A/N: Here we are with chapter seven! Thea and the gang are off to the Big Spot! and we all know how that will end!
This chapter was a bit of a struggle for me simply because I didn't have a lot of time this week to work on it so the ending could have been better. I apologize in advance if it bores you a little.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything other than Thea Ellis and her storyline. All rights to The Walking Dead remain with Robert Kirkman and Co.
When they made it to the Big Spot! Thea could see that the army had tried to put up some kind of refuge for civilians, a refuge that had obviously gone to shit.
The front of the store was surrounded by tall chain-link fences and inside those fences she could see green army tents set up. There were crates overturned or busted open littering the area and she could see into one of the tents enough to spot overturned cots.
Clearly they had tried to create a makeshift medical bay, hopefully there would be some supplies left over.
"Army came in and put these fences up," Daryl was explaining to Bob as if it weren't obvious. "Made it a place for the people to go. Last week when we spotted this place, there was a bunch of walkers behind this chain-link keeping people out like a bunch of guard dogs."
Thea squinted at a portion of the fence that appeared to be cut open. Bits of decaying flesh hung on the ragged ends of broken chain-link as if walkers had squeezed through and gotten caught along the way.
"So they all just left?" Bob asked.
Sasha, who stood behind the two men with a rifle in hand, sighed. "Give a listen."
Thea strained her ears to figure out what the woman meant, and then she heard it. Music was playing loudly in the distance but she wasn't quite sure where it was coming from.
"You drew them out." Michonne commented, impressed.
Sasha smirked, clearly pleased with herself. "Put a boom box out there three days ago."
"Hooked it up to two car batteries." Glenn added.
Thea had to admit that she would have never thought about that. Guess that was why she wasn't in charge of runs.
Daryl grunted as if to say that he was tired of all the talking and then moved to squeeze through the hole in the fence.
"All right, let's make a sweep. Make sure it's safe." He instructed. "Grab what you can. We'll come back tomorrow with more people."
Bob followed after him and then Sasha, Tyreese, Michonne, and Zach. Glenn waved Thea in front of him and she did her best to hide the wince that pulled at her features when twisting her body to fit through the hole without slicing herself on the ends covered with walker blood shot pain up her side.
She made her way into one of the tents to check for anything that could be useful, but all that she could find was the cots and a few knocked over stands that doctors would hang IV drips from. They had clearly used all the supplies before whatever had happened here turned everyone into the dead.
Not that it appeared that they had much to begin with.
She didn't bother checking the other tents as the rest of the group were doing that, instead she moved to join Daryl, Zach, and Michonne where they were waiting by the front of the store.
The two men were seated on the small ledge-like window sill while Michonne leaned against a pillar by the door. Thea crossed her arms over her chest and stood off to the side, keeping her distance but close enough to listen to their conversation.
"I've been trying to guess what Daryl did before the turn," Zach was explaining to the katana wielder.
This was something that perked Thea up; she'd been wondering this herself for a while.
Daryl scoffed. "He's been tryin' to guess for, like, six weeks."
The younger man shrugged. "Yeah, I'm pacing myself. One shot a day."
"All right, shoot."
There was a moment as Zach paused to gather his thoughts and then he was off. "Well, the way you are at the prison, you being on the council, you're able to track, you're helping people but you're still being kind of…uh…surly. Big swing here." He paused for dramatic effect. "Homicide cop."
Michonne burst out laughing in an uncharacteristic manner, at least uncharacteristic by Thea's standards since she hadn't seen the woman laugh much, and Daryl glared in her direction.
"What's so funny?" He demanded to know.
Michonne didn't lose her smile as she responded. "Nothing. It makes perfect sense."
Daryl shrugged. "Actually, the man's right. Undercover."
The blond man was suddenly very pleased with himself. "C'mon, really?" he asked, excited that he may have figured it out.
