Things didn't seem to get any easier. Well, maybe they did.

As Hershel started to get better, everyone seemed more confident that we would actually be able to live in the prison. I had a much harder time accepting that outcome, knowing all the work that had to go into this place that some of the other members seemed to be neglecting. Not only that, but the mere thought of the prisoners being in the other cell block also threw uncertainty into our plans for the future.

Future.

I guess I was wrong about that, because we were already living through this. I tried to draw on the excitement I remembered feeling when we took over the field, but I remembered that being short lived when we found the civilian walkers inside the prison, and then again when we found the prisoners. Safe to say, the prisoners ruined everything.

Rick wanted to get the cars back from the road today, a simple task. He got a small group of people ready while I sat in my cell, comparing all the old plugs I had taken from the cars, to the new ones we scavenged from that garage a while back. They were like new, which meant they might've been better than the old ones who had been in each of the cars for God-knows-how-long. Every car, except the truck, was unknown, and if any plugs needed replacing then now would be the time to do that.

A shadow blocked her door while I was in mid-task, definitely obstructing her view of any important details of the plugs. Cracks in the surface would be very serious, something that apparently didn't matter to—

I turned my head to look at the person, nodding subtly when I saw Daryl to acknowledge his existence. "Do you mind stepping to the side?"

Daryl entered the room, and stepped to the side, standing at the end of the bunk bed and out of the way. He didn't say anything, which I found to be strange when I realised he was still here. I looked back over my shoulder to confirm that he did not actually leave.

"Are the others ready?" I asked. "I'm just making sure there's nothing wrong with these plugs before they go back in the cars. If they need to be changed then its better to do it now so its done."

"S' fine," was all he said.

"I won't be long," I added. "I'm basically done. I'll be out now."

"You don' have to."

I knew he was referring to the trip in general, because it would be a very boring day if he was insinuating that I didn't have to leave my room. As homely as the cell was, my restlessness would not let me sit around in here all day.

"I want to," I said simply.

Daryl didn't say anything else, didn't huff or sigh like he normally would have if I had pissed him off, which probably meant that I didn't. Strange. Then again, if he didn't want me going on this trip to fetch the cars, then he would've let his feelings be known, I would have argued and it would've ended with me not going.

Surprisingly, we had not had a scenario like this yet.

I put all the plugs I needed into a small ziplock bag and then into my own backpack. "I'm good."

"Gear," Daryl nodded to the riot gear that had been dumped on the floor at the end of my bed. I guess because I decided I was coming he needed another way to humiliate me— I mean, ensure my safety. I didn't know who else was coming, but none of them would be wearing the gear. Not to the extent that Daryl was expecting me to. Maybe T-Dog would have a chest piece, but no one else seemed too keen on wearing the gear.

"Do the walkers have weapons now?" I asked, partly trying to joke, and partly confused. When his answer was just a simple nod to the armour, I frowned. "What happened to we-got-this-far-without-it?"

My next point of argument would have been that Hershel was wearing the gear, at least some of it, and he was still bitten. But I didn't want to use that argument when he was a few cells down, and could probably hear us.

Again the only answer I received was the simple nod to the gear, and he stepped back and away from the bed so I had access to it. This was one of the scenarios I mentioned, where I probably wouldn't be leaving until I had the riot gear on.

"Fine," I muttered.

Daryl gave a nod, and turned to leave. "We'll be waitin'," he said, before taking off in the direction of the common room.

After getting the gear on I entered the common room, seeing everyone who had decided to join us to get the cars back. Rick, T-Dog (wearing his chest piece), Carol and Daryl. Carl was sitting at another table, eating with Lori. For obvious reasons, I assumed that they weren't coming.

"Everything good?" Rick asked as I entered the room.

I nodded, assuming that Darryl had explained why I was talking so long.

