(As Yet Untitled)

by DomWeasel

Watching the series again back in late 2022, I was reminded how much Sophia's arc in the TV show depressed me. Thought about it for several months and then rewrote season 2 with an original character to have some fun and take a break from another project, and to create a timeline where Sophia may or may not live as long as her comic counterpart. I don't know, I haven't finished yet

3. The Bandit

"We couldn't just leave him behind. He would have bled out! … If he lived that long…"

Rick's conclusion to their night's adventure did not engender reassurance. It was a simple story. They had gone to retrieve Hershel, it had taken longer than expected and then they had encountered two men. Two men from Philadelphia of all places. It had not been a peaceful encounter and reading between the lines of Rick's description, the three of them had been lucky to make it out of that bar. As it was, Rick had been forced to kill both of them before they could kill them.

Daryl and T-Dog had been on their way into the town when they had heard shots and decided to go in on foot. They had run into the two guys' friends. That had also not been a peaceful encounter. They had been shot at. Glenn, Rick and Hershel had been shot at. There had been a lot of shooting. Naturally, the dead had gotten into the middle of it.

"It's gotten bad in town." Glenn added in a subdued tone and everyone had to decide which was worse; walking corpses or men with guns.

"What do we do with him?" Andrea asked the question and I saw immediately that Rick didn't know. He was saved from answering though as a wet-handed Hershel walked in.

"I repaired his calf muscle as best I can but he'll probably have nerve damage. He won't be on his feet for at least a week."

"When he is, we give him a canteen, take him out to the main road, and send him on his way." The words seemed to come to Rick as he spoke them.

"Isn't that the same as leaving him for the walkers?" Andrea asked.

"He'll have a fighting chance." Rick countered.

"Just gonna let him go?" Shane asked and just speaking was enough to earn him a whole bunch of dirty looks. "He knows where we are."

"He was blindfolded the whole way here." Rick snarled defensively. "He's not a threat."

"Not a threat? How many of them were there? You killed four of their men, you took one of them hostage, but they ain't gonna come looking for him?"

"They left him for dead. No one is looking!" They were on opposite sides of the room and they seemed ready to charge the gap and duke it out.

"We should still post a guard." T-Dog tried to rein in the insanity with a pragmatic suggestion.

As did Hershel. "He's out cold right now. Will be for hours."

"Y'know what? I'm gonna get him some flowers and candy." Shane declared and then much louder. "Look at this, folks. We back in fantasy land."

Hershel wasn't going to let that slide. "We haven't even dealt with what you did at my barn the other day. Let me make this perfectly clear once and for all. This is my farm. Now I wanted you gone, Rick talked me out of it but that doesn't mean I have to like it. So do us both a favour. Keep your mouth shut." Hershel spoke quietly unlike Shane but that didn't make his anger any less chilling.

Shane glared at him. At everybody. And then he turned and walked away, his boots thumping hard on the wooden floor and he sighed, like we were all nuts.

"Look." Rick tried to smooth things over immediately. "We're not going to do anything about it today. Let's just cool off."

Hershel nodded and I saw that the man had the patience of a saint because all things considered, the day and night he had had, no one could or would have blamed him for tearing Shane or Rick a new asshole. He just nodded.

Andrea went after Shane. Lori insisted Carl go back to bed despite his protests and Sophia went with him and for a moment, Carol hesitated before deciding she wasn't ready yet to be separated from her. After being stuck indoors for days, I headed out.

Curiosity brought me back to the battle-scarred vehicle. I had seen a car riddled with bullets before but this was different. That car had been used as target practice. This car had bullet-holes because people had been trying to shoot people behind it.

"What are you doing?"

I looked up at T-Dog. He looked exhausted and also haunted. I guessed he had shot one of those guys and putting a bullet into a living man hit harder than a dead one. "I've never been shot at." I said, which was surprising to me.

"Good for you." He declared and then I guessed he went to get some sleep, or to pray.

[][][][][][]

They prepared a meal in the house and things were tense. Hershel's other daughter was still bed-ridden and the fate of the kid they had brought back hung overhead. Shane's only ally seemed to be Andrea while Daryl and T-Dog were trying to stay neutral. They had the exhausted look of men who had gotten only a few hours of sleep and they ate like lions.

Carol had an icebreaker though. "Sophia tells me you're a thief."

Having a dozen virtual strangers stare at you was… I looked at Sophia who blushed. "You didn't say it was a secret." She said.

"No… I didn't."

"Thief?" Rick asked with an odd look.

"Housebreaking and burglary."

"There's a difference?" Glenn inquired.

"Burglary is at night. Housebreaking is during daylight. Though the State of Georgia punishes both equally. It's a felony." I looked at Rick. "If you get caught."

"And you ain't never been caught?"

"No. Because I'm smart."

"Smart?" Shane spoke now. "You think you some kinda criminal genius?"

"No, I'm just not a criminal dumbass." I replied, making the kids giggle. "How many stories do you have of catching idiots? Someone who tried to break in through an air duct and got stuck? Or through a skylight with a rope like they thought they were in Mission Impossible? Or went into a store shouting and waving a pistol and got taken out by the owner with a shotgun? Any idiot can point a gun in someone's face. Any idiot can take a crowbar and break a door open."

"And you ain't an idiot?" Shane asked with dripping scepticism.

"No. I learned the best way to steal from someone is for them not to know they've been robbed."

"And how do you do that?" Andrea's tone suggested I was crazy.

"If you come home and your TV's missing; it's the first thing you see. Same with your laptop or your jewellery box. But what about the document scanner for your laptop you keep under the desk? How about that breadmaker buried at the back of your cupboards in the kitchen? And how long before you notice a single ring missing from your jewellery box? Could be days. Could be weeks. Some things you might not even notice were missing until months had passed. And when you do notice they're gone, is your first thought going to be 'I've been robbed!' or is that going to be your last thought? If you're missing a few pieces of jewellery, you'll think your kid took them to play with or your husband stole them to pawn for drinking money." I saw them all deciding I had a point. "And even if you do decide you've been robbed? What are you gonna tell the cops? That you've been robbed but you don't know when or how or who? They'll take your information, tell you they're sorry and say they hope you're insured." I said and then looked at Shane who glared and Rick who let me have the point. "No offence."

"None taken." He said. "Ain't much we can do in that situation. We can dust for prints, canvas for witnesses but unless the prints get a match, we ain't gonna catch anyone. And you ain't gonna be so stupid not to wear gloves."

"I'm not. But you know how many are that stupid."

"So that's it, huh?" Shane asked. "You just stole people's junk?"

"I stole plenty that wasn't junk. And it wasn't that simple. You ever done a stakeout? Spent days sitting in a car watching a building? That's what I did. I did my homework. I learned people's routines so I knew when they weren't home. When their neighbours weren't home. You know some neighbourhoods are just empty during the day? Maybe a few old folks and someone working from home? If you really wanted you could park a moving van in a driveway and clear out a whole house and no one would notice."

"So if you didn't jimmy doors or windows; how did you get in?" Lori was looking a little violated which was understandable. Housewives like her lived in a fear of home invasions during the day while their husbands were gone.

"He has lockthingies." Sophia supplied.

"Thanks." I said to her and she blushed again and I reached into my sock. I actually enjoyed their astonishment as I produced them.

"You just carry those around with you?" Shane demanded.

"They're kinda useful these days. I'm not exactly built for kicking in doors."

"He used them to get into the house we stayed in." Sophia defended me and gave Shane a glare that made her mom proud.

"You picked locks?" Andrea actually seemed genuinely interested now. "What about alarms?"

"Well, most household alarm systems can be disabled if you unplug the phone lines." I said. "Plug them back in when you're done and they reset. You're better off with a dog. I always made sure every house I ever visited never had a dog. Knew a guy who made that mistake and the police had to rescue him from a closet. He got twenty years because he didn't check there was a dog."

"The things you learn." Andrea declared.

"Prisons are full of dumb criminals. The smart ones stay out… Until they start thinking they're smarter than everybody else. I never made that mistake."

"Oh, you didn't?" Shane was quite determined to maintain the cop-criminal relationship.

"No. I stayed in my league. Proper alarm systems I didn't touch. Properties with cameras; no. I didn't go for a 'big score', I kept a low profile. Except once, I got a job to steal some paperwork from a home office. That was easy but I didn't like the guy who got me the job. He got caught selling bad credit cards. He wanted me to steal people's information. I said no. He went with making fake cards. Got caught."

"And that was your life? Just stealing junk from people day to day?"

"I was living on the streets when I was younger than these two." I pointed at Carl and Sophia, using the remaining fingers on my left hand and the gesture didn't go unnoticed. "I didn't go to school, I wasn't going to get a job and I've had people trying to hook me on every drug ever made since I was twelve. Stealing enough so I could rent an apartment on a weekly basis from someone who accepted cash with no questions asked was good enough for me."

"You lived on the streets?" Carl asked in the yawning silence that followed and his parents both gave him a worried look.

"Now sometimes I sleep in a tent. I'm moving on up." I said and it got a few smiles. The tension was well and truly broken. I replaced my picks in my sock. "You got anything against thieves?" I asked the two policemen.

"You got anything against cops?" Shane replied.

"Depends on the cop. Most play a fair game."

"Most?"

"You ever planted drugs on a kid because you needed to meet an arrest quota?"

"Can't say I have." Shane said shortly.

"Not really much drug crime in our jurisdiction." Rick added.

