Who: Gretel, Erik, Judith, NPC natives, and later Negan What: Extraction Where: The shopping mall, first. Then the gas station When: During the heat-wave, midday and afternoon Rating: Medium for mentions of violence, language Status: Log, ongoing in comments
Erik didn’t have the faintest idea of where Gretel had ended up, but he knew where she started, and he knew what direction she’d gone in. With how oppressive the heat and humidity was, he didn’t think she could have gotten very far.
Rather than walk like she had, Erik and Judith set off in a large van which, when they found it, had three bench seats in the back. Erik ripped out the two which were unnecessary, leaving them with the closest thing they’d get to an ambulance in this world.
It didn’t take long, driving along the road with the windows down, to find the shopping mall. Their van made no noise as it travelled down the road, fueled not by gas, but pushed along by Erik’s mutation. He slowed down when the mall came into view, but continued down the road towards it. If he were Gretel, the shopping mall, with its parking lot devoid of walking corpses, would seem like the perfect place to investigate to escape the sun.
They’d only rolled into the entrance of the parking lot when he felt movement. As soon as he focused on it, he could feel them: guns.
“This is it,” he said, glancing at Judith. “How far do you think they’ll let us go before they try to shoot?”
Judith peered out at the massive complex, her eyes darting from ever crow’s vantage point on the roof, where she would put a sniper. She did the same for the entrances, where the heavy trucks were set against the doors, likely to keep any herds out, as well as lookeeloo’s.
“I don’t think they’ll shoot at a van,” she told him, frankly. “Unless they’re stupid enough to waste the ammo.”
Erik kept the van rolling forward steadily, and sure enough, they weren’t shot at. They made it most of the way into the parking lot before he actually saw any of the people holding the guns he could feel. There weren’t many of them, anyway, maybe half a dozen, but they were well hidden in the parking lot.
The one he finally saw walked forward deliberately: a woman with dark hair, wearing coveralls, and carrying a hunting rifle. He stopped the van.
“Do you want their weapons?” he asked, without looking away from the woman standing fifty feet in front of them.
Judith smiled at him.
“You know what I like.”
Erik chuckled, turning his head to give her a quick wink, before he turned his gaze back to the woman in front of him. Rather than continue going with the van, he hopped down from the driver’s side, shutting it behind him, and walked slowly forward. He already had the woman’s weapon jammed.
“I believe you have a friend of ours,” he said, his tone fairly calm and neutral. “This can be easy, if you let it be.”
Vivien held her weapon ready, with no idea the thing wouldn’t work if she called upon it. When he got too close, she raised it, her aim level at his chest.
“I agree with you,” she said tightly. “What can you give us for her?”
Erik paused where he’d been walking, and seemed to genuinely think about it for a moment. Then he shrugged, and a smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
“Your lives,” he answered simply, and with a lazy flick of his fingers, her gun flew from her hands. The butt of it gave her a hard enough whack on the head to send her down, and then the gun flew so he could catch it in his outstretched hand.
After that, the reaction was immediate. He felt it before he could see it, the panicked shift in movement that helped him lock onto the guns that were pointed in their direction. While he knew being shot at wouldn’t get them injured, gunshots would draw unwanted attention. The shouting was bad enough as it was, but at least it was short-lived.
With the survivors scattered and unconscious, and half a dozen more guns to add to their armory, Erik turned his gaze back to the van and gestured for Judith to follow him.
Judith quickly stuffed the new acquisitions in the back of the van, the sided up to Erik and gave his handiwork a good long look-over.
“Unless you killed them, they won’t be out for long-” she said, with enough inflection in her voice to hint that even if he killed them, they could still be a pain in their ass. “Let’s get them behind something so they don’t come looking…”
Erik took a quick glance around the area. The only option besides the building they were going into was the array of vehicles scattered around the parking lot. There was, however, an overturned semi with a large trailer attached to the back of it nearby. He reached out towards it, plucking the trailer off of the back of it, bringing it closer and then setting it down carefully.
“We can lock them in there,” he said. “They’ll be fine until we leave.”
Getting them into the trailer took longer than taking care of them had in the first place, but it was made significantly easier by the fact that they were all wearing some type of metal. Once they were all inside, Erik secured it, punching holes out so that air could flow through. They wouldn’t be in there long.
“That should do it, although I imagine there are more of them inside.”
The other survivors inside the complex were as easily dealt with as their cohorts in the shipping container, either knocked out or closed behind locks that would undo themselves when Erik decided they were far enough away. He was able to find Gretel easily enough, mostly by the metal signature of her weapons- all of which were laid out on a table near the guard standing watch by the utility closet. He was left with a lingering concussion like the rest.
Gretel herself was half conscious for most of the ride back to the gas station. Though the water and food she’d been given helped a little, her wound was deep and still constantly seeped through the bandages wrapped tightly around them. Vivien had been right- she couldn’t walk, not even with a crutch; she’d lost too much blood.
