Rick's group stands staggered in front of the grill. Their eyes scan the area, still looking for threats. Lupe shifts on her feet. Something tacky sticks to the bottom of them, like the ground itself is trying to latch on and pull her under. She stares down at her shuffling toes, smearing the charcoal beneath her. There's a divot in the ground by her toe that she rubs at. She's tempted to inspect it, her knees start to bend, but she freezes.
"Mary, would you fix each of these new folks a plate for me?" Alex smiles and looks towards the older woman.
Lupe gets distracted by movement in the courtyard. Random residents start trickling in like a wedding procession. They wander around the space like NPCs on a specific track. One man sits and opens up an orange backpack, but he's not even looking inside of it. Another man sits facing a wall. He stares right at it, that's it. He rarely moves. A ginger gentleman walks out with a set of full body riot armor. She watches him take off the lid of a wooden crate and place it back on twice before picking it up. He glides to another spot and does it again. A woman sits at a table. The day is already heating up, but she's wearing a thick woven poncho. The fork in her hand pokes into her plate, but there's no food on it.
"Why do you let people in?" Michonne asks.
"When people become a part of us," Alex smiles, "we get stronger." He turns to Mary to grab some plates, handing them off to Carl, then Michonne. "Here..." His grin spreads wide again. "You guys look like you're starvin'. We better fatten you up."
Rick walks past Lupe right up to Alex as he extends his hand with a plate in it. Rick smacks the plate to the ground and reaches for Alex's hip. In a blink, Rick has the man twisted in his arms with a gun to his head. Everyone raises their weapons and points them at the gathered crowd. Those NPCs all face the burgeoning chaos now and they have weapons too. Lupe turns around in a slow circle and starts inspecting their routes for escape. She knew she hated it here.
"Where the hell did you get this?" Rick snarls, holding up a silver pocket watch on a chain.
"You want answers? You want anything else? You get'em when you put down the guns!" Alex mutters through lips stretched tight, smile now gone. He tries not to struggle against Rick. Very few are foolish enough to doubt the way he presses a gun into their face.
Lupe turns to see a figure strolling towards them in the alley. She doesn't want to take her eyes off of it, even as Rick speaks.
"I see your man on the roof with a sniper rifle," Rick muses, turning Alex with him to put him up as a shield. "How good's his aim?" Rick leans in and growls, "Where'd you get the watch?" He exhales tight. When there's no response, he roars, "Where'd you get this watch!?"
"Don't do nothin'! I have this!" Alex screams at the sniper. "You just put it down! You put it down!"
Lupe takes her aim at the sniper. He doesn't put the gun down, but he crouches a bit behind the top edge of the roof. Lupe feels adrenaline starting to snake through her. She grits her teeth. They shouldn't have trusted Terminus. People didn't deserve to trust anymore. She knows.
"You want to listen to me," Alex whimpers through his threat, "there's a lot of us."
"Where did you get the watch!?" Rick screams into his ear.
"I got it off of a dead one," Alex gargles out, "I didn't think he'd need it."
Rick turns him sharp, pointing him back toward the crowd. "What about the riot gear? The poncho?" Lupe maintains her aim at the sniper, clueless about what Rick's saying. She has a vague idea, but she doesn't quite want to ruminate on it yet.
"Got the riot gear off a dead cop," Gareth says emerging from the alley with his hands lowered. "Found the poncho on a clothesline."
Everyone shifts at Gareth's entrance. Lupe pulls out Alma's pistol. She has a gun in each hand, one pointed up at the sniper and one leveled at Gareth.
"Gareth, we can wait..."
"Shut up, Alex," Gareth says in a monotone.
"You talk to me," Rick growls at Gareth.
"What's there left to say? You don't trust us anymore." Gareth shrugs.
"Gareth..." Alex begs, "Gareth, please."
"Shut up!" Gareth snarls at Alex. He sighs and then tries to placate him, "It's okay. It's okay." Gareth steadies, raising a hand. "Rick, what do you want?"
"Where are our people?" Rick demands.
"You didn't answer the question." Gareth smiles and his hand closes into a fist.
Terminus erupts with gunfire. Rick twists around in time for bullets to riddle Alex's body. Lupe fires off both her guns with a simultaneous squeeze of her grip. Her shot at the sniper hits true, but the one towards Gareth only skims his arm. He wails and his hand jumps to cover the wound. He glares at Lupe and then runs away fast. Gunfire pelts the ground around them or cracks into the brick walls, kicking up dust. The group converges as Rick calls for Carl. Only four of them run off down the alley the gunshots direct them towards.
