"So we gon' do a supply run, just like we planned, but this time it ain't gonna be Maggie and Glenn goin' in there," Daryl said over breakfast. "Maggie ain't fit to go out and Glenn could use a little more time to get patched up himself."
"So who were you thinking of sending?" Rick asked.
The group was planning on returning now with van to the scene of the battle that had taken place at the school. With a group that size, Daryl couldn't ignore the fact that they had to have been prepared. There had to be supplies stocked up somewhere and he was anxious to bring it back to their community. They'd given themselves a little time to get over the shock of what they'd been forced to do there that day, but now they had to face it in hopes that whatever supplies there was would be left intact. He couldn't figure, after all, that too many looters would think to explore a school with a yard full of dead people for food and other necessities.
"I ain't decided exactly, I reckon whoever feels up to goin'," Daryl said. "I think we oughta take two vans, 'cause we don't know how much they had stockpiled. I'd rather do this in one trip if we can, get everyone back here safe as quick as possible. I don't reckon no less than six people need to go. We don't know if we gonna see just Walkers, and we don't know how many of 'em there's gonna be. Could run into other groups too, other survivors," Daryl said.
"I'll go," Beau offered.
"No, you ain't gon' go 'cause you and Carl done got a job huntin' for the day. I want ya out there in the woods gettin' whatever you can," Daryl said. "Me and Rick'll go, who else wants in?"
"I'll go," Tyreese offered.
"I'm in," Jimmy offered.
"If Jimmy's going, I'm going," Junior said.
"I'll go," Stella said, "I'd like to get out of here for a couple of hours."
"Good," Daryl said. "We'll get out there, get all that we can, and we'll get back here as quick as we can. It shouldn't take the day."
The group finished breakfast and everyone that was going on the run immediately headed back to their houses to get their weapons and get ready to go. Daryl already had his crossbow with him, so he went to start making sure the vans were ready.
"Don't take any chances out there," Michonne said, walking up to Daryl as he turned off the second van, assured that they both ran well.
"I don't never take no chances, woman," Daryl said, smiling at her. "We got a good group goin', we ain't gonna have no trouble, don't you worry about that."
"I've told you before, Daryl, I'm always going to worry when you go out there, no matter what you're going out for," Michonne said. "I can't help it."
Daryl closed the van door and reached out, grabbing Michonne's hand. She intertwined her fingers in his. He pulled her to him, kissing her deeply enough that moaned into his mouth.
"You hold on to that," Daryl said, pulling away and grinning at her. "I'll be expectin' to pick up right there when I get home."
"Ass!" Michonne said, pretending to be annoyed with Daryl for the suggestive kiss. "It's rude to kiss someone like that and leave them hanging," she said.
"Ain't leavin' ya hangin', 'Chonne, just leavin' ya with a promise," he growled. "Just be ready when I get home."
Michonne kissed him again quickly and then turned to leave. She wouldn't wait to see the group off, not wanting to embarrass Daryl. No one else was gathering to see them off, no one seeing the run as much of a big deal. She didn't want to be the over emotional pregnant woman hanging all over the fence as they rolled out.
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"God it smells like shit out here," Daryl said, getting out of the truck. He was almost knocked over by the smell of rotting flesh. The Walker population in the area was low, and he figured that was in part owing to the interest that their community drew from the Walkers, and also owing to the fact that the smell of death here could cover up the smell of anything living, so the Walkers probably wouldn't find it a prime dining possibility.
"It's ripe, you're right about that," Tyreese said, closing his truck door. He turned his head at a heaving sound.
Junior sauntered up beside Tyreese and Daryl.
"I think that Jimmy and his breakfast have decided to part company," Junior said, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand.
"Might as well get it over when he can," Daryl said. "Mine ain't exactly feelin' like it was 'fore we got out here."
"I hope we get a lot of good stuff out of this," Rick said. "Just to make it worth the stench."
When they were all out of the vans they surveyed the area outside of the fences. There were no Walkers that proved any immediate threat to them. Inside the fences the bodies were left where they had been before. Daryl was a little surprised that none of them were up and ambling about. They'd tried to put them all down, but he'd thought that they might have missed one or two given the confusion of the day.
