There it is. I own nothing. Please read & review to let me know if you like it, want more etc... It really helps the writing process to know there is a readership out there...
Carol had disappeared one morning, and no one had been the wiser. The whole day went by without anybody noticing. All in all, it had been a normal day.
Rick had become the unofficial leader of the ASZ and people were mostly okay with that. It reminded people of how things used to be before: Deanna was the pseudo elected leader and Rick was the one working behind the scenes, taking the decisions and making Deanna see things his way, with Maggie's help, in a way that allowed the so-called official to pretend the decisions were hers.
"Just like a real democracy", Abraham had joked one night at dinner, when the group had gotten together.
Carol had laughed and raised her glass to their leader, and they had toasted to the Family, as they had come to refer to themselves. The rest of ASZ went along with it, with the nickname, saying every town needed some kind of mob.
It was a status quo of some sort, and it worked. Maggie was right by Deanna's side all the time, and she was faithful first to the family, then to Alexandria though she would never have said it to her boss. They all hoped one day the family and ASZ would become the same thing, that there would be no degree in loyalty, but truth be told, it was still a bit tough to relate with people who had been hiding behind walls for so long when Rick and his group had come and gone so many places, suffered so many losses, and taken so many blows.
Some things had started happening, bringing people closer. For example, a group had been organized, for people who had lost someone to the virus, which basically meant everyone. After Sasha's breakdown at the party all those weeks back, someone started spreading the idea that maybe people needed a place to talk about those losses. As Jessie and Deanna had said, and many other Alexandrians, one thing that bounded them all was the knowledge of loss, and the need to talk about it. Hence a parole group had been started.
Most people would thank Maggie and Reg for making it happen, but they hadn't been the one to start the movement, they had just acted in it. It had proved to be a great idea though. People in Alexandria all thought they knew all about each other, but having an opportunity to speak about those they had lost had made them realize that while they were safe, they were not sound and they could only move forward as a group.
All in all, the bet they had taken coming up to join the Alexandrian had paid off, and things were ok. One could never say things were good or things were great, the world was still suffering a Zombie invasion, so until that was cured, god and great were words only to be used for people or food "this pie is good", or "that chick is good in bed".
This had been the topic of another dinner night for the family, when and where it was okay to use the words good and great and other words. The word they were all starting to use even more was "normal", and of all the words out there, it was by far the scariest. They often told each other and themselves not to be lulled into a false sense of security, that a herd could probably bring down the walls, that they had a good place now but that it could be gone the following day, but still sometimes, normal things happened, like Carl going to school, or Judith taking her first steps.
The day Carol went missing, as fate would have it, was one of those days everybody would have described as "normal". People did their job, interacted with one another, talked about making the place safer if possible, about possible runs, about possible new recruits. It had been an average day, until Daryl had come back from a run with Aaron and barged in Deanna's office a few minutes later, asking:
"Where the fuck is Carol?"
Rick, who had been talking with Deanna and Maggie had been startled, especially when Daryl had gotten in his face and asked coldly, but ferally:
"Did you get all Rick-tator again, and banished her without asking anybody their opinion?"
Maggie had gotten up, ready to come in between the two men, but Rick had answered:
"What do you mean 'where is Carol'?"
And Daryl could read in the eyes of his friend that he really had no clue the third of their unholy trinity had gone missing.
"Banishment, hum?" Deanna had said. "You banished people before?"
"Deanna, I know you're a politician, and you have this knack for gathering Intel, but right now is really not the time to poke into our past behavioral patterns," Maggie had said, before any of the men could have ripped the official's head off. "Where could Carol be?" She then said, wringing her hands together.
"She did not go to the kitchen today," Daryl said, observing the official who was observing them. "People thought she was sick. She is not at the house. In fact, all her belongings are gone."
"We'll find her," Rick said, a hand on Maggie's arm, in order to give her courage. "Daryl and I will go ask around. But we'll find her."
And ask they did. They learnt from the morning guards that they had let her out this morning, that she had said she was just taking a trip to find some herbs. Sure, she had been packing lots of guns when she had left, but according to Olivia, they had all been her weapons. The guards had been released from their shift an hour or so after she had left, around 5AM, and they had forgotten to mention to their replacement that Carol was out there, so nobody had worried when she hadn't come back.
Stress and anxiety had taken a hold again on the family, and even Judith was crying nonstop. They all got together into the first house they had been given, the one where they had slept the first nights, and they had assessed the situation, away from the Alexandrians, who didn't seem to care so much about where Carol had gone, as they were more worried about who would be doing the cooking when they couldn't.
They looked at the situation a thousand different ways, making ridiculous hypothesis that they would crush one second later. Nobody wanted to say it, but it was plain as day: Carol had taken her things, and had gone off. She had actually disappeared.
When they went back to Deanna to let her know about this new development, she had looked at Daryl and said:
"No offense, but to me you were always the one we might lose one day or another this way."
"You'd think that, hum?"
He hadn't wanted to say anything more, processing this earth shattering event.
Carol was gone, and she had left no trail, they had checked right away. Carol had disappeared, vanished.
They waited each day for her to come back, with a good explanation or not explanation at all if she didn't feel like sharing. Daryl and Rick took turns with Michonne, Glenn, Abraham and Rosita in order to always have someone out, looking for her, in case she had decided to come back. It just made no sense to them, why would Carol decide to leave them? She was their matriarch, the female Rick, or maybe Rick had been the male Carol, but they were the two heads of this company. Rick was distressed to the core by her disappearance, feeling guilty for not having seen that she had been missing, and torturing himself wondering how long it would have taken him to see it.
When a whole month went by without sign of her, the whole community was truly shaken up. The Alexandrians couldn't understand how someone could decide to turn their precious lifestyle away. The family just didn't understand, or if they did, they didn't want to, and they pretended not to know. There were still a couple of theories going around but Daryl would cut those conversations short, and say that Carol would explain when she would be back. He never doubted that she would be. He always spoke of "when", never of "if" she came back. He spent as much time as possible outside, Aaron tagging along on Rick's suggestions, as the sheriff knew his friend and knew just how far he would go to get Carol back. Aaron made sure Daryl came back home every night, even if the hunter didn't sleep a wink, or spent the night on the porch, waiting for her.
Normal had proven once again to be the most dangerous word in the English language.