June 16, 2011
Carol's nerves tingled with excitement, but not, this time, because of the thrill of riding with her husband. Rather, she was eager for the opportunity to behold a new community and meet new people. Before Ed had cut her off from her friends, discouraged her from attending church, and isolated her, she had been a social creature by nature. Ed hadn't liked socializing. Neither did Daryl, particularly, but Daryl didn't care if she liked it, never tried to make her conform to his own inclinations, and accepted their differences. At worst he wandered off when social interaction became too much for him (or, as he had yesterday at the Sanctuary cafeteria table, immersed himself in a book on motorcycle mechanics); but he never tried to deprive her of it. She thought perhaps he even liked that aspect of her personality, even if he couldn't quite understand it.
The motorcycle weaved around a fragment of tire, shot past a stumbling walker, and then pulled behind the brown, compact sedan Gavin was driving. It was a rather non-descript, unintimidating vehicle for a man who had built and now largely ruled an entire post-apocalyptic community, but Gavin said it got good gas mileage.
When the sedan pulled to a stop before the gates of Alexandria, and Daryl put both his boots down on the ground to steady his bike, two rifles were leveled at them from the platform above. Gavin eased his door open and stepped out with both his hands up. "I'm Gavin," he called up. "Deanna's expecting us."
One of the guards went down from the gate, and in a couple of minutes a woman, dressed in a business-like gray skirt with a gray blazer over a white blouse, and wearing flats, of all things, strolled toward the gate. It was extremely impractical dress for their times, Carol thought. The woman said something to one of the guards, who rolled open the gate.
"Gavin," she called, and Gavin stepped forward and offered a greeting in the form of a handshake before returning to his car and driving it inside. Daryl followed, gliding slowly on the motorcycle. They parked their vehicles just inside the gate. Gavin and his soldier recruits-DJ and Darren-extied the sedan, while Daryl and Carol dismounted the motorcycle.
The woman Gavin had called Deanna told them, "Welcome to Alexandria." Someone rolled up with a cart with two shelves, and she said, "You'll need to turn over your firearms while you're here as our guests."
"Fuck no," Daryl replied. "I ain't turning over shit."
Gavin sighed. "It's a dangerous world, Deanna, and we're all allies here. I can vouch for everyone here. Let us hold onto our weapons."
"Only the constables and guards are allowed to be armed inside the gates of Alexandria. You know our rules."
"Deanna—" Gavin said.
"—don't you think it's the least you can do for me," Deanna asked him, "given that the rebellion you and Shane led cost both my sons their lives?"
The expression on Gavin's face was tightly restrained. He could have reminded her how his rebellion had freed her entire community from the hell of the Saviors, but he didn't. Instead he said to DJ and Darren, "Come on, gentlemen. Honor the Congresswoman's request." He placed his rifle on the cart. He removed his handgun from his holster and placed that on the cart, too, and DJ and Darren followed suit.
"Come on," Carol whispered to Daryl and set an example by laying her rifle and handgun on the cart. She didn't want to jeopardize Gavin's chances of recruiting soldiers here, and she wanted to meet Aaron. Besides, the woman wasn't asking for her knives.
Daryl glowered but set his handgun and rifle on the cart.
"The bow?" Deanna said.
"Said firearms," Daryl replied.
"That looks like a rather deadly weapon," she told him.
"Yeah, well, so are m'fists."
Deanna nodded to the man with the cart and he rolled it off, which Carol took as a signal that she was giving in to Daryl's insistence on maintaining his bow.
A fifty-something man in khakis and a button-down shirt wandered over, and Deanna introduced him as her husband Reg. Deanna told them that Gavin, DJ, and Darren would be staying with her and Reg, while Carol and Daryl would be lodging with Aaron. "Gavin said on the radio you had some family connection with him?"
"A relative of his is in our camp," Carol explained.
"And Gavin," Deanna said, "I understand you want to meet with our Council? We'll be assembling soon. Come with me. Reg will get Darren and DJ settled." She waved to a man who was working on patching a section of the fence. He put his hammer in his toolbelt and strolled toward them. "This is Tobin," she said. "Our construction foreman. He'll get you two settled and give you a tour. He shares a house with Aaron."
Tobin smiled at Carol and glanced more warily at Daryl.
As Tobin showed Daryl and Carol around Alexandria, he told them about how the community was formed, that it was designed by Reg Monroe, who settled in northern Virginia while his wife Deanna was serving in D.C. as the Congresswoman from Ohio. It was initially built as a green community with houses starting in the low $850,000s.
"Shit," Daryl muttered.
