Shoe Thief

🧚🏻‍♀️ The Walking Dead - Year 6 Part 1

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Emanuel "Manny" Newman Location: Hospital/Medical (B) Skills: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

It seemed Lisa was determined to stay. He was more then find letting her go early but she insisted on finishing this and he respected that kind of work ethic from her. Manny did take note of Amelia again passing through medical probably still working her own job for the day. He did find the banter between Lisa and Doc a bit funny as they walked along. It reminded him of simpler times of when he had first started his own dentistry and everyone had to act professional, despite all the jokes and banter that they were doing on a daily basis. He missed those days, but it was nice to see that it was still a possibility now even with corpses deciding they no longer wanted to be dead anymore.

Manny gave a wave to Doc as him and Lisa went for the cleaning supplies. "Alright then. Let's get the evil dirt monster cleaned up." With Lisa showing him where the cleaning supplies were Manny felt confident he could find them again in the future, which added yet another win to Manny's daily achievements. Lisa sorted out the needed cleaning supplies and Many got to carry the broom and dust pan, bowl. On a stick. "So, did you have a fun time while I was gone? Or was that planter incident the most exciting thing today. If so, still a pretty exciting afternoon if I do say so myself." He was hoping it was more exciting then the funeral he went too. He felt odd going today, but he felt like he had to pay respects to the people that died, and their deaths lead to the direct events that made it so he could live.

Once back to where the mess had been made Manny got to work getting as much of the bulk of dirt picked up so mopping could be done. "You know, when I spent all those years in medical school I didn't think I would be cleaning up potting soil as often as I did this late into my career for medical work. Kind of funny to think about, but there are a lot of plants in any doctor's office it seems. I wasn't a huge fan of them, but I had to admit they looked nice. My partner insisted on it so to hell with it, all the plants. Turned into the stereotypical doctor's office right then." He chuckled at that thought. He never got the love for plants in a work place until his husband pushed him for it, then he found himself begrudgingly liking it too. "A little something to "Pretty up the place" he would always say."

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Hunter Monroe Location: Cell B Skills:N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Ted lit up his smokes as he informed Hunter getting pot of any kind would not really be possible in that situation. He shrugged not caring too much. HE had only had it once in his life and that was after meeting Pete. Ted did make a comment about nothing left to lose, and Hunter had to admit, he fit that area rather well and could see the connection. Ash though, had more then just simple words to say towards Hunter. As he spoke Hunter sat up to listen to what he had to say and, found himself honestly kind of speechless for a while. He honestly found himself stunned, he wasn't sure if he should take the compliments, confront him with some of his comments trying to justify himself, or if he should try something else.

When Ash was done Ted made his own comments about Maddoc and Nikki, but Hunter was so focused on what Ash said he struggled to take note of it. "Wow... That was. A lot." He stood up off his bed and walked to the bars facing Ash. "To answer your question though, no. I don't know when to shut up. I am quiet when I should speak up. And I scream when I should shut up. For the most part, the latter just hurts me though." He was still unsure how to respond to the rest of the information. The question was something that he at least had thought about for much of the last few years. Even landing in jail here, only really hurt him even if it wasn't needed he land up there should he keep quiet. "You know... you kind of sound like my dad. The last time we talked before I joined. I didn't get what he was saying until I got back from basic, But I think... I see what you're trying to say." He seemed to be visibly struggling with what to say or speak. "Why... Why do you even happens to me? I lost my shit on your friend, I have cussed out people who actually have an understanding of the military and who you'd probably get along with better." He stopped and turned as if looking for his next thoughts.

He took a breath and turned back to face Ash, but was still struggling for words. "I... I have no idea what the fuck I am doing here man. Everyone here is like, "you were military so you get it" but like... My whole fucking career consisted of basic training, and getting deployed to shitty security details in corpse bait city. And like... How well.. do you remember those early days? Where the infected... looked almost... Alive. That was my career, trying to tell them from us. They gave us guns, and told us to keep people in line while keeping the dead at bay. None of it made sense then, and none of it makes sense now." He took a breath and struggled on his words again. His heart racing he tried to finish his thoughts. "I... want to do better. I do. But the military wasn't the way to do it then. And now... this place reminds me very much of what was going through my head as all of that built up. This is like... the first settlement I have come across since this started that wasn't... gone. And I was ready to get better. After how today, last night, and quarantine went. I highly doubt I'll be able to stay much longer Ash. And even less likely that they will ever let me touch a gun if I do stay. And I hope to god you are wrong about ever being needed like that again." He left it at that. He already felt like he talked too much, and was pushing his luck and the patience of everyone around him. Including himself.

🧚🏻‍♀️ The Walking Dead - Year 6 Part 1

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Emanuel "Manny" Newman Location: Hospital/Medical (B) Skills: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

With the pot off and things seeming to move along, all that was left to take care of was getting Doc and Lisa off the ground. Which, Doc finally being fed up with the situation just picked Lisa up and and set her down, getting up on his own. Seemed both Lisa and Doc were fed up with the situation by this point. "That... that works too." Doc did a simple check on Lisa to make sure she was okay, then did himself. Manny took note of the tattoo as he did so, but held off pushing about it for now. This seemed like a bad time to ask with everything going on. It didn't stop Manny from taking note of it, and he wondered who the name on it was to the doctor. Someone close he guessed.

