Chapter Seven: Inertia

Inertia: a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged.

Day 21

Daisy knelt down, large white sheet-wrapped bundle in her arms that her fingers tightened around. She took a deep breath in and softly placed the bundle on the ground. There was a bloody circle near the top of the sheet, and tiny, bruised purple toes peeking out from the other end, the only way of identifying that it was Jonah who was wrapped so tightly within. Daisy looked down at Jonah's wrapped body and looked around at the countless others that lay still in the parking lot of Harrison Memorial Hospital, and her eyes hardened.

Life just wasn't fair, she thought. That she could live while all these people just lay here, while Jonah lay here. Her head bowed down and her eyes closed tightly. Frustrated wrinkles in her forehead smoothed over and her eyes reopened, cold. Then she silently stood, glancing down at Jonah's tiny body before making her way back into the hospital doors.

"God damn it." She whispered, narrowing her eyes at the banging doors to her left, locked tightly with a chain. "'Don't dead, open inside'…that's so fucking stupid."

Daisy came to the door of the room that she and Jonah had shared for the night and stopped. Her hand came up to rest on the painted wood, scratching lightly at a crack in the paint, lip curling in unease.

"Fuck." Daisy muttered, shaking her head and turning away from the door. She turned and rested her back against the door, sliding down to sit down and hug her knees to her chest. The poorly labelled door banged again, the dead could be heard softly moaning from behind.

"Shut the hell up, you goddamn dead bastards!" Daisy snapped in the general direction of the aforementioned bastards.

She stood in a huff and made her way further away from the groaning door, slamming open the door to the next hospital room after pushing a gurney out of her way. Daisy stopped when she saw that it was already occupied.

"Oh, sorry, dude." She said absentmindedly, backing away out of the room, but then she stopped in confusion and her face scrunched. "What?"

There was a man lying in the hospital bed, IV still leading fluid from a hanging bag to his elbow. Save the not-so insubstantial, patchy stubble that grew wild on his face, the man looked as if he was just sleeping. Not dead at all.

Daisy looked around the room, noting the wilting flowers that sat on the bedside table and the cards that stood open on the dresser beside her. She stepped back into the room and closed the door behind her and picking up the card closest to her. A small smirk made its way to her lips as she saw that there were what looked like three sick peas in a pod, above them was the caption, 'PEAS GET WELL SOON!'

"Hah, peas…" Daisy smirked wider. She set the card back where it had been before and walked towards the man who slept in the bed, who looked to be in some sort of coma. At the foot of the bed there was a clipboard hanging from the rail which she picked up.

"'Rick Grimes', huh?" She rhetorically asked the man in the coma. "Nice to meet you, Grimey!" Her nose scrunched, she continued, "No, I don't like that, man. I'm just gonna call you Rick."

Daisy sighed, a bit upset at the fact that her only company was a guy in a coma. She sat in the chair beside the hospital bed and kicked her feet up to rest beside him.

"Nothin' better to do…"

Day 32

"So, anyway, she said, 'Dude, you didn't even date him outside your own head, I don't think the Girl Code applies.' I mean, what? That's ridiculous…of course it does." Daisy shook her head, leaning up to attach a fresh bag to her comatose pal Rick's IV, which she had started doing regularly as soon as his first one had run out after she had come across him.

"But, I digress…" Daisy sighed and fell back into her chair. One hand came down to sightlessly grasp around at her duffle bag that sat beside her on the floor. The hand came back with a brightly wrapped candy bar clutched in eager fingers, which brought the chocolate to her lap to rip open.

"You like Peanut Butter Cups?" Daisy asked the unconscious Rick, nodding and humming to the quiet air. "What am I talking about, of course you do. Everyone likes PB cups…"

Daisy sighed, looking bored while eating the melted chocolate peanut butter mess. "You should wake up…" She continued with a slightly hopeful look.

Day 50

"Hey!" Daisy shouted near the man's face, but to no avail. Rick continued in his comatose state. "Shit. I thought that might've worked…" She looked down at him with narrowed, suspicious eyes. "Oh, crap…did you die while I was gone?"

Daisy leant her head forward, eyes darting around the room. Her hand came up and her fingers clasped his wrist, her thumb against his pulse.

"Oh, thank God!" She exclaimed as she felt a small thump. Daisy breathed a sigh of relief and sat down in her chair. "You had me going there, Rick." She scratched the back of her neck with a sheepish look towards him, startled when she saw that his eyes were open and looking up towards the ceiling.

"Whoa, Rick!" Daisy exclaimed, rising up from her chair to lean over him. His eyes continued to stare up at nothing, she waved her hand vaguely in the air above him, with no response.

"Rick?" She asked, getting only a few slow blinks and eventually his eyes shut again. "What…?"

