I suppose I should tell you all why I'm falling back to only posting once a week on Fridays. It so happens that right now, I'm not only working nights full time and watching my kids during the day, but also? As long as the weather is good enough for the kids to go to school, someone's building a frankenmansion next door. It's loud now, but will be ugly forever. Being gentrified sucks. It's time for a more 'fluffy' chapter, so:

Well now, how's the other half living? All characters not Negan or Darryl in this chapter are my own creation.

Ben Is Out For House's Blood, Dooby Sees Tracks In The Mud

Five bikers on four bikes came roaring down the hillside. Singed beards and dusty, improvised bandages were sported by all. Dooby, the smallest of them, rode bitch behind Ben. The motorcycles pulled to a stop beside a farmhouse. The bikers rapidly turned them off without any revving and dismounted. Ben shook himself a bit and straightened. He held up hands for silence, scowling as the blisters on his hands hurt. He grimaced. He waved one biker toward the barn and folded his arms, scowling and gritting his teeth. He turned to Dooby and nodded.

Dooby stretched a bit, nodding back, and began studying the ground a bit away from the motorcycles. After a bit he walked back to Ben, visibly cowed. "Dust too wind-blown. Can't tell ya much. Was a pick-up or an old car here but not for a long time. Some horses here too about the same time. Woulda grazed uphill or maybe past the farmhouse if there's a creek. Looks like more downhill past the farmhouse."

Ben nodded, pulled out a pair of broken binoculars. He held them together and stared to the north and the northwest. "More guardrails," he grumbled. "Dead're walkin' all over the interstate anyway, kinda swirly like you said. Flock of birds." He pointed to some telephone wires leading from the farmhouse to a set of poles and into the woods. "Whatcha think?"

Dooby nodded. "Bound to be a way through there back to a highway. Maybe a security fence to break. Tools maybe along the way?"

Ben pointed wordlessly uphill.

"That farm equipment? That stuff runs on diesel most a the time. Doubt we want that. We want diesel? They got pumps a that everywhere."

"What about the blades? Could we run that through the dead?"

Dooby blinked. "Oh. If we get it started, we could sure try. Won't turn over. That's a combine."

"What chou mean, won't turn over? We ain't tried to start it yet." Ben looked at Dooby funny.

"I mean the dead can't rock it over. If the blades'll turn through the dead, we could plow the whole interstate. One to drive it, two to knock off any climbers, two of us on bikes to help 'em down 'n' get away if it goes bad."

Ben nodded. "I'm sendin' Batter back."

Dooby looked back at Batter. "He IS lookin' bad. Leg swellin' up. Jaw swollen shut. You got a fever, Batter?" Dooby looked at the sweat glistening over "RBI," the tat on Batter's forehead, where Batter's nickname came from and frowned, vaguely remembering a rumor that the letters were actually the initials of someone who went to prison in Batter's stead and died there.

Batter, scowling badly enough to sweat worse, nodded. Ben clapped him on the back. "I'm gonna send you back the way we came with the proof we're on House's trail. Got no spare radio for you—not that you can really talk anyway. Can you make it?" Batter nodded, wiping sweat from his forehead tattoo.

"I'm sorry about Croc. Never knew him to get sick. Anyhow. No need to turn off at that drug place House was at unless you just need a rest. You've been a trooper. Workin' like a Trojan. Have Negan set you up with the new doctor, and tell him I might be expandin' our territory while I find House. I'll just add this duffel on your bike. Soup to drink." Ben pulled out a medicine bottle and a piece of a cigarette wrapper from a pocket and stuffed them in the outer pocket of a duffel bag. He tied it on to Batter's bike and watched as Batter drove back uphill.

The biker sent to the barn came walking back, holding a pitchfork. "Some tools. Two dead horses. Somebody cut the meat out of 'em long enough ago the bugs are done with the rest." He handed Ben the pitchfork.

