The first two times Daryl took out his solar-powered bike, he hated it. He hated the quiet, the electric whir. He missed the manly roar of his ethanol-powered motorcycle and the raw smell of the fumes. But now, he loves it. He loves that the natural sound of the wind in his ears, the fact that he can hear so much more around him.
At first, he hated how light the frame had to be to make the power source viable, but now he loves the easy way he can maneuver around debris and abandoned cars, how far he can lean in either direction, and how quickly he can right himself again.
He's two miles ahead of Henry now on the largely straight highway, so he stops to circle back and meet up with Henry's cantering horse. Daryl makes a U-turn around the stoic animal, which is as unperturbed by the bike as it is by the walker that is now lumbering toward them from out of the wood a quarter of a mile up the highway.
Daryl zooms closer to the walker. With the flick of his wrist, he flings his knife through the air, and it lodges in the creature's forehead. Daryl looks over his shoulder and watches the monster slump face-down on the gravely shoulder. He grips both handlebars again, leans his bike, and circles around to the left to come back and reclaim the weapon, but Henry has already stopped, dismounted, and is pulling it out.
Henry hands him the knife, insisting, "I could have handled that."
Daryl sits casually, holding up his bike with one booted heel against the sun-grayed asphalt of the highway, and cleans his knife with a handkerchief. "Relax. Just takin' care of business. Ain't challengin' yer manhood." Daryl slides the knife back into its sheath. "Speakin' of which – don't knock up Jessica."
Henry flushes. He looks like as if he's going to deny that he's been fooling around with her, but he doesn't. Instead, he says, "I've got it under control."
"Carol wants ya to date someone yer own age."
"Who?"
The first person who comes to mind is Cyndie, because she's a bad ass and an excellent fisherman, but then Daryl realizes she's also ten years older than Henry. Then he thinks of that Ocenasider who's very near Henry's age. "Rachel!"
"Forgive my French," says Henry, using a phrase he picked up from Carol, "but Rachel is a stuck-up bitch." And that's a phrase he picked up from Daryl.
"Mhmm….Yeah," Daryl agrees. He can't argue with that. "Dunno. Enid maybe?" Enid's only five years older. Carol would probably be comfortable with that spread.
"She's with that guy who used to be a Savior."
Daryl peers at him with narrowed eyes. "What Savior?"
"Alden," says Henry, as though it ought to be obvious enough.
"Alden?"
"Yeah, Alden. I've seen them around. Laughing. Smiling at each other. Kissing. And I think he's thirty-seven. So if you're going to lecture someone on age differences, it ought to be her."
"Alden?" Daryl never liked that baby-faced Savior. At least Alden was on their side from early on, but Daryl always felt like he was just a little too conciliatory. Maybe Daryl would have developed more respect for him if he wasn't such a namby pamby. At least when Rick was trying to make peace, he was a man about it. Alden was what you'd get if you took Rick and chopped off his balls and gave him even worse aim.
"They're both adults," Henry says. "She's twenty-four, and a competent doctor, not to mention a Councilwoman. And guess what? I'm an adult, too. I'm done with my schooling, I work full-time, I'm the second most important hunter in Hilltop after you. And when you retire, old man, guess who's going to be Director of Forestry?"
"Listen, kid," Daryl mutters, "I don't give a shit 'bout the age difference. Just passin' on Carol's message. But I'll tell ya this – knock that woman up and yer stuck. Everyone's gonna 'spect ya to marry 'er. 'S the way it works in this world."
"What makes you so sure I don't want to get stuck with Jessica, anyway?" Henry shakes his head and paces back to his horse, which he mounts with irritation. He kicks its side, shouts, "Hi-yah!" and takes off galloping down the highway.
[*]
"Is this really necessary?" Carol asks Aaron as he hands her a large pair of sewing scissors.
"Ceremony is important. It gives people a feeling of being rooted to their community."
