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SlumberingVoid — Always makes me giggle when Michonne destroys his Stradivarius... like, if it was a gun, was she expecting to cut it in half? It's a good point, and it makes me sad to think about all the billions of hours of work saved digitally that would be completely lost.
Rhys' voice was still tingling from shouting over the wall earlier. Carl was still standing in front of him. Rhys swallowed, his throat tight and scratchy.
Carl is the same as he was. It was the last thing Rhys expected. His eye looked like a painting that hung on the wall in Maggie's old office, one of Rhys' favourites, where the shadows of trees and the light of man hit the snow-brushed ground so imperfectly that they turned it to the most careful of blues. Carl's other eye was covered — a simple gauze pad instead of the bandage he used to use. The corner of his mouth twitched into an almost smile, probably as not to poke the bear that Rhys must look like to the Alexandrians.
"Rhys..." His voice felt both calm and stormy, like something was brewing or swirling inside of him.
Rhys didn't know what to say. Carl clearly didn't either.
Rhys pointed. "You shave."
"I do," Carl said, touching his own chin briefly, letting a breath that could have been a laugh out his nose.
Rhys nodded before he sat down on the edge of the porch, and Carl seemed to take it as a cue to do the same.
"I am sorry about it, you know?" Rhys told him softly, finding all the care in his voice that he thought he'd lost.
After all these years, Rhys had never told anyone why he and Carl stopped speaking. Most people assumed it was because Carl had pissed him off at some point, gone too far and said one too many hurtful things. After all, why wouldn't people assume that? Carl was the eldest son of Rick Grimes, the man who ended the war. The stories of his father only made him seem tougher and darker in legend. It didn't help that the closest person Carl still had to a parent was the woman who had cut all ties to the other communities and separated Alexandria from the new world they used to talk so much about.
"I know you are," Carl said. "I am too, for my part in it."
Rhys found himself wiping his eyes now. "Is Judith okay? I've heard about RJ..."
"Yeah," Carl said, letting his smile grow a little. "Jude still talks about her other big brother Rhys. RJ likes the stories about you."
"You tell him stories about me?"
Carl shakes his head. "Judith does. I think she makes some of them up. Rosita and Mikey do, too."
A storm was brewing. A light rain started to fall, and the sound of droplets pattering against the porch roof and pasture stretching down Hilltop left Rhys and Carl silent. They listened to the rain because it meant they didn't have to speak or look at each other with their eyes stained in colours that painted years of stories and guilt. This way they could be together without all that. The rain let them get familiar without the familiarities.
"About what happened," Rhys started, "I know you're still—"
The medical trailer door flew open across the yard, and Rosita tripped out with Enid, Michonne, and Siddiq on her heels.
"Rosita, stop!" Siddiq called, trying to pull her back towards the trailer, but she shrugged free, stumbling towards the stables with a blanket over her shoulders.
By the time Carl and Rhys caught up, they were in the stables, Rosita looking around for a saddle as she opened Downy Beardy's stall. She started yelling at a very confused Marco when she couldn't find one.
"What the hell's going on?" Rhys asked.
"Rosita says it's not safe out there," Michonne answered, sounding like she didn't really understand either. "That the group going after Eugene is in danger."
"They don't know what they're up against!" Rosita barked at them, her skin pale and studded with beads of sweat. She snatched DB's tan saddle from Marco when he found it behind a barrel of oats. "The walkers they were different... they were—"
"Different?" Carl asked.
"They were whispering to each other!" Rosita let the saddle she'd taken fall to the dirt, her eyes unfocused and frightened. "They were hunting us."
Enid and Carl glanced at each other. Siddiq's jaw went slack, small wrinkles creasing along his forehead. Michonne straightened herself, her face tight.
"That's not possible," Marco said quietly.
Enid shook the stunned expression from her face. "Either way, you're too weak to go anywhere, Rosita."
"Send out another group then!" Rosita yelled at her.
"We don't have the people on hand," Rhys said. "If Sasha was here to—"
"We'll go," Michonne said, Carl and her already letting their horses free from their pens.
"We can save Hilltop the trouble and get everyone back safe," Carl added.
"For fuck sake!" Rhys hissed at them, eyeing Siddiq start to walk Rosita back towards the infirmary. "This isn't Alexandria's problem."
"Eugene is Alexandria's problem," Michonne snapped back. "So is Aaron."
Rhys then picked up the saddle Rosita had dropped, hauling it onto Downy Beardy, the horse glancing around nervously at all the people. Rhys called back to Marco as he finished up the horse's tack to get their weapons.
