Aaron's out cold. Rick yells for him to be tied up and tells Carl to dump his pack and search his things. Michonne tries to get his attention. She hisses his name like he's about to step on a snake. Rick, for his part, ignores her. "We need eyes in every direction," he says, pacing the barn floor as energy courses through the group, some people sticking to the walls and peering through the panels and some, like Gabriel, just gaping. "They're comin' for us," Rick says matter-of-factly.
Carl gave me Judith when he went after the pack, so she's here for me to pull closer when Rick says that. It surprises me, those exact words, They're comin' for us. I don't trust this guy, of course I don't, and usually I'm pretty good about being cautious, but it's a long step from where I am – knowing that this guy could be lying – to where Rick is – They're comin' for us.
But I don't say anything. Maybe because I don't completely trust myself, or at least trust Rick and the other grownups more, maybe because I don't think I deserve a say –
No, I do, I do.
I say nothing anyway.
Leah does, though.
"Rick," she says, louder than Michonne, sounding a little, a little, like her old lawyer-self, maybe, can't completely remember . . . "Let's slow down. This is one guy. This doesn't strike me as the first wave of an attack. He doesn't strike me as a threat."
"Which makes him all the more dangerous," Rick says, dismissing Leah in the way she hates. Her jaw twitches, and she and Michonne lock eyes for too long for it be coincidence before Michonne goes to check over Aaron, who's had his hands bound by my dad.
Carl begins to pull and shake things from Aaron's pack. I kneel beside him as Maggie says, to Rick, I think, "Me and Sasha – we didn't see him. If he had wanted to hurt us, he could've."
Glenn is at the side of the barn, looking through the cracks in the panels, and he tells Rick he doesn't see anything but a lot of places to hide. Rick says to keep looking . . .
I think I'm like Leah. I don't believe this is an attack. If you're going to attack someone, you don't send one guy in broad daylight to get captured and then wait things out . . . You fall onto the barn at night with all your force, take what you want, kill what you don't. I would think.
I don't want us to lose a chance at this place with steel walls. It could be real. My instincts, the gentler, sweeter kind I used more often before the end of the world, they're stirring inside of me and whispering that Aaron's okay. But the harder instincts, the ones responsible for the blood on my hands, they tell me to trust no one. Ever.
There's nothing immediately suspicious among Aaron's things. A couple bottles of water, toilet paper, spoons, some canned food – Jesus Christ.
"Carl, are those peaches?"
"Yeah . . ." He holds up the can, one corner of his mouth slopes up. "We can't go with him just because he has peaches, Syd."
"I wanna go with him because he has a giant steel wall . . . The peaches are a bonus."
"You wanna go with him?" He unzips another one of the bag's pockets.
"If he's telling the truth. But I have no way of figuring that out, do you?"
"No . . . but I think we have to risk it."
"Really?"
He shakes the bag again and a flash of orange slips from the newly-opened pocket. A gun, a little one, about the size of mine. Carl bounces it in his hand a couple of times before handing it to me. "You ever see one like this?"
I haven't. The gun is lighter than it should be. There's a hammer but no chamber in its side. When we give it to Rick, he pops a section out of the top – it looks like some sort of chamber but there's only one long hole to it, not five or six little ones. His eyes shoot up to Aaron, still on the ground, but beginning to stir under the wet rag Maggie's dabbing on his forehead.
When I stand, I get dizzy. Feels like my head floats an inch further than I asked it to, and it makes the rest of me stumble into Carl. While I'm carrying Judith. I should probably not be doing that.
Carl squeezes my shoulders. "Syd?"
"I'm okay. Here, take her." Judith's leg brushes against my bad hand, right on the stumps, and I can't fight back a flinch as pain courses up my arm.
"You are so not okay." Carl balances Judith in one arm and brushes hair out of my eyes with the other. Glances at my hand. "If this guy is telling the truth, they could have medicine. We'll find out. We'll get it for you. One way or another." He brushes my face again.
That's the second time this morning a Grimes has made me a promise no one could for certain keep, and it's the second time this morning I force a smile in response.
"That's a hell of a right cross there, Rick," Aaron croaks. The idiot's trying to smile. How very Owen-like.
Aaron flexes his jaw as Maggie and Michonne prop him up. "You're being cautious," he says to Rick, sounding out-of-breath, "I completely understand."
"How many of your people are out there?" Rick holds up the orange gun. "You have a flare gun. You have it to signal your people. How many of them are there?"
And Aaron's smile slips off.
