Naomi
The days were getting colder, but it was warm in the truck—not just because of the sunlight coming through the windshield, either. Daryl had been in the best mood I'd seen him in for months. He hummed lightly to himself, feet up on the dash as I drove. The stress that plagued him when he led Sanctuary had melted away now that I'd taken it over.
That was a big enough reward in and of itself, but it turned out that running the place wasn't so hard now that Daryl had started work on his biofuel. Previously, only the Sanctuary residents still working on growing crops had something to do. Now, Daryl had a team helping him turn Sanctuary's existing machinery into the tools he needed and a separate workshop to start adapting the cars and bikes to be ready for it. There were fewer idle hands and fewer fights. People felt like they had something to work for.
Daryl spent his days tinkering with cars and machinery, surrounded by people who saw his brilliance. This wasn't how I'd imagined it playing out, but it was everything I'd ever wanted for him back in that damn trailer park. Back then, I never could have predicted he would be spending his nights with me. Crawling into our bed smelling of engine oil and sweat and dirt. Tired but undeniably happy. Wrapping me up in his big arms, a dopey smile on his face. Setting my soul on fire with the kinds of kisses he left across my skin, giving me a side of himself I don't think he'd even known he had. I loved it. All of it.
The boy was goddamn flourishing, and every time I looked at him, I felt like my heart was about to burst.
This is it.
We've made it.
"What are you smiling about?" he asked when I looked over at him for what must have been the millionth time. It was hard to keep my eyes on the road.
"Nothin' really," I said. I didn't want to jinx it. Speaking it aloud felt like tempting fate to take it all back again. The universe might realize there'd been a cosmic mistake letting these two trailer trash kids finally find peace in the world and in each other.
"Nothin', huh?"
I resisted the urge to point out that he'd been all smiles all morning, too. Instead, I said, "It's kinda nice doin' this… like a road trip."
"Gotta have some music and better snacks to make it a road trip," he laughed, but I could tell he liked thinking about it that way. He had a point about the snacks, but Sanctuary's food supplies were too low for us to have taken anything.
"Well, we kinda had music," I said. He shot me a quizzical look. "You were humming."
"Was not!"
"Eh, yeah," Mia piped up from the back of the four-door pickup. "You were."
"Dammit, Mia," Daryl grumbled, but he was still all smiles. Mia's eyes met mine in the rearview mirror, and we shared a conspiratorial grin. She'd been all smiles for the whole drive, too. Which probably isn't how kids who are grounded until they're eighty are supposed to feel, but I wasn't about to tell her to stop.
"Told ya."
"Hey. Eyes on the road, lady," Daryl said, trying not to laugh. "You can drive a little faster, too, y'know. Would be nice to get to Hilltop sometime this week."
"I'm goin' the speed limit," I said, tapping the speedometer.
"Ain't no damn speed limit no more." Daryl spluttered with laughter. "You still indicating when you turn, too?"
"Well. Gotta be safe," I said, but put my foot on the accelerator.
"Such a dork." I didn't look over at him, but I could feel the love in Daryl's voice.
"Shut up," I said. "It's outta habit."
"Habits of a dork," he said. "Did you ever get a ticket?"
"No," I admitted and had to raise my voice over the sound of him laughing at me. I'm sure he and Merle had left a string of unpaid speeding tickets in their wake wherever they went. "But to be fair, I didn't have a car for most of the time."
"Why?"
"Couldn't afford one."
"How'd y'all get anywhere?"
"Bus. It ain't that hard to get around a city. Sometimes Bryce gave us a lift."
"Could've got a bike," he pointed out. "Merle and I had no money, but we could still somehow always get our hands on one for cheap."
"Oh yeah, and they weren't stolen?"
"Parts of 'em probably were, yeah," he shrugged. "That's what made 'em so cheap. But you know that trick. You never thought about getting one?"
"I did. But the looks I'd have gotten picking Mia up from her fancy ass school on one of those?" I shook my head. "PTA would've called social services. I had enough people staring at me for being about a decade years younger than every other parent there."