Mary had told the mixed group of tumblers with those involved to clean up the mess. Lisa had already started going for the cleaning supplies and Manny figured to follow with her for a moment walking by her side to get the cleaning supplies. "Hey Lisa, you've seemed like you have had a busy day. My day has been relaxed all things considering. So if you want to get out of here Ill go take care of the dirt and such. Just get it cleared with... I guess Doc before you leave. It's not too bad and I should be able to handle it. Plus, an old man like me? I'm new here, and have nothing to do after work. Plus, I spent the day outside and could use some air conditioning time. Go out and have fun with whatever young people have fun with now a days." The AC bit was true, but it seemed like Lisa was having a rough day and could use some breathing room and a break. Plus, Manny felt bad that he had been away all afternoon as Lisa worked. "I don't know where the cleaning supplies are now though, so if I could get help there that would be nice. Then we can go clear this with Doc so you can get out of here for the night." Manny would be content with some air conditioning, casual conversation with whoever was still here, and then once home a good book. If he had time after cleaning though he could go around and see what things were like after the work day.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Hunter Monroe Location: Cell B Skills:N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

It appeared that things were starting to look interesting for the soldier boy. Cage made some comment about brains that Hunter paid little mind too. But now he was intrigued with the conversation as there was people and something to talk to other then a pile of people goo. He followed along long enough for Cage to give Ash the rundown. Hunter felt bad that the man had been left with the restroom on his own, and wondered if they would put him back on it once the other one was done. Hopefully it would be easier then it was before. Hunter did give a little chuckle at Cage's comment about choking to death. "Awe, glad you are so concerned with the well being of the prisoners you're supposed to watch." He did wonder what Cage did more specifically since he didn't seem to watch the prisoners (In person at least), and he didn't maintain the cells. After he left though Hunter did sit back down on his bed. "Oh yeah. Gotta worry about little old me huh? Unarmed, skinny as a stick, I bet I could count out all of my own ribs. Maybe even the..." He stopped and had to think about it for a moment. "The... Whatever the fuck the two bones on the arm are. I don't know I'm not a doctor." He said with a shrug.

Hunter looked at the guy that came down with Ash, offering up smokes. Hunter was ready to point out how foolish it would be to light up something like that in a confined space, and the effects of smoke. Then he thought about it, and realized he had probably already done worse to his lungs years ago. Not enough to effect them now, but enough that in 15-20 years time should he live that long he may have problems. In the end, Hunter just shrugged. "If it's tobacco, no thanks. If you have any pot I'd be up for it. If not whatever. Thanks for the offer though." Hunter wasn't huge on pot, having it only once in his life but it helped him relax then. Plus, what had he to lose now?

He did give a glimpse over to Ash had was visibly trying to come up with words to say. "sorry to uh... leave you like that. Wasn't my plan to end up in here if I am being honest? Hopefully the woman's room wasn't too bad." He felt bad that Ash got left like that. And he knew from in here there wasn't much he could do to make it up to the man. "IF it makes you feel better, I'm not likely to try to grab you through the bars. Lack the strength, and the most viable weapon in the room would be that poor fuck's tooth. You know how intimidating the tooth of a dead man's tooth is nowadays? Actually... I think everyone should know by now. If not. they're probably already dead." He shrugged off that thought too. Now that the cleaning team was here, there wasn't much he could do about it now. Plus, Cage seemed very much like the person who would rather let a hostage die then let Hunter out. "So... if either of ya need me. Ill be in my room." He laid down and would listen to whatever either of them had to say. But now that he had talked, he wasn't really sure where to take his thoughts from there.

🧚🏻‍♀️ The Walking Dead - Year 6 Part 1

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Emanuel "Manny" Newman Location: Hospital/Medical (B) Skills: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Failing to get the pot off Lisa was a rather harsh blow. She had been down a while now on poor doc and it seemed she and doc just needed a break. SB came over with her own thoughts on the matter, and was ready to end this right here and right now. "Thank you." He said to her once she got the pot off Lisa. Lisa herself then made an attempt to get up but it appeared that after what she had went though she was having a rough time with it. "Here, let me help you there." Manny took her hand and tried to get a good lift going. He thought he had decent footing, and seemed like he might be able to do it this time. Sadly he wasn't as fortunate as he would have liked.

His age started to show again and he made no progress. He cursed himself a bit, he wasn't sure if there was a leverage issue or if there was a simple raw strength issue. But he couldn't get this done. "Sorry..." He let go catching his breath. Thankful this wasn't a life or death situation. But what if it had been? What if this was a situation where he couldn't do what needed to be done and people could die because of it? Was it a sign he was getting too old? Or was the dentist turned field medic over thinking things? He hoped the last one, but he would be getting close to the age he considered retiring at originally anyways. Chances are SB would have to help Lisa again, or maybe they could do better next time.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Hunter Monroe Location: Cell B Skills:N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Hunter laid down on the bed in a state of between being awake and sleep. Sleep was a great way to pass time, but Hunter wasn't a fan of the dreams that followed it. With nothing new to distract his thoughts it became too easy to dose off. He got tired a lot faster nowadays compared to years ago when he could function for days before he collapsed. He wondered if that was because he was a teenager then, or because the current times have just worn him down to the point where it didn't take much to tire him out. Or maybe in this case it was more of the boredom getting to him, and the lack of his traditional stressors that kept him going day to day. So Hunter found himself in a state between being awake, and being asleep.

Hunter's Stadium Day Dream

Hunter's dream state led him back to years ago. He found himself in full fatigues, a gas mask on his face, and his old M-249 SAW in his hands. A staff Sergeant had grabbed Hunter by the door by his jacket and pull him close. "Private, you're with me. We got a job to do." Hunter knew the man had said more but in the dream he said nothing else to him. The staff sergeant as well as others from his scattered company had started to push inwards on the stadium. Saving what refugees they could, and rallying what soldiers might still be inside. The refugees were sent back down the path that had been cleared and was now being secured by another mixed squad. As the mixed squad had started to use up the ammo supply, the staff sergeant called a halt to the advance as he pulled another magazine from his vest. He gave the order to hold this position and let whoever else was still alive come to them. Hunter remembered protesting, the first time he had spoken since security inside the stadium fell apart. "Sir, it's a blood bath in there, we can't expect anyone to be able to fight their way out of that without... us?" It wasn't the strongest argument he had on him. In the spur of the moment, it was the only words he could form. "Ammo count private, we don't have the ammo to fight forward and expect to do any good."

