Once again, in this piece and the one under edit, I'll be referencing a few things that are technologically feasible, based on the history of a decade ago, rather than today. Don't let it throw you. Locations are fictional, and I still don't own the character hidden in the masked man or those listed in the profile. I am also not a paid advertiser or representative for Super Eight, Windex, or any other product or service named here. Enjoy the ride.

Walking Dead, The Masked Man, And Ann Gee

The peculiar, sectioned vehicle scooped four dead from the pavement as it came to a stop on the dark highway interchange blocked with cars. Three of the dead landed with a sickening crunch and stopped moving. The fourth, having landed on one of the others, slowly made its way to a standing position. The lead section's door swung upwards. The masked man stepped out, pulled out the charging conveyor and one grille, and walked up to the dead man. The dead man, which wore a suit shredded in the front, began to step toward the masked man. The masked man seized his left arm and spun him around. The arm came off. The masked man recovered his balance and stuffed the dead arm into the mouth of the dead man as it lunged forward at him. The masked man seized the dead man's right arm and twisted it behind the back, forcing the dead man up onto the conveyor extending from the last section of the vehicle. Closing the second grille around the dead man, the masked man stepped over to the second vehicle section and opened the door. Ann Gee swung her shapely legs out and stood. "Yes?"

"I'm very tired. It's not going to stay dark much longer. The road atlas is all I have of this area, and most of the signs are down. One of these exits is for the Clellan Conference Center. We need to stay close." He handed her a headset with odd-looking goggles. "Wilson said you're good at picking out places to loot. Pick the closest place we can hole up for the day. Road access like a large street motorcycle. We've got to hide it and ourselves in comfort till nightfall."

Ann Gee looked at the headset. "How does this work?"

"Left-hand toggle changes from night vision to infrared to ultraviolet. Right toggle changes to and from distance gridlines. We don't want any buildings with orange or yellow heat signatures. Those are the living. Dead are blue to green on infrared if they're moving."

"Cool." Ann Gee put it on and started panning around. "Why here?"

"Pamphlets in that last jewelry store said there was a gem show opening in the conference center the Monday after things went crazy here. Over a hundred vendors. Gems have very little survival value. Some of them may have arrived early and be ripe for the picking. The weekend was the close of the medical equipment conference. There may be some gear left. Some samples, some manuals, something."

After examining nearly halfway around the horizon, Ann pointed and handed over the headset. "No living, I guess. There's the center, I think. Looks overrun. Next door there? To the left? Super Eight. No movement, no heat. I could use a real bed after sitting in one position for four hours. I'm going over there." She started across the bridge toward a large truck, demonstratively shaking a roll of toilet paper.

"Be careful." The masked man studied the buildings through the goggles for several seconds, examining the route there, the shape of the lots, the heat vents protruding from the buildings. "Looks good to me." He pulled out three fist-sized bundles and checked wires on each. He magnetically stuck all three to the side of the vehicle. "Remote flash bangs," he said in explanation.

"Stuck to us?" said Ann Gee, returning.

"I'll remotely turn off the electromagnets when I want them to fall. They won't go off till later, when I trigger them. I'll drive the long way around and drop them at convenient spots for a diversion." He motioned her back inside, shut her door, and paused. He looked at the walking dead man charging his vehicle for a moment. The masked man pulled a toolbelt out of the vehicle. Putting it on, he rapidly walked to a pickup truck with a winch on its front. He took the hook end of the cable and pulled it to a car. Feeding the end through the missing front windshield, he put a boot against the open door's window and pushed, popping it out. He fed the end through the newly missing window and stopped for a moment, listening.

He waved dismissively at his vehicle, where he had heard Ann Gee tapping. He picked up the cracked window from the pavement where it had fallen and spun, decapitating the first dead person to come between the cars. He placed the window upright between the bumpers of two cars to block two more coming and turned to loop part of the winch cable around the neck of another. Dragging it along, he played out a bit more cable and lashed out a loop like a whip. The blow severed the spine of a fourth, causing it to collapse, tripping the fifth one behind it. He tightened the cable, tearing the head off the looped one. He swung the weighted end out, clubbing a sixth.

