(As Yet Untitled)

by DomWeasel

Watching the series again back in late 2022, I was reminded how much Sophia's arc in the TV show depressed me. Thought about it for several months and then rewrote season 2 with an original character to have some fun and take a break from another project, and to create a timeline where Sophia may or may not live as long as her comic counterpart. I don't know, I haven't finished yet

11. The Town

Dale was dead. Gunned down in the guard tower by the gate and likely unaware of what had happened; just like Theodore. Ben was dead too, having bled out on the basketball court during the firefight and his father hadn't been able to do anything about it. Allen was alive but wounded. Wounded because the round that had struck him had lost most of its force after passing through his son first. Myself, Beth or Sophia could been similarly wounded if we hadn't been shielded by Theodore whose big build had absorbed the rounds that struck him rather than being perforated by them.

Three dead.

Two of our attackers were dead as well, both shot by Andrea with her hunting rifle and it was possible more might have been wounded by the others fire. They weren't even sure how many attackers there had been though one thing was clear; they hadn't realised how many of us there were. After their initial attack on our little gardening party, the fury of the counterattack had evidently surprised them and they had fled. They hadn't know how little ammunition we possessed.

We… I had spent the whole battle cowering on the ground.

Now I was sat in the cell block, hugging a shaking Sophia and doing my very best not to tremble myself. My heartbeat was brutal and I was coming to terms with splattering Theodore's brains across the yard. Yes, he had already been dead and so I had only shot a walker… But it was still him that I had shot and there was a big difference between shooting an unknown walker and one that had been a happy, cheerful person just minutes earlier.

Carol had seen that her daughter was alright and then put her in my care. She was needed elsewhere. Allen was shot, Glenn had had a piece of concrete whipped across his forehead, Sword Lady who had been down in the bus throughout had reopened her leg wound and Lori in the midst of all the shooting had gone into labour. Beth, Carol and Hershel had their hands full.

Daryl had gone after them. How you could track a vehicle from a motorbike I didn't know but he did and so he had pursued. Rick was caught between his need to 'punish the invader' as it were and the need to be with his wife. The latter had won out and that was why Daryl was gone. This effectively put Andrea in charge because Maggie was concerned with her family and Glenn and so that left no one else of the original group. Andrea's orders were very clear; everyone remained in the cell block except herself, Sasha and Oscar. Axel was no shooter and neither was Tyreese. Tyreese chafed at Sasha being outside while he was indoors but she had pointed out he was no use with a rifle. And besides, she was lying down by the fence in the yard. She wasn't vulnerable.

That left me with Sophia while Carl was pacing around the common area having been sent away from the carnage of the infirmary. Axel was sat in there. Tyreese sat slumped in the doorway. He had run inside, found a weapon and come outside again and perhaps the reappearance of the big man had been the final straw that had scared them off.

It wasn't as if Sophia had reverted to being a scared little girl again. Seeing a man killed right in front of you and then using his corpse for a sandbag was disturbing for any human being. It was disturbing for me. Hugging her wasn't just helping her, it was helping me as I forced myself to get a grip on my emotions and feelings. But they were like a basket of kittens; no sooner did I put one in than another two jumped out. There was the noise of the gunfire that had left my ears ringing, the strikes of the bullets on the cell blocks and yard and Theodore's body and the spent round that had struck my foot and the other sounds that I hadn't been consciously aware of. The yells from inside the cell block in response to the attack, the calls and cries as they came outside, Andrea screaming for Dale, Allen screaming for his dying son, Maggie screaming thinking Glenn had been seriously wounded, and through it all the dim awareness that I might have been crying out; the yell of someone trying to force their fear down. There was shooting Theodore. There was feeling Beth and Sophia's terror throughout it all. There was the knowledge that whoever had tried to kill us was still out there.

The last time I had been truly fearful like that had been the night the farm had fallen; watching as Patricia was torn apart. I had been horrified by events that had taken place here but not scared. Being shot at… With everything happening in the world, being shot was a rather mundane way to die, and perhaps that was what made it so terrifying. Walking corpses were simply unnatural but people had been dying to pieces of fire-propelled metal for hundreds of years. To be killed by a firearm had been an everyday threat before. Especially for me.

Eventually we just sat there on the stairs, waiting and contemplating our hands in the meantime. There was no reason for us to be sat so close besides that it comforted us both, just as we had remained close while waiting to be found in that house. I had always wondered if sitting and flexing my fingers and thinking about all the things that had to happen to make my fingers move was just a quirk of mine. Contemplating existence by the simple act of bending a few fingers. Seeing Sophia do the same told me it wasn't unique to me. But being sat next to me, she had something to compare them to.

"Do they ever hurt?" She asked the question while taking my left hand and not quite touching the stumps.

"Sometimes" I said and then I had a thought. I took her index finger and moved it into the space where the first part of my little finger was meant to be. I then felt the most bizarre sensation I ever had in my life and jumped.

"What?"

"I can feel your finger on mine. On the finger that's gone."

"What?!"

"It always feels like they're still there." I explained. "And I can feel like I'm touching them with my own hand." I moved her finger into the void where the second and third segment no longer were. "I can't feel anything there." I moved her finger back and felt that strange jolt again. "But I can feel that."

She pulled her finger from my grip and tested it for herself. For me, it was the strangest thing in the world to experience these phantom sensations even though I was watching and knew there was nothing there and it was a trick of the mind.

"Are you messing with me?"

"No."

Sophia looked at me suspiciously, trying to figure out if my little twitches were feigned and I wished they were. I had gotten used to my hacked off fingers itching from time to time and being able to scratch empty air to relieve them. But being able to feel someone else's touch in the same empty air was simply weird.

It distracted her for a little while. And me.

We heard her mom talk to Carl and then the sound of him running out and slamming the door behind him. Carol stepped over Tyreese who didn't even seem to notice her and I found it odd how Sophia remained still beside me, at least until Carol was close and I realised she was simply enjoying the comfort of being close to one person as long as possible before transferring to her mom. Carol put just one arm around her but it was pretty clear to me that she would have liked to take a hold of her and never let go.

"How is everyone?" I asked carefully.

"Carl has a little sister." Carol answered.

"Just like he wanted." Sophia missed the implication from the omission.

"And Lori?" I had to know for sure.

"We're doing everything we can for her." Carol said carefully.

Reading between the lines, I guessed that Lori had received that dreaded C-section and I knew that even in the past when such things were routine it could be very, very nasty. If she wasn't dead already though; that was a good outcome.

"And the others?" I asked as Sophia began to pick up the subtext.

"Allen will be okay. Glenn's going to have a scar. …And our guest will mend." Her tone conveyed that the atmosphere in the infirmary was grim.

[][][][][][]

We were effectively paralysed until Daryl returned. I didn't know if his lack of urgency was calculated to make people feel calm or if he really was just hungry. Either way he didn't say a thing until after he had had something to eat. Oscar kept watch from the yard and it seemed unlikely anyone would feel comfortable going out there for a while; let alone the field. With Oscar outside, Beth and Hershel in the infirmary with Allen and Lori and the baby, that saw myself, Andrea, Axel, Carol, Daryl, a bandaged Glenn, Maggie, Sasha and Tyreese to gather in the common area and regard Rick and the Sword Lady. Rick didn't take his eyes off of her as Daryl made his report. Carl was in a bad way and Sophia was keeping him company.

Daryl had been able to track our attackers' vehicle. How wasn't particularly important because at the end of it, he found something interesting.

"There's a town. Woodbury. They got a whole section of it walled off. Fortified. With trailers mostly, with tires, sheet metal, plywood… Whatever junk they could find. They got guards on almost every wall. Lots of 'em."

"When you say a town." Andrea began carefully. "Do you mean they've just walled off a street or-"

"I mean they got a whole chunk of the town fortified. A few blocks."

Andrea whistled softly. "Imagine that."

"How many?" Glenn asked, visibly struggling not to scratch his bandage.

"I don't know." Daryl answered with simple honesty. "But I heard people inside. Women and children. Must be at least fifty though."

"Why don't you tell us?" Rick addressed Sword Lady. "You been there. Ain't you?" It wasn't an accusation because he had no doubt he was right. She only scowled at him and his patience was non-existent. The Python was out and in her face in an instant. "We lost three people today!" This was why no one interfered. "Good people! And I know the people who killed them were the same assholes who shot you! So how about you tell us about the goddamn wolves you brought to our door unless you want me to put you out of your misery! Then I can string your body up at the gates and they can see you ain't no friend of ours!"

I really thought she would tell him to do it. I had seen the momentary spark in her eyes at the appeal of an end to all the shit she had endured and she was definitely tempted. But her stubbornness was stronger. It didn't get any more stubborn than refusing to die. "Seventy-five." She said and her soft tone and unexpected words took everyone by surprise. "About seventy-five. There's kids there." She confirmed for Daryl. "Families." Her expression became hard and that meant her previous expression, believe it or not, had been soft. "The place is run by this guy who calls himself 'The Governor'." She spat the title. "Pretty boy. Charming." I saw she was pointedly comparing this man to Rick but he didn't seem to see it. "Jim Jones type." It meant nothing to me. "He's got a whole bunch of paramilitary wannabes and they've taken weapons from the actual military and I mean the living military. Killed them for their weapons. But the people there? They don't know. He spoon feeds them a whole bunch of bull and they gulp it down." Her contempt was visceral. "He doesn't like anyone to leave his little piece of paradise."

Rick lowered his weapon and took a moment to think. I doubted her one sentence describing why those 'paramilitary wannabes' had been after her would suffice but I thought the thing he was really trying to wrap his head around was confirmation of Daryl's report of a town. Daryl had guessed fifty, she said seventy-five and even if the figure was in between, it was still more live people than we had seen in a long time. Tyreese's group had seen a high of twenty-five. Ours had been twenty and now there were seventeen of us. Eighteen if you counted the newborn. Eighteen if Lori survived… Everyone else was considering the numbers, and the difference between a prison and a town. For some reason my mind considered the logistics of it and then I realised it was my life experiences. I had always been able to find food and water on the streets but that was before. How did you get water into a town now that water was no longer pumping through the pipes? How did you get food for that many people? We had our small field for future crops but what could you do in a town? They had to have answers to these questions though.

"How did you meet these people?" Rick asked her.

"There was a helicopter. I saw it crash and went to investigate. So did they." She adopted a sneer. "They decided I needed rescuing from the wilds and they wouldn't take no for an answer. I saw what they had in their town. I saw what their 'Governor' was. I said I wanted to leave and it took days before they finally let me go." She scoffed. "A few days for him to realise I wasn't going to become one of his loyal soldiers and to plan to take care of me. He wanted my sword. He wanted a trophy."

I considered the sheer amount of hate she had for the man and wondered if it was truly earned or if this woman was simply too far gone to have interpreted her experiences at the town in anything but the worst light.

"What's this about the helicopter?" Andrea pressed.

"National Guard. They brought in a man who survived the crash. Word around town was that they had safezone near Atlanta that got overrun. They evacuated and took the chopper with them and they were using it to scout when they came down." Sword Lady became dark again. "He spun a story about how when they went to find them, the dead had got there first. Brave heroes who died doing their duty, while Woodbury would benefit from their sacrifice by using their vehicles and weapons. Funny how they had all that firepower and training and couldn't deal with a few walkers. Funny how their vehicles had bullet holes…"

"So what, you're saying this Governor, he killed them for their supplies?"

"He killed them because he wouldn't have been able to control them."

"You're saying he murdered a bunch of soldiers just to stay leader of a town?" Sasha demanded.

"And attacked us here because we could be a threat." Rick concluded.

"Maybe." Daryl said.

Rick whipped around to face him. "Maybe?"

"Wasn't much of an attack if he has a whole town."

"Wasn't smart either. "I said. "If they were smart, they would have let us get down in the field first. In the open. They just started shooting the moment we stepped out. So they didn't know how many of us there are. They weren't watching us."

"He's right." Daryl unexpectedly agreed with this. "If this was planned they would have hit us when it'd really hurt. 'stead they started firing the second they got out the door. And they weren't even shooting our best people." He made an odd waving motion with his arm. "Shooting at kids…" He grunted the way he did. "The way I figure it, they followed her trail here and camped out overnight. This Governor didn't know we existed until today."

"And the real attack could come tomorrow… Great."

"I don't know." Daryl had obviously thought about it while he had been out there. "If she killed a bunch of 'em and we took two here, and he's keeping this stuff from his people; he's got to be low on soldiers. We're dug in here. Can't surprise us now."

"If we're attacked again, we don't have anything to shoot back with." Andrea said. "We're down to a few handfuls of rifle ammunition and after that, we've got pistols and nothing else. If we're going to defend ourselves, let alone hit back at this murdering asshole, we're going to need a lot more guns."

Rick needed a moment to process and the rest of us did too. The idea of a whole town of survivors was hard to wrap your head around when you had been living in abandoned buildings and the only people you had seen were dead. I had spent the winter with fourteen people and spring with sixteen. Seventy-five? That was crazy.

Trying to understand that three people were dead because some trigger-happy assholes served a wannabe king who was killing everyone who might challenge his leadership; this was not so crazy to me. That was more of the same for me and my criminal upbringing. For the others, it was insane. The dead were enough to deal without some lunatic on a power trip.

[][][][][][]

As there was a chance of being attacked again, we had to have a midnight funeral and that was creepy as hell. There were no eulogies because we were too exposed so instead we dug the graves, put them down, filled them in and went back inside. Ben, Dale and Theodore laid beside Donna and Big Tiny. Big Tiny's grave had weathered while the other four were fresh.

I didn't go to bed. I sat in the common area with a dynamo lamp and watched it fade down to nothing before winding it again. I was meant to have been clearing dirt for crops and instead I had dug graves.

Glenn looked like shit and it wasn't his bandaged forehead. Another injury meant little to him. He gave me a brief look before sitting down.

"You shouldn't be drinking." He said.

