I'm sorry I haven't been able to update the past few days! Work is still insane and I've been very busy. Please forgive me for the delay.

Luthersville seemed even smaller than Greenville had been as they drove into the town's city limits. They hadn't expected to find much in the tiny town, but it was starting to look as though they would be lucky to find anything useful at all as Daryl entered the limited downtown area.

"How does a town this small need two hair salons?" Daryl muttered as he made a three-point turn to go back the way they'd come after seeing nothing useful on the downtown street.

Beth laughed a little and examined the storefronts downtown. Antique stores, a liquor store, a packaging supply store, hair salons . . . nothing useful. Daryl turned down Main Street and hummed in discovery as he pulled into the parking lot of a small hardware and auto parts store.

"Looking for anything particular?" Beth asked.

Daryl shrugged. "Was just gonna see if there's anything we can use. See if inspiration strikes."

He exited the truck and Beth followed, wincing just slightly as she stood. She was a little bit sore from her and Daryl's two sexual encounters that day, but she didn't mind. She smirked to herself as she recalled how hot the sex in the library had been. She remembered how sexy Daryl's low voice had sounded when he had told her to cum for him, and once again, she throbbed between her legs at the thought. She took care not to allow Daryl to notice that she was feeling sore, because despite the soreness, she knew she would want him again later, and she didn't want him to have any reservations about giving her what she wanted. He was turning her into some sort of nymphomaniac. Not that she minded. Beth had never experienced anything like it, and to her, the changes she was experiencing were nothing short of amazing.

Daryl cleared his throat, and Beth realized she'd been staring at him while lost in thought. She blushed and hurried to the door for their usual routine. Daryl knocked on the glass door loudly, and when nothing moved inside the store, Beth pulled the door open, allowing Daryl to enter first with his crossbow raised. They could hear the moans of a walker somewhere in the store, but since the sounds weren't coming any closer, they assumed the ghoul was stuck somewhere. Daryl whistled loudly, but the sound only further riled up the one biter they could hear. No other dead made themselves known.

Daryl crept toward the sound of the walker with Beth on his heels. They turned down an aisle and spotted the source of the sound. The walker was tangled in a heavy spool of barbed wire that had fallen from the shelves. Its rotting arms reached for Daryl and Beth, and due to its level of decomposition, they could tell that it had been stuck there for quite some time. Daryl quickly strode over to it and ended its second life with his hunting knife, leaving the store quiet. He stared down at the tangled up corpse in thought.

"What?" Beth asked, noticing his pensive expression.

"We should take this wire," he muttered. "See how the barbs got it stuck? We could use it to reinforce the cabin a little better. Maybe make a barbed wire fence to go behind the spikes as a second defense."

"Good idea," Beth agreed.

Daryl knelt down and began attempting to disentangle the walker's corpse from the wire, and Beth winced as the barbs tore chunks of decaying flesh as he pulled the wire free. Daryl heaved the heavy spool upright and off of the walker's body. He wasn't sure how much barbed wire they would need to make an adequate fence, but he fully intended on taking the entire spool. He attempted to lift it, but felt his muscles strain as he did so.

"Help me with this," he grunted to Beth, who was standing idly nearby. She grimaced at the bloody mess covering one side of the spool.

"You're not gonna clean that off?" she asked.

"No," he sighed impatiently. "Besides, maybe it's good to have that shit on there. Walker guts are like camouflage."

Beth shuddered, and Daryl rolled his eyes. "Here, you take the clean side. I'll hold the bloody side."

She nodded gratefully and went to where Daryl had been attempting to lift the spool. She got a good grip and hoisted the heavy spool in unison with Daryl. The two of them shuffled toward the door, where they had to put the spool down momentarily to open it, and then out to the truck where they stashed it in the far back of the truck bed. Beth quickly reorganized the rest of their loot in the truck so that the bags of goodies wouldn't get caught in the bloody barbed wire. She went back inside the store where Daryl was already pulling things from the shelves. He had a shovel in one hand and was throwing boxes of nails into a plastic bag looped around his wrist.

"They've got some lumber in the back," Daryl said. "We can board up most of the windows in the cabin so the light doesn't attract walkers. I know that don't sound too homey, but it'll be safer since we'll be stayin' there a while."

Beth nodded and couldn't stop the grin that spread across her face at the thought of staying at the cabin all winter. She wandered down one of the aisles and examined a selection of tools. Her eyes were immediately drawn to a small selection of hammers that had baby pink handles and she quickly grabbed one from the shelf.

