The hot Georgia heat with its dense humidity played tricks on the mind. Dehydration was a slippery snake to the psyche. It toyed with their eyes. Silly thoughts became real. Confusing. An illusion.
Eloise was not convinced it was the heat that made their new hosts strange.
They were much too unbothered by the collapse of the outside world. Nothing on the farm seemed changed from the start of a pandemic. The farmer Hershel and his children behaved like it was just another day on their beautiful acreage as they enjoyed electricity and running water with their horses and cattle.
More so, their eyes held too much life. Too much life for a world of the dead.
It set her skin on edge to witness the strangeness of normalcy before her.
The hood of the truck was coated in a thin layer of map lines. An entire county map. Atlanta seemed so far away in their minds yet rested on the edge of the map as if it were not but a skip away. She ignored that corner of the map. Her elbow covered the neighborhoods she could picture in her mind, smell in memory, and shudder in pain at what happened within those streets.
A young woman of short brown hair showed the part of the highway they were stopped at.
Rick described the church they found, as far as they'd searched in the woods.
The search for Sophia was resumed. Everyone was antsy to get back out there and find her. A sudden harshness came to Daryl's tone the longer they stood there, not searching. Finally he went off on his own. The patience to listen to Hershel chide Rick and Shane for wanting to search so near to their death beds was not interesting albeit a reasonable concern as there was no color to Rick at all and Shane limped.
There was suggestion that they all be trained to use firearms. The farmer was uncomfortable with the idea.
Eloise stepped away, irritated that yet another day would pass without finding the girl. The separation killed them all, but none so much as her mother.
The small woman sat next to the rudimentary firepit at the center of camp. A shirt sat in her hands, needle and thread fixed between her nimble fingers as they moved along.
There were no words to explain the despair. Nothing of comfort would settle poor Carol's soul. Not a word.
She settled in next to Carol.
The woman kept her eyes focused on the mending in her hand. "They aren't going to look for her, are they?"
It reeked of bitterness, and Eloise knew she couldn't blame her.
Still, it felt wrong to answer. "Rick and Shane are too sick. No one else knows how to shoot or navigate. Daryl's the only one trying. He's up at his camp right now to get ready to head out."
The hearty clip of the sheriff caught the corner of her eye. Rick moved with purpose in the direction of said camp.
Whatever would be said, she quietly hoped that Daryl would not listen.
Sophia mattered. She mattered to them all. Her disappearance ruined the small bit of hope in them all, and they all needed her to be found.
"They think it's a waste," Carol murmured, perhaps lost in her own despair, inside her mind. "That she's already dead."
Her fingers pulled the thread through. The end caught against the knot, and she began cross stitching along the length of the tear. Tip of the needle never poked the fleshy tip of her fingers. It moved smoothly, guided by the familiar motions, in and out, the rip slowly disappeared before sight.
Eloise licked her lips. "I don't think that. Neither does Daryl."
"You're just being polite."
"No. No I'm not. Sophia's out there. And it may not feel like it compared to what you feel, but we all want to find her."
The camp fell silent. Carol made no more issue to push the matter. It was farther than Eloise had wanted to say on it. Her heart pounded too loudly when she thought of Sophia. All at once she felt despair and the urge to scream tighten the back of her throat.
She forced the girl out of her thoughts. Instead, eyes were mesmerized by the sway of thin hands as they weaved through fabric.
The memory of what she found on the highway popped to her mind. She eased up from the heel of her palms and brushed them down her pants.
"Say, Carol."
"Hm?"
"Could you teach me how?" She gestured to the needle. "How to use one of them."
The woman lifted her eyes in surprise. The slow blink showed the curiosity of the request.
"Sure," she answered softly. "Yeah."
"I found this patch that I want to stitch to a cap." Eloise dug it out of her belongings and showed it. "I thought someone might like it."
Carol read the patch. Her eyes stayed on it for a while before she answered, "I'm sure they will."
The farm was quiet, peaceful, eerie. It remained untouched by the plague of humankind, that truly irked her mind. As the group split to their own accords, Eloise ventured through the long grasses of a nearby field. She nimbly split the barbed wire and let herself inside its protection, a line of trees her focus.
Knives clinked against her as she walked. The largest was a machete that hanged against her right thigh, the gentle tap of its blade with each step, a safety net to her own growing anxieties to the quiet through the farm.
It'd been a long while since she'd felt the magical release of frustrations as a blade flew from her hand into a target. The swing of her shoulder in its socket, the power behind the thunk of the blade as it split into the core of the trunk, a harsh breath released from deep within her lungs.
