Tell It To The Frogs
Glenn
Glenn could honestly say that he had never had so much fun as driving up the abandoned highway in a red sports car, travelling at over eighty miles per hour. The Vespa he had used for delivering pizzas could suck it. This was a mode of transport superior to all others. Not that there are a lot of things which aren't superior to a Vespa, mind.
After the drive which he would have loved to continue, Glenn arrived at camp. In his mind he was owed a hero's welcome, he had just gotten out of the city alive and saved all the others at the same time. Probably. He got out of the car a little reluctantly, sad to leave it behind and greeted everyone at camp. Most people were looking at him furiously. He remembered the alarm, which during the drive had stopped bothering him so much. Dale told him to turn it off, and as soon as he replied that he didn't know how.
He opened the hood trying to listen to what people were saying to him. All he could hear was the wailing alarm and Amy badgering him about her sister.
"She's okay! She's okay!" He attempted to reassure her as Shane went to the hood of the car to disconnect the battery.
"Is she comin' back?" Amy persisted. Glenn couldn't believe he'd had a crush on this girl when he met her. Amy was nice but she was loud and it felt like his energy drained just from talking to her. Either she was talking at fifty miles an hour, or she wasn't really listening to what was being said to her. Conversations with Amy were not easy tasks.
"Yes!" he assured her again.
"Why isn't she with you? Where is she? She's okay?"
"Amy!" Amy's friend Juliet spoke up. "Glenn said she was fine, she's fine. They're on their way back right now, and they're all fine, right Glenn?" She asked him, fixing her dark blue eyes on him, begging him to just say yes so that none of them had to hear Amy ask again.
"Yes! Everybody's okay. Well, Merle not so much."
"Why, what happened to Merle?" Juliet asked, looking a little worried.
"Do you care?" Amy asked her with one eyebrow raised.
"Not really, but he's a person, if something bad has happened then we should at least be a little sympathetic to that." Juliet reasoned with her.
"Well I won't be sorry if he's gone. We can all sleep a little safer at night if he is."
Juliet looked like she was poised to scold Amy for what she had said – although Glenn was pretty sure she was right – when Shane interrupted their mini argument.
"The hell were you thinking, drivin' this up here?" Glenn shrugged.
"We're probably okay. Nothing seems to have followed him up." Dale reasoned with Shane.
"Not yet." Amy interjected, earning her another look from Juliet. Amy was older than Juliet was but watching them together no-one would be able to tell. They looked about the same age, and Juliet was clearly the more mature of the two. Amy was quite childlike in the way she acted sometimes, which was often endearing but sometimes unnecessary. Glenn assumed the difference came from their families; Juliet was an older sibling and had to set an example to her younger sister, whereas Amy was the baby of her family, and had no reason to act older than she was, or even act her age most of the time. The two, despite the differences in their characters, did seem to be close though.
"Perhaps next time Glenn will think a little more carefully about what he drives, and where." Dale suggested. Glenn nodded, although if the chance came to drive a wailing sports car up the road again he would take it.
"Sorry. I was blinded by the awesomeness of my new car."
"It is a cool car." Juliet agreed with him, and he grinned at her.
"Thank-you. See? Someone appreciates how great it is."
No-one was listening. Everyone had now turned their attention to the truck which was coming up the road that everyone else who hadn't had the chance to drive such an insanely great car had been piled in to. Well. Not Merle.
As families reunited he noticed a few stragglers in the group, people who didn't have anyone else, no-one who was coming back to them. He was one of them, but honestly he didn't mind. He noticed that Juliet was another. He knew she had family in the group because when he'd first met her she'd introduced the little girl with her as her sister, and he assumed the adults Sophia was with were Juliet's parents too. She clearly just wasn't close with them. Lori was knelt comforting her son. They appeared to be a little separate too, although Shane, as usual, was close to them.
"How'd y'all get out of there anyway?" Shane was asking Morales, although Glenn managed to answer first, if only to remind them all that he'd been there too.
"New guy… he got us out."
"New guy?" Shane didn't sound best pleased at the idea that they'd brought someone back, but Glenn didn't know what he'd expected, them to get help from a random stranger and then leave him on the highway for the walkers?
"Yeah, crazy Vato just got into town. Hey, helicopter boy! Come say hello."
The mood changed as soon as the new guy got out of the truck. Lori and her kid looked over, and it was almost like they did a double take. Both looked like they had seen a ghost, someone long dead resurrected, just not in the way that was so typical now.
"Dad!" The kid kept yelling, eventually rushing to him. Both were crying. So was Lori who had now joined them. Glenn had to smile to himself. He'd rescued the guy from the tank. He'd made this happen. Glenn was suddenly very glad that he hadn't left the guy in there, no matter how stupid going in was in the first place.
Once the meet and greet was over, Glenn went to sit with Juliet who was continuing cooking dinner, which had been abandoned by Lori and Amy in favour of them being with their families.
