In the morning, they said goodbye to and buried Bob. He finally succumbed to the fever and the shock an hour or two after the sun rose. Merle and Sophia both only offered the man a short and simple farewell, as neither had known the man well. They'd left the church to head out for a hunting and foraging endeavor before they had to leave with Abraham. Merle was pretty certain in his choice, but Sophia seemed like she had something to say about it. When they got far enough away from the church for Merle to be holding back his scowls at the usually chatty girl's complete silence, he spoke up.
"Speak your mind, girl," he told her in an agitated tone.
"Why are we goin' to DC instead of waiting for Ani and Daryl?"
"'Cause we ain't goin' to DC," Merle said plainly. "We won't make it there 'fore we have to turn around's what I reckon. Won't make it very far at all with the way that Eugene fella's been actin'. Ani knows somethin' we don't."
"How do you know that?"
"How she said we'd go to DC. 'Not 'cause I believe in your mission,' those were her words. I'd damn near bet my other hand that man is lyin'. So we go, and we make damn sure we get 'em back here to our people. Those guys are too damn strong not to have on our side."
"So, it's like a fake out?"
"Exactly, girl. Now let's get back. They'll be wantin' to head out soon," Merle told her, patting her on the back as he took point and led her back to the church.
Glenn, Maggie and Tara were already waiting outside as they walked up, Abraham handing something to Rick. "This is our route to DC. We'll stick to it as long as we're able. If not, well, you got our destination. Once Eugene gets to the big brains up there, things are gonna bounce back. This group should be there for it. Tiny should be there for it. You should be there for it."
"They will be," Maggie told him.
"We will," Michonne agreed.
"We will," Rick promised.
"Let's go!" Abraham said as they all loaded into the car, Carl giving Sophia a hug before they loaded up.
Abraham sat and thought long and hard about whether or not they should really leave before deciding they were doing the right thing. This group was strong, and they weren't even taking their strongest fighters. Sure, the soldier was pretty tough and a crack shot, but he wasn't anywhere near on the same level as Tiny, who was the real prize in the group he'd been eyeing to have along on this adventure. But even with Tiny's skills, they couldn't wait around when they didn't know if the girl was going to make it back alive. With a final nod to Rick, he closed the bus doors and drove away.
They'd been on the road for roughly half an hour, listening to church music, when Rosita started playing with Abraham's hair, "It's getting a little messy for you."
"Gettin' ready for retirement," he told her. "Relaxin' my groomin' standards. Thinkin' about becomin' a plumber, a sheepherder or somethin'."
"You ain't herding sheep, Abraham. Eyes on the prize," she told him as she continued messing with his hair.
"Damn right. That's my girl," he told her as she removed her hand. "Maybe I'll let you shave me down all over, dolphin-smooth."
They both scoffed before Rosita smacked his arm light-heartedly, "I'll cut it for you tonight."
Tara was sitting behind Rosita watching the exchange. Looking between the two in front of her and Eugene, she told him out of friendliness, "Hey, maybe Rosita can give you a trim while she's at it. Party's getting a little long in the back. Or is it your source of power?"
"I ain't slayin' a lion anytime soon," he told her quickly, still thinking about how he was supposed to get out of this whole ordeal he'd created for himself. "I wouldn't be placin' any wagers on seein' me dispatch a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass."
"Oh, so you'll just settle on saving the world right?" she asked him, noticing the change in his attitude.
"Yeah," he said quietly, wondering when his trick was going to finally take effect; hopefully they could get back to the church before sundown.
"What's up? Last night?" she asked, guessing it had to do with their talk.
"Nope," he responded before correcting himself. "Yes, that and tomorrow. And I'm thinkin' about that preacher, what he did."
Tara kept quiet, looking at the man with the mullet in contemplation. What the preacher did was no different than what she had done, to an extent. She had kept the doors to their apartment closed for almost a year before she'd been forced to let Brian in by her niece, and look where that had landed them. Up shit's creek without a paddle and a dead family thanks to Brian's need for revenge. As much as she would have liked to believe otherwise, she wouldn't have done much different if she had been placed in the same situation as the preacher, at least not back then. Now? Well, after Terminus and Glenn and Maggie, she'd do what she had to whether or not she was scared, to protect herself, to protect her friends. And she was absolutely terrified now that she was without her family and essentially tagging along with strangers.
"Maybe they're just behind us," Maggie's voice broke her out of her thoughts. "Maybe the others came back. Maybe they took the map, they found some cars, and they're just down the road."