Sophia. Why hadn't she been found yet? Why wasn't there more invested in her return?
Eloise let her teeth grit together as she flung the blades harder and harder. An echoing thud traveled through the air. Its vibration tingled the edges of her chest as she breathed in its power.
The Georgian sun gave its best effort against her; it beat down in ascending strength as the day passed on. A line of beaded sweat formed at her brow. A drag of her sleeve against the moist flesh did little but shift it away from falling into her eyes.
Images of the CDC flashed before her eyes. The way her chest heaved. Hands on her, lips pressed against her skin. Hot falling water.
She staggered back, arm limp at her side.
"My daddy wouldn't like you here," a voice said, "disturbin' the cows."
Although her mind still reeled in the surmounted emotion of memory, her voice came cleanly. "Sorry."
"There's trees by the house," the young woman stated. She looked about Eloise's age, if not a couple years younger. She had short brown hair, a defined mouth and expressive nose. It wrinkled when she appraised down the length of something, dissatisfied or distrustful.
Eloise approached the disfigured tree. Her teeth still gritted.
"Too many people," she said. "Couldn't risk one of them walkin' in my line of sight." The blades were dulled well. Their lengths were not buried too deep into the wood. She pulled them with little effort. Though the pain that shot from her shoulder throughout her bicep said it was enough. "Your cows keep away."
The woman kept her nose wrinkled through the lengthy process that it took to situate every knife in place. She did not seem impressed with weapons. Her eyes hinted at a bit of betrayal, disgust.
There was a time where she'd never have considered carrying a weapon on her person, no matter how dangerous Atlanta became, Eloise held herself without the fear of threat. The plague changed that. Her heart raced if she was without her waist holster and a couple backup knives fitted to her person in case she was stripped of her gear.
A piece of her envied the look in the young woman's eyes. The innocence inside that disgust.
"Let yourself be caught without one in this world," Eloise explained lowly, "and you'll understand the need for so many."
She walked off without another word. The rest of the evening spent in the same fashion. She kept to her tent. The separation from the group necessary for the uncontrollable emotions loose within her. Sophia. Atlanta. Daryl. The life before all of it…
A pair of crunchy footsteps stopped at the closed flap of her tent. The outline of fletching at the top of the figure gave hint to who it was.
She crawled over. The silhouette dipped down to a squat as the zipper ran along the track until the light of the house and fire poured inside it.
"You're back," she stated.
Her eyes were hesitant to meet his.
"Found a house. Someone small bunked there, ate some sardines." He looked off in the direction of the farmhouse.
She struggled to withhold her relief. The tight knot at the back of her throat finally swallowed.
"Did you tell Carol?" She breathed.
He nodded. The withheld emotion on his face said something, or rather, it spoke to the space between him and what he felt.
"She deserved to know. There was hope. All mothers deserve hope."
The sparkly blue of his eyes, typically thin with suspicion, blared bright in their gaze. She felt their smooth touch against her face.
In the moment, she felt her heartbeat wildly, like it had that night in the shower in the CDC.
Her lips yearned to ask him to stay the night. The warmth of another person so near would shake the eerie loneliness alive on the farm, like a time capsule, unreal and unfeeling in its existence.
Instead, she sighed. "You camped up on the hill over there?"
Daryl glanced up at the small hill beneath a small grove of nut trees. A lonely tent set up on the edges of the farm, hardly noticeable at all. Like he wanted to be forgotten, faded from view.
"Yeah." He cleared his throat. "We've been all living together like a pack of rats for too long. Need some space, stretch out. Be on our own."
A lie. They both knew it was.
Eloise still made no effort to pretend she knew different.
"There's plenty of room, you know." It was said so suddenly that she felt like it'd been said by another just out of sight. The man refused to meet her gaze. They stayed at the ground where the tips of his fingers toyed with strands of grass. "I wouldn't even notice another tent set up on the other side. That's for sure."
There's a certain pressure inside a person, a relief valve, that when popped open, exploded through with a surge of emotion uncontrollable until it was all drained. Daryl had shoved it rather forcefully. Eloise was ready to latch onto the shoulders of his shirt, pull him inward, and forget all about Atlanta and the group beyond the confines of the thin fabric walls of the tent.
Her hands still vibrated with glee that she had to grip the sides of her thighs.
"I'll be sure to mention that to Shane. He's been looking for some distance."