Carol turns to face the crowd of Oceanside refugees that is gathered outside the newly built dormitory. "It is my privilege as your Mayor," she says, "to dedicate this newest building to the honor of those Oceanside residents who were lost in the hurricane that battered your shores. This plaque –" She points to a hand carved wooden plaque by the front door, "bears their names, and in our hearts, we bear their memories." She turns and cuts the red ribbon that Aaron has taped from frame to frame across the front door, and there's clapping from the spectators.
Carol swings open the front door and turns to the crowd again. "Six months ago, we welcomed you through the gates of this town. Today, we welcome you to your new home, knowing that you will repay our generosity with your hard work and loyalty, as equal citizens of Hilltop."
She steps aside, hands Aaron the scissors, and watches their half of the Oceanside refugees filter inside their new dormitory to drop their belongings in their rooms.
"One of the Oceanside women decided to move into Tara's trailer with her," Aaron says, "so there's an extra room in the dorm, if we need it."
Carol's pretty sure Henry's going to want to take it. He'll move out of their cabin and leave an empty room, not to mention an empty hole in her heart. Time is pressing on, faster than she ever imagined it would.
"How's Hershey?" Aaron asks.
"No fever," Carol answers as she begins to walk with him away from the dorm. "But I'm holding him home from school for one more day to rest. Barbara's checking in on him while I'm at work." Barbara's a saint that woman, a sort of professional babysitter for the Hilltop's children. "How's Gracie?"
"She's got it now. Jesus is home with her. Glad to know it's a short-term thing."
Carol thinks of the sickness that spread through the prison in Georgia, and she's thankful that they're far more equipped to deal with such issues now. Even if this wasn't some minor virus, they have a clinic staffed by Siddiq, Enid, a former EMT from Alexandria, and now a former nurse from Oceanside. They have medicines, and, when Daryl returns, they'll have even more.
[*]
Henry and Daryl stop in a neighborhood of dilapidated country houses to scavenge. They're already ahead of schedule, so they have the time to browse. Besides, Henry wants to kick in some doors, and Daryl can't blame him.
Daryl kicked in a couple of doors when he was nineteen, and he didn't even have the excuse of an apocalypse. Once, his cousin Billy owed him twenty bucks and had hauled up in his cabin and locked the door and wouldn't let Daryl in or hand it over. And once, when Daryl got home from a night shift, Merle was tripping something awful in the trailer they shared, and Daryl could hear him screaming weird shit inside, but he couldn't find his key. It turned out, after he busted the hinges clean off, that the door had been unlocked all along.
Henry flies into the air with a spiral kick and contacts the wood with his foot in such a way that that it looks like he's barely tapping it – and yet it splinters. Daryl doesn't know how he does it. He half wishes he could do that kung fu shit, but he would feel like an ass twirling around like a ballerina. Knives and arrows are good enough for him, thank you very much.
Dust, mold, and cobwebs assault their throats as they cough their way from house to house. Rats, having made nests in the furniture, scurry across floors. They don't have much luck until the fourth house. The walker that lunges at them when they turn the hallway from the foyer is still very much alive. Henry whacks it hard with his staff and sends its already soft head splattering against the chipped yellowing paint of the hallway wall.
"He must have turned in the last year," Henry says. "He didn't look that rotten."
"Which means this house might still have some good shit," Daryl reasons. "If he survived here 'til recent."
Daryl steps over the carcass of the walker and sweeps the kitchen with his crossbow, but finds it empty. In the pantry they discover an unopen canister of salt, which Daryl takes for Carol, flour infested with weevils, sugar littered with the carcasses of dead ants, and six unopened bottles. "Coke!" Daryl exclaims.
"That's Orange Crush."
"Maybe where yer from," Daryl says as he snags one of the bottles, butterflies open his pocket knife, and uses the curve in the hilt to flick the cap off.
"That's got to be at least nine years past its sell by date," Henry warns.
"At the worst it's flat," Daryl reasons. He puts the rim to his mouth, throws back, and then spews the liquid out onto the yellow linoleum floor of the kitchen. He coughs as Henry laughs. Daryl wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, sets the open bottle on the kitchen table, and says, "Let's just take the salt."
