A bit of Carol and Morgan's inner concerns and motivations are uncovered as the Wolves prepare to move on the ASZ.
Hook, Snare and Pit
"The wolf dreads the pit-fall, the hawk suspects the snare and the kite the covered hook." -Horace, ancient Roman poet
"I don't think I can take much more of this." Daryl sighed quietly from his place sitting on the basement floor leaning against the wall next to where Carol stood on watch at the front window.
"Do you need another pain pill?" Carol asked, looking down at him.
Rosita glanced at them from the back briefly, but then resumed her vigilant stare through the small knothole in the plywood.
They had been in the basement of the Armory for two days and nights, waiting. It was just before dawn of the second night and they were the only ones awake.
The eerie distant sounds of the rock music the Wolves used to "call" the walkers seeped in through the barriers. It had started at dusk and they'd decided that meant in the morning the invaders were planning on coming in, after the Zone had been cleared of the dead.
The rest of the group was sleeping, getting as much rest as possible before the battle sure to come.
"Naw—ain't that. It's just the waitin'" Daryl grumbled softly, shifting his crossbow off his lap to his side.
"Thought you'd be used to it—from hunting. Sitting up in a deer blind all day?" Carol asked.
"That ain't huntin'," Daryl grunted, "That's shootin' fish in a barrel while sittin' on your lazy ass drinking beer and tradin' lame ass jokes till you fall out of the tree."
"Aaand that pretty much sums up my dead husband." Carol smiled wryly and shook her head.
"He hunted?" Daryl scoffed, "Never heard him offer when we'as back at the first camp."
"No, that would've meant doing actual work...and not being there to make sure I didn't make any friends or talk to any men." Carol said matter of factly and Daryl grunted in agreement. It had only been about two years chronologically, but felt like at least a couple of lifetimes ago.
"Not many of us from back then left." Daryl looked around the room.
Carol realized they were all here together—Rick, Carl, Glenn, she and Daryl. Even Judith, as a part of Lori and Rick, had been with them since the start.
"Did you think, when all of this started, that any of us could make it?" Carol asked, curious.
"Honestly?" Daryl asked, raising an eyebrow. "Rick had his family to protect, n' I knew Glenn was fast on his feet, the rest of ya, not so much." and then he chuckled, "You protectin' Sophia and then bashin' old Ed's head in the next day gave me some hope though."
Carol pursed her lips at him and frowned, remembering the blind terror of that night, feeling helpless as the walkers overran the camp.
"You helped save us—I didn't do anything." she protested. Back then she hadn't known how.
"You put yourself between your little girl and the dead—saw it." Daryl said. "You took care of her...of them... best you could."
Carol felt herself starting to tear up and she looked away from Daryl's intense gaze and back out the window spy hole, thinking of all her girls.
"You have a little girl?" Sam's sleepy voice said softly from where he'd been bedded down near Carl.
Carol closed her eyes in a wince and sighed before returning to her watch.
"You're s'pposed to be sleepin' little man." Daryl admonished the boy quickly, leaning forward so he could meet Sam's eyes in the early morning gloom. "Gonna be a long day."
"I'm just going to be in here." Sam said dismissively, getting up and coming over to Daryl.
"Protecting Judith—you got your knife—gonna need you in here, buddy." Daryl said with an odd brusque gentleness.
A hint of a smile played at Carol's lips as she looked quickly at the two of them. Sam stood straighter, his hand going to the hilt of the knife in the scabbard at his belt.
"Can I get two? Like you?" Sam asked, pointing to the second smaller knife, the one that had been Beth's, which hung at Daryl's belt.
Daryl stared at the boy for a few beats before he gave him a crooked pained little smile and shook his head no before replying,
"Let's see how you do with the one you got first, okay?"
Sam nodded but frowned, clearly still thinking that more weapons would be better.
"I want to learn to shoot too." the boy said stoutly.
"Do what you're told today n' I'll teach you myself." Daryl promised, hoping they'd both still be around for him to fulfill it.
Sam's face lit up and he looked up at Carol to see if he could really believe what Daryl had said, as if he was asking her permission, as if she was the one responsible for him now, trying to set his hook into her heart.
She continued to look out the hole in the window barricade.
"Go on—back to sleep now." Daryl told the boy, covering for Carol's lack of a response.
Sam looked disappointed, but went back to his bedroll and lay down.
"Gonna have to sort that out, we make it outa here." Daryl said, for Carol's ears only.
Without looking at him, she sighed.
