Rick sat with his back against the wall; in his hands was his old police badge. He and Glenn had been trapped in the store for hours, and all he could think about was whether or not Carl was alright, alive even.
"Think they're alright?" He finally asked, looking at Glenn who was sitting next to him.
"Yeah, of course they are. Daryl's a hunter, I'm sure he knows how to handle himself in the snow, and you know he wouldn't let anything happen to Carl." Glenn replied, he believed what he'd said. But he wasn't sure of was this blizzard, it'd been raging for hours, when they'd last checked the windows it was night time.
"How long do you think they'll wait before coming after us?" Rick asked, not feeling any better after hearing Glenn answer. Personally Rick was hoping that Daryl would leave him and Glenn and take Carl back to the Prison. Because if they were looking around for them in this weather in the middle of the night then Rick didn't think that their chances of surviving were very high.
"I think that if they were going to look for us they would have found us by now. They wouldn't have waited more than an hour or two before thinking something was up." Glenn answered honestly. "I'm sure that they headed back to the prison as soon as they found out we weren't coming back. There Carl can get checked out and Daryl can get a larger search party to find us." He added quickly, not wanting Rick to become any more concerned than he already was.
Rick nodded, seemingly content with Glenn's answers. He just continued to fiddle with his police badge in his nervousness. He kept telling himself that Carl and Daryl were fine; they hadn't seen any Walkers since the snow began; they'd been freezing from the cold weather. So they were that much safer. There was still the blizzard though, that could be worse than Walkers. Especially if Carl did have a concussion like Rick suspected.
Another few hours passed, during this time the two ate what little fresh food they could find in the store. Mostly stale bread and junk food, along with energy drinks that were long past there sell by date. Eventually they looked out the window to see that the storm had died down a bit, before it had been a roaring blizzard, now it seemed to have become a gentle snowfall. This gave Rick and Glenn some slight relief, if they were lucky the snow would clear up by sunrise. They debated trying the doors again, but decided against it, fearing that perhaps the blizzard would pick up again, with them in the middle of it.
Sometime later the two men fell asleep, neither one bothering to stand watch, knowing that with the snow they couldn't get out, which meant that no walker could get in.
Morning came quickly, to their relief Rick and Glenn found that the snowfall had ended and the sun had emerged from the grey skies. Immediately they tried the front door, finding that the snow in front of it had melted they opened it and bolted from the store.
After taking a moment to remember which direction they'd come from they set out to return to their car, silently hoping that they wouldn't find any corpses when they arrived. When they did find the sight of their crash relief washed over them, no one was in the car. Figuring that Daryl and Carl must have made their way back to the prison the two men set out down the road.
However shortly after departing from the car wreck Rick saw a sight that filled him with fear. There was Carl's hat lying in the middle of the road. Rick rushed over to the article examining it for any sign of what had happened.
"Rick?" Glenn said gently kneeling down next to his friend, "Rick, it's just his hat. There's no other sign of him here. The hat probably blew off Carl's head and went too far back for him to get it. He and Daryl are probably at the prison right now." He continued, trying to reassure the former deputy.
"He wouldn't have just left it though." Rick replied disheartened, "He would have gone back for it. Even when he stopped talking to me he still wore it. What if..." Rick didn't finish the thought out loud; he knew Glenn understood where he was going.
"Rick, we have to keep our hopes up. It's only his hat. There's no other sign of him near here. I'm telling you he has to be at the prison." Rick just nodded at the other man's words; he wordlessly picked up his son's hat and stood. He and Glenn continued on their path.
It wasn't until much later that Rick's worst fears were confirmed. In the distance he and Glenn were able to make out the prison, it was still some distance away but they could see it now. Rick felt himself fill up with hope, he'd found no other signs of Daryl or Carl. Glenn was right, they were at the Prison. Then he saw it, the body on the ground, snow outlining it, and a small walker next to it, gnashing away at the near frozen corpse. Shaking his head in disbelief Rick ran over, praying to anyone or anything that this wasn't what it looked like. But it was, as Rick reached the walker there was no denying it.
"No." Rick whispered, falling to his knees, "No no no no no." He repeated the word as tears welled in his eyes at the sight of his son desecrating his best friend's corpse. "Carl…" Rick called, in an attempt to try and reach his son. To his surprise the walker turned his head to Rick, the dead eyes staring directly into that of his fathers. Rick knew that it was just a coincidence that the walker had turned its head because of the noise, not because he heard his name being called. From this angle Rick became acutely aware of just how much this looked like Carl. It had all the same features in its face, the same brown hair, with the same spots matted with dried blood, the only difference was that his normally blue eyes had turned an ugly yellow color, and his skin was now a dead pale. He must have died from the cold Rick thought noticing that there were no discernable signs of injury. That just made Rick feel worse, knowing that his boy had died a slow awful death from freezing.
The walker rose to its feet and slowly started to shamble towards Rick, in a small part of his mind Rick was aware of the fact that he needed to shoot the walker. But he couldn't, not when it looked exactly like his son. He hoped that Glenn would understand and do it for him. But as the walker came closer no shot came, not even a warning from his companion. Rick turned away from his son and saw that Glenn was nowhere to be found. He was going to call out, when he was pushed to the ground by Carl. Rick turned back to the creature that had not long ago been his son. Without a word he resigned himself to his fate, crying as his son took a bite out of him.
As soon as the walker's teeth bit into him Rick shot up from his position on the floor. He quickly looked around and found himself back in the general store he and Glenn had been in. He breathed a sigh of relief, but the relief was short lived. What he'd just experienced may have only been a nightmare, but all it did was make him more anxious to find his son safe and sound.