Chapter 26

The ride home was silent, but no words needed to be spoken. Carol couldn't keep the grin off of her face, and Daryl couldn't keep his free hand off of her thigh. As they drove away from the little house they'd made their own for a couple of hours, he gently squeezed her thigh and felt her place her hand over his, rubbing his knuckles softly.

Carol gently strummed her fingers over the back of his hand, and she rested her head against the headrest, peering over the snowy road, yawning and fixing her gaze on the tire tracks they'd made on the way home. One good thing about being the only car on the road was that it was mighty easy to follow your own tracks home.

They were halfway home when Carol shot up in her seat, gripping the dash.

"S'wrong?" Daryl asked, hitting the brakes. The truck skidded briefly, tires sliding over ice, and Carol pointed toward the side of the road, where a few feet away, a walker was devouring the carcass of a dead dog. A few feet away, a puppy that appeared to be a German Shepherd, was bounding through the snow toward the walker.

"Poor little thing," Carol murmured. She bit her lip and reached for the door handle.

"What're you doin'?" he asked. But she was already aiming her gun and shooting the walker in the head. The puppy whimpered and jumped before freezing in place, and Carol scooped the little fur ball up and tucked it inside of her coat. She came back to the truck with a hopeful grin on her face, gently stroking the puppy's ears.

She closed the truck door, and the puppy nuzzled her chin before giving her a ticklish lick on the jaw.

"Got a thing for dogs, do ya?" Daryl asked, leaning against the steering wheel and watching her with an samused smile on his lips.

"Oh, Daryl, she's an orphan. She needs someone."

"She?"

"I think she's a she." Carol held the puppy up a little, turning its rear up. "Yep. She's a she." She tucked her back in her coat. "Come on. She's…"

"Another lost one," Daryl said quietly. Carol nodded somberly.

"Puppies are needy and they yap a lot."

"Well, some people are needy, and some people are loud and talk a lot. We have walls, Daryl. It'll be ok. Besides, she'll grow up to be a great watch dog." She kissed the puppy's nose. "Won't you?" Daryl chuckled and put the car back into drive, heading off toward home.

"Looks like we got ourselves a dog."

Sophia helped Jenna make up a bed for the puppy, and Jenna insisted that the puppy sleep in her room, which Carol was absolutely ok with. If it insured that Jenna would continue sleeping in her room, maybe it meant the nightmares would begin to fade away as well.

"What are we gonna do with a dog?" Beth asked, exasperated as she cut up leftover squirrel meat from lunch to give to the puppy.

"You grew up on a farm. You don't like dogs?" Carol asked, helping her slice the pieces into smaller, more manageable ones for the puppy to chew.

"I love dogs. I just…I guess I didn't think I'd ever see one again that wasn't, you know, sick or dead or something like that." Beth shrugged and wiped her hands on a towel. "You know, Jenna really misses her mom and dad."

"I know," Carol said with a deep frown, scraping the scraps into a little bowl. "I wish there was something I could do."

"She asked me something, and she told me not to tell you, but I thought you should know."

"What's that?" Carol asked softly, turning to give Beth her full attention.

"She asked if you and Daryl were her new mom and dad. She…she said she wants a mom and a dad, and she thinks that you guys are it."

"Oh," Carol said softly, raising her eyebrows. "Poor thing."

"Carol?"

"Hmm?"

"I miss my dad. I miss my sister." She smiled a little, blinking back tears. "I know my mom's gone. I know that. But the not knowing? Not knowing what happened to Maggie and my dad, it's just…I don't sleep much. At night. I write. I write music, and I think, and I feel bad, because I had all those years with them. Jenna's so young. A few years go by, and she might not even remember her mom and dad." Carol gently squeezed Beth's arm.

"Hey. The world we live in calls for survival. That's what we're doing. It's what Glenn would want for Jenna. It's what your dad would want for you. It's ok to think about them, but you can't let it take over. You can't let it stop you from moving on." Beth gave Carol an understanding nod.

"Come see!" Jenna squealed, hurrying into the room. Carol and Beth followed the little girl into the living room, where Daryl was standing in the center of the rug. The little puppy was standing on her hind legs with her front paws on Daryl's leg, looking up at him expectantly. Carol giggled at the sight.

"Somebody likes Daryl," she teased.

"Ain't a dog person."

"Don't tell me you're a cat person."

"Ain't one of them either," he grumbled.

"Looks like you are now," Sophia teased. She scooped up the puppy and scratched it behind the ears. "We should name her."

"How about Rover?" Carl snickered.

"No, she needs a girl's name. How about Sugar?"

"Sugar?" Daryl asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah! See, she likes it." Sophia pulled something out of her pocket, and held her hand out. It was a sugar cube from the box in the cupboard in the kitchen. The kids had been eating them as sweets. The puppy licked at it, and Carol laughed.

"She does! Sugar. I like it." She gave Daryl a little pat on the behind as they stood watching as the kids crowded around playing with the puppy and calling her by her name.

"I gotta call her Sugar?"

"It's her name, Daryl," Carol teased with a grin. She stood on her tiptoes and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

"Sugar," he muttered. "Had to be Sugar."

Baby Judith and little Jenna were both napping when the gunfire began outside the gates. Carol and Daryl had been watching Beth, Sophia and Carl engage in a rather hardcore snowball fight, and poor Carl hadn't stood a chance against the girls. Carol had even tossed a couple snowballs Daryl's direction, but everything stopped when the gunfire started.

"Fuck," Daryl hissed under his breath. "Grab the guns. Let's keep it quiet. Ain't nobody gotta know we're here." Everybody filed inside and grabbed the guns out of the hall closet before heading out of the house and rushing up to the gates.

Daryl was the first there, peeking through a small slat to see walkers falling over one another as gunshots rang out. Carol climbed up, and Daryl reached to pull her down, but she was quick, pulling herself up the concrete siding and perching just below the top of the wall, peering over to get a good look.

She saw quite a few people with guns and supply packs, but it was the woman in the center with the long samurai sword that made her freeze. She knew that woman. She knew that cloak she wore on her back.

"Open the gate," Carol called down.

"What?" Daryl asked, looking up, uncertain if he'd heard her correctly.

"Daryl, it's Michonne. The woman from the woods!" Daryl's eyes flickered with recognition, and he reached up for her, helping her down.

"You sure?"

"Yes! Let them in. Please. She helped us. The least we can do is help her, too." Daryl nodded, and he and Carol went to work opening the heavy gates they'd reinforced with large beams. As they opened, the walkers began to try and force themselves in, and Carol and Daryl were the first to start popping off rounds, leaving a pile of walker corpses as some sort of red carpet welcome.

"Get inside!" Carol called, waving her arm as the weary survivors began to stumble over the bodies to get in the doors. Michonne took up the rear and ran in last, making certain the rest of her group made it in safely. As the doors slammed shut, closing out the rest of the world, everyone turned to look at one another. Michonne's eyes fixed on Carol, and recognition flooded her face.

"You."