"Hm. Bet you did," he muttered darkly. "Fuckin' pervs."
"They weren't looking like that," I rolled my eyes. "Just bein' judgemental assholes."
"Naomi, you're so damn pretty," he grumbled. "' Course they were looking at you like that."
I could feel a heat on my face that had nothing to do with the warmth in the car. I wasn't sure I'd ever get used to him complimenting me like that. Even if he was cranky when he said it. "Nobody in the world thinkin' that but you, Daryl."
"Bull," he grumbled.
"Jess Burnett's Dad always said you were pretty," Mia piped up again.
"Told ya." Daryl looked smug. Triumphant.
"Dammit, Mia!" When I looked at her in the review again, she stuck her tongue out. "You're supposed to be on my side."
"Hey, I'm on the side of truth," Mia raised her hands. "And he did say that. It was really embarrassing."
"Is that why you always asked me to stand around the corner and wait for you when it was time to take you home?"
"Yup."
"Unbelievable," I muttered. Hilltop rose up in front of us. The lookouts had been prepared for our arrival. They waved at us on our approach, and the gates rolled open. Glenn was waiting on the other side. Maggie was coming down the steps of Hilltop's main house. In the weeks since we'd last seen her, her bump had grown even more. So had her smile.
"Daryl!" Glenn said with a welcoming smile, which only widened as Mia and I jumped down from the pickup. "Didn't know you were bringing the whole family."
Family.
It had always been a difficult word for us. For Daryl, it was bruises and broken whiskey bottles and self-destructive loyalty. For me, it was burned skin and discarded needles and responsibilities I wasn't ready for. For both of us, it was fear and disappointment and pain in an endless loop.
But that word about each other?
I'd always seen us that way. How many times had I thought of Daryl as the family I chose? How often had he told me he loved Mia like she was his blood? But to hear it from someone like Glenn - someone who'd had the kind of parents who'd tuck him in at night and read him bedtime stories. And Maggie - someone whose Daddy loved her enough not just to stick around and learn her name but to quit drinking the day she was born, who might've lost her Momma too young but still had space to love the big extended family that came after - didn't bat an eye at what he said either. These people knew more about healthy families than Daryl or I could ever dream of, so knowing that they saw us that way, too… it hit me in a way I wasn't expecting.
Daryl felt it, too. I could tell from the way he had to swallow something down but couldn't quash that glimmer of something in his eyes. And the way his hand came to rest on the small of my back like a confirmation - we ain't just playing house, we ain't just muddling through something we're too broken to grasp the real meaning of. This is something real.
"Is it okay that we tagged along?" I asked, trying to sound normal, but I could feel every aching beat of my heart. It was a good kind of ache, the nice kind—the kind that comes from feeling like you belong someplace after so many years standing on the outside looking in.
"Of course," Maggie said, pulling me in for a warm hug, "this is a lovely surprise."
"Sanctuary can live without us for a few hours," I shrugged. There was a time when it felt like we'd never reach that point. Maggie and Glenn walked us through Hilltop. It was busy. Bustling with people. A cage in the middle of the grounds held the former Saviors who'd staged an uprising. I did my best not to look at them. I fell into step beside Maggie. "How are you feeling?"
"The third trimester has been kinder than the first. Thank God," she said. "That morning sickness was somethin' awful."
"Well, you were fightin' a war and growin' a baby at the same time," I said. "Not sure anyone's written a pregnancy book on that."
Maggie laughed," Maybe I'll be the first. What to Expect While You're Expecting a Hostile Takeover by an Asshole with a Bat, by Maggie Rhee."
I laughed with her, "An instant bestseller around these parts."
They led us to where they'd stacked crates of corn. There were a few mixed looks from passersby. Giving up a food source for what was, at this point, still an experimental new idea, had faced a few rumblings of protest. Thankfully, Glenn and Maggie had as much faith in Daryl as I did.
"This enough for you?" Glenn asked.