"Why? Because it's against the law?" I asked. I had needed a drink and our scavenging meant we had a choice. "It's just wine anyway."

"Wine bad." Glenn said, recalling the CDC. He had definitely been rough the day after. I hadn't touched the stuff; not that anyone had noticed.

"Dale liked wine." It had been one of the topics he had covered during guard duty. "He said he didn't believe in all that fruity nonsense about wine. Having 'character' and everything. It had a good taste or it didn't. It was good wine or bad wine. Everything else was just a way to jack up the price."

"Is this good or bad wine?"

"No idea. I never drank wine before." I admitted. "Vodka, whiskey… Brandy…" I shuddered remembering that. "People build… Built… They built up their collection of spirits. Grab a bottle from the back and, easy money. There was always someone looking to buy cheap alcohol… Dale didn't approve of me drinking either."

"He didn't approve of a lot of things." Glenn said, and then took the bottle and took a long draught before pulling a face. "Bad wine." He declared. "I feel like we should all have glasses and we should be toasting." He swallowed. "I don't even know what I would say."

"It's easier with Theodore. He always watched your back. He watched everyone's backs. Even when he was trying to make sense of all this and he was deep in his thoughts; he always had one eye open for you." I gazed at the fading lamp. "The last thing he did in life was take a bullet for me and Sophia. Even if he didn't mean to… And then he took a whole bunch when he was dead. Protecting us. I'm going to miss having him around to grab me by the scruff and throw me out of harm's way. But Dale?" I shook my head. "He was always telling me I mattered. What I thought matters. I still don't know what to do with that."

"He believed in people. Even after everything we'd been through and everything he'd seen. He still believed in people. He believed in us. And in this place." Glenn frowned. "Dale lost his wife to cancer. He was all alone when this all started, he had to watch Andrea lose Amy, he nearly lost Andrea too… There was nothing he could do for Jim… He even lost his RV! And Jimmy, he saw Jimmy torn apart! And he still believed. He was still…" He searched for the right way to describe it.

"Glass half full?" I offered.

"And he died alone in a prison guard tower. Shot to death."

"Worse ways to go."

"He shouldn't have gone at all! And to be killed by people?! Like we haven't got enough to worry about?" He raised his hand but managed to fight off the need to scratch his wound.

"What do you think it means?"

"Mean?"

"Andrea's on the warpath. Allen will be too." I was certain of that. "If Lori doesn't pull through…" That would be bad for everyone. "And everything we know comes from a woman who talks to herself."

"She does?"

"Trust me." I had seen her lips moving silently and I knew the second she thought there was no one in earshot she would be voicing her thoughts, or worse. It was 'normal' for people who spent long periods in solitude. At first it was just to hear something but after a while it became second nature and they couldn't discern the difference between silent and spoken thought.

"We go through all that shit through the winter and now here we are losing people to some psycho!" Glenn fought to keep his voice down. "It just never ends!"

[][][][][][]

Savannah's gangs didn't have a reputation for gun battles, not like other cities. But there were shootings like anywhere else and they rarely even made the local headlines because the thing about gangs was that they had the guns but they didn't know how to shoot. They would point them vaguely in each other's directions and let fly and the rounds would go wild. They didn't know any of the things that Rick had drilled into me. They couldn't even hold a pistol upright. Fifty bullets could go flying in a street and not one of them would hit anyone. Or if they did, it was an innocent bystander and that would make the local news though of course in the neighbourhoods where such battles took place; the bystanders weren't considered important.

That was how it seemed looking at the scars in the yard from the 'battle'. Some rounds had gone low, like those that had struck Theodore's body, but most had gone high. Very high. Dale had been a sitting duck in the tower while Ben and Theodore had been walking in the open. After that initial hit, they had fired what must have been a couple hundred rounds without effect. Unless you counted hitting Theodore's body… Andrea meanwhile had taken two of them with two shots. The gulf between automatic fire delivered with a prayer and careful shooting was clear to me. But all I knew how to use was a little pistol at very short range. For me it was clearly best to hit the ground and stay there.

I had already known about the difference between cover and concealment. An idiot would dive behind a dumpster thinking it was cover and not realise it was a box made of very thin metal. Even if it was completely filled with trash, it would mean little to a pistol round and even less to one from a rifle. So placing the tops from the tables from the cafeterias along the fence wasn't meant to protect us from more bullets. It was meant to make it harder for them to see us when they were shooting at us.

Small comfort.

Maybe that was a future project; building a wall of sandbags behind the yard's fence. The two fences down in the field protected us against walkers and up here in the yard would be our defence against people.

Against people… It seemed crazy to me that people were still fighting each other when they had such a clear-cut common enemy. But with everything I knew about human nature, could I really say I was surprised? It was depressing to think that this was a dispute over turf but really, how was that anything new? This was a country where people built concrete walls to maintain the boundaries between their properties after all. In friendly neighbourhoods. If this Governor wanted to be king of his own little domain, he was no different from any of those gangs I had known.

[][][][][][]

Lori might recover or she might not. It was not a question that could be answered. Allen meanwhile had been pumped full of drugs because he had been quite determined to go to this Woodbury and kill the Governor. Hershel said with his wound, any significant movement would tear his stitches and he would bleed out.

"Thinks he's Delta Force or something." Tyreese said and then sighed. "Man loses his wife, then his son before he's even started to get over his wife? How's a man live with that?"

"He'll live longer if he doesn't go to war without any guns." Andrea had every last round and shell we possessed laid out on a table and it was a depressing collection.

"Where is she?" Rick asked, meaning Sword Lady.

"In the bus."

"What's she doing?"

"Healing." Andrea approved it seemed. Healing up so she could go to war.

"That all?"

"Axel's keeping an eye on her." He was meant to be keeping watch in general.

Rick grunted. He didn't seem to have slept a wink since the attack and he had that twitchy nervous energy. He was trying to think of a course of action to take; something to do. But what was there to do? A counterattack? With what? Andrea had made that point. Fortify? With what? The low fence we had built with table tops meant little. Talk? The most peaceful members of the group were occupied in the infirmary with Allen, Lori and a baby while everyone else was either angry or frightened. Both.

Daryl had some thoughts though. "I can keep an eye on the town. See what's what. But there ain't more to see, and if they come back, there ain't nothin' to stop them ramming a truck through them gates. We ain't got shit to stop them."

"I got an idea for that." Rick stared into space. "Maybe. Something to improve the situation." He stared at Sophia's mural of the Greene farmhouse on the wall. "But it means leaving and I don't want to leave for the day and come back to find ashes. Can't leave anyway." The last part was one of those voiced thoughts I had told Glenn about and he didn't seem to realise he had said it. "But it has to be me. Only one who knows. …Fuck it."

"Even if we get more guns, what are we going to do with them?" Glenn asked. "Defend this place? Attack their place? We don't even know what we're up against. I mean, no offence to her, but can we really trust her? They killed Dale and T-Dog but what if this Governor isn't who she says he is?"

"Whatever he is, we need to be ready. If it ain't this Woodbury, it could be someone else. And the walkers ain't gone away." Daryl growled. "We been behind these fences too long. Got comfortable. We forgot how many assholes are out there." He shook his head. "You got an idea for firepower, you get on with it." He said to Rick. "I'll keep my eye on Woodbury."

"What do the rest of us do?" Andrea inquired and not quite in that familiar huffy tone of hers, but close. "Just sit here and wait?"

"I ain't sitting here waiting to be shot at." Oscar declared. "Not if you ain't gonna give me something that shoots back."

Rick stared at him for about half a minute and then took a step over to Andrea's table and swept up the M4. He held it up to Oscar. "You know how to use this?"

"I do."

"Okay then." Rick pressed it into his hands, one of our best weapons, and just like that he was part of the inner circle. Rick turned back to the rest of us. "I didn't take everything from the cage back home. I didn't leave much but if it's still there; it's something."

"Pistol rounds and shotgun shells?" Andrea asked.

"It's something!" Rick snarled. "And if you can't sit still, you can come with me!" He got a grip on himself. "It's a long way to go but it's something." He repeated for a third time. "And we don't know what we're dealing with."

"I could find out." I said.

"What?"

"I could go there."

"Dude, you can't just break in!" Glenn protested. "If they've got guards-"

"I wasn't going to break in." I said. "I was going to go up to the front door and knock." Every single one of them stared at me. "Just another lost soul wandering the dead world and finding their bit of paradise."

"How can you do that?" Andrea folded her arms "They know what you look like."

"Do they? Look at me." I stepped beside Oscar and then took another step to Daryl. They were starting to take the point when I took another step to stand beside Maggie. "I don't think they staked us out and even if they did, I don't look like anybody. I'll change my clothes, hack off some hair and then I really could be anybody."

"Let me get this straight." Rick fixed me with that stare of his. "You want to walk into the lion's den, and what? Take notes?"

I shrugged "Yeah. It's what I do."

Everyone looked at Rick and clearly expected him to tell me to sit down and shut up. Instead he nodded. "We could do with a man on the inside."

"Are you crazy?!" Glenn's voice was the loudest in the uproar.

"We need to know what we're dealing with and all we've got is some stranger's word!" I spoke for myself. "This is something we need! Something I can do."

"And if they recognise you?" Maggie asked. "What then?"

"I tried." I shrugged. "But I know how to do this."

"No offence but you robbed people." Andrea said. "This is… Spy stuff."

"I used to spend whole days just taking notes and no one noticed me. Not one person ever asked me what I was doing in their neighbourhood and told me to move on. Because I didn't look out of place. And when I needed to take a closer look… The last time someone saw me and chased me off, I was twelve. Look at me." I had to make the point again. "I'm young, skinny, I've got this." I held up my hand. "I'm not threatening and if this place has a public face, taking me in out of the wasteland is a heart-warming tale for them to tell." I leaned down on Andrea's table. "I'll look very pathetic when they see me for the first time."

"You can't put yourself in danger like this." Maggie insisted. "It's crazy!"

"We're already in danger. If I stay here it's guaranteed." I said. "At least this is on my own terms."

"You people are crazy." Sasha declared. "And you, you're just nuts."

"Sasha." Tyreese remonstrated.

"I mean it! Who do you think you are, kid?"

I stood up straight. "Who are you?" I replied. It was the best response to give because she didn't have an answer. People used to be able to answer that question easily but now, it was up in the air.

"One thing though." Andrea said. "What are you going to tell Sophia?"

This did give me pause and served to ease the tension in Glenn and Maggie at least. "I'll tell her mean Mr Grimes is making me do it."

[][][][][][]

I gave myself a crude haircut with a knife which took me back to younger days when this had been my idea of grooming. When I had become a 'professional' thief and had needed to blend in, I had required something less conspicuous. Now though the look suited me perfectly as someone keeping his hair short to avoid being grabbed by walkers.

Clothing wasn't important. I could wear anything I liked because anyone could get clothes from everywhere now. All they required was being slept in so they had the right musty smell to them. It was simple.

"You look like rats have been chewing your hair."

I could have told her I knew what that was actually like but she was thirteen and upset so I let it slide. She was really starting to master that death glare of hers though. "They told you."

"I heard." She folded her arms and it was to make herself look tougher but at her age, it had the opposite effect. It was the freckles. In my world they would have been a devastating weapon because people would constantly underestimate her. When she figured that out, we would all be in trouble.

I sat down on my bed so she could enjoy the high ground at least. Her death glare was a bit more effective when directed downward. "I'm going." I said.

"Why are you doing this?"

"Because I can. Someone has to."

"So you think you're James Bond?"

"I have no idea who that is." And I had no idea how significant that gap in my knowledge was either. Judging by Sophia's expression; pretty significant. "Look, someone has to check out this place and I'm the only one who can do it."

"The lady's already been inside."

"And she's nuts. And not a talker. Someone has to confirm what she's already said and find out more."

"Why you?" She asked again.

"Because I'm a skinny, eight-fingered rat no one will look twice at. If Daryl went up to those gates, they'd put him on a leash. Glenn can't lie… It has to be me."

"But you're…!" She stopped herself.

"A kid?" I asked and she scowled at me. "That's the point."

"What if they just shoot you?"

"Why? I'm not worth a bullet." I said and she obviously was not placated. "We need to know what we're up against and this is something I can do." I repeated my initial argument. "That's what I always do; try to be useful."

"You're not a spy!"

"I know how to be sneaky though. It's what I'm good at." I reminded her gently. "I go in, I play the part of the loner amazed by what I see in their little town, I learn about this 'Governor' and then I get out.

"What if they just shoot you?" She asked again.

"Then they shoot me. It's a risk. But staying here and doing nothing is a bigger risk. For all of us." She continued to glower at me. "It's not a game to me, Freckles." I said and the nickname annoyed her. "It never was. But I know how to do this."

"I don't want you to go." Just like that she proved she did know how to use her features to full effect. The big sad eyes and the freckles together were quite the weapon.

"I know you don't. But we both nearly got shot and that's important." I sighed. "If this Governor is as bad as Sword Lady says, we're going to end up in a war. We can't leave… Not with a newborn baby and Carl's mom can't move right now. So we need to know what we're up against and I'm the best bet." She kept giving me the sad eyes. "I don't want to go. I need to. I have to. We're all good at something and sneaky shit like this; that's what I'm good at. I ain't gonna be any use sitting around here. I can't just sit around waiting for something to happen."

Sophia sat down next to me, and then she leaned against me. The intimacy of it immediately put me on edge and I considered the possibility that this was the point; another weapon she was aware she could use against me. "Who's going to take care of me?" She asked and this question made me further suspicious. Maybe it was innocent, or maybe it was carefully calculated to make me feel guilty. I didn't know and I lamented how intelligent she was.

"You've got your mom and right now she needs you." I replied. "Everything's fucked up at the moment." I said and then shook my head and laughed. "At the moment? I guess I was comfortable here then if I thought everything out there wasn't so bad anymore…" I looked at her head resting on my shoulder and I thought that the blonde in her hair was losing ground to the strawberry. That felt symbolic. "You can't make me change my mind."

