Author's Note: Here's the next part. I'm going on vacation to visit my nieces and nephew in the morning, so writing the following chapter and finishing the next chapter of my other story Roads Not Taken may be delayed. Enjoy this nugget and, as always, please R&R!
xoxo —Holly
"Your heaviest artillery will be your will to live. Keep that big gun going." — Norman Cousins
As the sun rose in the morning, Georgie was awake as soon as daylight crept into the cafeteria through the gaping hole in the ceiling simply because a small beam of light ricocheted off a dangling metal beam in just the right away and happened to hit her closed eyelids and nothing else. Cursing such an offense under her breath, Georgie sat up in her cot, which squeaked with every little move she made. Being the light sleeper that he was, Rick woke up abruptly; startled by the noise and reaching for his Colt out of habit. When he looked to his left and realized it was only her, he let his head sink back upon his own cot and sighed.
"Sorry," she muttered over her shoulder at him as she scrounged her pants up off the floor from where she'd discarded them the night before. "Good morning, though."
"Unh."
Georgie smirked, pulling her pants on one leg at a time and then standing up to shimmy her them up over her waist. "You don't have to get up right now if you don't want. Sleep a little longer," she suggested, staring down at how he covered his face with both hands. "It's still early. We've got plenty of time."
Rick grunted and then began to stretch his limbs out and crack the joints in his body that had tightened up on him while he'd slept. "No," he finally muttered. "I'm up." Pulling himself into a seated position, he threw his legs over the side of his cot and turned to look at Georgie bending over to pull on her boots and zip the sides up. "I wouldn't be opposed to wasting about ten minutes back in bed, though."
When Georgie stood up straight and looked over at Rick, she saw he was wearing an impish smile upon his lips. With a roll of her eyes, she chuckled. "If I hadn't had a hysterectomy, you would've impregnated me nine ways to Sunday just over the course of the last two days."
"Making babies was always the fun part," he joked as he turned around and began to reach for his pants.
"Yeah," she agreed, pulling on the same tank top from the day before. "But the parts after that can be fun, too."
They both thought about their children and the ups and downs that went along with raising them; the good times, the bad times and then the scary times. Unfortunately, they lived in scary times and these scary times are what cost Georgie her children's lives. Neither of them wanted Carl or Judith the suffer any similar fates, which was why they were doing what they were doing; out looking for guns and preparing for a big fight with some very dangerous people. Although it scared them, they refused to give into that fear. That fear is what forced them to keep going and why they redirected it toward other feelings and activities.
When they were both dressed and had gathered up their backpacks and utility belts, they grabbed a quick bite to eat from one of the ready-to-eat pouches for breakfast to tide them over to whenever they managed to get their next meal in. They took a second look make sure they had all their weapons on them, which had included Rick's red-handled machete that Georgie was planning to use while Rick planned to primarily lean on his hatchet. Sure, she had a hunting knife, but that blade was good for a more staggered one-on-one with walkers, not the multitude they'd have to deal with around the carnival. A longer blade would allow her to keep a safer distance and get the job done without too much risk to her own safety. Rick's hatchet was a good choice, too, because he could just hack and slash and be on his way. They also had their guns, and they had some ammunition with them, but they only wanted to rely on them as a last resort. Also, the sound of firing their guns would draw more walkers down upon them and they wanted to make the task ahead as easy as possible.
Finding a set of barricaded doors that led out to the back of the high school, Rick and Georgie stepped out into the day but were temporarily shielded from daylight by a rusted metal covered walkway. The closer toward the end of the walkway they got, the louder the sounds of the walkers became. Just before they reached a few dumpsters that blocked them from being seen by the undead that were ambling around inside the fenced in school grounds, Rick found a gun on the ground. Crouching to retrieve, he then passed it off to Georgie who unzipped and stuffed it into his backpack for him.
At the dumpsters, Rick held his arm out to prevent Georgie from going any further; as if she would've until they had a clear opening. Standing behind him, she placed her hands upon his lower back and held on loosely to the material of his shirt while looking around him to see what he was seeing.
Looking beyond the immediate threat of walkers, she whispered, "Look. The walkers in the field aren't closed in."