"Too rich for my blood, for sure," Tobin agreed. "But I was the foreman whose crew helped build the place, so I got to stay when the world descended into chaos. So did my crew—the ones who survived, anyway. We keep the fences strong. The military used this place as a safe-zone for a while, but after a couple months they pulled up stakes and deserted us, went off to fight the roamers, I guess. Deanna took over. She was in charge for a while, but now she shares authority with an elected council. Aaron is on it, along with Russ, Kyle, and Barbara. I think Barbara got a lot of votes because everyone appreciates that she watches their kids. Anyway, I'm glad we made the move to a council. Russ and Kyle have put a lot more emphasis on security than Deanna ever did, and Aaron's an excellent recruiter."
"Recruiter?" Daryl asked as they walked by some people working in a garden plot.
"He goes out looking for people who are surviving on their own," Tobin answered, "judges their character and skills, and brings them back to live with us if they seem safe. The only downside of that is that we keep having to shuffle houses. I used to have a house entirely to myself. Now I'm housemates with Aaron."
That hardly seemed a hardship to Carol when she considered how many people were jammed into the House of the Future and the Royal Banquet back home. The only people with their own houses in Fun Kingdom were those living in the tiny models in Frontier Village, which were closer to the size of bedrooms than houses. "Just the two of you?" she asked with disbelief. "In a house like one of these?" She motioned to the nearest McMansion, which loomed two stories.
"Not just us. This new girl…Enid…she's fourteen. Aaron found her a couple months ago. She'd been surviving alone out there ever since losing her parents. She has the attic bedroom. But there's three bedrooms, so you'll have your own tonight."
"Why is Enid sleeping in the attic if there's a third bedroom?" Carol asked.
Tobin shrugged. "She likes being up high. It makes her feel safe. And she likes her space away from us. She keeps to herself a lot."
As Tobin continued to talk about the community, Carol grew increasingly envious with each of his descriptions. She thought they'd stumbled upon and built up something amazing in Fun Kingdom, but here, every house was like its own House of the Future.
Tobin showed them the communal pantry and armory, where he introduced them to a woman named Jess Anderson and a ten-year-old boy named Sam who were working there. Jess was working, anyway. The boy was sitting in a chair and eating a chocolate chip cookie. Someone else—Tobin called him Wayne—was locking up their guns in a metal cabinet. Carol saw her AR-15 being placed inside.
"These two are from that community in Georgia that toppled Simon," Tobin told Jess. "They know someone related to Aaron."
The woman's face grew stern when he said that. "Welcome to Alexandria," she said curtly and turned and began sorting something on a shelf.
Tobin motioned them on. When they were outside the pantry and walking past another garden, he explained, "There's some bad blood between her and Aaron. Aaron convinced the council to banish her husband Pete."
"'Cause he was an abusive asshole!" Daryl exclaimed. "Ain't she glad he's gone?"
Carol looked at Daryl in surprise, wondering how he knew that. Tobin asked directly how he knew.
"Overheard people talkin' 'bout it. At the Sanctuary."
"Yeah, well, he was abusive. And I guess maybe some people turned a blind eye to it for a while because Pete was such a skilled surgeon and doctor, and skills like that are gold these days."
"Sometimes people turn a blind eye with less motivation," Carol murmurred, and Daryl glanced at her guardedly.
"Anyway, after one too many bruises, the council voted to boot him. They sent him to the Kingdom, actually. The goal was just to get him away from Jess, keep her safe. And the Kingdom was warned about his abusive past, but Aaron figured King Ezekiel would take him in because their doctor has a congenital heart disease and may not be long for this world. Eventually, all they'll have is thier medic Kurt. But Pete never made it to the Kingdom. He never showed up there."
"And Jess blames Aaron for that?" Carol asked.
"She's not angry about Pete's banishment so much as the fact that her sixteen-year-old son, Ron, got upset and ran away one night, tried to follow his father to the Kingdom. And he never made it either. We sent a search party out looking for him, but…" Tobin shook his head. "We never found him. It wasn't Aaron's fault Ron ran away, but Jess needs someone to blame. She even blames Enid a little bit."
"The teenage orphan girl who's living in your attic?" Carol asked in surprise.
"Ron thought he was Enid's boyfriend, and the day before he ran away after his father, she told him she wasn't really that into him. It's no one's fault, of course. It was his choice. Ron always seemed troubled to me. But what do you expect, with a father like that? At least maybe Sam has a chance now."
Tobin showed them the infirmary next, where they met Dr. Denise Cloyd, a former psychiatrist who had taken over as their doctor upon Pete's banishment. Working with her and organizing the pharmacy supplies was a thirty-something, brown skinned man. "This is Siddiq," Tobin said. "Aaron brought him in just last week. Found him setting fire to an entire horde of roamers to free their souls. They were in a quarry pit not that far from Alexandria, so he did us a huge favor. He rigged up a sprayer to douse them with gasoline and then threw in some Molotov cocktails."
