by the fans for the fans

Part Five: All Out War

Pete was buried close to Mom. Alex was out there, somewhere, neither alive nor at rest. Max and Argus at least were at rest. I had to protect my little brothers and sisters from the hungry dead and the evil living. Dad could only do so much.
“Her name is Shiva.” Jerry, a guy from The Kingdom, came up behind me while I was trying to keep kids away from the tiger. “Shiva only lets the king pet her.” The kids pouted, but wandered off to fuss over Maggie and Carol. They’d been missed.
“Thanks. I keep telling them she’s a wild animal.”
“She’s on a leash.” Jerry summed up the children’s point of view perfectly. “She’s a pet.”
“A pet that just ate a bunch of people.” I introduced myself. I knew Jerry’s name because King Ezekiel had been summoning him all day. “Carol was at The Kingdom all this time?”
“She was in bad shape when they brought her in.” We just stood there a while, watching Carol fawn over the children. And vice versa. “She’s tough but she hates this.”
“Yeah, we all thought she was Donna Reed and she turned out to be Rambo.” I didn’t mention that Mom had known there was more to Carol – there had to be for her to have survived, even with that big group. “I guess it’s too much to ask, for this to be the end of things? For the Saviors to slink off into the sunset?”
“If they don’t, we’ll beat them again.”
I wished I had the confidence Jerry did.



I came home late one evening, exhausted from helping weld steel sheeting onto cars. Dad had the kids in the back yard, coaching Hattie on how to shoot. We weren’t sure if she was old enough, but desperate times… He’d probably be training Freddy if he could lift the rifle. If the Saviors got past us, got to the kids, they’d be in for a surprise. When he saw me, he called it a night and crutched over to me.
“How did it go?”
“It’s done. Tomorrow we hit The Sanctuary and what satellite outposts we know about.” I knew he was about to tell me I didn’t have to do this or something similar. “I volunteered to be a driver. That way, I’m under the most cover and will be more likely to get home to you and the kids. You hate this falling into my lap, I know you do, but it’s the right thing to do. Someone from this household needs to be helping and you can’t.”
“And they’re all so young.” He nodded toward the kids. “Did they feed you at Hilltop?”
“Of course. Fainting from hunger is counterproductive.” We sat on what had once been the windowsill to the family room and watched the little ones play. “Stacie’s starting to develop. Do you know if Mom had the talk with her?”
“What? Oh, that talk.” Dad actually blushed. “She explained all that when we had the little twins. I don’t know how much detail she went into, though. Do you think I should?”
“I can. Might be better coming from a girl.”
“We both will. We’ll sit down with her and Hattie tomorrow night. Give you a bit of extra incentive to be careful. Or is Hattie still too young?”
“We might as well get hers out of the way, too.”



We pulled up to the Sanctuary the next morning and for some reason shot out all the upper windows. I trusted that there was some larger plan – so much ammo wasted otherwise – and waited. I contorted myself so I could see into through the makeshift armor to the doorway that Negan came strutting out of. His stupid cronies followed, as cronies do, and Rick started talking.
My jaw dropped. TALKING?! He was right there. We had him dead to rights and Rick was over there TALKING?! Then Gregory came out and announced that unless his people laid down their guns, they would no longer have a home at Hilltop. Hilltop stands with Negan.
There was a long pause, a little muttering in the ranks, and then a voice from our side of the fence rang out. “Hilltop stands with Maggie!” That was Jesus – the really cute guy who had introduced Rick to the Hilltop and the Kingdom.
One of Negan’s lieutenants kicked Gregory’s ass while Negan blathered some more. Then Rick talked a bit – I couldn’t make out a lot of what was said because I was in the armored car – and bullets started flying again. I tried to keep track of what was going on, but my spine decided it was done being bent in directions nature didn’t intend. I was still recovering from the muscle spasm when I got the signal to pull out.
At the outpost, I crouched behind the car and took a gun from one of the Hilltop people. I knew I was breaking my promise to Dad, but the confinement was too much for me. “Plan is to pen them in and kill a few. Those’ll turn and do the rest for us.”
I just nodded and spotted a Savior who kind of looked like my old English teacher. I pretended it was him and got revenge for every bad grade he’d given me and Alex. Dude had hated anyone that didn’t properly worship Charles Dickens.
Then we waited. Some guy I’d seen around Alexandria knelt down beside us and asked me the strangest question I think I’d ever been asked. “How come your one sister is a different color from the rest of y’all?”
“What the hell kind of question is that to ask her?” The Hilltop guy looked like he didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or get mad. “What the hell does it matter, especially here and now?”
Before I could answer the question – it was a valid question, if rudely phrased and badly timed – the screaming inside the outpost started. Hilltop guy gave me a gentle push back into the car. I was to keep it ready to speed away at a moment’s notice.
I hunkered down in the car, knife handy in case someone tried to take it, until it was over. There was no celebrating on the way home, despite our victory. Everyone was exhausted – all we could muster was a smile or two. The outposts were gone and Sanctuary soon would be.
It was very strange, almost surreal, to go from that to The Talk with my little sisters. Especially since I’d just been reminded that one of them was a different color than me.



