A/N: I do not own The Walking Dead or any of it's characters in any way, shape or form.
TRIGGER ALERT: While not in every chapter there are chapters that mention rape and/or abuse.
Chapter 16
Daryl woke up to the quiet commotion of the others moving around on the lower floor but didn't move to get up yet. He had been laying there for about 20 minutes when he heard someone coming up the steps. He seen Rick and signaled for his friend to be quiet, which made Rick stop.
"We're gonna hit the armory before we plan to clear out the rest of the prison, if you can manage to untangle yourself." Rick whispered, smirking as he looked at his friend tangled up in the limbs of his lover.
Daryl looked down to see what Rick seen and smirked as well.
"A'ight. Give me a few." Daryl whispered back.
The easiest way for Daryl to get loose would've been to wake Adrian up but he knew that if she had gotten enough sleep that she'd already be awake, she wasn't one to sleep in very often. Daryl wasn't sure how he managed it, other than very carefully, but he got free of the arms and legs attached to his girlfriend without waking her up and walked downstairs to meet up with Glenn, Rick, Maggie, and T-Dog so they could raid the armory before they tackled another section of the prison.
TWD
Adrian woke up to find herself alone on the perch Daryl had claimed and to see the sun was higher than she expected. She got up from the mattress and rubbed her face to help the crusty feeling go away even as she secretly prayed for a screaming hot shower that she knew she'd likely never get again. She could hear the voices of Lori and Carol coming from a cell not far from where the perch was and wondered over to check on her pregnant friend. She poked her head into the door of the cell to see Lori laying on the bottom bunk as Carol sat on a stool.
"Bet you never thought you'd be so happy to see a crappy mattress in your life, huh?" Adrian asked her.
"No. Although some of those couches we came across during the winter were pretty amazing." Lori said as she turned her head so she could see Adrian.
"Did you get any sleep?" she asked Lori.
"Some. How about you?" she asked.
"Yeah, you slept in pretty late this morning. That's not like you. Something we should know?" Carol asked with a teasing grin on her face.
"Yeah, I was fucking tired." Adrian said, returning the older woman's grin.
"Where is everyone?" Adrian asked.
"They went to go raid the armory a while ago. They should be back soon." Carol said.
And as if right on que, the loud squeaking of the outter door could be heard. Adrian seen a very troubled look pass over Lori's face before she sat up and looked at Adrian.
"Could you get Hershel for me, please?" she asked. Adrian nodded and went to go retrieve the old vet.
"We could boil 'em." she heard T-Dog say as she approached the door.
"I think I just threw up in my mouth." Adrian said as she watched T-Dog hold a glove dripping sludge on the floor at his feet.
"There ain't enough firewood in the whole forest, no. Besides, we got this far without 'em." Daryl told the man.
"Hershel, you're needed, if you please." Adrian told him.
"Everything alright?" Rick asked as Hershel started to walk toward her.
"If I wanted you to know something Rick, I'd've told you." she sassed as she followed Hershel back to Lori's cell.
"I very much doubt that." Rick heard T-Dog mumble under his breath as he starred at the now empty doorway.
"Well, you can't say she isn't consistent in her dislike for me." Rick sighed as he looked back at the table holding the weapons they found in the armory.
Adrian stood outside of Lori's cell to give her and Hershel the illusion of privacy. Lori hadn't felt the baby move in days and was worried that she had lost it. And to make matters worse, she imagined the baby turning and killing her from the inside if it had died since they were all infected. Adrian didn't know when she had had the time to come up with such a morbid thought, but it wasn't an unwarranted one. Adrian had always known that any number of things could go wrong with this pregnancy and apparently so had Lori.
On top of being worried about the possibility of the baby being stillborn and killing her from the inside, Lori was worried about either her or the baby or both of them dying during childbirth. Her greatest fear was her dying during the birth and then coming back and trying to kill all of them, including the baby if it survived. Lori told Hershel if any of that were to occur that they were to put her down immediately.
And then the ever present crushing weight of her son's dislike and her husbands hate was made known. And then her guilt about Shane and Rick's relationship turning from friendship to hate in a matter of weeks. It seemed that Lori was better at hiding her worries and stress than Adrian gave her credit for because that poor woman was drowning in emotional distress and she had never known but the bare minimum of it.
And then she heard Hershel speak words of wisdom.
"You know doesn't give a shit about any of that? This baby." Hershel told her, causing Lori to let out a wet laugh. "Now let's make sure everything's alright." he told her. Hershel came out a while later and seen Adrian leaning against the wall just outside of the cell. Adrian walked with Hershel for a few steps before he spoke.
"She's exhausted and scared." he told her.
"She has every right to be, not that I'd ever tell her that to her face. It doesn't help that she has all the time in the world to think and stress about her thoughts either." Adrian told him.
"No, it doesn't." he said before walking down the stairs.
TWD
Everyone who was going with the scouting party was getting ready to leave. T-Dog, Glenn, Maggie, and Hershel were all putting on protective vests that they had found laying around while Rick told Carl that he needed to stay behind in case anything went bad, Carl would be there to protect those left behind, which was Beth, Carol, and Lori. Rick gave Carl his set of keys so the door could be locked behind them. Lori was standing on the catwalk on the second floor watching them all leave. Adrian looked up at the woman and gave her a simple nod in farewell and it was as Adrian was walking out of the cell block that she had forgotten to rub Lori's belly for good luck.
