Chapter Eighteen
The nearly full moon shines brightly through the cloudless sky, casting enough light for Rick to see the dark hulking mass of walkers shifting slowly in the parking lot. Through the two-story windows encasing the stairwell, he watches their sluggish campaign and prays for something to attract their attention; anything that will lure them away from the school.
Sitting at the top of the stairs, elbows on knees and boots resting squarely on the third step down, he could literally be the shadow of the man sitting at his shoulder - until Daryl leans back and straightens a long leg out in front of them.
"Maybe we could break more windows in the back to draw them around," the hunter says, cutting into Rick's thoughts. "Then we could make a run for the car."
"It's not loud enough. We'd need gunfire to get their attention and I'd rather not waste the bullets we have," Rick replies, absently lifting his left arm to scratch an itch on the back of his neck. He winces smartly and quickly returns his forearm to his thigh before reaching back with his right hand instead.
"How's it feelin'?" Daryl asks as he strokes the thick fur around Nikki's collar.
"I'll live. Thanks to your medical expertise - or handyman skills, I should say," he responds with a crooked but sincere smile.
"Erin's gonna kick yer ass when we get back ya know," Daryl says, his southern drawl echoing softly in the quiet space.
"Yeah, I know." Rick sighs heavily, looking out at the sea of walkers and wondering just how the hell he is going to get back to her, the current view giving him less than a dim glimmer of hope of escaping any time soon.
"I'll get ya back to her, Rick."
"Yeah?" He tries to put some faith behind the word but it still comes out doubtful.
"Yeah. I promised her. And I owe her."
"For what?"
"She was the first person that ever believed I was more than some dumb redneck. Like I actually mattered."
"That doesn't surprise me," Rick replies, rolling his right shoulder to ease the stiffness in his back. "She's got compassion oozing out of her pores." He smiles at the thought of Erin befriending the reticent hunter like beauty and the beast.
"She's a wily one too. She stopped me from robbing everyone when we first set up our camp," Daryl says quietly with his head turned down, looking shameful. "Well, me and Merle together," he adds with a shrug.
Rick looks at the hunter, not sure if he'd heard the words correctly. "What? Who did you rob and how the hell did she stop you?" he asks, sitting up straighter as the notion that she'd been in some kind of danger with the Dixon brothers has him suddenly, though unreasonably, concerned. Obviously nothing had come of the incident since they all seem to be living peacefully in camp, but he can't help clenching his right fist in a knee-jerk reaction, a by-product of his combative teenage years. Thinking of Merle threatening Erin in any way really makes him want to shoot the man in the balls like he'd offered her earlier.
"In the end, we didn't rob no one," Daryl tells him. "Thank God," he murmurs as an afterthought. "It was our second night in camp. Merle told me to take watch on the midnight shift so he could go through all the cars while everyone was sleepin'. He told me to forget about the walkers – I was supposed to watch the camp, make sure nobody come up while he was doin' his thing. Then we were gonna drive away before anyone woke up."
Rick watches Daryl pick at a stray thread escaping from a small hole in his jeans and waits for him to continue the story.
"Erin… she said she couldn't sleep but I think she was just waitin' up for us. She came out of her tent before Merle had a chance to come out of ours. She sat with me a little while, just keepin' me company she said. She must'a heard me and my brother talkin' that day. She didn't come right out and say she knew what we were plannin', but she skated around it, ya know? Said that I didn't always have to listen to Merle just 'cause he's older than me. Said there's other people I could listen to now."
He pauses again and Rick imagines a quiet conversation between Erin and Daryl as the world slept, the deep silence of the midnight hour shrouding them while the stars watched solemnly from above. Not so different than the scene playing out on the second floor steps of Campbellton high school, he thinks, as Daryl begins to speak again.
"She told me how grateful the whole group was for all the fish I caught that day. Said they were lucky to have me." A self-deprecating chuckle reaches Rick's ears and he looks over at his friend. "Imagine that – someone lucky to have me," Daryl mumbles in the darkness as he pulls harder at the errant thread, widening the hole in the denim. "She said we need to count on each other if we wanna survive. The only way we was gonna survive."
He meets Rick's eyes for a moment and then looks out toward the tiny pinpricks of light floating high in the darkness above the parking lot. "When I looked at her face, I knew that she knew. She knew what we were doin' but she wasn't gonna call out or tell anyone. She was giving me a chance, ya see. To make a choice for myself. Stick with Merle and run off on our own after stealin' all the supplies, or stick with the whole group and survive together."
"I see you made the right choice," Rick says and watches as Daryl nods his head.