"They'll catch up," Glenn assured her. "We're clearing the way for them."
"How long will it be?" Maggie turned and asked Eugene. "After you get on that terminal and do what you have to do?"
"Depends on a number of factors including density of the infected around target sites worldwide," he told her going right back into the lie he had perfected even though he knew he had to tell the truth sooner or later.
"Wait, target sites?" Glenn asked. "Are you talking about missiles?"
Eugene looked at the man, hoping that he would stop asking questions as he responded, "That's classified."
"I thought we were over that?" he insisted.
"What if we all live?"
"Like secrets will matter then?"
"They might. Anyway, the speed with which things normalize depend on a number of factors including worldwide weather patterns which were modeled without the assumption that cars, planes, boats, and trains wouldn't be pourin' hydrocarbons into the atmosphere this long. Changes the game quite a bit when it comes to air-transmissible pathogens," he said, wondering how Ani had called him out so quickly while these people just stared at him like he was talking gibberish.
"Why the hair?" Glenn asked, not keeping up with what the man said at all; Ani was like that too sometimes when she started talking about psychology.
"Because I like it," Eugene said plainly. "And no one is takin' a clipper or scissors to it any time soon. You hear me, Ms. Espinosa?"
"Yes, loud and clear," Rosita laughed back at him.
"Y'all can laugh all you want. The smartest man I ever met happened to love my hair," Eugene bluffed again. "My old boss, T. Brooks Ellis, the director of the Human Genome Project. He said that my hair made me look like, and I quote, 'a fun guy.' Which I am. I just ain't Samson."
"Ani, she won't let anyone cut her hair either," Merle told him with a chuckle. "We can braid it, play with it, make fun of it hangin' to her ass, but the minute you mention cuttin' it, she swears up and down to call her Samson."
"I didn't know you braided her hair," Maggie told him.
"Well, who else do ya think kept it up when she was sick? Certainly wasn't the girl who could barely keep her eyes open! Took an hour and a half to brush that rat's nest out," Merle said. "Should've cut it while she sle-"
A loud bang from the engine interrupted Merle mid-sentence, followed by squealing tires and a bus that was swaying wildly back and forth. Merle grabbed hold of Sophia and shielded her with his body and arms as they swerved wildly down the road before the bus finally lost its balance and sent them crashing to the ground, the bus having flipped on its side, Abraham yelling a rather funny curse out in the form of 'bitchnuts.' If he wasn't in so much pain from having Sophia land on him, Merle might have been laughing at the other soldier's expressive vocabulary. Abraham started calling for Eugene as everyone began to gather themselves and assess for wounds.
"You okay, Pops?" Sophia asked, climbing off of Merle and retrieving her bow.
"Yeah. You might as well be a feather, girly. No issues here," he said, even though he was clearly winded and took a minute to get to his knees and push himself up. "Anyone get the license of the guy that hit us?"
"Funny, Merle. Real funny," Glenn said as Merle smirked.
"Eugene, are you okay?" Tara asked, hearing the man mumble about the preacher as she helped him get up.
"Everyone alright? Everyone else, are you okay?" Abraham asked, a chorus of affirmations responding to him.
"The engine's on fire," Rosita said. "We gotta get out of here."
"Grab what you can, we gotta get outta here 'fore that engine blows," Merle commented, grabbing Sophia's bug out bag and throwing it at her before putting his own on. "Abraham, you and me, we got the doors. Knock the son a bitches back. Glenn, you and Maggie come out behind us, Rosita, you too. We'll fight off the biters. Tara, Sophia, stay with Smartypants. Keep him safe. We can fight our way through."
"Yeah, alright, we'll do it live," Abraham said, climbing to the back of the bus through everyone. "Tara, Sophia, you don't come out 'til it's clear and you stay on his six at all times, you hear me?"
"Yes, sir!" Sophia said with a proper solute, something Ani had showed her as a joke against Merle but now she had a second target to make stare at her in shock, which was what Abraham was doing.
"Let's go," Merle said. "On my mark. Three. Two. One. Go!"
Unlatching the back door as Abraham grabbed a hold of a pole meant for holding onto with both hands, Merle rammed the thing with his shoulder at the same time as Abraham pulled himself up and kicked. It took a couple turns, but they finally managed to knock back the walkers that had been banging up against the door, Merle barreling out with a war cry headfirst as his door opened. Abraham was close behind him as the others climbed out and began to kill the walkers that had followed them up the road.
