by the fans for the fans

The Walkers of Alexandria (A Journal by Gabriella Walker)
Part One
About six months after everything went south, my parents admitted we had to leave. It was hard for them to do that. I mean, we were living off the grid. We still had electric and running water. But that brought people. Most of them were nice and took what we would give them. One bunch hit my brother with the car while they were stealing it. He wasn't hurt bad, but after that Dad started greeting them with his shotgun.
But the family was all okay. And we're a big family. Mom and Dad didn't believe in birth control. So far, they had seven of us. The babies weren't quite a year old.
I know it was about six months because of our periods. Without school and work, it wasn't so important to know if it was Wednesday or Tuesday, but the months we could track. Pete said we could do the same with the phases of the moon. Whatever.
That morning, Dad and Pete went out to the stables. Stacie watched the babies and Freddy in the living room while Alex and I emptied the pantry into boxes. Mom was doing the same with the freezer and a big cooler. And a small cooler. She even had our insulated lunchboxes.
We had to go because of the (as Stacie called them) Ex-People. One by one, the sheer weight of them was taking down our fences. We'd reinforced as well as we could the ones closest to house and barn, but they were starting to wobble, and the decision was made. "We'll head for the coast. If the government hasn't turned DC into a safe zone, we'll be better off on an island. I don't think those things can swim."
We were taking a break to feed the babies - Mom had one at the breast and Alex was using a bottle - when we heard the camper coming. Our camper was probably older than Dad and didn't look pretty, but it was like a tank.
Pete came in but didn't even talk to us. He just started carrying the boxes and coolers out and I ran to help him. Stacie was standing lookout from the roof of the camper. The horse trailer was hitched to the rear with Argus in it. He'd been cooped up in the barn since the pasture fence went down, and he looked happy to be out.
It was a hell of a thing. Pete should have been gearing up for Senior Prom. Me and Alex should have been worrying about crushes and make up. Stacie wouldn't go to fourth grade and Freddy to kindergarten. And the babies (who were actually named Luke and Leia) never even got to go to preschool.
And we were the lucky ones.



Fortunately for me, we headed east and town was west of us. I was afraid I'd see my best friend Taylor eating Alex's best friend Charmaine or something equally horrible. Max kept barking at things out the windows and there were a couple times Dad nearly lost the trailer because Argus was freaking out. Alex was keeping Freddy and Stacie from looking. Pete, Mom, and Dad took turns driving.
"We'll stop there." Dad nodded at one of those blue Rest Area signs and when we got there, he pulled right up the sidewalk and parked in the open space between the tourist information room and the restrooms. "No one leaves the vehicle until Mom and I scope the place out. No one." That last sentence was for Pete.
"Why don't we just toot the horn and they will come out if they're hiding?" Stacie actually reached for the steering wheel before Alex grabbed her arm and called her an idiot. Which was harsh. She wasn't even nine.
"We don't want to attract more from outside." I wasn't worried, though. Max and Argus were both quiet. Ex-People would have them riled up. "Dad and Mom can handle it."
After what felt like a year, they were back. "Didn't even need the weapons. There's a wall around three sides of the rest area. As long as we keep quiet, they won't even know we're here."
"We'll sleep in the atrium. All of us. Pete, lead Argus. Big twins, get the little twins. Stacie and Freddy, stay with Mom." You could tell Dad was a veteran. Even standing there in sweaty civvies and holding a lap dog, he looked like a general. Once we were safe inside the atrium, the parents and Pete carried in supplies.
Mom used the camp stove to cook some of the meat. We had that, canned veggies, and a loaf of bread for supper. Pete took us kids across to the restrooms after we ate - we all used the men's because it was closer - and then we crawled into sleeping bags.
Argus munched on an armful of the decorative grass that someone brought in for him and Max had some kibble. We were all so tired, we didn't even complain about the smell when Argus pooped.
Dad and Pete were looking at the map on the wall, figuring out the best route east, while we ate leftovers for breakfast. The highways were jammed with abandoned cars. Dad did have the good idea of mounting our snow plow on the camper, but none of us wanted to continue to push our way through. The noise brought Ex-People and gave us all headaches.
The back roads were better. Fewer cars and fewer Ex-People wandering around. In one little town, we decided to camp at the County Fairgrounds - only to find what was left of a FEMA camp and a lot of Ex-People. Dad didn't even take the time to turn around. He just plowed right through them and the chain link fence on the far side. By this time, Argus had figured out that he was safe inside the trailer and kept calm. Or at least calmer.
We drove through the night most of the time. Alex and I knew how to drive, but we only took the wheel if our parents or Pete were too tired. Neither of us was confident enough to travel at any speed. Alex was driving and I was in the navigator position, which meant I had the map, when she gasped. "Is it starting to snow? Gabby, I can't drive in the snow."
"Look, there's a Wal-Mart. Park there, as close to the building as you can. Dad and Pete were talking about getting more supplies anyway."
When we woke the next morning (still in our seats, since there was nowhere else to sleep), we found the camper bumper-deep in snow drifts. Pete was leading Argus and Max into the fenced-in garden center. Freddy was up on the kitchenette counter, watching our older brother.
"Hey, kiddo, where is everybody?"
"Mommy and Daddy go shopping wif Stacie. Little twins sleeping." Freddy pointed at the car seats, as if we couldn't see the babies. "You pwotect us."
"I guess there were none inside the store?" Alex managed to sound both surprised and relieved. "What are the odds of that?"
"Somebody else came along before us and -" Pete, coming back from the garden center, remembered Freddy was listening. "-and cleared them out. Left us slim pickings, too, but at least they did us that favor."
"Argus munching the flowers." Freddy giggled at the idea of our horse inside Wal-Mart. "Max gets to run and play in the safe fence."
"That was a good idea." The dog had been driving us bonkers. He was used to running free. And feeding Argus was becoming a problem. "Maybe we can hole up here until spring."
And we did just that. Drove the camper right into that fenced area with Argus, chained the gate shut behind us, and lived there for the next two months. I wish I could say they were uneventful months, but that would be a lie.

