April 11, 2011

~*~ Jesus ~*~

Jesus isn't entirely sure what to expect as he makes his way further into Georgia. He's not alone for the trip, since Olivia, Enid, Earl, and Earl's son, Kenneth, are along for the trip. That Olivia and Enid would want to see where their friends from Alexandria ended up doesn't surprise him, but for the blacksmith to want to come is a little more unique. He figures the Suttons would have made it a family affair if Tammy wasn't so busy with spring planting right now. Tina's family didn't feel up to a trip just yet, after months on the road.

He's glad it's been an uneventful trip. He's following the last route the Georgians used, and they haven't seen anything he would classify as a herd. The only signs of life they've seen are animals, mostly surviving livestock that are probably rapidly becoming undomesticated as more time without human intervention goes by.

The RV makes the trip a comfortable one, almost too comfortable for his taste. Even with Buttons and Oso, he tends to rough it on his sleeping arrangements while traveling. Buttons will enjoy the vacation. Oso is enjoying the road trip.

The first sign of people makes him a little nervous even though he knows the vehicles waiting outside Toccoa, Georgia are from Homestead. They've got four big semi-trucks on either side of the highway, pointed south. Honey's leaning against one of them, grinning as he pulls the RV to a halt on the highway.

"Got room for a passenger?" she asks.

He glances to the waiting semis, knowing they usually run a two-person per truck rule. "That gonna get you in trouble?"

She shakes her head and points to the blonde in the passenger seat of the closest truck. "We've got a trainee out today learning the ropes. She's a good enough shot to run shotgun for Glenn in my place."

With a wave to the truck, she hops on board the RV, greeting the others cheerily and thanking Earl when he gives over the front passenger seat to her. Jesus finds himself in a tight, affectionate hug that ends reluctantly. Oso immediate moves to plop his big head in her lap.

"Just follow the trucks. They shuffled the supply direction once we knew you were coming, so we've been working this stretch of highway."

"Finding much?" Just because they've got four trucks doesn't mean they're fully loaded, after all.

"An unholy amount. Toccoa evacuated really early on, from what we can tell at the police station from the chaos of paperwork left there. No one's wandered out this far that we can tell."

Jesus knows you can usually tell if there's been a larger human presence, because they leave dead walkers behind. Not every group gathers them up like the Homesteaders do. "Any more luck on finding survivors?"

"I think about half the problem's like the little group you found. Too many of them are staying on the move, rather than staying put someplace and trying to stay protected. We've all found evidence of where people have been, but no people."

"How far are we from Homestead?" Olivia asks.

Honey twists in her seat and smiles at the passengers. "Around seventy miles, so we should be there in two hours or so."

"I'm surprised Logan didn't wriggle into coming along," Enid remarks.

"Oh, he tried. But since this was a full supply run, Homestead rules apply. No one under sixteen. He's helping on a paddock building crew today after class instead, so that he'll be a little bit closer to the front gates."

"Paddocks? And he's building things?" Enid looks curious when Jesus glances up in the rear-view mirror.

"Learning to, yeah. We needed to expand the sheep paddocks because the flocks have outgrown the ten acres my brother kept his flocks on before all this. Fencing's for sheep is fairly light work, so they're running a youth crew on it."

After that conversation, Jesus isn't exactly sure what he's expecting once they've followed the semis into an entrance almost hidden by strategically placed vines and unkempt undergrowth. It's not winding through a deserted neighborhood of houses that were probably proudly lower middle-class rural domains once upon a time. Now they all have the abandoned air he senses in the towns.

"How much do you have enclosed?" Earl asks. He sounds as overwhelmed as Jesus feels.

Hilltop always felt like a big place, on the scale of end of the world. The Kingdom's a little more sprawling, but the old boarding school still isn't this big.

"Two hundred and fifty acres or so out here, but this is something they started working on during the winter. We could support everyone on the original area we had enclosed, but the council felt it was too risky."

"Does anyone live out here?" Olivia asks, ever the practical soul.

