Because this is a short chapter I'm going to upload two tonight, because you know what? I'm the author and I can do what I want with this. Plus I have, like, fifty chapters I need to post before the week is out, so...Merry Christmas, I guess. Happy Chanukah and may your Kwanza be filled with Kwanza type things...and a shout out to all my druid and pagan friends with a very bright and mystical Yule! Did I miss one? My apologies if I did.
Chapter Thirty-Six: Marinette-Bwa-Chech II
**Carol**
As the men were distracted by pushing the Lieutenant and the others into the forest, she quickly tucked the small knife the Lieutenant had given her into her bra cup, under her breast where the padding concealed it best.
Going to the window, she watched as the men were marched into the woods, exchanging a worried glance with Michonne who also watched grimly at the window in the back.
Scrambling back from the window, she hurried to the driver's side and tried to climb out, the rat faced man from earlier pushing her back inside roughly.
"Ah-ah, little lady, just be good and things'll go a lot smoother for everyone."
"What are you going to do with them?" She asked, knowing what was going to happen, but hoping it wasn't true.
"Just shut your face, bitch," another man snarled, "before I fill that hole with something."
"Something, hey, Billy?" The greasy man asked, grabbing his crotch and laughing.
"Shut up, Ingram!" Billy growled.
Casting a worried look to Michonne who was glowering at the men with narrowed eyes, Carol pulled back from the driver's side again.
Any man who came at her was going to get a knife to the side, she didn't care if he killed her, they weren't going to touch her.
Mind drawing an inconvenient blank in the face of reality, Carol drew herself into a ball and eyed the men who lingered outside the SUV. They all seemed casual about the ordeal, a few lighting cigarettes, a few eyeing her and Michonne with eager eyes.
One, however, stuck out to her.
He sat on the hood of the other SUV smoking alone, he didn't seem to take much interest in her or Michonne, and he didn't seem to take much interest in anything outside of his cigarette. But he seemed different than the others, not as eager to get at the women, not as excited about the men being marched off. He looked a little more classy then the backwoods men who seemed to have accosted them, less like trailer trash from Arkansas and more like a Milton Mamet type, only a little more rugged.
That was when she took in the way he held his cigarette, pinched close at the mouth.
She didn't think it was a conventional tobacco cigarette at all.
Carol shook her head. It's not important, she scolded herself.
For the first time since Sophia went missing, she said a quick prayer, hoping the Lieutenant and the others managed to somehow avoid being executed in the woods. It wasn't the right sort of end for any of the men, it wasn't right for anyone.
As the man on the hood shifted forward, she spied something silver fall out from around his neck and she recognized it as the same sort of ID tag the Lieutenant wore.
He was military.
After about ten nerve-wracking minutes of waiting to hear the shots ring out, Carol began to get anxious. Was she supposed to hear them?
The men outside the SUV began to get antsy to, shifting on their feet, a few of them moving closer to the woods cautiously.
Glancing over to Michonne, she found the woman eyeing the men as most of them moved towards the woods slowly, one by one.
"Hey, Pete!" One of them shouted into the forest. "Let's haul ass, huh?"
After a moment someone shouted back.
"Give me a few goddamned minutes, dipshit! Jesus!"
Sticking her feet onto the floor of the backseat, Carol tried to push herself up to see the woods better, her boot kicking something loose from under the passenger seat.
Glancing down, she spied a screwdriver, about seven inches long, which had been somehow shoved under the mat and then jammed under the seat.
She looked over at Michonne and saw the woman had seen it as well.
Checking on the men outside the SUV, specifically the one holding the gun on them at open door, she found him, like all the others, distracted by the woods, still curious about the men who had gone into them.
Slowly removing her over shirt, she dropped it onto the floor over the screwdriver and cautiously bent down to pick it up again, screwdriver and everything.
Still keeping one eye on the multitude of men outside the vehicle, she handed the shirt over to Michonne who shook it out, out of sight of the men and put it on, the screwdriver somewhere at her knees.
Carol jumped a little in surprise as two shots suddenly rang out in the woods.
She bowed her head in the brief moment of silence that followed.
