They leave Wiltshire Estates.

They drift aimlessly. Their travel yielding little more than a ruined and burnt out world. Even the untraveled and neglected back roads of the county yield abandoned cars and the browned and crusted remains of the long dead. The world's end is all around them; it would not be ignored.

They try to plan a route, but their path is determined by the state of the roads – and by the herd.

From their vantage point atop a hill, they watch a dark river of bodies amble slowly through farmland, tearing down fences with the press of their numbers. Relentless and daunting and seemingly unending. They had stumbled across the mass only an hour before, they had decided to sit and watch in awe as it drifted past.

"Where are they going?" Maggie asks.

Glenn shrugs as he draws on the map - a large arrow points in the direction the herd moves. He's started littering the map with other symbols; blocked roads, burned out communities, excessive undead.

You know, the usual.

"They're following something," Dale mutters.

"They follow whatever catches their attention," Cal says. She had seen the relentless, clueless pursuit of the dead before. "The rest of them make noise – they follow that.'

"Until something calls their attention," Dale suggests.

The conversation quiets.

Rick watches from atop a truck, eyes narrowed in thought.

Eventually the group needs to move on, and they put the cars in neutral gear before pushing them slowly down the hill opposite the herd. It is only when they're certain they're out of the herd's hearing that they start the engines, eyes fixed on the horizon just in case.

They move on.

A day becomes days.

Those first days of travel are punctuated by tests of insubordination.

It starts and ends with Lori.

A wayward remark, a snide comment. Eventually the tension culminates. It ends when Rick puts a pistol in his wife's hands and tells her to leave if she so desires. She mutters something along the lines of I don't even know you anymore, and returns the pistol. No one says anything after that. After those first days, there is only silence.

The world around them slowly transforms as days pass. Leaves turn red and orange and vibrant – and then they become muted, brittle and dull. They yellow and brown as the light slowly fails, and fall settles itself around them. Eventually the leaves rain down, leaving a scattering of dusty colours across the dying earth.

They scavenge. They poke and prod their way through anything and everything. Eventually the nights are cold enough that they start pulling musty blankets from abandoned houses, rodent infested towels and sheets from linen closets, old jackets from suitcases and cars and houses.

One such house is lined with bodies, the walls alight with halos of dried blood.

Carol is quiet, tears staining her cheeks as she tugs and pulls at the threads of a jacket roughly her size.

"I don't think I can do this," Carol murmurs, fingers curling around the lapels of her newly acquired coat. The other woman squats beside her, huddled into a too-large jacket with the name Madge across the left breast.

Cal is silent for a moment. Carol fusses in silence, her breath curling out of her in steamy gasps.

"Why not?"

Carol looks away.

"Do you want to survive?" Cal asks.

"What?" Carol looks up in surprise.

Cal shrugs, "it is a simple question. It has a simple answer."

Hell is around them. They squat in a room with the ring of bodies – a ring of people who had opted for an alternate path. The walls are painted with their transgressions; a grim showcase of one of humanity's few remaining options.

"It isn't that simple," Carol's voice wavers and break. Despite the shattered cracks, it is still her voice. She isn't cowering. "It is never that simple."

"Right now it is. It's as simple as putting the jacket on or leaving it behind. That is the only choice you have to make right now."

Carol considers her. Her big watery blue eyes are lined with fear, but they slowly take on a gentle defiance.

And then she tugs on the jacket.


They make camp in an abandoned barn surrounded by a wide and rolling field.

The vehicles are tucked out of sight of the road as they sweep the premises, finding a lone walker catatonic in a corner. It rouses at the first noise, creaking and groaning as it turns its head to regard them. Rick kills it.

They set up a collection of tents, or drape tarps between rope tied between support beams. One by one they set back to regard their homes for the night; drear and sagging shells that are their only hope of surviving a cold night.

Dinner is a quiet affair of canned beans and hot water heated over a small wisp of flame. They eat in relative silence, murmuring gently as the warmth chases the chill from their bones.

"I can take first watch," Rick offers.

"You took watch last night," Dale says, eyes wide. "Rick, you need to sleep."

Rick is cut off by T-Dog, "I'll take first watch."

"I'll take second," Glenn says, and T-Dog nods in reply.

Rick concedes with a thank you.

They trickle away, moving to their tents with murmured words of goodnight.

From where she huddles beneath a blanket, Cal watches Daryl avoid the shared tents and tarps. She watches as he drifts towards a pile of hay bales, and she follows.

He's arranging the square bales. Hauling them by their twine as if they weigh nothing. He doesn't note her arrival, but she knows he is as aware of her as she has ever been of him. She watches him work, and after a moment moves to help.

Stack, cross, stack, cross.

Together they stack and arrange a small fort made of hay.

"Never took you for a farm kid," Cal murmurs as she arranges her blanket around her shoulders.

Daryl stops and glances at her, when he notes her smile he hisses. "Stop."

"You don't want to sleep in a tent?"

Daryl snorts softly.

"Ain't a cloud in the sky - it's going to be cold as hell tonight," he replies.

She stares at him.

"S'warmer in there," he gestures to the hay fort.

Cal makes a sound at the back of her throat, and watches him. He in turn watches her, biting his lip in consideration. She can never fathom his thoughts – he hides them behind his quiet, just as she imagines she does her own.

