The group who went to check out the cars came back with what Abraham described as an ass-load of canned food. It was about five times as much as Rick, Daryl, and Rosie brought back from her house. There were lots of spaghettios and even two liters of soda. Rosie hadn't seen soda since that gas station, before they even got to the prison!
"This, this is ours now," Rick said to Aaron, who was still stuck leaning up against one of the posts in the barn.
Aaron nodded, but he looked tired and defeated. "There's more than enough," he said. Rosie didn't like the idea of going to this man's community at first, but now that she knew it had spaghettios and soda, she was starting to change her mind. Sure, he still could've been lying and trying to trick them, but if he was, Rick would just kill him.
"It's ours whether or not we go to your camp," Rick said, his voice tense and low, like it was a threat. It's ours, and if you try to take it, we'll kill you.
"What do you mean? Why wouldn't we go?" Carl asked his father, sounding annoyed. He was a lot more convinced than Rosie was, and Rosie was already pretty convinced. He didn't want to pass up a chance to be able to live safely.
"If he were lying or if he wanted to hurt us... but he isn't and he doesn't. We need this," Michonne said. Her face was tense and her voice was stern and gruff. She meant was she was saying. They needed this. They couldn't live on the road like they were anymore. They just couldn't. They were tired. "So we're going. All of us," Michonne said, looking around at the group. Rosie looked up at Daryl's face, trying to figure out if he agreed- because she wasn't going anywhere he wasn't going- but she couldn't tell what he was thinking. "Somebody say something if they feel differently," Michonne said.
"I don't know, man," Daryl said. Rosie sighed a little, thinking he didn't want to go. "This barn smells like horse shit," he finished. Oh?
"Does that mean ya wanna go?" Rosie asked.
"Yeah," Rick said, answering instead of Daryl. He gave a firm nod. "We're going." Rosie's stomach knotted up, but she wasn't sure if it was nerves or excitement. This place had soda, but that didn't mean it was good. What would it be like there? How different would everything really be? Rick turned to Aaron again. "So where are we going? Where's your camp?" he asked.
"Well, every time I've done this, I've been behind the wheel driving recruits back. I believe you're good people. I've bet my life on it. I'm just not ready to bet my friends' lives just yet," Aaron replied, stuttering like a mess. Rosie rolled her eyes, even though she knew Daryl didn't like it when she did that. He wasn't paying attention to her right now, anyway. She just didn't understand why the Aaron guy would spend so much time trying to convince them to go there, but then say he didn't trust them.
"You're not driving," Michonne told him with an authoritative tone to her voice. She stood tall and intimidating in front of Aaron. "So if you wanna get home, you'll have to tell us how."
Rick crouched down a few feet away with a map and a pen in his hands, and Aaron sighed. "Go north on Route 16," he said. Rosie watched as Rick traced a line on the map. She didn't understand maps very well. They were hard to read.
"And then?"
"I'll tell you when we get there," Aaron said.
Oh, you gotta be kiddin' me, Rosie wanted to say, but didn't.
"We'll take 23 north. You'll give us directions from there," Rick said.
Aaron let out a nervous laugh. "That's- I don't know how else to say it- that's a bad idea," he said. The more he talked, the more he made it so they didn't want to trust him. If his job was convincing them, he was doing only a mediocre job at it. "We've cleared 16. It'll be faster."
We don't care about gettin' there fast, we care about not getting locked up in a train car to get cut up and eaten.
"We'll take 23," Rick said, sticking to his decision. Aaron was pale, as white as a ghost. His nerves reminded Rosie of how Gabriel was when they first met him. "We leave at sundown."
"We're doing this at night?" Sasha asked, her face scrunched up a little to show that she didn't like that idea. Rosie didn't like that idea either. Doing things at night made everything more difficult. It was dark, making it harder to see and easier to lose each other.
"Look, I know it's dangerous. But it's better than riding up to the gates during the day," Rick told them all. Why? Rosie almost asked, but Rick answered her question before she could even ask it. "If it isn't safe, we need to get gone before they know we're there."
"No one is going to hurt you," Aaron insisted, growing a little bit irritated. He was tired of this. "You're trying to protect your group, but you're putting them in danger."
Rick turned to look at Aaron again, his face tense and his movement quick. Rosie thought he was going to punch him again, but he didn't. "Tell me where the camp is, we'll leave right now," Rick bargained. They all looked at Aaron, waiting for a response, but he just shook his head. Rick sighed and stood up all the way again. "It's gonna be a long night. Eat. Get some rest if you can."
Rosie sighed, dropping her head back dramatically as Rick got up to go check on the cars. She didn't want to wait in that barn anymore. She'd been waiting all night for everyone else to wake up, and it was boring. Now she was gonna have to wait all over again. She wished that she had some crayons or chalk or paint or anything she could draw with or on, but she only had a stick and the dirt, so she drew in the dirt with her stick. It wasn't very fun compared to crayons and paper, but it was better than nothing. It was better than just sitting around and thinking.
