Newly Revised
Sorry for the delay. Halloween is a busy time of year for us between trunk or treating, school activities, and trick or treating. I also had to get my car fixed and so took some extra shifts at work to save up the money. Sorry for the delay and thank you for your patience.
Carol was looking at her knife, waiting for Lizzie to come to the visitor mirror, as she reflected on what she had done two nights before. She had done what she had needed to in an attempt to keep the children safe but Lizzie still had fallen ill. Carol hadn't given it a second thought when she killed both David and Karen in an attempt to keep the illness at bay. When she found out that Ani had been sick all along, she had to admit that she was angry at the woman for taking such a risk. There were children in the prison and Ani had knowingly put them in harms way in an attempt to pretend everything was alright. The woman should have been down in the tombs, but instead had spent the night in the cell block with Judith and the others. Carol figured that Ani would have understood why those infected would have to be taken care of as soon as possible. The chance of the illness spreading was too great for them not to try to stop it by any means necessary, at least that was how Carol was rationalizing her choice to kill. She should have made Daryl and the others have Ani stay down in the tombs with the other two. It didn't matter if Sophia was close to the woman, she had been a threat and would have understood that Carol had to take out the threat.
A knock on the window brought Carol on out of her reverie as Lizzie appeared, "Ma'am?"
"Hey Lizzie," she said as she walked up to the window.
"They told me to come down here," Lizzie told her.
"Are you okay?" Carol asked, concerned for the girl who looked pale and weak as she nodded her head. "Good. I wanted to see you because I'm going on a run with Rick."
"Do you think Daryl's dead?"
"No," Carol said definitively. "He had to go far away to get the medicine, so it's gonna take a while. And we lost all our food in cell block D, so we're gonna go look for more and whatever else we can find."
"Nobody's died since I've been in here," she commented. "Is Ani okay? She was in D and they said she was sick."
"As far as I know. I haven't checked," she answered the girl.
"Why not?"
"She's not my concern. You and Mika are."
"What about Sophia?"
"She has people looking out for her," Carol said dismissively.
"I think a lot of people are going to die," Lizzie told her. "It's what always happens. Makes me sad...but, at least they get to come back."
"Lizzie, when they come back, the aren't—people aren't who they were."
"Yeah, but they're something. They're someone. I'm little now. If I don't die, I'll get big. I'll be me, but I'll be different. That's how it is," Lizzie reasoned. "We all change. We all don't get to stay the same way we started."
"Lizzie, it's more complicated-" Carol started.
"You said I was weak. I'm not," Lizzie cut her off. "I'm strong, so I'm telling you what I think."
"Remember what I told you to do when there's danger?" Carol asked her, not wanting to argue with the sick girl right before she had to leave.
"Run as fast as I can."
"That's right. You run and run until you're safe. And if it's your life or your sister's life, you can't be afraid to kill. Understand?"
"Yes."
"You are strong, Lizzie. You're gonna live. You, your sister, and me? We're gonna survive. I know it," Carol told her. "Where's your knife? Put your t-shirt behind it. You gotta be able to get to it quickly."
"Yes, mom. I mean ma'am," Lizzie said.
"Don't call me mom," Carol told her, her own choices allowing her to distance herself from Sophia.
"It was an accident."
"Just don't."
"Okay."
"What is it?"
"I'm not afraid to kill. I'm just afraid."
"You can't be," Carol told her harshly.
"How?" Lizzie asked in tears.
"You fight it and you fight it. And then one day, you just change," she said. "We all change."
She left the tombs and went out into the courtyard where Rick was waiting as she loaded her gear into the trunk. They headed out to a cul de sac a few miles away from the prison that they hadn't quite been through other than to see whether or not it was safe. Rick had no desire to talk as Carol began to nervously look at him and back out the window, seeing the man's face set. He wasn't showing any emotion, but it was a forced state of being that let Carol know that he knew what she had done. She knew it would only be a matter of time before the man had figured it out; Ani already would have if she wasn't sick. It had been for the good of the group, and nothing anyone said was going to change her opinion on the matter. Rick would just have to accept the fact that it had to be done just like Ani would and move on from it like she herself had to. Carol knew that Rick wasn't about to break the silence any time soon, probably not wanting to bring up the topic at all. She couldn't stand the pressure and started up a conversation to gauge where the man's head was at.
"Maggie wanted to come, you know."
"Someone had to stay back. Watch over things," he told her.
"Someone you trust, you mean. They would have drowned in their own blood. They were suffering. I made it quick. Ani would have done the same thing if she hadn't been sick herself," Carol tried to explain, even as Rick remained stoically silent. "We needed the bodies gone. We needed to stop it from spreading. They were the only ones we knew were sick. They were a threat. I was trying to save lives. I had to try. Somebody had to."
"Maybe. What if Ani had been down there? She's kept you safe all this time, kept Sophia safe. Do you really think she would have killed them?" Rick asked her quietly. "I don't think she would. I don't think she'd agreed with just killin' them before they had a chance to try to recover. That's why she made the tonic, wasn't it? To give people a chance if they got sick? Do you really think she would agree with you?"
"I did what I have to to keep the others safe," was all Carol could say, knowing that wasn't the answer the man wanted.
They fell into silence again as they finished the drive to the place Ani had been planning on making a run out to, but then everything happened at the prison. She and Glenn had fallen sick, and now it was Carol and Rick out here instead, even though neither of them had been outside the prison very often lately. There were a few large houses and what looked to be a greenhouse and they hoped to get lucky enough to find some food and maybe even some medicine. They noticed a vehicle in front of them was unusually packed and clean for today's world as Rick pulled to a stop. They carefully made their way to the vehicle after pulling out their packs and looked inside it. It was relatively clean on the inside and looked as if someone was living out of it with how many supplies were in the back.
