DAMNATION.

chapter fourteen, rock in the road.
[ season seven, episode nine ]

"FOR ANYONE OUT THERE, who loved the obese bastard as much as I did, I just wanna say a few words. Fat Joey was not the most badass son of a bitch, but he was loyal. He had a great sense of humor. In fact, we were just joking about oral sex with Lucille the other day. Things will not be the same now that he's dead. Without Fat Joey, Skinny Joey is just Joey. So it's a goddamn tragedy. So, let's have a moment of silence."

Negan's voice comes to a stop over the radio Jesus stole off of Fat Joseph's dead body. Everyone has piled into one car now, leaving the other for Daryl and Odessa at the Kingdom.

The car comes to a stop. In front of them are dozens of cars blocking them from the rest of the road. Jesus and Rick look out their windows. "Someone's trying to block the way. Gotta be the Saviors," Jesus says.

"Look," Carl pipes. "Gotta be their base over there." Every head in the vehicle turns in the directions he's looking. Miles away stands a dull looking factory.

"Yeah, that's it. Must be trying to make it hard to get to 'em." Jesus states. They look back at the cars.

"We gotta keep going. We'll move 'em and then we'll move 'em back. They don't need to know we were here." Rick says and with that everyone is moving to get to work.

It doesn't take long to move the car to form a path for them. They stop when Michonne calls to Rick. He moves to her and takes the binoculars from her hands and looks where she had been. He pulls them away from his face with two words, "ah, shit."

They all walk to the area in the road. Rick gets on his hands and kneels and levels himself with the red trigger.

In front of them is a line of explosives. They're tied to a metal cable. Michonne looks at the explosives in confusion, "what's all this for?"

"Wait," Carl speaks up, "when I was hiding in the back of the truck I heard a couple of of them talking about this. This is for a herd."

"That's why it's a steel cable. It's not just for one walker. It's for a lot." Rosita tells them.

"We need these explosives." Sasha says.

"Yeah," Rick agrees. "We need to figure out how to disarm it first."

Rosita finds where the explosives connect to the big boss. She kneels and takes the grate cover off of the grass. As she begins to disarm the explosives, they hear Negan's voice over the radio again.

"We got ourselves a red situation! I need a search party. See if Daryl and Odessa ran home like the dumb animals they are." The man exclaims. "Also if you happen to find Odessa, cut her right arm off! That little serial killin' bitch is the one that killed Fat Joey. She wants her revenge for her friends, so we take ours for our friend."

"On it. Be there in time for lunch." Simon responds.

"Bring me back her arm still twitchin'! Turn that sleepy little burg upside down!"

"We gotta go. We gotta get there before them, but we need these," Theo turns to Rick.

All it takes is word from Rosita for everyone to get to work. They all carefully cut the explosives loose. They take the dynamite, the RPGS that had been stolen from them.

Cole holds a bundle of dynamite up to his face. Rosita looks at and he looks at her. "Yeah, the shit doesn't look right."

She moves towards him and takes it from his hands. She runs and places it down gently far away from her people.

"Dad," Carl says suddenly. "Look."

Everyone looks to where the teen does. Coming around the bend far down the highway, the first of the herd appears. "Okay. There they are. But they're far. We still have time."

"You sure?" Sasha asks him.

"We need these." Rick says. "And we need to get the cars back in front of the on-ramp."

"They'll know we took their explosives. Does it matter?" Cori asks him.

"We want that herd to stay on the highway." Rick tells her. When the girls asks why, he says, "we may need it."

"Okay. Tara, Carl, Cole, Theo, come on!" Rosita exclaims. They load explosives into the car and all get in. The speed to the other side of the highway where they all rush to get the cars back in line.

"Uh," Cori speaks up as she looks at the walkers that grow in number by the second. "Rick, that's a lot of walkers."

"Can y'all get back to the Hilltop on foot?" Rick asks Sasha, Jesus and Cori. Sasha nods. "Tell Maggie we're not givin' up, go!"

The walkers are close now. Cole looks at them. "Hey, guys, we gotta go!" They all rush back to the car without Rick and Michonne.

"Damnit!" Carl exclaims angrily.

"We'll figure it out!" Rosita tells him.

It's only a matter of forty five seconds until Rick and Michonne push their way to the car. Walkers surround them despite Rick and Michonne killing dozens with the wire tired between two cars. As soon as the door shuts behind Rick, Tara steps on the gas.

As they drive away from the dead, the ground shakes and a boom sounds. Cole whirls around to look as fire rises in the air.

"Yeah," Rosita speaks up, "that shit didn't look right at all."

When the return to Alexandria, it's only seconds before the Saviors arrive. Theo looks on angrily as they drive right through the gates and park down the street.

He rolls his neck. They all turn on their heel and walk toward the group of Saviors. Simon is here, Kathleen isn't. "Rick. Hello!" Simon holds his arms out wide in greeting. "And... hello again."