"It'll be a good start, yeah," Daryl nodded, with that electric energy he'd been carrying with him these last few weeks. I could feel it crackle around him. Contagious. How often did we get to do something new like this? Something positive?
There was a brief argument between me and Daryl about him not lifting heavy crates of corn into the back of a four-door pickup. An almost identical argument occurred simultaneously between Glenn and Maggie about her not doing it while seven months pregnant. Glenn and I both won in the end, but not without a lot of protesting from Daryl and Maggie. With a disgruntled sigh, Maggie disappeared back to the big house.
Glenn took one end of a crate, and I took the other. Between us, we lifted it back toward the truck where Mia had opened up the back. It was heavier than I thought it was going to be, but I tried not to let any strain show on my face. Daryl was itching to step in.
We lifted the first crate into the back, and headed back for the second while Mia and Daryl strapped the first one down to the floor of the pickup.
As we heaved the fourth crate of corn to the truck, my arms ached and I was extremely grateful it was the last. Glenn was starting to struggle too, neither of us saying anything until the last crate had slid onto the back of the truck.
"I can't believe Daryl worked all of this out," Glenn said, wiping the dirt from his hands on his trousers.
"Yeah, he's something special, ain't he?" I said without thinking and felt my cheeks heat up as Glenn looked at me.
"Yeah," Glenn said. I was grateful to him for not leaving me hanging, but I could've done without the grin that split his face from ear to ear. "He is."
Daryl appeared around the other side of the truck.
"Less yapping, more loading," he said. The mixture of the grump in his voice and the smile on the corners of his mouth made me wonder if he'd heard all that. "I could load faster than all y'all, and that's with one busted hand."
When the truck was loaded up, Maggie joined us again from the big house, "Y'all got time to stay for a bite?"
My stomach rumbled an immediate 'yes,' but I tried to talk over it in case the offer was out of nothing but politeness. "You got enough to spare?"
"Sure we do. You drove all this way. It only seems fair."
My worries that Maggie was just being polite were immediately quashed by the spread she'd laid out in the big house. There was a palace set for Daryl, Mia and I.
"Our latest crops," Maggie said. "Dig in."
"You used to live on a farm, right?" Mia asked tentatively. Asking people about their past was always a delicate matter, given how much of it we'd all lost.
"Yeah," Maggie nodded, a little taken aback by Mia's question but happy to answer it. She indicated to Glenn and Daryl. "That's where I met these two. Their group came to us after Carl… got into an accident."
"What kind of accident?"
"He was shot," Daryl said bluntly.
"Accidently," Maggie added, hastily when Mia's face flooded with alarm. "By one of my Daddy's farm hands who was out looking for deer."
"Wow. Ouch," Mia grimaced. "Carl never told me he'd been shot…."
There was a moment of silence, and then Glenn said, "I can't believe I have a child getting shot and almost bleeding out to thank for finding my wife. That's crazy."
Maggie smiled fondly at him, "Eat your lunch."
Mia looked between the two of them. "You guys weren't married before this? You didn't even know each other?"
"No," Maggie said. "We were total strangers."
"It's crazy who you get thrown together with when shit hits the fan," Glenn mused. Then he looked up at Daryl and I. "Or thrown back together with in your case, I guess."
Under the table, Daryl's hand squeezed my knee.
"Did you have a wedding?" Mia asked.
"Not anything official," Maggie said. "Glenn asked me when we were living in a prison and… I guess I've considered myself his wife ever since."
"I like weddings," Mia said. "They're fun."
"You've been to one," I said.
"They are fun," Glenn nodded. Again, his gaze slipped to Daryl and me. There was a glint in his eye that made me feel suddenly self-conscious, although I didn't know why. "Hey, if it hadn't happened at a time when our house was being blown to bits by the Governor of another town, maybe we would've had one."
"You ever miss those days?" Daryl asked, tearing a piece of bread in half with his hands. "Y'know, when we were all in one place…instead of all spread out like this."
Daryl looked down at his food, which meant he was feeling self-conscious about what he'd said. Glenn considered it for a moment. "Yeah, of course I do, man. But… it's good that we're building something new, isn't it?"