"Let's go in, but y'all keep your eyes open. Might be Walkers in some a' the buildings. Remember, if you run into anybody in there and you don't feel threatened by 'em, call out for the rest of us, but if you feel even threatened for a minute you get rid of 'em," Daryl said, starting forward to crawl back through the hole that he had once entered in the heat of battle.
As they made their way through the schoolyard, stepping over the fly covered corpses, Daryl tried to hold back his own urge to vomit. They'd been in some pretty nasty situations before, the smell here was ridiculous, probably made worse by the baking sun.
"It's kind of creepy," Jimmy said from behind him. "It's like a graveyard."
"What's scary," Junior said, "is to think that we did this."
"Don't think about that, boys," Rick said. "You don't need to dwell on that. We all did what we had to do."
"Alright," Daryl said. "It looks clear, but keep ya eyes open. Looks like they's these three main buildin's and them three little storage units," he pointed. "Jimmy, Junior, y'all go check them units out. Pile up whatever you think we might want. Rick, you and Tyreese go in that buildin' over there. If'n we can find the cafeteria I'm bettin' that's where they kept most the stuff, but check all the rooms and the closets just in case. I'll take Stella with me and we'll go in this buildin'. Later we can check out the rest. Holler if ya run into trouble."
Everyone understood their roles and their positions and they started off in the directions assigned to them.
Daryl wasn't used to working with Stella, but he worried that she might be the weakest link out there, and if anyone was going to get stuck protecting someone, he thought it would be best if it were him. The girl had been quiet the entire time, simply following along, her fingers pressing her nose closed against the invading smell.
Daryl pulled open the doors to the building that they were going to enter and Stella followed him inside. The doors opened into a hallway and Daryl started down it. The first thing they came upon was an office of sorts. Daryl checked it quickly and then moved out of the way for Stella to pass by him. They checked the office area quickly, but there was little of interest. Stella found a box and silently filled it with some crackers and bottled water that she found scattered in some of the drawers. She carried it with her as they passed back into the hall and continued to glance into various rooms.
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"So if we do what Sadie taught me, then we could talk about just about anything and we'd never have to say a word to each other," Carl explained, following Beau through the woods. They'd set the rabbit traps already, and now they were in search of whatever else they could get to take back to eat.
"Sounds stupid ta me," Beau said. "Just shut yer mouth an' keep yer eyes out for somethin' we can take back. Carol ain't gonna be happy if'n we don't come back with nothin' 'cause you was yappin' the whole damn time."
Carl lowered his voice, scanning the area for any sign of movement.
"Just because you're mad that Sadie didn't kiss you doesn't mean it's stupid, and it doesn't mean that Sadie's stupid," Carl said.
Beau continued along in front of him.
"How did'ja know about that?" Beau growled back in a whisper.
"I saw you," Carl said. "I saw you kiss Sadie and then you got mad and left."
"You shouldn't have been spyin' on no one," Beau hissed back.
"I wasn't spying, you kissed her on the porch. I was just walking to my house," Carl argued, careful not to raise his voice above the noise level they'd already deemed appropriate.
Beau huffed and continued on. Carl was growing aware that they'd gone much farther than they had in the past, but he stuck close to Beau. When he saw a squirrel he put his hand up, stilling Beau's steps. Carl raised his bow, took aim, and dropped the squirrel.
"I got it!" He said with excitement.
"Yeah, one squirrel, lotta good that's gonna do us," Beau said, unenthusiastically. Carl ignored him and went to retrieve the squirrel, tying it quickly to a length of twine that he was wearing draped around his chest just as Daryl had showed him.
"I don't see any squirrels on your string," Carl said, feeling satisfied with himself.
Beau ignored him and continued on.
They crossed over to some kind of clearing, Beau stepping into it first. Beau eased through, his eyes searching in all directions, not anxious to lead them into any kind of trap. The cover of the woods falling behind them making him uncomfortable at first. The first thing that he could see, though, was a long wooden fence, and then what he saw excited him.