We had a few days. Word traveled back and forth between the communities. Jesus had taken a bunch of prisoners back to Hilltop, which created a drain on Hilltop’s resources. Gregory had somehow gotten back there and was in the makeshift POW camp with them. All the communities had suffered losses, but The Kingdom had the worst. Pretty much their entire fighting force was gone. And Shiva. I like to believe she ate Negan before she died – probably not, since she wasn’t even at the Sanctuary, but a girl can dream.
No such luck. Guess who showed up at the Alexandria gate? Rick wasn’t back, he still out chasing down Saviors, but Carl got us moving. I had to yank the little twins out of the bath, still soapy, and Luke was having none of it. “My wee wee is showing! I can’t go outside with my wee wee showing!”
Hattie threw a bed sheet around both of them and ran out the door with the sheet thrown over her shoulder like Santa’s bag. Stacie was right behind her with their pajamas in hand. Fred grabbed the “Boogie Bag” and Dad grabbed him. We ran for the big vehicles with most of the Alexandrians, trusting in Carl Grimes to protect our homes.
I was dressing Luke when we busted out the secondary gate – Negan was at the front and I guess Carl didn’t want him to know about the evacuation. I would have rather gone out that way and ran right over the cocky bastard. I didn’t notice until we got to Hilltop that Luke was wearing Leia’s jammies and vice versa.
The Saviors had hit them the Kingdom, as well. I left them alone – I had my hands full and so did they. A pretty good size bunch of Alexandrians was missing, but I assumed they had stayed behind to slow the Saviors down, if nothing else.
The Hilltop guy from the attack came over while I was setting up near the back wall of Barrington House. We kept a small tent in the Boogie Bag (so called because you grab it when you gotta boogie). “Need a hand with that?”
“You might be more help than my sister.” Stacie flipped me off for that one, but she wasn’t really angry. She joined Dad in trying to get the little ones calmed down. “My name’s Gabriella, by the way.”
“That’s a lot shorter than what I’ve been calling you.” At my unspoken question, he clarified. “Cute chick from Alexandria. I’m Jasper.” Jasper suggested that we not go into a certain area because Jesus had brought back POWs from one of the outposts. Maggie had them – and Gregory – penned up over there.
The stragglers didn’t so much trickle in as arrive in bursts. When I rose the next morning, Carol and Ezekiel were there. Morgan Jones and a boy Hattie’s age. From what I overheard, I figured out that Ezekiel had given himself up to protect his people, just like the king he was. Carol and Morgan rescued him. The boy’s name was Henry and he apparently snuck away from the escapees and back in to avenge his brother. He was Hattie’s age!
The main group from Alexandria arrived sometime that day, led by Daryl Dixon the Possum Man. Judith Grimes was with them, but not the rest of the family. Michonne and Rick had stayed behind to bury Carl. That hurt way more than it should have. I barely knew Carl.
Carl had been bitten earlier that day, or the day before, and had saved most of Alexandria while slowly dying. Stacie shut herself into the tent for an hour when she heard the news. The man he was helping when he got bitten was a doctor, but Carl didn’t know that until after. He just knew the guy needed help. Typical Grimes behavior, or it was until Negan happened.




