. "I would take the bunk above you, but that would just be weird."
He might have gotten a smile from me here, if not for those three questions and the answers that came from them. Now I just let my head fall.
Dad's got the bottom bunk on the bed closest to the door, Carol, the next bottom bunk, which is also the one next to the bottom bunk of the bed where Owen's got top. Owen, he's all alone up there.
"You three should sleep, I'll take first watch." Carol goes to the window. Dad half-crosses the room, slowly, rolling out of his vest.
"Place's locked up pretty tight."
"I know," she says.
My eyes lift to Owen. His head is turned to the side, so I guess he's watching them. Or maybe he's already asleep.
No, he never falls asleep that fast.
Dad tosses his vest onto my bed and tells Carol, "So we're good, then."
"I'll keep first watch. I don't mind."
"Suit yourself."
Dad puts a hand on the railing of my top bunk and lowers down next to me. "You g –" But he stops there.
Now that, that tugs a baby smile out. "You can say it when it's necessary."
"How'm I s'posed to know when it's necessary?"
I click my tongue. "If I come within . . . two feet of a walker."
"Four."
"Alright."
"And eight if there's two of 'em. Twelve if there's three . . . and so on."
"That's too much math. That was always my worst subject."
"Maybe. You still got straight A's on every report card ya ever got."
I was always so excited to show him my report cards. I could tell it made him happy, proud, to see how smart I was, even if he never made the big deal out of it that Mom and Nana and Papaw would. I could read him well enough to see.
"Not on every report card," I say. "I got a B in second grade. Science."
He snorts. "Yeah, forgot about that . . . You came home with me and cried for an hour."
"Well, I'd blown my chance at gettin' into a good college."
I see the corner of his mouth twitch. That's what keeps me from telling him that the reason I got a B was because I didn't let him or Mom know about a test I had one Monday because that Monday came after one of Dad's weekends.
Dad, he looks me over now, top to bottom and back. "You shouldn'ta followed me."
I roll my head back. "You gonna wear me out?" I ask, so dryly it makes his lips twitch again, and he shakes his head at the floor.
"Oughta. If you were ten again, I probably would." A couple seconds, and then, "Sometimes I wish you'd just stayed ten."
"If I had stayed ten," I say, "I would be dead by now."
His lips don't twitch that time. They weren't supposed to.
"So are you?" he asks.
"Good?"
A nod.
"Yeah."
A two-second-long hard-core stare at me to decide whether or not I'm telling the truth, then, "'Kay," and a kiss on my forehead. "Get some sleep."
"Yeah."
He leaves his vest behind. I watch him get to his bed, watch him watch Carol for a minute.
"That was nice," comes Owen's voice.
"Shut up."
A heavy sigh. "Did it ever occur to you," he says, "that maybe sometimes I mean what I say?"
I don't answer.
Dad lies down on his back. Folds his arms under his head.
Carol is standing at the window, stock-still, a gargoyle, like in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Except, those gargoyles turned out to be pretty lively. That's not Carol, not right now. Maybe not ever again.
I wonder what it is. What it is that makes her not look right at me, that makes her so . . . flat, that made her go to the escape car when there was no need for escape.
She ended up with Tyreese and Judith, met up with them outside the prison after she'd seen the smoke from wherever she was. But what happened while they were out there?
She might be gone from me. Really, truly gone. That happens sometimes. Hell, I've already thought it's happened a few times. But . . . it never hurts less.
I pull Dad's vest to me. Feel the leather. Smell the sweat, blood, and smoke. It's kind of gross, I guess. I don't care.
A sound comes from outside the room. A thump. Carol whips around, Dad slides out from his bed, Owen pushes himself up, and I'm on my feet with my bow set to kill. Dad gets his crossbow, Carol gets her rifle, and I go to join them, but when I get there, Dad holds out a hand. "Stay here."
"But –"
"I mean it this time. Stay."
So I stay, and they go. Dad and Carol, I mean. Owen, he's behind me. And, when Dad and Carol's footsteps have faded, he says, "Good girl."
I whirl and shove him with my free hand, hitting his right shoulder. It sends him a half-step back, which is not as much as I was hoping for. "Stop trying to make trouble!" I snarl.
He lifts his chin. Kind of smiles. Takes the stance of a guy with all the answers, and I hate him.
