A/N: Once again, I'm posting this in a hurry. I apologize for any mistakes made, etc etc. I have to catch a flight for a business trip in a few hours (so grown up) so I expect the next update will be next weekend. To make up for it, I hope you enjoy this slightly longer chapter.
A quick note about warnings. I've decided to avoid content warnings as to not spoil the plot. The story will only get as dark as the source material, which is... plenty dark on its own. I am aiming for a mix of heartwarming and soul crushing, just saying. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to drop me a comment.
Chapter 4: Don't Fear The Reaper
Days came and went, and there was no sign of any of the kids.
There were a few in Alexandria who were of the opinion that Carl, Enid and Mikey ran away on their own. Maybe to join a different group, somewhere, and taking Judith with them as a safeguard to ensure their acceptance, wherever that was. The only person stupid enough to air that particular theory out loud ended up knocked to the ground, and was only spared a worse fate by someone else stepping up to stop Glenn, of all people, from hitting the mouthy idiot in the face.
A far more common theory was quickly settling in most people's minds: the Saviors did it.
There were not many people left to defend Alexandria with Rick spending more time outside the walls than in. That was stupid, he knew that, but… Rick had always been a man of action first and foremost, and pending attack be damned, he could not sit idle while the kids were out there somewhere, possibly held by people who had a very real grudge against them. Rick's instinct was to go out there and look for his children.
He was constantly being reminded of that desperate search for Sophia, only a few years past, though it seemed like a lifetime ago. That similarity was the reason Carol had left them, or so Rick assumed. She didn't actually stuck around long enough to explain herself. Regardless of her reasons, Carol was one of their more capable fighters, and with Morgan chasing after her, they were quickly running low on fighting power.
Rick was trying his damndest not to resent Carol for leaving them now. He wasn't having much success at it. They had spent weeks searching for Sophia. Rick had spent weeks searching for Sophia. Mapping search paths and combing acres of woods for traces of the lost little girl. After all they've been through, it hurt that Carol wouldn't do the same for Carl and Judith.
It wasn't just Carol who went away. Michonne was there, but she was… closed off to him. Rick always displayed his emotional distress openly. Michonne hid hers under a dozen layers. Rick couldn't begin to guess what was happening inside her head, and he was not able to stop her from leaving Alexandria on her own again and again, but he knew she was out there tearing the world apart looking for his - their - children.
They sent out more search parties. Not everyone came back. As they suspected, the Saviors were far from eliminated, and when they encountered them again, they had lost Denise in the exchange. Rick had been leading his own search party at the time, and wasn't there to stop Daryl from going after the Saviors on his own, nor to stop Glenn from chasing after him.
Alexandria was as close to defenseless as it ever was. They were spread pretty thin. Rick didn't know why the Saviors were not attacking yet - it was the perfect opportunity. To top it off, Maggie was sick. Exhaustion, stress, whatever it was, she was looking like death and Rick couldn't - wouldn't - lose another member of his family. They took the RV and made a beeline for the Hilltop to get her medical care.
Of course, it was then when the Saviors finally showed up. By nightfall, the Saviors managed to lure them into an ambush. Not only did the Saviors manage to outmaneuver them, they also managed to capture Rick's missing friends. The Saviors' leader - older guy, foul-mouthed, barbed baseball bat - loved hearing himself talk. On his knees with his family, with Michonne, vulnerable next to him, surrounded by more thugs than they could possibly take down on their own, Rick had no choice but to stay there and listen.
"I don't wanna kill you people, I want to make that clear from the get-go. I want you to work for me. And you can't do that if you're fucking dead, now, can you?" Negan went on and on. "I'm not growing a garden."
The only sound besides Negan's never-ending monologue was Rick's blood pumping in his veins and his people's frightened breaths. The Saviors were absolutely revering Negan in their attention, not one of them fidgeting or murmuring in the background. Past the indignation, past the horror, that quiet worship was what fried Rick's last aching nerve.
"Did you take my kids?" He rasped. He wasn't sure if he was hoping for a yes or a no.
"See, the boys mentioned you might ask that," Negan said thoughtfully. "I gotta tell you, Rick, I feel for you. I do. But you killed my people, a whole fucking damn shit lot of them." He raised his eyebrows. "You shanked them in their sleep." Adding, "you know they all crapped their beds, right? Blood and shit everywhere, and I do mean everywhere."
He continued. "I've seen some fucked up shit in my day, but that, my friend, takes the absolute-fucking-cake." He paused, and snickered. "And I sure as shit know my shit from shit. I've been to Vietnam."
