Swordplay
When the lights were brought back up, Leon, Philip's dim-witted bodyguard, was a riddled mess by the hall's half bath. Two of Rick's bullets had found his chest and the other was in his right shoulder. No one gave him a second thought as chaos erupted in the ranch house's great room.
Chairs were overturned. Women were screaming. Some huddled together too drugged and afraid to run. Others hid where they could. Under furniture or behind the heavy floor to ceiling velvet drapes. Some crouched under the large bottom boughs of the giant lit Christmas tree in the corner of the room. The jingling of belled ornaments littered the panicked sobs.
Some of the most powerful figures in the room, old and feeble, cowered behind their hired men. Bodyguards had weapons drawn, covering their frightened high value targets. The great room was packed with card-carrying Saviors, contract security and stolen women.
Professional muscle spoke into their wrists and pressed their earpieces trying to coordinate with the fragments of their security details who were avoiding the rain inside the rows of parked luxury sedans and SUVs. Unsure of who was invading and why, rich and prominent men fumbled to put their masks back on, fearing recognition.
It was no use. Rick could place too many of them. Polite southern society had been stripped naked to reveal a poxed-ridden, parasitic underbelly.
He'd known Merle would be there. It still made him grind his teeth whenever he thought about Dixon patrolling the streets in the same KC uniform he wore, all the while breathing threat and murder against his citizens.
And when Philip Blake arrived, Rick had no time to be outraged. He was too busy babysitting Hugh's unpredictability as much as Tyreese's apprehension. In survival mode. But now, it was sinking in that his son had been living with a devil most foul. He wondered how much Lori knew.
The governor was a resident of the upper echelon, like the corporate juggernauts who frequented the government administrative offices, making plans for the city and state. It was easy for them to banish anyone they considered undesirable from their field of view and see them as nothing more than a plague.
But what truly unnerved the sheriff were the men of little renown who felt superior to American minorities even though they toiled through similar struggles. Ordinary men, like him, who drove the county bus and collected county trash and sliced meat at the county deli. Teachers from Woodbury Academy, where his son went to school. Police officers from nearby jurisdictions.
If they only knew how people like Philip Blake really viewed them. Without big city connections, political power or tycoon money, even little guys that looked like him were all 'niggers' to him. And as far as Rick was concerned, the governor's face always read contempt for the sheriff, but now Philip was staring at him in slack jawed surprise. Rick could see him groping for a lie that would explain his presence in the midst of nazi sympathizers.
He was trying to summon that tight-lipped phony contrition that he'd worn for the camera's when his affair with Lori became public. The performance of a penitent politician had served him well in the past. Though it directly opposed the defiance in his eyes that Rick could always read easily enough. The look that said 'I've found myself in stickier situations and came away squeaky clean'.
This time though, Rick was determined to end the smug bastard's winning streak. Governor Blake's security team couldn't care less about the Savior's cause. Their main concern was their duty to one of Georgia's top elected officials.
He was swarmed by three of his subordinates, intent on seeing him unscathed by violence or scandal. Elsewhere in the room, second amendment fanatics who lacked bodyguards but not ammunition, clumsily pulled their weapons. Hoping to gain special favor with Negan or other moguls by taking down these meddling attackers, they fired in Michonne's direction.
Spending time in the woods shooting guns and drinking can make you comfortable with a gun in your hand. But the dusky beauty was a blur moving through the rabble and most of the redneck militia couldn't aim for shit. Two of their own took friendly fire for being too close to the dark-eyed swordslinger's wake.
When a stray bullet popped into the stone surrounding the fireplace, the amatuer shooters decided to cease fire. The bullet had whizzed right by Negan's head but he was more focused on the shotgun barrel Rick was pressing against his cerebellum.
The last time Michonne had commanded her gifted sword was when she'd practiced as a child. That felt like an eternity ago.
For years she had worn her hair in a tight little bun to avoid any Caucasian qualms. She had dressed up in blouses and blazers like a little tag-along of the lawyers where she worked. She spoke how they spoke and ate what they ate and pulled their weight for less than half the pay.
She would search through scattered papers for a witness list, only to find the one she had was not up to date and then stab through her mouse pad in frustration with the tip of a letter opener. There were so many times she fantasized about headbutting a nitpicking partner or drop-kicking one of the firm's entitled clients. All those years seemed like a lucid dream.
Yet, now, when she brought her arms down in a strong arc across the chest of the first rabid Savior trying to take her in hand, she woke up.
She was air and water, weightless and coursing. She was earth and flame, hard and multiplying. She felt like three women instead of one. A holy trinity of fire, brimstone and damnation.
The frightened woman she'd warned Rick she would be was nowhere to be found.
She wondered, Is this what Hugh felt like running through the Vietnam jungle, his only intention to kill? Even so early into her attack, before the carnage to come, she heard her subconscious answer in Hershel's voice, No Michonne. You are not Hugh August.
