The Heart of Dixie

by gillyflower34

Sequel to Gone for Good and Here to Stay. Fifteen years after the final battle with the wolves, the survivors have carved out lives for themselves. Little do they know they are about to face a threat more evil than any of them could ever imagine. Only the Alexandria Seven can stand against it, but it will take the heart of Dixie to bring them together. Rated M for sexual content.

3. Chapter 3

** This chapter contains an excerpt from the erotic poem "To His Mistress Going to Bed" by John Donne. As always read, enjoy, review. I own nothing from The Walking Dead, only my original characters. **

Hershel

The dream had been about Dixie, like they always were. Her long golden hair undone and blowing in the wind as she leaned closer to him. Then he had woken up to a terrible racket in the kitchen. His room was on the first floor, so he got up and shuffled out, pushing a stray curl back and out of his face. The place was a complete disaster. Flour was strewn about on every imaginable surface and his twin brothers were covered in it, like two tiny snow imps. There were eggs cracked on the floor and a nasty burning smell was coming from the stove.

"What the hell are you two doing?," he demanded.

"Making breakfast," they both said in unison. Then Little Rick, who was the more smart mouthed of the two added, "what does it look like ya dummy?" Hershel turned off the stove and carefully placed the pan into the sink and turned the cold water on. A giant cloud of hissing steam rose up, making both the boys ooh and aah. Hershel's mother appeared in the doorway, having also been woken early by the loud banging. She did not look happy.

"How many times have I told you boys not to play with the stove?," she asked them, "You could have burnt the whole house down."

"We were makin' breakfast," Little Rick insisted stubbornly.

"And where did you get those eggs?," she asked.

"Nowhere," Little Rick said.

"From the hen house," Nick said, too dumb to follow along with his brother's lie. Beth shook her head, if those little shits let all the hens out again, Rick was going to have a fucking coronary. She could never understand it. All her other children were so well behaved. And then the twins came. She had to get them under control before the new baby got here or she was going to lose her damn mind.

"I will check on the chickens and clean this up," Hershel offered. Beth crossed the kitchen and hugged her eldest son. Then she grabbed each tiny scallywag by the hand and dragged them upstairs to bathe them. Hershel heard them fighting and hollering. They acted like they hated the bath, but once the bubbles and the little rubber duckies came out, next thing you knew they would be screaming all over again when it was time to get out. First Hershel checked on the laying hens, who thankfully were all still in their coop. Then he got a rag and cleaned up the eggs and flour mess, getting mostly covered in the white stuff himself. Not having time for a shower, he went outside and shook off like a dog. Since he was going to the radio booth, which was outside the main walls, he put his gun in the holster on his hip and grabbed his bat.

He whistled while he walked, putting one hand in his pants pocket to fell the peices of paper inside. He knew them all by heart now, but he still liked to look at them. He thought about his favorite one

License my roving hands, and let them go,

Before, behind, between, above, below.

I love you.

The poems were never signed. But in his mind, he liked to believe that they were from Dixie. He thought about her when he read them. And a few times he came close to asking her. But he had lost his nerve. She had never shown any desire to be more than friends with him. But he did see her reading a lot. When they were having what they called a 'lazy day' she and her mother would lay out sunbathing and take turns reading to each other from short story books. Once her brother MJ had snuck up on her when she was lying on ther stomach and undid her bikini top. Hey Hershel, wanna see something funny? Then he had stood behind her and screamed SNAKE. Of course she jumped up with her boobs out. MJ's Uncle Daryl had come down off the porch and slapped him upside the back of the head. What 'n the hell is wrong with ya! MJ had rubbed at the back of his head and carried on laughing, hollering at his sister to tell him when her boobs had gotten so big. Hershel wondered the same thing. One day they had all been skinny scab knee little kids and then it seemed like overnight, all the girls had just started swelling up in all the right places. Except poor Glenna, who seemed to just swell up.

Hershel saw he was going to pass his dad, who was coming back from walking the wall. He had Hershel's younger brother Shawn and Dixie's dad Daryl with him and both men gave him a nod.

"I think you might want to get home before mom drowns the twins," Hershel suggested to his father. Shawn rolled his eyes. His brothers were the absolute worst.

"They weren't in the chicken coop again, were they?," Rick asked. No matter what he did, he could not get those boys to behave. Hershel raised his eyebrows as if to say, what do you think? Rick cursed under his breath and headed for home. Daryl laughed. MJ had his moments when he was a toddler, but RickyJo had always kept him on a short leash. And he never had to worry about Dixie. She had been her mother's little helper from the time that she could walk. The gate opened and RickyJo and MJ came in, swinging a good sized deer between them. Daryl gave the Grimes boys a nod and walked back to his house, checking out the deer on the way.

