ampishPoet I appreciate it all the same
RHatch89 thanks, a bunch
Think I'm a just upload the rest of this story within the next few days/weeks so I can have the rest of summer to focus on preparing for uni.
The next morning, I woke up on the floor in my room alone. Dad and Michonne were asleep and Judith, too, and Oliver wasn't around the house. Not by the lake, or on watch. I found him behind the church, in the graveyard. The world had frosted over in the night; just starting to thaw. Birds chirped and the sun was rising over roof-tops.
And Oliver was asleep.
He startled when he heard me coming.
"Just me," I said.
He looked around, shivering and confused.
"Hey," I whispered. "You— You should come back to the house. You'll get sick."
He mumbled something like, "I am sick," except then he sort of pretended he didn't say that and instead said something else: "I need to find flowers for his grave. The old ones died."
I looked at the name carved into the wooden headboard.
MIKEY LLOYALS
1995 – 2012
"How long have you been out here?"
Oliver shrugged.
I watched him, and then I said, "We'll find him flowers. Promise."
Oliver looked at me. I ran my fingertips through his fringe, then let the early breeze blow it all back again. Oliver shivered again so I took off my coat and put it around his shoulders. He put his hand on my knee, kept it there for a few seconds, then let go.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Nothing," he said.
I smiled. I bent down and kissed his forehead and whispered, "Al de là, Oliver."
He agreed to come home and sleep for the rest of the morning, but as we were walking back, we heard the trucks approaching Alexandria.
Oliver rubbed his sleepy eyes. "Is it them already?"
"Heapsters. Yeah," I said.
In the distance, brakes squeaked and engines hissed. We heard the gate pull open, and a whole army of Heapsters began setting up around Alexandria. They'd brought bikes and those trash-trucks with the crushers which more people climbed out of. Michonne and Dad talked with Jadis, who had a long, pale face and straight, shoulder-length, brown hair with grown-out blond ends. Rosita, Aaron and Daryl were wiring up the explosives in a truck parked outside by the burned houses. On the side of the truck, the logo read: Trust a Move.
Oliver and I got to work loading our guns and packing ammo, and then we went up onto the guard post next to the front gate, which, three months ago, Noah had extended to stretch all the way along the wall. Aaron, Eric and Scott came and joined us, positioned to our left, along with a few other Heapsters and my father who stood at the edge, beside the gate.
A Heapster, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old, lit a cigarette with a match, and caught Oliver glance at it. He had long hair tied back in a messy bun and his skin was sun-burned and scarred and rashy, dark circles under his eyes and specks of sweat and dust in the lines along his neck and face and fingers. He looked like he was filled with sand. That was the colour of him, too; sand. His hair and his eyes and his skin.
He caught me watching him, and smirked when I turned my head back to the Trust a Move truck. When I snuck another look, he was looking at Oliver again.
Oliver looked at him, too.
"Could really use a smoke right now," he said.
The Heapster reached into his pocket and held out a pack.
Oliver took a cigarette. "Shoot me up?"
The Heapster did — he gestured Oliver towards him and Oliver shuffled over, thanking him under his breath with the cigarette between his lips. I watched the ends of their cigarettes press and glow and crackle. The Oliver turned away and scowled out over the driveway. He took a long drag and blew it up to the sky. The smell made me think of Grady, and Oliver must've been able to tell because he put his hand on my knee and squeezed, then let it go and smoked more.
The Heapster guy made a small scoff at the back of his throat and looked away from us, flicking the butt of his cigarette over the wall.
"We win," he said.
Yeah, I thought. We do.
Just then, a Heapster somewhere sounded an alarm, which was one of those animal-calls. Another Heapster somewhere else sounded their own whistle: the Saviours were coming. Dad looked over at me and nodded. And then he double took.
"Oliver! Put that out..."
Apologising, Oliver snubbed it out and left it by his boot, blushing. He punched me when I snorted. Dad turned away.
"Rosita."
Standing in front of the gate, she nodded up to him.
"Get into position," Dad told her. "I'll signal you... And the wall's gonna hold?"
"It'll hold."
A moment later, vehicles were approaching. Three trucks — and all our eyes went wide when we saw the figure standing on the trailer of the first truck.
"All points are covered..." Eugene said, talking through a megaphone. The truck's trailer had nothing on the back but him and a large, rectangular crate tied down and covered by rope and a sheet. "Every contingency is already met," he went on. "I come armed with two barrels of the truth. A test is upon you, and I'm giving out the cheat sheet."
I couldn't believe him.
His truck, driven by some Saviour, parked on the grass in front of the Trust a Move truck. The other two Savour trucks were parked along the driveway.
"H— Hello," Eugene said. "I come salved with the hope that it is my dropped knowledge that you heed. Options are zero to none." He sighed all scratchy through the megaphone. "Compliance and fealty are your only escape. Bottom-lining it: You may thrive, or you may die. I sincerely wish for the former, for everyone's sake. The jig is up, and in full effect. Will you comply, Rick?"
