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As Daryl Dixon finally began reading the book Beth had given him, he remembered why he’d stopped reading at such a young age. He didn’t have the attention span for it, and because of that, it took him far too long to get interested in any type of novel. Even when he could concentrate, the black and white lines of blurred letters ran together, tricking his eyes and making it almost impossible for him to read quickly. And if he managed to get through those struggles, reading made him sleepy.
However, today was a day that he overcame all of his problems with reading and started making a good dent into the brick of a book Beth loved. The story was interesting from the beginning, jumping right into a murder case that made Daryl want to read more just to find out what happened with the pregnant, twice-widowed mother and the novel’s antihero Shay Bourne.
He was so wrapped up in the story when Hershel entered his cell that he didn’t notice his company, or look up when the man greeted him with a favor.
“Can you make a run today, Daryl?” Hershel asked receiving a grunt in reply as Daryl turned the page. “Whatcha reading?”
“Change of Heart,” he answered quietly and finished a sentence before looking up at Hershel finally. The latter stepped forward, ducked his head beneath the top bunk, and took a seat beside Daryl, reaching out for the book in his lap.
As he picked it up, he slipped his finger between the pages to keep Daryl’s place and closed it to check out the front cover, immediately recognizing it as a book that made its rounds through the farmhouse. “Beth’s favorite,” he smiled, passing it back to Daryl. “Lori’s not producing enough milk, and even if she was, Judith isn’t latching on well.”
Daryl nodded slowly knowing that it meant he needed to go and find formula. “She’s severely dehydrated, pale and clammy, really delirious,” Hershel went on quietly, careful not to let his voice echo down the cell block. “She needs fluids, but the infirmary doesn’t have any. I’ve made a list for you if you’re willing to go.”
Hershel placed the scrap piece of paper on top of the book and handed both over to Daryl, who dog-earred the page he was on and stood up. He looked over the list and nodded again before pocketing it. “She’ll be okay, though, right?”
“If we push fluids soon, then I believe she’ll make a full recovery.”
The older of the two men stood to his feet and clapped a hand on the other’s shoulder, a sign of gratitude before he exited the small cell, allowing the curtain to fall back into place. Daryl collected his arrows, pulled his poncho over his head, and hoisted his crossbow over his shoulder before heading out into the cell block. As he passed Beth’s cell, he peered in to find it empty.
“Beth’s with Lori and Judith,” Maggie’s voice explained as she made her way toward Daryl. Her holsters held her guns and the handle of her knife stuck out of her sheath, like she was ready to go out on a run. “Daddy says you’re goin’ out for formula. Mind if I join you?”
Daryl answered with a quick shake of his head and then entered Beth’s cell fully to retrieve her bag, which he strapped to his back and met up with Maggie once more. “Where we gonna find formula?” he asked, leading her down the cell block and out to his bike.
“Could try a day care center?” she suggested with a shrug of her shoulders. “Not sure what the closest grocery store might still have, but we could try that, too.”
Daryl straddled the seat of his bike, turned the key in the ignition, and revved the engine while Maggie climbed on behind him. “And what about fluid bags? Hospital?”
“That’d be the first place I’d look.”
~*~*~*~
Daryl didn’t know the area yet, but he did know where the nearest grocery store was, so they went there first. Like he imagined, it was ransacked. Every bit of food and water was cleared off the shelves, and the most useless of the items ended up on the floor scattered carelessly. From the start of the outbreak until now, he’d never run straight to a food store for supplies. It wasn’t in his nature to join the crowd, so he had no idea what kind of madhouse this place must have been almost a year prior. Probably worse than the only time he mistakenly went to Walmart on Black Friday in search of some aspirin to cure his hangover blues.
“Think we should grab some Gerber’s, too?” he asked as the two scanned the aisles slowly. “Bowls, sippy cups, bottles, doots, toys…anything she might need that we don’t have?”
“I think we should grab whatever we can find. Who knows when we’ll get out here again.” Maggie turned and eyed Daryl as he dropped a few toys designed for dogs into his bag.
He glanced up and caught Maggie’s gaze. “What? She ain’t gonna know it’s for a damn dog.”
“No, it’s not that,” Maggie began, stammering with her words. Finally, she shook her head and continued on to the next aisle where they found a few cans of formula alongside other nutritious treats made for babies a little older than Judith. The more they collected the better. “You just know more than I thought you would.”
“I ain’t completely feral,” Daryl replied with a small scoff, reminding himself of a conversation he and Beth shared as they looked for a bow at Walmart. “I like kids. Had some experience with th—”
“What’s a doot?” Maggie asked, cutting him off midsentence.
“That binky thing. We called it a doot.”
“Who? You and your brother?”
Daryl lifted his shoulders in a shrug and turned into the last aisle of the store. “Yeah…ready to move on?”
With an affirmative nod from Maggie, the duo zipped their bags and returned to Daryl’s bike. As he drove further away from the prison, keeping in mind their route back, the next place they came across was a hospital. Finding it equally as wrecked as the store, the two tiptoed through the overturned gurneys and splayed bodies, careful not to make too much noise in case a group of hidden walkers saw them before they saw it.
“Supply closets should have some,” Maggie whispered. She led Daryl through the halls with her knife in one hand and her gun in the other. If all hospitals functioned the same way, each floor had at least two rooms of supplies stocked by the main supply found in the basement. She stopped suddenly and turned back to Daryl, her reeling thoughts evident on her face. “I don’t think it’ll benefit us to go through each unit. There should be a central supply downstairs, and I think that’s where we should go first. It’s getting late and we still want to find more formula.”