The group were slowly making their way through the dark hallways, checking every cell and hallways they came across before going further. Glenn had brought along a can of spray paint to help them fine their way back to the cell block. The only problem they had encountered so far was that Glenn couldn't stand to be more than three steps away from Maggie, which had caused a jump scare that had almost made Adrian pee in her pants. Adrian was in the back by Maggie and Glenn when Rick whispered loudly for them to go back. Adrian, Maggie, and Glenn were ahead of the rest of the group but got blocked off by walkers coming from one of the hallways, cutting off their retreat. They turned back and met up with the rest of the group and they all ran down another hallway, Maggie, Adrian and Glenn ending up in the rear again.
Daryl lead them all down a empty hallway but walkers suddenly appeared out of a connecting hallway, cutting them off from the rest of the group. Glenn turned and opened a door right behind him and the three of them ran inside and closed the door, pulling on the handle to make sure the walkers didn't get it open. "Son of a bitch! Where did all of these bastards come from?" Adrian whispered, mostly to herself.
They waited until they couldn't hear anything outside of the door before they slowly cracked it open and peeked carefully outside. Once they were sure they were in the clear they slowly crept down the hall they had been cut off from everyone in. They could faintly hear the sound of Hershel's quiet voice calling out Maggie's name and Maggie quietly called back. And then they heard a God awful screaming and then a gun shot that could only come from Rick's hand cannon coming from up ahead and ran toward the noise.
They turned the corner and Maggie started crying out in horror as Adrian felt all the blood leave her face and made her light headed. Hershel was on the ground, screaming in pain, a large bloodstain on his pant leg. Glenn and Rick threw Hershel's arms over their shoulders and Daryl walked ahead of them, pointing his light and crossbow at something over Adrian's shoulder. She turned and seen all of the walkers they had lost coming around a corner right for them. They were blocked on both their right and left sides so they were forced to go backward, Rick and Glenn in the front with Hershel, Maggie and T-Dog in the middle, and Daryl and Adrian were in the rear.
There was a commotion from the front before they all started rushing into the only room at the end of the hallway. They ran inside and quickly shut the doors before a jarring forced pushed Adrian, T-Dog, and Daryl a step away from the doors. They pushed against the doors until T-Dog was able to slide his fire poker through the handles of the door. Once the doors were semi-secure Daryl ran over to where Hershel was laying on the floor, still crying out in pain, with Glenn and Rick kneeling on the floor beside the old man as Maggie his head, crying for her father.
Adrian stayed at the door with T-Dog just in case but she still looked on in horror at her friend on the floor and it made her want to cry knowing there was no way to save him. Rick suddenly started to jerk his belt from his pants with quick instructions to Daryl to hold him down. Rick tied his belt around Hershel's leg and Adrian realized what Rick was about to do and she already wanted to throw up. Rick grabbed his hatchet and told them all there was only one way to save him before he slammed the sharp blade of his hatchet down onto Hershel's leg.
Adrian knew the mutilation of their friend was necessary to possibly save his life, but it didn't make watching it any easier. Hershel finally passed out from the pain and once Rick had the whole lower leg off, the reality of what he had just done hit him. Rick suddenly ducked low as Daryl pointed his crossbow at something across the room.
Adrian turned in the direction he was pointing to see 5 men standing behind a steel grate on the opposite side of the room. She still had her machete in her hand from when they were in the hallways but her machete was useless on long range targets, like men on the opposite side of the room, for instance. Adrian slowly sheathed her machete so she didn't draw the attention of the strangers to her and just as slowly reached behind her to grab her gun that was tucked into the back of her jeans before she brought it to her side.
"Who the hell are you?" Daryl demanded as he stalked closer to the strangers.
"Who the hell are you?" one of them asked.
"He's bleeding out. We gotta get back." Rick told them.
"Come on outta there, nice and slow." Daryl told the men.
The men all carefully walked through the door leading to their side of the room and they were all wearing prisoner jumpsuits. There were three African American men of different heights, an average sized pale white man with blonde hair, and a tall Hispanic man with long black hair that was pulled back.
Rick told Glenn to find something for them to carry Hershel back to the cell block and had Maggie take Glenn's place at Hershel's gushing leg. Rick instructed the girl to press hard against the wound to put pressure on it and help it stop bleeding. Adrian was sure Maggie would've known the reason for putting pressure on the wound if she hadn't been so traumatized by everything that had just occurred in the last 10 minutes.
"What happened to him?" asked the Hispanic man, looking over Daryl's shoulder to get a look at the small group on the floor. Adrian had stepped a few feet from the door that T-Dog was still standing by so that she and Daryl had two different angles on the prisoners.
"He got bit." Daryl told him.
"Bit?" the Hispanic guy said confused as he grabbed a revolver from the waist of his jumpsuit, which made everyone jumpy.
"Whoa, now, easy. Ain't nobody gotta get hurt here." Daryl told him.
He finally seemed to notice Adrian when she finally raised her gun and aimed it at him, but he seemed conflicted on who was the bigger threat, her with the gun or Daryl with his crossbow.
All of the prisoners were now out from behind the grate and Adrian was able to get a better look at them all. The Hispanic man was tall, he had tattoo's on his neck and arms, his greasy black hair was half pulled back, he wore a dirty white wife beater, and the top half of his dirty blue jumpsuit was tied around his waist. There were two dark skinned men directly to his right.
The one closest to him was the shortest of all of the prisoners, Adrian would even bet that she was taller than him. His jumpsuit was also dirty, a few of the top buttons had been undone, his hair was cut close to his scalp and his face was clean shaven for the most part.
The man beside shorty was was tall, probably taller than the Hispanic guy, his head was completely devoid of any hair, he had a stubbly beard on his face, and the top few buttons on his jumpsuit were undone as well, showing a grey top underneath.