Hunter looked at his own weapon. He remembered doing a count that morning on his own personal ammo supply. The unit was still stocked for ammo, but he had no idea where that ammo was now. On his person though, he had almost 600 rounds of ammo. While two of his squad mates carried another 200 rounds. Looking at his gun now, he could see the end of the belt of ammo. He checked his person to see the last belt of ammo. Another 100 rounds. He wondered if he had lost some. Or if he had actually used that many trying to get out and then fight his way back in with this mixed group. Gun shots started up again as the next wave of infected broke into the tight hallway. Hunter remembered the controlled burst fire that his unit answered with as they held the line. Hunter saw the last of his ammo get used up, and spent what felt like forever trying to reload the gun in his hands as the rest of his unit kept firing. They were flooding in now, from the other hallways, from the back rooms, from the back end of this hall, from the stadium itself. For every one they killed ten more came to replace it. They had fired off so many rounds that the new infected who came in had to climb over bodies and many times would just trip and keep crawling. Hunter had finished reloading right as he heard a squad mate call "Out". Then another. Hunter open fired just in time to hear the staff sergeant shouting at someone. He had trouble making it out over the gunfire but it sounded something like, Get back here!

THUMP. Hunter recognized the sound from basic training, someone just fired a grenade into the approaching crowd. They were packed nearly shoulder to shoulder now closing distance. He ducked in anticipation for the explosion. He saw the blast explode seeming to vaporize a few of them, including one that looked like his old English teacher. He saw others flown and thrown great distances, and many more getting limbs blown off and burnt. He got up and got ready to open fire again, only to watch those who had been blown to smithereens start standing back up as if nothing had happened. The ones who had lost legs crawled towards them as if that is how they always moved. Many who had guts blown out started walking like nothing had happened. Those on fire didn't even seem to notice. The ones who had lost their arms seemed most inconvenienced out of all of them, struggling to get back up with little or nothing to lean on. He wondered, did any die from that? He looked around a bit to see more of the squad missing. One of his squad mates was reloading the grenade launcher like it was his only option to survive, one had drawn a sidearm, another was panicking, and frantically searching about probably out of ammo. He looked down to see the infected who had taking the brunt of the grenade, the head of the English teacher looking monster. Just the severed head opening and closing it's jaw, trying it's best to bite at Hunter. Looking back he wondered if it was trying to move, as if the motion of the jaw would roll the head somehow.

Hunter pointed his weapon at the severed head and fired off a burst longer then he intended into it. "What the Mother Fucker!?" Then he saw how close the horde was. He saw the net grenade flying this time, and land right through the torso of one of the infected, and do nothing. No explosion, no nothing. Two words came to Hunter's mind at that moment as he started to run out of ammo. "Oh shit". He fired until the last of his ammo got used up, and looked around to see he couldn't find the staff sergeant anywhere. Had he retreated? Where was the squad? He realized he had turned around, let his back face the dead. He turned to meet them right as one had grabbed his uniform. "FUCK FUCK FUCK!" He panicked, trying to shove it off panicking. Then he remembered, he's a soldier. He has weapons, and this freak didn't. He grabbed his sidearm suddenly thankful and feeling like an idiot for complaining about having to carry even more gear. "DIE MOTHER FUCKER DIE!" That was the phrase that came to mind, the one his training sergeant had told him to keep in mind when handling his saw. To help him time the bursts to keep consistent fire without using all his ammo. Though he ended up doing just that. Firing 15 rounds point blank into a single infected. It fell dead, though he's not sure which round killed it. But since that was the only magazine he kept for the gun, and he couldn't find the rest of the unit, he booked it for the exit. Passing by the new bodies and the new infected as he ran still not sure where the rest of his squad went.

Hunter snapped out of his day dream for a brief moment shaking his head. He didn't like nodding off in the best of conditions. It left him vulnerable, and he still didn't know how his current situation would play out. Even by dinner time he didn't know what things would be like in here. He had spent hours locked in a room with dead people bits. And he had lost track of time again. He didn't know if he had been asleep for a few seconds or a few hours. Was it the next day? No... It didn't feel like that much time had passed. Maybe an hour or two... maybe seconds. Hunter got up and rested his head on the bars. "...this fucking sucks." He simply stood there standing just to keep his blood flowing and to stay awake. He wasn't too tired, but tired enough that if he wasn't doing anything and got bored he could go off to sleep even if for a short bit. Mostly he needed something to do to keep his mind and or body active.

🧚🏻‍♀️ The Walking Dead - Year 6 Part 1

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Emanuel "Manny" Newman Location: Hospital/Medical (B) Skills: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The scene was definitely one for a photo book. But as Manny lacked a camera and was the only one on his feet, he was in no position to stand around and make witty jokes. Doc had made a comment about helping, and Lisa probably wasn't laughing at his joke for more reasons other then the pot on her head. "Alright don't worry. I got you." Lisa had made another attempt to remove the pot, but didn't seem to make much progress. Manny gripped the pot with both of his hands and got ready to pull. "Don't worry, in my youth they used to call me, "The Spanish Bear"." Unfortunately there were a few problems with that statement now. The first being, Manny was not a youth anymore. And second, his Spanish only covered basic conversations. As he got into school being the strongest person around meant little to Manny, and mostly cardio was enough to keep him physically active enough to avoid health problems as long as he kept at it and actively.

