After getting dressed, Edward had looked mournfully at his still-damp mass of blonde hair, despairing as he realized that he hadn't been given a brush or comb. He could of course just gather some material and transmute one, but getting all those fiddly tines right was irksome as hell.
He was about to hazard the attempt anyway, when he spotted something at the dark end of the locker room that made him stop; there was locker at the very end of the row that still had a padlock on it. At least he assumed these were lockers, they bore a similar look to the lock equipped wooden cabinets that were called that back in the barracks at Central; so much about this world was similar to Amestris, but seemingly decades ahead of his home dimension.
Ed inspected the lock; it was heavy, dust covered thing, with a few fresh tool marks on the metal to show where someone had bene trying to force it open without any luck. Edward guessed that it had been abandoned with the factory before Negan's gang had taken up residence and whoever had been trying break it open to salvage its contents but had given it up as not worth the trouble.
But Ed had a slight advantage over the unknown scavenger, and he grinned as he went back to his pile of old clothes and grabbed that odd pen- he still wondered if it was called a Sharpie, or if that was just the name of the company that manufactured it -and carefully drew a deconstruction circle on the broad face of heavy lock, before clapping his hands together and sending a storm of alchemical energy into the hunk of metal, which collapsed into a pile of metal dust unto the floor.
Ed's was still grinning as he lifted the latch on the locker door, and he almost laughed in triumph when he found a hairbrush sitting on a shelf inside. He snatched the brush off the shelf and tucked in his back pocket before rifling through the other contents of the locker; he found a faded read canvas backpack with black straps with a word "Marlborough" stitched across the top flap. Ed wasn't sure if that was the name of the bags previous owner or the company that made it, but in any case it was empty and Ed started quickly dumping the other contents of the locker that were worth having into it.
Some kind of folding tool with multiple attachments, what appeared to be an electric torch in a long, black metal tube, a flip open lighter that was oddly identical to Lieutenant Havoc's, a few packs of stale cigarettes and a stack of magazines
Ed looked at the first one, which seemed to be some kind of mechanical guide, while all he could see of the volumes behind wee their titles. Ed tossed the stack into the bag and moved away from the now empty locker, whistling happily as he took the bush back out and idly wondered about the title of those other magazines- what did Hustler mean, anyway?
He was trying, unsuccessfully to get his long blonde hair back into its usual shape when Ash strode into the locker room, a shout at Ed to hurry the fuck up dying on her lips as she found him sitting on a bench and looking back at her, long blonde hear draped over his shoulder as he braided it back into it's usual shape.
"You're seriously braiding your hair?" Ash demanded.
Ed felt himself blush, despite his desperate will to fight down the reaction.
"Yes?" he lamely answered.
The two sat in awkward silence for a moment, before Ed asked, quietly,
"Could you…give me a hand?" he asked, "My auto-mail is stiff after it gets wet and it's making this a lot harder."
Asha gaped, sighed, and let her rifle fall across her chest on its sling.
"Fine. You gotta cut this this off at some point, though…" she gave Ed's locks a short, sharp tug, making the alchemist wince.
Ed gasped in mock indignation,
"What?! Never!"
Another sharp tug,
"Stop moving."
"Ow! Okay…"
There were a few moments of awkward silence, and then the alchemist, remembering his earlier plan to get Ash alone t ask her some question, decided to seize the opportunity.
"So, what brings a girl like you to bandit fortress like this?" Ed blurted, and his following wince was not entirely due to Ash's next tug on his hair.
"We doing life stories, now?" Ash sardonically asked,
"Not much else to do right now…how did all this start; with the reanimated, I mean. I haven't even asked anyone yet…"
Ash sighed,
"This is gonna distract me, it's gonna take me longer to get this over with, and Negan's gonna come looking for you, and you are gonna be the butt of like, all the girly-man jokes he can think of when he finds me braiding your hair." Ash predicted, but then she began as she wove Ed's hair into the long, heavy braid that draped down is back;
"Two years…or so…ago, the new started running reports about attacks spread across the country, people biting others, people being found half eaten, violent attacks just about everywhere. Some places were just going dark…"
"What are they? The reanimated? I assume they're dead humans who have somehow been brought back to a violent, ambulatory state but that doesn't make any sense."
