I never did make it out of the tower. Somehow I ended up half in, half out of the tower's top door. It was not the worst night's sleep I had ever had either. I was stiff but no more than I had been sleeping in the field in the long grass. I peeled myself off the floor and managed to make it down the stairs without tumbling.
The cell block was locked so I wandered up the yard to where the walkers rattled the gate and frothed at the sight of me. The gate and fence were perfectly secure and to my eyes it seemed more secure than the outer fences. Despite our ordeals so far, there was still much more of the prison to clear and we would have to figure out the damage at the front.
It was good to look death in its faces first thing in the morning. Fantastic… I left the upper yard and went down to the bus. Dale looked shattered and stopped pacing when he saw me. "Feeling better?" He asked.
"Depends. What year is it?"
"Feels that way, doesn't it?" His great eyebrows rose and fell. "All quiet outside."
I climbed up on the bus and saw he was right. There wasn't a single walker at the outer fences. No movement at all. That was something I guessed. "Makes a change."
"It usually means they've been drawn off somewhere else and someone else is in for a bad day."
"Who's the 'someone else' these days?" I asked pointedly. Besides the convicts, we had only had glimpses of other people all through the winter. Which meant either people were that rare now or they had hunkered down some place during the cold rather than roaming from place to place as we had.
"We can't be the only ones left."
Standing on top of this bus with a corpse-strewn field behind us and wind ruffled trees in front, I found that hard to believe. We could easily have been the only people left in the world.
No one seemed in the mood for drama so I was pointedly ignored when the cell block opened and I had a breakfast of plain oatmeal. It was a very bland meal but it wasn't a woodland animal surprise so I appreciated it. More than most it seemed. But I guessed the bleakness of the cell block was getting to them. That and the hard fighting that had been necessary since we got here. Had it really only been three days?
There would be no fighting today, not intended anyway. Rick's intent was to get rid of the corpses that had accumulated in the upper yard and to clear out those on the path to the cafeteria. They were the priority for hygiene and odour reasons. Not to mention we could do without having reminders of death everywhere. To that end, Carol volunteered to do what she could with some of the blood in this immediate area. The cafeteria had yielded some meagre cleaning supplies although simply scraping the brains off the walls in some of the cells would be more than enough. Not to mention sweeping up which Sophia volunteered for and Carl was promptly pressed into service. When he complained his father swiftly shut him down by asking if he could pick up a two hundred pound body and carry it a hundred feet. Beth couldn't so she would join the cleaning efforts while I could carry a body, so I wouldn't.
It was a different kind of housekeeping. Well, yard work. Literally. Hershel, Glenn and Maggie started by clearing out the supplies from the vehicles stuck between the two gates. Figuring out how to move the overturned bus was a job for another day. I was still trying to figure out how it had overturned. Perhaps it had been deliberate to block the gates. It was difficult to figure out how they had managed to overturn the bus so the underside was parallel with the inner gate. But then, I had seen some odd sights over the course of the past six months.
Rick took Andrea, Daryl and Theodore into the cell block for the bodies on the route to the cafeteria. That left me and Dale to build a pyre from the junk in the yard. The smashed pallets, broken chairs and gnarled cardboard that had been soaked through by the winter rain and snow only to dry and bake in the spring sunshine were ideal. With all these bodies, the fire would need to burn all day long and into the night. It would take a lot of wood as we wouldn't be wasting gas on it.
They were bringing the first bodies out of the cell block when Axel and Oscar appeared in the doorway of their block. It looked for a moment like Rick would immediately fly off the handle but Oscar spoke first. They wanted to bury Big Tiny and it was too much a humane request for Rick to deny. He would probably have made them bury him outside the fence if he hadn't been such a huge man which would have made him unquestionably cruel. Instead they got a small corner of the yard. Out of the way of any future crops. Tomas got no such honours, he was tossed on the pile with the other walkers which were to be burnt just off the basketball court. They didn't want to burn them on the ground where those future crops would be because first of all it made certain people uncomfortable and secondly there was a chance they might miss something during the clean-up and they didn't want to encounter human remains in the soil later. You didn't want to find a jawbone full of teeth when you were planting tomatoes.
When they lit the fire, the smell of burnt rotten flesh hit us all hard for the first few minutes but then the familiarity of it returned and it just became work. Given how decomposed walkers were now, I found I didn't think of it as burning people. Sophia thought of them as people with her ceremonial prayers but I thought of them as creatures. Having chewed off their own lips which gave them a ghastly rictus and their flesh having turned from grey to brown; they were more monster than people now. Although it was noticeable that the light-skinned walkers looked far more horrific because of these changes. The dark-skinned ones, of which these convict walkers disproportionately were, looked far healthier although it seemed to me that the sunken look around the eyes was more prominent on them.
There was a lot to burn but the prison food meant we didn't just have full stomachs. We would have full stomachs for the foreseeable future. Five guys eating the supplies from that cafeteria for nearly a year hadn't made a dent. Not that Daryl would stop hunting.
Dale and Hershel were forced to retire from the heavy labour and went inside which left me in charge of the fire. It would not have been my first choice but as I wasn't as strong as the others, it was necessary. Raking charred corpses with a crowbar and throwing on pieces of pine pallet wood was not the dream career. But it was somewhat less disgusting than carrying or dragging bodies with the risk of juices.
We burned bodies and the two convicts dug their grave and then lingered by it; contemplating their futures. Rick said we were honouring the deal but I didn't see where that left them. They couldn't live in that cell block; they would have to come out for sanitary purposes just for starters. And if they came out for that, we would need to dig a latrine out here; in one of the other corners. We would have to share. If Rick insisted they stay inside…
His plan seemed to be to make their lives unbearable and for them to decide to take their chances on the road rather than stay. Giving us the run of the prison and one less thing to worry about. For him to worry about. I considered the two men and what I had seen of them so far. Axel was obviously not a violent man, not with how easily Tomas had cowered him and how quickly he had surrendered to Rick. Oscar was a proud man. He had probably been a proud man before prison had forced him to make concessions to that pride so that what was left was even pricklier. I guessed Axel would do anything to ingratiate himself and stay here. Oscar would not. But if Oscar left and Axel found himself alone in that cell block… Well then we would see if a non-violent man became violent. When they realised Rick was glaring at them, they meekly made their way back into the cell block.
