Chapter 19
"I'm so sorry," Lucy said as she dabbed a cool washcloth on the strange young woman's face. "You're dressed like…them, so I thought you were here to kill me."
The woman took the washcloth gratefully and wiped away the blood from her nose. She scrunched her face up a little. "I don't think it's broken. I should have been more careful. Hovering over someone sleeping is not smart." She shifted and winced, grabbing at her ribcage. "I just thought… maybe you were also hurt. I wanted to help."
Lucy took in the young woman in the faint light. Her hair was a mess of curls, tangled with bits of branches and leaves. Dirt covered more of her than not, but now she could see some of the dirt patches were large welts or bruises. She was small and thin, no larger than Lucy's teenaged wards, but one look in her eyes betrayed the wisdom of age and heartbreak.
Lucy extended her hand. "Lucy."
The other smile and took it. "Willow. And you're not wrong, I'm dressed like them because I am… er, was… one of them. No longer, though."
"Shit. Does your thorough beating have something to do with that 'was?'"
Willow nodded. "Banished, exiled, whatever you want to call it. Not welcome anymore, not that I wanted to be."
"They beat the living hell out of you and drop you in the woods. If you survive, you're on your own. Can't go back or they'll kill you. I honestly don't know how I got here, your settlement is miles from ours."
She sighed. "Things didn't used to be bad, but only for a short while. There were more to give tribute than your group, but now they're gone. It used to be more of a power play than necessity… then it became necessary. Too many hard winters – no babies survived for the past while. We're-" She shook her head. "They're dying out. Getting scared – so is the Witch but she'd never admit it."
She rolled to her knees from her sitting position and tried to stand up, shaky as a newborn deer. She put weight on her left leg, but it buckled and she cried out. Lucy helped her to the cot.
Willow smiled bitterly. "See? How the hell did I get here with a bum leg?" She looked down and her hands, dirt packed tightly under her fingernails. "If I crawled then I'm ballsier than I thought."
Lucy laughed, and it seemed to startle Willow at first before she joined in with the chuckle.
"Listen, I need to go check on the rest of the group and see what's going on," Lucy said. "I'll go get you some drinking water, some cleaning water, and fresh clothes to change into. I think we have some crutches or a cane laying around so we can get you moving as well." Lucy held back a smile. "If not, I got a wheelbarrow with your name on it. No offense, but I got to lock you in here, okay? Just for now."
Willow nodded. "I won't be going anywhere anyways."
She opened the door and turned back to say something, but froze. A strange rhythmic sound permeated the air, faint but distinct.
Drums.
Even in the dim light, she saw Willow's face drain of any remaining color.
"Oh God," Willow whispered. "Oh god, it's too late."
"What is it? What's that sound?"
Willow shifted, struggling to stand up. "You'd better hurry. Get those children and go!" She grabbed at an ancient broom with a wobbly handle to use as a makeshift cane and began to hobble forward.
"Why? Tell me what that is!" Lucy hovered between running and helping Willow, panic and bile rising in her throat. The drums grew louder.
Tears began to stream down Willow's face. "Those are the wardrums. It's to awaken the ancestors, the old gods, whatever is out there. Before… before an offering."
"And we're the offering?"
"One of you is – probably you. The rest will be taken prisoner."
Lucy didn't stop to put on her boots and burst out of the door still holding them in hand, running barefoot towards the gate.
/ / / / /
"Any of you get any closer, he gets a bullet to the brain."
Negan shifted slightly, but the source of the voice was still invisible. It was low, almost a whisper, yet carried through the trees like a songbird's trill. Daryl was frozen, hands held in the air near his head, although he looked almost lackadaisical about it. No fear. He met Negan's eyes momentarily, and shook his head ever so slightly.
No.
Negan didn't like it, but Daryl wouldn't signal to him unless it was important. So, Negan holstered his pistol and slung Lucille in her holster across his back. Then, he came out from the cover of the big pine, hands outstretched.
"Alright, you've found us at a fuckin' disadvantage." Negan flicked his eyes around, though he saw no one. Just the trees, until a slight movement straight ahead-
"Holy fuckin' shit," Negan let out a chuckle. Straight ahead was a figure smeared with mud and paint, barely visible. He blended in perfectly with his surroundings, and he crept forward silent as a snake. Suddenly he stopped.
"The two others behind me better get in front, or you'll all get a lead belly for supper."
