Fear And Loathing Part 2

By the time Rick got Judy settled with Mrs. Gunderson down the street, and left a note for Carl and Michonne as to her whereabouts and what was going on at the south wall, an hour had passed. Rick now zoomed his cart to the wall where Tim and Jake West were working with a crew to not only seal the breach but to reinforce it so that it wasn't as vulnerable to walker attacks.

Tim, the older of the brothers by a couple of years, nodded at Rick and gave him a progress report.

"Sorry I wasn't here sooner. I had to find a sitter for Judy," Rick said.

"No problem, Sheriff. We've got it under control. No casualties today and we'll have the reinforcements done along the whole south wall by Thursday night if we work round the clock, which we will. President Huber in S1 is sending in help."

Rick nodded. The south wall surrounded a few hundred acres of open land and forestry. It would eventually be a community of apartment buildings and shops. For now it was simply open land.

"I'll hang around a few hours, just in case the walkers manage-"

What now, Rick wondered, when the lights on the emergency beacons began to flash. It meant there was a breach and walkers had been spotted inside the sanctuary. People would know to shelter in place, which would greatly reduce the chance of anyone being bitten or scratched. They wouldn't come out until the red beacons stopped flashing for more than ten straight minutes. His radio crackled seconds later.

"Rick, its Hank. We've got another breach. Ten walkers in town, and at least five more were called in as being spotted heading for Fisherman's Pond."

"My boy is up there," Rick said. "You work to get rid of the walkers in town. I'll head up to Fisherman's Pond. Find Michonne and make sure she's okay. She's getting fitted for maternity clothes."

"She's up the street. I see her now," said Hank. "Jesus."

"What?" Rick said, panicked.

"She and Maggie Rhee are cutting through them like butter."

Tim laughed at the expression of relief on Rick's face. "Go help her, Hank. Rick out."

"We got it covered here, Sheriff," Jake called from his place at the wall, where he was welding.

Rick waved and then jumped into his cart. He pushed it as hard as he could to get up to Fisherman's Pond. He prayed his son would be alive and well when he got there.

---

Carl Grimes surfaced and thanked God he did because Zoe Bloom was climbing out of the pond and water was cascading down her body. She wore a bright red bikini that had threatened to make Carl's eyes pop out of his head when he'd first arrived at the pond. He'd hated his parents' teasing, but honestly, it was more than a cool swim on a hot day that had convinced Carl to come to the pond. Zoe was perfect in his eyes. She was also recently single.

"Hey, Carl," she said, patting the grass next to her. "Come out and have a cool drink with me. I brought a cooler with some sodas."

Carl looked back at his buddy, Will, who was trying to reel in a fish with their other friends, Adam Martin and Joel Simmons. He sloshed on shore and sat down beside her to pop open a couple of bottles of soda that were made in S1 and shipped to the other sanctuaries. It wasn't as good as Coca-Cola had been, but it was cold, fizzy, and sweet.

"Thanks," he said.

"No problem. You going to take any fish home?" she asked.

"Probably not. I'm mostly here to swim. I think Mom is making some kind of veggie casserole for dinner this evening."

"I'd love to be in your house this evening then. Dad and Will are gonna clean those fish and stink up the whole house."

"Why don't you come over for dinner?" he asked.

"Really?" she said, smiling prettily at him.

"Yeah. We'd love to have you over."

Just then a shadow fell over Carl. "Why don't you fuck off, Grimes?"

Carl sighed and stood to face Jacob Ryan, who had a good three inches and twenty-five pounds on Carl. Most some of it was muscle, some of it fat. Still, Carl had a hard time being afraid of Jacob. He was nothing compared to some of the stuff Carl had seen on the outside.

"Go away, Jacob," Zoe said. "We broke up three weeks ago."

"You'll come around," he said, dismissing her.

She rolled her eyes. "The way you ignore what I want and just try to decide everything for me is why I broke up with you to begin with. Just go away!"

Jacob ignored Zoe. He was too busy staring at Carl. "You heard me the first time, Grimes. Get lost."

He shoved Carl, who immediately shoved him back. Jacob laughed it off, but Carl heard the undercurrent of surprise and anxiety under it. Normally Jacob's size made it easy for him to bully people simply by crowding them. There was a real chance, Carl realized, that nobody had ever, in his life, shoved or hit back at Jacob Ryan.

"How about you back off, punk?" asked Carl.

"I'm the punk? Oh, right, I forgot. You're mister tough guy. You spent a few years on the outside and think you're hot shit."