"Stay out of the cities then." I said and then chuckled humourlessly as I realised how true that was now.

"So what's the most valuable thing you ever stole?" Glenn asked and then shrugged a 'what?' when they looked at him.

"No idea. I wasn't in the big leagues. I didn't have a fence. People I sold to… I was a very small fish."

"So no bank robberies?" Carl asked and actually got a real laugh from the adults.

"Just low-end electronics and small stuff. I might actually have been about to become a real criminal when this all started. I got introduced to a guy, a... The guy made things happen. You needed a doctor who didn't ask questions, you needed a pocket picked, a box on a truck to go missing, someone to look intimidating; he was the guy who knew a guy. I would have been in his book." I did my best impression of him. "'Need a guy to make something vanish from your neighbour's house? Here's the guy. I know, looks like I just wiped his momma's milk off his face but trust me, behind this young face is a true professional.'" The impression had raised many eyebrows. "I know, sounds like an 80s used car salesman. I was all set up with a real job paying real money and I was doing my homework when all the weird stories started going around. People getting into fights and biting each other… Next thing I know, everyone with a boat is heading for the Bahamas and everyone with a car is heading for Atlanta, Augusta, Columbia or even Jacksonville and Tallahassee."

"So wait." T-Dog said. "Where you from?"

"Savannah."

"And you ended up outside Atlanta?"

"They said go to the big cities. I went with everyone else."

"And you say everyone took all the boats?"

"Sailed for the Promised Land." I answered. "I doubt there's a boat bigger than a dingy between here and Canada."

"Damn." The big man clacked his fork down and then explained himself as he found everyone looking at him. "I was thinking the same thing. Get a boat and…" He waved his hand. "Something."

"Guess not." Rick said.

"It might be safer at the coast though." T-Dog pressed. "If everyone left to go inland-"

"Not everyone." I said. "And not everyone made it that far. Lot of people turned back before they were halfway to Macon. A lot of people stayed at home and said it was all nonsense." I said and then winced. Hershel did not return my look. Maggie was… Contemplative.

That was my introduction to the group and it gave them something to think about. Not about me but rather just what exactly it was they were planning to do. There had been no real plan before except putting Atlanta behind us and then they had stumbled on this place. Now they had to actually think about what it was they intended to do. What we all intended to do.

After the meal I thought about that properly. I was stuck with these people. There was nowhere for me to go and I wouldn't know how to get there either. I considered that none of them knew either. Rick had lost all credibility after we had gone to the CDC and its horror and followed it up by going to the nursing home… With its horror. Fort Benning had been little more than a point on a map away from Atlanta. Shane didn't seem to have a plan either. If he did, he would have been pushing it on everyone but he wasn't trying to oust us from this place, even though he was the most unwelcome person here.

The others… Andrea lurched from the role of strong, independent woman to broken-spirited brooder every few hours as she thought about her departed little sister. Glenn was in the midst of a whirlwind romance which given the circumstances was perfectly understandable. Dale, the RV was his home and he had opened it up to Amy and Andrea and now Carol and Sophia. He was somewhere between a father and grandfather figure. Daryl was adrift without his brother and looking for purpose and for that I was grateful because without it, he wouldn't have been so dedicated to finding us. Looking for lost kids wasn't just something to do in this broken world; it was a good thing to do.

That left T-Dog and I found him around the back of the house, enjoying the cooling evening air on the porch. I didn't bother with preamble. "What's your real name?"

"Whut?"

"What's your real name?" I asked again.

"Theodore Douglas. You got a problem with that?"

"No. That's why I'm asking. I like to know people's actual names."

"And Bas is your real name?"

"On the birth certificate. But it's short for Bastard." I said and this got his attention.

"For real?"

"That was the joke. They saw the name Bas in a baby book and thought it would be funny for their little bastard baby."

"That's fucked up."

"Yeah…" Though not as much as telling me my name and by extension my life was one big joke. "Parents…" I said and he grunted. "I've got another question."

"Sure."

"How did you end up with this group?"

"What do you mean?"

"This is Georgia and this is the whitest group outside of Friends."

He chuckled almost with humour. "And what does that make you?"

"Depends who you ask. Blacks think I'm white. Whites think I'm Latino. Latinos call me gringo when I can't speak Spanish…"

"Guess that makes you white then."

"White enough." I shrugged, even though we both knew how little that meant to a whole bunch of people.

"I thought about it." He said. "It wasn't so bad at the camp, back in Atlanta. Then after the attack it was just me and Jacqui… Now it's just me."

"Funny thing about Savannah were the whites who couldn't deal with being minorities. Really fucked with their world view. I never gave a shit. Now here I am in their perfect world."

"You think that shit matters now?" He asked and it was a serious question.

"It always matters. Those guys at the nursing home, they were playing the role of scary Latin gangsters because they knew it would work. …Until it didn't. Merle called me a 'skinny coloured boy' once."

"Called me worse."

"I bet he did…"

"I'd still give anything to make it right with that piece of shit though. It wasn't right what happened to him."

"Has anything been right for a long time?" I asked. "What happened yesterday, while you were in town… If the living are fighting the living, where does that leave us?"

"Up shit creek."

"Seems like it."

"I know if his friends come around." He meant Randall; the one they had brought back. "They ain't gonna be friendly and they will remember what we look like." He shook his head. "I can't remember how many of those things I killed." He said. "I thought about it, but I can't remember. But last night, someone shot at me and I shot back and I know I put him down. I don't know if I put him down before the dead started chewin' on him." He shook his head again. "That ain't right."

"Why did you bring him back?"

"Rick insisted." He shook his head. "Because it was the Christian thing to do."

He lost me there. "You said he had a spike through his leg? At the very best, he'll have a limp and how he's going to outrun the dead when we send him on his way?"

"He ain't. You think we should have left him?"

"I don't know. That's why I'm talking to you."

"Well I think there was no right thing to do. Whatever we did would have been wrong. We left him there, and he gets eaten alive and we have to live with that. We leave him there but we put a bullet in his head… We have to live with that too. And now we've brought him back and we'll dump him in the countryside to die and we'll have to live with that."

"No right thing to do…" I echoed him because he was right. "How the hell did we end up here?"

"I think we gonna be asking ourselves that for a long time." Theodore said and trying to find some peace in the view. He didn't seem to find any.

"What happened to your arm?"

"Cut it. When that herd on the highway surprised us." Now he did laugh with actual humour. "And now, the only reason I'm not sick and dying is cuz of Merle Dixon's clap."

[][][][][][]

I also received some of Merle Dixon's clap meds and Hershel told me I had done a reasonable job hacking off my fingers. But that I was also lucky not to have blacked out and then bled out. He could only conclude that I was tougher than I looked. I didn't know what to think.

For reasons I couldn't quite explain, I boiled up the slowly rotting pieces of my fingers in a can, making sure no one knew what I was doing. I was left with a soup of human flesh and six bones. I poured the soup into a hole and buried it. The bones I kept. They looked small and pathetic but for some reason, I had to keep them.

It was peaceful. The first day on the farm I spent mostly lying in the shade of the campsite, wearing a new cut-off shirt that did not suit my skinny build. But it was better than melting in the hoody. The second day I spent most the same way.

Hershel was caught in his grief. His daughter Beth was consumed by it and virtually unresponsive. Maggie seemed to have had a stronger grasp on the new reality and so wasn't as troubled. The other two, Patricia and Jimmy, they seemed determined to soldier on as stoically and practically as possible. So far as I could tell, they intended to keep the farm going as if nothing had happened and life was continuing on as before.

While Rick and Shane were at each other's throats, neither of them seemed to have a plan beyond staying put on the farm. I could see the appeal. After two solid weeks of lurching from calamity to disaster and back, the chance to rest in relative security just couldn't be passed up. Hershel didn't want to kill Shane but I felt comfortable saying he absolutely hated him.

It was a feeling shared by Carol and Dale. I didn't know what was going on between Dale and Shane and they weren't sharing it beyond snide remarks and truly vicious looks. Between Carol and Shane it was perfectly clear. Shane had apparently written myself and Sophia off within hours of our disappearance and on the third day had been voicing his belief that searching was a waste of time. The same day I had spent out of it after losing my fingers. Carl had been shot two days earlier and Shane had been on his mission with the shooter to keep him alive so I could understand his burn out. After what we had been through, optimism was not in plentiful supply.

But tearing open the barn, screaming at Carol that her daughter was 'gone', meaning dead, and then initiating a slaughter of people our host considered sick… That seemed more than a little insane. And I was told he kept blaming Rick. I remembered him blaming Rick for the attack on the camp, even though Rick hadn't been there and Shane was the one who hadn't had anyone on watch. He had spoken as if the presence of Daryl, Glenn, Rick and T-Dog would have made all the difference. Four men… What could those four men have done if they hadn't shown up with a bunch of shotguns? Sure, Rick had led us to a mad scientist who had nearly blown us all to hell but he owned that. Shane didn't own up to being responsible for the disaster at the camp. Yet oddly, Andrea didn't blame him for it and seemed to be a supporter of his brutal outlook. Perhaps no one had pointed it out to her. Not me.

Daryl and myself were Carol's two favourite people in the world. I had gone after her daughter and kept her alive and even though I kept pointing out that my actions had been minimal, she didn't see it that way. And Daryl, he had refused to give up looking or even to slow down after being thrown off a horse. The cop had said Sophia was 'gone' while the thief and the white trash redneck had done their best for her. That also made us Carl's favourite people though he and Shane had an old connection and that wasn't being broken.

