Notes: 200 chapters! That's wild.
-Rhys-
Drip...
Drip...
Rhys watched Carol fill her canteen with the water trickling from the rock-icicles hanging from the ceiling— Jerry had called them stalactites. The fire Daryl had lit brought the room enough light that they all glistened.
Drip...
Drip...
Drip...
Aaron, Mikey, and Jerry poured over a map of the national forest they were somewhere beneath, trying to pinpoint where exactly they were. Jerry swallowed nervously when one of the many tunnels out of the chamber they were in echoed with the sound of falling rocks. Aaron clicked off his usual metal hand, putting it in his bag and fishing out his mace prosthetic instead. Mikey didn't look up from the map.
Drip...
Drip...
Connie and Kelly were signing to each other in a small outcrop, an electric lantern by their feet to light their hands. Kelly was pale, and Connie seemed anxious about her sister's ankle.
Drip...
Drip...
Magna stomped over to ask Daryl for his matches. He told her to relax, but she told him she couldn't. He tossed them to her.
Rhys sat with his back against a wall made smooth from probably a hundred years of water running down it— it was dry now, though, and Rhys was grateful for it. Carl's head was in his lap, and Rhys ran gentle fingers through his hair, listening to his steady, sleeping breaths. He watched Carol pass by them, sitting beside Daryl across from where they were.
"I never told you I was claustrophobic," she said to the side of Daryl's head. Rhys could hear how uncomfortable she was in the way that every word that escaped her lips was breathless.
"If I only knew what you told me, I wouldn't know shit," Daryl said.
"Look who's talking..."
Daryl played with a bandana he held in his hand, rubbing his thumb against the fabric in an attempt to smooth its thousands of creases. "It's like I can't even turn my back on you anymore."
Carol retreated her gaze down at her lap.
"It's bad enough I've got Aaron running around with that skin freak," Daryl told her. "Now I've got to worry about you all half-cocked every time you go outside."
She looked at him. "I'm sorry," she whispered.
"I begged you to talk to me," Daryl said. "I wanna be there for you. I do." He offered her a dismally sad frown. "I don't know what to do anymore."
Carol looked across the chamber to Rhys, and he avoided her eyes quickly. He felt awful for it. He knew he was the closest person to understanding how she felt. He knew she'd never ask him to.
"I can't stop thinking about it," she told Daryl. "I know I have to, but I can't..."
Rhys did look at her then. Their eyes met and locked in the saddest dance of green and steel. They never talked about Henry. Not even those nights on the boat. Those nights that they felt safe, and they felt happy and comfortable. It just hurt too much.
"Oh, god," she whispered, wiping a tear from her cheek and looking away, back to Daryl to whom she spoke. "I don't want to just kill Alpha. I want to hurt her. I want to make her regret everything. I want her to beg for forgiveness... and then I want to kill her."
Rhys dried his face against his wrist, looking up at the ceiling and holding his breath until his chest stopped hurting. When he looked back down, Carol was doing the same. Only she wasn't holding her breath to try and stop it— she seemed to feel better letting all that agony seep from the cracks.
"If I went through all the shit that you went through... I'd probably feel the same way," Daryl said softly. "Unless you tried to stop me. You gotta quit all this. You gotta. People you care about are starting to get hurt."
"I didn't mean for any of this to happen." Carol looked at him. "I know I have to... I know I have to s—"
"You gotta not bullshit me," Daryl told her. "Don't bullshit me. You gotta promise. I gotta know we're on the same team. We fight for our future. We don't fight for revenge."
"I promise," Carol whimpered.
They managed eye contact for the first time.
After a pause, Daryl nodded. "Alright..."
Carol brushed away a tear that caught in the corner of her eye, leaning into him and resting her head on his shoulder.
Maybe Rhys gripped Carl's hair too tightly because he jolted awake, almost head-butting him as he sat up and stared at him, his chest heaving.
"I'm so— I'm... I'm sorry," he gasped between tiny panicked breaths.
"What?" Rhys asked, scootching closer to him and touching his arm.
Carl flinched, swallowing and looking around.
"Are you okay?"
Carl wiped the side of his face, nodding. He was crying.
Rhys took his hands to either side of Carl's head, pulling their foreheads close until they gently bumped. "We're getting out of here."
