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We Can Change

December

“How did it get so late so soon?
It's night before it's afternoon.
December is here before it's June.
My goodness how the time has flewn.
How did it get so late so soon?”
— Dr. Seuss



Wrapped tightly in a thick, plaid blanket that was so much longer than her height that it trailed behind a queen’s ceremonial robe on the way to her coronation, Jo scurried down the back stairs from her and Rick’s bedroom, completely barefoot, despite his displeasure with her walking around without socks on. Mostly it stemmed from how she would accidentally touch her bare feet against his legs while they slept and it would give him an unpleasant jolt from how cold her feet were compared to the heat he seemed to naturally emanate. Also, he just didn’t want her to catch a cold. Even though the fireplaces were now up and working, the house was still drafty and it was getting even colder outside.

Jo just couldn’t help it. She had never been a big fan of socks and shoes for most of her life. She used to walk around barefoot outside and inside when she was home. Even when she got cold, she would bundle up with the appropriate amount of layers of clothing, and yet still forego socks. They were prisons for her feet. When the world fell apart, though, she had no choice but wear something on her feet virtually at all times. Especially while she slept, because she never knew when she’d have to get up and make a run for it. Even at the prison, it just wasn’t safe to not wearing something at all times.

But life was different for them now, here at Mount Vernon. Life was quiet, and peaceful.

In the month since Rick and Jo’s “re-wedding” there hadn’t been one negative incident, unless you’d consider Mika dropping the full bucket from the portable toilet before she got it outside to be dumped.

That had been a right nightmare.

The smell was evenly matched with that of the undead, cleaning the floor and walls where it all splashed was as far from a good time as possible, and then Mika crying so hard because she had been so embarrassed by the accident made that day just…just bad.

Fortunately, the floor and walls were cleaned so well by Nicole and Tara that no one would’ve ever known human shit had just been there. Doors were left open for a while to air it all out and the bottle of Febreeze that Rick had found on a small supply run days before had finally come in handy. Mika was also calmed down and it was decided that she didn’t need to be in charge of disposing of the waste. The grown-ups would take care of that. Karen and Jo both felt even better about it all because Nicole had explicitly disallowed the pair from that chore. Since they were pregnant, she didn’t want them to get their hands literally or figuratively dirty with any task in or around the house that could get them sick and endanger the lives they were growing within them. In fact, because of how Karen and Jo had both had further spotting as of late, they were both told not to take part in most of the physical chores around the house or the property.

The house, in itself, was starting to feel more and more like a home, and less like a living museum. It was no longer a window into George Washington’s past, but an opportunity for lives to flourish once again. The fact that the new world was closer to 18th century life rather than the 21st century helped the family considerably. Everything in the house and around the property was conducive to life now. It was just a matter of getting accustomed to it all, and learning how to use everything, which was actually not a hard task at all. Team Family seemed to be a bunch of quick learners. Plus, it helped that they’d already lived somewhat similarly in their previous camps; the prison or the Commune, depending on the person.

During supply runs for extra things they might need, Rick had found the portable toilet that must’ve belonged to an elderly person who had it in their bedroom in case they couldn’t make it to their bathroom during the night. Luckily, it was clean and empty, which meant there were no worries about bringing it back to Mount Vernon. The biggest find from that same day had been the tub.

It was a copper, free-standing claw foot tub that was just sitting there in the master bathroom of some craftsman style bungalow. He just stared at it, thinking about the possibilities. He thought about how nice it had been to soak in that tub with Jo back at the Commune, even if the water had been cold. Sponge bathing got old after a while and the idea of being able to properly bathe, submerged in water was tantalizing. The main issue would be how to get it to Mount Vernon and where to put it afterward.

Returning to Mount Vernon, he had found Tyreese and broached the subject with him. With the larger man’s help, Rick wouldn’t have much trouble getting the tub home. Daryl and Finn were coming back to that bungalow, too, to help. First, they had to fold down the two back rows from their passenger van so they had the space to transport it, and once at the bungalow they were able to wrench it free of the pipes; taking only the plug for the bottom of the tub to keep water from draining out once it was filled. They loaded it into the van, drove it home to Mount Vernon and brought it up to the house where they carried it inside and then left it in the entrance hall because Rick was still unsure where to put it.

After a day of mulling it over, he decided on the little parlor. The harpsichord in that room was moved into the adjoining ballroom along with the small, leather couch that happened to also be a settee bed. The table and two chairs, however, remained in the room, as a place to store bathroom toiletries anyone would need. The carpeting in the little parlor was ripped up and removed, and then an average coffee mug was cut into the floor. When the tub was brought into the room, it was placed along the wall opposite the windows, nearest the fireplace. The tub was positioned so that the hole in the bottom of the tub coincided with the slightly larger hole in the floor, so when water in the tub needed to be drained, it would empty down into the hole in the floor which ended up somewhere in the stone cellar, they assumed. The portable toilet had then been placed where the leather couch had been. The buckets of water everyone had been using in their rooms for sponge bathing were no longer necessary and instead occupied their newly minted bathroom, since the 18th century house didn’t have one before that.

To go to the bathroom beforehand, they’d all had to go outside and use the 18th century style privies that were basically glorified outhouses. It had become less and less ideal the colder it got, and especially at night. No one wanted to have to wander around outside in the cold with only a flashlight to use the facilities. The guys had it easy; just having to whip it out when they had to take a piss. The girls? Not so much.

Another great find had been the portable generator that was brought back to Mount Vernon and placed into the infirmary. Once it was running, the ultrasound machine was hooked up to it. Karen and Jo got to actually see their babies inside of them, and how they were doing. It was still too soon to tell what either was having, a boy or a girl, but Nicole was able to determine both babies seemed healthy, with strong heartbeats. She was even able to print out copies sonogram for each expecting mother to have. The fathers, Tyreese and Rick, had been present for the viewing of their respective partner’s womb, and both men cried happy tears at the sight before them.

Life was getting better, despite all the many previous losses they’d all been through. It almost felt too good to be true, that nothing bad had happened yet. Each person smiled more and laughed more. Each person was happier, but there was no denying the underlying feeling that they were walking on egg shells, just waiting on that other shoe to drop. Every time anything good had happened in the past, something bad was just around the corner to balance things out.

It reminded Rick and Jo of their conversation heated conversation after Sam’s death in North Carolina, about how their lives were a rollercoaster. Up and down. Good things, then bad things, and then more good things, only for more bad things. Up and down, back and forth.

On this specific day, Jo had no reason not to believe it wouldn’t be another good day. And she would be correct in that assumption.

In fact, it was literally a specific day.

Rick had gone out early that morning, just after sunrise, as he did most mornings, but this time it was to scavenge some nearby houses he’d been meaning to look through. Daryl had gone with him; never one to really sit still in one place too long anyway. Both men had only been gone a few hours, returning around ten or eleven with backpacks filled with important things they could put to use, like more toiletries, batteries, canned goods, and candles. But also little things they didn’t necessarily need but would like to have, that would bring smiles to their faces, such as a bag of M&Ms, the Monopoly board game and books to read.

Jo was scuttling through the infirmary toward the dining room, wrapped in that long, plaid blanket when she heard the front door opening, with Rick and Daryl’s voice filling the air a moment later.

