AN: I just wanted to remind everyone that some of these chapters will be somewhat asynchronous (not running on exactly the same timeline). I hope that isn't too problematic for you.
I hope you enjoy! Please don't forget to let me know what you think!
111
It hadn't taken very long before Michonne discovered Andrea's secret. Her abdominal muscles were pretty good at holding things back, but they'd finally given up, and the soft roundness of her stomach had turned to a slightly more pronounced roundness practically overnight.
A baby wasn't the easiest thing to keep alive in this world, but Michonne wouldn't dare to open her mouth to say a negative thing about a baby. Even if it was a struggle, new life in a world that seemed to be overflowing with death, decay, and rot was worth the effort they would have to make to keep it thriving.
Michonne had been alone for a while—she'd hardly faced this world, as it was now, with the company of anyone else, and she'd quickly learned that most company was less than desirable and completely unreliable. Michonne knew how to take care of herself, and she didn't need a single other person around. She'd fully convinced herself of that.
Of course, sometimes she forgot. And, sometimes, she got lonely.
It maybe would not have been Michonne's actual plan to end up with Andrea—pregnant and clearly depressed as she was—but it was what had happened. And, once they settled into things, Michonne found that she really did enjoy Andrea's company.
She worried, too, about Andrea's health—especially as what Michonne thought of as the "illness," whatever it actually was, seemed to only grow worse instead of better.
During the fire, Andrea had clearly inhaled a great deal of soot, ash, smoke, and whatever else there might have been floating in the air. For a few days, her voice had been harsh and strained. Her breathing had been labored. Michonne had assumed that it would pass as Andrea's lungs cleared themselves. Unfortunately, that hadn't been the case. Andrea's lungs only seemed to be growing worse and, then, the fever had begun.
It was impossible not to notice the sheen of sweat on Andrea's skin as she walked a half-step behind Michonne, dragging her feet as she went because she lacked the strength to lift her legs. They had to move. Michonne hadn't yet figured out how to make a camp where they could safely be sedentary for long. A couple of nights seemed to be all she could get out of a camp before she found herself surrounded by the Monsters—creatures that Andrea called Walkers.
It was time to find a new camp and, really, the best thing they could do was try to move as far as possible, since they knew this area was swarming with the Walkers.
This morning, Andrea had begged Michonne to leave her. She'd told her that she'd only slow her down. She'd told her that she didn't want to be responsible for Michonne's death.
If Michonne were the person she liked to believe herself to be, she would have left Andrea. The fact of the matter, though, was that Michonne had never been the person she pretended to be—and the thought of being completely alone, again, after just getting used to the idea of having Andrea and, someday, a baby in her life, terrified her.
Michonne didn't regret her decision to bring Andrea, but she did question whether or not it had been the best thing to do for Andrea's sake. Michonne worried that she'd collapse at any minute, though she pretended that she was fine and did her best to smile at Michonne whenever possible. Michonne comforted herself only with the reminder that Andrea would have died if she left her alone. Now? At least she could hope that, somehow, she would live.
The problem, of course, was that Michonne didn't know what was wrong with Andrea. Even if she could have cleared out entire pharmacies for her, she didn't know what to give her to try to clear her lungs and, now, to handle the fever that was threatening to burn her out entirely.
Michonne feared losing Andrea, but she didn't know how to save her. Part of her hoped that, as they moved along to try to put whatever distance possible between themselves and the Walkers that they could, they would encounter some physician who happened to have survived, and who wanted to heal Andrea for nothing more than Michonne's appreciation and what little food she could find to offer.
"We can rest a while," Michonne said. Andrea shuffled up next to her, hugged her blanket around her like it was much colder than it was, and put on a pained smile. Michonne could practically see the fever burning in Andrea's eyes.
"What, Mich? And—risk breaking this speed I've built up? If you can't keep up, just say so."
Andrea laughed at her own joke, and Michonne couldn't help but laugh in response. She reached in her pack and offered Andrea a bottle of water.
"Drink this," Michonne said.