So this is the kind of guy who keeps a smile on after being knocked out . . . but not after finding out his people might be at risk.
"Does it matter?" Aaron asks quietly.
Rick tells him that yes, yes it does.
"I mean, of course – it matters how many people are actually out there." Aaron shakes his head. "But does it matter how many people I tell you are out there? Because I'm pretty sure no matter what number I say . . . Eight, thirty-two, four hundred and forty-four, zero . . . No matter what I say . . . you're not going to trust me."
Rick points out that it's hard to trust anyone who smiles after getting punched in the face.
"How about a guy who leaves bottles of water for you in the road?"
There's a pause.
Of course.
Dad breaks in, riled up now. "How long you people been followin' us?" I wonder if he's thinking about me and him, yesterday, right outside of this barn. I am. Was Aaron or someone like him out there with us, listening, watching? No way, it's me and dad, we would have sensed it – at least he would have . . . Right?
"Long enough," Aaron answers, "to see that you practically ignore a pack of roamers on your trail. Long enough to see that in spite of a lack of food and water, you never turned on each other. You're survivors. And you're people. Like I said – and I hope you won't punch me for saying it again – that is the most important resource in the world."
Rick steps closer to Aaron. He brings his voice down to a deadly level. "How many others are out there?"
Aaron sighs. The breath shakes a drop of sweat from his nose. "One."
No one responds. I think Rick shakes his head a little.
Aaron's shoulders drop. "I knew you wouldn't believe me . . . If it's not words, if it's not pictures, what would it take to convince you that this is for real?"
That's the problem, the very scary problem – there's nothing he can do, I don't think. I can't imagine a way for him to get us to listen to him . . . What can he do or say that wouldn't require us to have at least a little faith in him? And can we risk having faith in anyone outside of the group? We've tried that before, and people died.
Optimism, Sydney . . . no, no. Survival. Survival is more important.
Steel walls equal survival.
"What if I drove you to the community?" Aaron blurts. "All of you? We leave now, we'll get there by lunch."
Rick scoffs. "I'm not sure how the eighteen of us are going to fit into the one car you and your friend drove down here in . . ."
"We drove separately! If we found a group, we wanted to be able to bring them all home. There's enough room for all of us."
"And you're parked just a couple miles away, right?" Carol's voice is flat.
"East on Ridge Road, just after you hit Route 16. We wanted to get them closer, but then the storm came, blocked the road, we couldn't clear it."
"Yeah, you've really thought this through." Rick's giving him nothing. I . . . I wish he would. But I just really want that steel wall to be real. What's more, I want it to be ours.
"Rick," Aaron pleads, "If I wanted to ambush you, I'd do it here, light the barn on fire while you slept, pick you off as you ran out the only exit . . . You can trust me!"
Owen clucks his tongue. "Dude. If you want someone to trust you, maybe don't describe how you'd kill them first?"
"I just meant – I – If I wanted to hurt you, I could have, but I would have been giving up any chance the second I came up to Maggie and Sasha. I did that because I don't want to hurt you. I want to help you, because I believe you can help us."
"I'll check out the cars." Michonne.
"There aren't any cars," Rick says, as if he's said it a hundred times before, as if it's obvious, but it's not, it's not, Rick, don't you see? Didn't you hear it when he talked about steel walls?
"There's only one way to find out." Michonne is steady, speaking softly, but there's no room for changing her mind. Only a handful of people can tell Rick they're doing something and that's that without asking for trouble. I think she might do it better than anyone else.
"We don't need to find out," Rick says.
"We do." Michonne says. "You know what you know, and you're sure of it. But I'm not."
"Neither am I," Leah says.
"Me, neither." Maggie.
Rick's shoulders are tight. "Your way's dangerous," he eventually says. "Mine isn't."
"Passing up someplace where we can live?" Michonne narrows her eyes. "Where Judith can live? That's pretty dangerous."
"We have a doctor," Aaron pipes up. "A surgeon named Pete. And we have medicine." He decides it's a great plan to look at me, then at my dad. "We can give your daughter medical attention."
I flinch. There's twenty feet between Aaron and me, but Dad moves in between us anyway. I don't think I like spies. I hate that this man knows anything about me when I know nothing about him.
But . . . if he wanted a kicker, he found it.
Rick ducks his head into his hand. Michonne inches closer. "We need to find out what this is. We can handle ourselves . . . so that's what we're gonna do."
"Then I will, too," Glenn says. "I'll go."