Part Two: Wal-Mart Winter
We pulled the camper into the fenced area and chained the gate, but we had the run of the entire store. I had taken Argus to the produce section to eat when that changed. I heard glass breaking and someone said "Is that a horse? How the hell did a horse get in here?"
Argus turned toward the voices - there were several now - and I was visible to them. A group of about a dozen, all men. "Well, looky here. Trigger's got a lady friend." The way they were looking at me made my skin crawl. "Hey, pretty. What's your name?" I didn't answer. "Hey, Brad, what was her name? Roy Rogers' girlfriend?"
"Dale Evans." Brad licked his lips and the men spread out in a rough circle. They were trying to surround me! "You're going to be good to us, right, Dale? We can have a little fun."
"I'm not alone. There's a whole bunch of us here and we've got guns." It wasn't really a lie. Nine people could be considered a whole bunch and we'd looted what was left of the hunting department. And we were hunters even before all this - even Stacie could shoot.
"I don't see nobody, Dale."
Somebody grabbed me from behind and I dropped the lead. Argus reared and kicked Brad square in the middle of the forehead, then I lost track. One of them was still holding onto me, dragging me away, but the rest were trying to contain a panicking fourteen-hand gelding. I reached behind me, grabbed slightly below the belt buckle, twisted, and pulled. He screamed directly into my ear, but he let go. I grabbed an apple crate and started beating him with it.
One of the men flew past me and into a display of melons. The sound and the gush of rotting fruit were almost funny. Argus looked like a bucking bronco - which I guess, in a way, he was. Somebody fired a shot and I hoped it was one of us, but it ricocheted off the girders overhead. None of us would have done that. "God damn it, Ralph, kill the fucking horse!"
Argus seemed to realize the danger he was in and vaulted over one of the men, clipping him with a rear hoof. I could hear his footfalls as he fled. The one who had grabbed me was knocked out. Melon Man kept trying to rise and slipping in the ooze. Ralph - I figured that was him because he had a pistol in his hand - stood there with his jaw hanging open. He was looking down the main aisle behind the registers.
For a second, I saw them as he must have. Dad, Pete, Mom, and Stacie. Mom had her shirt open - she must have been feeding a baby when they heard the noise - and Stacie was wearing a Disney Princess costume. All four of them had guns. Dad spoke first, asked me if I was okay.
"I think so." But I was shaking so badly. I staggered over to them, probably looking drunk. Or like an Ex-People. "Dad, they were gonna --"
"I know what they were gonna." Dad gestured with his gun and the men hurried to follow the silent command. All except the one Argus had kicked in the forehead and Melon Man. "Go get something to bind these assholes with, honey."
"Right." Mom hurried away, buttoning the shirt as she went. Pete pulled Melon Man out of the mess and dragged him toward the rest. There was blood coming from Melon Man's mouth and nose. Argus must have kicked him, too.
"Four people, you little bitch? That's your whole bunch?"
"Four took you out." Stacie stuck her tongue out at the guy who spoke. "And one of us is a little girl."
"Where's everyone else?" I worded it that way on purpose and Dad caught on.
"Strategic retreat." He took one of the many plastic ropes Mom brought and tossed another to Stacie. After Pete shot one of them in the leg when he lunged at Stacie, the assholes behaved. "Now we have a dilemma. It's not like I can call the cops on you for attacking my family, is it? You tried to rape one of us, you might have injured our horse, and that move at the little one didn't make me feel any more charitable."
"I vote we castrate them." Pete waved his gun at Brad, who was still not moving. The eleven men in bondage started talking over each other. They ran the spectrum from weeping in terror to defiance. "At least the ring leader."
"I think Argus took care of him for us." I tried to get a better look at Brad's injury without getting too close. There was a huge dent in his forehead. "By the way, I apologize for complaining about that self-defense class last summer."



Dad sent me and Stacie away before they did it. Eleven shots echoed through the store - I guess Argus really did kill Brad. I expected Stacie to quiz me about the incident. An adult would have and a lot of was beyond her ken. But she didn't. It was scary to see my little sister so easily accept our parents executing men, even men like that.
The garden center had some indoor shelves, as they all do, and we'd turned that area into a little home. Three tents in a line, right down the center of aisle 42. The animals (we'd found Argus in the pet section, eating gerbil bedding) were locked in the horse trailer and we had all crawled into our sleeping bags when we heard Max barking.
"I got it." Pete went out, but came back moments later. "You need to see this."
It was the men from earlier, trying to get through the chain link. We could clearly see the holes in them, the dried blood. Brad, my would-be rapist, had something that looked like cottage cheese coming out of his ear. "They're Ex-People."
We killed them easily enough, just stabbed them in the head right through the fencing, but brought the animals inside anyway. "How the hell did that happen?"
"We just took the bodies out and blocked the broken door. It's not like we checked them for bites."
"They can't all have been bitten, can they?" I could see the horrible thought forming in Alex's head even as it formed in mine. "Or does this happen to anyone that dies?" I was never so happy to see Stacie burst into tears. She looked like an innocent little girl again.