Daisy hadn't had much experience with comatose people, but from what she had heard, they didn't just snap out of it like movies would have you believe. So, she settled back into her chair and swiped up her current book, 11.22.63, and began to slowly read, glancing up every now and then to check for any signs of him waking again.

Day 59

There was a loud crashing bang that sounded from the end aisle of a dilapidated Walmart. Daisy cringed from where she was crouching, the offending pots and pans now on the ground in front of her, and one bowl slowly circled around and around until it fell on its side. Her eyes darted to look towards the front of the store, seeing the sole dead man slowly cracking his neck to look over towards where the crash originated from.

It stared at her with lifeless eyes and began to twist and turn its stiff limbs around, rising from where it had been snacking on a half-decomposed young lady and meandering towards Daisy.

"Ugh, crap." Daisy shook her fist slightly at the pots before her with disappointment and stood, turning towards the dead man that was coming for her. She raised a shiny new hunting knife in front of her, poised for the killing, and waited the few moments for the slow-moving dead person to reach her.

A sickening crunch was heard as the sharp knife landed home in its skull, Daisy shuddering as she kicked one foot up to push the thing down to the ground so she could pull the knife back out.

"That never gets any easier…" She lamented to herself, looking back to the pans with renewed hate, "Fucking pots and pans, never liked cooking with you anyway…loud bastards."

Reluctantly, Daisy picked up a small pot and attached it with a thin piece of rope to the backpack that was now fastened over her shoulders. She made her way down the long rows of the Walmart and stopped at the line of cash registers, giving an apologetic look towards the figurative ghosts of cashiers past, before continuing to the glass doors at the front of the store. It still felt weird to her, stealing everything you needed.

Looking around the street, Daisy saw no dead people lurking around, so she warily made her way to the truck that she had commandeered. She opened the creaking door and threw her backpack onto the passenger's seat, wincing at the crashing sound that followed, and lifted herself up into the car.

The engine came to life with a splutter, and Daisy drove the few blocks back to the hospital. It was easier driving now, post-apocalypse, with there being only a few abandoned cars and loitering dead to dodge. No traffic at all…which was ultimately a good thing, though sad if you thought any deeper about it.

A grunt from the engine signified its stop as she pulled into the parks on the side of the road at the back of the hospital. She had begun using a side entrance that she had found, with their being less chance of encountering any of the stray dead.

After some walking, Daisy came to the room that she had camped in, the next one down from coma-guy's and made to open the door before she stopped. The gurney that she had come into the habit of pushing back where she had found it, in front of Rick's door, had been pushed away. At first she came to the conclusion that one of the dead had managed to make their way into the hospital hall, but upon further inspection she realised that the door to the room was swinging slightly from a breeze, open.

Daisy pushed the gurney even further out of her way and warily pushed the door open fully, her mouth raised in a wince. The room was empty. She poked her head further in and saw that the bed's blankets were strewn across the floor and the IV pole was flat on its side.

"Fuck." Daisy exclaimed. Her hands came up to tangle in her hair and she entered the room more, looking around frantically from where she stood. There was no evidence of any blood stains on the ground, but maybe one of the dead had come in and turned Rick. She poked her head into the adjoining bathroom, but found nothing. "How the hell do you lose a guy in a coma?" Daisy yelled at herself, face palming with too much force, wincing at the sting.

"Okay…okay." Daisy muttered to herself. "Gotta go find Rick, he's your responsibility. Probably fine, he even looked at me just the other day. Just woke up, is all…"

Her hands pulled at the straps of her backpack and she left the room, making her way down the opposite end of the hall, towards the adjoining hall that had the Cafeteria door with the weirdly structured writing on it, 'don't dead open inside'.

Daisy passed the groaning door in a hurry and burst through the nearby door to the stairwell, skipping down a few stairs at a time after finding the flashlight that had ended up at the bottom of her bag.

After a few flights she came upon the door to the outside and pushed it open, skipping down the few stairs there.

"Yo, Rick!" She yelled into the open air, predictably getting no answer. Daisy sighed and she walked through the rows of wrapped bodies, brushing flies from her face in uneasy disgust. "He can't have gotten far…"

Daisy stumbled up the short hill next to the hospital and through all of the military cars and helicopters that had camped there before evidently being overrun. She had almost given up hope when she saw a man stumbling along the road a ways ahead of her. "Oh shit…" Daisy mumbled.

"Rick!" She shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth to amplify the sound. The man startled and tripped up on unstable feet. Daisy picked up her pace and ran towards him, Rick had turned around confusedly, eyes squinting at the bright sunlight. She caught up to him with a relieved smile and bent down to catch her breath.

"Whoa, thank shit I found you!" Rick looked at her warily, eyes wide, presumably at the deserted world around them as well as Daisy herself.

"You're pretty sneaky for a guy in a coma!"