Flip Side {Daryl Dixon}

{Drop Everything And Run}

"Hi! I'm Mary. Looks like you've been out on the road a while." The sweet woman smiled softly at the trio standing in their courtyard with wary eyes.

"We have." The brunette answered her as the other two scanned the area for any enemies or secret attackers. So far so good. Nothing looked out of place.

"Let's get you settled and we'll make you a plate. Welcome to Terminus." She held out a plate of pristinely cooked steak towards the trio still standing in an unsure triangle.

"What is that?" Eevee snapped as she eyed the meat with sharp eyes.

"It's steak, honey. I know it's been a while, huh?" The little brunette stepped forward and took the first plate, Merle and Azolla hesitantly following her lead.

"Where'd you get it?" Eevee asked again, something about his place seemed off. It was too perfect, too proper. Nobody leaves their gates unlocked without knowing they had the ability to take out whatever could come through.

"Found some cows outside of town. Probably escaped from a farm and wandered to the city. It's safe to eat if that's what you're worried about." She plastered on a smile and glanced around the courtyard at the few milling people sitting and eating at the round tables and chatting like it was a normal day at a café and not the middle of a downward spiral of shitstorms called the zombie apocalypse.

"I'm sorry but I'm a picky eater- what part of the body was this cut from?" Eevee asks yet another question with a soft smile and an innocent tilt of her head.

"The hamstrings, we always give our guests the best cuts. First impressions matter after all." The Jenner woman hummed and smiled wider with a little laugh.

"Thank you for clearing that up for me. This is a really nice place you have Mary, makes me think of my summer trip to Poughkeepsie." The woman tilted her head in confusion, her bright smile starting to slip off her mouth. Merle and Azolla instantly tensed up at the last word she said, their agreement ringing through their heads.

"Wait you really just want to traipse right through the front door?" Azolla spluttered as Eevee finished up her set of backup plans now that she had the general layout memorized of this Terminus place.

"They have nearly every other entrance blocked off. We'd be spotted and shot down before we could even get to the top. The front is what they're expecting, so we play along until we figure out if it's safe or not."

"And if it ain't? How we gonna tell each other without alerting the rest of 'em that were on to their game?" Merle demands with a quirked brow. "We don't all have the brain power to light a city on our own."

"I've been thinking about that and our word will be Poughkeepsie." The other two looked at her like she had spoken in Klingon.

"What in all fuck is Poughkeepsie?" Azolla demands with a nodding Merle at her side.

"Poughkeepsie is a city in New York but that's not the point. If any of us see something that looks off, work that word into a sentence. Don't just blurt it out, understood?" Her partners nodded in understanding. Unless they claimed to have Turrets just screaming out a random- and probably foreign- word would catch every unwanted attention in the room.

"Okay, and what exactly is this Poughkeepsie standing for? Like potential danger or deadly weapon or...?"

"If you use the code words it's not a hey watch out kind of warning. Poughkeepsie means drop everything and run."

"I've never been, where is that at exactly?" Mary tried to keep the conversation going despite noticing the clear unease of the three.

"It's a lovely city in New York. Really well known for their meats like steak and pork and all that. I just figured you may have a butcher here who may have been there, this is some fine craftsmanship on the cuts." Eevee turns up the wattage on her smile as she noticed that the rest of the people in the courtyard were starting to close in around them like sharks that smell blood in the water.