After that, we never strayed alone into the main areas without a companion and a gun. We used forklifts and pallets to build a wall around "our" section of the store. People came and went, but since they didn't want potting soil or garden gnomes, they mostly left us alone. Mostly.
Someone with bolt cutters got through the fence and was trying to hot wire the camper when Mom and I caught him. We made sure he could see our guns but didn't draw on the guy. "The rest of the store we'll share, but the garden center is ours."
"It's not full of -- you know, the dead ones?"
"We keep them out." Mom pointed toward the front entrances. "The doors are closed, but not locked. Please leave them that way when you're done. Saves us a lot of work."
"Just the two of you here?" Why did they always ask that when no men were in sight? Mom told him we weren't alone, just the current sentries. "How many are you? We've got about a dozen."
I scoffed. "A dozen. Argus took out a dozen by himself." I'm not sure if his claim had been meant as a threat, but his chin dropped. He believed me, at least for a moment. Maybe because Argus wasn't the sort of name you'd expect a teenage girl to pull out of thin air.
"Eleven." Mom corrected me just in case the guy decided to call me a liar. "You got one of them, yourself."
The guy burst into tears and crumbled to the floor. "Ok, there are a dozen of us, but most of us are children. I don't want to hurt anybody or get hurt. We're what's left of the evacuation camp on route 52. Those - those things..."
"You were stealing our camper. Where are you headed?"
"Nowhere. Anywhere." He shook his head in confusion. "Look, we're holed up in that Chinese Buffet across the parking lot. We had one of those army trucks like you see in movies, but we wrecked it. Hit a patch of ice. Anderson got us inside before dark, but we've had nothing to eat but MRIs and stale fortune cookies."
"We just told you the store's clear. There might even be a truck in the -- Gabby!" Mom raised her gun at the gap in the fence. Two Ex-People were getting in. The guy screamed and ran for it, but he had nowhere to go inside the fence. One of them grabbed him seconds before I took its head off. Mom got the other.
The gunshots brought everyone else running, weapons drawn. It also drew some Ex-People from the direction of the Chinese Buffet. Our camper thief went white at the sight of them and said something, but I couldn't hear him for all the gunshots.
After it was all over, he went out there and knelt beside one of them. He was crying. Dad cleaned up the fence where the links had been cut and we were almost done cinching the cut links with radiator clamps when the guy came back. "Hattie isn't here. These were my people - well, except for that one in the tux - but Hattie isn't here."
Some of them looked as young as ten and one was in uniform. His name had been Anderson. Dad and Mom exchanged one of their patented looks - I swear they have telepathy - and Dad nodded at the guy. "I'll go with you to look for her."
"There'll be warm food waiting for you when you get back." And there was.
Hattie was five or six, and Dad found her hiding in the walk-in freezer. Oh, and our thief? His name was Ray Garrett. He had no idea what Hattie's last name was.



"I smell spring." Mom leaned against the camper, staring out across the parking lot. "Time to start loading up."
"All I can smell is stinky dead guys. And horse poop."
"Mommy's nose is trained cause she's a farm lady, Hattie." Stacie, Hattie, and Freddy were climbing everything they could. Except the fence. We kept them off the fence. "Those stinky dead guys are part of the spring smell. The cold made them not get rottener."
The store was already pretty well ransacked, but we still went through it aisle by aisle. In teams, of course, just in case. We even went through toys. Ray knew how to convert the camper to run on other fuels and some of us helped him with that while the rest loaded up. No more siphoning gas, thank God.
The second day, about noon, we opened the gate and rolled out. We filled Argus's food bin with every kind of vegetable matter we could find, even seedlings that had sprouted in the flower pots. Max rode in the trailer with him.
We'd just crossed into Ohio when it happened. Dad using the plow to clear cars and the noise brought them. The biggest bunch of them we'd ever seen came out of the woods on both sides of the road. "Just keep pushing through. We'll be fine."
Even as Mom spoke, we heard the screech of metal giving and felt the camper rise on one side as the trailer went over when they swarmed it. Their weight snapped the tow bar, the camper lurched forward, and we lost the animals. Argus emerged from the chaos, trying to flee on a broken leg, and went down under a wave of them. We didn't see Max at all but there's no way he survived.

Part Three: Adoption in the Apocalypse

"Do animals turn into those things?" Hattie couldn't take her eyes off the rear window. Until she spoke, I thought she was hoping (as children do) to see Argus or Max unhurt and trying to catch up. But this was fear.
"No. Just people."
"I wish I was a animal." She sat there, still watching the road behind us, silent tears running down her cheeks. "I don't wanna be dead like that."
"Well, we're going to do our best to keep all of us from being any kind of dead." Dad talked over Ray. He didn't believe in comforting lies like Ray kept telling the children. "Stay close and follow orders like a good soldier."
"They ate the soldiers." Her voice was as hollow as her eyes.
None of us had a reply to that. We were following the Ohio River Scenic Route. Even though it was an Interstate, it was mostly clear of traffic. The stretches of road between the little river towns were blessedly close to the river on one side and we could push cars onto, and sometimes down, the bank. You'd almost need climbing gear to go up the hills on the other side.
We came around a curve to the welcome sight of a chain link fence surrounding mounds of gravel. "Must have been one of those places you could go to buy rocks for your driveway." Ray was in the passenger seat while Mom drove. "Do you think we should stop?"
"Can't hurt to check." She blew the horn a few times to draw them out. Nothing.
Pete and Dad grabbed weapons and hurried to open the gate and we were inside the fence almost before we knew it. While Mom watched from the roof of the camper and the little ones watched through the windows, the rest of us checked the perimeter. The fence was intact and the little office trailer unoccupied by anything larger than a mouse. We set up a real camp.



