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Carol had prayed for this day many a time. She had hated herself for praying for it—she had hated herself for being so weak that only Ed's death would set her free—but she had prayed for it.

Now, she should feel relief. Somewhere in there, she did. But she also felt something else, something she had pushed down and ignored and pretended not to feel for so long that it bubbled to the surface before she had quite figured out what it was.

After all this time, Carol Pelletier was angry.

She was angry at Ed, for letting himself be killed by Walkers instead of protecting his family. She was angry at the camp for not having been secure enough. She was angry at whoever the hell had caused this whole stupid zombie outbreak. And she was angry at herself for putting up with a man who treated her badly all these years and letting Sophia be raised by a father who didn't care about her.

When they had discovered Ed's body after the attack, everyone had looked at her funny. Like they wanted to feel sorry for her, but they already had felt sorry for her, so now they weren't sure whether to offer condolences or congratulations.

Well, she hadn't wanted either of them. She'd wanted to go off alone, to think things through by herself. She had always found her best solace in her moments alone. But that wasn't possible any longer. She had Sophia, who clung to her side every moment, more attached than she had been as an infant, and she had the others, who were more determined than ever to stay in a group to make sure that what happened last night couldn't happen again.

She sat with the others, head bowed and defeated, as frightened as they were, as Daryl Dixon went through the camp burying his axe in the heads of the fallen—human and Walker alike. No difference anymore. They were all just dead. Nothing more to them.

Daryl had lost patience with the whole stinking lot of them. Sitting around moaning when all these bodies were just waiting to come back. Hadn't they figured that out yet? He'd picked up the axe to end any chance of that before it could start happening, thinking someone else would join him once they saw. But no one did. He was on his own, the only practical one in the whole bunch. He'd be better off if he left them all behind. They were all going to die anyway, just like the people had last night.

The blonde girl, Andrea, hovered over her sister like it was before, like you could take time to mourn your dead or be destroyed by the loss. Look at him—his brother was probably dead there in Atlanta, walking around with only one hand, and he was here working, taking care of things.

As he kept going, though, T-Dog and Glenn started following him, picking up and moving the bodies once he'd made sure they were dead for good, piling them on the fire. At least that was something, he thought, though he didn't look at them as he moved off to find another body to take care of.

The stink of the burning dead hovered over the campsite, and Daryl wondered if that would draw more of them, or keep them away. Was there enough left in their minds to know that others of their kind existed?

Ah, hell, who gave a damn what they thought, or whether they thought. He hefted the axe into another head, feeling it split open beneath the blow.

In the midst of it all, he saw the blonde girl pull a gun on Grimes, who backed off and left her there bent over her dead sister. So no one was going to pull her off so they could take care of her sister? Which meant she was going to die as soon as the sister came back to life. Not that Daryl cared, but if you were going to do something, you did it right, which meant not sitting there and staring at a dead body until it opened its eyes and started eating you.

He suggested to the others they should shoot the dead girl in the head from the distance, take the decision out of the blonde girl's hands, but he was voted down.

Church people, he thought. People like Grimes were church people, people who thought more about how things looked than how they were, people who let little kids be beaten by their fathers and did nothing about it because the little boys weren't clean and proper and well-behaved. People who let men like that big Ed guy scare their wives and daughters and didn't say nothing. That was one person who had deserved to be Walker meat, and Daryl wasn't sorry to see him gone, except that he figured it was too late for the wife and the daughter to make something of themselves now.

It made him sick, all of them sitting around weeping over a few more dead people, like there weren't already enough dead people to cry about. Meanwhile they'd left Merle to die on a rooftop because he wasn't nice enough.

He told them so, too. "You reap what you sow." His exact words. They didn't like that any, but he wasn't wrong.

Carol stood quiet and listened, the way she had learned to do, while the men argued over what to do about Jim, who'd been bitten. Lori's husband wanted to find the CDC, see if there was a cure. Something in Carol that still believed in the world as it had been before thought that sounded like a good idea … but she kept silent. She and Sophia would go where the group went, because they couldn't survive on their own. So what did it matter where they went or how they guided their travels?

She had been watching as Daryl moved through camp, doing what needed to be done. She admired that about him. He was rough and uneducated and he thought they were all fools, but he worked hard and did more than his share.

And he was probably right about the rest of them, too.

When he went around the back of the RV, where the body she'd been trying to avoid thinking about all day lay in the sun, she followed him. She didn't know what she was going to do, but she knew that she needed to see the end of Ed Pelletier with her own eyes.

Daryl was standing over Ed's body when she approached. Before she could think, without knowing what she was going to say, she told him, "I'll do it. He's my husband."

To Daryl's credit, he didn't argue with her. Didn't tell her she wasn't strong enough, didn't tell her this was no job for a woman or try to protect her from the reality that it had to be done. Without a word, he handed her the axe.

Carol was fighting back tears as she lifted it. Tears for Ed, for the man she'd thought she was marrying, for the life she could have had—for the life she did have, vanished into this terrifying chaos along with everything else. For herself, and the dreams she'd dreamed as a girl, the dreams that had died a little with every blow, every hateful word.

She swung with all her might, a little surprised to see the point strike just where she'd aimed. And it felt good. So she pried the axe out of his head with difficulty and struck again, not entirely aware that she was crying out loud. She did it again and again and again, until suddenly she didn't want to cry anymore. That was done with. She didn't have anything more to cry about. Maybe she'd never cry again. She had Sophia, she had her freedom, she was alive. That was more than Ed had, more than Ed would ever have again.

Daryl took the axe back, watching Carol walk away. Her back was straight, and she walked tall. Taller than he'd ever seen her walk. He'd known a lot of women like Carol in his time, seen the way they cringed like a dog, trying not to get hit. Most of them hadn't been able to get out of it. The ones who did—they found themselves another man just like the first, mostly.

But he liked what she'd done, taking that axe and finishing her husband off. She'd done what needed to be done. Maybe she'd make it after all, he thought. Maybe she would.

He turned back to the work at hand, putting her out of his mind.