With a smile on her face, Jo stepped around the dining table in the bright green dining room and slipped out into the entrance hall. Reaching a hand out, she grabbed onto the curled base of the black walnut staircase’s railing and just stood there as Rick turned and saw her.

“Hey,” she greeted; playfully narrowing her eyes at him. “You left again without waking me to say goodbye. You gotta stop doing that.”

Rick winced, then flashed her a half smile. “Yeah, I know. But you looked so warm and peaceful all bundled up in that bed.” Stepping up to her, he greeted properly with a kiss. When they parted, and slowly at that, he glanced down at the floor and frowned. “And what did I tell you about wearing socks?”

Jo grinned. “You’re not the boss of me.”

Daryl snorted as he came forward, shifting the backpack hanging off his shoulder. “She ain’t wrong. More like she’s the boss of you.”

Rick threw Daryl a look of mock betrayal. “Whose side are you on?”

“Hers,” Daryl replied without missing a beat. “Ain’t you learned yet to not get on the bad side of a pregnant woman?”

Jo raised an eyebrow at the archer. “And if I weren’t pregnant?”

“You’d still be the boss.”

With a victorious grin, Jo stepped over to Daryl and squeezed his face in the hand not holding her blanket around her and kissed his cheek. “There’s a good boy,” she quipped. “Now, what’d you two bring back this time? An elliptical, maybe?”

“An elliptical? Really?” Rick questioned with a chuckle. Setting his backpack down on the curled base of the railing, he unzipped it and began to forage.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you did,” she replied. “After seeing that claw foot tub come through that door, anything’s possible.”

“You love that claw foot tub.”

“I do,” she agreed. “Doesn’t mean seeing it appear wasn’t hilarious.”

“The tub was a practical find,” Rick maintained, his face still buried within his backpack; clearly looking for something in particular.

“An elliptical would be, too. Keep ourselves in shape now that we’re not constantly moving from place to place. And it would be just as hilarious, either way, and—what are you looking for in there? Digging to China?”

Rick looked up at his wife and rolled his eyes. “No.” Biting down on his bottom lip, he smirked when he touched down on whatever it was he was trying to find amidst the jam-packed clutter of baubles and bits he’d brought back home with him. Withdrawing a white device of some sort with a grey screen and what looked to be random words and numbers all over it. “Check it out.”

Jo narrowed her gaze. “Is that a digital calendar?”

“Solar powered. Means it’s never lost track of time like we have.” Handing it over to Jo, Rick just smiled. “Today is the third of December, in case you were wondering.”

Taking the calendar into her hands, Jo felt suddenly emotional. It was almost ridiculous how something as simple as knowing the exact date could make her so inexplicably happy. As tears stung her eyes, Rick moved his backpack down from the railing and set it on the floor at the base of the stairs. With a single step forward, he pulled Jo into his arms.

Feeling awkward to just stand there watching the couple, Daryl cleared his throat. “I’m gonna take this into the blue room and sort through this shit,” he muttered, turning around and ducking into what was technically called the West Parlor. But, because it was painted completely blue, all anyone called it was the ‘blue room.’

Rick pulled back and placed his hands on either side of Jo’s face, smiling down at her. “I figured you’d like having that. Hell, I think we’d all like having it,” he commented. “I have no idea when exactly this world fell apart since I was in a coma, but the rest of you would remember, and could figure how long it’s been. But mostly, now we can know when to look forward to special days, like Christmas or birthdays. We’ll know the day our baby is born. He or she will have a birthdate. So will Tyreese and Karen’s baby.”

Smiling so happily through her waning tears, Jo leaned her forehead against Rick’s chest. “Hope would’ve been about ten months old now, give or take a week or two, I guess. If it’s December, she was born in around early or mid-February.” Lifting her head up, she seemed confused. “That doesn’t seem right. It wasn’t cold at all when we met. We would’ve met in January.”

“It was unseasonably warm after the New Year, but the months before that were as cold as hell. Maybe the outbreak affected global warming or whatever. I don’t know.”

Jo smirked. “Al Gore’s gotta be rolling in his grave.”

With a chuckle, Rick took the calendar back and nodded. “He ain’t the only one.” Off the curious raise of Jo’s eyebrow, Rick sighed. “Dale. He had this book that helped him keep track of dates. And when we got to that self-storage facility, a short time later, he deduced it was Christmas and we all celebrated. I mean, there wasn’t snow but it was a bit cold, so we just believed him. And a week after that we celebrated New Year’s Eve. I guess time really became lost on us, especially Dale, because there is no way it was Christmas when we celebrated it then.”

“Maybe he knew it wasn’t actually Christmas but figured it was something y’all needed.”

Rick considered this. “Yeah, maybe. Most of us were getting pretty close to ripping each other’s throats out,” he joked lightly. “Me, Shane, Lori, and even Andrea. We were all arguing with each other and Hershel played mediator. He got us to play nice for once.”

Jo just smiled at the image of the four of them bickering and Hershel putting his foot down; the parent among squabbling children. She hadn’t known either Hershel or Dale long, but both men had left enough of a mark on her; so much so she named gave Hope the middle name of Dale before he died. She’d been born barely an hour before. Jo had heard the stories of the in-fighting already, usually from Andrea, Lori or Carol because the guys never talked about stuff like that. The women still liked to gossip, even after the world went to shit. It helped Jo get to know everyone better in the early days, which was barely a year ago.

Damn, time was a weird thing nowadays.

And apparently so was the weather.

“So, where is everyone?” Rick wondered, crouching down to lift his backpack up onto his shoulder again.

Jo shrugged. “I don’t really know. The baby’s made me feel extra tired lately so I slept in late, and it felt amazing, by the way. I literally had just woken up a few minutes before you and Daryl got back.”

Rick tilted his head slightly. “Morgan’s probably taking care of Bessie.”

“She’s been doing better; getting healthier,” Jo remarked in regard to the cow in question. Hushing her voice, she added, “That’s more than I can say for Jen, though. I mean, she’s been adapting better to not having her hand anymore and contributing to chores, but she doesn’t really look any better, you know?”

Rick nodded in agreement. “And if this winter turns out to be as brutal as I fear, she’s gonna need to refrain from those chores and take it extra easy like you and Karen. She’ll make herself sick and she looks like death as it is most days.”

“But she’s so positive that you almost forget the state she’s in.”

“I think that’s a sign she’ll be right as rain eventually. It’s just taking her a bit longer to get there.”

Jo sighed. “I hope so. I mean, I’m not that close with her, which is a shame since she’s my brother’s girlfriend and all, but I’d hate to see her get worse, simply for Finn’s sake. He loves her so damn much.”

“Maybe we should throw them a wedding, too. I mean, what’s anyone waiting for these days?” Rick chuckled. “The dead are walking the earth. A meteor could hit us tomorrow, so why wait for anything, right?”

With a tiny upturn of her lips, Jo smacked Rick’s arm and then pulled her blanket tighter about her when it began to slip. “Well, since no one’s apparently around, and if they needed us they would holler, and since you don’t seem to busy right now…” Jo trailed, giving him a come hither look.

“I like the way you think, woman.”

Jo’s small smile grew bigger when he quickly caught on.