We only had a day or two before things started up again. The Saviors attacked after dark. I joined the mass exodus of parents herding children into the upper floors of Barrington House – the safest place for them. Once we got them up there, the older kids were given instructions, and most of the parents left. I started to do the same, but Dad stopped me.
“Only one of us goes out there. Close quarters, my leg won’t be an issue.”
“We need all the people out there we can get. Stacie can watch them.”
“Stacie can’t be a parent to them if we both die. Adulthood comes early nowadays, but not that early. I’m a better shot, I have more combat experience, so I’m the better choice for – “
“Okay, go. But if you die, I’m gonna kill you, Daddy.” I fought back tears as he closed the door firmly behind him. It wouldn’t do anyone any good for me to break down.
We couldn’t close the windows because of the summer heat, and that meant we heard the entire thing go down. I peeked out and saw that the Saviors were using bows, so most of the gunfire was coming from our side, if not all of it. They came in, shot us up, and retreated with Rick Grimes and Maggie Rhee hot on their heels. And it was over.
Or so we thought. Nobody wanted to sleep outside of Barrington House, since the Saviors might come back, so we sacked out all over the place. I just kept our little ones upstairs – the heat was oppressive, but why bother moving them? Here we were at least together and could spread out a little. Dad joined us, mercifully unhurt, and we slept.
A commotion woke us in the dead of night and I ran to see what was going on. How the hell had walkers gotten in? People were screaming and fighting them off as best they could, but they had the element of surprise. I grabbed one of the fancy chairs nobody ever sat on and started beating the nearest walker over the head with it. When it turned toward me, I recognized Jasper! I even paused once it was down to take a good look. How the hell did Jasper turn? He’d barely been scratched in the battle. Literally. All he’d needed was a Band-Aid. I didn’t have time to dwell on it. One walker I took out as it knelt to bite a terrified toddler, another as it grabbed an old lady. One almost got me from behind, but someone else saved me. I have no idea who. Once they were all dead for real, we took a good look at them. They were all our people. There were no bites. Very few serious injuries, even, from the skirmish.
The Inner Circle had a discussion and came back with the only answer that made any sense. The Savior weapons had been tainted with walker blood, or guts, or something. Tara had been hurt but was fine. The assumption was that she’d been shot by the Savior we had working with us – a man with a burned face. His name was Dwight. Dwight hadn’t tainted his arrows.
During all of that, most the POWs had escaped and the little boy Henry vanished. Carol and Morgan went out looking for the boy, Rick for the runaways. One POW, Alden, told us Henry had come into the pen demanding to know who had killed his brother, been overpowered, and most of them fled. Gregory went with them. Henry must have followed them.
The rest of us concentrated on cleaning up the mess and burying the dead while they were gone. Eventually, Carol came back with Henry. Morgan had split off from her to help Rick because he’d given up on finding Henry alive. I went to what passed for bed before the men returned and didn’t really care that none of the POWs were with them.



We had a map marking where Negan would be, presumably from Dwight. Dad wasn’t able to go on the mission, since his leg was still healing, so I went. I didn’t look back – I knew seeing all those little faces bidding me goodbye would crush my spirit.
We found a field. A big, empty field. There was a tree with some kind of suncatchers hanging off it, but no Saviors to be seen. Then suddenly, there were a LOT of Saviors. Surrounding us. With guns. Negan stood with them. Beside him were Eugene and Dwight, but Dwight was obviously a prisoner. Negan had caught him and set a trap. Worse yet, he’d somehow captured Father Gabriel!
Negan spouted off a lot of his signature vulgar pomposity and signaled his people to fire on us. The Savior’s guns exploded in their hands, Eugene and Dwight grabbed Negan, but by the time I realized I wasn’t dead or dying, it was over.
Mostly. Negan had gotten free of Eugene and Dwight. He was sprinting away, toward the tree I’d noticed, and Rick was chasing him. The rest of us followed but they were way ahead of us. Rick caught up to him under the tree and words were exchanged. What words? I don’t know. My ears were still ringing from the guns exploding. Then, somehow, Negan was down. Rick stepped back, said something to Siddiq, and Maggie screamed at Rick. He was sparing Negan’s life, like Carl had asked him to, and Maggie was not pleased.
I can’t say I blamed her. Negan had gleefully bludgeoned her husband to death right in front of her. He’d done the same to the man both Rosita and Sasha loved. In front of them. So many of us were dead because of him. I wanted to scream right along with her, but was stupefied instead.

Another great installment. I had forgotten a lot about what happened during Season 8 so this was a nice reminder. Sounds like the Walker family is still going strong, the father only suffer minor injuries and lives to fight another day.

Seems they've all been affected by Carl's loss, especially since he sacrificed himself to save the others. I also agree that Rick should have done less talking and actually taken Negan out when he had the chance.

Next comes the three year time jump which ends with the case of the missing Rick, and then the 6 year time jump following that.