Lupe sprints after Gareth but the little rat slips into a door and locks it. She looks around and realizes that she's alone. She can't hear much of anything over the gunfire. In snippets, there's the sound of distant radio chatter, but she can't discern it. She thinks she hears Rick yelling, but she doesn't know which direction to go. Most of the rooftops have shooters up there. She starts to run, but skitters to a stop and looks to the building at her side.
Except one.
Lupe squares up to the building and her eyes scan the available real estate. There are some low windows and an awning with what looks like a water collection tank next to it. She shakes her head at herself, curses several times, and then runs towards the tank.
The gunshots focus on the group fleeing them. It gives Lupe ample time to get up to the roof without being bothered. As she throws herself over the edge, she tumbles down onto the rooftop and rolls. She hears the crunching of uneven footsteps in the gravel and lifts her head and her gun at the same time.
The sniper is dead, but not fully dead. She hit him in the throat. He must have bled out fast because he's already white-eyed, up, and shambling around. The maldito reaches for her, but she pulls the trigger and kills him a final time. She scrambles low on the rooftop and grabs his weapon. Alma is better on the long-range guns, but Lupe never shied away from an opportunity to improve. As she's fiddling with the gun, getting accustomed to it as fast as she can, the static of the radio buzzes it to life.
A strange too casual voice speaks, "Heading into the main."
Lupe grits her teeth and scrambles back over for the radio, tucking it into her pants. She goes back to the rifle, perches its muzzle on the roof, hugs it to her shoulder, and then starts firing.
Her shots ping off the other rooftops until she gets the hang of it. The rifle kicks like a mule, but she forces herself to keep going despite the ache in her shoulder. She manages to pick off four of the Terminus rooftop snipers, smiling at herself all the while.
The radio comes to life at her hip. "We've got a rogue one!"
"Get them off B!" Someone shouts and it's suspiciously close.
Lupe turns to look over her shoulder and Gareth comes from the rooftop entrance on the opposite side. He has at least four other people with him.
Lupe raises her gun and fires off as many shots as she can until they're all jumping for cover. She peeks over the edge of the roof. The Terminus group will get the balls to fire back soon. She doesn't have many options.
"This is bull shit. This is bullshit. This is bullshit!" She screams as she jumps, staying tight to the side of the building. She falls down with a wail, tucking her body at the last second. She smacks into an awning that almost buckles beneath her weight, but doesn't break. She's able to roll out of the thick material and lower herself to the asphalt.
"Holy shit!" Lupe rasps, knees knocking as her entire body quivers. There isn't much time for fear so she sprints off down the alleyway with the fewest bullet holes in the walls.
"Rogue is off the rooftops!"
Lupe hears Gareth not only through the radio, but his voice echoes in the alley as she runs. She doesn't stop, winding down the paths that look the least destroyed. Skidding to a stop, she kicks open a random door. Once she sprints inside, she slams the door shut behind her and pulls a heavy metal table in front of it. She turns around and goes completely numb.
Luckily the room is almost empty, but only empty of people that are alive. Her eyes stay wide-open and unblinking. She flinches hard hearing the gunshots erupt outside again. But her eyes refocus on the corpse laying on the other metal table. The man's head lolls to the side, eyes wide open and unseeing. The back of his skull dents in from a hard blow, but there's also the gaping wound across his throat. There are pieces of him missing. She knows well enough what those absent chunks mean. She read Silence of the Lambs when she was eight.
She sprints through the open warehouse and out the back door. She runs towards the fences until she sees two people pop out of the brush. They poke their muzzles through the chain link.
"Put the guns on the ground!" One man screams.
Lupe huffs, eyes unblinking. She takes off the rifle and lowers it to the ground, nice and slow. She stands with her hands up and her eyes flickering through her surroundings.
"The pistols at your side too!" The woman yells.
Lupe nods. She lowers her hands to her weapons but takes her sweet time. She's halfway there, acting like it's the longest process in the world. The people behind the brush start to stand right as her hands brush against the handles.
She draws so fast they don't see it. She re-holsters the pistols as the two Terminus guards drop dead on the other side of the fence. Shoving her toe under the rifle, she kicks it up into her hands and slings it across her back. She sprints towards the fence and scales it as fast as possible. Once over the fence, she stomps on the heads of the dead guards, takes their guns, and disappears into the forest. She knows she needs to get out of there, but she's not leaving them behind.