"Yep. I mean, I don't like to talk about it 'cause it was a lot of heavy shit, you know?" Daryl said in an almost believable tone, looking away from them as if just admitting this brought back memories he didn't want to recall.
Thea wasn't believing this for a second.
"Dude, come on, really?" Zach replied in disbelief.
The dark haired man turned and just looked at him blankly for a few seconds before looking down at his crossbow in his lap and clearing his throat. As he adjusted his grip on the weapon, Zach snorted.
"Okay, I'll just keep guessing, I guess."
"Yeah, you keep doing that."
"Mm-hmm."
Thea shook her head at the two of them. She had never considered them friends, but it was clear that they got along pretty well.
They were all silent for a moment before Zach seemed to turn the tables on the Brit.
"You were a doctor, right?" he asked her suddenly.
She nodded and shifted uncomfortably, not really enjoying that all eyes had turned towards her.
Zach didn't seem to notice her reaction. "What's the grossest thing you ever saw?" He wondered.
As Thea opened her mouth to respond two walkers suddenly slammed against the glass windows behind Daryl and Zach, causing the latter to startle. The former simply stood like nothing had happened.
"We gonna do this, detective?" Michonne asked him.
"Let's do it."
Thea gripped her axe anxiously as the two moved to open the once automatic doors. It had been over a month since she had left the prison, over a month since she had even been face-to-face with a walker. She had never gone down to the fences to help put down the walkers accumulated there, the council having decided that a doctor shouldn't do something that might put them in harm's way.
It kind of sucked to be considered valuable these days.
Daryl and Michonne wretched open the glass doors and several walkers spilled out, immediately being taken down by either crossbow or katana. As the rest of the group joined them at the entrance, several more walkers came from inside the store.
Tyreese quickly helped dispatch them before any could get very far, and Thea only felt a small amount of relief at being spared the duty of putting any down.
Zach and Tyreese pulled the bodies off to the side as Sasha turned to face everyone.
"All right, we go in, stay in formation for the sweep. After that, you all know what you're supposed to look for. Thea, you're handling the meds, right?"
Thea nodded once.
Sasha returned the nod and then glance at the others. "Any questions?"
No one spoke up and Daryl stepped into the store, followed by Michonne and Glenn.
"Was there ever a time that you weren't the boss of me?" Thea heard Tyreese ask his sister.
"You had a few years before I was born." The woman replied smugly.
Thankfully there hadn't been any walkers straggling behind in the store and so they were able to begin their search for supplies without any problems arising.
Thea picked up one of those plastic, hand-held baskets and moved through the aisles towards the section beneath a sign that read 'Toiletries & More' in hopes that any first aid supplies would be there as well. Everyone else spread out through the store to find the things on their lists, most pushing shopping carts with them.
It was odd being in a store and hearing the carts being pushed around, almost like things weren't as bad as they were and this was a normal shopping trip. All they needed now was catchy shop music to play softly over the forgotten speakers.
She felt a sigh of relief escape her as she caught sight of an entire shelf of first aid supplies ranging from cotton swabs to bottles of peroxide to ACE bandages. Her ease was short lived though, as there didn't appear to be any medicine of any kind. Not even crappy generic brand painkillers.
They couldn't always get lucky though, so she really shouldn't let this bother her so much.
As she began to throw as many items as possible into her basket, grabbing even the stuff they didn't necessarily need, she began to wish she had grabbed an actual push cart instead. And just as she was debating whether or not to go back to the front of the store to grab one she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
She could hear footsteps approaching her from behind and suddenly she was alone in that dark library again, her heart pounding in her chest rapidly and her palms becoming sweaty. Her breath caught in her throat.
"Find anything good?" a male voice asked suddenly, startling her.
She jumped and the basket fell to the floor with a loud clatter, the contents spilling out across the tile. She spun quickly and was faced with Tyreese's large form looming over her, and though she knew the man would never hurt her she still flinched as he raised a hand out to steady her.
Upon seeing her reaction he stopped short and furrowed his brow. "You okay? I didn't mean to scare you."