In return he gave a nod and turned back to the others. "We'll just get the cars back to the front gate for now," Rick started explaining like he was answering someone's question. "I don't want to drive them up to the prison without clearing the bodies. We had enough trouble with that a few months ago."

I felt myself chuckle, remembering Rick running over the walker, how it completely wrecked the tire on the truck. Apparently he could learn, seeing as he didn't want to make that same mistake."

"It's gonna take a couple days to get all those bodies out of the way and burned, and that's not including the ones we gotta take care of inside," T-Dog said.

"More than a couple," Daryl scoffed.

"We'll start on the bodies when we get back," Rick said. "For now, let's just get the cars back."

They walked all the way back out to the vehicles, almost in silence unless someone was instructed to kill a walker. The gear was uncomfortably hot. Maybe it was Daryl's plan in some convoluted way: he wouldn't let me leave without the gear, but if I died of a heat stroke then I couldn't wear it. I doubted that was what he had in mind, my fainting would just be a bonus.

Either way, I looked cool.

The cars were still there, still untouched, only gotten dirtier in the few days they'd been left alone. It didn't seem like they had been found by anyone, all of them had their windows intact. Now that I thought about it, it may have been better to leave the cars unlocked. It's not like anyone could've taken them, and it would've protected the vehicles from damage by a frustrated wanderer.

"Everyone keep an eye out," Rick said. "We're gonna be here a little while."

Spark plugs were simple enough to install, but still, cars had more than their fair share. Without any help, one car could take 30 minutes to an hour to install the plugs, and we had three. Not including Daryl's bike.

"Which ones I need?" Daryl asked, standing next to the truck.

I looked at the bag for a second, now realising I should have split the plugs up between the cars before just dumpling them all in one bag. I inspected each of them for a moment, before handing Daryl the ones he needed. When he started on the truck, I moved onto the hyundai. And started replacing the plugs.

Rick, Carol and T-Dog made occasional circles around us as we worked, taking out any walkers that noticed we were on the road. Having them around made it a little easier, but not entirely. I was still worried about walkers that slipped past their gaze if they got distracted or something.

When we were done, I got in the Hyundai with Rick, leaving Carol and T-Dog to take the other two cars. Daryl rode his bike, but had to stay behind the cars because Rick had the map and was the only one that actually knew the roads back to the prison right now.

He took off, silent for a while as he flicked his gaze between the road and the map he held over the steering wheel. He didn't even try letting me direct us back to the prison, which was probably the smartest decision. I would one hundred percent get us lost.

When he seemingly had the way memorised, he moved the map out of the way, dumping it over my legs as he held his gaze on the road. "I'll show you where the prison is tonight," he said.

I nodded, "Cool."

"I want to find the warden's office soon," Rick said, "in the next few days at least. Find directions to the armoury."

I hummed in response, unsure of whether he was fishing for volunteers or just wanted an ear while he ranted out his plans. Either way he knew I would go, either to the warden's office and the armoury. I didn't want to be left in charge again, at least not until things were better. I know that the only scenarios leaving me in charge would be when the others needed to leave, when they had to do something that would require the people left behind to be protected. I just didn't understand how I became the one capable of protecting them.

The prison needed a lot of things done to it to make it safer for our people. New walls, fences. Probably some better gates and defences outside the prison to stop so many walkers piling against the fence, they would definitely see us with the farm being put in the field.

"Everything okay?" He asked after a moment.

"Yeah, just thinking."

"What about?"

"The prison."

Rick nodded, understanding what I meant. "We're going to make this work. No matter what."

As the car pulled up to the prison gates, I unfastened my seatbelt. I would have to get the gate open, something we probably should have asked Glenn or Maggie to do before we left, but no one was outside to see us now.

There were not as many walkers as there had been before, maybe they had been drawn away by the lack of stimuli coming from the prison. With everyone inside, nothing would have kept the walkers attention around the prison.

"It's pretty clear," Rick unfastened his own seatbelt as he stopped. "Pull it in as close to the next fence as you can, give the others some room. I'll open the gate."