It was meant as a joke. A slight tease to ease the discomfort of both of them being remotely expressive.
Daryl didn't find it funny. He just sniffed and raised back to standing. "Yeah. Yeah, Shane."
His boots kicked up a bit of dirt and dust as he marched up toward his campsite. A lonely hill fallen dark in the absence of farmhouse's light. Only the faint shift in shadow as he climbed inside the standing tent.
There he stayed until early morning when the noises of camp started to rise. The morning things of dressing and finding a bit to drink and eat before they set about doing their days tasks.
Eloise found herself seated by T-Dog that morning who looked loads better than he had prior. There was pigment back to his face. A louder fight back inside his eyes that was a comfort. They couldn't afford to be down yet another person.
They shared a breakfast of eggs. Carol had done the honors since Eloise had no skill of cooking and T was given the leniency of his injury.
"Gonna be a hot one today," T-Dog stated. "I can feel it."
She nodded in agreement, her mouth still full of yolky goodness.
Fresh eggs. What a luxury. It slipped across her tastebuds like a reward. She savored the slippery rich goodness with a need to remember each flavor as it moved along.
"We'll have to take all the water we can out there," she finally managed to squeak out as the egg slid down her throat. "The humidity will have us seeing stars if we aren't hydrated."
The skeleton sheriff emerged from the farmhouse. He looked more humanlike in the morning light. A night of sleep did him well. His head was back to its height as he moved straight toward their camp.
He rested a boot against the firepit ring. The tip of it pointed.
"How's Carl?" Carol asked.
"He's resting now. He's been awake and talkin' a bit." The man gave a polite smile in thanks. It almost hurt to know that the woman who asked after his child was missing hers without any answer as to where the girl was. A painful stab of joy, to not be in her position, must have crossed through his mind. Any parent would say the same.
Of course there was no rest for the surviving. There was too much work and too little time.
Rick set his sights on the two seated at their breakfast. "You up for searchin' today?"
T nodded. Like he could he expected anything else. The man prayed for Sophia's return at every meal.
Attention then turned to Eloise. "I'm going to need you out there, too."
"Okay."
"With a firearm," he finished.
There was an instant wave of resistance that spread through her body. "I don't do guns."
"Just as a precaution."
She shook her head. The loosen fallen curls at her shoulders a reminder that she'd have to deal with them sometime.
A dish tub filled with used dishes sat near the central fire. It was filled with water. She slipped her breakfast plate and fork into the water with only a slight line of suds to the grease beaded atop the dishes. T-Dog handed his over. They were set in the same way to be scrubbed later.
"I don't," she took a slight inhale before she continued, "like guns. Don't want to touch one, carry one or fire one."
The man had abandoned his badge and uniform, though he hadn't forgotten to unlearn the mannerisms of a man in charge. One leg propped up, a hand on his hip. He gave off the very air of a cop.
Cops meant nothing now. They had no way to coerce. There was no power, apart from their weapons, that made them any more special than the rest of them.
Rick pushed his lips together and nodded. "I suppose I'll have to respect that. But."
She exhaled. If he asked her to explain, she'd vomit.
"We'll be spread too far out in woods full of walkers. It'd be a lot better if there was atleast one carrying a gun should you need to use it," he explained.
"Give me one," T interjected.
"You?"
The man rubbed his head, drawing attention to the fact there was nothing but skin there to rub. "Yeah. I'll search with Eloise and hold the gun."
Rick agreed to the suggestion they search together. He thought aloud that it was better to be in pairs anyway. There was too much out there that might take down a single person.
They gathered around the truck with the map when Daryl emerged from out of nowhere astride a horse. The expression he wore at the ribbing of the others was not very pleasant. It was a mood she knew to steer clear of. Their eyes only met in a passing goodbye as he galloped off toward a ridge with an advantageous oversight.
Andrea was given Jimmy as a partner. She did not look too thrilled with the lanky teenage boy as a partner, especially if he was to be backup if a walker found them. Still, she seemed rather happy to be given a task that wasn't a chore.
T led the way to their assigned grid. Eloise made certain to keep a close eye on their surroundings. New woods were confusing if not respected. They taunted and toyed with those who foolishly forget to keep track of themselves.
Neither kept their weapons drawn, though Eloise was fitted with most knives within reach.
The endless stretch of tree trunks was the perfect spot for a walker to ambush them at any time. It made every step agonizing. Would it alert one? Would there be time to repel it? Would they even see it before it slammed into them with razor sharp teeth and oozing pus sockets?
