"Fuck!" Anger and adrenaline pulse heavily inside Rick's chest to dull the pain in his left shoulder as he rolls into the long grass at the edge of the paved pathway. Gripping his Colt Python, he keeps his eye on the parking lot in front of them as Daryl drops down to his side with a grasp on Nikki's collar and a stern command to stay. "Did you see anything?" he asks the hunter in an urgent whisper.
"A big white van," Daryl replies, stretching out on his belly and levelling his crossbow to his eye. "Don't know how many guys came out of it though," he adds, waiting for a target to appear around the corner bricks of the school where Rick sees a silver bumper and a block of white metal. "How bad ya hit?" he asks, an edge of concern sharpening his words.
"Would've been nice if it went a couple inches lower… and caught the flashlight in my pocket," Rick says, breathing heavily through the throbbing pain that intensifies with every other beat of his racing pulse. "But I think I'll live." He twists his body until his back is facing Daryl. Wincing tightly he asks, "Any blood back there?"
"Yeah. A little hole in yer shirt, too."
"Good. It went through." Rick turns back onto his belly, keeping his eyes on the corner of the building as he holds the revolver in a firm grip.
"We gotta get outta here, man. Stop that bleedin'."
"We will." Rick nods his head toward the school beyond Daryl's broad body. "See if that door is unlocked."
Crawling like a soldier on a battlefield, Daryl slithers on his elbows about twenty feet back toward the slip of pathway that connects to the side door of the school. Rick hears a soft creak of rusty hinges and turns his head to see a stripe of dark gray spread out to a band of dusky brown as Daryl pulls the door wide, letting the sun erase the shadows on the pale walls of the hallway inside.
Pushing himself up into a low crouch, Rick follows Nikki until the three of them are standing inside the school behind the bright beam of the thin light strapped to the scope of Daryl's bow. "Quiet now. We're probably not alone in here," he whispers as he lets the heavy door close softly behind him.
A responding groan resonates from a distance down the hallway and Rick adjusts the gun in his sweating palm. He stays close to Daryl as they pass a staircase on the right that leads up into a sea of murky darkness. Just beyond the stairs, a door to a classroom stands open in welcome and Rick follows the hunter inside, peering into the shady corners as the flashlight cuts briskly left to right and back again.
The large windows along the far wall are bright with sunshine, streaming down into a small rectangular courtyard set between the classrooms in the top half of the figure-eight structure. Standing at a low bookcase set before the windows, Rick looks through the dusty glass at the empty quad as the sound of gunfire and shattering glass echoes from the across the hall. "They think we're in that front room," he says, forearm locked across his belly as he slowly shrugs his shoulder in a futile effort to ease the excruciating pain. He takes a deep breath to stay focused. "We should go upstairs. It'll give us a vantage point to get a look at these assholes."
"Maybe we'll find the nurses office on the way," Daryl murmurs as he rifles through the top drawer of the teacher's desk.
"Come on, boy." Rick gives a short whistle to get the dog's attention and crosses the room to meet Daryl at the door. The hunter takes a moment to peer around the doorjamb into the quiet hallway and then Rick follows him out with Nikki at his heels. Halfway up the stairs, he swallows the urge to growl along with the husky when another window is shattered in the front of the school.
"Damn, every walker in the building is gonna be heading for that room now," Daryl says, the front stirrup of the crossbow leading the way into a path of golden light that reveals a mercifully empty hall on the second floor.
"Let's get out of the way before they see us. There," Rick says, pointing his gun toward a doorway just ahead of Daryl on the left.
As his partner checks the chosen classroom, he stands at its threshold with an eye on the neighboring doors and a prayer that he need not fire his gun.
Besides the dire need for silence, he doesn't know if he could hit an elephant as the brightly painted mural across the hall swims in and out of focus. Closing his eyes, he rests his spinning forehead against the solid doorframe for a moment before Daryl gives the all clear to enter the room.