Hearing breaking sounds from behind her as she was about to climb out, Tara stopped and turned around to see a walker nearly cutting itself in half as it tried to get into the bus. It was cutting Eugene off from escape and Sophia had already exited the bus. Grabbing her knife, Tara did what she had to do before calling out to Eugene, terrified in the moment herself.
"Come on. I know it sucks and it's scary, but it's time to be brave," she told him.
"It isn't voluntary," he responded.
"It is when you're screwed either way," she countered. "So you cut to the choice that might help somebody." Handing him one of the spare knives she'd been given, she told him to come on again, waiting for him to exit the bus. "I'm right behind you," she told him, exiting it herself.
Sophia was crouched beside the bus with her bow, reloading a bolt as Merle stood near her, taking out any walker that got too close. Tara was on the other side, doing the same. In front of him, Glenn, Maggie, Rosita, and Abraham were having a seemingly easy time fending off the dead. Eugene wasn't really a coward, well, he was, but it was because it was all too much. The smell, the movement, the sounds, it was all too much for his brain to cope with and made him unable to move, paralyzed with an inability to discern one thing from another. All the blood the squelching, the grunting, it was all so much and made his ears ring as he took in the carnage around him.
The muffled sound of groaning behind him had him turning frightfully to see a walker that Tara quickly dispatched from behind before heading to dispatch another. Still terrified and overstimulated, Eugene forced his body to move as he watched a walker come up on Tara's back while she dealt with the other one, plunging his knife into the thing's back. Tara turned and finished it off when she finished with hers, but Eugene was unable to pull the knife out until the walker was on the ground. He looked around in both shock that he had actually done that and horror that he had, in fact, actually just tried to take out a walker for the first time ever. He held the knife Tara had given him out in front of him defensively as Abraham killed the final walker and stormed around breathing heavy.
"Check Eugene," he told Rosita.
"I'm fine," Eugene told him. "Just cuts and dings is all."
"Check him!" Abraham yelled forcefully.
"Is that your blood?" Maggie asked him, pointing to his hand.
"Yeah," he said. "Damn thing opened again. I swear, the cuts are finer than frog's hair. They're just big bleeders."
"First aid kit's in the bus," Maggie said, moving towards the back of the bus as Merle pulled Sophia away from it. "I'll see what we have."
The only things they'd managed to pull off the bus was Abraham's large blue rucksack and Merle and Sophia's bug out bags. The entire thing was now up in flames, having really lit on fire just after Merle had grabbed Sophia. He'd seen the flames and knew the bus was about to go up which was why he'd grabbed her up in the first place. Watching as Abraham took in the sight of the bus and visibly almost blew his lid before he grabbed the blue bag from in front of Merle.
"We're not stopping. We're rolling on. We'll find another vehicle down the road," Abraham said as he began walking around the bus. "The mission hasn't changed."
"Devil's Advocate, nothin' more, we smashed to a stop hard," Eugene tried to reason, trying to get Abraham to go back to the church without actually telling him the truth. "We spent a lot of time rolling things out of the road. The church is just 15 miles that way-"
"No," Abraham growled at him. "We don't stop. We don't go back. We're at war, and retreat means we lose. The road fights back, the plan gets jacked. You all know that! Now, we will get through this because we have to. Every direction is a question. We don't go back!"
"Hey now, what'd I say about Ani not takin' your crap when she catches up? I ain't gonna take it either, boy, so calm your ass down," Merle told the man as he began to storm away.
"I am fit as a damn fiddle," Abraham told him.
"We are going with you," Glenn told him as he walked up. "You are calling this thing, but I need to know you're good. That you aren't spiraling."
"This is how things stop," Abraham said after a moment, looking the younger man in the eye. "I can't afford that right now. The world can't afford it. Listen, I took a pretty hard shot to the sack with that crash. I am stressed and depressed to see that ride die, but if you say we're rolling on, I'm good."
"We're rollin' on, Red. No worries about that," Merle told him.
Abraham nodded his head and heaved a heavy sigh before saying, "I'm gonna rub some dirt on it."
"Yeah," Glenn agreed.
"We'll find what we need like we always have," Rosita offered. "On the way."
"Okay, but I'm not rubbing dirt on anything," Maggie agreed.
"We used clay in our poultices at the prison," Sophia informed her, making everyone chuckle at her innocence. "You've already rubbed dirt on wounds."
"Maybe we can find some bikes," Tara offered, honestly thinking that bikes would be more efficient and trying to lighten the mood at the same time. "Bikes don't burn," she said with a shrug.