Still, every time she slipped that blade beneath the fabric, the skin and the muscle of a man, it was an elixir for fear. A flash of power akin to the lightning outside.
When she felt her metal open carotid, axillary and femoral arteries with the ease of a sigh, deep enough to scrape across bone, the vibration washed over her with a voltage high enough to make her heart skip a beat.
The blade was so thin and fleeting that as Michonne whirled it through the air, the Savior's around her didn't even know she had it until they felt the warm wet weeping from their skin turning their clothes clingy and red.
It was the coppery scent of blood and the woozy feeling that alerted them they were bleeding out. The sword's bite was so fierce it was ghostly.
Michonne parried and struck, parried and struck, exerting herself more than she had in years. Her head still throbbed from being pistol whipped at the diner and her wounded leg complained each time she dipped for a low blow.
Instead of giving in to the pain, she let out a warrior's cry with each whirring thrust.
"Ha!" She attacked with a bursting slice through the press of oncomers. "Ha," came the diagonal downstroke to follow.
She drove back a column of charging curs with the sole of her boot propelling into the sternum of a brave but foolish man who came at her with a chair held over his head. "Ha!" Her kick and the weight of the chair sent him tumbling onto the men at his back.
"Ah!" Her arm cut a horizontal line through the air and less than an inch of her sword skated across his neck as he fell. It was more than enough. Blood spurted through the air and Michonne issued a fearsome cry, heaving as she turned to the next wave of opponents.
Rick watched her in amazement as she roared again and again. He realized he was seeing the answer to the questions he'd asked himself so many times. How could she survive the loss of her son, the loss of her home, the loss of her best friend? How could she defy a fever and chills to be beside him when I needed her? How could she win Carl over when the boy refused to give in an inch?
She's a fuckin' beast.
A she-bear. A tigress. A lioness. Beautiful, terrible and unrelenting. It was the same unbridled passion she gave him in bed once he coaxed her out of her shell.
A fuckin' beast.
And that's when he knew. He wasn't there to save her. He was there to bear witness. He was there to see the part of herself she always tried to hide. He was there to see it so he could love her more. A thing he didn't think possible, but God knew better. Lightning turned night to day for an instant but to Rick, it was Michonne shining bright as the sun.
Outside, Hugh was making his way around the house. His old G.I. Marine cap tight around his bald head kept the downpour out of his eyes. He was headed to the watchposts he'd seen on the map…
... only all the men on duty were on their way to the sound of gunshots.
He raised his gun, elbows locked as he ran, picking them off quickly before they reached the door. He growled with his next step but held his pace. When he glanced down he saw a bullet had taken a chunk out of his outer thigh in a flesh wound.
Finding the shooter a few yards away, he sent three rounds through the storm and watched the Savior fall where he stood. Hugh's attention shifted when he heard his daughter's rhythmic grunts of exertion over the mindless screaming and shouting around him.
Drawn to the fight inside, he raced up the stairs to the double doors of the house. As he passed the dying men on the ground, he didn't neglect their final coup de grace.
Women were pouring out to escape the carnage inside. Hugh holstered his weapon, pulling them out roughly by their arms. They stumbled to their knees at his feet or fell in a face-first sprawl, congesting the exit even more.
A straggler Savior caught Hugh with an elbow around his neck. Neither man said a word as the faceless enemy squeezed Mr. August's windpipe like a vice, pulling the tall, dark invader back and down over a motionless corpse in a black suit.
Hugh could reach his gun, but he wouldn't be able to aim without going for a headshot. With the other man's face so close to his and all the jostling and jerking, Hugh was liable to put the round in his own head.
He threw his hands over his head, his branching fingers clutching the man by the back of his skull. Hugh found his eye sockets with his thumbs and squeezed back just as hard. The Savior let go of him, screeching and covering his blood-streaked face.
He stumbled over the body beneath them and fell writhing in pain on the porch's welcome mat. Hugh took a moment to relish the sight, before continuing inside. He saw Rick just standing there, with a man at the business end of a shotgun while his daughter took on a mob. He sneered.
Michonne was slicing her way to Merle. But before she reached him a half dozen Saviors lay carved up, dead or dying at her feet. Some of their limbs hung on by bloody bits of skin. They were the lucky ones, when so many retreated without a hand or an arm.
Merle, the Legion Axe, watched in horror as he read the dark omen. He was a man sworn to shed blood, even his own, in the Savior's service. And he would have stood his ground against anybody else.
But he saw Rick's blood splattered face, the double barrel of his shotgun and the colt in his other hand and he withered. He saw Michonne rushing towards him, nostrils flared, with that long curved blade. He turned to run like a rabbit in low grass.
