“Come on!” Daryl said, his eyes not moving from the sights of his crossbow.  “Nothin’ in here’s any damn use to us.”

“We don’t know that, Daryl,” Dale moved along the shelves, stuffing books seemingly at random into a satchel. “Something we overlook now might make a big difference later.”

“Yeah, or we could be diggin’ through a bunch of stupid books when the walkers get us.” His blue eyes were narrowed into slits, scanning the window.  He wasn’t a nervous man, Dale knew.  Just…wound tight. Then again, anyone sane had a right to be, right now.

“They aren’t stupid,” Dale corrected. Only the important things, he reminded himself. Funny how the end of the world stripped things back like that, like a walker stripping flesh to bare bone.  Some things just weren’t worth a fuss. 

Books were. Books were the only link to the world he remembered, the one where ideas mattered, where you could think of things other than whether or not you’ll see sunset. 

“Yeah, whatever, old man,” Daryl said.  “Just hurry it up. Walkers get a scent on us, all the learnin’ in the world ain’t gonna save you.”

That, Dale couldn’t refute. “Fair enough, Daryl.” He had enough to keep them busy, zipping up the satchel as he moved to the door by the alley. “Glenn said pickup would be this way?”  A question, ready to defer.  Daryl knew more about survival than anyone here.  More than that, Daryl seemed to have a kind of instinct, and Dale had learned he didn’t need to understand something to trust it. A salesman’s instinct of his own, he figured.

“Yeah.” Another look outside the front window, and Daryl moved, rough boots leaving dark marks on the scattered pages on the floor. It was a kind of tragedy, Dale thought, treading knowledge like that underfoot.  But that wasn’t Daryl’s fault, or Daryl’s doing. And right now the world needed Daryl more than the volume of poetry that he kicked on accident into the newspaper rack, rattling the now-yellowed sheets.  Dale found himself going over, idly, but drawn, to check the date—the last date newspapers had been delivered, and for this town, the last day of the world. 

“Hey! Where you goin’ now, old man? Gotta go!”  Daryl’s hand rested on the doorlatch, the other bracing his crossbow, the weight of it causing his forearm to bulge in ropy muscle. 

“Be right there,” Dale said, snatching the front paper, feeling the brittle pages crinkle in his hands. 

“Newspaper.  Hope that sports section helps save our ass some day,” Daryl rolled his eyes, eloquently.

“Not the sports,” Dale said, and his voice sounded distant, almost haunted, even to himself.

“What’d you say?”

“Not the sports,” Dale said, forcing more energy into his voice. “Horoscopes.”

“Horrorscopes.” Daryl gave a sneer. “My momma believed that horseshit.” 

“So did Irma.” He could still remember her, every morning, as he stood in front of the hallway mirror, working on the lay of his necktie, sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for the coffee to boil. She always opened the paper to the horoscopes first, reading hers and his aloud, in that tone of amusement and wanting to believe.  It was a fond little ritual they’d taken with them, morning after morning, even on vacation, even when there was no necktie and someone else was making the coffee. 

He’d give anything to see Irma again, reading those dates with her slow, solemn voice. 

“Yeah, and look where it got ‘em,” Daryl said, trying, somehow desperately, to bolster the sneer.

Dale turned, the paper crumpling in his hand for a moment before he straightened it, smoothing it against his chest before stuffing it into the satchel’s front. “Maybe a better place than here.”

Daryl’s mouth worked, for a moment, one of those silent tectonic shifts that he seemed to have since Merle was gone, as though his foundations were re-ordering themselves.  “No maybe about it.”