Pointing the bat at Rick's face, he added in a voice that dropped to an intimate level. "So let me tell you, when you say that shit to me, after everything that you did?" He tsked. "That hurts my feelings." Negan shook his head. "Sorry Rick, I didn't take your damn kids. But I'll tell you what - we'll be sure to keep an eye out for you."
And the worst part was, Rick thought, the crazy son of a bitch actually looked sincere.
"But you still gotta fucking pay. So now? Now I am going to beat the holy fuck fucking fuckety fuck out of one of you." Negan twirled his baseball bat.
What followed was one of the worst nights of Rick's life.
Days came and went, and Carl kept catching glimpses of his parents.
Claire was only half right. It wasn't about actively looking at anyone, it was just that he couldn't. His parents were around, tending to the lawn, or making dinner, or watching TV… but always half hidden, their backs either turned, or standing just out of Carl's direct line of sight. They would get close if he ignored them - once, while eating cereal, his mom ruffled his hair - but if he tried to look at them, they'd back away, and if he tried to corner them, they'd simply vanish.
And it wasn't just his parents. With the exception of Brian, all the adults seemed to belong to the scenery. The people he passed in the street, the ice-cream vendor who went by twice a day, the other parents… they were all like his mom and dad. Background people. And… they felt wrong.
The only people who seemed to be real were the other kids. There weren't many, though Carl had the impression that there used to be a lot more of them. There were a few other younger kids besides Susan (although she hated to be lumped with them), and a few other teenagers as well.
Mikey, who Carl knew from Alexandria, rarely left his "house". Claire took to calling him a Stockholm, whatever that was. There were the twin brothers Jake and Scott, who were downright mean to one another, but were never found apart. And of course, Claire, who had been around the longest. At "eighteen the last time I bothered to count," she was the also oldest of them.
Also, there was Enid. Carl actually found her on their first day there. He was still in the backyard with Susan and Judith, and he happened to look up. Enid was sitting high up on a tree, straddling a branch with her back to the trunk.
"Hey Carl." Enid had said when he called out to her. There was something odd about her voice. "I just saw my parents."
"Yeah, me too." Carl replied.
"Everyone's moms and dads are here," Susan informed them matter-of-factly. "Even the dead ones." She was crouched next to Judith on the little blanket where Carl had put her. The red headed girl seemed to find Judith fascinating, as if she had never actually seen a toddler up close before.
"My dad is alive," Carl said. "I mean, he was, last time I saw him. And I don't remember dying. I just remember going to sleep."
"Nobody remembers dying," Susan said. She looked at him conspiratorially. "Nobody. Get it?"
Susan, Carl learned, had been there the longest after Claire. She was traveling with a ragtag group of survivors before she woke up in Heaven, together with two other children from her group. They weren't around anymore.
"They weren't happy," she said, with a pointed look. "So Brian took them back."
Carl wasn't sure what he felt about Brian, that funny little guy who claimed he was an Angel. He visited often, and even when he wasn't around, Carl had the strange sense that somebody was watching them. The guy seemed harmless, actually looking more afraid of Carl than anyone who could teleport really ought to be. He also seemed very interested in Carl and Judith's well being, asking them multiple times if they were happy about where they were. Stressing that Heaven wasn't a prison, and that if any of them really wanted to go back, he would make it so.
He seemed earnest, but Carl's instincts told him to be careful. Both Claire and Susan obviously thought that going back wasn't a good thing, and not just because of the walkers. So Carl played along, too.
"I don't really understand anything," he told Susan, who had taken up to following him and Judith around constantly. The girl had shrugged and resumed her attempts at teaching Judith to fetch. Carl gave up trying to explain to her that Judith wasn't a dog. Actually, he was starting to think the girl was just messing with him. It was nice having someone to talk to, anyway.
Enid shook herself out of the dreamlike state eventually, and took to following Claire around during the day. What they were doing, Carl wasn't sure, but it mostly involved sitting around listening to the radio. Or, more accurately, listening to the radio static. Except for their initial written communication, Claire hadn't bothered (or hadn't wanted to risk?) explaining anything else to him. And she only laughed like a lunatic when Carl pointedly handed her the Etch A Sketch he found in Judith's room.
With nothing else to do, Carl - with Judith in a little stroller, because he wasn't letting her out of his sight - spent his days exploring. Susan showed him that if he followed a path between the houses, he would end up in a park that was strangely not visible from the main street. There was a little dirt road that made a great path for Judith's stroller. The park was huge, and despite the constant sinking in his stomach that yelled out wrong wrong wrong, Carl had fallen in love with it.