Ed felt Ash's shrug through the fingers she was plying through his hair,
"Well, sense or not, they are most assuredly dead fucks that come back to life and start attacking and eating anything alive. Before the broadcasts got taken over by the emergency system, people on TV were saying it was a virus. They called it Wildfire, after it spread so quickly. That was the last they could agree on, cuz' just about right after that the cities collapsed and the military started sending out bomber planes and burning the shit out of everything they could with them, but pretty soon even they got pulled under. That was pretty much that. No one is sure where the virus came from, what it really is. We just know, if those things bite you, you turn, guaranteed."
Edwards head was swimming with questions after Ash fell silent, not just about the virus that created the reanimated, but TV? Planes? He still had an imperfect grasp of English, but he doubted that was just a translation failure. But instead of asking those technical question bouncing around in his head, he next asked;
"What happened to you, while all of this was happening?"
"Fuck, you talk to much…what brought your little ass here, then? You first."
"I told you already!"
"Nah, you told Negan. And tell me again, I want to see what changes in your batshit-crazy story."
Ed sighed, and quickly explained, again;
"An immortal alchemist as trying to sacrifice a city to use their souls to fuel her power and I got in the way, a homunculus who was my half-brother before he was turned into an immortal shape shifter stabbed me in the chest and killed me, my brother brought me back to life, I did a turnaround using alchemy and got him his body back, but, in exchange, I was pulled into The Gate, an alchemical construct that linked my world with another Earth. Somehow, I ended up here, instead, probably due to that same immortal alchemist. Is the story still close enough, Ash?" Ed demanded at the end of his monologue,
"I just have one question…"
"What?" Ed demanded,
"Do you have anymore of the drugs you're on? They seem like good shit…"
Ed growled in frustration as Ash snickered.
The pair of them fell silent as Ash returned to her work with Edwards hair, when Ash started quietly talking;
"I'm from Pennsylvania, originally. It was a state, North of here…I'll show you on a map sometime, I guess. Anyway, I was with my boyfriend, after school let out…they had been insisting everyone keep going despite the rumors about a new pandemic…" Ash trailed off, her fingers slowing "There were screams at night, sirens all the time, the police and medical people were calling into radio show and tv stations, saying somethings going on and their were some posts on the internet about cannibalism, but I think the government was trying to keep things quiet."
Ed nodded along, making sure Ash knew he was listening,
"Things must have hit their breaking point that day, I guess. A herd massed up downtown, while Mason, my boyfriend, was giving me a lift home…that was the first time I saw them. Like, really saw them. I had seen single one before, I guess, shambling around but I ignored them, everyone must have been…" Ash shivered, "The police, whatever was left of them, never even showed up. Some bright spark in the city government hit the emergency sirens. You noticed they're attracted to sound, right?" Ash asked,
"The reanimated came swarming, didn't they?" Ed guessed.
Ash nodded,
"That was the end of my home town. Mason panicked and found a clear line of traffic…we left everyone. I'm still not sure what…" Ash choked some words back, "Mason did get us clear of it, though."
"What happened to him?"
"He felt like shit for leaving everyone behind when he broke and ran, is what happened to him. There wasn't a thing we could have done except join everyone else in some stench's belly, but he let it tear him up. He swore he'd never run again and that he would protect me, if I let him."
"Did you?"
"Fuck yes, I was terrified at the start. More than him, even."
"Did he protect you?"
"He did. Somehow. We ended up with a refugee column headed South, bouncing from camp to camp, until the military finally collapsed. We were together three more months after that."
"What…what happened?" Ed asked, closing his eyes. Ash was reminding him of Rosé, except…
"Four men came to the house we were holed up in. Stupid fuck protected me alright, and got himself killed in the process."
Except for that. He felt like he could physically feel the sneer in Ash's voice. But when she spoke again her voice had a ragged edge of sadness to it that surprised Ed.
"He kept them off me while I escaped…I was fucking useless. I had been letting him find all our food, deal with the stench's , pick where we were going…because I was too fucking scared. I still was, then."