"It was actually easier than I would'a thought too. But I guess it's easy enough if you have someone believe in you. The right someone anyway," he says softly, almost shyly as a corner of his mouth lifts into a small, modest smirk.
"Yeah, I know what you mean," Rick replies with a smile of his own, thinking of how Erin makes him feel like he's worth so much more than he's ever believed himself. "She's the right someone, that's for sure."
"So why are you wastin' yer time not bein' with her?" Daryl asks somewhat adamantly. "Who knows how much time you have left? Shit, she almost died the other day. Enjoy what you got, man."
"But what happens if it doesn't work? We can't just go our separate ways. Not anymore," he replies, thinking about the divorce proceedings he and Lori had gone through when they had finally decided to call it quits.
"Then you make it work. Isn't she worth fighting for?"
"Yes, and I am fighting for her. Fighting to keep her safe, to keep her alive."
"And you couldn't keep her safe if she was your girlfriend?"
"It's not that simple."
"Sure it is."
"Until I fuck things up and she hates my guts."
"So don't fuck it up," Daryl says matter-of-factly, earning a guarded look from Rick. "All I know is, if I had a woman like her, who looked at me like she looks at you, there's nothin' I wouldn't do to be with her. I mean, what's the point of survivin' if ya ain't really livin'?"
"Well, I won't have a chance to do either if we don't get out of here in the morning. Shit, she's gotta be freaking out by now."
"Yup. Good luck keepin' yer distance when ya do get back to her. She's gonna be all over you – after she tears you a new one for scarin' the shit outta her."
Then maybe we'll be even, Rick thinks, recalling how terrified he'd been three days ago when he almost lost her to that damned snake bite.
After a restless night on the cot and a long morning deliberating and discarding plan after hopeless plan, Rick's empty stomach rumbles loudly, echoing the hollow promise of escaping the large brick building. Standing next to Daryl in a classroom on the second floor, he slowly shrugs his left shoulder to loosen the muscles of his sore chest and back as they look out over the pathway they had walked along the day before. The midday sun shines down on the side yard where the bodies of the first walkers they had met lie surrounded by a scattering of over two dozen wanderers. He watches their lethargic march, an indecisive stroll that keeps them contained between the paved path, the fence separating the yard from the parking lot and a small copse of trees lined up on top of a slope that blocks the view of a baseball diamond. "Christ, where are they all coming from?" he wonders aloud.
"All the gunfire attracted every walker in the neighborhood like a moth to a flame," Daryl mutters at his side, sounding as frustrated as Rick feels.
"We need another flame," Rick says softly, rolling the thought over in his mind until it takes shape into an idea with a solid foundation and the strength to hold its form.
"Yeah, a flamethrower would be nice but I don't see one layin' around."
Rick scans the yard looking for the perfect torch until his blue eyes rest on the cluster of trees about fifty yards from the window. "Right there," he murmurs, ignoring Daryl's comment. "That's it."
"What's it?"
"Can you hit that big oak tree from here?" Rick points to the sprawling oak at the edge of the copse, its green leaves waving slightly in the afternoon breeze as if challenging the hunter to dare.
"Maybe. Prob'ly."
Rick grins at his partner, feeling a thread of hope weave through the heaviness he's felt in his chest all day. "We're gonna make a flamethrower." He turns from the window to head back to the chemistry wing on the first level, his steps light as he walks between the dusty desks. "Come on."
"Where to?"
"That chemistry lab downstairs. We should be able to find some kind of accelerant in there."
"Like what? Ya ain't gonna find gasoline in there. And ya ain't dowsing my bow in it if ya do."
"No gas, just some potassium or glycerin or something that'll catch quick and burn long. We'll just wet the tip of the arrow with it."
"We don't need no fancy chemicals, man. Purell and some cotton balls will work fine," Daryl says as they reach the top of the staircase. "We can prob'ly find that in the nurse's office."
"Hand sanitizer? Really?" Rick asks as Nikki bounds down the steps ahead of them, tail wagging happily with the freedom of the open space after spending the morning napping at their feet in front of the window.
"Yeah. Me and Merle done it a bunch of times."
"Honing your survival skills?" Rick asks, only half joking.
"Nah, just fuckin' around in the woods. It's a miracle Georgia wasn't burnt to the ground years ago," he drawls and shakes his head with a smirk.
Fifteen minutes later, Rick is holding the shaft of an arrow as Daryl winds another piece of duct tape over the Purell-soaked cotton wrapped tightly just below the point.
"Damn, I hope this ain't gonna be too heavy."
"Aim higher to compensate for the added weight. We've got a few arrows to play with so it's alright if you don't hit the first one. Just get the feel for it at least," Rick tells him as a whisper of warm air stirs a sheet of loose-leaf paper on the shelf in front of the open window.