Rick nodded. "Uh-huh. Yeah. We gotta take care of the ones out here and block that gap, too, so we can take the rest slow." Squinting his eyes, he began to count to himself and then aloud. "Seven, eight…" He moved to the left side of the dumpster where there was one walker coming up alongside a car riddled with bullet holes. "…nine. That car—I can block it up." Rick stepped back over to Georgie. "I can take out that one on the way. You draw the rest."
Georgie took a moment to realize what he'd said and then raised an eyebrow at him. "You're leaving me eight? I'm not some ninja. I'm not Michonne, though it would be nice to have her katana sometimes."
Rick shrugged, trying to think up some other option. "We could shoot them but that would call the rest from the field. This is about doing it quiet, with the machete." He was being playful with her and trying to convey the confidence he had in her as he began to shrug off his backpack. "I saw you handle your own when we took care of that herd back home in Alexandria. You can handle eight."
Rolling her eyes, Georgie mirrored Rick by slipping her own backpack off; both of them dropping them down, side by side behind the dumpster and getting their preferred weapons ready. As he moved back over to the left side of the dumpster, she slipped behind the other dumpster at their right.
"Hey," Georgie called out to him, her voice still no louder than a whisper. When he stopped, turned and looked at her, she mouthed, I go when you go.
With a sigh, he simply nodded. On an unspoken count of three, Rick slipped around the left of the dumpster they'd both been standing behind while Georgie began banging her fist upon the back of the other dumpster. Slipping along the right side of it, she lifted and readied the machete in her hand. As the first walker began to approach her, Rick darted out and swung his hatchet across that ninth walker's face. He didn't hesitate or pause to watch the body drop as he continued on toward the opened trunk of the car in a hurry. Meanwhile, Georgie had backed up behind the dumpsters and let the first and second walkers come to her; hacking into their faces with one slice each that was deep enough to damage the brain inside their rotting skulls.
Scurrying around to the driver's side of the car, Rick did hesitate just outside the opened door at the sight of dead, helmeted soldier sticking in the car through the broken windshield, with its arms dangling on either side of the steering wheel. Crouching slightly, Rick leaned forward to reach for the gear shift only for the dead soldier to stir and reach for him; quite obviously revealing it was actually undead instead of good ol' fashioned dead. Jumping back in surprise, Rick tried to grab for one of the arms and raised his hatchet while trying to figure out how to put the walker down considering it had a helmet in the way.
As arterial spray stained the brick wall behind the dumpster from the first two walkers, Georgie turned her attention away from their dropped bodies as she stepped out from behind the dumpster. Two more walkers were already fast approaching and she did her best to conjure that spirit she'd had in her to help take on that horde in Alexandria's streets, but that had also been under different circumstances. Back then, both Rick and she had been on autopilot; with her having lost her son and him not knowing if his son would live or die. Their own lives didn't seem to matter much at that point and they just needed to redirect their rage and grief and fear somewhere. This moment was something else entirely. They very much cared about their lives and very much wanted to get home in one piece.
Doing her best seemed to work just fine for Georgie. She kicked the first of the approaching two back a few feet, knowing the second would come up at her right before she'd finish with the first. Slashing the machete diagonally across the second's face, she kicked it backwards to help speed up its own death fall and then let the first reproach her. Taking a few steps back, Georgie sidestepped it and swung the blade across the back of its neck; lobbing off its head like a warm knife through butter. With a heavy sigh from the exertion, she lowered her arm for a moment and cast an eye in Rick's direction to see how he was doing.
Having moved to the hood of the car, Rick tried pulling the helmeted walker's body free of the windshield by grabbing it by the ankle, but its state of decay only allowed Rick to pull the foot off of its leg. Bloody tendons oozed and created that ever disgusting slurping sound that bodies made when being pulled apart. Grimacing at it, Rick dropped the foot to the ground and set his sights instead upon the waist. Reaching up, he hooked one hand around an upper thigh and the other he hooked into a back pocket and then grunted in frustration at the lack of give he was giving. Bracing a foot upon the grill for leverage, Rick pulled harder. When he felt the body moving down the hood, there was a moment of triumph that flitted through his brain but was quickly replaced by seeing it was merely the walker tearing in two at the waist.
