Winter Part 11

A/N: This fic is very nearly completed. I think there’s only one more chapter left, plus the epilogue. Comments = love!

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Even in the best of times breakfast at the prison consisted of leftovers from the day before, and, if they were lucky to have it in stock, a cup of instant coffee to wash it all down. They sometimes had eggs from the chickens they kept but mostly those eggs were used for cooking other dishes. This morning, after having been dressed in a dark green cashmere sweater, black slacks, and black leather, high heeled boots, Maggie followed Ziga downstairs where she smelled breakfast, the likes of which she hadn't smelled since before leaving the farm, cooking.

The breakfast nook had been set with delicate looking plates and cups, and heavy duty cutlery, not the cheap, functional things Maggie had gotten used to at the prison. She sat down across from Evelyn and took a deep breath. The rich aroma of brewed coffee filled the air, as did the delicious smell of frying bacon, eggs, and toasting bread.

“Do you like coffee?”

“I used to live for it,” Maggie answered honestly.

“By all means, allow me.”

Evelyn poured Maggie a cup of coffee. It was steaming hot and black. She picked it up eagerly and took a tentative sip. She wasn’t faking the moan that escaped her upon tasting the delicious brew.

“Oh, God…that’s heaven,” Maggie said honestly.

This earned a chuckle from Evelyn. “Cream or sugar?”

“No thanks. I like it just like this.”

“When the Turn first happened I realized we'd need to hoard supplies, so my men and I raided a grocery store. We killed anyone who dared approached and over a two day period we took everything from it and brought it here. We did the same for several other major market chains.”

Some of Maggie’s enjoyment of the coffee was tainted by this news, but she didn’t let it show on her face. She continued to sip, reminding herself that she’d not been responsible for how the coffee had been procured.

“I knew,” Evelyn continued, “that when the dead began to arise and eat the living that this was going to change the world. Life as we knew it was over, permanently, so I prepared ahead.”

“How so?”

A plate was set down before Maggie. It contained scrambled eggs, two long, thick slices of bacon, and a piece of toast. She saw that real butter and strawberry preserves had been set out on the table. She coated her toast in both and took a bite. It was so fresh and delicious it was hard to believe this food hadn’t been recently brought home from the grocery.

“I gathered over forty men, all of them survivors from the military. They had equipment, weapons, and experience. They weren’t afraid to kill but they needed a leader. I filled that role quite nicely when the Turn came. I knew we’d need a base, and that was going to be here, in Charlesville. I knew we’d need supplies that would last a long time so we gathered supplies and ammunition that would last years, including gasoline. We're also using solar power but that doesn't provide an abundant a supply as I'd first thought it would. We’ve got a stable setup here, Maggie. You can eat like this all the time and put some meat back on those lovely bones of yours.”

Maggie bit into the bacon. It amazed her to think that, even as good as the food was, Evelyn would actually believe Maggie would betray those she loved for a bite to eat with a maniac who would eventually tire of her and kill her.

“Did you enjoy your bath?”

So she had been watching.

“It was okay,” Maggie hedged.

Evelyn smiled at her knowingly, smugly. She watched Maggie clear her plate. “Would you care for seconds?”

“I don’t want to be greedy. Everybody else has to eat.”

Evelyn laughed as though indulging a dimwit. “Oh, ma chere! How precious! Our bellies must be filled first to our content. After that, everyone else gets the leftovers.”

In truth Maggie was full. She wasn’t accustomed to such a hearty breakfast. “I don’t normally eat such a big breakfast. I’m full.”

“Not even another slice of toast?”

Maggie considered the offer. It seemed Evelyn wanted her to have more, and bread was something she hadn’t eaten since leaving the farm.

“Well, I could take another piece of toast, I guess.”

Evelyn topped off their coffee cups while Maggie buttered another slice of toast.

“May I see the rest of the house?”

“Looking for an escape route?” Evelyn asked flatly.

“No. Just bored.”

“In that case, I’ll show you the library. I have an extensive collection of classics that you’ll have to familiarize yourself with. You’ll need to learn philosophy, art, music, and French. If I’m going to keep you in luxury, ma chere, you’re going to have to provide me with stimulation that stems from more than what’s between those young, strong thighs.”

Evelyn slipped her hand onto Maggie’s knee and slid it high up, on the inside. She instinctively jerked her legs shut, and that seemed to please Evelyn, who squeezed even harder, and pressed until she came just short of actually touching Maggie’s womanhood. She smirked at Maggie’s discomfit and then removed her hand.

Apparently she felt as though she’d made her point when, in fact, she’d just given Maggie a little more insight into her character. Maggie was a little closer to figuring out just how to play this bitch.

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Rick and Michonne dressed and joined Lena, Bobby, and Grant in the living room of the tiny apartment. Bobby had made scrambled eggs and had, somehow, procured bacon and bread for their breakfast. Lena had made a pot of instant coffee and they ate in relative silence.

“Recommendations?” Rick asked, once they were finished with breakfast and were strapping on their weapons.

“We hit door number 1,” said Grant. “There’s ammo in there, lots of it. We’ll need it for the duration of the game.”