Daryl nodded, mopping up something on his plate with the piece of bread.
"I know this little one will appreciate everything we're doing when they're older," Maggie said with a hand on her belly.
"Yeah," Daryl agreed. The thought made him smile, but I knew he still missed being close to everyone. Even if we finished at Sanctuary one day and headed back to Alexandria, Glenn and Maggie seemed pretty settled here. Carol was getting real cozy at the Kingdom, too.
"Once you've fixed our fuel problem," I said, nudging his knee under the table with mine, "we should make this a more regular thing. We'd love to have you guys at Sanctuary some time. For dinner or somethin'. It's less… murder-y than it was last time ya'll were there, I promise."
Maggie grinned, "We'd love that."
"And once the baby's born," Glenn said. "We'll have you all back here for sure."
Daryl was visibly lighter. Seeing him feeling comfortable enough to be himself around people who weren't me never failed to make my heart sing.
If I'd died right then, I'd have died happy.
"What kind of farm was it?" Mia asked.
"Cattle, mostly."
"Did you have horses?"
Ah.
That's why she's so interested.
"Mia's always wanted to learn to ride," I said.
"I'll teach you sometime," Maggie said.
By the time we were ready to leave, it was later than planned to set off. The sun was getting low in the sky. After what had felt like an almost endless, violent summer, the arrival of fall and its earlier nights was still catching me off guard. I hugged Maggie and Glenn goodbye and then climbed back into the truck while Daryl double and tripled checked that the crates were secure.
"Scoot up," he said, opening the door. "I'm driving us back."
"You sure?" I asked, sliding down the seat to the passenger side. "What about your hand?"
"Doc says I should start doing more with it. Driving ain't that strenuous," he said. "Plus, I wanna get back before sundown. Slowpoke."
"I could drive," Mia said hopefully.
"No," Daryl said, at exactly the same time I said, "Over my dead body, Mia."
"I gotta learn sometime," she protested.
"Not at thirteenth."
"I'm almost fourteen," she muttered under her breath like a handful of months would make a damn bit of difference.
Daryl
As she waved us goodbye at the Hilltop gates, I saw the ring glinting on Maggie's left hand, and for the first time, I caught myself wondering how Glenn had managed to find one. I hadn't cared enough to pay attention at the time - I'd thought it was dumb, honestly. Who cares about a piece of jewelry in the apocalypse, right?
But now, looking over at Naomi with her feet up on the dash and sunlight in her hair, it didn't seem so dumb. Her hands rested on her lap, and I thought her left hand looked mighty bare—empty—like it was missing something that would let the world know she was mine.
She caught me looking at her, and my heart jumped into my mouth, although there was no way she could've known what I'd been thinking about.
"Eyes on the road, mister," she said with that soft smile that drives me nuts. All of her smiles drove me nuts.
"Fine," I grumbled, but I was glad to have the excuse to look away. I knew I was getting carried away with myself, and those eyes of hers had a way of looking at me like she could see right into my soul and read whatever was in there.
Slow down.
Don't rush this. Don't rush her; you'll ruin it.
Still, I reached over and squeezed her thigh. Couldn't help myself. And the way she turned her head to smile at me told me she didn't mind it. Mia cleared her throat in the backseat and I let go, but I caught her smirking.
"Alright," I said, turning to look at Mia. "Let's see how fast this thing can go when your slowpoke sister ain't being a law-abiding citizen."
Mia whooped.
"Are you trying to be a bad influence?" Naomi said, but she was smiling as she felt the car speed up. Windows down, the wind whipped through the car. Both of my girls started laughing and hollering. I drove fast, but not too fast. Fast enough to amuse them, but not so fast that I didn't feel in control.
Funny how things can change in an instant.
I took a corner. A crowd of people stretched out in front of us. I had a split-second panic where all I saw was a mass of bodies walking down the road, and instinct made me slam on the breaks. There were bodies there, but they weren't people. Not anymore. We hadn't seen a horde this big for a long time.
