Tour Guide ➣ Carl Grimes

47. Physicist's Twisted Cat

Everything happened so quickly. As soon as Hannah realized the explosives weren't going off, there was already a gun pointed in her direction. Behind every Alexandrian stood a Scavenger, guns directed at the back of their head.

It was all too familiar. The cold metal pressed to her skin. The sight of her friends seized once again. Carl was still at the top of the gate, a shutter on his lips as he too realized what was happening. Hannah couldn't watch the defeat that washed over his features. The quick fear that zipped across his face. With a shaky breath, Hannah closed her eyes.

When she opened them, it was Negan who was caught in her gaze.

"You ever hear the one about the stupid little prick named Rick who thought he knew shit but didn't know shit and got everyone that he gave a shit about killed? It's about you," he spoke lightly as he pointed to Rick, the bat swung carelessly over his shoulder, "You're all gonna wanna put your guns down, now."

"No one drops anything," Rick countered immediately and Hannah could see him talking to Jadis, the leader of the backstabbing trash people.

Hannah held tight to the gun in her hand, following Rick's instructions, and waited for the next sign to move.

"You push me, and you push me, and you push me, Rick," Negan continued, "You just tried to blow us up, right? I mean, I get me, my people. But Eugene? He's one of yours. And after what he did-- He stepped up. You people...are animals. The universe gives you a sign and you just shove your finger right up it's ass, I mean come on"

The tension across Alexandria was palpable as Negan laughed to no one but himself.

"Dwight, Simon, chop-chop."

She knew it. Hannah knew Simon was too good to be true. She knew that, in the end, his loyalty would lie where it always had. He was just as much Negan as the man himself.

The two men jumped onto another truck bed and began unlatching a large box of sorts. From where Hannah was stuck standing, her view obstructed by the metal of the gate, she could just make out the reflective material of a coffin.

They stood it up on the bed, allowing Negan space to stand near-by, before disappearing from Hannah's sight.

Cowards

"So you don't like Eugene anymore?" Negan began again from his new spot. His eye's wandered from each of their faces, lapping up the despair. "You guy's gotta like Sasha." Hannah's jaw shivered as the man raised his bat to tap on the coffin. Sasha was in there. She was just there, behind the coffin's door, and there was nothing that could be done. She was both dead and alive at that moment, like a physicist's twisted cat.

"I do too," Negan knocked at the door, "Got her right here, packaged for your convenience, alive and well."

Alive and well.

"Now, I brought her so I wouldn't have to kill all of you, and not killing all of you could get complicated. See, I know there's a lotta fire power left in there, Rick. So, I'm gon' make this simple. I want all of the gun's you've managed to scrape up." He was talking about Oceanside. He knew about Oceanside. "I want every last grain of lemonade you got left, I'm sure Mrs. Patchy still knows where that's at," he added quickly, and Hannah could hear the man whose gun was pressed to her head chuckle, "And I want a person of your own choosing for Lucille."

"Now, Daryl. I gotta get me my Daryl back," Negan pointed to the man who was only feet away from where Hannah stood, "I see you. And the pool table and all the pool cues and chalk. I want it now!" His voice was both demanding and childish as he continued, "Or else Sasha dies. And then all of you. C'mon Rick, just because I brought her in a casket doesn't mean she has to leave in it."