"So, Eloise," T-Dog said after what felt like hours of searching empty woods. "You local?"
"Atlanta. All my life."
"Me too. Go Panthers."
She smiled. "That's where you played football?"
"Just until my ankle gave out on me."
There was a faint chittering of birds. It spread throughout the forest floor with no indication of its source. It could have echoed for miles or happened right before them.
Eloise kept her grasp at the hilt of her machete. Just in case.
"My parents were professors at Georgia State," she revealed lowly.
"Oh, for real? What'd they teach?"
Being so far away from home and trapped there when the plague started, she'd tried not to think about what the city was like when it fell to the dead. There was so much destruction that she could only imagine what terror lived inside those streets as they were bombed and gassed and fired into.
Her parents lived in the city, in her childhood home, and had been there when the end of the city came.
She'd been on her way there when she was caught up with the people of the highway.
Her throat went dry. Each word was a struggle to speak. "My father was a law professor. And my mom taught the master program for African American studies."
There was a strange tweak across his face.
T snorted. Like in disbelief.
"What?" She stopped short. "You don't believe me?"
"No. Just the irony. The irony of it all."
They continued below the now shaded cover of the trees as they delved deeper into the woods, every so often calling out Sophia's name in the hopes she'd be just wandering around out there.
The word refused to leave her mind. It taunted her round and round it went, his sardonic snort.
She flexed her brow. "Irony."
"Yeah. You know. You and Daryl. The guy's a fuckin' racist. Him and his worthless brother. Had they the sense to know you ain't just got a nice tan, neither of them would fuck with you."
The strength of her heart shook at her ribcage.
"I know a sister when I see one," T-Dog revealed. "And you better hope that he ain't figure it out."
Her jaw wired shut. The burn at the top of her cheeks, a vibrant reminder of her stupidity in revealing anything about herself. She owed them nothing. It didn't matter who she was, or where she came from.
No. It was they – THEY – who did not matter.
She trudged back to camp with a hearty clip. T was far behind her as they ended their search. The sight of the farmhouse, a welcome reprieve from the violent silence of the trees.
The dish tub still remained. Its water turned scummy and cold.
She ratcheted the heavy tote up to her chest. "Be back in a few."
An isolated spot made the perfect place, just on the edge of a field, to scrub the dishes until she no longer felt humiliation beneath her skin. It was by luck that the cold of the water had the egg yolk stuck like glue to the surface leaving a great amount of effort to be used to leave each dish clean.
All her life she'd felt pulled between. Her pale features and blonde hair, too white to be her mother's child, but still exiled from her white peers at the unspoken differences between them. It was never right. There was a reason for her to be excluded. Always displaced, a jagged edge to the other smooth ones.
The late afternoon breeze felt brilliant against the gathered sweat of her body. Her sleeves stuck to her arm in a shifting fit not quite on the mark. The dampness beneath her bust and armpits took a serious chill in the blowing wind. So much so that she shred the shirt all together. It hung from the nearby fence to dry as she continued her chore.
Lye soap smelled of her summers spent with her grandfather spent bent over a small sink with a wide-open window blowing a country breeze inside, fitted with heat and insects of every variety. After every meal, they stood at that with their own dishes. Each cared for their own things. There were no free rides. Grandpap – as she called him – thought it the most important to care for oneself without aid.
"Ain't a single soul in the world who's goin' take care of you for free. You best learn that now. Everyone's got their own goings ons, and if you give them the free will to use you around, use you is what they'll be doin'."
He was a shade different than her other grandparents, who never let her lift a finger when she visited. They praised her and gave her gifts and catered to her on her weeklong visits. Grandpap did little in the way of catering, but there was no absence in the love he exude, she knew. The man showed his love through what he taught. He was patient as she learned.
Her little arms were too weak to lift an axe when she first arrived for the summer. So, everyday she carried heavy sacks of flour and rice up from the cellar, or manhandled the goats, wrestled the pigs, or threw the chopped wood into a wagon which she then dragged over to a covered shack where all the firewood was stored as it dried, then dragged back up near the house to be burned for heat. By the end of the summer, she could swing the axe above her head and crack it down into a log. It would take a few mighty swings that way – and some practice aiming the blade – before it cracked open.
She always wondered if he was harder on her and her mom because he knew what they faced out in the world as black women. He never said as much aloud. But there was something in the way that he emphasized the importance of their own strength that made it feel that way.
Though his record was clean as her mother was a strong educated black woman with no question of her self-worth, Eloise never felt that she fell into the category of black woman the same. Half. Only half of that was her.