Manny pulled the pot, and had little luck in trying to wedge it off. With a frustrated grunt he tried again, but no luck. "Well. It appears I have gotten old..." he said with a defeated sigh. He stopped uselessly tugging and tried to figure out what else could be done now to get this fixed. "Okay, what if we both try this at once? Surely between both of us we could get this thing off." Sometimes Manny wished being young and the strongest person around. Though looking back his choice to change his life was still the best he could have made. Even if it did mean most of his post childhood exercise was mostly cardio. Though even that was starting to get challenging for the old dentist. A part of him wondered if it would be better to get doc freed first since he was likely stronger then Manny and three people would be more likely to get the pot off. Or if it would be better to just try to get the pot off and free Lisa asap. "Just... If you want to do this at the same time, just give me a sign and we can work together to get this off." He wondered again about getting doc out, but he worried that he might not be strong enough to do that on his own either without help. He figured at least with getting the pot off that is something him and Lisa could work on together.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Hunter Monroe Location: Cell B Skills:N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Jail was still boring to Hunter, but he had to admit watching Cage ramble and rant was kind of funny. He wondered if when he had his own breakdowns if other people thought he was funny. Though Hunter was glad he got some kind of answer from cage. Even if it was simple. For hunter it had seemed many times when he asked questions it was either bad timing, vague answers, or threats. Sure, much of that was his own doing, but he still liked getting a strait answer from time to time. Even if simple.

Cage's answer on why he didn't just clean up the mess himself seemed to just be it wasn't in his job description. So he left it. It did make Hunter think what Cage was supposed to be doing as a warden since he didn't do much for the cells it seemed, and he wasn't watching the prisoners, or himself in this case. Hunter didn't bother to think too much past that. He had a feeling if he asked he would probably get met with some kind of comment to backwardly justify it. His rant went on for a bit, hunter paid it some mind but again not a lot.

Eventually his warden left to make some kind of call. Probably to call someone to clean up the mess because... He was either too busy or couldn't be bothered. After he left Hunter chuckled to himself a little. "And the winner of the "Not my Job" Award goes to, Warden Cage!" He did in a quiet voice in the tone of a game show announcer. He took another look at the bloody remains and sighed. "Pretty sure that's a health hazard. But hey, it's just me so who cares right?" He shrugged it off and went back to laying on his bed. The longer he stayed here, the more he thought that maybe this isn't the place to try and sort himself out.

🧚🏻‍♀️ The Walking Dead - Year 6 Part 1

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Emanuel "Manny" Newman Location: Bus (Assembly) --> Hospital/Medical (B) Skills: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Nothing was being said anymore. It was surprisingly peaceful for the former dentist who had a tendency to talk all the time. Manny took note of how Alexander and Thalia interacted with each other. They were protective of each others, and had a connection that seems pretty unique to just them. Manny could appreciate that, and was glad for them. Two of the least social people he knew, finding some protective comfort in one another. Manny took another look around the bus to get an idea of what was happening. They had just passed through the gates, meaning that Manny would get a chance to help Lisa out and finish things up.

Then what seemed out of nowhere the whole bus came to a sudden stop. Manny found himself jerking forward, but had caught himself before he hit his head on the seat in front of him. He was sore for sure, but it was better then a direct hit against the seat. "I think I am getting too old for this..." There was some cussing, some grunts of pain, confusion. But overall things seemed okay. A little shouting as well. "You know... I think I am ready to go back to the days when I walked to get where I needed to go." He said in a still catching his breath tone towards Alexander. The bus eventually made it back to moving towards assembly.

When the bus finally stopped Manny stepped off ready to be back on the safety of his own two feet. On his way back to medical he made sure to give a friendly goodbye wave to Alexander and Thalia. When he finally got to medical things seemed like a mess to say the least. Lisa was on the ground covered in dirt, and some kind of planter container. Manny had only in recent times gotten into plants so he wasn't sure exactly what kind. But he made his way over to Lisa. "Looks like you're in the middle of something. Want me to come back later?" He said with a little bit of a joking tone. Between the heat outside and the excitement from bus Manny mostly needed a moment to catch up to himself. Given a moment to do that and he could help with the pot.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Hunter Monroe Location: Cell B Skills:N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Hunter sat on his bed looking for anything to pass the time. That came sooner then expected for Hunter though as he heard the heavy footsteps of none other the Cage making his way to the basement. He seemed like he had more then his share to complain about. What through Hunter off was Cage asking him if he had eaten lunch today. Seemed odd as up to this point Hunter's impression of the man was someone who couldn't be bothered to do much unless he had to do it. "I ate yeah. Why? Does it effect when I get to have dinner or is there some other reason?" He wasn't sure what to expect, but he found the question suspicious. Some things to Hunter felt like petty reactions from people here, others seemed more professional. Part of him wondered if it was a question to see if they could afford skipping his dinner because he had already eaten and was being punished. He wasn't sure what to make of it. Hunter soon realized he had been gripping the edge of the bed rather hard. Hard enough that when he let go and looked at his hand he could see the imprint on his fingers from where he held it. He figured it was more of where his mind kept going towards, Cage reminded him a lot of someone from his past that he would rather not think about. He had to keep telling himself that Cage was not that man, as Hunter was there when he had died. That man back then was also the reason for some of Hunter's worst scars. The cup up fingers, the slashes across his back, the gunshot wounds. The big gash across his arm.

Hunter had to remind himself that Cage, was not that same person. For now not an enemy either. An asshole sure. But there was a difference between an enemy and an asshole. At first at least. "Having a rough day huh? Mind if I ask why if it's such a problem you don't do it yourself?" Hunter was pretty set on the man probably felt he couldn't be bothered. But he had nothing else to do so he figured he would ask, pass some time. Get to know the person who held the keys to the outside world. Plus, maybe he wasn't an asshole as much as Hunter thought he was. Or maybe he was and knowing for sure would be nice. Plus if they could work out some kind of positive relationship maybe he would let Hunter have something to do.

