How the Man Designed Me

Chapter 25

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Special thanks to my reviewers as always: piratejessieswaby; bevin79; FrankiKaos; FanFicGirl10; fanreader01 and Guest. Glad you guys liked the mushy stuff. This next chapter involves one of my favourite episodes of the entire show and the indomitable Lenny James!

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Pennywise - Clear Your Head

watch?v=Q_zZYbqCukQ

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Carl gazed out the window from the back seat as the scenery passed by. It was a nice break to see the blue sky and the greens and browns of the woods after all that grey of the prison. He could feel the beginnings of fall in the air and in the crunch of the fallen leaves that whirled in the wake of the speeding car on the empty road. It had always been his favourite time of year, new class, new start, well as much as a small town can be. He reckoned he'd be starting high school if things were normal, maybe trying out for football. He wasn't big but he could run.

He wondered if Beth would even know who he was if it wasn't for all this because three years might as well be 30 in high school. Looks like the end of the world had its up side after all he thought as he traced the image of her face onto the glass with his finger.

"Janessa gave this to me." He said, breaking the silence and leaning forward holding up a CD. "I asked if she had anything that someone who wasn't a hundred years old would like."

"Ah, Pennywise. Nice." Blake said seeing the cover. "California Punk. Would it surprise you to know that's about 25 years old?"

Carl looked at Blake in shock.

"You know about Punk?" He gasped.

"Can't know Janessa and not learn about music, she's an encyclopedia when it comes to that. I've found quoting it back to her is the only way to make her stop talking about it." He replied with a chuckle.

Carl grinned up at him, thinking yeah, she did talk a lot about music.

"For example they got their name from the monster in a Steven King novel about an evil clown that ate children." Blake continued.

Carl's eye went wide, he remembered seeing that movie on TV, it was creepy.

"You know you look like the kind of kid he would have in one of his books..." Blake said with a straight face. He figured it was important to remember that he was still a boy, around the same age as David and by old world standards, they'd be riding their bikes, playing video games and starting to think about girls.

Let's face it the adolescent brain is still under construction, he thought. Science said they weren't really done until the early 20's. And that's just from the nature side of things, let alone the nurture. Blake shook his head, Carl already knows more about life and death then most people learn in a lifetime but without the emotional growth needed to process it, that takes time. He saw plenty of that in Vietnam, kids who would giggle over chocolate one moment and then kill someone in the next one. He thought Rick was right to bring him along, this is how he's going to learn, but he also needs time to be a young man. Carl giggled in the back seat next to him, proving his point.

"No really, Clear your head is a good one, and trust Janessa to find a song that fits." he told Carl seriously, knowing how sensitive a young man can be.

They passed a homemade sign with streaming coloured rags fluttering in the wind that read "Erin, we tried for Stone Mountain. J." Up ahead they saw a lone male figure walking along the side of the road. He was dressed like a backpacker, jeans, red plaid jacket and bright orange knapsack with items clipped to the outside clanking with his movement. Turning as he heard their car coming up behind him he began yelling as they neared.

"Hey! Hey slow down! Slow down! I'm begging you please!"

Michone looked to Rick who narrowed his eyes briefly but he kept his eyes front and so she kept driving, his earlier words of "we'll patch you up and then you're gone" echoing in her head. She wasn't going to rock the boat. Carl looked back through his window as they passed the man on the road without slowing, whipping his head around and looking through the back window to see the backpacker fall to his knees.

Blake could see his concern and turned to Carl, checking Rick's expression in the rearview mirror to see if it was ok to speak.

"You have to be observant and make hard decisions quickly. After a year out here you should know not to hang things like frying pans off your pack and make that kind of noise. What else did you notice about him Carl?" Blake asked going into instructor's mode.

"He seemed a bit too clean and his gear too new to have been on the road long and his yelling was way too loud, he knew we saw him." Carl replied promptly.

"He might be on his own he might not, but yes you're right about the amount of noise and the brightness of his gear. Doesn't say survivor does it? I've been on the road plenty and I've learned that there's those that will kill you and those that will get you killed. When in doubt you have to move on. Too much is at stake." Blake replied.

"But you picked up Daryl and Merle." Carl said questioningly, because they didn't look harmless to him.

"Good point. That's where instincts and experience come in. I was a Ranger and was trained to size up situations quickly. I could see that they knew their way around survival. Merle used the sun off his blade to catch our eye not noise. We also needed something. Information. We needed to know where they were coming from with just the shirts on their backs. Besides, Janessa said she had a feelin' and we all saw how that worked out." He replied with a smile.

Carl nodded his head and giggled.

Blake looked to Rick through the rearview mirror asking with his eyes if he'd said too much. Rick nodded his head slightly in approval. He could see the importance of teaching Carl the things that he'd need to know.

