Ch. 28
Thank you so much for reading! I'd really love to know what you think of this one.
Rick motioned for the young guy manning the gate to pull it back, and Daryl raised his bow in reaction, his fingers were twitchy already. The two men were smirking a little as they walked right in and neither flinched as the gate closed behind them.
"Can we help you two?" Rick asked, resting his hand on his gun.
"We're just here to talk," one of them said and looked at the group.
"We ain't lookin' for new friends," Merle said and adjusted the buckles on his prosthetic.
One of them snorted and Morgan asked, "What's the 'W' for?"
That made the man on the right perk up a little. "You know, the first settlers here, they put bounties on wolves' heads. Brought the natives into it. Made 'em hunt 'em. Didn't take 'em too long to kill 'em all. They're back now." He looked around to the group in front of him. "Thoughts?"
"Everythin' gets a return," Morgan said with a shrug. He seemed unfazed by this brand of insane, and maybe it was because he had been lost in his own head before.
"Are you shittin' me?" The man on the left asked with a laugh.
Morgan laughed, too. "No, I shit you not."
All three of them continued to chuckle for a moment, and Daryl wondered if he had made a mistake and Morgan was actually with the Wolves, and they had all been played. Then the man started talking again, and his words made Morgan straighten up a little.
"I like this. Just talkin'. We don't get to meet new people very often and never this many at a time. Maybe once every two weeks we see a few new ones."
"That's a lot," Michonne said.
He looked over Michonne, and his smile turned almost predatory as he scanned her body. "Oh, we work at it. We really do. Sometimes we find camps. We run through 'em. But we have traps, too." He paused for a moment. "It's different. It's not like meetin' like this—as equals. Little chats at the gate. That's the closest thing to movies now." He got a distant look in his eyes and said almost to himself. "I miss the movies. I used to—put that down," he said and turned to the boy at the gate who had picked up a metal t-post.
"Why's he gotta put anythin' down? You don't run this" Abraham asked.
"'Cause I will. I want everythin' you have."
Daryl's finger tensed on the trigger of his bow as he met the eyes of one of the men there.
"I remember you," he said and nudged the other guy to look at Daryl. "He had the blonde girl."
His skin crawled as he thought that maybe they had been the ones that were tracked and not the other way around.
"We almost came out when y'all were at the food center, but the Jedi showed up." He sighed and said again, "I miss the movies."
The other man shook his head and went back on topic it seemed. "Some of the tribes around here, they thought that the first people were wolves transformed into men. And now, well, you know." He looked directly at Morgan and smirked. "Everything gets a return, right?" He scanned the others next. "This one took a lot more plannin' than we're used to, so you'll forgive us if it isn't as quick as it usually is."
Morgan shook his head, "Doesn't need to be any ugliness."
"That's all there is," the man said. He pulled out a flare gun from his side pocket and raised it in the air. Daryl pulled the trigger and the bolt struck him straight in the eye. He squeezed the trigger on reflex and shot off to the side as he fell.
The other man's head was separated from his body before he could move at Daryl thanks to Michonne's katana.
It was too late, though.
He could hear them from the woods, screaming like banshees.
Sasha's voice cracked over the radio. "There's at least twenty men. There are walkers, too, at the western side of the fence. They just started wanderin' out of the trees, and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight."
"Where are the men?" Abraham barked into the radio.
"Comin' right down the road."
The Wolves hit the gate, and they all backed up and readied their weapons. The people Rick had taught filled in behind them, while some stayed in the houses, protecting their families that way.
The first of the Wolves topped the fence and fell back just as quickly as Sasha took him down.
"We're gonna have to go hand-to-hand," Abraham yelled. "She don't need to waste her bullets."
Just then his radio squawked and Carol came on, "I'm in the tower with Sasha. We've got plenty of ammo, and I'm takin' the walkers while she takes the Wolves."
Abraham picked it up and hollered, "Keep an eye in the other directions. They're baitin' us."
Carol didn't respond, but she didn't need to. They all knew what this was and what was coming. Or at least they thought they did.
The men stopped coming over the fence and the group backed up, watching, waiting for their next move.
"What're they doin'?" Abraham barked into the radio.
"They're puttin' somethin' on the gate. Back up now!" Carol yelled. "Run! Get outta there!"
They barely made it twenty yards before the gate blew off the hinges, shrapnel cutting into the skin of his back. Everyone fell, and he knew their faces were scrapping the concrete just like his.
"Get up!" Sasha yelled into the radio.
Carol must have been shooting the ones running through the gate because he heard the faint pops in his ringing ears as he tried to stand.
To his right, Abraham struggled to get up with a piece of metal sticking out of his shoulder.