Glenn was acting strange and I guessed it was the experience of being shot at in town. Sure, the Vatos had kidnapped him and roughed him up a bit but it was different to bullets flying through the air around him. Theodore was similarly messed up and no doubt thinking about how any one of those bullets could have hit him like the ones he put into that man. Glenn also seemed to have run into difficulties in his whirlwind romance with the farmer's daughter; they seemed awkward together. That was a shame. He seemed to talk about it with Dale but they both went quiet if anyone approached. It wasn't anyone else's business.

Lori was pregnant. It clicked with me after seeing her dash off early two mornings in a row and then seeing her looking sick around cooking food. Morning sickness and general nausea. I remembered how grim Rick had looked when I had first talked to him here and asked if there was anything else I should know. He knew and he wasn't happy. I didn't know who else knew, though my suspicion was that Glenn and Dale were both aware because Glenn was awkward around her while Dale must have seen her dashing out in the morning and figured it out just like me. Which likely meant Daryl knew as well. An open secret none of us would acknowledge.

Daryl kept himself busy. He had made new arrows for his crossbow and he used them out in the woods. I wondered just how many rabbits and squirrels I had eaten from his contributions; amongst other things. He did the skinning and gutting away from the rest of the camp, so the kids didn't have to see any more gore than they already had. I doubted he would admit that was the reason. When the meat was all cut up, it was unidentifiable. And it was food, so no one cared. We had fresh meat, milk and eggs and after some lean days; that was luxury.

I found Daryl in the evening occupying himself by making yet more bolts for his crossbow. His weapon was slow to reload but obviously, the ammunition was limited only by what he could make. It was only wood and feathers. He gave me the look he gave everyone who came near him. It wasn't quite a death glare but it was certainly stronger than a simple 'fuck off'.

"I didn't thank you." I said straight off because small talk was a complete waste of time with this man. As evidenced by his uncomfortable expression and non-committal grunt. "So thank you for looking for us and thank you for finding us."

Daryl grunted again and continued carving his bolt.

"What's it like out there?"

"Out there?"

"We heard them moving around. Seems like they're never far away… But we haven't had any here."

He grunted again and thought about it. "Hard to hunt out there with them crashing around. I put'em down when I can but… There's always more. Figure they'll show up here sooner or later."

"Then what?"

"Then we'll have a problem."

He summed up the world's predicament in so few words that it was almost funny. "Do you want to mention that to our leaders?"

"They got it covered."

"How?"

"Ask them." He said. It seemed to mean he thought they had ideas they hadn't gotten around to implementing yet. Or he was being sarcastic and thought we were all fucked.

"Good talking to you."

He grunted again. I had said what I needed to say and I had learned what I wanted. While the dead hadn't stumbled onto the farm yet, they would. They already had considering the occupants of the barn and presumably Otis, the one who had wrangled most of them, he hadn't been putting them all in there. Just the ones he could. This place had never been safe. Just safer than where we had been before.

I returned to the campsite and brooded. Everyone did a great deal of brooding. We all had plenty to brood about. I thought my brooding was more focused on the big picture though. Everyone else had personal issues to occupy them and those personal issues were probably a welcome distraction from the horrifying big picture that the world had come to an end. The only distraction I had was the persistent ache from my stumps and so I thought about the farm and how our defence so far consisted of one person on watch during the night; typically Andrea, Dale and Shane with T-Dog out because of his arm, no one asking Daryl and Glenn and Rick apparently getting a pass. The farmhouse residents stayed indoors. I didn't even know if they locked the door at night.

Sophia had suggested finding a quiet place and putting a fence around it. This place already had wire fences so it was a start but where would you find enough material to reinforce them with a wall the dead couldn't see through? That was a lot of lumber. And it would need building which would take weeks even if everyone worked together. So it was materials we didn't have and time we didn't have.

And if a whole mess of dead showed up, what could ten adults, two old men, three teens and two children do to stop them? Beth so far as I knew couldn't feed herself, I had no idea what Jimmy was capable of and I had never handled a gun in my life. So that left two old men and ten adults. I didn't think Carol could shoot so that brought the total to eleven. I assumed a cop-wife could shoot so Lori was good and Andrea seemed to know how to handle a rifle these days. I couldn't believe a farmer couldn't shoot and more than likely Hershel had more practice than anyone else. Eleven shooters then.

Fighters… One on one I could handle a walker so long as I had a good weapon. I had coped with a simple hammer at first and now I preferred something longer. But the dead rarely came one at a time. I figured Daryl, Shane and T-Dog were the only ones who could handle a sustained hand-to-hand fight while the rest were the same as me.

So we had eleven shooters with a dwindling supply of ammunition and only three people who could be expected to stand their ground without a gun. Daryl came out of it pretty well; he could shoot, he had his crossbow and he was handy with a blade. Everyone else was dependent on guns which without ammo just became fancy, and fragile, clubs.

Nothing seemed good.

Thinking about it, I realised now that I hadn't woken up after the attack on the camp. That had stirred some life into me but not much. Nor had the night of luxury at the CDC followed by its fiery destruction. And sleeping on the floor of a nursing home full of its executed residents… That had just been more of the same. What had broken me out of my funk had been looking for a kid. Though then I had lost two fingers, but before that I had had a reason for being here. I didn't have that reason now. Now I was back to just being here. Day to day survival before was something I was used to but now, things were different. I didn't need to acquire things to get cash to get food; now I just needed to find the food. And water. Which I knew nothing about. The other urban dwellers were in the same boat. I was sure Daryl could walk across the seemingly empty fields around the farm and identify all the plants you could boil up into soup. If I tried it, I'd be dead in an hour from something poisonous.

What skills did I have? Creeping about unheard? That was definitely useful but not here. Not now. Right now I was just… Dead weight…

[][][][][][]

I had once had an odd conversation about the difference between girls and boys. Boys liked cars and machines in general. Girls liked horses. The nation had a whole history of men and their horses but they had still been tools for the most part. Girls cooed over horses, even the ones who had never seen one in real life. Even today, little girls wanted ponies.

Carl was interested enough in the farm's horses, especially as his dad's hat made him look the part of a cowboy. But Sophia? Getting up close to actual horses and feeding them out of her hand seemed almost to make up for all the horrors she had experienced over the past couple of months. She could at least forget for a little while.

The kids liked the horses. The horses didn't seem to like me. Patricia thought it was my hand, that they could smell it and it made them nervous. I guess it made sense but it still felt a little mean. I kept out of the way but I wasn't going anywhere. I had no other means of entertainment while my hand healed. I could make myself useful by wandering the farm and collecting firewood from under the trees dotting the property but that was essentially it. My hand ached and frequently had spikes of blinding agony which Hershel said was good. If it had been numb and lifeless, I would have been in trouble.

Apparently that was true for Randall. I suspected though that Hershel was dosing him with painkillers to keep him quiet rather than to manage his pain. He was the elephant in the room and keeping him quiet let people forget he was there. It avoided the awkward discussion. One of many. Everyone was having very perfunctory conversations about food and water and the washing of clothes. Daryl kept up his hunting trips which I further suspected was only to occupy himself. We all seemed to be holding our breath while the Randall situation worked itself out.

[][][][][][]

Rick revised his plan regarding Randall. Rather than simply taking him to the main road and sending him on his way, the new scheme which reeked of Shane was to take him eighteen miles out. It was an oddly arbitrary number I thought but the bigger concern was Rick and Shane going on the mission together. While Shane seemed content with the compromise, it still felt like having an executioner serve as an escort.

I asked if a week was really long enough for him to have healed. Hershel answered that he could walk. When I asked about running, he gave me a look. A look that told me that saying he could walk was pushing it.

Theodore wanted to check in town. He didn't want to go back to the site of their gun battle but he did want to go for supplies. Rick wasn't happy about splitting the group but Daryl backed him up, saying that living off squirrel and woodchuck was stupid when there was a whole bunch of supplies on the doorstep. I wanted to go with them but Rick forbade it. He said my bandaged hand made me a liability and got real quiet when I asked how my two missing fingers was a liability but a crippled leg apparently wasn't.

So the two pairs left, leaving Glenn, Dale and Hershel as the only men over twenty and Dale and Hershel were both well over fifty. It was not comforting, especially with whatever was making Glenn anxious these days. Andrea meanwhile looked like she would have liked a pack of walkers to show up so she could gun them down. To prove that she could.

In the meantime, the kids taught me Monopoly. Dale had a mix of travel games in the RV and they had reached the point where board games appealed. It beat doing puzzles on the floor. It was also the only time I would ever be a property owner.

Andrea gave me dirty looks from her perch on the RV, as though I should have been doing something other than playing games with kids. I thought that babysitting was the best use of my time if my hand was a liability. It left everyone else free. Carol was finally comfortable letting Sophia out of her sight and she and Lori found plenty to do. More than I would have imagined, but then, I had never had a house to keep. Living by yourself in a tiny apartment didn't need a lot of maintenance.

"This game has got to be rigged." I declared as Sophia proceeded to take the last of my real money, leaving me with petty change. The kids just smiled, leaving me unsure if I was just unlucky or actually being hustled.

Lori came running up at this point. It wasn't the run of impending doom and it bothered me I could make that distinction. "Andrea! You seen Maggie or Hershel?"

