[A/N: Happy Australia Day!]
'We did it!'
Maggie's cry rang along the catwalk as she stood up behind the metal sheeting they'd used to reinforce the catwalk.
Asha swung her semi automatic under her arm and pushed the visor on her helmet back. The riot gear was sweltering and her back was slick with sweat.
'Hell yeah we did,' she called back, a note of incredulity in her voice.
Had Glenn's scraped together ambush plan really worked? Did they really just drive out the Governor's army with a few smoke bombs and a handful of people?
Glenn was whooping in excitement from where he was positioned on the landing. Asha felt a grin spread across her face.
'Glenn!' She screamed. 'You are a fucking genius my friend!'
Maggie's grin matched her own. Asha spread her arms wide, ignoring the twinge in her rib cage, tossed her head back and crowed with delight at their success. Half a second later she heard Maggie's stunned laughter join her.
'I take it from the banshee impression that it worked,' Rick called dryly.
Rick, Daryl, Carol and Michonne had come out of the tombs and were in the courtyard, looking up at her and Maggie with amused expressions on their faces. Asha scanned them all quickly, and breathed a little easier when she realised they were all ok. She felt her eyes lingering on Daryl and jerked them away.
'I vote Glenn is master of tactical decisions from now on,' she called back down, still grinning.
'We're not done yet,' Rick said grimly.
The four of them sat in silence in the dual cab, Rick, Daryl, Asha and Michonne. The hum of the engine and tyres on tarmac was the only sound. They were going to Woodbury, to find Andrea and to finish it. Maggie and Glenn hadn't been willing to return, so it was just the four of them.
Michonne had said that it would never be over until either they or the Governor were gone. Asha remembered the cold faced man she'd seen on the day she'd arrived at the prison, the same man she seen driving his people into the prison earlier that day. Cold and cruel and thrilling at the slaughter all at once.
She knew Michonne was right. From the stony set to Rick's mouth, he knew it too.
She knew that, but she was really there for Merle. When Daryl, face grim, had started for the car after the ambush, she'd followed him without thought. She knew killing the Governor wasn't going to bring Merle back. She also knew from experience that is wasn't likely to make her feel much better either. It didn't take the loss away, but it would dull the edge of the bitterness that churned in her stomach whenever the realisation bit that her friend was gone whilst the bastard that had killed him still lived. She looked across Daryl, heart aching at the bleak lines in his face, and hoped it took some of the bitterness away for him too.
The corner of her mouth quirked sourly. She wasn't proud of it, but she wondered if she was the only person in the car who had set out to deliberately kill someone before.
Needs doing though.
Suddenly, Rick stomped on the break and they swerved violently around the army truck stopped in the middle of the road. The dual cab rocked sideways on its wheels before skidding to a stop alongside the truck. A pickup was stopped not far ahead of it, seemingly abandoned, doors flung wide and panels raked with bullet holes.
Asha recognised both vehicles them from the prison—last she'd seen they'd been tearing out through the gate with a third vehicle under a barrage of gunfire laid down by her, Maggie and Glenn.
Her mouth dropped open as the four of the them pushed open their doors and eased themselves out onto the road. Bodies were strewn across the road and out into the nearby field. Those quick to turn were already feeding on their former friends, and the groans and damp snarling sounds of the dead feeding filled the air.
'What the hell,' Daryl muttered, looking out into the field. Asha walked over to join him at the edge of the road. She didn't need to be a tracker to realise that the people face down in the grass had fled from the road and been mown down.
Something suddenly slammed against the inside of the truck cab window. Asha jumped, lost her footing on the grassy verge and slipped to her knee in the ditch at the side of the road. Heart pounding, she scrambled back to her feet. Rick's gun and Daryl's crossbow were trained on the dark haired wild eyed woman who had both palms pressed against the window.
'He killed them,' she near sobbed through the glass. 'He just…' her eyes moved across the road and field. 'Opened fire.'
'Come out of there.' Rick said. He lowered his gun slightly, after a quick glance to check Daryl's crossbow hadn't moved.
The woman pushed the door ajar and near collapsed out of the truck. She pressed a hand to her mouth as she looked around. She was muddy, and there was a great smear of blood across her back. 'He's a madman,' she said eyes wide.
'What happened,' Rick pressed, his voice low and calm.