"I can do it," I offered.

"I got it," he opened his door and got out of the car, using his silenced gun to take down the three or four walkers close to the gate, the ones that would be able to get him. When he managed to unlock the chain he'd set up before we left the prison, he pulled the gate to the side, opening it.

I jumped across to the driver's seat, and pulled the car forward into the entryway between the outside and the field. I pulled it right up against the second gate, close to the guard tower so one of them would be able to fit their cars in the space next to mine, and just as I planned, the Silvereto rolled in at the side.

I got out, handed over my gun as I watched some walkers near the gate as Daryl pulled his bike in, but Rick closed the gate before they could get inside. I walked over to the group once the gate was locked, eyeing up the walkers that slammed their bodies against the chicken wire.

"I don' like leavin' 'em out here," Daryl got off his bike, and looked over his shoulder to the front gate, the only way out of the prison, "this far away. Hard to use 'em if shit goes sideways. Besides, it's like a beacon that the prison is clear."

"We don't have a choice until we clear these bodies," Rick said, "besides, we're not going to be flushed out from anything inside. The prisoner's can't get to our block, neither can the walkers."

"Great," T-Dog said, "we just gotta worry about things getting in."

"We can set up guards in the towers," Rick said. "We'll have eyes on the whole perimeter."

"Well, there's already been talk about the guard tower being used for other things," Carol intervened with a smirk.

I frowned. "What things?"

Everyone laughed, which made me even more confused.

"Yeah," T-Dog added, ignoring me. "I'm sure Glenn and Maggie want the first shift."

I wanted to question that further, because they had only come up with the guarding job this second, and it had not been brought up with anyone not currently here. Why would Glenn and Maggie want a job they didn't know abou—?

Oh.

"Oh," I frowned. "Eww!"

"She's got it," Daryl said with a smirk.

T-Dog laughed. "For someone teaching themselves military grade chemistry, you're kind of slow."

"I'm not slow! Why would I assume you were talking about that?"

"Okay, everyone," Rick interrupted, still chuckling. "Come on, let's get back inside. I wanna start clearing the bodies out from the courtyard."

We spent most the rest of the day clearing the bodies from the courtyard, placing them in one big pile so that when we had the time to find some firewood, we could burn them. This was the thing that took the longest.

I grabbed under the walker's shoulders, and started dragging it along the floor towards the field. It was heavy, but manageable.

"Lemme help you with that, kid," T-Dog stopped me, grabbing the walker by the legs.

We walked the body over to the top of the field and over to the pile of bodies that had been growing over the past hour. The group had almost finished moving all the bodies into the one pile as it became late afternoon and the sun was low in the sky, leaving an orange glow over the prison.

"It's actually starting to look nice out here," T smiled, placing his hands on each hip.

"Yeah, just ignore that pile of rotting flesh," I then looked up and saw the walkers up against every fence, trying to get in. "And all the walking corpses by that fence. Just like home."

"We'll get those sorted out in no time," T-Dog said. "We'll have barbecues out here, some nice cold drinks. It'll be good."

He sounded more like he was trying to convince himself that we could live here, rather than convince me. I understood it. After being on the road for so long, with everything that happened, it was hard to believe we could stay here. The last place I thought we would be able to live on was the farm, and that went to shit.

After everybody got excited over Wiltshire, I think it's safer to believe that this will also have some kind of a problem, that we may not be able to stay here forever. Maybe he was just trying to see the prison more of a home now that things were working out. It had been a few days.

I just hummed in response, turning back around to drag another body to the pile.

The prison was a lot quieter after we had cleared most of the hallways. The first night here I could hear groaning from every inch of the building, echoes bouncing off of every brick wall, sounding so close that I kept thinking that walkers had gotten inside Cell Block. Now as me and Rick wandered aimlessly through the darkened hallways, everything was basically silent. There was still a quiet sound of walkers still echoing, but quieter than the other night.