Thea wondered if Karen had told him anything. She quickly realized that her friend wouldn't do that.
"Yeah, sorry," she brushed it off with a forced laugh, tucking the right side of her hair behind her ear. "I'm just a little jumpy, is all. It's been a while since I left the prison."
He stared at her for a moment before it finally looked like he believed her and then he squatted to pick up her basket and the things she had put in it.
"I get it; it's been a while since I left too. Sorry for sneaking up on you." He apologized with a kind smile.
Just as she was about to stoop to help him a loud crash broke through the silence, accompanied by the sound of glass smashing on the floor and a pained scream.
Tyreese shot to his feet, trusty hammer at the ready, and peered over the shelves. "The hell was that?" he wondered aloud before glancing her way. "Stay here."
Before she could protest he was making his way down the aisle and disappearing around the corner, and she was alone again unsure if they were being attacked by walkers or if it had just been an accident.
"What happened?" She heard Glenn yell from across the store.
Zach called back a few seconds later. "Everyone's all right. We're over in Wine & Beer."
The Brit felt a moment of assuagement before it all went to shit.
A walker suddenly hurtled down through the ceiling and hung there from its entrails, snapping at them and trying to reach out as if he had impossibly long arms that could indeed grab one of them below.
"Yeah, uh, we should probably go now." She heard Glenn declare, something she couldn't agree more with.
Forgetting the items still scattered on the floor beneath her she grabbed her axe and turned for the entrance.
"Bob's still stuck, get him out of there!" yelled Daryl, followed by a response that she couldn't make out.
She hadn't made it four steps before walkers began raining through the ceiling.
"You sure this is a good idea? If Dr. Montagne catches us we're going to be in deep shit. Do I look like I want to be doing SCUT for the next month?" Larissa Johnson rambled as she followed Thea into the observation room that overlooked the operating room.
The chairs in the observation room were usually full of other surgeons and interns dying to get a peek at an interesting surgery, but today they were empty. Down below Dr. Montagne was in the middle of operating on a prominent member of society, what the patient did had not been disclosed to anyone who wouldn't be in the OR with the doctor and that had only made Thea all the more curious.
"Don't be such a wuss, Lar." Thea whispered, planting herself in one of the chairs in the very back row. "If we leave the light off he'll never know we're here."
The blonde intern sighed wearily before sinking into the chair beside her friend and turning her attention to the OR below.
Thea was annoyed to find that the patient's face was covered to preserve his privacy, but that annoyance quickly disappeared as she realized Dr. Montagne had just made his incision in the scalp.
He pulled the scalp forward to reveal the white skull beneath, which the camera positioned behind the table displayed on a large monitor, and Thea held her breath in anticipation.
A section of skull was cut and removed. Thea's heart was racing and she felt her eyes on the verge of welling up with tears at the sight before her. She had seen a human brain before in medical school, but the brains she had seen were all from cadavers. Now before her was a fully functioning and living brain and she couldn't help but be amazed at the beauty of it. It really was astonishing to think that Dr. Montagne had just opened someone's head and their entire life was sitting before them.
It amazed her how doctors could see every part of a person, literally.
She vaguely registered Larissa complimenting the doctor's technique but she found she couldn't tear her attention away from the monitor.
The human brain was a beautiful thing.
A walker crashed through the ceiling and landed right in front of her, mushy skull splitting open and rotting brains splattering on the tile.
She moved around it quickly in a panic, praying silently that a dead one didn't land right on top of her and turn her into a flapjack. Almost on cue another one came through right in front of her, this one landing on a stack of boxes that broke its fall.
It stood and moved towards her with an animalistic growl and arms outstretched, and she raised her axe quickly to swing it into the beast's head. It connected with a squish and her ribs protested loudly. She couldn't pull the axe from the walker as it fell and she went down with it, one hand gripping her side as she hissed in pain.
"Shit." She cried out, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment before a growl from nearby drew her attention back to the matter at hand.
