Naomi

The forest is loud high up. Being close to the treetops puts you with the leaves when the wind rustles through them. If you close your eyes and try to forget where you are, it can kinda sound like the ocean. Would've been peaceful if it weren't for the dead that roamed around underneath us. Moaning and snapping their jaws like deranged piranhas.

I sat, 20 feet above the ground, legs dangling over the edge of a ledge we'd built from bits of wood scavenged from the wrecks of other people's homes. I ran the blade of my hunting knife along the belly of a dead squirrel, feeling a rare sense of peace. There was a familiarity that came with gutting animals that really put me at ease. Not that I could readily admit that without everyone thinking I was some kind of psychopath so I'd make the same disgusted noises as everyone else while I did it. Truth was, it reminded me of the good bits of when I were a kid.

"Naomi," Mia said quietly, she'd learned to be so soft on her feet that I hadn't heard her coming. Got such a fright I nearly fell off the ledge. "I'm going to get more water."

"Not on your own, you ain't," I told her and put the half-skinned squirrel down. "I'll come with ya."

"Me and Perla were gonna go," she said. Her eyes were full of hope, the way she used to look when she was asking to have a friend over for a slumber party.

"Only if José goes with you both," I said. "He knows how to shoot."

"You could teach me how to shoot," she grumbled.

"I will," I promised. I knew how valuable that skill would prove to be, and the last thing I wanted was to leave Mia vulnerable. "But we gotta find somewhere safe enough to do it. Don't want to bring all the Groundlings in the woods to our camp, do you?"

"No," she said. "So… can I go?"

"If Perla and José's Momma is okay with it," I said. "Then, yes."

"They're asking now," Mia said. I looked over at where Blanca was doing the same kind of bargaining with her kids I was doing with Mia. José was doing a lot of nodding while Perla looked across at Mia in hope. Eventually, Blanca handed José one of our guns. Perla jumped up and down in excitement, which was a dangerous thing to do so high up.

"Alright, looks like she said yes," I said. Mia was damn near bursting with excitement. I held out the hilt of my hunting knife to her. "Take this with you. No dawdling. You get the water, and you come right back. Got it?"

"Yes," she nodded earnestly. I pulled her close.

"If there's any danger out there, you get yourself safe before you worry about anyone else. You hear me?" I said it quietly so that Blanca didn't overhear me telling Mia to ditch her kids at the first sign of trouble. I had no doubt she'd be telling them the same thing about Mia. Sticking with people was the only way to get by, but in moments of chaos, it's family first. Always.

"I hear ya," Mia whispered back.

I let her go.

"Take the empty buckets with you," I reminded her. "Replace the ones you bring back."

She nodded. "We will."

"Okay," I said. "C'mon. I'll take you over."

The wood creaked underneath me. That noise used to make me panic. I'd thought the boards hadn't been nailed well enough out of fear of how many Groundlings the sound would bring. It was always a lot. But, if you stayed up high and quiet for long enough, they'd go away. Something else would get their attention. They're easy to distract because they ain't smart. Thank God.

None of our boards had broken yet, so now the sound didn't worry me and the creaking wood was just a part of life. It really was like living on a ship.

There were sturdy wooden bridges made from thick planks of wood that ran between the platforms we'd built; high enough that the dead couldn't reach us and wide enough to pitch a small tent on each one. I dreamed of one day filling in the gap between them to make a proper floor between the trees. Or maybe it would be better to turn it in to a city of treehouses and let the dead have the ground.

I crawled across the makeshift bridge between trees. Standing was riskier. If you crawled, spreading your weight out evenly on all fours then you were less likely to lose your balance.

"You hear what these kids are doing?" Blanca said as I reached her.

"Sure did."

"At least they're not going far. I already gave my gun to José," she said. José gave me a smile that I'm sure was meant to look confident, but there was a nervousness in his eyes that betrayed him.

"We'll leave the ladder down in case you get into trouble," I said, to ease his worries. The rope ladder was bundled at the edge of the platform, I pushed it down and watched it unravel to the forest floor. "Remember, Groundings are slow so you can outrun them but don't get so focussed on the one you're running from that you forget to look out for others."

"Yes, ma'am," José said with a nod like I was some kinda army general.

"Okay," I said. "You first."

The rule was one at a time. We didn't know if we could trust our homemade ladders to take the weight of more than one person. We waited until José got to the ground beforr looking at the girls. Perla was nervous, so Mia went next, grinning at me as she stepped down onto the first rung of the ladder.

"Watch out for Groundlings," I reminded her out of habit.

"I will," she said and smiled like I was overreacting. On another piece of rope, I lowered down one of our empty buckets to José who untied it so that I could send down another.

When Mia was safely on the ground, Perla climbed down too. Blanca peered nervously over the edge until she saw her daughter was safely at the bottom.

"Never thought I'd live in a world where I felt good about giving my fifteen-year-old a gun," Blanca muttered. The kids, who now had an empty bucket each, looked up at us and waved before they started walking.

"It ain't far. And we can see most of the journey from here," I said. Another benefit of living up so high was that you could see further in all directions. It's why castles are best built on top of hills.

"That's true," she said. We both glanced at the path ahead of them to make sure it was still clear. "You think we should have stopped them? I don't like this."

"I don't like it either," I admitted. "But we ain't got a choice. If we don't let them learn to live in this world, they'll die in it."

"Yeah, I know," she said, but she didn't look too convinced.

"Plus, we need to give them things to do, they're getting bored," I said. "Bored kids do dumb shit. At least changing the water is a fairly safe job."

"Still…" she said. "They're just kids. They should be playing, not collecting rainwater to survive."

"It ain't fair," I said, nodding in agreement, lamenting the loss of a childhood that I had never had, Mia had half-had, and José had probably been lucky enough to have most of. It seemed like he had a good Momma.

"I came here to give my kids a better life," she said. "And now… this."

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, I think it's shit everywhere. Other countries would've sent aid by now if it was just us," I said. It didn't look like it helped, so I added, "Although, we're in a good place for when a cure comes."

"What makes you think that?"

"We got a head start in resources," I shrugged. "One of the richest countries in the world. I'll bet the CDC started work on a cure before any of us even knew there was a problem. The USA might not be the first to solve it, but we have the infrastructure in place to survive it and get vaccines out when they're available."

Blanca looked thoughtful for a second. "You think Groundlings can be cured?"

"Not sure," I said. "Once you've turned, you might be too far gone. But there must be a cure for people who've just been bit."

"So should we head to the CDC?" She asked. "Be first there when they get a cure?"

"Maybe," I said. I hadn't thought about it, but it weren't a bad shout. "I dunno how safe the cities are yet. Might be best to wait."

"Yeah, maybe," Blanca sighed. "I am just tired of so much waiting."

"Same," I said. "Mia and I want to head to Washington eventually. When things quiet down."

"Why Washington?"

"Mia thinks of it as home," I said. "We got friends there I want to check on. And if there's a place in America that'll be the first to get a cure, it'll be wherever the President is."

"Makes sense," Blanca said. "Do you think-"

I never got to hear what it was she was going to ask next. From somewhere, not too far off, came a loud and urgent, "Naomi!"

Mia.

My feet were on the first rung of the rope ladder before I had consciously registered that it was her calling. It was an instinctive leap, my body reacting before my brain. I called back to her, not thinking or caring about the Groundlings that this might alert to my location.

"Naomi!" she yelled again. "Come quick!"

Blanca was making her way down the ladder behind me. The safety policy of one at a time forgotten because the kids were in danger. It swings a lot when one person is climbing down, it swings even more when there's two. I nearly slipped more than once, climbing so fast I got rope burn.

"Mia!" I called. It was disorientating to be back on the ground without creaking wood and the feeling like if you took too many steps you'd fall. Smelled like forest and earth. I started running in the direction of our water stores. When something darted between one of the trees, I couldn't tell if it was a Groundling or one of the kids. I reached for my knife anyway, better safe than sorry. My hand grasped at nothing. I'd forgotten I'd given Mia my only weapon.

"Naomi!" she was close. She was real close. I head her footfall and then saw her run around the trunks of one of the trees. We nearly crashed into each other. I grabbed her by the shoulders.

"You okay?" I asked. "Are you bit?"

I glanced her over. She looked fine, I couldn't see a scratch on her. My knife was still clutched in one of her hands, clean and unused. I hadn't heard the gun go off.

"No, I'm fine," she said. "We found a guy. I think he's hurt."

My panic turned to anger in an instant. "That's what you was screaming about?"

She was shocked, she hadn't expected this reaction from me. "He's... he's hurt," she stammered

"Is he hurt or is he bit?" I asked. Another moment of surprise flashed across her face. I couldn't believe she hadn't thought of it. "Go home. I will deal with this."

With one hand on her back, I marched her to the bottom of the ladder. We got back just as Blanca had stepped off. Her eyes were still full of panic. "Where are they?" she asked. "What happened?"

"Get up there," I snapped at Mia, taking my knife back off her and propelling her towards the ladder. I watched as she started to climb and then I turned to Blanca. "They're alright. Some guy's been injured, they stopped to help."