Setting the solar powered calendar into his backpack, Rick walked backward and stepped into the blue room where Daryl was sitting on a couch, cleaning under his dirty fingernails with the tip of his knife instead of going through his own backpack like he said he’d be. Rick set his down at Daryl’s feet and didn’t bother with sugarcoating what he said next.

“I’m gonna go fuck my wife. You need me for anything else right now?”

Daryl let out a snort of laughter. “Nah, I don’t need ya for anything. Go fuck your wife.”

“Thanks.”

As Rick left the backpack and stepped back into the front hall, Jo was staring back at him and shaking her head. “You’re an ass,” she giggled.

“Hey, you’re the one that married me. Twice.”

Without a moment of hesitation or waiting from any verbal response out of her, Rick lifted Jo up into his arms and carried her bridal style into the dining room like he did when he carried her across the threshold of their bedroom on their re-wedding night.

Further giggles escaped Jo’s lips and trailed after them on the air as they made their way upstairs.



Another week had passed.

It was now the tenth of December and just knowing that was something special.

The entirety of Team Family seemed to find a certain amount of peace in the simple joy of knowing what day it was. They had even begun preparations for celebrating Christmas. Because they had missed Thanksgiving, Michonne was insistent they find a turkey that she and Tara could cook in the kitchen; the two of them having taken on that particular chore and getting pretty accustomed to how the kitchen — an entire building separate from the main house — worked. Daryl would go off hunting in his spare time, usually alone, but sometimes Sophia came with him. It had actually been Daryl who suggested it; possibly because with it being near the holiday, which was a time to gather with loved ones, they were starting to miss Carol more than ever, and the two of them used that time together to bond over their shared grief while Sophia was further taught a useful skill.

On this day in particular, Jo and Karen were spearheading the task of making decorations that would soon adorn the house. Mika and Jen helped. It was the one task that required little to no physical exertion that Nicole signed off on as being okay for the three adults involved. Several aluminum pans of Jiffy Pop popcorn had been found on an earlier supply run and had been heated in the kitchen, thanks to Michonne. Now, it was all being laced onto string to be used as garland. Mika and Jen were painting several pieces red and green with the Crayola paint set that had been found specifically for Mika and Sophia. It gave it more of a festive feel than just plain ol’ popcorn. It also prevented anyone from eating any. Strips of construction paper were being glued together in links to make more garlands to be hung. They wanted to somehow make ornaments, but they needed a tree, which explained Rick’s absence that day.

He hadn’t gone off alone. He never did that one a run. It just wasn’t safe, no matter how familiar they were becoming with the neighboring areas and how much they’d secured certain places to keep Mount Vernon cut off from the rest of the world. Daryl was off hunting again with Sophia, hoping to find a turkey and bring it home alive to keep it fresh until Christmas. This meant Rick didn’t have his usual right hand man at his side, and instead brought Finn and Michonne along for the ride. Both seemed to need an escape from the house.

For Michonne, she just needed a break from the house and wanted to spread her wings a bit again. Finn, on the other hand, had become akin to a helicopter parent; always hovering around Jen to make sure she was okay and had everything she needed. Even though she was still weak and didn’t seem to be improving, at least she wasn’t getting worse, and Jen seemed to be getting tired of the lack of breathing room Finn was giving her. She loved him, and he loved her, but his hovering was becoming an issue that Rick had picked up on. Bringing his brother-in-law along was mostly a gift for Jen. It gave her time to just relax with the girls to enjoy something normal without the twenty questions of if she was alright or needed anything like food to eat, warm tea to drink or an extra blanket.

Sitting behind the wheel of one of the sedans they’d taken to using for smaller supply runs, Rick tapped his fingers to the music wafting from the stereo, thanks to the CD Michonne had popped in after calling shotgun. They were both bopping their heads slightly to the sounds of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours album.

“I used to picture myself as a black Stevie Nicks when I was a teenager,” Michonne muttered, halfway through ‘Dreams’. “I had this friend that dragged me to a renaissance fair with her parents when I was about fifteen or sixteen. I bought this dress with some money I’d saved up and it looked like the one Stevie Nicks wore on the album cover. It just so happened I was going through a classic rock faze then. Not typical for a girl of my particular coloring, growing up in Atlanta.”

Rick smirked. “Did you have the tambourine and lacey shawls and everything?”

“No. But I did have a recorder.”

“You played the recorder?” Rick chuckled heartily.

“Oh, yeah. I played the shit of that recorder.”

“That is definitely not something I would’ve guessed by looking at you.”

Michonne grinned. “I wasn’t always this cool.”

Rick looked over at her and continued to smirk before returning his full focus to the road as it curved to the right. Just up a ways, the side street he’d been meaning to search at some point anyway was fast approaching. He’d been down it once before, but there hadn’t been enough time to clear the area. It was covered with enough walkers to prove a hassle, but today he had come here first, so he had the time, and he had Michonne and Finn’s help. And, like Jo had said to him before: Michonne was like a ninja with that katana of hers. She was fast and precise with her walker kills.

Turning left onto Lynnhall Place, the road in question, Rick knew it led to a dead end with large homes, and a few were gated. Gated meant contained. It meant nothing was really getting in or getting out. Walkers on the street could be kept off the property and give them time to search more freely without the worry of a walker coming up on them. Then again, there was still the prospect of the property and the house being filled up with the dead, much like Mount Vernon was. But, that was nothing they couldn’t handle. If they could clear an estate like Mount Vernon in under a week, they could clear a McMansion on about an acre of land.

Pulling slowly up to the end of the road, Rick let the car idle for a few moments before deciding to turn it off. Several walkers had taken notice and he was trying to assess the path he’d take once he’d slipped from the vehicle. Directly in front of them was a rather Palladian-style house, wide open and not very protected from anything. To their left was a Plantation-style home, surrounded primarily by some minor tree and shrubbery coverage. To the right was the typically gaudy McMansion type of house, and just as open as the one in front of them. The large home between the Palladian and the gaudy one was the only one nearby that was gated with both wrought iron fencing and greenery. On the other side of the gate was a circular driveway in front of the house, which appeared much larger than the others. Rick’s aim was for that house.

The gate would’ve required electricity to keep it locked in the old world, but now there was also no electricity to open it. Even though the fencing was short, the top was spiked with pointy railheads. However, the silver lining was the stone pillar between sections of fence that could be climbed upon and used to jump over into the property.

That was Rick’s plan so far.

Get out of the car, kill walkers in their way, and climb over the pillar.

With a nod, mostly to himself, Rick looked at Michonne and then at Finn in the backseat. “Alright, that house,” he pointed at the gated McMansion. “We clear our path to that pillar between the fences and climb over.”

Finn leaned forward between both front seats and narrowed his eyes toward the wrought iron gate. “You know, that gate’s being held closed with a chain of some sort. We have bolt cutters in the trunk,” the younger man deduced. “We cut those, we can just push the gate open and walk right through like we own the place.”

Rick followed his brother-in-law’s gaze and frowned. He hadn’t seen the chain and now felt like an idiot. “If there’s a chain keeping the gate closed, nothing else is,” he realized. The lack of electricity was no longer keeping the gate locked in place. But it also meant something else. “Someone would’ve put that chain there to keep something out, or something in.”

“We could be dealing with a house full of walkers,” Michonne remarked.

“Nothing we can’t handle, right?” Rick smirked at her with a rather charmingly mischievous way.