"Need any help?" Glenn offered. He rarely had to do much around camp since he was the go to guy whenever a run needed to be done and everyone agreed that was work enough. Still, he knew that he should try and help out a little, and Juliet seemed a little flustered trying to cook for so many people by herself.
"Yes, I really do." She sounded relieved that he had offered. She'd probably wanted to ask and felt bad about doing so. "Could you just keep an eye on those two pots, stir them occasionally and take them off the heat if they start to boil?" He nodded. He had no idea what she was making, and by the looks of it, neither did she. Amy had probably just given her some vague instruction before running off to talk to her sister.
"Guess it's just us on the outskirts now." Glenn commented. Both of them looked over to the group and Juliet shook her head.
"It's kind of our choice though. Well, it's mine at least."
"Mine too. Kinda. But seeing people like this… Makes me wish I had my family around." Juliet lost the smile she had been wearing and stared down. It was clear that he had struck a nerve, though he had no idea why. He wasn't close enough to her to ask. "I'm sorry."
"It's fine." The smile was back and she looked up at him again. "I know most people miss their families. I miss mine, but I kinda considered mine to be my friends – my roommate especially. I keep wondering if she made it out of California. She had family in Oregon so she probably headed up there when all this started. I hope she got there, saw her older brother and his kids again. She was always talking 'bout them. Kept pictures of his sons on our fridge, commented every morning how she needed to get up there and see them and never quite got the chance. Either she couldn't get time off work in our holidays or she didn't have the money. Her brother brought them down once. Sweet kids, black hair, blue eyes all three of them, looked exactly like him, nothing like his wife. You'd swear they were triplet if not for the height difference." She stopped speaking and met his eyes. "It's funny the things I remember so vividly now. Just… Such unimportant things, yet I can't get them outta my head."
"All of it's important. Like Lori always says, it's the memories that keep us going." She said it along with him, grinning widely. "Exactly. I mean, I have no idea if my sisters are okay. I just have to hope they are, that I might get to see them again." Glenn didn't think he would. He knew they were probably either dead or far away by now, but there was still the glimmer of hope that people have when they don't truly know something. He told himself time and again they were dead, but there was that tiny part which kept saying 'but they might not be' and it was to that he held on, and would hold on until he knew for sure one way or the other.
Juliet nodded and quietly went back to dinner. He saw the new guy on his own and waved him over to them. Juliet looked up and smiled; Glenn remembered that she was a little wary around new people, but he figured he'd better make sure the new guy had someone to talk to while his wife and kid were off elsewhere.
"Juliet, meet the new guy. New guy, this is Juliet." Glenn introduced her, and Juliet got up off the ground to shake his hand.
"Nice to meet you, I'm Rick."
"Juliet, obviously. It's nice to have you here. Lori talked about you a lot, I know she and Carl will be just over the moon to know you're okay." She pushed her glasses up her nose where they had slipped a little with her leaning over the pan and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Glenn noticed she fidgeted a lot when she was talking to other people, the way she became seemingly more self-conscious. Seeing her by herself she was never like that.
"Well I hope so. They're both fixin' the tent before they show me it."
"Hopefully they won't be too long. Dinner should be done soon. Lori and Amy were working on it but they both have better things to do so unfortunately you'll have to taste my cooking your first night here. I apologise in advance." Rick laughed, and her weak smile grew a little wider.
"I'm sure it's not as bad as you think."
"Glenn, tell him."
"It's pretty bad." Juliet laughed and elbowed him in the ribs lightly, though he groaned and pretended to be in real pain, to which she rolled her eyes.
"Shut up. You're meant to reassure me and tell me what a wonderful cook I am and assure him that there is no better chef for his first night here."
"I'm not going to lie to the new guy."
"I swear, next time I have to do your laundry I'm going to put holes in all your shirts if you keep this up, and you know I'm not kidding." She did sounds serious, but Juliet was nice. He was at least sixty percent sure that she wouldn't do anything too bad to him, or his clothes. The two watched as Lori and Carl emerged from their tent and began to head over to the group of them. Rick looked at the pair and grinned, still clearly elated that he had found his family after such a long separation. New friends were quite rightly not a priority yet.
"Well I better go. I'll see you two at dinner. Nice to meet you, Juliet."
"Nice to meet you too." Juliet knelt back down next to Glenn, and carried on cooking in silence as Rick walked away, embracing his son again when he met them. "They're sweet." Glenn murmured in agreement.
Dinner was served just as the sun was setting, and everyone sat around the campfire. In the middle of a conversation about Call of Duty with her, and trying not to let on that she was clearly a lot better at it than him, Glenn sat with Juliet. He wondered if that might have bothered her friend Amy, but she seemed happy enough just to be with her older sister, grinning at Juliet as she walked over and giving her no other greeting.
They listened as Rick talked about how it felt to wake up. Glenn had been terrified enough as it happened, but at least then it came in stages. Somehow that made it easier to process. Waking up from a coma and being thrown in to all of this must have been terrible.