Practically growling in anger, Rick sneered as he pulled the bottom half of the walker down off the hood and threw it aside like a Frisbee. Bloody, putrid intestines and other body parts spilled out onto the hood, along with blood and other bodily juices. If he'd had the time to, Rick would've hunched over and thrown up, but he focused on breathing with his mouth instead of his nose and soldiered on, no pun intended.
Georgie felt bad that he was struggling with just one walker and what a mess it was for him, but part of her found amusement out of it. Her taking care of eight walkers was supposed to be the harder task, not the other way around. As she put down the last of her allotted walkers, she turned and looked back over her shoulder at a walker in full camo and an automatic rifle slung over its shoulder that was approaching a truck with a pile of rebar sticking out from the open truck bed.
Finally and successfully removing the top half of the helmeted walker from the windshield, Rick tossed it aside with the rest of its body parts and hurried to the driver's seat of the car. Shifting the gear from park to neutral, Rick hopped back out of the car. Holding on to the opened driver's side door with his left hand and steering with his right, Rick began the arduous task of pushing the car toward the gap in the fence. Seeing him struggle again, Georgie smirked and scurried around to the back car, gripping the area around the left taillight to help him push.
Realizing she was there, Rick looked back at her. "You got your eight walkers. I can push."
"So can I," she bantered with a smiled. "You just worry about steering us in that gap."
Easily relinquishing his pride, Rick gave her a nod of his head and hopped into the car; closing the door behind him. Turning the wheel in the direction they needed to go, he started pushing his foot down upon the brake pedal. The sound of it squeaking and the more obvious fact that the car wasn't braking was something to worry about.
"Shit. The brakes don't work!" he called to Georgie.
Having not heard him, she gave the car an easy push and instead of the car slowing down, it kept on moving forward. She was only allowed a fraction of a second of confusion when gunfire rang out and bullets started flying in her direction; barely missing her feet. She turned to see that the camo walker with that had been approaching the truck had gotten its automatic rifle stuck on the rebar which caused the gun to fire on its own. Darting forward as not to get shot, Georgie jumped into the trunk of the car and pulled the lid down as the car rolled right through the gap in the fence instead of blocking it.
As the car came to a stop, more or less, on its own when the wheels hunkered down into a dip in the grass, Rick shifted the gears back into park. Slumping over to the right to get out of immediate view of the walkers that were beginning to swarm the car, Rick listened carefully and turned his head toward the back of the seat he was pressed against.
"Georgie, you good?" he asked.
"Yeah." Her voice was muffled from the trunk, but at least they could hear each other. "You?"
"Yeah," he frowned; a hint of regret in his voice. "I think we overshot it."
"You think or you know?"
Hesitating to answered, Rick sighed as walkers grabbed and clawed at the car on all sides. "I know," he answered. "It was a good plan, though."
"It was a great plan."
Rolling onto his back, Rick looked up at the sunroof and had an idea, but first he needed to get Georgie out of the trunk, but he couldn't get outside and pop it open that way with all the walkers surrounding them. Sitting up, he looked into the backseat. "Can you kick down the backseat and crawl into the car that way?"
After a moment, she replied. "I can try."
Leaning over the backseat, Rick decided to meet her halfway by reaching forward and grabbing at the top of the backseat and pulling it toward him as she began kicking at it from inside the trunk. It didn't take much and it didn't take long as the middle section of the back seat folded forward. Holding his hand out to her, Rick grabbed onto Georgie's arm the moment her body began to poke through. Once she was finally free of the trunk and sitting awkwardly in the backseat, Rick pointed up at the sunroof.
"If I can kick that away, we can climb out the top and jump down to the hood." Rick turned and looked out the broken, shattered and bloodied windshield. "They're not standing around the front. We'll have an opening."
Georgie sighed and nodded, casting her eyes upward. "Okay."
Slipping down once more onto the front seat and laying upon his back, Rick lifted his legs up, which made him look a bit like an overturned turtle. Kicking upward at the glass, he winced and tensed up; half-expecting the glass to crack and shatter down around him. Fortunately, it didn't. After a few forceful kicks, the sunroof's glass panel popped off and went flying.
Quickly climbing out of the rectangular hole the glass panel left behind, Rick pulled himself up and was immediately being grabbed at from both sides of the car by decayed hands. Stepping back a bit so Georgie could climb out next, Rick placed a hand on her arm and then urged her forward, where she jumped down onto the hood and kicked a walker in the head that was getting too close for comfort. Not wasting any time, she leapt from the car and over the blue fencing that encircled a carnival ride and Rick did the same.