A walker in a tattered sundress was shambling forward and she still couldn't pull her axe from the other one's head. She stepped on its chest to give herself some leverage and yanked with all her might, only for the axe to come free and the momentum sent her flying backwards into a display of toilet paper.
Her ribcage connected hard with the crate the bathroom tissue was on and she couldn't hold back the shout of pain that bubbled up her throat.
The female walker's arms outstretched towards her but a second later its head exploded as a shot rang out. Decaying brains sprayed the shelf behind it and then it was slumping to the ground in a heap.
Thea whipped her head around to see who had taken the walker down and found Daryl standing on top of a several cases of beer stacked nearby with his gun pointed in her direction despite the three walkers that were trying to get at him from below.
She didn't have time to thank him, instead getting to her feet as quickly as she could with her ribs throbbing and grabbing her axe from where it had landed.
Everything was moving so fast then, she remembered hearing blood curdling screams but not knowing who they belonged to. Sasha's hand had grabbed her forearm roughly and dragged her from the store as a helicopter began to come through the holey roof.
She didn't get to see who hadn't made it out before Sasha shoved her in the green Hyundai. Glenn, Tyreese, and Bob got in with them and they were speeding away from the Big Spot! before the ruckus drew more of the living dead.
Guess they wouldn't be back tomorrow after all.
They drove for several miles in silence, the entire time Thea kept glancing in the side mirror to see if she could figure out who was in the truck behind them, who had made it out and who hadn't.
She wondered what had caused the run to go downhill. What was the initial crash that had drawn the attention of the walkers on the roof?
Most importantly, how many of them had been lost to either flesh eaters or the helicopter that collapsed through the ceiling?
A mile later the Hyundai slowed to a stop on the side of the road and Sasha jumped from the vehicle with a slam of the door. The truck was coming to a stop behind them and as Thea opened up her own door she heard the rumble of Daryl's motorcycle as he came up beside the cars.
She stayed on the passenger side of the Hyundai and peered over the hood to see who was exiting the silver truck, her hand pressed tightly against her side. There was no hiding that she was in pain now; she had probably made her ribs worse.
Glenn and Michonne were the only two in the truck which meant that they'd lost Zach. Thea twisted her head to see if he would miraculously come out of thin air but it was no use. Those screams had been his and he was gone.
"What the hell happened back there?" Sasha demanded as they gathered by Daryl's bike.
Thea wanted to know too but she kept her distance not wanting to draw any attention to her injuries.
Bob looked down with shame. "I ran my cart into a shelf of wine. It came down on me, must have alerted the walkers on the roof that we were in there."
How had he managed to ram into an entire shelf? It seemed like the type of thing that happened in a Three Stooges movie or something, and Thea felt her skepticism grow.
"And Zach?" Michonne added.
Bob didn't answer, the guilt on his face growing exponentially.
Daryl shook his head once. "Helped pull Bob out and then a walker took him down."
That wasn't a nice way for anyone to go, torn to shreds by teeth and hands. She sighed softly, resting her head against the hood of the Hyundai.
As she stood there with her adrenaline wearing off she started to really feel the damage to her ribs and she let out a ragged breath to mask the whimper. Apparently not too well.
"Thea? You okay?" Glenn was suddenly asking her, having heard her and spotted her hunkered over the vehicle.
She lifted her head quickly and waved them off. "I'm fine." She lied.
They didn't believe her and Sasha stepped forward. "What's wrong with your side? Did you get bit?" she demanded to know.
Thea wondered who had put her in charge.
At the mention of a possible bite she noticed everyone stiffen, hands inched closer to weapons.
"No, it's not a bite!" She quickly reassured them. "I just…I fell wrong. Think I might have cracked a rib or two." She could use this to her advantage, act like she had been perfectly fine prior to the run and avoid having to explain the real reason for her injury.
