The next day, Cal was woken up at 11 a.m. by a commotion and the noise of people outside. Curious to know what was happening, he came out wearing his bathrobe open under which he was shirtless, wearing his pajama pants with the holster of his small Glock 45 pistol on his thigh and a Coffee.
He walked nonchalantly following the noise and the path led him towards the infirmary.
"Calvin…" Clementine who saw him in the distance happily ran towards him, she had slept with the other children in a sort of sleepover or something like that.
Carl followed with the others and they looked at Calvin in awe, this guy had a perfect physique and extremely well defined muscles, his chest and abdomen were visible because his robe was open.
The worst thing was that he didn't do it to impress anyone but it was out of habit because of Christina for their different erotic activities in the morning.
Calvin: What's going on? Why is everyone so agitated so early in the morning ?
Clementine: But Cal, it's 11 o'clock…
"That's what I said, so early in the morning…" he said yawning as a tear fell from his eye, Christina wasn't there and it was bothering him like Hell.
Carl, like a good little soldier who came to the report, gave him an account of the situation. Pete had lost his temper and threatened to kill Aiden if Deanna didn't give him back his house and his family.
Apparently he was completely drunk and also demanded other privilèges as the only surgeon in his community, Rick and the others have been trying to calm him down or think of a way to incapacitate him without risking Aiden's life but especially Tara still unconscious and Eugene.
Calvin thanked Carl and headed towards Rick's team which he saw with Deanna and the others who saw him arrive while happily drinking his coffee.
He had threatened Pete for the same reasons but apparently the alcohol had made him forget certain things.
"Hello there…" He greeted them with a smile and they knew he had already been informed. Rick and Shane came to talk with him, Pete was serious and had managed to steal a gun with which he threatened to kill the others if anyone came in and in his left hand he had a scalpel with which he threatened to disgorge Aiden.
Dawn: Lincoln, can you help us ?
"Of course, but do I want it ? I already helped you yesterday and I was denied revenge…" He said pretending to sulk.
Dawn: Stop acting like a child, there are lives at stake.
"Well, I can do something but I want Nicolas's life and that's not negotiable." He said smiling and Deanna immediately replied that she agreed, the others looked at her with surprise as she had agreed so quickly.
"RAHAHAHAH, The selfishness and hypocrisy of people. We play the civilized and high moral leader until the life of a loved one is at stake..." He said mockingly looking at Deanna and headed towards the infirmary with everyone watching present.
"I had already forgotten what it felt like to deal with him…" Dawn said in annoyance.
Shane: Yes but did he lie? It's easy to remain composed and narrow-minded when a loved one isn't involved, Nicolas doesn't deserve to still be alive in his cell after what he did.
Deanna :…
Calvin entered the infirmary and immediately, Pete pointed his gun at him while with the other hand, he put his scalpel towards Aiden's carotid . Eugene was the only injured person awake and he was terrified...
Pete: Get out of there before I kill the idiot with his mullet...
"You can kill him, his life has no sort of importance to me. It's the same thing for the pretty brunette and for your boss's son. You scare people, old man.
I was shown your wife and your two children terrified outsider and you're scaring your own family, you're terrorizing them right now and we don't negotiate with terrorists…" Calvin finished speaking in a very cold tone, looking Pete in the eyes before drinking his coffee.
"ALL I WANT IS FOR MY FAMILY AND I TO BE LEFT ALONE…" Pete screamed and in his emotional gesture, he raised the scalpel slightly above Aiden's head while he shifted his left hand who was holding his pistol on the right, This was the opportunity Calvin had been waiting for.
At horribly fast speed as his hand became a blur, Calvin drew his Glock 45 and fired three shots at Pete. The first bullet aimed at the scalpel, the second bullet hit Pete's gun which let go and the last bullet lodged in Pete's left knee who immediately fell down screaming in pain.
The others who through the windows saw and heard almost everything came in to subdue Pete and they looked at Calvin meaningfully as he yawned and came out to ask people to go home 'cause There was nothing more to see.
