Rick stepped forward and laid the barrel of the Remington across Hoffman's chest, urging him back gently but firmly. The detective shot him an aggrieved glare but acquiesced, retreating a couple of steps.
"Hold on now," he said, his gaze shuttling between Hoffman and Sidney as if on a track. "Am I missin' something here? Do you two know each other?"
Andrea had, meanwhile, been studying the woman in the hooded coat. She was somewhere in her early thirties, chocolate-skinned, with close cropped black hair. Her lips suddenly parted in a soft, knowing smile and her wide-set brown eyes shone gently all the while, remaining fixed on the detective without blinking or shifting in the slightest.
"We know each other all right, oh yes," she said, and only now pulled her gaze away from Hoffman, turning her attention to Rick instead. "You're lucky to have him with you, Sheriff," she continued, tilting her head to one side. "Detective Lieutenant Hoffman is one of the finest police officers I've ever known. He found the Jigsaw killer, don't you know?"
"So he told me," admitted Rick, subsiding, looking around at Hoffman. "I apologise for my caution, Detective, but I trust you understand it given the situation. If this lady's corroboratin' your story then I guess everything's okay."
Andrea tore enough of her attention away from Sidney to shoot a sidelong glance at Mallick and Diana. The two were huddling together as if they intended to conduct a private conversation, but if that was the case then whatever they were saying to one another was carried solely through frowns and puzzled looks. Diana half turned her head and seemed to realise, at last, that Andrea was watching them, and her lips thinned.
"Mallick and I attended a Jigsaw survivors' group before all this," Sidney was saying to Rick. "Detective Hoffman interviewed us both and he could not have been more kind. When we heard he'd been taken we thought we might know where he was and," she turned back, smiling at Hoffman, "it seems we were right."
This story was told in a calm and placid manner, and it wasn't until it was done with that Andrea realised she didn't believe a word of it. She stood halfway between Hoffman and Sidney, studying them both in turn, and feeling a powerful crackle of energy in their shared gaze. Where Sidney was perfectly calm and smooth, Hoffman's face seemed to have shut down entirely; he was all rounded eyes and bloodless lips.
"What about this young lady?" asked Rick, nodding at Diana.
"We found each other along the way," said Sidney, smiling fondly at the girl, who – Andrea noticed – returned this affection with a strange, hurt stare but said nothing at all in response.
"I hate to interrupt y'all," said a new voice, "but we got company." Daryl had joined the group in the glare of the headlights, and he was already unslinging his crossbow from his shoulder and hauling back on the string to cock it. He slotted his one remaining arrow into the groove, raised the bow and fired into the dark without ceremony.
There was a strangled gurgle, followed by a thump as something slumped to the ground. Now the group saw what Daryl had already spotted, as four more walkers stumbled into the pool of light cast by the one working street light on the block. One, a female, seemed to be missing an arm, but the rest were fully able and looked much more dangerous. Andrea cursed and reached for her shells, and she watched Rick lift the rifle to his shoulder with an unhappy grimace, but all at once Sidney was stepping forward and gripping the barrel, lowering it once more.
"Save your ammunition, Sheriff," she said, gently. "There's only four. Diana?" She turned, addressing the girl now, who nodded sharply and dodged back around to the car door, braids flying. She reached into the back seat and withdrew a long-handled axe, fixing her small hands on the handle and resting her weight on her toes. Sidney, for her part, merely handed her cane to Mallick for safekeeping and threw open her coat. She unsheathed a length of gleaming tempered steel with a metallic ringing noise, wrapped her fingers around the hilt and made a short, experimental pass.
Andrea turned to Mallick, looking him up and down with naked incredulity.
"What about you?" she asked. Mallick met her gaze with some difficulty and then looked over at his companions.
"Oh no," he said, "this isn't really my, er...thing. I find it's best just to let them get on with it." He coughed into his hand and wound down, embarrassed. Andrea favoured him with another astonished stare and then turned back to watch the confrontation unfold.
Sidney skirted the vehicle and approached the first of the walkers, a burly male in what looked like a telephone company uniform. He reached out and tried to take hold of her, but she pirouetted aside with easy grace. When she returned she was bringing the claymore around in a low, wide sweep, catching him across the shins with a dull thud. The walker snarled as the blade opened a wide gash in his leg and knocked his feet out from beneath him.
As he fell, Sidney stepped over him and adjusted her grip on the sword mid-swing, bringing it down vertically and driving it into the back of his neck. He convulsed and issued a spittle-clogged groan, but Sidney merely planted one small foot on his shoulder and wrenched the blade out of his spine. She stepped back and rolled him over with a hard kick to the hip, and when he flopped onto his back she closed in again and drove the sword down with gruesome efficiency, plunging the point into his eye socket and puncturing his brain. The walker twitched and sagged, going limp at once. Sidney yanked the sword out of his head with a sickening squelch and turned on her heel to seek out another target.
The whole thing had taken a mere handful of seconds. Andrea realised that her jaw was hanging open in shock, and closed it once more as she turned her attention to Diana, who was circling the one-armed female walker with a frightening half-smile painted across her sallow face. The walker drooled quietly and then lunged, but met the flat of the axe coming the other way in a vicious jab that smashed her nose open in a startling spray of blood and mucus.