🧚🏻‍♀️ The Walking Dead - Year 6 Part 1

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Emanuel "Manny" Newman Location: Bus Skills: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The bus ride was nice. The AC kept things cool and comfortable, and with that Manny had another chance to chat with Alexander. "Yeah. You're right there, the chance to give a proper burial was nice." He did chuckled a bit with the quote from Alexander's former sergeants comment. "It sounds like a plan then. Let's "Not Fuck Up"." Sure, it's not like anyone was trying to fuck up. But at least now they had the ability to remove much of the risks and situations that had been present before. Granted that came with it's own set of challenges, but a lot less that lead to someone dying now. He took note of Thalia saying thank you, but he wasn't sure who it was directed towards, so held off giving a reply back. He remembered more then one occasion where he said something or replied to something that didn't need to be spoken about and made the situation seem more awkward. So he let it go for now and Let Thalia thank whoever she wanted to Thank.

The plan now? Go back to camp, check in to see whatever tasks are left and move onto dinner. Where then there might be more work to do. That was honestly a bit of relief to Manny as he didn't want to leave Lisa with all the work. Though if there was still work left now that would probably mean more work for her. If there was still work left he could always ask that she can get sent home and Manny can touch up things himself so that Lisa wont get stuck with everything. Though if it's all already done then it didn't matter too much he guessed. Maybe the next day he could take on more tasks for her to give her an easier day. Or depending on how currency and credit worked here maybe he could buy her a drink for making his first day here a present one. one thing for sure though? Almost dinner time, and like the night before likely another fish meal. They weren't bad, and it was a nice cooked meal.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Hunter Monroe Location: Cell B Skills:N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

To Hunter's surprise, there was no rat. Maybe it was his paranoia or his mind playing tricks on him. Or maybe just a surprise. But it was a damn hamster. He relaxed a bit setting his feet back down on the floor and looking at the little creature. "Hi there. You alone down here too?" He spoke with a soft and calm tone. A ton that in normal situations would feel very non threatening. It didn't help him much as soon after the little critter decided to leave back into it's hole. "yeah. Must be nice huh." This left Hunter to think with a little bit of a more refreshed mindset. What was the plan after this? If he got to stay he would be watched like a criminal no matter how things went. And it was clear that Hunter was not a good mix with the locals here as well. But if he left what then? They would take Izibel from him. Maddoc made that clear enough already. And to add to it, he had no where left to go. If he stayed he wouldn't likely get Izibel back either though. With what he saw for the situation, it was a lose lose. He figured he could maybe go back up north? Go back to his old family home and...

He wasn't sure what would happen after that either. He had spent the majority of the last 5 or 6 years searching for whatever remained of his family with no real progress. What was considered his entire adult life. He knew where they lived, but he was no detective. So what? go home and start over? maybe. But after all this time what trail is left? He could wander around and inspect each walking corpse to see if he missed some, but he figured that wouldn't do much for him either. He wondered about going north from there, he did technically have family that way too, but they haven't been on good terms with his parents since Hunter was a little boy.

He started having trouble focusing again. Though this time for another reason, he was starting to get hungry. He figured that might mean he was getting closer to dinner which would be nice. Though these days it felt like he was always hungry. He was severely under weight, he had many days where he would shut down emotionally and even if he had food wouldn't eat it. And he hadn't been functioning too great since the apocalypse started anyways. He know he almost went into shot once from the weight he had lost since this started so that had helped him get through those worse moments. So now, food seemed nice. He wondered how much longer was left until then.

🧚🏻‍♀️ The Walking Dead - Year 6 Part 1

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Emanuel "Manny" Newman Location: Grave Yard Skills: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

It was time to leave now. Manny still felt like he should say more, but he had nothing to say and all of his words at this point would seem more like saying something to say something then for anything else. No, what he said before was enough. If he wanted to say more he could at a later point in his life. There were a few awkward exchanges between people, a few nods of approval, and a few more goodbyes. Manny was done though. He walked his way down towards the bus, taking note of Bass collecting the weapons. He found himself running late as Atticus pointed out he was the last one left. Manny made sure to unload his shotgun before passing it back over to Bass. "Sorry about earlier, there were better ways to point out my frustration, and that was far from the best. So I'm sorry for that outburst I had before." He handed the gun and the shells over without anything else to say.

Manny made his way on the bus, letting the nice air conditioning cool him down. The heat was brutal outside and Manny was glad to be out of it for now. He took note of Alexander sitting by himself. He worried the days were starting to get to his fellow Baby Boomer. Manny sat himself down next to Alexander and gave him a small smile. "I don't think we'll have too many more of these. Not like this at least." Sure, no matter what people were always going to die. But hopefully the time of old age and challenging sickness would take the bulk of it was coming soon. A time where the threat of walkers and people would be so small that if the weather was nice people could choose to walk out towards and say good bye at their own pace and leisure. A chance that things might feel normal, even if different. If that was even possible anymore.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Hunter Monroe Location: Cell B Skills:N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Prison was rather boring for the soldier boy. He had little to hold his attention other then the ants, and the remains of the dude they were taking back to the nest. Which he found kind of creepy. He wondered if walkers would be more or less scary if they took bits of people back to a nest of some kind. He decided more, that would imply some kind of hive mind or cooperation and walkers with a strong ability to think and work together was not a fun thought. He liked the idea of being able to sit on top of a stone or brick structure and be able to blast off round after round into the undead's head and the other around gave no shits what happened to the ones who got shot. Granted if they were a hive mind would they care then either? only partially minded cannon fodder probably not. Thinking about these random things were nice. It was a nice distraction until he burnt the idea out in his head. At this point though he needed a new distraction, his mind was starting to wander to less then pleasant memories, less then pleasant thoughts.