"Skins!"
The sudden shriek from Magna sprang everyone out of their respite and onto their feet.
They crowded through the tunnels to find her shoved against a wall, trying to wrestle a knife away from a Whisperer who had the point inches from her eye. More dropped down from tunnels above before anyone could help Magna. Daryl sliced one across the face. Jerry stabbed his sword through another's head. Connie dodged past them all and fired a whistling stone from her slingshot into the temple of the one grappling with Magna. From the dark, a Whisperer slashed at Carl, but Aaron's mace went through their masked head before the blade touched him. Another got behind Carol, and Rhys tossed a knife over her shoulder and into the whisperer's throat. Carol yanked the blade out for him, tossing it back. Mikey just managed to leap back from one, pushing them into the light of Daryl's torch for Kelly to shoot through their eye with her slingshot.
"Let's go," Mikey barked, pointing down a clear tunnel.
Daryl led the way, and the rest followed.
Connie frantically signed something when they found a moment to stop and catch their breath.
"If we don't follow each other in the dark," Kelly translated breathlessly. "We're gonna... gonna get split up."
"She's right," Carol panted. "We need to stick together."
"Agreed," Rhys said, coughing up some dust that got kicked up in his face in their escape.
"At least we know there's a way out now," Aaron said, gesturing back to where the whisperers ambushed them.
"Yeah," Magna said. "But where?"
"North," Mikey told them. "Logically, we need to head north. It's where the terrain will be lowest on the surface."
"Can confirm," Jerry said, tapping his compass and pointing down a tunnel. "Same way they came from."
"See where they went?" Daryl asked.
"Not exactly, but..." Jerry stepped aside and raised his lantern to an arrow carved into the rock face behind him. "I know a road sign when I see one."
Daryl nodded, leading everybody down the narrow path, all of them sticking closer together now.
The tunnel led them to a skinny cavern with a ceiling that seemed to go up forever.
"Hey, c'mon," Daryl said, waving his knife at a small gap in the wall. It was horrifyingly narrow.
Connie poked her light through it, and as far as her arm reached— and further, to as far as they could see —they saw it stayed narrow. Past where Connie's light reached, it was unknown how small it got. A long suffocating squeeze to god-knows-where.
Daryl went first. He had no choice but to go in sideways, holding his breath to fit into the slim passage.
"Fuck this," Jerry said.
They all continued to listen to the sound of Daryl's vest scraping against the rock as he scooted further and finally disappeared into the slit in the wall.
They waited, hoping he'd come back and say dead end, but—
"This is it!"
No such luck.
Mikey went next, followed closely by Kelly.
Rhys watched as Carol pressed her back up against a wall and started to breathe deep, harrowed breaths.
"Oh, god," she gasped.
Connie turned to look at her, frowning.
Carol saw her face, waving a hand in front of her own. "I'm good, just give me one minute." She kept panting. "Or not."
Connie moved to her side and took her hand, pinching above her own eyelids for Carol to shut hers. Carol nodded a few times, closing them as instructed. Connie started to run her finger against Carol's palm, spelling something slowly.
"U... R... O... K," Carol whispered. Connie squeezed her hand. Carol chuckled and whispered it again. "You are okay."
Connie greeted Carol with a smile when she opened her eyes again.
Carl stepped past Rhys to touch Carol's elbow. "Go behind me, yeah?"
Carol smiled, patting his cheek gently. "Thank you."
After the other three, the rest followed. Aaron, Carl, Carol, Connie, Magna, Rhys, and Jerry.
It was suffocating. Rhys wasn't even claustrophobic, but the thought of getting stuck or his light dying started to scare the hell out of him. To his and everyone else's horror, the further they went, the lower in got.
Some minutes went by and they were dragging themselves forward on their bellies, the crawlspace ceiling scraping against their backs.
"Hey," Rhys called over his shoulder to Jerry when he couldn't see his light behind him. "All good back there?"
"Yeah... sure..." Jerry called back. "I'm just a six-foot-two dude that had trouble fitting into airplane bathrooms." He grunted as Rhys heard him slide a little further. "Why wouldn't I be okay?"
"I think it's getting wider up ahead," Rhys lied.
