𝕃𝕠𝕧𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝔽𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘 | Daryl Dixon

43 | INFECTED

"Oh, man. It's Patrick," Daryl breathed out lowly. He looked down over the railing to the bottom level where bodies were littering the ground. "It's all of 'em."

The mood was low and grim as they had to sift through all of the cells, making sure that the bitten people were put down before they turned. People who survived the attack but lost their friends and family were crying, the whimpers of their heartbreaks echoing like the downpour of rain after the storm. The heavy thunder of the attack had passed, but the storm was bound to come back around. 

Her heart broke when she came across an elderly lady named Joyce. Grey hair was stained crimson, and several walker bites bled on her arms, one big one on her stomach. The brunette felt her heart break as she closed her eyes and drove the end of her knife through the lady's temple, preventing her from turning. She remembered how Joyce always talked about her late husband, and tried to take solace in the fact that the couple might be reunited somewhere.

Tori wiped her hand over her forehead as she stood up, two people entering the cell block. Hershel and Caleb, or Dr S, as most called him. She followed them up the stairs to the cell where a man's body still lay on the floor, Rick and Daryl already up there, just staring.

Doctor S pulled on a pair of latex gloves, using a flashlight to assess the dead man's face. His name was Charlie; he had no bites, and his cell door had been closed when Rick found him as a walker. His face was completely covered in blood, trails from his eyes, nose, mouth – all poured down his chin and neck, staining the collar of his shirt.

"No bites, no wounds," Rick shook his head as he crouched across from Doctor S. "I think he just died."

"Horribly too," the doctor grimly said. "Pleurisy, aspiration..."

"Choked to death on his own blood," Hershel mumbled. "Caused those trails down his face."

"I've seen this before," Tori spoke up, glancing to Daryl. "When we were out, few weeks back. A walker with the same trails."

"Saw 'em on Patrick too," Daryl added.

"They're from internal lung pressure building up," Doctor S explained. Even from his tone, they could all hear the shock he was in from what he was looking at. "Like if you shake a soda can and pop the top. Only imagine your eyes, ears, nose, and throat, are the top."

"It's a sickness," Bob folded his arms, standing behind Hershel, just outside the cell. "From the walkers?"

"No, these things happened before they were around," Doctor S shook his head. "Could be pneumococcal. Most likely an aggressive flu strain."

"Someone locked him in just in time," Hershel sighed, remembering how the cell was locked when they found the body.

"No, man. Charlie used to sleepwalk. Locked himself in," Daryl spoke, his voice a low rasp. "Hell, he was just eating barbecue yesterday. How could somebody die in a day from just a cold?"

"I had a sick pig. Died quick," Rick looked up, referring to the pig Carl had named Violet. "Saw a sick boar in the woods too."

"I read about something like this in one of your books on the farm," Tori told Hershel. "Pigs and birds, that's how this kind of thing spread in the past."

The farmer nodded to her. "That's true. Means we need to do something about those hogs."

"Maybe we got lucky," Doctor S suggested with little hope in his eyes. "Maybe these two cases, are it?"

"Haven't seen anybody be lucky in a long time," Bob mumbled. "Bugs like to run through close quarters. Doesn't get any closer than this."

Hershel looked around at them all, being the one to tell them, "All of us in here... We've all been exposed."