"Idiots," she fumed. I heard her curse some more in Spanish and then she started running in the direction Mia had come from. "José! Perla!"

I ran after her. They must have heard the anger in her voice because they came running real fast. It's weird how all kids kinda have the same guilty look when they get in shit with adults. Even at fifteen and wielding a loaded gun, José looked just as terrified as his little sister.

"Mama..." Perla started to say, her eyes full of tears threatening to spill over and her bottom lip shaking. Blanca said something sharp in Spanish and both kids looked at the ground.

"Take them back," I told her. "I'll deal with this."

She nodded, grabbed each of her kids by their arms and marched them away. Not thinking to get the gun from José, I pushed forward with just my knife.

A soft moan from up ahead made me stop where I was. I kept listening, trying to find out if it were the rattling breaths of the dead or a cry from someone who needed help. I tiptoed towards the clearing where our water supplies were kept.

I saw his feet first, filthy sneakers under ripped jeans. The kind of shoes someone would buy for style rather than comfort. He groaned again, and his feet didn't move. That weren't like dead ones. I'd seen them walk despite all kinds of broken bones, seen them drag themselves around with just their boney arms. I stepped forward.

He looked at me. From the top of his maybe-blonde hair to the toes of his formerly fancy sneakers, he was caked in dirt. He looked half-dead, but half is much better than whole-dead.

"Name?" I asked. Dead folks can't speak, so it's a sure way to tell the difference.

"Lucas," he said it so quiet it was basically a whisper. But he did say it. His expression changed too, which is another thing the dead don't do, they only got one look. I relaxed, lowered my knife.

"Lucas," I repeated, taking a few steps towards him. "I'm Naomi. Are you bit?"

"No," he said, craning his neck to get a look at me. I crouched down next to him.

"You on your own?"

"Yes," he said. "I had a group, but we got separated. Been alone for weeks. Can't find any food or water. I heard there was a quarry near here, so I was trying to find it when I saw those buckets up there. They yours?"

"Yeah," I said. "We leave 'em there to catch rainwater. Get more rainfall in the clearing than the rest of the forest. Did you fall trying to get some?"

"Yes," he said. "I don't know if I'm just too weak or if you meant it to be almost impossible."

"Bit of both," I said. "We don't want folks stealing our reserves if they come across them, but there's also a pulley system that's so simple the kids can do it. You just have to know where to look. You thirsty?"

"Yes." I already knew he was by the hoarseness of his voice.

"Okay, stay where you are, I'll get you a drink," I said. I walked over to where the nearest rope was tied around a low branch. We'd disguised it with leaves so to the untrained eye it just looked like a vine or something. You could only see the buckets if you look up and most folks don't do that because they're busy looking around for the dead. I untied it, slowly lowered the bucket down. It was heavy, we must've caught a lot of rain. "How bad are you hurt?"

"My leg's busted," he said, putting a hand on his left knee. "I landed funny on my back. It's a miracle I'm still alive."

"Less of the pity party," I told him. The bucket landed gently on the ground, I tied the rope loosely again and filled up a flask of water that I kept tied to a loop on my belt. "You're fine now."

I slipped an arm under his shoulder. He let out a long, involuntary groan as I tried to move him.

"Is it your back that's giving you trouble?" I asked. He nodded. "Can you move your feet for me?"

"Yeah," he managed to wiggle his feet in his scuffed up shoes. There was a movement in his legs too.

Satisfied that his back weren't broken, I said, "Do you remember hitting your head when you fell?"

"No," he said.

"Let's see if you can sit up," I said. "We'll take it real slow, okay?"

"Okay," he said and, with a huge grimace on his face, he managed to help me get him up into a sitting position. Under all the dirt, he looked pale and kinda sweaty. I supported his weight so he could drink from the flask without choking.

"Alright," I said when he was done. "Let's get you someplace safe so if the Groundlings come you won't be lying out here like an all-you-can-eat buffet."

"What a way to go, I always hated those," he said. I smiled. Can't have been feeling that bad if he were cracking jokes.

"How long you been lying here?"

"I don't know," he said, which was extremely unhelpful. "My watch stopped weeks ago."

"Alright," I said, always amazed by how dependent some people were on old technologies and how unadaptable they could be. "But has it been more than a day?"

"No," he said.

"And do you remember where the sun was when you fell?" I asked.

"Um," he tried to think for a minute. Then he pointed. "Over there, I think."

"Okay," I said, glancing up at the spot in the sky and doing some rough calculations. Sun hadn't moved much. "Probably only about an hour."

"Felt like longer," Lucas said.

"You're lucky no Groundlings came by," I admitted. "You think you can stand?"

"Yeah," he said but didn't look so sure. I shifted my hold on him to take more of his weight. He bent his knees and tried to get a firm foothold on the ground. "Why do you call them that?"

"What, Groundings?" I asked. He nodded and managed to stand. "Because they can't climb."

"I see," he said. I could tell he didn't really get it but he would in time. Leaning on me hard, he took a step. It looked like it pained him. "And the kids that were just here. They yours?"

"One of them's my little sister. The other two live in our camp," I said. I realised he was asking all of these non-urgent questions as a way of distracting himself from the pain he was in, so I decided to keep him talking. "So, where are you from?"

He didn't much sound like he were from here.

"New York," he said.

"Oh, I always wanted to go there," I said. "Not a good place to be now though, I'll bet."

"No," he said. "Guess I had a lucky escape. I was here on business. Only supposed to be here for a night."

"What kinda business were you in?"

"Insurance," he said. "I was here doing a risk assessment for one of our biggest clients. Seems mundane as shit now."

"So 'the dead coming back to life' weren't one of the risks you assessed, huh?"

"Funnily enough, it didn't make the list," he said. "Maybe if it had, I'd be in better shape right now. Be in one of those bunkers with a load of canned food with other apocalypse preppers. Remember when everyone thought they were crazy?"

"God, I must've read a hundred think pieces on Preppers," I said. "Still, you're doing better than most."

It felt like most of civilization had fallen and taken a giant chunk of the population with it.

"I guess," Lucas reluctantly agreed. "So, what were you before all of this? Some kinda nurse or something?"

"No," I said, not wanting to explain that the reason I knew how to check for broken bones and head injuries was a childhood spent bandaging up myself and my best friend. "A reporter, actually. Washington Post."

"Oh," he said, surprised. People usually were. "What were you doing in Georgia?"

"This is my hometown," I said.

"What? The woods?" he said. I know he meant it as a joke, but he weren't far wrong. If I counted up all of the hours I'd spent hunting in the woods, would it beat the number I'd spent hiding in that damn trailer?

"Grew up just outside Atlanta," I said, because either way you sliced it, that were true. I started to tell Lucas about Momma being sick, the journey Mia and I had been on, the house burning down and hiding out at one of our neighbors. He nodded along, and I hoped it was an entertaining enough story to be distracting from whatever he'd done to fuck up his back.

"Naomi!" It was Mia again, yelling even though I'd told her not too. I looked up at where a small portion of our camp was visible through the branches. "Naomi!"

"Is that Mia?" Lucas asked. I nodded and was about to yell back at her to shut the hell up when I caught the urgency in tone, saw her frantic waving.

"Naomi, look out!" she hollered in a way that could only mean there were Groundlings nearby.

"Shit," I muttered and looked off in the direction she was waving at. Lucas started to panic. I heard his breathing speed up, his eyes darted around from place to place.

Not good in a crisis, I noted, How the hell has he made it this far?

I pulled my hunting knife out again and turned to him, "Can you stand on your own?"

"I... I think so," he nodded. I started to let go of him slowly, so if he couldn't hold himself up, I would still be there to catch him.

"I'll take care of these. If you can walk, head towards Mia. If not, stay here, and I will come get you. Got it?"

More nodding. I didn't wait for Lucas to say anything else, I just ran. Mia had stopped yelling now she'd successfully got me to look in the right place. I hoped that somewhere up above me, Blanca would have my back with one of our guns.

There were four of them, spaced out between the trees. The first took me by surprise. I heard a growl and then she was on me. Mia screamed again, this time out of fear for my life. I grabbed the dead girl's hair, a clump of it came off in my fist. There was still scalp attached to it. A bald patch of skull gleamed when it caught the sunlight. I drove my blade into it and immediately started to look for the next threat. Two of them were real close, drawn together by the sounds of the one I'd just killed. I kicked one in the chest, heard some ribs crack. It stumbled back just long enough for me to take out the other one. Then he was back, jaw snapping, arms reaching for me. He was missing a couple of fingers, and I wondered if that was pre or post-mortem. I got him in the eye.

A shot rang out. I got such a fright it stopped me where I stood. Something crumpled to the ground just behind me. The last Groundling, taken out by Blanca from somewhere in the trees. It was a loud gunshot, if there were any more close by, they'd be on us soon. I ran back to Lucas, who'd made slow progress towards where my friends were waiting for us.

"We gotta move fast," I said. "The dead will have heard that."

"Okay," he said, and I could tell he was trying not to sound afraid. He looked up. "I can't climb."

