May 20, 2011

~*~ MD ~*~

Merle plops the daily tally sheet into Carol's inbox and leans against her desk. She finishes whatever she's working on and smiles at him. "Done for the day?"

"Yeah. New tallies on the finished lumber versus firewood."

The tornadic storms that blew through at the end of April missed Homestead and Terminus by a margin that still makes Merle's skin crawl. Without the weather service people to make assessments, he can't be sure. But he's fairly certain that the twister that tore about a twenty-mile path of destruction between the two communities had to have been at least an EF3 or better.

It happened while they were in Virginia, too. Terminus and Homestead worked together to get the route between the two communities clear. Now they're both sorting through the extensive wreckage to salvage useful items.

With more workers and more space, Homestead's been focused this week on hauling the downed trees to mill into lumber and firewood, depending on the damage. The scrap metal from several destroyed chicken houses and businesses will come in handy once they're done with the trees.

"Makes me glad that you insisted on storm shelters." Carol shudders a bit. "And makes me miss the weather sirens system."

"At least we aren't as prone to tornadoes as further west. Can you imagine being in Tornado Alley now? At least a hurricane making landfall should send out plenty of warning."

She picks up his tally sheet and assesses. "We're set for firewood if we need it, aren't we?"

"Yeah. Probably about two years worth if we really clear out the downed trees, since we don't exclusively heat with it."

All of the new construction - the cabin kits and freeform cabins - have fireplaces or wood stoves installed. He's determined that nothing has to be retrofitted if their solar electrical sources fail. Only the container apartments and nursing home would be a problem in that scenario, as well as the appliances in the community center.

With any luck, it won't come to that. They've got spare parts for years and growth, and he's fairly certain that they have enough people with the knowledge to piecemeal small-scale hydroelectric in if they needed to.

"Lumber needs to be marked separate from the stuff we haul in from the stores. Not pressure treated, so add it to the other we have left from when we did the raised beds."

After seeing Carol's tidy garden beds behind the house, Hershel suggested installing them elsewhere around the community, with each household being responsible for a couple and allowed to choose their plants. There are ornamental flowers here and there around Homestead, but for the most part, even if it's pretty, it's edible too.

"Got a suggestion in from Glenn's team for council tonight," she says, after she scribbles a note on his tally sheet. She's got her Cheshire grin on. "They came across a marijuana field that's apparently self-seeding itself now that its owner disappeared."

Merle laughs and shakes his head. "Damn plant is medicinal, I suppose, and probably better than some of the pharmaceuticals. But I really want to see Hershel's face when he gets cannabis farmer and dispenser added to his extra titles."

It's a scenario he imagines his friend would never have foreseen for himself. He and Hershel aren't the only residents who are recovering addicts or alcoholics, enough so that they act as each other's support and then as sponsors to anyone struggling. No one's really relapsed towards drugs, but alcohol's been more of an issue.

That's disregarding Cricket's hell-on-wheels campaign to get their smokers off the habit. He thinks at least three people quit cold turkey just to be able to skip the meetings with her. She enjoys showing the images of lung, throat, and other cancers far too much, but he understands her fear. They can't heal cancer anymore.

"You've got more news, don't you?" he asks. She's still smiling just a little too much for anticipating Hershel's reaction to marijuana farming.

"Four new pregnancies confirmed this week."

"Jesus Christ. We're gonna need to build that daycare soon." He's content though. The baby boom is happening because people think they're safe. "Who?"

"Chloe, Ana, Gail, and Karen."

His mind goes to possible work schedule changes. Chloe works the breakfast shift and Ana in laundry, so neither of them should need any accommodations. Gail's a teacher, so that's good as well. But Karen's a team leader, and that could get complicated since she's one of Shane's for the search they've got ongoing.

"Guess Tyreese will be fit to burst in the meeting today then." He settles on the happy side of that.

"He was fit to burst in today's appointment. Happy, but panicking just a little." She stands and slides her arms around his waist. "Like another person I know who raised most of his kids and is starting over again."

"I'm twelve years older than Tyreese. Got more reason to worry about being around for you." He kisses the tip of her nose to tease her, brushing his fingers across her barely showing baby bump. She's been feeling the baby move, but he's had no luck yet.

"Like any of us are going to let you be less than perfectly healthy."

He can only agree there. He doesn't think he could manage to be anything but healthy, at least as far as the issues that can be managed. Even the concerns of long-term damage from the sunstroke seem to have played out nicely, with all of his follow-up tests coming back as normal.

"How's the priest settling in?" He's been off property so much this week he's barely said two words to the man.