Michonne looked back at him with a slight squint that she paired with a smile. “When you smile like that I can understand why Jo turns to butter around you.”

Rick was immediately taken aback by the comment.

Finn, too.

“I—I wasn’t—I wasn’t flirting,” Rick suddenly became embarrassed and flustered by what she’d said. He looked over his shoulder, back at Finn to ensure he’d meant nothing by it.

“Wow,” Michonne laughed. “I wasn’t implying you were, but now I know how to turn you a bright shade of red.”

“I swear I wasn’t flirting. I’d never—I mean, that’s not to say you aren’t an attractive woman— ”

Whoa, Rick, reel it back in,” Finn muttered, leaning forward and slapping his brother-in-law on the shoulder. “You’re just gonna put your foot further into your mouth.”

“I wasn’t flirting, though, I was just smiling.”

“Yeah, we get it.”

Michonne was just all out cackling by this point. Slumping against the passenger door, she wiped some tears from her eyes. “Your face. Sweet Jesus, it’s priceless. I wish I had a camera.”

Rick frowned and shook his head. “Aww, fuck you.”

In response, Michonne just kept laughing.

“Let’s just get this fucking done with,” Rick huffed.

Staring forward, he refocused his mind and energy on the gate, and then let his eyes wander toward the walkers starting to swarm the car. Turning the key in the ignition to start the car back up, but keeping it in park, he was able to roll his window down halfway. Without missing a beat, he pulled out a pocket knife and jammed the blade into the rotted forehead of the first undead face that came close enough to the window. When the body dropped, Rick quickly turned the car off and tossed the keys to Michonne. Turning in his seat, pulled the handle and opened the door wide and fast, knocking back two other walkers that had gotten close enough. The force with which Rick had done so had caused those walkers to stumble back. One of them had even fallen into the side of the car and dropped to the ground, disoriented.

Using the window of opportunity provided him by the walkers stumbling out of the way, Rick practically jumped out of the car. Slamming the door shut, he kept the knife in one hand and then slid his machete out. Forging a path away from the car, Rick’s unrelenting slaughter of walkers gave Michonne and Finn a chance to free themselves of the car as Rick was causing enough of a distraction for them to do so.

Armed with their own weapons, Michonne and Finn came up behind the amassed walkers that were beginning to swarm Rick and started to help pick them off. As the undead numbers dropped, Michonne hurried around to the back of the car and unlocked the trunk, removing the bolt cutters Finn had mention. As she shut the trunk, she was caught off guard by an approaching walker and wasn’t able to defend herself fast enough. Fortunately, she didn’t have to.

As she stared directly into the decayed face that had been moments away from chowing down on her own face, part of Rick’s machete was suddenly sticking through the walker’s head, having been impaled from the back of its skull by the blade. Gripping the walker’s shoulder for leverage, Rick pulled the blade back out and let the body drop between them.

With a nod of thanks, Michonne took a deep breath mentally kicked herself for letting her guard down for even a second. “Thanks,” she expressed verbally as well.

Rick nodded back. “You can thank me by not bringing up that train wreck of a conversation in the car to Jo,” he muttered, taking a step back and pocketing his pocket knife. “Jo would understand, I’ve no doubt, but it would also give her ammunition to tease me with later.”

Michonne smirked. “Deal.”

Smiting the few, remaining walkers in their immediate path, Rick led the way toward the gate and gestured for Michonne to hand him the bolt cutters. As she did, he simultaneously returned his machete to his side. With both hands completely free to hold the cutters, he took them to the chain keeping the gate closed. Gritting his teeth, he applied enough force to snap the chain. With a simple yank, he removed the chain from the gate and tossed it aside into the low shrubbery. Taking a moment, he looked up at the house and then gave the gates a decent shove forward.

As the gates swung open, and slowly at that due to how heavy they were, Rick stepped inside with his right hand reaching instinctively toward the grip of his Colt Python. Narrowing his gaze, he took in the sight of the front yard and how overgrown the landscaping was, just like it was everywhere else. Dead leaves littered the ground from the previous fall and the one that was on its way out; he trees more or less already bare now. Even though it was basically mid-December and there was still no snow, and despite the bright sun overhead, the clouds that were forming in the sky lately seemed heavier. The air was even colder and had more bite to it, especially the closer to water they got, like back at Mount Vernon or hear at this McMansion that was right on the Potomac River as well.

“Looks quiet,” Finn remarked, looking up at the house.

“Looks are deceiving,” Rick replied. “That gate was locked for a reason and we’re about to find out why soon enough.”

“Remind me again why we’re here?”

“Specifically or in general?”

“Specifically.” Finn gripped the handle of his axe a little tighter as they neared the front door. “I’m not having some existential crisis about why we’re on this planet.”

Rick threw a look over his shoulder at the younger man and rolled his eyes. “You know why. And it we don’t find one in this house, there’s bound to be one in at least one of the other houses.”

“Is that seriously it? Risking our necks so we can get a stupid—”

A crashing sound from inside the house easily pulled their focus away as they scurried up to the front door and tried peering inside the tall paneled windows on either side.

“What do you think that was?” Finn asked, changing the subject back to the more immediate task at hand.

“Judging by this house, probably a million dollar Ming vase or something equally as expensive,” Rick bantered.

“Yeah, okay, but living or dead?”

Rick shrugged.

“Maybe it was an animal,” Michonne offered.

“You think an animal can survive nearly two years alone in a house like this?” Finn wondered.

“For one, animals are highly intelligent beings capable of a great many things we humans don’t give them enough credit for,” she riposted as they sidestepped away from the front door and toward the side of the house. “Secondly, I read about this study published a few years ago about how a middle-aged woman had been eaten by both of her dogs. And you know what the worst part was?”

“Being eaten by her pets wasn’t the worst part?” Rick questioned, as he led them along the closed garage bays, further around to the back of the house.

“The dogs consumed her entire body. The only things left of the poor woman were small bone fragments, a piece of her skull, and some hair. Apparently the woman had been dead for a whole month before she was found. Officers at the scene arrived to find two bags full of dog food that had been ripped open and eaten. They had run out of their normal food, so they had to look elsewhere.”

“This is why I was always a cat person,” Finn quipped.

“Oh, no, cats have been known to do the same thing. It’s instinctual. When they get hungry, they’ll eat whatever they can. And if your dead ass is just lying there, you’re fair game.”

“Let’s hope the woman was dead before her dogs ate her, and not the reason why she died.”

The back of the property sloped slight, with steps leading down toward the back of the house where there was a concrete patio below with dual stone staircases that led up to the same stone deck. Looking between Finn and Michonne, Rick continued to take lead; heading up the stairs first. Michonne went next, and then Finn. Once on the deck, Rick moved forward, toward the large two-story windows that gave the back of the house an amazing view of the river, but the glare from the sun prevented being able to see inside without pressing his nose up against the glass. Unfortunately, that was what Rick would have to do.

Stepping slowly up to the glass, Rick was expecting a walker to slam up against the other side while hoping the noise inside could just be attributed to someone’s abandoned pet gone stir crazy. Looking to his right, he saw Michonne had her katana at the ready. At his left Finn was also rearing to go at a moment’s notice. From what Rick could see inside, he was looking into a large family room that seemed rather lived-in.

