AN: I finally got the next chapter up, sorry about the wait again, but I hope you're all still having fun with this story, even if I'm not always quick on the update.

As always, thanks for reading and reviewing! I usually personally thank everyone who reviews, so if I missed anyone last chapter I just want to give you a special thanks, I really appreciate them, they always make my day!

Enjoy! :)

Glenn had a bad feeling.

He couldn't put his finger on the cause, but the sense of unease had been growing steadily since they'd left the prison. The run had gone well, surprisingly well in fact. Really, it'd been awesome. Everything going smoothly, no obstacles slowing their progress on the drive there, just a handful of walkers dotted sparsely through the buildings they looted, and best of all, finding everything they needed and then some; only having to go to two of the three clinics they'd mapped on their route. They could have gone to the third, these days you could never be too stocked up on anything. But Rick didn't want to push it, stating that they'd gotten what they'd come for and had been away long enough as it was. They could come back for the third location another time.

Glenn suspected that Rick was feeling apprehensive too, which only served to unnerve him even further. It just gave validity to what he was thinking. Runs practically never went this smoothly. So it had to mean something bad was coming right? Either they were about to get ambushed, run into a herd of walkers, or something awful was happening back home.

Something to do with Daryl, he worried.

If the air in the cab of the truck (and why did they have to take the same truck? He and Maggie couldn't escape the blood staining the seats, and had to sit on the soiled material. It felt wrong.) he could almost pretend that he was just psyching himself out. That everything was perfectly fine and there was nothing to worry about. He glanced over at Maggie. She was staring distractedly out the window, the fingernails on her left hand absently scratching at the seat, like she could dig the blood out the cloth.

Glenn's heart went out to his wife. This had to be worse for her. Sitting back here again like this. She'd been the one sitting on these seats trying to hold Daryl together mere days ago. He reached out his own hand gently stilling hers and giving a reassuring squeeze. She glanced over at him and gave him a sad smile, squeezing back lightly. He could see the fear he felt mirrored in her eyes.

"Hey," Glenn spoke softly. "It's gonna be ok." Maggie stared at him with a look that said she wanted to hold on to hope, but she couldn't quite grasp it. The edges of her lips turned down as she struggled not to cry.

"Mmhmm." She nodded giving him another smile, this one shaky at the seams, then turned back to the window.

Suppressing a sigh, he kept hold of Maggie's hand and looked up through the windshield, relieved to see the prison off in the distance.

"Almost there," he thought. "Almost there."

Daryl stared at his brother in warily. Merle would never change; here he was, locked in a cell, no way out, taunting him. Yet Merle's words struck a chord with him, leaving him feeling even more unbalanced, but he refused to rise to the bait.

"Man, whatever, you're the one locked up." Daryl sneered. "Besides, you ain't even supposed to be here. You're supposed to be dead!" He turned away, only to stop dead in his tracks when he almost ploughed right into Merle.

"The fuck!" He yelped. He frantically looked back to the cell, finding it exactly as it'd been, minus Merle, then back to his brother who still stood in front of him with a look of asinine glee plastered all over his stupid face.

"Where you think you're going, Daryl?" Merle asked him in a deceptively casual tone. "Ya know, contrary to what you might believe, I never did mind you tagging along, but I think ya 'oughta listen to your friends on this one. So go on and get!"

Taking his brother's words as a challenge Daryl tried to make himself look bigger, more threatening, straightening and puffing out his chest, tilting his head forward slightly on his neck, invading Merle's space. "Get out of my way, asshole."

Merle stayed rooted to the spot, continuing to block his path. "Ain't you listening? Go back, Daryl. There's nothing for you here!" Merle almost sounded desperate.

He stared at Merle with scrutiny, saw the intensity in his brother's gaze, the sincerity there; he didn't trust it. Merle may mean well when it came to Daryl, but following Merle had never gotten him anywhere. With that he shoved past Merle knocking him to the side, and began walking down the row of cells, but only a few steps in he froze as fear slammed back into him full force, his heart once again trying to hammer its way from his chest, beating agonizingly against his ribs. Gasping for breath he stared, not believing what he was seeing, because it just wasn't possible.

But then she spoke.

"You always were stubborn, Daryl. They all tried to tell you, and you just didn't listen. It's your own fault really."

"A… Andrea?" His voice didn't even sound like his own, it sounded like it'd come from a child, meek and terrified. Somewhere in the back of his mind, it occurred to him to feel ashamed, but he couldn't quite bring himself to be bothered with it. Not with Andrea standing there, talking to him. She was very clearly dead, her face was gray and drawn, her eyes a sickly opaque yellow. The bite on her shoulder was a bloody maw of blackened dead blood and rotting flesh. Yet there she stood, in a cell of her own, right next to the one Merle had been in just moments ago. She hadn't been there before.

