Now, John at the bar is a friend of mine . . . He gives me my drinks for free . . .

Or maybe it's Jim at the bar. Jim, John, Jim. I knew a Jim once.

Anyway, those are the first two lines of the second verse, I've figured them out by sunrise. Can't remember what's right after that, but a few lines down it's He says, "Bill, I believe this is killing me" . . . As the smile ran away from his face . . .

I'll remember the rest later. For now, we have work to do.

. . . . .

I flip the pipe in the air and catch it without looking. My eyes are too busy watching the five of them, Dad and Rick and Maggie and Glenn and T-Dog, who are over by the gate Rick closed just yesterday. The same gate that Hershel's about to open. I flip the pipe again, meeting Carl's eyes now, and then there's the painful shriek of the gate being thrown open and our five people – my dad and Carl's dad and three friends we love – are on the other side of it, Hershel's closing them in, and I kick the fence in front of me, hard, and scream, "Hey!"

Me and the others run along the fence, banging on it as we go, bringing as many walkers as we can over to us, away from the five, who are moving forward steadily, keeping the usual circle formation that lets them watch every side and guard one another's back. Some walkers are moving toward those of us outside the fence, but not enough. Our first walker reaches Hershel and he puts it down, and two more are close, but there are just not enough coming. I yell and cling to the fence, gritting my teeth, looking between the walkers and our people, who keep moving forward, weapons at work, blood flying, walkers falling. Maggie slices a head open. My dad stabs one and it drops. A walker's getting close to me, its eyes are on me. "That's right, asshole, c'mon!" I tell it, and it snarls back, and as its hands grip the fencing I shove my pipe through its eye. There's an explosion of red stuff and now the used-to-be man is no more. Screaming all around me, the clanging of fence, the others trying to lure more walkers over, and I yell some more, too, but I keep glancing back at the group on the inside. They're making good progress, they're all the way at the other end of the courtyard now, nothing but dead walkers behind them.

I have to stab another geek, and then there are no more walkers left in this part of the courtyard. Our five, they're pressed up against a wall – no, just four of them, my dad's at the end closest to us. His crossbow is up. Can't tell why, he's looking into an area of the courtyard I can't see from here, but he starts to move forward, slowly, and I see him shoot, but then he backs off, fast, and something's wrong, and Rick jumps forward with his machete high. I get just a quick look of a tall walker with some sort of helmet on its head, and then T-Dog shoves that walker away, and now they're all behind a wall, my dad and everyone, out of sight.

"I can't see them – can you see them?" I hear Lori ask Carol breathlessly.

"They're back there . . ."

I slam my pipe into the fence and start pacing behind the others. At one point, I hear Rick yell my dad's name, and I can't tell anything by it, not a thing. I catch Carol looking back at me and I look away, cracking my fingers, gazing into the empty courtyard.

One minute goes by. Two. Hershel pats Beth's back, Carol and Lori murmur to each other, Lori rubs her belly. I pace. Carl stares straight ahead. I pace some more, faster, and then they're back in view, all of them, all five of them, my dad included, and they're bloody and dirty but they're all fine, just fine, and I spring back to the fence. Courtyard's clear, then, at least this part.

But then they stop. Rick talks, and I see my dad pointing in a direction to my right and then at a walker on the ground behind them. I can't hear what they're saying, even though I've got good ears, and now, now Rick's leading them off, off to our left, and they don't come over and tell us why. They jog all the way to what looks like a cage, and Rick opens a door and I see that it's not a cage, it's something that leads to a door that leads into the building. They're hard to see when they get behind the caging, and then I can't see them at all. The last thing I hear is the wail of a heavy door being rolled open and closed.

"Son of a bitch . . ." I murmur, and not even Carol gets on to me.

Fifteen minutes, at least. That's how long we have to wait, out in the hotter-every-day sun, twiddling our thumbs because the five of them couldn't take the time to run over and tell us the plan. Fifteen minutes of basically silence, very heavy silence, and then that door wails again and Glenn and Maggie appear from the caged place. Just the two of them. But as Maggie jogs over to the gate, she calls, "We're clear."

We're clear. Everyone's fine. I feel like I've been holding my breath for an hour, but everyone's fine.

Our vehicles are parked outside the fence. We get our bags, and I get my bow, and then we go into the prison, following Maggie and Glenn across the courtyard and the bodies, into the caged place. Up a short set of stairs is a big door, and Glenn pulls it open, and he leads the way into a dark, cool room. The only light in here comes from a giant, barred window over to my right. A few stairs lead down to a trash-covered floor and two round tables with the chairs connected to them. Across from me, another set of stairs, longer, leads up to a small, windowed room above our heads, and a balcony connects to that and wraps around the right side of the big room. The air is thick with the scent of decaying flesh, but that's really pretty normal for any place we hide out in.

