A True Dreamer - I think Daryl needs to talk more about the shit he's going through instead of just getting mad.
HGRHfan35 - Oh, I'm glad you enjoyed it. It was meant to be a comical chapter, so if you laughed, that's good. Means I did my job.
Brazen Hussy - Working on it...so many characters and not nearly enough time to write some quality Merle flirting with the ladies scenes.
skittletitz - Yes, the chapter with Daryl making up should prove to be beautiful...hopefully.
Lilone1776 - Thank you. I think it's cute that the Lt. gets to be an honorary Dixon. I don't think Merle would mind, as long as he wasn't expected to give a rat's ass about the man more than usual.
AFishNamedSushi - The sense of community on the show is a lovely idea. I agree that there's not much you can get by people when we live that close with them. It really is some kind of familial environment, isn't it?
I wrote this chapter as a huge 'fuck you' to AMC, but also it moves the plot along. So everyone wins. Except AMC, they never get to win, because they're mean to the characters I love.
Chapter Fifty-Nine: Doux
**Milton**
There was a time, oh about a month and a half ago, when Woodbury was a beautiful oasis in the middle of the rising dead.
Milton Mamet was a man of science, of theory and thought and testing and conclusions, but that didn't mean he hadn't ever read the bible.
But your dead will live; their bodies will rise. Those who live in the dust will wake up and shout for joy! For your dew is like the dew of dawn, and the earth will give birth to the dead.
Of course, being a logical man Milton couldn't help but think that perhaps the bible was merely spouting poetic. None of that made any sense to him.
Since storming the prison and chasing the inhabitants out in a spray of gunfire and bullets, the Governor had become a man obsessed with hunting the survivors down and putting them to death.
Everyone was walking on eggshells around him. The man was growing increasingly paranoid and dangerous, the town itself was on permanent lockdown, Martinez and his men at the gate. Scouting parties out everywhere searching for the prison group survivors to put them to death.
But still Philip would stroll among his people, flashing those confident, arrogant grins of his, letting them know all was well, while behind locked doors any innocent straggling survivor they came across was tortured and killed just out of the Governor's pure unbridled frustration that they weren't from the prison.
The man had his hand burned, figuratively, and he retracted it, holding it close to his body, striking out like a wild animal at anyone who dared come close enough to him to threaten the safety bubble he formed around himself in the wake of the trouble with the prison survivors.
With Andrea gone those left in Woodbury turned to him for advice, but Milton could only give them the false reassurances Philip had ordered him to give. Smiling, touching them on the shoulders, telling them everything was fine, that the lockdown was for their own safety since the threat at the prison was still out there somewhere.
One wrong move and Milton was sure that would be the end of them. Philip would rather kill his own people then let them abandon him, especially now that his daughter was finally put to rest.
The rations were beginning to get slim, nasty instant eggs and some kind of powdered milk that was so thick and lumpy it was basically a cottage cheese paste.
None of the men at Woodbury were hunters, sure Martinez and his men could be cold-hearted killers, going after those at the prison like they were animals, but none of them had the tracking skills to get Woodbury fresh meat.
By his calculations they had a few more months before vitamin deficiency took hold and rickets seeped into the population of children of Woodbury. They needed calcium of some kind in their diet, it was originally why man started drinking cow's milk to supplement the lack of calcium in much of what they ate, but they also found it in the marrow of meat bones. Traditionally, while they stewed the meat, the marrow seeped out into the sauce, half the reason why meat was an important dietary need. As it was, he was expecting that without the canned fruit they had just run out of they would all be suffering scurvy in about three to two and a half months.
Every day he took a walk about the street, passing the gate, eyeing the heavy security placed there.
If he could get out, find Andrea, maybe she could talk some sense into Philip. But there were about three main flaws with that plan. He wasn't a fighter, guns and their owner's eluded them, he had no idea where she was and he honestly didn't think he'd survive three hours beyond the walls of Woodbury.
But every day he passed the gate and mulled over his options under the watchful gaze of Martinez and his men. His men might be willing to let him go find help, they had wives and children among the survivors, but Martinez was alone in the world and he seemed loyal to the Governor. He was the one to watch out for.