The second night we were there, a group of five joined us. They were armed with gardening tools and a baseball bat. They were on foot. "Thanks for having us. Last camp we came across opened fire even after we yelled. You know they didn't think we were walkers - Walkers can't talk."
"You call them Walkers?"
"Yeah, that's what most of the folks we've come across call them."
"Most of us are named Walker." Dad introduced each of us, pointing each of us in turn. "The non-Walkers are Ray Garrett and Hattie. Strays we picked up along the road."
The big guy was Rob, the skinny one was John, and the women were Sarah and Debbie. Sarah might have been a cheerleader before all this. Their fifth person was a younger guy with his left arm missing from the elbow down. His name was Casey. "We heard that you could amputate if a person got bitten. So far, Casey's been doing all right."
"I was a nurse before all this." Debbie didn't even look up from checking the bandages. "Under the circumstances, I think I've done pretty well at controlling infection and it does seem what we heard was right. It's been a week and Casey hasn't even spiked a fever."
"It itches like a mother fucker." Casey apologized when Freddy giggled. "Forgot how I'm supposed to talk around kids."
Mom waved his apology away. After the things they had experienced, even with us sheltering them, bad words were the least of our concerns for the little ones. She opened a couple more cans of soup and dumped them into the Dutch oven over the fire.
"You've managed not to lose anyone?" That was Rob. I think he was wondering how big the family started out if there was still that many of us.
"We were about as prepared as anyone could have been and still function in normal society. We had a good-sized garden and hunted. Stacie bagged her first deer the summer before all this hit."
"We lost Argus and Max." That was Alex. "Pets count."
Dad accepted her correction. "We're headed toward DC. We figure --"
"Don't." Casey held up his freshly bandaged arm. "If the government survived, they're holed up in Area 51 or some shit. We're headed south. Heard a radio broadcast - place called Terminus is taking people. Our van - the radio won't shut off. The static was driving us nuts, but then this voice came through. I thought I was hallucinating. You know, cause of the bite. But we all heard it."
Dad mumbled something and poked the fire. We sat in silence until we heard the fence rattling. Alex and I picked up our guns, but John and Sarah were already running in that direction with a rake and a hoe.
"Gunfire makes too much noise. You shoot one, five come running." Rob leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "You'd be better served to hide the little ones and go hand to hand. Saves ammo, too."
"I should have thought of that. We knew noise drew them." Dad watched the darkness where John and Sarah had gone. "That's how we lost the animals. They were in the horse trailer and we were using the plow to move cars off the road."
"Sometimes the most obvious things escape us." That was Mom's to-go whenever one of us thought someone was stupid, including ourselves. "Besides, we're gun people. Of course we thought of them first."
"I've seen combat. I know how the enemy can --"
"So have I." Mom started ladling out soup and distributing bowls. "Our methods worked well enough to keep our children alive. That's what matters."
It was a few more days before we broke camp. The news about DC had rocked Dad to the core. We washed clothes, using river water and a big steel tub we found, and cleaned out the camper. Anything we couldn't wash or reuse went into the fire.
The morning we packed up, Ray announced that he'd made a decision. "Hattie and I are going with them. You guys should, too. That notion hitting the coast could fall through." He had an arm around Debbie.
"Not going." Hattie sat right down on the gravel, the way Freddy's preschool called crisscross-applesauce and that Dad called Indian Style. My jaw dropped. Open defiance was not Hattie's way. "Can't make me. Not my daddy."
"Hattie, I'm responsible for you now. Your parents --"
"She can stay with us." The entire family said it, those of us who could articulate themselves. Luke and Leia were busy chewing on Barbie feet. It was like we'd rehearsed.
Hattie jumped to her feet and ran to embrace Pete. "My daddy now."


We'd crossed into West Virginia, Pete at the wheel, when we came up behind another huge wreck. Most of the cars we could have managed to move with the plow, but there were semis involved. Mom and Alex went out to see if we could get around them while the rest of us consulted maps.
Mom came back at a run, with a mob on their heels. I got the door open for her and we slammed it shut while the mob surrounded us. "They got Alex."
There was no time for mourning, though. The trucks were tangled together and blocking the road all the way across. We tried to ignore the horrors just on the other side of the glass and rerouted.
The little ones hid in the bathroom, according to protocol, but four of them in there with nothing to do... I moved them to the bunk area. Scared as they were, a warning not to open the hideous curtains wasn't needed. Keeping quiet was more of a problem for them. Especially once they noticed Alex's absence.
Once we got rolling again, this time with Dad driving, Mom showed us what none of us had noticed - her fabulous long ponytail was gone. "One of them got hold of my hair and Alex cut it off. She fell as we were running back and... Well, they were so close to us."
"Is she gonna be an Ex-People now?" Freddy was barely audible through his tears. "Or did you get to save her from that?"
"I tried."
"You're like Annie Oakley. I bet you did." Stacie nodded firmly, determined to believe her big sister wasn't going to become one of those things. None of us argued with her. "She saved you, huh?"
"Yes, she did." And we all cried. Dad even cried while he drove, which didn't seem entirely safe, but I think we were all afraid they'd catch up and what had once been my twin sister would be with them. Even Stacie, for all of her insistence that Mom could shoot a moving target while running.
We only stopped to switch drivers for I think three days. We lived on Slim Jims and stale potato chips. I can't begin to count how many times I tried to say something to Alex before remembering she was gone.


"Dad, listen to the engine." Pete was driving with me in the passenger's seat. We didn't like the sound coming from under the hood. "I think we need to stop."
"Follow the signs for the national park - we'll at least find a parking lot with decent lines of sight. And let's hope whatever it is, is something we can repair." He shooed me out of the passenger seat and opened the road atlas. "If nothing else, there should be plenty of hunting. Camp store, tourist shops. We can pick up supplies."
I left them to it and went into the back. All the little ones were curled up on the lower bunk and Stacie was reading to Hattie in the top one. Mom sat on the floor, trying to do something with what was left of her hair. "I'll get the back even for you."
She gave me the scissors. "I miss Alex. I miss my hair. I miss life before all this. Remember when our biggest problem was the curfew?"
"I remember Alex teasing you about your hair. It was the only thing you were vain about. You didn't mind gaining weight or stretch marks or going without make up, but your hair..." We both laughed at the memory, but it was a sad laugh. "But we've come this far, in the world the way it is now, and only lost her and the animals. We've been incredibly lucky."
"Always the optimist."
Pete planted the camper right in the center of the first parking lot we found. It was empty except for a park service truck. We set up camp right there on the pavement. "Gabby and I will clear the tourist shop while the men work on the engine. Stacie, you and Hattie are in charge of the little ones."
The door stuck a little. I guess the hinges needed oiled. But it wasn't locked. Mom signaled me to go left while she went right. A big human shape lurched out of the darkness and grabbed me. I stabbed at it, but it was too tall for me to reach the brain. The thing couldn't hold on to me, though, since its skin was sliding off. I climbed onto a counter and stabbed it right in the top of the head.
When it fell, Mom was behind it. "Looks like that was the only one. Must be the ranger who came in the truck out there." We could see by our flashlights that it was wearing the uniform. We were bagging anything that might be useful when Dad and Pete came to help.
"Camper's beyond repair." Dad started to explain, but we heard Stacie and Hattie yelling and dropped everything. There was a man walking up the lane, his hands up in surrender position. "Well, how about that?"
His name was Aaron and he was from a real, honest-to-god community. They had steel walls. Solar power. Hot and cold running water. "I'm really not supposed to bring back large groups, but so many of you are children. I'm sure Deanna would understand. Of course, she'll make the final call, but you seem like the kind of people we need in Alexandria."
The entire family exchanged a glance, weird as that may sound. My twin sister had been Alexandria - Alex for short.