"That's okay," I put an arm around him again. We moved as fast as I thought he could handle. Every noise from the forest sounded like the dead coming to get us. I looked up at where Mia was still peering anxiously down at us.

"Tell Blanca to get the Crane ready. Get Alf if he's up there!" I called to her. Pointless to be quiet when there'd already been a gunshot. Mia's outline in the trees vanished, and I looked at Lucas. "We'll get you up there."

An agonisingly long pause and then the Crane descended from the treetops. 'Crane' was a generous way of describing it. It was just a sturdy old door that we'd strung up on another pulley system to help us haul bits of wood up and down for construction. Standing underneath it as it came down, you could still see the number 9 on it. Even had a letterbox.

"What the hell?" Lucas gawped at it.

"We use it to take heavy stuff up to camp," I said. "Climb on, they'll pull you up."

"What kind of heavy stuff?" he asked suspiciously.

"Bits of wood, anything that's too heavy for us to carry up ourselves," I said. "It should hold a person just fine."

We hadn't actually tested it, but it was pretty confident.

"I'm not sure..."

"Okay," I sighed. "But it's the only way of getting up there without climbing, so if you ain't gonna do it, then you're Groundling grub because I ain't staying down here much longer."

The Crane was eye level with us now, but Lucas looked up.

"You guys live up there?" he said, taking in the maze of platforms and bridges above our heads.

"We sure do," I said, and I was kinda proud of how much we'd been able to build, how much safer just looking at it made me feel."

"How many of you are there?

"Eleven," I said. "Twelve if you get on this damn Crane."

"Help me up," he said. It was now at hip-height, and whoever was up there lowering it weren't going any lower. I let him put most of his weight on me as he tried to sit down. The door swung and tipped towards us.

"Sit as close to the middle as you can," I said. "You'll be fine."

It swayed as he pulled himself into the centre. He looked nervous for someone who was in the process of having his life saved.

A Groundling stumbled out of one of the bushes. I patted the door.

"See you up there," I said.

The Crane started moving. It can only go up in these uncomfortable jerky movements which don't matter when it's scraps of wood but probably ain't ideal for a human being. When he was on his way, I ran for the ladder that was still down. My sudden movement drew the attention of the new Groundling. I leapt up the first few rungs, heard the too-familiar snapping of a dead jaw behind me but managed to climb clear of it. By the time I got to the top, there were three of them at the bottom.

"Thank the Lord they can't climb, huh?" a hand reached out to take mine when I reached up to pull myself over the edge.

"Amen," I said, taking the hand and letting it help me up. "You seen our newcomer?"

"Sure have," Alf replied. "Blanca and José are unloading him now. What's he like?"

"He's a complainer," I said. "And he's injured. But when he's better, it'll be good to have another person around to help."

"And until then he's just another mouth to feed, huh?" Alf said, but I knew he didn't really mean it. His grumpy old man shtick was mostly an act. He cared about the group more than most. I don't think he'd had many people to look out for before the world ended and now he had a group, he weren't taking it for granted.

"Come meet him," I said, and together we made our way over to where Lucas had been successfully unloaded from our rudimentary Crane.

"I survived," he said, looking more than a little surprised.

"Congrats," I said. "I see you've already met Blanca and José."

"Hello," they said in unison.

"Blanca's daughter, Perla, is over there," I pointed to where she was shyly looking over from behind a tree trunk. She gave a small wave and then ducked out of sight. "This is Alf. He's the architect of this whole place."

"Wouldn't go that far," Alf's dislike of anything that might border on praise turned the tips of his ears pink with embarrassment. He held out a hand for Lucas to shake.

"It wasn't you who built all of this?" Lucas asked me.

"Hell no," I said. "I ain't got that kinda know-how. Alf used to be in construction, which is great news for us."

"I can't do much of the heavy lifting myself," Alf said. "I threw my back out a few years back."

"I can sympathise with you there, friend," Lucas said, with a grimace.

"Well, you're great at telling the rest of us what to do," I said to Alf. "We have a group out on a run at the moment, you'll meet them later. And Mia is-"

I looked around. Alf and Blanca exchanged a look I couldn't decipher.

"Where's Mia?" I asked.

"She was kinda upset when she got back," Alf said. "She's over there."

He nodded back to our usual spot, where I could see Mia sitting down near where I'd discarded the carcass of the squirrel I'd been skinning. Living in such close quarters meant there weren't many places to hide and sulk.

"Thanks, Alf," I said, feeling my heart sink a little. "I'll go speak to her."

I left the group to help Lucas get settled in and crawled across the boards to where Mia was sitting, all folded up with her knees under her chin. Her face was shiny from the tears on her cheeks. When she saw me coming, she turned her head away.

"Hey kid," I said gently, scooching over to sit beside her. "I'm sorry I yelled at you. You just gave me a fright is all."

"I just wanted to help," she said. "That man needed help."

"I know," I said. "But you can't be so noisy. Groundlings'll hear you."

"I didn't think there were any nearby," she said. "I checked... or, I thought I checked..."

"It's hard to see that far when you're on the ground, it ain't like when you're up here, and you can see through the trees," I reminded her. "More and more of them are coming through the woods, you know that."

"I know," Mia said, finally turning her head back to look at me. "They almost got you... and it's my fault. I'm so sorry."

Having almost calmed down, she burst into tears all over again. "I'm okay," I said and put an arm around her. "Look. I made it back. I'm fine."

"You're always looking out for us. I just wanted to be like that... to look out for people too," she said, furiously wiping tears from her eyes. "And I nearly lost you."

"Don't beat yourself up about it. It'll take more than a few Groundlings to get me away from you," I said. "I won't lose you, kid."

"I know." She leant her head on my shoulder. "I won't lose you either."

She heaved a big sigh. I hated that she was disappointed in herself for trying to do the right thing.

"His name's Lucas," I said. "And we got him. He's safe now, thanks to you."

"Yeah..." she said, but she didn't look convinced. "Still put you in danger, though, didn't I?"

"Everyone messes up sometimes," I said. "I'm alright."

"I can't mess up anymore," she said. She sounded so serious. "Not with the world the way it is now. If you mess up now, you die, or someone you love dies."

She was putting a lot of responsibility on her own small shoulders. For a second, it made me angry. Not with her. Just with the world. I'd worked so hard to keep a stable roof over our heads and food on the table so that Mia would never have to grow up worrying about survival. Now, despite everything I'd achieved, here we were. Hunting. Scavenging for scraps.

Had it been worth it?

If I had known what was to come, would I still have done it all? Would I have studied my ass off, taken every job I could find? Or would I have taken Daryl's hand that night he asked me to run away with him? Would I have looked him in the eye and said, Yes? Let's do this. Let's fend for ourselves and be happy. Us against the world.

Would I have been happy?

Would Mia?

Would he?

"Are you mad at me?" Mia's small, sad voice pulled me away from thoughts about a life Daryl and I could have shared. I looked at her.

"No," I said. "I'm just sorry you have to go through all of this."

"It's okay," she said and managed a tiny smile. "I'm kinda used to it. And we'll be back in Washington one day."

"Yeah," I said. "Washington. That's the plan."

Something didn't feel right about it anymore. I don't know if it was the small part of me, the tiny ghost in my soul that whispered 'what if' every time I thought of Daryl, that stopped any path I was on from feeling like the right one. Maybe it was the amount of hope Mia was putting in Washington, I worried she hadn't thought about how much things would've changed. Had she considered the possibility that every one we'd known there might not have survived?

I didn't bring it up. It was a conversation for another time, I was already feeling too heavy from the weight of this one. Mia had only just stopped crying as it was.

"We never got water," I said. "When the Groundlings have wandered off, come with me to get some, yeah?"

"Yeah," she said.

It took a few hours for the Groundlings to clear, and in the end, it wasn't because they wandered off. The group who'd been out scavenging came back just before it got dark and picked them all off. We covered them from the treetops with the gun, but there was no need for it to be fired this time. Everyone made it up just fine.

"That's the most we've ever had down there," Jack commented when he was safely back at camp.

"Yup," I agreed. "More of them are coming out of the City. How was the run?"

"Alright," he said. "Managed to get a few canned goods that ain't gone off yet, some medical supplies. Who's the new guy?"

He'd spotted Lucas, sitting with his back against a treetrunk feeling sorry for himself.

"That's Lucas," I said. "Mia found him when she went to get some water. Don't have any painkillers on you, do you? He's a little injured."

"Sure do," Jack said. "We got painkillers, antibiotics, allergy tablets, some blue thing that may or may not be viagra, the label's come off."

"I told you not to bring that," Izzy grumbled. "Waste of bag space."

"They don't take up that much room," he said. "And I thought they were funny."

"You're a child," she rolled her eyes.

"Maybe just give him the painkillers," I said. "What you do with the rest is your business."

"Alrighty," Jack said. He headed over to give them to Lucas and introduce himself and Izzy.

"They bickered the whole trip," Will said, watching them go. He looked tired. "I am not going on a run with them again."