With the walkers from the car and other areas coming toward them, but with having a good amount of protection between them and the walkers because of the fencing, Georgie looked at Rick and grabbed for the machete again. "We'll do it here," she determined.
"Yeah," he agreed, removing his hatchet from his utility belt.
With each walker that got close, they reached forward just enough to either bury their blades into or hack at the skulls. However it didn't take but a few walkers pressing against the blue fencing to determine the fencing wasn't meant for all that wait to be upon it.
"Shit," Georgie mumbled. "It's not gonna hold."
A few more hacks, slashes and stabs later and the walkers began falling forward against the fencing.
"There it goes," Rick announced as he and Georgie jumped back out of the way.
Turning to run, they darted through the chairs of the swing ride and toward ticket and gaming booths. Looking over their shoulders simply to determine how much distance they'd put between themselves and the walkers, they headed over to the high striker game and together they pushed it over to create some sort of barrier or, at the very least, cause a delay. They walked backwards to keep an eye on the mob in front of them as a walker came up at Rick's right. Lifting his arm he struck his hatchet down upon its head and kept going backward. The high striker game downed against the picnic table it had fallen upon wasn't enough to hold the walkers back and gave way; letting the walkers to continue on forward toward Rick and Georgie.
"We should split them up into smaller groups," she suggested, looking around at the other rides that were fenced in. "The barriers might hold then."
"You take slide, I take Ferris wheel?" As she began to turn toward the slide, he added, "Or we could just go."
Georgie turned back to him and smirked, despite the immediate threat of walkers coming at them. "You wanna go?" she asked incredulously.
"Nah. We can do this," Rick replied; waving a hand at her and darting for the Ferris wheel.
"Yeah, I know we can."
Heading off into two separate directions seemed to work pretty well. The walkers seemed to split almost evenly; one group going after Georgie and the other going after Rick. Finding protection behind their respective barriers, they were quite ready to deal with the approaching onslaught by their lonesome. Rick had grabbed a wooden stick with a metal hook on the end and used it, initially, to crack against the head of walker in his way, and then banged it along the barrier once he had locked himself in at the Ferris wheel. Pacing the length of it, Rick kept banging the stick and waited for the first layer of walkers to reach his defenses. Georgie did the same, trying to find calm within her and deciding it might be quicker to just cut off heads instead of running the potential risk of getting the blade of the machete lodged into a skull. If that happened, she'd be on her own, trying to get it free, and not have Rick to back her up as other walkers got too close or fell over the barrier and started to attack her that way.
They both had to be two steps ahead with this sort of thing.
One after another, walkers fell from at the hands of Rick and Georgie, and soon their respective hordes of walkers began to thin.
"How you doing?" Rick shouted across to her.
"Eight more! How about you?"
Rick paused and began to count off silently. "Ten!"
Just as he was about to impale another walker with the hooked stick and bring his numbers down to nine, Rick spotted a deer several feet away that was eating the grass amidst a dilapidated Zipper ride. With a different motive in mind, Rick dropped the stick and jumped up as he began climbing up the Ferris wheel. Carefully, he ascended higher and came to stop against part of the framework. Pulling his Colt from its holster, Rick raised the gun and aimed it toward the deer. However, he wasn't the only one with the same idea of bagging that deer. Another group of walkers that neither he nor Georgie had been dealing with came up from around a tent. Knowing that even if he shot the deer before the walkers could kill get to it, the walkers would still get to the deer and start to feast on it before Rick could get back down and kill any of those walkers off. The deer was unfortunately a lost cause.
Also unfortunate was part of the metal framework Rick was leaning against creaking and snapping off, causing him to fall forward to the ground.
At the mere sound of the metal breaking, Georgie looked up from her last few walkers in time to see Rick fall behind a stand and out of her view. "Rick!" she cried out in panic and not thinking of anything else other than running to him as she jumped over her barrier.
Scrambling to get to his dropped gun, Rick army crawled to it and, as soon as his trusty Colt was in his hands, flipped himself backward onto his ass and crab-walked away from the walkers that were coming at him as he fired off a few shots at them.
