A United Front Chapter Three

Micah Bishop politely knocked on the door.

“He’ll blow you away as soon as you answer,” Dale said. “I wouldn’t put it past him. The man is sick.”

“I don’t want him to start shooting through the door,” said Rick. “Get our women upstairs to the attic, Dale. Stay with them. Carl, go with them.”

He nodded. Maggie, Andrea, Sasha, Carol, and Beth started upstairs with Dale and Carl behind them. Michonne refused to leave.

“Michonne, please.”

“I’m not hiding from anyone,” she said, and drew her sword. “Open the door.”

He’d gotten to know Michonne well enough to know it was useless arguing with her when her mind was made up. This time when Bishop knocked it was twice as hard, and almost rattled the door in the frame.

Rick opened the door cautiously. Bishop didn’t have a gun drawn, but he did have four men behind him. He smiled at Rick, revealing even white teeth.

“Evening. May I come in?”

“No.”

“That’s no way to greet company.”

“You’re not my company, Bishop.”

He feigned surprise. “You’ve heard of me. Is that good ole Hershel Greene I spy behind you? Has he been telling you tall tales about me?”

“What do you want?”

“Women,” he said bluntly. “You have a bunch of them. Seems only fair you share them with my people. It’s lonely in this dark new world. Now, by my count, you’ve got six women. Give us three and you keep three. It’s the neighborly thing to do and I’d consider it a friendly gesture. I’m a very good friend to have in times like these.I’m an even worse enemy.”

“Are you serious?” Rick asked angrily. “You expect me to hand over three of my friends to be gang raped?”

The phony smile fell off Bishop’s face like a safe from a window. “Yes.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Then I’ll kill the men and take all six women. Didn’t I tell you, Hershel? Next time you didn’t give me what I wanted I was going to kill you? Well, it’s time to pay up.”

Rick moved to shut the door in Bishop’s face but he shoved it open with enough force to knock Rick back. As soon as he moved, the four men behind him surged forward, guns drawn. Someone fired a shot from behind Rick. He felt his hair move from the path of the bullet. It struck one of Bishop’s men square in the forehead, felling him in the driveway.

“Get down!” Rick shouted, when return fire came.

Damn fools are firing when their man is still in the door, Rick thought. It was chilling how aggressive these men were. They were everything Hershel said they’d be, and worse. He could tell that by their bold assault.

“Men are coming in from the back,” Daryl shouted.

Suddenly the house was booming with the sound of gunfire.

“Get the chick with the sword!” Bishop shouted at two of the men who’d come in from the back yard. “I want her for my own.”

Two men lunged for Michonne. She swung her blade around in one graceful arc and took their heads off.

“Shit,” Bishop shouted, as he saw his men fall, and Rick tackled him along with Tyreese. The fight wasn’t going to plan. These people weren’t nearly as meek as he’d thought they’d be. He’d lost three men, that he knew of, possibly more, but none of his enemies had fallen. The gunfire from Hershel, Daryl, and Glenn was so intense the remaining three of the five men he’d sent around the house to come in back were forced to retreat. His own men, behind him, couldn’t fire again because Rick and Tyrese held him squarely in the center of the doorway, using him as a shield against his own men.

He heard his men cry out behind him. Rick heard the sound of gunshots from upstairs. The women, Carl and Dale probably included, were shooting back from an upstairs window.

“Retreat!” Bishop shouted. “Fall back!”

The last man in the driveway ducked behind the armored truck they’d arrived in and laid down cover fire. Rick and Tyrese were forced to let Bishop go in order to dive for cover, especially after a bullet grazed Tyreese’s leg. They slammed the door shut while the women upstairs continued to fire. The truck drove off. The men in the back yard took off over the fence to the house next door, probably to meet up with Bishop further down the street.

“How many of his are dead?” Rick asked.

“Three in the drive,” said Tyreese, favoring his right leg.

“I’ve got two here,” said Michonne.

“I nailed one in the back yard,” Daryl reported.

“That’s six of the ten that came here,” said Hershel. He smiled at Rick. “We did it. We scared him off.”

“I wouldn’t be so quick to celebrate,” said Rick, as Dale, Carl, and the women came back downstairs. “He may have a base with more men. He may try to come back after us.”

“Then let’s run after him and finish it,” said Glenn.

Maggie shook her head. “I don’t like that idea. You could get shot.”