Part Four: The More Things Change
The house they gave us was just three bedrooms, but it was a lot fancier than we were used to. There was a family room with a two-story ceiling and huge fireplace, a regular living room, and two dining areas. Mom said the one in the kitchen was called a breakfast room. The study and master bedroom had double doors like was some kind of throne room. Pete claimed the couch in there since he didn't want to share a room with Freddy and Luke.
Since there were four girls, we were given the master bedroom. Hattie and Stacie immediately claimed the double bed, but that was fine with me. Off to one side, there was a "sitting room" with two couches and a view of the pond in the middle of town. Leia could crash on the couch I didn't. The smaller bedrooms were the size of the master bath. It was crazy but we weren't complaining.
Freddy, Stacie, and Hattie went to school in the mornings. I went afternoons. Pete went once and found he'd already learned everything they had. So, I guess he graduated. The school was just one classroom, set up in a garage, but again - we weren't complaining. Life settled into a groove that was almost the old normal.
When things started happening, they happened fast. Aaron brought home a large group - 14 of them, if you count the baby. An actual baby. As in, born After. Luke and Leia were newborns when the apocalypse came and they were toddlers now. We called them the Grimes Group - the leader was Rick Grimes and the baby was his daughter. He had a son, too, who looked my age but was younger. I guess being out there made him grow up fast.
And they really were out there, not like my family. At the welcoming party, one of the women went off about how stupid we all were for not being constantly on high alert. Which was kind of how Dad felt, but he didn't yell about it at parties. He just "took a walk" every evening to check the walls.
The Grimes Group had lost at least three places they'd tried to settle, even a prison. And usually by people - living and breathing people who made the assholes who came into our Wal-Mart seem like saints. Again, I was reminded just how lucky we'd been.


"It hit the fan today." Dad said this over dinner, his tone serious but with a glint in his eye. "Our new constable tried to do something about Pete Anderson. It seems he has a zero-tolerance policy for domestic abuse."
"Beat the crap out of him right in his front yard." Pete supplied that part of the story. "Wouldn't stop, either, even when he should have. Michonne had to clobber him."
"I like Michonne." Stacie jumped out of her chair and brandished a French fry like it was a sword. Mom made her sit back down. "Is he in trouble? Are they gonna get kicked out? I hope not! I didn't get to play with the baby yet!"
"There's going to be a meeting. I think one of us should go, to represent the whole family. The question is, how do we feel about exiling him? Odds are his entire group would go with him. We're not talking about losing one guy."
"We need them. And misguided as his methods may be, he's right. Something needs to be done about Doctor Pete." Dad called him that to differentiate him from "our" Pete for the little ones. Not that they were following the conversation. "He's gotten away with it far too long just because we need him in the infirmary."
"No argument there. But in the old days, this would be police brutality." Pete stared at his peas for a moment, sorting his thoughts. "Exiling is too strong a punishment but he can't get away with it."
"I don't know why Deanna listens to him when she wouldn't hear us out. Maybe she's just ready now. Maybe he's got her ear because he was a cop Before. And I don't care, as long as she's listening. Sooner or later, someone will be a threat and the Grimes Group knows what needs to be done."
"Mom, you should go to the meeting and say exactly that." I didn't really have a say in any of this, being still a kid, but spoke up anyway. My parents are cool like that. "After what they've been through, it's a miracle they're adjusting as well as they are."
"Yeah, I still don't think Possum Man's taken a bath." We knew his name by now, but the nickname stuck. Daryl Dixon shot a possum right outside our gate the day they came and announced that they'd brought dinner.


"Pretty suspicious if you ask me. One of his own people left the gate ajar? On the night we were discussing what to do with him, he got to dramatically reveal how badly we need him? And since when is domestic violence punishable by death?"
"Pete barged into the meeting and killed Reg. That was why Deanna had Rick shoot him. As for the Ex-People getting in, I think if it was planned no one would have known who left the gate open."
"And what the hell are we supposed to do for a doctor now?"
I stopped halfway down the stairs. Mom and Pete were having a heated discussion in the kitchen. What had happened last night? Pete Anderson killed Deanna's husband? She had Rick Grimes shoot him? And the gates - holy shit. Good thing we'd stayed in and watched DVDs during the meeting.
"Even if he did set up the thing with the gate, it made people wake up to the truth. We need those people - they know what we're up against and what to do about it. And we agreed when we came here to live by Deanna's rules." That was Dad, who was the one who had actually attended the meeting and seen the drama unfold. "By her decisions regarding the community. Remember, we were going in there to defend Rick Grimes. I had Mom's little speech memorized. Now listen to you."
"Do you really think he has some kind of mind control power? He took over Pete Anderson's body and forced him to do that?" Mom was moving around now. I could tell by the sounds that she was getting breakfast ready. "Now drop it, both of you, before the kids get down here. Or go take a walk and argue there."
Both Dad and Pete mumbled a reply. I went on into the kitchen. "We need shampoo again. There was half a bottle last night before the girls had their showers. I think they drink it."
Whatever Mom said in reply was lost in the chaos as the younger ones stampeded down the stairs. Even the little twins, who you'd think would fall down the steps. Dad and Pete left to go work on the expansion wall and I helped Mom herd the brood to school. Then she went to go feed people - the elderly or sick or even just the lazybones who didn't cook. I wondered what we would do for a doctor now. I wondered if whoever it was would teach me, kind of like an old-fashioned apprenticeship.


