From her spot in the corner, Calista took everything in.
After Rick left, she saw Shane walk straight toward Lori, who was sitting alone on a fence post, looking dazed.
She couldn't hear what they were saying, but Shane's agitated gestures were obvious, and Lori's expression gradually turned cold and resolute.
In the end, Shane seemed to be struck hard by something. He staggered back a step, his face full of disbelief and hurt, then turned and disappeared into the dusk without looking back.
Calista thought to herself that Lori had drawn the line in the most direct way possible.
The group's internal conflict, combined with Lori's pregnancy, only made the already complicated situation even more chaotic.
Meanwhile, back at the farmhouse, Maggie tried once again to talk to her father.
"Dad, we can't drive them away! Glenn is right. Those things are really dangerous. Today in town, I almost…"
She didn't finish, but the fear in her eyes said enough.
Hershel looked at her, pain in his gaze. "Even you don't understand, Maggie? They're your family. Your stepmother and your brother!"
"They're already dead, Dad!" Maggie cried, her voice breaking. "The living matter more!"
Hershel either didn't hear her or refused to.
He turned and walked back into his room, his steps unsteady, then shut the door, cutting off all arguments and pleas.
As night fell, Calista, Leah, and Merle quietly returned to their tool shed.
Merle let out a cold laugh. "A bunch of idiots, fighting over a pile of rotten meat."
Leah checked her dagger and said calmly, "It was bound to happen sooner or later."
Calista nodded, looking out the window at the farmhouse lights and Rick's lone figure pacing in the darkness.
"They need to make a choice. As for us," she withdrew her gaze, "once we find a car in town, we can leave."
Outside the tool shed, Daryl leaned against his motorcycle.
He glanced toward the shed, then silently fitted a new bolt onto his crossbow.
Daryl's stance had already begun to shift, quietly but unmistakably.
After Hershel's ultimatum, the atmosphere on the farm dropped to freezing point.
Rick found himself in a situation more difficult than ever.
He understood the fear Shane and some of the others felt about the walkers in the barn. He also couldn't ignore Hershel's stubbornness as the landowner and protector. At the same time, he couldn't just give up this relatively safe place.
Especially now that Lori was pregnant.
To ease the situation, or at least to show they weren't ungrateful and to offer a sign of goodwill and cooperation, Rick made a decision after spending the night outside clearing his head.
Early the next morning, he went to Hershel and proposed helping him continue what the farm had been doing before: capturing walkers wandering near the farm and locking them in the barn.
He would take Otis, who knew the land well, and the strong young Jimmy.
He hoped this would show they respected Hershel's rules and were willing to maintain the farm's "order" within his framework, and in doing so, ease tensions.
Hershel looked at Rick with a complicated expression. There was fatigue, but also a faint sign of softening at Rick's concession.
In the end, he agreed.
So Rick, Otis, and Jimmy drove out in the pickup.
Shane scoffed at the whole thing, calling it pointless, a waste of time, and nothing more than appeasing danger.
Still, he didn't openly oppose it. He simply watched with cold detachment.
Calista and the others remained observers.
As they watched Otis and Jimmy leave, Merle grinned at Daryl. "See that? That's pure self-delusion. Dragging those things back and locking them up. What, raising them like pets?"
Daryl said nothing, but the look in his eyes made his opinion clear.
Rick, Otis, and Jimmy drove the old pickup used for hauling feed along the dirt road at the edge of the farm.
In the truck bed were several bundles of coarse rope and a few long wooden poles with slipknots tied at the ends, tools meant for catching livestock, though this time the target was far more dangerous.
"Up ahead, near those bushes," Otis pointed. His round face carried its usual gentle look. "I saw two or three wandering there. Far enough from the fence, so it shouldn't attract too many."
Rick nodded and stopped the truck at a safe distance.
He took a deep breath, forcing down the sense of absurdity in his chest.
He knew this was like walking a tightrope, compromising with Hershel's outdated and dangerous beliefs.
But what choice did he have?
Forcing the issue at the barn would only lead to immediate conflict and getting thrown out.
For Lori, for Carl, for the child she was carrying, and for the group to have even a brief place to rest, he had to try this last attempt at easing things.
"Move fast. Keep the noise down," Rick said quietly, grabbing a lasso pole and stepping out first.
Jimmy looked nervous. He gripped his pole tightly and whispered to Otis, "Mr. Otis… do we really have to bring these things back? Hershel, he…"
He trailed off, clearly afraid of the barn's "residents."
Otis patted his shoulder, his tone patient and reassuring. "Jimmy, Hershel has his reasons. He's read a lot, knows more than we do. He believes these people… these patients… are just suffering from a disease we don't understand yet.
One day, God will guide us to a cure. Until then, we can't abandon them."
There was a quiet devotion in his eyes, a belief shaped over years under Hershel's influence.
Rick listened, but his chest felt heavy.
He could not agree with any of it.
They had lost too many people along the way.
They had seen walkers tear into the living with their own eyes. They had felt that mindless, pure urge to kill.
That was not a disease. It was death itself walking.
Still, Rick didn't argue. He only said in a low voice, "Jimmy, circle left. Otis, right. I'll draw it from the front."
Their target was a male walker in a torn plaid shirt, shuffling aimlessly near the bushes.
Rick deliberately snapped a branch.
The walker immediately reacted, letting out a low snarl as it turned and staggered toward him.
Now.
Rick seized the moment, swinging the lasso and catching the walker cleanly around the neck.
He pulled hard, tightening the noose. The walker's movements grew clumsier and more frantic.
Otis and Jimmy rushed in from both sides, looping their ropes around its arms. The three of them worked together, like handling a raging animal, forcing the struggling, snarling walker under control.
...
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