Right?

"See this?" Andrea asked, pointing to her ruined shoulder. "It's your fault."

"It's not." Daryl denied vehemently. But doubt still crept into his mind. Was it? Could he have done something to change it?

"You left me behind!" She screamed at him, grabbing the bars of the cell and rattling her cage. "You just left me there!"

"There's nothing I could have done!" He shouted back. And there wasn't. He knew it. There was nothing he could have done to save her back at the farm. But he still felt the guilt weighing on his shoulders.

Should've, could've, would've.

He turned away, ignoring her screams and accusations, only to stop in his tracks again when he found Lori in the next cell. She was a walker too, her guts hanging open in a jagged cut, gore falling out of her gaping midsection to land at her feet.

"Daryl! Why did you let this happen to me?" She sobbed, as he stared in horror. "You could have done something!"

"I did everything I could!"

Lori fixed him with a scathing expression, snarling at him. "You let me die! You're a failure!"

"No! That's not on me!"

"But it is, Daryl. It's all on you."

A low moan pierced the silence of the cell. Startled, Hershel looked to the man lying on the bed before him. Daryl's pallid skin was covered in a light sheen of sweat, his eyes roving around erratically behind closed lids. It was the first sign of waking the hunter had made since this whole ordeal had begun, and Hershel was both relieved and concerned. Just maybe he was finally coming out of it, but it was also clear that Daryl was in distress, and that worried him greatly.

"Daryl, wake up." Hershel prodded, taking Daryl's twitching wrist and feeling for his pulse. He wasn't pleased with what he found. Daryl's skin was much too hot to the touch, his fever having skyrocketed since earlier, and his pulse was fast and shallow. Fearing the infection was taking hold of the injured man, Hershel pulled down Daryl's blanket to check the dressing on his wound again.

It was soaked through with blood.

"Damnit." He muttered, peeling the soiled bandages back to reveal red, angry looking skin that was starting to swell around the stitches.

"Come on, Son." Hershel begged, gently tapping Daryl's cheek. "Daryl, can you hear me?"

Daryl didn't respond other than to let out another moan, this one bordering on a whimper.

"Daryl! Wake up!" Hershel demanded, tapping his face harder now, as hard as he dared. But still, Daryl didn't wake.

The old vet leaned back with a solemn sigh and set about cleaning and re-bandaging the wound. There wasn't much else he could do right now, and he felt sorely inadequate with his inability to help his ailing friend. Just as he was finishing up taping down the dressing a commotion broke out in the common area.

Several voices echoed throughout the prison all at once, a stampede of feet could be heard pounding on the concrete. But Carl's excited voice ringing out above all the rest of the din gave Hershel a glimmer of hope.

"They're back! Hershel, they're back!"

It was too much.

He had to get away.

He could feel the walls closing in on him and without thinking Daryl broke into a run.

But he could still hear them. Andrea and Lori's curses and outrage followed him from the cages they were locked in. Other voices joined them as he ran down the endless corridor of cells, it was longer than it should have been, holding too many rooms.

It wasn't right.

None of this was right.

Faces once familiar flashed by, now destroyed by the merciless hands of undeath. Each cell he passed held someone else.

Jacqui. Jim. Dale. Axel. Oscar. Amy.

Shane. Patricia. Jimmy. T-Dog.

Everyone they'd lost was there. All of them emaciated, rotting, wasting away, shouting and leering, blaming and damning. A tirade of accusations hurled at him in anger and hatred, a relentless cacophony of offences rose in the air around him, inescapable, unyielding.

Worthless, failure, trash.

Insults flung at him like refuse. Piercing his soul.

He was breathing too fast, too harshly. His chest was on fire. His head swimming with dizziness. They were all screaming at him now, blaming him for everything that'd ever happened to them. The noise rising around him, seeping into his veins like a physical thing.

Burning, tearing, clawing.

It was too much. It was all too much.

He fell to his knees, letting out a primal scream of hopelessness and pain. His eyes clenched shut, hands covering his ears, body shaking in terror and agony.

And suddenly all was quiet, disconcerting in its silence.

The calm before the storm.

"Daryl."

His heart seized in his chest.

No.

Not her.

"Why didn't you save me, Daryl?"

Not Sophia.

"I told ya, and your new best buds did too." Merle's voice came from directly behind him, nearly causing him to jump out of his skin. "You shoulda gone back. Don't know, but it might just be too late now."

And maybe it shouldn't have surprised him as much as it did, but Merle actually sounded kind of sad about that.