They search the cupboards next. "Oh yeah!" Henry draws out a half-finished bottle of Tequila. "Is this like that schnapps you let me try?"
"Nothin' like. That shit will fuck you up."
Henry grins and unscrews the cap.
"One swig," Daryl insists. "'N don't tell Carol I encouraged ya."
Henry throws back his head the same way Daryl did a moment ago. He chokes and gurgles and lowers the bottle abruptly as the Tequila spills out of the corners of his mouth and runs down into his patchy, dirty blonde goatee. He's been trying to grow a full beard, but isn't quite old enough to accomplish it.
Now it's Daryl's turn to laugh. "Ain't like schnapps, is it?"
Henry gasps, pounds his chest, and says, "I think it's poisoned! It burns!"
Daryl laughs harder.
"I'm serious!" Henry pounds his chest again.
"Ain't no damn poison! 'S just 80 proof. Gave yerself a little heartburn, 's all."
"That's what heartburn is?"
"Wait 'til yer my age," Daryl mutters. "Every dam thing'll give ya heartburn. Ya just learn to live with it." He slaps Henry on the back and snags the bottle from him. He takes a swig, screws back on the cap, puts the bottle in his pack, and then continues searching the kitchen.
"I need to wash that taste out." Henry takes a drink from the flat Orange Crush Daryl couldn't finish. He actually manages to drink the bottle empty. Then he says, "Watch this." He throws the bottle into the air, twirls, and smashes it with his staff.
Daryl ducks as shattered glass reins down onto the countertop and on his own head. He bends his neck and shakes his head to get most of the shards out his hair. Then he runs his hand over the top of his head to brush out the last few pieces and ends up with a sliver stuck in his palm. He winces and pulls it out.
"Sorry," Henry says. "I didn't really think that one through."
"No shit," Daryl agrees, but he throws Henry a bone anyway – "'S kind of cool."
In the living room, Daryl goes through the collection of DVDs and snags a few titles he thinks the kids might like for weekly movie night. In Hilltop, they generate a limited amount of power via windmill and solar bay, so power usage is fairly strictly rationed and limited to certain areas of the town, such as the clinic and the communal kitchens, as well as the bathhouses, where it's used for heating water in a central tank. But once a month, they allow the kids to pile into the mansion's expansive foyer. The kids drag along pillows to sit atop and watch a film on a TV/DVD-player combo that is rolled in on a cart and plugged into a portable power pack.
The kids love it, but most of them have no idea what they're seeing. Movies set in the ordinary, pre-apocalyptic world are as magical and foreign to them as the world of Harry Potter. "What's that thing? What's that thing?" is the constant chorus rising from the cross-legged children as they sit before the glowing TV and watch people answering phones, flying in planes, and ringing up their purchases on cash registers instead of bartering at trading posts.
By the time Daryl's in the next room, Henry has picked up a comic book and is flipping through the pages. Daryl's gut ties into a sudden knot, and for a moment he has no idea why. Then he realizes that his body – even before his mind – is thinking of all the comic books Michonne used to find and bring back for Carl while they were tracking the Governor. And that in turn reminds him of the prison, which reminds him of Glenn and Maggie, of Herhsel and Beth and Rick, of loss upon loss upon loss.
Grief still strikes him like that, more often than he thinks it should. The most mundane things can trigger that tangling in his gut. He grits his teeth and turns and walks away so abruptly that he doesn't notice the loose doorstop until he kicks it, and it goes flying hard against the wall.
Henry jumps at the noise, drops the comic book, and whirls while preparing to swing his staff, but when he sees it's only Daryl, he catches himself, freezes in mid-motion, and draws back the rod. "Jesus. Don't sneak up on a guy." Then he looks down at the comic book at his foot and flushes with embarrassment. "I was just getting a couple, you know, in case the kids want them. For Hershey, you know. It's not like I read them anymore."
"Mhmhm." Daryl walks the rest of the way out of the room. He goes out the front of the house, hoping to find a walker so he can untangle this feeling in his gut with the thrust of a blade.