It was not shame. A black woman was no shameful mark, not by any stretch by the women she knew. There was the question of her 'blackness' when she looked in the mirror or combed through her wavy – not curly. It couldn't be full of beautiful taut ringlets, no. It was wavy – hair.
The pale outshined everything else. The green eyes, the pale hair. Her flesh was not even white. It was not pale, but a rich almond color. It might have looked like a tan, but it wasn't. It was her tone.
Eloise was lost deep in her irritating questions when a twig snapped suddenly behind her back. Her shoulders heightened in response.
"Need any help?"
The voice lowered the tension of being surprised. Her hands dipped back into the water for another fork.
"I'm good," she answered.
Still, they stayed right there behind her back, silent, as if watching the same field as her, question how long it could last in the world they knew.
Some time later, Lori spoke again. "We've offered to cook dinner for Hershel and his family. With all they've done for Carl and Rick and T-Dog…" her voice trailed as she saw the lack of interest from Eloise. "Would you like to help?"
It was difficult enough to remain calm in the attentions of everyone when she badly needed space to cope with all she felt. Each day, a harder and harder pressing on her to express the building fires of rage and hurt.
Eloise kept her lips tight together to prevent a quiver. "I can't cook."
"Oh." Lori shifted. The slender line of her outline just caught the edge of her eye.
She stood and grabbed hold of the tub. Clean dishes, dirty water. It was hoisted against her chest. "I'll do the dishes."
The wide-eyed stare of the woman shuddered to a sudden blink. "Right, sure. That would help."
The dishes were put back in camp and the water pitched out into the grass. Hershel's oldest daughter, Maggie they said her name was, descended the farmhouse steps. Her boots thundered against the old wood. Eyes squinted against the sun, they appraised her with curiosity rather than distain as before.
It was then when Andrea and Jimmy returned from searching their grid. The younger teenager stopped mid step when he saw Eloise.
"Wowza. Where'd you get those?" He gestured toward her arms.
Though his innocence failed to see what deep bruised muscles looked like, he seemed impressed like it'd been earned in a cool fashion.
Eloise burned under the attention. She'd forgotten her shirt back out by the field. The length of her forearms, therein her injuries she preferred to keep hidden, were exposed to the plain air.
The knot at the back of her throat was impossible to swallow. It kept her taut necked, incapable of speaking, or breathing.
"That." T-Dog put his large hand on the young man's shoulders, "is the cost of survival."
At that moment Lori walked up. A long black shirt in her hand. She handed it over with an understanding expression of pity and hope.
The fabric slipped over her sticky sweaty body in record speed. Sickly yellow and browned bruises hidden from sight once more. However, the blush of embarrassment was there in full view for them all to see.
Jimmy was an awkward teenager. He simply shifted around and avoided eye contact now that he'd prodded at something he hadn't. "I'm sorry, miss. I didn't mean - ."
"Forget it," she grumbled in the hopes the topic would diffuse.
"Well Carol. Let's get inside and start on dinner," Lori pronounced. "Jimmy, I'll bet Hershel likes you washed up before you eat."
"Yes ma'am."
He followed the women inside as Maggie held the door open. Her eyes still fixed in question at Eloise.
"Dumb kid," Shane mumbled from his spot leaned up against a tree. "They haven't got a clue what's going on out there, do they?"
"Can you blame them?" Rick hollowly replied.
"I'd rather live like this than know what's out there," Andrea pointed out.
Eloise stood silently, her hand in her hair.
"It's all a lie. A mirage. It isn't real." Shane shook his head. It further revulsed her to know that she and Shane shared a similar opinion. They both believed the farm to be a pretend place to forgo acceptance of reality.
She shuddered. Just how devoid of empathy was she?
Her feet fled up the porch and into the farmhouse in the hopes that whatever happened inside would breathe a sense of humanity inside herself. A place of warmth and light. A kitchen filled with women.
Food was a melting pot. It, the labor of love of generations of people from all different beginnings, bonded like the solid fill of a stomach.
The house was much like a rustic farmhouse looked. A long wooden table filled an entire room, no doubt for Sunday lunch after church for an entire family. Beautiful fireplace with a mantle thicker than her upheld antique frames, some black and white, others in blistering color. Generations of a family on display.
Her lonely feet echoed throughout. Those oak floorboards ran the entire length of the foyer into the rest of the rooms in continuous spread. Original thick woodworking throughout. Crown molding at the ceiling.
