Chapter 58 - Nothing left
The walls shook around them, and Maggie, Tahlia, Glenn and Sasha stared at one another in fright.
"What the hell was that?" asked Sasha, pushing herself up to sit.
"Stay here." Maggie instructed Glenn and Sasha as she jumped to her feet. "We'll go check it out."
"Maggie!" started Glenn, but she held a hand up.
"Stay here, I'll come right back when I know what's going on."
And then she was off at a run with Tahlia hot on her heels.
Just beyond the main buildings, Daryl, Rick, Tyreese, Beth and Carl were already gathered at the top fence, and further around the fence line by the washing troughs, Carol and three other women were huddled together, everyone staring out to the field beyond the prison gates where a large group of people and vehicles – including a tank – were congregated with their weapons trained purposefully on the prison.
"What's going on?!" asked Tahlia as she skidded to a stop next to Daryl.
Without taking his eyes off the scene below, Daryl reached a hand back and shoved her close in behind him.
"That's the Governor."
It was easy to see whom Daryl was referring to. There was a man with an eye patch confidently pacing at the fore of the group, a maniacal air about him. He started yelling that he wanted to speak to the man in charge. Wanted to speak to Rick.
Next to Daryl, Rick clenched his fists, on edge.
"I'm not in charge anymore!" he shouted back. "We have a council now!"
"A council?" called the Governor with a menacing smirk. "These people wouldn't happen to be on your so-called 'council' now, would they?!"
And then two of his cronies dragged Michonne and Hershel, bound at the wrists, from one of the vehicles and forced them onto their knees in the grass, eliciting a collective, horror-struck gasp from the group up at the prison. Tahlia wasn't sure if she had reached for Daryl first or if it was the other way around, but he now had one arm wrapped securely around her as she pressed up against him, clutching a fistful of the back of his vest as she stared down the hill to where her best friend and mentor were at the mercy of a madman.
Rick leapt forward and gripped the chain-linked fence, his knuckles white and his eyes wide.
"Rick!" yelled the Governor. "Come on down! We've got things to discuss!"
"I've got to go down there." muttered Rick, sweat beading on his forehead.
"Dad!" Carl pleaded quietly. "Don't! Please don't!"
And Rick looked at his son and wished there were another option, but all he could see were lives hanging in his hands, and putting his own on the line seemed like a small price to pay in comparison to what he might lose if he didn't.
Striding the two steps towards Carl, Rick clasped him tightly.
"It's gonna be ok." he assured him in a steady voice, even though he didn't really believe that, and his eyes were bright with worry.
Then, releasing Carl, he looked to Daryl.
"Be ready."
"We ain't got enough manpower to take 'em on."
Rick rubbed a tense hand over his mouth. "No. We don't. Hopefully it won't come to that. But... be ready."
Then Rick was striding down to the lower fence line, and Daryl jumped into action, grabbing guns from a cart nearby, handing them out to everyone there before finally pressing a semi-automatic rifle into Tahlia's hands.
"Stick with me, Tahly." Daryl told her firmly, adrenaline firing a molten track through his veins. "Stick right next to me."
Tahlia gave a faint nod as she turned her attention back to Rick, who was now standing alone in the lower field looking as vulnerable and defenseless as a child on a beach with an incoming tidal wave.
She knew right then that this would not end well.
The Governor wanted the prison for his own. He was giving them until sundown to leave, and if they didn't, he would take it from them forcibly.
Despite the threat, Rick wasn't prepared to relinquish their home, but with practiced calm from years of negotiations, he did his best to reason with the Governor, even offering to take separate sides of the prison and share the space. For a moment it seemed like Rick was getting through to him, but there was an increasingly wild, unfocused look brewing in the Governor's good eye and then, without warning, he snatched up Michonne's katana from the trunk of a nearby vehicle, and with a violent swipe, hacked into Hershel's neck, half-decapitating him.
Tahlia felt Daryl's hand clamp tightly around her arm as her mouth dropped open in horror. She couldn't be sure if any sound escaped from her because all she could hear was Maggie and Beth screaming.
And then in the next instant, chaos erupted as everyone started shooting, gunfire whipped and deafened, while the tank rolled forward, crumpling the fences like paper as it advanced up the slope, firing shells into the prison buildings. Drawn by the havoc, walkers were pouring thick and fast through the fallen fences, streaming hungrily into the prison grounds.
"Take cover!" Daryl threw Tahlia down behind a concrete wall as one of the Governor's men advanced on them, firing. Daryl took him down with a bullet to the head, as Tahlia shot at two walkers that were heading their way.
"Oh my God." breathed Tahlia, trying to get her head around how everything could have changed in an instant. "We've got to... Michy! Rick!"
Daryl shook his head. "Can't go down there. Walkers everywhere. Rick and Mich will know that they gotta run." He glanced around them. "Fences down now. This place got no protection anymore. We're all gonna have to run, too."