"You got that look, man." Theodore declared between bodies.
"What look?"
"That look when you thinking but you know to keep your mouth shut."
"Is that what I do?"
"Yeah. Smart move. You know you ain't old enough to speak up and bother the grown-ups." He smirked to himself.
"Do you know what I'm thinking?"
"Same as I'm thinking. It ain't right forcing them out in the cold."
"I don't know if it's right…"
"Well right now they could be helping us with this." He pointed out. "Andrea keeping watch at the gate, Dale and Hershel being old, Lori pregnant, Carol babysitting, Beth being Beth." Meaning squeamish. "So it's just me, you, Daryl, Rick, Glenn and Maggie out here." He shook his head. "Not even half."
"Some prison labour couldn't help. And they've got bodies to burn."
"Can't say nuthin' though. Not today. Nuh-uh." He nodded and Rick had a former inmate by the collar and was dragging it toward us and the fire.
"Yeah, not on burning day." The sight of the blade Rick currently wore on his belt buried in Tomas' skull would not be leaving me any time soon.
"You think he's doing okay?"
"Today or…?"
Theodore smirked again. "Good talking with you."
The pile got pretty big as they cleared the lower and upper yard. So much so that Rick took the others outside the fence for bigger firewood while I was left to ensure the world's worst barbecue didn't go out. Feeding bits of smashed pallet and prison riot debris onto a mass of fire-shrinking corpses that seemed to leer at me from the flames combined with the machete memory all but ensured I would not be sleeping again tonight. Perhaps at some point I would just pass out from exhaustion.
"Hey, man." Axel kept his distance while holding the body. He looked at it and then at me. "You mind if…?"
"Knock yourself out."
He nodded gratefully and awkwardly tossed it on the heap and the impact released a fresh nauseating wave that made him recoil while I… I seemed to be getting used to it.
"We got more." He said when he had recovered his stomach.
"If you want to bring them out and sling'em on here. Do it now. While the others are gone. They won't take kindly to seeing your face around today." He stared at me. "You won't get another chance. Unless you want to start a fire indoors?"
He took off and then he and Oscar brought out a dozen bodies before they saw the others down by the gate. Oscar said nothing and didn't even look at me. Axel nodded gratefully. I assumed by the bodies they wouldn't have any dead in their section of the cell block.
Either Rick had seen them or Andrea had told him. Either way he came up to the inner gate hot. "What the hell were they doing back out here?"
"Housekeeping." I said and then looked into the fire where the new bodies were burning.
"And you just let them out?"
"You told them to stay in their cell block. They're staying. But if they're going to live there, they can't do it with a bunch of corpses under their feet. So here they are. Burnin'." His frustrated expression confirmed my belief he hoped to drive them out with impossible conditions. "Unless you'd prefer them to come out tomorrow or the day after and start their own fire? Or start a fire indoors and burn their block down by accident?" Behind Rick's back, Theodore made a gesture that suggested this was one of those times when I should keep my mouth shut. "They took care of it. They're indoors now. And the first sight of you made them scurry on inside. They ain't a problem."
"That ain't your call."
"Then leave an adult next time."
He made a gesture that suggested he was thinking of hitting me. I was losing my talent for invisibility then. But the others liked the remark. Even Daryl. Scary cutthroat Daryl. Rick looked up at their cell block and then decided not to make an issue of it. Not today at least. I guessed he was too involved in feeling like we were making progress. And we were. So much as a vast pile of burning corpses filling the air with a foul stench could be called progress. The creepiest part of burning corpses was that when the fat started to run, it fed the flames which produced more fat which fed the flames…
We worked all day to make the most of the light and the result was a bunch of very exhausted people but just about every corpse in the upper and lower yard was dealt with. Those in the inner yard thrashing the fence were a problem for another day.
The first section of the cell block had been swept clean. It was immaculate. This might have simply emphasised the structure was two tones of grey if Sophia hadn't been very busy. Extremely busy. The party of cremators were all stunned into silence.
From door to door, the wall beneath the windows was now a vast mural of a vibrant summer countryside. Instead of grey there was green and blue and gold. I had seen her doodles before but this was a whole different league. There was a herd of horses rendered in simple but notable detail, there were trees with leaves layered in different shades of green and a blue sky with birds. She had managed to render a field of wheat so that the stalks at the forefront bore individual grains. She had managed this all with chalk.
"I'm going to need more chalk." She declared, her eyes hard and serious and it got a big laugh. It did not sound like a request.
"I want to know what you've got in mind when you break out the paints." I said to her and she beamed.
"You'll see." She said and I thought that was unexpectedly ominous.
[][][][][][]
I actually slept. The cell was still bleak but the plastic wrapped linen from the laundry room meant the musty smell wasn't quite so bad. And I was exhausted so I did sleep heavily for a change. So heavily that Daryl woke me by jabbing me in the neck with one of his gnarled fingers.
"C'mon! Gittup!" He growled.
Someone else might have had a witty retort. I had a mouth full of slime and a dry throat so I merely gurgled, and flailed. It had actually been easier waking up in the tower. Quicker to reach the bathroom too. That had to be an unpleasant future task.
Rick wanted to clear the upper yard of walkers but Andrea argued it was pointless if it would just fill up again. We needed a proper look at the front of the complex. We had been here four days after all and we didn't know the full state of the place. Rather than fight our way through to the front; why not take a car to take a look?
There was only one conclusion.
"Few days off the road…" I remarked. "I'd forgotten."
"Forgotten what?" Theodore asked, clinging to the cab of the pickup as Andrea seemed to find every pothole.
"How big the world really is."