"Agreed," Frankie said, throwing her bag down at her feet and stretching out her shoulders. "How long have they been married?"

"About a week before all this kicked off," I said. "I think."

"God, what a shit honeymoon," said Dee. "Two months camping in trees with a bunch of strangers while the dead try to murder you."

"I dunno," Will said. "Some people pay a lot for glamping in treehouses."

"Well this ain't very glam, is it?" Dee sighed.

"It will be by the time we're done," Will said. "Which reminds me, I found a hardware store that I think it would be worth going back to, where's Alf so I can ask him what we need?"

"Over there somewhere," I pointed across a few bridges to a platform several trees away. Alf liked to keep to himself most nights. Will was prone to annoying him with overly enthusiastic construction questions. As he walked away, I turned to Frankie and Dee. "I'd like to lead another run tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" Dee repeated. "What else do we need?"

"Weapons," I said. "We are not as well defended as we should be. The number of dead in the woods is just gonna keep growing. The kids should be trained too."

"We might have to go deeper into the City for that," Frankie said. She looked nervous. "I don't know what kinda shape it's in."

"Nah, I reckon the City will be clean out of guns by now. I say we start with the houses closest to us, see what kinda weapons people have left there. We need quieter ones too, so every shot we take doesn't bring every Groundling for miles. If we don't have any luck, we'll move on to the City," I said. "And I ain't going to make anyone come with me who doesn't want to. "

"Alright," Dee said. "I'm in. Tomorrow then?"

"Tomorrow," I agreed. "We'll go at first light."

We cooked up the squirrels I'd skinned and some of the canned beans the group had brought back. I'd never seen anyone eat as fast as Lucas on that first night, it must have been days since his last good meal.

We turned in earlier than usual, although staying up late wasn't something we did much of anyway. It's a lot less fun when there's no late-night TV to fall asleep to or lamps to read by. For the first time in a while, I dreamed. I dreamed I was back in my old Washington apartment. Not the fancy one with the coffee machine and the big windows and the underfloor heating I always forgot to turn on. It was the other one, the one with damp on the walls and only one bedroom. I sitting on the saggy old sofa working on an article and Daryl was there, making something in the kitchen behind me. He didn't say anything, but I knew it was him. Like I could sense it without looking. Whatever I was working on seemed too important to look away from until some small part of me that knew I was dreaming realised that this was my only chance to talk to him again. The urgency of willing myself to turn around in the dream woke me up before I had a chance to see his face.

I couldn't fall back asleep again. I just listened to the sound of the trees, and other people snoring around me. I watched the light in the forest grow as the sun came up and then, as promised, we got ready to go at first light.

Mia wanted to come, so did José, but after the previous day's antics, it was firmly decided this trip was adults only. When they'd been trained on weapons, then we'd teach them how to go on runs. Alf stayed behind with them, he were old and knew he'd slow us down. Lucas was too injured to come. On request of Frankie and Dee, Izzy was also made to stay back. They fed her some bullshit about needing one person at camp who was in a fit enough condition to protect the place, but we all knew it were just because they couldn't take another day of her bickering with Jack.

Jack seemed sad that she weren't coming, which was baffling to the rest of us given that at some time in the night they'd fallen out so badly he'd had to sleep in another tent.

"Married life everything you thought it would be?" I asked him on the walk, falling into step beside him.

"Can't say this is exactly what I pictured when I wrote my vows," he grinned. "But it could be worse."

"Really? Dead are walking about, and all y'all do is fight," I said.

"Ah, that's only part of it," he said. "We have our fights, sure, but we mostly fight those dead dickheads. We fight for each other when it counts, too, that's the important part."

"I guess that's true," I said and felt something horrible twist in my gut.

"Would've been worse if we'd been separated," he said. "Can't imagine surviving this without Izzy. I don't know how Frankie's still going."

There was a moment of silence while we both stared at the back of Frankie's head while she talked to Blanca. Dee turned around and whispered, "She thinks they'll find each other again."

"Maybe they will," I said, with a shrug. They both looked at me like I was crazy. "Stranger things have happened."

Jack laughed. "You're a lot more optimistic than I thought you were."

"What's that supposed to me?"

"I dunno," he shrugged. "You're always catching rodents to gut, setting up traps and talking about how to up our defences."

"Yeah, that's true," Dee agreed, thoughtfully. "Didn't have you down as a secret romantic."

"Wouldn't go that far," I said, but I could feel myself blush. "There's just no way of knowing how many survivors like us there are out there, that's all."

"I'll bet we're the only ones," Dee said. I could tell from her eyes she really thought that were true.

"How can you say that? We found Lucas yesterday," I said.

"Oh, yeah," she said. "Well... I reckon he's the last one."

"Nah," Jack said. "I'm with Naomi, there's gotta be more than us."

"Maybe," she shrugged.

"What about you, guys?" Jack asked, ready for a change of topic. "Either of you married before all this?"

"I'd just broke up with my girlfriend," Dee said sadly.

"God, that sucks," I said.

"Shit timing," Jack agreed.

"Worst part is I don't even remember why now."

"Sorry to hear that," Jack said, then looked at me. "What about you?"

"No," I said and held back a laugh at the idea I'd had my shit together enough to be anyone's wife.

"Ah, well," he shrugged. "There's still time. For both of you."

"Nah," I said. "Don't think there's much point in getting married these days. You could both be dead an hour after."

"That's the whole point," he said. "We're all living on borrowed time now. Why waste ay of it not being hitched to someone you love?"

I wanted to disagree, but I couldn't actually think of a decent counter-argument. So, I just shrugged and said, "I think most folks have more important things on their mind than dating."

"Right now they do, yeah," Jack said. "But it won't always be like this. One day you're gonna find someone that you wanna fight alongside in all of this. Someone you can only imagine making this shit show not just bearable, but better. Then you'll see."

I didn't say anything, just wondered what happened if you'd already met that person and ruined it in a big, dumb fight.

Dee sighed and said, "Neither of us will meet anyone because everyone else is dead," and we didn't speak again until we were in sight of some houses.

Daryl

Merel didn't come back to camp to seek his revenge like we feared he would. Either because he were dead or because it weren't long before there wasn't a camp for him to come back to. Maybe he tried, but by the time he got there, we'd already gone.

Walkers came through. First time we'd seen a group like that. Not quite as big as a horde but there were enough of them to overpower us, take us by surprise.

We lost people.

Eighteen in total.

Amy.

Ed.

Can't say I was too sad about that last one. I didn't know any of them very well at that point, but Ed was a real asshole. That much was clear from real early on.

Jim got bit, and after that, he got sick. We tried to get him to the CDC in time to get a cure, but he didn't make it. We left him tied to a tree - his choice, not ours.

We should've shot him, but the early days were weird, and none of us knew what to do with people when they turned.

We made it to the CDC.

We thought there'd be a cure, or at least some answers about how all of this got started and when it might end. I'd expected a whole team of people, a crowd of nerds in lab coats. But there was just one guy, Jenner, and all he had were some brain scans of infected patients turning into Walkers. He confirmed that they weren't alive, not really, so I hoped folks would feel less squeamish about shooting them. He had no idea what had caused it, so all in all it would've been a wasted trip, if it weren't for the fact he had showers and food. Booze too. We ate like Kings and stopped smelling like peasants. Just for a day.

Jenner had been alone too long. He weren't quite right anymore. Think it was the first time I really saw that you need people around you in all of this. To keep you tethered, keep you sane.

He blew the place up.

Took one of ours with him.

Jacqui, I think her name was.

We said goodbye to the Morales's too. They didn't die, just chose to go another way. Which kinda amounts to the same thing these days.

Life was just becoming a long list of people who hadn't made it, and I was tired. So tired. Felt like we was always on the road and the roads were never clear. And things were constantly breaking or getting broke.

Like the damn RV.

It needed a new radiator hose. We stopped where the road had been mostly blocked by abandoned vehicles and scavenged them for all sorts. We took their fuel, any water or fresh clothes we could find. Looked for a damn radiator hose for the damn RV.

Then came our first horde. We'd never seen a group that big. Must've been like a hundred dead dickbrains all walking towards us at once. We dove under cars, stayed real quiet. Real still. We could just see their feet passing through and smell the stench of their rotting flesh.

Lucky the dead are fucking idiots.

When it sounded like they were a safe enough distance away, I got up and kept looking for shit that might be useful. I was kind of aware that something was kicking off with the others, but I didn't pay no attention to it until I could fee someone staring at me.

"Hey," they said, and I looked up. It was Rick, looking at me so serious I thought he must be talking to someone else. Shane was already standing behind him, though. So was Glenn. Those were his usual go-to guys. "You're a hunter, right?"

I glanced behind me. Nothing but the corpse of a man who'd blown his brains out in a Honda, so it must be me he were talking to.

"Me?" I asked. "Yeah. Why? You hungry? Cause I don't think now's the time, man. Though I think Dale found some chips or some shit-"

"Can you track?" he cu me off.

"Course I can track," I said. Fucking dumb question.

"I need your help," he said. "Sophia's wandered off. You think you can come into the woods with me and help me retrace her steps?"

