Alone

Chapter: 8 // hold me love •

On the drive back to Alexandria, with Negan rambling in the background on the walkie talkie about losing one of his men, fat Joey, which was probably our doing, we're stopped short suddenly by a blockade of cars on the highway, a trap that was clearly made by the Saviors.

"Someone's trying to block the way. Gotta be the Saviors." Jesus said. I'm sitting between both Jesus and Carl in the back of the vehicle, Michonne and Rick up front, so the tension was absolutely high.

"Look," Carl says, and alerts us to the right. "There's the base over there." He's right, it's undoubtedly far but we've got a great vantage point from the highway. "Yeah, that's it." Jesus joined. "Must be trying to make it hard to get to them."

"We gotta keep going. We'll move 'em, then we'll move 'em back." Rick dictates. "They don't need to know we were here." He turns the engine off, we climb out the car and Carl opens his door for me and I roll my eyes.

We have no choice but to move them out of the way, and anyway, no one has come up with a better solution than Rick's.

Meanwhile Michonne peers through her binoculars at something, she invites Rick to have a look, and what they discover; a tripwire cobbled together across the road with explosives carefully intertwined down the wire. We stare at it for a hot minute, puzzled, fearful, frustrated, "what's all this for?" Michonne cries.

"Wait- when I was hiding in the back of the truck I heard a couple of them talking about this- this is for a herd." Carl refers to the time he sneaked into the Savior's truck. And I thought Jesus was with him, but judging by Jesus' pinched brows I assume maybe they got separated.

"That's why it's a steel cable, it's not just for one walker. It's for a lot." Rosita replies matter-of-factly.

"We need these explosives." Sasha looks over her shoulder, probably checking for the herd that's supposed to be here any minute.

"Yeah. We have to figure out how to disarm it first." Rick has no clue what his next move is, and we're trying to put our heads together and ponder when Rosita simply lifts a vent up and finds the bomb.

Before she can jump into action, Negan's voice cracks through the walkie talkie in Jesus' hand, he goes on about finding Daryl, something about sending a search party and obviously that means they're going to check Alexandria first. Ron, my arms get goosebumps just thinking about him and what the Saviors would do to him.

"We gotta go,we gotta get there before them but we need these, we need to clear a path anyways." Michonne said. "Yeah. Rosita?" Rick glances at Rosita as she tries to disarm the bomb. She gets the battery out easily, now holding it in her palm.

"First part's done,"

"What now?"

"We gotta unwrap the secondary explosives- the dynamite, the RPG's. Make sure these casings are not messed up and do not mess them up either. This thing could still blow." She orders, and I'm utterly impressed by her knowledge but mostly her demeanor, how she never loses her composure even under tons of stress. I guess her losing Abraham made her mentally numb.

"Y'all heard her, let's go." Everyone pans out, individually working on our own explosives but there was more than enough to go around and a few of us.

We collect one's we've already done and that Rosita approves as long as there are no dents and tears and stash them in the trunk. "Dad, look." Carl shouts, pointing down the highway at the herd as they pile in seemingly faster than normal.

"Okay, there they are. But they're far, we still have time." Rick proceeds to clip of more dynamite, despite the fact that there is a herd coming and they might be far but they're still coming for us.