“The noise is going to attract walkers,” Carol said, coming down the steps last, behind everyone else.

“What are we gonna do?” Beth asked. She went to stand beside Daryl.

“Suggestions?” asked Hershel.

“I say we pack up as quickly as possible and head out,” said Sasha. “The school. We could take it and fortify it.”

“What school?” asked Rick.

“There’s an abandoned school about twenty miles from here. It’s got a few walkers, probably more than we can see on the outside, but I think we can fortify it and make it a safe place to live,” she explained.

Tyreese was nodding. “It’s got a brick wall around it, only one story, plenty of rooms to convert into living spaces. I think it would be a good place to settle. There’s plenty of room on the grounds to farm.”

“A river runs behind it, too,” said Hershel. “It’s only about twenty yards from the back wall of the school.”

He had to make a decision, fast. They’d won this fight, he believed, on pure luck, rather than skill. Bishop had been unprepared. He’d underestimated them and had most likely thought they wouldn’t have the guts to take a human life. He’d operated on the assumption that Rick and his group could be easily bullied. Now that he knew he was wrong he would better prepare himself for a fight against them.

Their best option was to run, find a fortifiable place, and then prepare to make a stand in case he, or others like him, crossed their path again. There was something in Rick, perhaps his pride, which made him want to stay. His instinct was to stand and fight. That would get their men killed. That would get their women raped.

“We move out. Now. This house was never safe and now it’s too small for all of us anyway. Pack everything we can. We’ll give ourselves an hour. Dale, how much fuel you got in that RV?”

“She’s full,” he said.

“Good. You, Carl, and Andrea make sure the other vehicles are fueled. We had a good haul today with gasoline,” said Rick. He issued orders for the others to begin packing food and clothes while Hershel bandaged Tyreese’s leg.

“I can help,” Tyreese said.

“Are you sure?” asked Rick? “That wound looks nasty.”

“It hurts but it’s not life threatening. Is it, Doc?”

“You’ll be fine as long as we keep it clean. I’ve got a tube of antibiotic ointment that’ll keep it from getting infected.”

“Then let’s get to work.”

*****

It was over an hour later when anything of value that they owned was packed into the RV and the other vehicles. More than ten walkers had come, drawn to the sound of gunfire, and they'd fought them off while packing up. More were on their way, Rick could see them further up the road. 

Beth rode with her father, sister, and Glenn in the RV with Dale. Rick insisted Carl ride with them, rather than in the open Jeep where he would make an easier target if someone fired at them.

“Rick,” Carol said, approaching him before she climbed into the back of the Jeep with Tyreese, who was going to ride with them. “I saw something during the attack that I think you should know about.”

“Okay.”

“I think, I can’t be sure, but I think I saw a man in the upstairs window of the house across from us. He fired on one of Bishop’s men.”

Carol pointed to one of the men in the front yard. He had a bullet to his back. Rick looked to the house across the street. The windows were darkened. There was no sign of life. If there was someone who’d helped them in the fight, his instincts told him to find that man and offer him a place in their group, or at least a ride out of town before Bishop could return.

He was about to cross the street when he thought of Lori and Carl. He thought of how he’d abandoned them to try to save someone else while they were under threat. It had cost his wife her life and had nearly gotten his son killed. He wasn’t going to make that mistake again. If the man wanted to be part of their group, he should have announced himself already. He wasn’t going to make the mistake of putting a stranger’s welfare over that of his son. He needed to get Carl out of there, and he needed to do it now. There was no time to waste on saving cats from trees.

“Let’s move out!” Rick said, hopping into the driver’s seat. He gave Michonne a quick kiss. “You okay?”

She nodded. “I just want away from here. There are a lot of bad memories.”

Rick pulled out first, followed by Andrea and Daryl, who rode in the Ford that was packed with food and clothes. Sasha and Tyreese rode in the back of the Jeep with Carol, who gave the house she’d called home for the past year a final glance. Her daughter was buried in the back yard. It was a grave she would never get to visit again.

It was strange how leaving the house behind after a year of grieving somehow made Carol feel as though a weight were being lifted off her shoulders. She sat back, feeling a pair of eyes on her. She saw that Tyreese, the big, handsome man who’d been grazed by a bullet, shyly looked away before she could make eye contact.

A smile tugged at the corner of Carol’s lips.