Glenn and Maggie don't stop here. There's an opening in the far right corner of the room, with a door made only of iron bars swinging open, welcoming us in. Just as we're crossing through this opening, a body falls from above and lands in front of T-Dog, who bends down and starts dragging it away.

This room's narrower than the other one, but it's long, with more of those barred windows to my right. To my left are what I know to be cells – little rooms with bars for doors, all of which are open. Directly in front of me there's a staircase that leads to more cells up above. My dad's up there now, I can see him looking around, he's fine. And now Rick's walking down the stairs. "What do you think?"

"Home sweet home," Glenn says from in front of me. Grudgingly.

"For the time being."

"Is it secure?" Lori asks. There's trash all over this floor, too. Trash and dirt and other unknown things. I poke a bundle of paper with my toe and something scuttles away, disappearing under a different trash pile and not showing its face again.

"This cell block is," Rick answers.

The C Block. There's a sign on the wall that calls this place the C Block.

"What about the rest of the prison?" says Hershel. We're all grouped together in the center of the room, none of us entirely sure what to do here.

Rick comes to a stop in front of us, hands on hips, nodding a little, the way he usually does when he's thinking. "In the morning, we'll find the cafeteria and infirmary."

"We . . . sleep in the cells?" Beth asks uncertainly.

"Found keys on some guards . . . Daryl has a set, too."

"I ain't sleepin' in no cage," Dad says from above. I look up to see him eyeing the top of the stairs. "I'll take the perch."

I shift my backpack. My dad can do what he wants – disgusting or not, the cells have beds in them. A bed sounds nice. Very nice.

Maggie and Glenn have claimed a space, Carol's heading up the stairs, and Carl's disappeared from my side. I look over to see him following Beth into a cell.

"Pretty gross," Beth's saying as I arrive at the door. She puts her bags down, studying the bunk bed against the wall.

"Yeah, remember the storage units?" Carl says, and I sure as hell do. Unfortunately. No, he's right, these cells aren't as bad as that. And they're safer . . .

Beth settles onto the bottom bed, bouncing a little. "It's actually – it's actually comfortable." She smiles at me, then Carl. "Check it out."

I swear to God, if he gets on the bed with her –

But no, he steps up and feels the top bunk.

I lean on the doorframe just as someone steps up behind me, then in front of me. Hershel. "You find a cell yet?" he asks Carl. Pointedly enough that I have to hide a little smile.

"Yeah," Carl says. Lying. "I was just, uh, just making sure Beth was safe."

Hershel only nods. He keeps looking at Carl until Carl gets the picture. "C'mon, Syd," he says, edging around Hershel. I stand up straight, and Carl pauses long enough in the doorway to look back at Beth and say, "See ya tomorrow."

We find a cell a few doors down from Beth's, right under the stairway that splits the room. It ain't clean, but it's the cleanest one I've seen yet. "Think this'll do?" I ask him, already setting my bag on the floor, crouching down to dig for my sleeping bag.

"Yeah. You want the top bunk?"

That makes me stop. I look over my shoulder at him, raising my eyebrows. "You wanna share the cell?"

The single window the cell has means that the light in here is pretty dim, but not so much that I can't see Carl's face go a shade too red. "Uh . . . I thought we would."

Well. It's not like Carl and I haven't shared close quarters before, but never in a room to ourselves, unless you count the thicket, which I don't. We stare at one another for a couple of seconds.

Then, "Yo, Carl. Go find another cell."

My dad's appeared, leaning on the doorframe in the same way I did when Carl was with Beth. Carl looks from Dad to me but doesn't ask questions, just gives me a little wave, ducking his head and leaving. Me, I nod at him before ducking my own head and pulling out my sleeping bag, which I toss onto the bottom bunk while pretending my dad's eyes aren't drilling into me. I'm certain that he's going to say something about Carl, or ask something about him, or tell me something about him, but he doesn't do any of that. Which I love him for. "You good?"

"Yeah."

"'Kay." He gestures at the bed. "Sleep tonight, alright?"

I nod and he leaves. I can hear the others, but I have more privacy than I've had in a long time. I spread my sleeping bag over the bed and throw my backpack on the top bunk. I take my bow and my quiver from my shoulder and lean them against the wall right beside the bed, with an arrow already nocked. I consider unstrapping the release from my wrist but decide not to. I'm not quite that comfortable yet. But I do put my revolver and the knife I keep at my waist on the top bunk, and after thinking about it, I even take off my denim jacket – with my second knife – and toss it up there, too. I leave my boots on. The others are settling in, their voices drifting to whispers and then nothing at all. I lie on top of my sleeping bag and watch my doorway until exhaustion and maybe something like peace comes over me and I manage to catch some sleep.

