"Get out here!" Night goggles on, Peter aims the crossbow at the closest figure, tracking it as it trips heavily over the brush wire in the darkness, zeroing in as it keeps on, scratching and crawling. Behind him there're more, snarling, gnashing, pushing and clawing. Alarm lines sound and jangle and clank. Peter pulls back the trigger and fires, watching the bolt miss its mark and drive into the thing's neck, leaving the brain untouched, and the creature still advancing. He's pulling his pistol when behind him ensues the fracas of the camp erupting back into action as everyone bursts from their huts into fight mode, some barefoot, all grasping for knives and guns and blades.

"Mikey—" Rob shouts, "machetes!"

"J?" Peter calls, "We good for gunfire?"

"How many?" Daryl's there at the border with him, pulling the crossbow from Peter and employing his strength to reload and nock it as fast as it can be, firing it deftly into the horde with lethal accuracy.

"Manageable," Simon breathes, looking through the second pair of night vision goggles. "Twenty. Maybe thirty."

"You waitin' for a bus?" Daryl sneers through his adrenaline. "Smoke 'em; open fire!" He lets fly another bolt then pulls the revolver from his back waistband and follows after John and Rob who are already on the other side of the river running at the walkers at full speed. Shots ring out in a string of cracking echoing explosions, lighting up the night and shattering the forest's quiet.

"Circle round!" John shouts behind him into the confusion of action, waving his arm for emphasis. "Come at 'em from behind!'

More shots fire, and across the river in the maelstrom hunting knives machetes and bats thrust, slash, and strike as the strategic gunfire from the others continues.

"Com'on! Com'on!" somebody shouts. "Watch 'em as they break off!"

"Blades!" another commands. "Save fire as we need it!"

Behind the river mark still, Simon breathes heavily, "How'd so many get so close?" He spits, and uses the rifle's scope to fire one by one at the walkers he can get direct hits on. Beside him Beth fires her Remington with precision and accuracy.

"Look alive!" she hears James shouting somewhere in the trees. Beth takes a shot at one careening towards Michael.

"Beth!" Daryl bellows as he strikes hard with blunt force the base of the crossbow into the decayed head of a walker pushing past the carcasses stuck on the wire line. "Watch the borders!" Beth takes two more shots then turns her back against Simon's and scans the darkness.

The butchery continues as those on the frontline take out the walkers entangled in traps and storming toward the commotion.

"Aaarrghh!" an abrupt bray roars through the violent cacophony.

Beth flashes round in an instant when she hears the cry of pain, uncertain of the body it issued from. She can't tell. In the melee she can only make out indistinct shouting: 'He bit?' 'Get 'him outta there!' "Who was that?"

Simon shakes his head and keeps firing. "The borders clear?"

Under duress Beth retrains her eyes on the darkness opposite the breach point. Listening and scanning, Beth scrupulously surveys the woods surrounding the back side of camp and across the lower bend of the river. The herd came from above, but the assault will likely draw in nearby roamers. She hears another shot fired from Simon's rifle and feels his body press into hers from the kickback. The cry plagues her — What is the injury? Who's was the body? — but she holds steady. Her eyes and trigger finger are all that keep their backs safe and an escape route open. "Simo—" she starts to ask but then a distant clanging of metal sounds somewhere downstream and she steps forward to the edge of the sharp drop-off and waits, straining her eyes to distinguish shadows from forms, walkers from trees. Simultaneous to the instant a rotting shadow lurches forward, breaking from the tableau of the motionless woods, she fires. Beth watches dispassionately as the thing crumples, lifeless. She suppresses the compulsion to call a roll call for her comrades less she distract them when their focus is most vital. When another emerges she shoots it.

"Beth!" Simon hisses. "Get back!"

Behind her the firing has lessened though still there comes the unmistakable sounds of truncheons finitely bludgeoning decomposing skulls and metal crushing into rotted bone and decaying flesh. The action behind her persists but slows; she is anxious, but upholds her watch. She waits, and holds her trigger finger steady.

"Clear?" That's Rob, she thinks.

"Clear!" That was, John maybe. Maybe Peter…

"Greene!" The brusque sound of his voice calling her sets her breath back at pace.