"Ash you don't have to…"
"I kept on going. I…learned. I survived." One of Ash's hands left ed's hair, and he guessed he was wiping away tears, "I got down the Blue Ridge and into Virginia, the Saviors found me. It was Gavin's crew, thank god, not Simon's or Arat's. He brought me back to Negan."
"But…why Negan? Why the Saviors? Did they make you…"
"No, Ed, he just didn't say I'll protect you or ask me for shit, I told him how I got here and he handed me a gun and said show me what you got."
Ed remained silent, and Ash continued,
"That's why I'm still here, that's why I'm…"
Negan suddeny burst into the locker room, leather jacket undone, Lucille grasped impatiently at his side as he roared,
"What the fuck is taking so fucking long, are you two braid each other's fuckin'…" he fell silent as he took in Ash standing behind Edward, doing just that, and burst out laughing.
"Oh shut up, jerkass." Ash growled, "His fucking robot arm is stiff or something, he needed help."
Negan's laughter trailed off to snickering,
"Right, right, it's low hanging fruit anyway. I'm too big for that. It's beneath me."
Ash looked back strangely as Negan put odd emphasis on some of the words he spoke, but Edward was stiffening with anger below her, which evaporated completely with Negan's next statement,
"Wait, can you fix that metal shit your arm is made out of?"
Ed froze, suddenly feeling his automail's full weight,
"I…I…" the alchemist stammered, remembering every, single conversation he'd ever had with Winry about maintaining his automail.
Or rather, her speaking and him not paying attention.
Fuuuuccccck he cursed, mentally. The company he kept was clearly rubbing off on him.
"I'll take that as a no…" Negan pointed out.
"Not…not really, no."
At least Winry will never find out about this…
Back on the world where those who died stayed dead
She awoke with a start, almost jumping up in her darkened bedroom, but instead of the lingering dread of a half remembered nightmare, Winry Rockbell felt a warm feeling of what she could only describe as smug satisfaction gripping her tight.
While she hadn't the slightest clue why this was- she may have been having a dream, but couldn't remember the particulars -but she fell back unto her tangled sheets with a smile nonetheless, taking happiness where she could get it. A quick glance at her alarm clock made the feeling evaporate.
"Six thirty?" she demanded aloud, groaning in despair. Her alarm was set to seven, she'd just lost half an hour of precious sleep after pulling an all nighter to put most of the finishing touches on an automail job…she sighed in resignation. She'd still get it done today, and it wasn't like she had a massive waiting list of customers right now.
With a final resigned sigh she sat up, pulling up her scattered blankets as she wrapped her arms around her knees after pulling her legs to her chest, mentally running over a checklist of what she had to do today; finish the automail job; four hours. Annnd…nothing else.
Try and figure out how to feed four peoples on seven hundred Sens for a month, with one of them being a pregnant woman and the other being a ten year old boy who seemed to be determined to make up for not having stomach for the last four years.
Winry was sorely tempted to fall back down unto the bed and chuck the alarm clock out the window, but instead she sighed in resignation and swung out of bed, snatching her overalls and take top off a chair next to bed and before shoving on her boots and staggering to the mirror over the small bureau in her room. She refused to look on her reflection for an overly long time, knowing that her blue eyes would be taking on a harder, wearier edge then she was really comfortable with.
After unsnarling her long blonde hair as quickly and as brutally efficiently as possible, she slipped out of her room, determined to make her way to the kitchen without waking the other denizens of the rambling dwelling that was the Rockbell house.
sHe was most of the way down the stairs when her nostrils filled with the scent of freshly brewed coffee. She paused, shaking her head with a half-smile. The old lady had beaten her to the waking world today.
"Morning, Granny" Winry softly called when she got to the bottom of the steps.
Pinako Rockbell squinted for a moment, regarding her granddaughter from behind her thick spectacles. Winry might have worried about the hesitation, but everyone in this house called Pinako grandmother; Alfonse Elric, Rosé, the newest addition to the residence…and Edward had to.
How many months again?
Four. She wasn't that damned tired.
Four months ago Edward and Alfonse had gone below Central, to take the fight to Dante and her Homunculi, while Mustang and his loyalists battled in the fortress above.