To the left of the Hispanic man was the pale white man. He was about average height, had shaggy, greasy blonde hair with a terrible mustache and goatee, in her opinion. His jumpsuit was done all the way up, and he looked the most jumpy of all of the men, his arms folded tightly against his chest.
The last man was the tallest man Adrian had seen in a long while. He stood well over six feet tall and probably outweighed her by 100 lbs, minimum, his bicep alone was probably as wide as her torso. His black hair was short on top of his head and he had a short beard on his face.
Every one of the prisoners wore a look of shock and utter confusion. Adrian guessed that none of these men had any idea of what had been going on for the last year, especially if they were confused by Daryl's answer of Hershel being bit. Glenn asked the men if they had any type of medical supplies as he quickly walked by the men and into the kitchen to look for something they could use to get Hershel back to the cell block quickly.
"Who the hell are you people anyway?" asked the Hispanic man.
"Don't look like no rescue team I've ever seen." said the jumpy blonde.
"If a rescue team's what you're waiting for, then don't." Rick told them as he and Maggie pushed Hershel into a sitting position, a loud metallic clanging came from the kitchen before Glenn charged in with a large metal cart. Rick, Maggie, and Glenn got Hershel onto the cart and Rick told T-Dog to get the door so they could leave.
The short man freaked out, telling them not to open the door. T-Dog told him they knew what they were doing before he pulled his poker from the door handles and let a lone walker covered in riot gear stumble into the room before he shoved it against the wall and drove the poker into it's head, letting it fall to the floor as Rick, Maggie, and Glenn who were pushing the cart, ran out the door. "Daryl! Adrian!" Rick yelled for them as he ran down the hall. Adrian stayed put as Daryl backed up to the door, her gun still aimed at the man with the gun. "Adrian." Daryl called to her, letting her know it was safe to back away now.
Adrian swapped her gun to her left and and pulled her KBAR from it's sheath and walked backward toward the door. She turned to look behind her just in time to see Daryl step through and into the hallway. She quickly turned and jogged after the others back toward the cell block. They were running through the halls and had taken a wrong turn before they were told to turn around but Adrian seen two walkers coming at them from down the hallway they were in. She turned to the others but only seen T-Dog standing there.
"Go. We can't afford to let them follow us back to the cell block. I'll find my way back. Go!" she hissed at him, shoving at his shoulder to get him moving.
The walkers had been former inmates from their jumpsuits. Adrian quickly started running at the walkers, who were now growling at her. Once Adrian was a few yards from the first walker she dropped down and slid along the floor, pressing her hands together to make a club and swung as hard as she could at the shins of the first walker. If Adrian hadn't been so focused on quickly killing these walkers and getting back to the cell block she might've been sick because the legs of the walker snapped in half, causing the walker to fall with a wet splat onto the concrete but the fall hadn't killed it.
After her momentum had slowed from her slide past the second walker she popped to her feet and the walker turned and took a step in her direction, mouth wide open and ready to bite her. Adrian shoved the barrel of her gun into the mouth of the walker and pushed it against the closest wall before she slammed her knife into it's forehead and letting it fall to the ground. The first walker was clawing it's way to her since she had taken out it's legs. She walked past it before she turned and planted her booted foot into it's back, and pushed the blade of her knife into the back of it's skull.
She pulled the blade from the walker and felt fresh droplets of blood land on her forearms and face. She wiped her knife onto the dirty jumpsuit of the walker before she walked to the end of the hallway. She was still in the shadows of a connecting hallway that would lead her back to the cell block when she heard the voices of the strangers in the hallway she needed to take back to the cell block.
Making sure she stuck to the shadows, she crept to the edge of the hallway and peeked out, first looking at the way they came from, which was empty, and then the way back to the cell block, which is where she seen the shadowy silhouettes of men. She looked down at her hands to see that she was holding both her knife and gun and knew she had to make a choice. After a moment longer she put her knife away and quietly made her way down the hallway, not wanting to be spotted by the prisoners.
Adrian could hear the voices of people talking as she got closer the to door that lead to the cell block but made sure to keep her steps quiet as she crept up behind the prisoners.
"We ain't goin' no where." she heard one of them say.
"You ain't comin' in either." she heard T-Dog say.
She could now see into part of the room and could see that the Hispanic prisoner had his gun out again.
"This is my house, my rules, I go where I damn well please." the man with the gun said, as if any of them would be afraid of such a lame threat after everything they had been through.
"There ain't nothing for you here, so why don't you go back to your own sandbox." Daryl yelled at the prisoner.
"Hey hey hey! There's no need for this." Rick said as he ran into the room.
The prisoner with the gun tried to peek around the corner, as if he could see into the cell block.
"How many you got in there?" he asked Rick.
"Too many for you to handle." Rick smarted off, which might've been true if most of their strongest fighters hadn't already been surrounding the prisoners.
"You guys rob a bank or somethin'? Why don't you take him to a hospital?" the prisoner asked. Everyone was quiet for a minute before Rick's voice broke the silence.
"How long you been locked in that cafeteria?" he asked.
"I don't know, like 10 months." he answered.
Everyone was quiet again. If they had been locked in that cafeteria for that long then they were absolutely clueless as to what had become of the world in that amount of time. The prisoners explained how a riot of which they had never seen before had broken out, that they had heard rumors of people going crazy and going cannibal, that a guard had locked them in the cafeteria and told them to stay there until help came for them, which it clearly never did.
