A/N: I was so happy to get to 100 reviews for my little story that I decided to go ahead and write the next chapter tonight. Woohoo! It's a little short and it's not the most pleasant situation for our dear Carol, but I hope you enjoy reading it nonetheless…
Carol gasped, stifling a scream. At least twenty-five walkers were heading straight for her. They were shuffling along slowly, as always, but they had definitely spotted her. They became louder, groaning and growling and drawing the attention of other walkers, who were starting to appear from behind other houses in the neighborhood. Carol was too shocked to move for a moment, watching them drag their crooked limbs toward her, opening and closing their mouths as though they were already feasting on her flesh. She pulled out her knife and turned to run back to Daryl and the others, but she saw another fifteen or so walkers heading toward her from that direction. They were everywhere.
Suddenly everything slowed down around her and Carol felt an unmistakable calm settling over her. This was her moment. This was when her strength would be tested. Would she survive this? Would the others? No. She couldn't worry about anyone but herself until she got out of this situation. She looked around quickly to locate the best direction to head in, the area with the fewest walkers to get through. She ran across the road, heading away from home and away from Daryl, because there were only a handful of walkers in that direction. She fought her way through quickly, stabbing walkers in the eye or jabbing them anywhere she could and then moving on, anything to get past them. She ran faster than she could've ever imagined was possible, her lungs burning, tears streaming down her face. Nearly every walker who managed to get close to her got her knife in the eye. Her arms ached from pulling her knife out over and over. She wondered how long she could go on, but there was no sign of the herd thinning. Where had they come from so suddenly?
She ran for what seemed like miles and miles. She had no idea how long she'd been running, or how long she could continue. She looked around and realized she had no idea where she was. She'd crossed into another neighborhood, run all the way through, and then headed down a long stretch of road to another neighborhood in another part of the town. She hoped she would be able to find her way back. But for right now, she had to concentrate on getting away from the walkers who were still pursuing her. She put every other thought out of her mind.
Hide. She needed to find somewhere to hide until the herd passed, then she could find her way back to Daryl. She stopped for just a second to look around for a place to hide, and a walker grabbed her arm. She lost her balance, falling onto her back in the driveway of a house that had been abandoned long ago. Carol held the walker off with her knees, pushing her off with all the strength she had left. Luckily the walker was a thin, light female and was no match for the adrenaline that still raced through Carol's veins. She thrust her knife into the walker's right eye, but when she knelt next to the corpse and pulled the handle of the knife it wouldn't come out. Somehow the blade was lodged in the walker's eye socket. Carol stood up and looked around frantically. Three more walkers were heading in her direction, picking up speed. She stumbled backward, sobbing, losing hope. In her mind all she could see was Daryl's face. She wondered if this was the end, if they would never see each other again, if he was trying to find her.
She kept stumbling backward until she finally backed into the hard surface of the garage door. It jarred up and down when she hit it, and she looked down to see that there was a space between the bottom of the door and the ground. She turned her back on the walkers just long enough to reach her hands under the sliding door and lift with all her might. The garage clearly hadn't been opened in a very long time, and the door creaked and complained when she tried to lift it. But it did lift, and Carol managed to slide under it and slam it shut. One of the walkers had reached a hand under the door just before she shut it, and three of his fingers now lay on the inside of the garage, next to where Carol had collapsed in fear and fatigue.
The walkers outside continued to growl and hurl their bodies against the garage door. Carol hoped they wouldn't figure out how to open the door. She imagined they weren't smart enough to do that, so she took a moment to evaluate her surroundings and tried to ignore the walkers. Sun from the three small windows in the garage door enabled her to see that there was one car in the garage, though there was space enough for two. She peered into it, hoping there wouldn't be a dead body or perhaps even another walker, and she was happy to see that it was empty except for a child's car seat, some clothes, and some trash. Unfortunately there were no keys and Carol had no idea how to hot-wire a car. A tool bench occupied the back right corner of the garage, and Carol was happy to see a few tools still hanging there: a hammer, a wrench, and a few other things she couldn't identify. Maybe when there were fewer walkers outside she could use those tools to fight her way out of here.
She headed straight for the door, which was at the top of a set of five wooden steps. She could see through the window that the door led into a small, bright kitchen. She rattled the doorknob, to no avail. She looked around for something to try to pick the lock, though she'd never done that before. She should've paid attention when Rick and Glenn picked the locks of houses and stores when they were on the road. She looked around the garage again. There was a refrigerator next to the tool bench. Carol hoped against hope that there would be some kind of food and maybe a bottle of water or two inside. She cursed herself for leaving all the granola bars and water with Daryl, Rick and T-Dog. Who knew how long she might be stuck in here? Inside the refrigerator, Carol found two cans of beer, a package of disgusting molded cheese, and some completely unidentifiable rotten food wrapped in foil. Ugh.
In the front left corner of the garage, there was a large rusted metal trash can. Carol looked inside to find that it was half filled with water. The water smelled coppery and dirty, but she was thrilled to see it. She was sure it probably wasn't safe to drink water out of a rusty metal can, but it was surely safer to drink it than to allow herself to become dehydrated. She looked up at the ceiling above the can and saw a large wet spot. They must've used the can to contain rainwater from a leak. She didn't know why the can wasn't completely full. It hadn't rained in a quite a while. Maybe the inhabitants of this house had only recently left. She scooped a handful of water to her mouth, nearly spitting it back out when she tasted its bitter metallic tang.
She looked at her surroundings again. Besides the car, water can, refrigerator, and tool bench, the garage was simply filled with junk. Boxes and crates filled with old toys, rags, and other odds and ends lined the walls of the garage. Carol was thrilled to find some duct tape and some old sheets and blankets. She taped the ragged sheets up over the three narrow windows in the garage door so she wouldn't have to see the faces of the walkers slobbering and drooling and hungering after her. She saved the blankets for later in case she was still stuck in here when night fell. The air in the garage was already beginning to feel cool. A sliver of light at the top of the sliding garage door showed her that air was coming in from the outside, and she was thankful not to have to worry about suffocating in her hideout. She prayed that the bottom of the door would remain flush with the ground so that a walker's fingers wouldn't slide under and pry it upward as she had done.
Well. She didn't pray, exactly. She hoped. Carol hadn't prayed since the day Sophia followed those walkers out of the barn, squinting in the sun and wrinkling her nose as if she'd never seen daylight. That wasn't Sophia, Carol had always maintained. But it was her body. It was the body Carol had held so many times, the face she'd kissed. The little arms that had wrapped themselves around Carol's neck. The moment Carol saw that Sophia was a walker instead of the beautiful little girl she loved above all else, she stopped praying to God about anything. It wasn't a conscious decision, exactly. She just didn't find herself compelled to talk to God anymore. She didn't ask him for anything and she didn't question him anymore. She just concentrated on surviving, and she concentrated on Daryl and the others, on making a life. Maybe it was God who had given her the strength to do that, to move on after Sophia, but so far she'd managed not to allow herself to think about that too much. If she thought too deeply about what God did and didn't do for her, she might have to conclude that what happened to Sophia was God's wrath, her punishment for praying for Ed's death.
As Carol looked around the dim garage and listened to the sounds of at least a dozen walkers scratching and banging on the door, she wondered if it was time to talk to God again. She didn't even want to pray for herself. "God, please," she whispered, sinking to her knees against the back wall of the garage. "Please let Daryl be alive."