4:15 PM
Glenn and Dixon returned from their looting expedition and parked in front of the storehouse, where Carol and Maggie met them to see what they'd acquired. Maggie kissed Glenn and looked him over, because he had some walker guts on his t-shirt, as did Dixon. "We're fine," Glenn assured her. "We just had to kill a few at the dorms."
"What did you get?" Maggie asked.
"Twenty-three boxes of condoms and eighteen packs of pills," Glenn answered. "Plus a bunch of strong antibiotics. And some beer and liquor. College kids, you know. And Dixon grabbed some trade books that might be useful."
"Six packs each on the pills?" Maggie asked Carol. "You, me, and Patricia?"
"What about Michonne?" Carol asked.
"She's not with anyone."
"At the moment," Carol said. "But she's been seeing Dr. S. It could…progress."
"Then five for each of us and three for her, how about?"
"Fair enough," Carol agreed.
"And the condoms, six boxes for Daryl," Glenn said, "since he already has four, eight for me, eight for T-Dog, and…I guess we can fight over the last one."
"I'll take it," Dixon said.
"For what?" Maggie asked him sharply.
"For uh…just to have…hold onto…in case…"
"In case what?" Maggie looked at him coolly.
"I'm going to go take this box of books to the library." Dixon picked up a heavy cardboard box from the back of the truck and hastened off.
"Relax, Maggie," Glenn said. "It's bound to happen eventually. Just be glad he's thinking about being safe when it does."
"Beth is nowhere near ready for that."
"Okay," Glenn said.
"They're just in the kissing stage!" Maggie insisted.
"Uh-huh. I think I'll just…bring in this box to the warehouse …" Glenn grabbed another cardboard box from the bed of the truck and hurried off.
5:00 PM
Ezekiel lounged in a lawn chair on the second story balcony of the school. He reached over and scratched Shiva behind her left ear. The tiger purred. Nabila approached and cautiously kept her distance from the great cat. "I just wanted to tell you, your highness, that the leeks are ready to harvest in the east garden. If you could assign three people to help me tomorrow."
"I'll be sure to do that, Nabila, and thank your for your fine work supervising the gardens. You're a blessing to the Kingdom."
Jerry, grinning, lumbered down the balcony toward them. "Hey there, Nabila," he said.
Nabila smiled back, whether with affection or amusement it was hard to tell, and said, "Hello, Jerry."
Jerry grinned even wider. "Hey."
Ezekiel chuckled. He didn't think Jerry would have much luck there, but who knew. Men's odds had shifted in the apocalypse.
Jerry finally drew his attention from Nabila to Ezekiel. "May I speak to you privately for a moment, boss?"
"I was just on my way to bring some fresh vegetables to the chef in the cafeteria anyway." Nabila walked on past the tiger, molding herself to the balcony as she did so and looking at the great cat warily as she passed it and then Jerry.
Jerry turned to watch her go, and, when she was out of earshot, turned forward again. "Gavin's at the front gate."
"What?" Ezekiel sat abruptly forward and Shiva let out a low growl and sat at attention with him. "It's not collection day, and he swore he would never bring guns to our gate, that we would always meet – "
"-It's just him," Jerry interrupted. "I think he walked in on foot from somewhere. It's just him and no vehicles. No other Saviors. No guns but the one on his hip. He says he wants a private audience with you."
5:05 PM
His hair wet from the shower and drops of water still lightly beading his bare chest, Daryl sat on the edge of the bed with a white towel wrapped around his waist. Carol sat behind him and worked on the knot in his shoulder. He grunted. "So damn sore," he muttered.
"Well, that's what you get for hunting alone." He'd run into ten walkers at once – likely leftovers from the herd on the farm - and he'd had to shoot, stab, stab, reload shoot, stab, stab… He was lucky he hadn't gotten bit. "Was it worth it?"
"Yeah. Really needed to stab some shit today."
Carol kissed the back of his neck and inhaled. She loved the way he smelled when he was fresh from the shower, like honey sickle and talcum powder. The honey sickle was from some kind of "hunters' soap" he'd picked up from a mostly-looted sporting goods store while on a run. The deer loved the scent, supposedly, but he used it with every shower, because Carol loved it too. The talcum powder he used to keep his feet and armpits dry and his human scent obscured, especially when hunting. She resumed her rubbing. "Catch anything?"
"Wild turkey. Spring's the season. But it wasn't easy. Those fuckers are skittery. Beth and Maggie are pluckin' it now. Should yield eight or nine pounds butchered. Have some tomorrow."
"Well, I got a lot of work done. Laundry, a little harvesting in the gardens – the parsnips, rhubarb and spring cauliflower were ready to be picked. I also restocked the pantry and rotated by expiration dates…Patricia's making dinner tonight. It should be ready in less than an hour."
"Like her tuna salad casserole."
"We're out of canned tuna finally. She's making a venison stir fry and some cornbread on the side." They had several boxes of cornbread mix from the BBQ joint in the park. "But Sophia caught a real fish today. T-Dog caught two. We had them for lunch. You missed out."
"Had me a woodcock. Caught it by the creek digging with it's bill. Lower," he murmured. "Yeah, that's the spot."
As she dug in with her knuckle, she said, "I take it a woodcock is a bird of some sort?"
"Mhm. Hard to catch, usually. $99 on the exotic meat market for one bird."
"And how much meat does one bird produce?"
"This one? 'Bout three ounces."
"$99 for three ounces of meat?" she asked skeptically.
"People are crazy," Daryl told her. He grunted because she'd found another knot.
"I had a good chat with Maggie and Patricia today."
He murmured and leaned forward as she worked lower on his back.
"Do you ever want children?" she asked.
He sat straight abruptly. "What?"