Now, all of the hullabaloo I'd been ignoring made sense. I glanced over at Carol, who was in floods of tears. Lori was trying to comfort her, but she looked distraught too. Sophia couldn't have been much older than ten or eleven. Old enough to look after herself but young enough to be scared our there on her own. Especially cause she had a Momma who cared about her. Kids that have that wanna get found when they run off.

"Yeah, of course," I said, quickly. "Lead me to it."

He took the three of us - Shane, Glenn and me - into the woods next to the highway. I worried for a second that this dumbass cop wouldn't be able to retrace his steps right. But he stopped by a creek and jumped down into it. I followed him, while Shane and Glenn stood on the bank. Probably worried about getting their shoes wet.

"I left her here," he said and indicated to the spot. I took a good look for any signs of a struggle or the direction she might've run off in.

"Waste of time, man," I heard Shane mutter. "This guy ain't gonna be able to tell you anything."

Fuck you.

I ignored him. "Sure this was the spot?" I asked Rick in case his dumb ass had got the wrong bit of the river.

There were very few signs of anyone being there, least of all a little girl. It was a good thing, overall, meant a struggle wasn't likely.

"I left her right here," he said again and seemed real sure of it. "I drew the Walkers away, off in that direction- up the creek. She was gone by the time I got back here. I figured she just took off and ran back to the group. I told her, go that way, and keep the sun on her left shoulder."

Good advice. Maybe less of a dumbass than I thought.

I waded through the water, towards where Sophia might've gone if she'd taken the cops advice. She seemed like the kinda kid who'd listen to a cop. Glenn was standing in the way.

"Why don't you step off to one side?" I told him. "You're mucking up the trail."

"You're assuming she knows her left from her right," Shane said. "The kid's tired and scared, man. She had her close call with two Walkers. I'm kinda wondering how much of what you said stuck."

What the hell were they teaching cops about finding missing kids? Or was Shane just one of them folks who don't know how tough kids can be when they have to or the kinda shit they can survive? Probably because he never had to think about survival until now.

"We got clear prints right here," I said, continuing to ignore Shane. "She did like you said- headed back to the highway. We'll make our way back."

Why had nobody done the right thing and given the kid a gun or a knife? She might've had a fighting chance with one of those. I lead them as far as I could find traces of Sophia.

"She was doing fine until right here," I crouched down where the tracks took a worrying turn, scanning the ground for any sign that I was wrong. "All she had to do was keep going. She veered off that way."

"Why would she do that?" Glenn asked.

"Maybe she saw something that spooked her," Shane said. "Made her run off."

Spooked, how? Don't remember you being out here with her, Detective Dumbass.

"A Walker?" Glenn said.

"I don't see any other footprints," I reassured him. "Just hers."

"So what do we do?" Shane asked, looking back at Rick. "All of us press on?"

If I ever had a kid who went missing, there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell I was calling Shane to help me find them.

"No," Rick said. "Better if you and Glenn get back up to the highway. People are going to start panicking. Let them know we're doing everything we can. But most of all, keep everybody calm."

Shane and Glenn left us to it. I followed Sophia's new trail, leading Rick deeper into the woods. We came across a Walker that had just eaten, cut open its stomach like we were the huntsman looking for Little Red Riding Hood inside the wolf, but all that was in there was chunks of a woodchuck.

Dead were eating better than us.

We lost the light and had to stop searching. Carol didn't take that so well, even though we promised we'd pick it up again at first light. Most of the camp came out to help, except Dale and T-Dog who kept watch on our stuff. Rick asked me to take the lead on the search. It was weird, to have the camp follow me like that, for them to look at me without hating me for the first time since I'd met any of them.

We found a dead guy in a tent. We found a church where the bells were still ringing even though there was nobody there to ring them. We found plenty of Walkers.

We did not find Sophia.

The light started to fade again, and Rick got me to lead the rest of the group back to the RV. He, Carl and Shane stayed to keep looking even though I told them it was pointless. In the dark, they'd just be tripping over themselves.

We'd not been walking for long before we heard a gunshot. Just one. Lori immediately wanted to turn back, but I wouldn't let them. Rick had trusted me with getting them all back safe, it couldn't be my fault that his wife wandered off on some dumb suicide mission. I tried to keep everyone calm, I probably weren't as good at it as Shane, and there weren't any chores to give people. It was just more walking and that ain't as distracting as you might think.

Morale was low. Carol's the lowest of all.

Andrea did her best to comfort her. "I'm sorry for what you're going through. I know how you feel."

It hadn't been that long since she'd lost Amy and since then, she'd kinda been on edge. Wouldn't have been all that surprised if she'd topped herself.

"I suppose you do. Thank you," said Carol, doing her best not to cry. "The thought of her... out here by herself... It's the not knowing that's killing me. I just keep hoping and praying she doesn't wind up like Amy."

Harsh.

Andrea flinched, and the rest of us fell silent. We'd all seen her turn. Seen her get put down. It weren't pleasant.

"Oh, God," Carol gasped. "That's the worst thing I ever said."

If that were true, Carol must have lead a pretty polite life before all of this. It certainly didn't remain the worst thing she'd ever said.

Andrea was quick to forgive her, "We're all hoping and praying with you, for what it's worth."

Fuck's sake.

"I'll tell you what it's worth," I said. "Not a damn thing. It's a waste of time all this hoping and praying. 'Cause we're gonna locate that little girl. She's gonna be just fine."

Carol didn't much look like she believed me, but it didn't matter because I did. I couldn't wait to prove her and everyone else wrong about it. It was enough to snap them both out of their little pity party so we could keep going. We pressed on towards the highway.

Another sound stopped us. A weirder sound; hooves beating against the forest floor. They were moving with too much purpose to be a wild horse. Unease grew as we looked around. I raised my crossbow in case Lori had been right to worry about the gunshot. Someone could've taken Rick, Carl and Shane hostage. Could've shot at them. Or just plain shot them.

From out of the bushes burst a chick on a horse. Didn't look armed but I kept my weapon up because you can't be too careful.

"Lori? Lori Grimes?" she yelled, looking around at us all.

"I'm Lori," Lori stepped forward.

"Rick sent me, you gotta come now."

"What?"

"There's been an accident," she said. "Carl's been shot. He's still alive, but you gotta come now. Rick needs you!"

"Woah, Woah, Woah!" I said, trying to get between her and the horse. "We don't know this girl. You can't get on that horse!"

If Rick did make it back, what would he say to me letting his woman ride off with a stranger just because she knew his name? She could be the one who shot Carl in the first place.

The chick on the horse kinda glared at me. Lori totally ignored everything I'd said and started climbing onto the horse. "Rick said you had others on the highway?" she said. "That big traffic snarl?"

"Uh-huh," Glenn said, sounding all dazed like he'd been hit on the head with something.

"Backtrack to Fairburn Road. Two miles down is our farm. You'll see the mailbox. The name's Greene." She spurred the horse on, Lori clinging to the back. Then they was both gone, left the rest of us in the dust.

Nothing else to do but keep head back to the highway and fill the others in on what had happened. Felt ridiculous, going into the woods to find one person and coming out with four less than we'd started with. There was division amongst us about what to do next. Dale was all for heading to the farm to check it out, check it was real and that the rest of our group were alright. Carol wanted to stay in case Sophia came back. I volunteered to stay with the RV, but Dale weren't happy to just leave it with me. Probably thought I'd take off with it or some shit.

In the end, it was decided that Dale, Andrea, Carol and I would stay with RV and leave a message for Sophia. Glenn took T-Dog to the farm to see if they had any medicine for his blood infection.

Night fell, and it was hard to sleep. Carol cried in the corner. It was soft, quiet, and I could tell she didn't want to draw attention to herself or wake anyone up. But it made me think that Sophia might be out there crying too, alone in the dark. And that made it real hard to sleep.

Kids who have a loving home should get to spend as much time there as possible. You can lose it so fast.

I got up to do a nighttime search. Andrea came with me. I weren't that keen on having her come with me, but an extra pair of eyes out there in the dark was always useful. Walkers are more active at night.

"You really think we're gonna find Sophia?" she asked.

I glanced at her. She looked tired and beat down. "You got that look on your face same as everybody else," I told her. "What the hell is wrong with you people? We just started looking."

"Well do you?"

"It ain't the mountains of Tibet," I said. "It's Georgia. She could be holed up in a farmhouse somewhere. People get lost, and they survive. Happens all the time."

"She's only twelve."

"Hell, I was younger than her when I got lost," I said. "Nine days in the woods eating berries, wiping my ass with poison oak."

"They found you?"

"My old man was off on a bender with some waitress. Merle was doing another stint in juvie, didn't even know I was gone," I said. This was back before I knew Naomi. Before I had anyone who would've noticed I weren't there. "I made my way back, though. Went straight into the kitchen and made myself a sandwich. No worse for wear, except my ass itched something awful."

Andrea looked at me and started laughing. "Sorry. I'm sorry," she said, trying to sound sympathetic. "That is a terrible story."