He asked Clementine to go get ready because they were going to leave soon and she nodded calmly before going to warn the others.
A little later , Calvin had finished getting dressed after taking a shower when there was a knock on his door and he went to open it to see Clementine with Duane and Sophia but also their parents and a few others.
"Shall we go back already ? Cal, couldn't we stay a little longer ?" Sophia asked him in a worried tone.
Duane : …
"Listen Calvin, we can't thank you enough for finding our children and I know you take good care of them but we are their parents. Don't you find it unreasonable that they are in your community while their parents are here ?" Morgan asked as Carole moved closer to him and he held his hand, it seemed that the loss of their children had brought these two closer together for a while. Calvin looked at them then he looked at the children…
"Duane and Sophia you aint coming with us." he told them calmly.
" WHAT ?! You're kidding, right ?" Duane asked in disbelief.
Sophia: Cal…
"I didn't tell you everything when I brought you here because I know you would've refused. You don't fully realize how lucky you are to have a father and a mother still alive in this nightmare, but one day you'll understand.
Both of you will stay with your parents until you are old enough to decide where you want to go and then the doors of Lincoln will be open to you again. " He said without much emotion and Duane charged towards him but Calvin calmed him down with a slap before putting his hand on his shoulder.
"Do you think I'm awesome, cool or impressive? You have what I don't have anymore since I was 11, my parents were burned alive in a church with a firebomb by a white supremacist. The world still seemed normal but I already no longer had my parents, now it's the apocalypse and you are lucky to still have a father but you want to gamble with your luck. Don't make me jealous of you, lil nigga..." He said calmly and Morgan looked at him before nodding, Sophia ran in to give Calvin a hug and Clementine came out with their weapons.
Calvin asked the parents not to take these weapons from them, it was Lincoln's property and that these two had permission to use in extreme emergencies only.
After exchanging a few more words, they separated and more people arrived and it was Deanna, Reg and Rick and the other police officers.
Rick: Are you leaving already ?
"I was only there to drop off the children, business is waiting for me elsewhere. (to Deanna) I hope your son recovers from his injuries but now if you could deliver this dearest Nicolas to me, that would make me happy." Calvin asked calmly.
Deanna: I'm sorry but it won't be possible. You saved my son twice but Nicholas will be banished by tomorrow after being tried tonight.
Calvin :…
"Deanna you gave him your word." Shane told Deanna, he knew this could go very badly.
"Sheriff Lerner and I talked about it, we agreed." Deanna replied looking at Dawn.
Dawn: That's right, if we want to rebuild a real civilization then we have to act like one. Lincoln, Nicholas' life means absolutely nothing to you and you lose nothing by letting us take care of his-(interrupted)
"Are you trying to break our agreement with me ? I already had no more respect for your leadership yesterday but now my overall respect for you has just ceased to exist. Do I look like someone you could play with ?" Calvin said to Deanna looking directly into her eyes, his gaze was extremely murderous and they knew things weren't going to go well.
Shane looked at his wife with annoyance for doing this sort of thing behind his back with Deanna.
Rick : Calvin, calm down.
"You knew ?" Calvin asked him and Rick gestured for him to calm down.
"Shane, Michonne and I didn't know anything about it..." He replied to Calvin who took off his jacket and carefully folded it but as the tension rose, the latter thought about something before calmly smiling and to get dressed under their perplexed looks
"I established contact with your community to see who I was dealing with as a neighbor and that's done, I planned to establish alliances for future activities but I don't deal with people incapable of keeping their word. I advise you to train people for combat because in exactly 5 months I'll send a hundred of my men to pillage this place and kill you all." He said smiling innocently.
"You're not serious..." Rick told him as their expressions were serious, Shane and Michonne tried to talk to him while Dawn's look was that of someone who had caused a devastating fire.
Michonne : You can't do that, there are innocent people and children living here.
"Bitch, I showed good faith twice and I was played. You can keep Nicolas, his life no longer interests me because in five months I will bring you death and Pestilence. We have finished the discussion…" He said turning around.
