"Damn it, Rick, this is more than a few people!"

Rick, for his credit, did manage to look a little guilty when he turned to me.

"I know. But it'll be fine. All you have to do is shake the Captain's hand, and maybe those guys too, and smile for the camera. That's it and it'll be over," Rick said.

I was only a few days out of the hospital and, looking out at all the people and cameras gathered in the noisy room, seriously considering going back. At least there it was quiet, I thought glumly.

Sometimes life really makes no sense.

This whole mess started on a day like any other. I set off before dawn with my crossbow, hoping to get some hunting done before the day got too hot. Then I stumbled across a search party. Well, search party might be a little generous. It was a group of volunteers, wandering around the woods, hollering. Apparently a local girl had gone missing.

I ended up talking to a couple of the Sherriff's deputies running the whole thing and they seemed to know it was a sorry excuse for a search, but didn't have the manpower to do any better.

"You don't need all that, man. All ya need is one good tracker," I told them.

I ended up going off with one Officer Rick Grimes to the girl's house, the last place she was seen. I looked all around and it wasn't easy, considering how badly trampled the whole area was, but after a bit I picked up a pair of prints the size of little girl sneakers. We spent the rest of the day tracking. Well, I was tracking and Rick was along for the ride. I only had to tell him off once for asking too many questions and by the end of the day we hadn't found the girl, but I had to admit the two of us made a pretty alright team.

The search stretched on and as my trail went cold, picked up and then went cold again, and the eager volunteers started to disappear, the days stretched into a week. Then Rick's kid got hurt in a hunting accident and his partner took over. He and just about everyone else had given up hope at that point. They kept saying things like 'after the first forty eight hours...'

But I knew the kid was still out there. Hell, I'd gotten lost once when I was younger than Sophia was and I got lost. Nine days in the woods eating berries, wiping my ass with poison oak.

My old man was off on a bender with some waitress. Merle was doing another stint in juvie. Didn't even know I was gone. I made my way back though. Went straight into the kitchen and made myself a sandwich. No worse for wear. Except my ass itched something awful.

Sophia though had people looking for her but after twelve days the deputies were shutting things down. I saddled up one of the horses at the farm they'd been using as a sort of base camp and set off on my own.

Long story short, that damn horse got spooked and threw me off. I tumbled right down a ravine, must have been a good fifty feet or more, and got a bolt stuck in my side on the way down. So there I was, lying in the water, delirious from the pain and the bright sun in my eyes. I don't remember too much about it, lying there in the silt, blood seeping out of me, but at one point I could have sworn my brother was there, talking shit as usual.

I spotted something on the edge of the stream. It was a cloth doll. It had to be Sophia's.

After that, somehow I managed to pull the bolt out of my side, tie my shirt up, and this part felt like eternity, climb out of there. I didn't make it far, though. Passed out cold on the ground.

I probably would have died there, bled out or gone into shock or whatever. I'd come as far as I could in this life by sheer force of will, or by momentum, and my body couldn't go no further. See, I've been beat within an inch of my life a time or two and I know what it feels like to be close to the other side and that's where I was when the girl found me.

So when the police Captain shook my hand and said with a grin, "That was a mighty brave thing you did, saving that little girl's life. We all owe you a debt of gratitude, Mr. Dixon," all I could do was shake my head.

"Nah, that ain't how it happened. She saved my life out there," I said, but nobody seemed to hear me over the clapping.

Then came the reason I'd agreed to this ridiculous spectacle in the first place.

The police Captain handed me a piece of thick paper, the words 'Letter of Commendation' printed across the top and some signatures at the bottom, and an envelope. Inside the envelope was a check.

Damn! That was more zeros than I'd expected!

Rick told me later that it was the money that'd been set aside as a reward for helpful tips during the search. By then I'd already figured out that the whole public presentation was less about thanking me than it was about saving face. It sure didn't look good when the police force gave up looking for someone who turned out to be no more than about two and a half miles from where she went missing.

By all rights, that money should have gone to Sophia and Carol. I'd halfway hoped the two of them would be there. I hadn't seen either of them since they stopped by to visit me in hospital. Turned out they were at some shelter in the city until that bastard husband's trial was over.

Carol deserved that money more than I did but, looking at the number, I started thinking about all the things that could change. I decided I'd set aside part of it for her and the kid and use some of it for myself.

First I could pay off those hospital bills. Then get Merle's bike out of impound. Finally move out of that lousy motel I'd been crashing at ever since Merle disappeared. Hell, maybe put a down payment on a little trailer, park it somewhere out of the way, maybe over by the Yellowjacket River where the fishing's good.

"Everybody say 'Cheese'!" someone shouted and cameras clicked away.

But standing there in the spotlight all I heard was what Merle used to tell me. 'Don't ever let 'em see ya flinch!' he'd say, poking a finger in my chest.

I glared at the cameras, shook the Captain's hand one more time, and got myself the hell outta Dodge.

..................................

TBC!

Second Chance Fact: Daryl ended up renting one of the old rundown cabins on Hershel Greene's property with the promise of helping with the work to fix the place up. The job turned out to be more work than one person could handle, so Daryl got Hershel to hire his buddy Tyreese to help out. Tyreese later repaid the favor and got his sister to hire Daryl when she was setting up her company.