Rick then told them about how everything was gone now. No hospital, no military, government, all of it was gone, that he estimated that possibly more than half of the world's population was now dead. There was a shocked silence from the prisoners as they tried to swallow the fact that everyone they ever knew and loved was most likely dead.
"Ain't no way." the prisoner with the gun said.
"See for yourself." Rick told him.
Rick told the prisoners to go first, pointing toward the door that lead outside. They slowly made their way to the door, with Rick and T-Dog right behind them. Daryl started walking too when he seen Adrian walk out of the dark hallway and into the room.
"Where the hell have you been?" he demanded as he stomped up to her and took her chin in his hand.
"I've been hiding in the shadows of the door ever since Sharp Shooter out there threw around the words My House, My Rules." she told him as he turned her face this way and that before giving her body a quick up and down glance to make sure she was alright.
"There were a few walkers in one of the hallways we turned down and I didn't wanna chance them following us back here but by the time I got finished with them the prisoners had already walked past me, so I thought it might be a good idea to stay out of sight behind them, in case they tried anything." she said.
"Yeah, well don't do that shit no more. Damn near had a heart attack when you didn't show up with the rest of us." he told her.
"Well you should probably take that up with T because he knew what I was doing." she told him.
"Come on, let's get out there with the rest of 'em." he told her as he took her hand and lead her outside. As they walked outside Adrian put her gun away and pulled out her machete. She had seen the weapons they were carrying and all of them were blunt weapons, aside from the one with the gun. They followed the prisoners outside to the courtyard that was littered with dead walkers and trash.
"Damn, that sun feels good." one of them said as they soaked up the sun for the first time in almost a year.
"Never thought I'd be so happy to see these fences." the one with the gun said as he gestured to the fences lining the courtyard and the field. Rick, T-Dog, Daryl, and Adrian slowly followed behind the prisoners and fanned out once they were all outside. Daryl walked to the far right and Adrian was a few steps behind him. She knew of all of them she was physically the weakest and didn't want to chance being to far from any of the others in case the strangers tried something stupid.
"You never said, how the hell'd you get in here anyway?" the short one asked. Daryl gestured to the area they got in. "Cut a hole in that fence over there by that guard tower." he told him. Adrian gently pressed the right half of her body into Daryl's right arm, pressing her lips against the back of his shoulder, not to kiss him but more as a place to rest her head while she kept an eye on the prisoners as they walked around, her machete in clear sight as it rested against her right leg.
She felt Daryl reach back and rest his free hand against her hip.
"That easy, huh?" he asked skeptically.
"Where there's a will, there's a way." he said simply.
"That's easy for you to say." he grumbled, annoyed.
"So what is this, like a disease?" the large man asked after he poked on of the dead walkers with his pole.
"Yeah, and we're all infected." Rick told him.
"Infected? What do ya mean, like AIDS or somthin'?" the blonde on asked.
"AIDS doesn't do this kinda shit to you." Adrian told him, speaking for the first time in their presence.
"If I was to kill you, shoot an arrow in your chest, you'd come back as one of these things. It's gonna happen to all of us." Daryl explained to him.
"Cheery thought, isn't it?" she asked with a bitter smile on her face.
The prisoners stood in stunned silence for a minute.
"Ain't no way this Robin Hood cast killed all these freaks." Sharp Shooter said, gesturing to all of the dead walkers in the courtyard.
"You're right, it wasn't all of us. It was only half of us, so you better watch your mouth because you have no fucking clue what we're capable of." Adrian said as she glared at him.
She got a bad feeling in her gut every time she looked at him. It wasn't anything he had said or done that had caused the feeling but Adrian had discovered early on that she tended to get a gut feeling when something wasn't right with a person. Of course, by the time she realized what her gut tried to tell her about some people she had already been a teenage mother.
Shooter just shot her a look that said he was unimpressed and she felt Daryl give her hip a light squeeze.
"Where'd you come from?" he asked Rick.
"Atlanta." he answered.
"And where you headin'?" he asked again as he walked closer to Rick.
"For now, no where." Rick said. Shooter nodded his head like he understood. "You can use that area down there by the water." he told Rick, as if he had any say in where their group stayed. Adrian quietly snorted at the absurd suggestion. Those dumb fucks would still be locked in the cafeteria if it weren't for them and that asshole had the audacity to tell them where they were allowed to stay?
"We're using that field for crops." Rick told him simply.
"We'll help you move your gear out." he told Rick.
"That won't be necessary. We took out these walkers, this prison is ours." Rick told him, firmly letting him know that they weren't going to be told what to do.
"You snatched the locks off our doors." the short one snapped.
"We can give you new locks, if that's how you want it." Rick told him.
Adrian had to duck her head behind Daryl's shoulder to hide the smile that Rick's comment had given her but that smile was quickly wiped from her face.
"This is our prison, we were here first." Shooter said, as if them being there first gave them a right to the place.
"Locked in a broom closet?" Rick smarted back.
"This isn't a game of I-Had-It-First. We're the ones who cleared out that field, this courtyard." Adrian snapped at him.
"We took it, set you free, we split blood, it's ours." Rick told the prisoner and while his voice wasn't loud, you could still hear the anger in Rick's voice.
"We're moving back into our cell block." Shooter told him.
"You'll have to find your own." Rick told him. Clearly Shooter had had enough because he pulled out his gun again, as if that scared any of them when they could all take him out before he ever got a shot off.
"That is mine. I've still got personal artifacts in there, that's about as mine as it gets!" he yelled.
He took a step toward Rick but Rick didn't move. T-Dog, Daryl, and Adrian, however, did and all of their weapons were aimed at the prisoner who had stepped near their friend. The other prisoners ran forward and put themselves in front of their friend with the gun.
