Carolina in my mind
Chapter 19
"What's happening?," Hershel asked, his eyes widening at the increasing sound of gunfire coming from the other side of town.
"The shits about to hit the fan and splatter," Carolina announced, skirting around him and heading into the infirmary.
"The Governor was the one that lit the fire?," Hershel asked as he followed her into the building, though since he didn't seem to be waiting on an answer, Carolina assumed the question was rhetorical. Clearly the governor lit the fire. Who else would? It was a little early for him to go full crazy. But obviously, Carolina had thrown the entire timeline off with her meddling.
The halls suddenly filled with the sound of someone banging on a closed door. Carolina and Hershel exchanged worried glances. And she increased her speed, moving quickly towards the source of the noise.
Carolina spotted the problem as soon as she rounded the corner. The door where the banging was coming from was locked shut with a latch on the outside of the door that was fastened with a large steel padlock. Carol was poking at the latch with a knife. But she didn't appear to be making much progress.
"What happened?," Hershel asked. From his tone, Carolina guessed that the door to Lori's room was not locked when he stepped outside to see where the gunfire was coming from.
"He locked the door," Carol said, tucking her knife under the latch and pounding on the hilt of it with her palm. "The governor," she said. "He was bleeding from under a patch on his one eye. I hid when I saw him coming. But he locked Lori and Carl inside with the baby. He locked the dead bolt and the latch."
"Is that smoke?," Carolina asked, sniffing nervously at the air. Like Hershel's question, she wasn't waiting on an answer. She could definitely smell smoke. Carol's lips tightened into a hard line. And she pounded harder on the back end of her knife.
"Move," Carolina ordered. Leaning close to the door, she hollered through it, warning Carl to get the hell back.
Carol took one look at Carolina and the way she was backing up, staring at the door like an angry bull ready to charge before she cleared right the hell out of the way. Carolina lifted her leg, slamming the flat of her boot down as hard as she could against the door. She aimed as close to the doorknob as she could, hoping to either pop the lock on that or break the frame. Carolina was rewarded by the loud satisfying sound of the wood cracking. And she repeated her maneuver a second time, breaking the door enough that it opened as far as the metal latch at the top of it would allow. The door was still held shut, but at least she broke the dead bolt open.
The smoke Carolina could only smell before was starting to fill the hallway. The intensifying odor and the sight of it was causing all of them to panic. Especially Lori, who was locked inside the room with her infant. Carolina backed up, kicking the door a few more times. It was opening wide on the lower half when she railed into it. But the latch on the top kept forcing it shut again.
Hearing the sound of running footsteps, Carolina stopped her assault on the door and pulled her gun out, pointing it towards the sound. But she quickly relaxed when Michonne popped out from around the corner. The woman was bleeding from the side of her mouth and her hair was rumpled up, like some of it had been yanked from her head.
"I'm fine," she announced before anyone could ask. Carolina gestured towards the door. Michonne nodded. "On the count of three?," she suggested. Carolina moved slightly to her right, leaving room for them both in front of the door. Then she waited on Michonne's countdown. One. Two. And on three they both kicked the door as hard as they could. The top half stayed locked in place. But the bottom half broke open far enough for the people trapped inside the room to be able to wriggle out.
Carl handed his baby sister out first. Carolina took her, quickly handing the baby off to Carol. Hard pass on that. Saving a baby from a burning building and holding it were two different things. She and Michonne pulled Carl out next. And then helped Lori climb through the broken door.
"Can you walk?," Carolina asked. Lori nodded. But the look in her eyes told a different story. She just had a brutal c-section a few days before. Carolina didn't know a lot about that. But she knew enough to be sure that the woman probably shouldn't even be out of bed. "Here," Carolina said, shoving her gun at Carl, before she reached for Lori. The woman was only a little shorter than her. But thankfully, she weighed much less. Carolina was able to lift Lori into her arms without totally breaking her back. She wasn't sure how far she could make it. But she figured straining her shoulders was preferable to tearing Lori's stitches.
"Wait," Hershel urged, stopping outside the room where they kept the medical supplies. Unlike the door to Lori's room, this door had a window. Hershel smashed it in with his crutches and let himself inside.
"Hurry," Carolina urged as Hershel tore through the room, stuffing everything he could grab into a bag as fast as possible as the smoke in the hallway grew steadily thicker.
"That's gonna have to do," Michonne urged. "We gotta go."
Hershel slung the clunky bag over his shoulders and started moving with them towards the door. Carl opened it, motioning them to stay back. Total chaos had erupted in the short amount of time Carolina was inside the infirmary. Several buildings were on fire. There were walkers and people running everywhere. On the opposite side of the street, a random woman was screaming as the dead ripped her apart.
"I've got the keys to that truck," Carolina said, pointing towards the truck near the town's gates.
"Stay close to the buildings and keep quiet," Michonne ordered, stepping out past Carl and gesturing for the boy to follow her.
They weren't moving fast. Not with Hershel on his crutches and Carolina carrying Lori in her arms. But they still managed to make it most of the way to the truck before the dead noticed them.