"I didn't free them all, unfortunately," Siddiq said. "Only about two thirds burned up enough to release their souls. The rest are charred up and still walking around in there."
"Well, they'll all be dead eventually," Tobin assured him. Turning to Carol, he explained, "We use them for target practice. Once a week, Russ leads a group out there. He used to be a firearms instructor for a police academy. We check out rifles from the armory and go and shoot at them down there in the quarry, so we can learn to use weapons better. Deanna's not a fan of letting civilians have weapons."
"We noticed," Daryl muttered.
"But Kyle and Russ made a push to get as many of us trained as possible," Tobin continued. "And we need the practice. I fought in that battle at the Sanctuary, and I'm lucky I survived. I should have been better trained. Anyway, I'm rambling." He motioned to the man who was now organizing a medicine cabinet. "Siddiq used to be a resident doctor in the old world."
"So now we have a real doctor," Denise said.
Siddiq turned around. "A psychiatrist is a real doctor," he assured her. "You have more knowledge in some areas than I do. We make a good team."
Denise shrugged. "I guess the two of us together will make up for Pete Anderson."
"I'd rather have the two of you any day," Tobin said, and then he led Daryl and Carol on. He showed them the school house / day care, where Barbara lived with her teenage daughter and took care of many of the children during the day.
Gavin caught up with them at some point and told Daryl and Carol, "I presented my case for the defense of Shirewilt. The Alexandria council is voting now whether to lend us soldiers for the cause. I can tell Deanna is dead set against it, after losing her sons in the battle at the Sanctuary. I couldn't read Aaron, and he lost his husband in that battle, so I'm not optimistic he'll vote in favor. Russ seems for it, Barbara's against it, and Kyle's on the fence."
In the end, the council voted 3-2 to send soldiers with Gavin to fight the new crew of Saviors at Shirewilt. They sent out a call for volunteers. Three men stepped forward to answer it—Aaron, their tourguide Tobin, and a supplyrunner named Heath. "Guess Aaron did vote for it after all," Gavin said.
It wasn't until dinner time that Carol and Daryl finally got to meet this Aaron person. He'd been preoccupied all day, but he came back to his house after Tobin had already cooked and set the table. Tobin introduced him to Daryl and Carol and then told him, "I'm actually going to Deanna's house for dinner tonight. She wanted me to talk with Gavin about construction matters. He used to be a foreman, too. But enjoy your dinner."
"Only three plates?" asked Aaron, looking at the recently set table.
"Enid's off somewhere again."
"She didn't leave the gates, did she?" Aaron asked.
Tobin shrugged. "I couldn't tell you. She's just off again."
Aaron nodded.
It was a big table, Carol thought, for three, and a chandelier glowed above them with fake electric candles as they ate. Tobin had made spaghetti with marinara sauce. Daryl slurped his spaghetti loudly, and Aaron smiled as though he was trying not to laugh.
"Thank your boyfriend for cookin'," Daryl murmured.
"What?" Aaron asked him.
Daryl jerked his thumb toward the door where Tobin had retreated.
Carol laughed. "Tobin's not his boyfriend, Pookie."
Daryl flushed at the use of the endearment and gave her a look that said, Stop.
"She's right," said Aaron, chuckling. "We're just housemates."
"Tobin's as straight as an arrow," Carol insisted. "Trust me. I could tell by the way he was interacting with me."
Daryl took hold of his glass of ice tea and narrowed his eyes. "Yeah? How was that?"
"Like he might not mind asking me on a date."
Daryl made and uncertain noise and sipped his ice tea.
"So," Aaron said. "I'm told we have someone in common? And that's why you're here?"
"Mika Samuels," Carol replied. "She's in our camp. And we know she has an Uncle Eric. We're assuming that was your husband."
Aaron nodded. "I met Mika twice. Once when Eric took me for a family reunion in Tennessee. He grew up in Appalachia." Aaron laughed and shook his head. "I never would have guessed that when I met him. No accent at all, and he seemed so…refined. But he grew up on a farm and he was definitely comfortable with nature. He was great at traversing Nigeria's terrain."
Daryl sucked in the last of a string of spaghetti and looked at Aaron with a furrowed brow. "Fuck was he doing in Nigeria?"
"We both worked for an NGO there, delivering food and medicine in the Niger River Delta. That's how we met."
"And Mika?" Carol asked.
