Daryl opened the car door for Beth and stared at her as she stepped out. Her clothes were stained with blood, but her mouth turned up into a smile. "You're back."
He was unable to smile back. "What happened?"
"I killed a walker all by myself," she said in a voice filled with pride.
"You almost got yourself killed is what you did," Maggie snapped.
"Calm down," Glenn said. "It all turned out okay."
"It was a fierce kill." Michone broke into a rare smile. "She proved that she can handle herself."
"She shouldn't have been going off alone in the first place!" Maggie was still upset.
"You went off by yourself?" Daryl scowled at her.
"Isn't that what you did?" Beth asked.
He ignored that. "What were you doing by yourself?"
"It happened at the grocery store," Glenn said. "We were going to come straight back after we hit the clothes stores, but Beth wanted to check if the grocery store hadn't been completely cleaned out. Good thing, too, because we scored some baby food and formula. A bunch of diapers, too."
Daryl was working all of this out in his mind. "So you split from them at the grocery store?"
"I was looking around." Beth was now avoiding his gaze.
"Looking for what?" Daryl saw a slight flush creep into her cheeks.
"I have to get this stuff off of me," Beth said. "I'm going in the shower."
The way she had evaded the question told Daryl that she didn't want anybody to know what she had been looking for. He wanted to follow her to her cell and question her further, but Carol went with her. "Just leave your dirty clothes on the floor after your shower. I'll get them later."
"Thanks," Beth said as she gathered together a clean change of clothes.
He didn't notice Michone until she was standing right beside him. "She's tougher than she looks." She nodded toward Beth. "She took down that walker with a knife. Said she didn't want to fire her gun and attract more of them. They need to stop treating her like a china doll."
Before he could say anything to that, Michone had disappeared again. Daryl waited until Beth left to take her shower. The others had gone outside to start hauling everything in from the car. He looked inside Beth's backpack, which was the only thing she hadn't left in the car. White hot anger raged through him as he restrained himself from flinging everything she owned onto the floor. When he was sure that he had himself under control, he walked past the group sorting through all kinds of clothes and into the hallway leading to the shower.