"Sad fact is that surviving isn't about saving everyone, it can't be done. If we picked him up and things went bad what would happen to everyone back at the prison with what's coming? Without the weapons we need." Blake asked.

"They be dead I guess." Carl replied.

"Yes they would, all of them. That's 12 people for sure. What about all the people y'all might save in your lifetime? Now on the other side you put one person..."

"So it's the good of the many outweighing the good of the few?" Carl interrupted.

"That's right Carl, Blake has the right of it." Rick added to the conversation, grateful Blake had put into words what he knew to do instinctually but had thought to use as a teaching exercise. He realized that he had to do that more often now.

Michonne slowed the car as they came across an accident scene. The crumpled cars were still smashed together like it had just happened and overturned vehicles still lay by the side of the road. They crawled slowly past carefully seeing the corpses of passengers still trapped in their cars, red wet bodies stripped of flesh staring sightlessly at them and a walker whose legs were trapped by an overturned truck clawed at the air at them. Michonne was forced to leave the road to go around the obstructions and suddenly found herself in soft ground with the rear wheel spinning, unable to get traction. In a flash they went from safety to sitting duck, they were good and stuck.

Rick looked to Micheonne in annoyance and within moments they found themselves surrounded. Walkers pounded on the windows, snarling and clawing at the glass, one of them bearing the name Erin on a bead bracelet on her shrivelled wrist. Looks like she didn't make it to Stone Mountain.

"Cover your ears." Rick said to Carl as he pulled out his service revolver, winding his window down a couple of inches and getting ready to shoot the closest walker in the head. Blake did the same on his side of the car.

"Sorry Erin." Blake said gently as he pulled the trigger.

In short-order they cleared the scene and got to work with getting out of the mud trap they found themselves in. Going through the many suitcases strewn across the road at Rick gathered clothing which he then bundled with branches.

"This will work." He said walking back to the car, intending to use to help with traction under the tea wheel stuck in the mud.

"Tell me when." Michonne said as she sheathed her sword and got back behind the wheel.

Blake got into to the car as well to put weight on the back rear tire also seeing that this would be good moment for father and son bonding and he didn't want to get in the way of that. Finding themselves alone Rick turned back to Carl who was standing with his arms crossed and kicking a tuft of grass.

"Hey." Rick said with a nod of his head for his son to follow him.

"Put something like this under the car like this with a little gravel and sticks - gives you traction." He explained while kneeling by the rear tire and showing him what he was doing.

"Wouldn't have to do this if we didn't get stuck." Carl replied in irritation.

"It was an honest mistake." Rick replied softly, walking towards the other back tire to repeat the action.

"Why'd you let her come? She took you to Woodbury and you said she just split on you. And Oscar died..." Carl continued.

"It wasn't that simple." Rick said cutting him off. "I asked her to come today. I didn't want to leave her at the prison. Not if I wasn't there. Not with Merle - That and we got common interests. Right now he have the same problems so maybe we can work on them together."

"Just for right now?" He asked, his voice carrying through the open window.

Michonne kept her eyes forward, trying not to let the words scare her - She did not want to be alone out there again. Her eyes flickered to Blake in the backseat through the rearview mirror as Rick's reply of "Yeah just for right now." Softly followed.

Blake could see how devastated she was in that flicker of eye contact and quick downturned glance through the mirror, and tried to convey his reassurance but was cut off by the backpacker's screams from down the road.

"Hey!"

Great Blake thought, there he goes ringing the dinner bell again.

"Help me! I'm begging you! Help me! Hey!" He continued to scream as he ran towards them.

Rick looked at the approaching figure with concern, thinking for a second and then to Blake's comments earlier and pounded the back of the car twice.

That was Michonne's queue to turn the key in the ignition and pull out of the deep rut the car had been stuck in.

"I'm not bit! Please! Hey!" The back packercontinued toscream at the top of his lungs as he approached rapidly.

The car pulled away to his raw pleadings of "Help me! Stop!" Before he stopped in his tracks exhausted, and without hope with the realization that they were leaving him behind again. Rick leaned forward and pushed the CD into the player as the punk rock song played clear your head and the scenery flew by.

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Pulling into Rick's hometown they stopped at the police station, leaving Blake to guard the door only to discover that the gun locker had already been cleaned out. Putting his hands on his head in exasperation Rick tried to think of a plan b quickly.

Michonne bent down to pick up the only bullet remaining off the ground.

"You got any other police stations in town?" She asked quietly.

"I was the police here. Me and a couple of other guys. Ain't a big town." He replied saying "fuck" under his breath.

"There are other places to check, not as many guns as were here..." He continued.

"We need as many guns were in here, ammo too." She replied.

"Yeah we do but right now, I only got a line on a couple. There are a few places on the main street. Bars, liquor store. Owners had a gun behind the counters that people didn't know about. I did, I signed the permits. They might still be there..."

Michonne looked away.