Moving back from the window, Rick walked over toward the door that led into the house. Grabbing the handle, he wasn’t sure whether or not he was surprised to find the door open. Gingerly he walked inside, letting his eyes scan the interior for any signs of a threat. Over to his left was the kitchen that opened up into the large family room he was standing in. As Michonne and Finn came in behind him, Rick began to mill about the room, touching his free hand down to pillows and blankets strewn about the wraparound couch and the floor. Unlit candles were everywhere, charred logs were in the fireplace, empty cans could be see piling up on the counters in the kitchen along with pots, and a few empty water bottles with the exception of one which was halfway filled still. The board game of Chutes and Ladders was spread out on the coffee table, abandoned, but how long ago it had been abandoned was the real question.

“I wonder who’d been staying here?” Finn wondered; not really looking for an answer.

“Whoever it was left not too long ago,” Michonne remarked. “The smell of burning wood is still hanging in the air. A fire was burning in that fireplace recently. Maybe not today or the day before, but recently.”

“Considering we heard something from in here a few minutes ago, I think it’s safe to assume someone still is here. Probably saw us coming up toward the front door and ran to hide somewhere,” Rick spoke. Stretching his arm out, he tapped the blade of his machete against the wall and waited for a moment. “Hello! Anyone here?”

Nothing.

“We’re not here to hurt you. If there’s someone here, we won’t take anything from you. We’ll leave and go somewhere else instead.”

“If there’s no one here, then asking if someone is would be pointless,” Finn quipped with a smile thrown over to Michonne.

She merely shook her head at him to shut up.

Rick, ignoring his brother-in-law’s comment, tapped the machete against the wall again, but this time harder and louder. “We heard something break in here, so we know someone’s gotta be here. Or maybe it’s something and I’m wasting my time. I promise you won’t get hurt by us. We’re good people. That being said, if you try to hurt us, we’ll be forced to defend ourselves and that’s not a fight you want to have.”

Turning around, Rick looked at Finn and then Michonne before shrugging. Maybe it really was nothing. Maybe there was a window open somewhere and a breeze knocked something over. Maybe it actually was just an animal stuck in the house. Maybe it was a walker. Though, the latter seemed more and more unlikely. From the noise Rick had been making, a walker would’ve made its presence known by now.

Walking toward the front of the house, Rick spotted the remains of a glass bowl on the floor in the dining room. Surrounding the shards of glass was a small puddle of looked to be water and Fruit Loops, as well as a single spoon.

Someone was definitely there.

Someone had been in the middle of eating, and then probably gotten so scared at the sight of people approaching that they ran and hid.

“Alright, now I definitely know someone’s here. Just come out already.”

“Why don’t we just go?” Finn asked. “Let’s just check the other houses for—”

“How many of you are there?”

Rick panned his face away from the younger man and directed his attention to the stairwell in the front foyer. The voice they’d just heard was male and definitely coming from upstairs.

Stepping closer toward the bottom of the stairs, Rick grabbed the bannister and looked up. “Three of us.”

“Do you have weapons?”

“Uh, yeah.” Rick made a face. What kind of idiot didn’t have a weapon on them these days? “Do you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I meant what I said. We won’t hurt you. We don’t want to hurt anyone. It’s not our intention, but we will defend ourselves if that’s what it comes to.”

“How do I know you aren’t lying?”

“I have no reason to lie.” Rick sighed. “Tell you what. I’ll you my name and you tell me yours. We’ll go from there, okay?” After a moment of not getting a response, he continued. “My name’s Rick. Rick Grimes. Now it’s your turn.”

Another moment passed, but it was cut short by—

“Mike.”

“Mike? Hi, Mike,” Rick greeted the voice. “I’m here with my brother-in-law Finn and our friend Michonne. We’re just here looking for certain things, things that might seem ridiculous to you. You don’t have to worry about us taking your food or water or medicine. Nothing you would need. I swear on the lives of my children.”

“You have kids?”

“Two daughters currently. Another on the way.”

“Congratulations.”

Rick chuckled, catching Finn’s smirk as well. “Thank you. Do you have kids?”

“Two. Currently.”

“Expecting another one, too?”

“No,” came the reply. “I lost my daughter in the beginning.”

That hit home. “I lost my son toward the beginning, and another daughter somewhat recently. I know how hard it is. Our kids aren’t supposed to go before us.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Why don’t you come out of hiding?” Rick was getting a little tired of the back and forth, and not having a face to put the voice to. As far as he knew all the talking could be a distraction to keep him and the other two busy while they were getting surrounded.

“I’m not here alone. I have people to protect. Your word that you won’t hurt anyone doesn’t really mean shit to me right now,” Mike remarked. “We’ve crossed paths with too many assholes already.”

“Yeah, same here. Seems like there’s more bad than good these days. We just dealt with this big group of assholes in DC a little over a month ago.”

“Guy name Sarge?”

Rick paused. Then, “Yeah. You know him, too?”

“I’ve met some of his people. But that was more than half a year ago. They took all our shit.”

“Yeah, they took our shit, too. Well, what shit we had on us, anyway. Killed one of my people, too.”

“They did? I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, it was rough.”

Suddenly a figure stepped out from around at the top of the stairs. A man in his mid to late forties appeared, standing there in a worn pair of denim jeans and a grey hoodie that had seen better days. In fact, there looked to be old stains of blood and whatever else splotched here and there. He was far from clean-shaven but his facial hair was nowhere near as overgrown as Rick’s had been. His dark eyes seemed tired but, then again, whose weren’t most days? The kicker was that all he held in his hands for protection was a baseball bat, and not even a metal one. A simple, wooden bat that looked like the last time it had seen any action was at a little league game before the apocalypse.

“Well, hello there,” Rick greeted properly. “Nice to have a face to put to the voice.”

“Not much of a face,” Mike replied scratching at his stubble.

“You should’ve seen mine,” Rick quipped, gesturing to his own face. “Anyway, this is Finn and Michonne. How many people are you keeping safe here? Just you and your boys?”

Mike shook his head. “My wife, Alyssa, and our three friends.”

“All of you are hiding up there from just the three of us?” Rick was rather amused by this.

Lowering his bat to the ground and using it to lean on like a cane, Mike shrugged. “If we’re being honest here, the three of you coming up toward the front of the house was intimidating enough. I mean, you’re holding a machete, katana and axe. And you have guns strapped to you.”

“Don’t you have guns? You said you had weapons.”

“I have this bat. We have knives from the kitchen we keep stashed around the house just in case,” Mike admitted. “We have guns, but no more bullets. Blunt weapons have been enough to protect ourselves when we’ve gone out to look for food.”

Rick watched the way Mike looked down toward the opposite hall from where he stood, nodding to someone there. “How long have you and your people been here?”

“A couple months. Maybe three, four,” Mike answered. “We’ve had to move around a few times. My family used to live right in DC. I worked in government, but I was no one important enough to be spirited away to secured bunkers when the world began to fall apart. My family got out before the city was napalmed. We’re originally from Texas, so we tried to get on the road, but didn’t make it far. Ran out of gas, and just moved around ever since, camping out in abandoned homes like this one. This…this has been the best place we’ve had so far.”

“It’s definitely cleaner than most places we’ve seen.”

“Barbara passes her time with cleaning,” Mike smirked.