He gave me a look that said he thought I was crazy but I didn't know how to articulate how our nomadic life on the road had meant we were threatened by everything all at once while our short time in the prison behind its fences and steel doors had reduced the threat to an almost background level. You knew it was out there but it would be difficult for it to get in the room with you.
The three of us were the scouts. Rick had Daryl, Glenn and Maggie in the courtyard, taking out the walkers through the fence and gate. Maybe that space would fill up again but either way we would have to take care of them so why not now while we three assessed the damage?
We had seen evidence of fire but mostly it had seemed to be from inmates burning sheets and mattresses in the cell blocks. Not so. One of the admin buildings had lost an entire section to fire and the gutted structure had partially collapsed, taking out a wall and the perimeter fence with it. The fence was wrecked and even if it could be wrestled upright, it was too compromised to be an effective barrier. The breach in the wall was a little more promising.
"You could barricade that." Theodore said and then raised his arm and pointed. "A big piece of sheet metal, with the rubble piled up behind it… That'd work."
"That's good." Andrea replied. "Because no one ever taught me how to lay bricks."
"Fence is gone." The collapse hadn't just bent the poles, I could now see it had ripped the mesh open.
"But if the inner fence and wall is okay…" Theodore was a good mood today, or at least, trying to be optimistic.
"Company." Andrea warned and then predictably took care of it herself. The chisel she used was far too short for my liking but she eliminated the two walkers easily. Almost lazily.
The collapsed structure was the only break in the inner brick wall and fence but the outer fence had been compromised in multiple places. If that meant the breach into the admin building was the only means for walkers to get in then the damage wasn't anywhere near as bad as we had feared. And the sight of a building marked E Block was good because I had already seen it from the other side on the inside so the place wasn't vast. So far we had cleared C Block for ourselves and likewise cleaned A for Axel and Oscar. But that left B and D to finish. We still had a lot of work left to do in the dark. And until that breach was sealed, the admin buildings, E and F blocks, the rest of the prison interior; it was all hostile territory.
We took a moment to assess and Andrea once again took care of the 'company' before we could climb out of the bed of the pickup and help. I thought that things could have been much worse but also that this place was overwhelming. In four days we must have killed well over a hundred walkers here and we had only secured a small fraction of the site. There was a lot more work here. Weeks or even months of it.
Theodore was thinking the same thing. "Ain't gonna be easy. But we know where to start."
[][][][][][]
The others had cleared that courtyard and they had scouted in. They had closed the doors they could and secured another gate so that the courtyard would stay clear. It meant that for the first time the upper yard was secure and quiet. People could feel comfortable going outside although Rick was adamant about certain people never going anywhere alone.
Our scouting expedition forced a shift in his thinking. With a way for walkers to get in, that part of the prison couldn't be cleared. But every cell block and building only had a few entrances which we could lock with the guards' keys. So long as there were no breaches in those buildings, they could be secured and then cleared in good time. The buildings were fenced off from one another and those gates could be secured too. Section by section, building by building. The only question was whether or not to try and secure that breach now or to clear as much of the prison as possible first.
The latter was chosen because that way we couldn't be attacked from inside and out. Rick also pointed out that if by chance anyone came across the front of the prison, it would look broken down and overrun and they would move on. It was the closest anyone came to voicing that this place was vast for the fourteen of us. Fourteen and two inmates.
We might be able to take it over but holding it was another question. I knew security and most security systems were based on deterrence. If you really wanted to get through a door, you could. I could pick a lock so no one heard me but you could use a crowbar for a noisy entrance or a battering ram for an even louder one. If you used a crowbar or battering ram; someone would hear and the law would arrive. That was the deterrent. But if there was no deterrent, you could use as much force as you liked. Old prisons were built like fortresses, with big tall brick or concrete walls that had to be climbed or tunnelled under. Prisons built in the past few decades had wire fences. The razor wire on top of the fences prevented climbing. Cameras and motion detectors prevented anyone getting near them to burrow under like a rabbit. This place didn't have the detectors by the look of things but the cameras were there. A single man trying to escape would be caught trying to get through one fence, let alone two. But if there were no guards to stop him, he could bring the fence down. The wire was only held up by metal poles in the ground after all. Rock it back and forth and even secured in cement, the soft earth would give. Back and forth, back and forth… Eventually it would give. All it would take was time.
Turn that back and forth motion into a dozen walkers grasping and shaking the wire all day, every day and it would take far less time. And that was before you considered the possibility of a few hundred driving at a section of fence. Sure, it would hold for a while but then sheer dead weight would bring it down.
So at some point the fences would have to be reinforced. More work. Heavy work.
"I think we need to talk about our friends across the yard." Dale declared that evening as we ate our meatloaf and potatoes.
"They ain't our friends and there's nothing to talk about." Rick replied shortly.
"I believe there is." Dale pressed. "If we're taking this place over, it'd help if we had guides. I think we'd all appreciate it if we weren't stumbling about in the dark looking for the infirmary, and finding ourselves in the visitors or mail room instead." Dale looked around to see a few nodding heads. "You want to find the armoury." He addressed Daryl. "You can't find that until you find the Warden's office."
Daryl did what Daryl did best. He grunted noncommittally.
"These men can be useful!" Dale stressed. "They didn't want anything to do with the other ones. The one who killed their friend. They're assets; not enemies."
"We made a deal." Rick said. "We're honouring it. End of discussion."
I took a glance at Andrea and Glenn. They both knew that this was not the end of it. Dale had been content to go along with Rick's decisions during the winter, shaken by events at the farm and then debilitated by illness afterward. But it was clear that the short time we had spent here had revived his spirit and now we had the prison food and regular meals; his body was strengthening too. Rick had declared this wasn't a democracy but with the security and general comfort of the prison; that wasn't going to last.
[][][][][][]
C Block consisted of forty eight cells. Sixteen of them faced the large exterior windows while the rest were in the dark. Daylight had obviously been a privilege. The initial section of sixteen cells we had occupied would suffice for now while no one had any interest in occupying the dark cells. There had been a few windows here and there which if cleaned up would provide a bit more light, but without electricity most of those cells were now in permanent darkness.