As the first two blundering dead knocked the car window aside, he ran three steps back to them and kicked the lead hard enough in the chest that it bashed heads with the one behind. They both fell. He pulled a screwdriver and ended those two and the other two that were still moving. He played out more cable. He rapidly fed the length around a wheel each of three other cars, crisscrossing cable about knee height above the road. He spent another ten minutes breaking ignition locks, releasing parking brakes, and putting cars into neutral.

A single blow with a mallet and screwdriver opened a car trunk. He pulled out a crate of food. He stowed it in the third section of the vehicle and opened another car trunk in the same manner. He pulled out a tow chain and an old-style four-way lug wrench. He tangled the lug wrench in the crisscrossed winch cable. He wound half the length of the tow chain thoroughly around the tangled winch cable and lug wrench. He ran back to the third section of his vehicle, pulled out a pack, closed the door, and ran back to the reinforced tangle. He carefully wound some sturdy wire from a pouch and more tow chain around the pack, avoiding the pack's top. Ducking down, he yanked a cord. A full-sized World War Two parachute opened without fully extending. He hauled the upper part of the chute across the top of the cars, and fastened a plastic cover to the air vent with epoxy. He reached into back seats to grab three umbrellas and a few empty cardboard boxes, stuffed them into the canvas bulk, wired the boxes and umbrellas together, opened the umbrellas, and dropped the whole mass over the rail. Looking at his work for a moment, he nodded and walked back to his vehicle. He opened the second compartment, handing Ann Gee an MRE.

"I thought you said you were tired?"

"I am."

"Oka—aay. What's the parachute for?"

"Clearing the road a bit." He closed her door, got in, and closed his door. They slowly started away, destroying their undead generator as the hardware retracted. About forty-one minutes later, rain began to fall. Slowly at first, the rain built to a crescendo on the metal roofs. The parachute cords thrummed with the tension and rhythm of the rain collecting in the chute. Slowly, the rain's rhythm and weight began to vibrate the reinforced winch cable tangle and pull it toward the side of the bridge. There was a quiet grinding of metal on metal as the tow chain, winch cable, and metal wire tightened and deformed slightly around each other. The cars moved gradually toward the side of the bridge, rolling over the fallen dead. After eleven minutes of slow movement, the plastic cover broke loose from the epoxy, and rainwater cascaded out of the parachute.

The downpour continued for twenty-four minutes at a furious pace and then slowed to a drizzle. There was three-quarters of a lane unblocked.

HHHHHHHH

House narrowed his eyes at Wilson on the other side of the glass. "And did Ann Gee tell you to tell me anything today?"

"No. She didn't really say anything to me today."

House frowned deeper. "She didn't go with him, did she?"

Wilson blinked in surprise, then shrugged. "Yes. It surprised me. I thought she just wanted to go out for a day. Looting. She's good at it and seemed to miss it. Then when she came back, she told me she was going for longer and showed me how to make nut bread. That's peanut bread we had for lunch."

"I guessed. You know he's dangerous. We could lose her and not know it till we run out of rations and have to break out of here or die."

"He signals me at sunset to let me know they're okay."

"Signals?! How does he signal you?"

Wilson looked at the watch he wound daily. "He uh, has a machine."

"What kind of machine?"

"It locates bugs. He turns his on and off four times at sunset so I know he's okay."

"A tracking device?"

"Yes."

"How many bugs can it measure?"

"He has twelve active right now. I log their movements from time to time. Three are never on grid. Nine of them are mostly circulating around Negan's direction."

"Quixote has a catch and release program." House shook his head. "He may have been telling the truth about letting us go." He nodded with a worried frown.

HHHHHHHH

Ann Gee looked doubtfully at the device being rapidly assembled by the masked man. It had four rotors like a helicopter and several small devices attached to its lightweight frame that she couldn't even identify. She looked doubtfully at the masked man, who hadn't even come on to her, though she had known by his breathing that morning he wasn't sleeping well on the floor of the room she'd chosen. Then she looked doubtfully at the odd-shaped pistol he was holding out to her. "You want me to what?"

"Fire into the crowd down there. It's silent. Powered by air cartridges."

"I can't hit anything."