“Barbara one of the friends you got holed up there with you?”

“Uh…yeah. Sorry, it’s just been a while since any of us have had a conversation with anyone other than ourselves or anyone from the outside world who wants to cause trouble for us.”

“Well, as I said, we’re not like that,” Rick insisted, making a show of good faith by holstering his machete.

Michonne and Finn followed suit.

If Rick felt there was no threat, then neither did they.

“The people we’re with; we’re a family,” Rick continued, narrowing his gaze up the stairs toward Mike. “My wife, our kids, my brother-in-law, his girlfriend, our friends…we’re all one family. We’ve been through so much together and it’s brought us closer. We would do anything for each other.”

Mike nodded. “Same here.”

“How are you on food? I noticed a bunch of empty cans piling up in the kitchen. Is that all you have to rely on? Canned goods? Have you tried hunting?”

Mike snickered. “In the suburbs?”

“I take it you lot have never had squirrel or raccoons,” Finn spoke up. “Our friend Daryl is an artist with a crossbow. Can hunt and catch anything that walks on four legs for us to eat.”

Mike nodded and considered this. “Some of the houses around here have gardens that still produce vegetables, but not too much. We fish sometimes, but none of us seem to be really good at it. What food we find, we eat is sparingly. We haven’t been anywhere long enough to grow our own gardens.” After a moment of silence between both men, Mike gestured at Rick, Finn and Michonne. “Where are you set up? In some other house nearby?”

Rick wondered whether or not he should give up their location. “We’ve been in the area almost a month and a half,” he offered up. “We cleared out a place. Took us a while, and it took all of us, but we’ve made it home.”

“You look clean, well-fed…”

“Yeah.”

Mike bit his lips together. “Where…how did you do it? How are you surviving?”

“It’s been a hard road, but we just keep going. That’s the only option.”

Mike seemed to lose his composure a little then. He began to chew the inside of his bottom lip and looked toward the floor. “Is it safe where you are?”

Rick found himself looking up at a man who was near a breaking point; someone barely holding it together. Rick saw part of himself in Mike and felt guilty. Mike might be holed up in a McMansion, but it was just a shell. Just a place. It wasn’t anywhere he could thrive with his family and his friends. “Yeah,” Rick nodded. “It’s safe.”

Turning back toward the opposite hall from him, Mike beckoned for whoever he was looking at to come forward.

Watching with careful eyes, with his hand instinctively going to the grip of his gun out of habit, Rick was soon welcomed with the sight of a rather thin woman in her early forties with dark blonde hair hanging well past her shoulders. She seemed incredibly timid and immediately reached out for the two boys who appeared behind her at the top of the stairs. The eldest son looked to be a year or two older than Sophia while the youngest appeared to be the same age and height as Mika. Next out came a Hispanic man who was looked no older than thity-five, at the most, and was armed with a butcher’s knife.

“This is my wife, and my boys Taylor and Ryan.” Gesturing to the Hispanic man, Mike also introduced, “This is Jose.”

Jose looked skeptical about greeting Rick, Michonne and Finn. “’Sup?” he called down to them with an abrupt nod of his head.

“Hi,” Rick greeted back.

Lastly, another man, who looked closer to Rick’s age, stepped out of the upstairs shadows holding the hand of a short, stocky woman who had to be well into her sixties. Being the only other female, Rick could safely assume that was Barbara.

“This is Lewis and his mom, Barbara,” Mike informed.

“Hi,” Rick repeated. “How long have all of you known each other?”

“My mother and I found Jose just after DC was bombed,” Lewis spoke. “My dad was getting attacked by one of the dead. I would’ve lost my mom, too, if Jose hadn’t showed up. He’s been by our side since. A few months later we got together with a larger group. Mike’s family was part of that. But then we got overrun with more of the dead and had to make a run for it. Lost some others along the way, and like Mike said, we’ve just been moving around. This is the best place we’ve had and the longest we’ve been anywhere.”

“But we’re low on food, and we can’t really find much anywhere else,” Barbara added her two cents. “With winter on our doorsteps, we can’t afford to stay here much longer or we won’t survive.”

Rick looked down from the seven people staring at him from the top of the stairs and glanced over at Michonne. The two of them looked at each other and he tried to nonverbally hold a conversation with her about what she thought they should do.

With a raise of her eyebrows, and gentle expression, she tilted her head slightly in the seven’s direction and then nodded subtly at Rick.

Turning to his left, Rick looked at Finn next to flesh out the same thought process.

Finn simply shrugged, leaving the ball in Rick’s court.

Clearing his throat, Rick placed his hands on his hips and looked back up at Mike, Lewis and the others. “Listen, the place my people and I have is nearby. We have food, enough to get us through the winter until we can start to grow more. We have weapons to protect ourselves. We have medicine and even a nurse to take care of us when we get injured or sick. The house we’re in, every bedroom is being used. I can’t make any promises to all of you right now because we need to talk to our family first and see what they say. If they’re all in agreement, we might be able to have you come back with us. We’ll share our food, find a place for you to sleep, but we’d expect you to contribute with chores; cooking, cleaning, keeping the place safe. You’ll have to learn to hunt, to bring more food to the table. Things like that.”

Mike looked like he’d just been handed a winning lottery ticket. The smile of relief on his face said it all. “Y-yeah. Yes, whatever it takes, we’ll do.”

“Well, like I said, we need to talk this over with our family first. But first, I need to ask you an important question.”

Mike nodded eagerly. “Yeah, anything.”

Rick just stared back for a moment, licking at his bottom lip. Then, “Do you know if there’s a fake Christmas tree and a boxes of ornaments anywhere here in this house that we can take?”



As the sedan rolled up to the house at Mount Vernon, the front door opened up before the ignition was even turned off. Jo stepped outside, wearing nothing more than a long-sleeve shirt and pair of jeans that were unzipped because they weren’t fitting right anymore because her stomach was already protruding more noticeably. She was smiling when Rick, Michonne and her brought climbed out of the car and narrowed her gaze at them.

“Back so soon?” she inquired as Rick walked toward the back of the car and unhooked a bungee cord that was keeping the trunk somewhat closed.

“Well, we got what we went looking for, and then some,” Finn answered.

“Oh? Did you find anything good, like more chocolate, maybe? I mean, I’ll settle for anything sweet at this point. Maybe a jar of pickles that hasn’t spoiled yet?”

Yanking a rectangular, nylon storage bag out of the trunk that was large and bright red, Rick dropped it at his feet while Michonne was busy pulling a blue, 18-gallon Rubbermaid storage box out of the back seat where she’d been sitting; having let Finn have shotgun on the drive home.

“Is that what I think it is?”

Rick smiled over at his wife and nodded. “One artificial Christmas tree and a box full of ornaments, just as you ladies requested.”

Michonne rolled her eyes, her arm muscles flexing as she carried the box up to the front door. “Yeah, pin it on us, as if you men weren’t looking forward to having a tree to decorate, too.” With a smile, Michonne eyed Jo and then slipped past her into the house. She turned left into the blue room and continued straight through to the ballroom where they planned on setting the tree up.

“We could’ve just cut down a tree,” Jo remarked, folding her arms and leaning against the doorframe.

“We’d still have to go find a tree stand and ornaments,” Rick countered. “And with everything else we do around here, who wants to added watering the tree and cleaning up pine needles to the list of chores? We finally have something in our lives that won’t ever die.”

