Work Text:
Nothing is Certain
by LastScorpion
Disclaimer: The rights to "The Walking Dead" and all its characters don't belong to me. This is just fanfic, purely for the entertainment of myself and a few of my friends. It goes AU after season, um, two I think? Possibly three? (LOL we don't get that channel; I've only seen it on DVD from the library.) Also I don't know if you've seen even that much of it -- Hershel is a sort-of elderly veterinarian, with one leg (because they had to chop the other one off when a zombie bit him!). Beth and Maggie are his daughters. A group of zombie apocalypse survivors are settled in a prison (where the walls and fences mostly keep the zombies out.)
Summary: The dead have risen. Darn. (Seriously, it's "Walking Dead". Do I even have to say zombie apocafic?)
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Hershel was sure he'd forgotten something, but he couldn't think what. He leaned on his shovel, sweating just a little in the early-spring sunshine, and surveyed the prison yard again. They'd dug up and prepared the soil as well as they could; the rows were laid out sensibly; he'd doublechecked all the planting depths and spacing himself. (Beth, Maggie, and Carol had all laughed at him -- they'd been pretty fine gardeners themselves, they thought, back before the world came to an end, but he was the only one who'd actually grown up on a working farm.) The corn was already almost a foot tall -- they'd found popcorn in the prison, and had planted it first off, before making seeds a priority on every supply run.
Everything looked fine.
What was he forgetting?
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Hershel was sure he'd forgotten something, but he couldn't think what. Rick and Glenn had done most of the work on the windmill, using spare parts from the generator room and the prison laundry. It was built to his best recollections of the old windmill they'd had on the farm when he was young, which had fascinated the 10-year-old him, and fixed itself indelibly in his mind. The balance on the millstones was okay; the stones themselves were durable and non-toxic. They could hook it up to pump water from the well that Tyreese had figured out how to drill, or to turn the mill stones and grind cornmeal.
It was a fine job; they'd all worked together; he'd checked everything.
What was he forgetting?
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Hershel was forgetting something, and it wore upon his mind.
Oh, there were always things they should be doing that he was afraid they weren't getting to, or weren't doing well enough. The makeshift walls and barriers they'd set up to block off the ruined part of the back of the prison, to keep away the walkers and the Governor's men (should any survive) always needed work. They should be built stronger, and watched more carefully. Everybody knew it. There just weren't the people and the materials to do a really good job with that.
And the walkers should be cleared away from the fences more often. Hershel couldn't be as much help there as he'd like; there were plenty of spots along the fence perimeter that his peg-leg kept him from reaching. But everybody knew it was a job that had to be done as often as possible -- twice every day, or even more frequently. At least fewer people grumbled about the chore, with the pretty spring weather they were getting.
What was he forgetting?
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It was Maggie who finally cleared it up for him. She used to run the office of his veterinary practice, back when the world was okay, and she had a good head for numbers and details.
"Oh, hey, Dad," she said one day, looking up from her weeding. "It's April 15. Tax day."
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Happy tax day, Celli! :-)