Honey shakes her head. "Not yet. Maybe later, once we are more confident of who's out there and how friendly they are. Everyone lives up on the original property for now."

She's studying the road intently, which Jesus can tell was once pavement but it's been layered over with gravel. Easier to maintain gravel, he supposes, and the pea gravel and oil mix that passes for pavement wouldn't hold up under the weight of the semi-trucks in the long term.

"Up here, when it clears out on the left, stop a minute. The trucks will go on without us."

As soon as he's stopped, she exits the RV, going to fencing that edges all the way to the pavement and pulls a hand-held radio from her gear.

In the distance, he can see a half-dozen people working, along with one much shorter figure that's got to be Logan. Four are working in teams of two, putting in fence posts in a pattern that's probably sensible enough if anyone knows about livestock. Two others are pulling wire fencing into place between the already set fence posts.

As Honey speaks into her radio, the tallest of the pair working the wire is the one that responds, pulling a radio off his belt. He calls out to Logan, whose excitement can't be missed because the smallest figure in the distance starts literally bouncing. It's apparently grounds for a break or end of duties for the fencing crew, because they start collecting up tools to a small truck.

Logan and the person Honey radioed end up on horseback instead of with the group at the truck. Jesus is fairly confident riding Buttons now, compared to his barely existent skills when he first lured her in out of the wild. But he wouldn't attempt to ride bareback, and that's exactly what Logan and his companion are doing. The mountain of a horse has a bridle and reins and nothing else. Stella lopes along beside the horse.

Jesus realizes a reunion on the RV is going to be rather cramped, so he manages to join Honey just as she opens a gate for the pair on horseback to exit the field. She's prepared for Logan's kamikaze dismount of the horse, because she's got her arms up to catch him. He gets about five seconds to brace himself before he's got his arms full of excited, overjoyed little boy.

The truck exits the small lane onto the gravel road and then Jesus realizes they aren't the only reunion. Enid's out of the RV, hugging the stuffing out of Ron Anderson where the boy popped out of the bed of the truck while it was stopped.

"He staying?" the driver calls back and Honey waves them on, so the small vehicle pulls off with the other four of the fence crew and two other dogs that look similar to Oso.

The rider is just watching in amusement as Logan finally lets Jesus go. "I gotta get going. I'm on shift in half an hour and I gotta stable Imbri and shower first."

"You gotta meet Jesus first," Logan pleads.

Jesus doesn't really need the introduction, because the guy looks enough like Honey that there's no mistaking this is her brother. He leans out to offer a hand to Jesus anyway. "Jasper Dixon."

It's a firm grip, reminding him even more of Honey. "Paul Rovia." Giving his real name makes the solemn expression change to a smile and he can see the mental note being made.

"Might get everyone on up so they can get a shower before supper. Mama said the ladies can use hers, but the guys will have to take turns on the upstairs or use the men's washroom in Pisces building. She's got them all sorted to bunk at the house anyway unless they're just bored enough to want the bunkhouse."

He gives a command to the horse and the big mare moves off up the side of the road at a trot.

Ron flashes them a grin as they all file back onto the RV. "I definitely recommend staying at the house."

"Why's that?" Enid asks.

"You'll see."

~*~ DC ~*~

Denise smiles kindly at the bemused expression on Olivia's face. "You look like I felt the first week here," she tells the former Alexandrian.

"It's weird. A lot of things remind me of Alexandria, all the conveniences, but then I'll get a glimpse of someone's holster or hear a snippet of supply run talk and I'm at Hilltop."

"They do try really hard to ignore the outside world at Alexandria, don't they?"

Olivia nods. "I think Hilltop did too, but they're more willing to adapt."

"And how's that going? I'd ask Jesus, but I'm not sure I could get a word in edgewise."

The bearded man doesn't seem to mind being appropriated to sit between Logan and Honey the next table over. While Denise thought it was to meet with Scout, all of the adults are humoring Logan's need to fill Jesus in on every last minute of the two months they've been apart.