"Think they're comin' back?" Carol asked Rick.
"Windshield's clean, wiped down," he told her. "Can't have been here more than a day, maybe two."
"You mean Daryl and the others. That's what this is, right? In case they don't?"
"Until they do," Rick corrected. "That's what this is. Search through the medical cabinets and the first aide kits. Anything that could help Hershel. We get in, we get out. And if we can eat it, we take it."
They started walking towards the houses in deafening silence; Carol could understand why Rick hadn't talked much on the entire trip. Rick had a point that Ani had made all that medicine for just such an occasion and she had distributed it the second they knew about the illness. The tonic only worked so well, though, as Lizzie had told her that several people were already coughing up blood. No one even knew how Ani was doing as the Dixon brothers had separated her themselves in the tower. There wasn't much in the way of words said or goods found in the first house they went into. They had split up to cover more ground faster downstairs, several doors upstairs having been locked when they attempted to search up there. They were preparing to leave when a walker came tumbling down the stairs behind them, forcing Rick to grab Carol and pull her back. She quickly took out her knife and plunged it into the walker's head, not even thinking about what she was doing, just acting out of necessity. They both went on high alert as one of the doors upstairs unlocked and a pair of young adults walked out with their hands up in surrender.
"Whoa, whoa. It's cool," the dude told them.
"We have fruit," the girl offered, holding the peaches in her hand out to the pair.
"Yeah, we got apricots, peaces. Here, catch," the man said, gently tossing a peach down only for Rick and Carol to stare at them. "Or, you know, don't."
Carol and Rick could only stare at them, trying to figure out whether or not the two were being serious until they learned that the man was injured and the girl had a bad leg. The pair honestly didn't look like they could hold against anything considering they'd been locked in the bathroom when there had only been one walker. Even most of the children back at the prison would be able to handle a single walker, or at least escape from it if they had a head start. These two had hidden with only one walker in the house and then hadn't even tried to hide against them. It would have been one thing to be wary of walkers, but the fact that they had willingly exposed themselves to her and Rick was beyond ridiculous. They had no survival skills, no sense of safety, and the only thing they had going for them were the supplies they had and the car outside. Carol was nice enough to offer to look at their injuries while Rick double checked the rooms upstairs. There was nothing she could do about the girl's leg, but the way there was a deep purple bruise and obvious road-rash on his shoulder told her everything she needed to know to help him. She carefully cleaned his wound as he sat on the table in front of her as they talked about their adventures before finding the house they were currently in.
"Where'd you come from?" Carol asked the man.
"Greenhouse around the corner," he told her as he looked back at her.
"We were looking for a place to crash," the woman explained. "The roof's broken now and it's been getting rain, so it's full of fruit. We were there for about a day and then the skin-eaters came."
"Killjoys, man. Jackin' it up for the whole world. I thought everybody was an asshole before this all went down. Now I love people. You know, people who are alive."
"How did it happen?" she asked as she double checked the joint.
"When they were coming in through the door I tripped crawling out the other side. Pulled the glass out, but my shoulder—it still hurts like a bitch," he told her.
"It's dislocated," she said plainly.
"Can you fix it?" the woman asked.
Taking a breath and sighing, Carol told him to lie on his back while taking everything off the table and moving the chair off to one side. She told him to hold his arm straight and gave him a bag to hold onto as she moved his arm out to the side. All through his grunting and groaning and cries of pain, Carol kept telling him to just hold the back while she moved his arm slowly but steadily upwards until a sickening pop was heard. She let him drop the back and helped him sit up as the woman checked on him and he rolled his shoulder, both smiling when they realized he could move it again. Carol didn't pay much attention to their gratitude and simply moved the bag away from the table as they stood up.
"It's gonna be sore for a few days," Carol informed the man.
"After the greenhouse, you came here?" Rick asked from behind Carol.
"Yeah," he answered. "We thought it was clear. We missed the deadie in the pjs, so we dove into the bathroom."
"Well, how long were you up there until we showed up?"
"Like, two days," the woman answered.
"There was just one and you have a gun," Carol said incredulously.
"We have about twelve bullets," the woman informed her while chuckling. "It usually takes us about five or six to bring one down."
"But you have knives," she said, still confused.
"To what? Stab it in the head?" the man asked.
"Yeah," she said as if it weren't the most obvious thing ever.
"We got separated from our crew about a week ago," the man explained. "Been trying to play it safe with just the two of us."
"I have to with my leg," the woman told them. "We were at a refugee center together. There was a fire. People were just trampling over me."
"Assholes," the man said, shaking his head before smiling over at the woman as she further explained what had happen.
"Sam saved my life. We didn't know each other before. It didn't heal right, but it healed. And we found each other. It was worth it."
"Where are you two heading next?" Rick asked.
"We just keep moving," Sam told him. "We haven't been waiting for places to go bad. I mean, it's getting a little old."
"You guys look alright. What's your setup like?" the woman asked.
"The 'skin-eaters.' We call 'em walkers. Though I'll give you fair warning, just agree with Ani when she says they're zombies," Rick told them contemplatively. "How many have you killed?"
In the end, the couple had killed only a handful of walkers between each other and no people because they'd always run from trouble, which was how they'd gotten separated from their group. Rick and Carol continued bagging and packing as much stuff as they could while the pair gave them more fruit as thanks for helping Sam with his shoulder. She astutely ignored them as she and Rick readied themselves to carry the supplies they'd gotten from this house out to the car.
"We've got about everything we can here. We should move on," she told Rick.
"So, did we pass your test?" Sam asked, both Carol and Rick stopping in their tracks.
"We're in a prison eight miles north," Rick told them after sharing a look with Carol, who obviously didn't want to take them back. "If you come back with us, we can't guarantee your safety. There's an illness, a flu. It's bad."