"There's the som' bitches right there."
Pushing away from the door and then closing it behind him, Rick follows a slightly staggered trail toward Daryl's voice, passing tall easels among an array of wide tables scattered with art supplies for creative teenagers. He stops next to his friend at the front corner of the art room and looks down through the windows above the parking lot. Six cars become twelve and then shrink down to eight before expanding to an even dozen again. Rick shakes his head to clear the double vision and watches in confusion as the window ledge tilts up at an obscure angle. Something strangely hard with a thick seam of soft leather touches his cheek.
"Woah, Rick! Sit down before you pass out on me."
Realizing that he had nearly, quite literally, done just that, he lets Daryl guide him into a chair at the closest table and doesn't argue when the man carefully loosens the Colt from his grip.
"Jesus, yer losing a lot of blood here. Get yer shirt off so we can patch you up."
Rick fumbles with the buttons of his shirt with unusually thick fingers as he watches Daryl pull a roll of black duct tape from the pocket of his leather vest and set it on the table. He stares at the shiny black ring as if it had been conjured out of thin air by a sly magician. A moment - or possibly an hour later, the sound of running water lures his attention to the back of the room where he sees his partner standing over a large sink. "Where'd you ge' tha'?" he slurs, pointing weakly to the magical tape when Daryl returns with a red Solo cup in his hand.
"It was in the desk downstairs. Here, drink this."
Rick takes the cup and swallows a few mouthfuls of cold water, feeling like a small child as Daryl unsnaps the last three buttons of his shirt and then takes the cup from his hand to pull the garment off of his shoulders. "So how many guys out there?" he asks, the words sounding a little straighter to his ringing ears as he leans back against the chair, giving Daryl access to his chest with a wet soapy paper towel.
"Five scumbags in the front," Daryl replies, cleaning the entrance wound and then moving around to his back. "Only saw the one van parked next to our car," he reports as he wipes more blood, dirt and sweat from Rick's shoulder blade.
"That's good. We can handle them," Rick says, inhaling sharply when Daryl presses a wad of fresh paper towel against the exit wound, grateful that it came from a roll of Bounty and not that stiff brown stuff that he had had in school.
"You mean I can handle them. You can't even stand up, sheriff," Daryl responds wryly. "Can you lift yer arm at all? We gotta tape you up so you don't go and bleed out on me."
Rick answers the question with his left elbow raised to just short of shoulder level. "That's all you're gonna get." He winces tightly and closes his eyes as the pain in his upper chest steals his breath for a moment. When Daryl has the sticky duct tape wrapped securely around his chest and back to cover the makeshift gauze covering both wounds, he drops his arm with a groaning hiss that would rival any walker.
"Sorry I don't have anything stronger for you, but drink some more water," Daryl says as he moves to the window once again. "We can look for some pills if we find the nurse's office once we take care of those dickheads out there."
"Where are they now?" Rick asks, wiping the fine sheen of sweat from his brow with his good right arm. "You still see them?"
"Three of 'em are goin' through the cars, including ours. The other two are headed for the front doors."
"We better get downstairs then," Rick says before draining the cup and reaching for his shirt.
"Maybe we should wait a bit. Let you catch yer breath and let the walkers take care of 'em."
"I don't want to get trapped up here in the meantime." Rick rises slowly, placing a hand on the sturdy table for support as he waits for a queasy wave to settle in his belly. Slipping his arms carefully into his shirt sleeves and leaving it to hang unceremoniously open, he grabs his gun and gives the hunter a look that leaves no room for argument. "I'm good. Let's go."
Letting Daryl take the lead again with the lit up crossbow, Rick descends the stairs behind his friend with slow and fairly sure footing. By the time they reach the ground floor, the pain in his shoulder has lessened to a dull scorch and his head and belly have stopped trying to swim against a whirling current.