A moment passes before Rick calls out Abraham's name. Abraham agrees to go. Rick looks to Rosita, she nods, and then, after a second, Rick says Owen's name, too, and my heart constricts a bit. Owen's eyebrows fly up. But he shoves off the wall, says he's in, and sends a shrug my way before heading out the door after Abraham.
"The walkies are out juice," Rick reminds Michonne. "If you're not back in sixty minutes, we'll come. Which might be just what they want." She nods once. Leah's made her way to Michonne's side. She wanted to believe Aaron, so of course she's going to check the cars. I don't look at her before she leaves, not really, not in the eye.
Rick turns to the rest of us. "If we're all in here, we're a target."
"I've got the area covered," Dad says.
"Alright, groups of two, find somewhere safe, within eyeshot . . ."
Dad clasps my shoulder. "You stay in here, you rest."
"Yeah."
He pushes some hair off my face and leaves. Carl squeezes my arm and leaves . . . everyone leaves, except Rick, me, Judith, and Aaron. Rick pushes the door almost closed behind our people, but leaves a little crack to watch through for a minute.
"When the world was still the world," Aaron says to the silence, "I worked for an NGO."
I don't know what that means.
"Our mission was to deliver medicine and food to the Niger River Delta. Bad people pointed guns in my face every other week . . . You're not bad people. You're not going to kill us. And we are definitely not going to kill you."
But oh, he doesn't know how often we've heard things like that before, in one form or another. My uncle told me the Governor wouldn't hurt me. Joe told me Len wouldn't hurt me. But both of them tried to. And then I killed them.
"If the seven of them aren't back in an hour," Rick says, "I'll put a knife in the base of your skull."
. . . . .
Someone covered the dead woman in the feed room with one of her own blankets. I look over the shape but don't lift the quilt for a look. We should bury her, or burn her at least, but we have more important things to worry about, I guess . . . Wonder if I'll have the chance to be buried. I don't think I care. I just don't want to turn, mainly. But then again, I don't want anyone I love to find me and have to put me down . . . So I guess it would be better to turn and ramble away.
But I don't want to think about that.
The floor is littered with empty food cans. There's a calendar on the wall stuck in December. A pile of books. The Holy Bible is one. Another reads JOURNAL on the front in dirty white letters. I open up to the first entry.
Aug 17
Dear Diary,
It's been too long since I've been able to write those words!
We found a motel mostly empty and we're staying here until the baby's born. Mel doesn't think it'll be long, and Andrew thinks we'll be safe here. He says it's hard to hear anything from outside. Cecilia wants her own room. Andrew said she and I can share one. We'll find one and move into it tomorrow. It's funny to think there was a time when I would have died before I shared a room with her. Now it sounds like heaven.
That entry goes on for pages, but instead of finishing it, I find the last entry, about halfway through the journal.
Dec 5
SUICIDE IS SIN
SUICIDE IS SIN
SUICIDE IS SIN
SUICIDE IS SIN
SUICIDE IS SIN
It goes on like that for a dozen pages. I drop the journal.
I'm turning to leave when my eye catches something glint. A tiny piece of silver pokes out from beneath a blanket. I pull at it and find myself with a crucifix, the actual cross half the size of my palm. Jesus's little face looking pretty peaceful for a dying man.
"A lot of good you did." But I tuck the thing into my pocket before I leave the room.
Aaron's leaning on a post – well, he's leaned against a post. He doesn't have much of a choice. I walk past him to get to Rick, who's kneeling with a fussy Judith on his knee while grinding the butt of his gun into a bowl, trying to grind acorns into something a baby can eat.
"Would you hold her?" he asks me, and does a double-take when I bend down for her. "Did you have a drink?"
"Yeah. Hi, baby girl."
"Go lie down with her," Rick says, but I barely hear him because Judith goes from fussy to screaming as I straighten up.
"I'm sorry," I whisper to the baby, beginning to pace. "I'm sorry." I don't know what I'm sorry for, specifically, but there's a long list of things to choose from. Judith doesn't care that I'm sorry, though. She keeps crying.
"You did see the jar of applesauce in my bag, right?" Aaron half-yells at Rick. Rick doesn't stop with the acorns. "This isn't a trick," Aaron insists. "This isn't about trying to make you like me, it's self-preservation. Because if the roamers hear her, and come this way, I know I'll be the first to go."
Rick pauses, but tucks the gun into its holster and moves to where Aaron's stuff is laid out. He pops open the applesauce, dips into it with one of Aaron's spoons, and strides over to make our prisoner take that first bite. Judith wails on. I don't think I should be walking, I'm getting a little lightheaded again.