"Haven't seen Hershel." Andrea answered coolly. "But I saw Maggie and Glenn walk by maybe twenty minutes ago."

"Can you find her for me? I've got to get back to the house."

"Of course."

Lori began to run back to the house so I called out to her. "Anything we should be worried about?"

"No! Leave it be!" She didn't even look back.

"What was that?" Carl asked, immediately and rightfully suspicious.

"She wants Maggie or Hershel. Must be Beth." I said.

"Is she okay?" Sophia asked.

For some reason I continued not to lie to her. "No. But if Carl's mom wants her dad and sister, she must have woken up." This was not good news. "Your roll."

Dale replaced Andrea on watch and he paced up and down to wake up after his nap. While Andrea was chilly to me playing games, he seemed amused and something else. The something else bothered me for a while until I realised it was gratitude. He was grateful to see such a normal sight as two kids and a teenager playing a board game. It was familiar. Comforting. If he wasn't on watch for monsters, it could almost have been called a normal day.

For a game dependent on luck of the dice, my chances should have been better. Instead I was eliminated first twice with Carl winning the first game and Sophia the second. We would have played a third game but both of them had sore heads. I knew why; the air was heavy. After the sweltering weather of the past couple of weeks, we were going to get another storm. Dale had no aspirin in the RV, I didn't feel like finding and snooping through Daryl's stash and so that left the farmhouse.

I walked into two rows. One was upstairs and I couldn't understand it but it was between the two farmer's daughters. The other was between Andrea and Lori and seemed less of a row and more like a pissing contest.

"I contribute. I help keep this place safe." Andrea was saying.

"The men can handle this on their own. They don't need your help."

"I'm sorry? What would you have me do?"

"Oh, there's plenty of work to go around." Lori said in that pissy tone she had made her own.

"Are you serious? Everything falls apart, you're in my face for skipping laundry?"

"Puts a burden on the rest of us. On me and Carol, Patricia and Maggie, cooking and cleaning and caring for Beth. You… You don't care about anyone but yourself. You sit up on that RV working on your tan with a shotgun in your lap."

There was a pause before Andrea responded. "I am on watch against walkers! That is what matters! Not fresh mint leaves in the lemonade."

"We are providing stability. We are trying to create a life worth living!"

"Are you kidding me?"

I made my presence known at this point and they both looked awkward being found airing their baggage.

"They call it a dick-measuring contest with guys." I remarked, earning myself two nonplussed looks. "What are you two measuring?" Now they were embarrassed. "Ever consider that you're both right?" I asked and neither of them had a response. "We got any aspirin?"

"Uh…" Lori found her voice. "Yeah… Wait." She went to a top cupboard and retrieved a packet. "Here you go."

"Thanks." I said graciously and left them to their mutual loathing. The more I saw of these adults, the more I was convinced they were determined to work against each other.

"What's going on?" Carl asked when I returned and doled out the pills. I didn't know if they could hear the yelling from the house properly but they seemed to get the gist.

"Your mom and Andrea don't like each other." I said frankly.

"Not really." Carl amused me by not even bothering to deny it. Kids were great that way.

"Why?" Sophia asked.

"Mom doesn't like to fight. Andrea wants to…" Carl shook his head. "People like that never get along." He said with unexpected wisdom.

"Not really, no." I said, though finding it interesting that he believed that when his father was a cop. Although that would explain why the two of them always seemed to have difficulties with each other. Though as a small-town cop Rick would never have been in danger frequently enough for it to be a major issue.

"I don't want to fight…" Sophia admitted sheepishly.

"Neither do I. I'm not built for it. I'm better at sneaking around and avoiding a fight."

"I can fight!" Carl declared.

"Really? All four foot ten of you?" I asked and he pulled a face. "She's taller than you." This made Sophia giggle. She was noticeably more mature than Carl despite them being the same age. He still had a baby face.

"I can shoot."

"Really?"

"My dad showed me."

"When?"

"Before."

"So you can shoot. Doesn't mean you can fight. What would you do without your gun?"

"I can take care of myself." Carl insisted.

"Sure you can. But you need to know what you can and can't do. T can pick up a walker and throw it like a doll. I couldn't do that. He could plough through a whole bunch of them quarterback-style and be fine. I couldn't. You couldn't. I can take out one or two of them by myself swinging a shovel or a hammer but I'm better off creeping up on one of them and never giving it chance to get me. You're better off staying back and letting Daryl use his crossbow than shooting a gun. We can't make more bullets but he can make more arrows. But if you need to, like one of them gets to you, then you should shoot."

"I don't have a gun."

"Then run away. That's your best bet. Run around, confuse it and let someone else take care of it. Someone in its weight class."

"Weight class?"

"You seen a heavyweight champion?" I asked and he nodded. "You see a lightweight? Why don't they fight?"

"Because the heavyweight would… Destroy the lightweight."

"Exactly. If I tried to fight a big guy like Shane or Theodore, well they could pick up a twig like me and drop-kick me over a fence." This made them both giggle. "But Glenn, or Jimmy? I could take them." I thought about it. "I couldn't take Maggie; she's a farm girl. She's much stronger than me. She'd have me tied up like one of the horses in minutes." They giggled some more. "That's what you've got to remember. Pick your battles. Know the fights you can win. Stay in your weight class. Otherwise you'll get hurt."

"Like you did?" Carl asked.

"This?" I held up my hand. "This was an accident. I wasn't careful." I said and then startled them both by taking hold of their hands. "That's what you've really got to remember now. You've got to be careful. You've got to always keep an eye open for danger, or know that someone like Dale up there is looking out for it for you. Understand?" They both nodded earnestly. "Hey, Dale!" I called. "See anything up there?"

"Grass." He replied, holding the strap of his rifle. He always kept it slung. "Trees… Some trouble." He said quieter but I heard him anyway and I saw Andrea returning from the farmhouse. Lori had said she sat up on the RV with a shotgun but actually it was a rifle. But now I realised it wasn't Dale's rifle because she was carrying one herself.

"When did we get another rifle?" I asked Dale.

"Otis." He said simply.

I nodded and the kids watched Andrea ask Dale the same question I had only this time he said it was quiet. Something prickled at the back of my mind but I couldn't identify it. Something… Something off. I looked Andrea up and down without trying to look like I was looking her up and down; the last thing I needed was her thinking I was leering at her but she was still the same. It wasn't Andrea. It wasn't Dale. Something was… Wrong.

I shook it away though. It would come to me. "Feel better?" I asked the two kids.

"No." Sophia answered and looked up at the overcast sky. "Is there going to be thunder?"

"Probably."

"I used to like thunder."

"Used to?" This surprised me. She seemed like the kind of child who would have hated it.

"Now it sounds like when they were bombing the city." The little girl said grimly, and sadly.

"Well, if you still have a headache, take a nap before dinner."

"Nap?" Carl asked with disgust and that tone only a kid could manage. "We're not babies!"

"Do you know how many adults would kill for naptime in their days?" I replied.

They both took that nap anyway because their heads persisted in hurting despite the aspirin. They popped their heads out when Daryl and Theodore returned and then vanished when they realised they would have to help bring in the groceries if they stayed. Theodore called it the stuff the looters had left behind and that seemed to be mostly true. It wasn't a great haul but they were being proactive. They said town was grim and they had made noise in one part to draw them off while they went shopping and they made it sound very casual which meant it had probably gotten very dicey.

It was a good thing the kids were napping because that way they didn't hear that Beth had tried to kill herself. It was a shock to the others but to me and Daryl, it didn't come as a surprise. I had considered it was a possibility a week ago but each passing day had made it less likely, or so I thought. Lori said she had cut herself and then felt remorse and that tracked too. I knew that people who were serious about suicide got it done quick; they stepped out of a high window or put a gun in their mouth. Cutting wasn't like in the movies, unless you had something that was truly razor-sharp you really had to work at opening your throat or wrists. Just the anticipation of pain was enough to put many people off and that first cut… I rubbed my own wrist, knowing Beth had cut a little deeper than I had to need stitches.

What struck cold was hearing that Andrea had encouraged her. Not to kill herself but to make the choice whether she wanted to live or die. This was a singularly stupid thing to have done because with the number of guns floating around camp, she could have easily taken an option that wouldn't have given her a second chance. That bitch was cold. I had never liked guns and knowing half of all gun deaths in the USA were suicides didn't help. For a country that was anti-euthanasia, we sure had made it easy for people to take their own lives.

Jacqui and Jenner had chosen instantaneous fiery death. I had once tried to cut myself and learned the hard way that it wasn't like the movies. Beth had learned it too, and maybe that there was a point in carrying on. I couldn't say what for at this point… But after everything I had seen, I hadn't been pushed to the point of suicide; although like Beth I had been near catatonic and considering what was the point of continuing on. Having been at the point of despair back in the real world, these days I continued on. With all eight fingers left to me.

When Rick and Shane returned, they didn't need to say anything for everyone to know that things had gone very badly. A picture spoke a thousand words and all that. They had come back with Randall and gotten themselves bloodied in the process.

"Looks like they finally lost it." Daryl remarked and when everyone stared at him, he tapped his temple like we were all idiots. "When did walkers start punching people in the face?"

Lori got a stricken look but the others all seemed to think that the inevitable had finally happened. Maybe it was even a good thing. I had seen a lot of men get along much better after pounding the shit out of each other. It helped to get it all out after bottling it up for so long. Catharsis… I thought that was the term. They said we would talk about it in the morning.