Forty-eight cells all with bunk beds. I was pretty sure we had taken down that many walkers clearing the lower and upper yard as well as clearing the path to the cafeteria. Not to mention those in A Block. The breach in the rear of the prison meant that some would have left. The fire that had made the breach would likely have taken a few. Six cell blocks. If they were all as big as this one and had all had nearly a hundred convicts in them when this had started, and they almost certainly had, then factoring those that had fallen already and those that had left that meant there was somewhere between three hundred and four hundred walkers left on site.
I kept this grim figure to myself.
Perhaps to demonstrate that we didn't need Axel or Oscar, Rick decided we would push into one of the admin buildings. It was a little headstrong I thought but Daryl really wanted to find that armoury. So did Rick. So far the prison had yielded little in the way of weaponry although I did feel good in the armour. We hadn't yet got around to boiling the gloves but I liked the pads for the arms. On Theodore the armoured vest looked puny. It pretty much swallowed me meanwhile. Andrea, Glenn and Maggie wore them with more dignity. Daryl and Rick didn't bother.
This building was different from the cell blocks. It had a carpeted floor for one thing and walls that weren't grey. Instead they had wood panelling halfway up and then the upper half was the same pale green as the guards' uniforms. It didn't look like the inmates had gotten into this building, at least at first. Then it was like entering a delinquent's dream. Every piece of furniture had been smashed, every cabinet overturned, pictures torn from the walls, computers thrown at those walls and papers were everywhere. They rustled underfoot and while I had little experience of snakes, the sound made me think of them. As it was an administration building there was plenty of natural light and as life was powerfully unfair, it didn't illuminate any threats save for three walkers that had had all their bones shattered and so couldn't get up.
If anyone had been thinking of finding a couch in one of these offices, there was no such luck. Someone had taken something sharp to them to leave them in ragged ruin. The destruction was total and so utterly pointless. Most everything in this place was cheap and mass-produced. Ironically, it might well have been produced in a prison. This prison maybe. If I was going to destroy something to get back at… Anyone… It wouldn't be something that could be ordered and delivered and therefore replaced within a week at the bare minimum of expense. What would be the point? But I had never been to prison so maybe even a tiny victory would feel worth it.
I didn't know a thing about the operation of prisons either but it seemed to require a massive amount of paperwork. Office after office, an open floor with cubicles, filing cabinets, smashed computer, a printer that had been too heavy to overturn so had just been scratched instead, nothing that was any value to us except the paper to start fires. I looked at some of the scattered papers and there was an invoice for laundry chemicals mixed in with pages of impenetrable legalese.
No one said anything because no one wanted to be the instigator of a row. This felt like a huge waste of time and it seemed like that was exactly what it would be because if there was information we needed, the riot had ensured we weren't going to find it. We encountered two more walkers which were mobile but no problem. We were all dressed up for nothing it seemed.
Naturally Rick wanted to press into another building. I felt like everyone did just to lose the feeling of wasting valuable time and more significantly; the feeling that your life was in danger for nothing. Usually we experienced it after exploring homes or stores that had been picked clean.
This building was not quiet. An explosion of inmates came at us the moment we opened the door and Andrea and Theodore's shields were the only thing that stopped us being engulfed.
"Motherfuckers!" Theodore snarled as he resolutely held firm, even with them snapping at him behind the thin screen of polycarbonate. I meanwhile had instinctively braced Andrea and Daryl reached over our head with his knife. Glenn and Maggie did the same either side of Theodore's head which he did not appreciate. "Push!"
Walkers weren't organised. They had no coordination and the sudden heave threw them back so that they tangled each other up. Daryl shot one of the standing walkers with his crossbow and Rick hacked one on the ground before Glenn and Maggie darted in to stop two more rising again. They surged up and one impaled itself on my crowbar as I drove it forward.
Without the shields we would have been forced to retreat and let them spill out of the building. Instead we were able to contain them in the doorway and though it was hot work, it didn't get dicey. It was grim, systematic, slaughter. More bodies to burn.
There were stragglers inside but they were easily taken down one on one. A locked office yielded someone who had been bitten and bled to death, leaving the office oddly pristine compared to the destruction outside. We continued on through more scattered papers and broken furniture until we found what Rick had been looking for; the Warden's office. It was another locked door and if it hadn't been for the struggle at the doors, Daryl would have probably kicked it open. Instead I got another chance to use my picks but once the lock was open, the door remained firmly shut.
"Barricade." Theodore was tired and made it sound like a question in his weariness.
The door didn't budge an inch so that barricade was solid. But the door was only wood and we had the tools to carve it into splinters within a few minutes. A solitary walker was drawn by the noise and Andrea dealt with it while Daryl called the door a 'sumbitch' and ripped a piece away with his hands. I remembered Shane suddenly and the gloves he would wear while handling his shotgun.
The Warden had been strong enough to move and place two filing cabinets behind the door. They toppled over with an alarmingly loud crash in the yawning silence of this place. Andrea and Theodore covered the door and the rest of us took in the office. It was a grandiose space and I reassessed when the prison had been built. Judging by the photos on the walls, it had been around since the start of the last century and had been expanded and modernised. The view from the window would have allowed the original wardens to glare down on the open space behind D block but E and F blocks had long since been built so that the view was of a brick wall. It had not been a pretty last view for the Warden before he had blown his head off with .38 just like the one Thomas had carried. It was only the third firearm we had located here except it came with a box of ammo; four rounds in the gun and forty-five in the box. Which meant the Warden had left a chamber empty for safety, perhaps thinking they could fight their way out, before ultimately deciding it was hopeless.
"That's a start." Daryl growled though he obviously wasn't impressed by this meagre contribution to our tiny armoury.
They ransacked the office looking for information that would lead them to the actual prison armoury. They were close to going through the toppled filing cabinets when Maggie saw that what we needed was hidden in plain sight on the wall. It wasn't a huge blueprint of the facility but rather a single A4 paper that was probably handed out to new employees during their induction. I could see Rick's delight at its discovery. It meant there was no more guesswork about where to go on the site. It also placed the prison Armoury outside the walls about half a mile down the road from the front entrance.