"Still acting about as gunshy as the Grady folks did when they first came. I made him set up a weekly appointment with Denise starting Monday. Lenore's happy having him down on the farm crew while he sorts out what he wants to do."

"Hopefully he'll be willing to talk to her, knowing it's in confidence for the most part."

That's a standard they're sticking to for now. Unless something makes Denise think a resident is a danger to themselves or others, she doesn't report to Hershel or the council. Having her available is an asset he can't believe they got lucky enough to have, considering what so many of their people survived.

"Terminus put in a request to have her come by once a month. She's agreeable, so Daryl's team will escort her over and work in the area to escort her home."

It's a little amusing that Daryl doesn't quite trust Terminus to bring the woman back themselves, but he knows his brother is actually keeping an irregular appointment schedule for counseling. It explains the overprotectiveness, he thinks.

He glances out toward the outer office, where Patricia is working. She's at the desk the teaching staff uses, so he assumes she's working on lesson plans of a sort.

"It's about time I round up both you ladies for the meeting if we want to get everything done before supper."

"Hmm. Suppose so." Carol reaches out to shut her computer down.

"Where's Matty?" he calls out to Patricia. The five-month-old isn't always in the office with his mother, but it happens often enough he expected to see him here today.

"Hanging out with Jessie this afternoon. She said she needed a reminder that her boys were tiny and sweet once."

That makes both Merle and Carol laugh. The longer the Andersons are at Homestead, the more mischievous Sam gets, and like most teenagers his age, Ron's a shifting ball of moody hormones.

Once both women are ready, he teasingly offers an arm to both.

"My, my, you're wanting to feed the rumor mill, aren't you?" Patricia jokes.

He just snorts. Although Patricia and her brood have a permanent invitation to live at his home, at least that's one level of silliness no one's attempted about it.

"Keep that up and I'll go out matchmaking for you, woman."

The rest of the way to the meeting passes with him suggesting various single men for Patricia - starting with the ones in their early twenties just for the joy of her pretend horror.

~*~ Amy ~*~

"How long are you going to be pissed off at me?"

Amy turns from her design board to stare at her sister. To look at Andrea, you wouldn't know she's pregnant, when Amy at that same stage was already all belly.

Jamie finds it entertaining that she's a week behind the mothers of the trio of "Christmas present babies", yet looks like she's further along. There are days where she thinks her husband likes being in the doghouse.

"As long as you won't tell those fathers they might have a baby on the way."

Or even confirm who they are. After the trip to Virginia, she asked Merle what Carol came up with, and if she's correct in her guesses, both men would want to be involved.

"I told you, it's cruel to let them get attached if the baby isn't theirs."

"You say that as if presenting a man with a baby out of the blue is any less cruel. The baby's not a damned unwanted kitten."

She takes a deep breath to calm herself as she turns away from Andrea. The baby reacts to her upset by performing what Jamie terms a barrel roll, rippling her belly under the lightweight green maternity shirt.

"Amy, I've never hidden the fact that I didn't want children from you. Even the pregnancy is pushing my boundaries, but it happened." Andrea sounds pleading, a tone that is rare and unusual for her bold-natured sister.

"It's not you not wanting kids that bothers me." She turns, unable to resist the idea that Andrea's nearly begging for her understanding. "It's just I see how overjoyed Jamie is or Glenn and I think that your baby's father isn't going to have any of those stories to tell them one day."

"They wouldn't have them the same way anyway, with me here and them at different communities."

"Not the same, no. But just knowing, anticipating, that there's a baby coming. That's something they need to know." She frowns, taking a deep breath. Part of what bothers her reveals a confidence from a friend, but she doesn't think Merle will mind.

"After you told me you were expecting, I asked Merle what it was like, to just have a baby show up out of the blue."

"Oh." Andrea sits in the chair the eldest Dixon often uses when they're going over a project.

"He said that all he could do was to tell Jazz he adored him from the time he knew him, but the older Jazz got, the more he could do the math."

"And what does Jazz think?"

"He's like just about every other kid who ever had a parent choose not to raise him. There's a right way and a wrong way to do this, Andrea, and you're doing it wrong right now."

Andrea sighs and eyes Amy's belly warily as the baby makes a viable movement again.

"Would you like to feel him move?"

It takes Andrea a minute to nod, and Amy guides her hand to the right side of her stomach. The baby reacts as he always does to pressure, bopping around.

"You were always moving when Mom was pregnant with you. She swore it meant you would be a dancer."

Amy laughs. "Mom missed the mark there. Apparently, I was just showing off my klutz levels early."