Hearing the gunshots as she ran barely gave Georgie any peace of mind.
If Rick was firing his gun, he was okay.
But then the gunshots stopped.
"Rick!" she shouted for him.
Coming around to the dilapidated Zipper ride, Georgie looked amongst the rusted, caged seats and metal framework. As another gunshot fired, giving her back a tiny ounce of hope. After that single shot, though, the firing stopped again. Spotting whereabouts Rick was, she ducked down and began to sidestep some of the framework so she could get through to the other side while the growling and gnashing of teeth from the walkers seemed to intensify.
When she cleared the Zipper ride and stood up straight, she found a group of walkers on their knees, surrounding a body; the sound of flesh tearing and the walkers feasting upon intestines and other entrails.
And like that, Georgie's world began to slip away.
It was like her life was flashing before her eyes.
Visions of her dead brother feasting on her daughter were replaced by her son being feasted upon by walkers in Alexandria. And now Rick.
How did she make it without him? How could she?
He'd become her rock in the storm, the love of her life. How did one move on from that?
She knew she'd promised him before that she'd take care of his children if a moment like this ever happened, but those moments were discussed from the comfort and safety of their home when these moments seemed implausible. It was a scary story children were told but was never believed to come true.
Dropping the machete to the ground, Georgie took a few steps back as tears welled in her eyes and began to slip down her face. She shook her head in disbelief because, no—this wasn't supposed to happen. Rick wasn't supposed to die. He was the hero of their story and heroes were supposed to save the day and ride off into the sunset to live happily ever after.
The walkers that had realized she was there and had gotten up to approach her didn't even seem to register to her, or she just didn't care anymore.
When Rick lunged out from one of the fallen carnival rides and started shoving walkers aside, she was still lost distracted by her perceived lost. She hadn't even noticed him until he was calling her name and tossing the machete to her.
Snapping out of it, she noticed the machete coming at her, and let it drop; not confident enough to catch it mid-air. Kicking the walker nearest to her away, she bent down and grabbed the red handle of the blade and came up swinging all the while Rick was hacking away at other walkers with his hatchet since his Colt had run out of ammunition.
With renewed fervor, that kept going; taking down every last approaching walker like they were nothing more than machines that were programmed to kill and little else.
It was like dealing with the horde in Alexandria.
The difference this time was that there was an immediate light at the end of the tunnel.
Stopping and turning to one another, Georgie smiled brightly with such relief. As he holstered hid hatchet, she ran right up to Rick who promptly lifted her up into his arms in such a tight embrace that it didn't seem like he'd ever let her go.
"I thought I'd lost you," she cried; her sad tears replaced by happy once as she buried her face into the crook of his neck. "I thought you were gone."
"I'm sorry," he muttered, still holding on. "I saw a deer. It might've been the same one you saw, and I thought I could get it for Michonne like we'd tried to yesterday."
As he set her back down to the ground, he reach a hand down over her as and gave a slight squeeze; not in a sexual way, but as a sign of closeness. When they slowly parted from another, Georgie lifted her head from his shoulder and wiped her tears with the back of her hand.
And then she punched him in the chest.
"Ow," he whined.
"Don't fucking do that again," she warned; half-teasing but also half-serious.
Rick simply looked her in the eye and nodded solemnly; realizing just how badly she'd been scared when she thought he was dead. "I'm sorry," he repeated.
"No more deer for Michonne if shit like this is gonna happen," she continued. "And don't go climbing abandoned carnival rides. And always carry extra ammo on you. I know you ran out of bullets, and—"
Rick cut her off by cupping both sides of her face and kissing her. "I'm okay. Okay?" He narrowed his gaze. "I can't promise I won't do reckless shit again, but I can promise to be more careful about it next time."
Georgie simply frowned. She then leaned in and kissed him back. "I'll take what I can get, I guess."
A little while later, the pair had made sure every last walker was put down and they did it safely and carefully. They didn't let their pride get in the way; letting them think they were invincible. Everything that had gone right over the last few days on the road together was suddenly eclipsed by how everything could quickly and easily go wrong.
Their mood wasn't quite jovial anymore.