"Rather well. I actually expected problems, with the way things went down. But Gregory's generally cooperative. I suspect it's because he's not trying to get into my pants like most of the other single women around."

Denise smiles softly. "I'd say his loss, but I'm not sure you'd get much out of it if he did come around."

"Yeah, he does strike you as the selfish in bed type, doesn't he?"

"From what I hear, most men are, but I can't speak from experience." Cricket laughs as she angles her plate onto the table before plucking Christian out of the carrier on her back. Sam darts off and returns with one of the high chairs, grinning broadly at the thanks he gets.

Olivia eyes the unmistakable baby bump and glances to Denise.

Cricket catches the look and smiles as she pats her belly. "Closest he got was a specimen cup."

"Oh. It must be an interesting request to try to make of someone nowadays."

"It would have been a weird request even before, in some ways, but probably better than some sperm bank and not knowing how much of their questionnaire is truthful."

"I suppose so." Olivia turns her attention on Denise with a knowing smile.

Neither of them fit in all that well at Alexandria, meaning that shared exclusion in group events led to conversations where they realized they get along. It would have been nice if Olivia were interested in women, but finding likely partners was hard enough before the world ended. Denise isn't optimistic of it now.

But that smile is a reminder that maybe not all things are excluded to her, lack of partner or not.

Jazz stops by to drop off a drink and a bowl of strawberries in front of his sister. "I saved him some before we made dessert." He accepts her thanks and makes a funny face at the baby so that he giggles, then turns to where Ron is sitting with his mother, Sam, and Enid. "I've got a sub for Saturday's game since you pulled that muscle in your shoulder today."

Ron looks confused for a split second and then grins. "Thanks. Tell me it's Honey?"

"Nah, that wouldn't be fair. Noah."

Denise wishes she weren't so far away from Jessie. The woman looks ashamed of herself. Jazz's polite fiction about Ron's shoulder is one that haunts his mother. Even weeks later, the physical therapy hasn't fixed the damage Pete doled out to his son.

"Alright. I'll be at practice tomorrow anyway."

"Good." He turns his attention to the girl next to Ron. "You're welcome to come. Enid, right?"

The girl nods, looking a lot shyer than Denise has ever seen her.

"Practice is about four o'clock, providing everyone's done their chores and can make it. Which reminds me, Ron. Patrick's covering your dish shift tonight so you can visit with your friend."

The concession makes the younger teenager's expression light up in a way few things do. "Tell him thanks for me."

"Have you eaten yet?" Cricket interjects.

Her brother gives her a sheepish grin. "Um, no."

"Better get to that before it's all gone. Suck to help cook and not eat it."

"Like Miss Katherine would let me go hungry," Jazz scoffs, but he does head back to the buffet, crossing paths with Tara as she joins her wife and son at Denise's table.

"Does everyone work all day like that?" Olivia asks.

"Jazz tends to set his own schedule around any community work he has to do," Cricket explains. "I'm guessing y'all saw him down at the new paddocks?"

"Ron too," Olivia responds.

"That's a volunteer thing. Ron gets extra hours in his tally outside of his required work shift. The sheep here, that's a special project of Jazz's that most people leave outside the realm of the general livestock. He tends to take extra responsibility for them."

"Just how many sheep are there? Your sister implied he outgrew ten acres."

"There were about seventy when everything first fell. But they've rounded up other sheep here and there, so his flocks aren't just the ones he started out with. He's still got more of his own sheep than can fit on the rotation system he uses for the paddocks, though."

"There's one hundred and fifty-two now," Ron adds. "I asked him this morning. We're off duty tomorrow, but I know he's taking another crew down again. Want to help, Enid?"

The girl shrugs. "I don't know how much help I'll be, but sure."

"How long are you staying, Olivia?" Denise asks. Since the trip is partly for medical supplies, it might not be a long visit.

"At least until Sunday. Earl's meeting with some of the tech people here, getting a better feel for the solar panels and interviewing with the interested folks who might want to apprentice with him up at Hilltop."