They put Randall in a shed and I didn't think they just locked the door to keep him in. I didn't want to think about it. But I did and so while everyone else went to uneasy sleep that night, I remained awake until I gave up and decided to go and perch on the RV. Daryl was on watch and he wasn't twitchy.

"Hey." He sounded very… Either bored or contemplative.

"Can you even see anything?"

"I see enough."

I didn't see how. With the sky overcast the white farmhouse was barely visible a hundred yards away. It had rained earlier but the promised storm was taking place far away. We both watched distant flashes on the horizon and the sound didn't travel.

"What was it like in town?" I asked.

"We made sure they didn't follow us back." His accent was so thick that for a moment I didn't understand him, especially the 'fahlah'. I was used to the urban accents of Savannah, not all these country accents around me. "Ain't gonna last long if they follow us back."

"Nothing stopping them if they do."

"Naw." He agreed. "Rick and Shane talkin' about protectin' this place when there ain' nuthin' protectin' us." I guessed he had a lot on his mind and that was why he was talking to me this time. "Don't know what we still doin' here."

"Carl's still recovering."

"Kid's tough. He can travel."

"And his mom?" I asked.

Daryl looked at me and then snorted. He knew but he didn't need to say it. He wasn't impressed; I knew that. Although it was possible he was impressed I knew. Possible.

"That rifle…" It was one of the things I had been thinking about it while unable to sleep. "Otis'…" Daryl fixed me with a stare. "How did his rifle make it back if he didn't?"

Daryl snorted again. "You smarter than you look."

"Smart enough I ain't gonna talk about it."

"Good call."

We sat and gazed into the darkness and I still didn't feel sleepy. I didn't think Daryl appreciated the company though he probably preferred having me awake where he could see me rather than wandering about. It was cold outside and up here we caught the breezes too. It was getting too cold for everyone to be sleeping outdoors, I thought. Not that Daryl and I noticed. He had a poncho but still kept his arms bare. I meanwhile knew what it was like to sleep on cardboard with newspaper stuffed in the legs and arms of my clothes.

"You gonna sleep?"

"No." I said.

"Keep watch then." He said and slipped off the RV. Forever a practical man. I guessed if something did come along, the best I could do was scream and shout and wake the people with guns.

[][][][][][]

Randall knew Maggie. They had been at high school together although Maggie had no idea who he was; they had been grades apart. But it meant he was a local and knew where this place was. That changed things. At least Rick and Shane thought so.

Shane wanted to interrogate him. Rick thought that wasn't a good idea. He thought Daryl would be better suited and I thought that was probably correct. Probably. Daryl didn't object when I said I wanted to look in though his reasoning was his own.

I had never seen the inside of a jail cell first hand but I had seen plenty of people cuffed and being led to one. The two cops had kept their cuffs it seemed and this was a farm so they weren't short of chains but even these reasonable explanations didn't make it any less sinister seeing someone chained to a wall in a shed. It looked like a horror film. And Daryl was the serial killing hillbilly.

"Got some questions for you." Daryl said with remarkable casualness. "How many in your group?"

"Group?" Randall replied. "What group?" Either he was very stupid or very loyal. I thought the first.

"The group that was takin' shots at us." Daryl growled softly.

Randall didn't recognise the warning. "I don't-"

It was as far as he got. Daryl dealt him a punch that knocked him to the floor with a crack that told me he had loosened teeth.

"I said the people who were takin' shots at us! How many?!" He picked Randal up only so he could punch him to the ground again.

Randall then made another mistake. He assumed I was the good cop. "You gonna let him to this to me?"

"He asked you a very simple question." I replied and any idiot would have known that any answer would have been better than feigning ignorance.

"And you still ain't answered it!" Daryl struck him a third blow, higher this time, drawing blood near the left eye.

"Thirty!" Either he realised answering was better than saying nothing or Daryl had knocked that sense into him. "Thirty guys!"

"Where?"

The guy was an idiot. Three blows to the face and he thought shrugging was a good idea. But this time Daryl didn't hit him.

"Where did you come from when you attacked us?" Daryl asked calmly. Calmly as he could as Randall shrugged again. "It ain't a hard question! Where did you come from?"

"I don't know, man! My head's all woozy."

"Oh come on!" I couldn't believe this. "You really think this guy is going to buy that shit?"

Daryl placed his foot on Randall's leg. "No, he ain't." He applied pressure and I had seen it done before with a broken arm so it didn't bother me hearing him scream. It bothered me imagining the children hearing it though.

"I don't know! I swear! We were never any place more than a night!"

Daryl removed his foot and drew his knife. "Scoutin'? Plannin' on stayin' local?" He juggled the blade from hand to hand.

"I don't know! They left me behind!"

"Some of those guys were from Philly." I said. "How long they been in Georgia?"

"I don't know!"

"You don't know?" Daryl asked. "Then how about how long you been with'em?"

"Two weeks!"

"Two weeks." I repeated. "Long enough for them to trust you with a gun and to back them up. How trusting."

"What kinda guns they got?" Daryl demanded.

"I don't know!"

"Hit him." I said and Daryl kicked his injured leg and his scream was definitely heard at the house and camp.

"They gave you a gun! You know what they got!" Daryl raised his foot to stomp on his leg this time and the threat was more than adequate.

"Heavy stuff! Automatics!" Randall gasped and then immediately protested his innocence. "I didn't do anything!"

"Your boys shot at me and my boys! You shot at me! I saw you up on that roof! I heard you callin' about your buddy Shawn!" Daryl didn't stamp on his leg but instead whipped his knife across his head. A tiny cut appeared across Randall's forehead and it evidently stung like hell. "Next cut ain't gonna be shallow!"

"They took me in! These people took me in!" He cried and for a moment he told the truth. They took him in, protected him and he became one of them. But then he started lying. "Not just guys, a whole group of 'em! Men and women, kids too! Just like you people!"

"A minute ago you said it was thirty guys." I said.

"Thirty guys! Thirty people! What's the difference?"

"Big difference." Daryl growled. "If half of 'em are women and children. So which is it? Thirty guys with 'heavy stuff' or a whole group of men, women and children?"

He was completely turned around and Daryl probably had actually made him lightheaded with his beating. "They took me in! They took care of me! You gotta understand that! You know what it's like out there!"

"Yeah, with people like you takin' shots at us!" Daryl juggled the knife again. "So thirty men, women and children were never one place more than a night? How's that work? You got a convoy of RVs?"

"I don't know!"

"You're a terrible liar." I declared.

"Like he wants me to kick his ass." Daryl was obviously fed up at this point.

"It ain't like that!" Randall squeaked. "We can't stay anywhere long, we gotta keep movin'! And the guys, they go out to scavenge. We go out, that's what we were doin' in town!"

"And shootin' at strangers?"

"It happens!" Randal protested. "It happens! Shit happens! We get shot at! We shoot back! One night we… We found this lil' campsite. A man and his two daughters… Teenagers, you know? Real young. Real cute." He said, breathing heavily. "Their daddy had to watch while these guys, they… And they didn't even kill him afterwards! They just… They just made him watch as his daughters… They jus… Just left him there…"

I looked at Daryl and had a terrible recognition. I didn't know if the abuse Daryl had suffered was sexual but it had still been abuse and what he had just heard had triggered a deep well of rage. And Randall looked up and realised it too.

"No, but… But I didn't touch those girls! No, I swear I didn't-"

That was as far as he got. Daryl gave him a kick that would make pissing a very painful task for him for at least a week. That was to start with.

Later, much later, I handed him a rag so he could wipe off his bloodied knuckles and I knew he was a tough son of a bitch because he hadn't broken every finger in his hands.

"Feel better?" I asked.

"No."

"No…"

"You believe that shit about women and children?"

"No. Not a bit. You heard what he said about those girls… He said he weren't involved… They wouldn't do something like that and leave a witness who might tell people back at camp. Bullshit." I swallowed a thick lump that rose in my throat.

"You alright?"

"I hate rapists."

"Who doesn't?" He asked pointedly. "He knows where his people are."

"Yeah..." At least, he knew where they had been.

"If they're like the ones we've met so far…" He let it hang and finished polishing his knuckles so we could set off back to the others.

"You think we should kill him?" I asked because I had to.

"I don't know." He said gruffly and he meant it.

The Atlanta camp crowd were all waiting and Rick and Shane with their battered, bloodied faces were standing conspicuously together like they had planned to look united after their punch up. They obviously weren't united though; not on this. I already knew Shane's attitude while Rick's was obviously in the air and that indecision made Shane nervous.

"RV." I said to Sophia. "Go."

She nodded meekly and obeyed while I looked at Lori.

"Go on." She said to Carl who immediately responded the way only a child could.

"Moooom!"

"Go!" Rick pointed him after Sophia.

It built up a level of tension I hadn't intended but there were some things kids didn't need to know. Even now.

"Boy there's got a gang." Daryl explained. "Thirty men. Got heavy artillery and they ain't lookin' to make friends. They roll through here, our boys are dead. And our women, they're gonna… They're gonna wish they were…"

"What did you do?" Carol was eyeing Daryl's knuckles. He hadn't got all the blood.

"Had a little chat."

"And you?" She asked.

"Good chat." I said. "Guy's a terrible liar. And he's a bottom-feeder."

"Guy like that, he'll go along with anything a bigger guys tells him." Daryl seemed to put his hand on his crossbow for reassurance. "Tryin' to make us think his group was the same as ours."