Dawn: Lincoln, you-(interrupted)
"ENOUGH…" He said firmly and she took out her gun and pointed it at him, telling him that she couldn't let him massacre innocent people later even if it meant killing him now. This action of Dawn put everyone on alert especially when they saw Calvin start to smile.
"I see all the progress you've made since the farm and that's why you won't be a widower today." He said to Shane before quietly turning around to go to his vehicle while behind him, Shane slowly lowered his wife's gun as he knew the guy in front of them was a demon who had slaughtered over 'around thirty men alone.
In King, Clementine who was sitting looked at Calvin in a certain way after listening to what they said outside...
Clem : Are you really going to kill everyone here ?
Cal : Of course not, princess. I just scared them so they would be prepared for this kind of eventuality. Rick no longer wants to lead anything, Shane wants to rest and Dawn is the sheriff here. This woman had a hard time outside and when they found a community like this where everything seemed normal inside the walls then things took a turn to the left in her head.
Clem: I...I don't understand much.
"Clem, when we're going through very difficult times we want things to go back to normal so badly that the slightest opportunity to take mental refuge in what seemed normal to us is to be seized.
Dawn was a police lieutenant and now that she's here, she wants to do whatever it takes to replicate the system she once belonged to and take mental refuge from the reality of the new world. It's a kind of denial but if more numerous and armed people with bad intentions find this community then it will be a butchery, especially with the current naivety of their leader ." He explained to Clementine as he sat down next to her and she understood that he put them there urgently to protect them in some way.
They left Alexandria to return home and on the way Calvin thought about a number of things. He lectured Duane and Sophia about being happy to still have a family member alive but he didn't practice that himself, he hadn't even tried to find out if his cousin and his aunt were still alive even though the latter had initiated him into crime, he had really taken care of Calvin after the horrible loss of his parents.
Much later, they finally arrived home and Clementine happily got off King as Paul came to greet Calvin with Molly and their men.
"Welcome back, boss…" Paul greeted him and they shook hands, they gave him an update on everything that had happened in his absence and the news was quite good, they had 384 new survivors come outposts with Lee who had completed his survey mission.
The roles of the outposts were that of a filter for survivors as new survivors were not directly in Lincoln but had to live for a period of 3 months in various autonomous outposts in the city, officials observed them to find out if there were dangerous or unstable people and even spies were sent among the survivors to observe them, get closer to them and understand their motivations.
Lee had completed his observation
and espionage mission to return with nearly 400 survivors and new survivors were still arriving at the outposts thanks to the fairly efficient survivor search teams.
They walked some more and saw a group of men and women running shirtless or in bras led by a man wearing a black military uniform. As soon as they saw Calvin and the others, they gave them a military salute before continuing.
"You're doing a great job Sterling..." Calvin said to the man leading the group of soldiers in training and it was Reginald Sterling, a British SAS soldier present in America at the time of the fall and there had 12 other SAS in Lincoln at the moment tasked with training volunteer fighters alongside the far more numerous US Marines, whose leader was Paul.
If we observed the fighters while running, we could see red impact points and certain bruises on their skin due to bullet impacts from airsoft rifles.
They simulated shootings on certain floors of uninhabited buildings and did so bare-chested with the only protection being a helmet.
These exercises were there to train them to fight against other armed humans outside and being hit once in the chest or abdomen was synonymous with death, the marks on the skin were there to prevent cheating and if it was painful so they just had to not get hit because it was a tickle compared to a real bullet.
All of Lincoln's fighters go through this and continue this exercise, Calvin himself practices it just like the others. No one was spared and even the children practiced this with protection but also with paintball weapons so that the spots could indicate the impacts.
"Boss, can I talk to you in private?" Paul calmly asked Calvin who agreed and they walked in a certain direction to chat in privacy.
" I'm listening..." Calvin calmly told him.
Paul: I'm going to avoid wasting your time. Knowing you, you are certainly aware that Elisabeth and I are old acquaintances, right ?
Cal : Yep.