Ben nodded. "You two go up, see if you can start that combine. If it runs, we'll go mow down I-66 all the way to Winchester. If it don't, we might use the blades. Mount 'em on a car or somethin'. Dooby 'n' I'll clear the house." He waited till the two other bikers had started up the hill and turned to Dooby. "So, House prob'ly ain't set traps near here, right?"

"Not too likely he came this way, Ben. No recent tracks where we came in an' it's just MILES of country to get lost in through here. House seems t' like a ROOST, y'know? High ground."

Ben grunted and turned toward the farmhouse. They walked the twenty steps down the pavestones from the little gate. Ben drew a home-sharpened breadknife and a length of broomstick, leaving the pitchfork leaning on the outer doorframe. Dooby pulled out a mismatched pair of long screwdrivers. Ben tried the door. Finding it locked, he listened for a moment. "Sumpin' there," he muttered. He kicked in the door. A nearly skeletal dead man, tendons barely present, was trying to get up from the badly stained and partially rotted living room rug. Its left wrist broke, and it fell to the floor again. It tried again. A tendon snapped as it sat up, and its shoulders sagged enough to make the body look almost snakelike. Its right foot cracked, its left leg came out of the hip socket, and the whole thing fell again. Its jaw opened, shut, opened, shut, opened—

. . . and Ben stomped its neck. He looked at the stairs, mounded with broken furniture. He looked at the back door, blocked with about fifty heavy boxes. He looked at the windows, sturdily boarded up. "Shit," he said, and opened the first box he could reach, "Farmer's Almanac? Accounting Monthly? Shit! Nothin' worth lookin' at here without a load a work. I still hear somethin,' too!"

Dooby and Ben walked back out the front door. Ben looked up. "TURN!" he screamed.

. . . and the combine smashed through the parked motorcycles and into one side of the farmhouse as Ben and Dooby leapt away. The farmhouse collapsed, partially onto the combine. As the dust began to settle, Ben stormed up to the combine and kicked a panel, shaking with rage. "You—you—you—" he stopped and turned to look downhill. A herd five times as wide as the length of the former farmhouse was just seconds downhill from the wreck. The door to the combine opened. "My foot's stuck!" the biker hollered at Ben. The biker pointed at his bootlaces caught in a pedal. "Toss me a knife!" Ben reached up into the cab and pulled a lever instead. The combine's main blades came down, crushing the legs of twelve dead. Ben turned and gored three more through the mouth, felling them rapidly, while clubbing another. "Where's Rocky?" he belted out. "Oh." He saw Rocky's head and arms connected by the upper chest crawling downhill toward them.

"He fell under!" wailed the biker in the combine, yanking at his boot. He slammed the door, seeing two dead climbing up on the other side. Ben's club broke. Ben stabbed the nearest dead thing up under the chin with it as he backed toward the rear of the combine. Seeing them close on all sides, Ben body-checked the biggest one uphill, jumped onto it as it fell, and dashed between the others. As the hundreds of dead around rocked the combine loose of the farmhouse, Ben saw the biker in the combine cab, eyes bulged out, mouthing something he couldn't decipher. Then the combine coasted down over the edge of the hill out of sight, taking more dead with it. Ben turned to look at the utility pole clearing and saw the way blocked with dozens of dead coming toward him. He turned to the barn to see it collapse and the dead come walking through it. A chance parting of the dead walking gave Ben a view of a dead woman staggering toward him with a pitchfork protruding downward from her chest, as if someone had stabbed upwards . . . "Dooby!" Ben startled, seeing no one else alive anywhere near. He started running uphill, already out of breath.

He heard the combine crash a few seconds later, and, faintly, the screams of the trapped biker shortly after. The edges of Ben's vision looked—dark somehow. His left arm hurt so much he stopped swinging it. His lungs burned. He could hear his heart in his ears . . . The night passed, the sun rose to shine on Ben's gray, contorted face. His body had not a bite on it as he led the herd approximately east by southeast. The only signs of his cause of death? His right hand clamped around his left bicep and his left arm contorted around it to clutch his chest.