"I know." She sighed and she leaned on me a little harder. I hadn't known it was possible to physically lay on the guilt.

[][][][][][]

Beth told me to be careful. Glenn and Maggie wished me luck. Andrea and Rick gave me a look. Carol gave me a hug. Sophia punched my arm very hard.

Andrea and Rick went on their weapon expedition while I left with Daryl. It was my first ride on a motorbike and it was exhilarating. I also felt vulnerable because while Daryl had no problem weaving amongst the walkers on the road, I was keenly aware there was no car door or window between me and them. Daryl was well-practiced at this though and the grasping hands were alarming but never came close.

The bike had no trouble on the roads. They had cleared the ways around the prison and we had opened up other routes during our winter migration but the bike could bypass every obstacle easily. It was a small advantage but it still amazed me how comfortable Daryl was being out here alone, either on the bike or hunting out in the woods around the prison.

Daryl knew the best place to drop me. It was a gas station outside Woodbury and we didn't need to worry about a surprise visit because the signs made it clear that the place was dry. Where Woodbury got its fuel from could be one of the things I could find out.

"Why you doing this?" Daryl asked.

"I didn't like being shot at." I answered and that was what had first planted the idea in my head. "If this turns into a war, I won't be any use shooting." I had left my new weapon behind as part of the story I would try to sell. "And last time I fought someone, I got stabbed…"

"That ain't it." Daryl said shrewdly.

"Honestly? I don't know… I got the idea and then it wouldn't go away. It's a good idea. And it has to be me. I'm the only one who can go up there and not look like a threat and then get out of there without being seen. I can do that…" I sighed. "More shit to deal with. I was looking forward to learning how to farm." I looked along the road back to the prison and then up toward my destination. "I just want to be useful."

Daryl nodded a few times. "Just don't get yourself killed. I don't want that girl's eyes on me."

I laughed. It was good to know I wasn't the only one fearful of Sophia's sad puppy eyes. "Yeah… She ain't gonna forgive me any time soon." I looked up the road again. "How do I look?"

"Like shit."

"Good. Shit is good." I had rubbed more than enough dirt onto my skin. "Five days, right?"

"Five days." He confirmed. "Unless you see shit 'bout to hit the fan, then you better get your ass back on your own."

"If I remember the way." I was thinking about the last time I had been alone. "Five days."

He grabbed at my arm suddenly and it took me a moment to realise it was an arm clasp and then I returned it. "Watch yourself." He said.

I watched him leave and listened until the noise of the bike faded away. If there were any walkers out there drawn by the initial noise, they would follow it now. Meanwhile, I was by myself with a bag of essentials and the random items someone living this way would have. It was all familiar to me. The only change was that I had a crowbar to hand. My tool to survive. That and my wits.

I had a half mile to walk and the solitude of it started to bite at me within minutes. The last time I had been this alone had been with Sophia after we had come off the highway. That had been frightening because I had been responsible for another person but now it was just me. No one to talk to. No one to watch my back. That was on me. I was alone and not in the comfortable urban environment I knew. At least I was on the road and not among those damned trees. The road was open and I liked that. Nothing could surprise me. If something came for me out of the trees, I could take it on the open space of the road.

When I saw the town, it actually reassured me. The countryside made me nervous but a sprawl of buildings; that I understood. I also understood the walker strung up from a tree and left to claw the air at the sight of me. A good scarecrow.

Daryl had suggested we take a look at the town first so I knew what I would be going up against but I had dismissed it. It was better if I was seeing everything for the first time so my responses would be real rather than needing to feign anything. It was a good call because if anyone was watching me, they saw me take in Woodbury's walls for the first time genuinely.

The street was partially blocked off with a couple of flatbed trailers and they had used them as a base to construct their wall. It was as Daryl had described it; a mixture of wood and sheet metal. Tyres too. It was definitely crude and improvised but also clearly functional. What impressed me were the gates in the middle which they had obviously built themselves and were large enough to allow vehicles to pass through. This was not some hasty project that had been thrown up in just a day. Maybe originally they had used the flatbeds to block the street and deter walkers but they had built on it and turned it into a proper bulwark.

I had other thoughts, immediate thoughts, but pushed them away. They wouldn't be in character for me.

There were five men on watch, three with cop or military rifles, while the other two had a bow and crossbow respectively. They were not good guards because they didn't see me until I stepped out into the open and made myself very apparent. They were obviously used to keeping watch just for walkers and so anything less than blatant activity didn't get their attention. That was good to know. I made sure the crowbar in my hand was visible so they could see I was walker and also see that it was a crowbar and not a gun.

Someone yelled at me to move my ass out of the open and I took that as an invitation. At least they hadn't shot me. Not yet anyway.

One of the gates opened a crack, a hand shot out and grabbed my crowbar to haul me in. I let it be twisted free of my hand so I was disarmed and I had two of those big military rifles shoved in my face. It should have been terrifying but I didn't think my pulse increased at all. There was something hopelessly mundane about having guns pointed at you after seeing people ripped apart by teeth. Perhaps it was because I knew that these guns weren't going to start shooting, not in broad daylight and not in front of so many people.

That was two things that served me well. My indifference to the weapons pointed at me sold me as someone who had been out there so long they just didn't give a shit anymore while my genuine shock at seeing a crowded street again said I had no knowledge of Woodbury. It was one thing for Sword Lady and Daryl to talk about the numbers but seeing them… I could see maybe twenty to thirty people and they weren't all clustered together but moving around, going about their business in a clean street that besides the lack of moving vehicles looked entirely normal. Either side of me was the makeshift fortification but in front of me was an everyday town.

Also a Hispanic man with a submachine gun and, inexplicably, wearing his cap backward despite the glare of the sun.

"Who the fuck are you?" He demanded.

"Who are you?" I replied, and like Sasha the question took him aback. So did the polite tone I used. Maybe not polite. Disconnected. It wasn't entirely feigned. Seeing so many people together and in such an ordinary setting after nearly a year of chaos was hitting me hard. I had seen masses of walkers often enough but people? A crowd of people had become such a distant memory as to have the quality of a dream.

He recovered himself and jammed the submachine gun against my jaw. I knew this weapon; an MP5K. I knew it by the foregrip. If he pulled the trigger, there wouldn't be much left of my skull afterwards. "I won't ask again."

"What is this place?" I asked and the dazed question combined with my ratty appearance and youth, not to mention the other guy patting me down and finding no firearms convinced him I wasn't a threat.

"What's going on here?" The voice was gruff, authoritative and also dripped Southern charm. "This how we treat visitors?"

"He just wandered up to the gates like it was nothing." The Hispanic man replied.

"Is there any other way?" The man asked with a smile. "You saw the town and figured it was a place to scavenge, right?" He asked disarmingly. "You weren't expecting to see all this."

"No." There was no introduction but I didn't need one. Based on Sword Lady's description, it was obvious to me that this was the Governor. This was the 'enemy'. I could see why she hated him because I knew that smile. It was… familiar.

"Any weapons?" He asked his men.

"Just this." One of them held out the crowbar and the Governor took it and swung it a few times before looking at the stains.

"No gun?" He asked me rather than them.

"Not much good with them. And they make too much noise."

He swung it again and looked at the chisel end and saw the stains that were there too. "We're not going to find a gun in that bag then?"

"Just knives."

"Just knives." He nodded. "You mind if we don't take your word on that?"

"Do I have a choice?" I looked pointedly at the MP5K that was held ready to cut me in two.

I did not. To his men this was inexplicable but it seemed to intrigue.

The MP5K was raised again. "You hide a gun out there?"

"Why?" I replied.

"Martinez, do you really think the kid stashed a gun out there and then walked in here with nothing but a crowbar?" The Governor's tone suggested this was exactly what he would have done. "What's the point? What good would it do him if we just killed him now?" He swung the crowbar again and it was hard to tell if it was meant as a threat. At least until he pointed it at me. "You come with me."

I noted that no one paid any attention to me being escorted at gunpoint. They ignored me completely but someone stopped him to ask him a question. They wanted to know if he could do anything about their neighbour's dog which was barking again. I didn't have to feign my incredulousness at the banality of the question or the Governor telling her he would look into it.

The building I was led into had an immaculate front lawn. They had turned it into a clinic and I didn't know if they thought I needed to see a doctor or if this was Governor's idea of a friendly place to interrogate someone. The three armed men accompanying him meant I had no illusions that it wasn't an interrogation. Hardly my first. They made me sit and this was something they had done before because the three of them hung back casually but still giving the Governor the projection of strength.

Sword Lady had called him 'Pretty boy' and I couldn't judge male beauty to make that call for myself. I thought he had a dour look about him but so did most people I knew, for obvious reasons. But he had that smile. Friendly. Warm. Disarming. At least it would have been for someone else but not for me. I wouldn't have trusted it even without what I knew.

"So." He began in a gentle tone. "Where did you come from?"

"Savannah."

"Savannah?" He chuckled. "You're a long way from home."

"They told us to go to Atlanta and with everything I saw going on in Savannah, I didn't argue. Everything I saw on the road… They said Atlanta would be safe."

"But it wasn't."

"I saw them dropping fire in the streets."

"I heard about that. I saw the aftermath… It must have been quite a sight."

"Hell." I said laconically.

"Well, we've all endured hell. Now we're doing our best to make something out of it." It was spoken kindly and in a tone I guessed was meant to be fatherly. The last fatherly tone I had heard had been from Dale and he was dead. And before that, my own despised father. I had to fight to stay impassive. "What happened at Atlanta?"

"I joined some people. We made a camp in a quarry outside the city. I got my own tent and everything… …I wasn't coping with any of it."

"What do you mean?"

"What is this place?" I countered. "Walls and soldiers and… Lawns? It doesn't look like this place has been touched!"

"We've been through our share, some of us more than others, this place didn't happen overnight. I know it must all look strange to you after being out there. We've had people come in before and they had trouble seeing our little piece of the old world and that was before we had the place tidied up." He chuckled again. "Made it pretty. You're alone?" He asked.

"For a while now."

"Hard to get by on your own now." It was a challenge.

"People die. A lot of people die."

"But you survived."

"I'm good at it."

"Without a gun?"

"Guns make noise. You fire a gun and every walker for a mile will hear it. Fire it twice and they know which direction to go. But you put a crowbar into a skull, you only have to worry about the rest of the street." I spoke coldly. Unfriendly. Appropriate. "They can't kill you if they don't know you're there."

"That must take some practice. My people, they always reach for their guns first and I have to remind them to save their rounds." He sighed sadly and I couldn't tell if it was feigned or not. "Guns are quick and easy. People prefer not to get their hands dirty if they can avoid it. Unfortunately, that ain't a luxury we can afford any more. I wish we had more bows and crossbows for the squeamish but sooner or later, people will have to accept that this." He held up my crowbar. "This is the best way to deal with lone biters. And if we work together, many more."

I thought about what Sword Lady had said about feeding the people here bull. What he had just said wasn't that, but the way he said it, I could see where her objection was coming from. Combined with the smile, his way of talking was threatening to me. I knew it was masking something more.

I didn't have to reply though because a man entered the building like he was storming the place and barged straight into the room.

"There you are." The man declared, loud and brazen. "Been looking all over for y'all."

"Merle?" I couldn't believe it.

The Governor looked at me sharply and Merle Dixon hadn't even noticed me until I spoke. He had lost weight and muscle but it was definitely him. You didn't forget a guy like that. Me however, I was easily forgotten and Merle stared at me hard and a dim glimmer of recognition appeared in his eyes. "I know you." He said quietly, a growl at the back of his throat. "I know you!" He pointed at me with a blunt arm. I knew he had cut off his hand to escape that roof top and now he wore an odd device over the stump that transformed it into a makeshift club, and also appeared to have a space where he could attach a bayonet. That didn't surprise me. He saw where I was looking and he smiled. It was another smile I was familiar with. It was the kind of smile that promised violence. "Oh, you like that?" He brandished his arm. "This all I got left now."

I held up my hand. "I'm catching up." I said and he took in the missing fingers with a certain kind of satisfaction while the Governor hadn't noticed. He didn't like that he hadn't noticed. "They went back for you." I said. "The following morning. But you were already gone when they got there."

"They went back for me?" The smile vanished instantly, replaced by a childish scowl of all things that looked especially ridiculous because he had a band-aid over the bridge of his nose. "You mean the assholes that left me up there?" He was angry but it was stale anger. I guessed he had raged over it a lot shortly after and had delivered a spiel familiar to everyone around him in the weeks and months since. By now he had nothing new to say. I imagined that if he saw Rick though, that rage would boil fresh once more.

"You know this kid?" The Governor asked him.

"He was in the camp. Back in Atlanta." Merle's casual confirmation of my story was beautiful. "Creepy lil asshole skulking around. Not talking." The smile reappeared on his face. The smile of a viper. "Looking at me like I was gonna turn around and bite."

"While you went around sniffin' all kinds of shit up your nose and then hollering round the camp about how we were all good for nothing city assholes and you were gonna stop the apocalypse all by yourself." I had made Merle scowl again. "No, not alone. You and your brother."

Merle had clearly not forgotten Daryl but it didn't seem to have registered with him that I might have information about him. But the Governor cut in before he could ask. "So you two do know each other?"

"No." I said. "I knew his brother though. He went back for you. Him, Rick, Glenn and Theodore." There was something very entertaining about watching Merle's face darken at the mention of Rick and then become confused at hearing Theodore. He had only known him as T-Dog. "They went back for you, and you were gone… And the vehicle they took into Atlanta was gone as well so they had to head back to camp on foot." It was as close I dared come to voicing the theory that Merle had stolen it. "And they barely made it in time. We were attacked."

"Attacked?" The Governor asked and his tone was neutral.

