John joins Carol and Daryl for dinner and tells them a likely embellished tale of his attempts to outrun the herd.
"How's the leg?" Carol asks.
"It still hurts, but I should be back to hunting tomorrow."
"I don't know if that's such a good idea, John," Carol says. "Didn't Enid say you needed to keep pressure off it for most of the day?"
"I've got to keep myself busy."
"Well, I might have some lighter work for you, if you want to help Amanda with updating the inventory tomorrow."
"Amanda? She's the widow?"
"Yes." Her fifty-nine-year old husband was the first man to die of natural causes since Carol became mayor of Hilltop. He had a massive heart attack in his sleep one year ago. It was a shock to Amanda, who didn't even know he was having heart palpitations because he hadn't told her, despire Sidiqq's urging to do so.
"Hmmm…I suppose I could help out."
"I mean, she's no red head…" Carol teases. "But she's closer to your age."
[*]
John pushes off the planks of the front porch with the foot of his good leg and sets the chair to rocking. Daryl eases down in the rocking chair next to his.
"Jacob gave my death bed letter to Julie this morning. I sure wish he hadn't."
"Why?" Daryl replies. "What 's say?"
John sighs out a light gray cloud of smoke. "Just every damn thing I'm sorry for. All the ways I helped make it go wrong. That I should have tried harder." He shrugs. "And that I was about to die loving her because…hell…she's the only woman I ever have loved. Can't say the same for her. Her heart's moved on."
Daryl looks out over the dirt road to the closed-up school house across the way, where Julie still teaches, even though she's been replaced as the Director of Education by eveyrbody's-mom Barbara. "Sure she loves that asshole?"
"She's letting him live with her, isn't she? Sharing her bed with him." John grits his teeth and takes a drag before hissing out the smoke. "I wrote that I hope he treats her better than I did. And then I left my Remington and my booze to Jacob. And my dog to you."
"Me?"
"You've already been housing Daisy, and she likes you. I also left you my Winchester."
"To me?"
"Wish I hadn't made it now, don't you?"
Daryl smirks. "That is a beautiful gun."
[*]
The next morning, Daryl packs his knapsack to the brim with goods for trade, kisses Carol and Hershey goodbye, waits for Henry to join him at the gate, and then saddles his motorcycle to head out for the Kingdom.
A fresh, thin layer of snow dusts the ground, but there's no ice, and he glides across the decaying asphalt of the highway gracefully, the electric whir of the engine humming in his ears, which are red-tipped by the cold.
They stop to loot a few houses in a different development this time, taking a slight detour two miles off the highway to investigate. They pick up a few things, but not much – the houses have been largely picked over, probably at the start.
At the last house, Henry ties his horse to the post of a staircase leading up to a wrap around porch, pours some water from his canteen into an abandoned hub cap, and sets it down on the ground for the animal to drink. He looks around for any trace of walkers before following Daryl inside to rummage.
"Rich neighborhood," Daryl mutters as they walk into a large study with built-in bookcases. "Big ass houses." The houses are arranged one per acre, unlike most of the developments they come across, which try to jam in three. The brick and wood houses are all designed in their own unique styles, each one is different than the last, instead of the cookie-cutters they're used to seeing.
"Maybe the supply runners have been here?" asks Henry. "Maybe we should have checked the map first instead of wasting our time."
"Didn't see it on the map."
"Well, you better put it on the map, then."
Daryl pulls out his latest copy of the ever-expanding map the Hilltop has drafted thus far. His copy is two months old, and he won't get a new one until some time in January, so it might not be up to date. It's possible they've just retraced ground another Hilltoper has already explored.
There's a woman who's job it is just to be a copyist, a former artist who didn't have very many survival skills, and she's makes periodic copies of the map for the supply runners, hunters, fishermen, traders, defenders, and scouts. They add to it what they find, and the master copy is kept in the Council Chambers and routinely updated by the cartographer, an old man who used to be a history professor at George Mason University. Daryl smooths the crinkled map out on the great, cherry desk. "Got a pencil?"
Henry rummages through the desk drawers until he finds one and hands it to him. Daryl marks the development on the map, with an S12, which indicates that it has 12 houses, all of which have been scavenged.
"Such a waste of time," Henry mutters.
Daryl glances up at him and notices that the books in the bookcase over Henry's shoulder look wooden. "Maybe not." He folds up the map and leaves it on the desk for now as he walks over and pulls back on the books, which yanks a lever. The bookcase creaks and cracks open.
"Holy shit!" Henry exclaims. "Just like in the movies! Think there's a secret passage?"
Daryl wedges his fingers into the crack. And tries to swing the bookcase open. He grunts, and Henry helps. Their efforts reveal a door that has two keyed padlocks locks. "See any keys in that desk?" Daryl asks.
