Carl's eye socket itched like nobody's business, but there was little that could be done about it out here. Michonne would have helped him clean it and apply some of that precious numbing antibiotic ointment, had she been home. But she was not. And he was distracted enough by that fact that he had neglected to do it himself.
He tugged a bit on his bandage, allowing the drag of it to scratch the itch a little. Unfortunately, as he knew would be the case, scratching only flared the itchiness even further. On top of that, his other eye was strained.
He stopped by a large tree threaded with heavy kudzu, looked all around himself with his weapon pointed, making certain that the area was clear of walkers, and then he fell to the forest floor, propping his back up against the tree.
He began to weep.
He cried not just for Michonne, but for everything that had happened to him, all that he had lost since the walkers. His mother, what his father had to do, what he had to to, his distance from every other person he'd met that was his age. His mistake costing Dale's life. His assault at the hands of that Claimer...
He felt so old and soiled.
He felt tainted by this world and he knew that it would never wash off. He'd never get to be that kid ever again, though he understood that it was necessary for his survival.
As Hershel and his family had repeated often, "We all got jobs to do."
But it did not stop him from lamenting the loss of a certain kind of happiness, one that he thought he'd never have again, one untempered by a near surety of its loss.
He was deep in his thoughts, tears drying on his cheek, when he heard the growl from his blind-side. He turned but it was too late. He felt the full-body-weight of a large walker topple him to the ground.
Carl managed to get some leverage beneath what was left of the walker's chin, but still, it eagerly snapped it's deadly teeth inches from his face and throat.
Carl struggled mightily to wedge his Berretta into the proper position for a headshot, but the walker was heavy, it's decomposing guts snagging the angular weapon.
That was when he felt the reverb of the impact. And the walker was stopped.
Enid stood over him with a large rock in her hand, now covered in walker brain sludge.
"You shouldn't be out here." she said.
"That's not your business." Carl said and he quickly got to his feet and started walking.
"It's my business if I see you doing something stupid that could get you and Michonne in much deeper trouble."
Carl walked faster.
"Carl." she husked. "Stop."
Carl stopped and turned to look at her.
"I'm wasting time."
"How do you think your dad is gonna feel knowing that both you and Michonne are in harm's way?"
"I don't care."
"-Bullshit. Also fuck you. I wish my parents still could worry about me. However prepared you think that you are, you're still smaller and weaker than Negan's people because you're just one kid. You know this."
Carl began to walk again.
"-A recently injured, depth-perceptive-hindered kid at that."
Carl stopped and dropped his head.
"I can't just sit around doing nothing! I never, -I never got to tell Michonne how much she means to me, -that even though I'll always love my mom, she's my mom too...and now, I may never get to."
Enid closed the space between them and reached out to embrace Carl.
He flinched a bit, turning the side with his missing eye away from her.
Enid grabbed his face and turned it to face her. Looking him full-on without any change in how she regarded what he now thought of as his ruined face.
"You will...but not like this. Let Jesus do his thing."
She leaned in to give him a comforting peck on the injured side of his face, before fully hugging him.
Jesus ran with the grace of a gazelle, using his parkour skills to his advantage, every seeming obstacle he used as a connecting boost to get to another point that much faster. He was ghostly silent as he went.
He was less than a mile away from where the map indicated Negan's homebase was located.
He heard voices and monkey-like, quickly scaled a nearby tree.
Several armed men passed below him, smoking, chattering, bullshitting about the goings on inside Negan's base.
"Dwight and Jay found Spam, man. It's a fucking treasure. A magical meat."
"This is nothing magic about the garbage parts of the pig processed into a canned loaf."
"You seriously talking shit about garbage parts in all this?"
"Yes! Those plantation fucks on a hill have real meat. Maybe we should be raising our own like them."
"Man, you know we got a system. And it works! Look how well we're doing. We don't need to farm or do shit except let others pay for our thinning out the walkers."
"Whatever man, you know he's psychotic. This shit ain't gonna work forever. Somebody is eventually gonna get pissed enough to come at us and do real damage. You seen what that black chick's group did. Wayne and his men were pieces of barbeque all over the damn road and they wiped out Sector 3. and the stopover."
"Yeah, and Negan knows that and he ain't worried about shit. He's got it under control, man."
"Remember what happened when them Treehouse fucks tried us?"
"-They came at us with a shitload of grenades and Molotov cocktails. Sacked three of our bases. But that shit was over once we got the leader's sister."
"He wore that wore smug fuck down and made him his bitch."
"That's what'll happen to these assholes. Like Negan says, we survive because we're the biggest swinging dicks. Ain't nobody got shit on us. Now, let's finish up so we can get back and eat some of that spam this fuckhead loves so much."
They divided up and began a more thorough sweep of the area. Jesus watched as they killed some walkers and tied up others for some purpose. He guessed they planned to use them as a living barrier, just like those women who took Maggie and Carol. They also gathered some fallen wood and set nasty traps.
Once they were done, Jesus took out the binoculars his group had salvaged from Maggie and Carol's captors and pointed them far ahead of where the men were headed.
His stomach dropped.
Negan's homebase was a damn fortress surrounded by walkers.
Michonne was escorted back to the women's quarters with some semblance of a plan beginning to form in her mind.
She didn't bother to share it with any of the other women, because she realized that any one of them could be a spy or actually in love with that egotistical louse. Even Joy could be baiting her. So, she decided to only file away what she saw the woman do.
There were a total of six women in the room, including herself. There was Helen who was the clear leader who stuck close to Aiko. Michonne got the impression that there was more than friendship going on there. They had a similar rapport to herself and Rick.
There was the brown woman, whom she guessed could possibly be Desi, with close-cropped pixie hair similar to Carol's, a long-haired brunette with a smattering of freckles on her face and one other blonde, this one of the dirty variety and when Joy got back, that would make seven of them.
There was no safe way to escape at this time, not without the possibility of falling into some kind of unknown trap. The fact that Negan seemed keen on making the women take him into their beds by twisting it into their own choice was useful. She was sure mind-games were his biggest weapon. Flexing and posturing as the top alpha, roughing up and/or killing those who get out of line. Keeping his people under his finger by keeping to his twisted codes.
The system here reminded her of certain animals. Obtaining his rivals' woman as some kind of sign of his continuing dominance. Keeping the other men who might challenge him afraid and in awe of him; betas underfoot by choice.
He could blame whatever sick shit he did on them not following his rules.
Michonne wasn't sure if Joy had seen her observe her swallowing that key. And she wasn't about to let her know that she knew.
She only wanted to keep a clear head, learn as much as she could about Negan and look for her chance.