Hey, guys! Well, this one's a bit of a longer one than the last couple just because I was hoping to fit in quite a bit. Hopefully you enjoy it. Thank you guys for your reviews, they really brighten my day! Also, today's chapter title is "Little Black Submarines" by The Black Keys, it's pretty cool. Let me know what you think!
22. Little Black Submarines
Abraham called the group to a halt near a derelict train tower. Several yards in the lead, Mason and Glenn exchanged a glance.
"It's barely noon," he said.
"I don't give a monkey's left nut," Abraham replied. "None of us has slept more than a couple hours straight since we went all Casey Jones. This place looks safe. We need to rest."
Glenn looked about to argue, and Mason didn't blame him. With each step, the urgency grew. Maggie, Sasha and Bob were somewhere ahead of them, maybe not even that far at all. And if they were out there, then the rest of their family could be, too.
Abraham spoke before either of them could. "I get it. You have to find her. But Rosita and me, we got a mission, too, and that is keeping Eugene alive, getting him to Washington and saving the whole damn world. So we're going in that tower, and we're going now."
Mason bristled at the order, but before she could spit out a retort a snarling made them all look up.
A walker lurked on the second level of the tower, alerted by the noise.
"Oh, crap," Eugene said, seconds before the walker walked right off the ledge.
Heart clenching with sudden fear, Mason rushed toward him but Abraham beat her there, pushing Eugene out of the way and knocking Tara to the ground in the process. The air hissed through her teeth as she hit the ground, cuffing her knee against the train tracks. Walker blood splattered them all.
Mason knelt by Tara's side. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," she grunted, eyes squeezed shut with pain.
Mason shared a worried glance with Rosita, then slipped an arm around Tara's waist. "C'mon, let's get you up. Can you put pressure on it?"
"Maybe in a second. The pain'll fade, I'll be okay." Mason steadied her as she hopped on one foot, obviously trying to downplay how badly it hurt.
"Hey, are you okay?" Glenn asked. "Do you want to stop, or keep going?"
"No, keep going, I'm fine."
Mason frowned. "If you're not-"
"No, really, I'm okay."
Glenn nodded, as if it wasn't plain she was putting on a brave face, and turned to Abraham. "Look, if she can keep going, we all can keep going."
But Abraham's eyes were glinting like steel, the way they did when he didn't plan on conceding any time soon.
"Or," Glenn said, "you guys can stay here. You don't need us, we don't need you. It's okay."
For some reason, this opened a pit of anxiety in Mason's stomach. She glanced instinctively at Eugene to find him looking back at her, with the same tension in his eyes.
Rosita leveled Glenn with a searing glare. "Wow, you're an ass. She will do whatever you say, because she thinks she owes you. Man up. Stay here for a few hours."
Through all of this, Tara kept her eyes downcast.
After a moment, Glenn spoke again to Abraham. "You just care about keeping Eugene safe, right? That's the only reason you want to stop? Then we go until sundown, I give Eugene my riot gear, right here, right now, everybody wins."
"Except Tara," Rosita snapped.
"You're not her mama," Abraham said. It was clear he was weighing Glenn's words, glancing from him to Eugene and back again. Finally, he looked at Tara.
"She says she can walk, she can walk. You all got yourselves a deal."
Mason kept close to Tara as the group continued, watching to make sure she didn't stumble or fall behind. Eugene stayed close, too, unusually silent. She was tempted to tease him about the riot gear, about how official he looked in it, just to break the tension. Instead she watched their surroundings for walkers and ignored her growing unease.
It was a few hours later when they found the train tunnel, and the writing on the cement just outside of it.
GLENN GO TO TERMINUS
MAGGIE SASHA BOB
Glenn touched his finger to the walker blood it was written in. The hope rolling off of him was almost palpable.
"We're gaining on them. Blood's still wet."
"We sure as Shinola can't go up and over," Abraham said, nodding to the rocky, vine-tangled cliff face above.
Everyone gathered at the mouth of the tunnel, hesitating when a distant cacophony echoed from it.
"How 'bout around?"
"No," Glenn said. "That'd take a day, maybe more. If Maggie went through, I'm going through. They're close."
"That there is a long, dark tunnel full of reanimated corpses," Abraham said. "I don't have full-on certainty that I can get Eugene through there alive."