"I can't tell you how grateful I am to you, Shane." Rick said, turning to his best friend, the man who had saved his wife and his child. "I can't begin to express it."
"There go those words falling short again. Paltry things." Dale said, shaking his head. Juliet grinned.
"Not if you remember the right quotes!" she said, and everyone laughed. Rarely in the first couple of weeks had Juliet said much in conversations, but occasionally a quiet voice would pipe up with something from a book unrelated to any situation and manage to have remembered a quote which perfectly captured the moment.
Glenn watched Shane quietly excuse himself and go over to Carol, Ed, and Sophia who were sitting on their own. Juliet didn't notice, either that or she didn't care.
Juliet flinched beside him as she heard Ed yell at Carol. She was listening. Her eyes rested on the small fire they had going and glazed over a little. There was no use talking or trying to comfort her; she had managed to take herself far away from it all, and bringing her back by speaking to her seemed cruel when clearly she wanted nothing less than to listen to them.
Shane
As soon as Shane sat back down with their group though, she looked up and the pair exchanged a look of mutual understanding. Neither smiled, but Juliet looked grateful. She folded her arms over herself and clutched the sides of her shirt. After a minute or so of watching her intently, Shane came over and handed her his jacket. She looked reluctant to take it, but as though she remembered suddenly how cold she was so took it and put in on. Glenn had left her now to go and speak to other people. He wasn't one to stick around someone quiet for long. Shane didn't mind. He liked Juliet, and he didn't really like seeing anyone by themselves. He knew she was quiet, but he seemed to have managed that pretty well. They were probably as close to friends as they were going to get now.
"Keep it. I have others. You don't." Shane said to her.
"Thank you." Juliet sounded genuinely grateful. "If I'd have known about the coming apocalypse I would have packed for camping out instead of shopping and nights out."
"Lori will lend you some stuff when it gets colder. 'Til then that should help a little. You should've asked one of the guys going on runs to try and find you somethin'."
"I didn't want to be any trouble; they have enough of a job finding food."
"Better to inconvenience us once than to cause us a shitload of inconvenience later when you get sick and need medicine and care." Shane reasoned with her. "Ask Glenn the next time he goes in to the city, you two seem friendly. He won't mind."
"Okay."
His attention was focussed firmly on anything but Lori. He couldn't stand the looks of disdain she would shoot him every time Rick looked away. He needed to explain himself to her, explain how he had only lied so she would leave with him because it was what Rick would have wanted, and he would have died anyway, or so Shane had thought. Apparently he was tougher than anyone else in his situation would have been. He needed to tell Lori that he had never meant for anything to happen between them, that he had never thought of her like that until after everything had happened. Shane doubted though that she would ever let him near enough to her to say his peace.
One by one most of the people around the small campfire retreated to their tents. He didn't – It was his watch and even if it hadn't been, he wasn't tired anyway.
Shane noticed that Juliet didn't go to bed either. She actually rarely slept, as he saw it, waiting usually until specific people were on watch before she did. The first week he couldn't remember her sleeping at all when it was dark, though he remembered in the afternoons if she had nothing better to do then she would sleep.
Her eyes never met his. She watched her family, as her mother led her little sister in to bed before coming out again, sitting there until her husband let her go in to the tent.
"You sleep through the day sometimes." Shane said suddenly. Juliet looked up at him questioningly and smiled.
"'What hath night to do with sleep?'" she said with a small smile. "John Milton. I like it. I've been thinking it a lot recently." Shane, who was actually very well read and usually recognised the little quotes she inserted in to her speech, hadn't heard that one. He'd never actually gotten around to reading John Milton, although people were always telling him to. His ex-fiancée Anna had loved Paradise Lost and kept telling him to read it. They'd broken up by the time he finished the book he was reading and had time to ask her for it. "What are you getting at?"
"I just wanted to ask why you don't sleep sometimes?" There was no-one else around as he asked her.
"Sometimes I'm just not tired, like tonight. Then other times… I just don't trust a lot of people round here yet, that's all. I don't trust them to keep us all safe if something bad happens. First couple of weeks there were no exceptions, now there's you, Andrea if she takes watch, and Daryl too on the rare occasion he comes over here."
"You trust that guy and not someone like Dale?"
"I trust his survival instinct. I trust that he's not just gonna fall asleep out here or freak out and get killed by any walker which might make its way up here. I trust that he wouldn't just give in and let the rest of us sleep while we died because we might be better off like that."
"And you don't think any of that about Dale?"
"I don't know Dale well enough to determine any of that."
"Your choice I suppose. Personally, I trust that guy about as far as I could throw him, and his hick brother even less. It's a godsend that T-Dog dropped that key and left him stuck on that roof. We're all better off without him."
"Maybe. I can't speak for Merle, I had one conversation with the guy before I decided it was probably better just to stay outta his way, but I think Daryl just likes being by himself. I don't think he's a bad person, not like his brother."