"We only ever had one walker up there at a time before. And then that night there were dozens of them. I came this close…" I shuddered and it wasn't play-acting as I recalled just how close it had been. "There weren't many survivors. Your brother and the others came back from Atlanta with a bag of guns Rick dropped there. Four men with shotguns ended the fight. But there weren't many people left. Then who was left split up. Atlanta was too dangerous so we left." I decided not to mention the CDC, it all sounded too fantastical. "Someone suggested we go to Fort Benning so that was where we were headed. Then out on the highway, Dale's RV broke down. You remember Dale?" I asked Merle. "Old man with the hat?" Merle nodded. "He's dead now. But that was later. They were fixing the RV and scavving some cars when a whole bunch of walkers came up the highway. We hid from them, but a couple of stragglers went for the kids. Chased a girl off the road. I went after her. We managed to hold up in a house for a few days. That's when I got bit and I cut these off." I held up my hand again. "Your brother found us." I told Merle.

"And then what?"

"We stayed on a farm for a while. Nice place. Very pretty. Good food. And wide open when a whole horde of walkers came by one night. Hundreds and hundreds of them. They set the barn on fire." They all stared at me. "Rick did. Not the walkers. He set fire to the walkers that had him trapped in there and he managed to get out. And the fire… That's what I remember. The fire. That great big fire raging with all the walkers around it and it all looked like… Like souls in torment. The actual fires of Hell." Just as I had described Atlanta. "That fire burning and people firing shotguns and… Patricia." I swallowed quite unintentionally. "One of the farm people. I saw her ripped apart right in front of me. Like, where you're standing right in front of me. After that…" I shook my head. "I got out of there though."

"And my brother?" Merle asked quietly.

"Last I heard he was tearing along on your bike." I said. "He was taking care of it for you." I added. "And the last time I saw him, he was definitely alive and well." These weren't lies but the actual truth and so easy to sell to Merle.

"So you were on your own after that?" The Governor inquired.

"Whole group split up. Different vehicles. Some people on foot, I guess. I was separated and I weren't gonna hang around. I headed for the town nearby. I knew it was there and I figured the others might go there to regroup. They didn't. We had some bad experiences there so maybe they avoided it. I stayed though. For a week or two. Then I moved on."

"Where?"

"I don't know. I was just looking for people but I didn't find any. Found a lot of walkers though. Everywhere I went. After that I found another town and I holed up for the winter. It weren't hard. There's plenty out there for just one person, especially if you ain't fussy. One person can hide in an attic during the day and then come out at night to scavenge."

"You went out after dark?" The Governor scoffed, the friendly façade dropping away as he looked on my less than impressive appearance.

"Walkers can't see for shit. You move around at night and they don't know what they're hearing so they don't get excited by it. And if you make deliberate noise, they all come to investigate and they bump into each other and make more noise and soon you've cleared a whole area as they all gather in one place and spend all night knocking each other down." We had learned this during the winter. "It's the closest you can get to making them fight each other."

"Interesting." The Governor seemed to actually mean it. "How long were you on your own?"

"I met some people in the spring. Small group. I wasn't too sure about them but after being alone all winter…"

"Where's this group now?"

"Dead." I said shortly. "Camp was overrun a few months back. People kept saying we needed to move on and find some place more secure but they had been there all winter so other people thought it was safe. Right until enough walkers showed up to bust through the fences. Then there were six of us. Then just me."

"What happened to the five?"

"I don't know. We were in the woods when we met a swarm. It was a brother and sister, and a family. I was the loner so you do the math." The key to lying was using familiar details and importing Tyreese's group into my fabricated narrative lent authenticity. If pushed for details about them, I didn't have to invent any. "I was on my own again."

"You seem talented at surviving on your own." The Governor didn't mean it as a compliment. It was an accusation.

"I was a thief." I had always planned to say this. "Staying out of sight and out of trouble is my first and second nature."

"You were a thief before all this?"

"Yeah." I reached down to my sock and it puzzled him as he knew I had been searched. I produced one of my picks. "Walkers can hear you breaking down doors. They can't hear you picking locks. So they never knew I was there." I deliberately replaced it in my sock to see his reaction. He didn't protest.

"You weren't searched properly." He said instead.

"They were looking for weapons. They weren't looking for anything else. It's not like looking for drugs." I nodded at Merle. "He can tell you about hiding them."

"The fuck you say to me, boy?" Merle immediately became loud and took a step toward more and the Governor stuck out a casual arm to hold him back.

"I'm sure he could. Past experiences being what they are. But we ain't about past experiences here. What happened in the past ain't important compared to what we plan to do now."

"What's that?"

"Stay alive." He said. "Stay alive and keep civilisation alive. There ain't many of us left now. This little town really is a little town now. We can't afford to gripe that people like Merle here and yourself have a chequered past. That ain't important no more. Not when we've got the biters to deal with." It was another good soundbite that must have sounded good to the people out there but not to a hardened cynic like me. "I'm gonna keep a hold of this." The Governor declared, referring to my crowbar. "Unless you want to leave right now?"

"Leave?"

"If this ain't your kind of place. Or you can stay." He turned to his man Martinez. "Make sure he gets a shower." He beckoned to Merle because whatever the Dixon brother had come here to tell him was not for my ears. I didn't want to connect the dots.

[][][][][][]

I was not quite a prisoner and my new cell was a clean furnished room. I found it interesting that my dirtying myself up had worked well enough that Martinez followed the order. He said he wanted to hear the water running.

My last shower had been in October. It was June now. The dirt I had rubbed into my skin was simple camouflage and washed off easily but the water cut through the layers that wet rags had barely touched. And the heat woke up protesting muscles and old injuries. Three months after being stabbed, the scars were ugly and liked the heat. But the scar from my previous stabbing was woken by it and throbbed. Scratches, cuts, burns… My body was lean because of my age rather than because of the lack of food over the winter. The regular meals at the prison meant I was in good health and if someone picked at the thread, thought I had should have looked thinner, I could explain it away by saying it was easy to scavenge just for yourself. I could only shower for ten minutes before the water went cold but hot water and actual products did a shocking amount to me; there was mud under my feet when I was done.

I sat on the bed for about thirty seconds before I had to sit on the floor. I had slept on concrete, steel or dirt with a bit of cardboard as insulation for years and upon getting my own apartment, I had struggled to sleep even on that sorry excuse for a bed for a long time. At the prison the foam pads they had for mattresses were almost a compromise between comfort and the squalor I was used to. This bed was a luxury. Just sitting on it was too much for me.

Sword Lady had rejected this place and I could see why. Proper beds, hot showers, clean rooms… Lawns… I could not stop thinking about that mown grass. When you had lived with nothing for a long time, you couldn't accept luxury just like that. I couldn't and I was playing a part.

…They had functional toilets…

I was ignored for the rest of the day and I had expected this after my brief interview. I wasn't particularly interesting to the Governor because of my age although if he was what Sword Lady said and what my suspicions suspected then my criminal past would appeal him. He would have uses for people who were experienced in getting their hands dirty. I also thought Merle would come and interrogate me further about this brother but maybe the Governor had persuaded him to let it lie, at least for tonight. Merle Dixon was a complication but not an insurmountable one. I did wonder if he had attacked the prison or had been involved with the attempt to kill Sword Lady. He was alive so maybe he had no part in that and Daryl had been prominent at the prison so it was unlikely he had been there.

They fed me and it was evident that the meal came from canned goods the same as at the prison and that was interesting. If this was town was surviving on scavenged food, the demand had to be huge and that meant a lot of work. A lot of journeys in vehicles burning fuel that also had to be scavenged.

Someone was at the door watching over me and so I didn't slip out to explore. I only took in the street outside through the window. For some reason they had the street lit up with braziers burning logs and torches burning oil and it bathed everything in flickering orange. Were they scared of the dark? They must have been to light up the town like a beacon at night which could only draw walkers in that would have otherwise passed by. Maybe the Governor had decided the comfort for the people came first; prioritising morale over resources. Well, we had steel doors to lock at night while they had ramshackle walls. Without all the fire, the streets would have been pitch-black and if everyone was living in the town without having fortified the buildings then they would feel very vulnerable at night. That was good to know. It meant that the people I had seen were normal citizens who got frightened at the thought of monsters attacking from the darkness.

Sword Lady had said the people didn't know what else lurked in the town's darkness. For the moment, the armed men I had seen hadn't given me any dark vibes. It only came from the Governor. That smile and my experiences with ones similar to it weren't good evidence. So far the story as I knew it was that Sword Lady had come here, left, and apparently the Governor had sent men after her to kill her except she had killed them. Then she had arrived at the prison with a bullet wound from that encounter and shortly afterward we had been attacked by men who had returned here. Sword Lady had said it was because the Governor didn't like people leaving his piece of paradise, and that he and his men had attacked other survivors, military, for their supplies. As stories went, it all made sense but I found it hard to believe that the people here could be ignorant of it. Or maybe that was because of my life story and mistrusting nature. I couldn't be fed bull.

What fascinated me though was thinking back to how Sword Lady had regarded Rick and how she had described the Governor in a way that matched Rick. I could definitely see it. Rick was definitely dour most of the time and those times he was jovial, it was very much like what I had seen of the Governor. Rick had killed his best friend and hacked a man to death. He had been willing to execute Randall before Dale had talked him into make it a group decision. So far from what I knew, Rick and the Governor were painted the same shade of grey.

[][][][][][]

In the morning I was given breakfast and then a tour of the town. The woman, Rowan, made me think of a realtor as she outlined Woodbury's features. She revealed there were in fact sixty-eight people in the town, with a pregnant woman soon to make it sixty-nine. She pointed out the solar panels they had in the streets and on the roofs and I listened to her talk about how wonderful it was to have an electrician who could make them work to provide power for the most critical needs. She confirmed my thoughts about all the fires and torches and said they were working to find more solar panels to replace the fires with electrical light once more.

"Isn't that just going to draw walkers?"

"We keep the fires low to the ground so they can't be seen from a distance." She said and was apparently unaware that all the fires combined meant the town would glow from a distance anyway. Maybe she chose not to be aware of it to enjoy the comfort of the illumination at night.

I chose not to be aware of the very conspicuous man following at a distance and obviously set to keeping an eye on me. He was no cop, and no thief either. He stood out.

Rowan was very proud of their walls and showed me every inch without any thought. The main entrance was the most heavily guarded and stretching across main street as it did, it and the opposite end were the longest walls. The others were smaller and likewise blocked off with vehicles. They had buses, trucks, even a couple of RVs. The smaller streets were watched by just one guard and I could see the flaws. The vehicles provided a base to build their walls around, a firestep to see and shoot over them but the junk they had used for the gaps was just that; junk. A person could break through the sheet metal and timber they had used easily enough. A walker would beat uselessly at it. A whole horde of them however would pile against them and their combined efforts would break down those weak points. They were obvious weak points too but Rowan seemed oblivious as she talked about the strength of the walls. She insisted that no one had been killed by a walker inside Woodbury since before winter.

"Really?" I tried to sound awed but I thought my scepticism shone through regardless.

"The walls haven't been breached in a month. If the biters do find a way in, we reinforce that spot so they don't get in again."

"Makes sense." I said and the sarcasm flew over her head. It seemed clear to me that the smart thing to do would be to ensure they didn't get in at all by reinforcing every section of the walls so there were no vulnerabilities. The fences at the prison were far more secure than this place and I kept seeing potential breaches as we walked. If a horde showed up, they would go through those weak stretches as easily as the walkers had broken down the low wire fences at the farm.

But it seemed they were more interested in making their town look clean and tidy than working on the ugly barrier surrounding it. It was all very clean. Too clean for me. She ascribed it all to their leader.

"Why do you call him 'The Governor'?" I asked.

She was surprised. "We just do."

"Why? Who started it?"

"I don't recall."

"So, someone someday just called him 'Governor' and it stuck? Not Mayor, or Boss, or Chief? 'Governor'?"

"It works." She shrugged.

"And you're okay with that? Who put him in charge?"

"He did. He stepped up and he did all this. I think he's more than earned the title."

Looking around, I had to admit that for all its flaws, building this all from scratch was definitely an accomplishment. "No elections then?"

"He's not a tyrant."

"I ain't saying that. Just that since this all started, I've seen a lot of men step up with their ideas for how to do things. Some good, some bad… And good or bad, they didn't like it when people disagreed with them."

"We've had disagreements here but everyone's always had the chance to speak their mind." She gave me a look. "And honestly, no one else wants to make the hard decisions."

"True." That had been what had made Dale so bitter; the willingness of the group to leave such decisions to Rick and Shane to pretend that their hands were clean regarding such decisions.

I missed the old man. It wasn't hard to imagine his disapproval of this whole situation. The situation that had killed him. People fighting people when the walkers were the real threat. I could understand people fighting over a bag of guns in Atlanta but out here, sixty-eight people with a baby on the way had the whole countryside to scavenge. Plenty to go around with what had been twenty people with a baby on the way. But men like the Governor who had that smile were fond of their power and didn't play well with others. They played friendly but it was a front. They liked power, revelled in it but they needed to be loved. The way Rowan was talking about him told me that he had the love while if Sword Lady was telling the truth then he enjoyed the power too.

Again, I compared him to Rick. Rick had made his leadership abundantly clear that night by the road. This place hadn't been built in a day. There must have been times when the Governor had had to make the same declarations of power to keep things going. With the weaknesses I saw though, he hadn't pushed his people anywhere near as hard as he could have. Or should have for that matter.

There were only sixty-eight people here and they had a lot more space than we did at the prison. They had fenced off the core of the town and it seemed like far too much to me. There were maybe two dozen people keeping watch on their perimeter and they were thinly stretched. That was comforting for the people as it implied the danger out there was contained but to me, it reeked of arrogance. If the Governor had a little inner circle attacking other survivors, they were in danger of retribution by a survivor like Sword Lady or even a whole other hostile group attacking without warning. With one guard on some of the small stretches of wall, it would take very little for a group to be over the walls and in amongst the people. Very little. It also meant I wouldn't have trouble escaping.