Racing toward the front entrance, they hear muted voices down the hall where a greeter's desk sits inside a spacious lobby. The scrape of a chair grating across the linoleum floor is followed by a muffled curse. Daryl slows his steps and lowers his bow to switch off the flashlight, shrouding them in semi-darkness as two men step into view at the back of the lobby, their flashlights glowing about thirty yards away.
Rick aims his gun as they continue to advance, silent and stealthy until an unhealthy moan springs from a hallway that cuts in from their right. He turns in tune with Daryl, both aiming their weapons toward the unmistakable call of the undead. "Shit," he breathes when a handful of walkers come out of the shadows, their spindly arms reaching for a fresh meal.
Daryl puts an arrow in the forehead of the first walker and Rick pulls him into an opened classroom before he can reload. As soon as Nikki clears the threshold, Rick holsters his gun and closes the door with a twist of the lock. Cursing under his breath when the tumbler fails to engage, he calls to Daryl who is sweeping the flashlight beam into the dark corners of what appears to be a chemistry class. "The lock is busted. Get me a desk or something."
With his good shoulder against the door, Rick watches Daryl scan the large black-topped work tables with their dry sinks, empty test tube racks and silent Bunsen burners. Despite the ominous scratching on the other side of the door, he can't help but think of Walter White and automatically looks up at the ceiling where a cell phone may be hidden behind one of the tiles. Shaking off the mental image, he turns his focus back to the present and finds Daryl gripping the edges of what was most likely the teacher's desk, below a huge poster of the periodic table of elements.
Rick moves to the side when Daryl pushes the large desk up against the door as double protection against the intruders, both living and dead.
"That should keep the geeks out and the geeks should keep those assholes from getting' too close to the door," Daryl mutters as Rick begins to search the room for anything that could be useful.
He pulls a fire extinguisher from its glass case on the wall next to the door and almost drops it when a burst of gunfire echoes loudly from the hallway.
The scratching subsides as frantic voices and more shots reverberate inside the building. "God damn those jackasses!" Rick hisses, cursing them for being so careless with all the noise that will only attract more walkers.
When the sound of a man in the throes of an agonizing death rips through the thin walls, Rick shudders involuntarily and moves toward the back wall where a bank of windows looks out into a familiar courtyard.
"Good riddance," Daryl mutters as another voice is heard yelling for his fallen friend before screaming in pain himself.
Through the door, a frantic argument is heard above the snarling walkers that seem to be growing in numbers.
"Let's get out of here, Jimmy!"
"I can't leave my brother!"
"Louie's dead, man! We gotta go!"
"Those two fuckers in there are gonna pay for this!"
As the human voices fade away, Rick reaches over to scratch Nikki's neck as the dog stands with his two front paws on the ledge in front of an opened window. Looking through the screen as a frosty breeze dances across his heated skin, he spots another opened window in the far corner of an adjacent wing on the left side of the enclosure. "Good idea, boy," he says affectionately, rubbing the dog's ears. "Daryl!"
After crossing the garden path, they peer through the window with a flashlight aimed at the far wall to reveal anything that could be lurking in the shadows. Deeming the space clear, they slide the screen across to quietly slip over the wide sill strewn with textbooks about American history.
As he gains his footing with a one-handed grip on the extinguisher, Rick wonders if enough people will survive this outbreak to write about it in future history books. Perhaps in a very distant future when the world sits comfortably on its axis once again.
He follows Daryl as they slip out of the classroom into a quiet hall, turning left toward the main entrance in a cautiously covert manner. Rounding the corner that leads to the lobby, the hunter stops suddenly and Rick nearly plows the fire extinguisher into his back. Looking at his friend's sullen face, he quickly bites back a bitter retort before it leaps from the tip of his tongue.
"Fuckin' hell," Daryl grumbles softly.
The sheriff echoes the sentiment in his head when he looks beyond his partner's broad shoulder to see a sea of walkers shuffling about the parking lot, just outside the large windows of the main entrance.