A volley of arrows flies in the direction of the emerging hoard. The first five walkers crumple and fall, and the rest of the horde lurches over the bodies. Arrows whisk from quivers. Strings are pulled back, and another volley follows. Walkers drop in the creek bed, knees collapsing, legs folding like rag dolls. It's not long before the arrows are all spent.
The archers throw their bows to the ground. Carol slides her fingers into the brass knuckle rings of her knife and jerks it out. Dianne unsheaths her sword from the hilt on her back. Daryl rasps out a jagged knife in each hand.
Behind them, the other fighters ready their weapons. Michonne grips her katana and bends her elbows. Cyndie and two of the Oceanside women steady their spears and harpoons. Lieutenant Alvarado raises his saber. Jerry swings his battle axe forward into both hands, while Aaron bends his arm – with its mace-like attachment – in a battering position. Seaman Lincoln moves his feet like an agitate boxer as he grips his machete. Eugene drums his fingers nervously down on the handle of his knife. Ensign Morgan lowers his cutlass into a charging position.
"Advance!" Cyndie yells, and the fighters spill forward.
It's a chaotic sea of walker guts, of thrusts and jabs and slices, of dodging and panting and shouts of warning. Daryl is just pulling one of his knives out of a walker when he feels more closing in from behind. He whirls around as four of the hungry creatures lurch toward him. He stabs one. Another is taken down by Gunther, who lies in a prone position on the left bank of the creek. A third is dropped by McBride, who lies prone on the right bank, and the fourth by Mitch, who stands in the middle of a tree that has fallen across the river from bank to bank several yards away.
Daryl doesn't have time to sigh in relief. Two more walkers close in. He stretches out both arms simultaneously and sinks his twin blades into their foreheads. As he's jerking his knives back out, another walker comes straight at him. Jesus jumps into the air, whirls, and kicks the approaching walker in the head. He cuts through its brain with the thick, jagged metal spur attached to his left boot. That's new, Daryl thinks for a moment, before stabbing his next walker.
Another walker draws up beside him, but before he can pull back his knife, it has its head splattered into a sea of black-blood by Jerry's battle axe. Jerry plows forward like a tank, onto the next walker and the next. Daryl stabs a walker in front of him, while the one to his left is decapitated by Michonne and the one to his right has its head sliced through from temple to neck by Lieutenant Alvarado.
Daryl has no idea where Carol is, but he also doesn't have time to worry about her. As he stabs a walker in front of him, he can feel another breathing down his neck. Before Daryl can turn to face it, Aaron brings his mace-hand attachment down on its rotting skull, and the guts splatter the back of Daryl's neck and vest. Two more walkers lunge for him. He dodges their advance, and the instant he's out of their path, Rosita takes them both down with a double pop from her AR-15. He whirls, weaves, and stabs again.
Daryl loses track of time, of motion, of smell, of sound, of everything. The slashing and dodging become routine, the pops of gunfire fade into the background, the smell of the walkers recede like a wave. There's an almost zen-like rhythm to the slaying after a while. The bodies pile up quickly, and the fighters keep backing up to allow the walkers more room to stumble out. Eventually, the horde slows to a mere trickle, like the creek itself.
Daryl's drawn suddenly from his slayer's trance when the screaming voice of Seaman Reedus pierces the air. Daryl looks up toward the sound. The sailor is running across the roadway that covers the tunnel. It's awhile before Daryl can make out his words: "It's snapped free! It's snapped free! The other gate has snapped free!"
Daryl scours the creek and the banks to locate Carol. She's just yanked her knife free from the desiccated skull of a walker. "Henry!" she yells. "Where's Henry?"
"It's snapped free!" Seaman Reedus cries again. "The other gate's snapped free!"
Carol runs up the bank. Walkers peel off after her from the creek bed. The marksmen take them down as they follow her. She scurries up the hill to the roadway, vaults over the bent metal guardrail on the shoulder, and flies across the asphalt, feet pounding, in the direction of the remainder of the horde, in the direction of her son.
Daryl, watching her run, doesn't notice the walker behind him until its bony hand has clamped down on his shoulder. For one brief second, he's sure he's dead, until Cyndie's harpoon slides through the monster ear-to-ear, and it crumbles behind him, its putrid hand running down his back all the way, like an evil caress.
[*]
Carol's heart pounds. She will not lose another child. She cannot lose another child. Why did she leave Henry to rattle their cage with his staff? Why didn't she consider the pressure might mount on that end and break the gate free?
She runs all the way across the road, vaults over the other guardrail, and reels to catch her balance at the top of the hill that slopes down to the tunnel and creek below. She screams in grief and horror at the sight of a dozen walkers on their knees in the brown creek water, heads bent, tearing and gnawing with hungry mouths, human flesh dangling from their teeth. "Nooooo!"
"Mom!"