"Mom would have loved seeing you become a mother."

There's a note to Andrea's voice that reminds her how often Andrea butted heads with their mother for her childless by choice state. For all that Amy is angry with Andrea about not informing the fathers, she's glad their mother isn't here to add judgement about giving the baby up. She misses her mother and hates that her son won't know her parents, but her sister doesn't need that.

"Dale's doing his best to make up for it."

The older man is taking to his adopted grandfather role with enthusiasm, jokingly practicing by offering babysitting to all the parents of babies and young children. He's good at it, which isn't surprising.

"He's a good man." Andrea smiles as the baby moves again under her hand. "I think I need to start reading that baby book Carol gave me. Shouldn't I be feeling something by now?"

"You're only fifteen weeks, so not really. I was seventeen weeks before I could tell, and we had the twenty week ultrasound before Jamie could feel the baby. It takes longer sometimes with first pregnancies especially."

"Or maybe I'll just ask you."

She makes a face at her sister. "You sound like Jamie."

"He's going to be a good dad, even if he lets you do all the research."

It's one of the ironies that her husband often gets along with Andrea better than she does. Being in the military, he understands the career driven woman better from working with women like Scout, she supposes.

"We've decided on a name."

"Oh?"

"Isaac Dale Nichols. Isaac for Jamie's brother who died in Iraq, and I figure Dad would understand honoring Dale as the adoptive grandfather."

"Dad never liked his name anyway, so, yeah, he'd understand." Andrea grins. "I'm just relieved you aren't coming up with something to rhyme. You're already Jamie and Amy."

She swats at her sister playfully. "Don't even go there. Danny keeps suggesting that and none of his ideas make sense."

They both laugh, before Andrea turns serious. "It's really important to you that I tell the fathers?"

"Yes, it is."

Andrea sighs. "That's going to be a hell of an awkward radio conversation, but I'll trust your judgement."

Amy throws her arms around her sister in an encouraging hug.

~*~ Spencer ~*~

Spencer hesitates at the steps to Aaron and Eric's house. He's never actually been inside, and he thinks that's the norm around here. Only their visitors seem to go inside.

Before they left, he asked Carol for advice on his resolve to step up and do more. One of her topics was making the community feel connected, without excluding anyone.

He's not so slow on the uptake to miss her looking at Aaron when she said that.

So, he's observed the dynamics of Alexandria, drawing on some of the offhand lessons his mother gave about campaigning. His conclusions make him disappointed in his mother, who made a career out of politics.

She has the skills to pull this off, not fumbling around like an amateur like he is. She's taken the path of least resistance in her leadership, with everything from Pete to the silently accepted community exclusion of two of their most skilled people.

They already lost valuable members of the community by allowing those just a little bit different to be pushed aside. It makes him wonder how the hell the original plans to protect their people and bring in refugees turned into this imitation of a Stepford Wives community instead.

"You're welcome to come inside, you know. We don't bite, and Eric's made extra if you want to stay for dinner."

Aaron's voice startles the hell out of Spencer and he jumps. How the hell he didn't notice the door open, he doesn't want to know.

The invitation solves half his dilemma, so he nods and goes up the steps. Aaron smiles as he passes him into the foyer.

"You looked like you were trying to solve the problems of the world out there," he says as he shuts the door. He leads the way into the kitchen, where Eric smiles over his shoulder as he dishes up something that smells a lot different than carefully selected canned goods.

"Hope you're a little adventurous tonight. Dinner's more of an eat the weeds challenge than you're probably used to," Eric says.

"Eat the weeds?" he asks, a little confused.

"Eric grew up in the middle of nowhere. Learned to farm, but also to forage."

Oh. Well, that makes sense, he supposes. Their ability to be self-sufficient is one of the reasons his mother asked them to be recruiters.

"What's on the menu, then?"

"Fried morels, grilled wild asparagus, and mixed greens. Eric and I found a motherlode of morels at the end of April and froze a lot of them. Most here don't trust foraged mushrooms."

Spencer's first bite spawns his reaction to that. This is damned tasty, and he remembers seeing morels on restaurant menus at a premium price. "Their loss then."

They pass the first half of the meal with compliments on the food and Eric explaining foraging in general.

"Honestly, when we go through towns and suburbs, we look for abandoned gardens and fruit trees too. Most of that, folks here are more willing to eat, but we still put a few things back."

Spencer sees the jars of jam on the counter. "You've been canning?"

"When I have a surplus of something safe for it, yeah. I offered to teach classes, but your mother didn't think we had enough excess to bother."

