Push and Pull || Maggie Greene

Better Angels

"Dale Could...Could get under your skin. He sure got under mine, because he wasn't afraid to say exactly what he thought. How he felt."

Another person, gone, Just like that. This time yesterday Dale was fighting to save the life of someone he didn't know, and now he's dead. When will we stop losing people? Not that death was a stranger before all of this, but now it's knocking on our door every ten minutes it seems.

"That kind of honesty is rare...and brave."

In the short time that I knew him, Dale helped me, so much. Without his advice, I would have messed up things with Maggie and I, big time. For that, I will forever be grateful to him.

"I'd look at Dale. He'd be looking back at me with that look he had, we've all seen it one time or another. I couldn't always read him, but he could read us."

Dale always said what needed to be said, and he knew exactly what we needed to hear, even if we were too stubborn to accept it.

"He saw people for who they were, he knew things about us, the truth, who we really are. In the end, he was talking about losing our humanity. He said this group was broken. The best way to honor him is to unbreak it, set aside our differences and pull together, stop feeling sorry for ourselves and take control of our lives, our safety, our future,"

Survival was not promised, it never has been. If we are going to live we need each other, it's as simple as that. Being a broken group was almost worse than going at this alone. We have to learn to trust each other more and actually start working together, or else we're fucked.

"We're not broken. We're gonna prove him wrong. From now on, we're gonna do it his way, that is how we honor Dale."

My brother finished his speech and we all stood there for a moment. A moment of silence for the man who had been our moral compass. If only we had followed him sooner.

A soft squeeze to my hand got my attention and I turned to look at the culprit. Maggie was the one who did it, and she gave a slight motion with her head. I noticed that people were starting to break off and head back to camp. We had some packing to do, Hershel was allowing us to move into the house after what happened.

She kept a grip on my hand as she led me back to our camp. Everyone else started to pack up all their belongings and I headed to my tent to do the same. I entered what had been my little sanctuary for the past few days and started to pack up my stuff, Maggie also helping me.

Once everything was put into bags I took one last look around the now-empty tent before picking up one of the bags and my shotgun, Maggie grabbed the last bag, and we stepped outside and walked over to the truck to put it all in the bed. Rick, Daryl, Hershel, and Shane were all standing by it, and Maggie and I joined them.

"Gonna be tight, 15 people in one house," My brother noted as we joined the conversation. "Don't worry about that, with the swamp hardening, the creek drying up..." Hershel started to say.

"With 50 head of cattle on the property, we might as well be ringing a damn dinner bell," Maggie finished as she joined in.

"She's right," Hershel nodded, agreeing with his daughter, "We should've moved you in a while ago,"