"You've spent enough time with him to form an opinion like that?"
"Yes, but I'd probably have formed it even if I hadn't. I'm usually quite a good judge of character, though obviously I'm wrong sometimes. I don't think I am here though."
"Why are you spendin' any more time than necessary with him?"
"Amy and I go on walks in the forest. We see him out there all the time." It was the kind of brush off answer that had clearly been rehearsed in her head from the moment the conversation turned to him, probably half true but not the whole story. He saw no reason for her not to tell him everything so he assumed he was just imagining there was more to it. "I'm actually gonna head to bed now. Have a fun watch." He thought for a moment she was being serious. Her voice was too soft to be sarcastic, but she was trying nonetheless.
"I'm sure I will. I'll wake you up if we're about to die imminently." She laughed.
"I appreciate it. See you tomorrow."
"I'm pretty sure it's after midnight already."
"Well then, I'll see you later today, happy now? God, you're so finicky." He saw her roll her eyes before she walked away back to his tent, and he smiled to himself before it faded instantaneously. Now the conversation had died and he had been left alone with his thoughts, which meant that Lori was creeping back in to his head. He wanted nothing more than to forget her, to be happy that his best friend was alive and that Carl had his Dad back but he couldn't be. It was like Lori had managed to erase everything that had happened between them in the last couple of months in a few seconds, yet for him it still lingered in the air, haunting him and his every thought.
God help him, he loved her.
Juliet
After what had turned in to a very pleasant evening, first speaking with Glenn and then her first proper conversation with Shane, plus a new addition to the group who seemed nice and already helpful, Juliet awoke for once well rested and in a good mood. It was early, and she silently met her mother, Jacqui, Lori and Amy and went down to the lake to help them with the laundry. It seemed to pile up every day, and it was near impossible to keep on top of. Still, they did a pretty good job, and when they went back they had what was left from the night before for breakfast.
"See, I told you there was gonna be too much food." Lori said to Amy, shaking her head.
"Who cares? We get to eat two meals. Stop complainin'." Amy said, happily taking a forkful of Lori's now she had finished her own.
"I'll save some for Rick." Lori said, giving Amy a glare as she looked down guiltily.
"Good idea." Jacqui said.
"You think it'll be hot today?" Juliet asked suddenly. It was clear to everyone that she hadn't been listening, and Jacqui and Lori exchanged small smiles.
"It's Georgia. It's summer. Yes is a pretty safe bet." Jacqui replied.
"I mean hotter than usual." Juliet corrected herself. "It feels warmer than normal this morning."
"Yeah, I think it might be." Lori said with a shrug of her shoulders. "Does it matter?"
"You think there'll be much work to do?" Juliet ignored her question.
"Just another load of laundry, we'll get it finished in an hour or so if I can get Andrea to help, and a few of the others. They won't mind." Amy told her. "Why?"
"I am so sick of trousers that don't fit me and being too hot in jeans. I'm changing in to one of my dresses. I don't care anymore." Juliet announced.
"Lend me one?" Amy asked. She nodded.
"Sure. Let's go change now, okay?"
The two got up and went to Juliet's tent. She had her suitcase set up outside it, and thought once again how glad she was that she hadn't unpacked it at her parents' house. She had one pair of her own jeans and a couple of t-shirts. The rest of her luggage was composed of dresses, some long, others a little shorter, none appropriate for walking around in the woods during the apocalypse. If it was hot though, her and Amy would forsake their walk and just stay around camp, and she didn't care if it got wet in the lake. She just wanted something cool to wear.
They changed in her tent one after another and went back to the other women who then began to dissipate to take care of other things before they went to do the laundry. Amy and Juliet simply saw this as prime sunbathing time; no-one had given them anything to do and Lori could come and yell at them if their help was needed. It was too hot to be working.
Andrea came over and joined them after a while, commenting on how much she wished she was their size so she could fit Juliet's clothes as well.
"If you like you can rake through and see if there's anything."
"Thank you, but since we're gonna go fishing later I'll pass. Next really hot day though I'll definitely take you up on that."
"Crap!" Amy exclaimed. "I forgot about the fishing."
"As I remember it Dad took you fishing in a mini-skirt once." Andrea said, and Amy grinned. "I think you'll manage in the dress."
"You're right. I'm just so much better at it than you that I could fish in anything and still catch more of them than you ever could." Amy teased her, and Andrea laughed and elbowed her in the ribs. Amy squealed and pushed her away.
"Wanna bet, little sis?"
"We don't have anything to bet with, or I'd take you up on that."
"How about I do all your work for a week if you catch more than me, and you do all mine for a week if I get more than you?" Andrea suggested.
"Sounds like a fair bet to me." Juliet said, and Andrea smiled at her, though Amy looked worried. "Doubting your abilities, Amy?" she asked her. Amy was silent for a moment before she grinned knowingly and shook her head.