She came to on a slightly inclined surface, a long padded bench in the hallway of the station that connected the main wings to the shower rooms, with her injured leg propped up by stacks of dusty, stale smelling novelty blankets to slow the seepage. The last thing she remembered clearly was being put into the back of a vehicle, and vague, distant words in her native language.
“Where am I?” she breathed in German, pale even under the orangish light sent in from the sun shades on the windows. There was someone nearby- she could feel their shadow on her face.
Negan was standing leaning back against the wall opposite Gretel in the narrow hallway. He didn’t know how long he’d been there, since he hadn’t been keeping track, but sometime earlier, he’d relieved Erik and Judith of helping Gretel, and had been waving anyone else off since.
And he really fucking hated that he was doing it, but he couldn’t get himself to leave, either. His face was set in a hard scowl, one that only just softened when she started stirring.
“I’m gonna need you to say that in English, Sweets,” he said, and pushed himself up from against the wall. He grabbed a bottle of water from a small table nearby, which had several more bottles, as well as whatever was left from the first aid kits they’d managed to find along the way. He came to kneel down next to the bench, grimacing at the tightness in his knee, and twisted the bottle open before offering it to her. “You look like shit.”
Gretel focused more on the voice, because she still recognized it so easily, so deeply, that hearing it actually hurt- of course, everything about her hurt at the moment. That, just more so.
“I’m hardly surprised,” she said back in the same tone, just with more breath, forcing herself to open her eyes and set them on Negan’s face. That hurt, too. Her gaze moved to the bottle of water, which she took and - with effort- brought to her lips.
So it had been Erik who brought her to the gas station, with the group that currently occupied it. Part of her was thankful, though tied in thorny knots. She tried to swallow that down with the water, but it went nowhere.
Despite his scowl, there was still concern in Negan’s expression, hidden somewhere behind the hard lines and edges that hadn’t been there the week before. He’d been able to mostly ignore how raw her absence had felt during the week, especially after he’d gotten a crate of hard liquor, but as soon as Erik and Judith had come through the doors with her, it seared burning hot.
“We should get you the fuck back to the hotel,” he said, in a tone that was a hell of a lot more gentle than any he’d used thus far during the week, despite what his words really meant. This was bad. This kind of injury wasn’t the kind you survived in his world, and there wasn’t any reason to beat around the bush.
Several swallows, small enough to manage while laying down, with hands that felt half asleep still from the lack of blood pressure, did little to assuage the stinging wound this conversation was opening. It did cool her down a little, though. Enough to hear what he said with enough mental clarity and emotional foresight to understand what was between the lines.
Gretel breathed in slow, then exhaled the same way, searching his expression with a tired gaze. Accepting this death over so many others she had known in the hotel felt different, and not just because she was outside its walls right now. She understood now, as she had in passing moments before, that she found herself at a certain kind of peace knowing it could possibly be over; that quiet desperateness fueled by the feeling of a love, lost. Several, actually. One after another.
Now that which she lost was staring down at her, but she could still feel the void. Just like she knew she would feel it when that man with her brother’s eyes looked her way.
“Did you send them to find me?” she finally spoke, foregoing what was left unsaid by him in his statement.
Negan let her avoid the subject. It didn’t really bear much more discussion, anyway. Even if she didn’t want to go back to the hotel, she wasn’t in a position to argue about it, and unless there was some fucking miracle, they’d have to bring her back before the sun went down. Her question made him draw in a sigh through his nose.
“Aw, Sweets, you’re giving me way too much fucking credit. I’m not that good of a person,” he said, some hint of wry amusement in his voice, though it didn’t reach his eyes. Then he sighed again, and idly rubbed his fingers through his beard as he shook his head.
“Eric - vampire Eric - knew what the fuck was up when you got hurt. He put up a post on the network,” he explained. “Judith’s Erik saw that shit like, five fucking minutes later. He took Judith and went right the fuck out to get you.”
As fucked up as it was, if it hadn’t been for the week before, Negan probably would have sent Erik and Judith to get her. No, he probably would have gone along with them, too. As it was, he’d seen Eric’s post on the network, and opted not to respond. He wasn’t proud of it, but he wasn’t sorry for it, either.
Very little changed in her expression, save for a shade that fell slow and subtle behind her eyes. There wasn’t a lot of life left in them to begin with, but the more she watched him and let the nuances of what he said sink in, the more she realized their connection had been severed. Even whatever one they’d managed to build before the hotel fucked with them on such a deep level.
She remembered- albeit with fuzzy, drunken details- their conversations in her room over several bottles of alcohol. The first time she slept without scathing nightmares in three weeks.
Gretel breathed out, unable to keep her eyes on him any longer, they simply closed. She was in no position to find anything else to look at, or even put forth the effort to pretend.
“I’ll have to thank them later,” she sighed quietly, the words feeling empty.