"Do you have a problem with that approach?" Rick asked confrontationally.

"No Rick, I don't have a problem." She replied meeting his eye with a steady gaze, knowing how tenuous her place was. "Maybe ask Blake, he's the local Ranger."

Carl looked from Michonne to his dad in expectation, and then she passed Rick the bullet with a small smile and walked past him. Rick thought that over for a moment before putting it in his pocket and followed her out.

They continued on foot passing the jarring image of a walled in clearing with of a stacked pile of charred corpses, neatly arranged like wood in the centre of it. The arch of the opening in the brick wall had the words "Away with you" scrawled across it, making it clear to Rick that someone alive had been here since he'd left home, making it their's.

Looking down on the pavement they saw that green arrows were painted on the ground pointing in the direction they were headed. Hearing sounds in the distance had them all drawing their weapons as they cautiously approached the centre of town. The wall behind them had the messaging "No guilt you know that" painted in big yellow letters, adding to the ominous atmosphere as they approached what used to be the heart of Rick and Carl's home town.

Turning a corner they suddenly found themselves in a scene out of a Mad Max film. The sidewalks and road had been barricaded with fences, wooden pallets and sharpened spikes which narrowed the flow for traffic down to a single lane in the middle of the road. Massive industrial cable spools lined the centre with sharpened stakes radiating outwards like petals of a vicious flower. Parked cars also served as pin cushions with pulleys and barbed wire lines stringing between them and across the street from one side to the other like a psychopath's playground.

Throughout it all were messages on the ground and strung up on banners. "Turn around and live" was one and "Just Listen" another. The car windows had the word "clear" repeating on them. A pigeon flapped in a cage left out as bait breaking the silence.

"Looks like someone has already made this theirs" Michonne said as way of caution.

"Doesn't mean they found what we're looking for." Rick replied with dogged determination.

Blake exchanged glances with Michonne. It was clear whoever it was owned this part of town, whether they found it or not, it was theirs.

"Rick, I've told you I've got weapons, lots of them and access to more…" Blake began.

Rick simply ignored him like he wasn't even there as he continued talking.

"A couple of the places are just up ahead. Let's get in and get the hell out of here." He said ducking under a line of barbed wire and began to weave himself around the obstructions. "There! Turelle's. Shot gun and two handguns, licences issued to Turelle Debs."

A walker approached silently from behind and Michonne prepared to take care of her with her blade raised above her head but Rick stopped her.

"Wait, she'll get caught." He said simply.

The walker staggered forward with her pelvis first and immediately snagged her long skirts in the wire as Rick had predicted. A moment later the shot of a high powered rifle pierced the silence and the walker's skull , casing it to slump forward into the spikes.

"Hands! You drop what you got, your guns, your shoes and that sword. All of it. Hands up! 10…9..." A lone figure shouted from the rooftop across from them.

"We need that rifle." Michonne said softly.

"8…7…" The man counted down.

"I think I can get up there." She continued.

"6…" He yelled to them.

"Carl go!" Rick said as they each ran for cover.

Gunfire rained down on them from above and Rick found himself pinned down behind a truck. Blake laid down suppressing fire giving Michonne and Carl the time they needed to find cover.

A moment later Michonne appeared on the adjoining roof but the shooter was nowhere to be seen. She raised her shoulders in a shrug, before spotting him on the street level, as he resumed his gunfire. Rick and Blake soon found themselves running out of ammunition.

Just as the man was about to get the drop on Rick, Carl stepped forward from a boarded up storefront and shot the aggressor at point blank range in the belly as the others converged on his position.

"Are you ok?" Rick asked, looking at his son in stunned disbelief.

"Yeah" Carl replied while still scanning the surrounding area to see if there were any other threats.

"I told you to run for the Car!" Rick said. "I didn't want you to have to do that."

"I had to!" Carl replied forcefully.

Michonne and Blake looked at him with small smiles of respect and then at each other with a nod that said give the lil' man his props, Carl's a badass. Not only for taking the shot but for standing up to his ol' man.

Rick nodded and bent down to lightly bang the man lying on the street on his chest twice.

"He's wearing body armour." He said, changing the subject.

Pulling the jacket open and undoing the velcro straps he pushed the t-shirt up exposing the deep bruising but no wound.

"He's alive." Rick said.

"Do we care?" Michonne asked rhetorically.

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Shupert kept his distance watching from a rooftop opposite their position. He thought this would have been the perfect opportunity to take them all out. Shame, that Michonne would make a nice pet herself and that kid...had to give it to him. Raising an eyebrow he thought he kind of liked the little fucker. It'd be clean that way though, all this would be over and they could go back to the way things used to be. But the Governor's orders were clear, observe and report, that's all. So instead he got comfortable, laying flat on the roof and taking in the boobie traps down main street, already thinking of ways to use them in the red zone back at Woodbury.

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