A quick pace caught her attention. She turned away from the fixtures.
The long strands of the brunette hair were tucked in a low hanging ponytail. Her steps stopped.
"It's easier to wash as you go."
Lori blinked and finally nodded. Behind her shoulder was the kitchen. The blonde woman Patricia was inside, along with Carol and the younger daughter of the farmer. Their voices were a small hum inside the room.
"Oh, Eloise," said a meek voice not tinged with sorrow or despair.
"I wont cook," she pronounced. "You wouldn't want that either. But I'll clean. That's something I can do."
Lori gave a small smile. "We won't turn anyone away who wants to clean."
The young girl in the kitchen was named Beth. She was a chatterbox. It was clear she'd been desperate for new conversation partners as Patricia was a soft-spoken woman with little addition told in Beth's stories.
She asked after each of the women, a basic synopsis of their life, and offered her own commentary on it. The teenager had seldom seen much outside of her small town and farm. Faith was evident. God's name was mentioned a fair amount each with a kind of blissful awe as she regarded the thought of a mighty being above them.
Then came the topic of Jimmy. Lori asked the scandalous question about the pair of them.
The pale of Beth's cheeks turned to a rosy pink while she dipped her eyes low away from their probing glances.
Patricia was careful to warn her if her father should overhear.
Lori chuckled and recalled the way her and Rick were as newlyweds. Patricia, too, remembered her childhood days with Otis, though they were not romantic until their young adult lives. Ed, Carol's husband, was only mentioned a few times in passing as no one wanted to linger on his foul memory.
Then came the time for the other to add into their conversation.
Eloise was bent over a sink amazed at the warm water that trickled from the faucet when the peppy voice of a young girl asked, "What about you, Eloise? Did you have a sweetheart?"
Lori and Carol quieted; their interest obvious as they made their ears ready to hear all there was about her life in explanation. No one had asked much about her. After the story of her arrival in Atlanta, there was little questioned about her person. She offered little, too.
She cleared her throat and gave a small smile as she looked over her shoulder. "Once upon a time, I suppose we were something. First year of college, I don't know if you can consider it sweethearts."
There was a small smidge of matronly chuckle from Lori. "Not if college is the way I remember it."
"Well?" A small voice asked.
Her heart skipped. "Well?"
Beth pushed her chin forward with wide eyes. "What happened?"
"Oh. Well, he wanted to travel the world. I liked Georgia."
It was an unceremonious end. No one spoke as if they expected something more, more explanation, more difference to justify an end.
The young girl let her face fall. "That's it?"
Through the tension in her throat at the reminder of what happened the last time she revealed something, Eloise let herself add to the story. "Seems small, doesn't it?"
The wispy baby hairs around Beth's pulled back hair bobbed as she nodded.
"It was more like, we wanted different things. For our lives, for ourselves. You'll see one day. Someone might be perfect, but their future won't match yours." Her fingers released the sponge into the dish water. Shoulders raised from their hunch over the sink. "We were still friends. Really good friends."
When she turned around, the kitchen was busy with the sounds of food being cooked and prepared, but their voices hushed. Even the glow of Beth's youthful face fell short.
"That's nice," Carol said finally.
Lori munched on a small carrot, a piece she'd just peeled and shredded.
The women were excellent chefs by the smell throughout the house. Eloise and Beth looked on as the elder women of the group crafted a meal delectable, especially compared to the small game they'd been eating with the supplement of whatever they could forage.
A boat of gravy was filled. Cooked carrots. Fresh baked buns with butter melted atop their crust. The noble bird was roasted to perfection.
There was no way that Carol and Lori's mouths did not water in the same way that hers did.
But, it was only the reminder of the broken promise of the CDC. The meal befitted a feast. Large and overabundant. They should have known what it was. A last meal. The last supper before the end.
Eloise stayed to the kitchen as they brought out the dinner on its arranged platter. Her hands gripped the edge of the sink.
Why did warmth feel so wrong? It ate up every comfort until she was a hot mess of heartbreak.
This world was cruel, bitter, cold. Warmth was but a trick of the light. A mirage of its own. Warmth was a promise: of salvation, of hope, of satisfaction. All that was impossible in the overrun diseased reality.
They were in middle of their meal, the kitchen's cabinets and counters all wiped clean, the clinking of utensils against plates, when a sudden pop echoed from somewhere outside the house. It was the blaring sound of a gunshot.
The chairs scraped against the floorboards. Hershel's dislike of the guns was a well known fact. The only one who had a rifle on property was Dale. Just as a lookout.