"And you spent practically the whole Turn holed up in a sanctuary, never having to go hungry or fight for your life against those drooling freaks," Carl shot back.

"Oh, boohoo for you, Grimes. Just because I wasn't out there-"

Carl could feel something dark boiling inside him. He hated bullies. He be damned if he let this one run him off or make him look bad in front of Zoe Bloom.

"Guys-" she started, seeing a real fist fight was coming.

Carl's fists were balled up. "Boohoo? Fuck you, Ryan."

"I said get lost. She's taken."

"She's free and doesn't want shit to do with you," Carl said, inching closer to Jacob. "Why don't you go sit on your fat ass behind your mom's skirts like you have since the Turn started?"

"At least I have my real mom."

That was all it took. Something inside Carl snapped and he lunged, taking Jacob by surprise. He got in two solid punches that dazed Jacob, and then he laid in with a few more.

"Carl, stop!" Zoe shouted.

Carl remembered looking down in the quarry and seeing Shane Walsh beat Ed Peletier nearly to death. He didn't want to be that man. He didn't want to disappoint his father, who wouldn't look the other way at him seriously hurting a boy just because of a fight.

"Get off!" Jacob shouted tearfully. His eye was swelling shut and his lip was busted, and he was humiliated, with everyone at the pond seeing him finally meet his match and taking obvious pleasure in it.

Then someone screamed. Carl saw flashing lights from the warning beacons to shelter in place, that walkers had breached their defenses.

Carl jumped up and saw that a walker had Adam Martin in its grip and had bitten into his shoulder. There were four more stumbling toward the other boys, Will and Joel were all screaming in terror, none louder than Adam.

"Will!" Zoe shouted fearfully.

Despite the relative security of the sanctuaries, Carl had never been able to completely relinquish protection. He had a beauty of a knife with a five inch blade and an ivory handle that he'd found on the outside that he kept tucked into his jeans. He unsheathed it and ran toward his friends while the others screamed in fear.

"Run!" Carl shouted.

His blood was pumping and, he realized, it was with excitement, not fear as it should have been. This was something he was used to. This was something he knew how to do all the way down to his bones. He was still angry about Jacob and he was now angry about Adam, and he wanted to kill something.

That dark impulse scared him. He'd hoped it would have gone away the longer he spent in the sanctuary but it hadn't.

"Get home!" Carl shouted, and brought his knife down on the head of the walker chewing on Adam's shoulder.

Carl had attracted the attention of the other walkers, now, because he was remaining behind rather than running away making himself an easier target. He brought his knife around in a wide arc, planting it in the side of another walker's head. He kicked another to the ground and stomped it square in the head. Two hard stomps put it out of its misery. Carl realized just how much easier he could handle the walkers. He was growing up, getting bigger and stronger, and not all of the walkers were rotted giants to loom over him.

Two walkers were left. He chased them down, while his friends watched, and put a swift end to them. When it was over, he stood looking down at his knife. It was coated in blood and gore, as was his hand.

Something caught his attention in the trees lining the pond. He caught a glimpse of short brown hair and he could have sworn it was Christine Todd. He wasn't a hundred percent sure since the glimpse seemed less than a second. It was more of a flash than a real look. Whoever it was, they were gone now, lost in the deep shadows of the forest.

Cheering drew his attention back to the moment at hand. Jacob Ryan sulked while the others cheered. Zoe's face wore an expression of both pride and awe. She'd never seen someone so young handle walkers so efficiently and with no fear whatever. That ceased to matter, however, when Carl ran to Adam's side and their cheers quickly subsided.

Adam was white as cotton. He'd bled out and now stared with dead eyes at the pond in front of him. He was going to turn if Carl didn't do something.

"I'm sorry, Adam," Carl said, before bringing his knife down to guarantee his friend didn't return.

"Son!"

Carl was almost overwhelmed with relief to see his father running toward him. He fell to his knees beside Adam and called for backup if any was available. Rick ordered the kids to stay put. He didn't want them walking home, defenseless, and possibly encounter more walkers on the way. He'd have a wagon brought up and drive them all home, and he'd have a doctor come to collect Adam Martin's body.

"You okay, Carl?"

Carl nodded. "I saw somebody, in the trees. Dad...it kinda looked like Christine Todd."

"Are you sure?" Rick said, looking to the trees where Carl pointed. There was no one there.

"Not exactly. That's just the first impression I got. I can't say it was her for sure. Are you gonna arrest her?"

"I can't unless you can positively identify her. Can you, son?"

Carl thought about it for a moment but decided he couldn't rightly name Christine Todd with only a glimpse that lasted half a second. In the end he had to shake his head no, though he hated to do it.

