Daughter of a Dixon ✔️

92: Oceanside

Apparently, I wasn't the only one who had been keeping secrets from everyone.

As it turns out, Tara had stumbled upon an entirely new community, who called themselves Oceanside. There were only females in the community, due to the fact that the Saviors had killed all the men it used to have. Tara told us they also had guns galore, with plenty to spare to us, which we needed for some deal that Rick had made with a crew of 'trash people,' as he had explained it. If we could get Alexandria, Hilltop, Kingdom, Oceanside, and the trash people to take a stand against the Saviors with us, we'd have them all in our back pocket before they even knew what was happening. 

We decided to make a trip down to Oceanside, to see if they would help us in the war. And if not, Rick said we would just steal their weapons anyway, which I was sort of okay with at that point. I was completely done with the Saviors and their bullshit. It was time to put them back where they belonged. 

When we got to the community, we stopped a little ways away from it to plant some dynamite Rick had found outside the Saviors' compound. It was only in case things went awry, which, from the way things had been going up to that point, I could only expect the worst. 

Rick put Michonne up in one of the nearby trees, so she could 'handle' someone if they got too out of hand during the raid. As for the rest of us, we waited nearby with the dynamite, looking for Tara to send her signal. She had snuck into the leader of the community's house, and was going to try to get her to agree peacefully to help us. If she didn't agree within ten minutes, then, and only then, would we set off the dynamite.

One minute, two minutes, three, five, eight, nine... ten. The milestone came, and I instinctively glanced over at my dad, who was going to be the one to set off the dynamite. He nodded to me when he caught me looking, and placed his hand over his head in a movement before removing it.

I knew what that meant; I took both my hands, and used them to cover my head, ducking down slightly, as if that would protect me at all. No more than a second later, a deafening explosion sounded from all around us, and even managed to send me backwards onto the ground.

My ears immediately began to ring, and I stood up from the ground uneasily, holding my head with one hand and my gun in the other. I took a moment for myself, waiting the ringing to ease up, before I began advancing forward, along with the rest of the group. My job was to be Rick's right-hand on the ground, making sure none of the Oceanside civilizations were able to escape. Dad was leading another group to their weapons arsenal to check out the gun supply.

I ran over to where Rick was basically herding the citizens into a center circle, scaring them with our guns, but not actually firing at them. We were just shooting into the air, to get all the women in one, center group. 

When we eventually managed that, we were faced with several frightened, crying faces of women, and I almost felt bad for them. I lined up with Rick, Father Gabriel, and Carl in front of the ladies, standing over them with dominance pouring from me. 

"Ladies, we want this to go as peacefully as it can," Father Gabriel started off by saying, his tone conveying that he felt sympathetic for the women. 

"Yeah, we do," Rick agreed, nodding. "We made a lot of noise just now. We wanna get this over as quickly as possible so we can redirect people to kill anything coming this way. People have said the forest is relatively clear, but we don't take chances, not anymore. No one has to get hurt."