HUGE APOLOGIES for taking so long to update, I had some crazy family stuff happen in January and then I wanted to see what they did with the season before carrying on. I will try to follow the season in a LOT of places but I will also be doing some veering off when I need to make it work with my story. Let me k ow what you think!

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Chapter 27

-Carl-

He'd gotten out of bed and moved out into the yard just to avoid one of his father's heart to hearts. There were times when he used to crave these one on one convos but with each day that passed since his mother's death he found himself feeling more and more distant towards his dad. He watched now as the ex sheriff walked into he woods outside the gate, peering around as if he was looking for something. What the fuck was he doing out there anyway?

His graze reverted back to his aunt who stood out in the yard clearing space for an herb garden in the outer yard. From here, She looked sane and normal, if you could ignore the tiny figures clinging to the bar wire fence below her. The Woodberry folks were all well-fed, and unlike his mother who began looking almost skeletal by her second and third trimesters, his aunt looked like she could've come straight off the cover of New Parent magazine.

Thinking about how well she was made him think about Lexi again and the wave of stress it caused was so intense he almost threw up then and there.

'Daryl will bring her back.' he reassured himself. With his dad the way he was nowadays Carl was starting to appreciate the younger man more and more. He trusted him implicitly to find Lexi, a small part of him just worried he wouldn't be fast enough.

'And she hates you now, remember?' He kept reminding himself over and over, so that if Daryl did come back with her he'd be ready for it, but the thought still overwhelmed him.

He turned at the sound of footsteps behind him and saw Carol and Axel walking together with Beth not far behind. The ex-con was doing his best to make Carol smile and was about to succeed. Despite how shitty she'd been to Lexi, Carl knew he had to set things right with her- she genuinely cared for him, and after all this time, she was practically family. Axel stopped and turned to face Carol, saying something Carl couldn't make out. The ex-con smiled triumphantly, having finally succeeded in coaxing a grin out of the older woman. Then a loud crack echoed through the prison yard and Axel crumpled- a bullet lodged in the hole where his eye used to be.

They were under attack.

-Lexi-

'Of all the stupid decisions you could have made...' she thought to herself as she pulled herself farther back into the cell. By the time she had realized the danger in G block she had been swarmed, and it was all she could do to pull herself into a cell and lock the door. The whole block was an ugly sight. Some prisoners must have tried to return to the safety of their cells, only to die of thirst and starvation and reanimate after death. The poor soul who had barricaded himself into her cell had elected to go with suicide instead, and still clasped in his decomposing hands was a small metal shank shoved brutally through the top of his mouth. He must have seen other suicides end in reanimation and been dead set on saving himself from an undead afterlife. Lexi shuddered at the thought.

With his shank, her two boot knives, and the small revolver she had tucked into her waist band she could hardly begin working on the walkers trapped outside the door. The gun only carried six rounds, which would barely make a dent in the swarm and all three of her hand weapons required her to get up close and personal- fine for one on one, but disastrous in crowds. She needed to think.

The walker in the cell next to her stretched towards her futilely as she sat with her back flat against the wall and tried to think. He still had a shank protruding from his neck. He didn't seem too mangled, so maybe it had been a suicide or just a plan murder that turned him, she couldn't be sure. She rarely ever focused on them as anything other than walkers, and she was beginning to chastise herself internally for giving so much thought to this monster when something caught her eye. On the floor of his cell was a pipe. Looking at it she realized he must have ripped it out from underneath the sink in his room. Lexi got up cautiously and moved towards him, holding one of her knives expertly in her good arm. She held out her injured arm just beyond his reach causing him to turn his torso and head to stretch for her, and in a flash she stabbed him behind the ear, dropping him immediately.

Twenty minutes later she was covered in sweat and her injured arm was throbbing with pain but she sat clutching the pipe triumphantly, having used the dead zombies body as a makeshift extend-o arm.

The efforts were exhausting her, and her stab wound, now almost two hours old, continued to bleed through the improvised binding she'd made using the cell's bedding. She needed to get back and have Caitlyn clean in and stitch it up sooner rather than later, and to do that she needed to fight her way out of this godforsaken cell block.

She didn't want to wait for Rick and the others to get back and have them risk their lives to save her. She was still fuming about Shane, and still deeply confused about what happened to him. She refused point blank to believe that Carl had just shot him. There was more to the story, and when she got out she'd find out what it was, but she didn't want to owe Rick and his people anything when she did.

If she was being honest with herself, a big part of her wasn't sure if they'd come after her even if she wanted them to. She had heard Carl screaming her name running after her, and winced at the thought of the pain she must have caused him. He would want her found, but what if Rick didn't feel the same way? What if her attack on Carol was enough of a reason for him to write her disappearance off as an easy solution to a complicated problem? It was clear there was no love lost between these people and her late brother afterall.

Seeing no other way, she picked up her hard won pipe, took aim, and began eliminating the walkers reaching into the cell. She had no idea how long she toiled, bringing the pipe down on the heads of the undead again and again. The only evidence of her efforts was the building pile of corpses outside her cell and the increasing tremble in her arm.

After what seemed like ages, she heard a banging sound at the other end of the cell block. She whipped around to see what it was but the quick movement was more than her exhausted body could bare. Stars clouded her vision as she stumbled to her knees. One of the walked reached out and grabbed her hair, pulling her backwards helplessly by her ponytail.

She didn't even have the adrenaline left to struggle away from her impending doom, when she heard a faint twang, and felt a brush of air against her face. The tugging ceased immediately, and she dropped face first into the safety of the cell in a dead faint.