"Not at all. In fact, I think we should make it a month, that's how sure I am that I'm gonna win."
"Ooh, fighting talk kid. Sure. You're on."
If nothing else, Juliet was just glad that they were both competitive enough that this would mean they caught a load more fish than they would have if they weren't competing. The camp was going to eat well tonight.
"Juliet could come with us, right?" Amy asked her older sister.
"Yeah of course you could, if you want to. I think it's a pretty big boat that Dale's got." Unlike Amy, Andrea actually spoke to Juliet. She was grateful but she had literally never been fishing in her life and wasn't sure she'd be too much help if they took her along with them.
"I don't know how, but thank you for the offer."
"Maybe not today, but if we're gonna be here a while we could take you out on the water if we have a free day sometime, teach you how to catch something. It's a useful skill to have, especially now we actually have to be good at it to eat. You don't have to, obviously." Andrea said. Juliet smiled and nodded excitedly.
"I'd love to learn. I want to be able to do more than the washing around here."
Andrea was poised to speak, probably some annoyed comment about how little the men did around the camp, but before she could a piercing scream rang out around camp. Juliet was the first to get up, running quickly in the direction it was coming from, managing to maneuverer herself in her dress very well.
She saw the walker bent over and eating the deer, half its internal organs spilled out over the dirt. It was something of a morbid curiosity that meant she didn't look away, but kept her eyes fixed on it and the deer. She came out of the slight trance she had fallen in to when Dale, from behind her, cut its head off quickly. She flinched and looked at him.
"It's the first one we've had up here." Dale seemed to be talking to Rick. "They never come this far up the mountain."
"Well, they're running out of food in the city, that's what." Jim said.
"It was always gonna start happening. Everyone leaves, sooner or later they start going where there's food. You think more will follow it?" Juliet asked. No-one looked sure how to answer her question, and she looked down to the floor.
With the snap of a few twigs and branches, she watched as Daryl emerged in front of the group from the woods behind him. He looked upset about the deer. Juliet wondered if it was the same one he had been tracking a couple of days before when she and Amy had seen him out in the woods near to camp, or if he'd caught and eaten that one already and this was a different one.
"Oh, Jesus." Dale said under his breath. Most people standing there were probably thinking the same.
"Son of a bitch. That's my deer!" Daryl exclaimed. "Look at it. All gnawed on by this… filthy, disease-bearin', motherless poxy bastard!" He kicked at the carcass of the walker.
"Better the deer than one of us lying there being eaten." Juliet commented under her breath. She knew from the glare she received that he had heard her, although everyone apart from Daryl murmured in agreement.
"I've been trackin' this deer for miles. Gonna drag it back to camp, cook us up some venison. What do you think? Do you think we can cut around this chewed up part right here?"
"I would not risk that." Shane said, and Juliet shook her head before she spoke.
"Yeah… No. None of us are gonna eat that." Daryl sighed.
"That's a damn shame. I got some squirrel… about a dozen or so. That'll have to do." Although she had been rather against eating squirrels for the first few weeks, they now seemed to make up a large part of Juliet's diet, and with little else on offer she had to admit that there was a lot worse they could be forced to eat. They could be left with just mushrooms.
Before anything else could be said, the head of the walker began to move, teeth and jaw snapping at air, decapitated or not clearly still able to smell all the potential food that was standing around it. Again, Juliet watched it curiously.
"Oh god." Amy said quietly from a little way back. Clearly she wasn't as interested or comfortable with it as Juliet was. Perhaps even killing just one of them the day before had desensitised her a little to them. It wasn't a bad thing in her opinion, to be okay with killing them.
"Come on, people. What the hell?" He said people but he was looking at her. He'd been telling her about killing them, it had obviously annoyed him that she hadn't picked up on the fact Dale had killed it wrong. Honestly, she hadn't realised that beheading it wouldn't do the trick. Daryl shot it suddenly with one of his arrows. "It's gotta be the brain. Don't y'all know nothing?" She thought about making a snide remark about knowing how to speak English, but since she didn't want an arrow in her head too she thought the better of it.
"Come on, let's just go back." Shane suggested, though it was treated like an order by everyone, even Daryl, who trooped along back to camp with them.
"What's with the dress?" he asked her. "Ain't gonna be able to run very far in that when a walker attacks you."
"I ran up there just fine, and it's hot. I'm sick of boiling in jeans. I'm wearing something weather appropriate today instead of terrain appropriate." Juliet replied as she tied her hair back to keep it off her face.
"Whatever." They arrived back and he left her. She wandered over to Amy. "Merle! Merle! Get your ugly ass out here! I got us some squirrel! Let's stew 'em up." Daryl was yelling. Juliet felt bad immediately, having forgotten with everything that Merle hadn't made it back the night before. Daryl was not going to be happy about the absence of his brother in camp, and even less happy when he learnt exactly why Merle wasn't there.
