Ch. 9

The Tombs smelled as good as anyone had expected. Blood, shit, and a lot of decay was in the air.

Sam adjusted his grip on his machete and stared into the blackness of the long crisscrossing hallways of the tombs. The scuffling of footsteps behind him stopped and he looked back. The blue light from his flashlight revealed to him that Glennwas
spraypainting arrows so they knew their way back.

"Anything?' Rick whispered to the young Irishman.

"No. Only a few bodies." Sam looked forward again and his eyes scanned the corpses in front of him.

All wore the blue jumpsuits of the inmates. Heads shaved and with neat holes going through the back. Their hands were bound behind them. And they were laying on their stomachs.

Daryl strode up next to him and Sam saw him looking at the bodies as well.

"Executed?" He asked.

"Most likely. They didn't put up a fight."

They began moving once again. More slowly than before. Sam clenched his left hand into a fist as they rounded every corner, prepared to bring his machete down onto the skull of a walker. But around every corner they had found nothing but empty hallways.

"Fuck," he swore as the group went forward.

"What?" Daryl asked, his crossbow still raised.

"I keep expecting them to be around the next- Shit!" Sam could almost hear the universe laughing at him when he rounded the next corner and came face to face with well over two dozen walkers. "Get back! There's too many!"

Sam sunk his machete into one of them and then followed everyone back the way they came from, following Glenn's arrows. Sam looked back and saw the mass of Walkers chasing them through the tombs. Reaching out with their decayed hands, desperately tryingto
close the distance and get their next meal. Sam ran faster andrushed past Glenn and Maggie.

The next junction they needed to turn on was overrun by walkers as well.

"Where do we go?!" Sam demanded as he killed a Walker with his machete.

"Anywhere but here!" Rick answered, drawing his pistol and firing into the nearest Walker.

The group backtracked and went down a random hall and they did not stop running until the sounds of Walkers began dying down. Sam stopped and checked their rear. No Walkers, but there was also no Glenn or Maggie.

"Oh shite," Sam swore. "Glenn and Maggie aren't here."

"Where'd they go?" Rick looked to everyone.

"They must've gotten cut off," Hershel's face dropped and Sam quickly spoke once more. "Don't worry Hershel, they're smart, you know that. They're going to be fine."

"We have to go back," Hershel demanded.

"Which way?" Daryl asked.

"Only way we came." Sam shined his flashlight down the hallway they had just escaped.

Sam took point, his machete raised and his pistol in his left hand. Daryl followed behind him crossbow raised high over Sam's left shoulder while Rick, T-Dog and Hershel took the rear, covering them from any potential Walkers.

Sam heard Hershel whispering Maggie's name over and over and winced at the volume. While he may have thought he was being quiet, any little noise would rouse the Walkers from their complacency, causing them to storm the small group.

But as they continued into the tombs, Hershel's voice became more and more distant. Until Sam, couldn't hear it at all.

"Hershel?" he whispered, his pace slowing. "Rick is Hershel there?"

"Shit." Rick swore.

They all turned and ran down the hallway hoping to find Hershel, Maggie, and Glenn.

Just as they were about to turn a corner they heard the old farmer scream and the snarling of a Walker.

"No!" Sam roared as he moved quickly around the corner. Hershel's left leg was sitting in the arms of a Walker who had bitten into it. Sam screamed and hacked the head off of the Walker with one clean stroke.

Glenn and Maggie rounded the corner and Maggie screamed out in horror at the sight of her father.

Rick and Sam picked up Hershel by putting his arms around their necks just as more Walkers emerged from around the corner.

The others began shooting their weapons, trying to clear a path back to the cells. As they were about to turn anther corner more Walkers appeared. They turned around once more and went through a hallway they had not been through before with the Walkers
/right behind them.

They stopped outside of a set of doors that had been sealed with a padlock and T-Dog quickly cut it off.

Rick and Sam set Hershel on the floor and Sam immediately began checking the wound. His hands moved to his belt and he unbuckled it as he had done only once, before he had met the group.

"Is that hatchet clean of Walker blood?" Sam asked Rick, his voice uneasily calm.

"Uh yeah, it is."

"We need to amputate it."

"Are you crazy?!" Glenn shouted at the young Irishmen.

"If we don't amputate the fuckin' leg he dies! Rick if you don't want-"

Rick slammed the hatchet onto Hershel's leg. Blood shot up into their faces and Sam winced at the sensation of warm blood splattering onto his face. Rick kept hacking away, trying to get the leg off, over and over with the hatchet.

Hershel eventually lost consciousness before he finished, and one last blow separated Hershel's leg from the rest of his body.