"How do you know he wasn't telling the truth?" Dale didn't quite ask but didn't quite demand either.

Me and Daryl looked at each other. "He's lyin'."

"But how can you be sure?"

"He had what cops call the urge to confess." I said.

"And what he confess?" Shane pounced immediately.

"The part about being a danger to women."

"Says he ain't had no part in it." Daryl added. "An' I believe him. He ain't had no part in it, yet."

"No one goes near this guy." Rick declared and he looked unsettled.

Lori even more so. "Rick, what are you going to do?"

Rick sighed, looked at Shane and then growled. "We have no choice. He's a threat." He addressed the group. "We have to eliminate the threat."

I think everyone knew who would be the first to object to that. "You're just gonna kill him?" Dale demanded.

"It's settled." Rick declared. "I'll do it today." He took off and Dale went in pursuit. I could predict that conversation. I had the same thoughts myself, that Rick had just decided to execute someone on behalf of all of us. Without a word of discussion. Execute… Murder. He was going to murder someone in cold blood and justify it as protecting us. Looking around, everyone was processing how they felt about that.

I sat at the picnic table. Daryl joined me and properly finished up cleaning his knuckles before looking contemplative about messing them up in the first place. I knew he was no stranger to the worst people had to offer. By the sight and smell of Merle, he had known plenty of hardcore drug dealers and the people that came with them. Guys who would shoot first and not care were nothing new to him.

"This what you two do now?" Carol asked. "Torture people?"

"Guy told us about watchin' his friends rape some little girls." Daryl addressed his fingernails and tried to sound nonchalant but there was a slight crack to his gruff voice.

"I think Daryl didn't hit him hard enough." I said.

Carol looked over at the RV and understood why I had sent Sophia inside. Daryl hadn't been being hyperbolic describing Randall's people. It made her skin crawl.

[][][][][][]

Rick made another declaration after his conversation with Dale. We were going to talk it over… It was certainly not a discussion I wished to have. No one did. Everyone began avoiding each other straight away and Dale went so far as to post Andrea as a sentry on Randall. Shane was not impressed and I didn't think anyone else was happy with the implication either.

I spent the rest of the morning with the kids, listening to Carl grousing about being excluded and trying not to laugh at his child's voice as he made out that he was grown up. It was the same argument as before; he could take care of himself. When I was his age; that had actually been true for me but this kid had no idea. And that was before. I had had severe doubts about my ability to handle myself through this and that was when I had still had a complete set of fingers.

Goddamn things kept itching.

There was only so long I could listen to a child grumbling before I had to get away. It probably wasn't wise to go wandering the perimeter of the farm by myself but it was probably better than strangling the sheriff's kid. It was peculiarly odd to wander freely after all the time I had spent in the Atlanta camp and then in the house with Sophia. Since coming here, I had rarely left the space under the trees of this campsite. I had done it the first day, but since? Once again I was struck by the way this place seemed to be frozen in time. But something I had learned a long time ago was that nothing lasted. Kids on the streets found themselves driven from place to place by all the forces of authority who didn't want them around. There was a reason for the term 'street rat'. When you thought you had found a place that no one could possibly have staked a claim on, you found yourself being threatened by someone who treated some decades-derelict building like prime real estate.

Solitude was nice. For a while. But then the unease set in. I was a city person and I was used to there always being people around. To noise. Out here away from the house, there were only insects. I couldn't even hear birds. Just peace. It shifted rapidly from unease to fear and I set off back to the house.

Dale intercepted me halfway. He looked exactly the way I would have imagined retirees in Florida, except he had a rifle instead of a fishing rod. He had clothes perfect for this heat and I had never once seen him need help from anyone. He took care of himself despite his age and then seemed to spend all his energy worrying about everyone else.

"You must be desperate." I said.

"Desperate?"

"If you want to talk to me; that must mean all the grown-ups haven't said what you want to hear. So you're scraping the barrel now."

"Your opinion matters." The old man said.

"Does it? Looks to me like the only people whose opinions matter are Rick and Shane, and whatever the wife says to make the husband uncomfortable."

"Rick told me to talk to everyone. He gave me a day. And I talked to Shane, he even said he'd abide by the group decision."

"Do you really believe that?" I asked pointedly.

"I have to believe that after the stunt he pulled at the barn, he knows if he just executed that boy, the next group decision would be about him."

"I don't think he thinks that far ahead."

"Maybe. But right now what's important is what you think."

"What I think…" I said and then sighed. I held up my left hand. "I think about this."

"What about it?"

"Rick said I'd be a liability going on a run with the others. Did he mean while this is healing? Or in general? I wasn't planning on heavy action, just keeping an eye out for them. Staying in my weight class. But if this is a liability, where does that leave me?"

Dale stared at me, not understanding.

"You want to know if I think we should kill him?" I asked. "No, I don't."

I knew I was right about the others not saying what he wanted to hear because he couldn't contain his relief at finally hearing it from someone.

"Shooting him, hanging him, poisoning him; whatever… No. Can't do that. I say stick with the original plan and toss him on his ass far away from here."

Dale's relief turned to anguish. "That's as good as killing him."

"Maybe. But it's more of a chance than he'll have here where it's certain."

"You think he'll last more than a day?"

"Yeah. I do. He's resourceful. I was there with Daryl interrogating him."

"Beating him to a pulp."

"Yeah. And I heard him. He talked about what that group has done. He didn't talk about it like he was revolted. He talked about it like…" I shook my head. "He wasn't remorseful. He watched girls get raped and he didn't try to stop it, he didn't try to get out of there. He accepted it. Because those guys protected him. And if you keep him around, he'll attach himself to another alpha… Another big aggressive guy he'll do anything to please to keep on top."

"You mean Shane."

"I knew guys like him." Meaning Randall. "They've got no morals. No loyalty. They follow along with the meanest guy in the room. He'd follow Shane around like a puppy, do everything he asked and then on a million to one chance his friends showed up; he'd shoot Shane in the head to show his old friends he was still one of them. So throw him out. Let him fend for himself."

"Million to one chance… You don't think they're a threat?"

"Just think about it. They came from Philly. Why would they come a thousand miles and stop here in the armpit of nowhere? They got shot up in a town full of walkers and lost half a dozen guys. They're not looking for revenge. It's been a week, they're halfway to Florida by now. We toss him out there, even if for some insane reason he decides to come back, he's not gonna bring any company with him. And if Shane tells him he comes back this way he'll shoot him on sight; he'll believe it."

"And you'd tell the others that?"

"I'm seventeen. They ain't gonna listen."

"But you're talking sense!" He wrung his hands at me. "You're the first to talk sense all day!"

"What's everyone else think?"

"They either don't care or they don't want to know. They're happy for Rick and Shane to get their hands dirty and look the other way."

"Everyone?"

"Most everyone."

"Well you know what I think. Some of it anyway…"

"Some of it?"

"If I have to, I'll tell them. And if I have to, you're screwed."

His eyebrows arched and then dropped heavily. "Okay… Good to know I can count on someone around here to have conscience."

"It's not a conscience. I'm just looking out for myself."

He didn't understand, just as he hadn't about my hand. But I had given him enough for now.

[][][][][][]

"What's he doing here?" Andrea asked.

"He has a right to speak. Same as the rest of us." Dale came immediately to my defence, something that wasn't lost on Shane who scoffed. He knew Dale wanted me here as an ally and he thought that was pitiful. So did I really. No one else voiced any objections. They just wanted this over with.

"So how do we do this?" Glenn asked heavily. "Just… Take a vote?"

"Does it have to be unanimous?" Andrea sounded more relaxed.

"How about majority rules?" Lori said quietly.

"Let's just see where everybody stands." Rick stepped up but he sounded exhausted. "Then we can talk through the options."

"Yeah." Shane naturally spoke up first. "The way I see it, there's only one way to move forward."

"Killing him." Dale countered bluntly. "Right? I mean why even bother to take a vote it's clear which way the wind's blowing." He said with raw bitterness.

"Well if people believe we should spare him, I want to know." Rick's exhaustion turned to irritability in an instant.

"Well I can tell you it's a small group. Maybe just… Me, Bas and Glenn."

There was a long heavy silence, in which Glenn squirmed visibly and Dale's face fell.

"Look…" Glenn started hesitantly. "I think you're pretty much right about everything all the time but this-"

"They've got you scared!" Dale accused.

"He's not one of us!" Glenn countered, as if that tired argument was a salient point. "And we've lost too many people already."

Dale took a moment and then located Glenn's weakness. "How about you?" He pointed his hat at Maggie. "Do you agree with this?"

Maggie by the looks of things was one of the ones who didn't want to know and being put on the spot pained her. "Couldn't we continue keeping him prisoner?"

"Just another mouth to feed." Daryl pointed out.

"Yeah…" I said quietly.

"It may be a lean winter." Hershel said and his tone said that by 'may' he meant 'will'.

"We could ration better." Lori was the same as Maggie.

"Well he could be an asset." Dale asserted, ignoring what I had said to him before. "Give him a chance to prove himself."

"Put him to work?" Glenn asked glumly.

"We're not letting him walk around." Rick stated.

"Put an escort on him?" Maggie had a lump in her throat.

"Who wants to volunteer for that duty?" Shane asked with naked contempt.

"I will!" Dale immediately stepped up.

Rick shot him down without hesitation. "I don't think anyone should be walking around with this guy."