Milton was a smart man, how was it he couldn't come up with a better plan than just 'wait it out'?
Mrs. Gregson approached him, her heavily arthritic hand clutching at the hand of her grandson.
"Mr. Mamet," she began, "we're all out of canned vegetables now, the rations haven't been coming like they have in the past." She greeted.
Milton offered her a small smile. "We've had some setbacks with our rations, due to the invasion of the prison terrorists," he lied so fluidly now that the Milton Mamet before the end of the world would have thought him a psychopath. "But the Governor is planning a huge supply run of some nearby towns, we'll have regular rations soon. We just need to all grin and bear it." He said.
Why was he the one to have to deal with people? He wasn't really a people person. The intricacies of relations with others was foreign to him.
Under Martinez' watchful eyes Milton Mamet lied to an old woman and her eight year old grandson, he wondered if Martinez had any say on the matter.
Watching Mrs. Gregson and her grandson walk off, Milton wondered if there was any canned fruit or vegetables left in his cupboards. He usually ate like a bird, which didn't actually say much as bird's were quite fond of eating, but he ate like the bird people always talked about when they said someone who ate very little ate like a bird.
Turning away from the two, he continued his circling journey, taking him from one end of Woodbury to the other.
"Yo, Mamet, hold up!"
Pausing in midstep at Martinez' cry, Milton waited almost impatiently for the man to ascend from his post at the gate.
In the realm of arrogant pricks, Martinez was Lord and Master, but he was good with a gun and the Governor trusted him.
Sniffing, Martinez flicked at his nose casually. "You know, I've been watching you this past week and every day you wander past this gate at least twice."
Gauging the man's face, Milton wet his bottom lip. "I'm just trying to do my part to patrol a little."
"Yeah, well we have enough men on patrol, if you want to help why don't you go find the women, they're trying to make something edible in the main hall."
Milton blinked. "I'm not much of a chef."
Martinez chuckled. "You don't cook, you don't shoot a gun, what good are you around here, Milton?"
"I make tea," Milton said. "And I keep the records."
"Who needs records when babies are starving?"
"Why don't you go and hunt?"
Martinez shifted on his feet. "Governor says we don't move until the scouting party returns."
"Is that why? Or is it because you don't know how? Pulling a trigger is easy, tracking game with a higher IQ than you is a bit hard, isn't it?" Milton probably would earn an ass kicking for that, but both he and Martinez knew he wasn't talking about the fur covered animals the militant had his men out tracking.
Pushing his face in close to Milton's, Martinez growled low, "keep your eyes down and on the ground when you go for your little strolls, Milt. If I've noticed, you can bet your ass the other men up there have as well."
Milton narrowed his eyes at the man, this was a curious development.
Martinez sized him up quietly. "Watch yourself because my men won't always be on that wall to watch you back."
Furrowing his brow delicately, Milton was sure the big ape was trying to convey something to him. It almost seemed like the man knew exactly what Milton had been thinking the past week and he was okay with it.
"I'll take a different route next time I'm out walking," he assured Martinez.
The man sized him up again, before nodding. "Good, don't want trouble."
"Martinez?" Milton asked out loud to the man as he began to walk off.
The muscular man turned.
"Is there any way I could get a gun? I want to better help protect those within the walls," he said.
Martinez ran his tongue around the inside of his bottom lip, before reaching for the holster at his waist, unbuckling his handgun and handing it over slowly. "Use it wisely," he advised.
Milton eyed the weapon that swung innocently from the holster. How innocent the minions of evil could be while at rest, he pondered.
"You know how to use it?" Martinez asked. There was something in the man's eyes that made Milton want to just trust him completely, to break down and share his plan with him, but there was also that thin line that he knew he couldn't ever cross. That crossing it might bring death and destruction about his head.
"Yes, of course," Milton lied, taking the holster with both hands.
"Isn't like reading a book, Milt."
"Of course. I've shot ordnance before."
"Really?"