"We've lost a lot. Kids too," Carol told them.
"Yours?" the girl asked.
"No, I don't have any. Thank God," Carol said flatly, worried about Lizzie and Mika. "But one of my girls, she's got it."
"I'm sorry."
"Lizzie's strong, she'll make it," Carol said flatly, earning a scoff from Rick, who just turned around, unable to understand where Carol was coming from with her words.
"You got fences and walls?" Sam asked, trying to break the tension as Rick nodded his head. "We're in!"
"Yeah, whatever you need us to do," the woman told them.
"For now, sit tight," Rick told them. "With your leg and your shoulder, just stay here. The two of us will circle back for you before dark."
"Or you could help us sweep the rest of this neighborhood," Carol suggested.
"We can do that!" the woman jumped at the chance to prove herself. "I can check the greenhouse, see if it's clear and bring back more fruit."
"And I can hit some of the houses," Sam offered.
"That's nice of you to offer, but our other leader, she won't be too happy if she finds out I let an injured man and a hobbled woman help carry the load. She'd want you to rest up and stay safe-"
"Ani's not here and we could use the help," Carol cut him off.
"As long as I don't put too much weight on my shoulder," Sam reasoned.
"And I can still move pretty fast," said the woman.
"I just don't think-"
"We won't take any chance," Sam cut him off again. "We'll look. And if it's cake, we'll do it. If not, we'll just roll. I mean, you don't look so good yourself, man. Are you a righty or a lefty?"
Rick couldn't argue with that as his main hand was currently wrapped, letting Carol take the opportunity to point out, "We'll cover more ground. The sooner we get back..."
"You can't carry us, man. It doesn't work that way."
"Please, we want to help," the woman begged.
"You fire a shot, we'll come running," Rick told Sam as he handed them each a pistol as well as his watch. "Let's meet back here in two hours. You'll need this."
He and Carol moved on to the next house on the block, combing through the medical cabinets and nightstands in an attempt to find something to help. They were looking through every last cabinet in the houses they went into even though they really hadn't found a lot. Carol was dismayed by the fact that all they could find was minor medicines; outdated cough drops and some expired Tylenol. They needed a lot more than the trivial amount they were finding and the lack of food they were able to scrape up didn't make the outlook any better. While the houses hadn't necessarily been cleaned out before them, the people who had lived in the community were either rather old or rather frugal by their contents. Everything was still unnaturally silent as they looted the second to last home on the block for whatever else they could find to take back with them. Carol couldn't help trying to break the silence by voicing her concerns for everything they had found so far.
"It's all outdated by at least a year," she complained.
"Better to take it. Let Hershel decide what he needs," Rick told her. "Did you think it was right? Letting those kids come back with us?" he asked after a moment.
"I think it was the humane thing to do," she replied.
"But did you think it was right?" Rick restated.
"Look at us," she said. "Digging through drawers, hoping that a couple of cough drops and some disinfectant might be the difference between dying and living a couple more hours. If they're strong enough to help us survive this, yeah, I think you made the right call."
"And if they're not?"
"Let's hope they are," she said plainly, turning on the man.
"Yeah," was all he said as he turned away himself, continuing to loot the bathroom he was in.
"Rick, I killed two people and you've hardly said a word about it," Carol told him as she stood behind him.
"What do you want me to say?"
"It's not about what you say. It's about facing reality. It always comes for us and over and over again we face it so that we can live."
"So that we can live," Rick emphasized.
"That's right," Carol said, completely missing Rick's point. "That's what it always comes down to. You can be a farmer, Rick. You can't just be a farmer," she told him, noting the look of skepticism on his face. "You were a good leader. Better than I probably gave you credit for."
"I never murdered two of our own, or confirmed the intent to kill more," Rick said in defense.
"Ani has."
"He was gonna kill her."
"So were they. They were gonna kill all of us," Carol defended.
"You don't know that."
"If you thought it would save Judith or Carl, would you have done it then or would you have just gone back to your crops and hoped it'd all be okay? You don't have to like what I did, Rick. I don't. You just have to accept it," she told him, crouching down at his level.
Rick didn't say anything as she turned away from him having said her piece. He still was having trouble believing that Carol would have killed Ani, that she actually believed Ani would be happy with her choice. Ani and Sophia thought of each other as sisters, confiding in each other and overall getting on as if they were. Merle had commented once about how they reminded him of Daryl and him with their ages and how Ani was always looking out for the girl while Sophia was always looking up to Ani. Thinking carefully about how to handle this situation, the options in front of him made him happy that Sophia had formed a closer family bond with others than she had with her mother. He knew she would need that support after he got back to the prison as they finished up in the house. They had managed to get several bottles of expired cold medicine and fever reducers along with some canned goods to take with them before heading outside. They walked behind the house to a small garden with several different kinds of plants with ripe vegetables on the vine. Carol noticed a cluster of more buildings on the other side of the street as Rick moved to pick tomatoes and cucumbers and put them in his bag.
"Let's hit the houses across the street," she said.
"Hold on," Rick told her. "How'd you put his shoulder back before? You learn that from Hershel?"
"Internet," was his response as Carol knelt down to help him. "Easier than telling an ER nurse I'd fallen down the stairs a third time."
"I'm sorry," he said.
"Don't be. Just fixed what needs fixin'." She paused for a moment before she shook her head, "I actually convinced myself I was happy with him. Which wasn't that hard to do considering my idea of happiness back then was just not being alone. He was charming when he wanted to be, especially those mornings after he'd come home piss drunk and...Stupid. Could never protect Sophia, couldn't protect myself. I was stupid. I didn't think I could be strong. I didn't know I could be. That I already was."