I came in from walking the brats to school and found the men of the house wolfing down breakfast, dressed for work. Mom was still sleeping - I'd given her the morning off.
"You're going to work today? I though the wall was done."
"Dad and I volunteered to help with the quarry project." Pete managed that between bites of cereal. "Rick says we need to get it done ASAP. Abraham asked for volunteers and we stepped up."
"I heard about that. Have you seen it? The quarry?"
"You know the pictures of Woodstock? Like that, but instead of hippies it's hungry dead guys. Firebombing them would only be a temporary fix, and if the road gives while they're burning..." Dad shuddered at the thought. "They'll just keep falling in there, anyway. Better to open it up and let them wander out in manageable numbers."
"Just this time will be crazy. Move the truck blocking the exit, lead the mob away in cars. It's a good plan." Pete was trying to reassure me. I didn't need it, though. I trusted Dad and he trusted Rick. That was good enough for me. "If things should go wrong, though, you know the contingency plan."
"I do." It turned out to be a good thing, too. But not because of the dead. Because of the living.
I had the little ones out front, playing with sidewalk chalk. Stacie and Hattie were playing hopscotch on the road - they could do that in Alexandria because nobody drove. Mom wasn't home. She was getting groceries from the pantry. Most of our fighting force was at the quarry, going over the plan one last time.
There was the distinct sound of a vehicle hitting a building, then the air horn started.
I grabbed one of the little twins and Stacie ran over to grab the other. Hattie grabbed Freddy, which normally would have been funny since he was almost as big as her, and we ran for the house. Up the stairs and into our room. Dad had designated it the panic room because it had its own toilet and windows in two directions, and because the dead would be slowed down by the stairs.
It wasn't until we'd locked ourselves in that we realized there were people out there. Not our people. They were killing our people. Just running around stabbing from the looks of it. And the air horn kept going.
Luke and Freddy huddled on the big bed, their eyes huge. Leia was on tiptoe, trying to peer out the window that faced the house next door, but she was quiet so I let her be. Stacie and Hattie, somehow, were wielding the fireplace tools from the family room. Hattie was terrified, Stacie just grim. No child should look like that.
I got down low, peeking around the curtain and over the sill. The men out there had some kind of symbol on their foreheads. I hoped they stayed too far away for me to make it out. But they didn't. I saw one disappear around the back and heard one of the family room windows shatter.
I grabbed the nearest heavy thing - a lamp, actually - and joined my sisters at the door. More glass broke downstairs and I heard Pete's voice. We waited. Leia climbed onto the bed with the boys.
We could hear the guy downstairs, slamming cabinet doors in the kitchen. I guess he was stealing food. Whatever. As long as he stayed down there. I had to chuckle when I heard a door crash open and Pete yell "Not our house, mother fucker!" He sounded like an action movie. And not even a good one.
Then it was over. Dad and Pete cleaned everything up before giving us the all clear, but I knew that faint stain on the hardwood floor was blood. And one of the huge windows in the family room was gone. Mom didn't come back. I didn't ask for details. I didn't want to know even as much as I did.



Alexandria was on alert. The Ex-People who had followed the air horn had us surrounded. We kept the noise and lights as low as we could (not easy with three under school age) and everyone stuck close to home. I tried to keep easy-to-grab food handy for Dad and Pete, who were kept busy on wall reinforcements.
"Any word?" I asked every time one of them showed his face.
"No, but Daryl, Abraham, and Sasha aren't expected back yet. They have to keep a slow enough pace for the dead to keep up. It's the bunch that went to the tractor place I'm worried about." Pete looked around the kitchen, almost like he expected them to appear. "That truck fell early and the dry run became the actual job. Then the damn air horn..."
"Yeah, I didn't know what was up, but I knew it wasn't good."
"Anyway, once they get back with the vehicles, they'll lure the rest away. We just gotta hang in there. Things got ugly at the pantry - people freaking out and trying take extra."
"Betsy killed herself."
"I heard. Jessie Anderson took care of it, of all people. Who knew she actually had a spine?" None of us were particularly fond of any of the Andersons, but Pete detested Jessie. He had no respect for a woman who failed to protect her kids. Especially after we lost Mom.
Something crashed outside and we heard yelling. The little twins and Freddy were in the family room, watching a DVD. We grabbed them and practically teleported up the stairs. Stacie and Hattie beat us there. Or maybe they'd been playing in our room. Either way, they were staring out the front window, the one by my couch. "Spencer's lookout tower fell. I think it broke the wall."
"Gabby, lock it behind me."
I didn't bother to get mad at Pete for telling me something I already knew. He was gone before I would have had time to say anything, anyway. The dead were everywhere. I lost sight of Pete almost immediately. Now he had the fireplace tools.
"Bloon." Luke pointed at the sky. A bundle of green helium balloons was drifting by. Hadn't they been using balloons to mark checkpoints on the quarry job? Did that mean someone was back to help?
Ex-People crowded around the family room windows. The DVD was still playing. If anyone had grabbed the remote, I could creep out onto the overlook and shut it up, but no one had thought of that. Some princess singing about her true love was gonna get us all eaten.
"Look." Hattie pointed. A bunch of people had come out of the Anderson's house. They were moving slow, holding hands - and being ignored. "What are they doing? Are they wearing guts?"
"Going for the guns?" Stacie's theory seemed valid. They were headed in the right direction. There was a crash downstairs - the plywood over that broken window must have given - and we double checked the door to the room. Very quietly.
When we got back to the window, the spot we'd last seen the group was swarmed. People were in the streets now, fighting. That group venturing out must have started a chain reaction. I wanted to go out there, myself, and bash a few rotting skulls.
I pulled the curtains. It was a full-on battle out there now and none of us needed to see that. We sat on the bed, all of us, and waited forever. Then the windows lit up bright as day. Something big was on fire. I made them all stay put and crept over to the front window.
"It's the lake. The lake is burning and the Ex-People are going to it." We heard glass breaking downstairs and saw them come pouring out of the living room's picture window. I had time to wonder how they'd seen the glow from the family room - it faced the back - but decided it didn't matter. They were leaving us alone.