Jo smirked. “Alright, point taken.”

As Finn assisted Rick with carrying the storage bag up into the house, Jo stepped aside to let them in and then closed the door behind her with a shiver going up her spine from the cold air.

Catching said shiver, Rick frowned. “Why aren’t you wearing something warmer?”

“I was just outside for a minute.”

“A minute is long enough to catch a cold.” Looking down, he added, “And you don’t even have shoes on your feet.”

Jo rolled her eyes as she followed after both men as they continued to carry the bag toward the ballroom where Mika and Sophia were waiting eagerly. “At least I have socks on this time.”

“Just promise me you’ll bundle up better. It’s getting so much colder out there.”

“Yes, daddy.”

Rick dropped his end half a second before Finn did, and then glanced over at Jo. “What’d I say about calling me that outside the bedroom?” he joked.

“Oh Jesus fucking Christ, I don’t want to hear about your bedroom kinks with my sister,” Finn exclaimed with partially mock disgust. There was probably plenty of real disgust there, too.

While the comments seemed more or less lost on the girls, Rick and Jo only smirked at each other. Michonne didn’t seem to care either way.

“Where’s Jen?” Finn asked, like clockwork.

“We finished the garlands and she went to lay down.”

“Okay.”

Without another word, Finn disappeared, likely to go check on his girlfriend for himself. Rick meanwhile stepped over to Jo and placed his hands on her hips and pulled her close to him for a kiss.

“How was your morning so far?” he asked, parting his lips slowly from hers.

“I jabbed my finger with a needle a few times while trying to impale painted popcorn onto a piece of string, but other than that it’s been pretty good,” she replied. “How about your morning? Did you run into any trouble?”

“Not really.”

“Not really?” Jo repeated.

“The cul-de-sac of McMansions had a small swarm of walkers we had to take care of, but that was pretty much it,” he answered. “Oh—and there’s seven people living in the McMansion we got the tree and ornaments from that I’m thinking we should bring back to live here with us.”

“Wait—what?”

“I wanted to bring it up to everyone else first, take a vote.”

“And just who are these seven people? Where would you have them stay exactly?” Jo leaned back from Rick and raised an eyebrow at him.

“Their de facto leader is a guy named Mike, with his wife Alyssa and their two boys. I forget the boys’ names but their Sophia and Mika’s ages. Then there’s a guy about my age named Lewis and his mother Barbara, and Lewis’ friend Jose. They’re all a close knit group like ours.” Leaning in toward his wife, Rick lowered his voice. “You’ve seen how I’ve been with newcomers in the past, back at the prison. I didn’t even want to bring Sam and Ana back to the prison, regardless of the sickness we had there. But these people are different. These people are where we would’ve been right now if we hadn’t found and cleared this place. They’re running low on food. They won’t have enough to make it through the winter. They have no weapons other than a baseball bat and some kitchen knives to protect themselves. They’re sitting ducks if people not like us cross their path. Lewis, Barbara and Jose seem more blue-collared. They seemed willing to rough it, unlike Mike and his family. They lived the city life in DC before the shit hit the fan. They said the fish sometimes but they’re not very good at it.” Seeing the skepticism on Jo’s face that was usually reserved for his, Rick brought his hands up to her elbows and gave them a squeeze. “We found a second chance at a home, here at Mount Vernon. Mike and the others haven’t had that luxury. We can teach them how to survive better. If something happens in the future where they leave here, at least they’ll have better tools on making it somewhere else.”

Jo nodded slowly, and then began to smile a little; rather loving how optimism looked on him. “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Rick smiled back. “Exactly.”

With a subtle roll of her eyes and a smile that became considerably brighter, Jo leaned in against Rick’s chest and snaked her arms up around his shoulders before placing a small kiss upon his lips. “If you can trust strangers that you just met, enough so that you want them to live with us, then I suppose I can trust them, too.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. There are other people that live here that need convincing.”

“Well, having you on board was the most important thing. And I already have Finn and Michonne’s votes. Jen will go with whatever Finn says. Morgan will likely say yes, too, because…well, you know he is.” Rick considered the others. “Do you really think anyone else would say no?”

Jo shrugged. “We’ll find out.”

“Where is everyone else?”

“Daryl came back with Sophia about an hour ago. Still no luck finding a turkey, but he wants to try again later. Merle was off with Tyreese, gathering more water for the house down at the river, Tara asked Nicole to start training her on basic first aid, so they’re in the infirmary right now. As for Morgan, last I saw, he went upstairs to his room. He caught his pants on a nail sticking some wooden beam somewhere near the stables and tore the material. He took the sewing kit to mend it.”

Rick nodded. “Okay, well, let’s gather everyone up for a meeting, shall we?”



The vote to let Mike and the others come back to Mount Vernon to live had been unanimous. After Rick, Michonne and Finn had all spoke their piece about how they believed all seven people to be good people, no one seemed go against the idea.

Merle proposed the idea of putting them all up in the former slave quarters. There were bunks and a fireplace to keep them warm. It could be their own place separate from the house, and while Rick considered that option, he also didn’t trust how warm it would be during the worst of the winter season. He didn’t want to bring those people to Mount Vernon, only to put them at risk of dying not long after of pneumonia because the slave quarters were too drafty and cold, regardless of whether that was a fireplace or not. And if they were hit with a bad snowstorm, trying to make their way up to the house for food and to bathe or use the bathroom wouldn’t be ideal. Maybe during the spring, Mike and his group could occupy those quarters on the property, but for the meantime Rick thought it would be okay to let them stay in the ballroom.

Less than two hours after Rick had left the McMansion with Michonne and Finn, he was already returning. This time with the RV since Mike’s group only have a small car that wouldn’t fit everyone in it with their supplies. Rick drove the RV, and Michonne tagged along again.

Finn stayed behind this time. His excuse was that he wanted to allow more room for Mike and his group to fit themselves and their belongings easily into the RV. However, Rick and Jo both looked at each other and seemed to be on the same page about thinking Finn just wanted to stay near Jen as usual.

Once they arrived back to the McMansion, Rick and Michonne explained how the living situation would work for the winter months; that Mike and his group would stay in one room together where there was a fireplace, so they wouldn’t have to worry about keeping warm. There was the issue of no beds, so Mike’s group would need to bring their own bedding, like blankets or sleeping bags, until cots or something else could be acquired for them. When the months got warmer again, Mike and his group would be expected to utilize the other housing on the property.

Rick still hadn’t even told them where exactly his group was living. It was something he was actually waiting to reveal until they arrived.

When they did, Mike’s group was in awe.

“You live here?” Mike asked. “You live at Mount Vernon?”

Rick nodded with pride as they all began to climb out of the RV.

“But…how? This place was crawling with the dead. Thousands of them, from what we heard.”

“My family can handle anything,” Rick remarked.

“Clearly.”

“What did you hear about this place?” Michonne wondered, helping Barbara step down.

Apparently the stout, 60+ year old woman had bad arthritis and no longer had the medication to help combat it anymore. She merely suffered in silence.

“We met a man and his family a few months after the outbreak, before my family found Lewis, Barbara and Jose. This man said his family had made their way here, after the televisions stopped working but before the major radio stations powered down,” Mike explained, standing there, looking up at the house and back behind them toward the Bowling Green. “Some televangelist told people to come here, to bring their families; that they’d find an escape from the damnation of the world here.”

