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D block was a nightmare. Daryl's nightmare. The evil outside had gotten in—somehow, some way, they had been lax. They had failed to prepare, and now the dead were loose, and people were dying, and it was chaos. Why hadn't they made a plan for this?
He charged in, trying to tell the difference between the living and the dead and those who were about to be the dead. A small child sat crying on the floor and Daryl scooped him up, handing him off to a woman, before putting a bolt through the head of a walker.
Carol made her way through the mess, avoiding the walkers, looking for the children. She grabbed a little girl, seeing the door to a cell about to clang shut protectively. "Wait, wait, wait!" she called out, hurrying the girl to the waiting arms of the cell's occupants, watching the door close behind her.
Then she rushed to the side of a man who had just been bitten in the arm. In the slow calming of the chaos, she recognized him. Ryan—his two little girls, Lizzie and Mika, were in her class. Mika listened well, but Lizzie was often away in her own world. Occasionally Carol envied that. She'd have liked to escape from this world herself sometimes.
She got Ryan into his bed, urging him to stay calm. It was the lower arm; she could remove it quickly and he would live. She grabbed a belt and tied it around his upper arm to cut off the blood flow, keep the infection from spreading. And then, as she reached over him with her knife, preparing to start the procedure, she saw it. Another bite, this one on the back of his neck. There was no surviving that.
Daryl helped Rick and Glenn clear the cell block, taking out a walker who had taken Glenn unawares. They looked down at the body and Daryl's heart sank. It was Patrick, the kid who had called him Mr Dixon and wanted to shake his hand.
Well, Mr Dixon had failed that kid … and everyone else in this cell block. What the hell good was he, anyway, if he let this happen inside their very home?
Or maybe there was no way to prevent this, and they were all doomed, and what were they trying to live for anyway?
Carol explained the wound, the inevitability of what was going to happen, and to his credit, Ryan took it well. His only concern was for his girls. "Lizzie and Mika—you care about them. I've seen it."
She didn't want to care about them, or anyone else's children. What good had that done her own?
"I don't have anybody else," he continued. "Kids on their own, they don't have a chance."
In Carol's experience, kids with parents didn't have much more of one.
"Can you look out for them?" he asked her. "Like they're yours?"
If only he knew what had happened to hers. But what else was she going to say? The man had minutes left, if he was lucky. "Yeah. Yeah, I can. I will."
Hershel and the new doctor joined Daryl and Rick to look at a walker Rick had killed in a closed cell. "No bites, no wounds," Rick said. "I think he just died."
"Horribly, too," Dr. S agreed. "Pleurisy aspiration."
"Choked to death on his own blood." Hershel shook his head.
The two doctors thought it was just a sickness. But this guy, Charlie—Daryl had eaten barbecue with him yesterday, and he'd seemed fine.
Rick mentioned a sick pig that died quickly, and Hershel said, "Pigs and birds. That's how these things spread in the past. We'll have to do something about those hogs."
Those hogs were Rick's hope for the future. Daryl felt bad for him—he had tried so hard to start afresh, to forget the horror that was always at the gates. But you couldn't afford to forget. Not anymore.
Carol explained quickly to the girls. They were as used to the nightmare as anyone; they had lost almost everyone already. They understood, as well as anyone could. She brought them into the cell. Ryan's breathing was harsh; there was very little time.
Mika was crying, wanting to get the doctor. But Lizzie was very calm. They took their father's hand. He said, "Take care of your sister."
And he was gone. Carol hurried them out of the cell, reminding them of what needed to be done now. But as she was pulling the knife, Lizzie caught her arm. "We should be the ones." Mika couldn't, but Lizzie was sure. "You taught us. I can do it."
Carol admired the girl's grit. Maybe if Sophia—but that was so long ago, now. No point in thinking about her now.
But in the end, it was too much. The knife clattered to the floor, and Carol pushed Lizzie at her sister. Mika held her. Dimly, Carol heard her telling Lizzie to look at the flowers, and wondered what that meant, but there was no time to ask. Not if she was going to do this before it was too late. She repeated the words, and then she did it.
It was over. She turned to the weeping girls and held them, already thinking about what needed to be done next, how to clean up from this mess and make sure it never happened again. They should have been ready for this, should have expected it.
They had tried peace; they had tried living like life could go on the way it once had. But that had failed. From now on, they were going to have to toughen up—or die. That was just the way things were now, and there was no point pretending otherwise.