"I just have a gut instinct that it was her."

"If only that would hold up in court," said Rick, looking toward the perimeter. He wished, in that moment, that he had Daryl Dixon there to track down whoever Carl may have thought he'd seen. Daryl wasn't there, however, and he would have to do his own investigating.

He was going to start with Christine Todd as his prime suspect.

---

It was eleven at night and Carl was still up since all the hoopla had gotten them home late. Michonne cleared the dinner dishes away before offering him a glass of sweetened iced tea.

"Are you okay, Carl?" Michonne said.

"Yeah."

"It's okay if you're not. Adam was your friend. You had to put him down."

"I put down my mother. Anything after that is kinda easy in comparison," he said. "Still, it sucks. He was only fourteen."

"I know. I'm sorry," she said, and kissed him tenderly on the forehead. She held his hand for a moment before seeing the headlights of Rick's cart shine through the kitchen windows.

"Wanna say hi to your Dad before you turn in?"

Carl shook his head. "I spoke to him earlier. I'm just really tired."

"Okay. Go on to bed. You can sleep in tomorrow."

Rick came in looking as exhausted as she'd ever seen him.

"How did it go?" she asked.

"The south wall is going well. The damage has been repaired. Now it's a matter of just finishing the planned reinforcements. We found the breaches by Fisherman's Pond and the one near town."

"There were two breaches? I thought there was only one."

Rick nodded. "The breach in the wall in town, where you and Maggie dealt with the walkers, was fairly small and easy to patch up. So was the one by the pond where Carl was."

Michonne set a plate of veggie casserole in front of Rick and he practically inhaled it. He refused seconds, though. He just wanted a cool shower and to lie down.

By the time he came to bed he moved stiffly. Michonne sat down behind him and began to knead the muscles of his shoulders, working out the kinks. He sighed at how good it felt to feel her untangling the knots.

"Something is bothering you," she said knowingly. "Want to tell me what it is?"

"The breaches in town and by the pond…they feel deliberate," Rick explained. "The more I think about it the more I'm convinced someone let those walkers in."

"Who would do such a thing?"

"Christine," said Rick.

"She's a deputy. She's sworn to uphold the law and protect the people. She wouldn't deliberately breach security, would she?"

"There's something I need to tell you," said Rick. He explained his conversation with Christine that morning.

Michonne was shaking her head. She didn't look as angry as Rick had been when listening to Christine's vile hate speech.

"Doesn't that piss you off?"

"Not really. I pity her more than I dislike her," said Michonne. "She's not the only one who can't let go of old ideas about humanity and people's place in the world. Humans need to stick together and fight the real foe: the walkers. We shouldn't still be dealing with racism, not now, not when humanity as a whole is struggling just to make it out of this. She sounds really unstable."

Rick shook his head. "You're a lot nicer than I am, Michonne, I'll give you that. I wanted to knock her head off and I never let myself think that way about women. She actually thinks she's a better woman for me just because she's white. Christ. Carl said he saw someone in the woods that had short brown hair. His first impression was that it was Christine in the trees but he couldn't say for sure. I didn't want him to lie just to tell me what I want to hear. That's not the kind of man I want him to be."

"Me either. You did right, Rick. His first impression is probably the right one, though," Michonne concluded. "What are you going to do?"

"Investigate. I don't have proof yet but I'll try to build a case. I wish I could arrest her and hold her while I work on the case."

"You can't do that. You have to have some kind of hard evidence before you can take her freedom."

"Meanwhile she's 'free' to run around doing god knows what and endangering the lives of our people. A fourteen-year-old boy died today, Michonne."

"I know, Baby. I know. I'm sorry," she said, and kissed him on the neck. She could hear the pain so heavy in his voice. "Why do you think she did it? Just to get back at you?"

Rick shrugged. "I took her badge. Maybe she thinks if she stirs up enough shit I'll need her and she can prove to be useful. I'm going to question her tomorrow. I may be able to get her to run her mouth and trip her up in a lie."

Michonne finished the massage and moved to sit down beside him but Rick pulled her onto his lap. He tried to change the subject to something a little more lighthearted.

"You decided on beef or pork for the wedding dinner?"

"Both. Let's talk wedding plans tomorrow," Michonne said, with a mischievous smile. She reached down to stroke Rick under his robe. He hardened against her palm at once and the feel of him moistened her. He lifted her up and she guided him to her entrance before sliding down on him with a low moan.

"You feel so good," she whispered.

