Asha tried to bring up the issue of the group's safety several times as they walked. But the younger brother - Daryl - palmed her off each time, saying she'd find out soon enough if Rick let her stay. Merle was tight lipped and refused to be drawn on the subject. Daryl got tenser and tenser every time she brought it up, and eventually he snapped that he would knock her out and leave her under a tree if she didn't shut the hell up. She let it lie after that.
They went further from the river than Asha wanted. She had hoped the group was camped somewhere along it, but Daryl increasing led them on an angle away from it. She felt the pull of it in her stomach as they moved further away, and she found her breath coming in short gasps as first the sight of the glinting water, and then its rushing gurgle, faded away through the trees.
She palmed the rough bark of a tree as they walked, trying to get her breathing under control. Without paying much attention to what she was doing, she pulled the knife from her thigh sheath and started carving a coded sign in the tree for her brother. Her knife had no sooner touched the bark then Merle grabbed her wrist in his hand.
'What d'ya think you're doin'?' he asked, eyes boring into her.
Asha jerked her head back and looked at him.
'Leaving a sign for my brother. So he can find me - otherwise he won't know to look for me away from the river.'
Merle squeezed his hand slightly, forcing the bones in her wrist together, and Asha fought the urge to wince.
'We don't know you, and I sure as hell don't trust ya. Maybe ya ain't even got a brother. Maybe ya got ya own group and ya laying a trail to lead them to us.'
Asha's eyes widened. She hadn't thought how laying a trail might look to her new travelling companions. She shook her head quickly.'It's just my brother, its a code we worked out.'
She looked around her anxiously. The trees stretched out in every direction with depressing sameness. Daryl had stopped up ahead and was watching them carefully.
'If I don't leave him a sign, how is he going to find me in this?'
'Let's move' Daryl snapped. 'We got somewhere to be.'
Merle's eyes were cold. 'Ya ain't leavin' nothin' behind for anyone to follow us.'
Asha's shoulders slumped, but she nodded. 'Fair enough.' She'd have to backtrack and leave the trail once she found their camp. She hoped it wasn't too far.
Merle shoved her forwards to walk between him and Daryl. 'So I can keep an eye on ya.'
As they walked, Asha pulled the spear shaft out of her gun and looked deprecatingly at the mangled flopper, still covered in chunks of walker face. It would have to be replaced. She was pretty sure she still had some spare floppers floating around her pack.
She sighed and groped around the side of her pack where her spare spears were strapped, locating one of the ones she'd doctored for walker use. She noticed Daryl tossing curious glances at her over his shoulder. She tucked the gun awkwardly under her arm and gestured with the spear with the mangled flopper.
'Fish. Flopper keeps them coming off.' She shrugged. 'Got it stuck in a deadhead's skull earlier. Shit of a thing to get out.'
She flicked as much of the gunk of it as possible and tucked it back with the other spears on the side of her pack. Then she gestured with the doctored spear. The flopper had been reversed and moved about three quarters of the way down the shaft. 'Deadheads.' She pushed it into the gun and then gave it a tug to show how the reversed flopper kept it securely in the gun and left the spearhead unobstructed. 'Can't shoot it like this, but it doesn't get stuck in the deadheads.'
'Clever,' Daryl admitted. 'Ya brother rig that up?'
Asha couldn't help the grin that spread across her face. 'Nah, this is all me.'
'You girls finished chin waggin',' Merle said. 'I hear something.'
The three of them froze, looking around as they strained to hear. The rumble of an engine could be heard in the distance. The two men set off after it immediately, and Asha followed half a step behind.
'We're close right?' Merle asked as they ran.
'Close enough,' Daryl said.
The engine sound outdistanced them quickly. They continued on at a jog for a few minutes, then the staccato ricochet of semi automatic gun fire tore through the air. Daryl took off at a sprint.
'Fuckin' idiot,' Merle cursed before taking off after him.
Asha slowed for a second. Not the safest camp. Right. Well that was obvious, and running into a shit storm of bullets was not her idea of a good plan. She seriously considered ditching the two loonies she'd hooked up with, neither would notice if she slipped away now.
But then she remembered why she'd approached them in the first place— Nash could be there... the receiving end of that gunfire. Her heart clenched. She scrubbed a hand across her face, swore quietly to herself, and then picked up her pace to try to catch the brothers.
She'd rolled the dice when she'd approached the brothers in the woods. Now she just had to see how they fell. But she sure as hell reserved the right to leg it later on if things weren't to her liking.