"Clear!" she answers Daryl. It's over. Her shoulders slack slightly, but still she keeps her stance, her arms extended, ready to shoot. She checks her magazine: three shots. When the camp doesn't flood with their return she knows they must be in the trees scouring for stragglers, surveying what's out there. She keeps her watch, expecting each next second the horizon before her will break with walkers. With how many she cannot know.

The bridge boards drop down hard and fast over the river border behind her; there's a crossing immediately, she can hear the muffled sounds of it before she pulls her eyes away from the far bank and turns, momentarily, to see. In the dark, at her distance, she can't see much, but she sees him – the figure she knows best – carrying with the might of his own weight, over the bridge, a heavy something, sagging with pain or dead weight.

"Michael—" Simon calls as Daryl pulls him over and releases him to slump to the ground near the fire pit.

"He ain't bit," Daryl assures him, breathless and exerted. "Leg's busted," he wipes at his sweating brow. "Could be bad."

Simon abandons his post and drops to his knees before his friend, feeling the leg. "I'm good," Michael winces. "No problem."

Daryl turns away from them as Simon works quickly to assess the damage, pushing up the pant leg; Daryl looks to her, "Y'good?"

Beth nods. "It's stayed clear. Only two; down stream, behind the tree line."

Daryl nods. "You okay?"

Though she'd answered him already, Beth nods again. "What happened?"

"Took 'em down, m'ybe thirty, in all. Mike there broke a leg fightin' two of 'em off; didn't see it. Think ev'rybody else 's okay."

"But what happened? How'd so many get so close?"

"Can't say till we get out there in th' light. Bettin' there'll be some caught in the traps 'n wires 'n pike defenses." He looks at her, "The setup worked."

"Yeh," Beth nods, but still her eyes move from him to scan the borders of their camp. "The gunfire…" It was necessary in the moment for quick neutralization, but what will the barrage have rendered? These're the first shots fired from camp in all the weeks she and Daryl have been there.

"Robby 's scoutin' south-east, I'm takin' th' west. We'll see whut's out there." Staring into the woods Daryl pulls her to him by the brawny arm he hooks around her neck. Held there close, the mixture of sweat and earth and gunfire on him smells good to her; feeling his lips come down to kiss her head, she buries her face into him, blocking out the other odors of the foul gore of walker blood and rot. "No one's sleeping t'night." He releases her to look Beth in the eye, "You good to stand watch?"

"I've got it," she nods, her big eyes looking up at him.

"How's your ammo?"

"Could use another magazine. Or ten."

"Heh," Daryl snorts, "yeh. Th' others went for the bikes; they'll be back. Get the rounds, 'll be back in thirty."

As Daryl scales the steep slope down to the lower water, Beth scrambles past Simon and Michael's discolored swollen shin and makes for the open cache of artillery, looking for more rounds to fit her sub-compact pistol. She finds only two, adds them to her magazine, and grabs a half loaded .38 revolver for back up. Alive with steely adrenaline Beth resumes her watch of the west bank, keeping keen watch of the edge of the woods Daryl and the crossbow have already slipped into. She takes down one more, watching as it pitches itself forward, marking time waiting for the better shot, meaning to keep the thing from falling into the water if she can. She takes the shot, the thing staggers and buckles onto the dry shore.

One by one Peter, John, and Tom return with the bicycles. The bikes drop heavy on their sides by the unlit fire and the boys disperse into action and a flurry of overlapping conversation.

"Everyone back? Everyone alright?"

"—Mikey's leg looks broken.

"—Rob'n Daryl are running patrols."

"—Did'ya see what happened?"

"—Leg twisted bad on the fall."

"—Help me with the splint!"

"—Biter stepped right on it."

"—Duck tape."

"—Use the branches for the arrows."

"—It's turning black–"

"—Keep it elevated."

"—How much ammo we got left?"

"—How'd so many get so close?"

"—How filled 'll those pits be?"

"—We staying here tonight?"

"—Pete, take up watch in country."

"—Was a lot of gunfire."

"—What we gonna do with so many corpses?"

"—Trip wires worked."

"—Where's Beth?"

"—Flames'll be too high, smoke'll show for miles."

