Angel

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Daryl

Angel was in the kitchen doing something with Michonne. Their laughter rang out throughout the house. I heard Angel say, "Oh my God, he didn't?" and figured they were talking about me. Michonne had plenty of stories to tell. Depending which one, I may have to get her back for it. Paybacks a bitch.

Rick and I were hanging out in the living room. The sun had gone down, so we had candles lit around the room so we could see. There was a question I had been dying to ask Rick for hours. "Hey, since you got to Hilltop have you had any trouble with the Negan?"

That prick had cost us everything. Too many people we had cared about were dead because of him. I had barely processed that Tara, Gabriel, and Morgan were really gone. I had always held out a small bit of hope that everyone had gotten out somehow. Enid was gone too, but I didn't know her all that well.

"Once we realized that all three communities had been attacked we wandered around for a while trying to figure out what to do. It was like back before we found the prison, spending each night in a different location. Jesus found us one day and I was thankful for that. He's a good guy and resourceful. He had a house with supplies he had been staying at and let us join him. Judith needed stability even if it was just a few days," Rick explained.

"Good thing you didn't let me put him up that tree," I finally admitted.

Rick laughed, "Yeah, good thing." Then he got more serious. "He and I went back to Alexandria one day. We wanted to see if there was anything at all left that we could use. You and I had hidden weapons and I didn't know if they were still there. We needed guns. All we had were knives and my hatchet. But a weird thing happened there." Rick stopped and looked at me.

"Jesus and I saw a black SUV sitting in the road outside the gates. A back passenger door was open. It didn't move for an hour nor did anyone in it. Finally, we threw a rock at it, hitting the roof. Nothing happened. So we made our way up to it and you know what was in there?"

He had me on the edge of my seat. "No. What?"

"Simon was in the driver's seat and Negan was next to him in the front passenger. Both shot dead execution-style in the head."

I saw Rick watching me as his words sunk in. Negan was dead along with his number one. I had wanted to have been the one to kill him. That goal got me through those lonely days after I thought I had lost everyone. A bolt would have been too easy. I spent hours trying to come up with slow, painful ways for him to die. Now a bullet in the brain had already taken care of it. He was dead. About fuckin' time.

"Any idea who did it?" I had my suspicions.

Rick reached into his pocket and pulled out a small intricately carved figure. "I found this on the console in between then both."

I took the figure from Rick. I had seen these before. "Dwight. He did it."

"Yep. He left the bodies for us to find so that we would know they were dead. Jesus and I buried them in shallow graves so none of the Saviors could find them. We used the SUV to haul back the weapons that we hid under the church floor. The building is gone, but we were able to move the debris to get to the stash. After, that we headed back to the Hilltop to start over."

The weight that Rick had carried was gone. Negan had been a thorn in our side since that dick had tried to take the gas truck from Sasha, Abraham, and me. That basically started the war between the Saviors and us. But it was finally over. The war with Negan was, but what about the rest of them?

"I can't believe he's finally dead. I dreamed of dozens of ways to kill that prick. A bullet seemed too easy."

Rick stretched out his legs in front of him. "Easy or not, it got the job done."