"We don't need company," Michonne said.
"Jesus and Sasha are Hilltop's problem," Rhys said.
"Rhys—" Enid tried.
"I know. Sasha can yell at me when we get home safe. Tell Tara what's going on."
The three of them rode hard, following the faint tracks that Daryl's bike made easier to follow. They eventually found their horses and Daryl's bike stashed at the edge of a field, the tracks going through it. The air got thicker as the night swept over Virginia's cascading countryside. The three pushed on. A heavy fog started to roll in, the smell of the storm on the wind.
Carl rode ahead once the tracks took them back onto a road, being the best tracker after spending years in the woods with Daryl. Rhys glanced at Michonne riding beside him. Going this slow meant they could talk, but Rhys was hoping she might not want to.
"How long has Maggie been gone?"
Rhys gave a heavy sigh at Michonne's question.
"Long enough."
"You don't hear from her or Hershel?"
"You got a point coming?"
"Rhys—"
He looked away.
"I'm sorry," Michonne said quietly, rubbing her thumb along the smooth bridle. "I know what I said— what I did to you was cruel. I had to send a clear message."
Rhys laughed breathily. "Don't worry. Message received loud and clear."
He looked at her to gauge a reaction, maybe even scare her away. But Michonne kept watching him. She looked him up and down like he'd grown so much in the years since they last saw one another. Rhys didn't think he had. He still felt like that sixteen-year-old boy that needed a family to hold him together.
Michonne winced. "Where's your hammer?"
"It's old," Rhys said, shrugging. "Don't want to break it."
"Your spear?"
Rhys raised his eyebrows. "Left it at Alexandria before you kicked me out."
"You know I didn't want that," Michonne said. "You, of all people. After everything, I had to make the right choice for my children."
Rhys swallowed, fog and swampy air filling his chest. "After what happened... I fucking needed you. I thought you had my back. Turns out Daryl was better at talking about it."
"I did," Michonne sighed. "I just—"
"Guys!" Carl called from ahead, nodding towards a hole in a chainlink fence that led onto a path through the woods. "Tracks veer this way."
The others had been on foot for a while Carl pointed out, so they must have stopped somewhere to rest close by. The three left their horses in an overgrown backyard, fenced in behind a house.
They followed the tracks for longer than they thought, eventually stumbling upon another small road, and a tall gothic wall wrapping its way around a plot of land by the woods. They stayed on a small track that took them around the wall until they found a sign. A red cross was painted over a ghostly word.
Cemetery.
The place the dead live.
"Know this place?" Carl asked him, watching Rhys stare stoically at the sign.
Rhys nodded, clearing his throat. He had nightmares about this place. "I've passed it. Never been inside."
"Why?" Michonne asked.
Rhys pointed his flashlight up at the wall, running the light beam across the crumbled brickwork. "Think there's any chance that they're alive down there? In their graves. Just... starving forever?"
The other two looked at him. They were holding their breaths.
"Yeah," Rhys breathed. "Never been inside."
They worked their way around the graveyard perimeter until they heard a dog barking from over the wall. Rhys could hear shouting too, growls, the faint murmur of the wind catching between gravestones to the point it started to sound like people whispering. Michonne started running, and when Rhys and Carl caught up, she had found a gate. Eugene was on the other side, Aaron and Jesus behind him, fighting back dead as they swelled from between gravestones and tombs.
"Eugene," Michonne hissed at his turned back. "Eugene."
"Gracious ignatius!" Eugene stuttered at the sight of them. "Am I happy to see your faces."
Carl and Michonne tried pulling the gate open, but the rusted bars held fast against them, hardly moving.
"The gate's obstructed by topsoil erosion," Eugene explained. "We can't get out."
"Where are Sasha and Daryl?" Rhys hissed.
"Tried pulling a ninety-degree ploy on the horde a mile back, haven't seen them since it didn't work."
"I need you to push!" Michonne said through the bars. And he did, Rhys helping pull from the other side, but the gate still didn't budge. Rhys jumped when two people appeared and started to help them pull. Yumiko and Magna were beside him. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Earning our keep," Magna grunted.
Rhys looked to the floor, where he couldn't see his feet below the swirling mist that curled around his ankles. He fell to his hands and knees, feeling where the dirt was holding the gate shut. Yumiko and Eugene saw what he was doing and started to help him dig. When the gate opened wide enough for Eugene to squeeze out, Jesus shouted for Aaron to go as he cleaned up the last of the walkers.
"Jesus, come on!"