"Windows up!" Naomi yelled, her fingers mashing the buttons to put widows up again, a barrier against any dead fucks that might try to reach in. Now that we'd stopped, we could smell them. Even with the windows shut, we could hear the collective chorus of their rattling lungs and snapping jaws.
"Ah, fuck," I turned the key. The engine spluttered but did not come back to life. I tried again and again and again, all to the same result. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."
C'mon. Not now. Not now.
I did everything I could think of to get it moving again while Walkers started swarming around us. The heavy metallic thunk of them throwing their bodies at the side of the car to try and get at us grew steadily as their numbers increased. Like raindrops turning to an upcoming storm.
The truck spluttered to life, throwing us into reverse. I went with it, backing away from the horde, feeling the crunch of Walkers under the wheels as we sped into the ones that had crowded behind while we'd been stalled. The truck bumped over them. Skidded. Something popped with a bang so loud I thought it was a gunshot. The car pitched violently to one side, landing half in a ditch.
Naomi and I both immediately turned to look at Mia. Mia looked back at us, a little pale but unharmed, her voice was shaking, "I'm alright."
"Did you hit your head?" Naomi scanned her over.
"No," Mia shook her head and repeated, "I'm alright."
The color was starting to return to her face. Satisfied that she was okay, we looked at each other.
"You good?" she asked me, her worried eyes scanning me now as I did the same right back to her.
"Yeah. You good?"
"Yeah," Naomi said, turning to the window on her side of the truck. The reverse maneuver that had thrown us into a ditch had still put a little distance between us and the Walkers, but they weren't far behind. In a few moments, we'd be surrounded again. The majority of them would be pressing against Naomi's side of the car. "We gotta move."
"Isn't it safer to stay in the car?" Mia asked, her fear radiating from her.
"The truck's unstable like this," I said as calmly as I could. I didn't want to freak her out, but she needed to understand the gravity of what was happening and how fast we'd need to move now. "If too many of 'em crowd us, they could tip it. If that breaks a window, they might get in."
"We're getting out of here, Mia," Naomi said, her tone matching mine. She held her sister's gaze, steady and sure of herself. Of us. "You gotta do exactly what Daryl and I tell you, okay?"
Mia nodded, her frightened eyes flickering between us. I grabbed my crossbow from where it was next to her in the backseat, and fixed it over my shoulder. I drew my knife and kept my free hand on the door handle. The angle of the truck meant that the driver's side was furthest from the road and the Walkers.
"Alright," I said, real calmly as I moved to open the door. "Here's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna open this door, and get out and open your door. I need you to get out as soon as you can. I'll be right there, okay? Makin' sure nothing can get to ya. You understand?"
"Yes," Mia's voice was barely a whisper.
"And your sister's gonna be right behind me," I said, looking over my shoulder at her. Naomi nodded, already crouching in her seat to move into mine once I'd gotten out. Her knife clutched in one hand. "Then we're gonna run like hell into those woods, okay? We stay close to each other. We do not split up. You understand?"
"Yes," Mia nodded. Before she had a chance to start thinking about anything or freeze with fear, I opened my door and jumped out. Took out two Walkers right by Mia's door. When I opened it, she slipped out of the car, and I pushed her behind me. There were still only a few Walkers between us and the forest, but more were starting to stumble around the side of the truck.
"Stay behind me," I told Mia. I felt her grip the back of my jacket as I started moving forward, stabbing the Walkers in our way as they lunged at us. A few paces away, I glanced back over my shoulder and my heart damn near stopped.
Mia was out, but Naomi was not right behind me.
"Naomi!" I yelled.\Mia was fighting the urge to run back to the truck. I grabbed her arm, and could feel her shaking. Walking away from the car without Naomi out safe behind me betrayed everything in me, but letting Mia walk back would betray her and that was worse.
Then I heard the radio in the truck switch on. It was just static, but cranked to full volume. Seconds later, Naomi slid out of the driver's side and bolted toward us.