Sometimes it just felt like my imagination.

"Hopefully there'll be a map of this place in the warden's office," Rick mumbled, holding his light out and waving it up and down to see all the way down the hall.

I hummed out a feeble response, just trying to listen for any undead. It was strange doing this with so few people, me and him, just like when we got separated from the group, only this time it was intentional.

I'm sure he only brought me because I was the one awake just after him. Daryl was still out cold on the perch, which was the sign that I was probably the second pick, and Rick just wanted to get this done as quickly as possible.

"Library," he noted, looking at the brownish grey wording on the glass of a wooden door. "Gotta be getting close, with a recreational room here."

"If you say so," I said.

There was a beam coming through the window in the door, a light source from inside the library, showing there were windows to the outside in that room, the first sign of daylight we had seen since coming down into the depths of the prison labyrinth. In all fairness, Rick had been spraying more white arrows every time we had taken a turn because he was one of the only people aware of my less than stellar navigational skills.

He started walking again, until finally we came across the place we had been looking for. "There it is," he said.

He glanced down either path in the hallway, seeing and hearing no walkers, before kicking his foot against the warden's office door. There was growling and banging in return, the walker almost screeching as it snarled out some random breathing noise. We waited, looking through the glass window to see if there were any other shadows, but there was nothing as far as we could see. Just the one.

"Just sounds like that one," Rick said. "I'll take care of it, just open the door for me?"

"Yeah, yeah."

He pulled out his gun, silenced, but still worrying due to the background noise that guns made. I was happy either way as long as I didn't have to kill the walker. I had my axe out ready for something to go wrong.

I pushed the door open, stepping out of Rick's way as he lined the gun up and shot, immediately killing the walker. "There's another body," he muttered, his gun lowered to be aimed at the ground, but after he realised it had a wound in its head he flagged me in.

"Gross," the smell was the worst of it.

The smell was always the worst of it.

Rick passed the bodies, and I closed the door behind me as I came into the room so we didn't get surprised by any walkers that came inside. He moved to the desk, pushing aside papers that had been splayed out across the surface.

I glanced around the room, before seeing a bit A3 paper that covered the wall, almost completely covered in blood. The only thing I could recognise was the big field and courtyard shown at the top of the image, realising that it was a map of the prison, now completely unreadable.

The person Rick shot must've been the warden, and the body in here was probably the guy that bit him. Whatever happened here resulted in complete destruction of a piece of paper that would have been extremely useful to us.

"How's that for your map?" I questioned.

"Shit," he mumbled, walking across the room and standing at my side.

He had really been hoping for the map, as I had, because Rick was sure there would be some kind of generator system here for if the main power from the plants ever gave out. If there were any generators here, then they had to be turned off, or empty, or broken. Whatever the poison was, we definitely had no power.

"It'll be fine," I tried to assure him. "We'll find everything. Did you find the directions to the armoury?"

"No, hold on," he walked back over to the desk

Rick sat in the chair, rifling around through the desk drawers. "I'm not seeing it, but one of these drawers is locked."

"Lush."

Rick opened his mouth to speak, but in shock his eyes snapped up to mine for a second at the new word, but then he shook his head, yanking at the drawer. Obviously, it didn't open, and Rick sat back in the chair, causing it to rock back under his weight. "Any ideas?"

I glanced around, my eyes landing on a few things around the room that could help. "I mean, the basis of lock picking works around the fact that there are little pillars inside the lock that need to be at a specific height for it to turn. That's why keys have those little ridges," I waved my finger around as though I was pushing the pillars inside the lock, but then gave a small smile. "But I don't exactly know how to do that."

"Helpful."

"Yeah . . . These keys might work, though."