Morgan's journey to the Zone had been different than the rest. There came a day when the town he had adopted as his own was just... clear. He was the last man, living or dead in that part of King County.
He stood at the graves he had dug for his wife and son.
(We bury the ones we love and burn the rest...)
"I think I am done here. I think...I think...I'm ready now. I will always, always love you. I want to be with you..." He looked down at the pistol he held in his hand, tested its weight, balance, opened the chamber and checked to make sure it was fully loaded, snapped it closed and stared at the ground.
The cry of a hawk drew his head up. He looked across the road to the burnt out brick foundation he used as a charnel pit, the last of the smoking blackened corpses piled in a pyramid pyre.
Away with you.
He had painted those words on the outer wall himself, months ago, an admonition to the living and a prayer for the dead within.
The hawk circled lower, over his head, so close he could see its eyes, golden yellow and fierce. It gave its eerie cry again and then soared up and over the ruins across the street, heading north.
Away with you.
Morgan watched it go until it was too small to see and then turned back to the graves.
"Still bossing me around?" he shook his head, smiling through his tears and touched the shoulder of the larger cross, running his hand along it in a caress. Returning the gun to its holster he reached over and removed the key chain rabbit's foot from the nail on Dwayne's marker and pocketed it.
He left three days later, heading north: the direction that Rick and his people had taken when they'd left him.
"All life is precious." Morgan said.
They were in Aaron's house, the pre-meeting before the big Council gathering at Deanna's. Sitting around the dining table with Carol's gift basket of muffins and mugs filled from pots of tea and coffee gave the illusion they were just sharing brunch, but in reality they were talking life and death; preparations for the wolf at the gate they all knew was coming.
Carol and Daryl, Eric and Aaron were asking him about the things Rick, Michonne and Carl had told them, the ways he'd protected himself and cleared the town he'd been in.
"All life is precious." Morgan said again.
"Even the lives of the people who are trying to exterminate us?" Carol asked.
"We can protect ourselves without taking lives." Morgan said patiently.
Carol shook her head at him, dismayed by what she saw as his naiveté; that same streak of fatal optimism in the goodness of man that had been in Tyreese. She looked at the others for confirmation of her frustration.
"Okay. How, Ghandi?" Daryl asked tersely.
Leave it to Daryl to cut to the chase.
"Make it more trouble to get at us than it's worth it for them. Lethal force isn't necessary" Morgan said.
"Rick said you had that whole town center booby-trapped." Daryl gave the other man a dead pan look of disbelief. "Had pit-falls, trip wires with bloody axes at the end of 'em—that you was sniping at them from the roof—sounds pretty lethal to me."
"That isn't me anymore." Morgan said in that same maddeningly patient tone.
"Well, that's the you we need." Aaron said emphatically. "They come in, they're coming for blood. They'll kill every man, woman and child—brutally—and they'll enjoy doing it. Is that what you want? For them to murder Carl? Judith?"
Morgan's face remained passive, resisting the snare of responsibility for these people, but his right eye twitched.
"We all have to choose, Morgan. All life may be precious, but some lives have to mean more to us than others." Eric said sagely.
Morgan's breathing began to quicken and then he very deliberately took several deep breaths to center himself.
Eric and Carol exchanged a look and he gave her a little, almost imperceptible, nod.
"You helped Rick, Morgan." Carol said evenly, choosing her words carefully.
"I did." Morgan agreed softly.
"And Aaron and Daryl." Carol said.
Morgan looked over at the two men and nodded.
"That makes you one of us." Carol told him. "Part of this community." And then she leaned across the table and stared him down until she had his undivided attention.
Morgan took another deep breath and let it out slowly. He had been alone for so long, had grown comfortable with it, knew his task and did it well...but wasn't this why he had left that empty place looking for Rick Grimes? To be part of something again? To rejoin the living?
"Help us." Carol said, those expressive eyes of hers boring into him.
"Help you kill people—like Rick did the night I got here?" Morgan asked. That unresolved tension had kept an invisible wall between him and the man he had met so long ago in King County.
"We're not talking about going out there and hunting them down." Aaron said. "Help us plan defenses for when they come after us. You know they will."
"Defenses..." Morgan let the word roll around in his mouth, testing it.
The rest of the group waited, some more patiently than others. Daryl stroked his chin whiskers and pushed his thumbnail against his lower lip, glaring at Morgan until Carol reached over and took his other fisted hand in hers under the table, calming him.