"Why don't you count Sophia as your girl anymore?" he asked her. "Why did you say you don't have kids when she's your daughter?"
"She doesn't need me. Sophia. She doesn't need me," Carol told him with a shrug of her shoulders. "And I don't need her like I thought I did. She's a player in somebody else's slideshow, not mine. I tried. I did, I tried. I tried pretending that everything was okay, that I was still the same, that I still felt the same. But I'm not. She's not. And she...she's just not my girl anymore. My girls need me. They need what I can give them, the protection, the guidance, the things I could never give Sophia. Ani gave it to me and Sophia at the same time, or at least she tried to. It's like my daughter is on the same level with me. That's not something...I can't just stand by and pretend I can do anything more for her. Better to cut the cord now than have her disappointed in something I can't do anymore. She has Ani, she doesn't need me."
"You can't seriously believe that," Rick told her.
"I do. It hurts, but I do. I've never been able to protect Sophia. The things her daddy tried to do, the things he did. Ani would have killed him in cold blood the moment he laid his hands on her. Me? I sat and cried in the corner. I knew the way he was headed and I couldn't do nothin' about it. I look at them, I see what should have been for my Sophia. But that's not my Sophia. That's Ani's, and Merle's. They built her up, they made her strong. She's not mine. Not anymore. Not for a long time," Carol said honestly, looking off into the distance.
Rick didn't know what to say about how the woman felt; he simply finished loading the vegetables into the bag in Carol's hand. He could never imagine thinking about his children not needing him as well as him not needing them or thinking of them as his. Even after everything surrounding Judith's conception, she was still his daughter and nothing in the world could change that. He wasn't sure if it was more disturbing that she thought that way about Sophia or that she would have killed one of the people she herself had deemed the child's real family. Carol had changed over the last few months and Rick honestly couldn't recognize the woman she had become. He thought about when she had changed as he stood up, walking over to the gate that lead to the next road. There was a dark trail in the grass and the girl's leg right past the opening of the gate. Walkers across the road were eating her fresh corpse, the sight of which making Rick sigh; he shouldn't have let them help.
"We should get back," Carol said from beside him, seemingly unaffected. "Sam's probably waiting."
They headed back to the house they'd agreed to meet Sam in only for the man not to show at the end of the allotted time. Rick wanted to go look for him, but the walkers that had taken the girl had confined them inside the house as they waited for him to show up. He knew he should have fought harder against Carol's encouragement for them to help with the scavenging. Between her leg and his shoulder, they had needed time to rest and heal before they tried to split up or help. They had been waiting for far longer than they should have and Rick could tell Carol was getting antsy. He had been using the time to stall and make up his mind as to whether or not he really was going to take action for what she did. In the end, there was only one way to deal with it, making him heave a heavy sigh as he closed his eyes.
"It's been too long," Carol told him from across the room.
"We should give him a couple more," Rick said.
"He might be fine. He really might be. But it doesn't matter, because he's not here," Carol told him, leveling a stare, "and we have to go. It was a nice watch."
She began gathering the supplies and carrying them out to the cars, checking out what was in the other car and pulling out what would be useful from it. Rick followed behind her, carrying the rest of what they'd gotten from looting to the car they had come in. They loaded everything into the two vehicles with Rick making sure to leave enough supplies in the other car to last a while. When they were done, Carol went to open the passenger door only to find it locked and Rick looking at her with a hard stare. He knew all too well what it felt like to lose yourself after losing a loved one, especially since he had been there himself after Lori had died. Rick knew he had gone off the deep end for a while and it had taken a serious wake-up call and almost turning his back on his morals to get him out of it. He couldn't take the risk of what Tyreese's wrath would bring down upon the prison. Ani had been no match in just restraining the man and he, himself, had acted on rage. That had been the only reason Tyreese had been stopped and Rick knew that there would be no holding the man back once he found out what Carol had done.
"They might have lived," he said with a sigh. "Karen and David, they might have lived. And now they're dead. That wasn't your decision to make. When Tyreese finds out, he'll kill you. He damn near killed me over nothing."
"I can handle Tyreese."
"The others, when they find out, they won't want you there. Sophia will be angry. Ani won't be willing to punish you because you're Sophia's mother. She'll give you chance after chance if that's what Sophia would want. They could have lived. And if Daryl and Michonne don't make it back and everybody dies back at the prison and it's just the two of us, with Judith and Carl, with my children. I won't have you there."
"Rick, it's me," Carol pleaded. "No one else has to know. I thought you were done making decisions."
"I'm making this decision for me. I'm doing it for me, to keep my children safe," he responded. "I won't give you the same chances Ani would. I won't have you there to stab me in the back the minute I become a threat."
"I could have pretended that everything was gonna be fine," she said with a broken voice. "But I didn't. I did something. I stepped up. I had to do something."
"No," Rick said. "You didn't."
"If you think I'm going anywhere without Lizzie and Mika-"
"You want them to leave? To go out there with you? Lizzie's sick. Mika is ten years old."
"You can't."
"Do you even want to take Sophia? Or are you only thinkin' of Lizzie and Mika?" Rick asked her, watching as Carol hung her head in shame. "We'll keep them safe. Ani will make sure of it when she recovers. You know she will. She'll make sure Sophia's got someone lookin' after her. You don't have to worry about them," he tried to assure her. "You're not that woman who was too scared to be alone, not anymore. You're gonna start over, find others, people who don't know, and you're gonna survive out here. You will."
"Maybe," Carol said as Rick began removing her things as well as some of the rations and fuel.