Her voice trembled. 'He pulled across the road and made us stop. Wanted us to go back and finish you off... We wouldn't do it. We're not an army, we're just...people.' There was a pause while she tried to find the words. 'He just, started shooting. All of us. I thought I was dead.' She started sobbing in earnest.
Rick lowered his gun the rest of the way and raked his fingers through his hair as he looked around.
'Karen,' Michonne said to the sobbing woman. 'Karen, we need to find Andrea. She wasn't with the group that attacked the prison.'
Karen's eyes jerked up. 'Andrea's with you...The Governor said she betrayed us, that she was your spy and led him into an ambush when he went to negotiate with you yesterday.' She scanned their faces. 'He said she was with you at the prison.'
Daryl spat on the road. 'Lyin' piece of shit.'
Rick held Karen's eyes as he shook his head. 'We haven't seen Andrea since we first met with the Governor three days ago. She'll always be welcome with us, but she's no spy.'
'Rick,' Michonne pleaded. 'We have to find her. You know what he can do.'
He nodded. 'Let's go. You too, Karen. We're not leaving you out here.'
Asha wasn't sure why she turned back to the field for a final look, but as soon as she did, the backpack caught her eye. It was on the back of a scraggly walker who was turned away from her, face buried in the entrails of one of Woodbury's recently felled citizens. The pack was black, with a large Australian flag patch stitched across the back. It seemed to swell until it filled her whole vision.
It was Nash's.
He'd brought that bag back after spending a summer as a dive master on the Great Barrier Reef off the Queensland coast. Asha remembered the grin on his face when she'd met him at LAX, that pack slung casually across his shoulder, and the feel of his arms pulling her into huge bear hug.
She gave a low cry and raced into the field.
A handful of walkers were in the field, and she drew their attention like moths to a flame. Fresh meat is always best. Her spear blurred in her hand as she wrenched it through the skull of the first to reach her. She pivoted away on her heel, driving her spear under the jaw of another, then kicking a third in the hip in stabbing it through the head as it fell to the ground. Rick or Daryl, or maybe Michonne, shouted behind her.
The walker wearing Nash's pack hadn't moved from its meal. She made a beeline for it, absently taking out another two walkers before reaching it.
She slowed.
It's not big enough to be Nash, not big enough.
She moved slowly around the side of the walker. Its head was tipped forwards, hands clawing entrails to its mouth, face hidden behind a screen of tattered hair, too muddy for Asha to tell its colour. It had been dead for a while.
The walker caught her scent and looked up slowly, fixing Asha with its filmy eyes. Half a sob escaped her and she stumbled backwards. The face was all wrong. Slanted eyes looked at her beneath swarthy brows.
Not Nash.
She choked on a hysterical sob of relief.
Not Nash, not Nash, not Nash.
The walker that was not Nash was on its feet, teeth gnashing as it tripped over the body it had just been eating as it sought to take the most direct route to her. Shoulders shaking she drove her spear through its head as it sprawled on the ground.
Then she started pulling the pack off its back, struggling awkwardly as she tried to manhandle its arms though the straps, chest heaving with silent hysterical laughter. She couldn't get it off. The creature was a dead weight and the flesh of its arms stripped off as she wrestled with the straps.
Then Daryl was there, losing a bolt at snarling walker coming towards them. Asha realised Michonne was in the field too, her katana spinning as she took out a walker. Rick was still on the road with Karen.
'Are you outta your goddamn mind?' Daryl hissed, grabbing her by the arm and yanking her roughly to her feet. 'What the fuck is wrong with you.'
'Nash's pack,' she gasped.
Daryl's eyes widened, flickered to the body at the feet and then back to her with a sudden flash of sympathy.
'Not Nash,' she half laughed half sobbed.
Not Nash, not Nash.
'But Nash's pack.' She grinned like a maniac, gripping Daryl's arm 'I need it, it'll help me find him. If I can figure out where this walker was...'
She trailed off.
Daryl was looking at her like she was a few cans short of a six pack. The sympathy was still in his eyes. There were some probable ways that Nash's pack had ended up on a walker whom she wouldn't have recognised when he was human—and some less probable ones. Thinking she would find something in Nash's pack that would help locate him was definitely banking on one of the less probable ones.
'Daryl,' Rick called from the road. 'We gotta go.'
She tugged her arm out of Daryl's grip and went back to pulling at the pack. She managed to get an arm free before Daryl bent, swearing under his breath, and helped her roll the corpse to get the other arm free.