Carol's head jerks in the direction of the cry, and she sees her son is not the one being feasted upon. He's escaped the horde by scaling the iron ladder on the side of the section of the tunnel that rises up like a periscope. He's balances himself atop the black iron grate that covers the vertical access point. Walkers fling themselves against the sides of the tunnel and reach lame hands and grope, but they can't climb.
Henry jabs at their fingers with his staff. He looks desperately in every direction, but there's no escape. Walkers are ahead of him at the mouth of the tunnel and to the left and right pressing in on both sides. He could try to jump down off the periscope protrusion onto the cement tunnel and run to where it disappears into the hill beneath the road, but then the walkers that press against it could seize him by an ankle and easily drag him down into their herd.
"Hold on, Henry!" Carol yells "Don't move from there!"
[*]
Daryl makes his way up the hill after Carol, who has long disappeared. Harpoon in hand, Cyndie runs after him. Captain McBride follows her.
Daryl finds Carol on the inside of the guardrail on the opposite side of the roadway, staring down at the scene below. A herd of walkers surrounds her trapped son, who pokes at their grasping fingers with his staff. At least they can't climb up there. They can't even reach him where he stands in the center.
Some walkers begin to peel off from the tunnel and climb up the gently sloping hill toward the scent of fresh human meat. They slip and slide on the way, some tumbling back down, but others remain on their feet. A few fall to their stomachs and continue the slow journey up in a sort of deathly army crawl.
"Come back," Daryl says. "Other side of the rail." He helps Carol over the guard rail and watches the walkers slither up the overgrown grass toward them. He draws his knife as one gets close, but it's not easy to bend over the rail to stab it. Cyndie shows up beside him now, out of breath, and stabs it with her long harpoon. It's head slumps into the grass.
On the other side of her, McBride stabs another walker with the bayonet on his rifle before his attention is drawn to the feasting walkers in the water. He looks over at Henry on the grate, and down again at the grisly dinner. "Oh God," he moans. "It's one of my boys. It's one of mine. Merry. Poor Merry!" He screams in rage, raises his rifle, and opens fire on the feasting walkers. He picks off seven before he's dry firing, which leaves space for more walkers to join the meal. He releases the empty magazine from his rifle, which clatters to the ground, unclips another from his belt, and slaps it into the gun.
"Stop!" Cyndie yells. "We need to conserve ammo and figure this out. We need to get Henry out of there. They can't reach him from there. He's safe for now. Let's just…the ones that make it up this hill, we need to keep stabbing them until we figure this out."
McBride sighs. "Always my men. Why is it always mine. This is the second sailor I've lost in a month. And always on other people's missions!"
"I'm sorry," Cyndie tells him. "I never meant for this to happen."
McBride grunts and then slides his bayonet into another walker that has clawed its way to the cusp of the hill.
Carol is practically hyperventilating as she watches Henry beat off the clawing hands at the edge of the grate. Daryl puts a hand gently on the small of her back. "Breathe. Breathe. 'S fine. Gonna be fine. Gonna clear 'em all out."
"There's so many!"
"Listen. Shh, listen. Almost done on the other side. Weren't many left. Gonna go back 'n collect our arrows, a'right? Get Dianne. Get yer bow. Get m'bow. Get 'Chonne and the lieutenant 'n anyone with a sword or a spear who can stab the ones that crawl up, 'n we'll shoot the rest from here. We got this. A'right?" He forces her to look in his eyes. "A'right?"
Carol nods numbly.
[*]
It's a slow process. Every re-collected arrow is spent a second time in a volley of arrows sent into the creek bed below. Slayers bend ungracefully over the guardrail to stab with spears, harpoons, bayonets, and swords as the walkers creep up one by one. When the herd is thinned out, Henry leaps from the tunnel and finishes off several with his staff as he makes his way up the hill, where Carol embraces him gratefully. The slayers spill down the hill at last to finish off the few remaining stragglers, collect their arrows, and examine the remains of Ensign Merry Riggs.
When they all meet back again on the roadway, Captain McBride holds Merry's blood-stained sailor's cap shakily in his hand. "There's nothing worth bringing home to bury," he mutters. "We'll have a memorial. We'll erect a cross in the cemetery in his honor." He lets out a long shaky sigh.
Cyndie puts a hand on his back, near his shoulder. "I'm so sorry," she says again.
"It's not your fault. We all knew the risks we were taking."
"Well," Seaman Reedus says. "At least Merry won't have to explain to Kaitlyn that he knocked that Oceanside woman up last year and has a baby now."
"Don't be an ass," McBride growls.
"Just trying to see the silver lining, Captain, sir. Sometimes you've got to laugh to keep from crying."
One of the Oceanside women, a former nurse, has brought a first aid kit and treats the minor scrapes and bruises obtained during the battle. Everyone is checked for bites. As the sun begins to set, the weary, dirtied, bloodied group begins it slow, tired hike down the roadway to find a safe place to camp, eat, and sleep for the night.
As they walk, Carol leans her head on Daryl's shoulder. He drapes an arm around her waist.