And Ed hadn't come back up.
Alfonse could tell her very little about that- to him, one moment he had been igniting the circle to try and bring back his and Edwards mother, the next he had woken in a decaying opera house, underground, with a strange woman telling him they had to go, now.
Winry took the steaming mug her grandmother passed to her with a almost soundless word of thanks, still lost in thought.
"Thinking about the job today?" Pinako asked,
"Not exactly," Winry said, "It's mostly done, actually."
Pinako sighed,
"Did you sleep at all last night, Winry?"
"Of course…not. Not really."
Pinakos gave her a stern glare,
"You can't get fine mechanical processes done correctly after saying up to the wee hours of the night, Winry. Check your work carefully before you get started on the rest."
Winry nodded,
"Yes, ma'm."
"No point in rushing a job when we don't have any others on the waiting list, anyway." The old lady further chided, echoing Winry's thoughts from earlier.
With Mustang taking the reigns of power in Amestris, Fuhrer Bradley and the militaries constant stream of border skirmishes, petty conquests and occupations had come to an end as peace rapidly broken out- with this, the steady stream of wounded soldiers and citizens in need of automail replacements for missing body parts had dried up as well, leaving the Rockbells with fewer and fewer customers.
Winry shivered; she'd never thought of her chosen profession like that and it made her feel like a ghoulish war profiteer.
As if reading her mind, Pinako spoke up;
"It's not as bad as all that. Things were quiet before Bradley and his ilk- I made it through that. People will always need our help. It's like being a surgeon; you pray every day that no one will need you, but when they do…"
Winry smiled and nodded,
"We still have enough in the accounts to get us through winter even without more automail work, but we might have to look at doing something with the fields in spring," Pinako had unexpectedly given over the family book keeping to Winry and she had quickly taken a liking to it; she had an affinity with numbers.
Pinako glanced out the window and considered the early morning sunlight spreading across the grassy fields around the house; it was easy to forget just how much land she and Winry owned around their home.
"I'm to old to get into farming." Pinako joked,
"And I can kill house plants just by looking at them." Winry returned, before going on "I was thinking we'd either get a tenant or rent the land out."
Before either could continue, their quiet conversation was interrupted by the sound of something falling to floor with a thump from behind a door near the kitchen,
"Not again…" Winry groaned, before gulping down half her coffee and stalking over to the plain wooden door that led to an old workshop- which had long since come under occupation by the Elric brothers, who had converted the small space to a library to hold their voluminous collection alchemy texts and equipment.
The door was locked- Winry smirked in disdain before snatching a thin piece of metal from the top of the door frame; she effortlessly slid it into a small notch cut into door, and unlocked it- a little trick she had built into the door when she had bene thirteen, but Ed and Al had never caught unto her.
She pushed the door open and went inside, closely followed by Pinako.
Inside she found Alphonse Elric slumped on the floor amidst piles of books and notes he had been laboring with since…when was the last time she had seen him?
With a muttered curse, Winry knelt down besides the sleeping boy, who was busy snoring face down in a text book.
"Best just ti leave him to rest." Pinako sighed, going to the living room to fetch a pillow and blanket from their couch.
Winry barely acknowledged her, instead focusing on the text books surrounding the exhausted Alfonse- she knew little about alchemy, but she didn't need to be an expert to figure out what the youngster was researching; she picked up a book an read the title "A Theory of Dimensional Transition via Alchemical Reaction".
Some of the papers scattered about featured transmutation symbols she had never seen, indecipherable notes, and drawing of a huge, gothic gate surrounded by macabre statuary.
Winry sighed in despair and sat down next to Alfonse as Pinako came back into the room. Alfonse was clearly hatching a plan to use alchemy to rescue Ed. All well and good, but the last time the Elrics had tried anything like this they'd accidentally birthed an eldritch monster at the costs of Ed's arm and leg and Alfonse's entire body.
Godammit Ed, the mechanic thought as he helped cover up the sleeping Elric brother, Where are you?!
Winry sighed again, ignoring the strange look her grandmother shot her.