I took a moment to take it in. A and B blocks had the prison laundry between them as well as Canteen 1. The existence of more than one cafeteria made me think how stupid Rick and Tomas' posturing had really been. After clearing Cellblock A, Tomas would have gotten his half from Canteen 2 and controlled Canteen 1. C and D Block had Canteen 2, the Commissary, the Mail Room and the Infirmary. E and F had Canteen 3, a Gymnasium and Library.
There was a separate building simply labelled Workshop and it seemed that the building that had partially collapsed was both Reception and Visitation which was lucky because there would have been nothing useful there. That left Deliveries and Storage next to the Workshop and a small building labelled vaguely as Security. Rick decided to check this out.
It meant carving a path through more courtyards but with the map, it was slaughter with purpose and the fences corralled the walkers into manageable groups and we secured doors as we went. Everyone could see how happy he was as we cleared the way and made the prison that much more secure. It would take a lot of bonfires to clean up though.
Security looked like a bunker but it proved disappointing. It was where guards could take their breaks, monitor the CCTV and store spare kit. In response to the riot, there was nothing left in the equipment lockers; no armour, no shields, no batons and it was obvious they had never stored firearms here. There was a discarded can of pepper spray on the floor and that was it. If we wanted more of the guards' equipment we were going to have to take it off their cold dead bodies. There was a spare sealed jug for their water cooler so at least for a couple of days we wouldn't have to boil water from the creek.
I couldn't say it was the worst day we had had here.
[][][][][][]
Once again I was left to tend the fire and I found it interesting that no one seemed to think my age made the work inappropriate. They wouldn't have had Beth out here next to the pyre of cooked human meat. I might not have been good with executions but I was hardened against the former every day horrors of life. Maybe they wanted to keep Beth from that path. I was too far gone.
Rick had left with Andrea, Daryl and Theodore to check out the armoury and to clear a path through the front so we could move the bus in the lower yard which left Carol, Dale, Glenn and Maggie to move corpses while I ensured the fire didn't go out by keeping it stocked with the debris of the prison and smashed furniture from the admin buildings.
I didn't like being in the middle of the prison like this. I could hear movement in the buildings we hadn't cleared yet and without anyone in sight, it felt like I was entirely alone. I hadn't been alone since venturing for supplies while lost with Sophia. Even with my cell to sleep in, everyone else was never too far.
So seeing Dale approach while dragging a tarp with bodies on it was a strange relief. Until after he had thrown them on the fire and turned to me with that look. That look that said he needed to talk.
"Déjà vu." I said.
Dale shrugged. "Something like that."
Of course I knew what he wanted to discuss. "I think our group has too many people who can't pull their weight because of their age or situations and two grown men would be valuable assets."
Dale respected my blunt opinion and assessment. "That's what I think. You were there; do you think they bear us any ill will?"
"Before? No. After…" If any man deserved to hold a grudge, it was Oscar with Daryl's knife at his throat and Rick's gun in his face. "The way they've been treated, I wouldn't blame them. But Axel ain't violent. He can hold his own against walkers like Beth or Sophia but you wouldn't want him taking point to clear a house. It's not who he is. Tomas had him whipped before we showed up and Rick put the fear of God into him making him think he was gonna be shot like a dog in a laundry room. There's no fight in him."
Dale's lack of reaction told me that Andrea had given him all the details. "And Oscar?"
"After the way they threatened him, I'd consider it justified if he wanted to blow Rick's head off…" The words made Dale blanch. "But I don't think he wants that. He's seeing the world out there for the first time. He's seen how things unfolded here… All his cellmates executed like that… I think he knows how messed up it can make people. How brutal… And two men can't survive on their own here. He needs a pack to run with, and we're it."
"That's not how I'd like him to see us."
"How else are they going to see us?" I asked slowly and deliberately. "We hacked our way into that cafeteria, pointed guns at them, then they came out to see what half a dozen people had accomplished. And then we killed two of them before the day was out. Rick… He didn't hesitate. He knew Tomas tried to kill him and he knew he would try again so he took him out. And they know he's in charge and he'll kill them without hesitation."
"I'd rather they saw the benefits of us all working together."
"Well they haven't even seen us all." I said. "You think if they showed their faces at the same time Carl and Sophia were outside they'd survive more than thirty seconds?"
"It doesn't have to be that way though! There's a lot of work to do here if this is going to be our home and I can't build barricades and plough fields. I can keep watch so the rest of you can work and Hershel can supervise but we can't labour. And Lori, she's going to have to dedicate every waking minute to the baby when it comes." He breathed in and let it out heavily. "Excluding them when they could be valuable feels like we're shooting ourselves in the foot."
"No argument from me. But like I said, déjà vu."
"This isn't like Randall! We know these men are alone. They haven't shot at us! Sure, we keep an eye on'em and don't let our guard down but we don't need to kill or exile them on the off-chance they can bring hell down on us."
"Who backs you?"
He snorted. "If you're on board, that makes me, you, Andrea and T. T feels the same way as you; he wants to give them a chance to share the burden. Andrea's only condition is that they sleep separate from us until we build up trust and I don't think that's too big an ask."
"Glenn?" I asked, though I was interested Andrea was on board.
"Oh, he's being stubborn." The old man declared, sounding so much like a parent. "It's been just us for too long and he wants to keep it that way."
"So what's his plan? He marries Maggie, I marry Beth, Carl marries Sophia and Grandpas Rick and Hershel and Grandmas Carol and Lori take care of our babies while we work the land while Andrea becomes an old maid and Daryl and Theodore become confirmed bachelors?"
He raised his hands. "Easy there."
"If we're going to trust only our own people, this place is going to get very inbred very quick. And people die…"
"I didn't think you'd be so open."
"I'm not. If a couple of cars show up tomorrow with a group like ours, I'll be paranoid as hell." I would go for the shotgun again. "Rick thinks this place can be a fortress and a sanctuary. But look at the size of this place! This ain't even a big prison and there's only fourteen of us. Ten adults. There's no future with those sums."