"Like I said, I met her at that family reunion. Her and Lizzie and Eric's sister, their mother. Mika was only six at the family reunion. And then once, when she was eight, I think, not long before all this…she and Lizzie stayed with us at our house in Maryland for two weeks so their parents could go on a second honeymoon. Lizzie's not with you?"
Carol swallowed down the ice tea she was drinking hard, as if it were stuck in her throat. Daryl caught her eye. "No. Lizzie didn't make it. Neither did either of Mika's parents."
"What happened to them?" Aaron asked.
"That's a story better left untold," Carol replied quietly. "But there's a young man, Daryl's nephew, who looked after Mika. And now he's living with us in Fun Kingdom. And Mika's happy. Dixon's like a big brother to her. And Daryl and I look out for her. She's happy. She's happy where she is." Maybe Carol was emphasizing that a bit too much, but part of her was afraid Aaron would try to claim Mika and take her to live with him here in Alexandria. He certainly had the room in this great big house. "Our daughter, Sophia, thinks of Mika as a little sister. They room together."
The front door slammed open and closed. A teenage girl with long brown hair came through the dinning room. "I can get you a plate, Enid, if you wa—"
"—I'm not hungry," she interrupted Aaron. And then she was clomping up the stairs. There was creaking, perhaps the lowering of the attic ladder.
Aaron sighed. "I never thought I'd be raising a teenage girl, and I honestly don't know what I'm doing."
"Me neither," Daryl told him.
Aaron glanced at him. "Sophia's a teenager?"
Daryl nodded. "Thirteen."
"But you got to raise, her, huh, didn't get her fully formed and set in her ways I like did Enid."
Daryl looked at Carol. "Got her already raised well by a damn good mama when she was twelve. Lucked out that way."
"Oh. You two…" Aaron waved a finger from Daryl and Carol, "met after the fall?"
"We did," Carol said.
"You just seemed really comfortable with each other. Like you've known each other a long time."
"Been married 'bout three months," Daryl said.
Aaron laughed. "Newlyweds? Wow. I would never have guessed that." He looked at Daryl curiously.
"We've known each other since the beginning of the end," Carol explained. "It just took us awhile to…" She smiled softly at Daryl. "Tie the knot."
"So when this over, this thing in Richmond," Aaron said, "I'd like to go back with you to your camp. See my niece."
Carol nodded. "I'm sure she'd like that, too." She smiled amiably at Aaron, but her stomach was a twisted knot of fear that the man might tried to take Mika back to Alexandria. "A visit from her uncle would be a nice surprise."
Carol and Daryl were settled in the "master bedroom suite" downstairs, because apparently Aaron had moved to an upstairs bedroom after Eric's death, too haunted by memories in that room. Tobin had a room upstairs, too, and there was Enid's attic space. Downstairs was a half bath off the living room, but Daryl and Carol's suite also had its own private full bathroom.
"Could fit half our camp in this damn house," Daryl muttered as he unzipped his pack on the bed. "And they only got three people livin' here?"
It was an exaggeration, but they had enough beds to sleep seven people, and a couch and a loveseat that could sleep two more, and a study upstairs that could potentially be filled with double bunk beds instead of a desk and bookcases.
"Sanctuary's crowded as fuck," Daryl continued. "Gavin's bustin' his ass to make it inhabitable, and they got all this space? Why don't they take in ten or fifteen people from there?"
"You know how it is, Pookie. People hoard and protect their own resources. It wasn't easy for us to take in as many people as we did, and if they'd had anywhere else that was actually inhabitable, functional? Safe?" She shrugged. "We might not have. And Aaron is at least recruiting people. It sounds like he brings in someone new every week or two. So all this space may all be filled one day. Maybe they think its better to give a home to someone out there," she nodded toward the window, "than someone who already has a roof and walls."
Daryl shook his head. "Surprised that Negan fucker didn't just roll in here and take over the whole place and make it his camp. Hell, they got everything!"
"I think he wanted them to produce for him. If he took over the place, he would have to manage it." She walked to the private bathroom and turned back to look at him. "We can be jealous of all this, Pookie, or we can take advantage of it while we're here." She wiggled an eyebrow. "Want to wash my back?"
Fifteen minutes later Daryl had the palms of Carol's hands pressed to the cool, slick tile of the shower wall while the hot spray poured over them and he pumped inside her from behind, biting gently at her neck and leaving little marks of desire while her moans mixed with the pelting of the water. After he came, just seconds beyond her final cry of pleasure, he released her hands and staggered back, spent. He thudded against the glass door, and it shuddered in its frame. Carol, laughing, turned and balanced him by grasping his arm. "Let's not break anything. We might never be invited back." She shut off the water. Clothed only in white, fluffy towels, they made their way to bed.