"I've got this!"
And he did have it. They watched from behind the gate as he twisted his blade and sliced through soft skull after soft skull. Jumping off one walker and axe kicking another's head into mush against a crypt corner. He jogged towards the gate, slicing down the last two in his path. Only, he somehow didn't. It somehow went wrong. His blade didn't miss the first one, and its body hit the ground like the rest. He didn't miss the second either — his sword swung exactly where it should have. But the walker wasn't where it was meant to be. It happened so fast. Rhys blinked, and the walker ducked. Jesus' blade missed, and the walker shoved a knife up into his ribs. Jesus gasped. Aaron screamed. The walker whispered...
"You are where you do not belong."
It was only a second that Rhys stood there watching. Jesus' eyes faded, shock replacing the blue. His body crumpled heavily into the dirt. Lightning struck high above the clouded sky, and the walker's rotted, decaying face flickered into view.
Aaron roared, barging back through the gate. The rest followed behind him. Daryl and Sasha appeared from behind a cluster of tall headstones, Daryl putting a bolt through the walker that killed Jesus. More dead came out of the fog. They were sprinting. They had blades. One ran straight at Rhys, and he froze, everything wrong and terrifying. Magna struck the walker down before the machete in its hand connected with Rhys' head.
"Fuck," he breathed. "Thank you."
Magna nodded, and Rhys shook the fear from his head, remembering he was in control and when the next walker ran at him, Rhys caught its wrist, a rusted knife an inch from his eye. The stink of hot breath from the walker's mouth pushed against his face. It whispered at him, "We walk in darkness... we are free..." Rhys yanked down and snapped the walker's forearm over his knee. The walker screamed. Screamed like wild animals scream. Like people do. Rhys stuck his knife through its eye, and the screaming stopped.
Sweat dripped from Rhys' temple as he stared down at the thing he just killed. All these years, he had feared what lay beneath the earth. Was this it? No... this was worse than he had imagined. This reality was worse than any nightmare a person could conjure. He was snapped back into the moment when another walker charged from between two crypt entrances, flailing a blade. Rhys stood with his legs parted, his knife ready and his stance the type he would take if fighting a person. Then there was a flash, a deafening but familiar bang with a thunderclap of gunfire, and the walker dropped dead. Carl lowered his father's colt python, his eyes were wide and his gun rattled as his hands shook.
Yumiko killed another with her bow. Michonne cut apart two with her sword. Aaron butchered one with his mace arm. Sasha split one from skull to throat with her tomahawk, its gurgled scream bubbling into silence.
Rhys' shoulder rose and fell as he spun around for more, but the cemetery was silent besides the wind and thunder. But it wasn't wind he realised after a moment. Whispers filled his head.
Daryl retrieved his arrow from the one that got Jesus. Rhys fell to the floor, part from exhaustion as he scrabbled towards Jesus' body. But Aaron had already checked. He was crying and shaking his head.
"What are they?" Sasha hissed, her face contorted and shaken as she looked down at the walker she just split open, its fingers still twitching.
"Walkers..." Carl stuttered. He sounded terrified. "They're... they're walkers."
Dog was barking at Daryl as he examined the walker that he killed. "Hey, come here."
Rhys moved from where Jesus' body was oozing blood into the dirt. He couldn't stop crying. He had held Jesus' hand for a moment, but the warmth had already left it.
Everyone else gathered to Daryl, watching in horror as he flipped the walker onto its front and pulled back the tangled hair from its head. There was a seam. He snipped the stitches with his knife and pulled off the walker's face. He rolled the body again, and there was another face now. A face without rot.
"They're trapped..."
More ear-piercing whispers came from the fog surrounding them.
"Circle round..."
They stood back to back, weapons held to the thickening mist. Rhys felt his hands tremble.
"Don't let them slip away..."
Dog growled and barked at every direction.
"Keep them together..."
"Go," Michonne hissed. "Now."
Rhys saw Aaron struggle to lift Jesus' body after putting a blade through his temple to stop his turn.
Sasha was pulling Rhys towards the gate. "We gotta move. Now!"
Rhys yanked away from her, reaching for Jesus. He and Aaron lifted him together, hauling his body past the gate. The whispers were so close now Rhys could feel their words creep down hairs on the back of his neck.
"We bathe in blood. We are free."
Daryl fired into the darkness, swirling mist swallowing his arrow.
"We love nothing. We are free."
Carl and Daryl were the last through.
"This is the end of the world..."
Michonne locked the gate behind them.
"Now is the end of the world. We are the end of the world."