He wasn't sure if this was some cruel present from the universe, but he got his distraction from his own thoughts. "Mother Fucker?!" pulled his feet up from the cot the moment he saw the rat. Given a chance to let the shock of the situation pass he fell back into less then pleasant thoughts, but this time not focused on memories. "Of fucking coarse. Fuck you little shit head and fuck this place." He sat back down on the cot, but keeping his feet up. With not much better to do he sat and watched the rat. It was something doing... something. And it was nice to keep an eye on it to make sure it didn't bug him.

🧚🏻‍♀️ The Walking Dead - Year 6 Part 1

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Emanuel "Manny" Newman Location: Grave Yard Skills: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The funeral was coming to a close. Most everyone had something to say to the dead, and some had more to say beyond that. He got the attention of Alexander, and returned with a simple nod, and a smile of appreciation as well. Manny still felt out of place as being probably the only person here who had never met anyone who had died, but he was still alive because of those who were dead, and Alexander helped him feel a little more welcome to be able to say that thanks to them. Lola and the others caused enough commotion to give Manny a chance to fight back, and Gavin died soon afterwards. He would never be able to get something like that out of his head. He wondered if his own death would have that kind of significance? Or if age would simply take him in his sleep. He wondered how many more were going to die like that, dying to give someone else a chance or as a chance to avenge someone else?

He clenched the shotgun in his hands tight. The head was harsh for the old man, and he complicated unloading the gun again. He didn't think it was hot enough for him to pass out or anything, but he was worried if something like that were to happen and he were to clench the gun wrong as he went down and pull the trigger. So he kept his hand tight on the grip itself just in case so even if it slid a bit he shouldn't graze the trigger.

Atticus eventually gave the announcement that things would be wrapping up. If anyone had anything left to say this would be the time to do it. Manny personally didn't, but seems not much wanted to be said anymore. Though he did take notice of Thalia... Flirting? He wasn't sure what counted for that nowadays. A part of him wanted to point out that this may not be the time or place for something like this, but another part of him wanted to laugh a bit as Thalia kept moods up with her comments.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Hunter Monroe Location: Cell B Skills:N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Cell life was boring for the soldier boy. He had considered counting ants, but didn't even get to double digits before he decided he was bored of it. He considered making conversation with the corpse in the next room over? But they weren't even a proper corpse, just bits and pieces. The smell was starting to get uncomfortable, but it wasn't as bad as the walkers, and still was no where close to as bad as the smell of the sewer system he got stuck in. Or the walkers in that sewer system. But a smell none the less. He wondered what Cage was doing that made it so he couldn't just clean this up. Not like there were other prisoners to watch? So for now he sat and tried to keep his mind occupied. He hummed some random tunes, but didn't really know the words to most songs in his head as he didn't listen to a lot of music in the last few years. He contemplated going through what was left of the remains, what little there was at least. The tooth was something of note, in a pinch it might make a great threat maker if things went south. Technically it was the tooth of a dead dude, so if things went guns up maybe it would buy him time and start a commotion. If things came to that. He thought about it and decided against it. He debated drawing with it but he wasn't sure it would hold up against the concrete. But he would keep that in mind for later just in case he got desperate for something to talk too. He thought back to his time in the army. And with it being short, only a few decent memories came to mind.

Thinking about the past, the former national guard's man named Pete was one the better people Hunter got to be with since the world ended. He wondered how things would have been if he had made it with Hunter this far? Had he been around when Hunter met... them. If he was with Hunter when he first came here? If he was there to tell Hunter to shut the fuck up when he opened his mouth. Pete had helped Hunter in a lot of ways like that, when things first started getting bad it was like a switch that went off in Hunter's head that made it so he wasn't the self confident older brother he had grown up being. When the first few weeks of chaos were over, he was left a husk of his former self, and alone. Nothing worked the way it should anymore except one thing. The gun in his hands, that still worked. Before Hunter would break up fights between his siblings. Then the corpses came, and you can't talk them down. He had several siblings who he could talk to and problem solve things, sort out problems, and then move on to a fun task at the end of the day. Then they were gone, and Hunter was to figure out his own things. And he had to get them done by himself. He had no one to try and protect anymore, and no one to be there with him as he figured it out. To Hunter, Pete was something he had never had, in a moment he really needed it. For the first time in his life he was someone like an older brother to Hunter. Before the world ended, he was the oldest of five, the protector of them and the one they went to for help for simple problems. In many ways Pete served that role for him, helping Hunter figure out the little things so Hunter would be ready for the big things later in life.

Hunter chuckled at that thought. Hunter had figured out how to fight one war, right in time for the next one. He could handle being a big brother, right by the time he was alone and the world ended. When That happened he had to figure out how to deal with the wandering corpses while also keeping himself alive, he had figured that out just in time to get confronted with those who had survived with... less then good intentions. He had figured out how to deal with those people and so by the time he had met people who wouldn't try to shoot him on sight, but were clearly beyond worried that everyone might do the same to them. He wondered what the people here went through to lead them to that point? Maybe they got shot at a lot was the first thought. Or maybe they had an internal civil war at some point so they had trouble trusting outsiders and insiders out of fear of more internal fighting? Who knew. But with what little Hunter knew either was just as likely. "And by the time I figure out this conflict, there wont be any people left. Is that the luck I get to work with?" He said it with a little bit of a joking tone to it and a small laugh. He went quiet after a moment though looking around. "Huh... maybe so."