"We've got a runner!" Pete shouted from the woods as a couple more shots rang out.
As a good portion of the men set off for the woods on the chase, Carol glanced over at Michonne and found her taking a quick head count of the remaining men as three of them left behind started towards the SUV.
She suddenly wished she had kept the screwdriver, as one of the men pushed aside their guard and began climbing in for them.
Michonne leapt into action, driving the screwdriver into his temple and Carol pulled the pistol from his hand in the same motion. She gave him a shot for good measure, before using both feet to kick him out of the door, shooting another man in the chest and dropping him, the last man standing, the military man from the other SUV stuck his hands up quickly, dropping his rifle.
She shouted, "on your knees! Down!"
Holding the pistol on him, she waited for Michonne to climb out of the back of the SUV and join her, taking that moment of confusion to quickly scan the three vehicles for a better weapon than a screwdriver.
Carol heard more shots coming from the woods, but refused to take her eyes off the man before her.
"I don't want trouble," the man said. "Just let me walk."
When he spoke it was a chemical purr, something raspy and dark, unlike anything Carol had ever heard come from a man. It actually scared her, just the sound of it.
"Stay down!" She commanded, using the tone she used with Sophia when she used to misbehave. Not Ed's unnecessary shouting, but that tone only a mother could use to scold.
Michonne, finding her sword tucked into the Humvee, joined her again.
"We should go," she said, raising her sword to finish the military man off.
"Don't," Carol said. "He's coming with us."
Michonne frowned.
"We need more information on these men," she explained.
Hopping off, Michonne began to tear through the vehicles for something to tie him with as Carol kept her pistol on the man.
"I joined with them in Jackson," he explained, hands on the back of his head. "I'm not like them. I swear."
She didn't say anything, just kept her gun on him. If he moved, she wouldn't hesitate.
The gunshots had stopped and with Michonne still tearing through vehicles, Carol decided they couldn't waste time to see who won the fight, so she eyed the man's head for a good spot and then used the handle of her pistol to knock him in the temple, dropping him onto the ground.
She didn't actually think that would have worked so easily.
"Michonne!" She shouted as she kneeled down to make sure he was still alive. "Help me load him!"
The two women dragged the prisoner over to their SUV and fumbled loading him in the backseat, before Carol jumped in and sat on him, pistol trained on his face in case he woke up, while Michonne put the vehicle into drive and tore out of the area on the road.
"We're closer to the other group, aren't we?" Michonne asked as she turned and twisted down roads in effort to lose anyone who may be trailing them. "Should we go there or back to the convent?"
Carol eyed the man she sat on, he was bleeding a lot from his temple. "He's our prisoner," she said. "We'll take him to the prison, safer that way. But we'll stop at the convent to get back up first, quickly. Hand me that shirt," she said.
Michonne, driving wildly enough, managed to tear off the over shirt Carol had given her and toss it back at her.
Carol used the small knife the Lieutenant had given her to cut the shirt into strips enough to tie the man's hands and legs up tightly. She used the rest to bandage his head, all while Michonne drove them wildly down the back roads, looking for a back way home.
Finally they found the highway and Michonne sped them towards the convent's cattle trail, eyes flashing now and then to the rear view to check for followers, but there was no one.
..-~-..
..-~-..
The cattle trail seemed like it would never come as they drove up it and skidded to a halt at the wall, where Merle and Rick were already hopping down to approach them.
"We have a prisoner!" Carol shouted. "He's out cold, we're taking him to the prison, come with us. Armed!"
Turning to Sister Joan on the way, Rick caught her rifle as she tossed it down to him and Merle, already holding his pistol joined.
Without time for anything else, waiting for Rick and Merle to hop in, Michonne put the SUV into reverse and gunned it back down the trail backwards, calmly eyeing the road behind with her arm draped across the passenger seat.
"What happened?" Rick demanded.
"We were driving and they ambushed us looking for Cash," Carol explained, still sitting on the prisoner. "They took the men into the woods and we got loose, took a prisoner and just drove."
"Are they dead?" Merle demanded.
"I don't know whose dead," Carol explained. "We just hit the road first chance we had."
