Thanks for the reviews. I'm so glad you haven't all abandoned Rickdrea as a ship!
Chapter 25.
Rolling up to the gates the following afternoon, Rick was unprepared for the carnage that awaited them. He was forced to slam on the brakes, their passage blocked by at least a dozen corpses strewn haphazardly across the road. Based on their advanced state of decay, the bodies were predominantly walkers, though he counted at least three uninfected men among them.
"Holy shit," Glenn breathed. "You don't think…?"
When Rick's eyes found his in the rear view mirror, he looked like he might burst into tears.
"I don't know," he growled, his jaw clenching with fury.
The window of bedroom he inhabited with Andrea and the girls had been completely obliterated by gunfire. He just hoped that they hadn't been asleep when they were attacked.
His son must have been keeping a look out for them from somewhere inside the house, because moments later he appeared, jogging down the drive to meet them.
Rick jammed the car into park and hopped out. "Carl! What happened?" he called to him through the bars, waiting impatiently to be let through. "Is everyone okay? Andrea? Your sisters?"
The fact that both men and walkers alike appeared to have been killed by Andrea's signature headshot gave him hope that they too had survived the encounter unscathed.
"They're fine, Dad," Carl assured him, removing the padlock. "Those guys tried to break in but me and Andrea took care of them."
"I'm sorry you had to do that."
Carl walked over to the body closest to the gate, retrieving a pair of heavy-duty bolt cutters.
Whoever those guys were, Rick thought with a growing sense of horror, they weren't messing around.
Carl shrugged. "Why? It's what you would've done."
Rick couldn't deny that it was, but he still hated the thought of leaving his family alone to fend for themselves once again. He gave his son a quick, impulsive hug.
"What about the walkers?" he pressed when he released him, although he was pretty confident that he already knew the answer to that.
"We think they came looking for the source of the shooting."
"Where are the girls?" he asked. "Are they inside?"
Carl nodded. "Judy and Georgia are napping in Carol's room. Andrea's up in the attic, keeping watch."
Everyone else seemed to be gathered in the living room. Rick left the rest of his group to talk to them, hurrying past them to the stairs.
His heart rate slowed, the knot in his stomach relaxing when he saw Andrea seated cross-legged in the window nook, her rifle resting across lap. Judging from the way she slumped bodily against the wall, she hadn't managed more than a few brief moments of respite last night, if she had even slept at all.
He realised she must have watched their arrival from her vantage point here in the attic, because she knew it was him before he even spoke.
"Hi, honey," she greeted him, turning to him with a weary grin. "You'll have to forgive the mess. I've been a little busy."
He wasn't in the mood to be glib, closing the distance between them and enveloping her in a bone-crushing hug.
She let out a small sound of surprise, but he felt her arms wind around him in response, her left hand cradling the back of his head.
He kissed the side of her neck, burying his face in her loose curls.
"I missed you too, Rick," she murmured after a few moments of this, "but you're going to have to let me breathe eventually."
It was only then that he realised how forcefully he was holding her.
"Sorry," he told her, letting her go. "It's just that when I saw those bodies, I thought… I don't know what I thought," he finished, shaking his head.
He sat back against the opposite wall. "Carl said you killed them."
"We had no choice," she admitted. "They were on our land."
"They say anything that might tell us who they were, or what they were doing out here in the middle of nowhere?"
"No, but then we didn't exactly give them a chance."
She met his gaze, a steely glint in her eyes. "I couldn't let them hurt our girls."
"You did the right thing," he assured her, stroking her cheek. "All that matters is that you and the kids are okay."
He was moving in to kiss her when a soft mewling pricked up his ears. "Was that…? Never mind." They were alone in the attic.
They leant in again, but before their lips could meet, a shrill cry erupted from somewhere nearby.
This time, the sound was unmistakable.
It was coming from the antique dresser in the corner. Rick saw that the bottom drawer had been removed and placed on the floor. Inside was what he'd assumed was a bunch of old blankets…
That was, until they began to squirm.
He was still processing this when Andrea passed her rifle to him and approached the wriggling bundle.
"I had to keep leaving my post to feed her," she explained off his bemused look, lifting Georgia from her makeshift crib. She carried her back over to the window with her, resuming her previous position. "In the end, I decided it'd be easier if she just stayed up here with me."
"You brought our two week old daughter on watch duty?" Rick asked, feigning outrage. "What if you had to shoot someone else?"
Andrea paused in unbuttoning her shirt to cock a dubious eyebrow at him. "She almost got eaten by a hoard the night she was born, and you're worried this is going to scar her for life?"
He knew she meant it as a joke, but Rick couldn't help the sigh that escaped him.
"You know, it doesn't always have to be like this," he told her seriously, watching her and the baby get settled.
Andrea regarded him with confusion. "It could just be the lack of sleep talking, but I'm not sure I follow you."
He realised that he'd been so focused on hearing her version of the events of the past few days that he hadn't filled her in on his own.
"Last night we made camp with a man who claimed to be from a settlement a few days north of here," he explained. "Almost a hundred people: men, women, children… He says they have room for us, too. All we have to do is show up."
"And you believe him?"
The idea that a little pocket of civilisation could still exist was preposterous; if he hadn't been there to hear it firsthand, he wasn't sure he would have been able to accept it himself.
"I know what you're thinking."
"So you won't mind if I say it," she insisted. "Even if this man is telling the truth, how do we know it's not another Woodbury? Or worse?"
After what she'd endured at the hands of the Governor, he couldn't blame her for being gun shy, especially now that she was a parent herself.
"We don't," he agreed. "But what if it isn't? What if this is everything we've been searching for?"
He could see the hesitation in her eyes; he took advantage of her uncertainty to continue: "We could finally give the girls the home they deserve. Carl could go back to school. He could have friends his own age. We could be a normal family. Don't you think we owe it to them to at least check it out?"
"Those are all good points," she allowed, "but it's not up to us. We need to discuss this with the group, let everyone decide for themselves."
She was silent for a long moment, as though weighing up whether or not she should tell him something.
"Maggie's pregnant," she said finally.
The news should have come as a shock to him, but for some reason, it didn't. Life found a way, even in an apocalypse. His daughters were proof of that.
"Has she told Glenn?"
Andrea nodded. "From what she says, he's as thrilled about it as you were," she teased him, nudging his leg gently with her foot.
If only they'd had somewhere to go back then, he thought, some final destination in mind, maybe he would have been a little more optimistic about Georgia's impending arrival.
"Then I guess we know which side their votes will land on," he told her.
To anyone who's still mad about Andrea's death, I recommend listening to the podcast Laurie Holden did with Greg Nicotero at Walker Stalker, released on iTunes earlier this month. They basically admit what a major fuck up that whole story line was: Mazzara made the decision to kill her himself, against the advice of the other writers and producers, and only called Laurie the NIGHT BEFORE shooting on the finale was due to begin to tell her. The original script had Andrea leading the citizens of Woodbury back to the prison. So she was always meant to be around for season four.