"Whoa whoa whoa. Maybe we can make this work so everybody wins." suggested the blond. Adrian didn't peg him as a man who had a spin of steel. His timid behavior lead her to believe that he was more of a follower than a leader every day of the week.
"I don't see that happening." Shooter said as he starred at Rick, as if it would somehow make Rick stand down and let them have the cell block that they had only moved into the day before.
"I don't either." Rick agreed.
"There are other cell blocks." the blonde said.
"You could leave. Try your luck out on the road." Daryl told him. Adrian agreed with Daryl's suggestion more. She didn't get a bad feeling from all of the prisoners but it didn't mean that if she had to choose between them living together and the prisoners leaving that she'd want them to live together.
Shooter seen that none of them were going to back down and looked around to see the other prisoners looking at him.
"If these pussies can do all of this, the least we can do is clear out one cell block." he told the other prisoners.
"With what?" the big one asked.
"Atlanta here will spot us some real weapon, won't you?" he asked as if daring Rick to refuse his offer but it seemed Rick was smarter than he gave him credit for.
"How stocked is that cafeteria? Five guys living in there for almost a year, must have plenty in there." Rick said.
"Sure as hell don't look like anybody's been starvin'." Daryl said, glaring at them all.
"There's only a little left." Shooter said.
"We'll take half and in exchange we'll help you clear out a cell block." Rick said, laying out the deal he was willing to make.
"Didn't you hear him, there's only a little left." Shorty said, as if they were hard of hearing.
"I bet you've got more food than you do options." Rick told Shorty before he looked back at Shooter.
"You pay, we'll play." Rick told him.
"We'll clear out a block for you and then you keep to it." Rick told him.
"Alright." Shooter said, agreeing after a moment of silence.
"But let's be clear, if we seenyou out here anywhere near our people, if I even catch a whiff of your scent, I will kill you." Rick told Shooter, looking him dead in the eyes so he knew Rick was serious.
Shooter was quiet for a few seconds before he spoke.
"Deal." he told Rick.
TWD
Rick told Shooter that as soon as they had their half of the food safely in their cell block that they would loan them weapons and help them clear out a cell block.
"Let's get this over with." Shooter said as he lead the march back to the cafeteria.
Rick, T-Dog, Daryl, and Adrian all walked behind the prisoners so they could keep them in their sights. They walked into the cafeteria and looked around the room for the first time, even though it was their second time in the room.
"Yall never tried to break outta here?" T-Dog asked them as they looked around.
"We tried the door a few times, but any time we made noise those freaks out there started growlin' tryin' to get in here. Those windows have bars on them that He-Man couldn't get off." the bald prisoner told them.
"Better than a 5 by 8." the blond one said.
"You won't hear me complain'. I'm doin' 15 in here, my left leg will barely fit on one of those bunks." the large one said.
"Yeah, they don't call him Big Tiny for nothin'." said Baldy.
"Yall done jerkin' each other off, I'm sick of waitin' back here." Shooter said before his eyes landed on Adrian and an ugly smirk appeared on his lips.
"Unless you'd like to to be the one doin' the jerkin' off, then I wouldn't mind joinin' in." he said, as if it was an offer she couldn't refuse.
"I'd rather kiss a walker and one of those fuckers will eat my face off." she snapped, very offended and completely grossed out.
"Have it your way." he said as he turned and walked deeper into the kitchen.
They walked into the pantry the members of the group stopped and starred in awe. There was more food in that pantry then they ever thought they'd ever see again. Adrian stepped up to the door after Daryl walked in and looked around with her mouth handing wide.
"Jesus Christ. You could feed a third world country with everything in here." she said, the shock on her face was also clearly in her voice. Daryl flicked on his flashlight and looked around for a second before he flashed the light in Shooter's face.
"This is what you call a little bit?" Daryl growled as he walked past the man.
"It goes fast." he said.
Adrian was sure it did go fast, when you didn't ration.
"You can have a bag of corn, some tuna fish-" Shooter started.
"We said half." Rick told him, letting him know that he wasn't going to weasel out of their deal.
"What's in there?" she heard Rick ask.
"Don't open that." Big Tiny said as Adrian heard a door squeak open and Rick started to gag. A half second later a smell worse than any walker she had ever come into contact with invaded her nose and she bent over and started to dry heave.
Daryl looked over when he heard Rick gagging to see Rick's back now pushed against a door that he assumed was probably once the freezer. His blue eyes looked down at his red headed girlfriend to see her bent over and could hear her dry heaving, hard, from the smell that had come from the freezer.
"You gonna make it or should I be gettin' ready to shoot ya?" Daryl asked her, not actually concerned about her dying. Adrian shot a hard, green eyed glare in his direction before she held up her middle finger at him. All she got in return for her insult was a smirk before he turned back to look at the food lining the shelves.
Rick and T-Dog started bringing bags of corn and boxes of canned food back to the cell block while Daryl lead the prisoners to the room outside of their block and Adrian went to get weapons for the prisoners to use. Rick and T-Dog were with Daryl and the prisoners as Adrian walked in with her arms full of different kind of blunt but silent weapons that she then laid on the table. Tomas, previously known to Adrian as Shooter, picked up one of the weapons before he looked at Rick.
"Why would I need this" he asked holding out one of the crowbars "when I've got this?" he said now holding his gun up.
Adrian rolled her eyes so hard she gave herself a headache.
"You got any more bullets for your little noise maker there?" she asked sarcastically.