"Can I go to the radio booth with you?," Shawn asked. Hershel nodded. He had actualy thinking about letting Shawn take some air time to himself up there, he was getting so familiar with the equipment. And today would be a good a day as any, since Hershel didn't want to miss Carl's party. Shawn already had his gun with him, since he had been checking the wall with his dad, so they opened the gate and headed out.

The party had been a sucess. Hershel headed back for the booth to relieve Shawn so he could go down and get something to eat before the food was all gone. Then he looked over the selection of music that his younger brother had out, smiling. The dude was learning, but he had a little ways to go yet. And he was still afraid to talk into the microphone. Hershel set up a few songs to play in a row. Songs that he knew his brother Carl liked, since this was his special day. Then he leaned back in his chair with his binoculars. He sat back up immediately and interrupted the music to sound the alarm. The alarm just meant people needed to listen. It was what came after that sounded a warning. One blow of the horn meant family coming home. Two blows meant another group approaching Three meant walkers or any other kind of danger.

Hershel turned the alarm off and blew the horn twice. Some of the people might be familiar, but they were too far away for him to tell. And there were a lot of them. He sounded the alarm again and blew the horn twice. Then he spoke into the microphone. About two dozen incoming. Twenty minutes to arrival. Two dozen incoming. Get to your posts. He didn't have to look, Hershel knew people in town were running around like crazy. Mothers took their children home or to a safe location. And everyone else came out with their guns, lining up on either side of the main street into town. It was an intimadating gauntlet to pass through, but it cut the right impression. The people here in Alexandria were not to be screwed with.

When Deanna had still been alive, she and her son Spencer had taken the new people into her house and spoken to them. Hershel guessed his brother Carl was going to be doing that today. Unless he had other plans. It was hard to tell with Carl. Hershel put his binoculars back up and waited for the people to get close enough that he could get a better look at them. Some were walking, but they had a few horse drawn carts with them Spencer and Cassie would be excited. When people came to town with horses, they liked to try and breed them with the horses they had to get more horses. Usually people were more than happy to let their horses do a little humping in exchange for a hot meal and some hospitality.

As they got closer, Hershel could tell some of them were familiar, but he couldn't say from where. People came and went. Sometimes a group would come for a visit and not show up again for a few years. They were about a quarter mile from the gate when Hershel figured out who they were. The necklaces they were wearing gave them away. He sounded the alarm and blew the horn twice. Incoming. Its Seaside. Visitors from Seaside. Seaside was a group of people that lived mostly on boats off the coast. They were a group that the Alexandrians traded with regularly. People still held the gauntlet. It was impressive and people that had been here before liked to see it. But a smaller group were climbing up on some horses to go out and meet the visitors. Hershel leaned to see if he could get a look who it was. He could see Daryl, Carl, his wife Sammie, Rick, Cassie and Dixie.

They rode out and Hershel watched them get closer to the group. When they reached them, they climbed down from their horses, offering rides to the tired and road weary guests. And they also offered to take the heavy packs the people were carrying. Daryl was shaking hands with the group's leader, a man he seemed to know well, since they were wacking each other on the back and talking. Dixie walked up and Daryl put his arm around his daughter. The man from seaside was laughing and gesturing to her. Hershel could guess the topic of coversation was her grown up appearance. The man took her hand in his and kissed it, making Hershel roll his eyes. He also felt a small pang of anger. Keep away from her if you know whats good for you. Then he scanned the road behind the guests to see if there were any stragglers coming behind them or maybe another small traveling group.

He saw nothing but a solitary walker. It was far enough away from the group not to be a threat, but something in the way it was moving caught his eye. He pulled down his binoculars and rubbed at them. Then he looked throught them again. The fucking thing looked like it was skipping. Maybe it was having some kind of weird body twitch, but it did not look like that. Then it stopped and he swore it looked in his direction. He was thinking he must be making more of this than it was, but then the thing raised its hand and waved at him. He rubbed at the glasses again, like some kind of smear on the glass was causing what he was seeing. When he held them back up, suddenly the thing was up against the window of the radio booth, pressed up against the glass. He dropped the binoculars, screaming in a very high pitched unmanly way that he was glad later there was no one around to hear. He jumped up, knocking his chair over backwards. But when he looked up again, there was nothing there. Daring to peer through the binoculars again, he saw the walker was lying dead in the road, someone from seaside was riding away from it on a horse, holding a long sword that must have been used to decapitate the monster.

It took Hershel a few minutes for his breathing to return to normal. He convinced himself he must have imagined the whole thing. Maybe he had not been getting enough sleep lately or something. Either way, he wasn't going to say a word about it to anyone. Not that they would believe him even if he told them.