Once again, we were lucky. Pete broke his hand and Dad twisted his ankle, but they were both still breathing. Abraham gave them some time off to recover, even though the construction crew was busy. City walls needed repaired and reinforced. There were broken windows and doors all over, mostly from the first attack. The Wolves.
The Andersons were dead. They weren't the only ones, but... the whole family, and right when Jessie was growing a spine. It was weird to miss people I didn't even like. The worst of the survivable injuries, though, was Carl Grimes. He somehow got shot in the eye.
Since the guys could stay with the little ones. I spent the morning helping to dig graves and add names to the Memorial Wall. We'd lost nearly two dozen people in less than a week. I put a bunch of wildflowers from inside the expansion wall on Mom and walked home, planning to get a shower before my school started.
"Possum Man is here!" Freddy met me at the door. I picked him up and carried him into the family room, where Dad and Pete were talking to Rick Grimes and Possum Man - I mean, Daryl Dixon. "See, Gabby? Told ya Possum Man was here!"
Daryl looked amused. I guess someone had already explained the nickname to him. He nodded at me in greeting, but neither of us spoke. Dad was on the couch, an icepack on his ankle, talking to Rick Grimes. "Horses or cattle usually need an acre a head for grazing. For now, smaller animals would be better. Free range chickens we could do, maybe some goats."
"It'll be the luck of the draw." Daryl was a lot more soft-spoken than I expected. "Whatever we can find out there."
"Well, in that case... We managed to keep a horse and a dog alive in a Wal-Mart for three or four months. Where there's a will, there's a way, right?"
I just shook my head as I went upstairs. Dad was going to turn this place into Walker Horse Ranch, part two. Might have to change the name, though, since most of Alexandria called the Ex-People Walkers.


When I got home from school, I found the kids playing Scrabble. Well, Hattie and Stacie were playing. Freddy was announcing what letters each had while the little twins slobbered all over the extra benches. "Where are Dad and Pete?"
"Grown-up meeting. About the new town, I bet. They have a doctor - a real one!"
"Denise is a real doctor."
"She's a sky-trist."
"Those are real doctors. Besides, she saved Carl." Stacie had a crush on Carl Grimes. "I can still marry him when I grow up!"
"Eeewww. He's got a big hole in his face."
"Stacie mooning over Carl again?" That was Pete, coming back. Dad was right behind him. Even though he was teasing Stacie, I could see something serious had gone down at the meeting. "Anyone under the age of twelve, go wash up for dinner."
Dad checked to make sure no little ears were listening before filling me in while the three of us threw together a meal. "There's a group calling themselves the Saviors, they're doing this whole protection racket on the Hilltop - that's the name of the other community - and they gave us supplies in exchange for getting rid of the Saviors. They gave us enough food already for a month."
"Where did these pink cookies come from?" Pete already had one of them in his mouth.
"Carol. You know, the housewife lady who turned out to be a total badass? They're made from acorns. I don't know why they're pink."
"Maybe she had to use cake sprinkles for sugar."
"Anyway." Dad was annoyed at the interruption. "Rick's going to ask around before deciding, but only one person at the meeting objected, so it looks like a go. We'll go along if asked, but I figure he's going to take the inner circle with him."
"Yeah, Gabriel got us fired up the night the tower fell and people have been training to fight, but very few of us are ready for something like this." It was kind of funny to hear Dad say that. The Walker family was part of the community, but we'd always held ourselves just a little apart. Dad had trained all of us in self-defense and taken us hunting from the age of eight. We'd been out there, even, albeit in a well-stocked camper. "Don't say anything in front of the younger kids."
"Need to know basis."



Abraham broke up with Rosita and was seeing Sasha. I bet that created some tension in the Grimes Group's two houses. Carol hooked up with Tobin, who was foreman before Abraham on the construction crew, but then left a note and vanished. Rick sent Morgan after her. Life went on.
Well, Maggie was pregnant and something was wrong, so a bunch of them took off for the doctor at Hilltop. (Denise had been killed on a supply run.) The leader of the Saviors, a man called Negan, bludgeoned Abraham and Glenn to death with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire right in front of the entire party. Sasha had taken Maggie and the bodies to the Hilltop.
And then they came to Alexandria. They had Daryl with them - they'd kept him as a hostage - and he looked defeated. I didn't even want to think about what they must have done to him. Negan was strutting around, making Rick carry the bat and thoroughly enjoying our subjectification. I wanted to take it from Rick's hands and whack Negan with it, but that would only make things worse.
The Saviors were taking anything that wasn't nailed down. We stood on our front lawn and watched the mattresses from our beds come out, the couches from the downstairs, even the grandfather clock from the study.
We just stood there in a group, each of the men holding a little twin and me with Freddy on one hip, and watched them do it. One of the men sauntered over to me, undressed me with his eyes, and asked Dad if I wasn't a little young for him.
"She's my daughter."
"She must look like her momma, cause you are one ugly son of a bitch." He laughed like that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. "What's your name, pretty girl?"
"Hey! You know the rules!" Another one of the men yelled at him from the trailer they were loading. The one talking to me protested, but all the color drained from his face when someone mentioned Lucille. He went back to work.
Then they were gone and we had to make our beds on the floors. The couches Leia and I slept on were built-in, so they couldn't take them. Instead they took the cushions. Assholes even beheaded all Stacie and Hattie's dolls.