Dale stared hard at me, and he had piercing eyes at the best of times. "What the hell happened in that laundry room?"
"How often do you think about Shane?"
"I try not to."
"He's still here. If it weren't for Lori, him and Rick would be finishing each other's sentences now."
"Rick's nothing like Shane."
"Really? Glenn doesn't trust anyone who isn't us. Neither does Daryl. Them and us. Just how Shane thought."
"Shane would have shot all five of those men the second you lay eyes on'em. And you know it. Rick gave them a chance. One chance."
"That's a pretty slim difference."
"Well, that's the way things are now. I've had to make my peace with it." The tension in his shoulders seemed to suggest that wasn't true. "But if I can temper our worst impulses and instincts; I will. And I say we give those men a chance."
"This isn't a democracy; remember?"
"Oh I remember. And I've abided by that all through winter. But we're not living on the road anymore. We're not surviving day to day. We're trying to build lives for ourselves and that can't happen if one man's doing all the thinking. Glenn told me, you let them bring out their dead so they wouldn't try and burn them indoors. Rick hadn't considered they might do that because they were too scared to come outside. But you did."
"I was just… Pissing him off."
"Even so, it was a good point. We're still dealing with bodies and there'll be more before this place is truly secure. Lots more. It's a lot of work and it's taking up time we need for other things, like getting water into this place without having to go outside the fences."
"We need a hose and some kind of hand pump."
"Exactly!" He clapped my arm. "These are things we need to do and need to be talking about. Instead everyone's exhausted from hauling bodies every day while we have two perfectly able men locked away doing nothing."
"You're telling the wrong person."
"I'm telling the exact right person. You're a smart kid!" He clapped my arm again. "You've always made yourself useful. You've always thought about our needs. You've always watched the kids so they're not a burden on anyone else and you've never complained about it. You never complained about being a babysitter instead of being out there chopping walkers. You just did what you needed to contribute. Lori's never had to worry about Carl wandering off again because you've always had an eye on him. You haven't been like him; acting like you're equal to Daryl and Rick if you're just given a chance."
"Because I'm not."
"Yes, and you're mature enough to know that. And I'm sure you not being a surly teenager has been a Godsend to all of us."
"Easy there."
"Look, I just want to know we're doing everything we can for the good of the group, and that you know the good you do. You've had a rough few days. We all have." The old man looked at the burning heap and sighed. "Y'know, when we were at the quarry outside Atlanta… That night when the camp was overrun... When Amy died…" He took a breath. "I thought that was the worst it could get. I thought seeing that girl cut down before she had a chance to really live and Andrea being torn up by it was our low point. But we all went far past that. There were nights when we were huddling in the dark and we thought we wouldn't live to see daylight…" Dale looked away from the burning corpses. "But here we are! Here we are in a place where we have a chance to make something. Maybe not a great something but something worth living for. I don't want to see that chance wasted because of petty vindictive feelings that just don't make sense anymore. Those two, whatever they did to get sent here? Does it matter anymore after the things we've had to do to survive? We've killed people. We're murderers. But we're not locked up."
"Maybe don't mention that to Rick. Or Atlanta. …Or the CDC or the farm or any of our other failings. You'll just piss him off."
"It doesn't take a lot to do that." Dale mused and then shook his head. "He's a good man. He just needs a chance to-"
I cut in. "Relax?"
"Eventually we might all relax here."
[][][][][][]
I would have liked to have flumped down on my bunk after a hard day's work but there wasn't enough space for that and the two thin mattresses weren't made for a 'flump'. It was more of a cautious settle.
"I want to play outside."
I groaned even though I had seen this coming. "You can't play outside until there's nothing nasty lurking in the grass."
"I thought that was cleared."
"We've got to be sure." And the upper yard was still a risk even with the chains on the gates and the doors locked.
"How sure?"
I sighed and sat up which Sophia took as an invitation to sit down beside me. "Trust me, boss man wants it safe and clear as soon as possible. After we've moved the bus and got the cars in… Then you can go outside. You'll probably wish you were shut indoors again when Hershel hooks you and Carl up to a plough and has you work those fields."
"I'd like to grow things. It was fun when we did it school."
"What did you grow at school?"
"Tomatoes. Beans."
"Got to be better than out of a can." If someone did bother to take full inventory, I imagined chopped tomatoes and beans would make up a large part of our supplies.
"You smell funny."
"So do you." I reminded her.
"I know what you smell of." She said and not gravely or fearfully. It was just a statement of fact. "They don't want me outside so I won't see anything nasty… But I've seen so many nasty things already!"
"I can't tell you anything." I said. "When I was your age, I lived in a box." She rolled her eyes as this had become another joke of ours; how often I mentioned my upbringing. "But your mom doesn't want you to see nasty things. Just because they're out there, that don't mean you have to see them."
"But they'll still be out there!" She protested. "And I'll always be able to see them through the fences!"
"I didn't say it made sense. Lord knows I don't want to see them every day. Look… Give it a couple of days. They'll move the bus, get all our cars inside and they'll want to get to the creek and they'll let you stretch your legs."
"You think so?"
"If you annoy them as much as you annoy me." I said and she pulled a face.
The others returned then and quietly. That didn't bode well.
"Not a goddamn thing!" Daryl reported of the off-site armoury with his particular brand of charm. "Whole place was picked clean!"
"Literally nothing." Andrea added. "Completely stripped."
"So we're still conserving ammo then?" Glenn asked.
"'less you got an ammo press you ain't talked about." Daryl was definitely pissed but then Carol handed him a cup of stew and he was forced to cool off.
"Tomorrow, we finish clearing the way." Rick declared. "We move the bus, we get the cars in and then we get a hose in the creek. Rig up sum kinda pump so we have all the water we need and no one has to go outside to fetch it. That's our first priority now."
"It is?" Andrea predictably asked. "You think this place is secure now?"