As the trees thinned in front of her, she began to make out wire and concrete structures, flashing through the gaps in the trees as she ran. Off to the right, a block of grey concrete resolved itself into a blocky tower. A double row of high chain link fences topped with razor wire stretched away from the tower at right angles. Behind it, a squat compound of brick and concrete buildings was visible at the top of the fenced in yard.
A prison. Fences, walls, she couldn't help but grin at the genius of holing up in such a place. She felt a surge in her stomach at the thought that Nash might be just beyond those walls.
Breathing heavily, she dropped to a knee beside Daryl and Merle, who had paused just inside the treeline and were intently scoping the prison from behind the scant cover of some scrubby bushes.
They had approached the prison from its eastern side. The main entrance was around to the right, and a tan coloured four wheel drive had pulled up just off the road. A handful of men hung out the windows and off the back, firing into the prison with semi automatic weaponry. Asha couldn't see the people in the prison, but there were spurts of gunfire being returned from the catwalk across the prison courtyard and from behind an overturned bus in the yard.
As Asha scanned the area she saw tufts of dirt spray into the air as bullets pounded into the ground near a little bridge crossing the canal in front of the prison. From the direction of the bullets, they were being fired from someone in the treeline near the men in the car. A man suddenly half sat from where he lay he shadows next to the bridge and fired into the treeline with a rifle, before quickly dropping back flat into the shadows.
Asha nudged Daryl with an elbow and pointed at the man.
He nodded, eyes tight. 'Rick'.
He started to circle around towards the bridge and the front of the prison through the trees.
Merle and Asha followed him. The woods, which had previously been fairly quiet, were suddenly full of walkers stirred up by the engine noise and gunfire. They'd outpaced most of them when they were running towards the prison, but the dead were quickly closing the gap. Asha's stomach dropped and she quickly stomped on the surge of panic she felt as she saw the woods swelling with walkers.
She touched her fingers to her knife to check it was still secured to her thigh, and then grimaced as Merle flicked out the chamber on his gun to reload it.
'Don't' she hissed, eyes still scanning the walkers that seemed to be oozing from behind every tree and fallen log.
'You'll pull them all right to us.' She yanked one of her spare spears from her side of her pack and thrust it towards him—waiting till he jammed his gun back in his waistband so he could take it in his hand.
There was a mindless groan behind her. She whipped around flinching back from the outstretched hand clawing for her face. A drooling walker loomed up fast behind it. She ducked reflexively to one side, slipped, spear flying from her hand and falling awkwardly on her pack. Heart in her mouth, she kicked out desperately, connecting with the back of the walker's legs. Knees buckled, it sprawled face first next to her. She rolled over on to it, plowing its face into the dirt, grasping desperately for her blade and then pounding it through its skull.
A strong hand grabbed her under the arm, and she choked on a scream as she realised Merle was attached to it.
'Move girly,' he shoved her roughly in the direction of Daryl.
Daryl cleared the walkers immediately in front of them, trusting Merle and Asha to clean up any that got too close along their flank. They ran, sweat dripping, feet slipping, heart pounding. Steel slamming through softened skulls and rotten bodies thudding to the ground. From the front of the prison, they heard a huge engine revving followed by the tortured screech of tearing metal and an almighty crash. Asha caught a glimpse through the trees of a red and white van in the prison yard, its tailgate slowly descending, before her attention was pulled back to another walker.
They were closing in on the bridge and up ahead of them, still a distance away, Asha could just make out through the trees a man in a baseball cap firing towards the bridge. Daryl had outpaced them and was moving towards the man, skirting from the tree to tree to stay out of his line of sight. Merle growled in irritation and picked up his pace to catch him, but at that moment there was an intense burst of gunfire from the prison yard, and the man in the cap suddenly abandoned his one man siege of the bridge and fled back towards the road. Daryl raised his crossbow at the man weaving through the trees, but lowered it after a moment and started back to Merle and Asha, frustration written all over his face.
Asha skirted closer to the treeline, happy for a brief breather whilst she checked on the prison. A tall thin man with an eye patch over his right eye, hung out of the passenger side door of the four wheel drive. His teeth were bared and his eyes burned as he looked across the prison. Asha could almost taste his hatred. She felt her blood run cold.
The one eyed man fired off several more rounds in the air, snarling as he did so. Asha was baffled for a moment until she recalled the woods surging with deadheads behind her. Still, the gratuitous display was a waste of bullets, they'd already made so much noise already that bit more wouldn't make much difference. The one eyed man swung back into the vehicle and it thundered back down the road, narrowly missing a silvery dual cab that swerved around it and floored it over the flattened front gates straight into the prison yard.