'Hell no,' he said, as Asha started to open the pack, ready to go through it there and then. He planted a rough hand on the top of the pack. 'We got stuff to do remember?'
She glared at him, but then nodded and clutched the pack to her chest. She was already covered in blood and filth, so a little more meant nothing. Daryl started her towards the road with a shove in the shoulder.
'Did I miss the part where we started robbing the dead?' Rick asked dryly when they joined him on the road.
'It's Nash's,' Asha said, noting Rick's quick glance at Daryl, and Daryl's tiny head shake in response.
'Not Nash,' Asha confirmed. 'Just his pack.'
Rick nodded, his expression carefully blank. 'Ok. But put it the trunk for now. I need you focused till we deal with Woodbury.'
Asha nodded reluctantly.
He had a point.
She let Daryl take the pack out of her hands and stow it in the trunk. Then she got in the car without meeting anyone else's eyes, hating the sympathy she could see there.
He wasn't dead.
It was dark before they reached Woodbury.
Not wanting to announce their presence, they parked the car some distance away from the wall and approached on foot, ghosting quickly between the abandoned cars scattered along the road. Rick and Daryl led, Asha and Michonne brought up the rear with Karen in the middle.
Asha shouldered her semi automatic rifle and scanned the wall with narrowed eyes. Her spear was in the car, and although she knew the rifle was better suited to storming Woodbury, she missed the comforting weight of her spear across her back.
As they darted across gap towards their final bit of cover—a burnt out sedan with rusting body and shattered windows—there were flashes of light from the top of the wall and bullets ricocheted across the car. Heart pounding, Asha sprinted hard and slumped behind the back tyre before returning fire.
'Tyrese!' Karen shouted between spurts of gunfire. She started moving away from the car. 'It's me don't— '
'Get down,' Rick hissed, yanking her back.
'Karen,' a man's voice called out of the darkness. 'Karen! Are you ok?'
Karen wrenched free of Rick and stepped away from the car, holding her empty hands up. 'I'm fine.'
'Where's the Governor?'
Asha could make him out now, a large dark figure on the top of the wall, partially concealed behind a stack of tyres. She kept her rifle trained on him.
'He fired on everyone,' Karen said. 'Killed them all.'
There was an incredulous silence from the wall, and Asha saw the man glance across to someone still hidden out of sight.
'Why are you with them?' He asked after a long moment.
'They...' Karen glanced back towards the four of them crouched behind the car, '...saved me.'
There was another long silence and Asha watched Rick grimace and then sling his rifle across his back. 'I'm coming out,' he called, voice tight.
Asha's heart leapt into her throat.
'Nah,' Daryl hissed, locking eyes with Rick, but Rick moved away—hands up—into the open. Asha's skin prickled all over as if she were in the firing line. The man had balls, that was for sure.
Daryl growled in his throat before lowering his rifle. Asha lashed out instinctively to grab hold him, but he avoided her grasp and followed Rick. Asha shared a quick grim glance with Michonne, before swallowing hard and following with her own hands up.
Her eyes flew apprehensively along the length of the wall, but in the dark she couldn't make anything out. The dark shadow of the large man had disappeared. She noted with some jealousy the relaxed way Rick seemed to roll his shoulders as he approached the wall. He was probably faking it, but even faking it was impressive. Personally Asha was wound so tight she thought she might shatter at the next loud noise.
The gate in the wall edged open as Karen reached it, the gap filled by a large dark human shape that held a semi automatic in one hand and pulled the dark haired woman into a rough embrace with the other.
The man—Tyrese, Asha assumed—fixed Rick with a hard stare. 'What are you doing here?' he asked.
'We were coming to finish it,' Rick admitted. 'Until we saw what the Governor did.'
'He killed them?' There was a look of bafflement in the large man's eyes.
Rick nodded. 'Yeah… Karen told us Andrea hoped the wall, going for the prison. She never made it. She might be here.
Tyrese frowned. He gestured behind him to a pretty, dark skinned woman with narrowed eyes. She held a rifle that wasn't exactly still trained on them, but it wasn't exactly lowered either. 'Sasha and I ran into her in the woods after she jumped the wall, but we haven't seen her since.'
Rick shared a grim glance with Daryl. 'We think we know where she might be.'