It was a mix of wild and orderly. Impossibly tall trees of all kinds created a canopy above their heads, their leaves varying shades of greens and reds, as if they couldn't decide if it was Autumn or Spring. Entangled in their branches were Christmas lights of every color, so that even after dark, the park was always warmly lit. There was a small lake with black and white swans that didn't take offense to anyone who swam up to them, and an enormous playground that the younger kids enjoyed (except for Susan who turned her nose at such things). Some of the older kids too… only, so they said, ironically.
Carl was sitting on a swing, with Judith in his lap, when the ground started to shake. Susan was on the swing next to his, pretending to be indifferent to it, except for the way she kept kicking her legs to swing higher. She was also glaring at a young boy, Oliver, who kept coming up with reasons to talk to her.
"I think he likes you," Carl teased, and she turned her glare to him. She opened her mouth to reply, but her glare turned confused when the tremors started - slow at first, but gradually increasing. Both she and Carl were on their feet a moment later.
"Hey, all of you, get down," Carl called out to the other children. He wasn't actually sure what he was supposed to do during an earthquake when it took place while he was outside, but he assumed swinging on monkey bars wasn't it. And technically, it wasn't an earthquake, was it? A Heaven-quake just sounded weird. Like a fancy dessert name.
With Judith in his arms, he herded the kids toward the main path. Besides himself, Susan and his sister, there were three younger kids. Oliver, who looked a couple of years younger than Susan, had brown curly hair and the biggest green eyes Carl had ever seen. There was also Annabelle, who very shyly told Carl she was nine and originally from Texas, and another little girl around that same age who was called Daliah and spoke very little English.
They didn't scream or cry - kids who grew up with walkers in the neighborhood learned quickly not to do that, or they wouldn't grow at all - but Carl could read the alarm on their faces.
"It's gonna be okay," he told them. The Christmas lights made an almost musical sound as they clinked together overhead. "It'll be over soon."
The ground continued to rumble in increasingly powerful waves. They stumbled down the path, struggling to remain upright and losing their footing once or twice. Carl was helping Daliah climb up to her feet, more shaken than bruised, when he himself lost his ground and barely managed to avoid squashing Judith between himself and the path.
"Okay, guys, stop," he called out. "Let's just wait this one out." They huddled together in the shade of a sturdy looking oak. Judith was whimpering, although Carl barely heard her over the ringing in his ears. The rumbling seemed to be accompanied by an increasingly loud sound he couldn't describe if he tried.
There was electricity in the air, and it seemed to be increasing. With a sudden sense of foreboding, Carl shouted, "get down!" and covered as many of kids as he could with his own body. The lights exploded, raining glass all around them. They were suddenly in complete darkness. A voice he recognized as Susan's cried out in alarm, and he felt her clutching his arm.
"It's okay," he said. "It was just the lights. Everyone all right?"
There was a murmuring of voices. Judith was frightened and crying, her face buried in his shirt. Besides that, everything was silent. The ringing had stopped. The ground was still.
"Why is it so dark?" Annabelle whispered.
She was right, Carl noticed, startled. It shouldn't be this dark, even with the lights out. It was still daylight a few moments ago, although dusk was approaching. Looking up, he couldn't even see the stars beyond the trees.
"I don't know," Carl said honestly. "Okay, can… can you all grab each other's hands? We'll walk together. Susan, hold onto my shirt."
They all stood up shakily, and with Carl leading the way, tried to make their way out of the woods. He felt Susan trembling as she all but walked pressed against Carl's side. She's afraid of the dark, he thought, and with the arm not holding onto Judith, patted her shoulder in what he hoped was an assuring way.
"What's going on?" He asked her, quietly so that the other children wouldn't hear. "Has this ever happened before?" He felt rather than heard her shake her head.
After what felt like a lifetime of stumbling around in the dark, Carl noticed a light up ahead. "Hey!" he called out. "Over here!" It was Claire, along with Enid, Mikey, and the twins Jake and Scott. Claire was holding a flashlight, its light seemed unnaturally bright and pure after so long in the dark.
"What are you guys doing?" Carl asked when the other teens approached. Claire's flashlight really was incredibly bright, not simply beaming in a column like Carl would've expected, but brightening the entire area they were standing in, as if they were hanging out inside a bubble of light.
"Hiking, asshat, what does it look like?" Jake said. Raising an eyebrow at the younger kids, he told Carl, "nice of you to bring backup." Jake and his brother were both dark skinned and dark haired, but that was where the similarity ended. They weren't identical. Jake was tall and broad, handsome in an obvious sort of way. Scott was almost a head shorter than his brother, and seemed frail in comparison.
