June 20
The next day was spent assigning defensive positions for the battle to come, pushing out select bricks from the wall to form shooting holes, loading more magazines, filling receptacles (including an entire large dumpster just inside the wall) with water to fight any fires that might erupt, and nervously anticipating the fight that was to come.
That night, all of the would-be soldiers crowded into the living room, dining room, and kitchen of the house Noah Johnson had grown up in. An extra leaf was put in the dining room table. The kitchen table, which could be contracted into itself, was extended. And still more people sat in chairs and on the couch around the coffee table in the living room, all eating together a meal that Carol and Aaron had prepared.
There was talking, laughter, and wine, and attempts at flirting, some far more successfully than others: Cyndie, much to Zach's chagrin, ended up dividing her attentions between the 25-year-old Alexandria supply runner Heath and the 27-year-old Hilltop guard Eduardo, leaving Zach out in the cold with Benjamin, who was gloomily watching Tina laugh with Noah. "I don't get it," Benjamin told Zach. "He's so geeky looking. I bet he can't even use a staff."
"I hope you brought a gun and not just a staff," Zach told him.
"The first round is fire," Benjamin replied, "but eventually, it reaches hand-to-hand. I may look young, but I've been in a war before."
"So have I," Zach insisted. "Of a sort."
Ozzy tried to flirt with Dianne, who smiled with amusement for the first go round but then left him standing alone by a bookcase in the living room to go sit next to a rather perturbed looking Gavin on the couch. She left a cushion of space between them and glanced at the plate on his lap. "How's the fish?"
"Well seasoned, but not as tender as Oceanside fish," Gavin answered. "Having fun with Ozzy?"
"He has his moments," Dianne replied.
"What kind of name is Ozzy, anyway?"
"It's short for Ozymandias," Ozzy replied, overhearing their conversation, strolling to the couch, and wedging himself down on the cushion between them. Looking cramped, he stretched out one of his arms on the top of the couch behind Dianne. "You know, the king of kings, look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
"Hell, I'd go by Ozzy too," Gavin muttered, and then he scooted away, a little closer to the arm of the couch.
Meanwhile, Darren from the Sanctuary made a crude move on Jessica, a Shirewilt woman who had remained to fight with her people. The pass was not at all well received, and, Tobin, seeing her discomfort, inserted himself. Tobin's move was better received, and Jessica and Tobin chatted by the mantle for about ten minutes before they ended up disappearing together, like two college kids sneaking off to an upstairs bedroom, except that the forty-somethings were just going for a quiet walk outside.
At the same time, in the kitchen, Carol watched as a Shirewilt man named Joesph attempted to flirt with Aaron, who though friendly at first eventually said, "Look, you seem like a good guy, but I just lost my husband a little over three months ago."
Joseph flushed and said, "I was just being friendly. I'm totally straight anyway."
"Mhmm," Aaron murmured as he set down his wine glass on the kitchen table. "You should meet my friend Jesus."
"Oh. You're one of those religious nuts. Good thing I am straight and you just lost your husband," Joesph replied.
Aaron laughed. "No, that's his nickname. I'm not trying to convert you."
Daryl's full extent at flirting was, "Good cooking," and a kiss to Carol's cheek before he vanished out back to smoke. DJ followed him out, not to flirt, but to bum a smoke. Jerry flirted with everyone and no one, all smiles and cheerful conversation.
As the evening wore on, the party spirit gradually dimmed, and the mood grew increasingly solemn, as each seemed to become more and more aware that someone among them might, perhaps, be eating his or her last meal.
June 21
12:15 PM
When the neo-Saviors arrived, they pulled up to the barbwire gate in an eighteen-wheeler truck advertising Farm Fresh Supermarket on its side and a pick-up truck full of men in its bed. When the leader spilled out of the driver's side of the eighteen-wheeler, Gavin, who was in a blind with Carol, whispered, "That's him. David."
David had done a lot of recruiting in the short time since his banishment, it seemed. When everyone hopped out of the bed of the pick-up except the driver, and the back of the eighteen wheeler rolled up and still more men jumped out, there were twenty-four in all, every single one armed with a semi-automatic rifle. Carol couldn't make out the driver of the pick-up truck, who remained behind the wheel, but he looked barely old enough to drive.
The leader of the neo-Saviors hollered to be let in. When no one came out, David took out a megaphone from the truck and announced, "If there's no one here to remove this barbwire and let us inside in the next ten seconds, that's another boy on his knees with a bullet through his head! I'll take the older one this time. Isaiah, was it? Or was that the one I killed? Hell, who can remember? They all look the same to me. But his mother wasn't bad looking, for her age. Maybe I'll take her for a ride right in front of little Isaac-Isaiah before I shoot him."
"He likes to talk as much as Negan," Gavin muttered quietly beside Carol.
