Last Day On Earth, Part 5: Finish.

-Carl's POV-

We park the RV a few miles down the road. I perch by the window, glancing through the blinds at a walker in the field beyond as it slowly trips and shambles our way.

Aaron's sitting beside me.

"Why'd you come?" I ask him. "Why didn't you stay back and help guard the place?"

Aaron looks to the room Maggie's in.

"I owe her." He gives me a soft smile. "Why did you come?"

I turn back to the window, watching as the walker creeps closer. "I owe them."

Eugene calls everyone over to the RV table where he and Sasha are pouring over our map.

Eugene points to a road a few miles west. "Logrun road's a straight shot."

"We want visibility," Sasha says, biting her bottom lip like she disagrees with him.

Eugene nods, bobbing his head back and forth until he moves his finger higher on the map. "There... you got it on Shelton. Golf course, country clubs, sloping terrain. No bum-rush from the boogymen. We'd see 'em from a good piece. It is a longer trip by a third, but we'd get the scenic safety of clear-cut dingles and glens."

The walker reaches the RV, banging on the door.

"We got a route?" Dad walks down from the front, leaning over Sasha's shoulder.

She glances at Eugene but nods eventually. "Yeah."

Dad looks to Abraham who squeezes by in the crowded RV. "Let's go."

The engine chokes and splutters to life, and we're off.

The drive lasts maybe twenty minutes. Abraham and Sasha talk softly about babies. Abe asks her if she could do it, asks if doing something as big as that is living. I think about how Rhys would have liked to hear that.

We start slowing down.

"Bitch nuts," Abraham growls, stopping us in front of another blockade ahead. Maybe double the number of people this time.

"We making our stand?" Sasha asks.

"Yeah," I nod, gritting my teeth. "We end it."

Dad shakes his head. "No, not now."

I glare at him.

"They've been waiting," he says. "They're ready. With one of us behind the wheel that's five on... sixteen."

"Dad—"

"We're gonna play it our way, how we want it." He looks at me. "Right?"

I nod. "Right."

"All right, go slow," Dad tells Abraham as he backs us out.

One Savior starts firing his gun in the air as we peel back down the claustrophobic road, the trees squeezing us in.

Another half-hour and Dad's looking over Abraham's shoulder. "How are we on gas?"

"Half a tank," Abraham says. "I pulled some more cans before we left."

We haven't seen any more roadblocks.

"Those weren't the same men that blocked the road the first time," Sasha notes.

"Same outfit, different soldiers," Abraham says. "They got numbers."

"Yeah, we keep driving," Dad says, glancing back to Maggie's room. "We get her there."

"We will," Sasha tells him.

Abraham nods to her. "If we have to shove each and every one of them up their own asses."

But then we have to stop again.

Dad lets out a sigh, so I move up the RV to look out the windshield.

"What the hell..." Aaron mumbles, standing up.

A dozen walkers are standing on the coiled country road ahead, all chained together in a line that spreads from one side of the road to the other. Their low moans perk up at the sound of our engine.

"We can't go through it... can't risk the RV." Dad watches the walkers, his eyes flickering to the tree line. "Abraham, stay behind the wheel, just in case. We'll clear it."

The rest of us funnel out of the RV. Everyone has their guns up. Two steep slopes on either side of the road give us the low ground as we come up on the blockade. There's thick woodland at the top of each slope, cutting off our visibility.

"Putting together a red rover like that takes people," Eugene comments, peering over his gun to study the conga line of dead people that block our way. "A lot of 'em."

The chains are threaded under flesh, stuck through jaws and wrapped around throats.

"Come on, let's do this," Dad motions towards the chain, swivelling his gun onto his back and drawing his hatchet.

As I examine each walker, I see two crossbow bolts sticking from one's chest. Another has a familiar leather vest around its shoulders, dreadlocks pinned harshly through the skin of its rotting scalp.

"Dad..." I stare, breathless. The words won't come to me, but I don't think it's because of my eye. My blood feels cold and my hands start to sweat.

"That's Michonne's," Aaron says, looking at the vest and hair.

"That's Daryl's," Sasha says to the other walker.

Dad steps closer, pulling the dreadlocks from the walker's head, clenching his fist, grimacing.

He raises his hatchet.

A line of dust suddenly kicks up at our feet as bullets rain down from the slopes. I duck, turning to fire back, not seeing the enemy in the trees.

"Get back to the RV!" Dad roars as his axe is shot from his hand. I see the person that shot it. I shoot back.

"Go!" Dad yells at me, grabbing his axe, cutting the middle walker's arm off, sinking his knife into its shoulder and driving it to its knees before burying his hatchet in its skull.

With the chain broken, four walkers line up and Sasha blasts them away with one shot that travels through all of their heads.

"Start it up!"

We all scramble back to RV, speeding off through the path Sasha and Dad cleared us.