In fact, it got worse. Several more minutes of crawling and they were in a space so small it felt like a water slide. A water slide where they were up to their necks in cement. They waded on. Rhys could see Magna's boots keep disappearing around corners that he worried Jerry might not squeeze past.
"Alright!" Rhys heard Daryl's voice echo from up ahead. "I'm out. Follow my voice!"
Rhys heard Kelly grunting... then... "I'm good!"
That meant Mikey was out, too.
The sound of Aaron's mace dragging stopped, so Rhys knew he was out.
Rhys was listening more than he was looking, so gasped when he crashed into Magna's backside.
"What's happening—?"
But he heard Carol up ahead, panting and gasping. Then he saw her further up the tunnel, curled up against the wall in the middle of a full-blown panic attack.
"Carol?" Carl called back to her from the other end.
"I'm here," she whimpered, shaky breaths between each word.
"You hurt?" Daryl called.
"I'm okay..."
"Can you see my light?" Daryl asked, shining it down the stone pipe.
"Yes," she cried.
"Just follow my light."
Breathlessly, she whispered, "I can't."
Connie grabbed her foot and squeezed reassuringly, not able to do much else since they were all stuck behind her now.
"Carl," Rhys heard Daryl hiss. Then he saw Carl's head appear at the end of the tunnel as he crawled back in until he could reach Carol.
He outstretched his hand.
She gripped it tightly, shaking and sobbing.
"You're okay," Carl told her.
"I'm not," she whimpered.
"You are," he cooed softly. "You saw me back there, yeah? Scared as anything."
She was nodding violently, gasping at the air.
"I need you with me now, Carol," Carl told her. "From Atlanta to here, yeah? You don't die in this cave. We don't."
Carol nodded again, huffing and puffing as Carl started to tug her forward, shimmying himself backwards.
A few seconds more, and she was out.
The line started to crawl forward again.
"Hey, guys," Jerry called up the line. Those still in the crawl space stopped.
"What's wrong?" Rhys called back. He heard the winding of Jerry's torch. "Dude?!"
"Just be quiet for a second," Jerry whispered.
More winding.
Rhys wriggled onto his back to look behind him and saw Jerry's light getting brighter around the last corner.
He listened.
And then to his and everyone else horror, they heard growling from behind them.
"GO! GO! GO!" Jerry screamed.
"Fucking go!" Rhys yelled, punching Magna's boots, which started scurrying forward as he pivoted back onto his belly.
Daryl pulled Connie out quickly.
Magna scampered out after her.
Rhys gasped as he dragged himself towards the light and Mikey and Daryl pulled him out the other side. Carl was quick to catch him when he stumbled forward and out into the larger cavern they'd been spat out in.
"Jerry, c'mon!" Aaron cried into the rocky pipe. "You're almost there!"
Daryl slapped the stone with his hand, reaching in. "Come on!"
They could hear Jerry grunting and struggling his way towards them. Then, suddenly, they could only hear growling.
"Guys..." Jerry hissed from the darkness of the tunnel. "I'm... I'm stuck."
"Here, take my hand," Daryl gasped as he reached further in.
"My feet. My feet! They— they've got my feet," Jerry cried. "They're biting my feet!"
"Jerry," Rhys screamed. "Get out!"
"Take your gear off," Aaron yelled. "Take it off!"
Jerry struggled with the buckle off his armour, tearing the leather strap off altogether and pushing it from his shoulders and up. Daryl grabbed it and tossed the armour out, then he pulled on Jerry as hard as he could. He pulled until Jerry's head, then torso were visible. Aaron and Carl grabbed his other arm, yanking him further out of the pipe. Rhys and Mikey hauled on his legs when they came through. With a mighty tug, they all flew back onto the floor with him.
Aaron jumped up to crush the head of the first walker that was pursuing, blocking the hole and trapping the others behind it.
Kelly and Magna helped Jerry sit up while Rhys and Connie checked his feet. The leather was torn away, but not enough.
Connie grinned a huge beautiful smile at him, her eyes wet.
Jerry started laughing. He sounded more nervous than happy at her reaction.
"They didn't get through," Rhys cried out in relief. "You're okay."
Jerry panted and nodded.
"Fuck this place," Rhys swore.