Morgan tapped his fingers on the wooden surface of the table in an irregular rhythm, frowning to himself as he looked off into the distance, seeming to be listening for something only he could hear. His eye landed on a framed photograph of Aaron and Eric which was displayed on the wall along with dozens of license plates.
The men were standing in a forested landscape, a river or lake behind them. Eric was holding out his leather protected forearm, upon which was perched a large magnificent bird; Aaron looking on proudly from beside him.
Morgan stood and went over to the photo, looking at it intently.
"I had that with me—it's one of my favorite pictures." Aaron explained. "Eric volunteered at the Potomac Raptor Center—that was a hawk he helped rehab and was releasing back into the wild that day."
The bird looked exactly like the one that had started him on the journey that had led him to this place.
Morgan turned back to the table and looked at them each in turn and then slowly nodded.
"I'll need a crew."
The last of the group of rough looking men and a few women dropped to the ground inside the walls of the ASZ and assembled around their leader, awaiting instructions. Most held hand weapons, machetes, knives and other blades,and long handled hammers. One or two had compound bows and a few carried guns. All wore the distinctive "W" carved into their foreheads.
"How many head you figure we lost?" the tall blonde man at the front of the group asked the man next to him.
"At least twenty—had some kick-asses in here, that's for sure." the heavyset man with a steel gray flat top buzz cut said, sucking on his teeth. He was displeased that the ASZ residents had been able to take out so many of the walkers he had so carefully prepared. He hoped the tally of the Zone casualties would even out the numbers.
"Have to go house to house, flush 'em out." another man, one of the ones Morgan had encountered in the woods, the dark haired one he'd spoken to, said with a big smile, brandishing an axe and resting it on his shoulder.
"Heart shots—and leave the arms and legs on them—we need more ambulatory." the blonde man ordered.
"Am-bu-la-tor-ree?" the axe man asked quizzically.
"Walking." the buzz cut said impatiently.
"Shit—why din't you just say that then, Alex?" Axe man grunted derisively.
Before he could turn away or raise the weapon he held, the big blonde's fist slammed into his gut and when he bent forward in pain, the beat down continued. Boss man put his hands together in a double fist and whammed his victim so hard between his shoulder blades that he was laid out onto the ground.
"Who am I?" the blonde man said in a tight low voice of command.
"Lu-lupus Dei..." the axe man groaned, rolling into a tight ball of pain.
"That's right—you are the Pack. I am your God. Alexander Davidson was a weak shell that I devoured to become. We are Wolves!"
"We are Wolves..." the man on the ground choked out.
The man who had been Davidson, banished from the ASZ eighteen months ago, nodded in satisfaction and turned to the rest of his Pack who were riveted to the spectacle of discipline that had just been doled out. As one they repeated the chant:
"We are Wolves!"
"We are Wolves!"
"We are Wolves!"
Their leader smiled in satisfaction and then held up his hand to silence them and give the last instructions to his pack for the assault on the compound.
"You find the queen bitch that runs this place still alive, you bring her to me, understand?" the Lupus Dei said, his voice without mercy. "Name's Monroe, Deanna Monroe."
Notes:
Alexander Davidson was one of the founders of the ASZ, banished along with 2 others for his bad acts early on, which is referenced both in the comics and on the TV show by Deanna in her interview with Rick and by name by Aaron in a conversation with Daryl.
Spirit Guides/Animal Totems: may "work by creating synchronicities to bring you greater awareness, sending people into your life or arranging for you to be in the right place at the right time to witness an unrelated event that provides revelations about your own experiences."
Carol has a Kite as her guide: (a medium sized bird of prey with a brown to grayish-white head) "responds with grace and gentleness...brings about truths and wisdom while keeping watery emotions in balance and will teach how to skim the surface of knowledge to collect what you need for the moment. Observe carefully what is around and resources will appear...able to bring great darkness into the light, being unafraid to fly, caring for and helping others, a spiritual messenger, inner and outer grace, a connection to death, the shadows and the underworld."
Morgan has a Hawk: "the messenger of the Great Spirit, the protector and the visionary, delivering omens, spirit messages and blessings in order that you may see the larger picture; holds the key to higher levels of consciousness."
Davidson has a Wolf: "... death and rebirth, facing death with dignity and courage, guidance in dreams and meditations, instinct linked with intelligence, social and family values, skill in protection of self and family, the outwitting of enemies, the ability to pass unseen and the taking advantage of change."
Sources
arkive and spiritwalkministry