Brazen Hussy - He can be a bit much, huh?
crazstiz - Next chapter is big bro's visit, I promise!
HGRHfan35 - Taking a break from 'feels' in this chapter. At least where Tyreese is concerned (I wrote that part late at night...so...no take backsies!)
Merle's Right Hand - Because you complained about the rain I called in a favour to God and ended it. You're welcome.
MollyMayhem84 - Haha, like a cat to a mouse! XD Now I'm just screwing with you, putting Andrea in all kind's of situations now.
itsi3 - Yeah, in this world without a lot of anti-biotics infections can be a bitch, huh? Yikes...
SilverWolf84 - Enjoy this chapter!
GG - Honestly I love Milton, he needs to be in this story more. Maybe he'll play a bigger part in the sequel.
Aphrodite2 - Yeah, there's going to be deaths. Such is the way of TWD world, huh?
Supfan - Yeah, I'm going slow, aren't I? Ah, well, at least it's still interesting, right? RIGHT? O_O
Axelrocks - No worries about the lack of reviews, good to see you're still with us. ^_^
Surplus Imagination - Yeah, Carol is becoming a little hard, isn't she? Even on the show. Not sure if that's a good thing or not. She's such a sweet lady...erm...
peonies01 - You should have a bad feeling. That's all I'll say.
BanannaFlvdSnow - Good to see you caught up! Welcome to the current chapter and thanks for all the kind reviews on the others! ^_^ I want to write more bro time and girl talk...maybe in the sequel. Yeah...
Lilone1776 - Well, there's only so much a man can do before people start to think he's a little looney. And Phil is pretty goddamned looney.
Ms Q - I think Glenn would agree with you on the peace talks. I was rewatching TWD this week and all I could think everytime Rick was onscreen was how badly that man just needs a hug. Like someone just needs to hug him and baby him a little...I wanna make a bundle of him, okay? Is that weird?
Anyways, Odd Couple references aside, this chapter has a lighter ending, because I felt you kids needed a bit of a break from the angst and suspense. So...I may have also written it late at night, hence the comedy. I get wacky after dark when I write on too little sleep. No apologies.
Chapter Eighty-Four: Attraper
**Rick**
The Mall
With Woodbury now at the mall, he made the decision to give up his search for Andrea, Tyreese and Alan, opting instead to head straight for the back door of the mall to warn Glenn and the others about the Governor's men and their arrival.
He also wanted to discuss the 'peace talks' and what he saw in the back of the truck with his people. There was no way he could back out of his plan to take out the men of Woodbury, the armed soldiers, but the thought of peace talks…he wanted to talk it over. It could be a trap, it could be sincere, but he learned long ago that taking things on himself wasn't the way to lead. He'd talk to the others, get their input, give them fair warning at least that they weren't alone.
The rain was finally letting up, as he made his way to the back door of the mall and Rick noticed that he could actually start to see a wider area around him.
His clothes were at least ten pounds heavier with water and he felt the chill to in his bones, but he barely took any care for it, his long legs moving him into the mall and across the highly polished tiles.
Glenn and the others would be at the front doors, watching, waiting to make their escape towards him, so he'd meet up with them there. Hell, for all he knew Andrea, Tyreese and Alan had made it back on their own and were waiting for him.
The mall was dark inside, so dark he had to fumble for the little penlight in his pocket, his shaking, cold hands and the wet material of his jeans making for a clumsy manoeuver.
Glancing up to check his surroundings, he took a moment to retrieve the little penlight, holding it up, shining it before him. It wasn't powerful enough to catch the stores across the corridor from him, but it would give him enough time to catch anything that could be coming at him.
With his rifle tucked under his arm and his penlight in hand, he continued on into the mall.
By the time he reached Glenn at the front, the younger man was arguing with Sasha who it seemed wanted to go out looking for the others.
As Rick stepped in close to the group, she turned impassioned eyes on him.
"Rick, did you find them?"
"No, I didn't find anyone else," he said.
"We gotta get back out there and find them, then," Sasha stated, moving to leave.
Rick caught her by the upper arm and held her back. "We don't go anywhere right now," he ordered. "Woodbury's here."
Everyone seemed to straighten their spines, tensing for a fight.
"Glenn, is the rain thinning?" Rick asked.
The younger man took a quick glance out the boarded up doors quickly. "Yeah."
"Can you see their truck?"
"No," he replied, "wait, yeah, yeah I see it. It's still pretty ugly out though."
"Can you read the side of it?"
"What? No, why?"
