The Night Before

It was still daylight when the convoy started up McAllister Mountain. Joaquin had stopped at the roadblock to send a message to Ashton about bringing visitors in. The town had rooms prepared for some and the rest would go up and stay on the mountain. The Woodbury group stayed in town where they were met by smiling faces and a hot meal. Joaquin led the convoy up the hill as darkness began to fall. Ashton, his wife Jo, Emily, and their children were at the house waiting for them.

Ashton opened the gate while his son Jonathan kept watch as they unpacked just their run bags. Tyreese opened the door to the house and helped everyone in. Carol stayed outside in the cool air: she was feeling disoriented and dizzy. The odd feeling passed in a few seconds but Carol had the oddest notion that something important had happened. Ashton and Jonathan closed the gate carefully and followed them in. Ashton introduced his line of McAllisters starting with himself, his wife Jo, his sister Emily, his twenty year old son Jonathan, his sixteen year old daughter Ariel, and his thirteen year old niece Arya. Carol introduced herself, Andrea, Hershel, Maggie, Glenn, and Beth. Then she introduced Rick, Carl, and Judith. She reminded them that Michonne and Daryl were keeping watch over the prison tonight. Everybody had already met Tyreese and Joaquin so they could get on with dinner. Jo and Emily had made lasagna and fresh bread. The always giving Sam and Dave had shown up today with blackberry cobbler and a bottle of their best scotch whiskey. That made it an official welcome home party.

Everyone ate too much, a few drank a little too much, and gradually the groups began to form. Jonathan, Beth, Ariel, Carl, and Arya were in one corner with Canary. Rick, Ashton, Joaquin, Hershel, Tyreese, and Glenn talked at the long dining table. Carol, Andrea, Emily, Jo, and Maggie were in the kitchen with Judith. Jo asked, "Well, who gets the barn?" and she laughed at Carol's confused face. "Did Ashton not explain about the barn?" Jo turned to her husband and shook her head in mock indignation. She explained that Nancy had the barn renovated when she redid the house. It looks like a barn on the outside but inside it's a small house. There is a kitchen, bath, bedroom, and a living area downstairs and two bedrooms and a bath upstairs. It needs some work, the solar panels and drywall are stored inside but it could be livable with some work. The water is hooked up, the bathroom works, it has been insulated, but the dry wall isn't up. Maggie smiled; she knew just the man and woman who could turn a barn into a home.

The groups formed again, Beth and Jonathan separated from the others and talked about being a teenager when all at once everything went to shit. Carl and Ariel compared weapons of choice and Arya admired Carl while petting Canary.

The men had spent an hour looking at Joaquin's sketch of the prison and developing a battle plan. Carol was watching them plan and had having that odd feeling again. She had spent most of her life expecting men to make the critical decisions in life; the little woman was to be silent and submissive but something didn't feel right here. She left the group of women and moved over to see the plan and Andrea quietly followed her and Emily followed Andrea. Joaquin used the map to show the plan. They were going to gather their forces on opposite sides of the prison, use explosives to make a pathway and storm from both sides. Carol stared at the map while horrifying images of the battle appeared in her mind. She saw the Governor retreating into the prison when the fences were shot down. His men formed a perimeter with the prison behind them. The attacking forces were never able to break through the line and when the first wave was killed by the Governor's men the rest would turn and run to be hunted down later. Carol saw Daryl and Rick heads on pikes at the gates of the prison. She staggered away from the table and Andrea caught her and put her in a chair. Carol suddenly knew what had happened was her first visitation of the "sight". She didn't understand it but she trusted it. Carol took a minute to process what she had seen. She could fix this.

Carol put the map/sketch in front of her. She said, "This will not work, and I will tell you why. These men you are facing have been trained as soldiers and they will fall back and set up a defensive perimeter. The field will be muddy and you will be slower than you think moving in. The Governor will retreat inside the prison and you will never get close to him. Your men are good fighters but they will be slaughtered if you go with this plan.

Joaquin was shocked to have the plan decisively dismissed by Carol. Ashton had been watching Carol closely since she had reacted so strongly to the battle plan. Grandma Nancy had told him one time that only one woman at a time had the "sight" at a time. Her mother Lydia Coulter had lived to be an old woman and Nancy had gotten it after Lydia passed. Grandma Nancy had believed that Carol would get it after she passed. What he did know was that no McAllister man would go to battle against the advice of a "sighted' woman. Call it superstition if you want to, he and his son would not be joining the fray if Carol didn't like the plan and he told Joaquin and Rick that speaking as decisively.

Joaquin was a little peeved when he asked Carol, "Well, if this isn't going to work, what would you do differently?" Carol looked at the men at the table; they were good men who had suffered through these terrible times and had done some things that they had regretted later. They were still good men; they had no acquaintance with evil. She knew evil; she had married it, slept with it, and bore a child with it. Evil finds joy in hurting others, delights in destroying, and gives place to their perverted appetites at every opportunity. The Governor and his men were evil, and the only way to defeat them was to let their evil desires control them.