"Fuck it," Carl concurred.
"Hey, look!" Magna pointed to a light piercing through the ceiling across the cavern they'd crawled into. She stood and stepped towards it.
"Wait!" Daryl yelled, yanking her back. Rhys jumped up, realising why — just past the hole they'd crawled from, between them and the light, a gaping black pit leered up at them.
Carl swallowed, stepping back.
Daryl lit his walker arm from before, tossing it off the edge. After a few seconds of it falling for far longer than they expected, it landed somewhere deep below. Rhys wondered why it looked like the floor was moving, and then, with everyone else, he realised it was lighting up the room they started in and the horde. It wasn't long before the torch was extinguished by a thousand stomping feet. The low humming of their growls was still ever present from the blackness.
They followed the carved arrows around the pit until they found a bygone mineshaft from the world before. Daryl kicked away the boards covering the entrance, revealing a long winding tunnel of rusted tracks and rotting wooden supports that held the ceiling up.
"Must connect to the outside," Mikey said. "Like the one we came in through."
They wandered down the broken tracks in s group, huddled close together as they followed the arrows until they couldn't find anymore.
"Crap," Kelly groaned, covering her face with dirty hands.
"Doesn't matter," Rhys said, pointing to a faint light spilling in from a hole in the dirt above Aaron's head. "We dig."
Everyone looked around nervously, shining lights on walls and other paths.
Magna nodded. "Rhys is right. So why are we standing around looking at it?"
"We have to be very careful," Kelly warned her as her sister grabbed Magna's arm when she tried to march forward. "We take out the wrong piece, this whole thing is gonna collapse."
"Squish," Carl said quietly, maybe not even realising he did.
Rhys smacked his arm.
"Alright," Daryl said, grabbing a rusted mining cart and huffing as he rolled it under the break in the earth. "Find somethin' to dig with."
Carl wobbled as he drew his machete.
"Hey," Rhys said gently, reaching out for it. "Take a break."
Carl nodded, handing it to him and looking for somewhere to sit.
Rhys poked at the dirt with Carl's machete. Magna used her spear, and Aaron, his prosthetic.
After a long while of digging, Kelly found a box of dynamite in the corner that stressed Mikey out.
"Put that down," he told her softly. "Very, very gently."
Kelly frowned, glancing at the stick she was waving around.
"Kelly," Mikey said again, a little more seriously. Everyone was watching. "That stick is sweatier than Aaron..."
"Hey," Aaron grumbled as he dug.
"Please," Mikey said. "The oils in your fingertips can trigger that stuff, so again... gently."
Kelly returned it to the crate, throwing a dusty blanket back over it.
Mikey swallowed, patting Kelly's shoulder.
While he listened to Magna and Aaron argue about her refusing to take a break, Rhys caught Mikey staring at an old canary cage.
"Know what they were for?" Rhys asked, taking a break from stabbing the ceiling.
"I'm not an idiot," Mikey snorted.
Carl tutted at him. "I have no idea."
"Sorry," Mikey said, looking embarrassed under the thick layer of grime on his face. "Miners brought them down here to check for carbon monoxide. If the bird dies, get out."
Carl frowned at the cage. "That's awful."
"Better than choking on carbon monoxide," Mikey sighed, taking off his muck-covered glasses and cleaning them on his sleeve before putting them back on.
"Enid told me about them," Rhys said sombrely.
The three turned at the sound of Daryl ripping a root out of the ceiling, the whole suddenly a whole lot bigger. Kelly scampered up onto a beam to poke her head out.
"Just a little more!" she called.
She came back down, and everyone started to dig again, desperate to get out.
"Where's Carol?" Daryl suddenly asked.
Everyone not digging glanced around.
"Ohhh, no," Mikey hummed quietly to himself. "That's extremely very not good."
"What?" Kelly asked.
They all saw the uncovered dynamite box. They saw the one Kelly put back was missing.
"Damn it," Daryl hissed, running back towards where the horde was still growling from.
It wasn't long after that an explosion shook the earth around them. The hole crumbled and opened wider, but one of the beams holding the ceiling up collapsed. They would have all been crushed if Jerry hadn't caught it on his back.
"GO!" he screamed, roaring in pain as the literal world weighed down on his shoulders. Aaron rushed to help him hold the beam.