"What was that?" Beth asked.
They all moved outside the dining room onto the porch of the house. Their ears were pierced by the agony of Rick's scream.
"Rick?" Lori breathed.
Andrea's body moved in hurried pace down the side ladder of the RV off into a field. Shane and Rick were out. Glenn had ran out there. T-Dog, too. They were all huddled around something.
Eloise squinted against the darkness to understand their screams.
"No. God no." Rick cried.
A body was hoisted up from the depth of the overgrown field. It was a rag doll between Shane and Rick as they pulled it close to the farmhouse. The neck lulled and flopped around as it was dragged.
She'd taken a few deceitful steps forward, curious.
"What's going on?" Hershel yelled. His booming voice reigned over the panic throughout the survivors.
"One of our men has been shot," Rick answered. "He needs help."
Lori and Carol gasped.
"Bring him in," their host waved.
Patricia split from their sides to gather something. She seemed to know her duty before instructed.
Lori, Carol and Eloise split away. Maggie and Beth did the same.
"Who was it?" Lori breathed.
"Make way!" Shane bellowed.
T-Dog followed behind. Something in his hands caught all of their attention. A breathy sob followed by clasped hands over Carol's mouth as she ran off the porch toward the doll in T's hand. It was one they all recognized.
"Sophia," whimpered a small voice. Thin fingers grasped at the fabric.
Spindly arms wrapped around the woman's body. "Where? Wh-who found it?"
"Daryl," Glenn answered. "Before Andrea shot him."
The blood drained from her face. The weight that hit her knees almost brought her to her knees.
Andrea ran up. "Did I kill him?"
"Don't know. They just took him in now." Glenn removed the red hat from his head.
Her hands shook as she stood there. "I-I-I-I thought – I thought he was a walker."
"Man, you couldn't tell?" T-Dog retorted.
"You saw what he looked like!"
"One walker. That's what you'll waste a bullet on. One?"
"I'm sorry, alright? I'm sorry." Andrea was distraught.
They all were. But it extended. That awful feeling of not knowing.
Eloise couldn't take it. She had to leave.
Though they begged her to stay, she forced herself away. Lori's soft voice followed her back to her tent where she zipped herself inside and recalled all the things possible that made it easier to think him better off dead. The small mercy of an accidental death in a world fraught with the threat of internal destruction every waking moment, a plague on the mind and body, as stress became their constant, a deep breath the only reprieve.
She stayed alone in her tent late in the evening. The rest of the commotion of camp died down. They fell into the same old routines they knew in spite of tragedy.
A steady pace crunched through the grass through the camp. It rounded the campfire, weaved through the lines of pitched tents and stopped just short of her own.
Eloise laid there and listened to their breaths. She heard them lower back down before a throat cleared outside her tent wall.
"Hershel took good care of him," Rick said softly. "He's okay. You, uh – they said you could go see him. He's awake."
A shaky breath spewed from her lips.
Why did it matter? Some racist, redneck would not hesitate to put a bullet in her skull if she was bit. What did it matter if he was shot? They were all expendable. All expected to return to the soil, rotten and decayed, one way or another.
The silence of the farm was suffocating. It flowed in one silent breezes and stole away what contentment there was to the eerie sounds of silence of the distance. She allowed it to fill her lungs. Each breath struggled with the emptiness of the world around them, the creeping suspicion of trickery out amongst the shadows.
There was no effort to break it. She remained stretched atop her sleeping bag with her eyes fixed at the ceiling.
Rick bent down lower to the flap of the tent. It was zipped shut. Somehow, still, he knew she was awake and listening. "Look. He asked about you in there. I just thought your company might help. That's all."
She raised to her elbows.
The sheriff did not wait for her silence. He marched off into the house. The clatter of the porch door against the frame awakened the rest of the night with its sharp interrupt to the silence.
There was no reason why she had to see Daryl. None at all. He was injured. Her being there would not heal him. Still, she felt a betrayal to even consider not visiting him. Rick's information did not ease the tension she felt the moment she heard it was Daryl who was shot. Her fingers ached from clenching them taut against her palms. Tightness was at the back of her throat.
Everyone expected her to rush in and see him. Their assumptions about their friendship were more theatrical than reality. Daryl and her made the best out of the situation. They worked together. That did not mean something deeper was at play.