"When I was out looking for our people, I came across their truck, they were busy taking down walkers. There was a sign on the side, said 'peace talks'," Rick began.
"So?" Sasha demanded.
"The Governor was tied up in the back, looked pretty battered and pissed off." He finished.
Glenn frowned. "So? You said no prisoners, this 'peace talk' crap could just be a trick."
"And what if it isn't?" Rick returned. "Wouldn't you hope that we could still offer to at least hear them out?"
"No," Sasha agreed. "I don't like it. You said it yourself, it ends here, today."
"We should at least hear them out, don't you think?" Rick asked, playing devil's advocate when in all honesty he didn't think he'd mind just killing the men from Woodbury.
The thought of zero hesitation suddenly chilled him more than the rain water soaked clothing clinging to his skin.
"I say we kill every last one of them," Glenn stated. "No mercy, no prisoners, no peace talks."
"I want to hear what they have to say," Beth said softly.
Everyone looked over at her, she had been so quiet through the whole conversation.
She looked shyly at them. "Can't we arrange something? A meeting or even just to get them to write us something on paper? Some kind of communication?"
"Beth," Glenn began, "do you want them to trick us or do you want this to end?"
"Now hold on," Sasha stepped in, "let her have her say."
Beth grimaced, glancing over at Rick.
"Go on," he urged, wanting to hear everyone's opinion on the matter.
"What if it was us? Our people? Wouldn't you want another group to at least hear us out if we asked for peace talks?" She said. "Glenn, I know you just want the world to burn right now, but shouldn't we try a little humanity?"
"No," Glenn stated. "I say we lure them in here like we planned and blow them up, solve the world's problem short of solving the walker plague. Done. Ended. Over."
Everyone looked over at Rick like he was still their ultimate final say.
He ran a hand through his wet hair, the gold of his wedding band catching the glint of Beth's flashlight.
..-~-..
..-~-..
**Michonne**
The Convent
"Never seen anyone on the wall who didn't mean business," she purred.
On the wall she was patrolling, she had come across many people inside the stone barrier doing various things, but never someone on the wall with a notebook and pen in hand, a penlight tucked into their mouth as they scribbled in the notebook.
The rain had stopped and the stars were finally in view, but the land was still drenched, soaked and she wasn't expecting to find anyone or anything out in the early morning hours.
Milton Mamet looked over and up at her, dropping the penlight into his lap to speak.
"I couldn't sleep." He replied.
She worked a kink out of the muscles of her back by rolling her shoulders, eyeing the walker tied to a tree below them. It had been altered much the same way hers had been.
Admittedly she wasn't half as nervous around Milton Mamet as she had first been. Maybe it was just the Stepford Wives vibe she was getting from Andrea at Woodbury, or maybe it was the Norman Bates sincerity of the Governor that had her on edge, but with Milton she more or less ignored him.
Maybe it was why she wandered over to see what he was doing, she still didn't trust him completely.
Or maybe it was because she was bored and wanted to actually have a conversation with someone, anyone would have done.
"What are writing?" She asked. It came out as a command.
"My daily log of activities. I want to remember a few things Mrs. Douglas taught Herschel and I about stitching up a spleen," he eyed her warily.
Michonne tilted her head at him. The man was about as threatening as a field mouse.
Carefully she eased onto the wall at his side, dangling her legs over the edge boldly, unlike his carefully tucked in pose.
"Why?"
"Because soon mankind will hold no regard for medical journals, many will be burnt to keep people warm come winter and a lot will more than likely serve as makeshift toilet paper. I can't collect every tome, though I'd certainly love to, so I'm making use of myself and keeping track of medical advice from a trained professional."
"That redneck boy going to make it then?" She asked, changing the subject with nothing really to say to his last statement.
"Hopefully, we'll fight off a few infections, I'm sure. A clinic is clean, but it's no hospital surgery ward. Of course, people are a lot stronger than we give them credit for being, the human body is an intricate and interesting device."
"What did you do before the world went down?" She asked.
"I sold chemical supplies to large industrial companies for mining and the likes," he replied.
Michonne frowned. "I would have guessed some kind of scientist."
"My parents died when I was young, I grew up in a series of foster homes," he explained calmly. "Couldn't really afford university, never got a scholarship, wasn't that lucky."
"But you seem so smart," she pointed out.
"Not really," he said. "I'm just observant." Removing his glasses he cleaned them on his shirt.
Taking that opportunity, Michonne plucked up his notebook and thumbed through it. Most of it was mechanical observations on basic survival, how to purify water with charcoal briquettes and a sponge, but some of it was observations of people and places.
