Wrecked
The onlookers, while armed and ready to fight, were not prepared to face a giant, bulletproof monster, and with shouts, screams, and exclamations, scattered in all directions. Rather than pursue any of the running prey, Vengeance leapt at the guard tower, tearing it apart like it was made of cardboard, leaving its occupants screaming and dangling. Aaron managed to swing himself up and over the fence, dropping to relative safety on the other side, but not without taking an injury on the landing. Enid, nearby, found herself suddenly doing a speed-run of her wall-climb escape. On the outside, she dropped and rolled, letting the ground take the impact. She came to her feet, dusting herself off, and ran to join Aaron.
"You hurt?" she asked, ducking under his arm to support his weight as he limped along.
"Ah," he winced, "twisted my ankle on the landing…"
"You're supposed to roll on those…"
"I know… didn't hit it at the right angle."
She looked up, pointing to their right with her chin and pulling her knife. "Walker."
Aaron drew his at the same time. "I've got it," he said."
"No, I've got it," she replied, stepping toward the dead woman while still functioning as a crutch for him.
Both stabbed their knives through the zombie's head on opposite sides. It hung motionless between them for a moment, skewered. They withdrew their weapons and the corpse fell in a heap at their feet.
In the moment that they paused to take in their kill, Enid started giggling.
"We're going to have to work on our communication, you and I," Aaron said with a wry grin.
She nodded. "You're going to need some down-time to heal that ankle anyway."
"Well. With such a caring nurse, I'll suffer through."
While the chaos inside the walls continued, they made their way around the wall, the long way.
Claudia did not fare so well, hanging from the scaffolding and an easy target. Vengeance raked her claws down the woman's back, dragging her to the ground where the telltale crunch ended her life. The two newcomers who had joined her on the platform fell with her, sprawling across the ground, but uninjured, regained their feet. One ran, the other hesitated, trying to find some way to help their fallen comrade, but when Vengeance turned her beady eyes on him, he found himself her next target and was pursued across the terrain and brought down with a few powerful leaps from the beast.
"Inside! Get inside!" Eugene directed, for all that people were listening or needed directing to get out of the monster's path.
And yet, for her easy pickings on the field, Vengeance 's eye fixed on the movement behind the window of the nearest house and bounded straight through the plate-glass at Naomi as she herded a gaggle of children up the stairs. Unhindered by the shards of glass, the enormous creature made a lunge for the large woman as she pounded up the stairs after the little ones, and Naomi landed a solid kick to its teeth for its trouble. The thing let out a startled, possibly even hurt yelp, but with her prey currently out of reach and up a flight of stairs too narrow to follow, after a turn around the deserted living area, it sought better pickings outside.
Eugene had never been a fast runner, between his large build and slow coordination. Though he hadn't stopped or even slowed while watching to see Naomi safely out of Vengeance's reach, his slow, shuffling run hadn't brought him as near as he'd hoped to the workshop, where Two was ill-advisedly standing against the doorway without her walking aids to witness the spectacle and motion in anyone needing sanctuary, her eyes showing anxious concern. She leaned aside to usher Dustin and Becca's father in, and when she turned back again, her eyes widened and she shouted to him, "LOOK OUT!"
But it was too late; something had caught his ankle and he only registered her warning as he was already falling and faced with the Walker version of Travis, having bled out and turned in the interim. Eugene kicked him repeatedly, and when the Walker lost his hold, rolled away, buying himself enough time to draw his machete and end the ill-fated man's second existence. But that only left an opening in his attention for the oncoming muscular bulk, and Two desperately screaming his name as Vengeance bore down on him.
As Two limp-ran toward him, Vengeance leapt. Eugene yelled as claws raked through his shirt and across his sternum as the mutant bent toward his head. Doing his best to ignore the agony of the shallow but painful slashes and thinking fast, he pulled Travis's body as close to his own as he could, hefting the dead man's head above his own so that the corpse was beheaded before himself, buying him a little more time for a better possible solution.
Unfortunately for him, Vengeance was a quick eater. She bent and decapitated Travis with her sea-creature teeth in seconds, chewed his skull up in seconds. Eugene let out a desperate cry, seeing that mouth full of needles coming for him, and braced his machete, hoping to strike a—maybe—sensitive eye, but it was difficult to aim when one was also trying to scrunch one's eyes closed against one's impending pain and death.
But a toothy death did not come for him at that moment, suddenly showered with dust and small pebbles as Two slid into him like a home-run hitter making a bid for home plate and laid her head atop his.