"Alright," Abraham said, everyone except Eugene and Rosita moving along with him.
Eugene moved over to the walker he had helped kill, wanting to remember that he had overcome the stimulation and fear and actually helped protect someone. He was capable of protecting someone else even in that state, which meant he just needed to try a little harder and he could protect himself, right? It didn't matter that everything was blurred except the moments of clarity when someone was killing a walker. It didn't matter that all his blood had rushed into his ears, making it hard to truly hear anything that was happening around him clearly. It didn't matter that he'd been nearly frozen with fear while his mind refused to concentrate on any one thing at that moment. He had managed to fight his way through all of it and help protect his new friend.
"Eugene, what are you doing?" Rosita asked, completely exasperated by the man's weird tendencies.
"Nothin'," he said before spitting on the walker and standing, following along the same trail the others had and giving the burning bus a wide berth.
~x~
Night fell as they were still on the road, having managed to find a small town, but no vehicles. Looking for a place to stay for the night, they happened upon a bookstore of which the windows were mostly covered. Merle busted open the doors while Eugene entered with his gun raised. Glenn and Rosita entered next, deeming the place clear after a few minutes. The rest entered and began rearranging the bookshelves to make cordoned off rooms after collecting what they could from the place, including water from the back of the toilet. Something was better than nothing was the thought of the day as Eugene used a battery to light a fire to burn so they could heat up food. Rosita used some of the silk from one of the books to stitch up Abraham's hand, Sophia going over when she was done and adding some poultice before it was bandaged from the herbs Ani had packed in her bag long ago.
"Won't be as potent since they aren't fresh, but it'll definitely help it heal," she told him.
"Well, thank you kindly little miss," Abraham told her before watching her walk back over to Merle; how the old soldier had found himself a kid like that he didn't know.
It was just after the little girl fell asleep that he heard Abraham and Rosita going at it, causing Merle to cuss under his breath. Even Ani and Daryl had been quiet because there were kids in the area, but these two? They had no qualms, even as Mr. Smartypants walked up and started watching. They just kept going at it like a couple of rabbits in the middle of spring. Trying to ignore them so he could sleep as well, Merle leaned back against the stack of books he'd made to use as a pillow and covered Sophia more with his jacket.
Tara was walking around when she saw Eugene standing right in front of a bookshelf, the noise behind it a telltale sign of what was happening on the other side. "Dude," she said as she tapped the man's shoulder.
He turned around and although he knew he should be ashamed, he wasn't. He simply stated, "Cards on the table, I was watching them."
"Yeah, I saw that," Tara said amused.
"I believe they know I catch an eyeful on occasion, which isn't to say it's their thing. It's not mine either," he assured her. "It's just that I appreciate the female form and I consider this a victimless crime that provides both comfort and distraction."
Tara stood with her eyebrows high up on her forehead and her lips pursed in a tight line with a little bit of a grin as she listened to the goings on on the other side of the shelves. "Maybe, uh...maybe we can move on from here," she said a little awkwardly. "I was coming over to say thank you for having my back at the bus. You saved my life."
"I don't know about that," Eugene told her sincerely.
"You did," she insisted.
"Well, if I did, then you provided the context for me doin' so."
"What?"
"I was screwed either way, so I went with the choice that helped someone. I thought it trite but it turned out to be true. Point to you."
"You have this," Tara told him. "Even if you didn't before, you do. Look, I'm...I'm the same way. You know you can do this," Tara assured him, noticing how he had barely looked at her the entire time she spoke. "Uh, did you hear what I just said?"
"The bus crashed because of me," Eugene told her, wanting to get a little bit of the weight that was his lie off his chest.
"No it didn't," she scoffed cheerfully.
"Yes, it did," he told her in all seriousness. "I put crushed glass in the fuel line. Light bulbs I found in the church. The vehicle, it should've failed before it ever got to the road."
Looking at him horrified, Tara said, "You would've killed us."
"It wasn't supposed to go down like that, not hardly, not half. The glass wasn't supposed to wear out the fuel line next to the sparkplugs. We fully pulled the short straw on that one."
"What the hell?" Tara whisper yelled, not knowing Merle was still awake and listening to the conversation. "Why did you do that? Eugene, why did-" Eugene tried walking away as he realized letting the little bit of truth out was only going to lead to questions he wasn't ready to answer only for Tara to stop him and stand in front of him. "Eugene? Why did you do that? Answer me," she said after he stood staring at her like a gaping fish.
"I appreciate the positive affirmations and looking the other way on the perversions, but I know empirically and definitively I cannot survive on my own. I cannot."