"No." he told her, confused by her question.
"Then what good is 6 fucking bullets gonna do you?" she asked him like he was stupid. He glared at her even as she seen lust in his eyes but she wasn't in the mood to entertain stupid questions.
"You don't fire guns, not unless your back's against the wall." Daryl told them.
"Noise attracts them. The louder the noise, the more that show up. Silent weapons are the best." Adrian said, finishing Daryl's explanation.
"We'll go in two by two. Daryl will take point with T and I'll take the back with you." Rick said looking at Andrew, a.k.a. Shorty. Rick gave Adrian a glance before he spoke.
"You can stay here if you want, help look after things." Rick told her, hoping she'd stay.
"Nah, too many cooks in the kitchen as it is." she told him as she looked at the blade of her machete. Rick just sighed in defeat and she was pretty sure she could hear Daryl's annoyance from across the table.
"Alright well you can be in back with me." Rick told her before he addressed the prisoners.
"Everyone stay together and stay in tight formation. If anyone breaks ranks, we could all be taken down. If one of you runs off you might be mistaken for a walker and end up with an axe in the head." Rick told them.
"That's how you take 'em out. These things only go down with a head shot." Daryl told them so they would try to stab them anywhere else and end up getting bit because they didn't aim for the head.
"You don't have to tell us how to kill a man." Tomas scoffed at Daryl.
"These things aren't men, dipshit. You ever seen a man come back to life so it can eat the flesh from your bones while you're still breathing? Head shots only. You try to kill it any other way and the only thing you're going to get today is a bite from a walker and then a head shot from one of us." she told him.
She'd be damned if one of her own got killed today because one asshole was arrogant enough to think he knew what he was doing when in reality he'd just been thrown into the deep end of the pool and found out he didn't know how to swim.
"Just remember, go for the brain." Rick told them before they all started to leave.
They had been in the hallways for about 10 minutes and were slowly making progress even though they hadn't seen any walkers yet.
"Man, it's too damn dark in here." she heard the bald one, Oscar, say.
She heard Daryl's deep voice, which it only seemed to do when he spoke in a low tone of voice, say something but couldn't make out the words. The next words spoken, however, she was sure everyone in the whole prison heard.
"It's comin'!" yelled Axel, the blond.
Rick shushed him as Adrian winced at the loud noise.
"Ring the damn dinner bell, why don't you?" she hissed at the jumpy man.
Adrian nearly jumped out of her skin when Big Tiny let out a war cry before all of the prisoners charged forward and began to attack two walkers. Rick and Adrian walked up to stand beside T-Dog and Daryl and they all starred on in confusion.
"What are they doing?" she asked, her head cocked to the side as if that would make their actions make sense.
"I think they're tryin' to kill 'em." T-Dog answered.
Adrian turned her head to look at her three friends but they weren't looking at her.
"No, seriously, what are they doing?" she asked again but didn't get an answer this time.
Oscar and Andrew were in the corner with one walker that had fallen to the ground, Oscar kept kicking it while Andrew kept beating it's chest and torso with a wooden bat, but never once did either of the two ever hit it in the head. Big Tiny was behind the second walker, holding it by the arms, as Tomas started to slam his crowbar into the stomach of the walker like his crowbar was another bat. Axel got one good hit in with his pipe before he dropped his pipe and pulled, what Adrian assumed, was a shank from one of his socks and started to stab the walker repeatedly in the stomach with his shank.
They had been beating and stabbing on the walkers for at least five minutes before Adrian broke the silence between their group.
"I mean, they have to hit them in the head sometime, right? Even if it is by accident." she asked, wondering just how stupid these guys could be to have not understood when they were told head shots only. Rick had finally had enough when he told the men that they had to attack the damn brains, which they finally did.
"Fuck, I'm exhausted just from watching that shit show." Adrian muttered to Daryl as they all started down the halls again.
They made it to the end of the hall and the double doors at the end were open. They could hear the walkers growling and stumbling toward the a few seconds before one walked through the door, which Daryl took out with his crossbow.
"It's gotta be the brain. Not the stomach, not the heart. The brain." he told them as a second walker stumbled through the door. Oscar jumped forward and quickly slammed his weapon onto the top of the walker, cracking it's skull open and killing it.
"Like that?" he asked as he jumped back in line as a few more walked through the door.
Daryl gave a quick "Yeah" before the other prisoners started jumping in and killing the walkers correctly. There was a steady flow of walkers coming through the door and the prisoners were handling it well. Adrian heard a loud yell from behind them and turned to see Big Tiny surrounded by 2 walkers, one coming at him from the front and one from the back. Rick ran forward and stabbed the walker in front in the back of the head. Suddenly two loud shots went off just inches from her left ear.
"Motherfucker!" Adrian screamed as she covered her abused ear. Adrian glared up at Tomas who didn't seem too concerned that he had not only just rang the dinner bell for any walkers left in the halls but also about firing so close to her ear. "Are you out of your fucking mind?!" she screamed at him, no point in being quiet after the gun shots. "You fucking bastard!" she yelled as she cradled her ear.
She felt a calloused hand on the right side of her face that pulled her head up and she seen that it was Daryl.
"Let me see." she faintly heard him say as he turned and gently pulled her hand from her ear so he could take a look. He was not happy, not at all. That psycho had fired that gun way to close to her head and hadn't even cared and he had fired that damn gun after they had already told him that loud noises attracted walkers, like gun shots.
"Can you hear anythin'?" he asked her.
She turned her head, her green orbs meeting his blue ones.
"What?" she asked him.
"I asked if you could hear anything outta that ear." he repeated.