Just stay safe. Winry commanded, hoping against hope her lost friend would hear.
It was the smell that hit first.
Rotting flesh too long in the summer sun and harsh weather of this new world.
After the smell came the sound- a ghastly cacophony, of gasping snarls, hollow moans and phlegmy, rattling exhalations.
By the time the herd of reanimated rounded the distant curve of the highway, Ed had guessed there might be hundreds.
Wrong.
Thousands.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt a sharp, stinging slap on his back and he could hear the loathsome smirk in Negans voice when he shouted;
"Alright, Eddie! Show me whatcha got!"
Edward looked out at the oncoming horde from the concrete and metal bridge- the Saviors had called it an overpass- that spanned across the road (highway, apparently) down which the festering multitude was making its way slowly towards the perch Ed and his new "allies" and "friends" stood watching them.
ON any other Ed might have been in amazement of the well made road ways below, four lanes wide of well made and impeccably engineered construction leaps and bounds ahead of the rutted, dirt cart tracks that still linked much of Amestris outside the cities and their suburbs- even the dilapidated abandoned vehicles that dotted the roadway were impressive, in that they were once something that the alchemist would have counted s a wonder of technology, before they met their sad end.
But that would be a day without an army of shambling reanimated coming straight towards him and a grinning lunatic standing behind him with a small band of armed gang members, eager for the "wizard" as Negan had dubbed him- despite Edwards attempts to explain to the marauder that it was all simple science that gave him his power, not some esoteric magic nonsense- to show them what he could do.
"Hey, you said you got this, right?" Negan prompted.
And indeed Edward had- or something similar, at least -back at the fortified abandoned factory the Saviors used as a base. Negan had hauled Ed to a meeting of his grim-faced lieutenants, including that dead eyed and darks skinned woman that still reminded him far too much of Scar.
Somehow, Negan claimed to have gotten the location of the assassin who had attacked the night before- claiming that the information had come form the surviving gunwoman, whose currents whereabouts he had bene vague, although Ed had spotted a fresh coating of dried blood on the barbed wire wrapped around Lucille- why the bandit had named his club that was still a mystery…
Negan had gone on, saying that the woman had claimed that a "Prophetess of God" had built a massive wall around a town far to the west of the Sanctuary which by the maps the saviors kept on the walls of their meeting room, was in the far suburbs of a city called Washington, D.C. (Ed hadn't the slightest clue what D.C. stood for, but considering the state of this world, it probably didn't matter anymore), while the nameless town the woman had indicated nestled in the mountain of a nearby province- no, state, Ash had mentioned they were called states -called West Virginia.
From the retold stories, whoever this "Prophetess" was, she was a powerful alchemist, and considering the name the gate children had been shouting in the void between worlds as Ed was dragged here, he had a pretty solid guess of just who this manipulative false idol was.
Dante.
Ed's excitement indeed eagerness, to strike out for this town and dela with the villainess had been dealt a hard blow when the cold-eyed woman had pointed out that the countryside between here and there was infested with legion of reanimated, although she had called them "stenches", Ed had blustered, hot for the fight and not thinking that this was the wrong crowd to act in such a way, and blurted out that,
"I can handle the dead! Not a problem, not for you anymore, either."
Mistake. The calculating glares he got from the hardened survivors and raiders of the Saviors leadership were mixed with a disdain and disbelief that only heated Eds temper further,
"I mean it, just let me show you…" he started, until Negan had taken a small handheld radio out from under his jacket and keyed it to life before asking if anyone had spotted a new herd.
Which had brought them all here.
"Well?" Negan prompted.
Ed glared up at him, saying nothing before looking back at the oncoming horde, still far enough away that he had time to think.
The bandit leader said something else but Ed stayed silent considering the oncoming mass of death.
Like a chef in a kitchen challenged to make meal with what he had on hand, Edward was considering his ingredients like only an alchemist could. He would need a circle, this time, no more free-handing his transmutations, which meant he would have to know exactly what he wanted to do well beforehand- and have the perfect calculations in his design ready to go before engaging the horde.