"Shit, Daryl, I would have found you last night but you were out hunting…" Juliet said quietly. He frowned at her when Shane came over and rested a hand on her shoulder.
"I got this, Juliet, don't worry about it." She smiled at him, but stayed put. She wasn't sure, but she guessed at least that Daryl might be less likely to attack him if she was stood there too. Of course her estimation of that could be entirely wrong and he might do it regardless. "Daryl, just slow up a bit. I need to talk to you."
"What the fuck is this?" Daryl asked, eyes fixed on the pair of them. Juliet couldn't quite meet his eyes.
"There was a… There was a problem in Atlanta."
"He dead?"
"As good as." Juliet muttered, loud enough for only Shane to hear. She might not have liked Merle but she did not agree with leaving some guy handcuffed to a roof on top of a building full of walkers to either get eaten or die of thirst or starvation. That somehow seemed worse than just killing him straight off. At least then it would have been quick.
"We're not sure." Shane said with a warning glance in her direction. She pretended not to notice.
"He either is or he ain't!"
"No easy way to say this, so I'll just say it." Juliet hadn't actually realised that Rick had gravitated towards them in all of this. Daryl sneered and gave him a look up and down. He had probably already decided to dislike the new guy.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"Rick Grimes."
"Rick Grimes, you got something you want to tell me?" Daryl did not look happy that they had brought this guy back and not his brother.
"Your brother was a danger to us all, so I handcuffed him on a roof, hooked him to a piece of metal. He's still there." Juliet was pretty sure Merle hadn't appreciated Rick trying to take charge. She wondered if the others had minded or if they had been so out of their depth with the whole situation that they welcomed his leadership.
"Hold on. Let me process this. You're saying you handcuffed my brother to a roof and you left him there?"
"Brightside - he's not dead. Yet." Again it was loud enough only for Shane to hear her, but this time he elbowed her lightly. The snide comments probably weren't all that helpful.
"Yeah." Rick said. He sounded a little ashamed. Daryl clearly didn't care. He lunged for Rick angrily, met by a shove away. T-Dog, from a little way off shouted something about a knife just as Daryl pulled it out, only to be put in to a chokehold by Shane. Juliet watched, horrified, convinced that one or the other of them was certain to end this dead. Neither were forces to be reckoned with, but given the anger and obvious adrenaline, her money would be on Daryl to win. The chokehold didn't exactly work to his advantage though.
"Okay. Okay." Shane was doing his best to calm him.
"You'd best let me go!"
"Shane, just take the knife and let him go." Juliet attempted as far as possible to be reasonable, even though admittedly the whole thing scared her. Spend enough time around the dead walking and you forget how dangerous the living can be, she realised.
"Nah, I think it's better if I don't."
"Choke hold's illegal." Daryl managed to say.
"You can file a complaint." She managed not to laugh, but for someone who laughed at everything, especially at time when it was utterly inappropriate, it was a struggle. "Come on, man. We'll keep this up all day."
"Shane, you're not helping by provoking him." Daryl was still struggling in the hold Shane had on him and Shane shrugged, not loosening his grip at all. Juliet looked at Rick pleadingly. Her bet had shifted now from Daryl to Shane. There was no way Daryl was getting out of that unless Shane wanted him to, and right now he looked like he'd rather suffocate the other man than let him loose while he still might be a danger to everyone in camp.
"I'd like to have a calm discussion on this topic." Rick said, and she gave him a small, grateful smile. "Do you think we can manage that?" Daryl was still struggling, fuming with rage. "Do you think we can manage that?" Rick repeated.
"Hmm?" Shane prompted him. Daryl looked at her. Any attempt to reason with him now from her probably wouldn't help. He'd make his own decision and any further input would probably hinder the discussion.
"Mmm. Yeah." Daryl agreed unhappily. Shane let him go, and he took in a breath of air.
"What I did was not on a whim." Rick immediately began to explain himself. "Your brother does not work and play well with others." Daryl probably thought the better of arguing with that, because he was not blind to his brothers faults. Obviously this was not a part of his character that Daryl had managed to completely overlook.
"It's not Rick's fault. I had the key. I dropped it." T-Dog was closer now, willing to chip in since it had kind of been his fault that Merle was stuck up there, and not just brought home in handcuffs.
"You couldn't pick it up?"
"Well, I dropped it in a drain." T-Dog said, looking down. He really hadn't helped himself with that one.
"If that's supposed to make me feel better, it don't."
"Well, maybe this will. Look, I chained the door to the roof… So the geeks couldn't get at him… With a padlock. It's gotta count for something."
"He's probably still alive then, right?" Juliet asked. T-Dog nodded.
"He's only been up there a night, not enough time to die of thirst, even in this heat. We could take some tools, go help him…"
"Wait a minute, are you sure the walkers couldn't get to him?" Shane asked. "Because if there's even the chance they could have, then you can't go. It's bad enough going in to the city when it's necessary, let alone to get some piece of shit like Merle." Shane seemed to have forgotten that his very angry brother was stood not four feet away from him.