He loaded it into the car Sam and the girl had been traveling in, letting her take most of their things and a can of gas as well. Carol was melancholy throughout the entire affair as she helped Rick move a few more things over from his car to the one she was now taking. Rick didn't say anything else as they worked and he didn't feel like there was anything left to say. He couldn't have Carol at the prison and risk taking the chance that she would turn on him or the others. He couldn't risk what Tyreese would do let alone who he would hurt while they tried to stop him. They had taken a lot of precautions when it came to the illness but she had taken it into her own hands without thinking. Patrick had been the first to die, and everyone had been around the boy. There was no stopping the spread of the virus by killing David and Karen and a part of him wondered if Carol knew that or if it was a simple oversight on her part. Either way, as the woman gave him the watch Ed gave her to replace the one lost with Sam, he didn't feel like his choice was wrong. Rick watched her drive away before he climbed in his own car and headed back to the prison alone.
~x~
Daryl was walking down a dirt road to a nearby town Michonne knew about in an attempt to find a car and get moving towards the college. The four of them were relatively silent as they traveled, Bob and Tyreese trailing behind them. If they weren't in such a hurry, Daryl would have been checking to see if the area would be any good for hunting, but he really didn't have time to go off course. That didn't mean that he didn't notice some things right in his path as he bent down to pick up a rock. He started trying to spit shine it, noticing it was a heliotrope as the dirt wore off. It was a beautiful dark green with red specks in it and Daryl stood back up and made to put it in his pocket.
"Is that jasper?" Michonne asked from beside him.
"Mm-hmm," Daryl hummed.
"It's a good color. Brings out your eyes," she joked with him.
"When Mrs. Richards went into A block as we were leavin', she asked me to keep a look out," he explained. "She wants to use it for her old man's marker."
"You know all of them back there?"
"You stay in one place more'n a couple hours, you'd be surprised what you pick up," he told her as he stood and continued walking. "'Sides, Ania's the one that really knows everyone. I just picked things up along the way."
They walked for a few hours, the trail eventually letting out at a road they could follow towards the small town. Daryl was thinking about how quickly they could get to the college as they turned onto blacktop closer to the town. There was an old building located right on the corner covered in overgrown vines and the branches of a fallen tree that had barely missed the already broken through roof. Tyreese and Michonne started walking past it as Daryl slowed down while looking through the branches. The building was completely overgrown with the vines and he couldn't see any way inside but it did look like there was something under the branches.
"You see something?" Bob asked him.
"I don't know. Maybe," he answered. "Hey, give me a hand with this, would ya?"
Bob helped him as he began pulling at the branches in order to see what was underneath, the front of a minivan coming into view. It didn't take long to get the entire front end clear with Tyreese and Bob helping him until Daryl could get the front door open. He quickly found the right wires he needed to try to start up the van but it had been sitting to long. When he popped the hood to see if it needed any work, it became pretty obvious that it was the battery was the problem. The winter might not have been horrible as far as the snow went and the temperatures dropping, but it had been enough to expand and kill the thing. He was pretty sure the mechanic's shop they'd been lucky enough to stumble upon would have another one that would be right for the van. Daryl just hoped that sitting for almost a year and a half hadn't destroyed any batteries on the inside like it had the van's.
"We gotta find us a new battery," he informed the men before trying to clean a window a bit only for a walker to slam against it and made him jump. "We got some friends inside. Come on."
They walked around the building where the tree had fallen and began pulling and cutting at the branches, Tyreese letting his anger out on the vines. Daryl warned the man that they didn't know what they were dealing with and told him that he needed to let up. Tyreese wouldn't listen and continued his rampage against the brush until his blade stuck in the vines. They got back to work while Daryl watched the big man as he went back to wailing at the vines. A hand to came out of nowhere and grabbed a hold of him, making him jump. The walker tried to get a firm grip on his jacket only for Daryl to move out of the way just as Michonne cut its arm off. He fell to the ground and took out his knife stood to kill it just as another walker came out at Bob. Michonne moved to help him while Tyreese started pulling yet another as Daryl finished standing up. The others called out for him to stop pulling on it so that they could take care of it but the man wouldn't listen. Tyreese continued to pull until the thing fell out of the vines, sending them both to the ground. He still wouldn't let go of the walker until Daryl pulled it off of him and Bob shot it in the head, the three men breathing hard as Tyreese seemed to go numb to all of it. Daryl understood that he was angry over Karen and worried about Sasha, but he was going to get them killed if he kept letting his anger get to him.
"Why the hell didn't you let go?" Michonne asked him as Daryl helped him up.
Tyreese just stood there looking out at nothing with a blank look on his face as Daryl shook his head at the man and went back to work. He found a door after clearing a few more branches and vines near where Tyreese had pulled the walker out of and entered the building with Bob. They cautiously walked through the building, Daryl taking point as he held his flashlight high. It looked pretty well stocked and Daryl contemplated stopping back here on the way through to get what they could. There were a lot of parts on the various shelves and plenty of tools they could use to fix up the prison even more. He knew they didn't have a lot of time to scavenge any other place than the college, but he could bring Glenn back. Daryl put his bow down and used his teeth to hold his flashlight when they came to a shelf that had a couple batteries on it.
"Here we go," he said, pulling out his knife to check the insides, too.
"Cells look a little dry," Bob said.
"A little distilled water will clear that right up," Daryl told him before looking around for the water only to stop short when he saw a dark splotch on the floor. "That's puke. Those douchebags in the vines?" he told Bob. "They took themselves out, holding hands—Kumbaya style."
"They wanted to go out together same as they lived. That make them douchebags? You know Ani'd do the same thing," Bob tried to reason.
"Naw, man, she'd fight tooth and nail against the dead 'til she died. That's how she'd go out," Daryl said. "These guys, they could have gotten out."
"Everybody makes it," Bob reasoned again, "'til they don't. People nowadays are dominoes. What they did, maybe it's about not having to watch them fall."
"Right," Daryl said with a roll of his eyes. "Come on."