I didn't mind, weren't like the experience had hurt me. As far as my childhood memories went, it were one of the nicer ones.

"The difference is, Sophia's got people looking for her," I said. "I'd call that an advantage."

Sophia had the kind of Momma that would've put her picture on milk cartons if she'd gone missing back in the day. She'd have been all over the news. No way she'd have wound up eating worms like me.

We kept walking, kept looking for signs and listening out for danger. Something rustled nearby, and I glanced at Andrea. She'd heard it too. I raised my crossbow, and we crept towards the sound.

A tent beneath a tree.

I was about to call out for Sophia when the rustling got louder. I looked up and saw some dead loser hanging from the tree. His skin was so luminously pale it almost glowed in the dark. He'd strung a note up along with himself.

"'Got bit. Fever hit. World gone to shit. Might as well quit.'" I read it aloud. Shit rhyme. "Dumbass didn't know enough to shoot himself in the head. Turned himself into a big, swinging piece of bait. And a mess. You alright?"

I could hear the sound of Andrea wretching behind me. She looked real queasy. "Trying not to puke," she said.

"Go ahead if you gotta," I told her. Better out than in.

"No, I'm fine," she said but didn't sound it. "Let's just talk about something else for a minute. How'd you learn to shoot?"

"Gotta eat. That's one thing these Walkers and us have in common," I said. It was the only explanation I felt like giving her after she'd laughed so much a poison oak story. I moved closer to the dead guy, watched him go berserk as he tried to reach me. "I guess this is the closest he's been to food since he turned. Look at him, hanging up there like a big pinata. The other Geeks came and ate all the flesh off his legs."

It were mostly just bone dangling there, kicking at us.

Andrea threw up. Finally.

"I thought we were changing the subject," she complained, wiping vomit off her mouth with the back of her hand.

"Call that payback," I said. "For laughing about my itchy ass."

She gave me a small smile.

"Let's head back," I said.

"Aren't you gonna-" she looked pointedly at my crossbow and then at the hanging Walker.

"No. He ain't hurting nobody and I ain't gonna waste an arrow either. He made his choice, opted out. Let him hang.," I said. I tried to leave, but she didn't follow. Just kept staring up at that dumb dead guy. I wondered if she was still thinking about taking the same path. "You wanna live now. Or not? It's just a question."

I don't think she were used to people being so blunt, but I never knew how to word things to suit folks like her.

"An answer for an arrow," she said. "Fair?"

"Mm-hmm," I nodded.

"I don't know if I want to live or if I have to or if it's just a habit."

"That's not much of an answer," I said. But I shot the hanging man anyway. Because a deal's a deal. "Waste of an arrow."

I turned to leave, and this time she followed.

"You didn't give me much of an answer, either," she said.

"Huh?"

"How'd you learn to shoot?"

"Taught myself," I shrugged.

"Really?"

"I had to," I said. "Like I said, my family weren't... well, they weren't much of a family. They weren't around much. And I had to eat. So..."

She didn't ask anything else. Just gave me a look like social workers used to give me sometimes. Sympathetic, but also kinda patronising, like they could never imagine living in the only world I knew but could also never imagine bringing someone me into theirs.

Next morning, we made sure everything was ready in case Sophia came back and needed to find us and headed to the farm. Carl was in pretty bad shape by the sound of things, although only his parents were allowed in to see him. Hershel, the old guy who owned the farm, made sure the rest of us stayed outside. Turned out one of his guys, Otis, had accidentally shot him while he was out hunting a deer.

I wanted to say that this Otis must have been a pretty crap shot, but then it turned out he'd died on a run for medical supplies for Carl, so I kept my mouth shut.

Now that the whole group was back together, and we had a few extra people form the farm, I hoped that finding Sophia would get easier.

"How long's this girl been lost?" Hershel asked us as we stood out in his front yard.

"This'll be day three," Rick said.

Maggie, the chick who'd been on the horse and, it turned out, one of Hershel's daughters, brought over a map. "County survey map," she said, unrolling it across the hood of the car. "Shows terrain and elevations."

"This is perfect," Rick said. "We can finally get this thing organised. We'll grid the whole area. Start searching in teams."

"Not you. Not today. You gave three units of blood. You wouldn't be hiking five minutes in this heat before passing out," Hershel told Rick. I hadn't known Carl had needed blood. No wonder Rick was looking like shit. Hershel turned to Shane. "And your ankle. Push it now, you'll be laid up a month. No good to anybody."

"Guess it's just me," I said, glad I didn't have to actually team up with any of those assholes. Teaming up weren't a strength of mine. "I'm gonna head back to the creek. Work my way from there."

"I could still be useful," Shane said. "Drive up to the interstate, see if Sophia wandered back."

"Alright," Rick said. "Tomorrow then. We'll start doing this right."

Not if I find her today.

"We can't have our people out there with just knives," Shane said. "We need the gun training we've been promising."

Hershel said, "I'd prefer you not carrying guns on my property. We've managed so far without turning this into an armed camp."

Shane started to protest. A lot of what he said made sense but Rick stopped him and reminded him that we were on Hershel's land. We agreed to run an unarmed camp, which felt like the dumbest thing in the world, but I knew how valuable it was to have a base to search for Sophia from. We couldn't lose this place, not until we'd found her.

I didn't find her.

But I didn't find an old farmhouse, just like the one I'd been thinking about when I spoke to Andrea. Felt like a sign she was right, that she might actually be in there. I held up my crossbow just in case and pushed open the door real quiet. Place was a dump. Smelled of dust and damp and mothballs. People had definitely been through it to loot the joint, but it had been a while ago, and now the shit that was left was still gathering dust. I found a tin of sardines in the kitchen that looked like they'd been recently opened. I listened carefully to the sounds of the house, tryna see what were just the building and what might be a scared kid hiding out. In front of me, I caught sight of a door standing ajar and something made of cloth lying the gloom. I snuck forward, opened the door slowly and quietly. At the bottom, there was a little makeshift bed, too small for an adult. Probably perfect for a kid.

I walked back outside and called for Sophia. There was no answer, but right outside the door, I saw two white flowers. Bright and hopeful. The Cherokee Rose.

I remembered a story about them from school. About when American soldiers were moving Indians off their land on the Trail of Tears, the Cherokee mothers were grieving and crying. They were losing their little ones along the way - exposure and disease and starvation - a lot of them just disappeared. So the elders asked for a sign to uplift the mother's spirits. Give them strength. Hope. The next day them roses started to grow right where the mothers' tears fell.

It made me think about how much Carol had cried since her little girl had wandered off. And how lucky Sophia was that she had a Momma who'd cry for her like that. Any kid in the whole world would fight to get back to that kind of love. The roses felt like an answer to Carol's prayers, a little sign that was trying to tell us all that Sophia was alright and that she'd been holed up in that farmhouse. Just like I said.

I picked one, and I put it in an empty beer bottle and took it back to Carol. I told her the story of the Cherokee mothers, but she didn't much look like she knew what I was talking about. So I said, "I'm not fool enough to think any flowers are blooming for my brother, but I believe this one bloomed for your little girl."

She smiled then, so I think she got it. If a feral and unloved mutt like me could survive out there at six years old, it was only fair that Sophia did too. She had something to come back to, a reason to keep living.

Day four on the search for Sophia and it weren't just me who was on the trail any more. Rick divided the map up into grids that we could all search, using the farmhouse I'd found to give him an idea of the best places to send us.

Only Shane seemed to doubt that the little hiding place I'd found might've sheltered Sophia.

I volunteered to go out on horseback. Mostly to avoid getting paired up with one of those assholes. If the day before had proved anything, it was that I did better on my own.

I took one of Hershel's horses and rode up to a ridge above the creek. The higher I was, the more land I could see. If she was in the area, I'd spot her miles away. The forest was nice and quiet, without one of them assholes yammering away at me. I was glad to be on my own. Even caught a few squirrels to bring back to camp.

I didn't see Sophia, but I did catch sight of something the stream. For a horrible moment I thought it was her, and that she'd drowned. But it were too small. And human-shaped without actualy being human.

I dismounted the horse and climbed down to take a look. It was a doll, caught up on a piece of a tree that had fallen in the river. It had to be Sophia's. Can't say I was paying much attention to her doll collection, but who else could it be?

I called for her. Nothing.

I mounted the horse again and kept riding, further along the ridge. We were getting higher above the water, but not yet high enough to have a decent view of anything.

It was all fine until the horse got spooked. Don't know what by, but one moment we was walking along quite happily and the next I felt my stomach turn over. Like when a lift drops too fast. I saw the sky and then the ground and then the sky again as I was thrown from its back. I tumbled down into the riverbed. There was the shock of the water. And a burning pain in my side.

The water around me turned red. I looked down. On of my own arrows was sticking out of my gut. It was bad. But I didn't think it had pierced any vital organs. I swam to the side of the river as the burning feeling got worse. Knowing it was only a matter of time before the shock wore off and the pain was excruciating, I ripped arms off my shirt and tied them around myself to try and stop the bleeding. I looked up at the ridge I'd fallen from. Damn horse had run off and left me to die. I'd dropped my crossbow too.