"We thought it'd be longer," Rick tells him.

"Do you think we're here for a tribute? Do you?" Simon asks the leader as more Alexandria gather around.

"Is there another reason?" Rick plays dumb.

"There is. We're here for Daryl and Odessa." Simon says. Rick's eyes barely narrow. Feigned confusion crosses his face.

"Negan took them." He replies.

"Oh, but... then your son showed up, Daryl and your daughter went missing... might those two things be connected?"

"They're not. We didn't know they were gone till right now." Rick says. "And to be fair, I'm glad my daughter escaped."

Simon clicks his tongue. "So this should be easy. Now, everyone find a buddy. Gonna have to follow us around. If they're here, really gonna need you to see Daryl die and Odessa lose her arm. Because your murdering kid killed Fat Joey!" Simon cackles. "Fuckin' serial killer, your daughter."

Simon approaches Carl and flicks his hat. Carl's eye follows him angrily. They follow the Saviors around as the completely and utterly trash every building in Alexandria.

They shatter vases, overturn tables, smash plates on the kitchen floors. They rips books apart. They knock holes in the walls. All of this holds no purpose to finding Daryl and Odessa. This is pure pettiness.

After this, they all gather up again. They follow Simon to the pantry. Theo's eyes widen at the emptiness of the garage. What the hell happened?

"Wow," Simon whistles when they walk into the pantry. The extremely empty pantry. "These are some bare shelvin' units. You guys have a barbecue or something and not invite us? Seriously, this is sad. Hope you're not tryin' to hide stuff from us, cause that generally doesn't go over very well."

"We have a lot of people," Aaron speaks up. Simon steps up to Aaron. Theo's eyes narrow, he slowly places his hand on the hilt of his knife. "It's.. getting harder to find stuff and our focus lately has been on finding things Neagn might wants. We're still getting used to the new system."

"We were gonna scavenge more today. If you just wait, we'll... bring somethin' back. We'll find more." Rick says.

"Aww," Simon pops his hip before leaning on the shelf. "Relax. I'm not here for a pick-up. Good thing. But that day is comin', so you best do what you need to. Dig deep. Go the extra mile. Take some risks!"

"We will," Michonne says.

"Well, we will appreciate that." Simon says.

The Saviors leave after making several threats towards Odessa and Daryl. As soon as the the gates shut, Rick turns to Aaron. "What happened to the party?"

"We don't know. And we need to talk about Gabriel," Aaron says to Rick.

Cole's brows furrow. "Where is he?" Rick asks.

"He was on watch the night you all went to scavenge. I was supposed to take over for him in the morning. He wasn't at his post." Tobin approaches from where he shut the gate.

"Pantry was cleared out and a car was gone," Aaron explains.

"No one's seen him since." Eric speaks up.

"That son of a bitch!" Rosita angrily exclaims. She says what everyone else is thinking. "He stole our shit and ran."

"That's... what it looks like." Tobin says sadly.

"Well, I don't wanna believe it," Theo says. He's grown fond of Gabriel in the time after the herd got inside Alexandria's walls.

"I don't believe it. That's not Gabriel. He wouldn't do that to us." Rick says.

"I thought he changed, too, but it can't be anything else." Rosita tells Rick. Everyone can feel the anger radiating off of the woman.

"Yes, it can." Rick says and walks away from them.

Gabriel wrote one word in a notebook in the armory. BOAT. He didn't hightail it out of the line of fire. He was taken.

So a group sets out to look for Gabriel. It consists of Rick, Michonne, Rosita, Cole, Tara, and Aaron. They go to the boat where Rick and Aaron found supplies.

As they search for Gabriel, they hear a sudden thud. Cole turns his gun in the direction. He sees a man standing with a gun pointed at them. Not far are two others with weapons pointed at them.

Then these oddly dressed people come out of every shadowed corner. Dozens upon dozens of them. They back Rick's people into a circle.

Cole's eyes are. "What the shit?" He whispers to himself. They have odd weapons too.

And instead of fighting, Rick Grimes smiles.

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word count: 1,756

cole >>>. i've said this in every single cole chapter but i love him so fucking much. he's possibly my favorite male oc i've ever created.

this is basically a cole/theo chapter. i hated this chapter though. i just seems choppy and ugh. id hate when i write choppy chapters.

also, negan is soooo adamant to hurt odessa. he's already done so much to hurt and the fact he wants to chop off her arm infuriates me. like fuck off you weird bitch, you'd probably fuck your bat if you could. weird ass. negan sucks ass.

also the scavengers are officially in the wastelands series!! they seem insignificant right now but... we all know why jadis is so important.

odessa in the kingdom is coming up and i hope y'all are excited for the relationship she forms with benjamin.

anyyyyyyyyway, i have the rest of season seven planned. y'all are not prepared at all for what's coming. the duffler brothers may be scared to kill their main characters, but i'm not 😏. so take that as you will.