"That is to say," David continued, "we can come in hard, or we can come in gentle. Your choice. But either which way, we will come in. And you've got exactly ten seconds to make your decision as to which way you want to take it."
All that shouting through the megaphone drew two walkers, which David signaled one of his men to take out. Carol observed that the neo-Savior who did the task wasn't a great shot. He spent four rounds to bring down two creatures that weren't even all that far away or lurching particularly quickly. That incompetence made her feel more reassured.
"10…" David began counting… "9…8…."
When no one came to the gate at zero, David ordered one of his men to cut the barbwire with bolt cutters. The neo-Savior strode cockily forward with the metal tool, but just as the mouth of the cutters came down on the wires, the man became rooted to the asphalt and began gyrating.
"The fuck?" David roared.
After a period of seizing, the would be wire-cutting man fell dead to the ground, his hair on edge.
"Drive through it! Plow it down!" shouted, David, running around to the side of the truck and leaping up on the running board to climb in on the driver's side. That's when Noah, who had no doubt been itching to kill the man the entire time he talked about his mother and brothers, fired the first shot from one of the tree blinds. The bullet tore through the top of David's head and sent him stumbling and slamming back-down on the asphalt. A pool of blood seeped out onto the street.
That's when the four soldiers kneeling inside the wall opened fire through the openings formed when single bricks had been pushed out. Three more neo-Saviors fell. Twenty left, Carol thought, counting the driver of the pick-up truck.
Whoever was in the passenger's seat of the eighteen-wheeler scooted over to the driver's side and slammed the accelerator hard while yanking the door shut. There were cries of chaos as the driver of the truck plowed it full force through the barbwire. Sparks flew, but the truck pressed on, tearing the wire from both sides of the brick. Neo-Saviors rushed in on foot after it, shooting blindly at the people who were now shooting at them.
The Shirewilt defenders couldn't call who they were shooting – that would give their positions away – so multiple bullets and arrows from multiple angles went into the same men—some from one of the three tree blinds, some from on the ground, and a couple from rooftops within Shirewilt. Benjamin, who was on the ground, took out a fleeing neo-Savior who was trying to retreat back out the open gate area by slamming his staff into the back of the man's knees. Jerry then charged forward with his battle axe and brought the blade down on the back of the man's neck.
Whoever was driving the pick-up truck that was still outside the wall seemed to panic and began to reverse it, but Aaron, leaving his defensive position behind the wall, ran out of the now open gate area and shot out its tires. He sprinted toward the pick-up as the driver seemed to scramble for a weapon. Aaron jerked open the front door and held the driver at gunpoint.
As a neo-Savior ran through the open gate area and pulled the pin of a hand grenade, Cyndie shot him with her harpoon and made use of the rope to quickly drag the speared man toward her. She grabbed the now unpinned grenade, gripped firmly and instinctively in the screaming man's hand, and promptly tossed it toward the large metal dumpster just inside the wall. There was a muted boom as the dumpster rattled and a spray of water shot up from within it in a hissing fountain.
The driver of the eighteen-wheeler stopped his truck halfway inside Shirewilt and threw open his door to shoot at Dixon from behind the cover of the open door. Dixon didn't see because he was busy taking down someone else. Fortunately, before the neo-Savior could squeeze the trigger, Daryl rounded the rear of the truck and shot the man straight through the back of the head with a bolt. He then ran to the truck and tossed the dead driver, whose body was slumped on the window, out before climbing quickly inside. Daryl plowed the truck forward and made a U-turn in the middle of the street, running up on the curb of the sidewalk and taking out a mailbox as he did so.
Aaron ran back inside the open gate, away from a pack of walkers drawn by the gunfire, dragging by the arm what looked to Carol to be a sixteen-year-old boy. She carefully shot three walkers who were close enough to claw at their shoulders. Once Aaron was inside, Daryl positioned the truck horizontally across the now wide-open gate area to keep the newly drawn walkers out. Dixon and Zach mounted the truck, and from its roof began to pick off the walkers clawing against the side of the truck and trying to crawl under it.
Beside Carol, Gavin's rifle cracked. The firearm jerked up in the air as Gavin cried out in pain. The man who had shot him, Gavin had also shot, once, in the chest, but Carol put a second bullet through the man's head before shouldering her rifle and turning her attention to the comrade who was now sinking down in the blind, his back against the tree, and grasping at the fresh wound in his side.
Gavin's panting seemed enormously loud in the sudden silence that descended upon Shirewilt. Their attackers were dead now, all of them, except the young prisoner Aaron held. The only sound of gunfire left was muted by the suppressors screwed on Dixon and Zach's rifles—the only two suppressors the defenders had—as they continued taking out walkers.
The entire battle had taken fifteen minutes.
Gavin coughed.
"Help!" Carol cried from their blind. "Man down!"