When my tour concluded, I remained under watch though the guard changed to someone a little less conspicuous. Only a little. I wasn't doing anything suspicious though. Not unless staring in disbelief counted and that was what I was doing as I watched the Woodburyians have a party. It was something they were practiced at and that made it worse. We had barbecued venison as a rare treat while they broke out the barbecues like it was a weekly event. Maybe it was. But they weren't cooking opossums and squirrels, they were making do with what came out of cans. As if to counterbalance that lack though, they had ice for their drinks.

I could believe with the solar panels I had seen that they had refrigeration but using it to make ice cubes? I dimly heard people remarking about the new kid staring at a table of glasses of water with ice in them like it was a jewellery store and it amused them. People had looked at me all morning but no one had said hello. They weren't scared of me but they were wary, even before they noticed my missing digits. When you had such a small community and you knew what it was like outside, you were going to be cautious about the new guy unless he made himself approachable. Even if I wasn't playing the part of someone who had been alone a long time, I wouldn't have been able to pretend to be sociable. I couldn't fake that.

There was one person though who was out to talk to me. Merle had a map folded up under his good arm which he was using to hold a beer and for no reason I could imagine besides showing off or trying to intimidate me, he demonstrated how he could use the bayonet attached to his stump to take the cap off as clean as a bottle opener.

"Time you had a talk with your ol' pal Merle." He declared and he chugged half the bottle before setting it down. Beer was much better than how I remembered him and his appearance told me he wasn't using. Even his hair seem fuller now. "Now you can tell me all about my lil baby brother." He said and I scoffed. "I say something funny, boy?"

"I'm trying to imagine Daryl as a baby. Never seen a baby eat a snake."

This did make him smirk but he was not a patient man. He unfolded the map and as someone who had spent almost their entire life in Savannah, I had to try and figure out where the Greene farm had been. He pointed Woodbury out to me and from there, I was able to, eventually, figure out where we had ended up when we had set off from Atlanta. I was also able to see that we had indeed spent the winter going in circles because while trying to find the farm, I located the prison and the two weren't that far from each other. Hershel had never mentioned being familiar with the place but then, why would he have been?

"And that was the last place you saw him?"

"In November." I warned.

"Somewhere to start. I know my brother. He'll have found some place and made himself comfortable. He ain't gonna have left Georgia." The thought that Daryl could be anywhere in the States had occurred to him then. "Now I know where to look."

"He could be anywhere." I lied easily.

"He's my family, boy. I ain't giving up on him." For a moment he almost looked vulnerable and he knew it because he reached for the bottle take another swig and then he thumped me on the back with his prosthetic. "Take a look around." He said. "See what we got to enjoy. You makin' me look friendly." He no longer needed me and with another thump that was definitely going to leave a bruise, he went to go and talk to the second man who had shadowed me so far today.

I tried to relax but I couldn't. It fit my character so I didn't worry overmuch. I tried to enjoy a glass of ice-water and instead thought about how I had drank mostly boiled creek water for all this time. It was like when we had first settled into the prison and we had gotten used to regular meals and we had been wary of getting used to it. There was nothing stopping the prison from adapting solar panels and making ice of their own but it obviously wouldn't be a priority. I couldn't believe it was one here.

It was self-evident that the people of Woodbury didn't want to think about the end of the world. They weren't pretending it wasn't happening because they had clearly put a lot of sweat and toil into building their walls and the people keeping guard came from all walks of life, but once away from those walls they clearly liked to pretend everything was just fine. Normal. Not that I had much understanding of what constituted normal.

Like the girl who came and stood near me. I knew it was deliberate placement but I didn't know if that was normal. I didn't know anything about girls that I hadn't learnt from Beth and Sophia and that was not a deep pool of knowledge and far from ideal.

The first thing I noticed about the girl was that she had shaved her legs. The general street festival atmosphere of this place made my skin crawl but after everything I had seen so far, nothing said misplaced priorities quite like having silky smooth legs so you could wear Daisy Dukes.

"Do you want a napkin for that drool?" She asked and she wasn't offended by my staring. It pleased her.

I made a point of wiping my mouth self-consciously which she liked. "I haven't been around people for a while."

"Yeah, I see that." She looked me up and down. "Did no one tell you about the showers?"

"I've had a shower."

She gave me a long look as she wrinkled her nose. "…Wow."

"Are you just here to mock me?"

"Yeah, pretty much." She said. "You're the first new face I've seen around here since winter and I'm bored of mocking every other asshole here." I wondered if that meant she had never seen Sword Lady or if she was being hyperbolic.

"Sure." I tried to understand the point of this conversation and then realised there wasn't one. "Those assholes don't like you talking to me." I meant the male populace of Woodbury who were our age and I assumed were the assholes she had been referring to.

She didn't even look at them. "Pathetic, ain't it? I'm just saying hello to the new guy and they're acting like you're muscling in on their turf."

They definitely looked jealous but I couldn't give a shit about some boys jealous that the pretty girl was talking to me. "Is that the point? You trying to get attention?"

"If I want attention, I don't need to play mind games." She declared. "They're fun though." She shrugged and I couldn't tell if she was screwing with them, with me or everyone or no one. Given my limited experience of women before the world had gone to shit, I had no idea. "So what's your story?" She inquired.

"I spent most of the last six months on my own out there."

"That explains the smell." She nodded. "I guess you love it here then."

"It's a bit weird."

"Weird?" This rattled her confidence.

"Look around." I said. "It's like you're all pretending everything's normal. Like that wall isn't there to keep hell out."

"That's the point." She replied. "We don't want to have to think about it all the time. When I'm up on the wall, that's the only time I want to deal with that shit. When I'm down here, all I want is to think about how pathetic guys can't stop staring at my legs."

"You think a lot of yourself."

"Well, yeah. Why wouldn't I?"

I suddenly saw her plain. She had been through the mill the same as anyone else and this was her coping mechanism. She had to believe she was Queen of the World otherwise she was just another nobody. Just another victim. I had known too many people like that. Giant egos to compensate for the fact that they had nothing. That they were nothing. The difference was that whatever she had in this town was far more than those people I had known in the streets.

Ice in the drinks and girls with shaved legs. Girls who semi-seriously flirted with me. Woodbury was an odd place.

"You're staring."

"Six months." I replied, thinking that I never would have guessed that my total lack of experience dealing with women would one day be an advantage because it definitely sold my story of having gone long periods of time on my own. "And you are pretty hot." I threw it in.

"Six months." She retorted, implying I would have said this about any woman at this point but also obviously pleased. There weren't many people left now so any compliment was welcome. "What else do you think is weird?"

"That." I pointed and she saw nothing and so raised her eyebrows. "You have lawns. You're keeping the grass cut."

"And?"

"People are mowing lawns and keeping flowers. Only a few people are growing anything you can eat." I had noticed this during my tour. They had planters in the streets and most of them seemed to be flowerbeds.

"What are you, a farmer?" She grinned.

"I've been eating shit out of cans for months. Everything else is rotten." I thought about how apt that was while her grin faltered. "It's getting harder to find food out there."

"That's not what I heard."

"Heard from who?" I asked. "The guys picking the big stores clean? Try picking your way through the ordinary houses."

"I don't do that."

"What do you do?"

"I guard the wall."

"And?"

"And what?" She asked. "It's a full time job."

"Except when there's a barbecue."

"You can't work all the time."

I thought of the barbecue at the prison with the deer. That had happened in the evening after the day's work had been done. This was the middle of the day. "So how do you guard the wall?"

"I'm an archer." She declared and then held out her arms so the left was over the right. "See how I'm lopsided?" There was definitely more muscle on her right arm. "Bows are better than guns. Biters can't hear a bow and you can retrieve most of the arrows. What do you use?"

"I had a crowbar. Before that, a hammer."

"You just whack'em on the head?"

"I'm no good with a gun. A crowbar's good."

"If it's so good, how did you lose your fingers?"

I raised my left hand and fluttered my two remaining digits in her face. "I cut them off."

"Why?"

I told her the story and she dropped the cocky attitude and listened with genuine interest to a tale from outside Woodbury. I didn't leave out any details but I didn't lose track of my surroundings; those young men really didn't like me talking to her or the way she hung on my every word.

"Is that all true?" She asked when I concluded.

"If I was making it up, would I really have said I got sucker-bit by a walker hiding under some trash?"

"I guess not. But you still said you were saving a lil girl and being heroic." It was hard to tell if she genuinely disbelieved me or if she was teasing me. Or teasing me by suggesting I was flirting with her by telling her a story meant to impress her. I was really beginning to understand why all the relationship drama I had witnessed drove the men to despair.

"True story." I said and shrugged.

"Where's the little girl now?"

"No idea." I lied. "I hope she's safe though. She'd been through enough already."

I hadn't intended to come across so bleak and heavy. Fortunately, she wasn't put off. "We've all been through enough already. But if you don't know, you don't know, so don't sweat it. Maybe she's somewhere like this now."

"Hopefully."

"I'm gonna leave now so those guys don't pop a blood vessel." She announced. "Feel free to watch me walk away though."

I did watch because she had those legs and other things. I was also fascinated by the past few minutes and trying to make sense of it. I didn't know if she had been being genuinely friendly, playing some game with those Woodbury boys, both or just passing the time. The whole interaction smacked of normality though. Like that even though the topic of discussion had been the apocalypse, she would still have talked to me in that cocky, teasing, flirtatious manner if it had been something else in the real world. I felt like I had just had my first human experience that wasn't crime or apocalypse based. We had just been two people talking at a party.

I didn't even know her name.

[][][][][][]

"So what do you think?"

"This place is strange."

"Strange?" The Governor chuckled. "Strange how?"

"It's like you're all pretending everything's normal."

"Normal? Normal is safe. Normal is dull. Boring. Normal's what we need! We've all had enough excitement."

This was true, especially when you were having dinner with the enemy. I had found the invitation very odd until I had realised that I was here because the man was hoping I would sing the praises of Woodbury. Of everything he had built. "It doesn't go away though."

"No. But nothing's changed. People have always liked to pretend the problems of the world are far away but now instead of wars, disasters or plagues overseas it's close to home. But at least there's a wall between home and what's out there." He declared and he had a point. "What do you think of the walls?"

I had many critical things to say but I wasn't going to repeat them to him, especially when he was fishing for compliments and it was an easy way to get in his good graces. "Everywhere I've been before, people were using fences that were already there. Or boarding up buildings. No one seemed to think of blocking off streets with vehicles like you have."

"Obvious when you think about it, but only after you've thought of it. People expect instant solutions to problem, that's how they prefer it, things that take time and effort… Well, we ain't eating microwave meals anymore."

"What are we eating?"

"Not the best but not the worst." He admitted. "Do you know anything about growing food?" He asked, obviously knowing the answer.

"No."

"Well, that's a shame." He said magnanimously. "We don't have any farmers. We're having to learn everything for ourselves." He chuckled the way he did. "Turns out it's easier to learn how to use firearms than planting crops."

He said that as if it was some secret wisdom. It also made my skin creep as I wondered if he was boasting about what Sword Lady had asserted; that he took what he wanted from others. Everyone knew that it was easier to take something from someone else than to do make it yourself, especially with a gun. My kind of thievery required some effort at least.

"Are you planning on staying then?" He asked and what he really meant was whether I was suitably impressed by Woodbury that I wanted to stay.

"Where else would I go?" I replied. "Have you been out there lately?"

"It ain't pretty." He agreed. "I hear you and Haley hit it off today?"

"Who?"

He snorted. "The one young woman you spoke to today." He said, none too subtly telling me I had been observed, as I knew. "I had complaints about it."

"I think she'd like that."

"Perhaps." Whatever those complaints had been, they seemed to amuse him. If anything this had done a good job of making me seem like a normal teenager. Cunning enough to survive out there by myself but still a teenager. Not a threat to him. "She asked if you were going to join security and needed someone to teach you how to use a bow."

"Really?" I didn't know if that meant she just wanted to show off some more, or something else. The thought of something else made me nervous and the Governor saw it and it amused him further. "Why do you use bows?" I asked to distract myself from this.

"There ain't no point wasting rounds on lone biters. We learned that lesson early on, especially when shooting one biter led to a dozen more showing up on our doorstep. The time may come when we'll need to take down a whole lot of biters quickly and we'll need the bullets for our guns to do it. I have people who can make arrows but I don't have anyone who knows how to make bullets. Not yet anyway." He said with meaning. He at least seemed aware that Woodbury could be attacked by a whole swarm of walkers even if he wasn't making a serious effort to reinforce the walls. "We've been lucky so far but you never know what's coming."

He kept making statements like that and while I still didn't know who Jim Jones was, I was beginning to realise just how unflattering Sword Lady's comparison was and that her animosity had a firm basis.

There was still a guard on my door that night though I didn't have any inclinations to creeping about after nightfall. Not yet. I hadn't been alone during the day and so despite my tour, I would not have been comfortable moving about in the dark in a place I was not yet familiar with. But I doubted I would find some deep dark secret just creeping around. Not with the time available. For the moment I was simply assessing Woodbury as an immediate threat and what I knew so far told me the threat was real. I didn't have the big picture yet though. I didn't know how the Governor operated but having seen the guards around here, it seemed that while he had a cadre of muscle, the rest were ordinary people. People I couldn't imagine going out to attack anyone. Sixty-eight people and one unborn baby. There were twenty or thirty people who manned the walls but it seemed only half a dozen were more than just sentries.

Merle was a complication. What were the odds that Merle would travel from Atlanta to Woodbury and end up on the other side of a river to his brother? I lay on my far too comfortable bed and tried to figure them but it was well beyond my skill at mathematics. I could imagine Merle as the Governor's favourite thug from what I had seen of him back in the camp at Atlanta and I could imagine how awkward a reunion would be between the two brothers. The Daryl I had known back in that quarry was not the one I knew now. He had a soft side he would never have shown before. Sure, he might have been ready to cut a man's throat but I doubted Merle could imagine him joking around with Carol or being teased by Beth. Daryl didn't even spit the way he had when he was around Merle.