•
"Do you think this place is gonna be for real?" Ian asked, leaning his head in his arms as he sat across from Rosie at the table in the RV Aaron had brought. Rosie was sitting across from him, shuffling a deck of cards she found in one of the cabinets. She didn't know how to play any games with the cards, but she did know how to shuffle, so that's what she did.
"They have soda," Rosie replied, shrugging her shoulders a little bit.
"That doesn't make it safe," Carl said, letting out a laugh that sounded a bit more like a scoff.
"It could," Ian said, raising his eyebrows. Rosie had grown to like him more over the past three weeks, but he still annoyed her at times. Sometimes she'd catch him staring at her and she'd give him a glare and sometimes he'd start asking too many questions again and she'd have to pretend he wasn't there. But overall, he'd gotten slightly less annoying than he was at the prison.
"Mother dick," Abraham muttered out, and the RV came to an abrupt stop. Rosie liked when he said things like mother dick and what the bitch because it was very funny. But this time, it wasn't so funny, because the cards went flying all over the place when he slammed on the breaks.
"Hell's goin' on?" Daryl asked, annoyed as he stood up front his seat and paced to the front of the RV. Rosie kneeled on her seat, looking out through the windshield. There was a huge herd of walkers and the other car's tail lights were flying through it. What the hell were they doing?
"Can't go through that," Ian spoke.
"No shit," Rosie replied as she began picking up all the cards again. Seeing that a few had fallen on the ground, she slid down off of her seat and crawled beneath the table, gathering the cards in her hand.
"What the hell was that?" she heard Carl ask.
"What the hell was what?" Rosie asked, trying to climb back out from beneath the table. Daryl was standing right in the way. She pushed his legs away, earning a glare, but she didn't care because she wanted to see. "'Scuse me," she said, finally squeezing herself out from beneath the table. When she stood up, she looked out the window and saw a bright light in the sky. It was the flare.
"Do you think that's them?" Maggie asked, her eyebrows pinched together.
"Probably," Carl said as the flare faded out.
"Yeah, but what if it isn't?" Rosita pointed out, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Then they'll probably go to it anyway," Carl answered, shrugging a little with Judith in his lap. And so off the group went, in the direction of where they saw the flare.
•
The door swung open and Maggie was out first, followed by Carl, then everyone else. Maggie ran to Glenn and Carl to Rick, while Rosie stayed out of the way. She didn't have any doubt that they were ok. Glenn, Rick, and Michonne were strong, and Rick wouldn't let anybody die. Of course they were ok.
It hadn't been them who shot the flare. It was some man with a broken ankle named Eric. Rosie opted out of talking to him, unlike everyone else, and stuck close to the door, waiting until the others got there. But now that they finally were there, they could get going. Maybe she'd be able to have some soda when they got to Aaron's camp.
"Eric? Eric?" Aaron kept saying.
Rosie pointed to the door. "He's in there," she said, and Aaron hurried in Eric's direction. She jumped when she felt someone put their hands on her shoulders, but she looked up and saw that it was Rick, standing behind her, but looking off towards where Aaron ran.
"You ok?" he asked.
"Yeah," Rosie said, nodding a little. Rick mumbled out a good before following Aaron inside. Everyone gathered in a big room with lots of boxes. Rosie busied herself by looking through the boxes, but there was nothing important. Just a lot of paperclips and sticky notes and other random office supplies.
"Excuse me. Everyone," Aaron said, grabbing everyone's attention. He pressed his lips together, his eyes full of emotion. "Thank you. You saved Eric. I owe you. All of you. And I will make sure that debt us paid in full when we get to our community. When we get to Alexandria. Now, I'm not sure about you, but I'd rather not do any more driving tonight. Maybe we can hit the road tomorrow morning."
"That sounds fine," Rick said, leaning against the doorway.
Rosie let out a dramatic sigh, earning a pointed look from Daryl. She could read his eyes' words sometimes, and this time, his eyes were saying quit complainin'. Rosie wanted to complain, anyway, because she was so tired of waiting around. First they had to wait for night to fall, and now they had to wait for the sun to rise. She just wanted to get there. What she wanted didn't matter, though, and she knew that, so she kept her mouth shut.
"But if we're staying her for the night, you're sleeping over there," Rick said, pointing over to the opposite side of the room- the farthest place from where Eric was.
"You really think we gotta do that?" Maggie asked. Aaron and Eric had seemed to earn their trust, but Rosie still wasn't sure. She didn't think they were going to kill them, but she still didn't know if she could trust them. Either way, she didn't see any harm in letting the two of them be near each other.
"It's the safe play. We don't know you," Rick reasoned.
"The only way you're gonna stop me from being with him right now is by shooting me," Aaron said, his voice more stern and serious than Rosie had heard it all day. No one said anything for a moment and Rosie looked between Rick's and Aaron's faces. The silence was intense. Aaron stepped forward to pass Rick, but before they could start fighting, Glenn stopped them. He started whispering something to Rick, but Rosie couldn't hear what he was saying because she wasn't close enough. After a moment, Rick backed away. He gave in.