A few yards away, Maggie and Beth were crouched behind an old dumpster.
"We've got to get everyone out of here!" Maggie cried. "I've got to get Glenn!" Then she turned to Beth and laid a firm but trembling hand on her sister's shoulder. "Get the bus ready. Get everyone on it." Looking back to Tahlia, she gestured up to the buildings. "Tahly, come help me to get the others out!"
A surge of protectiveness rose in Daryl at those words, and he grabbed Tahlia's arm, stalling her for a moment.
He didn't want her to be anywhere but with him - unless he could force her just to run for safety right this second, but he knew there was no way she'd leave without doing everything she could to help their people. At least, he reasoned, if she were inside the prison rounding everyone up, then maybe she might be a little safer – away from the gunfire; away from the walkers.
Conflicted, eventually he gave her a nod. "'Kay. Go get them others on the bus, then you go too."
"I'm not leaving without you!" exclaimed Tahlia, horrified.
"Y'are. Ya gotta." he told her resolutely. "Go up to the blocks, then out. Too dangerous for ya to come back down here. I'ma head off some of these assholes, buy you girls some time to move people, then when I know you're out, I'll come straight after. Catch up with y'on the backroad through the woods, just like we planned."
Tahlia hesitated because the thought of separating from Daryl in the middle of such a dire situation felt completely counter-intuitive, but he gave her arm a reassuring squeeze then nudged his head in the direction of the buildings.
"Go now, I'll cover ya."
And then Tahlia fired off her last few rounds to take down some walkers that were nearly upon them and ditched her gun before she and Maggie set off at a run to the cellblocks, while Beth veered off in the direction of the bus.
Turning his attention back to the fray, Daryl quickly scanned the area trying to see if he could spot any of their own.
All he could see in the lower field was carnage and walkers - no sign of Rick or the Governor. He desperately hoped that the former had escaped, and the latter was dead. Over by the courtyard entrance, Tyreese and Carol were firing at two of the Governor's men, and, further down by the sheds, a small group of their people were fighting their way through the undead to keep the road clear for the bus.
Spotting three attackers coming his way, Daryl clubbed a walker in the head then grabbed its shirt and used it as a shield as he ran towards them, opening fire. That goddamned tank had mowed down the inner fences now and had blown more holes in the side of the prison. Shit. Didn't seem so safe for Tahlia to be in there anymore. Shooting a glance up to the cellblocks, he saw a trickle of people running out, running for the bus, but no Tahlia. He willed her to hurry up. He needed her out of there now. Out of this damned place.
"Daryl!" Beth was running towards him. "Bob's been shot!" She gestured to the retaining wall of the herb garden a few yards away where Bob was sitting, clutching his shoulder, his face screwed up in pain. "Can you help me get him up?"
"Get him on the bus!" Daryl told her.
Beth shook her head. "The bus left just now!"
Glancing around at the ever-deepening sea of walkers surrounding them, Daryl swore. "We really gotta get outta here. Gonna be overrun real soon." Then flicking another look up to the cellblocks, he muttered to himself, "C'mon, Tahly."
Between them, Tahlia and Maggie had managed to round up nearly everyone inside the blocks and move them out. After escorting Glenn to the bus with firm instructions to wait for her there, Maggie had come back for Sasha and two of the others and had made a run for it minutes ago. Now, Tahlia was gently ushering Amos, Della and Eleanor, the last people left inside, to the exit.
"That Philip!" declared Eleanor, outraged. "Callin' himself the Governor like he's all high and mighty and then comin' in here and causin' all this ruckus! His mama would be turnin' in her grave! Ooh, I'm fixin' to march right down there and give him a piece of my mind!"
Tahlia couldn't help but chuckle at Eleanor's rant, loving that this spirited elderly woman was always so unconstrained and unflappable. Since meeting her, Tahlia had always secretly hoped that, if she made it anywhere near that age, she'd be just like her.
"Well, he'd better start running!"
"That he'd better!" proclaimed Eleanor as they pushed through the outer door.
Tahlia hesitated briefly as she surveyed the chaos in the yard. The press of walkers had thickened since she was last out here, and there wasn't a clear path for them towards the bus. Not that that mattered, as she now noticed the dust rising on the backroad in the wake of the bus that was currently on its way out.
"Plan B!" She pointed to the station wagon parked just beyond the block. "Let's get you guys in there and drive on out."
With an arm tucked through Della's, Amos propelled his wife towards the vehicle. "I'm driving!"
At that moment, one of the Governor's men appeared in front of them and fired, a bullet catching Eleanor right in the thigh. With a shocked huff, she stumbled and fell to her hands and knees. Acting on instinct and wrath, Tahlia whipped her knife out of her hip-sheath and flung it straight at their attacker, the tip sinking right into his eyeball, dropping him to the ground.