Daryl almost went to help him, but saw the Wolves running towards them.
He grasped his bow tightly in his hand and drew it back and slammed it into the face of the nearest man that wasn't theirs. For a long time, it was nothing but yelling and crashes of bodies as they fought and killed each other.
Then it became them against the Wolves and the walkers as those that had been killed turned, and the ones that had heard the explosion made it through the opening where the gate had been.
The radio crackled to his left and Abraham struggled to grab it with his injured arm.
"Got it," Merle said and took over.
The next words he heard chilled him the bone.
"More men just took down the back wall. They're runnin' into homes. Get ours and get out!"
Suddenly protecting the safe zone wasn't any of their priority anyway. Rick wiped blood from his brow and pointed behind them with his knife. "Get our people. We're gone."
Just then the radio crackled again, "They're burnin' us out," Sasha said through the radio. "The tower's on fire."
Merle looked to Daryl and nodded. "I'll see ya around, baby brother."
"Yeah, man. Get your ass back to that cabin."
Once again, the Dixon brother's parted ways. This time on their own terms.
He found the door to the hospital house already open, and he tried to push down any fear he might have had wondering if Beth were alive or not. If any of them were alive.
Inside the front room, Beth's bed was empty, and he could smell the smoke and hear the terrified screams from outside in the streets. There were two bodies in the floor, bullet holes in their heads, and he walked around those with his bow at the ready.
The bottom floor was clear, and that's when he knew they had already ran, at least Beth and the kids. Bob would go looking for Sasha. He knew that much.
Daryl went down to the basement and found the cabinet moved and the door ajar. He had no flashlight or way to see. All their things were in their room a few houses down.
It was the prison all over again.
An overwhelming panic hit him as he walked into the darkness of the passageway. Before he left, he marked a line in the wall, hoping to let the next people know that someone had gotten out.
There wasn't a thing Merle could do about the tower. It was already going up and Sasha and Carol were trapped up top. There was a house beside them, but it was a good ten-foot drop from where they were to its roof. They'd end up sliding down or breaking something, he was sure, but it was their only option.
"Jump!" He hollered and pointed to the roof.
Both of them were covering their faces from the smoke, and Carol yelled, "Look out!"
Merle turned and ducked out of the way just in time to avoid a knife to the neck. He went back and forth trading blows with some guy that couldn't have been more than eighteen, ending it when he knocked him so hard in the stomach that the kid doubled over and then he put his knife hand through his head.
At that moment, there was a dull thud and screech. He looked up and saw Sasha trying to find a grip on the roof, but she continued to slide. Her hands caught the gutter, and it slowed her fall a little as it broke off the roof, but she landed hard on the group.
Not ten seconds later, Carol jumped from the tower and landed on the house roof.
Merle couldn't look to see how she came down off the roof because three walkers rounded the corner and stumbled toward them. The new ones were the worst. They were faster and stronger than the ones they usually ran in to.
Sasha struggled to her feet beside him and took the pistol from her side. They managed to take care of all of them then he turned and watched Carol fall to the ground. She groaned and pushed to stand up.
The heat from the fire was overwhelming, and he grabbed her arm and drug her toward the clinic as Sasha kept an eye behind them.
There was blood and carnage everywhere they turned. Wolves stood on porch steps covered in blood and carrying bats. There were screams deep inside some houses that let them know that the torture was far from over. There was no way to take them all, though.
There were more men than he thought there had been originally and walkers kept showing up in droves. He turned around and saw a group of Alexandrians trying to push a piece of siding up to close the whole in the gate, but there were too many walkers and people.
A truck came out of nowhere and plowed through the makeshift siding, running over the men there. A whole other group of men jumped out of the back, but one man climbed on top of the cab and looked around.
He said something to the men around him, but Merle couldn't hear. He leaned against a baseball bat with black lines all around it. He had no idea who he was or what he was doing, but he had a suspicion that he was behind all of this.
"We gotta go," he said and pushed them in front of him as they struggled on down the street.
Once they were in the clinic, Sasha stopped and looked around. "I can't go. I've gotta find Bob."
"It's suicide!" Merle yelled. "If he's out there, he's either dead or gonna end up that way soon."
"I've gotta try," she whispered. "He can't end up alone again."
Merle didn't know what to say to that, but Sasha didn't give him a chance. She limped back out the door with her gun over her shoulder. Merle shook his head and pushed Carol toward the basement door.
When they were about to run into the passage, Merle noticed a deep cut in the wall and let out a sigh of relief. Someone had gotten out already, and if he were lucky, it had been his brother and Beth along with those kids.
Daryl was sure he had walked for miles. The darkness had a way of making everything seem endless. Finally he saw a pinprick of light, and he moved faster toward the end of it. It was there that he almost tripped over someone's legs.