First jump's only 18 month or so? But yeah, gotta figure out what they get up to in that time period.

Poor lil Stacie had a crush on Carl.

jeanie wrote: First jump's only 18 month or so? But yeah, gotta figure out what they get up to in that time period.

It was actually 3 years later since the comic story had a two year time jump and they wanted to follow that somewhat. And then after Rick went missing then it was a six year time jump so they could age up Henry and Judith.

Duh, I'm so dumb! It's already in the story what the Walkers can do during these time jumps... however long they are.

Part Six: Rebuilding

Despite the fact that none of us were happy with Negan in Alexandria, we rallied. They locked him up in a cell Morgan had built during his time with us, to give Rick options other than killing like with Doctor Pete. Morgan was a total peace freak when he got here, but by the time the war was over, he was scary good at killing. There was talk that he had a history of going off the deep end. He left shortly after the war.
Anne, the woman who had led the garbage people, showed up one day and we took her in. Simon – one of Negan’s lieutenants – had killed every one of her people. I wondered if he was the same guy behind the Oceanside slaughter. As bad as Negan was, wiping out that many people at once went against his way of doing things.
“Gabriella, I need you to join a group making a run to the Sanctuary, if you’re up to it.” Rick called me into one of his ongoing meetings with Dad in order to make the request. “We’ve got supplies for them.”
“Why are we sending them supplies?”
Rick chuckled and, for a minute, really looked like Carl. “Daryl’s running the place now. They’re on our side. They surrendered, remember?”
“I mean, why do they need supplies? Didn’t they have, like, everything we grew and found? They took it from us.”
“She’s a bit out of the loop, Rick.” Dad interrupted me. “Gab, afterwards, the communities divvied all that up. Most of us have managed to grow crops, but the only thing that takes at Sanctuary is corn. And it doesn’t grow well. Eugene’s been turning it into fuel for the cars.”
I studied the toe of my shoe, embarrassed. I should have known that – most of the gasoline had been used up or simply gone flat. We were already conserving fuel as much as possible, traveling by foot or bicycle when the few horses we’d managed to catch weren’t available.
“Are you in? You’ll have to meet Michonne at the gate first thing in the morning.”
“Sure. Sorry I was… you know, about my attitude.”

“Don’t worry about it. Forgive and forget is easier to say than do.” Rick’s eyes drifted in the general direction of the house with the cell in it. “I’ll tell her you’re coming.”
I went upstairs and locked myself in my room. I had my own room now – it was the smallest room, the one that had been Dad and Mom’s, but Dad couldn’t take the stairs any more. He slept in the study, on the sofa Pete had once claimed. I could hear the men’s voices through the floor, talking about acreage and livestock and converting the useless cars into something horses could pull.
None of it seemed to matter. Every time we made progress toward rebuilding, yet another asshole would try to crush us. What would happen when we could no longer bounce back? I flopped onto my bed, pulled a pillow over my head, and cried. For Alex, lost on the road while saving Mom. For Mom. For Pete. Eventually I slept.