"Shut up, Jake," Claire said, with resigned familiarity. To Carl and the kids, she added, "are you guys okay?" Oliver, Annabelle and Daliah rushed forward to glomp her in a hug. Susan stayed by Carl's side, still clutching his shirt. In the newfound light, Carl was dismayed to see Susan looking so shaken.
Enid, Carl noticed, was holding Claire's little radio. She sent Carl a fleeting smile.
"Sorry about all of this," Claire told them after a few moments spent hugging the younger kids. She patted Oliver's curly hair. "This was the only way we could talk without anyone listening in. I...um, wasn't exactly sure when it would happen," she said and glared at the radio.
"Claire's hearing voices," Jake informed them, and Carl didn't need to look at him to know he was smirking. "She's been trying to find a way out of this place."
"Why would we want to leave?" Mikey asked. "This is Heaven."
Scott said softly, "you haven't been here long. Sometimes kids disappear, the younger ones, or… the troublemakers, I guess. Brian says he's taken them home, but…" he bit his lips, clearly conflicted.
"What is he?" Carl asked. "Brian. I can't wrap my head around him."
"I'm not absolutely sure," Claire admitted. "My friend Castiel - the one I've been talking to - he says that Brian's something called a… Zanna? They're like, kids' imaginary friends. Only they're not supposed to be strong enough to go against Cas, or to do any of this, really. And he says they never hurt kids before."
"Imaginary friend?" Jake asked, after a moment of stunned silence. "You can't be serious."
"Well, he's not an Angel." Claire argued.
"I know him," Scott, Jake's twin, blurted out. "I mean, I didn't realize it before, but when I was really young I had an imaginary friend called Brian. He was… like my dad, back then." He didn't meet anybody's eyes when he said, "our real dad was… um, he wasn't a good man."
"Dad was a handsy son of a bitch," Jake agreed, darkly cheerful.
Scott shrinked, and mumbling, he added, "this can't be Heaven if our dad's here with us. It can't be."
"You can't trust Brian," Claire said, kindly. "Scott, you know that, right?"
Without meeting her eyes, Scott nodded.
"So what," Jake said, "we're supposed to trust you instead? Because a voice on the radio tells you stuff? A voice that, by the way, only you can hear?" He snorted. "In case the newbies didn't realize."
"I can hear him too," Enid said calmly. "And I know this isn't Heaven."
"Because you're the expert now?" Mikey said, looking bewildered and even more out of his element than he normally did.
"When my parents were alive, I could never ever get them to shut up," Enid started, looking uncomfortable but determined. "My mom would go around asking stupid stuff like... like, how I'm feeling, how's my day going. She'd say, 'it's okay to be sad, Enid'. I hated it. Like, Mom, all my friends are dead and monsters are trying to eat me. How do you think I feel? But she never stopped."
She continued, "and… and my dad always tried to cheer me up with these stupid knock knock jokes. Who even tells knock knock jokes anymore?" She paused for breath, and said, in a soft voice. "They're here, but they feel wrong. They don't actually talk to me. They ask me if I'm happy but they don't actually care. It's not really them, they're more like… echos, I guess."
"I know the rest of you feel that too," Claire said after a moment of silence. "You feel it. Something is wrong with this place."
"Even if we believe you-" Jake started.
"Of course you believe her," his brother interrupted. "You hate it here."
"Even if," Jake insisted. "This whole place just goes on and on in circles. How the hell are we supposed to get out?"
"We could kill Brian," Oliver, the six-year-old, suddenly piped in. The rest of them stared at him uncomfortably, although, Carl would bet, they were all thinking the same thing. Theirs was just that sort of world. Claire gave Oliver another pat on the head.
"We might get stuck here, little guy," she said, looking like she wanted to laugh. To everyone, she said, "Cas says we need to look for something that's out of place. That sort of thing would be like an exit." She bit her lips. "Or, wish for something that's out of place? Wish for the door? Sometimes he gets… confused. It's hard to make sense of."
The little radio in Enid's hands was coming back to life, the little red light blinking into existence. Then it screeched, loudly enough to make them cover their ears.
"Damn it, they're coming back." Claire sighed when the silence returned. She turned her flashlight off. "Remember what I said. Anything that's out of place."
And suddenly, Carl could see stars again.
I find it sort of funny how American television can graphically show a man being beaten to death or ripped to shreds, but painstakingly censor the word "fuck". I obviously went with the uncensored Negan version, because that was just too delightful to leave out (I needed to listen to the clip on YouTube a few times to make sure I was transcribing every "fuck" right).
What do you guys think of the original characters? And the direction this story is going? I would love to hear your thoughts. Anyway, hope you enjoy, and see you again in a week! XOXO