"—Could use more sound alarms."

"—Right there, watchin' our six."

"—Tighter– Hold it still Mike."

"—Big breath."

While John works with Simon to construct a splint for Michael, Peter leaves camp to keep watch on the east bank, climbing their nearest watch tree, a thick strong long-leaf pine, to take, utilizing the night-vision binoculars, a wider survey of their woods. The others move briskly about to consolidate weapons, remaining ammunition, and double check the go-bags, should they have to run.

Peter's whistle signals the return of Rob, reappearing after having killed three more roamers, and taken out the ones he'd found down in pits or tangled in lines. "Iron Mike—" he grins once back in camp, "hanging in?" Michael makes the effort to mirror the nonchalance with a smile delivered through a grimace of pain. Though the night is cold Rob drops down to the river and dunks the top of his head in, letting it soak him down to his roots. When he rises he shakes the water from his chopped black hair, and gets straight to the matter: "Spotted another two roamers; slipped past 'em. Nothing else. You were right, Tommy," he takes a second to catch his breath, "tree trimmer works for the pits; gotta be quick to counter the resistance though."

Rob's return was followed in short order by Daryl's. "Got four out there. Didn't see no herd. Shots fired might'a brought 'em right to us, but only if they're out there. Woods still seem clear."

"Good. Right," James says, assuming authority, "Mikey, get some rest, hammock if you can stand it, case we gotta get you up an' out fast. Rest 'f us, we stay up. Pair off, an' keep at least one 'f you awake, till we get daylight." They bundle up, take up their weapons, and disperse.

Daryl follows Beth to the back drop-off of the plateau. There she sits, her legs dangling over the seven-foot wall. The night has once again grown quiet. It's a wonder to Beth that after all the cracking and firing of gunshots, the Georgian crickets can still sound this loudly. The chirping surrounds and fills her ears as above her Daryl drinks, taking in great swigs of water, one after the other. "Here. Drink." He passes it down to her. Though she isn't thirsty she does drink, finishing what's left from the canteen. "We're gonna make it through this night." His surly gruffness is filled with the authority of seasoned experience.

"I know."

They keep watch, surrounded on all sides of their little island by other pairs, keeping the same quiet sentry. The stars glimmer, but there's not much moon, little more than a waxing crescent. They're both tired — they're all tired — but they keep guard, awake, knowing the night may yet hold some terror. Weighted, and from the darkness, his words reach out to her: "You ready to talk about this?"

Beth breathes slowly in, then releases, letting her body deflate with its escape. It won't be long now till every breath they take will be visible in the cold winter air. "Alright."

Daryl shoulders the crossbow and takes a seat beside her. All that moves in their field of vision is the river, and the slightest gusts of breeze. "Stay or go, Greene?" She doesn't say anything, but pulls her knees up to her, pulling her options in close. She's been thinking this conversation for weeks. Daryl's knife digs cones into the dirt as he twists it down, waiting for her vote. "Don't get the sense they'll be givin' us walking orders."

Beth nods to concur. Whether it is in their best interest, whether it is unanimous or strained, she too feels the boys had not brought them in lightly, and now — in spite of, or because of, this complication — they won't push them out. Even if they should; even if they may partly wish they could. She looks at him, "You think it's wrong?"

"World's dangerous any way you put it. Leaving may turn out worse than stayin'. Might be wrong of us t' stay put an' ask 'em to take a baby on, might be jus' as wrong for 'em t' send us away."

"Seems like the Daryl Dixon I used to know was much more decisive."

Daryl runs the tip of his finger just long the edge of his blade. When he reaches the tip, he speaks. "M'be."

"If, if we leave," Beth starts, almost keeping inside what's in her head, "there's a chance we might—"

"That's not the issue," Daryl cuts her off, low and dark. "We ain't talkin' 'bout leaving here for a search party. This can't be about them."

Though she knows this to be true, still, something in her that's been left incomplete since the prison compels her to say, in the meekest, solemnly willfully hopeful voice, "Rick found Lori and Carl. It would have been so easy for him not to have." Her eyes look at him but she does not hold him in her gaze. "Dumb luck or fate, it happened."