She suddenly felt cowardly. If the roles were reversed the Lieutenant and Glenn would both wait and look for them, but…things got so confusing and maybe she made the wrong call.
..-~-..
..-~-..
By the time they hit the highway again, Daryl had caught up with them on his bike, following their vehicle out onto the blacktop, as Michonne pulled a bootlegger turn and headed for the prison.
"Christ, woman," Merle remarked, gripping the dash with his good hand, dropping his pistol to do so.
Eyeing Daryl out of the back window, Carol felt herself calm, the adrenaline still carrying her on its crested wave, but the reality hadn't really sunk in yet. It was beginning to.
Beneath her the man groaned in pain as he began to rouse.
Carol stuck the pistol in his face so it was the first thing he saw, but kept it far enough away from him to avoid having him knock it out of her hands.
"Don't move," she warned him. "Just stay still."
He either listened to her or fell back into unconsciousness.
She waited for a moment, before reaching for the tag she thought she saw earlier and pulled it out from under his shirt.
There wasn't much she understood about it, but she knew the symbol of the cross and staff of mercury enough to know he wasn't regular military but some kind of medic and figuring that he wasn't an actual Saint she assumed his last name was St. James.
Inside the prison, they locked him up in a cell and waited to figure things out before deciding what to do with him.
Rick, pacing before the cell asked Carol and Michonne a million questions, before Carol grew restless with his questions.
"We just left! They could still be back there! I don't know…we don't know what happened in those woods, Rick!" She shouted.
Daryl moved to stand beside her, hand on her back, crossbow in his other.
"We'll find them," he assured her. "Ain't nothing can kill that Cajun."
"He's a goddamned cat with nine lives," Merle added.
Rick sighed. "Alright, Merle, you take Daryl and get a few more of our people to go with you. Michonne can you remember where they took you?"
She nodded. "I think so."
"I want to go," Carol said.
"Carol, I want you here when that man wakes up," Rick said. "You captured him, you're in charge of him."
"What about you?" She asked him as the others took off.
"I'm going to give you some back up." He said.
Carol, not wanting to miss a chance, raced after the others, catching them in the yard.
She called out to Daryl, who turned and waited for her, catching her as she launched herself at him.
"I'm sorry," she said to him. "They just took him and I ran—"
"It's alright," he said. "We'll get them back, they can't be gone." He shifted on his feet, before leaning in and kissing her. "You did good."
"Oh God, Grace—"
"It's alright," he stated firmly. "We'll find them. They'll be just fine."
Carol nodded, still feeling like she was going to fall apart. "He gave me his knife…I took his weapon, he just gave it to me and—"
"He does that," Daryl cut her off. "I'll be back in a bit with them."
She didn't think she could handle it if he came back dragging corpses with him, it was hard enough losing people before, but this…she couldn't take another death. Not now, not with this new family, not with Glenn or the Lieutenant or even that poor young man with the green eyes and freckles. Feeling sick to her stomach with worry and fear, she touched a hand to it and stepped away, watching him go.
itsi3 - Well if you insist...I guess I should at least get to the end of this story series.
missdaryldixon - Oh, Carol is going to kick ass my friend...she will.
Yazzy x - Daryl said it best when he said the Lt. has a silver horseshoe shoved up his ass...I'm sure things will be good. Or someone will die, either way.
Claire Randall Fraser - Anyone else wouldn't take that threat seriously, but as I'm quite ticklish, I suppose I should continue.
DarylDixon'sLover - Thanks.
Brazen Hussy - And as for you, young lady, Merle is going to be present, but no chapter from his POV in the near future, but soon there will be much devoted to him...he needs to find his lady, you know. ^_^
Surplus Imagination - Ugh, I hate chapters that do things like take me places. ^_^ And I can't believe you didn't find anything on South Amnesia, I'd tell you where I got the reference, but I can't remember. *two drums and a cymbal crash to the floor* Yes, that was a long way for a little bit.
Merle's Right Hand - Damn, I have to go and catch up on your fanfics...good reminder, good reminder.
GG - That catfish was good eatin'. And yes, it's sad what these kids know about music and history. Sad.