When it was over Sam swallowed hard and checked the bleeding sump.

"We need to get him back, right fuckin' now!" Sam told them. "Rick, Glenn find something to help us carry him!"

Sam applied pressure to the stump and then he thought he heard Daryl tell rick to duck. who did as he was told. And then he stood up and pointed his crossbow across the room. Everyone looked and there were 5 men in prison jumpsuits standing behind a cagedwindow.

"Holy shit," one of them said.

The 5 men moved out from the kitchen and stared at the group. Sam rose to his feet and drew his pistol.

Daryl got closer, keeping his crossbow raised. "Who the hell are you?"

"Who the hell are you?" One of them mimicked.

"We don't have time for this, he's bleedin' out, we gotta go back." Sam shouted at the group. He lowered his pistol and beckoned Maggie over to him. "Come around here, put pressure on the knee. Hard, hard! Push!"

"What happened to him?" a Hispanic inmate with long, dark hair asked us.

"He got bit." Daryl told them.

"Bit?" Another asked.

"Do you have medical supplies?" Glenn asked them as he walked past them and into the room they came out of.

"Where do you think you're goin'?" The big guy asked him.

"Who the hell are you people, anyway?" The Hispanic guy didn't move his gun from my chest ask he asked.

"Don't look like no rescue team," a scrawny guy with the heavy southern accent told his people.

Glenn came back out with a table with wheels. Sam grabbed Hershel and lifted him onto it.

"Get the door!" Rick ordered the others.

"Are you crazy?! Don't open that!" The small guy warned them.

"We can handle this!"

T-Dog removed the pliers and a lone walker in riot gear came in. T-Dog knocked it over the head and then jammed his fire poker into its head.

Sam pushed the metal cart forward trusting the others to keep him safe from Walkers as he got Hershel back to the cells. Back to whatever meager medical supplies they had left.

The tide of Walkers must have gone away since they were basically granted free roam of the tombs. They ran through the maze of corridors as quickly and quietly as they could. At least, until Daryl told them to stop, and pointed at the shadows that werebehind
them.

"Go!" Rick whispered.

They arrived back at the cell block and Rick shouted for Carl to open the door.

"Take him!" Sam told Rick as he moved from the cart and grabbed his rifle. Beth screamed at the sight of Hershel and Sam grabbed her hand.

"Don't worry. I've seen it before, he'll be fine," he reassured her. "I'm sorry but I need to go. Go with Maggie. She needs you right now."

Beth blinked a few tears from her eyes and nodded.

Sam checked the rifle and went back into the room outside the cell block.

"They here yet?" He asked Daryl who shook his head. "You got your pistol? Good, you may have need of it."

They heard shouting coming closer and closer. As if the inmates were arguing about they were going to handle the situation. Sam raised his rifle and Daryl did the same with his crossbow. T-Dog his behind a pillar and clutched his pistol, Sam wasn't surebut
he thought he could hear the man praying.

They came out one at a time. The Hispanic leading the way, a pistol tucked in the front of his pants.

"That's far enough." Daryl told them.

"Cell block C. Cell 4, that's mine gringo," the lead told him. "Let me in."

"Congratulations boys," Sam told them, "the governor called, you're all free to go."

"Whatcha got going on in there?" the lead asked.

"Nothing that concerns you," Sam clicked the safety off.

The Hispanic grabbed his pistol and began walking forward. "Don't be tellin' me what's my concern."

Daryl and Sam bothtook a few steps forward.

"Chill man. Dude's leg is messed up," the large black inmate said. "Besides we're free now. Why are we still here?"

"The man's got a point," Daryl said.

"Yeah, and I gotta check on my old lady," the more muscular black man said.

"A group of civilians breaking into a prison you got no business being in… got me thinking there ain't no place for us to go."

Well just had to get the prisoners with brains, Sam thought. "There's plenty out there. This was just the closest place. But I hear Nebraska is the place to go," Sam lied.

"Maybe we'll just be going now." The man with the heavy southern accent said slowly, hoping to defuse the situation.

"We ain't leaving!"

"You ain't coming in either!" T-Dog came out from behind his pillar and aimed his gun at the lead man.

The Hispanic raised his pistol and Sam lined up his shot, ready to pull the trigger at the slightest twitch.

"Hey this is my house, my rules! I go where I damn well please!"

Everyone began shouting. The lead prisoner telling the group how this was his place and they were trespassing while Sam and the others simply yelled at him to lower his weapon.

"Hey, everyone relax, there's no need for this," Rick strolled in and the yelling stopped.

The lead prisoner looked nervous now. "How many of you are in there?"

