In the morning, when Carol talks to Shannon about sending her and the kids home on the speed boat, she replies, "You know Gary's just going to jump off that speed boat the first time he sees a frog in the water. I'm not sure it's the best plan, to be honest. But hey, you don't need Rachel. Marcus can drive it back."
Carol had forgotten about Jamestown's skipper and fisherman, who was the first to pilot the boat when they discovered it. He agrees to drive it to Jamestown with news of the delay of the Susan Constant. He'll bring an armed guard with him for protection – an Oceanside woman. They'll spend the night in Jamestown and return the boat to Oceanside the next morning with more letters, and then he'll sail home on the ship.
Meanwhile, Sweetheart will remain at Oceanside under the watchful eyes of Shannon and Nabila. She'll spend the day playing with Gary, Judith, RJ, Hershel, and Jerry's brood. This new plan means Henry can join them for the walker slaying. Judith wants to join the adventure, too, but Michonne says no. "I've killed walkers before!" the little girl whines.
"Yes, you have. In controlled conditions," Michonne reminds her.
"Well aren't these going to be controlled conditions?" Judith asks. "I thought you want to funnel them out!"
"You've been listening in, I see. But a mission like this is a little too dangerous at your age, Judith. Next horde." Michonne winks. "I promise."
The team of walker slayers gathers with packs on their backs and weapons in their hands. They'll hike the three miles on foot, and by then, everyone who is a little hung over from last night's festivities should be wide awake. In addition to those who already committed to the mission at the Alliance Council Meeting, the team is joined by Mitch, Eugene, Jerry, Lieutenant Alvarado, Henry, two Oceanside soldiers, a Hilltop guard, and four Jamestown sailors who are beginning to regret accepting Madam Linda's free drinks.
Henry is at the front of the group, having walked ahead to do occasional forms with his staff along the way. Daryl and Carol walk somewhere toward the back. "Twenty-three people," Daryl murmurs. "Ain't bad. 'S that? Forty walkers a piece?"
"Depends how many walkers their turn out to be," Carol replies.
"How much ammo do we actually have, all together?" Cyndie asks Captain McBride from behind them. "We should do a count."
"Jamestown Navy!" calls McBride. "Sound off! Rounds accessible?"
"Fourteen, Captain," Lieutenant Alvarado calls. He's walking beside Michonne toward the front.
"Ten, Captain!" cries Ensign Merry Riggs.
"Eleven, Captain!" replies Seaman Norman Lincoln.
"Ten, Captain!" shouts Ensign Chandler Morgan
Seaman Jeffrey Reedus is last: "Nine, Captain!"
"Now I know you boys came with way more than that!" McBride bellows. "How much did you spend last night?"
"Sorry, Captain!" Seaman Reedus cries from somewhere near the middle of the hiking pack. "These women are beautiful enough to make money fly right out of a man's pocket!" The sailor steps a little faster until he's almost shoulder to shoulder with an Oceanside guard. From all the way back here, Carol can almost feel her rolling her eyes.
"I have fifteen rounds myself," McBride says in a more conversational tone. "So that's 69 for us." He lowers his voice still more to address Cyndie, but not low enough Carol can't still hear him. "Well not 69 for us. Anymore."
"I'll miss your crass humor, Captain," Cyndie replies. "I suppose Mallory will have that privilege now?"
"Mallory knows to strike while the iron is hot."
"The iron is always hot with you, though, isn't it?"
"Well, I'm a red-blooded man. But that's not what I meant. I'm thirty-seven. I'm not getting any younger. And the supply of women's not growing any larger, at least not soon enough to suit me."
"So because I'm not willing to settle down and move to Jamestown, you'll settle down with the first woman who throws herself your way?"
"Mallory wants a husband," McBride says softly. "She's not unattractive. And she seems sensible enough."
"Well, you sound madly in love," Cyndie says dryly.
"I don't need to be madly in love. Mallory likes me. She misses being married. Frankly, so do I."
"You were married?" Cyndie asks in surprise. "In the old world?"
"See, these are precisely the kinds of conversations we don't have."
Cyndie falls silent, as if admitting the truth of the statement. Finally, she says, "You're really going to marry some woman you've dated less than twenty-four hours?"
"Not tomorrow. She'll come back on the ship to Jamestown, get a guest work visa, stay until the next mailboat. See if she likes the town, if she likes her work. See if she still likes me by the end of the month."