Vengeance stopped as if confused by this sudden development and cautiously snorfled the new head presented to her, then shook herself and made a sound that very much sounded like, "Bleah!" seeking better prey elsewhere.
"Yeah, you better step off, bitch!" Two admonished lowly, not wanting to reattract its attention but still needing to get a parting shot in.
"What… just happened?" Eugene gasped in shock, and in pain as Two ripped up the rest of his shirt and used it to apply pressure to his bleeding wounds.
She winced, her head obviously pounding from all the sudden movements. "She only likes the sweetmeats, and I'm… well, I'm off, in the head!" She gave a whispering laugh to cushion the joggling to her aching brain. "Come on, up we go," she said, able to pull him to a sitting position, but then needing his help to stand and stagger back to the workshop. Dylan and Becca's father ran out to usher them back inside, but Two stayed at the doorframe. "Much obliged if you could patch my One up for me," she told him. "And, if you'd be so kind as ta hand me my old-lady walker…"
"Just what do you think you're doing?" Eugene turned and snapped at her.
She shrugged with that wasn't really an apology as she got the walker situated around herself. "Gotta do somethin'… I'm the only one immune from gettin' et out there!"
x-x-x-x-x
"What's it doing now?"
Cherise peeked around the church's entry, even chanced a few steps out to get a visual on the meat-creature, then rapidly retreated. "Looks like it's just roaming around, going after anything that moves… charging some of the houses…" she reported back to Victor, Arlo, Gabriel and Anne. The newcomer trio had been at the battered gate, with Arlo and Victor lobbing Molotovs through a foot-wide gap to help take the monster down as Cherise supplied and lit them, but when Vengeance shed her charred skin and jumped the wall, they had all run to the church, where Gabriel and Anne had beckoned them in.
"We need to do something," Gabriel insisted. "That abomination, whatever it is, is just an animal, and now it's trapped inside Alexandria's boundaries. Rick and Michonne and the others, when they come back, will be coming home to a potential deathtrap if we can't get it to go back outside!"
"So, for a start, we gotta force that gate open so it has a way out," Victor stated.
"Won't go, then what?" Anne put in.
Their silence echoed around the church for a moment, allowing another crash and a scream to filter through to them.
"The fish won't bite iff'n ya got nothin' on yer line," Arlo summed up what they were all morosely thinking. What they needed was bait.
Heaving a long, decisive sigh, Victor declared, "It's me. I'll go." This immediately created an uproar among the others, with Arlo's and Cherise's being the loudest protests.
"If anybody, it ought to be me!" Cherise argued. "I'm able to contribute the least and run the fastest."
Victor squeezed her hands, firm in both the action and his answer of "No."
"I should be the one to go," Gabriel interjected. "Alexandria would be less one burden without me, and I still feel a debt for my past transgressions…"
Anne grabbed him, pointing a finger in his face. "Don't. My sins, much greater. Are much greater," she corrected herself from falling into her clipped language out of habit.
"Look, the obvious choice here's me," insisted Arlo. He motioned to Victor and Cherise, bracketing them with his hands, then doing the same with Gabriel and Anne. "You're a couple, and you're a couple, and me… I'm just the third—or sometimes fifth—wheel. I couldn't live with mahself, splittin' y'all up. I go, yer not losin' anyone import'nt. An' I got my own transgressions ta atone fer."
Victor and Cherise stared at him meaningfully. "You're important to us," Cherise told him, squeezing his hand as well as Victor's. "You're our best friend!"
"Besides, your leg!" Victor pointed out.
Arlo swung his head around comically. " 'f I c'n run 'r not, 's not gonna matter none… Have ya seen that thing move?! Usain Bolt couldn'ta outrun that! Whoever plays bait, let's face it, they's not comin' back. 's got ta be me."
Neither couple could find an argument against him, silent, though they all felt they should have something more to say. He exchanged a hearty backslap and hug with Victor. Cherise hauled him into a deep embrace and planted a kiss on his cheek, her eyes wet. He patted her face gently in return, and turned to Gabriel. "Father, would you be so kind as to grant me absolution and last rites?"
"Of course." Gabriel intoned the blessings, fetching a small flask of oil from the church's sacristy to anoint Arlo's forehead and mutedly recite the prescribed words.
"Thank ya, Father. Much obliged." Their sacrificial lamb then headed for the door. "I am gunna need some help with that gate," he admitted. Everyone moved at once. "Not all'a y'all!"