I wanted to scream at her for scaring me like that. But it was a smart move. The noise now blaring from the truck would confuse and distract them for long enough for us to put a good amount of distance between us and them.
All we could do was run.
Naomi and I flanked Mia, making sure nothing got to her. Racing through the woods with no destination in mind, just listening to the sounds of the Walkers swarming our abandoned truck.
We kept running.
The crash of the truck when they toppled it sent birds flying into the sky in panic.
Kept running.
The noise brought more of them out of the woods.
Running.
Knives into dead skulls that got too close.
Run.
Until there were no more Walkers ahead of us.
Slowed.
I looked back at the way we'd come. Couldn't see the truck. Or any other walkers.
We slowed.
My legs were burning, but we kept going. I looked at my girls, their faces flushed and tired. Flecks of old blood on Naomi's arms from the Walkers she'd killed.
Silence.
Except from the sounds of our breathing. Heavy and labored. Air was fire in my lungs. None of us could speak. Naomi nodded to something up ahead. We were coming up to another road. I nodded to let her know I'd seen it, too. By the time we reached the road, my lungs had cleared enough to talk, but I wasn't sure how many steps my legs had left in me. We all came to a natural halt in the middle of an empty road. Mia bent double, trying to catch her breath; Naomi rubbed her back and made sure she was okay. I looked around. We had no idea where we were. No truck. No plan. Nothing.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," it tumbled right out of me. Shock made me numb.
"Hey. I'm okay, you okay?" Naomi asked, still breathless. This girl was half of me. All the good bits. What had I done bringing them out here like this?
I nodded. Physically, I was fine. But I could feel a pressure building in my skull. "I shouldn't have-"
"Mia's okay, too. We're all fine. That's all that matters." Naomi took my face in her hands, her gaze as unwavering as her faith. "Nobody could have seen that coming. You couldn't have known. It was an accident. And we all got out."
The calm in her eyes washed over me; they seemed to say Hey, it's okay. We got this.
"Where are we?" Mia asked, finally able to straighten up but clutching a stitch in her side. Her wide eyes looked around at the empty roads. "How do we get home?"
The sun was worryingly low in the sky. The forest on either side of us was starting to darken. I knew Naomi would have her goddamn maps in her bag, but it would take time to work out where the hell we were. By then, the Walkers we'd outrun might be on us again.
"I think we gotta find someplace else to stay for the night," Naomi said. "Get our bearings. Head home tomorrow."
She looked to me for confirmation or maybe for another idea, but I came up empty. Walkers were more active at night and harder to spot. Getting inside and somewhere safe was the priority.
"Head there," I pointed to a road sign in the distance. "Might give us a better idea of where we are and what's nearby."
The thought of having to move or walk any further made my calf muscles ache in protest. But we didn't have a choice. Standing still would make us Walker-chow. We walked in silence, too exhausted to keep talking. I saw a squirrel moving in the trees and shot it almost instinctively. We'd eaten well at Hilltop, but now we were on the road, not knowing where our next meal was coming from, I'd reverted to survival mode.
The sign pointed to the nearest town, a few miles away. It would be dark by the time we got there. I tried not to worry too much about the kind of trouble that might bring. We picked up the pace, but then, just as the sky was starting to turn orange, Naomi paused.
"I know where we're going," Naomi grinned and pointed ahead, "your old haunt."
A Walmart sign peeked out between the overgrown trees at the side of the road. "You ain't serious?"
"It's worth checking out, ain't it?" I couldn't argue with that. It was closer than any houses we were walking to. Naomi looked over at Mia. "Daryl used to work at one of those back in Georgia."
"Really?"
"Yeah," Naomi said. "He was Employee of the Month so many-"
"Naomi," I interrupted her. "I swear to god…"
"What?" she looked at me all innocent.
"That was so long ago. You can't still be bringing that up."
Mia gave me a sympathetic look. "She kept a binder of every certificate I ever got. Even the ones they gave you just for showing up."
"Damn straight," she said. "Kept it on a shelf right next to my Daryl-binder."
