Daryl keeps cleaning out the intestines, eventually beginning to stretch the casings inside-out to better dry them. He hooks them back up on the nails in the wall, checking each carefully for holes and tears. He talks idly while working; it feels good, in a nostalgic way, not to be utterly fucking alone while he does this. Carol used to chat with him while he showed her how to gut a deer, and Rick would shoot the shit if he was bored. Hell, Merle was a good enough companion back in the day, even if all he had to say was criticism.

"We watched Looney Tunes," Daryl says. "Or whatever we had on video." Which was either porn, action movies, or horror flicks where girls got their clothes ripped off. Daryl had found it pretty badass at the time, but he'd been seventeen in the mid-eighties. He can barely sit still for movies, now; it's been too long, and all of them seem so corny.

When it looks like the girl's gotten a fair fill of meat, he asks-- "this'll go faster with two people. And you ain't squeamish."

It's an offer. She doesn't have to. But at her age, Daryl was always wild to prove his worth.