The pair walked down another aisle, finding a jug of water as the sound of a walker reached their ears. It was stuck under some of the debris and, going by the uniforms of the walkers outside and this one, it had probably been the owner of the shop. Daryl couldn't fathom the option of suicide when such an open path to surviving a little longer had been available to them. Even with what Ani had said, he knew she'd go down fighting for as long as she could. She wouldn't find one place to stay, she'd move from place to place, taking out walkers the entire time and only taking what she needed to survive a little while longer. She'd shut the part of herself that wanted human contact off and just become a walking shell of the person she was, like she'd become over winter. She wouldn't just give up like these people had any more than Merle would, any more than he would. Daryl scoffed and walked away turning back to see Bob standing there looking at the wall. He didn't wait around to see what the man did as he grabbed the battery and headed outside. Daryl worked on switching out the old battery for the new, adding the water to the cells and hooking it up while Bob watched.
"You never told us about the group you were with before," he mumbled around a cigarette.
"Which one?" he asked with a shrug. "You know, when you and Ani found me out on that road, I almost kept walkin'."
"Why is that?"
"'Cause I was done bein' a witness. Two times, two different groups. I was the last one standing. Like I was supposed to see it happen over and over, like it's some kinda curse. But, when it's just you out there with the quiet...Used to be I'd drink a bottle of anything just so I could shut my eyes at night. Figured the prison, the people, thought it'd be easier. Talking to Ani made it easier a bit. The run to the big spot, I did it for me."
"You gotta keep busy," Daryl rationalized as he took a drink of water from the jug.
"No," Bob denied. "I did it so I could get me a bottle. Of anything. I picked it up, I held it in my hand. And I put it down. I put it down so hard it took the whole damn shelf with it. That's what brought on the walkers, and that's what got Zack killed."
"That's bullshit," Daryl told him after a minute. "Why don't you get in there and try the engine? It's the red and green wire. Go on. It ain't rocket science. Give it some gas," Daryl told him, fiddling around under the hood to get wires connected right.
Bob hit the wires Daryl had told him to and hitting the gas pedal a couple times before the engine roared to life. Daryl raised his hands in an odd victory celebration now that something was going their way for a change on this damned run. They'd already lost an entire day trying to get to the college and they had no way of telling who was still alive. Hopefully, now that they had a vehicle, they would be able to make up for some of the time they'd lost. If they could get to the college, get what they needed, and get out, there was a chance they'd be able to make it back by nightfall. They would have already been back at the prison by now with medicine flowing through their people's veins if they hadn't lost Zack's car. Bob blaming himself for Zack's demise came out of the blue, but it was a feeling he knew all too well. It was something both him and Ani had to remind each other from time to time; no one knew what the future could hold. The only things to blame for what happened to the boy were the walkers and how they destroyed everything they'd ever known the world to be.
"You know, Sasha, Ania and me, we picked that spot. We took you with us. There's no way anyone coulda known," Daryl sympathized with Bob. "You ain't gonna be standin' alone, not no more. Let's go."
He whistled over to Michonne, who was talking to Tyreese over on the fallen tree, to signal that they were ready to move out. They left the four used tires on the side of the road along with the battery after loading up the things they'd grabbed to help with their trip. It didn't take more than ten minutes on the road to get to the outskirts of the college town. Daryl had Bob turn into a cul de sac not too far from the college and park there so that they weren't risking losing another vehicle. The quartet headed out on foot, Daryl and Michonne easily dealing with any and all walkers as they moved through the main part of town. It only took about thirty minutes for them to get to an area with taller buildings and car parks, Tyreese making mention of the college dorms as they got closer. They ran through the campus without any kind of formation while avoiding groups of walkers so as not to alert even more. Bob lead them through the halls when they found the right building until they got to the lab that had a good part of what they needed. Daryl took the list Hershel had given him out of his pocket and looked at it for a moment before crumpling it and tossing it on the floor.
"Alright, let's make this quick," he told the others as they spread out.
Everyone grabbed any and all medicines they could as they moved from one room to the next and found several cabinets full of medicine bottles. Tyreese and Daryl went across the hall to find other medical supplies on the list, splitting the original one in two leaving the medic to sort out the medication. They pulled everything they needed out of the cabinets and stuffed them into their bags, going through every drawer and every desk they came across. Daryl lead the other man into another room that had an abundance of needles and bandages they ransacked and added to their supply. They took everything they came across throughout the rooms on the floor until their bags were completely full. They moved quietly through the halls until they heard Bob talking and entered the room he and Michonne were looting.
"We'll dissolve the pills in the IVs, put 'em right into the bloodstream. Dosage will be tricky, but considering the time we lost...How'd you do?" Bob asked them.
"Bags, tubes, clamps, connectors," Tyreese counted out. "Everything on the list."
"What about y'all?" Daryl asked.
"Yeah, we got it all," Bob said.
"Got one for those allergic to penicillin? Ania can't be the only one," he double checked.
"Yeah."
"We're good," Michonne said after doing one last double check on the cabinets.
"Alright, let's roll," Daryl said as he grabbed his bag and his crossbow and headed towards the door.
They had to move carefully down the halls as they couldn't risk breaking anything in their bags, let alone make too much noise. No matter how quietly they moved, though they couldn't stop their flashlights from gaining attention. Daryl and the others could hear the walkers' groans and gargles coming towards them as they fled down the halls. They ran as fast as they could as the sounds got louder, ducking into another room in an attempt to throw off their stalkers. Bob tried closing the door while Daryl stood watch behind him and Michonne and Tyreese went down the hall. Walkers appeared down the hallway as Bob tried again before turning to Daryl and asking for help with the busted door. He went back and held the door shut as the walkers got closer so that Bob could get the door at least jammed up a bit to keep the walkers from pouring in. He caught up to Tyreese as a walker jumped out at the man. Michonne was trying to find an exit as the big man struggled momentarily with the walker before killing it quickly.