"Dork," I said, but my heart could've exploded.
We checked the building. It looked deserted from the outside, but we entered through the warehouse at the back. I pushed inside first, sweeping the rows and rows of largely empty floor-to-ceiling metal shelves. There were a few stray walkers inside, easy enough to take out. Mia followed right behind me. Naomi was closely behind her, making sure we weren't being followed or walking into an ambush. These days, you have to be prepared for Walkers and for people.
Once the warehouse was secure, we checked the main storefront. The place looked like it had been picked clean of anything useful. The thin layer of dust on everything suggested it had been months since the last people had been through. A few more Walkers had found their way in. They seemed slow and had maybe been here a while.
"See any food?" I asked Naomi, when we'd taken out the Walkers and finished our final sweep of the building.
"Nope. Picked clean."
"Squirrel it is then."
"Mm-hmm, a Daryl-special," she said with a little smile. "You mind getting things started while I radio Bryce and let him know what's happened?"
I nodded. "Call Maggie too, in case that horde is heading their way."
"Good shout."
While she stayed in the main store to radio our friends, I exited back through to the warehouse. It was windowless and dark, the safest place for us to sleep. As long as the doors to the store and the outside were blocked, no stray Walkers would be able to get in.
I built a small fire in an empty barrel, turning it into a makeshift fire pit to roast the squirrel over. Mia stayed close, half-watching what I was doing and half-drawing in the little sketchbook Naomi had scavenged for her while she was missing.
"Whatcha drawing?" I asked. Mia tensed, hesitated.
"Mia never lets anyone see anything until it's done," Naomi said, overhearing us as she came back into the warehouse. She was carrying some thin, flat boxes.
"Perfectionist, huh?"
"Kinda," Mia shrugged.
"You get that from her," I nodded to her sister. Mia smiled a little, and flipped back a few pages in her sketchbook.
"You can look at these ones if you want," she said, a little shyly as she held open her sketchbook to show me a pencil drawing of one of the Kingdom's horses. The page opposite had a crazy-well detailed picture of Perla and Carl.
"Woah," I leaned in for a better look. "Mia, these are amazing."
"They're okay, I guess," Mia mumbled.
"Told ya she was good," Naomi said with an amount of pride that made Mia look like she was regretting showing me anything at all.
"You have to say that, you're my sister," she rolled her eyes.
"Nah, she's right, Mia. You got talent."
"Well, you have to say that, you're my-" she stopped. A clunky silence where Mia's face went red and I think all of us had the crashing realization there wasn't really a word for it. Somehow, 'sister's boyfriend' didn't seem to cover everything that I hoped I was to Mia. After a moment she said, very quietly, "Family."
"Yeah. I am," I said it quickly. Partly because Mia was looking mighty vulnerable and partly because I knew if I stopped to think about it I'd end up bawling like a little kid. "I am your family, but I also got eyes and you got talent."
"Thanks," she said, but closed her sketchbook.
Eager to take some of the spotlight off Mai, I glanced at Naomi, "Bryce okay?"
"Yeah," Naomi said. "He can hold down the fort for a night. Sounds like it's quieter there without us."
"Hilltop?"
"They've sent some scouts down that road, but haven't seen much yet," she said. "Hopefully the horde will avoid 'em."
"Sorry I got us all stuck here," I said.
"C'mon now, it ain't such a bad place to be holed up for the night," she said. "You know what ain't been scavenged from here yet?"
"What?"
"Board games."
"You gotta be joking."
"Nope." Naomi shook the boxes she was carrying, I could hear the rattle of game pieces.
"Monopoly?" Mia said hopefully.
"Absolutely not," Naomi vetoed it immediately. "I wanna leave this place without any major fights."
"What you got then?" I asked.
"Scrabble?" she said, holding it up hopefully.
"Hell no, you know too many words."
In the end, Mia chose a version of Pictionary where she did all the drawing and we did the guessing. We ate roasted squirrel off paper plates Naomi swiped from the party section and played Yahtzee until Naomi threw the dice at me when she lost.