"Well looka here, looka here," he whispered in a sing-song manner.
"What is it," Carl asked, pushing up against the hand that Beau had reached back to keep him from drawing closer.
"Just what's gon' make us heroes, Carl," Beau said. "They gon' write songs 'bout us! How much a' that rope ya got in ya bag, 'cause we gon' need us a mess a' rope!"
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Tyreese and Daryl stood on one side of the fence and loaded up everything that was passed over to them by Rick, Junior, and Jimmy. Stella stood not too far from them, picking off the few straggling Walkers that dared to come near the corpse ridden area.
They'd picked up a good number of things. There had been boxes of food, a lot of hygiene products, and most other everyday items. In addition they'd found a few weapons, though not many, and a toolbox that would be a nice addition to the tools that they'd already stockpiled.
Daryl thought Tyreese looked pleased with the spoils, but he couldn't help but feel that it wasn't as exciting as he'd hoped it would be. This had been a group that planned ahead, that much was obvious, but they hadn't been like his community. It was clear that they hadn't been intent on staying, they were just squatting at best.
It made Daryl wonder how many people out there were trying to do what his group was doing and trying to build some semblance of a normal life. If most people were surviving by moving from place to place, scavenging where they could, or squatting for brief periods in one spot and then moving forward, maybe that was the way to go. Daryl knew that eventually his group planned to move on, that much was true, and so far something that couldn't be avoided, but they apparently weren't moving with the same frequency as others.
Still, he had to admit that they were happy with their community, and as long as they could remain there he didn't intend to uproot them. They were thriving, at least as much as anyone could these days, and he didn't want to doubt himself and imagine that he was leading them wrong by not insisting that they continue in an endless chain of making and breaking camps.
"That's it," Rick said, crawling back through the hole in the fence, followed by the two boys. "We can head back. It's been a good day, no one lost."
Daryl grunted and made his way around to the driver's seat of the van that he had driven there.
"Let's roll out," he said, watching as everyone started to head back to their places in the vans. "We're homeward bound."
As they drove off, Daryl looked in the rearview mirror at the gruesome sight behind him. He hoped never to return to that school. Part of him was bothered by the sight of all those corpses there, all those lives lost in an instant, and by the knowledge that he had played a big part in their demise. The other part of him shivered to think of the horror of his own group suffering that fate instead of those that he left behind rotting. It wasn't easy to stomach, at times, the thoughts of the massacre that had taken place, but it made it much easier when he thought that this group could have come knocking at their gates, and then it would be his family that would have been left chopped down, as though none of them had ever existed.
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Rick had set a vigil inside the gates, offering to take watch over for Maggie and Seth. He sat alone in one of the plastic chairs, staring toward the wooded area.
They'd been back for a while, unloaded the vans, and Carol was preparing dinner. Daryl had even been out once, returning with the rabbit traps which had been set in their normal place. He'd reported that he'd followed their tracks for a while, but they'd apparently crossed the creek and then there'd been all sorts of footsteps. There was no clear way of knowing where they'd gone.
Rick felt a hand on his shoulder and he turned. Sadie was standing next to him.
"He'll be fine," she said. "He's with Beau, and it isn't dark yet. Beau will find his way back," she said.
Rick didn't say anything to her. He didn't know what to say. He couldn't figure out what the boys were doing or why they'd wandered so far just to go hunting. They should be back by now and he wasn't even going to pretend that he wasn't worried. He realized that he couldn't imagine what he'd do with himself if Carl didn't come back. He wasn't prepared for this. He'd just started feeling normal, just started to feel like he was really working through his feelings about Lori and about Judith. Now Carl was out there somewhere with a kid he wasn't sure was even smart enough to struggle through a Dick and Jane book without assistance.
"They shouldn't have been gone this long," he argued. "Beau should know better than to venture so far from the community. What if they got snatched up by one of those groups passing through? There's no telling what could have happened to them."