"Yes. All," Anne stated, brooking no argument.
"You're gonna need at least one 'a us, if not both, ta move that busted thing," Victor added, indicating himself and Gabriel, and someone's gotta keep a lookout in case that big monster catches sight 'a us. May as well be a pair of eyes either direction."
Arlo nodded an acquiescence to this. "Iff'n that critter heads this way, gate open or not, y'all git back inside an' leave me, y'hear?" Everyone gave grudging assents and the lot of them clustered up to the door, waiting for the coast to be clear before dashing to the gate to manhandle it open.
The gate scraped and screeched as the men managed to force it halfway open with definite necessary effort.
"Here I thought I was the leader of our merry band all this time…" Victor mused to his friend as the three of them lifted and shoved the gate to a half-open state before it jammed in place.
"Now, we all know who's really in charge 'round here," Arlo chuckled.
"Cherise," they chorused.
"I've got ears, you know," Cherise shot back at them.
But there was no further time for merriment. "It comes!" Anne announced, pointing as the beast rounded the corner.
Arlo waved everyone else inside, but Cherise and Victor lingered, even as Vengeance charged toward them. "Go on, git inside!" Arlo insisted, then turned to address the creature as everyone else ran to shelter in the church. "Come on, ya big chunk a'… uh… I don't even know! Just come an' git me, dammit!" he taunted, waving his arms over his head, then ran out the gap, encouraging the abomination to follow by whooping and hollering.
As the only prey in sight, Arlo was a fine target, as far as Vengeance was concerned. She barreled after him, crushing her way out through the half-open gate after him with a snarl, which developed into a full-blown roar as soon as she cleared the wall and pounded after her next meal.
The four in the church waited until it seemed the beast was well and truly out, then all of them ran out to force the gate closed again. There was a high-pitched scream and a crash, followed by another startled yell and a lot of crunching. Cherise started weeping as she lifted what she could of the gate. Victor winced as they heard their friend meeting his fate.
"Wait!" someone yelled. Two crutched her way toward them with her walker, but even with it, lost strength in her legs and sprawled to the ground. She rolled up, abandoning it in favor of reaching the gate. "Let me through!"
Victor let go of the gate, gawking at her. "Two, are you out your damn mind?"
She shook her head. "I'm the only one who's safe around that thing!"
"And what, exactly, d'you think you can do about it?! You c'n hardly stand!"
Two shrugged, slipping around the last two feet of bedraggled open gate. "Dunno! Makin' this up as I go along!"
"The creature might ignore you, but what about the Dead?!" he called after her in a last-ditch attempt to change her mind.
"I'll deal!" her voice carried back.
x-x-x-x-x
"Whoa," Two uttered, stopping in her tracks, eyes wide, to witness Vengeance chomping away at the Walker Rave Pit, full to bursting with Deadness and providing the head-eater with quite the smorgasbord. It looked up at her for a moment, sniffing in her direction, then gave a snort of distaste and went back to its meal. Where had they all come from? It was weird that someone could get so accustomed to the gabbling of the Dead that it had just become background noise anymore. "Nope… Deadness ain't gonna be a problem!" she called back over the gate.
She scanned the area beside the pit: a headless body in what was once a nice-looking suit, a long, metal-covered board, probably what Vengeance had climbed up to get into the walled community, a few stray Deadness, all headed for the noise from their brethren. And, as she glanced behind her, the wrecking ball, still strung up on the pulleys in anticipation of another swing had the townies decided to run the Twobe-Goldberg yet again. Given recent events, there hadn't been time to deconstruct the entire thing. Glancing back and forth between the giant concrete ball and the monster snacking away in the pit, she plotted the trajectory in her mind, deciding her course of action with a nod to no one but herself. Bullets might not pierce the mutant's rock-hard muscle, but how would it fare against a little internal bleeding? She limped her way to the pulley system, and with her belt-knife, sawed through the rope. It sung through the first of the pulleys, then bound in a gnarly knot at the top. She gave it an annoyed gasp and shook an upturned hand at it in a silent gesture of what-the-fuck.