“Agreed,” Daryl nodded, glancing around the hall they’d stopped in. He personally had no idea where to start, so he was happy to have Maggie by his side to help guide him. However, he found himself missing Beth’s presence during this run, something he’d grown used to having since staying at the cabin. She had a way of making something serious into something pleasurable…something that made him forget why they were on the supply run to begin with. Having Beth’s company made him feel carefree.
Maggie exited the first floor wing with Daryl at her heels, his crossbow raised and a knife in his free hand, and hurried down a hall, past the elevators and to one of the stairwells. Once they slipped through the door, Daryl stopped her from moving forward and held a hand up to keep silent, listening for any stirs or growls of walkers nearby. Hearing nothing, he crept down the steps with his flashlight lifted to illuminate all that he could.
As the two entered the basement level of the hospital, Maggie took the lead again. A navigational sign told them that the cafeteria, morgue, human resources, and central supply were to the right, while maintenance and the board rooms were the opposite way. “C’mon,” Maggie whispered, waving Daryl down the dark hallway and around a corner. She halted suddenly, skidding her boot across the linoleum floor.
More than a handful of walkers whipped around at the noise and charged forward hungrily. Stepping forward, Daryl stabbed two walkers in the skull before taking out a few in the back of the pack with his crossbow. “You okay?” he asked over the groans of the remaining walkers and received a quick hum in reply as Maggie took out another biter.
Once Daryl took care of his immediate threats, he held his flashlight up for Maggie and glanced around, finding the hallway clear.
“Why do they huddle like that?” Maggie asked rhetorically before continuing down the hall, a little more determination in her step. She quickly found the central supply room with the door left open and the knob broken off. Retrieving the light from Daryl, she rummaged through the shelves to find most of the supply taken. All sorts of medications were gone; instruments and first aid equipment all sorted through and missing.
Daryl turned his back to Maggie and started going through another shelf of bins, most of them empty as well. He reached up to the top shelf and groped around with his fingertips, instantly finding what they were looking for. “Hey!” he called, grasping a full bag of IV fluids and holding it out to Maggie, who held open her bag for him to drop it in. “There’s more,” he smiled and then filled her bag with a dozen more.
They finished their raid by finding tubing and IV kits, complete with the needle, anchor, and dressings from Hershel’s list. As they headed out the front entrance of the hospital, Daryl picked up a box of alcohol swabs and dumped them into his bag.
~*~*~*~
Luckily, Maggie spotted a daycare center on their way back to the prison. Daryl had taken a wrong turn and on his way back through, she noticed the rusty old playground from the road. Parking his bike alongside the fence, he hopped off and immediately climbed over into the overgrown yard. He helped Maggie over and the two of them set off for the building, stepping quietly through the abandoned playground.
“Wonder if the door’s locked,” Daryl mused trying the handle to find that it was indeed sealed tight. Without hesitation from his partner, Maggie knocked out a window with the butt of her gun and swiftly climbed through it. Following, he dropped his crossbow into the room and hoisted himself through, too.
Gathering his gear, Daryl stood straight and looked around what he assumed was a play room at one time. The toy boxes were turned over and scattered across the floor. Crayons, markers, and paper covered a few tables and fell to the floor around the legs of the chairs. A mess left in the wake of chaos. The very thought of the outbreak reaching its grimy fingers into this building made Daryl shiver.
The walls were covered in colorful handprints, each with a name of one of the children that spent their time in that room. The first to catch Daryl’s eye said “Sofie” in a neatly written script, making his thoughts go back to the farm and looking for Carol’s little girl. How much time had passed? It felt like a decade away, but couldn’t have been more than eight months.
Daryl shook his head and focused back on their mission to find as much baby formula for Judith as they could. They had two priorities on this run: to keep both Lori and Judith alive and healthy. He followed Maggie into the hallway and split up from her, taking the opposite way to find another playroom. After clearing it, he picked up a doll and added it to his bag, which was already filled to the top.
Meeting back up with Maggie, they entered another unsearched room to find a small kitchen. Some of the cabinet doors were left open, revealing that they’d been rummaged through already, but what caught their attention were the shaking pantry door and the scratching noise coming from behind it. Daryl stepped forward to open the door, but felt Maggie’s hand on his arm, holding him back.
“Don’t. Let me,” she commanded, giving a pointed nod toward his crossbow, which he raised ready to shoot whatever was behind the door. In one swift motion, Maggie pulled the door back and Daryl shot the child walker square in the head. Between the girl’s hands was her dinner, an opossum ripped to pieces.
Daryl knelt down beside the girl and gently removed his arrow from her skull, pausing for a moment before getting back on his feet. “Shame that ‘possum’s got walker cooties all over it. Coulda had dinner.”
With a look of disgust on her face, Maggie turned on her toe and began searching through the cupboards to find another stash of baby formula, which she quickly shoved into her bag. In a lower cabinet, she found a new pack of bottles and another binky to add to their collection.
By the time the two gathered their things and got back en route to the prison, the sun was setting.
~*~*~*~
The sound of the gate being dragged across the dirt driveway was like music to Daryl’s ears. He was happy to be home…well, if you call living behind bars home. Within the walls of the prison, they were safe and together, and just making it back meant that they successfully found what they were looking for. He slowed to a stop as Maggie hopped off the back of his bike and reunited with Glenn, who’d just closed the gate behind them. But as he watched their embrace, he could tell that Maggie was the only one filled with joy.
Glenn carefully peeled the girl away, the sorrowful look on his face speaking the words he couldn’t bring himself to say.
“What’s wrong?” Maggie asked, her smile fading quickly as Glenn shook his head and leaned it into her shoulder.
A sinking feeling in his chest told Daryl they were too late.