"Negan's here." Pete stuck his head into the breakfast room, where I was gluing heads back onto dolls. "He's at the Grimes's, sitting on the porch with Carl and Judith. Drinking lemonade."
"What?! Why?!"
"No idea, but it's just him."
"Do we need to go hide?" Freddy scowled. "I hate those big meanies." None of us could argue with that sentiment.
"From just him? I don't think so." Pete joined me at the table and pretended he was going to glue a girl head to a boy body, just to annoy the girls. "I guess he's waiting to have a pow-wow with Rick, but Rick's out on a run."
"They're supposed to come once a month and leave us alone the rest of the time."
"Well, it is just one dude. Even if he is the head honcho."
"The Saviors come in here and take what they want. How long before they decide to take who they want? How long before that one guy takes me? Til one of them decides he likes little boys and makes off with him?" My vague gesture could have meant either Freddy or Luke. "I'm starting to think we'd be better off leaving Alexandria."
Pete started to reply, but was cut off by a gunshot. Just one. "Stacie, Hattie, get the little ones upstairs." We followed the growing crowd. I had time to wonder who had gotten to keep a pool table when the Saviors had even taken our board games before realizing someone was dead. Negan was confronting Rosita (who was on the ground, her face bleeding and a gun in her hand) about who had made the bullet.
I wondered where she got the gun, myself. They'd taken all our guns, even causing a panic and searching all the houses because two were missing from inventory. None of us should have had anything more powerful than a Nerf blaster. Rosita insisted she'd made it, which I believed - that woman was full of surprises - but Negan didn't. He had one of his people shoot a random Alexandrian.
Carl, Judith, and Olivia were all on the Grimes's front porch and that was where the Savior fired. I couldn't see who it was, not with the crowd in the way, but it wasn't Judith. Too much weight hit the wood floor. At least they weren't killing babies. Yet.
Then Rick was there. He told Negan his men at the gate (so much for Pete thinking Negan was the only one there) had the supplies and told him to leave.
Turns out Carl had snuck into the Savior HQ (where ever that was) and took out some men. Negan insisted that he was a good guy because he hadn't killed Carl, but brought him home and fed him spaghetti. Carl was standing there on the porch, so it was Olivia who had been shot.
Spencer wanted Negan to kill Rick so he (Spencer) could be in charge of Alexandria. "As if." Pete muttered in my ear. "He was the one who took those guns when they came the first time. No one here's gonna follow him."
"I think that's him." I pointed at the dead guy by the pool table. His guts were out. At least Olivia'd gotten a nice quick head shot. "Doesn't look like Negan respected him any more than we did. Less, even. We never killed the idiot."
Tara claimed she had made the bullet but Negan didn't believe that any more than I did. Tara was pretty resourceful, but if making a bullet was something she could do, she would have already been doing it. She was a contributor through to the bone. Finally, Eugene admitted to it. Crying. Terrified. He'd been there, seen what Negan had done to his friends.
Negan took Eugene with him. Spencer reanimated, but Rick handled that. Stacie was watching out that front bedroom window when we got close to the house. Pete and I signaled her that they could come out.

Even though technically still a kid (Hell, so was Carl Grimes and he was right by his dad's side), I was out there when it all went down. We'd gotten guns, and inside information on the Saviors, from somewhere. We knew they were coming and were ready.
First another community showed up in garbage trucks and their leader took her place beside Rick on the gate overlook. Most of the Alexandrians were on the rooftops where we could see over the wall, as well.
The Saviors rolled up in their big trucks. The one in the lead was a flatbed with something draped in fabric on it. And Eugene. He tried to convince Rick to stand down and when Rick asked where Negan was, he said "I'm Negan." He'd gone over.
At Rick's cue, we all ducked and Rosita set off the explosives we'd planted outside the gate. Nothing happened and the garbage truck people turned their guns on us! Then Negan made his appearance, flourishing that bat. I had time to speculate about what he was compensating for while he made a lot of smug noise about how stupid Rick was. They stood the thing on the flatbed on one end - was a coffin. With Sasha in it, he said.
He claimed she was okay. She'd come in the coffin, but she didn't have to leave in it. All we had to do was surrender. Rick demanded to actually see her. And from his reaction, I knew Negan hadn't lied, that he'd believed she was fine. Until he saw her and she lunged at him. She had died and turned.
They went off the side of the flatbed and out of view, Sasha on top of Negan. Someone opened fire - one of us, up there with Rick - and we all followed suit. Those of us who still had guns used them and the rest of us used fists and feet. But it was over quickly.
The garbage people opened the gate and let the Saviors in. We were outnumbered and outgunned. They herded Carl and Rick up to Negan and forced them to kneel. Words were exchanged, but I was too far away to hear. Negan walked over behind Carl and took Carl's hat off. I realized then what he was about to do and turned away.
Negan was screaming like a little bitch. I looked and nearly fell over with shock. There was a TIGER inside the walls and it was eating one of Negan's men. Negan wasn't just screaming like a little bitch, either. He was running and hiding.
There were people with the tiger, fighting alongside us. Then Maggie and people from Hilltop showed up. How the hell had all these people gotten inside? Who cared? I had a shot lined up on Negan at one point, but he fled and the tiger attacked the guy who took his place.
Smoke bombs went off and they retreated. Left us with several garbage trucks and a lot of clean up. My family wasn't so lucky this time. We lost Pete. Dad was shot in the leg. I had managed to escape injury except for a sore shoulder. My gun had had a hell of a kick.

That's all I've got written so far.... Was waiting til the end of Season Eight to add next part, then got booted from my TWD group....

jeanie wrote: That's all I've got written so far.... Was waiting til the end of Season Eight to add next part, then got booted from my TWD group....

I really like what you've got so far. It's interesting to see how this family has survived all this time, as well as their POV once Team Grimes arrived at Alexandria.
I had to laugh at that bit where a princess singing about her true love was going to get the poor family eaten. Also liked Daryl's nickname Possum Man, that's adorable lol.

This is really a good fic and I'm sorry you got booted from your walking dead group, but maybe one of these days you can get back to finishing it. I'd love to find out what else happens with the Walker family.

Now that someone is interested, it won't take me long to get season eight written....

As for that group, they besically gave me the ole first grade ultimatum about another group they had some drama with. I refused to leave either group because this ain't the first grade - so they kicked me out. Ended up leaving th eother group because they were a bunch of troublemakers. (They'd started the drama, but still... we ain't in first grade.)

jeanie wrote: Now that someone is interested, it won't take me long to get season eight written....

As for that group, they besically gave me the ole first grade ultimatum about another group they had some drama with. I refused to leave either group because this ain't the first grade - so they kicked me out. Ended up leaving th eother group because they were a bunch of troublemakers. (They'd started the drama, but still... we ain't in first grade.)

Glad to hear you're going to continue your story. Definitely looking forward to the family's POV regarding Season 8 and onward. Will be interesting to see who is left by Season 9.

As for the group drama I'm sorry to hear that as I don't see why it made any difference if you were in both groups just minding your own business. Had my fill of fandom drama too and opted out and refuse to ever get involved in that crap again. The last walking dead site I was part of ended up closing down because the admin wasn't happy with the series, but there was a lot of drama going on between them and twd fans on tumblr when I wasn't there. Crap like sending spies to the site and what not. Absolute nuts. I'd only hear of it when I popped by the site's private chat box.

Anyway glad you're free of the BS and look forward to reading the rest of your story.

I've thought about starting my own FB group. Call it The Thinking Dead.

Now I'm sad. Just wrote Gabby hearing about Carl.