"Good thing it hasn't rained in a while. The tree should go up pretty quick. If I can reach it, that is."
"You'll reach it." Rick looks at his friend as Daryl takes a lighter from his pocket. The hunter meets his eyes and Rick feels the weight of hopelessness trying to squeeze his chest once again. "You have to."
Daryl dips his chin in a brisk nod, full of confidence laced with a swollen grain of desperation. "Let's get out of here."
When the crossbow is cocked and the arrow loaded, Rick reaches over the windowsill to position the lighter just below the bulb of cotton peeking out of the duct tape on the garnished arrowhead. "Tell me when." He waits as Daryl adjusts his sight on the thick trunk of the oak tree across the yard. He can sense the change in the man's breathing, the stillness that envelopes his entire body as he becomes one with the bow and focuses every cell on his target.
When Daryl gives him the word, Rick ignites the white fiber and watches the hunter pull the trigger as an orange flame engulfs the three inch section of tape and soggy cotton. He releases the anxious breath he'd held when the arrow spears the central bush in a patch of ornamental shrubs about fifteen feet from the oak tree.
"Not bad. Were you aiming for that?"
"Fuck no!"
If not for the severity of the situation, Rick would have laughed at his friend's aggravated tone. "Alright, that was just a practice one," he says soothingly. "Now you know how to adjust it. Let's do it again." He reaches for the jar of cotton balls as Daryl grabs another arrow.
As the second and third arrows burn the grass just in front of the tree and Rick's sweaty shirt clings irritably to the edge of the duct tape stretched across his back, he exhales a deep grateful breath as the fourth arrow lands solidly in the base of the trunk, about two feet above the roots securing the majestic oak to the earth. "Thank you baby Jesus," he sighs, the oath warming his heart as he thinks of Erin and all the times he'd heard her murmur those words over the last few weeks.
He claps Daryl on the back of his broad shoulder and is surprised when the man flinches at the contact. "Nice job," he says softly, suddenly feeling like he's trying to earn the trust of a wounded animal. "I knew you could it, Daryl," he adds, praising his friend in a big-brotherly way that he imagined dickhead Merle had never done. "Come on, let's make some noise now to get their attention from the front."
Rick grabs one of the metal folding chairs they'd taken from the music room and hands it to Daryl, who seems to shake off an unfamiliar emotion and rearrange his thoughts back to a more comfortable place. Stepping to another opened window, Rick lifts an identical chair to the one that Daryl is dangling over the sill. "Alright, on three. Ready…"
On the third count, they simultaneously release their grip to let the chairs fall to the ground below, creating a shriek of screeching metal against the cement walkway. A moment later, a second crash echoes over the school property as two more chairs fall raucously onto the pavement, metal scraping metal against concrete.
By the time ten chairs are lying in a heap on the path, red-orange flames are licking up the thick trunk of the oak tree and devouring the ornamental bushes in a cloud of dark gray smoke. Leaning out of the window, Rick turns to see a steady stream of walkers stepping through the opened gate as many others line up along the fence, unable to navigate their way through it but unwilling to retreat from the sight of the enticing flames on the other side. "It's working. Let's get the hell out of here."
Ten minutes later, when the fire has captured and held the attention of the herd to clear the majority of the parking lot, Rick stands with Nikki at the front doors of Campbellton High as Daryl searches the pockets of the dead men down the hall. Finding the keys to the white Mazda van in the taller man's pocket, they hurry out the doors toward the two vehicles waiting to take them home.
This afternoon blossoms much warmer than yesterday's chilly start, but a coldness that has nothing to do with the temperature outside has settled into Erin's bones and floats an icy path through her bloodstream. A chorus of frogs drifts over the beach of the quarry as she scrunches her bare toes against the heat of the large rock beneath her.
She hears the hum and rumble of a truck coasting down the hill behind her and wishes Shane would just leave her alone, even though he has been exceptionally kind to her all day. The fact that he is here and Rick is not fills her soul with an unreasonable anger and she can't help but grit her teeth and clench her fists as she buries her face in her knees. She hears the sound of a car door opening and closing. After last night's hopeful dream and then this morning's crushing disappointment when he never returned, the emotional roller coaster running through her veins makes a sharp turn once again. The anger subsides and she is overwhelmed with grief, bringing a fresh wave of tears to her puffy eyes.
With the late afternoon sun shining down to warm the thick Georgia air around her, a salty river spills down her cheeks as the sound of boots crunching across the stony beach gets louder and louder on the narrow stretch of sand at her back.