“This place was swarmed with walkers,” Michonne said. “The road leading toward the entrance gate and the parking lots were littered with abandoned vehicles of all sorts. Trucks, cars, buses, vans.”

Mike nodded. “This guy, he said the people flocked here, looking for a port in the storm, so to speak. But that’s not what this place really was. The televangelist, I remember him just barely. He used to have this show every Sunday morning on local access television. He brought hundreds if not thousands of people here, passed around water for everyone to drink and said a prayer beforehand. The guy I met that had been here, he said he and his family were among the last to get water and didn’t drink right when everyone else did. He said within minutes, everyone was convulsing and dropping dead to the ground. He forced his family to abandon the water bottles and get out of there. He realized it was all some sort of mass suicide event, like that Jonestown mass suicide back in ‘78. You know, the whole ‘don’t drink the Kool-Aid’ thing. Like Jonestown, those that weren’t drinking the water or that were trying to flee were shot on sight by members of the televangelist’s so-called church.”

“Was that televangelist an older guy in his sixties, thin, with John Lennon-styled eyeglasses?” Rick asked.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, that sounds like him.”

Rick nodded knowingly. “Yeah, after we cleared the grounds, the only body inside the house was in the dining room with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head. Gotta be the same guy.”

“Died just like the leader of Jonestown, too.” Still looking around, and still impressed, Mike leaned in toward Rick, just as the front door opened and Rick’s group began to step outside to greet the newcomers. “What happened to all the bodies, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“It took that first full week here, give or take, but we carted them up in the back beds of trucks and drove them down toward the Pioneer Farm, if you’re familiar at all with that. We piled them up and burned them all, little by little.”

Mike considered this, and just continued to look impressed. “Shit, for a second I thought you were gonna say you buried them all.”

“No,” Rick said with a shake of his head. “We don’t bury walkers. We bury our own. Walkers get burned.”

“Walkers? That’s what you call them?”

Rick nodded. “’Cause all they do is walk around.”

Mike smirked. “Makes sense.”

Once everyone was outside to greet Mike’s group, introductions were formally made. Because of how cold it was, Mike’s group was ushered inside and shown to the ballroom where a fire had already been lit by Morgan ahead of time.

“Go ahead and set up anywhere in here,” Rick suggested. “I’d recommend closer to the fireplace to keep warm.” He pointed to the door to the immediate left of the fireplace. That room in there used to be some other parlor. The harpsichord and small leather couch thing over there,” he pointed to the corner of the ballroom, “used to be in that room, but now it’s our bathroom. There’s a tub which we’ll explain how it works later. The toilet, though, I’ll explain now, because that’s more of a necessity than luxuriating in a bath.”

“I haven’t enjoyed a proper bath in—I can’t remember when.”

“Yeah, it’s a nice setup we worked out,” Rick chuckled. “Anyway, the toilet is only a portable one. Whoever uses it last, empties it. Except for the kids and anyone pregnant. There’s a large rubber tub outside, just off the piazza, filled halfway with water. Urine gets emptied into that bucket. We figure the water would dilute it and diminish any smell rather than just dumping it into the grass. Shit gets buried into a hole, further away from the house. There’s one already dug. When it gets filled with enough shit, we cover the rest with soil. The bucket for the toilet gets cleaned outside as well; rinsed with water and sprayed with disinfectant. We don’t want anyone getting sick from germs we can prevent from spreading.”

Mike considered all this.

“Cooking food is done in the kitchen, which is a building separate from the house. We can show you that tomorrow, along with other places around the property. Michonne and Tara have pretty much become our resident chefs. They oversea the preparing most meals, usually just one main one in the late afternoon or early evening. In the morning every pretty much just helps themselves to a piece of fruit or a small canned good item. Just enough to keep our stomachs full so we don’t go hungry,” Rick continued. “I’ll expect your group to follow the same lead. With seven more mouths to feed, we’re gonna need to be more careful with our food supply.” Rick pointed to Daryl. “Daryl is our main hunter. He might not look like a willing teacher, mostly ‘cause he isn’t, but he’ll teach you want you need to know to learn to hunt for food on your own. Don’t be afraid to ask. He won’t bite.”

“He’s not allowed to because he hasn’t had his shots,” Jo quipped, sauntering up beside Rick.

Rick looked down to his wife, realizing he hadn’t actually introduced her like he’d done with the others; remembering it was because she’d gone to put on her boots and a jacket. By the time she’d come back down, everyone had been coming inside the house.

“This here, is my wife, Jo,” Rick introduced.

Jo smiled politely and held out her hand. “Nice to meet some friendly faces. It’s a nice change of pace.”

Mike chuckled and nodded. “I couldn’t agree more. I’m Mike Willis,” he replied. Pointing over his shoulder toward his family, he added, “And that’s my wife Alyssa and our sons Taylor and Ryan. We, uh, had a daughter, too, but we lost her in the beginning. She was bit on our way out of the city. My wife hasn’t really been the same since.”

Jo’s polite smile faded into a sympathetic frown. “I’m so sorry.”

“Rick told me you lost a son and daughter, too.”

“Oh, well,” Jo began, about to correct him that Rick’s son was lost before she’d met him, and that they’d met after the apocalypse, but Rick cut her off.

“Yeah, it’s not something you ever get over. But we take it one day at a time,” Rick stated. “It’s all we can do. And we have other children that need our focus. It’s not fair to them if we ignore them just because we’re still upset about the others we’ve lost.”

“My same sentiments,” Mike muttered. “I loved my little girl, and sometimes I still have nightmares about the way we lost her, but my sons need me now. I gotta live my life for them now.”

Rick nodded. “We gotta do whatever we can to survive.”

“Here, here.”

With a small smile, Rick looked to Jo and then stepped closer to Mike and lowered his voice. “Just one more thing we need to get over before you and yours get settled in for the evening…”

“Sure. Shoot.”

As his smile faded, Rick whispered in Mike’s ear, “I just want you to know, that if I think for one minute that you’re putting my family at risk, I will kill you.” Leaning back and staring Mike in the face, he held the other man’s gaze. “Are we clear on that?”

Mike swallowed down a lump in his throat and nodded, rightfully intimidated. “Crystal.”

“Good,” Rick smiled again, slapping Mike on the shoulder. “Welcome to Mount Vernon.”

Notes

Comments

I absolutely love this story. I love how you re wrote the whole story but still kept the basics and changed who dies and when. I absolutely love that you kept Sophia alive because I really wished they had left her alive in the tv show. I love what you did with Negan. Absolutely perfect.

AliKook AliKook
4/23/19

@Grimesgirl63 @Loul461

Thank you :)

The ending is perfect

Loul461 Loul461
7/7/17

Thank you so much for this wonderful story. I'm very excited to hear that you are planning a sequel, and will be working on "The World We Live In".

Grimesgirl63 Grimesgirl63
7/7/17

I know we are getting to the end but I just do not want this story to be over. This chapter was great as usual and I can't wait for the next update. Glad that your ankle is better and you are settling in with your grandmother. Now, if you could just get that "e" key to work again!

Grimesgirl63 Grimesgirl63
6/30/17