"We're perfect together," he said on a sigh, and felt her begin to move against him. All thoughts of a deranged stalker fled Rick's mind in that moment, as the woman he loved brought him peace.

---

He's probably fucking her right now…

Christine tried not to think about it while she examined her reflection in the bathroom mirror. The naked bulb was harsh and made her look older than her thirty-four years.

It's not right. I'm the one he should share his bed with.

She regretted cutting her hair down. She should have kept it long and then she could have had it braided since Rick liked braids. She wondered, though, if that would make her look too niggerish. The last thing she wanted to do was look like one of the lesser races, especially the blacks, but Rick seemed drawn to dark skin.

I'll just have to get a good tan. I wish I could buy a wig and braid it. Then I'd look more like her.

Wigs, however, weren't something one could find in any of the sanctuaries. It was just luck that she had brown eyes. Hers weren't nearly black, like Michonne's. They were more of a warm cinnamon color, but it would have to do. Colored contacts weren't in supply since they weren't a necessity.

Fortunately she'd lucked up on a couple of boxes of hair dye in one of their warehouses. She could have black hair for a while, until the supply ran out. Perhaps she could go on another run and find more.

Once the dying process was finished Christine pulled on a headband like the one Michonne liked to wear when she wasn't in court. Black hair and a headband was the best she could do to look more like Michonne under the circumstances. She thought she looked rather fetching, considering what she was imitating. When Michonne was dead Rick would find it easier to accept her if she reminded him of Michonne. Gradually she could go back to her old look as he adjusted to not having Michonne in his life.

Christine took a bottle of beer up to the roof of her building where she'd set up a blanket. She would strip off all of her clothes and lay out in the sun tomorrow, thirty minutes each side, until she was tanned and as dark as she could stand it. She'd burn, of course, and peel, but there were ways to deal with that. In just a few weeks she would be about as dark as it was possible for her to be. Maybe then Rick would find her more attractive.

Her first attempt to get rid of Michonne hadn't gone as well as she'd hoped. The woman had taken a butcher knife and, along with Maggie Rhee, they'd cut down the walkers she'd let into town. She'd not been there to witness it but had, instead, heard it over her radio. Michonne and Maggie cutting through the walkers like butter. She snorted in disgust with Hank. He'd obviously been impressed. Most people were impressed with that bitch, unfortunately.

When it came to walkers, Rick, and the people who'd been in his group, were deadly assassins who never even, it seemed, came close to losing a battle with them. She remembered the way Carl had handled the walkers at the pond. It was as though they were nothing to him. It was as though he'd enjoyed it. He'd even put one of his little friends down without hesitation, which had put Christine on edge. There was darkness in the boy. She could see it.

Instead of being in town to see Michonne fight the walkers, she'd been up at Fisherman's Pond, where Carl Grimes had gone swimming, to let walkers in up there. It was a shame about the boy but he had to die. Christine realized that even though he pursued a white girl, as was proper, he'd undoubtedly been sullied by his father's way of thinking and would probably follow in his father's footsteps and date beneath him someday. Maybe he would even dirty the pristine white blood of his family line by breeding with one of the lesser races.

Carl's death would serve a duel function, though. Not only would it stop him from breeding and dirtying up good white blood, it would break his father. Losing Michonne wouldn't be enough. Rick needed to lose it all. Judith was young enough to be taught the right way but she would also have to die. She would only remind Rick of the life he'd had before Christine. She couldn't have that.

No, when she and Rick finally came together she wanted him all to herself without any reminders of what had been of his old life. They would have their own children. They would be white, and they would be pure, and they would be taught that it was white first, other races second, and then the walkers last.

Christine lay down on the blanket. It had warmed in the summer sun and wasn't unpleasant now. She imagined watching Rick grieve beside the graves of his son, daughter, and Michonne and it excited her. She dipped a hand into her shorts and rubbed her moistened clit as she saw herself take Rick into her arms and comfort him.

'You were right, Christine,' fantasy Rick wept. 'I should have chosen you to begin with. I should have seen how much you love me. I should have appreciated you. Forgive me.'

"Of course I forgive you. I love you, Baby," Christine whispered, stroking herself faster as she felt her climax begin to build. Rick slid into her while he sat atop Michonne's grave. She rocked against him, in this fantasy, and climaxed. Her juices gushed over her hand while she imagined it was Rick's cock she climaxed on. They would create new life, right there on Michonne's grave. It would be a glorious moment.

She came down from her orgasm and took another drink of her beer as she stared up at the starry night sky. It was time to send Rick a message with little Judith. She wasn't heartless. She would give him one more chance before she spilled the little girl's blood.

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