"He's right." Lori said from behind him. "I wouldn't feel safe unless he was tied up."

"We can't exactly put chains around his ankles." Andrea mused grimly. "Sentence him to hard labour."

"Look. Say we let him join us. Right?" Shane said. "Maybe he's helpful. Maybe he's nice." He said this with dripping sarcasm and it was awkward considering he thought the same as me about Randall's character. "We let our guard down. Maybe he runs off, brings back his thirty men."

Dale turned on me. "Tell him what you told me."

Shane rolled his eyes as he looked at me. "Why would his thirty men still be here?" I asked. "What's here for them?" I looked at Rick. "You said those two guys in the bar were from Philadelphia. Maybe most of them were. Why would they stop here in the middle of rural Georgia? Sure, they collected him and probably some other guys along the way but why would they stop here?" I looked back at Shane. "You think they're camped down a few miles along the road? Why? What are they eating? What are they drinking? They're already lost five guys here. How's a camp of thirty guys safe out here?" Now I scoffed and looked at the floor. "How are we safe here?"

"You want to take that chance?" Shane asked.

"No, I want to follow through with the original plan. Take him out somewhere and leave him. His leg'll probably give out on him and he'll be torn apart but it won't be on us. His 'friends' are gone. And for the record, I agree with you." I said, surprising him. "We can't keep him here. He'll turn on us the moment someone stronger comes along. I think his friends are long gone. But there's got to be others like them. And who would he side with? The group of old men." I waved at Dale and Hershel. "The women." Carol, Lori, Maggie and Patricia all squirmed. Andrea did not. "The children?" I smacked my chest. "Or the… former National Guardsmen or biker gang turned bandit? Not a chance."

"There's still a chance." Shane said and obviously he was dead-set on eliminating all possibility of it. "And how you gonna feel about letting him go when his friends tear through here and shoot off your good hand?"

"So the answer is to kill him?" Dale's disgust almost choked him. "To prevent a crime he may never even attempt?!" He half-shouted and then took a moment to compose himself. "If we do this." He continued. "We're saying there's no hope. Rule of law is dead! There is no civilisation!"

"Oh my God…" Shane rolled his eyes.

Hershel however seemed to have been listening to both of us. "Could you drive him further out?"

"You barely came back this time." Lori said to Rick without making eye contact. "There's walkers, you could break down, you… You could get lost." She wasn't making excuses; she was right.

"You could get ambushed." Daryl growled softly.

"No, they're right. We shouldn't put our own people at risk." Glenn said, again with the Them and Us mentality.

"If… You go through with it?" Patricia spoke up now. "How would you do it?" It seemed like a sick question. She asked. "Would he suffer?" Maybe not.

"We could hang him." Shane suggested. "Snap his neck."

"I thought about that." Rick said heavily. "Shooting may be more humane."

"Nah." I said. "You can't shoot him." I looked at Shane. "How you gonna feel if you shoot him and then a bunch of walkers tear through here and one rips your throat out because you wasted a perfectly good bullet?" I asked and both Rick and Shane grimaced. "String him up. That's the practical thing to do. And we're being practical, ain't we? He's a possible threat. Kill him. He ain't one of us." I said to Glenn who looked at the floor. "He ain't one of us. He's an outsider. So let's lynch him."

There was a long pregnant pause and then it was broken as Theodore crossed the room and stood beside Dale and me. He didn't say a word.

Shane scoffed again. "So what? You saying we racists now?"

"Where's the line, officer?" I asked. "You need to kill him because he's a threat. He's a threat because he ain't one of us. You can't keep him prisoner because he's a mouth you can't afford to feed. You hang him because you can't spare the ammo. So where's the line? We string him up and torch his body; then what? Who's next?" I asked. "If you want to talk about threats and dangers to the group, what good is this old man?" I pointed at Dale. "He can shoot but he can't fight hand to hand or run fast so does that make him a danger to the group? What about me?" I spoke directly to Rick. "You said this." I tore off the bandage and held up my hand. "Is a liability." They all stared at the red stumps. "I'm just a skinny kid with eight fingers, I can't pull my weight like Daryl, Shane or Theodore. Neither can Beth; she's just a skinny little girl. Are we dead weight? And your boy?" I asked and Rick swallowed involuntarily. "Your little girl?" I asked Carol. "She's scared out of her mind every time a walker appears. She feels bad about not feeling sad about her piece of shit father being dead. What use is she if we're attacked?" This announcement made Carol put a hand over her mouth. So did Lori. Everyone else shifted uncomfortably as I looked back at Shane. "You wrote us both off so I already know you don't give a shit about the slower members of the herd. So how long after you kill Randall that you start deciding which of us is valuable and which of us is expendable?" Daryl knew about Otis already. So obviously did Rick and Dale. I looked at Lori and saw the fear in her eyes. "Pretty much everyone here knows you're pregnant." She gasped involuntarily while Rick shot me a death glare, before he looked around the room and saw that the only people unaware of this fact were Andrea, Hershel and Patricia. Even Theodore knew. "How much of a threat is that to the group? Are we all gonna support you? Throw you a baby shower? Or just give you a knitting needle and point you at a bathroom?"

Dale was staring at me aghast and nodding as he realised I was simply voicing his worst fears. Glenn had his head in his hands and almost between his knees. Maggie was weeping. Hershel was praying.

Shane wasn't swayed. "None of that is relevant to what we talking about."

Now it was my turn to scoff. "Not yet. It'll be another conversation after this. And it'll be easier. Just like you want." I had nothing else to say and I had said far too much anyway. I left them. Left the adults to talk. I didn't feel like joining the kids with Beth and Jimmy either so I went back to the campsite.

When I got there I realised there was no one on watch. Everyone was in the house. They were in there talking about threats and no one was watching for the obvious clear-cut danger. I felt like going back and pointing that out but what was the point? I sat at the picnic table and thought about how a day ago I had sat here playing games with Carl and Sophia.

I wasn't sat alone for long. "That was quite a speech."

"I sounded like a dick."

"Not to Dale." Carol said. "Not to everyone else. I think you said a lot of things that scared them."

"Things none of them want to say aloud."

"No…"

"What about you?"

"I said no. They can't make us decide whether it's right or wrong to kill a person. Not like that." She said. "What you said, about Sophia."

"You have a saint. An actual saint."

"She doesn't have a mean bone in her body. If she knew what was going on…" She clutched at her forehead, apparently getting a headache just at the thought of it. "And she will find out."

"She's a smart kid. She probably already knows but she's just… Pretending."

"You really think setting him loose on the road is a good idea?"

"His friends are gone. Acting like they're still a threat; that's just paranoia. We've got real threats to deal with. You realise while everyone was in there talking about this, no one was out here keeping watch? No one!" She became alarmed as she realised I was right. "We're worried about thirty guys who are probably making trouble in the Sunshine State now and forgetting about the dead who are everywhere? It's not even about him now."

"It's about Rick and Shane." Carol nodded a few times. "You knew Lori was pregnant. You know anything else?"

I laughed humourlessly. "Like a sad widow being comforted in the woods by a lonely man?" I asked and the woman pulled a face. "I saw it. And everyone else knows or suspects; they're not idiots. And it could be his baby. Or it could be Rick's and we're living a real-life Jerry Springer." Now I clutched at my head. "Maybe it's because I didn't have anything to lose so I'm thinking clearer but is it just me that all this personal crap is a waste of time?"

"What choice do we have?" She said, meaning she had a daughter to protect and no survival skills of her own. And I by my own admission was just a skinny kid. I could take on one of them if I got the drop on it but more than one, by myself?

"What do you think they're going to do?"

"You left them all rattled. I don't think anyone wants to go through with it, except Shane. Dale was really hammering home what you said, and with T standing there…"

"Too much?"

"I think if we're going to start talking about murdering people, bringing up lynch mobs was a good move."

"I don't think I'm going to be anyone's favourite person for it though."

"No. You're not." She said. "Maybe wait until your voice finishes breaking before you make another speech."

I cringed and put my face in my hand and she laughed to herself.

Their discussion lasted only ten minutes more, growing heated toward the end with Dale, Rick and Shane's voices sounding loud throughout the night air and then the door flew open and Shane came storming out. He pointedly headed away from the shed where they were keeping Randall and even from this distance we could hear him running an angry monologue.

"No executions today then." I mused.

Lori brought the kids out first and I guessed she and Carol were now regretting having them in the house while the adults had their talk. It had seemed safer than the RV. Now it just meant they knew how angry and divided the adults were. Sophia went straight into her mom's arms while Carl scowled belligerently. I guessed he felt that if I was part of the discussion, he should have been too. Kids…

Theodore came by and without breaking stride flicked me hard in the ear with his middle and index fingers. "That's for pushing my buttons." He said and retired to his tent. That was probably the best I could hope for. Carol and Sophia both grinned at me as I clutched my ear. He was a big man and even a flick felt nasty.

Andrea and Dale came next and I didn't know what to make of her while Dale gave me a simple look of gratitude before climbing up on the RV. I sensed a greater conversation to come though. Rick, Daryl and Glenn came last with three vastly contrasting expressions. Glenn was relieved, Daryl looked like he couldn't care less and Rick… He looked like his already considerable problems had piled up even higher.

"We're keeping him in custody." Rick declared, still trying to sound like a cop. "For now."