Rick peered around a tree truck, and met Negan's eye. Negan nodded, and soon Kevin appeared too and sheepishly joined them. Negan studied the figure closely, and assessed he was a young man, maybe around the age of Rick's son Carl. Suddenly, he had a thought.
"I'm Negan."
The boy snapped his head towards him. Only the whites of his eyes popped, and occasionally a flash of teeth when he spoke. "You're Negan?" He seemed to consider this, flicking his eyes across the men.
"Heard of me, huh? This ain't the first time I've been held up at gunpoint by a kid still waitin' for his balls to drop. Although that little cowboy of yours has some massive cojones, let me tell you."
He thought he saw a spirit of a smile trail somewhere under the caked mud and paint.
"Well," the kid said in his low, husky voice. No wonder Negan thought it belonged to a man, he sounded like a man who'd seen some shit. "They've been tryin' to get a hold of you." He looked around at the men and their gear. "Looks like they were right in trying'."
Negan spread his hands out. "And here I fuckin' stand."
The kid opened his mouth but before anything came out, a roll of thunder echoed through the woods. That's weird, Negan thought. Sky looked clear when we came in-
Then the rhythmic beat poured out. Birds scattered from the trees as a steady beat came – drums. Slow at first, like the pattering of rain before a storm.
"Shit," the kid said, crouching low to the ground. The rest followed suit. "Shit, shit, shit. They're here."
"Last I heard they were already here and just fuckin' with you."
The kid looked over at Negan, his ice-blue eyes were sharp as a blade. "Well, now they're aiming at more than that. From what I overheard, they use their drums before culling a group. They like to announce it, really get the fear to set in."
"Culling?" Rick cut in. "Like a herd?"
The kid nodded. "Thinning out the herd. Defenses are already weakened, they've been tormenting Littlechapel for days now. They'll kill Lucy probably, take the littlest ones that don't fight. Maybe kill the bigger ones that do fight." His eyes narrowed to slits. "Like me.
I've been out here, keeping an eye out. I've found some of them, but they haven't found me." A wicked smile spread across the boy's face, bright white against the mud and dirt. The drums grew louder.
"What's your name?" Daryl asked.
The kid smiled, cracking the mud into deep crevices. "They call me Ghost. 'Cause you ain't sure you've seen me until after I'm already gone. And it'll haunt you, if you know what's good for you."
He spat something on the ground, a chewed up mixture of herbs. "They think they are like the tribes that lived here before or something, 'one with the land' and shit, reading footprints and broken branches. But they were all engineers, truck drivers, accountants. Assholes. They were taught. I was born in the base of these trees. They know me, and I know them."
The drums increase in pace, a heartbeat going faster and faster and-
Negan suppressed a smile and held out a hand. "Alright Casper, we didn't have the pleasure of meeting before," he said in a low voice. "Now, what do you fuckin' propose we do next?"
Ghost thrust his much smaller hand in Negan's and they shook. The kid had surprising strength for his size, probably from all this crawling and sneaking around in the woods.
"Let's kill the sons of bitches," the kid finally said. "And it's Ghost. Call me Casper, and I'll slit your throat."
Negan chuckled. "Fuck, alright there, Ghost. Music to my ears. But first, let's get those kids safe somewhere. Alright, now let's look into my bag of tricks here…"
/ / / / /
The air was getting so thick with smoke, it was hard to breathe. The sky just barely peeked through the haze, an unnatural orange- obscured and tainted. The drums continued, fast now, and seemed to come from all around. Littlechapel was surrounded.
Almost.
Lucy was wrangling the children, placing backpacks each filled with as much survival gear as they could fit. It was an odd feeling, stuffing MREs and little penknives into the tiny packs as Elmo and Spongebob watched with large, cartoonish eyes. The kids were frightened, sniffling and coughing from the smoke, but lined up neatly near the cavern entrance.
An older child, almost twelve, with pale white skin and strange goggles pushed up onto his long forehead lurched towards her. He was rarely seen around Littlechapel, like Ghost, but essential to their operations. He was perpetually hunched, but nearly as tall as Lucy, with long, slender fingers and gangly limbs. Also like Ghost, he had not been part of Lucy's original group, but had just sort of appeared one day and never left.
"Barry, I'm ready for another set to go," Lucy said, zipping up the last backpack. "How many can you take this time?"
Barry eyed the line of kids. "Four at a time is really the max for these ones. I've got Rosie leading the back now, she's getting better at navigating."