I n theory his option were limitless, he could transmute everything around him until he got what he wanted in the quantities he needed- wit the right circles and enough time he could transmute the ground, the rock, the metal of the vehicles below into a wall of single shot cannons, letting forth an explosive fury on the shambling mass of reanimated.
By chance, Edward looked over at one the Savior guards Negan had brought with him. The man carried a rifle, something like Ash's, all blackened metal and that odd material that seemed to make up half of everything in this world but that Ed still had not had time to analyze; unlike Ash's, though, this one was mounted with lights and a powerful scope, as well as some long, stubby tube under the barrel that looked like a miniature cannon.
The Alchemist considered this; the weapons of this world were leaps and bounds ahead of those on Amestris, even without Alchemy. And if all those guns and the militaries using them hadn't kept this world from falling…finesse, or as much finesse as would be involved in the alchemical energies he used to…crush…the horde.
Ed's calculations came to abrupt halt.
He was making this more complicated than it had to be. He needed a formula to put down in a circle that would create come to hold the reanimated, and then something to, well, crush them. It was intellectual as simple as that. Already his mind raced, looking at the ground below, he wouldn't have to know it's exact make up or density to do this, but the complicated part would…yes that would work, and if it didn't, the horde would still be contained.
Ed nodded to himself, before dropping the small backpack he'd taken for the locker room on the oddly made, faded black surface of the road and pulling out the notebook Negan had given him.
"Like I said, old man," Ed answered whatever jest Negan had been making- Ed hadn't been paying attention, but that seemed like good guess as to what the load mouth was most likely been saying, "I've got it."
Ed didn't say anything else, simply walking away towards the end of the overpass and the long ramp of graded earth and roadway that led to the highway below- and the oncoming horde.
Shocked at the disrespectful little shits comment- he was not old! -Negan watched in sullen silence as the alchemist made his way to the highway the mass of stenches was slowly barreling down.
"Hey, what the fuck, Negan, you just gonna let him go down there?" Dwight demanded,
Negan fixed his scar faced subordinate with a glare,
"He said he had t, didn't Dwighty?"
"There's thousands of them!"
"Jesus, you and your- excuse me, my wife, just have a fucking inspiring level of concern for that young man. Warms my heart, it really does."
Dwight didn't say anything, but matched Negan's glare with one of his own,
"Fine. Ash!" Negan called, looking around, "Hey, Ash! The fuck is that girl?"
"Simon took her with him to Hilltop. Said he needed her "personal touch" with some trouble makers." Arat answered, giving her opinion on that in the defiant glare she fixed Negan with.
Negan ignored the look, inhaling deeply instead. He had many questions, many, many questions.
"The fuck did she think…" He began
"Negan!" Dwight snapped; the scared man hefted his crossbow, unconsciously, no doubt, but Negan still caught the movement, as Dwight continued, "He's alone.", pointing at Ed as he walked, seemingly without a care in the world and scribbling in his notebook, into the maw of the mob of undead.
"Kid said he could handle it."
Dwigth said nothing.
Negan rolled his eyes,
"Fine." Negan grinned at Dwight, "The kid might need a little back-up."
I need to learn when to shut up, thought Dwight watching as Ed serenely drew one of those odd circular deigns on a blank sheet of paper in his notebook, even as the gasping moans of the horde filled the air- Dwight knew from experience that they had caught sight of the two of them, as the pitch of their odd exclamation grew louder and louder, signaling the entire horde with whatever primitive hunting instincts drove the stenches that prey was in sight.
"You better be ready for…whatever it is you gotta do, Ed." Dwight pointed out. The deceptively slow pace of a herd of deadheads could easily lull an overconfident person into a false sense of security- until you suddenly looked up and they were right on top of you.
"Hold unto your ass's, I've got it." Ed answered as he stood up and began walking towards the horde.
"What? Kid that doesn't make any sense."
"Does it not?" Ed turned to smile at Dwight, "Sorry, still learning to swear in this language, I guess."
Dwight shook his head, but stopped as he realized just how close Edward was getting to the horde, as the shambling undead picked up what little speed they could as they bore down on them,
"Hey, watch out!" Dwight shouted, starting forward, leaving his motorcycle where he had parked it after picking up Ed from the distant overpass where the Saviors still watched from and giving him a lift here.