Aaron shrugs. "To be fair, she was mostly right about the gardens here, but with the right teams to harvest, there are orchards and farms going wild out there."

"Hilltop arrives in a couple of days to start on the wall. Is that going to be too late to plant?"

"For some things, maybe, like potatoes. But there's a lot of things that like heat. Tomatoes, squash, peppers. We should look into finding freeze dryers and dehydrators, too." Eric points to an odd appliance on the counter. "I've made jerky and fruit leathers and other things with that."

"You got info on where to get them?" At their nods, he makes a mental note. "I'll get it scheduled with my mother once the walls are done."

Aaron lays down his fork and exchanges a look with his partner before speaking. "We try not to criticize how others adapt, but it's nice to see you get more involved."

Spencer feels himself flush with embarrassment, but he accepts the criticism hidden in the compliment. It's one of the reasons he's here. He needs to learn, and he no longer trusts his mother to be the best source for that.

"You were a diplomat and in politics before, as well as the NGO, right?"

Aaron smiles and Spencer's glad to see he doesn't really have to explain. He thinks the older man has already made the connection with the visit and his curiosity.

"That's generally correct. I never had the ambitions your mother had, but I did my part at the local level."

That probably explains his willingness to accept the role he has here. "I need to know more. Not just stay behind the walls or rush on supply runs."

Even with the changes implemented after the first visit from the Georgians, runs aren't a real insight into the outside world.

"You could join us, if that's what you're asking. Survivors are rare, but finding new resources for Alexandria is even more important now if we want to contribute to the alliance." Aaron's enthusiasm is contagious.

"I would like that." He takes a minute to choose the right words. "I figure with other options, you two will eventually leave us, unless we change our culture here. I can't promise that, but I want to be prepared."

He's not stupid or blind to the sidelong looks the couple gets. If they don't show to a community event, no one goes to fetch them like they do others. It's selfish to want them to stay and naive to assume he can change anyone's view but his own.

Eric looks slightly guilty, but Aaron's studying him with that empathetic intelligence that made him approach in the first place.

"I won't lie to you and say that we aren't considering moving to Homestead, or that there's not an open invitation. But as long as you make an effort to change, we'll help you out as best we can."

That's all he can ask, so he smiles and thanks them. The sense that he's operating on a time limit intensifies.

It's time to grow up.

~*~ Logan ~*~

Logan creeps down the bunk ladder carefully, trying not to wake the others. The nightmare still clings to his thoughts, and he's shaking and sweating.

He knows that he can climb over Jazz and his adopted brother will curl around him protectively. He doesn't mind being Logan's shield against the bad memories that come in the dark.

But Jazz wasn't home at bedtime, out with Hershel on a calf delivery from the new cows they brought in last week. He feels guilty on waking his brother again when he doesn't always get enough sleep.

He's fairly sure Al wouldn't mind him bunking with him either after a nightmare, but he eyes the stairs instead.

Before, when he had bad dreams, he always went to his mom and dad.

He heads upstairs before he can change his mind. At the door to Carol and Merle's room, he hesitates.

He can see that they're asleep in the big king-sized bed like his parents shared. They're curled up together, Carol using Merle like a pillow or a giant teddy bear.

"Carol?"

She wakes as quickly as his mom always did, sitting up even as she looks his way. "Logan? Are you okay, sweetheart?"

He hesitates, glancing to Merle, who's pushed to one elbow. He looks just as concerned as Carol.

"I had a bad dream."

Carol shifts and pats the bed between them in invitation. He pushes away thoughts of his own mother doing the same and climbs up and over as they adjust the bedding for him to sleep between them.

He accepts Carol's hug, burying his face in her shoulder and shivering. "I miss my mama."

She pets his hair, still holding him close. "I know you do, sweetheart. That's a normal thing to feel."

He sniffles a little, trying not to cry because he's too old to cry like a little kid. She kisses the top of his head just as he feels a big, warm hand rubbing his back.

While Carol reminds him a lot of his mom, enough that it's sometimes confusing, Merle intimidates him a little. He's very different from Logan's own father, who was a quiet, introverted man.

Merle's size and personality make him seem to fill any room he's in. He's rarely quiet and usually on the move. Although Honey's a lot like her father, it's different, her being a girl.

But right now, feeling his adoptive father rub his back as gently as his own father ever did, he finally understands they aren't any different where it counts.

For the first time since the night Jesus and Honey rescued him, he cries himself to sleep, secure in Carol's protective embrace with all of Merle's fierce determination at his back.

He's safe here and wanted and loved.