Eloise laid a while longer, dead set on staying in her tent for the night to prove them all wrong, when she thought of Daryl expecting her. He had been shot. In the head. It was safe to say that it was a concerning injury. A bit of acknowledgement was the least she could do seeing as he'd almost killed himself to find Sophia, and actually had found something to give the rest of them hope that she was still out there.
She trudged up from the survivor camp to the porch. Her lips released a shuddering breath before she pulled open the creaky door and entered the house.
The dining room was right off the front door. Everyone – every single person on the farm land – sat at the table with their eyes up at her.
Her courage fluttered away.
"Just in that room." Rick pointed. "There."
She nodded. "Right."
Across the table she caught T-Dog's eyes. He gave a pitying look that cut quicker to her core than a knife could.
Eloise opened the door with bitterness. Her jaw was clenched together as she entered.
Daryl lounged on his side. A white bandage wrapped around his sandy brown hair so that it only poked through the edges nearest his face. He half-turned, expecting Hershel or Patricia, when he gave a relaxed expression when their eyes caught in one another's.
"Hey," he greeted quietly.
Her arms hesitantly hugged around herself. "Hey."
She rounded the edge of the bed. He remained on his side looking lazily at a map of the woods. It was the one they'd used to split into grids for search. There were markings stretched across. One area was circled in red. It was off in the distance Daryl had ventured that morning.
"Does it hurt?" She gestured to his head.
He watched her intently. The demeanor of him changed the moment her tone exited her mouth.
"A bit," he answered. When she turned around and instead looked out the farmhouse windows, the map crinkled as he moved to his elbows. "What's up your craw?"
Anger. It bubbled up incessantly with no source. There was no place to be angry, yet she was.
Not at Andrea, either, for turning his skull into a target, but at him.
"You could have died because of your lone ranger routine. You know that, don't you?"
Disbelief and frustration mounted in him. His chin jerked back with only a minor wince from the pain in his bullet wound.
"I came back," he retorted loudly as he did when he got defensive. "I found the doll, didn't I?"
"You are the only one able to track her. Going out and dying alone would ensure she never came back." She turned away from the window. Her face hardened to keep the emotion from spilling out. "There isn't a soul on this property that has the proper idea how to handle this except you, and you're too focused on being some throwaway character. Like it doesn't matter if you don't come back or not."
A sudden knock at the door and entrance to the room surprised them both; T-Dog kept his eyes on Eloise as he spoke. "Maybe you should leave before he gets too upset."
It was clear what he meant. There was nothing safe about a Dixon temper once pricked.
Eloise's released a breath. She wasn't ready to leave. Not yet.
"What the fuck." Daryl declared. He scowled at T. "She can leave on her own."
The air of the room turned visibly chaotic on the verge of violence.
She was too furious at Daryl to even consider leaving until he understood what his death would do to the group…to her.
Her heart throbbed. That was where it hurt most. He'd have left her there, alone, without thought. Death on the pursuit of a missing child was too noble to fault him for, and she knew that.
"Knock, knock." A gentle voice split through the room. Carol carried a tray laden with pieces of their feast. "Hershel thought Daryl should eat something."
"I'm fine," Daryl snarled. His eyes turned back to Eloise.
She nodded. Right. He needed rest, not drama.
She turned to go. It rose Daryl to sitting.
"Hey! El. Where the hell you goin'?"
T-Dog followed her exit in silence. He watched her exit out the front door before he returned to his plate in the dining room where the rest of the survivors sat in their curiosity as to the screaming match they heard.
The cool air rushed into her nostrils. Their chill stung the burning heat at the back of her throat. Each breath, a struggle to keep herself under tight control.
She gripped the railing of the porch. It was all that kept her grounded to the moment of reality. Tiny needlelike pricks of old wood and paint stuck to her fingers and palms. The fresh touch of sun-ripened grass and trees flowed in on the night air with a distinct lack of humidity, a blessed relief after the heat of the day.
It took away the devastation of having formed a bond with someone she knew she couldn't.
Daryl Dixon was not meant to be.
The porch door swung closed behind her back. Her eyes refused to tear away from the blackness of the outside.
"He's going to be fine," Lori said gently. "Hershel said it was superficial. Both wounds missed everything major."
Eloise shook her head. "I don't care. Doesn't matter if it was or it wasn't. We are all going to die. If not shot by someone we know, then teared apart by someone we don't."
She swallowed down her bitter tears.
Big brown eyes were downturned as they stood at her side.
"There's no sense in caring anymore," Eloise murmured. "Feelings died with the first walker. The sooner we accept that, the easier this God forsaken world will be."