Denise wonders which of the young people they'll be sending off for a year or more. With any luck, Earl will cover extra bases and pick one of the ones already well versed in the solar grid here to help them at Hilltop. She knows that Eugene and Merle both have spent time on the radio walking Hilltop through repairs recently.

"Are you and Enid comfortable staying up at the Dixon house?" she asks. Her place is tiny, really, but with various cabins being completed, she knows the building's empty except for her, Jessie and the boys, and Honey's old roommate Lydia. They could easily stay in Michonne's old place.

"For a few days access to that lovely bathroom, I'm more than comfortable." Olivia grins. "Not that Barrington House is bad, but there's definitely not that much hot water."

"I thought she was going to turn into a permanent prune," Enid quips, making Ron and Sam laugh. "And the room we're in is really nice."

"We aren't actually putting that nice young man out of his room, are we?" Olivia asks.

Cricket shakes her head. "No. We refer to it as his room out of habit, I guess. He's been bunking with the other boys down in the basement since it was an option for him."

"It's a nice place, Olivia," Ron adds. "And Jazz likes it also because he doesn't have to tromp through the whole house in the mornings when he goes out for milking."

"You milk sheep?"

Denise understands Enid's puzzlement. She knew, intellectually, that in certain parts of the world, people milked and utilized sheep's milk. But even seeing goat's milk on the supermarket shelves didn't quite prepare her for the actual milking barn here, which is used for nothing but sheep.

"Jazz does," Cricket explains. "If you don't mind getting up at five a.m., he'll take you on the tour and show you how it works. They're going to build a larger milking barn up at the new paddocks and eventually have the goats up there too."

"What about cows?" Olivia asks. "We've got a milk cow at Hilltop, but her calf is nearly grown and we don't have the ability to rebreed her. Goat's milk is fine, but that's a limited resource too, since we don't know how old the three nanny goats are."

Denise can see the skills that make Olivia a good quartermaster coming to life as she thinks beyond canned goods and vegetable fields for her adopted people.

"If you keep milking the cow, she'll keep producing milk for a while. Years, maybe. Is the calf female?" Olivia nods. Cricket twists to the table behind and taps Honey's shoulder. "Send Jazz back over here. Tell him to bring his food though."

The message gets passed down the table to where Jazz is and the tall teenager snags his plate and drink and comes to sit down next to Ron. Cricket relays the issue about the cows and goats.

"Do you know how old the calf is?" he asks.

"Nine months. They found the pregnant mama wandering and brought her in. The books say she'll wean completely soon."

"She should, yeah. And you can get milk from the cow for a while. Unless you're wanting to build a herd, I wouldn't recommend her having another calf until her milk actually does dry up. Cows are a lot harder to keep fed versus your goats, from a dairy point of view."

"With no bull, I don't think rebreeding her is an issue."

"We could help with that. We don't have a bull, but one of the things we've been liberating from farms and veterinary offices is their supplies of frozen sperm."

"Seriously?" Olivia looks to Denise for confirmation and she nods, wrinkling her nose a little. The loft above the main barn is an interesting room, from a veterinary genetics point of view.

"It's how we're breeding most of ours, even the ones we have males for, to expand the gene pool further." Jazz takes a drink, mulling something over. "What about your goats?"

"Two adult females milking, one adult male. Both of the offspring are female, but we didn't figure breeding them back to the billy goat was a good idea."

"Not really. I mean, if all you were after was milk, it wouldn't matter that much. But if you want to build a herd, you need at least another male. Transporting one up there might be possible."

Denise laughs as Jesus gets co-opted into the discussion next.

"I think we might want to drive a lot more and spend as little time on the road as possible, because goats are damned noisy, but yeah, we could," he assesses.

"I'll have to verify with Hershel and Mama on the numbers, since the goats aren't my sole domain. But I'm thinking we can send four already bred goats and a male. That'll give you a diverse base, as long as someone keeps records. How much space do you have?"