Daryl shrugs and turns away, gesturing with a nod of his chin, "c'mon."

Cal hesitates.

"Pardon?"

"You heard me," he says as he bends down and crawls into the space of his fort.

She blinks.

She bends down and peers through the opening. He's laying on his back, an arm behind his head, and the other thrown over his eyes.

"There isn't a lot of room," she says, eyeballing the low ceiling of their cross-stacked hay bales, and the narrow space of the walls.

"Your choice," he shrugs.

She narrows her eyes at him, and his apparent nonchalance. Finally, she crawls in.

He lifts his arm up enough to watch her with one half opened eye, lips tight as she moves to settle beside him.

The space between them is cold.

For a long moment she stares at him, and he at her. There is a silence that stretches on; the quiet they share becoming theirs.

It is familiar and easy. It makes her feel safe.

She doesn't know the last time she felt as safe as she does when she is with Daryl – a wayward and startling thought that she abruptly pushes aside.

Slowly, tentatively, she curls on her side, and watches him - she doesn't look away.

"Are you cold?" She asks.

He continues to stare at her, but doesn't reply.

She sighs and arranges the blanket about herself, moving in turn to drape it across him. He stiffens.

"You said it was going to be cold," she whispers.

He makes a sound at the back of his throat and shuts his eyes, but his denial doesn't matter - the blanket still drapes across him. He tenses.

She stares at him, unmoving, at his jaw stiff with his tension. The air between them slowly warms. A soft line on the underside of his jaw stills her breath.

It is the white of an aged scar.

"What?" His voice rouses her, and she realizes he's looking at her with narrowed eyes, brow knitted in consternation. "What're you looking at?"

She swallows, hesitant to ask him about the scar. Instead, she changes the subject, "Do you think we're going to find somewhere to stay?"

Daryl closes his eyes and shrugs a shoulder. "What do you care? Weren't you set on leaving at some point?"

Cal stares at him - at the tension on his jaw, the white of his tight lips.

She had been set on leaving before everything went to hell, but she can't deny that that has changed – she can't even recall exactly when it had changed. Maybe, just maybe, when he had offered her his hand and said best keep an eye on you.

"I was," she whispers.

He makes a sound at the back of his throat.

"Something changed," she shrugs.

Daryl props a leg up, the blanket sliding off of him. His eyes flutter open, and he stares at the low ceiling. A piece of straw, strangely absent before, juts past his lips.

"You staying for good?"

Cal considers him. He is still – as if he is afraid she might bolt.

"Yeah," she says, finally.

He makes a sound at the back of his throat, pinches the edge of the blanket, and tugs it over himself.

"Good."


The next morning they are slow to move on. Daryl is gone from the fort, having slipped out at some point during the greyness of dawn.

The rest mill around, huddling beneath their coats and blankets. There is a chill in the air that sends ripples down their spines, and they are made to burn a small fire in the middle of the barn. T-Dog shakes his head at burning anything near hay, and promptly delegates himself to take watch.

"Yeah, watch you all burn to death," he mutters to himself as he leaves.

The rest huddle around the fire eating breakfast.

Cal squats beside the fire, a small can of tuna discarded at her feet. Her fingers tug and pull at the fabric of her jacket, the still-healing skin of her wounded arm itching under the layers. There had no complications since those first few days, the fear that had come with the incident having dissolved right before they had fled Wiltshire Estates.

"Mom," Carl's voice is soft and insistent. "I'm still hungry."

Lori makes a soft sound and drags him closer, offering him the remains of her own can of tuna.

They had started rationing their meals, and it was starting to show in the dark circles under their eyes, and the hollow of their cheeks.

"Cal," Rick's voice shocks her from her stupor, and she glances up to see him standing at the access door of the barn, the light of day casts him in shadow. He suddenly disappears back outside, and she rises from her spot to follow. No one seems to notice or care, they are too involved in their cans of food. Only Lori's eyes follow her from the barn.

It is noticeably chillier outside, and she tucks her hands into her pockets and tucks her shoulders up around her ears. She makes her way towards Rick leaning against the nose of the SUV.

"Daryl's huntin'," he says as she draws up beside him. There is a map laid out across the SUV's nose, the familiar lines and arrows and crosses already crowding a crowded map.

She makes a soft noise at the back of her throat, and Rick glances are her – she almost sees amusement in his eyes. Almost.

"I figure we'd take advantage of the weather and our situation here. I figure we'll let the others rest up. I want to head to this town -" he points at a small blob on the map, nearly twenty miles away. "Hershel tells me it has a discount store."

"I'll come," she whispers, eyeing the distance between it and other towns. It was promising.

He considers her for a moment before he nods his appreciation. "We'll head out right away."

"Rick," she says as he turns to gather the map. "We might run into... others."

She doesn't need to say the other dangers. They were simple truths of their new existence.

The store could be empty. It could be overrun. It could have burnt down. It could be a hideout. It could be a trap.

The only one that matters is the one she gives voice.

Others.

Rick looks at her for a long moment.

"We'll deal with it," he concedes.

It is all he says.


Author's note: I know it isn't particularly long, but I wanted to give you a chapter with a nice Cal and Daryl moment before we get into some other, more serious, potentially life threatening things. I mean, what? I didn't say that...