The yard was full of walkers, more than could have possibly made it through the gates in the short time they had been down. The red and white van stood abandoned in the middle of the yard, a jerry rigged ramp lowered at the back. As Asha watched, a walker staggered out of the van and down the ramp. Her jaw dropped. They—whoever they were—had driven that van into the yard full of walkers.
They were using walkers a weapons. Her stomach churned.
The sound of gun shots drew Asha's attention to the corner of the yard closest to her. A white haired man, leaning on a set of crutches near the fence, was firing steady shots from a handgun at the walkers advancing on him. He seemed to be holding his own so far, but that would only last as long as his bullets did. Then Asha noticed a blur of fast movement among the slow moving walkers. A dreadlocked black woman with a samurai sword spun through the yard in the direction of the old man, leaving a trail of heads and fallen walkers in her wake. The dual cab had barely paused after crossing over the fallen gate, and its engine revved as charged across the yard in the man's direction.
A single shot rang out, much closer to Asha. She scanned the area quickly thinking Merle must have resorted to his gun.
Just outside the fenceline a walker collapsed in front of Rick, half its skull blasted clean away by the huge pistol in his hand. Rick backhanded another deadhead with the butt of his gun, but he was quickly swarmed by two more and backed up against the fence, and handful of other dead were rapidly closing in on him. He pinned one of the deadheads to the fence beside him with his left hand and, teeth bared, tried to hold the other off in front of him with his right forearm braced against its throat.
A bolt buzzed past Asha's ear and embedded in the skull of the walker straining against Rick's forearm. Rick's eyes flashed with gratitude and relief as Daryl strode past her, fitting another bolt as he went.
Merle charged at a half crouch past his brother and put his borrowed spear through the temple of the walker Rick still had pinned to fence. He forced a grin at Rick, but there was tension around his eyes and the look Rick directed to him in return was noticeably cool.
A guttural snarl behind her reminded Asha that she wasn't alone. She turned, and jammed her spear into the head of the walker looming behind her, its face going slack as she yanked it back out.
She darted across the bridge.
The three men were working through the pocket of walkers that had collected near the fence, Rick using his pistol as a club. Asha skirted quickly to Daryl's back as he paused to reload his crossbow, taking out a walker that had gotten a little too close for comfort. He glanced at her over his shoulder and grunted in what could have been thanks.
She nodded slightly and turned her attention back to the remaining walkers, darting quickly around the side of the closest, crunching her boot against the side of its knee and jabbing her spear through its face as it lay on the ground snarling at her.
The immediate danger cleared, she glanced around at her companions, breathing hard.
Rick grunted, pushing himself to his feet above the walker whose brains he'd just smeared into a pulp into the ground. He nodded appreciatively at Daryl, but his eyes hardened as he looked at Merle— still grinning awkwardly— and, disconcertingly, at her. He didn't say anything for the moment though, and the four of them turned their attention to the prison.
The dual cab had made it through the inner gate and the white haired man was violently embraced by a young blonde woman as he got out awkwardly out of the car with his crutches. The yard still seethed with walkers but, for the moment, they were focused on the four of them, and trapped inside the fence looking out.
Asha turned away, and flinched slightly as she took in the sea of disjointed movement flooding out the woods behind them. That gunfire must have drawn every walker for miles.
'Hey,' she said, voice low and tight with urgency. Merle glanced at her, but neither Daryl or Rick seemed to have heard.
'Hey.' Louder. Louder than she wanted.
Rick turned on her, his face a cold mask of fury and eyes like flint. Her stomach clenched involuntarily.
'Can we do this inside? We're gonna have a lot of company in minute.' She looked meaningfully around at the woods.
Daryl's head snapped around eyes alert, looking at the horde of walkers creeping inexorably towards the fences.
'Shit, we're gonna be cut off from the gate. We'll have to run for it.' He glanced quickly to make sure everyone was ready before setting off, slinging his crossbow across his back and pulling his knife since he wouldn't have time to retrieve any bolts. Merle followed immediately.
Asha could still feel Rick's eyes on her, and he locked his cold eyed stare on her for an instant before gesturing with his gun for her to go before him. Asha tried not to read too much into the fact that he didn't trust her at his back, but she felt his eyes boring into her and the skin between her shoulder blades tingled as she ran.