Mason swallowed, her fingers clenching reflexively around the moon rock.
"My recommendation would be take the day, make the detour and play it safe, but I know you're not gonna do that. So this is where we've gotta part ways."
No.
She was surprised by the force behind the mental protest, surprised by the distress. Eugene looked at her, his eyes full of a pain she felt too cleanly cut through her own chest.
"I'm sorry," Abraham said, setting Glenn's backpack at his feet. "You're on your own."
"No, you're not," Tara said, taking her place at Glenn's side.
Mason knew this was the part where she was supposed to chime in, make her own declaration that Glenn would not be traveling alone, but she couldn't tear her gaze from the anguish in Eugene's.
She was half-aware that Abraham had dug some of the rations from his own pack and was handing them to Glenn.
"No, no, no. Those are yours," Glenn protested. "You guys will need them for your trip."
"You will, too."
Reluctantly, Glenn took them. "Thank you."
Fuck. Fuck.
Panic fluttered in her chest. These were the last minutes she would spend with Eugene, with Abraham and Rosita. She might not ever see them again. She had let herself get attached, just like always.
We have to keep the family together!
Frantically she began searching the ground. She didn't have time to find a perfect one, but she tried to find one as similar to hers as possible.
When she finally found it, she held her hand out to Eugene. "Here."
He blinked, confused, until she dropped the rock into his palm.
When he looked at her, a blush crept into her cheeks. "Well, you know… You won that vampire/werewolf debate, so… I owe you."
Quietly, he replied, "Thank you."
During their exchange, Abraham had finished divvying up the supplies. Glenn hefted the backpack over his shoulders.
"Sorry I hit you in the face," he said.
Abraham grinned. "I'm not," he said, then shrugged. "I like to fight."
In spite of her turmoil, Mason smiled. It wasn't just Eugene she would miss.
Rosita came over to say her goodbyes.
"Good luck," she told Glenn.
"Don't let him boss you around," she told Tara.
"Marvel is one hundred percent superior," she told Mason.
Which left Eugene, who stood there for a moment like he couldn't figure out what to say. His eyes never left Mason's. She wanted to hug him goodbye but something held her back. Finally, he seemed to gather himself.
"You're all, uh, good people. I wish you all the best in your travels."
He paused, squared his shoulders and continued.
"Tara, Mason… I have to say that you are both seriously hot."
This time it wasn't just her cheeks that flooded with heat, it was her whole damn face.
"Yeah, we like girls," Tara said, and Mason felt an odd prickle of irritation, though she couldn't say why.
Eugene nodded. "I'm well aware of that."
Tara smiled. Glenn chuckled behind them. And Mason rolled her eyes in a last ditch effort to disguise her sudden shyness.
"Say you get into trouble in there," Abraham said, "you turn around. We're doubling back to the first road we crossed. Maybe you find us before we find the right ride."
"Thanks," Glenn said.
They nodded at each other, and Abraham led his group back the way they'd come.
Mason looked back just once before following Glenn and Tara into the dark.
~m~
"When Brian told us he wanted to take over the prison, I knew it sounded bad."
Mason glanced at Tara, startled. All three of them had been quiet since entering the tunnel. The sudden noise surprised her, as well as the name.
I thought the cocksucker's name was Phillip, she thought with a curl of her lip.
"When I found my girlfriend, she was dead."
Mason winced, but Tara continued without noticing, her eyes distant with remembering.
"My niece… My sister, she was surrounded, pounced on. I saw it happen. But still, it wasn't as bad as seeing what he did to Maggie's father."
Glenn halted. Mason stopped herself from biting her lip, from digging her nails into her palms. Anything physical to distract from the agony of the memory.
Tara glanced from her to Glenn, her eyes wide with confessing, with the hope that they would understand.
"Because that's when I knew," she said. "That second the sword… I wanted to scream no but it just happened. Brian said we might have to kill people. I was the first to jump in. I was just hanging on the 'might'."
Glenn stared at her, like he was desperate to take it all in and desperate not to. Mason remembered with a jolt that he hadn't been out in the courtyard that day, hadn't seen…
She blinked sharply. Don't think about it.
She reached out and took Tara's hand.
"It happened," she said. "You didn't know. You didn't know us."