Everyone spread around the room and Aaron went to be with Eric. Rosie had no plans of trying to go to sleep. It would just be useless. She'd get so close to falling asleep, and maybe even she'd actually fall asleep for a few minutes, but then she'd be back there. Either back with her dad, or back with the Governor, or back with Claimers, or back at Terminus. Her body only let her rest when she really needed it, and she had just slept the other day. She didn't feel very tired so there wasn't much use in trying to sleep.
Instead of sleeping, Rosie let her eyes wander around the room again. She laid eyes on another box that she hadn't looked through yet. Maybe it would have crayons or markers or something, and she could use them to draw on the sticky notes she'd found. The problem was that the box was up high and she couldn't reach it. However, Rosie was not going to let that stop her. She marched right up to that shelf and started her climb to the top. But as soon as she placed her foot on the third shelf, someone wrapped their arm around her and pulled her off.
"Hell ya think you're doin'?" Daryl scolded her, placing her back on the ground.
Rosie furrowed her eyebrows, fighting with herself to not roll her eyes. She pointed up to the top shelf. "Gettin' that box," she said, as if it were obvious.
"You know what happens when you go climbin' on a shelf?" Daryl asked her, his eyebrows raised. Rosie thought about it for a moment, but then shook her head. "It falls on top of ya," Daryl told her.
"Oh," Rosie said, looking back up at the shelf. She thought that maybe Daryl would reach up and get the box for her, but he didn't, so she turned back to him again. "Can you get it?" she asked.
"No," Daryl said. Rosie huffed, and this time, she did roll her eyes at him. "Don't roll yer eyes at me," he immediately scolded.
"Yeah, they'll get stuck that way," Ian suddenly budded in, a small, joking smile on his face. Rosie glared at him and raised her middle finger, only for Daryl to lightly hit her hand away. Now she glared at Daryl instead.
"Go to sleep," Daryl said.
"Can't," Rosie replied, shrugging.
"Won't know that 'til you try," Daryl said. He sat himself down near the corner of the room, leaning his back up against the wall. Although reluctantly, Rosie sat down next to him, crossing her arms. She wasn't going to sleep, even if she could, she wasn't going to- just to spite him.
•
The RV squealed to a stop, and Abraham shut off the engine. After a few bumps in the road along the way, the group had finally rolled up to the gates of the community: Alexandria. If Rosie was quiet enough, she could hear laughing- the same kinds of laughing she would hear at the playground at school. She looked over at Rick. He was holding Judith, and his face was softer than it used to seem.
The gates started to slide open, and Aaron helped Eric walk on through. Rosie stayed between Noah and Daryl, looking through the open gate. There were houses. Good, huge houses. It looked like a normal neighborhood- a normal neighborhood from before.
A trash can tipped over and the grass moved to everyone's left, and each and every one of them turned, aiming their weapons in unison. Not a walker, a possum. Daryl pulled the trigger on his crossbow and a bolt went into the possum's side. Rosie picked the thing up by the tail, handing it over to Daryl with her face all scrunched up. It smelled bad.
"We brought dinner," Daryl said, holding the possum by his side.
The man at the gate glared at them all, a look of uneasiness on his face. Rosie couldn't blame him. They didn't look very friendly, especially if you're used to living inside walls- like everything was normal. "It's ok," Aaron said, to the man at the gate. "Come on in, guys."
Hesitantly, Rosie followed Daryl and Glenn through the gates, everyone else following after them. The gates squeaked shut behind them, and they all stood on the other side, unsure of what to do. Rosie felt nervous. She wanted soda, but this was still nerve-wracking.
"Before we take this any further, I need you all to turn over your weapons," the man said, looking over the group. Rosie looked at Rick to see if he was going to. He didn't, so Rosie kept her gun her hands, too. "You stay, you hand them over," the man said.
"We don't know if we want to stay," Rick told him, stepping to the front of the group. "If we were gonna use them, we would have started already."
"Let them talk to Deanna first, Nicholas" Aaron said to the man- apparently Nicholas.
"Who's Deanna?" Abraham asked.
"She knows everything you'd want to know about this place. Rick, why don't you start?" Aaron suggested. Rosie didn't like this. She liked soda, but she didn't like this. She was so excited and impatient, but now the anxiety was starting to bubble up in her stomach. What was it going to be like here? Was she gonna be allowed to leave when she wanted? Were there lots of other kids? Were they going to pull her hair? If there were houses, were they going to be all split up into different houses?
A walker snarled from behind them, and everyone turned. "Sasha," Rick said. Sasha lifted her gun and shot the walker right in the head, making it drop down to the ground. The man named Nicholas stared at her, then at the rest of the group, too. "It's a good thing we're here," Rick said before following Aaron.
Rosie stuck as close to Daryl's side as she could without bumping into him. She didn't trust these people. Not one bit. They weren't gonna take her weapon, that was for sure. It was hers. It was to keep her safe. They couldn't just take it. Not having weapons was stupid, and stupid gets you killed. Rosie wasn't going to get herself killed.
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