"Tomboy Tools," she read from the label as her grin grew wider. The pink hammers were made for women, and according to the label, the company had donated a percentage of their profits to domestic violent prevention and breast cancer research before the world had gone to hell. The handle of the hammer fit perfectly in her small hand, and the weight felt well-proportioned as she gave it a few test swings.

"Whatcha got there?" Daryl's asked as he rounded the corner.

"A pink hammer!" Beth exclaimed a little too excitedly, and Daryl laughed at her.

"Looks like it was made for you," he said.

"That's because it was!" Beth grinned. "Well, not for me specifically, but for women. I love it!"

Daryl shook his head at her in amusement as she tore off the label and slid the handle through her belt loop, hooking the hammer in place. Her smile was contagious and he couldn't help grinning as they continued to peruse the aisles for anything of note. Beth found joy in the smallest things, and he loved that about her. The fact that a simple pink hammer could make her so excited was endearing.

It didn't take them long to finish looting the hardware store. They soon had supplies to board up the cabin and build the barbed wire fence, which made both of them feel safer for the months to come. Once the truck was loaded up with their supplies, Daryl began walking toward the convenience store and gas station next door to see if there was any food left inside. He heard no noises inside when he knocked loudly on the door, and the store proved to be empty when they went inside. Most of the food had already been taken, but they managed to find a few bags of chips and crackers, some packages of ramen noodles, and a few cans of soup. Daryl also managed to snag a few packs of cigarettes, which he was quite happy about.

"Let's check out the Valero station across the street and then head out," Daryl suggested as they put the remaining supplies in the truck.

"Do you wanna check out any other towns today?" Beth asked. "I think I saw on the map that a town called Moreland is about five miles north of here. It's even smaller than this though, so it might not even be worth it."

Daryl squinted up at the position of the sun as they walked across the street and shrugged.

"We're losing daylight," he said. "It's probably mid-afternoon now. I think we've done enough for today. Wanna head back soon in case we get car trouble and have to walk the rest of the way or somethin."

Beth nodded in agreement. She definitely didn't want to be walking around after dark if something were to happen to the truck. The truck was old, and there was no telling if or when it would have some kind of mechanical trouble. She didn't like thinking about it, but it was a definite possibility.

As they made their way into the gas station parking lot, Daryl slowed and nudged Beth, pointing to a body on the ground near the side of the building.

"Walker?" Beth wondered, and Daryl shrugged.

"Dunno. Just be alert."

Beth's hand touched the smooth head of her new pink hammer, and she tugged it out of her belt loop. As morbid at it was, she was actually eager to test it out on a walker.

"I'll go see," she said with a smile, getting a good grip on the hammer. She loved the way the handle seemed to fit perfectly in her hand. Daryl gave her a small smile and watched her approach the body with the hammer raised cautiously. He frowned when her raised arm lowered, however, and she quickly shoved the hammer back in her belt loop.

"Daryl!" she called to him urgently, and he hurried over. Beth was crouched over the body she had presumed to be a walker, but the body was breathing. It was a teenage girl who was laying on her side in an almost fetal position, and she was completely nude, her body covered in grime. She looked as though she had been badly beaten as well. One of her eyes was swollen and black, and he could see severe bruises through the dirt on her body, particularly around her ribs and back. Daryl's blood ran cold as he noticed the dried blood on her inner thighs, suggesting that she had been brutally raped.

"We have to help her," Beth said desperately, and Daryl nodded. Beth moved toward the girl's head and lifted it gingerly into her lap. "Go get a water bottle from my backpack in the truck," Beth ordered, and Daryl quickly took off back across the street toward the truck. The girl gave a weak moan and attempted to open her eyes, only one of them meeting Beth's gaze as the other was swollen shut.

"You're okay now," Beth reassured her. "We're here to help you."

Daryl appeared next to her with the bottle of water, and the girl immediately gave a start and tried to shy away from him.

"He won't hurt you," Beth said as she took the water from Daryl. "Can you drink some of this?"

The girl tried to sit up, but cried out in pain and shook her head. Beth handed the bottle to Daryl and propped her head up a little, and he knelt down and delicately poured a little in the girl's mouth. She coughed at first, but then drank as much of it as she could.

"Thank you," the girl murmured, her voice very hoarse and almost too quiet to hear.

