Sweet Dreams #Wattys 2018

Whose Going To Tell Daryl?

Rick walked up to where Lori was hanging clothes. "Carl up yet?" he asked.

"He's helping Sophia gather laundry," Lori told him. "I had expected you to come to the tent last night."

Rick looked at her. "You made it perfectly clear a while ago that you and I were done," he told her.

"You were shot, the world ended, thought maybe we could talk," Lori told him. "You didn't go through hell just to get back to your family for nothing."

Rick looked at her and stepped closer to her. "I'm not dumb Lori," he said lowering his voice. "You and Shane. When you asked me to leave, don' you think I put two and two together? My best friend and my wife?" he asked. "Yes, I fought to get back to Carl, and to you. You are his mother and I will never forget that. For him we need to get along, but you and me the way it was, it's dead. It's been dead for a while and you can't deny that."

"I swear to you that Shane and I never...not until after," Lori told him as he kept her voice down.

"But how long would it 'ave been if the word didn't end Lori? If I hadn't been shot? You were thinking' bout it. I've accepted it, I can pretend, for our son's sake you and I are best friends. I can pretend, for the sake of this camp, that there's nothing wrong between Shane and me. But, for you and I goin' back to what they were back a year ago, that's not goin' to happen Lori. So please, for Carl's sake, let's be civil," Rick told her. "Out here we need to show him a united front, Lori."

Lori started to say something before Dale cleared his throat. "Rick, I hate to interrupt, but there's a problem."

Rick looked up. "What is it Dale?"

"Jewel's got a knife to Kaden Armstrong's throat, he was tryin' to sneak into her tent, presumably to see if Summer was alone," Dale told the other man.

"Shane," Rick called out.

"Yeah?" the other man questioned as he came around the tents.

"Dale says there's a problem with a guy named Armstrong," Rick reported.

Shane grabbed his gun. "Worse of a problem then Merle Dixon. Let me guess, he's snooping around there tents? First night of camp, he cornered Summer, I thought that between Merle, Daryl and Jewel, he'd be tied up. If his two litt' brothers didn' pop out of the car when they did, he would have been dead," he explained.

Rick nodded. "Seems I got here right in the knick of time," he told the other man.

Jewel and T Dog looked at each other as they heard the scream of the boy and both took after Rick.

"Mom!" the boy yelled as he ran to Lori.

"Carl you OK?" Rick asked his son as the rest of the group gathered around.

"I've got him!" Lori said as the group ran in the direction Carl came from.

They all stop as they see a walker eating the carcass of a deer, arrows sticking out the end. "Uncle Daryl is close," Summer whispered to her mother as she joined them.

The walker turned and came after them, Rick, Shane, Glenn, Jim, and Morales start to beat on it with their objects. Dale finished it off by chopping its head off with an axe as he looked shocked.

"It's the first one we've had up here. They never come this far up the mountain," Dale told the group.

"Well, they're running out of food in the city, that's what," Jim told them as they heard branches snap and footsteps approach.

Summer and Jewel exchanged knowing glances before Daryl came out of the woods.

"Oh Jesus," Dale mumbled.