His unrelenting pragmatism counters hard: "For every good, lucky thing that's happened, count at least double that have gone the other way." When he thinks he hears something, Daryl's attention flashes to the woods, but it was just a splash in the water, a jump in the current, maybe a fish. He looks back, to her. "We got livin' an' this to do."

Beth's voice drops with realization, "You don't think we'll find them."

His face creasing as it does, Daryl's narrow eyes glance at her. He exhales. "The dead are walking around hunting the living; pretty sure fortune's gotta still have some good luck stored for us. Seeing as the world's gone t' shit and scales 're stacked steep against us."

Beth doesn't speak. This isn't that conversation. Though it's muffled, she can hear the traces of conversations from the other pairs keeping watch. "This has been a good camp," she offers. She's come easily to love each one of these boys, and this little lot of land has become home to her, one that she helped make.

"Yeh," he grunts, nodding solemnly. They saved Beth and he when they needed rest and shelter, and an influx of hope, when it was easy to think there was no one decent left living. There aren't fences or watch towers, the family isn't here, but the camp and its builders have given them safety, and a home and a place in the world when everything had been taken from them, more times than they could take. Being there buoyed them from darkness and the wilderness. "Leavin' would mean leaving a home we know we got, people we care about. You haven't had t' do that yet. Ev'ry place you've left you've done 'cuz you ain't hadda choice." He rips out some wild grass. "I couldn't do it a day."

Beth had never pictured the prison without him... She breathes; since the night her expectancy began, she's been playing out in her mind what leaving camp would be like, but the prospect and its realities have never been so palpable. "Daryl…?"

His voice is grim, and stark as he reanimates from his reverie "… I ain't certain this is where we're meant to be." He watches Beth pull her jacket tighter. "Leaving'lll be hard."

"You think for sure we have to leave?"

Wordless, Daryl shrugs.

Silent steps approach, automatically they both look up. "Hey," Tom greets them huskily. "Here; it's warm." He hands over two mugs of yaupon holly tea. "An' 'll keep you up."

Daryl takes the mugs of the forest-made caffeinated drink. It was Peter who'd known it could be done; his and James' years working up to Georgian Eagle Scouts regularly proving disparately worthy. "Cheers." Dryly, Daryl takes a sip.

"Anything?"

"Naw," Daryl answers, following Tom's gaze back across the river. "Still as a shot through th' head."

Tom nods, "Good," and takes his leave. "Till the morning y'all."

Daryl takes another drink, and offers the other cup to Beth. "Want it?"

She accepts it, if only to hold something warm to her while she sits watch. She yawns, and blows on the tea, "You were saying?"

Daryl takes another large gulp and exhales wearily. "Don' know," he grumbles. "Guess, I was waitin' t' see this place tested." He watches Beth bring the drink to her lips and take a single sip. "We'll know more t'morrow, but th' camp held up. Systems worked. We know what we're doin' here."

"Those walkers came at us f'r nothin'," Beth reminds him. "The baby will cry. For months. Longer. This camp works because of its location, and its low profile. A baby'll draw attention; without warnin', without cause."

Daryl's eyes stare unseeing into the woods, momentarily forsaking their duty. "Keep thinkin' back to that house—" he tells her "— at the graveyard. Almost didn't make it. Almost got separated, f'r good. Place had walls, weren't no baby cryin', jus' happened. Like at the farm."

Beth studies him, "Are you sayin' we shouldn't leave?"

"Dunno." Daryl swings the crossbow off his shoulder and sets it beside him. "We spent months after the farm lookin' for someplace that'd work b'fore the prison. We've got numbers here; we're close to water and food. We're out of the way. We get hit with a mob of 'em, we can't hold 'em here, but we didn't hold th' farm neither. This place might be as good as we'll find, until it falls." He tugs at his beard, "In a house, where people're more likely t' pass by, even 'f we keep our visibility low, a cryin' baby's gonna see ev'ryone around come running. Don't know that we could soundproof."

"There are buildings," she says, "bigger ones, with inner rooms – schools, hospitals, office buildings. We could look."

"Y'think there's anything out there like that anymore that ain't already been taken, or isn't brimming with the dead?" He looks at her, "No way we could'a taken or held the prison just us."