Pete was standing on the roof of a strip mall when Batter drove up to it. Pete waved. Batter stopped, stared for a moment, and came around to the ladder. Pete opened the ladder cover and stood back to let him up. "You the sentry relief?" Batter shook his head. "I been waitin' here for the sentry. There USED to be one here. Found some batteries for a radio. Rechargeables!" Batter stared at him for a moment. He pulled out an Etch-A-Sketch and crudely wrote, "I look for him 2."

Pete blinked. "You can't talk? I thought I seen you talk once."

Batter struggled with the knobs a moment, scowled, shook the toy clear, and started again. He wrote, "Sick, trap with rusty barb wire."

Pete looked at him in alarm. "Sick?! You got a fever?"

Batter nodded, shook the toy clear, and started again. He began writing crudely, "Lock-jaw" and was almost finished when he felt Pete's knife enter his back. He fell to all fours, cracking the toy on the catwalk.

"I'm sorry," said Pete, "I can't take a chance on you turnin' on me. Stabbed in the back should make you fall quick. Won't hurt after that. I'll cut your spine. You won't stand up after."

Batter shot Pete in the head with a small pistol. Pete fell down. Batter slowly got to his feet. He stomped Pete's neck. He started down the ladder—and fell a mere twenty feet, concussing himself on the way down.

It didn't hurt after that. But he did stand up after dying.

Negan looked grumpily at the casserole on his plate. "Out of oregano AND pasta, Viper?"

"Sorry, Negan. Just this."

"How dangerous IS one little strip mall? Pete goes completely MISSING, sentry's not checked in, patrol's not back, Ben's group out that way's not checked in—is somethin' goin' ON out there? Some a the boys are gonna really miss Dooby's work if he isn't back here by harvest time. Take the patrols in that area and bring 'em in closer. Have two of 'em help watch movin' the big guns to the next outpost on rotation."

Viper nodded. "Yeah, alright. Oh! We might ask for a worker or two with farm experience to keep it up till Dooby gets back. 'T'swut we had to do last big deer hunt, remember? Don't sweat it. Doob wouldn't miss it. He's a grower, a treehugger from way back. He's probably watchin' Ben's group right now, havin' a high old time just watchin' the action."

Dooby was high up, watching the action. Rocky's upper third HAD proven entertaining. Dooby was not, in fact, hugging a tree. He was hugging a telephone pole with his left arm, which had gone numb and cramped up in the cold morning air earlier. He had climbed right up the back of the nearest dead body at a bit of a run and leapt, after stabbing a dead woman clawing for him with a pitchfork and running all the way to the third pole, just inside the woods. He had expected to call out and draw the dead away from the combine, so Ben could get out whoever was inside and climb a tree to wait out Ben drawing them away with a motorcycle engine or something, the way they usually did it.

Unfortunately, the dead were coming out of the woods on both sides of the utility pole clearing and closing on him. Out of breath, he'd taken the leap of his life and climbed halfway up the pole. Then he'd heard the combine crash and the screaming biker trapped in the wreckage being eaten alive as the dead clawed their way in just far enough. Dooby had stayed there then, just waiting, while the dead reached fruitlessly for him and clawed each other in the process. He sighed. He pulled a last joint out of a pocket. He stuck it in his mouth and pulled out a lighter. He lit the joint and pocketed the lighter. He puffed expertly, savoring the flavor and the enveloping calm. Nodding to himself, he stepped off the wire step to fall into the dead, outstretched arms waiting to rend him.

Ben's dead body with tangled arms was in the middle of the herd many miles eastward when a lone, familiar biker pulled up on the highway ahead of it and turned sideways. Darryl waited for a moment, sizing up the numbers and the way they were spread out. He noted the stragglers and the ones wandering off the shoulders of the highway as they fell closer into step. He let them approach to twenty feet out and drove a hundred feet. He waited till they were within fifty feet. He drove another hundred and fifty and waited again . . . He took the next left as a group of five walkers, one with a forehead tat of three letters joined the group. He drove another two hundred . . .

And so death makes turncoats of us all. I couldn't resist having another dovetail with Darryl and Negan as I finished off my major sacrificial characters. Please read and review.