" You're a very intelligent person so you certainly know the past she had. I just came to admit to you that I was like her at the time, I was even worse than her. I am a former neo-Nazi…" Paul told him as he waited seriously for his reaction .
"Why tell me?" Calvin asked looking into his eyes.
Paul: I ran away from that past because of Riley, my son, and seeing her again reminded me of all that. I just wanted to be honest with you...
Cal: "Honest"? My ass, you anticipated the fact that Lise would tell me about you and the horrors that you have certainly done. If you wanted to be honest then you would have told me all this well before, you were afraid that I would do something to you out of anger. I know that you aint afraid of me, your pride as a military man prevents you from doing so, but what you are afraid of is the fate of your son. Am I wrong ?
Paul : I'm not the same man anymore...
"That's what the bastard who killed my parents said when he became a pastor, a supremacist just like you. I don't believe people like you can change, there's not a shred of a chance I'll ever believe that but that doesn't matter, just keep up the work. I may hate you but that won't affect your position here and you have nothing to fear from me as long as You keep your ideology to yourself and continue to work for this community ..." Calvin said as he left.
Paul: Why do you keep me in the same job if you think people like me can't change ?
"(turns around) Because you think it's about my prejudice or my resentment towards monsters like you ?! There are over 4000 survivors so far here now with those returning from the outposts and all these souls are counting on us to keep them alive, whites, blacks, Asians and other people who are fight alongside us against this new world to stay alive. You may be a Nazi but you're doing a great job so I have to think of all these people and put my judgments aside so the machine can keep moving.
I'm a former drug dealer myself who runs this community so I'm not clean either. Look, you don't need my appreciation and you don't want to prove anything to me so just do what you have to do and take care of your son. " Calvin said with a shrug .
He left Paul and walked away before having the idea of shooting him in the head. He was angry, very angry because of his parents so he went to see Christina at the hospital to talk with her both to relax but to discuss an important one, he talked about the discussion he had with the children in Alexandria but that same discussion had led him to think along the way to make a decision.
"In two days I'm going to leave for California and pick up my cousin and my aunt in L.A. I don't know for sure if they're still alive but I trust my instincts. I need you to stay here to watch over our community." He told Christina as she was in his arms and that he was really savoring every second of his future wife.
Tina: This kind of thing can take months or even years, you can't leave me behind. Lee and the others are as good as I am at leading.
" Babe, You know that I love you and that it's my last wish to be away from you for so long but I can't stay in doubt on my side after what I said to these kids. Besides, I have a feeling that things are going to happen here and that you have to stay" Calvin told her as he hugged her tighter.
" Cal, my older sister and my two nieces lived in Dallas. I don't know if they're still alive So I'm in the same situation as you and I can't stay behind. I come and it's non-negotiable ..." elle lui a dit en se retournant pour le regarder dans les yeux.
Cal : Babe...please...
" Dije que no era negociable " She told him and he looked into her eyes for a long time before slowly nodding his head before she kissed him.
[ THE ENTITIES]
Reality : It seems that Calvin attracts neo-Nazis
Eternity : These humans and their skin color problems even when the dead come back to life to eat them. They are fascinating but sometimes incredibly stupid.
Reality : Paul says he has changed and we know he is telling the truth. He has a son and in such circumstances, he had to rethink his priorities. The tension between Calvin and him is a small but very important detail which highlights a big gap in the social realism of the universe of The Walking Dead.
Death :...
Eternity : Are you talking about racism? It's a series about zombies, people don't necessarily want to bother with it. Merle Dixon was already more than enough for the dose of racial tension in the séries.
"When you know the history of their country and the racism that reigns there while society is still normal, try to imagine how strong and atrocious the racial tensions would be. The universe of the series is a social paradise compared to what it would really become in the event of a crisis of this kind." Reality said before noticing that Death had not given his opinion since earlier as if he was concerned about something else.
"Things could have gone better like with Jacob and Ron, not like this...It's not fair..." Death said And the other two immediately knew what he was talking about, so they just stayed silent.