Michonne was waiting at the gate, Judith perched on one hip, and a wagon full of produce beside her. The horse cropped idly at the weeds around the gate.
“You’re bringing Judith on a supply run?”
She laughed. “Judith has a few years before she can help on supply runs. Aaron is meeting me here and Judith gets to spend the day with Gracie.”
“Aaron’s not going? That’s strange.”
“I ordered him to.” She made a don’t-mess-with-me face. “He’s running himself ragged.”
“Exhaustion helps you sleep.” I regretted that immediately. Michonne didn’t need to know my problems. “Or so I hear. Dad said all this work lately is better than a sleeping pill.”
“He’s not lying.” Tara magically appeared beside me and, of course, we had to do the fist-bump. “No wonder our ancestors went to bed so early. Just the three of us today?”
Michonne had walked off to pass Judith into Aaron’s care. He carried her and Gracie away, tossed over each shoulder like sacks of potatoes. Judith managed to throw Michonne a kiss between giggles.
I watched Aaron until the gate closed behind us. A snatch of some old song drifted through my head, something about children are the future, and I felt a surge of hope. I almost didn’t recognize it. Seemed like forever ago that I’d felt it last.
Michonne sat in silence while Tara and I gossiped. With the end of the war, brief as it was, there was a fresh crop of budding romances and a bit of a baby boom. “What’s the shelf life on condoms, anyway? Do we have birth control pills?”
A lesbian and a virgin, we looked to Michonne for an answer. “Up to five years, and they don’t instantly become useless. After that date, they’re simply less effective.”
“Well, that explains the lack of pregnant women walking around.”
“I’m sure some of us had those implants, too. I think they last a few years.” I thought for a moment, trying to remember Health Class. “Tied tubes and hysterectomies.” We started naming off methods. Michonne listened to us without contributing, but she had a little smile on her face.
We’d moved on to other subjects when we rolled up on the Sanctuary. They started unloading the supplies while Daryl, Tara, and Michonne talked. The upper floors had no windows to speak of. Corn struggled to grow in soil that could barely support grass. The walkers Negan had kept along the fences were gone, but that seemed to be the only real improvement.
Except for the people. The people were obviously glad to be out from under Negan’s thumb. I didn’t blame them. They’d basically been slaves. One woman dropped a basket of fruit and shot a terrified glance in Daryl’s direction. The last thing she must have expected was for him to come help pick up the mess.
He squinted up at me, still seated in the wagon. “Hey. Give them a hand, would you?” It hadn’t even occurred to me to do that. I’d been too struck by the idea of a place looking so defeated.
“Hi, I’m Cassandra.” The lady who had dropped the fruit pointed out a few of the others and told me their names. “Thank you so much for the supplies. We were rationing what we had, but it ran out.”
“You are on our side now.”
“Most of us workers were always on your side, whether we realized it or not.” She patted me on the arm, thanked Daryl for his help, and carried her load inside. I followed with a laundry basket full of canned food.
The interior was one huge room divided up into an area for each worker – or each family – and it rang with happy chatter and laughter. I doubted that sound had existed under Negan’s reign. Once again, I wondered at Rick sparing that man. If anyone deserved the death penalty…
Tara and Michonne joined the supply train while Daryl ran around, trying to do the job Rick talked him into. “Did we forget anything?”
“Daryl said this is more than enough. He’s got a hunting party out; people he knows he can count on.” Tara wandered off to chat with Rosita, who was there as Daryl’s second in command or something. I had no idea where Michonne was.
“Would you care to facilitate the discharge and organization of these provisions, Miss Walker?”
“Eugene! I didn’t know you were here!”
“This is where I’m most needed.” He said it like I should have known that. I went with him and helped put things away until time to go home.




There was a long period of peace. A bridge was washed out in a storm, along one of the main routes between communities and a joint effort began to fix it. The unrest at Sanctuary was getting worse, out of Daryl’s control, but they showed up and did their work.
I was resting at the work camp when they carried Aaron in. He was bleeding profusely. “What happened?”
“Walkers. Our look out was too busy pounding his – ” Jeff, a Hilltopper, rephrased when he realized who he was talking to. “They got past the lookout. In the confusion, the log pile collapsed onto Aaron.”
Enid had to amputate Aaron’s arm below the elbow. She’d been studying with Siddiq for not quite two years, but Siddiq told her she was ready and he was right. Aaron survived to go home to the little girl he’d adopted. Tensions ran very high after that.
Saviors started coming up missing. I figured they were running off to brave the wide world rather than live under the thumb of Alexandria and Hilltop. Which didn’t make a lot of sense, because they’d been treated a lot worse under Negan. Most of them, anyway.
I had just returned from the site and was washing up by my tent, when a small group of Saviors barreled into camp. They had guns. They weren’t allowed to have guns. Probably half the people in camp pulled their own weapons. The leader informed Carol that the missing Saviors had been murdered, by Oceanside, and talked some other crap. Carol tried to reason with him, but someone fired a gun.
I scrambled up an evergreen, ignoring the needles and sap. The next thing I knew, something exploded. My tree swayed in the shock wave and I fell. I could see people running around shouting, but all I could hear was a ringing sound. By the time my hearing returned, it was over. The bridge was gone. Rick Grimes was dead, sacrificing himself by shooting the TNT on the bridge to stop a massive herd.