"Plenty for five more goats," Olivia says. "What are you thinking?"

"Some of the collected sheep I have are a meat breed. I could send you a few ewes and rams, if you wanted to start a flock. These sheep practically produce litters, so you would get started a lot easier."

"Litters?" Even Denise is a little astounded at that description. She's seen the sheep that go to the milking barn. Pretty little things that don't look like story book versions of sheep. More like goats to her uneducated eye, actually.

"Yeah. That flock Glenn found? Those are Romanov sheep. When they started lambing earlier this month, we had four of the ewes have quadruplets that lived, and many had at least triplets. They can have five or six at a time, but that's not as common."

"That explains why you're building new paddocks," Jesus remarks. "That's a lot of lambs."

Olivia's mulling things over, exchanging a look with Jesus. "Do you think we can get more crop land enclosed so we can move the remaining gardens outside the main walls? I'm not comfortable putting live animals out there."

"Should be able to. It'll drive Earl's wife crazy to give up some of the already planted area, but for the prospect of a steady supply of meat, I'm betting the rest of the council will go for it."

They both look to Jazz then, and Olivia smiles. "Guess we have to find a livestock trailer for the trip back."

~*~ GR ~*~

Glenn turns from putting away the laundry that got taken care of while he was out on today's run to see Maggie stretched out on her back on the bed. She's holding her breath, eyes closed, both hands on one side of her stomach. It makes the swell of their growing child even more obvious.

"Everything okay?" How still she's being sends a note of alarm though him.

But when she opens her eyes, she's grinning. "I wasn't sure, at supper, but it's still happening."

"What's happening?"

"I can feel the baby moving."

"Holy crap, already? But I thought the book said it would probably be another couple of weeks because it's the first baby." It says eighteen to twenty-one weeks, and Maggie's not quite eighteen weeks.

He sits on the bed beside her, wanting to touch, but a little spooked as well. He's seen the ultrasound, and he's seen Maggie's misery with the nausea. Her body's definitely changed, filling in curves and softening in ways he finds fascinating from her original athletic build.

"Yeah. Guess she's making up for making mama so sick by saying hello early."

"Do you think I could feel it?"

"Probably not, but you can try. I can't feel it outside."

She moves one of his hands and he places his beside her remaining one. When her face lights up again, he knows they're going to have to wait for this part. He feels nothing but the firm baby bump.

"What does it feel like?"

"Like someone's popping popcorn in there."

He can't help himself. He laughs at that. "You said she. You think the baby's a girl?"

"Well, I figure the odds are in favor of a girl if you count up our biological siblings, and I don't like calling her an 'it'."

She's probably right there. With one sister on her side and four on his, that's a lot of female relatives.

"I hope you're right. I understand girls better."

She laughs now and pulls him down for a kiss. "You'd figure it out either way. I've seen you with the kids around here, Glenn. You're going to be a good dad."

He smiles at the reassurance. He likes kids, even if his sister's kids always acted like he was some sort of alien the few times he visited Michigan in recent years. "Maybe we should borrow Christian now and then for practice."

"I figure both his mothers wouldn't mind a night here and there to themselves, so sure." She holds his hand against her belly. "Maybe you can't feel her move yet, but the book says she can hear you."

Glenn thinks of the times he glimpsed people having conversations with Patricia or Lori's belly and smiles. "And just what should I tell her about?"

"Maybe you can tell her all about why you're so comfortable around girls?"

That's how he ends up with his lips brushing Maggie's bare skin occasionally as he speaks, telling the small life within her all about the sisters he misses so dearly. She cards her fingers through his hair, in sympathy for the vast unknown of his family fate.

He hopes that one day, the baby will know more than stories of the Rhees.

~*~ Jesus ~*~

Jesus stops reading aloud from the book he was given when he realizes Logan's definitely asleep against his side. He was offered quarters elsewhere, just like Earl and his son, but Logan's pleading gaze ensured that he accepted the alternate offer to bunk with the 'boys' in the main house. Stella's curled up on the floor next to the bunk.