Finding him studying her and reading just how observant he was, Michonne put the notebook back on the wall between them and sighed heavily.
"What are you doing here?" She asked. "Why'd you come all this way through the woods to find us?"
"I don't know," he admitted softly. "I like to think it was because of Philip and the change in him I've been a witness to, but…truth is I never felt like I really belonged at Woodbury. I never really felt like I belonged anywhere, all my homes, apartments, bungalows, they were all just a series of hotel rooms to me. I never really personalized, any of them never really got to know my neighbours or settle in."
"You're a nomad," she said, teasing him though her tone was serious as always.
He smiled slightly. "Maybe." Inhaling deeply, he motioned to the church behind them. "I like it here though. It doesn't feel like a home, but like a place."
She blinked.
"Just a place," he repeated quietly.
"You don't belong here," she said.
At his almost wounded look, she went on quickly.
"In this world," she stated. "It's full of sinners and killers and you're neither."
Around them the night was filled with the sounds of frogs, croaking happily in the moist world left by the rain, getting their fill of the humidity of the night.
"I know," he whispered. "I'll be dead before winter comes."
Michonne blinked at the man. For some reason his resignation over his fate got to her, normally she'd be pissed that someone would just roll over and die like that, but something about the man, the way he looked, the way he spoke, it got to her, touched that gentle feminine spirit deep inside her.
Pushing to her feet, she glowered at him, before marching off, back down the wall in the direction she came from.
..-~-..
..-~-..
**Tyreese**
The Woods (Somewhere)
They were lost in the damned woods, in the middle of the night, with only a handful of bullets and a couple of weak assed guns.
So far his night was going fucking swimmingly.
At least they didn't have a hungry horde of undead at their heels, so that was one thing he enjoyed about being in the middle of the woods, cold and wet and accompanied by a limping, bitching woman.
Not that he had any negative feelings towards Andrea, but hearing about how they were lost every ten minutes was a fucking dream for him. All he wanted was to be warm and dry and safe and preferably to be inside some heavy assed walls with a couple of cans of cold beer and maybe a little female companionship (that wasn't bitching about the weather and the woods).
They had gone back the way they thought they'd come, but after what felt like an eternity of wandering, they didn't hit hell or the mall, so he was sure they were lost.
It wasn't until he began to smell a familiar scent in the fresh air of the aftermath of the rainstorm that he began to feel a small sense of worry creep up his spine.
But it wasn't the same.
Not that he was a smell connoisseur of dead things, but there was a slight difference between pure rot and the walking dead rot and this smelled like pure rot to him.
Carefully he kept on, Andrea limping behind him quietly.
The first corpse (actual dead, dead corpse) they came across, had been tacked up to the trunk of a tree with wire and hung there garishly, rotting for the world to see as a form of warning. In it's hands, tied to the corpse's wrists, was a sign that read 'minefield ahead'.
Tyreese felt immediately creeped out. Something wasn't right about that.
Andrea moved in to inspect the corpse with her upper lip curled.
"What do you think?" She asked him. "Cartoon antagonist or actual warning?"
"Both?" Tyreese suggested. "Let's go back the way we came."
"That's going be another half an hour in that direction that we know doesn't lead home," she argued. "Let's split left here and head that way." She took a step to the left.
With wide eyes, she grappled for something, grabbing hold of his arm as the leaves of the forest gave way beneath her feet and they toppled down into a deep pit dug into the earth.
Tyreese landed wrong, but it wasn't his bone he heard snapping. Winded, he gasped for air, struggling to get to his hands and knees.
Andrea groaned and began whining.
"My fucking leg," she growled, grasping at it.
"Did you rebreak it?"
"I think so."
Taking in the dirt walls of their pit, Tyreese struggled to his feet, trying to hop up and grab the edge, it was too high.
"Well," he began, "unless you can sprout wings from your back then we're going to die here. Just what this night needed."
"Oh God, it's bad! It's bad!" Andrea gasped, holding her leg with trembling hands.
Tyreese dropped to one knee at her side. "Just sit still, not much we can do now. Just hope a pile of walkers doesn't decide to drop in on us too. How many rounds you got left?"
With shaking hands, she counted out the bullets left in her gun and in her pocket. "Eight."
"Yeah, I got about twelve." He pulled his knees to his chest, leaning back against the dirt wall. "Goddamn vacation hotspot," he muttered, "done in by a hole in the goddamned earth like some third rate cartoon bullshit."
The Cajun Dialect
Attraper – To catch.