She weighed her options. The pulley system was set up next to a beech tree, one with plenty of sturdy boughs. Any able-bodied person would have had no problem climbing it… but there was the problem, wasn't it? She huffed, psyching herself up. "Alright, here we go… Feets, don't fail me now…"
Five boughs up and around the tree, things went swimmingly enough—or climbingly enough—for a person with weak legs, continual headaches, and vertigo. But as soon as Two got her full weight on the sixth, she could hear it starting to crack. Leaning back against the trunk, she pulled out Dead Weight, whirling it in a tight circle and casting it up high in the branches. The weight looped a few times around a strong branch, and Two pulled it taut. Bracing her feet against the trunk, she walked her way carefully upward, scraping herself painfully on the bark once as her right leg gave out. She made a clenched-teeth noise of dismay as her knife popped loose from its sheath as the impact broke its snap. It toppled down through the branches. But, she kept going once she got her foot back in place and braced for the final few branches until she could reach the rope.
Once she was close enough, head throbbing like a motherfuck, she pulled her tiny cleavage paring-knife and started sawing through the thick cords. The rope finally snapped free, sizzling past her face, and the ball swung downward. "I CAME IN LIKE A WREEEECKING BAAAALLLLL," Miley belted out from speakers way too close for Two's enjoyment, but the surprise of it made her laugh aloud, even though the motion of it just hurt her head more.
The ball swung, as planned, straight through the cluster of Deadness and into the munching Vengeance, who, with her beady eyes, never saw it coming. It impacted with a meaty crunch and a showering of angler-fish teeth, carrying the beast along with it to the end of its arc, where the mutant detached and fell a good ten feet to the unyielding ground below. The creature gurgled once, let out a few halting breaths, and its movements ceased altogether to the echoing Two's raucous laughter.
The woman laughed in victory and amusement and pain and triumph… and then her eyes rolled back in her head as she started shuddering… and fell, taking the cracked branch down with her.
A cluster of vehicles pulled up just as she hit the ground. Rick and Michonne leapt from the lead SUV, pelting to Two's side as she juttered around, insensate. Michonne steadied her head, with Tara appearing beside her a moment later, and both began the litany of reassurances as Rick continued to the gate, shouting for Siddiq and Enid. The gate was forced open again as far as it would go, allowing Siddiq and a thoroughly distraught Eugene through. Tara relinquished her place for her friend to take over with much more intimate encouragements.
Daryll, meanwhile, looked over the fallen creature, which was near his height, even fallen over. Blood dribbled out of its disjointed jaw and needle teeth, a good sign that it had died of internal crushing… of course, the caved-in wrecking ball print in the side was also a good indication. He shot a crossbow bolt into each of its eyes for good measure.
Miley modulated and continued caterwauling about how all you did was wre-e-eck me until someone unplugged her.
"Hello?" a bashful, twangy voice called toward the commotion. "Would 't be too much trouble fer someone ta come cut me down?"
Cherise and Victor exchanged a wide-eyed look, rushing to help their friend, who dangled upside-down from the inside wall from where the ankle-hem of his overalls caught between two of the corrugated metal plates.
"Thought you were a goner!" Victor grinned up at him, bracing Arlo from swinging while Cherise flagged one of the other newbies down to help her fetch a ladder.
"Welp, I was durn ready for 't, too, but I guess God had other plans for me!" Arlo replied, sounding a bit loopy and looking red in the face from the blood flow to his head. "Guess yer still stuck with yer third wheel!" he giggled giddily.
His friend laughed deeply in response. "Lucky threes! Don't get me wrong, I'm plenty glad ta see you, but how?
"Well, once I got out, with that thing after me, I saw there's this ramp up the side 'a the wall, an' I thought, 'Arlo, you's got ta take that ramp down, or that critter's just gonna climb right back inside agin!' So I ran over, tried ta move it from the bottom, but I couldn't… There's hooks at th' top, see? Hooked over th' top 'a the wall, so it wouldn't fall off. So I had t' run up t' the top ta unhook it. Dropped it right before the meat-thing got turned 'round—it can't turn so well… 's got no neck. So it missed the ramp, but took a leap at me while I was up top, and, well, I flinched back, an' fell. Wouldda fell flat on my head and broke my neck if my Dickies hadn't got stuck, thank the Lord…"
"Thank the Lord, indeed," Victor echoed. "You always did say those overalls had high functionality value!"
"That I did… Quality! Fer that, I can stand all the blood rushin' to my head for a li'l while…"
"Not too much longer," Victor said with a jerk of his head over his shoulder. "Here come Carol and Cherise with the ladder."
"Bless ye, ladies!" Arlo hollered to them as Cherise and the other volunteer positioned the ladder and Carol set to unjamming the upside-down man's cuff from the gap in the tin plates. Enid and a limping Aaron arrived just in time to see him being bodily turned over and set on his feet and mauled with hugs by his companions.