"You'll need it," Andrea said, shaking her head. She didn't finish the statement. She didn't have to. Michonne could hear it all in her mind—you'll need it when I'm dead, which shouldn't be too long. Andrea was refusing everything—food, water, the Tylenol that Michonne had found for her. She was trying to leave as much of it with Michonne as she could. There was, after all, no use in wasting things that would only rot away with the body that had consumed them.
For a moment, Michonne thought about fighting with Andrea over refusing the water, but then she decided that it wouldn't do any good. It hadn't before. She tucked the bottle back in her bag.
Before Michonne could suggest that they move on, or even stop for the night, they both turned their heads instinctively in the direction of a sound that surprised them. The helicopter flew over them, clearly in a descending path. It was evident that it was going to crash, but a crashing helicopter was only a little stranger to see, these days, than one maintaining flight.
Michonne only had to look at Andrea to know that she was fine with spending what energy she could muster in going to find out what had happened.
111
The small group that they'd gone to check out hadn't made it through the night in the same location. They found evidence of their campsite, but there were no people around. For a while, Merle had tracked them, and they'd covered some ground through the woods. Finally, Merle had asked Philip how sincerely interested he was in finding these people. When Philip had admitted that it probably wasn't worth the trouble of tracking them, Merle had given that up and they'd headed back for their vehicles they'd left parked on the main road.
They might have gone home after that, but the helicopter had gotten everyone's attention. Merle couldn't think of anything more exciting than to follow the helicopter as it moved along its trajectory toward whatever would be its future crash site. Alice had loudly mused about the possibility of survivors—and then about her role as a care provider for survivors—and Philip hadn't cared enough, one way or another, to suggest anything other than following the helicopter.
They arrived not too long after the helicopter crashed. The column of smoke rising up had practically marked the spot with a big, red X, and Merle hadn't had much trouble finding small roads that took them pretty close to the site. Behind their Jeep, the truck parked—a truck in which there was another of Philip's "helpers" who was driving and offering his services, should he be needed for any heavy lifting—of the literal or proverbial sort.
There was no way of knowing who had been in the helicopter. These days, even a military helicopter was just as likely to be stolen as it was to be used by actual military personnel. In addition, wearing certain clothes did not mean the person wearing them was the person for whom they were first intended.
What they did know about the victims of the crash, immediately, was that there were likely far more dead than there were survivors.
"If they're growling," Philip said, making sure everyone had weapons by offering out weapons for anyone to take if they needed them, "put them down. And—if they haven't started biting yet, but they're on the way out, help them stay down."
"We ought to save who we can," Alice said. "They might be able to tell us what they were doing in a military helicopter. Maybe there's something we don't know about going on. Maybe the government is trying to send out aid or…"
"If they're alive, and you think you can save them," Philip said, interrupting her, "then you tell Ricardo to put them in the back of the truck, and we'll transport them back to Woodbury."
Alice had practically darted ahead—somehow invigorated, always, by the thought that there were lives to be saved—and Merle caught up with her quickly. He caught her by the back of the neck in an affectionate move, and she slowed her steps.
"Don't you go bein' a dumbass, Al," Merle said. "Don't you get too damn close. That asshole right there—the very one you was goin' for? You think he's alive or he's dead?"
"He's moving, Merle, and he's not growling," Alice said. Just about that time, as if to mock her, the Walker writhing on the ground moved a bit more solemnly and reached a gruesomely broken arm out in her direction while he growled at her.
"He weren't growlin' 'cause they don't—not at first. Weird that way. Don't you get too close, Al. Not 'til you know for sure. Don't want to lose you."
"I'll keep my distance," Alice assured him. She started off toward the next body on the ground, and Merle pulled out the machete he was wearing on his belt. He stabbed it quickly into the head of the Walker that had only just learned about growling out his intentions to feed soon, and silenced the creatures disgruntled noises. Then, he continued on to make sure that nobody else got up and walked away from this crash in an undesirable manner.
Merle was drawn some distance away from the crash by the sound of wildly growling Walkers. They were mad and anxious to feed, and that made him wonder if they'd found someone on which they might be trying to feed. Their sounds weren't those of slurping and crunching, so it was likely that whoever they'd found had avoided them for the time being, and Merle immediately thought that someone, having survived the crash but still injured, could have crawled away and hidden—too afraid, now, to give away their position.