Tears welled in Tara's eyes but never fell. She shook her head. "No. I didn't."
Mason offered her a small smile. "You're with us now."
~m~
When Glenn's flashlight illuminated the cave-in, Mason's throat tightened with anxiety. There were walkers caught in the rocks, squirming to get loose, but a quick examination revealed that none of their faces were familiar. Glenn paced back and forth with a bleak expression and she knew he was checking for the same.
"The blood's fresh," Tara said. "This must've happened today."
After a strained, wordless exchange, they began to climb. Mason focused on making sure Tara didn't lose her balance instead of the clamorous growling on the other side of the debris. But when they reached the top and saw the mass of walkers on the other side, it swept every other thought from her mind.
Shit.
There were too many to hope to fight in the dark, just the three of them, and with Tara injured. But Glenn stepped forward as if that was exactly what he intended to do.
Mason grabbed his arm. "Glenn. What are you doing?"
"She's not one of them," Glenn said, breathless with relief. "And there's no bodies on the ground, that means Maggie made it through. We have to get rid of them."
"We don't have enough ammo," Tara protested.
"Well, then we'll push through."
"No. We have to find another way."
"She's right," Mason said. "You're no help to Maggie if you're dead."
"If she made it through, then so can we."
"Tara's hurt. We'd be hard-pressed to make it through that in the dark even if she wasn't."
"Mason, please!"
The pain in Glenn's face knocked the air from her lungs. Her mind raced, eyes flickering down to the walkers who had gathered below. Grimly, she frowned.
"Give me your flashlight."
A few minutes later, the flashlight sat shining at the left side of the tunnel while the three of them crouched behind the debris. When the walkers had all been lured to one side of the rock pile, Mason led the way over the other.
They were nearly clear when one of the rocks shifted under Tara's feet. She slid roughly, cursing as a slab of loosened concrete trapped her legs.
"Shit, is your leg okay?" Mason hissed.
"Y-yeah, but…"
Tara trailed off as Glenn and Mason tugged at the rock. They pulled until their hands bled but it wouldn't budge.
"Go."
Mason looked up. Tara's eyes were bright with tears but she smiled a little at Glenn.
"Find Maggie."
"No," Mason said, and Glenn echoed her.
"You can't save me," Tara said. "Even if you got this off of me, I can't run, and if you stay here they're gonna get all of us."
Glenn shook his head. "No, there's gotta be a way."
"They're coming."
Mason growled. "We're getting you out."
"Get out of here!"
Tara shoved them both away, her eyes blazing with pain and fear. Mason remembered her face at the prison, her guilt and horror. She raised her fire iron and turned around.
"No."
The walkers converged quickly. Glenn and Mason stood their ground in front of Tara though they were desperately outnumbered. Half of their attackers appeared out of nowhere, veiled in shadow. Mason's heart thundered with the reality that these might be her final moments.
The car swerved suddenly from around the corner, blinding Mason with its headlights.
"Get down!" a voice thundered. Glenn and Mason had only seconds to huddle over Tara before the machine guns started, splattering them with walker blood.
When it ended, they looked up. Six figures stood silhouetted before them, hazy in the smoke of the gunfire. One of them broke away from the rest. Glenn sucked in a sharp breath.
"Maggie."
Then they were in each other's arms and Maggie was sobbing into his shoulder and Mason felt like falling to the ground.
He found her. She's alive.
She could barely breathe as her eyes adjusted to the light. Sasha and Bob were there, and there was something different in the way they lingered together. Closer. Beside them stood Abraham and Rosita, and behind them, Eugene.
Suddenly Mason couldn't make sense of her emotions. Her joy and relief at this reunion, which a part of her had always doubted, was shadowed by the fierce well of disappointment in hoping for more. She'd always imagined Beth finding her sister. The absence of her now was nearly unbearable.
But just as her knees began to shake, just before the emotion could drown her, her eyes found Eugene's. His mouth quirked in a rare smile and it was an automatic thing, smiling back.
She felt too much but she wouldn't let it drag her down again. She couldn't if she wanted to keep going. Her strength no longer came from her alone.
Her strength smiled back at her across the train tracks.
~m~
Mason leaned against Eugene's shoulder. "So basically what you're telling me is your ex was a bitch. Like a total, one hundred percent, scum-sucking scab hag."