"And then?" Cyndie asks.
"When the mailboat comes, she'll either go back to Oceanside on it…or she won't."
"Mallory's our best cook, you know."
"That virtue of hers had crossed my mind."
"You and Gunther, both," Cyndie mutters. "Robbing Oceanside of its talent. I never pegged you for such a pragmatist, Captain. I thought you were an adventurer."
"I suppose I am, but after sailing the high seas – or the low river as the case may be – and fighting pirates and hordes, I'd rather like a woman to come home to. Otherwise what am I fighting for?"
"I'm only twenty-six," Cyndie says, "I'm not in that kind of hurry to get married. And I have an entire community to run."
"I know. I'm sorry we want different things." He raises his voice again. "The rest of Jamestown? Rounds? Sound off!"
"I've got sixteen," Mitch calls from the row in front of Carol. "Because generous friends bought drinks last night." He puts a hand on Aaron's shoulder, for just a moment, and then takes it away. Jesus glances back from two rows up, looks the men up and down, and then returns his attention to the road.
The rest of Jamestown sounds off. Then Cyndie calls on Oceanside to give a count, Tara on the Hilltop, and Michonne on Alexandria. When all is said and done, they determine there are two hundred and twenty-eight rounds of ammunition available.
"We're going to have to do a lot of this killing the old-fashioned way," Carol says.
"Good thing I sharpened m'knives this mornin'," Daryl mutters.
[*]
The storm sewer tunnel runs beneath a three-lane roadway, the largest highway in town, and through two acres of woods on either side before emptying into a trickling creek with five-foot, sloping banks.
The two Oceanside guards Cyndie left to keep an eye on the tunnel meet up with them. The sailors perk up at the sight of new women who weren't at the fair.
"Did you see any of those Skins in the past 24 hours?" Cyndie asks.
"Yes," one of the guards answers. "The seven survivors of that camp came here yesterday afternoon. They were in their skin suits. They had keys to that padlock on the gate on the east side. They looked like they were getting ready to unlock it, probably to lead that horde toward Oceanside. So we made a call. We picked them off."
"Good decision," Cyndie assures them.
"Two got away, ran into the woods, but I don't think they're coming back. They probably thought we had an army hidden out here."
The group checks both sides of the tunnel. Several of the decaying creatures push against each of the two circular iron gates and stretch their rotting limbs through the black iron squares. Daryl climbs on top of the west tunnel, where another circular gate stretches across the top of a periscope-like cement structure. Standing on the cement edge, he looks down through the open metal squares at the teething mass below. Faces turn up at has scent and teeth gnash wildly. Arms claw the air, reaching within a foot of where he stands. He jumps back down off the top to the bank of the creek and then walks down to rejoin Carol. "Yeah. Walkers a'right."
She smiles and shakes her head.
Eugene measured the length from one end of the tunnel to the other as they hiked over the roadway, and now he's measuring the circumference of the mouth. His yellow, metal measuring tape is ripped down by walker fingers more than once, but he finally gets a read. He does the math, calculates the volume of the tunnel, and says, "It depends on how tightly they're packed all the way through there, but I'd estimate anywhere from 975 to 1,225 dead ones."
"That's oddly specific," Rosita says.
"It's a downright jamboree in there," Eugene intones.
They walk away from the tunnel, up the creek's bank, and back onto the highway above. The hum of the walkers beneath their feet can be heard all the way through the cement storm tunnels and the asphalt of the roadway. After a half hour of consultation and debate, they hatch a plan everyone can agree upon.
Henry will remain on the west side of the tunnel to attract at least some walkers to that side of the gate by running his staff against it, and thus slow the funnel out of the gate they plan to open. Seamen Reedus and Ensign Riggs will stay with him to thrust their knives into the foreheads of the walkers as they pile up against that gate.
On the east side of the tunnel, Rosita will lay a line of light explosives outside the gate – not inside the center of the tunnel, and not a large amount, which might blow off both gates and create chaos. "Just the Goldilocks right amount," as Eugene says –enough to cave in some of the cement on the eastside mouth of the tunnel and pop the iron gate free. If their lucky, the explosing will also kill fifty or sixty walkers in the process.
The walkers will then flood out the open gate in the direction of the slayers. To make sure they do – and to make sure a few pause in the creek bed along the way – they'll leave chunks of wild boar in the creek bed. Oceanside killed a big one the day before last but found it contaminated with worms. So instead of roasting it, they stored it in a cool root cellar to keep as meat for walker traps.