"Does the screaming baby from ringing church bells and white noise count?" she asked sarcastically.
"It's somethin' at least." he grumbled.
"If you say so, but now I'm half deaf and I can't go back on my own and no one can go back with me." she told him.
"You'll be in the back, right in front of me and Rick from now on." he told her. Adrian nodded her head that she agreed with his suggestion when she heard Big Tiny had been scratched pretty bad by the walker that Tomas had shot.
"Guy's, I'm telling you, I'm fine. I'm not getting sick, I'm not gonna turn into one of those things." he tried to convince everyone.
"This infection is like any other, Big Tiny. It never just hits you all at once. It starts with a fever and then just gets worse from there, but it takes a while before it sets in." she told him.
"I'm fine, I can keep fighting." he told them all.
"You saved that old guy. Why don't we just lock him up?" Oscar suggested.
"Quarantine him?" Axel added.
"Locking him up won't save him. The infection would kill him and you don't want him to go like that. It's torturous and inhumane just letting the infection run it's course until he dies, and he will die, and once he does he will turn." Adrian explained to Oscar.
"We gotta do somethin'. Why you just standin' there?!" Andrew yelled at Rick.
"I'm sorry, but there's nothing we can do." Rick told him.
"You son of a bitch." Andrew said, clearly not believing that nothing could be done to save his friend.
Adrian jumped when Tomas slammed his crowbar into the back of Big Tiny's head, who fell to the ground like a rock, a loud thud sounding as his body hit the ground. Tomas looked at his crowbar for a second before he started to hammer his crowbar into Big Tiny's head repeatedly. Adrian had taken a step behind Daryl before she turned her back on the gruesome scene.
"Oh my god." she said as she buried her face into Daryl's shoulder, fisting his leather vest in her hand with the few fingers she wasn't holding her machete with.
She felt Daryl put his hand on her back, careful not to prick her with his hunting knife. She didn't know how long Tomas beat in Big Tiny's head, probably no more than a minute or two, but just from the sound of it, it seemed like it went on forever. No one said anything but Daryl gave her a light nudge to let her know that they were moving. Adrian felt bile climb up her throat when she turned and took in the scene behind her.
There was red blood splattered all over the wall and half of Big Tiny's skull was smashed open, brains and blood flooding the floor around him.
"I think I can guess what he's in here for." Adrian whispered to Daryl as he lead her away from the hallway where someone had just been killed in cold blood. All of the prisoners were now walking in front of the four of them, none of them wanted any of the men beside them.
"Did you see the look on his face?" Daryl whispered to Rick.
Adrian was thankful that the ringing had finally stopped in her ear and she could hear like normal now, although she couldn't say she wasn't still a little shaken about having listened to a man having his head beaten in.
"If he tries anything." Rick trailed off.
"Just give me the word." Daryl told him, 100% behind the idea. When they got to a set of double doors at the end of the hall T-Dog walked forward and opened it. It turned out that it was the prison's laundry room and it was thankfully empty, but they could hear the growls of walkers on the other side of a second set of doors on the other side of the room.
Daryl tossed his keys at Tomas' feet and gestured for him to pick them up.
"I ain't openin' that door." he told Rick.
"Yeah, you are, because you want this cell block. You're gonna open the door, just the one. We need to control this thing." Rick told him.
All of the prisoners were in a half circle around the door that Tomas was about to open. T-Dog was on the far right, Daryl stood to his left a few feet away, and Rick to Daryl's left a few more feet away. Adrian stood in the back behind Rick, bother her machete and knife at the ready. She wanted to be ready but she also didn't want to crowd the already crowded area.
"You bitches ready?" Tomas asked with a cocky smirk, like this was some fucking video game. He pulled on one of the doors but it didn't open. He pulled two more times before he grabbed both doors and threw them open, letting in a flood of walkers.
"I said one door!" Rick yelled at him.
"Shit happens!" Tomas yelled back as he swung at the head of a walker in front of him. Adrian's eyes went wide in shock when Tomas swung at another walker and hitting in the side of head, but he didn't stop his swing, the bloody weapon coming within inches of Rick's face.
Tomas then stepped forward and grabbed onto a walker before he looked at Rick and threw the walker at him. The force of the walker threw Rick back onto the floor but his hands were full with keeping the walkers mouth away from his face.
"Rick!" she yelled, lunging forward and plunging her knife into the back of the walkers head and pulled it off of him. She jumped past Rick who was still on the floor and swung her machete, burying the blade into the top of a walker that was coming for them. Adrian stepped back to where she was standing before to see Daryl from the corner of her eye.
Rick, very calmly, walked over to where Tomas stood and looked at the bloody man.
"It was comin' at me bro." he said, as if that explained everything.
"Yeah, I get it. Shit happens." Rick said, his voice even but his face told everyone he was done playing games. Tomas seemed to get a little uneasy at Rick's calm demeanor and he was right to feel that way. Without warning, Rick reared back and rammed his machete blade into the top of Tomas' skull. Tomas' body fell to it's knees before Rick kicked it off of his machete.
Andrew yelled as he attempted to swing his bloody bat at Rick, but Rick kicked him in the back of his leg hard, causing him to fall back onto the bodies of the dead walkers. He looked at all of them in the room before he turned and ran away.
"I've got him." Rick said before he charged after him.
"Get on your knees." Daryl yelled at Oscar, pointing his crossbow at the man's head. Oscar held up his hands in surrender and got on his knees, placing his axe on the floor beside him, Axel doing to same with T-Dog's gun pointed at him.