"So you killed the bus?"
Eugene closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, not able to let go of everything he had built since this all started and not wanting to be left behind, "If I don't cure the disease. If I don't fix the world I have no value."
"That's not how it works," Tara tried to tell him.
"If I don't fix things, there's no way you people would keep me around, share resources, even protect me."
"Of course we would," Tara attempted to assure him. "We're friends. We have each other's backs. That's it. Hell, I've heard that to Ani, we're all family, so everyone treats each other as family. That's it. That's how it works," she told him, realizing just how torn up he was about what he'd done in the fact that his face, while probably blank to him, took on the same expression her niece's did when she was pouting or distraught. "Don't tell anyone else what you did," she told him. "I'll keep your secret and we'll keep going. You know you messed up. You're trying, but, dude, you can't do something like that again."
"I won't," he promised, meaning it whole heartedly.
"You're stuck with us," Tara told him with a smile. "Just like we're stuck with you, no matter what."
"I don't know why I told you," Eugene told her without looking at her.
"I do," she laughed softly. "Welcome to the human race, asshole."
Holding up her fist, she bumped knuckles with the man before telling him to get some sleep before going and looking at Abraham and Rosita before walking away. As she walked past Merle, she noticed he was awake with a small smile on his face and nodded at him, which he reciprocated. It seemed like she wasn't the only one willing to keep the smart man's secret, even though she didn't understand why. If she knew that Merle was planning on getting them all back to the church before the end of the next day, she might have understood a little better.
In the morning, Sophia went to look at Abraham's wound, even as Rosita was. She agreed with Rosita about it not being infected, but before she could even say anything else, Rosita was scoffing at her, "Where'd you go to med school?"
"Ani taught me, and I have some petrolium jelly in my bag that we can put on top to keep it from bleeding for a while," she suggested. "And if we put some more of the herbs I did last night, it'll heal even faster."
"Ani isn't a know-it-all," Rosita claimed.
"Might as well be," Merle said as he walked up to them. "At least when it comes to people, plants, hunting, and natural medicine. Had an old man who taught her all this stuff. Been handin' it down to Phia and Carl since the beginnin'."
"Useful lessons to have," Abraham agreed.
"Damn straight," Merle said. "Listen, I think we should stick around a little while longer."
"Stay another day," Rosita agreed, knowing that they needed to properly gear up now that the bus was gone.
"No," Abraham shot them both down. "You got some reading you need to catch up on?"
"We got lucky yesterday," Rosita countered. "We're all banged up, you especially with this bleeder."
"We've been through worse, and the little girl has a remedy for the bleedin'. Ain't that right girl?"
"Yes, sir!" Sophia said with another solute, making him and Merle chuckle, before she ran off to her bag for the necessary items.
"We keep moving," Abraham told Rosita as he watched the girl go.
"Maybe we keep stopping because we never start at 100%," she countered.
"Every minute we waste getting him to Washington, people are dyin'."
"People would be dyin' anyway. Won't say how long the reset will take," Merle countered again. "Tellin' you now, don't be surprised when this all blows up in our faces."
"And what, pray tell, is that supposed to mean, exactly?" Abraham said, about to stand up and square up with the soldier only to remember the man's threat about Tiny having trained him.
"Somethin' Ani said about this trip to DC," Merle said honestly. "She doesn't believe in this mission, and she talked to Eugene alone. I'm tellin' ya now, that man ain't all he says he is."
"If that's the case, why'd you agree to come with us?" Rosita asked, fully exasperated by the older soldier's remarks.
"Simple," he told her, once again being honest and motioning to Abraham. "Y'all need a place to fall back to when it all blows up, and he needs someone to put him on his ass when he blows up and Ani ain't here to do it."
"So you want us to stop," Abraham decided as Sophia came back and worked on his hand. "You want us to sit around and wait on people who might not even show up."
"Did I say that? Or did I say I'm here to get you where you need to go? Whether it's DC or back to the church, we're goin' where we need to go."
"This town isn't in bad shape," Maggie reasoned. "This store wasn't even touched. We could make a good base here. We could spend one last day doing a sweep for supplies."
"We'll sweep as we go," Rosita told her, glaring at Merle for what she viewed as insubordination. "We've done it since Houston, we're not stopping now."
"You heard the lady," Abraham said. "We're takin' it north."
"We tapped out the toilet," Tara informed them. "Broad River is five miles west. At the very least, we stock up there before we find wheels."