Once again the bed proved too soft and I slept on the floor.

[][][][][][]

Maybe the Governor was shit-stirring by putting me on the wall with Haley and it amused him to stir up conflict amongst his people. Maybe assigning me there was his way of grooming me for the future. I was a self-confessed thief after all. A criminal. If he was doing nefarious things then I obviously fit the profile for being willing to do shady acts and if I joined security, then I could qualify for going out.

And it was a sign of my growing paranoia that I suspected that perhaps he had placed me with Haley hoping to exploit an attraction he believed I had for her. What better way to make me loyal to Woodbury, to him, than by forging that kind of bond?

She was oblivious to any schemes. We sat on the wall on a couple of chairs like we were sat at the beach and I had learned her name from the Governor and she mocked me for mine after finally asking for it. I didn't tell her the origin behind it because it sounded too self-pitying and she already thought it was a stupid enough name. We did however trade backstories and I didn't hold back any details on being the spawn of two junkies. Perhaps because I didn't spare those details, she told me how she had put down her father and her brother. She had used a gun for that.

"What about your mother?"

"She's not around." She shrugged. "She never came home." She stared into the distance which wasn't far. In contrast to the clean streets inside, the outside looked like a landfill. I guessed while tidying up they had just thrown the trash over the wall. It was not a good view from which to draw hope. "It sucks." She declared.

"I wouldn't know." I admitted and she gave me a hard look that made me think I had said something very stupid. But then she nodded, satisfied with my honesty. I couldn't relate to her loss and I wasn't going to pretend I understood how she felt. I might have been able to recognise why she acted the way she did but I didn't know how it felt. I didn't know that pain. "I put down one guy I knew. He wasn't really a friend because we were never close… But he looked out for me. That was the only time I ever used a gun on a person. …Or a walker. Whatever he became."

Haley nodded a few times and then frowned. "Walker?"

"Group I was with the longest called them that. Walking corpses. Walkers. One guy called them 'geeks'."

"We just call them biters here." She said and I had noticed the different terminology. I guessed there must have been different names for them all over the country.

We switched to a somewhat cheerier topic; archery. She was very proud of her bow and talked about it at length using a whole bunch of terms that meant nothing to me but I found I enjoyed listening to her speak even though she was boastful and cocky. It was the strangest thing to sit in a chair looking at a desolate town and enjoy it because of the company. I felt a few pangs of guilt remembering how I had stood watch with Dale and listened to him talk. Dale had made mundane topics interesting while Haley's boasting was amusing. She said she knew how to use a bow because her father had taught her for hunting and claimed he had wanted to send her to the Olympics and I had no way of knowing if that was made up, a parent's overinflated opinion of their kid's talents or the actual truth.

Guard duty at Woodbury was different to the prison because the towers at the prison meant walkers that arrived at the fences didn't always notice they were being observed from above. Woodbury's walls weren't tall enough for that. When a lone walker showed up, it saw the two of us sat up there right away.

"Oh hell yeah." Haley declared, standing up and snatching an arrow from the quiver she had stashed in one of the tyres that made up the wall. It was a chance for her to show off. She put it to the bow and I watched all the wheels and strings on the weapon move as she drew it back. She released it and it passed the walker's left eye by a few inches. "Goddamn it!" She cursed and grabbed another arrow. This one would have hit home if the walker hadn't stumbled on a garbage bag at the last moment. "Fuck!"

"Hey." I said, putting a hand on her arm and startling her. "Take a breath." I advised.

She glared at me, but she took the advice. She took three breaths and the third arrow punched through the walker's nose and whipped it backward like a rope had been fixed around its neck and pulled. "That was just bad luck." She announced.

Her first miss had been because she had too eager to impress. The second had been bad luck. She would have missed the third if she hadn't calmed down. "Of course." I said and she glared at me again but it wasn't malicious. I didn't know what to call it.

When her shift ended she called me 'Basil' when she said she would see me later. I really was out of my depth with her.

"I'm told you're a man who can open things."

I turned to look at a man who looked like the baby of oatmeal and buttered toast. He was the most beige human being I had seen since this had all started. The people here were dressed casually but this man was wearing a suit. A casual suit but still a formal jacket and pants. The last people I had seen wearing suits had been dead.

My gaze made him nervous which was understandable. Familiar too. "That is, uh, I was told you can pick locks."

"Yes." I said and enjoyed his discomfort for a little longer. "I don't think you're planning a score though." I watched his brain consider all the meanings of 'score' that he knew or thought he knew. "What do you want?"

"Would you come with me?"

After my previous day watching this little piece of untouched America and my morning with Haley, I was sufficiently weirded out so if a strange, beige man asked me to go someplace with him; I didn't see how it could be dangerous. Even when we went off the beaten track and we entered a warehouse which had been converted into a laboratory. There was an array of electronics that had obviously been scavenged for parts, chemistry stuff and knick-knacks. And books. Lots of reference books. Intriguing to me though were the jars of dead stuff. Human dead stuff.

"Interesting setup, Dr Frankenstein." I remarked. "Are you trying to make a monster, or just understand the ones out there?"

"The latter. We still don't understand what we're dealing with."

I could have enlightened him with everything I knew from Jenner but I hadn't mentioned that part of my time with the group to the Governor. It was best not to introduce new details. "What do you need to understand? They're dead and they kill anything that isn't dead. And eat anything that's relatively fresh."

"Yes, but why? Why the impulse to eat warm… flesh? Why won't they touch anything cold and dead? If you offer them a steak, they won't touch it."

"You've offered one of them a steak?"

"In controlled circumstances." He said and he didn't like the incredulous look I gave him. "We can't beat the biters if we don't understand them."

"I understand enough. So what do you want?"

"This." He produced a lockbox. An old one. "I believe it has some lenses I could use."

"Lenses?"

"For the microscopes." He indicated. "We have limited scientific resources from the high school and as you can guess, such equipment isn't a high priority for our scavengers. Hopefully this has what I want."

"In a lockbox?"

"They are expensive." He looked thoughtful. "They were expensive. Now they're… They're priceless."

"So that's why you didn't just get a chisel and hammer."

"I do have the tools." He produced a nice leather case of picks. "But no locksmith. And I tried but… It's not my area of expertise."

"What is?"

"I dabble." He said and it was a poor brush off. He didn't want to say what he did here because the people out there at their barbecues with their ice cubes didn't know.

"Hmm." As he had provided the tools, I decided to use them instead of my own. They were brand new. Fancy. He watched me and he was plain astonished as I opened it in seconds. "Here you go, science-man."

"How did you do that?"

"Practice." I said and his attention left me as he inspected his treasure. They were what he had hoped for and his expression was no different to those I had seen over the winter, from people finding the real treasure of good food. It was another example of the gulf between my experiences and those of the people here. "How long did you have the box?"

"Too long." He wasn't being evasive. Poetic.

"And they'll help you understand the biters?"

"Doubtful." He admitted. "From a biological standpoint, they make no sense at all and yet, they're out there. I don't think I'll be able to unlock that part of the mystery working from here. But if there's a way to reverse-"

I cut him off. "Stop the dead from being dead?" I asked. "Bring them back? They're dead."

"Are they?" He asked. "Truly dead? Or do they just look that way?"

"Some of them are walking around with missing arms and legs. I've seen ribcages dragging themselves around. A live person can't do that."

"But haven't you seen them acting with intelligence?"

"Intelligence?"

"People have observed them returning to their former homes. Opening doors."

"In the beginning." I agreed. "When this started, they could open doors, climb fences… You saw them sitting in open cars behind the wheel or sitting in seats on buses. I saw one mashing the buttons on a register. But they don't do that now. I ain't seen any of them do anything like that for months. Maybe when they're fresh there's an… Echo… But now they're dumb as rocks."

"An echo." He said. "I like that."

"Dumb as rocks." I repeated.

"Maybe. Maybe not." He said and I wondered how long it had been since he had been outside this town. Beyond the walls. He suddenly remembered something. "I'm Milton Mamet." He declared.

"Bas."

"Bas?"

"Just Bas." I wondered when I had last given my surname. "Cute model." I remarked of the set up they had of Woodbury's main street and the water tower looming over it all. I hadn't seen anyone up there, despite how advantageous it would have been for a sentry. Or sniper.

"It helps with organisation to have a 3D model rather than just a paper blueprint."

"Are you going to make little people for it? One with a crown?"

"Is that a dig at our Governor?"

"Just the title. I hear Governor and I think of jail. I always tried to stay out of prison."

It was subtle but the mention of prisons flustered him. I had heard no mention of the prison or anything going on outside Woodbury from anyone here but it seemed that he knew about it. He knew enough about it to be uncomfortable just by the mention of the word. "I think people draw comfort from it." He said carefully. "Having a single leader keeps everything running smoothly and the title makes it sound official."

"Who was he before all this? I met groups led by cops and veterans, so what was he before this?"

"Just an ordinary man."

"Ordinary?"

"He worked a nine to five office job, just like the rest of us." Milton said. "I knew him before this. Back when Woodbury was a normal town."

"Did he always talk like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like someone's sticking a mic in his face and asking 'Mr Mayor! Can you comment?'"

Milton smiled. "No, that's new. Back when Woodbury was just a huddle of people cowering in a basement, people needed constant reassurance. They needed the… The, uh, soundbites." He described them just the way I had. "After a while it just became second nature."

"So they call him the Governor? What's that make you? The Scientist? The Doctor?"

"Just Milton." He said and the door banged opened. "Hello, Merle." He sighed without looking around.

"Oh, hey!" Merle drawled at the sight of me. "Milty wants to experiment on y'all?"

"I opened a box for him." I said to enjoy the confusion on the Dixon's face. "Does he have a title?" I asked Milton.

"I believe the Governor has called him a Hammer a few times." Milton answered and was obviously uncomfortable as Merle came and stood beside him. "Are you here for a reason?" He asked him.

"I was looking for him." Merle answered. "The Governor was wondering what happened to the kid. Didn't want him wandering loose in town when he's only been here a couple of days."

"And what? I shouldn't have revealed my top-secret laboratory to him?" Milton inquired with dry sarcasm and Merle scowled at him. "I was supervising him."

"And what'chu gonna do to stop this kid? Throw your test tubes at him?"

"Stop me doing what?" I asked. "What am I doing?"

"You only been here a few days, boy. You ain't trusted." Merle scowled at me now. "We ain't giving you the run of the place just yet."

"I noticed. Tell your boys they suck at tailing people."

"I know." The scowl vanished from Merle's face unexpectedly. "They couldn't hunt worth a damn. I told'em to keep an eye on you quiet like and they stand in the middle of the street watching you. They'd shit themselves if I weren't there to pull their britches down." His choice of language was intended to annoy Milton. "So why you still here?" He asked me.

"We were discussing the nature of the biters." Milton explained wearily.

"Nature?" Merle scoffed. "They dead! That's their nature. And the only cure is a bullet to the head."

"Governor's right; Hammer is a good title for him." I said. "And he's right."

Merle wasn't expecting me to agree with him and Milton was disappointed. "Hear that, Milty?" Merle grinned.

"Yes, I have ears." Milton sighed and then thought of a way to annoy Merle. "How did you lose your fingers?" He asked me. "Carelessness?"

Merle didn't appreciate the reference to his hand and he seemed to resist his first impulse which was to pick up Milton and throw him. The Merle I had known wouldn't have hesitated so this place had evidently been good for him.

"I was bitten." I said.

"Bitten?" Milton frowned. "You survived a bite?"

I told the story and they forgot their animosity as they were both fascinated by my experience. Milton found it morbid that I had kept the bones while Merle was delighted. And worse.

"You show your girlfriend?" He asked as I put the bones back in their bag.

"Girlfriend?"

"I saw you yesterday." Merle grinned. "Checking out that fine piece of ass." I felt a hot flush course through me from his nasty words and it was made worse by the fact that Merle was old enough to be Haley's father. "Hmmm-mmm-mmm." Merle growled to himself. "You want yourself some of that!"

"You're a horrible man, Merle." Milton declared.

Merle laughed. "You just mad the kid's closer to getting some pussy in just two days than you ever will." And now it was Milton's turn to blush. "I guess you ain't going nowhere, boy." Merle told me. "Not 'til you get some."

"You're a horrible man, Merle." I echoed Milton.

[][][][][][]

I walked the perimeter of the town before dark and I was careful to look like I was only walking and taking in the walls rather than noting every building. I had been to their medical building and to Milton's lab, I had learned where they kept their stores of food, a separate store for weapons and ammunition and a motor pool. They had a couple military trucks and a Humvee that looked far more impressive than the SUVs and old pickup we had at the prison but I kept in mind that Sword Lady claimed they had killed the former operators. I also learned where the Governor lived.

After dark and the town curfew went into place, I slept until shortly before dawn. It was no trouble for me to wake myself up when I needed to while the guard outside the door didn't stir from his slumber as I slipped by him. He only looked a little older than me and while guarding a wall was an activity that would keep you alert; watching a closed door in a warm building simply wasn't. He had sat down and rested his eyes and I could have cut his throat with his own knife if I was so inclined. I let him sleep and went out.

The fires had burned down by this time and with dawn approaching they weren't being replenished. The torches still burned steadily but it was no trouble for me to scurry like a rat in the shadows. The guards on the walls were looking outward and the patrols were likewise focused on the wall.

I went to Milton's lab. It wasn't locked and I had been there long enough to know the layout well enough that I could creep in and move in the pitch-black. Milton was carefully organised and this had meant that tools, medical and scientific instruments were set out neatly. I went in, took a dozen paces to the left and found the tray of flashlights I had noted. I took the smallest one and pressed it to my palm before switching it on, clicking it to a dimmer setting and then I was loose in the lab.