"Children." She pushed on his shoulder to ease him forward in a more relaxed position so she could continue to work lower. "It's probably something we should have talked about before we got married. Do you ever want them?"
"Got Soph. She's mine."
"She is."
"And Mika. She's…ours. All of ours in this house. Luke, too."
"Would you ever want one of your own, though? You know…from your own loins?"
"Pfft."
"Is that a no?"
"Ain't a no, 'zactly just…" He turned half around to look at her, his eyes clouded with concern. "Weird time to ask."
"I know." She motioned with her finger for him to sit forward again and resumed her massage. "I was just thinking about what you said. About how we have to make every day about love and life. Not death."
"You want a kid? From your own…uh…"
"Womb?" Carol asked with a chuckle.
"Yeah."
"I honestly don't know. In the old world, I think I would have said yes. Yes, I want to have your baby. In this world…with what happened to Lori…" she sighed and her hands slipped from his flesh. "I really don't know. That's why I asked what you wanted."
He turned sideways to face her in the bed, one leg bent up and stretching his towel. "Want you to be safe. Want you and Soph to be safe. 'S what I want most in the world. But I ain't in control of that." He sighed and looked down at the comforter. "Think that's what scares the shit out of me, more than all these dead things walkin' 'round. That even in the old world," he looked up at her again, "I wouldn't of been in control of that."
She leaned forward and kissed his lips gently. "We're not in control of our tomorrows," she said when she pulled back, "but we're in control of our todays. Let's savor each moment. We don't have to decide this today. Baby stuff. I just wanted to let you know what's been going through my head. The pills run out in May. The condoms will last us until the New Year – Glenn found some more. We can see how things are going by that point in our world, if anyone else has safely had a baby, how secure we've made Fun Kingdom, what kind of equilibrium we've managed to achieve in this world. And we can revisit the discussion then."
"A'right," he said, looking like his nerves were tingling with a mixture of fear and excitement.
She smiled, kissed his lips again, and then said, "My turn," before turning around to let him rub her back.
5:15 PM
Gavin walked down the aisle of the high school theater toward the stage where King Ezekiel sat in his cheap prop throne, Richard to his left and Jerry to his right and that great tiger lounging at his feet. The tiger had terrified Gavin the first time he'd seen it, but he took it in stride this time.
The first time Gavin had come to the Kingdom, he'd come alone, covered in walker guts, pretending to seek refuge. He'd followed two knights back at a distance, his vehicle in the woods, and come in on foot. He'd spent a day scoping out the place from the inside and taking inventory. The next day, he had volunteered to go out with the hunters. That way, he could leave the gates without suspicion and also discover their hunting grounds. He gave the hunters the slip in the forest.
A few days later, Gavin had returned with an armed crew to those same hunting grounds. Ezekiel was there, boar hunting with Jerry and Benjamin. Gavin's crew had surrounded the three men with a massive show of guns. He'd wanted Ezekiel to know how strong a force he represented. He'd told Ezekiel that there were more men and guns where these had come from, and then he told him what the price of peace would be. The king had agreed to it.
Gavin hadn't thought of what he was doing as wrong, precisely. He'd thought of it as an act of survival. There were mouths to feed at the Sanctuary, after all, and still more at each outpost, hundreds of mouths, a third of them women. And this was how he helped to feed them. He didn't like the way Negan ran things, but tough times called for tough men, and if it wasn't Negan, it would be someone else. He didn't like that Negan had brained to death a man at the Hilltop to establish his dominance there, but Gavin didn't have to do things that way himself, not with the Kingdom. At least, he hadn't been asked to do things that way.
Until now.
"State the purpose of your visit," Richard called across the stage to him. "And the king will hear you."
"Well you try and you try and you try," Gavin replied, "and you hope and you hope and you hope...just wanting things to finally just settle. Just trying to achieve some goddamn hard-fought equilibrium."
For months, Gavin had been slowly building alliances and loyalties among the Saviors with no real intention of rebelling. He was just trying to maintain good morale within his crew and to recruit the best talent, just as he had, in the old world, as a construction foreman. His goal was to become successful enough to be left largely alone, to live out his life at a growing outpost, in charge of his own small sphere, working as honorably as he could manage to work in this corrupt world. In this fantasy, he would also make enough points and enough of a good impression, eventually, to be able to support both Tanya and Frankie outside the harem at his outpost without pissing off Negan for doing it.
He was never planning to topple Negan. He saw himself as a foreman, not as an executive. He couldn't control all those Saviors, some of them very brutal men by nature, kept in line only by the threat of a more brutal man. If Negan was toppled, there would be a vacuum, and another equally or more brutal man would rise to fill it – most likely Simon.
But Gavin had felt backed into a corner in that council room this morning. He'd seen there would never be any escaping Negan, not really, not even to some distant little outpost. And Negan would grow crueler and crueler as his world became harder and harder to control. Simon was on his way to Georgia, and he wouldn't be in Virginia to fill the vacuum. There would never be a better moment than the present.
"But no," Gavin continued. "It always comes down to this. It always has to get dark. Ugly. And inhuman. I'm here because against my wishes, I've been asked to break my word to you, Ezekiel. I don't want to break my word. My word is all I have left in this world. So, if I have to break it, I'm going to break it to the man who asked me to break it in the first place. I'm done with Negan." He glanced from Richard to Jerry and back to the king. "I have information, and I'll help you to defend yourselves against the Saviors. In return, you agree to provide protection behind these walls to the families of the men who are loyal to me - sisters, wives, mothers. Negan will be overthrown. And with the help of the other communities, we can topple the entire syndicate."
"What other communities?" Richard asked.
"Your world," Gavin told him, "is about to get a whole lot bigger."