Beyond that boar at a relatively safe distance will be a line of archers – Daryl with his crossbow, and Carol, Dianne, the Hilltop guard (a former Kingdom knight), and one of the Oceanside women with their longbows. When their arrows are spent, they'll drop their bows, draw knives, and run forward with the others who will also be attacking with melee weapons. In the meantime, marksmen, from a distance – on the bank of the creek and other perches around the perimeter – will cover the walker slayers, picking off walkers that begin to double up on any one person.
The ammunition is collected from all and given over to the six volunteering marksmen – Mitch, Rosita, Gunther, Captain McBride, and the two Oceanside guards who were left to watch the tunnel. For now, the extra, empty rifles are piled by a tree on the bank.
Cyndie glances at Captain McBride. "Are you sure you can shoot that well?"
"I guess we haven't had that conversation either."
"It's just…you didn't enter the rifle contest either this year or last."
"I didn't want to waste two bullets."
"But you can shoot well?"
Captain McBride raises his rifle where he stands on the shore of the creek bed, aims several yards away toward the iron gates, and shoots past Rosita who is setting up the explosives, straight through one of the iron squares, and into the forehead of a thrashing walker. It collapses.
"Hey!" Rosita yells. "Watch it! Women at work here!"
"You didn't need to waste a bullet to prove it," Cyndie insists.
"I rather felt like I did."
Cyndie looks at Jamestown's farm manager next. "You didn't enter the rifle contest either."
"I assure you I'll be of more use with a gun than with a knife," Gunther tells her. "I can't do all that fancy hand-to-hand combat the rest of you seem to enjoy. But I've been a farmer all my life. I can shoot. Do you want me to waste a round proving it?"
"No." Cyndie glances at Carol. "I know you can shoot well. Are you sure you don't want to be one of the marksmen?"
"You don't have enough archers."
"After you drop the bow, you could grab a gun instead of a knife."
"I'm good with a knife, though. And six marksmen is plenty. We don't want too many bullets flying into that mess."
"Fair enough," Cyndie agrees. "Should we get this show on the road?"
[*]
Carol's boots are wet with murky creek water. The five archers stand with three feet between one another, spread apart across the narrow stream. The walkers, which have caught a whiff of all the people, are piling up on the gate now. Carol wonders how many Henry has managed to distract to his end, and how many he'll be able to keep drawing there once their gate is blown free.
She slides an arrow into her bow but doesn't pull back just yet. Beside her, Daryl lowers his crossbow and rests its butt on a rock in the creek so he can use both hands to cock it. She smiles slightly. She can't help it. She likes the way the muscles of his arms bulge when he does that. When he lifts the bow, he notices her smiling. "What?" he asks.
"Nothing."
"Got somethin' in m' teeth?"
Carol chuckles. "Like you would care if there was."
"Pfft." He raises his crossbow and aims toward the gate because Rosita has crouched down to light the long, powdered fuse that runs alongside the water, on the dry and cracked dirt shore, and curves into the makeshift dynamite that lies before the gate.
The black powder sparks. Rosita leaps up, turns, and runs like mad along the shore back toward the line of archers. The yellow-orange flame burns through the fuse. Six inches. A foot. Two feet. Three feet. Four feet. Six feet.
And then it peters out. Nothing.
Rosita, breathing hard, stops running on the shore, puts her hands on her knees, and catches her breath. "Shit," she mutters. She sighs, stands straight, pulls out her matchbox, and begins to stroll forward again.
"Run fast after your light it!" Eugene calls from the long line of melee-weapon-clutching slayers that stand behind the archers. "It's only seven feet long now!"
"No shit, Sherlock."
When the fuse catches again, Rosita runs, jumps, plants one foot in the center of the bank, and grabs the outstretched hand of the awaiting Gunther, who jerks her up. They both run along the top of the bank toward the archers and fighters and pluck up their rifles, which are leaned against a tree. Carol pulls back on her string, as does Dianne to her left. Behind them, knives, swords, machetes, and other weapons are raised.
There's a sudden Boom! Rocks, sticks, and dirt from the creek bed fly up in a cloud of dusty debris as cement crumbles around the edge of the tunnel. The iron gate pops off, careening through the air, and landing with a metallic clang against the rocks in the creek. Walker guts rain down from the explosion, and then the still-living dead begin to stream out.