What Merle saw, when he'd eased himself through some brush and bushes toward the sound of the Walkers, surprised him. There were two Walkers rattling chains like cartoon ghosts. They were stirred up, hungry, and in close proximity to food—but they had no mouths and no arms with which to take what they wanted. Holding their chains, like a leash, was a woman on her knees on the ground—watching Alice, Philip, and Ricardo as they picked their way through the crash victims. Another woman leaned over her, watching the same scene.
They hadn't heard Merle come up.
Then, Merle saw the black woman, her hand on the chain leashes, reach her hand back slowly toward a long sword that she wore.
"Easy," Merle said. "I wouldn't do that. Mine's bigger'n yours."
The woman turned around to look at Merle wide-eyed. He might have had something to say to her—he might have had something to say about her, but he couldn't even register her for the moment. Beside her, half-slumped over her back, was someone wearing a face that haunted every hour of every day, for Merle, for what seemed like a lifetime. Now, it seemed, he was even seeing that face in hallucinations.
She brought her eyes up to his—bloodshot and glazed. Merle realized that she wasn't a hallucination. He felt like his heart stopped. His knees felt close to going out.
"Andrea…" he said, the word catching in his throat like a handful of sandspurs.
She looked at him, opened her mouth like she might say something, and suddenly dropped to the ground in a solid faint. Merle lunged for her at the same time that the woman beside her lunged for her.
"Don't you touch her!" The woman spat at Merle like a pissed-off hellcat.
"Don't you fuckin' touch her!" Merle barked. "Alice! Alice! For fuck's sake! Get your ass here, now!"
Merle was trying to hold Andrea, and to fight off the woman who was determined to keep him away from Andrea, without injuring either of them with the bayonet attached to his cuff.
"If you don't leave me alone," Merle warned the woman, "I'll cut your damn throat to save her life. I swear to you, it don't mean shit to me to watch you bleed out. Not if it keeps a single damn thing from happenin' to her!"
Merle might have argued further with the woman, but Alice found them, and she came crashing through the brush and tripping over one of the chains attached to one of the jawless Walkers that had begun to roam as far as its tether allowed.
"Philip! I could use a hang over here," Alice called out, getting up and heading toward Merle to really take in the situation at hand. "Rather—I could use two good hands."
"Al—it's Andrea," Merle said. Even as he said it, part of him felt like he didn't believe it. He felt like it was a dream. A hallucination. He couldn't imagine what it would take to wake up from this, but he prayed for the absolute joy of waking up to find it had, somehow, morphed into his reality. For the moment, though, he simply felt numb—functioning on autopilot and afraid of finding out that he was just as bad off as he'd been that morning.
He couldn't let himself fully believe. He couldn't let himself feel. Not everything. Not yet.
"I got that," Alice said. "And we've got her, Merle. I promise."
Philip came and, needing about as much explanation as it had seemed Alice did, he'd reached down and scooped Andrea up bridal style while Merle held back the other woman who hadn't fully decided she was afraid of having her throat cut.
"Be careful with her! You—be careful with her!" Merle yelled out at Philip, almost fighting himself as hard as he was fighting the other woman, just to make himself let go of her, now that he'd found her again—even if he was only letting her go so that Philip could carefully carry her to their vehicle.
"I've got her!" Philip assured him.
Merle might have suggested that the woman follow him, but she took off after Philip and Merle had to keep on her heels just to hold her back and assure himself that she wasn't going to tackle Philip and cause him to drop Andrea as he rushed her toward the Jeep.
"You gotta save her, Al!" Merle barked out as Alice rushed by him.
"I'll do everything I can, Merle," Alice said. "I swear."
"I can't lose her again, Alice," Merle warned, catching the woman he was after and holding her in a choke hold—determined to render her unconscious one way or another. He'd take her back, just in case Andrea wanted her there, but he wasn't going to deal with her wild-ass all night. She'd transport better without full consciousness.
"I know, Merle," Alice said, ignoring his choice for how to subdue the woman in his arms.