*****

Shane Walsh watched as Rick turned his attention in the direction of the house he’d been holed up in for two days. It was dumb luck he’d happened upon Rick and the new group he’d formed. It was dumb luck that he’d spotted Carl, alive and well, return from scavenging with his father and the black woman the Governor had taken captive. He couldn’t remember her name. It was something like Melinda or Michelle. He didn’t care about her. He didn’t care about anybody in that house but Andrea and Carl.

Then Bishop had come. Shane knew the man all too well. He’d traded with him a few times in the months since he’d fled Woodbury, but he didn’t trust either Bishop, or his men, not to cut his throat in their sleep for sport. He’d made it clear he was on his own. Bishop had said he was welcome to join anytime.

Now that Rick’s group had kicked Bishop’s ass and embarrassed him, they’d had to run. It was a smart move because Shane knew Bishop would return for vengeance. He had almost twenty men, but he never travelled with more than half of them at one time. It was lucky for him he’d left so many men behind or they all could have died on the raid on Rick’s base. Shane felt some small measure of pride that his former friend had had the balls to fight back and to do so decisively.

Carl…Shane’s throat constricted with emotion. He’d cried upon seeing the boy. Almost two years he’d lived believing he was dead. Now he knew that the child he’d loved as a son of his own was alive. Lori was forever gone, but Carl had made it.

There had been a moment when Shane, having seen Carol draw Rick’s attention to his house, thought Rick would waste precious time to come and try to save the man who’d helped out in the firefight, using his last bullet to take out one of Bishop’s men to give Rick’s group a better chance at winning so Carl and Andrea would be safe, but he hadn’t. For once he seemed to have learned his lesson. They needed to move. They needed to get Carl out of there. They needed to get their women out of there before Bishop returned with heavy artillery and sprayed them with bullets until his wounded pride healed. That’s what Rick had done. He’d put his group above a stranger, and that redeemed Rick in his eyes somewhat. He’d never fully forgive Rick for Lori’s death, but now he knew Rick had finally learned that family was more important than anything.

That didn’t mean he trusted Rick to keep Andrea and Carl alive, though. Andrea was his woman, no matter how much she said otherwise. He’d marked her and she would be his till the day she died. Carl was the son he should have had. He was going to go after them. He was going to get Andrea back. He was going to take Carl and raise him as his own. He would keep them safe in ways Rick couldn’t.

That left him only one choice.

Barely twenty minutes after Rick and his group peeled out Bishop returned in a heavily armed truck, with all of his men. They stormed the house, only to find it empty. When Bishop emerged, angry, cursing and spitting like a madman, he found Shane Walsh leaning against his truck, arms crossed. If Shane was going to go after his woman and his son then he needed help. He needed men and he needed guns. Something he didn’t have on his own.

“Your offer still good?” Shane asked.

Bishop looked at the bodies of his men in the front yard. He saw the one man lying on the ground with a bullet in his back. That man now started to rise as he reanimated. Bishop stomped his head in, ending him once and for all.

“You the one who put that bullet in Lew’s back?”

“I am,” Shane admitted at once.

Bishop raised his gun.

“I had good reason.”

“Yeah? What reason is that?”

“My woman and son were in that house,” Shane said. “Rick had them.”

“Rick…”

“That's his name, Rick Grimes,” Shane said. “I know what you and your men would have done to Andrea. I couldn’t risk her being passed around. I couldn’t risk my fourteen-year-old son being gunned down. I’m sure you’d do the same if it was your family in danger.”

Bishop nodded. He could respect a man fighting for his family, even if that man was in the way of Bishop getting what he wanted.

“I know the man you want. I know his weaknesses, I know his strengths. I also saw which direction they headed. I’m going after my woman and son. I think it would be a mutually beneficial arrangement if you and I worked together. I don’t care what you do to the other women and men in that group. I only care about Andrea and Carl.”

Shane and Bishop eyed one another for a long while, sizing one another up. Shane had nothing but his word. Bishop had a small army and guns. They could end him at any moment. Probably would, considering he’d killed one of their own. Still, Shane stared Bishop down. Any sign of weakness now would surely turn Bishop against him and get him a bullet between the eyes. Or worse--a bullet to the chest and he’d be allowed to turn.

“You’ll take my brand,” said Bishop. 

“If that's what it takes,” Shane agreed. “I'll take your brand and I'll swear you my loyalty until I can get my family back, and get you the revenge you want.”

Bishop grinned and holstered his gun. “Somebody get this man a gun! He’s comin’ with us.”



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