The door to the only other exit was locked shut with a thick chain and dead lock keeping the door shut and the quartet trapped in a room with walkers baring down on them. It didn't help matters any when the fingers of the dead started to pop through as soon as Michonne touched the lock. Daryl shone his light through the crack in an attempt to see how many walkers were behind the door, but it was just too narrow to get a count. There was no telling what laid behind the door or whether or not they would be able to fight their way through, but they didn't have a choice but to try. If they stayed in the room they were in, they would die without even getting a chance to take the meds back. If they took a chance and managed to get out of the room, while it didn't guarantee their survival, it gave an opportunity to try. The walkers at the end of the hall had almost broken through the barricade as they realized they would have to risk it one way or another.
"We can take 'em," Tyreese told them.
"No!" Bob shouted. "They're infected. Same as at the prison. We fire at 'em, get their blood on us, breathe it in. We didn't come all this way to get sick now!"
"How do we know the ones in there aren't any different?" he countered.
"We don't," Michonne stated.
"Well, it's gotta change sometime," Daryl said, breaking a piece of metal off some wood to use it as leverage against the lock and chain while the others prepared. "Ready?"
"Let's do it!" Tyreese said.
He broke the lock open, releasing the chain as the doors flew open at the sheer force of the walkers behind it. Ducking out of the way and grabbing his bags and crossbow back from Tyreese, he watched as Bob shot one while Michonne beheaded two more. They were the only walkers in the corridor as they ran down it, but there were still dead coming up from behind them. They ran up the stairs as quickly as they could with Daryl in the lead, the only thought being to find a way out. Daryl started down one end of the hall when they exited the stairwell only to be cut off by more walkers. Michonne went the other way, leading the men while taking out the dead that came out of the rooms ahead of them. Bob frantically dropped everything he could in the hallway onto the floor in an effort to gain time as Michonne tried to open the door at the end of the hall. The damn thing was locked and while the walkers were having trouble getting over the barricade Bob had managed to make, they were still trapped.
"We have no exit!" she said as Daryl began kicking at the door with all his might.
When it didn't bulge, he simply jumped up onto the tall windowsill shouting, "Then we make one!"
He was checking for a way to open the window when Tyreese yelled at him to get down, covering his head as the man launched a fire extinguisher right through the window. Tyreese helped Michonne up onto the sill as Daryl told her to jump on the walkway below. He turned to help Tyreese up before jumping out himself, followed by Bob. The man jumped a little too hard and practically fell out the window, rolling as he did and lost his bag in the process. He barely managed to keep a hold of it before it fell to the ground, though the movement caused walkers to swarm beneath him. Bob fought to keep a hold of the bag while the dead snatched at it even as the others fought to help him up. Tyreese and Michonne urged him to let go, Daryl helping to keep the man on the roof as he refused to let go of the damn thing.
"Just let the damn bag go, man!" Daryl yelled at him, wondering what the hell was so important in the bag that they didn't already have.
Together, they managed to pull the man up as his bag went flying from his grip when they did, falling to the ground with a clink. Their bags rattled with the sound of plastic and metal bumping against each other with every step they took and yet his bag sounded like glass. Even as the walkers surrounded them below, Daryl couldn't help but stalk over to the bag. He wasn't the only one looking at the man pissed all to hell as he spoke after bending down and picking up the bottle of liquor. They'd been risking their lives this entire time to get what they needed back at home and this man only had one thing in his bag. He could hardly believe that he had trusted him to come with them on the trip just for him not to do the one job they needed him for. Daryl didn't know when Bob had managed to find the liquor when they'd spent so much time running. They'd barely been able to get everything they needed to take back to the prison before they'd been forced to flee yet he'd taken the time to grab a bottle of liquor. The anger inside him boiled as he thought about how Ani had brought this man in. She had taken pity on him and granted him sanctuary and when she needed his help, he'd gone out of his way to get liquor.
"You got no meds in your bag? Just this?! You should have kept walking that day," he growled, going to launch the bottle from the roof.
"Don't," Bob told him as his hand went to his gun.
Tyreese couldn't believe what he was seeing as Bob just stood there, looking down in shame, Michonne similarly disgusted by Bob's actions. Daryl stalked up to the man and looked at him straight in the eyes, pushing his forehead against Bob's and rounding to his full height. He stared Bob down as he pushed him back a couple steps while Tyreese looked at Michonne, neither of them moving to stop him. Daryl took Bob's gun away as the man looked down in shame, grabbing his vest and making to push him off the roof. If it hadn't have been for Tyreese, he would have followed through, but the man had a point and they didn't have time to deal with Bob.
"Just let it go, Daryl. The man's made his choice. There's nothin' you can do about it. You just gotta let it go. We gotta get back to Ani and Sasha."
"I didn't want to hurt nobody," Bob said as he shook his head. "It was just for when it gets quiet."
Daryl stalked up to him and forcefully shoved the bottle into his chest, "Take one sip before those meds get into our people and I will beat your ass into the ground. You hear me?"
He pushed the man a little to make his point before making his way back over to where he dropped his crossbow. He couldn't even bring himself to stop or slow down as they made their way off the roof and out of the town. It wasn't until they got to the van that he bothered to stop and sat in the passenger's seat as he stared at the piece of jasper he'd picked up earlier in the day. Daryl listened to Tyreese and Michonne discuss how they were going to get back while trying to zone everything out. Bob was obviously feeling guilty about his choice while Tyreese had started to overcome whatever it was that had gripped him when they first headed out. Daryl was just pissed that they had wasted time and resources on Bob when he'd only thought of himself in their time of need. His selfishness could cost their group even more lives, including Ani's and Merle's, if the man had developed symptoms while he was gone. Bob was on his shit list and that wasn't going to change any time soon as the others loaded into the van and Michonne started it up.