"It's an entire crowd of walking corpses. You probably can't miss." He had pulled out a roll of double-faced tape and was covering the back of a chair with it. "Mostly I just need five or six of them hit so I can track the crowd while I do something else." He picked up the chair and stood it on the table. Then he pressed the chair back against the clean spot he'd made on the window with the Windex and towel from the cleaning carts he'd collected in the hallway. He pulled a glass cutter out of his toolbelt and made a rough circle around the chair back. "Just aim at the center of the crowd and squeeze the trigger six times. Then move so I can close this quickly. Ready?"

Ann Gee looked at him with even more doubt. "Is there a safety?" She took the air gun.

"No."

She put on the headset. "Then I'm ready."

The masked man swiveled the chair inward, popping the piece of window loose. Ann Gee took a perfect Weaver stance, stepped forward, shot six times, pulled back, lowered the air gun, and removed the headset. The masked man returned the chair to its position, closing the window cut. He powered up the tablet beneath the chair legs and looked at the three moving dots and the three still dots. He cocked his head. "You actually did miss with three of them."

"I told you."

"Hold your fingers straight out at me?"

Ann put the gun and the headset on the table and held out the middle finger of each hand straight at the masked man. He studied the way her hands wavered and sagged.

The masked man walked to the nightstand between the two beds. He pulled the phone jack out of the phone and walked back to her. He put the phone in her left hand and the handset in her right as she looked at him quizzically. "You need more shoulder stamina. Your aim is fine, but, by the time you aim, your arms are drooping lower. Hold that at arm's length in front of you counting to ten. Four times. Sets twice daily to the front, maybe twice daily to the sides. Add a third set of each in a month. You'll start hitting more targets."

Ann Gee blinked. "If I'm drooping like a spent john, shouldn't I just shoot faster?"

"No. That comes later, after you get used to hitting what you aim at. You need to be able to judge what recoil does to your muscles to give yourself time to readjust your aim for your next shot."

"Were you military? You remind me of a Special Ops guy I was with for a bit."

"No. Practice." The masked man looked back at the tablet as Ann Gee began her isometrics.

"What's that seventh dot?" She said breathlessly after a set. She put down the phone and rubbed her shoulders. "All the way at the edge there?"

"Your boyfriends. They'll probably stay where they are, but it's good to check."

"They're not really my boyfriends. We have an arrangement."

"Ah." He turned back to assembling the device with the rotors.

"I sleep with who I want."

"BECAUSE you want them?"

She lowered her eyes. "No. I want them to keep me safe. To take care of me. Wilson, he would do that, but wouldn't be a hero for me. House would be a hero, but wouldn't take care of me. They would both be my doctor if I need it. Wilson would fix my colds and woman troubles. House would fix me if I got something I never heard of. I sleep with them, and either of them do both. Together they make a perfect man."

"That's well-arranged. So you're out here looking for adventure."

"I've not been with this few men for so long since I was fifteen. You don't seem like you want me. But you're not gay. You'd have scoped out Wilson, maybe hinted at him."

"I'm—not on the market."

"You don't want anyone to know you by your face or voice, either. Very strange. Not like we can go to the police and say 'who was that masked man?' He kidnapped us!" She suddenly frowned at him and put a hand on her hip. "You brought that dead woman in curlers to me, didn't you? To distract me when you take me so I not hear you coming."

"Diversions are the way to go when capturing someone quickly." The masked man shrugged, putting down a wire stripper. He picked up a precision screwdriver and tightened another tiny screw.

Ann Gee studied him for a moment. A sad expression flitted across her face. She picked up the phone and handset and resumed her isometrics. By the time she called it quits, he had the thing on the bed together. "What's UAV stand for anyway?" she finally said.

***Just for clarification, UAV was the common term for a drone about a decade ago when most people agree TWD first started. The military had already been using them for quite a while, but hadn't really made that knowledge public. 'Drone' as a term was only just becoming known as slang for a UAV, and wouldn't have been on any of the packaging for Ann Gee to have seen. The design hasn't changed noticeably to a layman. Tablets would have been recognizable if not so prevalent. For continuity's sake, this road trip is in a different direction, miles away from CSMS which is miles away from the Negan sequestering in Sanctuary, which may be almost over, and is far enough away, therefore, that if that helicopter Rick saw is real, it would go unnoticed by the masked man's surveillance equipment. Now back to the action.