"We got a vehicle," Abraham said as he stood up and went to the window, lifting a piece of cardboard to show them. "And it just so happens to have 500 gallons of water on it."
The fire truck was literally just across the road, the compartments stocked and ready for a fire. Abraham started humming happily as he climbed into the cab. Attempting to start the thing up, it spluttered and died on the first try only to come to life on the second.
Laughing in jubilation, Abraham gleefully expressed, "About time things started goin' our way!" Putting it into shift, he began to pull out only to get about five feet before the engine died again. "Come on," Abraham said hitting the steering wheel before angrily climbing out of the truck. "One damn time!"
"We'll find another ride," Glenn told him, coming around the front of the vehicle.
"If there was a ride worth a shit in this town, we would've seen it," Abraham said. "This thing's done some crowd clearin'. Right up into the intake. Which means we've got an air filter filled with damn human remains," he commented as he walked up to the vehicle and started patting at a vent with a towel he grabbed from one of the compartments of the truck. "There is no damned corner on this damned Earth that has not been dicked hard beyond all recognition."
"Abraham," Rosita called, earning an angry 'what' from the redhead in return. "That feeds the radiator. The intake for the engine is actually on the roof."
He stopped what he was doing and looked at her, nodding his head in appreciation. If he was going to say something, it got cut off by a tire randomly rolling by him, Glenn and Rosita, and bumping into Merle's leg. All Merle could get out was a 'what the hell' before a slew of walkers poured from the door the fire truck had been backed against. Even as the others were preparing to fight, Abraham stormed forward using the butt of his gun as a bludgeon to destroy the heads of walkers. The only problem was that by going so far ahead, he cut himself off from any help, causing him to be surrounded. It didn't help as more walkers came from the other direction.
It didn't look good until a powerful jet of water began knocking the walkers down and taking their heads off. Abraham looked around impressed and smiling, "I've been to eight county fairs and one goat rodeo. I never seen anything like that."
"Way to go, Smartypants," Merle told the man standing on top of the fire truck.
Eugene just looked proud of himself as he climbed down while Glenn spoke up, "I think I saw a Good Will over there by the bookstore. It's pretty blown up, but there might be some supplies, some dry clothes, maybe?"
"Eh, you'll air-dry," Merle commented, though the feeling of his pants against his tenders wasn't exactly comfortable if he was being honest; he'd just dealt with worse in the military.
"He's right, it's not necessary," Abraham agreed. "I can clear that intake in two shakes. Then the engine will get some wind. And so will we. You'll air-dry, just like the man said." He climbed up on top of the fire truck and looked down, catching sight of a spray painted message on the ground and laughing hysterically. 'Sick inside, let them die' it said as Merle read it, cracking a smile of his own as Abraham said, "What? This shit is screwed up!"
~x~
They'd been able to travel along for another hour before the fire truck started having issues again. Abraham hummed along as he and Merle checked the engine and various other areas of the truck. Glenn was watching the front while Tara covered the back and Rosita and Sophia the sides. Maggie was attempting to gather the meager supplies they had to sort into rations while Eugene sat on the rear bumper reading a book he'd picked up at the bookstore. Finishing up what she was doing, Maggie went over to Eugene and watched him for a while. It was funny to her how like Ani he was in the fact that he just sat there studiously reading even if he knew she was standing next to him waiting for acknowledgment. When it became clear he wasn't going to give it, just like Ani, Maggie began talking to him anyway.
"I know why you have the haircut."
"I told you, it's 'cause I like it," he told her without stopping reading, another thing Maggie noticed he had in common.
"I believe that. I like it, too," she told him before sitting next to him. "I think you like it for a reason." When he neither responded nor turned away from his book, she continued, "You're not the person people think you are. And you want them to know who you are."
That got him to put the book down as he looked at her in confusion, though it didn't show on his face, "Not followin'."
"If you didn't have that mullet," Maggie explained, "you'd probably be like everyone else in the labs. But you're not like everybody else. I think a lot of people in your position probably would've given up, but you didn't."
"There were people—a lot of them along the way—they made sure I didn't give up," he told her flatly. "It wasn't me remotely."
"It was," she countered. "You started this thing. And you're not like Samson. His story was messed up."
"Not followin' you," he said again.
"Well, his story goes that one day when a lion attacked him, God gave him strength and he tore the lion apart. Then he goes back one day, he's by himself, and he sees that bees have made a hive in the carcass. So later he tells this riddle to people: 'Out of the eater, somethin' to eat. Out of the strong, somethin' sweet.' I always thought, 'How the hell are people supposed to know the answer when it's just about his own life? When the only place the answer is is in his own head?'"
