Sayid

"This is nice." Sayid looked around the small room he'd been given. Zxander and Dayo hovered in the doorway looking in anxiously. Sayid got the feeling they wanted to impress him. He turned and smiled. "Seriously. A bed? Bedding? Curtains." He walked over and sat on the bed. "This is luxury! I just wish I had something to put in the wardrobe." He lay on the bed and stretched out, putting his hands behind his head.

"Sorry about the size of the room, but, you know..." Zxander rushed over his words, but Sayid waved a hand at him.

"First come first serve, I get it. Look, after sleeping in trees and on rocky ground, the cell was nice. THIS..." he gave an exaggerated sigh of contentment. Dayo smiled. Sayid noticed how his whole face changed when he smiled. No longer was he the threatening giant that he had encountered in the 'wilds' as everyone referred to the area beyond the walls of the town. Outside of the walls, it was obvious that Dayo was given a lot of responsibility that people's lives depended on his judgement. Sayid already knew from Zxander that two people had died due to being too ready to take in strangers. He knew that if he'd had been in Dayos position, he would have probably done the same.

Swinging his feet off the bed, he followed Dayo down the hall, closely followed by Zxander. Sayid couldn't help but marvel at how Dayo moved on his false leg. If he hadn't overheard Jack, the baby faced doctor, reminding Dayo to come for his check up, Sayid would have never known. Dayo opened the door to a large bathroom.

"Hot water isn't really an issue right now, cause of it being summer. When winter comes...well we'll see. It might be that we need to ration it or something. Now, if you look out back..." Dayo led him down the stairs to the back yard. Sayid blinked in astonishment. Two goats and a few chickens wondered around aimlessly. Dayo grinned.

"Just another way for us to be self sufficient. We alternate, so Bella and Jacci," he motioned either side of the yard, "grow veg." Zxander laughed.

"We use to grow crops, but we kept killing them. So his uncle gave us goats and chickens, cause, you know, they'll let you know when they're hungry." Sayid was barely listening, he was fussing over the grey goat closest to him.

"Why do they get a goat?" A familiar voice came from the house to the right and he looked to see Georgie and Michonne looking curiously at him. He couldn't help feeling relived. Even though he hadn't known Georgie for nearly as long as Michonne, he felt just as unnerved not having her in his sights as he did Michonne-even though he knew it was ridiculous. Both were more than capable of defending themselves.

"Goats and chickens are harder to kill than vegetables." Bella smirked at Zxander who made a point of looking anywhere but her. Sayid wondered if they were brother and sister. It wasn't the first time he'd seen brothers and sisters look so different-Zxander, tall blonde, muscular, Bella petite, dark and slender. He resolved to ask later.

"So Michonne." Dayo turned to his old friend. "What was up with the sword stuff? I mean, seriously..?" Michonne blinked, and turned her head slightly. Sayid hoped that her reluctance to talk to a stranger wouldn't make her look snooty or standoffish. It had taken around a month for him to get more than two words out of her at a time-and that was after she had saved his life.

"Just...the weapon I had to hand when it all started," she said eventually, carefully picking over her words. Sayid knew it would take her a long time to get even close to speaking freely around the others. "I always had some skill with it, and well...you saw." Sayid smiled to himself. They had seen. All three had managed not only to show that they were capable of meeting the 'minimum' physical requirements to live in the safety of the town, they had been able to impress the Seniors-the five men and women in charge of the town-exactly how valuable they would be. They hadn't been able to get them to bring in the undead, but Sayid had impressed them with his knife throwing, nailing four cards to the wall as they were thrown in the air. Georgie had done her bit too, not only shooting Frisbees in the air, but then shimmying up the gyms ropes to collect her arrows. But Michonne had stolen the show. Somehow, Bella had managed to get dummies, the type you'd see in department store windows, and set them up in the gym. Michonne had sliced through the lot of them with less effort than it took to slice through butter with a hot knife. Sayid had seen from the looks on the Seniors faces that their skills, would be greatly appreciated and valued in the town.

"Skill?" He stood up. Michonne was underselling herself as usual. Both she and Georgie needed to sell themselves more. Unless they were doing some serious bonding with Bella, he was going to have to do a lot of talking.

"Let me tell you about the first time I met Michonne." He paused for a moment, recollecting that day.

"So, it's maybe a month or so after the outbreak. I was stationed nearer the south. And of course the world has gone to hell in a hand basket as they say. The roads, the cities, the countryside swarms with the unholy walking dead. My whole regiment is dead, my family too. I realise that I can't do anything alone. So I decide to move towards the north, hoping that maybe I can find other soldiers, join up and do some good.

The more I travel however, the less cause I have to think this is a possibility. I look into house after house, to find it empty, occupied by then undead, or worse, filled with the corpses of those who just lost hope. And when I do find survivors, they are lost souls, barely living. That, or they are savages, who are resorting to dark, desperate measures." He noticed out of the corner of his eye, Georgie shiver and look down, not reacting to his story, but to a memory it had stirred within her. Zxander glanced at her too, frowning. Dayo and Bella however, were transfixed on him.

"Soon I give up looking for others, and start to travel through the woods. I manage to survive on roots, berries, the occasional rabbit. I am lucky, I do not run into many of the cursed undead." He was aware that his speaking was becoming more lyrical, the way it did when he told a story. He couldn't help himself, he enjoyed telling stories, and he enjoyed telling them the way he remembered his grandfather telling him stories. But no one seemed to mind.