"You were right what you said before," she told him. "About the trail going cold. I don't need to go out anymore."
"Good," he said as he slammed the door shut.
~x~
A knock on the door woke Merle up in the morning only to find Sophia and Carl standing there with a jar of deep reddish purple liquid and a cooked rabbit. He meant to take the stuff from them, but they just let themselves in as Ani started coughing herself awake. Merle tried to get them to leave, but neither teen was having it as they sat down on some of the extra blankets stashed in the place. They had already been outside of the prison and already gone with Hershel without letting the adults know, they weren't about to be told what to do now. Ever since the illness had taken hold, they'd been treated like little kids by everyone but Hershel. They weren't going to let Merle tell them they couldn't be in the tower when they had nothing else to do. Besides, both had agreed that if they had to listen to a bunch of kids trying to sing along with Beth one more minute, they were going to go crazy.
"We were already exposed," Carl told Merle. "I hugged my dad after the attack on D block. And we were both around Patrick the day he got sick. If we were gonna get it, we'd have it."
"Just like you, Pops," Sophia added. "Please? At least here we feel like equals. Besides, I'm sure you'd enjoy the company since Ani's just sleepin' most of the time."
"Ya kids shouldn' be in 'ere," Ani said as she worked herself into sitting up. "Even if ya been exposed, ya shouldn' be idiots like the Dixons."
"Well, I'm going on watch later," Carl said. "Dad and Carol are going on a run to see what they can get, so Maggie, Sophia, and I are all that's left that's not sick."
"Damn, afta the cell block, we only had maybe twenny people left. How many we lost since?"
"Dunno," Sophia said. "The adults haven't really told us much. Momma has been more worried about Lizzie and Mika than anything else. I don't even think she knows I've been out hunting."
"By yaself?"
"No, I went with her," Carl said. "Can't go alone, but there really isn't anyone else to help, so..."
"Nah, that's fine. Ya helpin' when we need all the help we can get. Nothin' wrong with that," she said as Merle took the rabbit from Carl and tore it into pieces, handing some to each of them before taking a piece himself. "Ya clean and cook it yaself?" she asked Sophia.
"Nope! Carl and I came to an agreement," Sophia said. "I really don't like the blood, and he don't wanna kill Bambi, so he cleans and I hunt!"
"Really now? That's pretty awesome, but ya got somethin' wrong, sweets," Ani said, something her papa had once told her popping into her head.
"What's that?" Sophia asked, honestly wondering what she got wrong.
"Ya don' shoot Bambi; ya shoot Bambi's mama."
"Oh, now that's the truth!" Merle laughed. "Which one of you cooked it?"
"Both," the kids said at the same time, looking at each other and cracking a smile.
"Carl started it, but I didn't think it was done enough when he did," Sophia told them. "Oh! And drink some of the elderberry tea Hershel made. We saw Maggie before we came here and she says that Sasha and Glenn are doing a little better, up and walking around, since they started drinking it, too."
"Alright. Hand it ova," Ani said, gladly taking a drink straight from the jar. "Gods, I wish my tonic tasted like this. Not the greatest, but at least it's not bitta."
"You're tellin' me!" Merle said. "Carl's prolly growin' chest hair drinkin' that stuff."
"Shut up!" Carl said in protest, his face going red with embarrassment.
"Jus' an old wives' tale anyways, Carl, don' worry 'bout it none."
Ani ate the half the piece of rabbit Merle had handed her and drank a quarter of the tea before she stopped. She'd barely been able to keep anything down because of the coughing, so she didn't want to risk putting too much in her stomach just to throw it back up again. It didn't help that the elderberry tea was similar to the color of blood and every time she coughed after she drank it, her phlegm was red tinted after she took a drink. No matter how much she tried to explain that to Merle, he'd turn into papa bear and hover like he had been doing since Daryl left. After propping up the pillows, she leaned back and listened to the trio talk about anything and everything other than the illness spreading through the prison. It was mid-afternoon when she finally succumbed to sleep after another dose of tonic, right before Rick came back without Carol. Merle told Sophia to stay put, Carl having left to go on watch, and headed up to the courtyard to find out what happened. He wasn't looking forward to having to tell Ani and Sophia that Carol was dead only for Maggie to inform him that Rick had exiled Carol for killing Karen and David without remorse. Even though Merle had already figured it out, hearing what he'd been suspecting was like a punch to the gut. Damn good thing we hauled Ani to the tower. Bitch really would have killed her, he thought to himself as he headed back.
"Is everything alright?" Sophia asked when he entered the room.
"Yeah, girly. Everythin's gonna be okay," Merle told her, watching her braiding Ani's hair as she slept.
He decided then and there that Rick was going to tell these two himself rather than do it himself; he wasn't going to be the one to break the little girl's heart. She called him her Pops, had the same amount of respect and reverence for him Ani had when she talked about her papa, and was overall a good kid. She'd been dealt almost as shit a hand as Ani had, which, according to Ani, was why Carol had taken to the sweet and innocent Lizzie and Mika lately over Sophia. Sophia reminded Carol of how she failed in her duties as a mother while Mika and Lizzie were a second chance to get it right. It didn't help any that Ani was caught right in between all of it because she reminded the woman of what she could have been if she'd have stepped up sooner. Merle figured it out pretty quickly that that was why Carol had been leaving Sophia alone with them more and more. Ani wouldn't let the little girl leave her side once she found out about Carol and Merle had already had the girl forced under his wing. He didn't mind looking out for the kid longer than just teaching her how to survive if her mother wouldn't.