Aside from the small snag of the battery in the RV going out, the trip was painless and almost serene. Glenn, the RV Wizard, got the beast up and running again. They pass the Washington Monument and the smoldering remains of the country's capital. It was almost a relief to watch D.C. fade in their rearview mirrors.
When they reach the gates of Alexandria they park outside and all climb out. They group together, molding into natural formations that are familiar. Alma, Lupe, and Noah are by Beth and her family. Daryl hovers over to the side, trying to get a clear line of fire. Carol, Tyreese, and Sasha are just in front of Daryl. Abraham, Rosita, Tara, and Eugene are on the other side. Gabriel hovers inconclusively near the back. Rick, Michonne, and Carl with Judith in his arms are in the front. They're all so tense their heartbeats thrum in their ears, waiting for the gate to open. They all fear entering another level of hell.
"Listen!" Alma whispers. There's a collective breath, a force-induced calm, and then they hear it.
Laughter.
Chatter.
The delighted giggles of playing children.
That fact washes over the group, stunning them with a wide array of thoughts. Desperation for safety was a common one. Thankfulness. Eagerness. And helpless terror.
Michonne reaches down and grasps Rick's hand. "You ready?" She asks, voice husky with equal measures of hope and fear.
"Yeah," Rick nods stiltedly, staring at the gate. "Yeah..." He squeezes her hand tight.
The large rod iron gate squeals as it slides open. The second chain link fence, covered with a tarp, jangles along its track as it's pulled back. Aaron walks in first, holding Eric. He places Eric down on a nearby bench and asks a few of the Alexandrians walking by to grab whoever Denise is.
The group walks forward quite slow. Alma almost bumps into Carl cause he stopped right in her way. She catches him staring off into the distance and turns to see what he's looking at. There's a small, rotting church house that has a steeple. A girl with long brown hair stands in the lower window staring back at them. In a blink, she's gone. Carl and Alma look at each other in confusion until Lupe urges them along.
They stop at the rails of the gate and stare inside. The trash cans right behind Daryl rattle and hiss. The entire group turns on a hair, guns up and ready. Daryl lets loose a bolt, which nails a pissed off possum in the heart. It keels right over and the rest of the group deflates in relief.
The chain link gate squeals open further. A single guy steps out with light brown curly hair, a sparse mustache, and goatee. He stares out at the group, armed to the teeth, with an open-mouthed shock.
Daryl yanks up the possum by the bald tail. "Brought dinner," he says without affect.
The curly haired guy gapes at him.
"It's okay," Aaron insists. He waves the group in. "Come on, it's okay."
Daryl slips in first, keen eyes shooting everywhere they can touch to assess for threats. The rest of the group follows him in, eyes roving, and a little stunned. Once each member crosses the threshold the thicker gate gets shut. It makes a clang that hits each of the group's ears like a death knell.
The curly haired guy steps up. "I'm Nicholas. Before we go any further, I'm gonna need you all to hand over your guns." No one moves an inch. He blusters a bit, narrowing his eyes to a glare. "To stay, you hand them over."
Rick steps forward, baby now on his hip and the hand cannon on the opposite side. He looks at Nicholas once and the guy folds, eyes dropping away. Rick snarls, "We don't know if we wanna stay."
"It's fine, Nicholas," Aaron insists.
Rick leans in towards Nicholas, squinting in the sun. His voice is grating and hollow, "If we were gonna use'em, we would have started already."
Nicholas gets the guts to glare at Rick, but he still shakes. Aaron interjects, "Let them talk to Deanna first."
"Who's Deanna?" Abraham barks.
"She's the person to talk to if you wanna know anything about this place. She's our leader," Aaron explains as he looks around the group. "Rick, how about you go first?" Rick looks around and nods. Aaron turns to Nicholas. "Please show the others to Deanna's garden. Get them food, water, whatever they need, okay?"
"Sasha..." Rick's voice cuts through the conversation.
Sasha notes Rick's gaze over her shoulder and turns. A walker is a couple feet from the back of the RV. She raises her rifle and fires off a single shot that tears through the walker's head. She turns back to see both Aaron and Nicholas gazing at her in awe. She looks over at Tyreese, wearing the proud hidden grin of an older brother. But he didn't miss the way they gaped at his baby sister's perfect shot. That underlined the suspicion that this place was much more of a veneer than anything else.