Carolina set Lori down, turning towards the walker that was closing in on her. She kicked, aiming for its knee. The monster went down with a satisfying crunch. And she pulled out her knife, wishing it was the crowbar she left inside the truck.
Carl shot the next walker that approached, hitting it dead center in the middle of the forehead. Michonne was slashing down the dead with her sword. But since she was trying to get Hershel and Carol to the truck with the baby, it wasn't helping Carolina much. She stomped down on the head of the walker she kicked, stabbing the next one through the eye with her knife. The blade stuck, pulling her down with it since she was refusing to release her grip on the weapon. Carolina screamed as another walker flopped down on top of her. She pushed back on the creature's neck, trying to keep its snapping jaws away from her face.
Just as quickly as the monster descended on her, it was roughly yanked up and away. Tyreese slammed his hammer into the side of the walker's head, smashing its rotten skull like an overripe melon. He extended his hand to Carolina, helping her up off the ground. His sister Sasha was behind him. With T-Dog. They were covering his back as he moved in to help Carolina.
"Thanks," she said, pulling Tyreese towards the building. "Lori can't walk," she quickly explained. "She'll rip her stitches." Tyreese nodded, moving in and gently sweeping the woman into his arms like she weighed no more than a child.
By this time, Michonne was on her way back. Together, the small group was able to clear a path to the truck. Carl climbed in. And Tyreese placed Lori carefully inside, snapping the door shut behind them.
"Do you know the way back to the prison from here?," Carolina asked.
"I do," Sasha offered. Carolina nodded, pulling the truck keys from her pocket and tossing them over to her.
"Then you're driving," Carolina said. Michonne was already hiking over the side of the truck and into the bed. Carolina followed her example, stepping on the top of the back tire and leaping into the back of the truck. She cast a worried glance at the town as she banged on the truck cab to let Sasha know everyone was safely inside. And as the woman wasted no time in gassing it towards the now open gates, Carolina sent up a silent prayer for the rest of the group. They made it out safely on the show. They could do it again, she told herself.
T-dog leaned back against the cab, wiping his face with the hem of his shirt. They escaped the battle. But he was clearly already worried about what was coming next.
"We won't be able to get into the prison," he warned. "Rick locked the cellblock up when we left."
"I've got the keys," Carolina assured him, smiling when he breathed an audible sigh of relief. "I'd give them to you," she teased, "...but I'm worried you might drop them."
With all the recent chaos, it took the man a moment to catch onto Carolina's little joke. But when he did, he started laughing before he could stop himself.
"Heard about that, didya?," he asked. Carolina laughed, nodding her head. She didn't need her memory to know that Merle had been bitching about getting left on that roof for the last nine months straight. "I'm Theodore Douglas," he said, offering Carolina his hand. "My friends call me T-Dog."
"Carolina Mason," she said, taking T-Dog's hand and giving it a good solid squeeze before she let go.
Sasha had to squeak on the brakes to avoid a walker that was shuffling around in the middle of the road. The sudden movement tossed Michonne around in the truck bed. It was clear she was the one out of the four of them that had never ridden loose in a truck bed before. Because she was the only one that didn't immediately position herself so that her body was braced against the back of the cab. Tyreese caught her, pulling the woman towards him so she would wedge herself between him and Carolina. It was a tight fit for four grown people. Especially since Tyreese was big enough to count for two. But the ride was short. And Carolina felt more secure with Michonne tucked in next to her. She reached for the other woman's hand and held it in hers.
"What happened to your face," Carolina asked. There was still dried blood in the corner of Michonne's mouth. And it was hard to tell in the fading light, but she looked like she might be sporting the beginning of a rather epic black eye.
"I might have killed the governor's walker daughter," Michonne admitted.
"You might have?," Carolina repeated, barking out a laugh.
"I took Andrea in there," Michonne explained. "To show her his freakshow trophy room. He showed up while we were there. I think that's why he lit that fire. So he could blame it on me."
"Andrea still didn't believe you, did she?," Carolina asked, rolling her eyes when Michonne shook her head. "There's no cure for stupid," Carolina added, immediately regretting it the moment the words left her mouth. She gripped Michonne's hand tighter. "I'm sorry," she said. "I know you thought she was your friend."
"She didn't have my back," Michonne said. "Not even when he accused me of trying to burn down the whole town."
"You were at the arena?," Carolina asked, the pitch of her voice rising. "Did you see what happened to Merle and Daryl?"
"Merle cut me loose and sent me after you," Michonne said, smiling a little at Carolina's very dramatic sigh of relief.
"Him and Daryl were tearing those Woodbury wanna be tough guys up when I ran for it," T-Dog added. "I'm sure they'll be fine. Too many geeks were coming or I would have stayed to help."
Any further conversation was brought to a halt as Sasha pulled the truck up as close as she could to the brick walls of the West Georgia Correctional Facility. They got Lori and Judith settled into one of the cells near the back first. And then Carolina started handing out weapons from the arsenal she and Merle loaded into the prison earlier while Carl tried to make friends with the kitten she rescued from Morgan's walker trap. Carolina wasn't sure what sort of trouble the rest of the group was going to bring with them when they finally arrived. But at least now they were ready for it.