“All right. Let’s move,” Rick said, polishing off his coffee.

“You’ll want to send in two expendable team members,” said Lena, while they headed down the stairs. “There’s usually traps on the way to the ammo because it’s the second most important of the five rooms.”

“Second?” asked Rick.

“This is the most important, number 5,” said Bobby, as though talking to someone dimwitted. “It’s your sanctuary.”

“So, who do you choose as expendable?”

“Bobby and Grant get my vote,” Michonne said.

Rick nodded.

“Gee, thanks,” said Bobby, with a roll of his eyes.

“We’ll be there as backup,” Lena assured him. “We always are.”

So they left the warmth and safety of their sanctuary and headed outside. A steady, cold wind picked up and whipped Rick’s hiar in his eyes as he followed Bobby and Grant’s lead. Lena brought up the rear. Their footsteps sounded loud in the cold morning air and if whatever walkers Evelyn had lurking heard them, they were in for trouble.

“Stop,” Michonne said.

At once the group came to a halt.

“What?” asked Grant.

“This street is blocked off,” she said. “It’s open on the map. It was clear yesterday.”

“Evy had it blocked off,” Lena explained. “Makes it more dangerous in the game. You may think you’ve got an escape route mapped out and then bam--you’re blocked in.”

“I’d ask how you could go along with this but it’s a waste of breath,” Rick said tiredly.

“She has eyes everywhere,” Lena reminded him. “One of us tries anything and she’ll have us all killed just to prove a point.”

“One woman has you all living in fear?” said Michonne. She didn’t bother to hide her disdain at their cowardice.

“She’s not just one woman,” Grant countered. “She’s got other people who are loyal to her. They’ll die to protect her.”

“Is that what she says, or what those other people say?” Michonne questioned.

She knew she couldn’t convince them to trun on Evelyn all at once, but she could plant seeds of doubt. She could make them wonder, and think, and maybe those questions would blossom into rebellion in time for her and Rick to put a stop to this woman once and for all.

“Let’s just go,” Bobby said. He looked scared, as though he feared that Evelyn herself would appear out of thin air and kill him herself.

Michonne tapped Rick on the arm. “Look.”

He followed her gaze. There was a camera aimed almost in their direction. The others saw it and stiffened, until Michonne pointed out that it had been busted out.

“Someone’s busted out the camera,” Lena said, frowning.

“Doesn’t that mean she can’t see this street?” asked Rick.

Lena nodded. “I wonder how this happened.”

“One of ours,” said Rick proudly. “They came back for us.”

“Don't get your hopes up, Boss. Evelyn’s men will probably have found and killed him by now,” said Bobby. He looked much more relaxed now that he knew Evelyn didn’t have eyes on that particular street.

“If it’s the man I’m thinking it is, then no, they won’t find him. They’ll just die at his hand probably without ever seeing him coming,” said Michonne.

“This is the perfect chance to put a stop to her,” said Rick.

“Stop it. Don’t even think like that,” said Lena.

“That’s your problem!” Michonne said, exasperated. “You're not thinking. You know she can’t see or hear us right now and you’re still afraid of her.”

“Damn right we’re afraid of her!” Lena shot back. “We’re always going to be afraid of her. You have no idea what she’s capable of. You have no idea what she’ll do!”

“Then stand up to her. She’s not God for Christ’s sake!” Rick shouted.

“She is in their eyes, Rick,” Michonne said, seeing the way the three of them cowered with indecision. It was sad, to say the least.

“Let us deal with her then,” Rick said.

“How?”

“When the time comes, you don’t have to attack. All I ask is that you don’t get in our way. Just stand down. Don’t protect her. She’s not your friend. She doesn’t care about you,” he said.

“She provides for us,” insisted Bobby.

“At what cost?” Rick said. “Look, when this is over, if we’ve managed to kill her, you can come back to our camp with us. I’ll provide for you. I’ll give you a roof over your head, food to put in your belly, and I won’t make sick demands of you. You need to change the way you think. Do you need somebody to follow? Follow me. I'll be your Boss for real but you have to do give me your loyalty and be ready to turn on her. You'll have to pick. Me, or her?”

He knew Michonne wouldn’t like the suggestion of making these people part of their group at the prison but it would be better to make friends of them than enemies.They needed hope if they were going to fight with them instead of against them.

“Stand up to her,” Michonne chimed in. “Put an end to her. Break her hold on you or you’re never going to be free.”

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Glenn waited behind the dumpster as he heard footfalls slowly approach from the other end of the alley. He was exhausted, trying to operate on only two hours of sleep he managed to catch in an abandoned storage shed. He’d killed three men and a woman as they’d patrolled in the night, looking for him and Daryl, though he’d lost contact with Daryl when they were raided and Maggie was taken captive. He still had no clue how many people stood between him and Maggie.

The footsteps were slow and clumsy. Glenn waited, wondering if a living man or a walker approached. He soon heard the rattle of keys and one sliding into a lock. He risked a glance, saw no one was in the alley, and then ran up behind the man as he went through the door. He shoved the guy hard, but he didn’t expect him to fall so easily to his face and begin crying in pain.

