In which dates are debated.
The gate was locked, but less than a dozen steps down the fenceline was the shiny glint of metal in the frost-withered grass. It was a mass of brass keys hooked to a frayed leather strap. In summer, the weeds would have hidden them completely. "Look," Carol said, holding the keys aloft.
She tossed them underhand to Daryl, who caught them one-handed before slinging his bow and slowly picking his way through the mass of unmarked keys.
Eight forty-foot shipping containers crowded the yard - six forty-foot standards in various shades and a pair of half-length boxes in sandy yellow. The keys fit the locks on the containers, making the bolt cutters in the saddle bags unnecessary, except for one shipping container secured with a dial tumbler.
"This'll do, right?" Carol asked. "This is what we were looking for." They had opened two containers to find a jumble of furniture, household goods – including winter coats and two boxes of blankets – and forty year old college textbooks. Now Daryl was pacing back and forth, shading his eyes at the upper edges of the containers.
"Yeah," he said, obviously distracted. "Here, gimme a hand." Seizing the pry handle of a red-painted container, he braced his feet, started applying leverage. Together, they got the door cracked open, only to both of them jump backwards when something small and brown darted across Carol's toes.
Cursing, Daryl snatched up his crossbow, fumbling a bolt into place. He was far too slow – the rat had already taken refuge under the next container. Carol hung on the pry bar, still gasping for breath.
"Tol'ja," he said, and grinned. "Now, why were you hanging out in here…" He seized the edge of the door, braced a foot, and pulled.
The container was full of food.
A hole gaped in the roof, letting sunlight stream in through a triangular rip in the metal a bit wider than Carol's head. A bright blue tarp - faded in streaks and wind-beaten to tatters - hung half in, half out of the hole. Between the rats and the rain the hole had also let in, much of the food was spoiled – burst boxes of pancake mix, spilled sugar, plastic bottles of oil with the bottoms chewed out.
But there were also untouched glass jars and canned goods – some with the labels washed off, the others clearly identified.
"Sweet," Daryl said, and ripped open one of the closed cardboard boxes. "Ha. Lookit, jerky and crackers that the little shits hadn't gotten to yet." He pulled out handfuls, stuffing them in his pockets before passing more to Carol.
She took the bright orange crackers, bent to read the crooked black marker on the closest box. New house, second bath. And under it, in thick bold print, KEEP.
Daryl stuck a cracker in his mouth and pulled his knife, ready to slice open the next box.
"Wait," Carol said. "Let's wait, until everyone is here." When he stared at her quizzically, she went on, "It'll be like opening Christmas presents."
Daryl snorted, shrugged, and put the knife away. "Well, good thing it's Christmas, then."
"Oh, like you know."
"Sure I do. New moon tonight, it's th' twenty-fifth tomorrow." He pulled down another box to get a better view of the roof, but when he passed it to Carol it dropped straight through her hands.
She jumped, looked down at the box – deodorant, blue containers – and back at Daryl. "You're serious."
"What? Course I am. Same as I'm serious this is mess we'll have to clear out, if we don't wanna be sleeping in the cars again."
"You've known what day it is, all this time."
Now it was his turn to stare. "You don't?"
"None of us did! All this time, not being sure of how much time had passed –"
"A lot, that's how much. A bunch of days." He stepped out of the container, waved her to follow him. "But they only come one day a day, you can count them easy enough." He threw his weight into swinging the door shut.
"How?"
"I dunno, fingers? Take your boots off when you get too high?" He made a quick sweep around the yard before leading the way back to the bike.
"Weren't you going to tell us?"
"Not my job."
She gave up arguing about it only when he kicked the engine back to life.
The road back was like the road away, only with the sun on her shoulders. The air still froze her hands. It was a shame, Carol thought, that she couldn't tuck them between the layers of Daryl's clothes. She was keeping his back warm.
If she tried, though, he'd probably jerk and crash the bike. It was only twenty miles back to the others - she could live with cold fingers for that long.
Her fingertips were not quite ready to drop off when the bike pulled into the parking lot of Henry Hog's BBQ and Bar. Sitting behind Daryl, she couldn't see the expression on his face when they rolled up to the porch. From the looks that Rick, Maggie and Glenn gave them, though, it was an epic shit-eating grin. "Jackpot," Daryl said, as soon as he cut the engine. "Grab your butts, it's moving day."
Rick drew a breath as if to argue, but Glenn and Maggie whooped in unison and darted back inside, leaving Rick no time to say anything. Instead, he strode across the gravel to Daryl. "Took you long enough." His eyes raked over Carol, then back to Daryl. "Is it good? Is it safe?"
Carol shoved again at Daryl's shoulders and finally he stood up to let her scramble off, the rifle muzzle banging on the seat. As she found her footing, legs already stiff from riding, Carol looked up to find Daryl staring at her, with an expression she could not read. Then he turned back to Rick. "Yeah. Only walkers there were a handful stuck in the auto yard next door. Carol took 'em out, we hung around, waiting for company to show up. Nothing. Containers got a lot of stuff in them." He pulled a packet of crackers from one pocket, tossed them to Rick. "Lots more where that came from."
Then Maggie was piling out of the door with Beth at her heels, and demanding – nicely – her rifle back, and T pulled the Suburban around, with a space for Carol in the back next to Lori and the navigator's seat up front for Rick.