"You'll see. For now I need your help flattening some flatware. Have a seat." He motioned to a chair. She sat down. He kicked a small, ragged roll of scrap linoleum to unroll across the carpet between them. He lifted his left foot and began strapping a bathroom tile to the bottom of his boot with a pair of children's belts. "See that first shopping bag? Pull out the forks and spoons. Drop three to four at a time between us. After I step on them all, sweep them to the carpet with the broom and drop some more." He strapped another tile to the bottom of his right boot. "Go." He picked up the tablet.

As she tossed the second group of flatware on the linoleum, the rotors on the UAV began to spin. It raised to hover at five and half feet. It turned sideways and went out of the room.

"Faster," he said.

Ann Gee began tossing out five to six at a time with her left hand and bringing the broom across the linoleum immediately with her right, trying to beat him to the flatware. She quickly found she wasn't fast enough, though he was also paying attention to the tablet in his hands, flying the UAV. She tried feinting, she tried spreading the flatware grouping wider, and she tried scattering past his just-placed boot. At one point, he spun, putting his back to her and still stomped every fork and spoon she tossed.

She tossed the last fork on top of his left boot. He kicked it into the air, spun, and back-kicked it. It stuck into the wall above a bed. "Damn," she said, nodding. He took off the tiles and held them out to her. "Next bag is all you."

Ann Gee did a fair job of imitating most of the moves she'd seen him do after a bit of practice—at a slower speed. When she was finished, she flopped down onto the bed, panting. "Ow," she said, and pulled a crescent wrench out from under her left shoulder blade.

"Sorry. Have a look." He turned the tablet toward her. The footage he'd recorded of the UAV's path was in night vision, clearly showing in sickly green the crowd of walking corpses milling in small circles around each other in the conference center parking lot. The UAV's camera caught a glimpse of a crow caught in a live animal trap on the roof of the hotel. Then the footage showed a flight to the conference center, entry to a crowded, decorative lobby timed between dead grabbing hands. Next was a flight above the dead on an escalator, up to the second floor where the dead were few and into large rooms set up with dozens of tables where the dead moved in yet smaller numbers. Then there came a flight returning out of the conference center and across a small parking lot to perch on a billboard, out of reach of the outstretched, rotting arms. The tablet screen paused.

"How far can you run faster than they can lunge?"

"I don't know. I wouldn't try THAT."

The masked man looked out the window and strapped his toolbelt back on. "They're clearing out. If I get your blood pumping, could you carry the crow at a light run? Just to the escalator."

"I think so."

"Stay here. Four minutes. Be ready to leave."

"What about all that flatware?"

"I'll pack that up when I get back. I use a magnet." He silently ran out the door.

Ann Gee used the restroom, pilfered the toilet paper, the hand towels, and all the other small items she could fit in her over-sized purse, and was leaning on the doorframe when he came running out of the open elevator shaft with the squawking crow in the trap. He placed it on a cleaning cart and ran into the room. He tore the spread from a bed, rolling it loosely, and tossed it over his left shoulder. He pulled out his coil gun and waved it over the floor, stooping only slightly as he collected the flatware in the shopping bag. Tucking the tablet into his front waistband, he ran back to the crow, motioning Ann Gee to follow him. He slid the whole trap into the rolled-up bedspread, muffling the crow, and handed it to Ann. "Got it?"

It lurched in her hands. "Maybe," said Ann Gee.

"Don't let go of it. We're skipping the stairs."

With only the light from the windows in the open rooms, the hallway was already dark. The elevator shaft was pitch black. "I can't," she said, "Can't breathe in there."

"I remember you don't like small spaces, Ann. But this is a whole elevator shaft."

"What happened to the elevator? We're on the third floor!"

"It's down on the basement level with the dead. We're rappelling down the cable."

"I can't rappel!"

"You hold the crow. I'll hold you."

"Who's gonna hold you?!"

He reached into the blackness with his right hand and pulled out a metal hook. He fastened it to something hidden by his collar and pulled Ann Gee to his waist with his left. He jumped. She shrieked all the way down.

Not far from the momentary goal. Why the crow? Please read and review. From content plans, next week will be MUCH shorter.