If I had been thieving, I could have been in and out in minutes because Milton had labelled every drawer and cabinet and every notebook as well. I skimmed a journal detailing his recent dissection of a walker and he had noted that they were starving, albeit very slowly, and that the rate of decomposition was 'consistent with other biters unaffected by external stimulus' by which I guessed were walkers that hadn't wandered into swamps or fires. Perhaps that was why he thought their state of "undeath" could be reversed; he had observed only the walkers that had lurked unmoving in buildings for months. He didn't know about the ones that had really degraded but were still active.

Another journal detailed Woodbury's power supply and Milton and I shared the opinion that their use of power was wasted on unnecessary luxuries. He described their solar grid as not being optimal. He had the same opinion on their sanitation and water supply. They were pumping water straight from a creek and purifying it for drinking or using it to flush the pipes beneath the town. He wasn't sure this was sustainable in the long run. It was better than the prison where we had been making do with buckets and an outhouse…

I learned a great deal about Woodbury's inner workings and despite the Governor's outward confidence, it became clear to me that in reality the town was struggling. I had remarked to Haley about how scavenging for food wasn't so viable now and Milton agreed with me. He had made notes on the shelf-life of canned goods and staples like pasta, rice and flour and done calculations based on Woodbury's population's average monthly consumption versus what they brought in from scavenging and he concluded that in the immediate area that they had already reached what he called 'peak scavenging'. Between spoilage, consumption and fresh supplies no longer being trucked in to replenish the local stores; Woodbury had picked the local area clean.

Milton had also made notes about the prison. West Georgia Correctional Facility had its own notebook amongst other places of significance in the area. He had outlined that it was a 'Red Zone' and from the context I deduced this meant an area that they had decided was too heavily infested to exploit. His notes revealed that they had been aware of the place before winter and that it had been filled with 'hundreds' of former inmates who were penned in by the fences and therefore couldn't be drawn out. Milton's notes said that Merle had been the one to declare that the prison was untouchable and that was amusing considering how important his brother had been to clearing it out. It seemed that Woodbury had only conceived of a direct assault however and it hadn't occurred to them that it would be possible to close gates and contain the prison into more manageable zones.

These were the old notes. Fresh entries dictated that the prison had been cleared and was now occupied by another group. The first entry made me smile because the men who had attacked the place had obviously lied through their teeth to cover up their blunder of blindly attacking the place by claiming there were at least 'twenty armed men' within, plus families. That number had been amended downward as recently as yesterday it seemed to an estimation of just twenty people but heavily armed; they had observed a large quantity of weaponry being brought to the prison. That had to be Rick returning from his police stash.

Milton had a whole bunch of theories regarding how the prison had been cleared and none of them were accurate. It seemed it just didn't occur to him or the Governor that it was possible to take down large numbers of walkers by hand. The Governor had his people training with bows but they were apparently very reluctant to fight hand to hand. Even his inner circle.

The final piece of information I took note of was that they knew 'The woman with the sword' had taken shelter there. It seemed Woodbury knew no more about her than we did. I couldn't find any notes that Milton had written about her but I assumed they existed. I could have spent a week reading all his notes. It seemed to be his way of coping; organising the chaos.

I set everything back in its proper place and I was amused that even though I was rusty, I still worked with practiced ease. No one would know I had been here. No one saw me moving through the early glimmer of dawn and the guard at my door was still fast asleep. It had been a good morning's work.

[][][][][][]

The Governor decided that a man of my talents would be wasted within Woodbury. If I could handle myself out there with nothing but a crowbar, I was ideal to join their scavenging missions. But only after I learned to use a bow. I guessed that I was still on probation and I could be trusted with a bow rather than a gun. The Governor certainly wanted to make use of me.

Haley meanwhile was delighted to have a student to bully. And she did bully me. Her bow she claimed had a draw weight of a hundred and twenty pounds while the one I was given to practice with only had twenty pounds. For children she said. But the real bullying was the way she taught me how to use it. She stood behind me so close that she was literally breathing down my neck as she directed me how to stand, how to nock an arrow to the string, how to hold it with my fingers and how to draw it back and aim. A couple of months ago I had been freaked out after been kissed by a child and now I was freaked out by a woman my age putting her hands on me under the innocent guise of tuition.

It was certainly more enjoyable than my lesson about how to use a revolver.

After I had made my first few shots there was absolutely no reason for her to stand so close other than that it amused her how taut I was. Her choice of language was also very suspect; she kept referring to the arrows as 'shafts' and talking about my grip which she kept correcting with her own hands so that could put her arms around me from behind. I still had no idea if this was actual flirting or just her screwing with me. What I did know was that using a bow was much harder than using a gun. Bullets flew fast enough that at this range you didn't have to factor in them dropping over the distance. Not so with arrows. I could hit the target because it was big enough but it was obvious that if I was aiming for a walker's head, I would struggle. She had demonstrated this the previous day when she had missed with her first two shots.

"It's definitely easier to hit the flank of a buck deer than a biter's head." Haley confirmed. "And to hit a target that ain't moving at all." I had considered before how worthless my gun training was versus how it would be in an actual situation against walkers. This was much worse. "It takes years to learn archery." She continued.

"So why am I bothering?"

"You have to start somewhere." She said. "And I told you, bows are better than guns." Her tone suggested that because she had said it; it was beyond contestation. "Merle says you want to fuck me."

The arrow slipped from my fingers so that the bow sent it soaring high over the target, over the wall and then there was the cartoonish sound of breaking glass. She was close enough behind me that I could feel her shaking as she giggled silently. "Merle is a horrible man." I said.

Haley stepped around from behind me which wasn't a relief because it meant I had to readjust my clothes. She didn't comment on the suspicious bulge she had created though. It would have been overkill. "Yes, he is." She confirmed. "You knew him before?"

"I spent time with his brother."

"What's his brother like?"

"Quiet. Go figure; Daryl's quiet and Merle's loud." I distracted myself by taking another arrow and lining up another shot. This one connected with the target. If I was facing men I could have managed at this short range. "Why don't you have any man-shaped targets?"

"They said it was too morbid. Like that ain't why we're out here practicing." She rolled her eyes. "Is Merle right?"

I had been reaching for another arrow but now I abandoned it. "What's your point?"

"Point?" She asked innocently.

"Do I say yes and you drag me into those bushes? Do I say no and you call me a liar? Do I say nothing and you just keep… Fondling me?"

She laughed. "Fondling." She repeated incredulously and rolled her eyes again. "Do you know what's funny about all this? About the world going to shit? All the single people terrified of being alone. All the guys scared of dying a virgin." She took an arrow for herself and demonstrated her skill with an only just of-centre bullseye. "All the guys who think girls are scared of the same thing and keep offering to help out." My instinct told me she was not one of those girls because she had already had sex. "Or worse, the guys who think saying we have a duty to repopulate the Earth is a hot pickup line." She took another shot. "Because that's what a girl wants to hear. A guy telling her he wants to knock her up."

I had not given all that much thought to how 'dating' would work in the world now although my own drama with Sophia meant I understood the problems with the limited options. I could not imagine however telling Beth we needed to have sex as a duty to the species. I could just about understand why an idiot might think it was a viable strategy though you would need an equally idiotic girl for it to work. I was happy to say that the women I knew weren't that stupid. "What do you want to hear?"

"Nothing." Haley said. "I think that's why I like you." She mused. "I mean, you can't stop staring because you haven't seen a woman in God knows how long but you haven't tried to hit on me and that makes a nice change."

"You're welcome?" I offered and she grinned. I tried to figure it out and I couldn't come up with a satisfactory conclusion. "So, you're flirting with me because I'm not flirting you with you… And you're… Me… Because I'm not hitting on you?"

"Messed up, ain't it?"

"I miss the streets." I declared and took another shot. "People were simple. See, want; take. See, dislike; ignore. Simple."

She let it lie for about a minute. "You didn't answer the question."

"Oh fucking hell!" I exclaimed and she laughed. "Alright, if you offered I wouldn't say no."

Haley rolled her eyes. "No guy would ever say no to an offer. That ain't an answer."

"I've known you two days."

"People used to go to bars and hook up after ten minutes."

"Good for them."

"Are you scared of me?"

"Yes." I said flatly and purely by luck I managed to hit the arrow she had put by the bullseye. On the wrong side.

"Why?"

"Criminals I can deal with. Cops. Walkers. But people…?"

"That's a really dramatic way to say you're a loser."

"Are you teaching me because no one else likes you?" I asked nastily.

"I'm only a bitch to you. You can take it."

"I don't know if that's a compliment or more bitching."

"Both." She admitted. "You do seem pretty tough though."

"Tough?"

"Most of the people here, they've been here from the start. Or near enough to the start. They haven't lost anybody…" She sent a very angry shot into the board. "It's nice to meet someone else who's alone."

"That is bleak." I said.

"You know what I mean! Don't you ever feel like…" She struggled for the right combination of words and didn't find them. "Other people don't get it."

"I didn't like my parents. It's not the same." I thought about it. "When I was with other people though, it did suck being by myself. It didn't matter before… When the world was full of people and time-"

"Now it feels like there's no opportunities." Haley continued for me. "No time."

"That is bleak." I repeated. Talking to her I realised how upbeat most of my people were. Had been. Theodore had always enjoyed the good moments when they came. Dale had always been optimistic. The group as a whole was very 'glass half full'. Beth had had these thoughts of Haley's before trying to kill herself but now she was one of the brightest about our future prospects. Or she had been before people started shooting at us. "So this is what it's like to be the last man alive."

"Appreciate it. Otherwise I wouldn't look at you twice."

"You ever heard of humility?"

"Weren't you listening to yourself? There's almost no one left now! I'm not just a pretty girl now, I'm one of the few pretty girls left." She tilted her head at me, a calculated move to make her dark eyes look bigger. "Before I'm nobody. Now…"

"That's one way to look at things."

"That's the law of supply and demand. You're a thief; you should know that."

It was a good thing I wasn't going to be here long if word was spreading rapidly about my past. I had come here to gather information though and whatever this was with her was an unexpected complication. "I don't get you. You like that guys are attracted to you, but you don't like them hitting on you. You like that I haven't hit on you, but you want to know if I want to have sex with you… Are you just messing with me?"

She grinned. "You figure it out."

"That's not fair."

"No. It isn't."

[][][][][][]

At night I did my job, even if it meant climbing out the window, and during the day I kept Haley company on watch and then trained with her. The Governor looked in on us more than once and it was clear to me that he was pleased that I seemed happy here. When I had first met him, he had been largely indifferent to me as a kid with no apparent useful talents but then I had revealed my lockpicking skills, demonstrating them to Milton, and my value had increased. It was very sinister to see him pleased by Haley's mockery of me; seduction by proxy. He seemed to think the same way as Merle and if Haley and I actually had been having sex, it would have been a good reason to think my loyalty to Woodbury was secure. If I hadn't been playing a role and I really had been wandering the world alone with no ties then it definitely would have been tempting. It was tempting.

Even though after aggressively flirting with me, she had toned it right back. I wasn't completely sure why but I thought that as while we had discussed time and opportunities being lacking these days and she had said people had hooked up after ten minutes in the past; she wasn't willing to jump into bed with someone she had just met. She didn't know who I was and the question had been a big deal before. Now in this world… And she was right to be cautious. I wasn't who I said I was. It was a relief she had pulled back because if she had come at me, even for a kiss, I would not have been able to say no. I enjoyed the back and forth and I would be lying if I said it didn't mean a lot to me to have the flirtation with someone my age. It eased my discomfort regarding Sophia. It would have been good for my mental state if my romantic experience extended beyond being kissed by a child, although Haley's intimate way of tutoring me in archery had definitely helped.

I would miss her.

I learned everything I could from Milton's lab and I got a good look at Woodbury's armoury and it did not bode well for the prison. I might not have been well-versed in popular culture but what action films I had seen in my brief time with my own place meant I knew what a grenade launcher looked like. Automatic weapons were bad enough without being shot at by explosives. The Governor encouraged his people not to use guns on walkers and that meant they had quite a hoard of ammunition. Not good.

I could not get access to the Governor's Residence. Not with the time I had. It was too risky during the day and I wasn't going to break in at night and creep about while he was sleeping. I had no idea if he had been a light sleeper before all this, let alone now. It was unfortunate but I doubted the Governor had a big board of evil plans. If he had any secrets in his home, I couldn't reach them in my time frame. I knew the prison was being observed but I didn't witness any activity in the town suggesting an imminent attack on the prison. I knew this meant nothing though; there was a divide in Woodbury between those who lived here and guarded the place and those who went out to feed the town. The Governor's small inner circle I knew had shrunk because of Sword Lady; they had lost five people recently. Two at the prison, which meant Sword Lady had killed three. For the moment, Woodbury was not an immediate threat. For the moment.

The walls were made to stop walkers getting in. They weren't anywhere near adequate to stop a person getting out unseen and I knew how to get back in when I needed to. No one saw me. No one had a clue. I left with the bag I had arrived with and the crowbar; I had retrieved it myself. I left behind the bow I had been training with even though it would have been useful on the road because of Haley. She was going to get hell when I was found missing and leaving the bow would be one less thing for her to hate me for.

I was fine creeping through the desolate town in the dark but when I left it behind and I was on the road with those damned trees either side of me; that was when I became anxious. There was a fitful half-moon but it offered very little light. It was the breezes in the trees that disturbed me most because the sound was constant and made it feel like there was a roaring in my ears from anxiety which probably meant there actually was one. It took a lot for me to keep my measured pace and not to start running. Sneaking about in a walled town and dodging armed guards was fine. Being out here in the dark with a whole world full of monsters…

But I didn't meet any. It would have been cathartic to beat a walker down and put a face to my imagined fears and instead I encountered nothing. I was anxious the whole way to the gas station. No problem leaving the town. No problem reaching the gas station on foot. Sometimes things were easy. Sometimes you caught a break.

Daryl was waiting for me, leaning against a wall with his crossbow in hand and some cigarette butts at his feet. "You look like shit." I said, recalling our last conversation.

"You smell like shampoo." He grunted.

"Woodbury has showers." I held up my hands. "Clean fingernails and everything."