The baby-killing bastard grabbed a disoriented strawberry blond and threw her at Michonne to slow her down. The girl stumbled headlong into her. She more than likely would have sheared off half her face against the edge of the katana if Michonne hadn't flattened the blade between her and the girl's scantily clad body in the nick of time.
Negan watched, completely taken aback, as Merle broke past Michonne and ran out of view down the main hall of the house. "Well, ain't that a dick in my ass," the head man said to himself incredulously.
"You really thought a man who would kill an innocent child was anythang more than a coward?" Rick's tone was even, weary and in no competition with the noise in the room but Negan heard him all the same. Though he only shrugged and changed the subject.
"You're early, Sheriff Grimes," he said loudly over the hysteria. "You crashed my party." His voice was jovial, mocking. Not a hint of alarm.
"Your fuckin' party sucks," Rick returned with the same cheeky tone. "But you see my baby over there?" He inclined Negan's head toward Michonne with the heavy weapon in his hand. "She's gonna liven it up for ya."
"You couldn't be without her one night, huh?" Negan said, flowery, "Must be true love."
The man at gunpoint wore a slimy smile, but when Michonne glanced in his direction, she could see the poorly veiled surprise in his dark, devilish eyes. For his part, Rick's eyes were beacons, darting around the room, scouting for anyone taking aim at Michonne as she tried to pull the dead-eyed blond out of harm's way.
No sooner than Michonne had all but flung the girl behind the altar for safekeeping, did one of the younger VIP's spot her dark skin in the sea of white. "Stay here," she was telling the girl, who had snapped out of her catatonic state.
Now she was begging the formidable swordswoman to help her get out of there. Michonne was reassuring her that she would be okay when the Savior bounded for her, seething and calling her whatever kind of black bitch that came to his mind.
Her back was turned and when he got in striking distance, he drew back his fist, propelling it with what would have been force enough to knock her out. But instead he dropped to his knees and fell over on his face from a shot between his eyes, courtesy of Sheriff Grimes and his colt 45.
The weapon's discharge sent a new wave of hysteria through the room. Armed men were still pushing their way inside to confront the unknown threat. When the gang of men coming to fight collided with the crush of women in flight, the shrieks and violent discord was instantly compounded.
The property's dark grounds were buzzing with gunfire between the Savior footmen and the woefully outnumbered King County deputies as they made their way uphill, under a bounded fire assault. T-Dog supplied cover as Jerry advanced and crouched near an old feeding trough. Jerry fired while Rosita flew through the middle of her leapfrogging team. She found a waist high plank wall to dip behind and when she began pulling her trigger, Noah came up from their six. He dove behind a huge landscaping boulder and when he caught his breath, he signaled for T to follow.
All the while the thunder broke through the sky and the rain came down in sheets. "Your little mutt is a badass. I'll give her that, " Negan commended and insulted Michonne at the same time. "But unless you got a battalion with you… and I know you ain't… you're outnumbered. Foxy Brown is quick but she's losing steam and when she gives out, you're gonna have to watch every man in here take a piece of her."
Rick could see the sweat on Michonne's forehead. Despite the dozen or so that she'd taken out, there were dozens more ready to go.
Hugh was near the entryway in a brawl with five or six guys. He clocked one with an elbow, breaking his nose. Another, he slammed head first into the wall while his long-legged reach kicked down two more. But that wouldn't last forever.
"I know you're smart enough to see that you ain't gettin' outta this alive if we keep fightin' like this. I gotta say, I'm impressed," Negan nodded. "This was a good try, Grimes. But I suggest we all calm down and talk this out like men."
Before Rick could answer, Negan put his fingers between his lips and whistled everyone to a stop. He started a slow clap, loud enough to rival the woeful moans around him.
"This was quite the fuckin' show," he shouted for everyone to hear. "Now, Miss August, I know you're probably more than a little pissed at us and that's understandable," Negan said in a domineering and condescending tone. "But your sheriff agrees with me that we're gonna stop the fighting, slicing and dicing. See if we can't resolve this with a little more dignity."
"Fuck that! This nappy bitch took my hand!" One man was shrieking from the floor as he clutched a stump to his chest. He should've just let Negan talk, because that outburst sent the point of Michonne's katana into the top of his head.
His tongue flopped from his open mouth under surprised but lifeless eyes, but any more objections from him would not be forthcoming. Negan waved his hands to prevent further aggression by his men. He sighed and chastised Rick, "Goddammit! You wanna get control of your woman?"
"Don't talk to me. You brought her here." Rick scoffed.
Michonne pulled her blade from the dead man's skull and flicked the blood off in a line across the floor. "I told you to be careful what you ask for, didn't I?"
"Alright boys if you need some medical attention go find Pete and his team. Get yourself looked at." A caravan of half-men limped and dragged each other from the room, some howling in agony, others trying to kill Michonne with hateful eyes. "Look, let's start this again. I did bring you here. Grimes you can look around the room and see how well connected the SOC is."
