Future Ghosts • TWD

25. The Barn.

Rosie nodded a thank you to Carol as scrambled eggs were scraped onto her plate. She grabbed her fork and quickly looked back to who she had been staring at for the past five minutes:

Glenn.

He was bouncing his leg up and down repetitively, looking back and forth between Maggie and Dale. Maggie was all the way up on the porch at the house with her arms crossed, shaking her head at Glenn, while Dale was standing by the clothes line, nodding his head at Glenn.

They were speaking with their eyes. Rosie hated that. It drove her mad. So she looked down at her plate and preoccupied herself with eating her eggs. She sat on the ground next to the fold up chair Daryl was sitting in. She'd been dying to ask him if he knew about Otis, and she wanted to last night, but by the time she worked up the courage to whisper his name, Daryl was already asleep. So she was postponing it until later.

"Um, guys," Glenn said awkwardly, rubbing his hand across his face.

Rosie looked up, her eyebrows raised. Was he going to reveal what he was talking to Maggie and Dale with his eyes about?

"So..." he breathed out, obviously nervous and unsure, "the barn's full of walkers."

•

Not even five minutes later, everyone was gathered around said barn. Shane was up close to it, peaking between the cracks at the walkers stumbling around inside. He flinched a little when one appeared right in from of him, and he backed away quickly. "You cannot tell me you're alright with this," he said to Rick.

"No, I'm not. But we're guests here. This isn't our land," Rick reminded him.

"Oh, God, this is our lives!" Shane shouted, putting his hat back on his head.

"Lower your voice!" Glenn hissed.

"We can't just sweep this under the rug," Andrea said.

"It ain't right. Not remotely," T-Dog agreed.

"Okay," Shane said as he began pacing back and forth, "we either gotta go in there, we gotta make things right, or we just gotta go. Now, we have been talking about Fort Benning for a long time-"

"We can't go!" Rick stopped him, holding his hand out.

"Why, Rick? Why?"

"Because it's safe here," Carl said, standing next to his mother.

Rick nodded in agreement, but Rosie wondered if there was another reason he wasn't saying out loud. She thought maybe he wanted to stay because of Lori's baby, because Hershel was a doctor. But she didn't even know if Rick knew about the baby yet. She'd been dying to tell someone, or at least ask someone her questions about it, but she didn't want to make Lori mad, so she didn't.

"Just let me talk to Hershel. Let me figure it out," Rick said.

Shane turned around quickly, lashing his arm out in Rick's direction. "What are you gonna figure out?!" he screamed, stalking towards Rick. Rosie hid herself slightly behind Daryl, remembering what she had overheard between Dale and Shane just yesterday, but she still made sure she could see both Shane and Rick.

"If we're gonna stay, if we're gonna clear this barn, I have to talk him into it. This is his land," Rick explained.

Everything had been so tense for the past few days. All the yelling and fighting between everyone- between Maggie and Lori, between Dale and Shane, between Rick and Shane- all of it reminded Rosie of her dad. And it made her feel uneasy.

Dale stepped toward Rick, his hand raised a little. "Hershel sees those things in there as people. Sick people," he said. Rosie admired his ability to just speak his mind, even with the threat of Shane standing a mere six feet away, even after Shane threatened him just the day before. She was sure that she could never be that brave. "His wife, his stepson."