The door closed quietly behind Andrea and Michonne. Asha's hands were shaking and she wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed as she leant her back up against the wall. She tried hard not to look at the pool of blood seeping under the door. She watched Rick wipe his eyes with the back of his hand. Daryl was silent, looking at the ground and fiddling aimlessly with his cross bow.
Asha closed her eyes and waited for the crack of the gunshot, feeling the tears pooling in her eyes. She had barely known Andrea, but no-one deserved that.
No-one gets what they deserve anymore.
She jerked involuntarily at the sharp crack of gunfire.
She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, feeling them shake against her face. Ordinarily she hated that she cried so much—at the drop of a hat, as her dad used to say—but she figured today warranted it.
After a long moment, the door opened and Michonne, eyes raw, emerged trembling.
'We can't leave her here,' she said.
Rick nodded. 'Tyrese,' he said to the man who had let them into Woodbury. 'Can you find us a sheet or something?'
The big man nodded and slipped away. Michonne slumped against the wall next to Asha. Asha reached out and squeezed her arm and Michonne's grief ravaged eyes flickered to hers for a moment.
There was silence for a few minutes.
'What now?' Daryl asked quietly.
Rick's eyebrows drew down as he concentrated.
'We can't just leave them here,' he said. The faces of the elderly and children who had stayed behind in Woodbury flashed through Asha's mind. 'Karen was right about the Governor taking just about anyone who could hold a gun with him on the raid on the prison. They're totally unprotected.'
'You want to take them back to the prison with us?' Daryl asked.
'I'm not sure there's a better option.'
Rick glanced around, looking for input.
'We don't know these people,' Daryl said. 'Lotta their people died today, might be that they're gonna blame us for that. Ya sure ya wanna invite that in?'
Rick shook his head. 'I think Karen can help with that. These people know her and she saw what the Governor did. Besides, if they're gonna blame us, leaving them here is only gonna give them more reason.'
Daryl grunted.
Rick looked at Asha. 'Well?'
'I dunno Rick,' she said quietly. Her stomach had clenched at the thought of bringing so many people back to the prison. 'I've been on both sides of this fence. A few days ago I was on the outside, hoping you guys would let me in, but letting people in is dangerous…'
'You really think those kids and elderly are a threat?' Rick said. 'We know Sasha and Tyrese weren't with the Governor long.'
'I know you're probably right Rick, but…and I know its hypocritical of me to suggest anything other than letting them in... but taking in a whole group like this, there's no way of knowing whether everyone is gonna be safe….'
Rick raked a hand through his hair. 'Well, we can't take this back to the group for a vote, so it's gonna have to be the four us. Anyone else got anything to say?'
They looked at Michonne, staring listlessly at the ground. 'I think Andrea gets a vote too,' she said without looking up. 'She fought hard to try to save these people, because she said there were good people here. She'd want us to take them in.' She looked up. 'That gets my vote too.'
Rick nodded. 'That's three in favour, you, me and Andrea.'
Asha struggled with it for a moment. 'I think I know what Hershel would say too. When I spoke to him a couple of days ago he told me he thought we had to take people in or we are just gonna fade away. He was trying to convince me to stay. He'd be in favour of this.' She took a deep breath, ignored the clenching in her stomach, and then nodded. 'Let's at least give them the choice.'
Rick cocked an eyebrow at her. 'Did you really just argue both sides of that argument?'
'Lawyer remember?'
'Maybe not such useless skills after all. Daryl?' Rick asked.
Daryl folded his bottom lip into his mouth and chewed it. Finally he nodded. 'Hell, reckon we handle any threat a handful of kids and elderly pose.'
Rick nodded. 'Alright then. We'll get Tyrese and Karen to make them the offer.'
'What offer?' Tyrese asked, walking towards them down the corridor, a faded orange blanket folded in his arms.
'We think the people here should come back with us to the prison,' Rick said. 'You haven't go the numbers or the muscle to defend this place anymore—and the Governor is still out and he doesn't seem to care much for his own anymore.'
Tyrese nodded. 'I'll ask.'
He held out the blanket.
Rick took it and he and Daryl slipped into the room to collect Andrea. Asha slipped an arm around Michonne as the woman's shoulders started shaking. A moment later, Rick pushed the door open and Daryl came out, Andrea orange shrouded and cradled gently in his arms.
Rick followed and closed the door behind him. 'Let's go home.'