He was doing this. Just like that? After everything?
"Where's Negan?" Dad ordered.
Eugene put down his megaphone.
And he said it.
He said, "I'm Negan."
My stomach sank, fell from the post and hit the ground with a splat. Dad's too. He took a deep breath, then another, and then he looked at Rosita and nodded, and it was over... click... only it wasn't. We'd all ducked but there was no explosion. Just silence. The Trust a Move truck was still in one piece and guns clicked and before we knew it the Heapsters had turned on us, too, one barrel aimed at each of our backs.
An old Heapster, Jadis' right hand man, opened the gate. Negan stepped out of his truck. He patted Eugene's back as he stepped down. The Trust a Move truck was opened and the explosives were disarmed and folded up by Negan's men.
Dwight looked around.
I wanted to shoot him through the skull.
"You ever hear the one about the stupid little prick named Rick who thought he knew shit but didn't know shit," Negan asked, "and got everyone he gave a shit about killed?"
He pointed up at Dad.
"It's about you."
I looked at Oliver. He looked at me, too. Horrified. And then the sandy guy dug his gun into the side of his temple and Oliver flinched and had to look down.
"You're all gonna wanna put your guns down now," Negan said.
"No one drops anything," Dad urged. He said something to Jadis who was standing behind him with a gun to his head. I only heard the last part of what she said back:
"He made a better deal."
"You push me, and you push me. And you push me, Rick!" Negan said, hips forward in that way. "You just tried to blow us up, right? I mean, I get me, my people. But Eugene? He's one of yours. And after what he did, he stepped up. You people are animals. Universe gives you a sign, Rick, and you just..." Negan flipped him off. "...shove your finger right up its ass."
Negan laughed.
"Dwight, Simon, chop-chop."
They climbed up onto the first truck and uncovered the sheet to reveal a coffin. Simon wheeled it back, then stood it up beside Negan on the trailer. Simon caught a glimpse up at Oliver and double took, but stepped down from the truck when he needed to move out of the way.
"So, you don't like Eugene anymore," Negan said, Lucille swinging by his calve. "You guys gotta like Sasha. I do, too."
Lucille knocked on the coffin.
Negan said, "Got her right here packaged for your convenience, alive and well. Now, I brought her so I wouldn't have to kill all of you, and not killing all of you could get complicated. See, I know there's a lot of firepower left in there, Rick. So I'm gonna make this simple.
I want all the guns you've managed to scrape up.
Yep, I know about those, too.
I want every last grain of lemonade you got left.
I want a person of your own choosing,
for Lucille.
Daryl — ooh, I gotta get me my Daryl back.
I see you.
And the pool table and all the pool cues and chalk.
And I want it now, or Sasha dies, and then all of you. Probably.
C'mon, Rick."
I was so angry. I was so angry. I felt like I had all the angry in the world built up inside of me and just me and nobody would ever know how angry me and all my angry felt. I'd never tell anybody of my angry. My pure angry. It was mine and mine only.
"Just because I brought her in a casket doesn't mean she has to leave in it."
Dad said nothing.
"You know what?" Negan asked. "You suck ass, Rick. You really do. I don't want to have to kill her, but that's exactly what you're gonna make me do."
"Let me see her," Dad said.
Negan chuckled. "Oh. Alright. Just give me a second. I might have to get her up to speed. You can't hear shit inside this thing." He used Lucille to knock again. "Sash. You're not gonna believe this crap."
Then Negan opened the coffin — and Sasha lunged out at him.
"Holy fuck!"
Growling and dead, Sasha grabbed him and they fell from the trailer. I didn't wait. I didn't want to miss another shot. I didn't want more people to add to the list of the people I didn't kill, so I swung around and put a bullet through an old Heapster's knee, and another through his skull. Oliver followed suit and shot another Heapster through the skull, and another. I saw the guy from earlier, heavy with adrenaline and sand as he aimed at me. Oliver threw himself at him, and as the Heapster fell from the post, he snatched Oliver's shirt sleeve and dragged him over, too. I heard their yells. I watched them crash to the ground hard. Someone screamed. And then they were fighting. The guy wrestled the gun out of Oliver's hand and it flung out of reach. He tried to scramble for it but Oliver grabbed him. He hit him. The Heapster hit him back. And again. I couldn't shoot down without being sure I would hit my target. And then Scott grabbed my shirt and yanked me out of a spray of bullets.
