I ran down the stairs fully expecting Daryl to yell at me. I certainly deserved it. My quick shower was anything but quick. I had no excuse, I really didn't and I was afraid to tell him I kinda had an emotional breakdown in the shower. How embarrassing was that? Nothing like having the guy you've been hot for think you are just a total loser. Damn, he was going to be so mad.

When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I looked around and saw him standing in the kitchen eating. "I helped myself to the canned beef stew. I hope that was okay. There more if you want some," he said calmly motioning to the pot on the stove with his spoon.

"Umm… yeah sure that sounds good." I helped myself to the rest of the stew and wondered did the universe take another sidewise spin? Why wasn't he mad? He didn't yell at me or even give me the old Daryl evil eye.

I ate fast and quickly cleaned up the dishes and the pot he used to heat the stew in.

"Let's head out. I want to get back to the group before dark. No need to be riding these roads at night," Daryl said calmly.

"I agree. I'm ready to go." I had my gun in my hand and picked up the keys to the door. "I'll put them back in the box to keep them safe."

I returned the keys to the box under the steps and we headed out. I noticed that the sky was now overcast as dark grey clouds moved in overhead. Night would fall even faster now and we needed to get back to the group. I didn't like the idea of riding at night. You couldn't see the walkers and that could prove to be deadly.

We headed back to where we stashed the motorcycle keeping to the road this time, but still on full alert. Surprises never ended well in the new world we lived in. We both wanted to keep living. When we reached the end of the drive, Daryl retrieved the bike and I grabbed our packs. Daryl secured his and the crossbow onto the bike and I still wore my pack on my back. He got on first and I climbed on behind him. With a roar of the engine, we took off down the road towards the small main street of Danville.

It took about twenty minutes for us to get to this quiet main street. First Daryl rode up and down it, then we hit a few of the side roads to get a feel of what was going on, which apparently was absolutely nothing. I mean nothing as we didn't see people or walkers or anything.

He stopped the bike in front of the grocery store. "Let's check it out," he said grabbing his crossbow.

I followed silently my knife already in my hand. The task of clearing a building was always dicey. You never knew what to expect behind every door, we had learned to expect the unexpected. Daryl tried the front door and found it unlocked. That was a bit odd as the lock didn't look jimmied or broken. The door was simply unlocked.

It did not take long for us to go down each aisle, look behind displays and counters. We found no one. We both looked at the door that lead into the back and Daryl shook his head. "We can do that another time," he whispered.

The store was basically untouched. The front door was unlocked, the shelves were full and no one was here. It was hard to believe that no one else had found this place before us to ransack supplies from it.

"This store is a gold mine!" I said quietly to Daryl. "An absolute gold mine of food! I'm filling up my pack to take back with us." Together we grabbed easy to eat canned items for the gang and dropped them into my backpack until it was full. It would be heavy during the ride back, but worth it when the family could eat again.

"If we had a car we could take so much of this stuff with us," I sighed. "I hope it's still here when we get back.

"Yeah, me too," Daryl replied absently. "Let's go."

I could tell that something wasn't sitting right with him. Heading outside to the bike the sky was an even darker shade of gray than before. Thunder now rumbled in the distance. We were in for a storm and I had no idea what we should do. I have never been on a motorcycle in the rain before. Was it safe?

"This is so gonna suck."

"What is?" Daryl asked taking another look around us.

"The rain. We're going to ride through it, right?"

"We can as long it ain't pouring, lightening and completely dark, otherwise we stand too big of a chance of either wiping out or running into walkers we can't see. But there's something weird going on here," he said. "What's missing in this town? What don't we see?"

I knew the answer the minute he asked. "Walkers. There aren't any walkers here."

"Right. At the cabins and here we haven't seen one damn walker and that ain't normal."

Before I could say anything the skies opened up and the rain started coming down in sheets. The wind picked up swirling leaves into the air and lightening flashed closer than I was comfortable with.

"Get on!" he shouted at me.

We both jumped onto the bike and Daryl took off. I had no idea where we were headed or what the plan was. I trusted Daryl to make the right decision on what to do. I just held onto him tightly and said a small prayer as we flew down Main Street.