It was then that Glenn saw the bolt in the man’s gut. It went straight through his body. He moved to close the door but someone on the other side shoved it open. Glenn raised his gun and found himself staring at the business end of a bolt from a crossbow.

“Daryl,” he sighed in relief.

Daryl kicked the door closed and locked it behind him. His eyes went to the man on the floor, watching him cry pitifully.

“Please, just end it,” the man said, after Daryl helped sit him up and lean him against the hulking mass of an old floor model television.

“Not till you answer a few questions,” said Daryl.

Glenn looked at their surroundings. They were in an apartment that looked like it had been decorated by a hippie in the sixties and it had remained untouched over time. Peace signs, black lights, velvet paintings, lava lamps, and other memorabilia were all over the place. Orange had apparently been the resident’s favorite color because it was everywhere, accented by brown and yellow.

“Please say you decorated this place so I won’t feel bad for killing you,” Glenn said.

“It’s not my place. It’s a safe house,” the man said. He looked down at the bolt in his body. “It hurts. I can’t believe this. I’m gonna die because of that crazy bitch and her stupid games.”

“I may be able to save you,” said Daryl. Glenn knew he was lying, but the man on the floor was desperate to cling to life and he looked hopefully up at Daryl.

“You can?”

“Maybe. I won’t even try unless you start talking and do it quick. How many people y’all got and where are they?”

“We got seventeen including Evy,” he said. “We used to have a lot more but she killed them off or they just disappeared. She used to get these moods where she needed to torture and kill, so she’d just pick someone and have them brought to the mansion. They’d never been seen again. Then she invented this game to replenish the ranks and have her brand of fun. I hate her. We all hate her. Now I’m probably gonna die for her. Fuck! That bitch made me kill my own brother and now look what’s become of me.”

He started weeping. Daryl let him. Just another sign the man wasn’t going to make it.

“She’s just one woman,” Glenn said. “Why not overpower her? Take control?”

“We’re afraid. We’re fools and we’re afraid of her.” He looked pitifully up at Daryl. “Can you really save me?”

Daryl shook his head. “No, man, but you can help me stop her. Tell me where she lives and how to get in. Tell me where she’s keeping our people. At least you can die knowing you helped me put an end to this bitch.”

“Ray,” he said.

“What?” asked Glenn.

“My name is Ray. You remember that.”

Daryl and Glenn nodded.

“She lives in the Tudor mansion two streets west of here. She’s got four guards on watch at all times. She’s got cameras everywhere through town and around but I hear someone’s been going around smashing them out.”

“That’d be me,” said Daryl.

“She’s gonna see you comin’ once you’re inside the mansion.”

“You serious when you said only eighteen people are responsible for this whole thing? Wrangling those walkers and--”

“Where are the walkers kept?” Glenn interrupted. He could sense the man was fading and they needed that information.

“There’s a storage pin behind the mansion. There’s about fifty of them in there. They can hear this frequency that people can’t. It’s loud to them but silent to us. That’s how we lure them around without getting in their way,” he said.

He took what looked like a long silver whistle from his belt and handed it, with bloodstained hands, to Daryl.

“Just blow on that a few times. They’ll come running,” said Ray.

“Thanks, man.”

“Please, the pain. I can’t take it no more. Don’t let me die slow, man. I know I deserve it, all the shit I’ve done, but please…don’t let me come back as one of those things, neither. Please…”

“Close your eyes,” said Daryl.

Ray shook his head, refusing. Daryl nodded once. If the man wanted to face his death then Daryl could respect that. He took out his knife and then brought it down hard in the top of the man’s skull, putting an end to him painlessly and quickly. Then he freed his bolt from Ray’s body and put it back onto his bow.

“What’s the plan?” asked Glenn.

“She’s blind on the streets. I’m damn positive I got all the cameras last night. I took out a lot of her people, too, but at the time I didn’t know what kinda impact I was having on her numbers.”

“How many?”

Daryl shrugged. “He makes six.”

“I got four last night. I hid the bodies after I’d kill them.”

Daryl nodded. “Me too, so they’re not in plain sight. So we got ten of their eighteen men. Only eight to go.”

“Don’t forget though, Daryl, that woman’s got Maggie, Rick, and Michonne. She realizes how low she is on manpower she may do anything.”

“She’ll eventually try to kill them no matter what we do, so don’t you think it’s best we keep movin’? said Daryl.

Glenn begrudgingly agreed. He knew Daryl was right, but the idea of putting Maggie in danger made his guts clench.

“You look as bad as I feel,” said Daryl. “I’ll take first watch. You get three hours, I get three. It’ll be dark when I get up and then we’ll head out and make a move on the mansion.”

Glenn was loathe to lie down to sleep when Maggie was still in that madwoman’s clutches, going through God only knew what, but they couldn’t move until dark and he needed the rest or he’d be no good to Maggie and the others. He lay down on a day bed that looked as though a unicorn had vomited peace and love all over it and was asleep in seconds.



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