A little sound of pain made him drop to his knees.
"Beth?"
"Daryl?" She asked in a whisper.
"Where's Carl? Judith?"
Beth seemed to struggle for breath. "She's with Carl and Enid. They left me so they could try and find a car. I couldn't have taken care of her right now."
Daryl reached out to touch her face. He couldn't see a damn thing, though, and ended up reaching her neck. He knew it was blood without seeing it.
"Stitches got busted," she muttered.
"Can I carry ya?"
Beth sighed and made a noise that sounded like, "Yes."
She weighed nothing in his arms, and he carried her out into the daylight. Daryl turned and looked back toward Alexandria. Once his eyes adjusted to all the light, he saw nothing but smoke.
Walkers would be all over the area soon.
He looked down at Beth and saw the stitches on her cheek were broken, and she had blood seeping through her top.
"Did they hurt ya?" He asked.
"No," she whispered. "Tryin' to run and bein' nearly cut in half don't really mix."
"Fuck," he mumbled.
His eyes scanned the ground for a second before he picked up on Carl's trail. Within a few minutes, he had found him and Enid with Judith squalling in the backseat of a car that they were trying to hotwire.
"Don't fuck it up anymore than ya already have," he barked, making them both jump. "Pick up the baby. I gotta lay Beth down."
Enid grabbed the little girl and tried to shush her as Daryl carefully laid Beth in the backseat.
"Get in there with her," he said to Enid.
The girl nodded and raised up Beth's legs a little and put them in her lap before settling Judith against her shoulder.
"Get in the car, Carl."
"What about my dad?" He asked, looking toward the safe zone.
"He's a tough sonofabitch. He'll be fine."
The car was started in a matter of minutes, and he let it idle, hoping someone else would come out of the woods and into the little neighborhood where they were at. Maybe Merle could track them to it.
When no one showed up after ten minutes had passed, Daryl turned the car around and went the opposite way of Alexandria.
He would get them back to the cabin, and he would pray that some of their group would join them again soon.
Merle and Carol waited in the woods outside the passage for twenty minutes before they heard people coming.
He pulled her behind him since she was hurt and watched the opening. If it was the bad guys, they would have to be quiet and try and slip away. He hoped it was their group, though. He didn't know what he would do otherwise.
The first person he saw was Rick then Michonne, Glenn, and Maggie.
"Hey!" He called out as he stepped from behind the tree. Rick drew his gun, but put it away just as quickly. "It just y'all?"
All of them looked around at each other, seemingly coming to grips that they were the only ones to make it out.
"We know for sure Eugene's gone," Rick said.
Glenn looked away. "There was nothin' we could do. I tried."
"We all did," Michonne said quietly. Her voice was full of conviction.
"How'd it happen?" Carol asked.
"He got taken out by a sharp shooter after coming out with a damn flame thrower he made from somethin'. He saved me and Glenn," Maggie said and cleared her throat. "I don't know about the rest."
"Sasha ran to look for Bob, but we didn't see where to," Carol said.
"I didn't see Abraham after the gate exploded. Rosita was supposed to stay inside, but I saw her out fightin'. I lost sight of her when those guys rammed the gate with the truck," Rick said quietly. "Noah was down there near 'em so was Morgan."
"Fuck," Merle said.
"Did y'all get Carl and Judith out?" Rick asked, looking around.
"No," Carol said. "They were already gone when we got there. Daryl ran for the house first, so we think maybe him and Beth got them out."
Rick looked like he was on the verge of tears. "Who the hell were those people?"
"The Wolves were just the troops. The real threat was that guy that rode in towards the end."
"Yeah, but why?" Glenn asked. "If he can control the Wolves, he must already have a place set up."
"Nothin' nicer than what they had in Alexandria," Merle said.
"Yeah even if half of it's burned to the ground," Maggie said. "They'd been watchin' for awhile. They didn't get near the solar panels or electrical grid."
"They wanted it for themselves," Michonne said. "They'll set it up like another Terminus. Whoever comes that way now will be in for nothin' but pain."
"We can't stay around here," Merle said, looking over them. "We get to that cabin and after a couple of days, we leave. They'll find that basement door soon enough, and they'll try and track us."
Rick nodded, his mind was elsewhere, though.
"Let's go then. Sooner we get to the cabin, the sooner we know if the others survived this."
They walked, following tracks that Merle already found, and got to a small neighborhood where they stole a car and started back toward the cabin.
There was nothing but silence as they drove down the road, dodging walkers that had come up due to the noise. He looked in the rearview mirror once before taking his eyes away and staring straight forward.
Wasn't no point in looking back.