Aaron looks at Rick with shock in his eyes as I slide down a wall. "You think I'm trying to poison your baby daughter?"
That actually nearly makes me laugh. God, he must be telling the truth about the steel wall, right? He must have been behind it all this time, to think the idea of someone poisoning a baby is really so absurd. Rick's seen a man try to rape his son. Watched a one-eyed psychopath behead one of the best men left alive. Had his best friend try to kill him.
Shane. I haven't thought about him in a while. He almost seems like someone from before the turn, it's been so long . . . except he was too angry. But Merle was angry, too. Dad was even angry, not Merle-angry, but bad sometimes. In a different way than he gets now.
I stroke Judith's head and promise her everything will be okay. I take the crucifix out of my jeans and dangle it in front of her. She goes quiet when she notices it.
"I'm tied up and you've already expressed a willingness to stab me in the head," Aaron says as Judith grasps for the cross, "How would cruelly killing your daughter in front of you in any way help the situation?"
Rick kneels down. "Maybe she doesn't die. Maybe she gets sick. Maybe you're the only one that can help her and I just lose."
"I am the only one who can help her because I have applesauce. And we all win."
Rick juts the spoon towards Aaron's mouth again. Aaron purses his lips. "I hate applesauce," he says, all but begging now. "My mom used to make me eat foods I didn't like to make me more manly. Salmon patties, applesauce, and onions. She was a very confused woman who tried her damnedest – I just bring the jar to show that we have apple trees nearby –"
"Just take a bite," I interrupt. "Just take a bite." I shrug. "Like you said . . . you'll be the first to go."
Look at me, making threats as I sit here with a baby and a rotting hand. What a badass.
I just don't want Rick to hurt Aaron.
Aaron gives Rick one last pleading look. Rick only says, "You heard her."
Finally, finally, Aaron takes the spoon into his mouth and gulps the applesauce down, near tears. Rick tastes it too before he crosses the barn and crouches beside me. He starts to take Judith, but stops to feel my forehead. Really not a good sign. "Do I look that bad?" I ask.
He starts to say something but changes his mind. He hands me the spoon. "Feed her. I'll get you somethin'."
The applesauce smells delicious, and extremely out-of-place. I scoop out a bit, take the crucifix from Judith's mouth, and get her to slurp up some applesauce instead. "Good girl. Is it good? Yeah . . ."
Aaron's talking again, apparently recovered from the applesauce. "The community is big enough, Rick. We can find a place for you to live where, even when she cries, no one, nothing can hear it outside the walls."
"You got forty-three minutes."
Rick makes Aaron taste the peaches we found in his bag before giving the whole jar to me, scooping up Judith and balancing her and the applesauce. "Eat it all," he tells me as he starts walking with the baby.
The peach slice explodes on my tongue. I literally shiver – I think it's the best thing I've tasted since the prison.
"There are peach trees, too," Aaron says. "Obviously." He watches me take another bite. "Were you bitten?"
"You don't have to talk to him," Rick says over his shoulder.
But, after I take a couple more bites from the jar, I say yes.
"I'm sorry," Aaron says, and I want to believe him. I want to believe everything he says. I hold the jar between my knees.
"My uncle sawed off his entire hand to get out of handcuffs and away from walkers, then cauterized the stump by himself. Losing a couple fingers is nothing."
"He must have been quite the man."
"He would have killed you the second he saw you."
"Guess it's a good thing we never met, then."
I stir the peaches. It's not smart of me to talk to him, even if Rick's letting me make that call. Not sure Dad would, but Rick and Dad are different, especially when it comes to me. It's kind of like Owen and Carl, actually. Owen let me go into the woods alone yesterday . . . Carl wouldn't have. It's hard, deciding whether you should let your loved ones do what they want or do what you think will keep them safe. You could lose them either way.
Anyway, we might have to kill Aaron in forty-three – forty-two, now – minutes. So I know I shouldn't talk to him. But I can't help it. Talking to someone new is so dangerous but so special, too. "Why'd your mom want you to become more manly?"
Aaron smiles a little, the sad kind of smile. "She had a view of the world that was . . . dated. I didn't fit into it very well. You're lucky. Everyone in your group obviously looks out for one another."
"You don't know them. You don't know us."
"No, I don't. But I know that much."
I can't help but meet his eyes, and he looks so genuine, and damn, damn I want to believe him. What's more, I want to like him.
Actually, I do like him. So I decide not to talk to him anymore.