Michonne went out almost every day to look for Rick’s body. Search parties joined her at first, but by the time it became obvious that she was pregnant, the only one with her was Daryl. Dad and I watched from the lookout post as the two of them set out yet again. “She just won’t accept it. If he could, he’d be back by now.”
“It is weird that they’ve not found more than his gun.”
“As close as he was to that blast, there may not be enough of him to find.” Dad spoke from experience. Both he and Mom had been combat veterans before I was even born. “Or to recognize, anyway.”
“Possum man won’t accept it, either.”
“Rick was his brother.” We both knew Dad wasn’t talking genetics. “I used to think he was just going out there in solidarity with Michonne, but no. Even when she quits looking, Daryl will still be out there.”
“You need to see Siddiq about your back.” Rosita was climbing onto the lookout. Our shift was over. “Every time I see you, it’s bothering you.”
“He can’t do anything more than he has.” I hadn’t even been aware I was rubbing the ache. “He said after that fall, I’m lucky all I have is a messed-up disc. But thank you for caring.”
Rosita grinned at me. “We’re all in this together.”
On the way home, I teased Dad about checking Rosita out. He had no intention of marrying again, but he was still a healthy straight man and Rosita was… well, Rosita. The younger kids joined us, chattering about their classmates and schoolwork, and we passed Stacie on her way in to school.
“How come she gets to go to big-kid school and I don’t?” Hattie scowled at the recent change in routine. “She’s only a couple years older than me.”
“You just answered your own question, dummy. Also there’s the fact that you’re a dummy.” Fred sprinted ahead, Hattie hot on his heels, both of them laughing. Luke and Leia chased after them, but couldn’t keep up on their shorter legs.
“Back during the war, someone asked me why Hattie didn’t match the rest of the family.”
“That was rude.” Dad gestured to all the kids walking to or from school. “Half the kids alive today are probably adopted. Most of the ones who aren’t have lost one parent or the other.”




Michonne was working on a sort of contract between communities. Something tangible folks could rally around, symbolic and maybe even legally binding. Life rolled along very nicely.
A group, all children except for one woman, threw a monkey wrench into the works. I know that sounds insane, but it’s really what happened. They showed up one day – as groups or individuals occasionally did – and at first everything was great. The kids were excellent hunters and the woman, Jocelyn, had gone to college or high school with Michonne.
We had what amounted to a Halloween party. Carving pumpkins, scary stories by a campfire, even costumes and face paint. A pack of new friends for the children of the community and Michonne happier than she’d been since before Rick’s death.
Then they hosted a sleepover. In the morning, all the children were gone. Jocelyn had turned out to be the Pied Piper. Daryl and Michonne left to track them down.
“Why aren’t more of the parents out here looking?” I paced on our porch, occasionally bumping into Stacie, who was doing the same. “Why aren’t we out there?”
“Daryl’s the best tracker in town. Maybe in the world.” Dad kept his eyes on the gate, where several of the other parents were waiting about as patiently as I was. “The entire town goes stampeding out there, we’re gonna obliterate the trail.”
“Michonne’s center of balance is off because she’s so far along. Daryl should have at least taken someone different along.”
“Michonne can handle herself, especially against an old friend and a bunch of kids. What I want to know is why Jocelyn did this.” Dad shook his head. “And how many times she’s done this before. Does she just go from community to community and carry off the little ones?”
“I wish I’d gone to the sleepover.” Stacie burst into tears. “I could have protected them. Run and got help, if nothing else.”
“You had a perfectly good reason not to go. Cramps can put you out of action even when you’re used to them.” He put up a hand as she flashed from guilt to anger. “Yes, Gabby told me. Having periods is nothing to be ashamed of. I was going to take you to Siddiq if you didn’t start soon.”
Stacie muttered something and returned to pacing. It seemed like forever, but was probably only a couple of hours, before Daryl and Michonne returned. She was bleeding from her belly – not lower, but the actual belly. Siddiq took her straight to the infirmary and Daryl watched the Alexandrian children run to their parents.
Stacie, Dad, and I sprinted to meet ours. Hattie had the twins by the hand, so Fred got to us first. “We thought it was a joke at first. A mean one, but still, just a joke. Then we were too far away to come back alone.”
“It’s not your fault, Fred.” We were all trying to hug him at once. Then Hattie and the twins caught up and joined the frenzy of hugging. “New rule, everyone: You are never, ever, to leave Alexandria without me or Gabby.”
Luke’s eyes grew huge in his little face. “Even when we’re grown up?”

I'm glad the family is still going strong despite everything that's happened. But now I wonder if that's going to change once the Whisperers are introduced?

Should be interesting, as three of them will be in their teens and the twins almost there. Debating Gabby's personal life at this point.

I would think by this time Gabby would be a young adult and probably already have a husband and a child on the way.