Ed crouched and carefully laid out one of the sheets of paper he had been drawing on- the boy had been tucking the carefully folded papers in the pockets of his black jeans after he finished the circles on them, for some reason and weighed it down with a few heavy stones he had collected.
"What…" Dwight began,
"Don't distract me." Ed shot back, cutting the older man off as he watched the horde bearing down on them.
He waited until the herd was about a dozen feet away, and just before Dwight grabbed him by the loose hood of his red hoodie to drag him to safety, before clapping his hand together and slamming them down unto the alchemical circle drawn on the paper in front of him.
With a crackling roar, blue light erupted from the ground as the alchemical power Ed has summoned was unleashed, ripping open the earth as the dirt and stone coalesced into thick, squared off mound that pushed itself up from the ground and shot upwards, spreading out to either side of the oncoming horde as Edward brought forth a nine-foot high wall that formed a semi-circular barrier across the front of the horde, spreading out into the distance.
Dwight froze in shock as he stared at the sudden construction that had appeared form the bare earth in just a few moments, walling off the oncoming stenches who he could hear on the other side, still, moaning and pounding on the sudden obstacle that had appeared in their path.
"See?" Ed said, getting to his feet- he swayed a bit and frowned before straightening himself, "Told you."
Dwight stared, face still blank,
"C'mon, in fairness to how awesome I am, that was only part one. We still have to finish sealing them in there." Ed started to walk off, but paused to steady himself on an abandoned car, before keeping on.
"Hey, you coming?" Ed called.
Dwight, still staring ta the wall, hesitatingly followed.
Negan grinned at the exclamations of his followers as Ed did his thing- the bandit leader couldn't help but chuckle at their amazement.
Man did he love being right-
The grin fell in an instant as he watched the distant shape of Edward collapse as he and Dwight made their way around the side of the wall Ed had just created.
"Hey kid, what the fuck?" Dwight demanded as he caught Edward.
Ed shook his head as the Savior steadied him,
"Don't know" he answered in Amestrian, and then in English when he caught his mistake,
Dwight shook his head,
"We're out of here." He said hauling the alchemist to his feet, but when he turned to look behind him, a mob of deadheads- he had no idea where they came from, not part of the horde but it didn't really matte- had surrounded his bike and were pushing towards he and Edward.
Dwight cursed, almost kicking himself in frustration for not bringing it with them when they first took off.
Ed pulled himself the rest of the way to his feet and leaned against the wall,
"Looks like we gotta finish this…"
"What's going on with you?" Dwight demanded,
"Not sure. Got tired after I fired the circle."
"Does that normally happen?"
Ed shook his head, no.
"Fuck." The scarred Savior grabbed Ed and draped his shoulder across shim, ignoring the young man's protests; they had to move,
"Can you finish whatever you had planned?" Dwight asked as he half supported, half yanked the alchemist the way they were headed before, towards the edge of the wall Ed had created.
"I think so. Enough to contain them, at least."
Negan almost roared with fury as he hopped in the back of the idling pickup truck Arat brought up as the Saviors began to swarm down off the ramp, Lucille death ripped in one hand he grabbed ahold of the roll bar mounted above the truck's cab.
That mob of stenches had come pouring out from a knot of wrecked tractor-trailers and straight towards Dwight and Edward, moving silently amongst the twisted piles of wrecked and abandoned vehicles until Arat had spotted them- too late for it to make a difference.
Even as slow as they were moving, they would be on top of the two distant humans before Negan and his crew got there, but he wasn't about to not try and do something about, He glanced down at the last place he had spotted Dwight and Ed as Arat hit the accelerator and the truck sped off, kicking up dirt and road grit as it fishtailed after the other vehicles in the Saviors convoy- why the hell were those two making for the edge of that damn wall?
Dwight, and Ed, were asking themselves the same question as they finally made it to the edge of Ed's creation; the horde on the other side had bunched up, compacting themselves against the inside, and the nearest roamers were still far to close to this distant edge for Dwight's liking.