"I do." Rick pointed with his colt from one to another, "Tony Hawthorne, the biggest petroleum producer this side of the globe. The owner of nearly every cell tower from here to California, Kenneth Mondell. Donald Nicks… Ansel Gaines. Big names. I even spotted our governor, Philip Blake with two kidnapped girls. What's the matter Phil, the woman you got don't satisfy?"
"Fuck you grimes. How dare you talk down to me? I could buy or sell a hundred men like you. A hundred men better than you! That's right, I took your wife. I took your son. I took your job. And even if Negan convinces you to join up, you'll always be the shit on my shoe."
Michonne bristled at the governor's rant and marched toward him, her sword pointed to the floor, still dripping blood. His pair of bodyguards quickly blocked her approach. The shorter one, a bald, stocky guy in a suit, stepped to meet her.
"I'm former Navy SEAL," he announced with his gun drawn and aimed at her face. "I'm not scared of you. You might as well have a pocket knife, for all I care. So put your toy away before I make you swallow a couple rounds."
His partner posted up beside him, nose in the air with a wordless dare. They stared her down. Michonne's breaths were still coming heavy from her deadly dance. She struck the red tears from her sword on a swift jerk of her wrist. The taller guard flinched at her motion and Michonne gave him a mocking smile.
Slowly she raised her outstretched weapon in her right hand and bent her elbow. So slowly, everyone watching her stood mesmerized. Her movements precise, the razor sharp tip of her sword found the opening of the scabbard at her back. The faint sound of steel on wood was deafening as she slid the blade down ever so slowly in the hush of the tensed room.
She opened her hand allowing gravity to pull the rest of the sword into its sheath. The metal collar of the handle closed the opening with a hollow knock and Michonne, still smiling, showed her empty palm above her shoulder.
Like the misdirection of a magic trick, her sword hand had drawn every eye while her left fist produced a small black switchblade. Michonne sidestepped the bald guard's aim, slamming her forehead into the center of his face.
The bones in his nose made a crunch and his head flew back, stunning him and knocking him off balance. His branched arm went limp across Michonne's shoulder and he dropped his gun to hold his face together. In the space of half a second, she dragged her pocket knife across his neck with her left hand and freed her sword again with her right.
It came up, sweeping through the air like a hawk. Over the bald man's ruined face, to cut across his partner's left eye, right cheek and wide right shoulder. In half a second more, she was on Philip Blake.
He went down, spitting out two of his teeth when the butt of her sword cracked him in the mouth. A few in the room were thickheaded enough to take a step toward Michonne. But they fumed inert and quiet when Rick reminded them that their beloved leader was still just a trigger away from having a soup bowl for a head.
"You fucking b…" Philip went to say but Michonne gave him two hard kicks in the ribs, stealing that final syllable from his lung. After that, he communicated his desire to relent with his shaking upturned hands.
"Hey, Phil, Rick…" Negan spoke, grinning amicably in an effort to douse the building tension. "You two don't like each other. We get it. But let's think about the bigger issue. Phil, I told you, man, Rick is an asset. He's proved it tonight. And Rick, the governor, here, he keeps us going through the highest levels of government. Men like you work together and the survival of the white race is all but assured."
Philip may have had some choice words for that suggestion, but he thought better of giving them voice when he looked up at Michonne. All he dared was a breathless, "He'll never join." He deflated and hung his head, holding his ribs and two prominent bloody pieces of that million dollar politician smile.
Negan ignored Governor Blake's doubt. "Rick, I'll give you the whole state operation… maybe even the entire southern bloc. Come on, man. They're breeding us out… you'll have the pick of my stables…Make some white babies. Be a part of the new 'Founding Fathers'."
Rick didn't deliberate. "Fuck you…" "Ok, Look. You can even keep your little black mamba if her cunt is that good," Negan offered. "I mean, lots of my guys like nappy pussy. I get Dr. Pete to sterilize 'em and we make 'em cumbuckets. Can't have no babies except white babies around here. But you can have your cake and eat it too. If you think about it, Grimes, it's a good deal. You can help us put more niggers behind bars. Liberals are taking over and they all want straight white christian men at the bottom of the totem pole. We gotta stick together if we're gonna take back our country and get these goddamn eses and eggplants under heel..."
Negan heard a revolver cock behind him. But it wasn't the sheriff's. They both turned and saw Simon with a Magnum at Rick's temple. His hands were still bloody up to his elbows from whatever he'd done with Jadis.
"Put it down," the Pieman commanded. A genuine smile finally broke over Negan's face as Michonne's eyes went wide with fear.
"Rick," she whispered, distressed.
"Not a fuckin' chance," Rick told Simon, calling his bluff. He pushed Negan's head back forward with the shotgun barrel.
"Just gimme the word, commander," said Simon.