Rick waited a minute, but there was no response from Sadie. He glanced up at her for a minute, her hand still resting on his shoulder and realized that she hadn't heard his argument at all. She was completely unaware that he was speaking. She was just standing beside him, her hand on his shoulder, watching in the same direction that he'd been staring at for what felt like ages.
Rick sighed and tried to will away the headache that was threatening to come upon him. He wanted to go out there looking for them, but he wasn't a tracker, and if Daryl said their footsteps disappeared into what had been a high traffic area, he knew he'd have no chance of finding them. Now all he could do was wait and hope that the footsteps that Daryl had seen didn't indicate any kind of scuffle with some opposing group.
After what seemed like a long while, Rick felt Sadie squeeze his shoulder, her fingertips digging into him.
"Look," she said, pointing.
Rick looked in the direction that she was pointing, but he didn't see anything.
"There's nothing there," he said, reaching his hand back and touching her arm so that she would look at him. She looked back, squinting.
"Look, I see them, don't you see them?" She said.
Rick looked again, but he was quickly becoming concerned that Sadie was seeing things, apparently not an uncommon occurrence in this day and age. He touched her arm again.
"There's nothing there, it's your imagination," he said.
Sadie shook her head, narrowing her eyebrows at him. She looked back.
"No, there they are, they're coming," she said, almost sounding excited, her body responding. "They're not alone. They're pulling something."
Rick sighed and watched her a second. He turned back. Then, just in the distance through the trees, he could see them coming, though he had no clear ideas that they were pulling anything. He was just relieved to see the two distant figures bobbing toward them.
Rick stood up and started fooling with the gates, trying to get the lock undone. Sadie moved beside him and he realized that she was wearing her machete. She had apparently come prepared to take watch with him.
When the boys finally arrived close enough for him to see them clearly, both were wearing huge grins plastered across their faces, and each one of them was pulling something, except they weren't pulling anything dead.
Rick and Sadie cleared the few Walkers from around the gates and the boys passed through, beaming over their spoils. Everyone around gathered to see what they had collected. Carl was dragging a rope behind him that was linking together two very dirty pigs. Beau had a similar lease, but his bore two goats instead.
"What is this?" Carol asked, coming closer to the boys. Both of them were filthy, and their clothes were torn.
"We got us a prize," Beau said. "We done found us a farm house an' look at what we found just a hidin' out there. We only brought back a pair of each, but they is more where this came from."
"I don't understand," Carol said. "How did you get them?"
"It was a farm," Carl explained. "There were all kinds of animals there, but the Walkers already ate them, cows and horses and what we think were chickens. There are pigs and goats, though, and the Walkers didn't eat them."
Rick had walked over now. He grabbed Carl to him, hugging him. Carl didn't respond, too swept up in his excitement to understand that the community was concerned.
"Why didn't the Walkers eat them then?" Carol asked.
Beau grinned at her.
"Too dern fast, I reckon," he responded. "They's some spry little animals. We 'bout beat ourselves up tryin' to wrestle these. I done tore up both my knees real good, and Carl he done tore up at least one a' his elbows, but we got 'em. Now they can make us babies just like them rabbits we got an' we gon' eat good."
Carol grinned then, realizing the possibility.
"We don't have any pens," she said suddenly, casting a glance at Daryl.
"One of them houses on the other street's gotta little penned up yard," Daryl said. "We can put 'em in there for the night and tomorrow we can figure out what we gonna do with 'em."
"We can go back fer more," Beau offered, "but we was gettin' hungry just as we got these fellers tied up so we thought we'd come in for the night."
"Come on, boys, Mark will take care of your scrapes while I finish dinner. Daryl, can you take our new pets over to their temporary home?" Carol said.
Daryl gathered up the ropes from Beau and Carl. "Yeah, I got it," he said.
"We did good, didn't we dad?" Carl asked, beaming up at Rick.
"You did real good, Carl." Rick said. He wanted to scold the boy about wandering too far and staying gone as long as he had, but the look on Carl's face was a look of pride that he hadn't seen in some time. Though he'd been worried, Rick couldn't bring himself to disturb such a look. "You did real good," he repeated, hugging Carl briefly before the boy headed off toward headquarters to get cleaned up.