"Daryl…" Daryl blinks, the way he does every time she speaks his name that way. He listens. "That winter we were on the road... I thought we could do it — have Lori's baby out there, house to house, car to car— But when Judith came, I saw just how wrong that was. She cried. Not all the time, not even a lot," there's a distant glint of remembrance in her eye as she thinks on her sometimes-charge, "but you can only do some much to keep an infant from crying. And in the woods— On the road— We need walls. Strong walls." Beth tugs at her bracelets, "I think we have to look."

"On our own."

"We could stay close by," she bargains. "A day or two's distance. They could help us clear."

"You ain't ready t' go. Even that far. These days, you'd never make it."

"We can wait. This part won't last much longer."

"Beth…"

Her sudden labored intake of breath betrays her, and what she hasn't been able to let go of. "I want to find Maggie." She sniffs in the cold air, knowing saying this makes the doing of it no more likely. She's already said it she knows. Without her saying anything at all she knows he'd still know, and feel the same way, but still she speaks, saying what she knows for certain when everything else is hounded by doubt. "I want to find Glenn and Rick and Carol and Michonne. I don't want to do this without them." It hurts Daryl to hear this. He wants them back with the group just as much, but he can't do that for her. He can't do anything more to find them— Beth rallies though, pulling herself from what cannot be; she looks at him, intently, her soft blue eyes full of meaning, "I don't think — if there is choice," she amends, "— I don't think we should do this on our own." She watches him blink, she watches him listen, and weigh and consider while he watches the woods. "We don't know what will happen—"

"Stop."

His interruption, almost as though it had been expected, does not alter the steady even delivery of her words. "Daryl," she gravely intones, "think of Judith—" Daryl does think of Ass Kicker, often. "When the Governor came the first time, we weren't in that fight — she was out in the woods, with me, Carl, and– my dad. When he came the second time, she was left on her own, for all I know. All the kids were."

"Beth," he wants her to stop.

"No," undeterred, she shakes her head. "We don't know what will happen. To me, to you, to— I can't leave another baby on its own." Daryl winces. "The fightin's not ever gonna stop. I think… more than walls, we need people."

Gruffly Daryl clears his throat, "You wanna do it here?"

Beth doesn't want to have to answer this, she doesn't know that that's the right call, but in time she finds the only words she really has: "I want the baby to be safe. As safe as we can make it."

"… We've got numbers here," he says again.

She looks at him with her large somber eyes, "I don't want them in jeopardy because of us."

"At some point," Daryl says, "ev'rybody's in jeopardy because o' someone else. Don't mean ya can go it alone." He swallows, and takes another approach. "We'll talk to 'em."

"If there's somewhere out there safer, more established, where others are making it work, not living in the ground, in the open, then aren't we're obligated to find it?"

"You wanna go back on the road? Wand'ring? Blind?"

"… No."

Frustrated with their lack of options Daryl exhales, "Uhhrghh," and looks away, pivoting his body some away from hers. "We were on the move all that time— We find anythin' better'n this? All that walking? You'll wear y'rself out. Look'a whut happened to Lori—" Beth's eyes flash to him. "M'ybe if we hadn't moved around so much, m'ybe if there'd been more food—" He can't continue.

"It was the attack," she says softly. "The breach, the walkers. There wasn't anythi—"

"Not gonna fight you on this, Beth." He goes quiet, and bides his time before again broaching the subject. Scratching at his nose with his thumb, Daryl looks just about every place but at her. "'s e'nough to fight for already. Don't need t' be fightin' you. But you're wrong." Beth's eyes soften and lift to his; she hadn't thought he'd counter her this way.

"How am I?" she asks of him faintly.

His words are haunted by ghosts, "Didn't, havf'ta play out like that."

"Daryl…" she practically whispers.

As he'd turned away from her he turns back, and pulls her blonde head to him, tucking her into his arm and chest, planting a preoccupied and distant kiss on her head. He breathes into her, "We gotta agree on a plan."

Beth lets herself be held. Daryl feels the weight of her head rise and fall on his shoulder as his breath slows and deepens. "Plans don't work anymore. We just, we just have to do it."

Daryl looks at her, his eyes narrowed, "We've gotta stay."