Diana ducked this with a disgusted expression and then rose once more, dodging around the walker, bringing the axe around in a neat half circle and burying the blade in her spine. The walker loosed a high pitched squeal and arched her back, reaching around to the site of the impact, but Diana had already pulled the weapon free once more and now took another measured swing, this one coming in high and slamming into the back of the female's head. Andrea cringed at the strident crack of the creature's skull and watched as the walker pitched forward and shuddered on the road.
Meanwhile, Sidney had dispatched her second target with another stab to the eye, and Andrea clamped a reflexive hand to her mouth as the pair closed in on the one remaining walker, a skinny young male with clotted blood staining his teeth. He growled at them and swivelled to and fro, trying to keep them both in his sight at once, but Sidney merely winked at Diana, then jumped up onto her toes and spun, the sword singing through the night air. It hit the walker in the throat and kept going, shearing through skin, cartilage and muscle, taking his head from his shoulders in one swipe. The watchers scattered as the head rolled into their midst like a random bowling ball.
All, that was, bar one. Hoffman, who didn't seem to have moved, breathed or blinked for the last few minutes, now stepped forward and prodded at the severed head with his foot, turning it around on its axis. Its eyes were still open and its mouth worked soundlessly, tongue flapping and lips painted with its own gluey brown ichor. Andrea watched Hoffman's bland, absorbed expression as he studied the head, and felt an icy trickle run down her back at the sight.
Diana approached the group, her mouth set in a self-satisfied grin. Hoffman raised his gaze now and held out his hand to the girl. She looked for a moment as if she were about to back away, and Andrea saw that her face was registering a difficult blend of surprise and suspicion. Finally she relented and passed over the axe without comment.
Hoffman curled his hands around the bloodstained weapon. Only now did his eyes seem to light up, and he stepped back a couple of paces and brought it down hard, the blade smacking into the head, splitting it neatly in two. The detective grunted with satisfaction as the walker's brains slopped out across the road, and then dragged at the axe, pulling it free again. With this, the spell finally seemed to break.
"Sweet fuckin' Jesus almighty," said Daryl, his voice hoarse. "And my daddy told me all Yankees were pussies..." He tailed off, looking between Sidney, Diana and Hoffman as if unsure which of them deserved the bulk of his terrified respect. He didn't notice for a second that Sidney was holding out her hand to him, and then he shook his head to clear his amazement and looked down at what she was proffering.
"Yours, I believe?" she said. Daryl grinned awkwardly and took back his arrow. He pulled out a rag and cleaned the point, but the action was purely mechanical and his awestruck gaze was still fixed on Sidney. She seemed to ignore this, and turned instead to Rick.
"As you can see, Sheriff," she said calmly, "we won't be a burden on your group. We're survivors in every sense of the word, and we intend to keep on surviving. We would simply like to offer our assistance in return for your company along the way." She reached out and took Daryl's cloth from his unresisting hand and gave the blade of her claymore a cursory wipe. This done, she sheathed it once more and pulled her coat around her.
"Well, we'll be pleased to have you along," said Rick, shouldering the rifle and smiling at her. Andrea stifled a small grin of her own; it was the first time she'd seen Rick smile, really and truly smile, and the expression lit up his face like a pinball machine.
"I remember you," said Hoffman, speaking up at last. He was regarding Sidney critically, his head on one side and a banked fire in his eyes. "My, how you've grown. There was a time you wouldn't say boo."
If this provoked a reaction of any kind, Sidney hid it perfectly well and did not deign to respond to the detective's commentary. She simply adjusted herself, collected her cane from Mallick and nodded at Diana to acknowledge a job well done.
"There'll be some more walkers along soon, I should think," she said, looking around at the group like a schoolteacher confronted with a group of disaffected students. "I suggest we move on before that happens. Thank you for your kindness, Sheriff. We'll talk more later, perhaps," she finished, casting one last indecipherable glance at Hoffman before leading her companions back to their car.
Diana rounded on Sidney the moment they were out of earshot.
"Are you ashamed of me?" she asked, quietly. She looked up into Sidney's eyes, which were suddenly twin black pools of pain and regret, lined with exhaustion. She did not reply at once, but turned instead to Mallick.
"Drive, please," said Sidney, tossing him the keys across the hood of the car. "Diana and I need to talk. Into the back with you, child."
When they were settled in the back seat and Mallick had pulled the car out at the rear of the convoy, Diana opened her mouth to protest but found her lips stopped fast by one soft fingertip.
"No, honey," said Sidney, gravely. "You need to listen to me for a bit. If I know Detective Hoffman as well as I believe I do, he'll have told these good people a little story of his own by now, and if I know him, he'll have blamed everything he possibly can on your father. Now they know he's a cop, they'll only accept his version of events all the better."
She sighed slowly, reached out and stroked Diana's hair for a moment.
"He does not hold all the aces in this game, trust me," she went on, "but we need to play very carefully for a time. Meanwhile, it's for the best if none of our new friends finds out your last name." Sidney finished and sat back, watching her.
Diana curled up, bringing her knees up beneath her chin. A small tear quivered in her lashes and she swiped at it.
"I'm proud of him," she said, her voice low but defiant, as another sparkling tear formed on the heels of the first. Sidney shifted closer on the seat and folded her in warm, tender arms, rocking her a little and pressing a kiss to her forehead.
"I know you are," she whispered.
"I miss him," said Diana, her voice dissolving into a sob.
"Me too."