🧚🏻‍♀️ The Walking Dead - Year 6 Part 1

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Emanuel "Manny" Newman Location: Grave Yard Skills: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Manny had a moment to calm down and take the scene in. He had more or less lost his calm. Sure, he didn't like how Bass treated him. Like an ignorant old man who couldn't get with the times. And he could admit he was in some ways. But to Manny, it felt so... disrespectful. Manny's follow up was not the best in response though, and looking back there were a lot of other ways he could have expressed his frustrations. It wasn't just the tone though, the fact that he was criticized for trying to be safe with the gun, when it had been handled in a less then safe manner. Confronting Bass then and there was still not the way to handle it though. He knew he would need to apologize for his reaction later, even before Atticus said something about it. What Atticus did left Manny more confused then anything else though. When the guards at quarantine were present, they didn't get involved with anything unless someone tried to escape, or he hoped if they got really violent. It left him thinking why Atticus confronted him now, in a way that felt almost deliberate in drawing attention. Maybe it was more personal for Atticus. Or maybe it was that in quarantine they wanted an environment without influence. He had other thoughts that came with it, but those ones led to the more paranoid, looking for guilt where it may not be present stuff. So he left his thoughts at that.

The funeral itself was another story. Manny felt out of place here. He didn't know anyone who had died. And the only one he had even seen alive, was Gavin. The moment he decided to save Thana over him. Lola was another person who died that day. Died only moments before Manny got out of his cage. Maybe even as he was doing it. He just knew it was before he met up with the others. And he really didn't know much more then that about the girl. And they knew nothing of him. yet the fucked up part, is that if they hadn't died that day, Manny would have likely died soon afterwards. If the assault had failed early on, or the tank broke down, or anything else that prevented the assault to take place stop it from doing so, Manny would have been one of the many victims of Eden. It wasn't proper to say they died for him. No, that would be foolish. They died in place of him. He got to live, because they died. They had unknowingly traded their lives. He wondered if that was a selfish thought. They came to Eden to kill those who lived there. Those who tortured through there. Manny was just at the right place at the right time. But he couldn't get that idea out of his head. They were trading lives. Who hadn't though? Even before the world went to shit, choices had to be made about who had to die so that someone else could live. Those choices just became everyone's choice once the dead started to walk. Everyone had to start making that choice then.

Atticus got things moving along with offering last words to the dead. It was hard to focus in the extreme Florida heat, but Manny had grown up, and lived in it his whole life. Though that didn't mean he was immune to it. The sweat running across his head, and the visible confusion from trying to focus was very noticeable. But he knew how to handle it. At least until they were back on the nice cold bus. Many of the survivors took turns saying goodbye. He took better note of Alexander who had some words to say about Lola. He never asked much about Lola, but it seemed he got along well with her. Amelia and Ash got their words in, Ash giving some backstory on one of the people buried. But combined with Manny not knowing the dead well, or the living in this situation well, he had trouble following along. Thalia also had her own words to say about Lola. Even with what little he was hearing now she seemed like an interesting woman. Maybe much for Manny's book but that hadn't stopped him before from liking someone. He wondered what he would have thought of her had she made it down the hallway another 30 feet. Everyone who was going to say something, had said something. Funerals were not Manny's strong suits, and were one of the few times he couldn't hold an extended conversation like in day to day life. But now that everyone else had said something, he felt... wrong for not having anything to say. He felt wrong for being here because he knew nobody who was in the dirt below him. "Thank you." He said in a quiet tone, almost as if he was talking to himself. Despite all the conflicting thoughts in his head, one thing was clear. He was alive, because of them.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Hunter Monroe Location: Cell B Skills:N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Cage did his own follow up laugh, and it was weird to Hunter. But he didn't pay it much mind. He stayed down until the door was closed leaning upwards from the mattress. Still more comfortable then anything he had used in a long time with the exception of the bed last night. After given a more detailed rundown of the situation he just shrugged. What else was there to say? The first few thoughts that came to mind probably would have gotten less then great responses, but since Cage made it a clear point he planned to spend as little time down stairs as possible he wondered if it would be worth pushing some buttons. He held off for now, Roy was being decent enough and actually seemed to be trying to help. Even if it was just him being professional about it that was something. So he kept shut even though he still just wanted to tell Cage to fuck himself. He had a brief moment of mental horror with that thought, and decided that was not a thought he wanted in his head. Going back to Ray, if he got out of this with anything decent results he decided he needed to talk to Roy and thank him. Hunter knew he fucked up, and had trouble deciding what would be fair or not, but Roy was decent enough to him even if it was just simple comments here and there. Assurances that not all of this sucked as bad as he thought it did.

Then, he was alone yet again. Trapped in his little cell, the remains of a dead man only a few feet away. He sat on the wall dividing the cells and thought about how to kill time. He was tired, but he figured that was mostly stress compared to anything else. Plus dinner was in a few hours and sleeping at random intervals would only throw off his sense of time even more so. He thought of time passing tricks he had learned on the road. The first that came to mind was to deep clean his firearms. But they were gone. Next was to get up somewhere high and try and do a mock scouting of the area, but he was under ground. Next was just go on walks and see what was happening. But he was in a cell. The thing that was getting him now was that he wasn't able to do... anything productive in his eyes. He considered looking at his more positive memories, but with how things went the last five years that mostly led to... less then pleasant ones. He wondered what something productive he could do. His mattress was an older one with very distinct springs, so his mind quickly lead into taking out one of the springs and trying to pick the lock. The problem? Hunter had no idea how to pick a lot. Many doors he had found were unlocked or he could break into it without much effort. At least a few years ago. "Huh... fucking apocalypse diet." That was something that Hunter regretted a bit. He always prioritized bullets over food. He was never shy of bullets though. He knew where to look, he knew which guns could use them, and he normally had a good idea where to find said guns.