"Well, I don't know if I would word it that way…"
Tara stared. "Eugene. She dated you for answers to the chemistry final, forced you to pay for her prom, dumped you at the after party and had the jocks throw you in a pond."
"That is correct."
Mason shook her head. "Yeah, that doesn't fly with me. If I'd been there, I would've beat them all into the fucking ground. Like, if they'd wanted to keep their faces intact they would've had to flee the country."
Eugene blinked in surprise and Mason grinned.
"Nobody fucks with my nerd. Except for, you know, me."
"Well, I sincerely wish you'd been there."
"We could've been outcasts together."
"Were you?"
"Oh, totally. I had my fair share of bullies, especially after I told everyone I was bi."
"Bi?" Eugene repeated.
"Yeah, short for bicycle."
"I…I just thought you were a lesbian."
"Well, I've mostly dated girls but there were some guys, too. I've always been an outcast, but it was so much worse after coming out. It was kind of ridiculous, but no one really believed me? Especially when I was dating a guy. They thought I was confused or starved for attention… my all-time favorite, though, was 'equal opportunity slut'."
Tara laughed at that but Eugene frowned.
"I would not have tolerated that," he said, but Mason just laughed.
"Back then it got to me but now it just makes me giggle. I love casting fear into the hearts of homophobes."
"I had a couple of lovely titles myself," Tara said. "But my favorite…okay, so I was pretty active in, like, theatre and stuff, and I was pretty popular before I came out, everyone knew me. So the bitchier populars started calling me celebudyke."
Mason and Tara cackled loud enough for Abraham to pop his head up with a growl.
"I can't make you idiots sleep but I can whoop you into next week if you disturb my sweet-dreaming ass one more time.
Mason snickered. "Sorry, Red."
Reluctantly, Tara sighed. "We probably should get some sleep. It's been a long day, and we'll be walking all day tomorrow."
Mason nodded, coming down slowly from her lightened mood. After reuniting, Abraham had revealed to Maggie, Sasha and Bob the mission to get Eugene to Washington. The group had been torn over what to do until Eugene had suggested they all go to Terminus together, where they hoped to find food, transport and allies.
After saying goodnight, Tara went to sleep closer to the fire. Mason and Eugene stayed where they were, huddled against the tunnel wall.
"I'm glad you came back," Mason murmured.
"Me, too," Eugene replied.
They were silent for a moment, watching the fire light play with shadows on the wall.
"What are you going to do after we get to Terminus?"
Eugene spoke quietly, but the question jolted her anyway.
"Well… I'm going to hope that Beth and Daryl found their way there. But if not… I have to keep looking for them."
After a moment, Eugene nodded. "If they're there, do you think they'd come to D.C. with us?"
Mason smiled. "Yes. And then there'll be two more people to tease you about watching The X Files."
They lay side by side in the dark, whispering like kids at a sleepover until sleep claimed them.
~m~
The group's high spirits carried into the next day, fueling their long walk down the tracks to the end of the line. Mason, Tara and Eugene kept to their own little pocket, until Sasha began arguing with Eugene about the finer points of Star Trek and Bob got sucked in as the mediator.
However, when the great brick building loomed on the horizon, everyone fell silent. The sight of its boarded windows, the letters painted beneath proclaiming its importance: TERMINUS. Something about the place made her neck prickle.
The group paused, one last silent consensus on whether or not to continue. No one voiced any objection, but Mason could see she wasn't the only one who felt nervous. She sidled closer to Eugene as they continued, reaffirming her grip on her gun, just in case.
They reached the front gate without incident, without seeing another living soul. It wasn't locked; Glenn unraveled the chain holding it closed and they slipped on through. The courtyard outside reminded her a bit of the prison, flower pots and garden troughs and water barrels. Still, Mason glanced firmly at Eugene, a reminder to keep close to her.
They came to another, smaller gate, with a sign that instructed them to lower their weapons. Almost everyone did, excluding Mason and Abraham. Glenn led them through this gate, too, and down a path between the first building and a second. There were more garden troughs, and flowers growing in bright, firework clumps. Mason's nose twitched, registering the unexpected smell of cooking meat.