We shot out at the Saviors. I saw one of my bullets split through someone's ear and out through the other. Saviors were getting in. Heapsters were already in. I peeked over the side to see Oliver and he was getting choked, his gun tangled in his and the Heapster's hands, and then it went off. I saw the flash, the splatter... the way Oliver's body jostled and how hard and fast he hit the ground, but I didn't want to see anything else. I didn't want to think. So I looked away. I looked away and I shut my eyes and I didn't think. Scott and Aaron and Eric were shooting and yelling at me. I didn't think. Only I did. I thought and I thought and then I had to look. I had to. And I saw. And there was a dead boy lying in the grass. I don't climbing down, just that then I was running across the grass. Scott grabbed me as I got there but I shoved past him. I thought it was Oliver but it wasn't. It was the Heapster. I turned him over onto his back and he wasn't full of sand anymore but blood. Blood spilling everywhere. Oliver's knife was lodged in his throat. I yanked it out, blood splashing my palms, and looked around.
"Oliver!"
I had to find him, but first I needed cover. Scott fought with me. We hid between the dump-trucks. He dodged under the back and had to stay down when there were too many Saviors. They were rushing in among the Heapsters like a flood and I was alone. I thought of the prison, when I was fighting on my own until I found my father and Oliver. It occurred to me that I might not be that lucky this time.
Then I heard a creak and I turned around and then something hard and heavy crashed into my face — I don't think I was out for very long. The next thing I knew, I was opening my eye and the gunfire hadn't quite ended and I was winded and in pain and laid on my back against something lumpy and shaking. My face throbbed. I looked for Oliver and my father. It was like instinct. And instinct paid off because Oliver was staring down at me.
"Oliver," I said, and laughed.
My face felt so bruised that smiling ached. Blood was smattered across his cheek and lip and hand and clothes. "I'm sorry." He sounded like he was in a lot of pain, and I wasn't smiling anymore. "I didn't mean to open the truck door that hard. Carl. Fuck. I— I... I had to hide."
"Oliver?" I saw that he was bleeding from his right arm. Bleeding bad. "Oliver..." I repeated, only my voice cracked that time. I sat up and pulled his sleeve up. He'd been shot just above his elbow. "Oh no. Oliver — shit, your arm."
"It's okay." He gasped. "Just a flesh wound."
"That's not a flesh wound."
"My leg. It's really bad."
"What happened?" I knew the answer. I was looking right at it. Even through his jeans I could see something was wrong. Very wrong. Oliver's jeans were cuffed, so I couldn't roll them up. Instead I took his knife and sliced his jean leg open from the ankle up to the knee.
Oliver's shin was swollen. A black and purple and red bruise stretched all the way across it and in the centre was a hard lump. And I touched it — I don't know why I touched it I just wanted to make sure it was real and broken and a bone and I couldn't believe he had been shot and it all happening to him right when I turned my back — and Oliver screamed.
"No, no, don't do that! Please, don't do that!"
"I'm sorry." I shuddered. "I'm sorry. Crap. Dammit!"
Oliver looked like he was going to black out. He clutched his arm and blood swelled and dribbled over his fingers. "Son-of-a-bitch," he said. His laugh was weak and breathless. "That rompicoglioni shot me up pretty good after all, huh?"
"Shh." I held his face. I didn't know what to do. "Shh, hey, hey." I was crying. "Oliver, I don't know what to do. Oliver. Oliver, you gotta tell me what to do."
His eyes shut and his head rolled back and then he wasn't there anymore.
"Wait," I said to him. "Wait, Oliver... wait." I don't remember a lot of things after that. I think I remember holding him to my chest. I think I remember that I kept saying his name, "Oliver," and I kept saying, "wait." I think I remember crying.I remember that. I remember yanking off my belt and tying it as hard as I could around the base of his right arm. I remember removing his belt, too, and using it to tie around his left leg. And then I remembered the rest of the world... and someone was standing right over us.
Before I could react, Simon pulled Oliver out of my hands and dropped him away from me. Someone else grabbed my collar and yanked me back. It was a big guy with a grey beanie hat and broad shoulders. He hung me from his fist for a second until I stopped thrashing.
"Knew I recognised this one," I heard Simon say, grimacing down at Oliver, who wasn't moving. "Not so smart-mouth now, are you, you little shit."
He cocked his gun
and placed the barrel
to Oliver's forehead.
"NO!" I fought furiously. I was going to kick and scream. "OLIVER!" I was going to turn into a tsunami. "OLIVER!" I was going to crush and drown every last one of them.
Only that was when Negan strolled around the truck.
"Oh, hoo!"
Lucille swung over his shoulder. He looked at me, and then he looked down at Oliver.
"This. Is. Interesting."
Notes
Similarly to the way Oliver was only supposed to dislocate his shoulder instead of lose a hand in the last book, he was only supposed to sprain his ankle in this chapter, not break a fucking leg...
"I'd never tell anybody of my angry. My pure angry. It was mine and mine only." was inspired by that quote Carl read to Oliver way back in The Easy Part chapter 13 from Bernard Beckett's August: "He could never tell her of the fear. The perfect fear. That was his alone."
As always,
Happy reading.