"We've locked every door. Checked all the fences. And we've checked five times after that. How many times have we been through this cell block to the cafeteria to make sure? There's no way for a walker to get to this side of the prison. We stay on this side for now. The field, the yard around this cell block; that's ours now."
"And the other cell block?" Dale made his move. "What about that?"
"Well, that's theirs." Rick said in that 'Are we doing this again?' tone of his that said he wasn't in the mood for a repeat.
"Until they run out of water. Or buckets. Then what? They're forced out and we have the whole place to ourselves?"
"You got a problem with that?"
"You want to turn this place into a refuge. Someplace we can endure in. And that's what we need to be doing! We need to make this into a place where we can live so we don't go through another winter like that. But there's just fourteen of us, Rick! You can't tell me you think ten adults, two teenagers and two kids can turn this place into a fortress and a farm?" I noted the way he referred to me and Beth as teenagers rather than kids.
"I hate to admit it, but he's right." Hershel got Rick's attention immediately. "I said it; the soil here is good. But farming is hard work and if we're doing the work of machines; it'll be even harder. Now I can make my girls work like mules." He said with a fond smile that Beth and Maggie returned. "And I can push myself. But even if the three of us spent every waking hour working, we couldn't do enough. We need to raise crops. And we need to take down walkers at the fences. We need to rebuild the walls. That all takes time and effort. We've been here seven days and we still haven't got our cars through the gate. Even the Lord rested on the seventh day, Rick."
"So what would have me do? Just invite them in? Put them in cell next to yours? Next to your girls?"
"They ain't rapists." Theodore said. "And why move them in here? They got their own space. We help'em clear it up and they got no reason to come over here."
"You'll still be back to sleeping with one eye open." Rick retorted.
"I never stopped." Theodore replied coolly and it caused a ripple as everyone reflected that even with the locked gates and steel doors, we had never truly felt safe and secure. Not yet. "Bring them into the fold." He said. "We send them off packing we might as well execute them ourselves." He made another ripple.
"I don't know…" Glenn sighed. "Axel seems a little unstable." He said and I laughed.
"Wonder why." I said, looking at Rick who glared right back.
"It's just been us for so long." Maggie put in. "They're strangers. It feels weird all of a sudden having other people around."
"You brought us in." Theodore reminded her.
"Yeah, but you showed up with a shot boy in your arms." She looked at Carl who was unconsciously feeling his chest. "You didn't give us a choice."
"And we showed up on their doorstep with guns and bloody weapons." Andrea said. "They didn't get a choice in that either."
"You want them to stay?"
"No." Andrea answered bluntly. "I don't. I don't want to live with a couple of actual convicts. Couple of guys who haven't been around women in years…" She looked apologetically at Carol for bringing this up in front of Sophia. "That's not my idea of safe. But I don't like going to bed aching and waking up aching because I spent all day breaking my back. We need people. That's a fact. We've got a hundred everyday chores to take care of even before we work on this place. And I don't seen any other people around to help us."
"They're convicts." Rick said and I didn't know if that his previous life talking or his experience with Andrew and Tomas.
"Those two might actually have less blood on their hands than we do." Theodore replied pointedly. He had blood on his hands after all.
"I get guys like this." Daryl put in. "Hell, I grew up with'em." He glanced at me as he said this. "They're degenerates but they ain't psychos. I could have been in there with them just as easy as I'm out here with you guys." He looked at me again. This was what bothered me about this place every day after all.
"So you're with us on this?" Andrea asked.
"Hell no." Daryl answered, forever the mystery. "Let'em take their chances out on the road just like we did."
"If they make that decision for themselves then fair enough." Dale declared. "But we don't have the right to make it for them."
"We do have the right." Rick remonstrated. "This wasn't their home. We didn't steal it from them. We took it from the dead and without us they'd be waiting to die in that cafeteria. We let them out. Now we've given them shelter and supplies and if they hit the road, they'll start with more than we did when we left the farm. Hell, I'll let you find a vehicle for them to give them a real fighting chance." I remembered when he said this about Randall. "We don't owe them anything."
"It's not about what we owe them." Andrea said. "It's about what we need and what we need is labour. You think they're strangers to that? Give Oscar an axe and have him chop firewood. If he looks like he's thinking of using that axe on us, I'll shoot him myself." She said it with enough conviction that we believed her and it alarmed Dale. "We said we didn't want Randall around because we'd never be comfortable. We said we couldn't shackle him or put a guard on him… Well now we can. We can control them. They've got nowhere to go, they live in a building we can lock from the outside and there's plenty they can do in the open where we can all keep an eye on them."
"We're going to meet people again." I said quietly. "What then? We gonna turn them away? Tell'em there's no room at the inn?" I chose these words deliberately. "It can't just be us forever."
"No it can't." Rick agreed. "But we ain't starting with them."
"We'll see." Theodore said. "If they stick it out in there, you'll have to evict them and I tell you now; I ain't gonna kick their asses to the curb for you. If they don't choose to leave; I ain't kicking them out."
"They'll leave." Rick replied.
"And if they don't?" Hershel asked. "If they prove themselves? I don't like it, Rick. I don't want them around. But we have to make do with what we're given."
"They're not staying." Rick insisted stubbornly. "End of discussion." He declared but I could tell that wasn't true. Too many people were thinking about the enormity of the task ahead. We would talk about it again before long. The fact he hadn't stamped his foot to squash this foetal attempt at democracy was proof enough that his own feelings weren't iron. Rick might not have liked challenges to this authority but he was a smart man. He had seen the potential of this place and everything we said about it being too big for just us to handle was true. He knew that. But as he was also a stubborn man.
[][][][][][] March 15th
I didn't have to help clear the way through the prison. One of the advantages of being young was how often that I got told to stand somewhere and keep watch while the adults did the work. Today I was the gatekeeper, holding the door for them at the last fence considered safe while they went through to the front and brought Hershel's Chevrolet through. I had to guess what they were up to by the noises I heard. Clearing the debris was no real trouble but the noise and movement attracted the dead. It didn't sound like a problem though and once through the perimeter and inside the prison in the safe zones we had created; the danger had passed. The dead drawn to the passing of the car would wander off eventually when something else got their attention.