"Get in the car!" Tahlia shouted to Amos and Della, who quickly obliged, and Amos gunned the engine as Tahlia hooked her arms under Eleanor's and pulled her to her feet.
Leaning heavily on Tahlia, Eleanor looked up at her. "He shot me!" she cried indignantly. Then she pointed at the knife sticking out of the man's head. "That serves him right!"
With a fond smile, Tahlia nodded. "Yes, it does. Come on, El, let's get you in the car and we'll sort you out once we're in the woods. You're gonna be just fine."
Bundling Eleanor into the back seat with an instruction to keep pressure on her wound, Tahlia then leaned on the roof of the car and stood on her tiptoes as she scanned the chaos for Daryl. Finally, she caught sight of him further down by the ruined inner fence, his eyes already locked on to her. She gave him a thumbs up and pointed at the buildings behind her.
Everyone's out.
He gave a terse nod, then motioned to the car and then to the woods beyond.
Go.
Holding his gaze for one more intensely charged moment, Tahlia then lifted a hand in a quick goodbye before ducking into the back seat behind Eleanor.
From his position further down the yard, Daryl let out a forceful exhale.
Tahlia was finally on her way out, so it was time to make tracks too.
"Beth!" he yelled. "Let's-"
"Daryl, look out!"
Beth's urgent scream prompted him to whirl around just in time to see two walkers grasping for him. He ducked instinctively, and fired a bolt up into one's shoulder, quickly grabbing it out then driving it through its skull, as Beth clubbed at the other walker with the butt of her gun.
Just then, the tank fired another shell.
"That fuckin' tank!" shouted Daryl, glaring at the vehicle in fury.
But then he caught the look on Beth's face and that was enough to make his blood run cold. Warily, he turned around to follow her gaze, and then froze completely, ice spiking his veins as his heart stopped and his world bottomed out.
The station wagon that he had just seen Tahlia climb into was barely discernable as a car anymore, now just a twisted mess of metal and flames, everything within incinerated.
Swaying on his feet a little, Daryl felt light-headed as he stared at the wreckage trying to process what he was seeing.
Surely he was imagining this. Surely...
He felt Beth's hand on his arm, and turned to her, hoping that she would tell him he'd gotten it wrong, tell him that the vehicle his girl was in wasn't a flaming wreck, tell him that Tahlia had already left, tell him anything that would contradict what he was looking at, but the volume of his world had been turned right down and he couldn't hear a single word that she was saying.
Couldn't hear anything at all.
But her expression told him all that he needed to know. A mixture of horror and pity beneath the flickering shadows of the blaze beyond.
Daryl let out a frantic roar of pain and rage and raced to the tank, pulling a pin on the grenade in his pocket and rolling it down the barrel. He dashed away as the grenade exploded, flames bursting from the inside of the tank, then shot wildly at three of the Governor's men who had been taking cover behind the vehicle, killing them messily.
Then he was running past Beth again, focusing only on his need to get to the car – what was left of it - but she jumped in front of him, grabbing his arms, stopping him.
"Daryl, we have to go!"
He shook his head. "Can't. Tahly. I gotta go up there. Gotta go get her."
The words out of his mouth were flat and wooden, and Beth could see that he still hadn't quite come to terms with what had just happened.
"You can't!" Beth gestured to the mass of the undead between them and the prison, swarming around the flames already. "There's too many walkers! If you go up there, you'll... you'll..."
Something spiked in Daryl just then, sparking him like a live wire and he ripped his arms from her grip.
"I gotta! Can't leave her like... like that! Gotta go get her. Gotta least... least take her and..." his voice wavered and cracked as he motioned to the far side of the lower field where they buried all their dead. "Gotta least put her in the ground."
"Daryl..." Beth started sadly.
His chest was rising and falling faster now, breath shallowing, lungs burning as the weight of it all started to catch up with him, crush him.
"Daryl." Beth repeated, firmer this time, clutching his shoulders and shaking him lightly.
She'd always felt a little intimidated by him, a little wary of his gruff nature and hard demeanor. But she knew that she had to be steadfast right now, had to make him understand. And although she was loathe to say this next bit out loud, she summoned up the courage for the good of them both.
"You can't go up there. You can't get her. After that-" She pointed at the fire, "-there's... there's gonna be nothing left of her to find. Nothing left of her to bury."
And those words were a sucker punch, leaving him breathless and choking and nauseated. Then the reality of it all descended on him heavily like the final curtain at the end of a show and he could feel himself shutting down, closing over, everything switching off until only basic, primal survival instinct remained.
"We have to go." Beth's voice was a million miles away. "There's nothing left for us here. We need to get Bob, and go."
And Daryl let himself be led over to Bob where he hoisted him to his feet, and then on auto-pilot, he slashed through the undead in their way as the three of them ran for the woods not daring to sneak even one backwards glance at the wreckage and the carnage and the loss behind them.