When they stopped, Ed didn't hesitate before slumping to the ground, pulling out another sheet of paper from his pockets with clumsy fingers, cursing as he nearly dropped it. He had been exhausted and pushed through many times before, but this draining numbness was like nothing he had ever felt before.
"Fuck, I don't think…" He began, but trailed off as spots danced at the corners of his vision.
Dwight gasped in fear as Ed seemed to nearly pass out, his eyes began darting around, looking for way out- and he found it. Or possibility, at least, as he spotted an abandoned ambulance nearby, far off to the side of the road, its doors still sealed shut.
Dwight pulled a handgun from a holster at his waist and reversed it, holding it out to the downed Alchemist grip first.
"You know how…"
Ed sat up and snatched the weapon, jacking back the slide a bit to see if a round was chambered before flipping off the safety; the sudden burst of energy seemed to take a lot out of him, but he nodded grimly back at Dwight.
"Keep them off you," Dwight said, pointing at the mob of roamers still coming from the direction of his motorcycle on the outside of the wall,
"The noise will bring more form the inside Ed pointed out as he took the magazine of ammunition Dwight offered. The alchemist did not like guns, but they were machines like any other and he was in no shape to fight hand to hand of he had to battle the dead.
"We'll be fine." Dwight answered, before loping off to the ambulance, staying low and quiet, trying to avoid gathering the attention of the main horde.
He made it without incident, before quietly tapping on the dusty doors of the red emergency vehicle- when nothing pounded back after a moment, he carefully swung one open- and almost gagged at the wall of stench that erupted form inside.
A roamer was till strapped to gurney inside, fruitlessly writhing as the human came into sight of it's milky eyes. Dwight brought his crossbow p to his shoulder and snapped off a bolt into the things head as he climbed into the ambulance.
Veen as he yanked the missile out of the dead thing head, he looked around at the labeled cabinets that lined the inside of the ambulance until he spitted what he was looking for. He yanked open the steel cabinet, happy to find it was still fill. He tore open a few bags marked with red crosses, exclaiming in triumph when he finally found what he was looking for, before leaping back out of the ambulance and sprinting back to Ed, heedless of the attention he garnered from the horde, as individual undead began to peel off and shuffle in his direction.
When he got back to Edward he looked up to see how close the dead were- nearly on top of them.
Dwight held up his prize and hastily explained,
"This is Epinephrine- it'll give you a jolt, get you some energy back. These are old as fuck, but hopefully they still…" Ed snatched the long white and yellow tube out of Dwight's hand,
"How does it work?" Ed demanded,
"Stick that end in your thigh and press the button…"
The burned Savior had just enough time to snatch the pistol from Ed's hand as he jammed the auto-injector in his thigh and pressed the button.
Ed cried out, but before Dwight could do anything, the dead were on them and he had to bring the pistol up and open fire cracking off shots he did his best to ignore just how many stenches the gunfire would bring form the horde.
With five aimed shots he dropped three roamers, just before the hair on his neck stood on end and he heard the crackling roar of Ed's alchemy fire up, just making out a peel of maniacal laughter as the alchemist felt his body writhe with chemically fired energy, adrenaline and pulse pounding within him as he complied ted his trap- an inverse of the circle he had already used created another semi-circular wall, sealing most of the horde inside of it and cutting off the shambling wall that been bearing down on the noise of Dwight's pistol.
Still laughing, ignoring Dwight's shouts, he stood up and darted to edge of the wall, taking out the last paper he had drawn an alchemical circle on before pressing it to the side of newly made wall, its rough edges and block, alchemically constructed surface easily holding the paper in place as Ed slammed his hands together, drew in his energy, and placed them on the circle.
In another storm of energy, the material around the top of the wall suddenly evaporated, moving forward to form a heavy, circle shaped surface like the lid over a pot- except this lid was two inches shorter than the rim. As the energy constructing it faded, it fell- straight down on top of the horde contained inside of Ed's wall.
The sickening, crunching splat echoed across the flat fields around the highway.
Ed turned, still grinning wildly, watching as Dwight battled the oncoming mob of undead still on the outside of the wall.
He heard squealing tires and more shots, thinking that he really should go help…and then a quick few of the sky as he fell, and then everything went black.