She was about to say something else when Glenn called out, "Whoa, what the hell is that?"
"What?" she asked as she stood up.
"Wind's picking up, you're about to smell it," he informed her before Sophia gagged.
"That's disgusting!" she complained as the others started groaning about the smell too.
"What is that?" Maggie asked.
"Biters," Merle guessed. "And a lot of 'em."
"Whatever's makin' that stench," Abraham said as he climbed out of the cab of the truck. "It ain't nothin' nice." He grabbed his rifle and started walking, "We're not stoppin'."
"Uh, we're stopped," Tara said in true Ani fashion, though she didn't know it; she always had a habit of stating the obvious, and the obvious was that they were in fact stopped.
Her little sentence had Glenn, Maggie, Merle, and Sophia smiling or chuckling as they walked ahead, Rosita having a hard time keeping the smirk off her face too. If Abraham had noticed it, he didn't show it. They left the fire truck and walked a grand total of three minutes before coming to a dead stop. A sea of the dead spread before them as far as the eye could see, thus explaining the stench that had come their way. It wasn't even close to them, far off in the distance to where they couldn't tell a single walker from the bunch, but close enough to where the groaning was being carried to them by the wind. Both Glenn and Merle shared a look before shaking their heads. They didn't sign up for this at all.
"Let's go," Glenn told everyone as he turned around, Merle staying next to Abraham as the man began muttering Army bullshit meant to hype one's self up for a battle they knew they couldn't win.
"Don't pull that shit on me now, son," Merle told him, shutting him up just as he said he wouldn't abase. "That there, that's a death sentence. We ain't goin' through that. I ain't lettin' you risk my kid in that."
"Abraham," Rosita called as the man refused to move other than to stare at Merle who was staring him right back down. "Abraham, let's get out of here."
He looked back at the group before looking at Merle and saying, "Hold up."
"We gotta go," Maggie told him.
"No. No we don't. They can't see us, they can't hear us. Not from here. We're fine," he said.
"Yeah, this is the very definition of 'fine,'" Tara said sarcastically, about to piss her pants in fear.
"We need the map, there's gotta be a detour," Glenn reasoned.
"I'm not doin' it," Abraham said as he started pacing. "We detoured and detoured and detoured from Houston to Georgia. I'm not playin' that game anymore."
"Well, we ain't goin' through that," Merle said. "And if you want to, good luck to ya. I'm takin' my kid and my people and headin' back to the church. We didn't sign up for no suicide mission 'cause some meat-head doesn't understand strategic retreat."
"We got a shitstorm behind door A and a storm of shit behind door B," Abraham roughly told him. "If you're lucky, it's walkers, or a shot up truck. But sooner or later you get cornered. You wind up stayin' and you wind up killin'. We don't go back. We can't go back."
"Hell yes we can," Merle reasoned. "We need the numbers. We need the weapons. The food, supplies, medicine. Hell, we need Ani if we're gonna get through somethin' like that! At the very least, we need to go a few miles out of the way."
"No!" Abraham shouted.
"We already hit a full stop caused by an air filter compromised by innards," Eugene tried to reason. "That will happen again."
"Then we'll hit 'em with the hose."
"The tank is empty, Abraham," Rosita chided.
"If we floor it-"
"We still hit them, they still slow us down, they still stop us, except then we're dead and the mission is over," Glenn reasoned.
"I'm not sayin' we just go straight!" Abraham yelled at them.
"That's the way the road goes," Maggie told him.
"We're goin' back to the church, we're waitin' for Ani, and then we'll find a way through this or pray it moves on, but I'm not puttin' my kid through that with just us," Merle reiterated.
"We can get through!" Abraham roared at him. "I know it! And that means we are not going south, going around, or going back!"
"Bullshit, son," Merle told him. "What you know don't matter when the rest of us know better. You're dumber than a box of rocks if you think we can get through a sea of biters in just that piece a shit truck."
"No," Rosita agreed. "They're right."
Abraham nodded his head and moved to grab Eugene, dragging him along back to the truck. Knowing what he was about to do, the rest tried to pry him off the scared man, only for him to knock Tara back. That was Merle's last straw as he completely cold cocked the redhead, knocking him to the ground, but not out. Abraham got up and threw a punch at Merle that connected to the man's jaw, but Merle simply reacted by going low and football tackling Abraham to the ground, banging his head on the cement before placing him in shoulder hold and using his entire weight to keep the taller, beefier man down. Ani was right that strength meant very little if you could get someone to submit without the ability to retaliate.