I waded back out into the water, looking for any sign of it. I saw something lying on the bottom, just a shape in the murky stream, and dove under to get it. It was the crossbow. Thank God.

I slung it back over my shoulder where it belonged and swam to the shore, trying to assess the best place to climb up. It was either that or swim back to where it might be easier to get out. But that were miles back and I'd probably had bled out by then. I grabbed two big and sturdy looking branches and used them to help me on my climb to the top of the ridge.

I got about half-way before the earth gave out when I put too much weight on it. My footing slipped. It was earth and sky and earth again.

And then there was nothing.

And then there was a voice, "Why don't you pull that arrow out, dummy?"

Merle

Fucking Merle. The hell was he doing here?

Was I dead?

I opened my eyes just a little. It were brighter than I wanted it to be. Merle's butt-ugly, smug, grinning face swam in to view. There was a forest behind him. Somewhere, I could hear water. "You could bind that wound better."

Wound?

I tried to move, but the pain stopped me.

Oh, yeah. That wound.

"Merle?" I wanted to ask how the hell he found me out here, but the pain stopped me from talking too.

"What's going on, man?" he asked. "You taking a siesta or something?

"A shitty day, bro," I said.

Merle laughed. "Like me to get you a pillow? Maybe rub your feet?"

Unhelpful as ever.

"Screw you."

"Nu-uh," he said. "You're the one's screwed from the looks of it. All them years I spent tryna make a man out of you, this is what I get? Look at you. Lying in the dirt like a used rubber. You're gonna die out here, little brother. And for what?"

"A girl. They lost a little girl."

"So you got a thing for little girls now?"

Fuck you. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck you.

"Shut up."

"I noticed you ain't out looking for old Merle no more," he said, which weren't at all fair.

"I tried like hell to find you, bro."

"Like hell you did," I said. I wondered if he were going to punch me or if he were a hallucination. It seemed too weird that he'd managed to find me out here when he can't track for shit. If you hallucinated a guy hitting you, would it still hurt? "You split, man. Lit out first chance you got."

Hallucination or no, this was helping me stop missing him.

"You lit out," I said. "All you had to do was wait. We went back for you, Rick and I. We did right by you."

"This the same Rick that cuffed me to the rooftop in the first place? Forced me to cut off my own hand?" the more he spoke, the surer I was that he weren't really here. "This him we're talking about here? Are you his bitch now?"

"I ain't nobody's bitch."

"You're a joke is what you are," Merle said. "Playing errand boy to a bunch of pansy-asses. You're nothing but a freak to them. Redneck trash. That's all you are. They're laughing at you behind your back. You know that, don't you? One of these days they're going to scrape you off their heels like you was dogshit. They ain't your kin, your blood. Hell, you had any damn nuts in that sack of yours, you'd go back and shoot your pal Rick in the face for me. Now you listen to me. Ain't nobody ever gonna care about you except me, little brother. Ain't nobody ever will."

"That ain't true," I said, and it felt like the most real thing that had happened in the last ten minutes. "You weren't ever there. Not once."

"I been there you're whole life, bro. I've been the only one looking out for you," he said. "You think you'd have made it this far without me?"

"You don't know shit, man," I said. Then I groaned because the pain in my side were getting worse. Or I was more aware of it.

"You thinking about that girl?" he said. He didn't have to say her name for me to know who he meant. "You think she cared more than I did? 'Cause I gotta tell you, she didn't give a shit about you, neither. She ain't your blood."

"Hey, shut up."

"If she cared about you so much, where was she, huh? Face it, she went off to college and forgot all about you because you're nothing," he said. "I made you who you are. Me."

The truth set my skin on fire. The truth about how I'd hurt Naomi, and been too ashamed of it to admit it to anyone. Even Merle, who I'd seen do much worse. And the truth that he had made me who I was. All the bad bits were him. That was who I'd become while I were trying to forget about Naomi and be the kind of brother Merle might actually stick around for.

"Shut up," I yelled at him. The anger was enough to help me move a little.

"Or what? You gonna make me? Come on, then," he taunted. I could feel him moving my feet. It made my whole body hurt so much worse. "Get up on your feet before I have to kick your teeth in. Let's go. Come on."

I tried to focus on him, managed to sit up a little. Merle was gone. Some dead bastard was the one clawing at my feet. Was I already bit? My whole body was alive with the pain that radiated from my side, too hard to tell if there was anything wrong somewhere else.

I kicked him off and tried to scramble for my crossbow. Every move fucking hurt. It were just out of reach.

The dead bastard was back on me. Cold, strong hands. Snapping jaw. I fought back, desperate to keep its disgusting teeth away from me. We sprawled in the dirt. I grabbed a branch that was lying nearby, clobbered its skull until it broke.

There was another one close by. I stumbled away from it, grabbing the end of the arrow that was sticking out of me. I pulled as hard as I could, the only thing that stopped me from blacking out for the second time was knowing that if I did, I was dead meat. It came out in a moment of pain so bad it blinded me. I kept going, feeling for my crossbow.

My fingers closed around it.

I struggled to load the arrow. I turned. Fired.

The second Walker fell a few feet away from me. I leant back, took a few deep breaths. My heart was really pounding, my wound was open now I'd taken the arrow out. I'd lose a lot of blood if I didn't fix it soon. I got up and rebandaged myself. Felt better.

Son of a bitch was right.

The two Walkers that had nearly killed me was still lying on the ground. I spat at them. Cut their ears off to make a necklace. It usually didn't feel so personal, killing Geeks, but these ones had damn near got me and getting a way from them felt like an achievement worthy of taking a momento. Dehydration and bloodloss probably factored into my accessory choice too.

I'd still lost a lot a lotta blood. I felt too weak to climb out of this damn ditch I'd fallen into. My limbs were shakey, and I were sweating like a pig. Felt like if I stood up too fast I'd faint again. Luckily, I still had the squirrel I'd caught. I sliced it open, ate all the raw bits I could, and after a drink of water from the creek, I felt strong enough to try again.

I was alright until about halfway. Then the pain, the heat of the beating sun, the returning dehydration were all too much. I needed a breather. The top still looked so damn far. I looked up at the sky to where the birds were, wished I had an easy way of travelling like them.

"Please. Don't feed the birds."

Merle.

Oh, good. Back to hallucinating.

I looked up and saw Merle's face peering over the top of the ledge. This didn't bode well for my survival.

"What's the matter, Darylina?" he said. "That al you got in you? Throw away that purse and climb."

"I liked it better when you was missing," I told him.

Merle laughed. "Come on, don't be like that. I'm on your side."

"Yeah? Since when?"

"Hell, since the day you were born, baby brother. Somebody had to look after your worthless ass."

"You talk a big game, but you was never there. Hell, you ain't here now. Guess some things never change."

"Don't see your little bitch here, neither," he said. I started to climb again. "She don't even want to be your damn daydreams."

"You best shut the hell up."

"Or what? You gonna come up here and shut my mouth for me? Well come on and do it then if you think you're man enough," he said. "That why you really looking for that little girl? 'Cause you think it'll prove something? Like if you can find a damn lost child still alive, maybe you can find Naomi?"

"Keep her name outta your goddamn mouth," I roared, my fingers clawing at the dirt on the edge of the bank. When I pulled myself up, he was gone. Forest was empty. Not even any dead folks. My legs were shaking so much I damn near fell back down again.

"Yeah, you better run," I yelled to the forest, in case Merle was a ghost and not a hallucination. Didn't want to spend the rest of my life haunted by that prick.

I was lucky not to meet any Walkers on the way book. Couldn't see straight, couldn't walk straight. When I got in sight of the farm, I could hear some faint yelling and some people running towards me, but they was just blurs.

"Is that Daryl?" one of them said, sounded like Glenn.

Who the hell else would it be?

I was aware of a gun, did my best to focus on who was pointing it at me. Rick.

Who else?

"That's the third time you've pointed that thing at my head," I said. "You gonna pull the trigger or what?"

I must've really looked like shit. I reckon they thought I was a Walker until I spoke. I thought I saw Rick lower the damn thing, but then I heard a shot. Felt a sharp pain on the side of my head and the ground beneath me. I looked up at the sky again for a couple of seconds before I felt some people haul me back to my feet. One of them was Rick. "I was kidding," I told him before blacking out. Again.

When I came to, I was in a real bed for the first time in months. Old man Hershel was checking me over. Rick and Shane were sitting in chairs near the bed like we was in some kind of hospital and it were visiting hours. They'd found Sophia's doll on me, wanted to know where I'd got it. Rick brought me the map.

"I found it washed up on the creek bed right there," I said, pointing to the place. Hershel was cleaning out my wounds with something. The sting was familiar. "She must've dropped it crossing there somewhere."

Rick looked pleased, "Cuts the grid almost in half."

"Yeah, you're welcome," I said. One day of looking on my own and I'd done better than either of the damn cops.

"How's he looking?" Rick asked Hershel.