"Shane, he's a human being. We can't leave him like that…" Juliet protested, and Rick nodded.
"She's right. Bad person or not that inhumane, leaving him chained there like a dog."
"Hell with all y'all!" Daryl was clearly bored of listening to them all talking like he wasn't there. "Just tell me where he is so that I can go get him."
"Rick can show you. Isn't that right?" Lori suddenly chimed in. Juliet hadn't even realised that she was listening, although from all the carrying on, the whole camp had probably overheard most of what was going on.
"I'm going back."
This was obviously not what Lori wanted to hear. She glared at her husband and stormed off. Juliet guessed she meant that Rick could just tell him, give him a set of directions, and send Daryl on his way, but she was on Rick's side here. It was all his fault in the first place, so clearly he felt some responsibility for what happened to Merle and wanted to help out, and regardless of that, letting Daryl go in to Atlanta on his own was a suicide mission.
"Great. Hurry the hell up. I don't wanna leave him up there any longer. He ain't exactly gonna be happy to see you." Daryl said to Rick. To his credit, Rick just nodded, thinking the better of starting another argument with him.
Rick went off to change, and Juliet sat down by herself, feeling a little exhausted by all the arguing that had been going on.
"You think I should go?" T-Dog asked. He had appeared sat next to her, and there had been no-one else close enough to ask. She shrugged and looked at him.
"I think you dropped the key. I think it would be a lot better if you went and at least tried to make it right, or at least offered. I think you need to take responsibility like Rick is trying to. And I think that you already made your mind up to go but you don't wanna piss Shane off by saying you want to help them."
"You think too much." T-Dog said with a frown, and she grinned.
"I know. Stay safe out there, okay?"
"Nice to know at least one person's gonna worry about me while I'm out there potentially getting killed."
"Well, me and Jacqui. She's your friend."
"I suppose so. Better go tell them I'm tagging along. Let Daryl yell about it for a while before we need to leave." Juliet laughed and watched him go over to tell the little group that had gathered that he was going with them.
She sat by herself for a little while reading. The women had decided laundry could wait until everyone had left and all the excitement in camp had died down a little, so she was free to spend what was left of the morning however she liked, and re-reading Rebecca for the millionth time seemed a good place to start. It had been her favourite book since she first read it at fourteen, and she was incredibly thankful that she had thought to pack it in her case when she went to visit her family. She couldn't imagine not having it with her.
"What're you doin'?" Juliet looked up as her light was blocked out, and blinked, adjusting to the lack of brightness. Daryl stood there with his arms folded.
"Cartwheels. Don't let the book fool you." Getting up early plus all the exhausting arguments meant that despite her earlier good mood she was now feeling snarky and sarcastic and she was perfectly willing to take that out on anyone who annoyed her even a little, even someone who it was probably best not to piss off in their current mood, like Daryl.
"I meant, why the fuck aren't you changed yet?"
"Why would I be changing?"
"You're coming, right?"
"I don't remember saying I was, or even thinking about the possibility that I might, so no, I'm not coming."
"Yeah you are." She raised one eyebrow at him. "You need experience out there, where you actually have somethin' to lose. You ain't gonna learn shit just killin' the occasional one out there in the damn woods." Annoyingly, what he was saying made sense. "Look, I'll have your back. You won't get killed, but it'd do you good." She was shocked that he was actually being reasonable, especially in his current state of mind.
"Fine, I'll come." He didn't smile, but he looked somewhat pleased. She knew her tone didn't sound as brush-off as she might like it to and that she was giving away the fact that she was excited, if a little nervous, about her first time going in to the city.
She got up to go to her tent and smiled as Shane wandered over to the pair of them.
"You okay?" he asked her.
"Yeah, she's fine." Daryl answered for her, and she managed to refrain from rolling her eyes. "We were just talkin' bout how Juliet's gonna come with us to get my brother." Shane looked at her and actually laughed, shaking his head.
"No. She's really not."
"Why the hell not?" Daryl asked him.
"Because she has no experience out there, I'm not risking her life for your piece of shit brother, and she has work to do here." Daryl looked just about ready to start another fight with him, but she shook her head.
"Look, it's fine. I'll go on one of the less dangerous runs some other time when I've cleared it with everyone more than ten minutes before I leave. You have three very capable people going with you, I'll just hinder this whole thing and I don't want any of you getting hurt because you're too busy covering me."
"Fine." The look he gave her told her that he wanted her out there, getting real experience as soon as possible. He probably had half a mind to tell Shane she could shoot a gun better than most of the people who went on runs, but he didn't. She flashed him a quick look of gratitude and wished him good luck on his search before she went to find Amy and the other women, who were wandering around camp gathering laundry to do. She watched as the four sped off in the cube van, and hoped that they were successful and that there were no severe casualties.