"We had no affiliation with what just happened here. Tell 'em, Oscar." Axel told them, looking to Oscar for back up.
"Just stop talking man." Oscar told him.
Adrian put her machete away but kept her knife in her hand as she walked over to Axel and kicked his weapon away, knowing he was too afraid to try anything. She then turned to see how close the axe was to Oscar before she slowly walked up to the kneeling man.
"I'm going to take that axe away. You twitch in my direction and he'll put an arrow in your skull. Understood?" she told him.
Oscar nodded that he understood before Adrian carefully knelt down and grabbed the axe, her eyes locked on Oscar's chocolate brown ones the whole time. She stood and tossed the axe away, the sound of it hitting the floor was loud in the quiet room. Rick came back a few minutes later but Andrew was no where to be seen. Rick was furious as he walked back into the room, his hand cannon gripped tightly in his hand. He stalked up to Oscar and pointed his gun at the man's head.
"That wasn't us." Oscar told him.
"Oh, you didn't know? You knew." Rick told him, clearly not believing a word of what Oscar said.
"Daryl, let's end this now!" Rick yelled before he walked over to Axel and pointed the gun to his head.
"Rick!" Adrian yelled at him.
"Please, sir, please you gotta believe me, please! It wasn't us, we ain't the bad ones, it was them." Axel started begging.
"Oh, that's convenient." Rick said, keeping his gun pointed at Axel's head.
"You saw what he did to Tiny. He was my friend. Please, we ain't like that. I like my pharmaceuticals, but I ain't no killer. Oscar there he's a B & E and he ain't very good at it neither. Please, I wanna live." Axel continued pleading.
Daryl had his knife to Oscar's throat and both Rick and T-Dog were pointing their guns at Axel's head. Adrian was afraid to breath wrong with so much tension in the room, especially since she was not okay with them just murdering the two men who were defenseless on their knees. Rick turned and walked back to Oscar and pointed the gun in his face.
"What about you?" Rick asked him.
"I ain't never pleaded for my life and I'm not about to start now. So you do what you gotta do." Oscar told him.
Adrian had to admit that she was impressed with the man.
Rick just stood there and looked at Oscar. Adrian slowly walked up to Rick to make sure he knew it was her that was walking up t him.
"Rick." she whispered as she laid a gentle hand on his forearm.
"Think about this. They haven't done anything to warrant a death sentence. They haven't tried to attack us or acted out aggressively toward any of us since we first saw them in that cafeteria." she told him softly. She went on when he said nothing and kept his gun up. "It was Axel that suggested clearing out their own cell block and they've followed all of the rules that you've set down. They can't take us on and they know it. Keep to the deal. Please. Don't be this person. You're not this person." she begged him.
Rick finally looked at the woman at his side. Her green eyes were begging him to spare these men and to keep to the deal he had made. He didn't trust any of the prisoners, he never had. They were a threat to his people and he had to keep his people safe. But as he looked at Adrian's pleading eyes he felt himself soften the tiniest bit. He and Adrian hadn't always gotten along during their hard winter on the road but she always spoke her mind about what she thought was right. She had done so much for the group, and for Lori and Carl, while they had been on the road and had never asked for anything in return, so he decided that he would grant her this one request to spare their lives.
"Alright. We keep to the deal." Rick said loud enough for all of them to hear.
Rick stepped back but kept his gun out and at his side. Adrian released a breath she hadn't even known she was holding as she took a few steps back.
"Thank you, Miss, thank you so much!" she could hear Axel cry from his spot by T-Dog.
"Shut up." Rick growled as he roughly pulled the man off the floor and then just as roughly pushed him to force him to start walking.
They made it to the cell block without seeing any more walkers and Daryl unlocked the door before Axel and Oscar were pushing inside so hard they almost fell on their faces. The rest of them followed them inside and see the state of the cell block. None of these prisoners ever stood a chance of making it out alive. All of the prisoners were laying face down, hands tied behind their back, and blood long since dried from their fatal head wounds. Every man in this cell block had been executed, most likely by the guards.
"Oh man." Axel groaned as he looked at all of the bodies.
"I knew these men. They were good men." he told them sadly.
"Let's go." Rick said as he turned to leave.
"You're just gonna leave us in here? Man, this is sick." Oscar protested.
"The deal stands. This cell block is your's, take it or leave it." Rick told him before he left.
"If you think this is sick, you don't even wanna know what's out there." Daryl told them as he started to walk away but stopped just before the doorway.
"Sorry about your friends, man." he told them before he walked past Adrian and left.
"Word of advice, take those bodies outside and burn them." T-Dog told them before he left.
Adrian continued to look at the long dead bodies of the prisoners when she was pulled out of her head by Axel's voice.
"Thank you, ma'am." he told her, his voice still sad at seeing his friends in such a way.
"For what?" she asked him.
"He might've killed us both if you hadn't talked him out of it." Oscar told her.
"Give it a while and you may have wished I hadn't." she told them softly as she looked back at the bodies.
"What do you mean?" Axel asked her.
"The lives we lead now, it's a constant fight for our lives. Any second could truly be our last, and more often than not, it's not painless. You don't know how many bodies we've come across out there that took themselves out because it was easier to die than to live this kind of life." she told them.
"Adrian." she heard Daryl call her name.
She turned to see him standing in the doorway before he jerked his head to the side, silently telling her to leave. She took a few steps before she stopped and turned to the two men.
"Another piece of advice" she said as she pointed at the bodies "Remember them as they were, not like this. That's how we keep them alive after they're gone." she then turned and left with Daryl, who locked cell block D behind him.