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In the car, Carol thought about letting things lie, waiting to see what Rick would say. But she was impatient. Whatever he was going to do, she wanted him to be quick about it.
"Maggie wanted to come, you know."
"Someone had to stay behind, watch over things."
"Someone you trust, you mean." Carol didn't mind the distinction—she had proven untrustworthy in a society that depended on people agreeing before decisions were made. The problem was that sometimes you couldn't wait for people to agree.
Rick was silent, and she could hear the judgment in the lack of response.
"They would have drowned in their own blood," she found herself saying. She didn't need to justify it to him—but maybe, in view of the rapid spread of the illness, she needed to justify it to herself. When he didn't respond, she just kept going. "They were suffering. I made it quick. We needed the bodies gone; we needed to stop it from spreading. They were the only ones who were sick. They were a threat. I was trying to save lives. I had to try. Somebody had to."
At last he spoke, his voice hoarse. "Maybe."
It was all she was going to get. It was more than she had expected, really.
Daryl looked at the floor—blood and vomit and an empty bottle of antifreeze. Well, that explained some things. "Those douchebags in the vines? They took themselves out. Holdin' hands—kumbaya style."
Bob followed him as he surveyed the store for anything useful he could find. "They wanted to go out together same as they lived. That make 'em douchebags?"
"It does if they could've gotten out."
"Everybody makes it—till they don't. People nowadays, dominoes. What they did, maybe it's about not having to watch them fall."
Daryl looked at him. "Right." He wasn't buying it. You fought as long as there was life and breath in you. You didn't give up. That was the way. He paused briefly by a walker pinned to the floor, watching it growl softly, then kept on going.
While he worked on the car outside, he probed a little. Bob never sat quite right with him—he felt like someone who might give up. "You never told us about the group you were with before."
"Which one?"
That was fair. They had all seen groups go wrong.
"You know," Bob went on, "when you found me out on that road, I almost kept walking."
"Why is that?"
"Because I was done being a witness. Two times, two different groups. I was the last one standing. Like I was supposed to see it happen over and over, like it was some kind of curse. But … when it's just you out there with the quiet … Used to be I'd drink a bottle of anything just so I could shut my eyes at night. Figured the prison, the people … thought it'd be easier. The run to the big spot—I did it for me."
"Gotta keep busy," Daryl said.
"No. I did it so I could get me a bottle. Of anything. I picked it up, I held it in my hand, but I put it down. I put it down so hard it took the whole damn shelf with it. That's what brought on the walkers, and that's what got Zack killed."
"That's bullshit." People died because the world was dangerous. You couldn't blame yourself every time things went wrong. You'd drive yourself crazy that way. Once the car was running, he looked at Bob, sitting in the driver's seat. "Sasha and me picked that spot. We took you with us. Ain't no way anybody could've known. You ain't gonna be standin' alone. Not no more."
As they dug through what had been someone's bedroom, someone's life, Rick worried about the two young people they'd found in the neighborhood, about whether it was right to bring them back to the prison.
"Look at us," Carol said to him. "Digging through drawers, hoping that a couple of cough drops and some disinfectant might be the difference between dying and living a couple of more hours. If they're strong enough to help us survive this thing, then yeah, I think you made the right call."
"And if they're not?"
If they weren't there was time enough to worry about that later. "Let's hope they are." She started to look in the TV cabinet, but … there had been enough silence. "Rick. I killed two people and you haven't said a word about it."
He looked up at her. "What do you want me to say?"
"It's not about what you say. It's about facing reality. It always comes for us, and over and over again we face it so that we can live."
"So that we can live," he echoed.
"That's right. That's what it always comes down to. You can be a farmer, Rick—you can't just be a farmer." He hadn't wanted to hear that, or recognize it as the truth. She hunkered down next to him. "You were a good leader. Better than I probably gave you credit for."
"I never murdered two of our own."
"Just one."
Rick nodded. "He was going to kill me."
"So were they. They were going to kill all of us."
"You don't know that."
"If you thought it would save Judith or Carl, would you have done it then or would you have just gone back to your crops and hoped it'd all be okay?" He had no answer for that, so she continued. "You don't have to like what I did, Rick. I don't. You just accept it."
She got up and left him there, wondering if it could possibly be that simple.
Outside, he bent to pick ripe tomatoes off a vine. "You put his shoulder back before. You learn that from Hershel?"
Carol thought of the boy with his dislocated shoulder. Poor kid. He hadn't had her resources. "Internet. It was easier than telling an ER nurse I'd fallen down the stairs a third time."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be." That life was gone; but it had given her strength for this one. "Just fixed what needed fixing. I actually convinced myself I was happy with him. Which wasn't all that hard to do considering my idea of happiness then was just not being alone. Made a decent living. He was charming when he wanted to be, especially those mornings after he'd come home piss-drunk and …" That was more of the past than she needed to relive. She hadn't thought of Ed at all in a long time, and she was happy to leave it that way. "Stupid," she said of her past self. "Stupid. I didn't think I could be strong. I didn't know I could. I already was."
"Why don't you say her name?" Rick asked.
"She's dead, Rick. Sophia." She thought the name a dozen times a day, at least. What point was there in saying it? "Dead. Somebody else's slideshow."
"Some mornings I still wake up half expecting Lori to be there. Reminding me to pick up Carl after school, or telling me breakfast is ready. Every Sunday she'd make us these pancakes that were just … godawful." They both chuckled. "Clumps of flour that weren't mixed in right. Thing was … she knew it was bad."
"Why'd she keep at it?"
"She wanted us to be the kind of family that ate pancakes on Sunday."
Carol supposed that was the way it used to be—you had your illusions, and you kept to them. But now, you couldn't afford to do that. And that was the way it was.