Everything had been too much for Eugene as he watched Abraham struggle, finally boiling down to him shouting, "I am not a scientist!" which got Merle to let go of the man.
"What?!" Merle yelled, rounding on the man himself.
"I'm not a scientist!" he repeated. "I lied! I'm not a scientist. Ani knew right off the bat. I don't know how to stop it. I'm not a scientist." They all stood around looking at him in various states of denial, disgust, or despair as he explained himself, unable to look any of them in the eye and standing very still, which made it easy for Merle to notice how bad the man was shaking.
"You are a scientist," Rosita exclaimed. "I've seen the things that you can do!"
"I just know things."
"You just...know things?!" Glenn repeated incredulously. "I left my family to get you to DC, and you just know things?!"
"I know I'm smarter than most people. Thought I was smarter than everyone until I talked to Miss Ani and she sniffed me out like a drug dog on cocaine. I know I'm a very good liar, and I know I needed to get to DC," Eugene told them, the floodgates of truth open now that he'd said the biggest part.
"Why?" Maggie asked.
"For the same reason Ani said we'd go," Sophia guessed. "The nation's capitol should have resources, right? Bunkers for the president and congress and stuff, right?"
"That is right, little lady," Eugene affirmed. "I do believe that locale holds the strongest possibility for survival, and I wanted to survive. If I could cheat some people into taking me there, well, I just reasoned I'd be doin' them a solid, too, considerin' the perilous state of the city of Houston, the state of everything."
Abraham looked to the ground as he sat, letting everything sink in when Rosita spoke up, "People died trying to get you here."
"I'm aware of that," he told her, looking at her and seeing Glenn's distraught face before he ran a hand over it, making Eugene feel even more guilt. "Stephanie, Warren, Pam, Rex, Roger, Josiah, Dirk, and Josephine. And Bob," he said as he began breaking down. "You see, I lost my nerve as we grew closer. Miss Ani gave me the option to tell you myself which I did not take when I should have, for I am a coward. The reality of getting to our destination and disclosing the truth of the matter along with Miss Ani already knowing, I took it upon myself to slow our roll. Find time to finesse things so that when we got there, find a way to tell the truth without causin' problems. But as of this moment, I fully realize there is no longer any agreeable options. I'm screwed either way. I also lied about T. Brooks Ellis likin' my hair," he blubbered, truly unable to stop himself from coming clean about his lies. "I do not know T. Brooks Ellis, but I read a book of his once. He seemed like the kind of guy who wouldn't blink twicec a Tennessee Top Hat. Again, I am smarter than you, and you may want to leave me here-"
Whatever he was about to say was cut off by Abraham lunging forward and sucker punching Eugene right in the jaw, causing the man to fly backwards. When Abraham went to punch him again, Sophia and Merle moved as one, Sophia swiping a kick at the back of the knee as Merle grabbed the man from the shoulders and brought him back into the choke hold he'd put him in before. Abraham struggled, trying to get the man off of him, but Sophia stood in front of him. All Abraham could see when she did that was his daughter, who died because his wife and children became terrified of him due to what he had to do to protect them. That's when he'd met Eugene in the first place, when he was ready to off himself after finding his family torn apart.
"Please, Mister Abraham," she asked him. "Can we just go wait at the church for Ani until we decide what to do? Please?"
"Get off me," Abraham wheezed to Merle.
"Only if ya promise the little lady. I'll put you down if I have to. We're goin' back to that church and waiting for Ani."
"Why do you put so much faith in that girl, anyway?" Rosita asked as Abraham nodded and was released, him glaring at Eugene but making no further attempt to harm him.
"She's our leader," Glenn told them, shocking everyone. "I know, you'd think it was Rick, but she calls the shots for the most part. She's the one who trained us all, too."
"You've all had trainin'?" Abraham asked.
"Well, not all," Tara said. "Kinda just joined."
"Everyone at the church. We've all had some basic self-defense and some training in holds, judo I guess?" Glenn asked while narrowing his eyes and shaking his guess. "I don't know. Ani's got training in self-defense, Maui Thai, Judo, and just MMA in general."
"That and she's a sharpshooter and can throw them knives like she's throwing a ball," Merle added. "She's worth the trip back for."
"Fine. But he rides on top," Abraham said, pointing to Eugene. "I don't want to see his face right now lest I make him look even more like a jackass than he already does."