Rick starts walking with Aaron and muses, "Good thing we're here."
Nicholas is still staring at Sasha, aghast. He stammers, "Follow me." Turning on his heel he guides them around the opposite side of the house Rick and Aaron head towards. They get rounded into a big brick patio with a fire pit and a bunch of outside furniture.
Everyone spreads out and takes their positions. There is a stony silence within the group. None of them want to worry about getting distracted. They look casual enough that Nicholas doesn't start screaming in terror. But they're all angled against walls or furniture, watching the entrance and exit. A few strategize in case of an emergency, stuck in hyper-vigilance.
Later, Rick comes out the door with a very petite red-haired woman in her mid to late fifties. "Hello everyone," she says once they hit the bottom steps. "I'm Deanna Monroe. I was a congressperson in Ohio, the 15th district. I figure I can give my introduction to you all at once instead of wasting any time in our interviews. And yes, I would like to have a conversation with each and every one of you. I need to know exactly who is coming through those gates. I hope you'll understand. It also gives me an opportunity to see where you might fit best, as we all have our jobs to do. Of course, if you have any particular skills you want to utilize, I would love to hear about it."
"I'm the so-called leader of Alexandria. So welcome." She smiles and it's almost genuine. Her eyes are bright and she seems like the type not to miss a thing. "Alexandria was formed after my family and I got redirected here by the Army. One that never returned for us. We had some supplies, so we made the best of it."
"This housing tract was built to be the beginnings of sustainability. It has its own solar grid, cisterns, eco-based sewage filtration, and much more." Deanna nods. "We built the wall using resources from a nearby mall construction site. My husband Reg is a professor of architecture and he got the first plates up with our sons. After a few weeks, more people arrived and we had help. We started to build and shape a community."
Rick's entire group glances over to him in confusion. This community got built right at the start and they'd had the protection of walls the entire time. They lasted since the beginning and none of Rick's group could ascertain how.
"We still want to build up this community. We can only grow stronger the more people that join our efforts. We hope to learn how to better survive and adapt, and to do that, we need help. Your help, specifically." Deanna looks upon them all with a pride that seems only partially manufactured. "We need people who understand the outside world, but still want to fight for it." A smile quirks in the corner of her lips. "Your group is the first one we've been willing to consider for a very long time."
"Here in Alexandria, we want to survive. We need your help, we need everyone's help to do it," she sighs, "but I also want us to do more than just survive. I want us to be able to cultivate lives, I want families to be supported, I want our children safe." She smiles over towards Judith. "I want them to live to have a future where all this is just history."
Rick clears his throat and steps forward, eying his group. "I want y'all to talk with Deanna. They've graciously offered us a place to sleep and some supplies. We should take some time to rest and we'll discuss things ourselves in time. I want you to have confidence in how you feel."
"I hope to inspire that confidence." Deanna grins. "Now, the one thing I ask of you is to hand over your weapons to my dear friend Olivia."
She gestures over to a round woman with dark brown hair and nervous, but kind eyes. Olivia is obviously a little afraid of the roughly hewn group, but she smiles nonetheless.
Deanna continues, "They're still your guns. You can check them out whenever you go beyond the wall, but inside here, we store them for safety."
Rick nods to his wary group, but they follow directions. The stack of guns grows and grows. Particularly weighted by Abraham and Lupe's contributions. Carol does a pantomime of ineptitude, her smile a bit goofy towards Olivia as she fumbles with her gun. The woman in charge of the inventory house is more focused on the teetering pile. With so many weapons, some hang over the side.
"Should have brought another cart," Olivia jokes as she pulls away.
"Now, who would like to go first?" Deanna asks.
Maggie goes. Then Glenn, Beth, and Noah. The line continues until Lupe and Alma decide to make their way up. Alma didn't want to go into the interview alone and Lupe respected that. Alma didn't want pressure on her to talk about what happened to her at Grady's. She didn't want to trigger a panic attack on her first day. She still struggled with the memories of being there, the nightmares. Lupe didn't mind being Alma's back up. She'd happily take the brunt of any tense conversation that turned sour. She'd always wanted to fight a politician, so maybe this was just gonna be her chance.