Tyreese moved to her side and she tried with all her might not to flinch away as he wrapped one arm around her shoulders and gripped her upper arm with the other, almost like he was supporting her. He seemed oblivious to the fact that it made her extremely uncomfortable.
"We should get her back to the prison so Herschel or Dr. S can take a look at her." He stated as if it weren't obvious.
Thea huffed at him, shrinking out of his embrace. "I'm a doctor, you know. I'm more than capable of taking care of myself." She grumbled even as pain shot through her.
Sasha rolled her eyes hard and let out a frustrated sound. "We don't have time for this. You don't want our help that's fine, I'm not going to stand around and argue about it. Let's move out."
Returning to the prison without supplies, good news, and one member short hadn't been very fun. And even less fun was having to explain to Herschel the situation with her ribs because Tyreese absolutely was not going to let her get off easy with it. Luckily for her Herschel had agreed to let Maggie help Thea wrap them, so she didn't have to explain to anyone why she already had an ACE bandaged wrapped tightly around herself. That probably wouldn't have gone well for her.
As the older Greene daughter finished tightly securing the bandage Thea realized that there was something palpable in the air. It wasn't really relief but that seemed to be the only word she could describe it as.
"I'm not pregnant," Maggie spoke up as if she could read Thea's mind.
The doctor lowered her shirt back down and turned to face the farmer's daughter.
"That's good news, right?" She asked, still unsure what Maggie had wanted the outcome to be.
Maggie set down the tape she had used to secure Thea's bandage and shrugged her shoulders. She didn't seem sad, but there wasn't a smile on her face either. "It wouldn't have been a bad thing…"
She trailed off and moved towards the door but stopped before she could leave. "You shouldn't have gone out there today. You knew what condition you were in and you went anyways. You might not have made it back."
She disappeared before Thea could respond and she sighed heavily. She sure was glad that people weren't afraid to tell her how they really felt; it was only adding to the idea of leaving for good.
Thea turned and grabbed her bag of toiletries from the table, then made her way out of the cell block and down the tombs towards the showers. She needed to wash her face and then turn in for the night, hopefully she could avoid another verbal lashing from another survivor.
The showers were thankfully empty and she moved to the makeshift sink, pumping water into the bowl and brushing her hair back out of her face long enough to splash some cold water on her skin. She used the small bit of the bar of soap she had left to scrub at her face before rinsing and then grabbing a towel to pat dry.
As she hung the towel over her shoulder, grabbed her bag, and turned to exit the shower block she gasped loudly and stumbled backwards into the sink as she caught sight of Daryl leaning against the doorframe almost casually.
"How long have you been standing there?" she asked, her eyes narrowing at him.
He avoided the question in usual Daryl fashion. "You didn't hurt yourself on the run today."
It wasn't a question and they both knew he was right. She wouldn't admit that though.
"Oh yeah? What makes you think that?" she retorted in an attempt to stand her ground.
He was squinting at her like he always did. She wondered if he needed to get his eyes checked.
"Ain't stupid. You been hurt for a couple o' weeks now."
She was silent for a long moment and he continued.
"Seen the bruises, seen the way you been avoiding people. Something happened."
Thea scoffed. She had been on the receiving end of more than enough lectures today and she wasn't about to stand her for another. Stepping towards the door slowly she held her head high.
"You sure Zach wasn't right about you? You seem to be pretty keen on the goings on around here, Detective Dixon." She ground out in annoyance.
It was a low blow bringing up the friend Daryl had just lost but she was trying to get out of here as fast as possible. She stopped in the doorway but kept a decent amount of space between them.
"You stick to hunting deer, you're better at that."
The words came out in a growl and she didn't wait to see how he might respond before slipping into the tombs and back towards the cells for some much needed rest.
A/N: I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter! I think it's safe to say that Sasha is not a fan of Thea and Thea is not that much a fan of Daryl at this point.
The next chapter will be episode 4x02: Infected!
As usual, I'd love to hear what you thought of this chapter and thank you for reading! :)