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The distant blare of a car alarm, already a startling and unusual reminder of the way things used to be, broke the quiet peace of the camp. Carol wasn't sad about it. She'd been helping Sophia wash up and trying not to overhear the casual conversation at Shane and Lori and young Carl's camp. Nothing much, just a man and a woman and a child enjoying the moment together, but it was more than Carol had ever had, or ever would.

She had always considered herself a God-fearing woman, and so it bothered her that she envied Lori her widowhood so deeply. When the world was still there, it would never have occurred to Carol to pray for Ed's death … but now death was all around them. Better people than he, by far, were lost every minute. And when you lost a husband as Lori had, sometimes you found … something else. Something that seemed better. Carol had never asked Lori about her husband, but she had the impression of him as a cold man, a man who hadn't cared for his wife and child. Shane cared, you could see that. Sometimes you had to look away from him because he cared so much it felt too intimate to witness the look on his face.

They all stood and watched, waiting, tense and worried, until the car, alarm still blaring, pulled in and turned out to be driven by Glenn, a young man who had needed that moment to cut loose, in Carol's judgment. Or maybe she just envied everyone their freedom today.

Glenn was followed shortly by the others who had gone on the run to Atlanta. Carol watched the tearful reunions of those left behind and those who were returning and was glad Ed had felt he was too important to put himself in danger that way. She couldn't have brought herself to run and embrace him the way the others were doing.

And then there was a different kind of tension as the new man who had been driving the truck stepped out and he and Shane stared at each other across the camp. The moment was broken by Carl's voice crying out, "Dad! Dad!" and Carl running past Carol into the arms of this man in the sheriff's uniform.

Lori stood frozen, not moving, as Carl and her apparently not dead husband embraced. Carol felt for her—but she also felt for the husband, who appeared anything but cold if the look on his face as he saw his wife was to be believed. Hard to tell from a look, she supposed—but Ed had never looked at her like that. Nor would he.

Lori and Shane exchanged their own look over her husband's shoulder, and Carol recognized the end of the casual family that had been forming as the formal family reasserted itself. Lucky Lori, she thought, with two men who loved her. Or maybe not so lucky. Did love end because an obstacle placed itself in the way? Was Shane really the kind of man to step back honorably from something he wanted?

Time would tell.

The hunt had taken longer than Daryl had meant it to … or maybe just exactly as long. He was tired of hanging around that camp with those people who looked down on him and Merle, and with Merle always talking trash about them and waiting for them to die so he could steal their stuff. Sometimes, Daryl thought Merle might do something about that, let Walkers into the camp or something, so he could make things go faster.

Still … he needed to get back eventually, no matter how much quieter and more peaceful it was alone in the woods. In the woods, he understood who he was and what he was meant for. With people, not so much.

When he came back and found himself facing Shane's shotgun and a bunch of other weapons held by the other men in camp, he wished he hadn't bothered. Yeah, he got that they thought he was a Walker—but if they'd known he was Daryl, would their attitude be any different? He bet not.

Then he saw that they had stood there and let the deer he had so carefully sent their direction get eaten by a filthy Walker, and he was pissed. All that work, and none of the rest of them could lift a damned finger? Useless, weak, soft idiots, the lot of them. They hadn't even killed the stupid Walker, just cut its head off. They hadn't learned a thing.

Maybe Merle was right. Maybe all they were good for was their stuff.

He called out for his brother as he approached the main camp, but saw no sign of him.

That's when Shane, the big man, the poser who thought he was a leader, took it on himself to tell Daryl that his brother was still in Atlanta, but they weren't sure if he was dead or not.

Some new guy came toward Daryl. "No easy way to say this, so I'll just say it."

"Who are you?"

"Rick Grimes."

"Rick Grimes? Got something you want to tell me?"

"Your brother was a danger to us all. So I handcuffed him on a roof, hooked him to a piece of metal. He's still there."

Still there? What the hell was that supposed to mean? "Hold on," he said. "Let me process this. You say you handcuffed my brother to a roof? And you left him there?"

"Yeah."

Daryl had to give it to this Grimes guy—he wasn't trying to make excuses for himself. Well, Daryl wouldn't make any excuses for him, either. He threw the string of squirrels he was carrying at him as the weapon nearest to hand and then got set to lay into him with his fists, only Shane came at him from the side before he could get there. He went for his knife, but Shane and Grimes worked together—pretty well, too—to disarm him. Shane the cop got him in a chokehold which almost made Daryl wish law and order could come back to keep guys like this under control.

Grimes got in his face, demanding a calm discussion. What was Daryl supposed to say, fighting for breath like he was?

"What I did was not on a whim," Grimes said after Shane let Daryl go. "Your brother does not work and play well with others."

Wasn't that the truth, though. Merle didn't work and play well with Daryl, much less people like this, soft and vulnerable.

T-Bone got in the middle of it all, owning up to his part in the whole mess. So they left his brother handcuffed on a roof and they wanted Daryl to give them a goddamned medal because they chained the door closed?

"Hell with all y'all!" Daryl shouted at them, fighting back tears. He had never belonged here. He would never belong. "Just tell me where he is, so's I can go get him."

That was when Shane's woman spoke up. "He'll show you. Isn't that right?"

She and Grimes traded looks, and that was when the name rang the right bell in Daryl's head. Grimes. Lori's husband. Well, wasn't that just the way things ought to work out.

Grimes wasn't sure he liked being put on the spot, but he took his medicine and agreed to take Daryl back. Maybe he'd be less useless than the rest of them. Or maybe he'd die in the process.