Carol outlined her plan which came to her quite easily as she thought about the nature of evil. The reaction of everyone man but Ashton was an absolute no at first and he quailed at the plan too. Andrea spoke up, "It will work, I know him, and this will work". Joaquin thought it was just theater and wouldn't work. Rick thought it was too risky, and Carol replied, "We have to be precise on timing and everyone has to carry out only their part. Some of our people will be hurt and some might die. We will need medical people there. We need to get some equipment in place, but this will work. We have to wait at least a day to let the ground dry up around the prison and get everybody ready. But understand this, you can take no prisoners, these are evil men and you must kill them all."

Rick agreed to the plan, Ashton accepted it for the McAllister clan who would soon learn that Nancy McAllister's oldest granddaughter had the sight and who had come up with a hell of a plan. Joaquin reluctantly accepted the plan which was basically his plan with one great exception.

Joaquin managed to get a few words with Andrea after that. They had talked for hours on the way to pick the others up and on through the mountains. He liked her, she had been forthright in telling him that she had been involved with the Governor but had managed to escape from Woodbury. He had shared that he lost his wife and children to walkers. His wife had gone to the elementary school to pick their children up and he was on his way home when they were attacked. He used his service firearm to put them down. He had been working on a project near here and he returned to the mountains to lead the remnant under his command. Beth gave Andrea a thumbs up when she saw Andrea and Joaquin talking; Andrea wished everything was really that simple.

The McAllisters and Joaquin made their departure. Thunderstorms were coming in from the west. Rick and Carol walked them out with Carl and Canary trailing behind. They stood at the gate watching the approaching storm. Lightning would briefly illuminate the surrounding mountains and rumble of thunder stirred the visitors to take their leave.

Everyone needed rest. Carol offered Hershel her bedroom but he said that he would take one of the couches and Tyreese took the other. Rick and Carl took one bedroom, Maggie and Glenn and Andrea and Beth took the other two. Carol would keep Judith with her tonight.

The approaching thunderstorm and exhaustion drove them all to their rooms. The storm seemed to center right over the house and the thunder rolled off the mountain like cannon fire. The big house was full and Carol thought that Nancy McAllister would be happy that her home sheltered so many people from all sorts of storms tonight. Judith slept soundly in her portable crib and Carol wondered what tomorrow would bring.

Daryl and Michonne had stayed in the woods until darkness came. There was always an off chance that a roving patrol would decide to check out the barn. Walkers were a problem; if the Governor's men found dead walkers around they would start looking for who had killed them. They ate in the woods and hid the MRE trash under a rock. At dusk they went back to the barn to sleep. Daryl took first watch while Michonne tried to sleep. Thunderstorms soon hit, one after another. It was soon cold and wet in the leaky barn. Daryl had not allowed himself to think much about the night before. It was too distracting from trying not to be eaten by walkers and killed by the enemy, but now he allowed to remember how it had felt to wake up in the middle of the night and know that Carol was lying close to him, he had put his arm around her and moved closer her in the big bed. She had woken up and cuddled closer and … Michonne's shaky voice interrupted a damn good sure enough real memory, "Daryl". "What is it, Woman?" Daryl suddenly remembered that he had occasionally called her "Woman" because it really pissed her off. Not too often though because pissing off Michonne too often might lead to missing body parts. "I think I hear rats" Michonne whispered, "May I move over to where you are?" She moved before he gave permission and she settled in close to him. "Does that mean my Nubian princess that you can face a herd of walkers and a horde of the enemy without blinking but need me to keep rats away?" Daryl teased. "Shut the hell up and keep your man parts to yourself, " Michonne replied sounding a lot more like herself. "You keep your woman parts to yourself," Daryl answered back and then remembered dancing the waltz with Michonne in the prison when he was learning how to dance. "I'll keep the rats at bay since you taught me how to dance and all". Her voice warmed, "So you remembered stepping on my feet." "I remember the lessons, but I can't remember why I was learning to dance". Michonne sang, "At last my love has come along", she kept her voice very soft but it had the power to allow Daryl to remember dancing with Carol to that song. Carol had been wearing a dress and jewelry that glittered at her ears. The earrings were blue like her shining eyes that night, and he remembered walking her back to the room and …..Michonne's voice interrupted again, "Did you remember that song?" He squeezed her hand and quickly let it go, "Yeah, I did but I liked the Etta James version better. Get some sleep, my friend. I am on rat patrol". Michonne soon fell asleep and Daryl kept watch for rats while he remembered the night he danced with Carol and the night before. Maybe losing your memories for a while wasn't such a terrible thing after all, when they came back one by one you wanted to grab them and hold them close to you so that you would never lose them again.

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