"One day. My luck runs out. I am out hunting. I have left most of my weapons in the tree I sleep in-a foolish, naive mistake that almost costs me my life." He closed his eyes, re living the scene. "I'm sitting at the river side, washing out the guts of a rabbit. I hear a noise. I look up, turn around. Coming out of the woods, are what seems like an army of the undead. I count them. One, two, four, seven, ten. There are ten of them and one of me. I only have one knife. They are moving towards me blocking off my escape. I can see no way out. I know then that I am to die at the hands of these monsters. If I cut my throat, I will not die before they start to feed on me. I do not have a pistol to destroy my brain. I know I am doomed to become one of them. I wonder how many I can take down before I am overwhelmed.

All of a sudden, three fall to the ground. Their heads hit the floor and suddenly there are seven. I do not know what happened, but I know that there is someone helping me. I throw my knife at the nearest one. A good shot, it lodges in its skull. I run and yank the knife out, throwing it again. By this time, another four have been slain, their heads also separated from their bodies. I take down the last one, and turn to thank my saviour.

It is like something from an epic tale. There stands a hooded figure, sword dripping with blood. I can not see the face, but can see from its stance and figure that it is a woman. But this does not hold my attention for long. Not only does this mysterious stranger have a sword in her hand, but she holds two chains in the other. And these chains are leading two of the undead. Their arms are cut off, and their lower jaws are gone. I am later to learn that they were once Michonne's boyfriend and his best friend.

She lowers her hood, and, as you can imagine, I thank her profusely. I offer her food in thanks, and she accepts. Before she comes back to my camp, she lays her companions to rest. She tells me that travelling with them puts off other undeads, that they don't bother her this way. So I ask her why she has gotten rid of this protection. She says simply that she would rather be with a living person, even if it is for the last few days of her life. I can understand this. So, we start to travel together. Trust each other. Sometimes, I save her skin, sometimes she saves mine. I have to admit, she saves mine a lot more. But for around six, maybe seven months, we have travelled together."

He stopped, and took in the faces of his audience. Michonne was impassive, her reaction to her story of heroism unreadable. Georgie was vaguely interested, but had heard the story so many times, that the impact was somehow lost. Dayo, Zxander and Bella however, was rapt, eyes wide, mouths open. Bella regained her senses first.

"That is the coolest thing..." she trailed off. "I mean...wow! We have people who are trained to shoot for the head, but it's not a great plan, when you can't reuse bullets. If you could train people to use swords like that..."

"It would be amazing." Dayo chimed in. "We have lots of weapons like that stocked up in the armoury. We just need someone willing to show us how to use them. And now...we have you too."

"And Georgie." Sayid saw Zxander shoot another glance at Georgie. "Shooting an arrow the way you did...I'm gonna be the first signing up for those lessons." He looked to Sayid. "How did you meet Georgie? Was it as cool as when you met Michonne?"

"No." Georgie said shortly. "The brother of the man I was involved with showed up to the town we were hiding out in. Along with a load of Nazis. They sniffed out the black in me, and the brother stuck a hunting knife into my abdomen. I staggered into the woods and Sayid stopped me from bleeding to death. When I was strong enough to go back to the town, walkers had gotten there and my group had moved on. They'd dug me a grave."

"Shit." Zxander looked shocked. For a moment, there was an incredibly loaded silence.

"Dayo!" Everyone jumped.

"Back here Uncle!" Dayo shouted, a little too eagerly. Everyone looked around as Herman came to the back, along with George. Everyone fell silent-both Herman and George had that effect. From what he could gather, both were-or had been-high ranking members in the army. After the collapse of Washington, they, along with the other three 'Seniors' had worked together to secure the military town, managing to bring in the surviving members of their troops, which had amounted to less than fifteen, and a few civilians. They had organised the scavenging of weapons-ALL weapons, not just guns, risking their own lives to search for cattle, goats, chickens, seeds to sustain their community. They had devised the various tests and screening processes for strangers. In short, the sixty or so people currently living in Elysium owed their lives to these men.

"Ah, excellent." George stopped by the fence. "I was hoping to talk to you all actually, so this saves time. We wanted to discuss the possibility of knife, sword and bow and arrow classes. Not immediately of course, we'll let you get settled. But after seeing your skills, we feel the sooner we are equipped with alternative weapons, the better. And we were very impressed with your focus and drive. The fact that you were willing to go straight into the physical with no training, that tells us a lot. So what do you think?"

Sayid nodded. "Sign me up." Michonne nodded agreement. Only Georgie looked unconvinced.

"I...I'd have to think about it." She looked at her nail beds. George and Herman's expressions didn't change.

"Of course." Herman smiled at her winningly. "Don't feel pressured into anything Miss Powell." He turned to Sayid and Michonne. "Would we be able to meet at eighteen hundred hours, in the church? The time is on the church tower." It was more of a command than a question. Both men turned on their heels and left the yard.

Before anyone could comment, Georgie mumbled something about needing a nap and rushed into the house. Ignoring the locals confusion, Sayid stared after her. He had a sneaking suspicion that Georgie wasn't too worried about settling into the town. He could almost hear what she was thinking. If one town had made it out and done so well, why couldn't another.

She wanted to get to the other towns on the map. She wanted to find her friends.