I keep my eyes on the window, watching the road behind us until we're well and truly gone, and I'm sure no one is following us.

Dad's still gripping Michonne's hair.

The RV starts to rattle.

"What's that sound?" Sasha looks down.

"Undercarriage could've caught a bullet," Eugene says. "Or it could be transmission... It could be nothing."

"They were firing at our feet," Dad tells them. "They blocked the road, but they weren't trying to stop us. They want us in this direction."

Sasha taps the map. "Barton road takes us north, but they gotta know we wanna go north."

The RV rattles again, worse this time.

"Meadows," Eugene says, pointing over her. "Could take us east a piece, but we can get back on track on Mayhew."

He and Sasha keep going back and forth.

"We're down to a third of a tank. We could top off at the next stop, but no refills after that."

Aaron interrupts, grabbing dad's shoulder and looking to the back of the RV. "She's burning up."

Dad presses a thumb to the bridge of his nose, scrunching his eyes as he tries to think.

The RV starts to groan.

"Rick," Abraham calls from upfront.

We all look. We all expect another roadblock. But what we see...

At least fifty men stand on the road, some atop vehicles, some with guns, others with just blades.

All of them staring us down.

All of them in our way.

"Go back," Dad says slowly, watching the horde of men ahead of us.

"Where?" Abraham asks.

We all look at each other, quickly realising that we're running out of places to go back to.

"Back," Dad repeats himself, looking just as lost.

I sit with Maggie in the back of the RV, offering her water when she starts coughing.

"I— I heard shots," she rasps out, trying to sit up.

"Saviors," I tell her. "We got away."

Maggie nods, giving up on sitting, sinking instead. She looks awful, sweating through her clothes and sheets. Her eyes are veiny and bloodshot. Dad says she's running a fever, but it just looks like she's dying.

"When this is done," I tell her, "I'm gonna find Rhys."

"Rhys?" She whispers, looking through me a little.

"Yeah," I nod.

"He's good," she says.

"He will be."

"He's not here," she says, licking her cracked lips when they stick. "He's..."

"Not yet," I tell her. "Not yet."

We hit more roadblocks.

More Saviors.

The last one wasn't even manned, but still, we couldn't get through it. Lumber was stacked in the road, forcing us back.

The one we're at now is the same.

Logs that might as well be full-sized trees are piled high across the road. So high that the setting sun slithers behind them.

We park in an underpass below a bridge. Getting out to investigate.

"These tracks..." Eugene looks at tire marks on the road, "they would indicate they not only have people but some big-ass toys and capabilities."

"What it indicates," Abraham growls, spitting on the tire marks, "is that we are neck-deep up shit creek with our mouths wide open."

A scream comes from the bridge.

We all spin on our heels.

A man falls.

The same man from the first time we were stopped.

A chain is tied around his neck.

He starts choking as he hangs.

Aaron raises his gun.

"Don't," Abraham warns.

"I can try and break the chain," Aaron argues.

"It won't work."

"—I can try!"

"It won't work," Dad says, agreeing with Abraham. "And we need the bullets."

We all stands and watch.

Watch until he stops choking and starts turning purple.

Watch as his eyes bulge and blood pours from between his lips.

Then he dies.

The wood blockade behind us ignites into roaring flames, the logs crackling and spitting within a few seconds.

A voice comes from the other side, the same one from before.

"You're treating your people good, right? Like it was your last day on Earth? Or maybe one of theirs? You better go... it's gonna get hot. You go get where you're going."

"Go," Dad rushes us back. "Go!"

We drive away. Just away. Abraham parks us down a countryside lane, two miles south. The sun is nothing but a faint glow from the windows now.

"So what's the play?" Abraham asks Eugene and Sasha, the both of them back to studying the map.

"She needs a doctor," Dad says, marching from the back, his eyes red and wide.

"There are two more routes north from here," Sasha tells them.

Aaron shakes his head at her. "They're probably waiting for us right now."

Eugene's shaking his head too, murmuring under his breath.

"So, they're ahead of us... probably behind us. But they're not waiting on us, per se," Eugene says, his voice breaking. "They're waiting on this rust-bucket. And they don't know the moment-to-moment occupancy of said rust-bucket. And the sun sets soon."

Abraham nods at him.

So does Dad.

When it's dark, and we can barely see our own feet out of the moonlight's gaze, we carry Maggie out on her mattress and lay her in the road.

Dad fills up the RV.

Abraham wanted to do it, but Eugene insisted, saying it was his strategy. He's going to keep driving. Lead the Saviors on a chase while the rest of us get to Hilltop by foot.

Abraham hugs him, and when Eugene is nothing more than taillights in the distance we carry Maggie into the forest. I stay in the front keeping the path clear of walkers. Sasha, Dad, Abraham, and Aaron carry Maggie behind me.

A walker with a tree branch through its chest stubbles towards us. I split its head in two with one sharp machete blow.