Logan's excitement in showing Jesus where he lives now is reassuring, because it means he's happy. Honey's reported in regularly, and he knows the boy struggles even now with being homesick for Jesus.

He admired the colorful comforter, with its red and blue geometric pattern, along with the collection of books Logan's managed and a lot of drawings that he states are gifts from his friends. There's no mistaking the affection in Logan's voice for the people he's close to.

Most of them are a bit of a blur. He met so many people between their arrival just after four in the afternoon and the time he used Logan needing to sleep as a cover for his own exhaustion that he knows even his fantastic memory will struggle. He likes Honey's boyfriend, more so than Logan seems to, and he hopes that his approval will settle the boy's ongoing issues with Eugene.

The former science teacher is nothing like who he expected bubbly, outgoing Honey to pair off with, but somehow, the pairing works well. Jesus isn't so blind that he can't see just how devoted the man is to his friend.

The rest of the Dixons are mostly as he expected from Honey's tales to Logan, from Merle's gruff humor all the way down to Christian's ability to throw food half the length of a cafeteria table. He can tell there's been an almost visible effort not to overwhelm him by the sheer numbers of the family. She was quite amused to tell him that it's expanding even further, with even her stepmother adding to the baby boom.

He and Logan are almost alone in the basement. The two non-Dixon boys are still upstairs in some sort of Boggle tournament he's been informed he must participate in later when he's better rested. Jazz begged off on the reason of having been up since five a.m. and having evening rounds for the sheep. He just trekked through the basement about five minutes ago, putting away his weaponry in a gun safe near the outside entrance and heading for the bathroom on the other end.

"He probably won't wake if I move him to his bunk."

Jesus refrains from startling, but only barely. Jazz is standing near his own bunk, in the set of four away from the ones where Jesus was reading to Logan. The teenager's in plaid pajama pants and a sleeveless shirt, but he rubs at his bare arms almost as if he's cold.

"He'll probably want to sleep with me." The bunk is narrow, but not impossibly so, and he knows from past experience that Logan will sleep tucked in close.

"Yeah. He ends up in my bunk more often than he stays in his, most nights." Jazz glances at the other two bunks that Logan stated belonged to Patrick and Al. "He has nightmares still, sometimes, and so do they."

"Anything I should know about that?"

"Logan will go right back to sleep still if you wake him, and so will Patrick. Sometimes Patrick will talk for a bit, if it's a really bad one. But don't shake Al awake if you wake up faster than I do. He'll come up swinging if you do."

"Alright. I'll try to leave it to you, other than Logan."

"Thanks. Do you need anything?"

Jesus shakes his head. He's already shed his outer layers and knowing that Logan would likely sleep with him, kept a tank top on over the shorts he's sleeping in. It won't take much to shift Logan under the blanket on the bunk.

"I'll try not to wake you in the morning then." Jazz shuffles his own bedding around and as he settles down, Jesus wonders just how Logan actually fits. He knew Honey's younger brother was tall, from her descriptions and the fact that Honey herself is so much taller. But his mind still boggles a bit at him being nearly a foot taller, and he supposes sisters don't think to describe just how pretty their brothers are.

He wonders briefly, if Jazz ever has issues with being too pretty for traditional masculinity, like he has where even the beard doesn't really help, or if the sheer size of the younger male keeps that sort of thing at bay.

"Actually, I wouldn't mind a tour of the morning routine, if you don't mind." He knows Enid was invited, so hopefully Jazz is willing for another tag-along. Jesus's innate curiosity means he likes to observe everything new he encounters.

Jazz's voice is partly muffled by the fact that he's lying on his stomach on his bunk and seemingly halfway to falling asleep. "See you at five a.m. then. G'night, Paul."

He waits until Jazz's breathing settles completely before moving Logan, not wanting to disturb the obviously tired teenager. As Logan moves easily in his sleep to snuggle against his chest, he feels homesick himself, but it's not for Hilltop.