"You stay here," I tell him, defying both my dad and logic. But when I reach the door and look back, Owen's still where he was. Still smiling at me like he knows all the things I don't. It's kind of a sad smile.
"Good boy," I say, and go.
I find Dad and Carol at a room labeled 7, a room with two doors made with the foggy sort of glass, so all you can see through them is the shapes of people. Or things.
I stop in an archway behind Dad and Carol, hiding half of me behind it. Because they're talking, and I'm thinking I probably shouldn't have come, because what they're talking about, without using so many words, are the two things behind the doors of Room 7. One is a big thing. One is a little thing. And they both want out so they can tear anything with a beating heart all up.
"You don't have to," says Dad.
Carol reaches for the doorknob. Dad reaches for it, too, and stops her hand.
"You don't."
And this time, Carol listens. She listens, and she turns, and when she sees me – does she miss a step, just one? – she sighs and goes right on past.
Dad turned to watch her go, but found me here instead. His fingers curl up. I don't blink.
When he starts towards me, I brace myself, but he blows right past. "Don't know why I even bother with you."
And suddenly I'm part of the wall, not only stuck to it, but meant to be there, to stay forever with it, still and bloodless.
His footsteps stop. "That came out wrong."
Still and bloodless.
A touch on my shoulder, very light, but it gets hold and tugs. "C'mon. Let's just get to bed."
But I'm part of the wall. Being . . . inanimate, it's pretty nice.
"Little Bit."
Right, Daddy. Call me Little Bit, and everything will be okay.
I follow him back to our room. I don't look at Carol, I say nothing to Owen. I lie down on my bed, curl my legs into my chest, tuck my bow in next to me. I push Dad's vest onto the floor. Then I roll over and stare at the wall until my eyes can't bear it anymore and they close.
I don't know if I ever fall asleep, really. But I go into some sort of rest, and then I'm hearing voices, familiar voices, safe voices. But they pull me out of the sweet dark anyway.
"I don't think we get to save people anymore."
Carol.
"Then why're you here?"
Dad.
"I'm tryin'," says Carol, and she says it in a weird way, like it means something special.
"When we were out by the car," Dad says after a while, "What if I didn't show up?"
"I still don't know."
"You asked Owen to come with you out there . . ."
"It was a matter of time before he left. Even Sydney knew that. I thought I could give him a way that decreased the chance of him getting killed. And decreased the chance of me getting killed. He seems capable enough."
"He's just a kid."
"Yeah, well, kid doesn't always mean what it used to."
Quiet.
"What about my kid?"
"What about her?"
"She still one? A kid? 'Cause sometimes I wonder."
"I couldn't tell you that."
"Time was, you mighta been able to."
More quiet.
"Why're you freezing her out?" Dad's voice is soft.
"You don't want me to answer that."
"That were the case, I wouldn'ta asked."
And, eventually, Carol does answer him, and I think she answers him honestly. "Because if she is still a kid, a genuine kid, the odds are against her surviving long enough to grow up. This isn't a world for children anymore."
Quiet yet again. The heavy kind of quiet. All of it pressing on me, here in my bunk, trapped by the wall.
"Say that's true," Dad says. "Just hypothetically. You just ain't gonna care about her anymore? 'Cause she might die tomorrow? Any of us might die tomorrow."
"I know."
"But?"
"But you've never lost a child. You barely knew Sophia. Or Lizzie and Mika."
Lizzie and Mika. Carol adopted them, but then – the last time I saw them was at the prison –
All this time, and I've barely wondered about Lizzie and Mika. Or the other kids. Just Carl, Dad, Rick – the group that was always my group. But Lizzie and Mika – when Carol took them in, they became my group. I should have wondered.
When Carol says she lost them . . .
"It's different, Daryl. From any other kind of loss."
"I know."
"No, you don't. And I hope you never do. But if it happens, if something happens . . . I can't go through it again."
Pause.
Dad says, "She loves you." Pause. "Might need you."
Pause.
"She needs a mother. I'm not a mother. Not anymore."
There's no more talking after that.
I know what I'll see if I look up at the next bunk, but that doesn't stop me from rolling over slowly, from stretching my neck, awkwardly and subtly, over my bow to peek. There he is, on his side, wide awake, watching me. No smile. No hint of his special bitter amusement. No fear, either.
Sorrow.
It's too real for me, and I roll back over and put my hands over my face and wait for dawn.