They worked alongside each other in virtual silence, gathering every last gun off the bodies of dead walkers and those guns that were just laying abandoned in the grass. Georgie had found a rusted metal cart for them to load the guns in and carry back with them to their van, and Rick did the same with a metal barrel he placed upon a trolley. It still only morning time and they had all day to get this done, but there was an unspoken agreement about them to just get all of this done as soon as possible so they could load up the van with both the guns as well as all or most of that food from inside the school. If it didn't fit, they could always come back, since they now knew this school and that food existed. But they needed to get home.
While working quietly by herself, Georgie still couldn't yet shake that fear she'd felt when she thought Rick had been killed. Mere months after losing her son so horribly, and only a week and a half after Glenn and Abraham; this had been almost been the figurative icing on a very bad cake.
Crouching down in the overgrown grass, Georgie placed her head in her hands and started to cry again; unaware that Rick was watching her.
When the sun was directly overhead, Rick and Georgie had both determined it was officially afternoon or somewhere thereafter. He had gone off to get the van, stating it would be easier to bring it to them at the school than for them going back and forth between the school and the van, making multiple trips which would end up taking them longer. Rick had used that time to think about things as he walked around the front of the school, climbed over the fence and made his way back through the woods. He found the van with the side doors still wide open as they'd left them, and luckily everything inside had gone untouched. Nothing living or dead had happened upon the vehicles and the supplies within in the last twenty-four hours.
Packing up everything that had been left outside the van and then closing the side doors, Rick made his way to the driver's seat with the keys he'd gotten back from Georgie. Determining the direction of the school, Rick was able to backtrack out of the woods and to the main road toward the roadway leading up to the school grounds. The chain-link fence surrounding the school did have a gated section but it was locked up with a lock and chain. But that was okay, because Rick and Georgie had packed bolt cutters for this very reason.
Rick had shifted the van into park while leaving the engine running. He climbed out only long enough to cut the chain and pull the gate open. Once back inside the van, he set the cutters on the passenger seat and drove through the gate; eventually coming to circle around toward the back where Georgie was seated upon the edge of the trolley and waiting.
They started with the food inside the school first, carrying as much out at a time as they could and figuring out how to arrange it in the back of the van. The guns really weren't going to take up too much room since the couple of totes they had with them still had plenty of room inside for them to store the guns there. All they had to do was rearrange a few things and they were able to manage packing up all the ready-to-eat food from the cafeteria.
Once everything was loaded up and the doors were closed, all they had to do was grab their backpacks from where they'd left them behind the dumpsters, and then they were set to go.
Rick resumed driving duties and, within minutes, they were back on the opened road, heading home to Alexandria.
And the ride was a silent one at that.
While Georgie sat in the passenger seat with her head leaning against the window, she stared blankly ahead as Rick glanced over to her more than once. Irked with her melancholy, Rick put his foot upon the van's brake pedal, which squeaked, and then brought the van to a stop, right there in the middle of the leaf- and twig-littered road. Turning the key toward him, the engine stopped, and he brought his focus back to Georgie with a sigh.
"I know what I said in the middle of the night, but I could've gone a couple more days. I would've liked that," he remarked. When she didn't reply, he looked down and brought his hand to his head; rubbing at his eye. He decided to take a different approach as he looked over at her again. "I haven't been sleeping. I know you know that, more or less. I've just been thinking about what we lost. Thinking about my friends. Glenn saved me. Right at the start and I couldn't save him." Tears began to well in his eyes as he tried fighting back the urge to cry. He was looking forward at the road but he could see Georgie had turned toward him from his peripheral vision. "It's normal. I know that. Being stuck on it. We went through something." He looked to her again, seeking her eyes for solace as he gestured at the bounty in the back of the van. "This—this doesn't cure it."
Georgie reached out and touched a hand to his face. "Rick, I'm sorry," she whispered.
Taking her hand in his, he brought the back of it to his lips and pressed a kiss upon her skin, and then he just held her hand against his chest. "We're gonna fight them. That's what happens next," he asserted, looking her dead in the eye. "And we're gonna lose people, maybe a lot of them, maybe even each other."
On that comment, Georgie turned back forward; not wanting to hear that after thinking she'd lost him back at the carnival.
"Even then, it'll be worth it," Rick continued, still looking at her.