"Alright, we should get some shut eye," she said. "We probably got a long day ahead of us tomorrow."
I started to put out the last few embers that were burning in my makeshift fire pit, while Naomi went back out to her storefront to raid the bedding aisle for anything that would make us a little more comfortable.
"Was this what it was like when you guys were my age?" Mia asked me. "Hunting food and playin' games and stuff?"
"Kind of," I said. "Wasn't safe for us to go home then, either."
The smile vanished from Mia's face, and it took me a second to work out why. I hadn't thought about it much, but Naomi has that way of making shit things fun. I mean, not long ago we'd been running for our lives, but that had been almost all forgotten now we'd spent the night bickering and laughing over dumb games on a warehouse floor.
Naomi did such a good job of shielding Mia from bad shit that I'm not sure the kid knew how much of it there had been even before the dead started walking. Her memories of living with their Momma would be hazy at best, she'd been so young when Naomi got her out of there. Any stories she'd heard about me and her sister would've skipped the why we were out there in the first place. Brushed over the bruises and skipped over the burns.
"She always made it sound…" Mia trailed off.
"I didn't mean it like that," I said quickly. "All my best childhood memories have got your sister in 'em."
"Yeah. Me too."
I didn't doubt it. Most of her childhood, I was sure, was spent feeling safe and loved. I knew from how easily Naomi cut her own rations to make sure Mia had enough when times were lean that there would've been nights Mia had gone to bed with a full belly, and Naomi didn't. There's nothing Naomi wouldn't sacrifice for someone she loves. And she has a real sneaky way of doing it that means you don't notice unless you're paying attention—real close attention—the kind of attention I pay her.
The fire had died out, I left Mia for a moment to find Naomi hauling as many soft things as she could back toward the warehouse. She looked up when she heard me close the door between the two spaces. She smiled when she saw me and I felt like my heart was about to melt. "You gonna help me with some of this?"
"C'mere a sec," I said quietly, slowly pulling her toward me. I kissed her hard and deep. The things she'd been holding dropped to the floor.
"What was that for?" she looked up at me, a little dazed, a little confused but smiling a whole lot.
"Just because," I shrugged. The truth would've made her too uncomfortable, and she'd been so relaxed lately.
"Well…" she said, still with that dopey smile. "Ain't that lovely?"
You're lovely.
We cleared out some of the upper shelves in the warehouse, ones you needed a ladder to get up to, another precaution against any Walkers that might somehow get in while we were sleeping. Then we stuffed them full of the bedding supplies Naomi had grabbed from the homeware department.
"It's like bunk beds!" Mia said, climbing up to the top one. "I always wanted those."
"My brother and I had bunks when we were little," I said, climbing into the one underneath. "Fighting over the top one gets old real quick."
Mia stuck her head over the side and looked down at me in the bunk and her sister at tge bottom of the ladder, "Guess that makes you two losers tonight, huh?"
"Let you win more like," I said. She stuck her tongue out at me.
"Go to sleep you two," Naomi said as she climbed up and slipped in to the bunk beside me. She was trying to sound stern but there was a big smile on her face.
"Okay, goodnight," Mia's head disappeared as she settled down to sleep above us.
"Night, Mia," I said.
Naomi snuggled up beside me, her head resting on my chest. I pulled her close to me and closed my eyes. Exhaustion from the day washed over me, sleep seeped into my bones but my mind started drifting. My thoughts turned back to that ring and the easy way Maggie called herself Maggie Rhee.
I'd never been proud to be a Dixon. Too many shitty people attached to it, too much trouble surrounding it, violence soaked right into it. But… putting Naomi in front of it?
Naomi Dixon.
Now that was a name I'd be proud of.
"You okay? Yer heart's goin' a mile a minute." Naomi's voice, soaked in sleep, gave me a jolting awareness of the tight longing in my chest. My heart was racing with it.
"I'm all good, angel," I said, pulling her closer so I could hide my smile in her hair.