"How long have you been here?" Beth asked.

"I don't know," the girl replied weakly. She seemed to be growing more coherent, and suddenly her breathing became heavier and her open eye darted around in fear. "Those men, are they gone?"

"What men?" Daryl asked slowly, glancing around the town and searching for any sign of the men she spoke of.

"Oh god, what if they come back for me? They said . . . they said they were leaving me to die, but what if they're coming back?"

The girl was growing more panicked with fear, and Beth tried her best to calm her.

"There's no men, it's just us. We're good people. We won't hurt you, I promise."

Daryl was still watching the deserted town around them. It still appeared to be void of people, but the girl's utter panic over these men made him very uneasy. It was obvious that they had been the ones to do this to her, and he didn't want to be anywhere near them. He didn't even want to think about what could happen to Beth if this girl's attackers found her. It made him sick to imagine it. He wondered if the men who had hurt this girl so much had been the ones who had kidnapped Beth. The girl was young, much younger than Beth, but she looked like she had once been pretty. Daryl was filled with icy fear and nausea at the very thought of people harming her so brutally.

"Daryl, we have to take her back to the cabin," Beth's voice brought him out of his head. "We can't just leave her here."

He nodded. "I'll get the truck and pull it over here. We'll have to put her in the back."

Beth watched him run back across the street. He ducked back into the hardware store and emerged a few moments later with some moving blankets that he'd seen when they had looted the place, and he quickly made a softer place for the girl in the bed of the truck before starting it and driving it back across the street.

"We're going to get you out of here," Beth said to the scared girl in her lap. "We have somewhere safe outside of town. I'm Beth, and that's Daryl. You don't need to be scared of us. We're here to help."

The girl nodded feebly, and Beth stroked her hair soothingly as Daryl backed the truck up close to them and made his way back over to them.

"What's your name?" Beth asked her.

"Cara."

"Okay, Cara. We're going to lift you and put you in the back of the truck. We're taking you somewhere safe."

Daryl bent down next to them, his expression looking distraught.

"I'll put her in the truck," he said. "Don't think there's any chance of her being able to walk."

Beth chewed on her lip as she watched Daryl delicately slip his hands beneath the girl's battered body. She gave a wail of pain as he lifted her easily, and Beth winced at the sound. Daryl gently set her on top of the blankets in the truck bed and made sure she was as comfortable as she could be before closing the tailgate. He walked around the truck bed and gave the spool of barbed wire a little shake to make sure it was secure and wouldn't go sliding around the truck bed before nodding at Beth and climbing in the driver's seat.

"We'll be back at our cabin in about fifteen or twenty minutes," Beth told Cara, who gave a single nod, looking as though she were about to pass out again. "Just hang in there."

Beth climbed in the truck next to Daryl and he carefully drove out of the parking lot, taking care not to hit bumps too hard so that Cara wouldn't be jostled around. He was chewing on his thumbnail anxiously, and Beth felt just as upset as he looked. They drove in tense silence for a few minutes and the tiny town faded away into forest on either side of the small highway.

"I don't like this, Beth," Daryl said after a few minutes. "Whoever did this . . . they could still be nearby. We don't know how long she was there. It could have been days or hours. I don't like knowin' that someone who is capable of this kinda violence could be somewhere near here."

"I know," Beth said quietly. "And she's so young . . . she doesn't look any older than fifteen or sixteen."

Daryl started feeling sick again as he thought about the blood caked on the girl's thighs. Someone had raped her, probably many times, beat her, and left her to die. And that whoever had done it was too close to home.

"Her injuries are pretty bad," Daryl said. "Definitely has broken ribs. She can't even sit up. We can try to help her, but she might not make it if she's got internal bleeding. I just want you to be prepared for that."

Beth nodded solemnly. She hoped and prayed that they would be able to save her. No one deserved to die from such horrible causes. She looked out the window and tried to keep herself calm. They would do whatever they could to help Cara, and hopefully it would be enough.

Daryl couldn't keep his eyes from frequently darting to Beth as they drove. He hated that the peace and safety of their home had been called into question, despite the fact that nowhere was really safe anymore. He felt now more than ever that he had to protect Beth. He would die before letting her end up like Cara, and if it came down to it, he would. He would give his life in an instant if it meant keeping Beth safe. The future was more uncertain than ever, but one thing was clear: Daryl was going to protect Beth no matter what.

Thanks for reading! Please review! :)