Daryl kicked the bike into gear and led the way.
"Is it really good?" Lori asked, quietly, over Carl's head as he chewed on crackers.
It's like Christmas, Carol wanted to say, but the words wouldn't come off her tongue. Not yet. "It's good. It's not the farm, but it's good."
The next six hours were a maze of discovery, arguments, plans, a trip to the treeline with Maggie and Glenn to fill water bottles, revised plans, two rejected proposals for the latrine area – heavens they had toilet paper again, boxes of it - and an accident with oil-soaked blankets and the lunch-time fire that filled the red container with smoke, emptied it of people and also emptied half of their newly filled water jugs, putting it out.
Carol snatched up the one bottle with boiled drinking water in it and held on to it, even when Beth tried to snatch it from her hands. "Gravel!" T-Dog shouted, "Get dirt!" while Rick and Glenn threw things out of the container, helter-skelter.
They put the fire out, Daryl snatched the new tarp off the roof that Glenn had insisted had to go up, and they stood and watched the smoke slowly rise out of the hole.
Glenn drew his eyes down from the grey line, turned to Daryl and said, "You were right." Daryl snarled, dabbed his tongue on a skinned place on his knuckles, and tossed the tarp to one side.
"Just remember it, next time," was all he said.
The afternoon wore on. When Carol looked up again from boiling more water – outside, this time – it was to see things slowly taking shape.
T-Dog was shifting the mass of boxes and furniture out of the yellow container beside the red one, Carl and Beth helping. The younger two made the same number of trips as T, but with a single box between them. Meanwhile, Glenn sorted boxes into stacks of food, not food, and clothes, and Rick argued with Daryl about the utility of emptying a third container.
"Well, how the hell long are we planning on staying? I thought you didn't wanna set up house."
She let Rick's reply fade away. It could change tomorrow, or the next day. Better to focus on something else, something now. Food this evening, shelter, blankets.
Carol's attention kept coming back to the empty water jugs, but there never seemed to be someone available to go with her for refills. She eventually hung the water jugs – strung together with ropes for easier carrying - on the fence and drifted over to the blankets staging area by the container door. Hershel was sorting bedding and foam pads, while his daughters tried to help Lori with restarting the inside fire under the roof hole. When Beth snatched the box of matches out of Maggie's hands and stomped back into the red box, Carol drew Hershel and Maggie aside.
She'd thought about it for nearly ten hours, and there still didn't seem to be a best way to say it. "Daryl says that he thinks it's Christmas Eve."
Maggie's face was incredulous. Her voice was scornful. "How would he know?"
"He says it's the new moon, that it's time." She looked from Hershel to Maggie and back again. "Daryl seemed so sure, but I don't have any way to check."
Hershel sighed and looked up at the sinking sun. "Moon phases. I should have realized it myself." He tugged his coat closer, the lines on his face deepening as he searched his memory. "This year, Christmas Eve falls on a new moon. I remember looking at the almanac, last spring, when I was noting the days of the equinox, long before any of this began." His face grew more settled. "Still, I am happier to know it now than tomorrow, or the next day. We can still celebrate."
"Daddy…" Maggie's voice was half amused, half dubious, and all anticipatory.
"Carol, could you give Maggie and I a moment to discuss something?"
She opened her mouth to argue – celebrate what? With who? – but something of the authority Hershel had worn back at the farm had re-entered his frame, and Maggie…Maggie had an expression on her face that Carol had long since dubbed levering the world.
One of the similarities between Maggie and Lori was their mutual love of comfort and routine. Disrupt the patterns that made up their lives - and the lives of the rest of their families - and the two women were equally discomforted and hostile. The difference was, Lori only knew one way to re-right that which had come upset – and that was to find someone she could nag into fixing it.
Maggie didn't nag. Maggie went looking for a handhold on the universe, and heaved until things suited her again. And God help anyone who stepped in her way.
Carol shut her mouth, nodded, and walked away. Two steps, and she stopped. When did I learn that? She hadn't known that about Lori, or Maggie, on the night the farm burned.
What else do I know?
Behind her, Hershel and Maggie were still silent, waiting on her to leave them be. Carol picked up one foot, put it down, picked up the other.
At the first stack of boxes, she sat down. She stared down at her boots, at the thin crust of mud on them. They were good boots. She had good pants tucked into them – warm, loose, with roomy pockets. She could wade through a lot of water in those boots.
Maybe I didn't spend all that time, just not-drowning.
As the evening wore on, it became clear that the Greenes had some sort of celebration planned. (They told Glenn, which meant the rest of them knew soon enough.) The men took it in good stride - at least, they didn't stop duct-taping a tarp over the open end of the container to argue - but Carol began to notice a tightening in her gut. Not nervousness, because what was an ugly social situation compared to the dead walking out in the darkness? But concerned, just a little. Setting up in the containers was a little like a victory. Finding the food – and a promise of quiet rest – even more. A fight could ruin it.
They were ten people, a lot of guns, and one little metal box in a very dark field.
In the end, it all turned out. Like any holiday with random in-laws, there were awkward, brittle silences and totally inappropriate comments that should have been left unsaid.
They all lived through it.