It came from up ahead, where a middle-aged woman was leaning over a wide grill, so absorbed in her task that she didn't notice her guests until Glenn cleared his throat.
The woman's eyes widened and then she smiled. "Hi," she said. "I'm Mary. Looks like you've been on the road awhile."
"We have," Maggie said.
"Well, let's get you settled and make you a plate. Welcome to Terminus."
Mason's stomach rumbled at the thought, but she refused to let her guard down. Everything was so…quiet. It was making her edgy. Sensing her tension, Eugene raised an eyebrow. She said nothing but shook her head. These people had to earn her trust.
Mary was soon joined by a group of young men, one of whom carried himself confidently. She surmised he was the leader, as he stepped forward and greeted them.
"My name's Gareth," he said. "Welcome to sanctuary. There's plenty of room here for all of you, but before anything else, we need to see everyone's weapons. If you could lay them on the ground, we can get things rolling that much quicker."
He was congenial, matter-of-fact. Cocky. Mason narrowed her eyes.
Bob and Tara were the first to lay down their guns, but Mason and Abraham exchanged a tight glance.
Gareth smiled a little. "You're nervous, I know. I can assure you we have nothing to hide, but we also need to figure out who we're dealing with. Taking in people off the road has its risks. We've kept this place going this long by playing it safe."
Mason hesitated, but Eugene nodded at her. Slowly, she lowered her gun and her fire iron.
She stood stiffly as the other men surrounded them and began to pat them down. She stared straight ahead, but in her peripheral she kept her attention trained on Eugene.
"So how long have you people been on the road?" Gareth asked.
"A while," Sasha answered.
"We're on our way to D.C.," Bob said.
Gareth raised an eyebrow. "That's a long way. What's in D.C.?"
A flicker of movement caught Mason's eye. Trying not to draw attention, she glanced up at one of the buildings.
"Eugene here is a scientist," Glenn explained.
"A scientist?"
Something moved on the roof.
"Yes. He knows how to reverse all this. Get us back to the way things were."
A man.
Before Mason could draw breath, Gareth snapped his fingers and the man on the roof raised his gun.
Acting on instinct, Mason threw herself at Eugene, wrapping around him as much as she could to shield him from the gunfire. Briefly their eyes met, wide with fear, and then Abraham was there, shoving them away.
There was no time to turn back for their weapons. The men had already snatched them up. So they ran, herded by bullets.
They're shooting at our feet, Mason thought dizzily. They want us alive.
The group stuck together through the assault, but it quickly became clear that there was nowhere to go. They skidded to a halt near a red train car as a group of armed men surrounded them, Gareth included.
"Fight us and you die," he said.
Mason fixed him with her blackest glare. The bloodlust was back, hammering through under her skin in fevered waves. As their attackers closed in, she slapped her hand into Eugene's and pulled him back, but a burly man in a red hat yanked him away.
"No. No!"
A scraggly-haired woman pressed a gun to Mason's temple. "Make a move, bitch."
She wasn't afraid of the woman shooting her, but when Red Hat pressed his gun to Eugene's head she fell absolutely still. Her insides whirled with panic but there was nothing, nothing, she could do.
One by one, her group was led to the train car. Maggie's poncho was ripped from her shoulders. Glenn's backpack was taken, as well as the watch Hershel had given him. Her outrage reached its peak when Red Hat slammed Eugene against the train car and stripped him of his riot gear.
She took an unconscious step forward and Scraggle Hair elbowed her in the gut.
"Wait your turn."
When they came for her, she snarled at them. Her veins were hot with fury. She was surprised she didn't scorch them.
There was nothing to take from her, so she was marched straight to the train car and shoved roughly inside.
Eugene caught her, and for the first time it was him pushing her back, away from the door.
"Are you okay?" she asked. "Did they hurt you?"
"I'm okay," he said. His trembling voice made her want to tear the world apart.
As if reading her thoughts, he grabbed her hand warningly.
Nearly everyone was inside. Glenn and Maggie hovered over Tara, who clutched her injured knee. Sasha stood rigid in one corner, and Bob whispered urgently in her ear as though talking her down from something stupid.
Abraham was the last. He fought like a bear the whole time. It took four of them just to wrestle him inside.
As soon as he crossed the threshold, the door slammed shut and they were left in darkness.