f i v e

                                    

                                          
"No," Rick said gruffly, stepping forward. "You talk to me first.
                          
Rick wandered the room while Deanna spoke with Aaron outside, his hands on his hips, and his machete sheathed at his waist. He glanced at the various chotchkies and books that lined the white painted shelves, his patience wearing thinner with each nanosecond that passed.
                          
"I'm Deanna Monroe," the woman began as she entered the room.
                          
"Rick Grimes."
                          
"Are you okay with me filming our talk?"
                          
"Go ahead," Rick said dismissively, peering out the window at a tall tower just outside the wall. "Why film this?"
                          
"We're about transparency here," Deanna told him, jutting her chin at the large, floral patterned chair opposite a coffee table and a black leather couch.
                          
"Please," she said as she took her seat on the leather couch, the camera pointed over her shoulder.
                          
"How long have you been out there?"
                          
"Since the beginning," Rick responded gruffly, perching himself on the edge of the chair and hanging his hands.
                          
"How did you all find each other? Did you know each other before, or—"
                          
"We didn't know each other before," Rick interrupted, talking over the end of her question. He looked around the room again like a caged animal.
                          
"I was a congress person. Ohio. Fifteenth district," she told him, leaning back and clasping her hands together around her knee. "You?"
                          
"I don't think it matters anymore," he said shortly.
                          
"Oh, I know it does," the woman pressed.
                          
"What is this place?" Rick asked, dodging the question again.
                          
"This is the start of sustainability. That's what the brochures we found say. This was a planned community, with its own solar grid, cisterns, eco-based sewage filtration, starting in the low eight hundred thousands. Can you imagine such a thing?"
                          
Rick remained silent. He held his skeptical gaze, his blue eyes shining against the layers of dirt and grime packed into the lines of his face and his beard.
                          
"And they sold them all," she finished with a laugh.
                          
"How'd you end up here?"
                          
"Well, my family and I were trying to get back to Ohio, so I could help my district manage the crisis, and, uh—" she paused to let out a sigh, "The army stopped us on a back road and redirected us here. They were supposed to come later. They didn't. But, there was supplies here, and we made the best of it."
                          
"You put up the wall?"
                          
"Well, there was this huge shopping mall being built nearby, and my husband, Reg, is a professor of architecture, and who he was mattered quite a bit; he got the first plates up with our sons, and after a few weeks, more people arrived, and we had help. We had a community."
                          
"You've been behind these walls the entire time?" Rick asked, his voice dripping with disbelief and skepticism.
                          
"We need people who have lived out there. Your group is the first we've even considered taking in for a long time."
                          
"You should keep your gates closed."
                          
"Why?" Deanna breathed.
                          
"Because it's all about survival now," Rick said, his shoulders moving in the smallest shrug, "At any cost. People out there are always looking for an angle, looking to play on your weakness; they measure you by what they can take from you, by how they can use you to live. So, bringing people into a place like this, now—"