I grabbed the keys off the hook and threw them at him, and he caught them in one hand. Rick just stared at me for a second, partly amused and also disappointed that he had failed to notice the very obvious solution himself. Without saying anything, he tested a few keys in the gap until one finally fitted in the lock and turned so we could get the drawer open.

"Smartass."

"I am a very out-of-the-box thinker, aren't I?"

Rick ignored me, pulling out brown paper files each marked with a different black ink scribble on the front to indicate their contents. Rick laid them out along the desk, muttering some miscellaneous titles of each folder like prisoner count, utilities—

"—Armoury," he blurted out. "Location, Inventory and Training Schedules."

"That's good."

"If it hasn't been picked clean already, there should be a lot of stuff here," Rick was staring at a piece of paper, which I'm assuming was the inventory.

"Where is it?"

He put the first sheet down, before flicking through the many different pages, before then pulling one out the top, eyeing the page. "It's not far from here, 30-40 minute drive at most."

"That's kinda far," I frowned.

"Not for this kind of thing," Ricks shook his head. "It didn't have to be within walking distance because there were always some weapons kept on the grounds in case things got out of hand."

I just nodded, but decided not to argue. That was another thing completely different between Britain and America. It was normal over here to work an hour or two from where you lived, but back home, it was barely 15 or 20 minutes. The only big trips we ever took were to the closest city, and even that was less than an hour.

"It's too late to go now, tomorrow will be better. If there is anything left behind, then we'll need some time to move it."

"If it's empty that could mean there's another group around, right?" I suggested. "If there really is that much weaponry, then not everything could be taken by just one person on the road."

"We'll find out when we get there," Rick said. "I wouldn't worry."

Rick left me in charge again.

I didn't understand how I became the person he trusted to be in charge of his people. He could've left anyone else behind to look after thing, and I could've gone to the armoury.

Instead of sitting around inside, I decided to finish moving the bodies left in the courtyard. At least it was something productive that didn't leave me in the prison 'taking care' of everyone.

The last few were around by the gate at the prison building, with live walkers piled up behind. It was unsettling, but I had to get some of the bodies in the pile near the guard tower, so that's what I worked on for a while.

"You should wait for help with that," Lori's voice came over the sound of the prison jumpsuit scraping along the ground.

When the weight became too much, and I needed a breather, I dropped the body and straightened up. It was good though, because talking to Lori was the perfect excuse that I needed a break. Though she probably saw right through that.

"I got it," I shook my head, panting.

"Maggie's inside," she said. "I can ask her to come and help you?"

"Don't bother her," Maggie was the last person I wanted to pull outside, because as far as I was aware, she was spending this time with Beth and her dad. Hershel needed her around more than I did, and I was fine dragging bodies around until the others came back from the armoury. "I'm fine, I can do it. No point doing nothing while the others are out," I mumbled the last part under my breath, because there was not much else Lori could do while the others were out. Not with her current medical situation.

I leaned over, gripping the loose shoulders of the jumpsuit, and dragged the corpse to the smaller pile I had made just outside the guard tower at the top of the field. The bodies we moved the other day had been left much lower than that, but when I was done with this, I could put the bodies in the back of the pickup truck and take them down to the bottom end of the field where the others were.

When I turned back to the courtyard, Lori was still there, arms crossed as she watched me walk past her towards the next body.

"Wait," she stopped me before I could even kneel down and search the pockets. I stood up, and turned to face her as she walked over to me, placing a hand on my cheek. "How long have you been out here?"

I shrugged.

I knew the answer, it was since the others had left, which was a good two or three hours ago. It had been a while. Rick asked me to take care of things again, but last time I was in charge all I could do was sit around and wait.

Now I at least had something.

"You have to watch yourself in this sun," she reprimanded. "It was fine in the Winter, but now the weather's picking up, you need to be careful."

"I'm fine."

"Well, if you won't come in, I'm at least going to get you some water," She left, walking into the prison, giving me some time to check the body.