"Too many for you to handle," Sam smiled at Rick's warning.

He looked at us all then. "You guys rob a bank or somethin'? Why don't you take him to a hospital?"

They all looked at each other, disbelief dancing across their faces. How could these men be so blind as to the reality of the new world?

"How long you been locked in that cafeteria?" Rick asked him.

"Goin' on like, 10 months," the muscle in his arm was tensing up again.

"A riot broke out," the big guy spoke "never seen anything like it"

"Attica on speed, man," Sam understood that reference.

"Ever heard about dudes going cannibal, dying, coming back to life? Crazy," the little guy spoke with disbelief.

"One guard looked out for us, locked us up in the cafeteria. Told us to sit tight, threw me this piece, said he'd be right back."

"Yeah, and that was 292 days ago." the other big guy informed us.

"94 according to my calcula-."

"Shut up!" the Hispanic guy cut off the southern guy."We been thinking the army or the national guard should be showing up any day now."

"There is no army." Rick told them simply.

"What do you mean?"

"There's no government, no hospitals, no police. It's all gone."

"For real?"

"I'm serious."

They fell silent as they thought of what had happened to the outside world.

"What about my moms?" the big guy asked.

"And my kids? And my old lady?" the other big guy looked close to crying. "Yo, you got a cell phone or something that we can call our families?"

"You just don't get it, do you?" Daryl growled at them.

"No phones, no computers. As far as we can see at least half of the population has been wiped out" Rick told them bluntly. The Hispanic guy started to lower his gun, worry took over his face as his eyes were on the ground. "Probably more"

"Ain't no way," he snapped out of his trance, but didn't raise his gun again.

"Why don't you take a look?" Sam told them, finally lowering his gun, but keeping his hand near his pistol.

When they took them outside, they shielded their eyes from the burning sun. "Damn the sun feels good," one of them said, stretching as they absorbed the suns rays.

"Good lord, they're all dead," the southerner looked around at the bodies of the Walkers.

"Never thought I'd be so happy to see these fences," the Hispanic guy said as they looked onwards.

"You never said - how the hell did you get in here in the first place?" The little guy asked.

"Cut a hole in that fence over there by that guard tower," Daryl pointed across the yard.

"That easy, huh?"

"Depends. When we did it, there was no one tryin' to shoot us," Sam joked.

"So, what is this, like, a disease?" the big guy asked Rick.

"Yeah, but we're all infected," he informed him.

"What do you mean infected? Like AIDS or somethin'?" the Southerner asked. "If I was to kill you, shoot an arrow in your chest, you'd come back as one of these things" Daryl pointed to a body by their feet. "It's gonna happen to all of us.

"Ain't no way Robinhood casts responsible for killin' all these freaks" the Hispanic said as he looked around at the bodies.

"Must be 50 bodies out here."

"Where'd you come from?" he wondered.

"Atlanta" Rick told him.

"Where you headed?"

"For now, nowhere"

"I guess you can take that area down there near the water. Should be comfortable." Sam's hand clicked the safety off of his gun.

"We're using that field for crops." Rick told him.

"We'll help you move your gear out."

"Not gonna happen," Sam spoke up.

"We took out these walkers, this prison is ours," Rick told him.

"Slow down, cowboy."

"You snatched the locks off our doors." the little guy got closer to Rick, standing next to the Hispanic guy.

Rick stepped up and tapped his gun. "We'll give you new locks, if that's how you want it."

"This is our prison, we were here first,"the Hispanic guy smiled.

"Locked in a broom closet?" Rick laughed. "We took it, set you free. It's ours. We spilled blood."

"We're movin' back into our cell block."

"You'll have to get your own."

"It is mine. I still got personal artifacts in there, that's about as mine as it gets." he took out his gun again and Sam raised his.

"Careful now. Wouldn't want to get blood all over that nice clean shirt now would we?" Sam threatened him.

"Woah, maybe let's try to make this work out so everybody wins." the Southerner tried to make peace as he got in between the Hispanic and Rick.

"I don't see that happening."

"Neither do I." Rick agreed.

"I ain't going back in that cafeteria for one more minute." The mans face tightened and his hand balled up into a fist.

"There are other cell blocks." the Southerner told him.

He kept looked at Rick and shook his head. "These four pussies can do all this, the least we can do is take out another cell block."

"With what?" The big guy asked.

"Atlanta here will spot us some real weapons. Won't you, boss?"


AN: Sorry for the wait everyone! Anyway updates should be more frequent now and I'm sorry for any mistakes I may have made. Please leave me a review if you can, and I will see you next time!~ Pacco1