"I'll get Daryl and Carol!" Carl yelled, dodging rocks as they crumbled on them from above.
"No, you fucking won't!" Rhys yelled back, snatching his arm and dragging him towards the hole that Kelly had already scrambled out of.
Carl followed her up.
"We've got freaks!" Kelly yelled from above.
Rhys jumped under the beam, pushing with all his might and yelling for Aaron to go.
"You first!" Aaron barked.
"You're too heavy for Jerry to hold alone. Go!"
"SOMEONE PLEASE GO!" Jerry cried, his hair falling loose and wild as dirt piled on his back.
Aaron clambered up and out.
"Go, little dude!" Jerry roared at him.
"Don't make me dig you up!" Rhys screamed back, letting go of the beam, climbing onto it and scrambling out. The sun was blinding in the meadow they came out in, and the next thing Rhys saw was a Whisperer rushing towards him. He threw his hands up, but Aaron caved in their face with his mace before they reached him.
"That's the last of them," Carl yelled.
Daryl came out next, pulling a barely conscious Carol out after him.
Aaron dived back into the hole, reaching in and screaming for Jerry, who he hauled out of the earth with a mighty tug before the hole swallowed itself with an explosion of dirt and rubble.
"The d- dynamite," Rhys stuttered, staring at the crater of rubble after it settled under a blanket of ash and soil. He looked around, staring at each of them. "Where's Mikey? Where— where's Mikey, did... did he get out?"
Everyone looked, but he wasn't with them.
Daryl sprinted through the dust, clambering up the mountain of rubble and attempting to dig with his bare hands.
Kelly screamed. Connie and Magna weren't here either. She ran forward, tripping in the uprooted remains of the mine. Jerry caught her, holding her head to his chest as she wailed.
"He wasn't..." Rhys muttered quietly, watching Daryl shovel rocks aside with his hands. "Surely he... he made it out. Daryl? Daryl... he made it out, right?"
Carl held Rhys' shoulders tightly. When Rhys looked at him, he saw Carl was crying and knew it was real.
"Daryl..." Aaron said. "It'll take us a week to clear this."
"Then help me!" he cried.
Rhys stumbled forward, but Carl held him back.
"We can't!" Kelly screamed. "This blast is gonna call walkers and whisperers from a hundred miles from here!"
Daryl went still, lying on the rubble and watching her.
"We don't want our backs pressed against this mountain when they come," she sobbed angrily. "We can't save them if we're dead."
Daryl punched his fist against the earth, distraught.
Why wouldn't he be?
They almost all made it.
Aaron helped Daryl down. Carol stumbled towards him shaking and crying, grabbing at him when he tried to push past her. He shoved a finger in her face and she shrieked.
"Go ahead and say it to me... I deserve it," she sobbed. "Please just say it to me. You were right about everything. Just say it. Just say it!"
Daryl's face creased and trembled as he tried to pass her again. She shoved him back.
"No, please!" Carol whined. "You cared about her, and now she's gone because of me! Please just say it! Mikey's gone because of me! Please just say it..."
Daryl stood there, staring at her as she crumbled like the earth, gripping her matted grey hair and sobbing into her sleeves.
"Please say it!" she wailed.
Daryl walked past her, turning to the rest of them, his voice shook. "Go home. Tell the others we found the horde. Those Whisperers got out first... I'll find another way in."
He stumbled off into the dry meadow, disappearing into the long, brown grass.
Carol reached out for Kelly as Jerry and Aaron walked her right past the trembling woman.
Rhys and Carl hadn't moved. Carol looked up and found his eyes, she sobbed and snotted and stared at his eyes like she never did.
Carl pulled Rhys past her, but she grabbed his arm. "Rhys, please..."
He just stared back at her. Heartbroken.
"Please, Rhys... she killed my boy. She killed him. You want her dead, too. She killed him. She killed him! Don't— please don't walk away... you can tell me. Tell me. She did this."
Rhys couldn't stop the tears streaming down his face as he watched her fall to her knees, clutching desperate fistfuls of his shirt.
"She didn't, Carol," Rhys whispered. "She didn't do this."
Carl didn't spare Carol a glance as he pulled Rhys past her.