Henry rummages through the desk again but comes up empty handed. "We can go back to that garage at that last house," the young man suggests. "It had bolt cutters."
They do, and like a kid on Christmas, wondering what the secret storage room holds, Daryl flexes his muscles and closes the cutters down on the first padlock, grunting as he forces it to snap off.
"Let me do one," Henry insists, and Daryl hands the pliers over.
The boy struggles more than he did – he doesn't have Daryl's strength – but eventually the lock snaps.
Daryl grabs hold of the door handle and pulls it open. He isn't expecting anything living inside, so he stumbles backward into the desk, his ass hitting the wood hard, when a dessicated walker lunges out at him.
Daryl quickly draws his knife, but Henry's already drawn his. The young man stabs his blade into the side of the walker's head. He yanks it back out with a slurp and the walker slumps at Daryl's feet.
Almost as soon as Henry looks down at it, another walker emerges. "Behind ya!" Daryl shouts, and Henry whirls again and dispenses with the growling creature before it registers on him that it was only a little boy, maybe eight years old. Henry's hand slips from the hilt of the knife, and the walker falls with the blade still wedge inside of its forehead. Henry stares at the crumpled mass and the open glassy eyes and makes a strange noise. It occurs to Daryl that he's never killed a child one before.
Daryl steps forward, drags the walker child out of sight, and recovers Henry's knife. He wipes the blade clean and returns it to him.
"Sorry," Henry mutters, sliding the knife back into his sheath. "I just…" He breathes in and shakes. "I haven't felt anything in so long. You know…I mean…killing one."
"Mhmhm." Walkers became cockroaches long ago, their former humanity long forgotten. But it's hard not to remember when it was once a child. "S a'ight."
Henry turns and looks through the open doorway. "What the hell? They were locked in there?"
"Mother n' child. Daddy was probably protectin' 'em from someone or somethin'. He was gonna come back for 'em maybe, but he ended up dead and never did."
"And they starved to death?" Henry asks.
Daryl shakes his head and glances at the bodies. "Think Mama shot the kid when Daddy didn't come back after a few days 'n they couldn't get out. 'N then she shot 'erself." He walks inside. "Guns. Ammo."
Henry follows him. "Canned food. Water. Booze. Are those MREs?"
"'S a bunker. Small one, but…"
There's lots to loot still, and they don't have a means to transport it, so they take only a few things, shut it back up, and close the bookcase.
They leave the study and have their pilfered lunch in the kitchen – whiskey, which makes Henry hiss - and an MRE each. The expiration date on the MREs is three years ago, but because they were stored in a cool, dry place, and they know some of these things can last five years past the expiration date, they chance it.
Daryl has the mac 'n cheese, and it reminds him with a strange pang of the great before. Not that his life was better before the Collapse – in fact, it's better now – but with that reminder comes the reminder of all that humanity has lost.
"I wonder if there are more secret bunkers in the other houses?" Henry asks between bites.
"Have the supply runners check when they come," Daryl tells him. "Can't haul much anyhow."
Henry eats and drinks in silence for awhile and seems thoughtful. Daryl assumes he's worrying about Jessica and the pregnancy, but then the young man says, "You know how last names used to mean what people did for a living? Like Smith was a blacksmith and Miller was a miller and all that?"
"Mhmhm."
"I wonder if a hundred years from now, it'll be like that, but last names will be associated with whatever trade our people passed on. Like the Garrisons will be carpenters. And the Hamiltons will be butchers. And the Dixons will be hutners."
"Ain't gonna be no Dixons though."
"What do you mean?"
"I ain't had no kids."
Henry stares at him, his expression morphing from confusion to something like hurt. "What about me and Hershey?"
"Mean kids that'd have my last name."
"Well, what's my last name if it's not Dixon?"
Daryl takes a slow sip of whiskey and looks at Henry. It's never occurred to him Henry would want his last name. Daryl never wanted it. If you were known to be a Dixon boy, well, you were known to be a usless piece of shit at worst, trouble at best. He sets down his glass with a clink. "Ya want my name?"
"Why wouldn't I?"
Daryl's hand tightens a little around the glass and a lump forms in his throat that he has a little trouble swallowing down. He doesn't know what to say, so he mutters gruffly and quickly, "Yeah, well, young Dixon, don't bring no dishonor to the name, ya hear?"
"No, sir. Can't promise the same for my kids, but I'll try to raise them right." The left side of Henry's face twitches into an uncomfortable smile. "Think I should try to raise this one? That Jessica's pregnant with? Even if it's not mine? If the dad won't step up."
"Dunno, son. Ya got to fig'r that out for yerself. But I know you'll do the right thing, whatever the hell that turns out to be."
Henry laughs slightly. "Because I'm a Dixon."
"Yeah." Daryl grins. "'Cause yer a fuckin' Dixon."