"Damn." He said, looking me up and down. "You had fun then?"

The question made me laugh and he stared at me. "You could say that." I admitted. "Anything I should know since I been gone?"

"All quiet. We were being watched though."

"Yes, you were." I looked at him and I decided now was not the moment to tell him what I knew. Not yet. It would be better for others to be there when Daryl learned the truth. I was not qualified to help him get through it. "Let's get out of here."

[][][][][][]

We met in the cafeteria. Myself, Andrea, Daryl, Glenn, Maggie, Rick and Sword Lady. Andrea and Rick had been awake and waiting for our return, Sword Lady had emerged from the overturned bus as we passed on the bike but I insisted Glenn be woken and that meant Maggie came with him. I needed Glenn for later. Sword Lady was there so Rick could watch her as I confirmed or denied anything she had said.

I spoke about my entry to Woodbury and my first meeting with the Governor. "I knew men like him." I said. "They smile at you to seem friendly and to make you let your guard down but if they have to, they'll kill you. He had that smile. He loves that people look up to him… Need him. And he'll get his hands dirty."

"You saw this?" Rick asked.

"I only saw him talking to people. People praising him. But reading between the lines, everything his man Milton wrote down in his notebooks." I described Milton's entry on the prison and his entries about their supplies. Milton had a euphemism for supplies that had been seized rather than scavenged; he had called them 'acquisitions'. I saw them exchanging looks as I spoke at the length about what I had read.

"You could have brought these books back." Andrea smiled, shaking her head. "How do you remember all this?"

"I stole bank and credit card details, didn't I?" I said. "Woodbury's got two kinds of people. The ones who think they survive off scavenged supplies from the countryside and other towns and the people who know they've robbed other survivors. And it's a small number. Very small."

"But there's sixty-eight people in Woodbury?" Rick asked.

"There are now." I looked at Sword Lady. "You killed three. We killed two. I think for the moment he's short on muscle and that's why he was… Grooming me." I shrugged. "Thief." I explained.

"But if he wanted to, he could bring how many people to fight?" Rick pressed.

"With the same amount of training I have with guns? Half of them. A few more maybe. The rest are too young or too old."

"So we'd be outnumbered three to one."

"And they've got good weapons." I described what I had seen in their armoury. "I read that we're well-armed now. They're watching this place."

"We're better off." Rick answered, staring into space.

"What's the deal with you two?" I asked Sword Lady. "Milton called you the Woman with the Sword. It mattered that you were here. So what did you do?"

She glared at me. "I didn't do a thing."

"Be nice, Michonne." Andrea sighed.

"Michonne?" I echoed.

"Yes." Her death glare became more pronounced. "Do you have a problem with that?"

"No, I like having names for faces." I said. "You were taken to Woodbury. You wanted to leave. You left. He sent people after you. You killed three of them. Is that it?" I asked and she didn't answer but Andrea nodded. "When you were at Woodbury, did you meet an older guy? Light, greying hair? Square jaw? Square head? Mouth like a sewer?"

"He was the one who shot me." She said coldly.

"Shit. You punch him in the face?"

"I kicked him."

"Wonderful."

"Is there a point?" Andrea inquired.

"Yeah, in a minute though." I said. "Look, the people in Woodbury… They're not fighters. They've got plenty of people who can shoot walkers but they don't fight them hand to hand. Getting them to come here and shoot at us… It ain't gonna happen."

"They already did." Glenn pointed out.

"A few of them. But you didn't like shooting at people and being shot at by those men last year. Do you want to go to Woodbury and shoot at them?"

"Not really."

"Same with them. These people mow their lawns and keep flowers. They're all pretending nothing's changed. They ain't gonna form a posse and go to war… Not without big motivation."

"So we can live and let live?" Maggie asked.

"I don't think so." Rick replied, still staring into space. "If he considered Michonne a threat when all she wanted to do was leave… He can't have us down the road."

"And he ain't gonna need an army." Daryl put in. "A couple guys in those woods… Taking shots at us. Picking us off one by one…" He painted a very grim picture with just a few words. The mundanity of it was what made it frightening.

"He's got the men for that." I said. "Even if he has to lead them himself."

"And if we retaliate, we stir up the hornet's nest." Rick concluded in disgust.

"We only need to take care of one man." Michonne declared.

"So what? We assassinate this Governor for regime change?" Andrea replied dryly. "And the way you've talked about him, it'll only make them all want to avenge him."

"They don't know the truth!"

"What truth?" I asked. "You said you know he killed a bunch of soldiers for their gear. Where's the proof? Where's the proof he sent people after you to kill you? They'll never believe it."

She glared at me but she had no rebuttal.

"So what now? Stalemate?" Glenn sighed.

"We can keep watch on the road." Daryl suggested. "The bridge even. If they come our way-"

"If they don't, then we'll just have our asses hanging out for the walkers." Rick had stopped staring into space and drew his weapon, placing it on the table. He stared at it, as if it might inspire him.

"How's Lori?" I asked the group at large.

"Better." Maggie answered. "She's out of the woods and Judith's doing well."

"Judith?"

"Carl named her."

"Congratulations." I said to Rick and he grunted. "Leaving isn't an option then."

"Leave for where?" Rick growled. "We were out there for five months before we found this place. And anywhere we go, we could end up in the same situation or worse. We ain't leaving."

"So maybe we should talk." Maggie suggested and everybody stared at her. "It ain't my first choice but what are we fighting for? Really? It makes me sick to my stomach knowing we lost people but if we keep this up, we'll lose even more and for what?"

"What do you suggest?" Andrea inquired. "We drive up to Woodbury waving a white flag and we sit down and discuss this over coffee? He had Michonne hunted through the woods like an animal. They killed Dale and T!"

"And the people he's lost." Michonne continued. "He's not going to forget that. Not him."

"It sucks." I said.

"What?" Andrea glared at me.

"I met a girl in Woodbury. She told me all about how her mom never came home, and she had to put down her dad and her brother. That's what she said. It sucks."

"What is your point?" Andrea demanded in that tone of hers.

"The people in Woodbury are just like us."

"Maybe we should talk." Glenn sided with Maggie. "I want to hit back at this asshole but if it means starting a war-"

"We didn't start it." Daryl snarled.

"This isn't a war yet!" Glenn protested. "We lost three people but if we attack them, they could lose a dozen and if they retaliate they could kill all of us."

"Who's Jim Jones?" I asked before anyone could argue with Glenn and they stared at me. "She said it before." I pointed at Michonne. "When she was describing the Governor. Who is he?"

"He was a cult leader." Rick grunted. "Led nearly a thousand people to commit suicide."

I thought about the way the Governor spoke, his sweeping statements, his habit of delivering inspirational soundbites as Milton and I had discussed. I couldn't imagine him leading his people to commit suicide but there was definitely a cult of personality surrounding him. "He's not like you." I told Rick who gave me a startled look. "You tell us what to do and you don't give a shit if we like you or not. But he wants people to like him. Trust him. Belieeeeeeeeve in him. And they do. They believe in their Governor."

"You seem to trust him." Michonne accused.

"Are you crazy?" I asked deliberately, just to see her eyes flash. "You just have to look at him. He loves being a leader. Milton told me he was just a normal guy before this, with one of those boring desk jobs. Now he runs a town! You can tell it's gone to his head. The end of the world's the best thing to ever happen to him."

This mollified Michonne but disturbed the others. It was late though, they were tired and they had no answers in this secret meeting in the dead of night. But I had gathered this group for a reason. Andrea, Glenn and Rick were the only ones left of the group that had left Merle on that roof. Jacqui was dead. Theodore was dead. Morales was gone.

"Daryl." I said. "Merle's alive. He's in Woodbury."

He was floored. "Whuh?"

"Merle's alive, and he's basically the Governor's… He's his chief muscle. He's got a smart guy for some stuff and he's got your brother for other stuff."

"Does he know I'm alive?" Daryl asked softly.

"First chance he got he asked me where I last saw you. I told him about the farm. He ain't forgotten you. Probably the only reason he didn't tear up there looking for you is because the Governor wouldn't let him." I was well aware of Michonne simmering beside me. So was Rick because he had taken a hold of his gun and knew where I was going. "He was the one who shot her."

The funny thing was Michonne and Rick both rose to their feet and she drew her sword and he pointed the Python at her, but Daryl remained seated as he processed what he was hearing. "You didn't tell him 'bout me?" He ignored them both. He didn't even seem to realise that Michonne seemed to think he would attack her.

So did I. "I thought of telling him the truth and bringing him out to you, but I didn't know how he'd take it. How you'd take it. I didn't think I should just spring that on you. For all I know, you two were shooting at each other a week ago. Sit down!" I snapped at the two of them, feeling very tired now. "Michonne, Merle is Daryl's brother. Merle lost his hand when Rick here cuffed him to a roof, and Merle cut it off to escape because he didn't know they were coming back for him. If you want to try and kill Daryl because he's Merle's brother, Rick will blow your head off. If you think Daryl's going to try and kill you because you kicked his brother in the face, maybe you should just pack your things and leave in the morning. Daryl's here, Merle's there and you all want to fucking kill each other and fuck knows you all have good fucking reason but I'm too fucking tired for this shit so put your fucking toys away and fucking sit down!"

They didn't put their weapons away but they did lower them as they stared at me incredulously.

"I've had a long week." I said lamely, aware of how many times my voice had cracked as I swore at them. "Didn't sleep much at Woodbury."

"Well, maybe that's an idea." Rick said. "We sleep on it for tonight. Continue this discussion in the morning with the others." He glared at Michonne. "If we're gonna have a problem because Daryl's Merle's brother then the kid's right and you should leave tomorrow."

She glared right back at him and then abruptly stood. She would have stormed out but because it was now practice to lock all the gates, she had to wait for some with keys. Glenn and Maggie decided to take their leave but I could tell Rick wanted to talk to Daryl, and Daryl wanted to talk to me. Andrea didn't want to be left out of the loop.

"I know what you want to do." Rick told Daryl.

"He's my brother."

"He's an asshole." Andrea declared. "But he's your brother." She added softly.

"How was he?" Daryl asked me.

"Besides his nose? Good. He looked clean. Clean, but not sober; I saw him have a few drinks. But no scabs." I gestured at my head. "His hair's grown out." I had to laugh. "He's as charming as ever. There's a girl in Woodbury, Merle said I wanted to fuck her… And then he told her I wanted to fuck her just to mess with me."

Daryl couldn't help but smile, recognising his brother in what I said.

"And?" Andrea asked.

"'And' what?"

"Who's this girl?"

I realised Rick was staring at me intently. "Just a girl." I lied. "And we didn't fuck." I said honestly.

"Good." Rick didn't quite hide his relief at not having to deal with an additional conflict of loyalty.

"Look, I wasn't around Merle enough to know how he feels about Woodbury, and I didn't ask. But if he knew you were here, I know he'd come straight here." I was sure of this. "And he hasn't forgiven being left behind, so if he did; watch your back." I told Rick who had already accepted this as a given.

"He ain't a psycho." Daryl protested.

"I think he was only… I showed him my hand. That made me alright in his book. If he sees the rest of you all fit and healthy… I didn't tell him Theodore was dead. I didn't tell him and he didn't ask. But he definitely pissed at you." I pointed at Rick who again didn't react.

"So what do we do?" Andrea asked.

"Like I said, we sleep on it." Rick said. "We'll start to figure all this shit out in the morning." He looked at me. "Unless you got anything else to get off your chest?"

I thought of the people of Woodbury with the ice in their drinks. I thought about their walls with the numerous weak spots. I thought about Haley. I shook my head.

(25,181)

Author's Notes:

This chapter got away from me. I'm an organic writer, meaning I don't plan out my writing ahead of time. I have ideas and a general framework but I don't set out the journey from Point A to be Point B. I intended for Bas to go to Woodbury and meet the Governor and Merle and Milton. But his interaction with Haley was only meant to be that first conversation. But then I re-watched her first scene with Andrea in the show and I thought about her character. Haley in that scene is very cocky and I decided I wanted to explore that, especially with my own fondness for archery.

So I had that cockiness translate into a flirtation when they first meet and given her dress sense and Bas' lack of experience, she would be striking to him. She enjoys teasing him about it and she enjoys his reticence. Her telling him to 'figure it out' was a direct quote from a girl I knew who said the same thing to me; seventeen years later I still don't know.

The part where she misses her first two shots with her bow was me addressing criticism of the character. She's too eager to impress and rushes her first shot. The walker in the show does stumble so she misses her second. Andrea jumps off the wall to knife it, while Bas encourages her which makes the third shot count. The show features A LOT of improbable aiming with people making repeated headshots at range despite little or no experience with firearms or bows. Daryl notably averts this; most of his crossbow kills are within ten metres. In the show Haley claims her father wanted her to go to the Olympics and I leave it ambiguous whether this is true or not, but in the Olympics the target is stationary. It's not moving about in a jerky, unpredictable pattern. It's a little odd of me perhaps to defend such a minor character but I hate the 'Instant Marksman' trope. As Bas notes, if he was shooting humans in the chest with his bow, it would be a hell of a lot easier than trying to hit walkers in the head.

It became important as well to depict Bas having a healthy 'romantic' interaction with a woman after his drama with Sophia. His lack of experience prevents much of the 'squick' that would be present with that situation otherwise, but introduces a whole other problem if Sophia remains his only experience. After being grossed out after being kissed by a thirteen year old, he can at least think positively about Haley "fondling" him while teaching him how to stand with a bow. That sequence incidentally was inspired by every scene I've ever seen where a man teaches a woman something and uses it as an excuse to cop a feel. I thought it was funny to reverse the roles.

Sophia doesn't feature much in this chapter despite this story being about her but that was inevitable given the time Bas spends at Woodbury. I haven't lost focus of that. Incidentally, I'm still annoyed I can't think of a title for this story. I've never been good at that.

Next chapter will be from Sophia's POV during the week away from the prison.