He wondered how his life would have been different should he had not joined the army. First, he would have had a chance to fix things with his family... properly. Next... he would have been home when things got bad, and he could have been with them in whatever happened. If he had not joined he wouldn't have Met Don, Greg, Simon, and Harald. But in return, he wouldn't have met June and... Lucy. He wondered if that was a bad thing though, not meeting those two. Maybe then they would have had a chance to meet up with someone other then those... people. If he hadn't joined he wouldn't have been forced to listen to that one order. The order every soldier is scared to hear when all hope seems lost. Hold Until the end. Though, the first time he heard the order, it wasn't given to him or his unit. It was given to another unit attached to... what ever excuse of a regiment that had been assembled. Then it was given to another... and another. Everyone knew what it meant, but no one would say it out loud. Die so the rest of us have a chance to live. No one objected it, for fear that they would be given that order themselves. And those who were not given the order would make sure it got carried out, out of fear that they would also be deemed... expendable.

He put his finger on that. That was the choice he made that changed his life and sent him down this path. Or maybe it was just the unfortunate way of things that he got a recruiter who absolutely fudged his numbers so he was allowed to join. Though that didn't matter now, what matters is he made the choice and he chose wrong. The military might work for some, maybe those who's units were destroyed before they could be deployed against the dead, those not assigned to handle the hordes of refugees on the way to the cities, those who got deployed to handle only the dead. Those who's first deployment wasn't trying to figure out which American citizens were trying to kill you, and which ones you had to kill. It made him think if this was one of those more pivotal moments in his life. Where he could make a choice that would set the rest of his life in a new direction. Or if he had already made that choice.

🧚🏻‍♀️ The Walking Dead - Year 6 Part 1

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Emanuel "Manny" Newman Location: Bus (Outside Camp Mexico Beach) --> Grave Yard Skills: N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

The bus ride for Manny was an interesting one for him. Bass had more then a single thought on how Manny was handling the gun he had been given. TO the point of talking to him like he was an old man who had little idea what he was doing. He remembered a time back when he would have tried to throttle him for comments like that. Granted the boys father probably wasn't even born at that time in Manny's life. He did let out a rather loud audible sigh of disappointment. "Boy." Putting rather strong emphases on the word. "I have been handling firearms since long before you were even a thought in your parents minds. I get you are just trying to do your own job, but if I didn't know how to safely handle a gun I wouldn't have made it this far." He spoke with a simple matter of fact tone to him, as if educating a student who refused to listen despite repeated attempts. "Now, I get you are on guard duty, so some firearm safety rules have to be let slide. I am not on guard duty. I am not a huge fan of storing a dozen loose loaded firearms in a duffel and hoping the bus wont hit a bump and get my own foot or head blown off. I'll load it when it is a safer time to, as the last thing I need for it is to go off in my hands causing a rather horrible accident." He went back to inspecting the gun. To the best of his understanding it was good.

Once they got closer to the graveyard Manny did feel a bit bad about treating him as, well a boy. Sure, the boy might lack some respect, and he may have skipped a few steps in firearm safety, but he figured he had good intentions none the less. Bass and Atticus left the bus to make sure things were clear and once at that point the others were allowed off. Many of the others had gotten off before him, but when it was his turn he stood up holding the shotgun with the breach open. Once everyone was settled outside Manny grabbed the two shells he had taken out, loaded them in, and snapped the gun closed. Nice, stable, open ground. The safest and most effective place to fire a gun from. When given another chance, he would need to apologize to Bass. Other then his tone while explaining things, the boy seemed like a decent enough kid. The graveyard itself was... normal. Too normal in some ways. Maybe it was just the idea that Manny hadn't really been to a place like this in a long time. And especially not for something like this.

Manny Kept one hand under the pivot for the breach, in front of the trigger guard, and the other hand further down the barrel. His hand was close enough to the trigger that he could move and line up his shot in one swift motion if he was careful with his steps. And it was another safety step in case the actual safety decided it didn't want to work with him that day.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Hunter Monroe Location: Inside Jail (AA) --> Cell B Skills:N/A

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Hunter leaned back a bit when Cage snapped at him. It appeared that the man was dead set on believing this was Hunter's fault. Sure, it was a poor time to get arrested for them, but he didn't like where that left him in terms of a trial if reactions for things like this were extreme. He gave a shrug when Cage mentioned he has plans to avoid being near Hunter as humanly possibly. Under normal situations he couldn't blame him. He had to stop himself from saying something along the lines of "Right back at ya". He didn't, but the thought was a funny come back in his mind. Roy Drove the point home more, and Hunter did have to admit, he did have a tendency to say the first thing that came to mind on a regular basis. He wondered who wouldn't when the only thing you've had to talk to for over a year was walking corpses and a dog that seemed much more interested in the beans in your hand then the conversation.

He looked around with curiosity entering the new room. Bricks, in his mind one of the greatest single inventions of all the human race. Build walls with them, build houses with them, play jenga with them, and made great emergency weapons in a pinch. Then he saw cell A, he stopped walking for a moment to stare at it. So they were serious. There were comments made about it, but Hunter paid it no mind. Any reply he would get for replying would probably be met with one trying to defend it, but with the backing of guns. This left a bitter taste in his mouth. These were the people who had the resources to rebuild the world, or at least apart of it, and this is what was coming from it. To add insult to injury, the remains were just left out for display. Hunter considered all the crappy things he had done for a bit, and looked at the blood and other bits. "Huh." He considered saying something along the lines of "Mother Fucker" or "What the fuck" Or even, "Fuck Nuggets" but couldn't completely wrap his head around this. So Huh had to do.

He was so drowned out in his thoughts he flinched a bit when the cuffs were removed. And the main reason he noticed was because of the lack of tension on his hands. He looked at Roy with almost a look of surprise as if he had just been told something unbelievable. It took a moment for him to register completely what was happening, but keeping eye contact with Roy a moment, not completely registering what he was saying, then noticing the open cell door he got the idea. He walked into cell, and collapsed on the bed face first, and just laid down. The day was barely half over, and it had been a long one. He was ready to go back to sleep except for he didn't like being watched while sleep, and the dreams were still hard for him.