Lucy nodded, and assessed the ages of the kids in line. Youngest first – they'd gone through the littlest ones but Barry had to carry the first few groups one or two at a time. Still over half the group to go. She pecked the tops of their heads, and watched four little ones entwine hands and follow Barry to the caverns, like little ducklings in a line.
She looked around for Willow but didn't see a trace of her. She hobbled off immediately from the shed and shrugged off any help or assistance. Lucy had no idea what her plan was, but only hoped she could trust the young woman. There were bigger problems at the moment.
The oldest kids still left on the wall occasionally rang out a warning shot, but so far the gunfire was minimal.
"I don't want to go with Batty Barry," said little Sophie D. Her round eyes widened at the thought of the caves. "You always said it was dangerous in there. Are there monsters?"
Lucy crouched down and tucked a loose hair behind the little girl's ear. "It is dangerous, but just if you don't have light or know where you're going. Today the caves are going to help us. No one knows them like Barry."
The other children within earshot nodded knowingly. Barry was of the caves and Littlechapel, but mostly the caves.
"Why does he live there? It's dark and spooky."
"He has a tough time around lots of people. You know he can navigate in there with no light? He knows it so well he can do it in pitch black! You're so safe with Barry leading you through." She glanced over at Sophie D. "And there's no monsters. Only some bats and bugs but those stay clear of Barry."
The only monsters are at our gates, she thought.
As they waited for Barry to come collect the next round, she told them a story from the big book of fairy tales she read to them sometimes. She couldn't quite remember the ending, if it was good or bad, so she made it good and added some flourishes. Something, anything to distract them. Just as she was making sure the princess and prince were riding off into the sunset, one of the kids interrupted.
"What's that sound?"
Lucy stopped and listened. The drums continued, with an occasional gunfire. But then she heard it – a faint, high pitched whining.
Lucy slammed the book shut. "Get inside. Get as far inside home as you can, and hide."
The kids just stared at her with those big, scared eyes. The whining sound grew louder and louder.
It was screaming, coming from inside the cavern.
"GO!" She pointed towards the Gift Shop. "Hold hands! Find a partner! Get inside!"
Something clicked into gear and they understood. She watched them dash inside before running towards the cavern, her heart racing. She made it to the entrance, the screaming so loud it echoed inside her head. Lights danced wildly at the entrance, and she aimed her handgun, prepared to blow away any of those motherfuckers. Fuck. Her flashlight had slipped from her belt.
Instead of the Coven, terrified and dirt-smudged children poured out.
"They're inside the cave!" Rosie screamed as she burst through the darkness, clutching onto little Molly, who was sobbing hysterically. More children poured out, tripping and gripping onto one other for dear life. She tried to count them but they were moving too much. Not all of them though, that much she knew.
Lucy's stomach dropped. "Get inside, quickly!" She told Rosie and the others. "Lock the doors and hide!" The children, from what she could see as they dashed past her, had only minor scrapes and scratches. She snatched a flashlight from one of them and took a deep breath. It had been years since she'd been inside the caves, and now she was cursing herself for letting fear prevent her from familiarizing herself with one of their main escape routes.
Of course the Coven knew about the caves. All they had to do was follow the bats at dawn or dusk to see where they called home. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
The wooden stairs into the cave creaked and moaned. A few stragglers brush past and slammed into Lucy, clinging onto her legs. She gently coaxed them to go hide with the others, and pushed forward into the damp darkness. Sounds echoed and bounced around – voices, cries, clattering. It was impossible to tell what was going on.
Then, from outside towards the gate, she heard a loud explosion. Then, gunfire. Steady this time, not warning shots.
They've breached the wall. Something seized in her chest, and she could scarcely breathe.
She stood for a split second, halfway in the darkness, halfway in the daylight. Gate or caves? Gate or C-caves?
"FUCK!"
She turned around and ran out of the cave, swearing loudly. After she made it back out of the entrance, she turned around, tears streaming down her face. Then, she rolled a heavy metal gate across the entrance and locked it tightly. If the Coven was coming through the caves, the gate would at least slow them down.
Our last escape. She hoped Negan was on his way, but she didn't let her heart hope.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered, tears pouring down her face. "I'll come back for you, I promise."
She could only hope that Barry was still alive, and still able to help the children that remained in that black, terrifying place.
Then she ran back towards the gate, her legs screaming from exhaustion, her heart screaming from pain.