"I had no idea I would be going through antibiotics so quickly," he replied. I guess he was worried that I'd get an infection, even though I'd washed it out in the creek. I guess I had scrambled up a lot of dirt. "Any idea what happened to my horse?"

"Yeah, the one that almost killed me?" I said. "If it's smart, it left the country."

Wouldn't say no to a nice horse steak right about now.

"We call that one Nelly," Hershel said, "as in Nervous Nelly. I could've told you she'd throw you if you'd bothered to ask. It's a wonder you people have survived this long."

Not a very original name, then, I thought, but I didn't say it because I was very aware that he was the one bandaging me up. He told me to rest awhile, and they all left me alone. This time, there was no Merle hallucination. Or ghost. Or whatever. I just slept until the smell of food woke me.

Carol brought me up a plate and asked how she was feeling.

"About as good as I look," I said.

"I brought you some dinner. You must be starving," she put the plate down and reached towards me. I flinched away from her.

"Watch out, I got stitches," I said.

Carol looked a little hurt, but I wanted her to know I weren't looking for Sophia because I expected any special treatment or favours for it. I really just wanted to bring her back.

"You need to know something," Carol said from the doorway. "You did more for my little girl today than her own daddy ever did in his whole life."

"I didn't do anything Rick or Shane wouldn't have done," I said.

"I know. You're every bit as good as them," she said. "Every bit."

And then she left. I felt weird. Uncomfortable. Hadn't had anyone say anything like that in a long time. It felt like a part of me I'd thought was gone forever were slowly coming back.

The next morning, Hershel let me move back to my own camp. He said I could stay if I wanted to, but I didn't. The bed was nice and all, but I wanted to be with my own people. Andrea brought me a book as a way of saying sorry for shooting me. It was a nice gesture but a crappy book.

At breakfast, Glenn stood in front of us all, looking nervous as hell. I glanced at him and wondered if he was about to tell us that he was seeing the farmer's daughter, Maggie. Because if so, I didn't think the enormous build-up was necessary. It had been pretty obvious since he'd gawped at her on that horse. "Uh, guys," he said. There was a long pause. I kept eating. "So... the barn is full of Walkers."

The hell?

Shane lead us on an excursion to investigate. Sure enough, when you got close to the barn, you could hear the unmistakable sound of Walkers. No wonder old Hershel hadn't wanted us going anywhere near it.

Shane turned on Rick, "You cannot tell me you are alright with this."

"No, I am not," Rick said, "but we are guests here, this isn't our land."

"This is our lives, man!"

"Lower your voice!" Glenn hissed as the sounds from the barn got louder.

"We can't just sweep this under the rug," Lori said.

"It ain't right," Shane agreed. "We either gotta go in there, we gotta make things right, or we just gotta go."

"We can't go!" Rick said.

"Why, Rick? Why?"

"Because my daughter's still out there," Carol said.

"Ok. I think it's time that we all start to just consider the other possibility."

"Shane, we're not leaving Sophia behind," Rick said.

"I'm close to finding this girl," I said. "I just found her damn doll a few days ago."

"You found a doll, Daryl," Shane glared at me. "That's what you did. You found a doll."

"You don't know what the hell you're talking about," I yelled. I tried to reach him, wanted nothing more than to punch him in the mouth. He came for me too, but Rick got between us.

Shane was mouthing off, "I'm just saying what needs to be said here.

Now, if you get a good lead in the first 48 hours... after that it don't matter. Let me tell you something else, man. If she was alive out there, saw you coming, all methed out with your buck knife and Geek ears around your neck, she would run in the other direction, man."

"Shut up!"

I tried to get to him again. I wanted to kick his teeth in. Again, Rick got between us, the rest of the group pulled us apart. He and Shane argued over what to do. I hated the guy, but a lot of what Shane said made sense. Having a barn of Walkers just sitting there put us all in danger. But we needed this place. We needed somewhere to bring Sophia home to.

Rick promised to talk to Hershel before he lead the group on another search for Sophia. But at midday a big group of people were still loitering around the farmhouse.

T-Dog and Andrea, who were meant to be part of the search party, approached them just as Carol and I were coming back from looking for more Cherokee Roses. I don't know if she got it yet, or if she were just humoring me, but I was determined to make Carol see that they were a sign her little girl was alright.

"You seen Rick?" Glenn asked them.

"He went off with Hershel," Andrea said. "We were supposed to leave a couple hours ago."

"Yeah you were. What the hell?" I said. Why was everyone just sitting around?

"Rick told us he was going out," Carol said.

"Dammit, isn't anybody taking this seriously? We got us a damn trail!" I said. I looked around for Rick, saw Shane approaching. "Ah, here we go."

Maybe his second in command would have shit to say about the situation. He was carrying a lot of weapons. Might have been all the ones we had

"What's all this?" I asked.

"You with me, man?" he asked, handing me a rifle. I took it. Shane looked at the rest of them, "Time to grow up. You already got yours?"

"Yeah…" Andrea said. "Where's Dale?

"He's on his way."

Shane kept handing out guns.

"I thought we couldn't carry," T-Dog said.

"Yeah, well we can and we have to. Now look, it was one thing standing around here picking daisies when we thought this place was supposed to be safe. But now we know it ain't." Shane turned to Glenn. "How about you, man? You gonna protect yours?

Glenn glanced at his girl before he took a weapon. Maggie looked mad as shit.

"Will you stop?" she said. "You do this, you hand out these guns, my dad will make you leave tonight."

"We have to stay, Shane."

It was Carl who spoke up. Stepped forward like a real man, speaking for what's right.

"We ain't going anywhere, ok?" Shane said. "Now, look Hershel- he's just gotta understand. He's gonna have to. And we need to find Sophia, am I right? Huh? I want you to take this. You take it, Carl and you keep your mother safe."

He tried to hand one of the guns to the kid but Lori got in the way.

"Rick said no guns," she said. "This is not your call, this is not your decision to make."

"Oh shit," T-Dog gasped, drawing all of our attention to where Rick and Hershel were emerging from the woods. Each of them had a snare pole with a Walker on the end. Shane took off running towards them, the rest of us not far behind.

Looked like they was heading for the barn. Were they adding to Hershel's hellish collection?

"Shane, just back off," Rick said when he saw him coming. He tried to sound all calm but I don't think his cop-techniques were working on a fellow cop. Training probably makes you immune to it.

"Why do your people have guns?" Hershel asked.

"Are you kidding me? You see? You see what they're holding on to?" Shane said.

"I see who I'm holding on to!"

"Nah, man, you don't," Shane was circling them, getting closer and closer to their Walkers each time.

"Shane, just let me do this. Then we can talk," Rick pleaded.

"What you wanna talk about, Rick? These things ain't sick. They're not people. They're dead. Ain't gotta feel nothing for them, because all they do is kill. They're the things that killed Amy. They killed Otis. They're gonna kill all of us."

One of Hershel's kids had started to cry.

"Shane, shut up!" Rick warned.

"Hershel, man. Let me ask you something," Shane said. "Could a living, breathing person walk away from this?"

Without warning, he unloaded a tonne of bullets into the Walker Hershel was leading. Hershel said nothing. It weren't nice to see. Walkers gotta be put down but one bullet to the head will do it. No need to toy with them. Or an old man.

"That's three rounds in the chest! Someone who's alive, could they just take that? Why is it still coming?" Shane yelled, shooting some more.

"Shane, enough!" Rick said.

"Hey, you're right, man. That is enough," he said, finally shooting the Walker in the head. "Enough risking our lives for a little girl who's gone! Enough living next to a barn full of things that are trying to kill us. Enough! Rick, it ain't like it was before. If ya'll wanna live, if you wanna survive, you gotta fight for it. I'm talking about fighting, right here, right now!"

Rick was screaming at Hershel, begging him to take the snare pole so he could deal with Shane. Not sure Hershel could hear him, he was still staring at the dead girl. Shane broke the down the barn door with a pickaxe until it was weak enough for the Walkers to do the rest of the damage themselves. The door broke, and out came the flood. One dead bastard after another.

I don't know how many there were. I wasn't counting, I was just shooting. We got them all, we had too. Now that Shane had released them, they were too much of a danger to everyone. Hershel's surviving family cried, one of them was screaming. When it was done, Shane looked around with this beefed-up pride. Like he'd done the right thing. But the silence we were met with didn't feel good. Didn't feel right.

And then, from the bowels of the barn, we heard another Walker coming towards the light.

I raised my gun.

And then I had to lower it.

She were just a little girl.

Sophia.

Almost unrecognisable but Carol knew right away. I heard her scream. The only sound was her feet on the ground running towards her, and Sophia's growls as she reached towards us. I caught Carol as she came past me.

She fought me, tooth and nail to get to her kid, but I held on so tight we both fell as she tried to get away. Shane didn't look so big now, he'd kinda deflated. He looked like one lost, sorry prick.

Sophia kept walking, stepping over the other dead Walkers. Carol kept struggling against me. Until Rick stepped forward and raised his gun. Took a shot.

They both crumpled to the ground. The Walker that was once Sophia

From that day on, two things were clear;

A rose is just a rose.

And when you lose someone, they ain't coming back.