"Sure. Plenty of times."
"Well, make sure you let the Governor know I issued that, so he doesn't get pissed at the wrong man." Martinez stated, sizing him up one last, lingering time, before heading back for the gate.
Milton was caught in between thinking the man was cheerfully on to him and his plot, or the man just enjoyed the sight of the male form.
Not that his form was anything special.
Must have been the former.
Holding the holster and weapon awkwardly, Milton gave the gate one last cautious glance, before turning back and continuing his journey home, where he was at least safe from having to lie to people about the situation.
..-~-..
..-~-..
Stepping into his little allotted apartment, he set the holster and weapon on the small card table and hurried to his stacks of books, searching them for a particular periodical.
All forty copies of Guns & Ammo had been stacked at the very bottom of a large pile of National Geographic and he had to move the yellow bordered magazines to get at the ones he wanted.
Quickly, Milton went through them, looking for an article that would help him even begin to identify the handgun he was given.
He wasn't sure if he could even work up the courage to hop the gate, but if he found himself doing it suddenly, he wanted to know all he could about the weapon he was heading out with.
What he wouldn't give for Google.
..-~-..
..-~-..
Three mugs of tea later and Milton was turning on the lamp in his room so that he could keep reading. He found nothing about the particular make and model of the handgun, but he narrowed it down to either a .45 or a 9mm. Measuring the tube ruled it out as a 9mm, so Milton was left to assume his weapon was a Glock .45 military issue.
Flicking the safety on and off again, Milton got used to the amount of strength it took to switch the handgun from safe mode to hot and ready to fire. Referencing the magazines for closest relatives to his gun, he emptied it of all rounds, including the very deadly and often overlooked one in the chamber, and pulled the trigger, familiarizing himself to the give it took for the gun to be fired.
Reloading the gun, he slipped the round back into the clip and smacked the clip back into place within the grip of the gun where it clicked and was ready to fire.
It held thirteen rounds, so that plus the twenty rounds that came attached to the gun gave him thirty-three shots.
He wasn't so sure he could make it outside the compound of Woodbury with only thirty-three shots.
Milton had no idea where to even begin looking for help. But he figured if he could find the remnants of the prison group, he might find Andrea and Andrea would know best what to do.
Knowing he probably wouldn't make it far outside the walls, he took a few stone silent moments to weigh his options. If he stayed and the Governor kept on the same vein, the children would get sick and malnourished, the adults soon afterwards. But if he went, if he left the safety of his handfed life behind the walls he probably wouldn't make it far before something got a hold of him.
That was a displeasing idea, but less so than starving children and hopeless times in a military state.
Inhaling deeply, he went back to familiarizing himself with his weapon. Something he found distasteful, but necessary. One of those things he found seemed fairly common in these end times.
No, he figured, if he prepared himself properly he could make it outside the walls long enough to help the innocents of Woodbury. Even if he at least found them food or something better to supplement their diets with than powdered eggs and past due instant milk.
Unless the Governor gunned him down before he even stepped foot outside the walls…
Moving to the window, Milton peered out at the street, eyeing how dead it was, barely anyone moved. He could recall a time when Philip had a street BBQ almost every day, how he'd serve lemonade and cookies to the group, but now it was silent, quiet.
He wondered if that's how Krakow felt before the liquidation, everyone sensing things were about to get bad, everyone waiting for judgement. Not saying he was likening Philip to Hitler, but…military regimes were the same everywhere, weren't they? They were the men in power who wanted to throw their weight around, to remind people that they were – in fact – the ones in charge.
Men like Milton were the ones who died foolishly trying to make a stand.
Maybe he wasn't as smart as he had always assumed.
Eyeing the Hooper's door where the faint sounds of Mrs. Hooper's newborn baby could be heard, Milton realized that foolish he may be, but if he actually managed to pull off his escape, maybe he could be more use to the people then just lying to their faces and giving them reassurances about things that even he was unsure about.
The Cajun Dialect
Doux – Gentle, sweet.
Zeerahb (from the chapter before, apologies) - Disgusting