Lori had been excused from having to do her work. Apparently worrying about her husband was reason enough for her to be signed off for the day.
"I'm beginning to question the division of labour here." Jacqui commented. Juliet and Andrea agreed immediately with her. It was pretty much the only topic of discussion between the three of them, how little the men at camp actually did. Shane bossed people about, but Juliet could have done that too, and it wasn't exactly hard work. Ed did fuck all, but Juliet was hardly hopeful that would ever change. Dale and Jim constantly seemed to be trying to fix the RV but it wasn't exactly keeping them going. The other went on runs, which were needed but honestly they happened at most weekly. Surely between them they could have helped with the laundry and cooking once in a while. Daryl was the only one who was constantly helping, they always needed more food, and he was pretty much constantly hunting. "Can someone explain to me how the women wound up doing all the Hattie McDaniel work?"
"The world ended. Didn't you get the memo?" Amy asked jokingly, which earned her a glare from both her sister and her friend.
"The wold ending does not excuse the fact they do nothing to help. In fact, it makes it worse." Juliet said icily. Jacqui and Andrea hummed in agreement.
"It's just the way it is." Carol said quietly. It was the first time she had spoken in the half an hour they had been doing laundry for. She was always careful, especially when her husband was watching her closely like he was, not to say too much about anything.
"Well it shouldn't be." Andrea told her firmly.
"I'm gonna go and get a drink from back at camp, does anyone want anything?" Everyone requested water, apart from Amy who asked for 'any and all snacks' that Juliet could find, and laughing, she walked away from the group. As she walked closer to the path up to camp, Juliet watched the brief altercation between Lori and Shane, as Lori marched her son away from him and back up to camp. By the time she arrived at him, it was over, and Shane sat by himself looking at the water.
"Are you okay?" she asked tentatively.
"Yeah, I'm fine, don't worry 'bout me. Look, I'm sorry I stopped you from goin' in to the city today. I just think, if you're gonna risk your life, don't do it for someone like that. Go in because we need supplies or something, not for that. I don't have a problem with you going in so long as someone's there who can look after you. I'll ask Rick next time you want to go, okay?" Shane explained himself, and she smiled brightly and nodded at him.
"Thank you. I just… I wanna help out by doing something other than laundry."
"I know. Hell, I would too. I just…" Shane stopped, eyes fixed on where a loud racket was coming from. Juliet turned, watching Ed arguing with the women. She started to make her way over but Shane put a hand on her arm and shook his head. "Stay here. I got this." He sounded quite calm, but he looked about ready to blow a gasket. Juliet sat down, not sure what else to do, watching worriedly as Ed slapped Carol around the face. She stood, ready to go over and intervene no matter how little it would have helped when Shane pounced on the guy, pulling him off Carol, flooring him immediately.
Shane pummelled the other man in to the ground. Ed might have been bigger than him, but it was all fat, and Shane had muscle and strength on his side. He kept him pinned to the ground, beating him bloody. Juliet just watched on in horror.
She heard the commotion but could make out nothing specific. All she saw was Shane getting up eventually, leaving him alive, but just barely. She watched Carol bent over her husband's body, sobbing and apologising. It was ringing in her ears.
Shane walked past her, and she went after him.
"Shane!" she yelled. He stopped in his tracks, as though remembering he had been speaking to her before all of that. He turned and looked at her.
"You gonna yell at me for beating the crap outta that guy? Cry like your Mom?"
"She should be cheering." Juliet said coldly. "He deserved that, and if I was strong enough to keep him down like you did, I would have done it myself a long time ago." Thanking him seemed too odd, but she hoped he knew she was grateful, not just because Ed deserved it, but because, for all she had done, Carol didn't deserve to be beaten in front of women she knew. Ed had no shame about what an abusive bastard he was. "You should have kept hitting him." She didn't look sorry that she had said it, a little surprised more than anything.
"Next time, I will." He used exactly the same tone she did, cold, almost dissociated from what had just happened. It made sense for him; Ed meant nothing to him. He was just a guy who hit his wife who deserved to be punished from where Shane was sat. It should have been more complicated for her, but it wasn't. There was no love for her father anywhere in her mind, unlike her mother, where try as she might to tell herself she hated her, she could never quite bring herself to do so fully. Her mother, unlike Ed, for all that had passed between them, did care about her. Ed never had, and never would, and she didn't care, because she felt the same about him, perhaps with a little more loathing thrown in to the mix for good measure. "You know, you should probably ask someone to bandage your hand for you; you probably broke some bone. It looked like there was a lot of force behind those punches." She wondered if all the anger had been to do with Ed, or if it had been pent up from before that. Juliet wondered what exactly had passed between him and Lori before she had gone over.
Finding she had nothing left to say to Shane, and exhausted, Juliet walked past him and back to camp to get the drink she had promised herself. She would wait until she knew Ed was gone from the lakeside before she took anything down to the others. She didn't want to see him again after that.