Georgie shook her head. "When I thought that…" her voice cracked; her lips quivering slightly. Taking a moment, even though tears threatened to fall on her again as well, she turned back to him. "I can't lose you."
"Michonne asked me what kind of life we had just surrendering. It wasn't—it wasn't a life. What you and I did back there, what we're doing now, making a future for Judith, for Glenn and Maggie's baby, fighting the fight—that's living. You showed me that." Watching as the tears fell down her face, he felt terrible seeing her so upset. "You can lose me."
"No," she parried; pulling away.
"Yes, you can," he insisted, placing a hand upon her shoulder. "I can lose you. We can lose our friends, more people we love. It's not about us anymore. It's about a future. And if it's me who doesn't make it, you're gonna have to lead the others forward because you're the one who can. You've done it before and you can do it again. And you will."
Turning slightly toward him, Georgie tried to figure out the words she wanted to say as she looked upon his softening face. "But…how do you know?"
Rick smiled warmly at her. "Because I've seen you go to hell and back. Because you once told me to keep calm and carry on," he quipped; feeling successful when he got a small smile out of her. "Because you've shown me I can love again and without you, I wouldn't have gotten to this point in my life right now."
The following day, after they had made it home to Alexandria in one piece, Rick, Georgie and a few others returned to the junkyard and brought the guns with them to Jadis and her people.
"Operational? All?" Jadis questioned; inspecting several of the guns before her, laying spread out before her on the floor of the van.
"To the best of my knowledge, yeah," Rick replied, stepping forward. "May need some cleaning. We found supplies."
Tamiel turned to him. "Expect us?"
"We cleaned some, we oiled some. You can do the rest. We do this together."
"Yes, yes, but operational?" Jadis questioned again, turning around to look at him.
"Well, you can fire a few. Try them out, if you like."
"How many?" Brion asked.
Georgie took a step forward. "Sixty-three," she answered.
"We made an inventory," Tara offered up, pulling up a piece of paper from her pocket.
"No," was all Jadis had to say.
"You mean the inventory?"
"Not enough."
"What? Wha—what are you talking about?" Rosita scoffed, looking for any reason to go off on someone for the last two weeks.
Even Rick was at his limit. "You asked for a lot of guns. That's what this is," he insisted.
"Enough to fight your fight. Us? Nearly twice," Jadis retorted, maintaining eye contact with him. "Need nearly twice."
Rosita started stalking forward; a fresh fire lit under her. "We've wasted enough time. Let's go. Take our guns with us."
"No. Our guns to take. Our deal still on."
Rick looked at Rosita who resumed her place among the group, and then over at Georgie who gave him a knowing nod of her head. Turning back to Jadis, he hooked his thumb upon his belt. "Not all of them," he haggled. "We're keeping ten for ourselves—to find more."
Jadis smirked and stepped up to him. "Five."
"Ten."
"Six."
"Ten."
"Nine. And the cat back," Jadis insisted; referring to the cat statue Michonne had taken home with her last time.
For a moment, Rick looked like he was going to cave, but he did just the opposite. "Twenty. We keep the cat. We get you the guns. We fight together." With a slight sneer, he threw her comment from the other day back in her face. "Say yes."
With a smirk that suggested she was impressed with him, Jadis agreed. "Yes. More soon, we'll fight."
With nothing more than an abrupt nod at him, she walked away. Rick gave a little shake of his shoulders; something about Jadis irking him something fierce. Turning briefly away from the van and once again at Georgie, several of the Garbage Pail Kids walked up to the back of the van and began collecting their agreed upon allotment of guns while Rick and his group waited to pack the rest back up and get out of there. As he pinched the bridge of his nose and willed the headache he felt was coming to stay away, Georgie sidled up beside him.
"You get a few more days before 'what happens next.'"
Looking at her with a raise of his brow, he was practically smirking. "A few more days?"
"That's right," she remarked. "We'll find more. We'll figure it out. Soon. In a few more days."
Rick just stared back at her and nodded. Slipping his hand in hers, he led them away to leave; knowing that Rosita and Tara were going to be following behind with the van. Michonne would be coming with them in the car they'd also arrived in.
Rick squeezed Georgie's hand a bit tighter as the passed through the storage container that served as the tunnel entrance into the trash community. "A few more days," he repeated with a smile.