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I had been on edge for a while because of the lack of danger. The Atlanta camp had been secure for a little while but I had been in no state to appreciate it. When I had awoken during the attack on the camp, it had been to a constant threat of death. From the camp to the CDC to the old folks' home to the road; it had never let up. Then I had arrived on this farm just in time to miss the slaughter of a pack of walkers. That had been the last presence of danger.

So half a dozen biters down by the water tearing apart a cow was actually a comfort. It was a reminder that the world was still fucked up and I had to remain vigilant, especially if I didn't want to lose more than a few fingers.

I was too young to participate but I was no one's child so they couldn't stop me from hanging back and watching. Andrea, Daryl, Rick, Shane, Theodore; they were the capable adults of the group. I thought a pitchfork was an odd choice of weapon until I saw Andrea ram it through a walker's jaw and up into its brains. Rick had insisted on no guns which didn't sit well with Shane who was still seething from the night before. Rick had already been thinking about the need to conserve ammunition even before my speech about saving bullets and though it wasn't the lesson I would have liked him to take away, he was adamant about saving rounds. While Shane was angry, looking like he wanted to take the spade he wielded to my skull rather than someone who already dead, he acknowledged that six walkers didn't warrant the use of guns.

Though there was no need for him to smash a walker to the ground and then give it a whole bunch of rib-shattering kicks, besides it clearly making him feel better.

Rick let him blow off steam and that was evident in Andrea and himself too. Daryl and Theodore were detached; it was just a job that needed doing. I thought Daryl even looked annoyed by their waste of energy; his crossbow was quick and efficient.

I was interested in the dead themselves, particularly two with distinct muddy tidemarks reaching almost to their knees. I knew there was a creek nearby having been through it myself and someone had mentioned it being swampy roundabout. At this time of year, even with the recent rain, both had to be drying up. These two had come through the swamp and only lost their shoes in the process. One was positively the ugliest I had ever seen. It had long since chewed through its lips and it was shirtless, displaying every single un-bleeding cut and scrape it had accumulated since its death. Skinny fuck too. It was green more than grey and seemed to have been starting to go brown. Its skin was flaky; like it had caught too much of the Southern sun in the past few weeks.

"What the hell are you doing?" Theodore asked.

"You ever think about these things? How they work? What keeps them going?"

"I try not to."

That was a good idea; all things considered. Because even with Jenner's explanation, these things made no sense. They didn't drink so they should have been 'dead' in days even with the people they ate. But they weren't. They just kept on going and going and a scientist like Jenner had no explanation for it. My last science class had been in elementary school; what explanation did I have?

They didn't want to waste gas on just six walkers so instead we had to build a small bonfire and everyone was silent as we built it on top of the charred bones of the walkers they had burned from the barn. Was it even possible to burn bones to nothing outside of a furnace? Probably not. But we were only burning them to get rid of the smell and the flies, not to erase them.

The smell of cooked human meat. I was getting used to it.

Either the walkers on the property or last night's discussion had lit a fire under Rick's ass. Hershel's too. Things were changing. We weren't going to camp out anymore; Hershel was bringing everyone into the house. Whether they were planning to turn the old building into a fortress, I didn't know. But it would be solid walls instead of tent canvas or whatever the hell an RV was made of. I heard Hershel, Maggie and Patricia talking about provisioning the basement. I also heard Rick giving orders to bring the vehicles to the house, facing toward the road, and that there would be two sentries; one in the barn's loft and another on the windmill.

This all felt like stuff they should have done a week ago while Randall was healing and everyone seemed to be thinking it. Not criticising Rick or Shane for the inaction but asking themselves why they had been inactive. They all appreciated the work he gave them; it was a distraction.

All the adults got put to work. Carl for some reason was under strict instructions not to stray away from Lori's side, making me wonder what he had done the other day, Beth was doing chores in the farmhouse and that left me with Sophia who wasn't allowed beyond the first fence.

I lifted her onto a beam by one of the gates so that I wouldn't have to look down to talk to her. She had a clean shirt and jacket but the same capris. Hitting a clothing store had been no one's priority and they hadn't found anything on the highway suitable for her legs. I was wearing my entire wardrobe.

"Are Shane and Rick going to fight again?" She asked.

"Maybe."

"Why?"

"Because they have very strong differing opinions and they're not good at communication." I said, quoting some talk show host I had seen as a child.

"So they hit each other?"

"I think hitting each other has made them both feel better." Rick more than Shane, considering his whaling on that walker this morning. "But Rick's gonna take Randall away with Daryl, so I think he's still worried they're going to get into a fistfight over it."

"They were really screaming at each other last night."

"Yeah… You weren't supposed to hear that."

"Isn't just leaving him in the middle of nowhere killing him anyway?"

"He has a chance. He definitely has a chance." No matter how small. "But we can't keep him here. He's already been willing to shoot at Hershel. He's an old man. Could you shoot at an old man?"

Sophia shook her head. "I can't shoot."

"Well, we'll have to teach you." I said and her eyes got big. "No one's going to ask you to shoot at anyone, Freckles. But the dead aren't going anywhere." I pointed out. "I need to learn too. I'm sure someone can teach us." She kept up with the owl eyes. "You need to be able to take care of yourself." I said more severely. "No one's gonna ask you to fight any of them with a knife or for you to shoot any of them. But you need to able to defend yourself. Your mom too. We all need to learn."

"I don't know if I can."

It was cruel but I held up my hand and with the palm toward her, so it was impossible to even pretend that I wasn't missing fingers. "This was lucky. Do you want to be lucky?"

She balled her hands into fists protectively and shook her head.

"If it helps, my favourite strategy is still to run away from danger. It's never failed me yet."

"Did anyone ever catch you stealing?"

"No. I always did my homework. It was other people I had to run away from… But I don't want to tell you about that." With Randall around, she had enough to trouble her about people. "Don't rely on the adults. They can't be everywhere at once. You need to rely on yourself." I stopped as I heard myself. "That's about all the advice I can give you." I saw Dale approaching. "Dale probably has some life lessons he could give you. He's been around a while."

"I wanted to talk to you." He said and glanced at Sophia.

"I think you can talk in front of her. Unless you have some evil plan you don't want her to know about." I was in a light mood and Sophia's presence ensured Dale had to keep it light too.

"I wanted to thank you for what you said last night."

"I just said what everyone else was too afraid to say." I replied. "I don't feel like holding back anymore." Now it was his turn to be presented with my maimed hand. "And I'm just a skinny kid. I know how… I'm not as valuable to the group as Daryl or Shane."

"I don't agree with what they're going to do, but it's better than the alternative. If you hadn't said what you said-"

"Don't thank me yet."

His expression creased. "Not yet? Why not yet?"

"You heard Hershel. It's going to be a lean winter." It was noticeably cooler today. "You think this is the last tough discussion we'll have?"

"No." He said gravely. "Probably not. But at least this one won't be the one we think about with shame."

"Speak for yourself." I was thinking of bringing up lynching to win Theodore over. "What are you doing anyway?"

"Carol wanted to know what you two were doing over here."

"Staying out of the way. All the grownups seem busy."

"You could pitch in."

"How?" I asked. "I don't own anything to take into the house."

"You don't care where you end up in the house?"

"Street kid." I reminded him. "I'll be happy if I'm just sleeping indoors."

"I'll be sure to pass that on." My attitude had him nonplussed. For him, last night was a significant milestone but for me, just another bad day in a life full of them.

He left us and Sophia looked up at the house and then at the shed where they were keeping Randall. "What happens after he's gone?"

"Hopefully, everyone finds something new to fixate on."

"Like?"

"Food, water, clean clothes…" What we would do if a pack of walkers like we had seen on the highway showed up. I couldn't just run away from that. I already knew how bad things were running away in the countryside.

"I want a bath." She declared.

"That might be difficult."

"I know… I still want one."

"I don't know if they have hot water in the house. I know they've been using a generator. Maybe you can ask."

She brightened up at the thought of this. Small luxuries.

"Come on. Before they say we're slacking off." I held out an arm and she gripped it to slip down comfortably.

We began to walk up to the house and Sophia pointed. "They're talking again." Meaning Rick and Shane. "They don't look happy."

"What else is new?" I replied, making her smile. "What did Carl do yesterday?"

"I don't know." She said far too quickly and realised it and blushed. "He went and talked to Randall." She confessed. "Shane caught him."

"Now Shane's telling Rick." I guessed. "More drama." Now I knew why Carl was under arrest at least. Hopefully it wouldn't interfere with the Randall mission although I had a suspicion that Shane was trying to distract Rick away from it, as if a delay would change everyone's minds. "That looks more like fun." I pointed to where Andrea, Dale and Glenn were trying to get the RV out from under the trees of the former campsite. After sitting idle for so long, the characterful machine didn't seem to want to move. The whole thing seemed held together by duct tape and string and ran on hopes and prayers.

If half a dozen people in the RV had been rather pungent, I didn't want to imagine what seventeen people under one roof would be like, although the house was quite vast. I wanted to look around but I also didn't want to hear jokes about my profession. I had heard them all. The only room I checked out was the basement which seemed to have stuff in it dating back to the 19th century. I seriously hoped it wouldn't be necessary to spend time in it.

I came back up in time to have to close my ears to some more Glenn and Maggie drama. I wasn't the only one who had to ignore it. I had no details on their relationship but I figured that it couldn't be easy with everything happening; and now everyone piling into the house. I hadn't had much experience with privacy but it was a nice luxury.

And as always the peace was shattered.