Some of the walkers had packets of fags in their pockets that I wanted to hide from Daryl before he got his hands on them. I didn't like him smoking, and I could at least minimise that while I was here. One of the walkers I searched even had a shiv in their pocket, made out of some mystery material. From the square in its pocket, I was sure this one had cigarettes.

I knew she was coming back when

"Stealing contraband?" She asked with a small smile.

"How else am I going to make any deals?"

Lori held out the bottle of water, which I had to stand up and take because if I didn't, she would probably shove it down my throat. I took a few gulps, before moving across the courtyard to put the bottle down in the shade, next to the stairway back into C Block.

She followed me and took a seat on one of the steps, before glancing up at me.

"Take a break," was all she said.

If I didn't there would be hell to pay, and I would feel the consequences later on. It had already hit me; the redness in my face, the early buzz of a headache that was gnawing at the top of my head. I wouldn't have been shocked if I threw up later on.

Lori wasn't looking at me anymore, less concerned now that I had a drink and was sitting down with her. "It looks better," she commented. "It'll be nice when we can come outside. Like being on the farm again."

"We have different memories of the farm," I said.

"It was nice to start with."

"I don't know," I felt my face contort.

I had not arrived at the farm at the same time as Lori. My first memory of the farm was going into the house and seeing Carl there, dying, because of me. Because I couldn't save Sophia, and he needed to keep searching for her. It should have been me, not a child hooked up to a drip, grasping onto life.

The majority of what I felt on the farm was guilt, and despite the nice views, nice people that came along with it, all I remembered was going through a lot of bad.

Then it burnt down.

What surprised me was Lori's pleasant memories on the farm, with the baby announcement, her son getting shot. Maybe she just wasn't as big a pessimist? From what I could remember, Lori was a big advocate for staying on the farm.

"It'll be nice," she assured me. Lori was quiet for a moment, and she kept staring out at the field. "I can't imagine how Hershel is doing it, just staring up at that bunk all day."

That would kill me.

"Have you spoken to him?"

The guilt was back. I had thought about going to speak to Hershel, but he didn't want me around. Besides, what would I even say? Sorry you lost your leg. Get well soon. He would be better off not seeing me at all.

I shook my head. "There's not much I can do there."

"Just give him some company," Lori suggested. "That's all we can do."

I didn't say anything, too caught up in thought to tell her she was right, but in the back of my mind I found it hard to believe he would even want me there. Right now he had his daughters, Lori and Carol checking on him every five minutes. If I was Hershel I would have just wanted to be left alone.

Hell, I wanted to be left alone right now.

Lori stood up, looking down at me. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," That was as much as I wanted to delve into that.

Lori seemed to understand that as well, as she just nodded. "I'm going to head back inside," she said after a beat. "If you need anything, let me know."

"I will."

I probably won't.

I was there to open the gate when the others came back. Daryl was driving his back behind the others, gun out and shooting some walkers that had begin surrounding the car.

I unlocked the clasps and pulled the gate to the side, letting the vehicles in. The minute Daryl slipped through, I yanked the gate closed, just managing to keep a walkers prying hands outside.

Rick got out of the driver's seat first, waiting for me to clasp the gate shut before saying anything. Then he asked, "How's everything been?"

"Fine, I guess."

"You guess?"

"I've been out here," I said simply. "The courtyard's clear."

"All of it?" Rick seemed surprised.

I hummed a reply, giving a nod to T-Dog as he moved past to walk towards the prison. "I moved the bodies to the guard tower, figuring it'd be easier to drive them across the field."

Rick nodded, his eyebrows still raised as his gaze moved up to the courtyard.

Glenn walked around the car, squeezing my shoulder as he stopped next to me. "Hey."

I grabbed his arm, giving a squeeze in return, before looking back at Rick, "How was the armoury?"

"Picked clean, there was nothing there."

"Unfortunate," I mumbled.

"It'll be okay."

And I was sure Rick believed that.