Calista stopped a few steps away from Michonne, careful not to get too close.
She held the katana out horizontally, offering it to Michonne with the hilt facing her.
"Your katana." Calista's voice was calm. No extra explanation, no conditions attached.
The gesture made everyone busy in the living room slow down instinctively, their eyes gathering on them.
Carver's bandaged arm tightened slightly. Turner and Jenson exchanged a wary look. Even Merle stopped stuffing cans into his backpack and watched with interest.
Leah took half a step forward, her fingers resting on the hilt of the dagger at her thigh.
Michonne raised her head and fixed her eyes on Calista, then glanced at the katana in her hands before looking back at Calista's face.
There was something almost surprised in her eyes.
Michonne seemed not to have expected Calista to return her weapon so easily.
She stayed silent, and for a few seconds, time seemed to freeze.
Then Michonne reached out. Her fingertips touched the scabbard, and she quickly closed her hand around it.
The moment the katana returned to her hand, her entire presence seemed to shift in some subtle way, like a lone wolf reclaiming its fangs.
Once Michonne took the katana, Calista naturally stepped back, turned around, and began arranging their departure, as if what she had just done was nothing out of the ordinary.
She did not tell Michonne, "You can go," nor did she say, "You have to come with us."
Calista handed the choice back to Michonne herself.
The convoy was ready soon after. One vehicle after another drove out of the hidden spot and returned to the desolate, broken highway.
Calista sat in the passenger seat, watching the rearview mirror.
At first, there was nothing behind them.
But before long, a black dot appeared at the edge of her view.
An old, rusty pickup truck followed far behind the convoy, keeping a distance of about two or three hundred meters. It neither approached nor fell back.
Michonne was the one driving.
Through the binoculars, they could see the two walkers in the bed of the pickup, their arms and jaws removed, chained in place and swaying weakly with the bumps of the road.
"That katana woman's following us," Carver said as he drove, glancing at the rearview mirror. His tone gave nothing away.
"Mm." Calista answered. "Leave her alone. Keep our normal speed. Tell the people in the back not to provoke her, and not to keep staring either. Just act like she isn't there."
Although the team was still full of doubts and caution, they followed the order strictly.
No one deliberately slowed down to wait for her, and no one sped up to try to shake her off.
The convoy moved forward at a steady pace, while Michonne's pickup remained behind them like a gray shadow, close enough to follow, far enough to stay apart.
Around noon, the convoy stopped near an abandoned rest area to take a break and check the vehicles.
Just as everyone was starting to relax, Bossie, who had been scouting the flank, emerged from the roadside bushes and gave a hand signal.
Behind the trees near the road ahead, a group of walkers was hiding, about twenty or so, wandering aimlessly. They could be drawn over by the sound of the engines at any moment.
"Save ammunition. No guns unless we have to. We'll handle them with melee weapons."
The team quickly drew their melee weapons from the trunks or from their personal gear.
Before long, more than twenty walkers staggered out of the woods beside the highway.
Their clothes were in rags, their skin rotting. They had clearly heard the earlier noise and were restlessly pushing toward the road, but their movements were slow, their senses dulled.
Calista drew the dagger strapped to her thigh in a reverse grip and signaled for them to split up and flank the group.
The team immediately divided into two groups, using abandoned vehicles as cover as they silently circled toward both sides of the herd.
The fight broke out in silence.
Calista flashed out from the rear of an abandoned bus. Facing the first walker, she turned sideways to avoid its reaching, rotted arm, then drove her dagger swiftly into its temple. With a twist of her wrist, the walker dropped without a sound.
Leah swept into the flank of the herd, a three-edged spike in her hand flashing with cold light.
One walker's neck was severed in an instant, its head rolling away. Another was stabbed through the eye socket, the blade driving straight through to the back of its skull.
Mike used a machete. One walker was nearly split in half from shoulder to back, black blood spraying out. Another was kicked to the ground before the machete came down and finished it off completely.
Carver swung his axe and smashed a walker's skull apart like a watermelon.
Brain matter and bone fragments flew.
With a backhand swing, he brought the back of the axe into another walker's chest, caving it in.
Shane and Daryl worked smoothly together.
Shane used a fire axe to draw the walkers' attention from the front, while Daryl silently picked off the walkers trying to flank his companions with his crossbow, or used his hunting knife to finish the ones Shane had knocked down but not fully killed.
Merle used the vehicles for cover, going specifically after the lone walkers. His right arm chopped viciously at their necks as he muttered curses under his breath. "Come on, you bastards! Get a taste of Mr. Merle!"
The others moved quickly as well. Throughout the entire cleanup, not a single shot was fired.
In only five minutes, more than twenty walkers had become actual corpses on the ground.
During the entire small-scale fight, Michonne, who had been following behind, never stepped in.
She parked her pickup farther down the roadside, leaned against the door with her arms crossed, and calmly watched Calista's team carry out the whole operation.
Only near the end, when a walker somehow circled out from the woods on the side and staggered toward the bed of Michonne's pickup, growling meaninglessly at the two restrained "companions" inside, did Michonne finally move.
She coldly drew her katana, sliced off half the walker's head with one stroke, then lightly flicked the thick, filthy blood from the blade.
Over the next two days, the convoy and the gray pickup maintained a strange kind of understanding.
When they set out at dawn, the pickup would appear on time at the far edge of the rearview mirror. When they made camp at night, the food Calista set aside would always disappear silently at some point.
Michonne would carry the food back to her own vehicle, lean against the cold door, and only after confirming she was safe again would she eat under the faint moonlight.
She drank the water carefully, taking only a small sip each time.
After she finished, she carefully put away the wrappers and empty cans, leaving no trace behind.
Perhaps even Michonne herself did not realize that when she looked toward the temporary camp in the distance, the ice in her eyes seemed to crack by the slightest degree.
Accepting the food meant that a minimal, non-hostile form of contact was beginning to form.
There was no conversation. No closeness. Only a mutual, unspoken acknowledgment of each other's existence.
Michonne was like a silent shadow, and Calista's side gradually grew used to the "unofficial member" keeping her distance behind them.
Although the team remained cautious, the initial tension had eased considerably. At the very least, no one kept their gun subtly aimed in that direction anymore.