Cleaning House || the Walking Diaries || Ash, Rick and Ric
The morning was there. Alaric woke exhausted, always a bad sign, but not an uncommon one. He rubbed his eyes, thought over strategy. He and Rick had been teaching people to shoot and it was going okay; okay, not great, but since the occasional shambling undead American wandered onto their training ground and got quickly despatched he was feeling reasonably confident about it.
Reasonably.
He dragged himself off his bedroll and scratched his head, and as always one of the first thoughts he had was ‘where’s Buffy? She’d better still be alive’. Today though it was quickly chased out by the much more urgent ‘today’s the day we clean out the Lockwood manor. Tomorrow we move out of this stinking bar for good.’
It was a very sweet thought.
He stumbled to the kitchen. A lot of the faces still looked nervous as hell, and Alaric couldn’t blame them. Still he kept his own face neutral and upbeat. “Come on, guys,” he said. “We’ll be fine. You just focus on packing up the gear and getting it into the cars. We’ll be back in a few hours with news about moving on. It’s gonna be great.” There was some mumbled protest about such a small group going in to do the dirty work, and Alaric nodded. “I hear you. We’ve decided to take Brad (he had managed to stop calling him red-shirt guy), Michelle and Terry. Okay? So that’s seven. Even that’s a risk. But the rest of you… no. You’re staying here, and I’m not arguin’ about it.”
Exactly how he had never managed to introduce Rick and Ash yet was a bit beyond him but it had only been a couple of days, and their schedules had conflicted. So when he saw them both approach the breakfast table, he gave a smile.
“Whole crew’s together at last. Rick, this is Ash. Ash is a friend of mine from Boston, just lucky we caught up when we did. She’s a hell of a fighter. Ash, this is Rick. Still has that Sheriff sheen and he really knows what he’s doin’ with firearms. And his son, Carl, who can shoot about as well as me.”