But not before thinking about Carl.

. . . . .

Dale's death. That's what started it. That's what pushed Carl and me into becoming the pair we are now. Because when you cause someone to die together, that's always there, that's always connecting you. Binding you. I didn't know it then, but whenever I think about Carl, that day is always floating on some layer in my mind.

It continued from there, from the swamps and Dale and my first walker and my dad's stolen gun. I accepted Carl as my friend, which was a big step for me. But then it got to where it was more than just friendship, because my dad and Rick agreed that the only way Carl and I should be allowed in combat was if we were in combat side-by-side. They figured two of us equaled one adult (really, I think we equal a lot more, but whatever). So Carl was no longer just my friend. He was now my partner, the one whose job it was to have my back. Whose job it is. The one who can read my movements in a fight and know exactly what I'm planning, what he should do in turn. And I'm the same way with him.

Things went even further than that, though, after I got us lost.

It was early February. My dad let me go hunting without him for the first time, only because – whether he wanted to admit it or not – he was really sick, so sick that Hershel and Carol weren't about to let him through the door of the cabin our group was holed up in. So I headed out, and of course Carl came with me. Things went fine for a while. Together we put four walkers down, and – even though my bow was still kind of new to me – I ended up with a rabbit and several doves tucked into my belt. It was a pretty good day.

And then it started to snow. Not a flurry, a blizzard, out of nowhere, a freak of nature. Too thick for us to try and make our way back. But I was stupid and tried anyway. All that served to do was make both of us extremely disoriented when the snow finally stopped, late in the night. We didn't know where we were, and me, I ain't the type to get lost. It was just that bad.

We found a sort of thicket, though. Tangled plants – most of them thorny – made this little makeshift hut of a thing we could slide into on our bellies, and then have enough room to sit up in. Snow had gotten through to the ground, but not much. We brushed what we could to the edge of the hut and managed to start a small fire with some dry branches that had been shielded by others. We decided our best bet was to stay there and wait to be found. So, for the next two days, we lived off canteens and the rabbit and dove, listening to walkers shamble by, and really, it wasn't that bad.

But then Carl got sick. The same thing my dad had – a fever, a cough, a really bad headache. And thing was, Hershel had my dad on some kind of medicine. I found out later that the sickness was really not that dangerous at all, even without meds, just very uncomfortable, a nuisance. But in that thicket, with Carl hacking his lungs out and the smoke from the fire we couldn't afford to put out not helping matters, I was sure he was going to die. So on the third morning, against Carl's protests, I left the shelter and set out to find our cabin. It was miserable. I was cold, I was so incredibly lost, and I had to try and be quiet in the snow, which is about as easy as walking on water. I met every lone walker the state of Georgia has to offer, I swear – it was only by an act of God or whatever that I didn't run into a herd. Hours passed, and I did my best not to go in circles, but I got to the point where I was anyway, because I was tired and coughing, coming down with the same thing Carl had. I began dragging my feet, bringing more walkers my way, and I put an arrow in all of them but I was getting to the point where I couldn't give much more and I knew it, and the sun was just starting to set when I met with three walkers, took two of them down, had my bow knocked from my hands by the last one and was feeling its breath on my arm when an arrow pierced its head from behind, and then my dad yanked the thing off of me and held me tight, muttering fiercely. He felt so warm. Rick and Maggie were with him. I did my best to describe where Carl was, but my head was spinning at this point, and I sort of remember Maggie leading me back to the cabin, and I sort of remember Carol hugging me and crying, and I sort of remember my fingers stinging in a bowl of hot water, chicken noodle soup that tasted like love, a pill scratching its way down my throat, but what I really remember is my dad and Rick showing up in the middle of the night. Carl was in Rick's arms. Safe.

Dad made me go to bed then. Carl was going to be fine, just like my dad was, just like I would be.

I didn't save Carl's life, really. The sickness wouldn't have killed him – he's too tough for that – and the others would have found us eventually. But I risked my life because I thought I had to save his. And after those two days together, and after thinking that his life rested totally and completely in my hands – well, something like that is sort of like something like Dale's death. It's deep and you can't just forget it.

And so that's how Carl and me became what we are now. That's how he's come to understand things not even my dad gets. That's how he's gotten to where he expects to share a room with me when we get the chance to.

But I'm not sure I like that. Because he'd never even dream of expecting to share a room with Beth. No matter how much he might like to.