"Aaron, please," Maggie croaks, her voice faint over our footsteps. "Just let me walk it."

"Relax," Aaron tells her, grimacing when she winces. "Just a few more miles."

"I heard what you told her when we were leaving," I say to Dad behind me. "We can do anything, 'cause we'll do anything we need to do. We have and we will. What happened to Denise... I'm not gonna let anybody die like that again. What happened to Rhys..."

"Son—" Dad starts.

"What?"

There's a whistle.

It's not the wind.

Not a bird.

Two musical notes.

The first high, the second low.

We stop.

The whistling continues.

I draw my gun, but there are more whistles now. Every direction. Every tree. Every shadow under the full moon singing to us on two terrifying.

"Go," Dad yells. "Go!"

I slice branches as we move.

The whistles follow us.

We reach an open, dirt clearing in the trees.

Lights blind us. A loud clank as a trap is sprung.

Dozens of cars blaring their headlights. Floodlights behind them. Surrounding us.

I can't tell how many people there are. It could be hundreds surrounding us. We all point our guns wildly, but they're just silhouettes before the headlights, moving in and out of the light, moulding from one to ten before our eyes, all whistling those two notes. The RV is there. Eugene's on his knees in the middle of the clearing, bruised and bleeding from his head.

The Savior from before, the one with the droopy moustache, steps out from the darkness.

"Good," he grins. "Welcome to where you're going." His voice is so soft, almost soothing.

"We'll take your weapons," He tells us, pulling a gun and pointing it at me, suddenly dropping his voice low. "Now..."

"We can talk about—" Dad stutters.

"We're done talking." The Savior's smile is dead and buried under his grey moustache. "Time to listen."

Saviors step forward, stripping our weapons from us. Rhys' pistol is taken off me by the leader. He's staring at it with this daunting intimacy. "That's yours, right?" He asks me.

I stare him down, swallowing my nerves.

"Yeah," he leans in, his eyebrows and moustache rising together into a smile. "It's yours."

He flicks the rim of my hat up, expecting me to flinch.

I don't.

He spins on his feet to the others, gravel grinding under his boots. "Okay. Let's get her down and get you all on your knees." He claps his hands together. "Lots to cover!"

Saviors step forward to take Maggie, but Abraham barks at them.

"Hold up! We got it."

The leader steps back into the shadows for a moment, only his outline visible, broad shoulders and a wide stance. He raises a hand to his men. "Sure, sure."

I watch as we lower Maggie to the floor, helping her to stand gently, her feet failing her as Dad and Abraham walk her forward, getting her to her knees. Eugene is moved closer, his right eye unable to open from a beating.

The Savior steps up to Dad, face to face. "Gonna need you on your knees."

Dad grits his teeth, glancing around. No magic solution. No throats to bite out. No machete's to hack with.

Just us.

But that's enough.

It has to be.

Right?

I glare at him, panting, trying to tell him no. But Dad kneels.

Everyone follows one by one until it's just me.

I kneel. The seven of us lined up.

Their leader of the Saviors holds his arms out wide, running a hand over his moustache before calling into the crowd.

"Let's get the other ones. Right now."

He rolls his eyes when no one moves. "Dwight!" he yells.

"Yeah?" A guy with lengthy blonde hair and a melted face steps into the light.

The leader twirls his hand. "Chop-chop."

Dwight heads to a van among the parked cars, the only vehicle facing out. I realise why when he opens the back doors.

We watch as they're pulled out one by one.

Daryl, Michonne, Rosita, Mikey, Glenn.

They're hauled from the van and forced to their knees in line with us.

Daryl's bleeding from his shoulder, a ragged blanket wrapped around him. Michonne's eye is bruised and her shirt is torn. Rosita spits at the guy who moves her, shouting something in Spanish that doesn't sound friendly. Mikey's hugging himself in a jacket too big for him, rocking back and forth and crying softly. Glenn hits the ground hard when he's pulled out.

He sees Maggie, watching as she tries to stay upright.

"Maggie?" he speaks. He tries to run for her, but Dwight throws him down.

"On your knees!"

Glenn's pushed back into line.

"All right!" The moustached Savior cheers. "We got a full boat."

My knees sting against the rocky ground, but I grit my teeth and stay still. The moustache puts Rhys' gun on the floor in front of me, then he strides alongside the RV we're lined up before.

He turns back and grins at us all. "Let's meet the man!"

My heart sinks as I realise that this man — this villain that's brought us so low — he's not even the one in charge.

He clunks his fist twice on the RV door, stepping aside and clearing the stage for whatever monster lies inside.

A/N

I hope I needn't have to warn you that next chapter will have it all... gore, swearing, death, and a few twists and turns to keep it fresh. Pulling no punches, and I ain't cutting after the first hit either.

Next Time: Issue 100 of the comics... chapter 100 of this story. Chapter 100- Last Day On Earth, Finale: Nothing More Than A Stain On The Earth.