The dead down at the gates in the field were another problem and now I was given something to do as the adults worked on using the Chevrolet to drag the bus out of the way. Stabbing through the fence with the crowbar was safe and easy although when they threw themselves against the mesh and it sagged inward, there was moment where it seemed to vanish and I was there in the open as a walker hurled itself on me. But then the metal caught it and it clutched the metal and snarl and gurgled until I planted the chisel end of the crowbar through the fence into one of its eyes. The bottom of the fence here was getting thick with bodies as we had concentrated our efforts on clearing them out inside. But the flies never seemed drawn to walker corpses so that unpleasantness didn't need to be worried about at least.
I didn't keep track of how many walkers I put down, I just kept at it until a nasty scraping noise and some whoops announced that the bus had finally moved out of the way and the road into the prison was clear. It was a victory and they immediately moved our machines up to the cell blocks. I remained where I was and then climbed the gatehouse tower. Watching them clearing out the contents of the vehicles except for 'Bug Out Bags' felt very final; this was home. A prison. Right now that was very grim but in the future… It could be better.
They seemed to decide the field was safe now because they let the kids out. Carl and Sophia went tearing into the long grass like children half their age while Beth and Carol helped Lori so she could also enjoy the grass as well after being cooped up inside for so long. She was something like five months pregnant but even that belly was hard on her after our lean winter. It was almost homely and reminded me of the farm, except for the stark metal fences and harsh concrete and brick buildings. But that would change. Sophia after all had turned a depressing grey cell block wall into art.
"Are you hiding?"
"Just keeping watch."
"You're hiding." Beth sat down beside me. "Why are you hiding?"
"Just thinking about how this is home now."
"This isn't home. Not yet. We've only been here a week. We'll make it into a home though once we've added a few things here and removed some other things there." She smiled in that disarming Beth manner. "I guess we have to keep the razorwire though."
"It doesn't look friendly." I said rather than that I had thought that it could end up trapping us in here if we were cut off from the gates. Barbed wire was pretty much useless against walkers but I knew from personal experience its effectiveness against the living.
"Maybe we can tie some ribbons to it."
"Okay, if you're going to be that bright and optimistic then I'm throwing you off this tower."
She laughed, and then pointedly dragged me down to join the others and be social. Carl and Sophia were still tearing about and their energy made me feel exhausted by comparison. Lori was enjoying the spring sunshine and in the light, I thought she looked better than she had in a long, long time. A proper bed to sleep in and a few days of regular meals had given her some real colour and she didn't look ready to faint at any moment. Now that I knew what I was looking for, I saw that Carol didn't look so exhausted either although watching the kids run seemed to be draining her the same as me.
"Makes you think, doesn't it?" Hershel remarked and the beard he had grown over the winter meant it was impossible to judge his health. Perhaps that was why he had grown it.
"They're running because they want to. Not because they have to." Carol said and I hadn't thought of this. That was dark. But it added something. They were just kids being kids and not struggling to survive day to day. And there was me thinking that at the ripe old age of not-quite-eighteen after having struggled to live day to day before the dead had started walking and biting.
"They're making me feel tired." I said.
"They always do." Lori replied wearily and her growing belly really sold her authority on the matter.
"And they never slow down." Carol added.
"Never." Hershel said and I felt the gulf between my life experiences and theirs. I had never had a problem being just a teen in this group but there were times when the thought nagged at me that the world was never going to be the same again and while I had never had a life before, at least I knew how life was meant to work. This world was new though and I would be experiencing an entirely different life to these 'elders'. I didn't know whether it was a good thing because I didn't have an established idea of how things were 'meant to be' as they did. Or bad thing because I didn't have any pleasant past memories to draw on.
"You're thinking." Sophia said as she sat down.
"Sorry, ma'am." I replied and she smiled.
"We taking a vacation?" Andrea asked and I was concerned I hadn't heard her approach.
"Just smelling the roses." Hershel answered and in that tone of voice that meant Andrea couldn't stay annoyed. Between his rustic accent and his Father Christmas beard, he was beyond reproach.
The others joined us though and besides that they had closed the gates to the upper yard behind them out of habit to secure the area and there were walkers at the perimeter fence, it was almost tranquil.
Naturally, it didn't last long before Rick put us to work.
With the vehicles moved into the upper yard they were out of harm's way. The lower yard, the field, was clear and so was the upper yard though it was still strewn with trash from the riot. That wasn't a priority for the moment. For this moment, it was making the cell block more comfortable. That meant a run to the creek to get water for cleaning. That meant cutting down the walkers that had gathered along the perimeter fence. Stabbing through the fence only dealt with so many and the adults went outside to hack them down. We had cleared so many bodies from the interior of the prison but they were piling up outside. They took the opportunity, the respite, to gather as much water as they could. There was already a supply within the prison but we always needed more water. For everything.
I didn't care for cleaning blood off a cell wall but it was necessary. For all our sakes. If we were going to live here then we couldn't have such reminders everywhere we looked. So many buildings were tombs now. Monuments to death. Putting on some rubber gloves and scrubbing a wall with bleach was the least we could do to make it better. They had already scraped the brains off the walls so I didn't have to worry about that.
Was wiping down walls and floors that bad when you could be risking your life against walkers? There was always risk there. This was merely unpleasant. It was nothing really. There was even a pleasant mundanity to it compared to life on the road or the life I had lived before. Pedestrian. It was a strange thing but simply cleaning indicated how our lives had improved immeasurably finding this place. Although, I wasn't sure the smell of bleach was an improvement on the musty odour that the block had had before. It made me think of hospitals.
"Good day." Rick declared at supper and as it was nothing like his usual dour mood, it made everyone perk up. Sure, we were eating in a place that now reeked of bleach and we were eating in the light of a few dull candles, and we were eating food intended for convicts… But the man was right. It had been a good day. Reassuringly uneventful.