Learning to Live Again - Book One

Chapter 7

The next morning the group woke up to see that Rick must have been up hours before and searched the guard towers, finding guns, a small amount of ammo and stun bombs. It was decided that Glenn, Maggie, Rick, T-Dog, Hershel, Daryl and Tamara would move further into the prison and see if they could clear out at least C Block where the group had slept that night. If they could take the block and clear out the walkers it would be a good place to hunker down and survive for as long as possible.

"Wear a vest." Tamara looked up from checking her knife to see Daryl holding out one of the bullet proof vests they had scavenged from a dead walker the day before.

She raised an eyebrow, "You wear a vest." She told him.

A few days before or even the day before Daryl would have glared at her for telling him that but his eyes now darkened with a heat the small brunette knew all too well. "'Mara." He growled, "Put it on."

Tamara tilted her head to the side, took the black vest from his hand and promptly handed it off to T-Dog, her eyes never leaving Daryl's intense gaze. Holding his eyes for a moment more she then looked away and moved past him to grab a handgun from one of the metal tables in the room off the cell area. She heard Daryl follow her and tensed, waiting for him to explode and cuss her out like he had been doing all winter when she pushed him too far.

His large hand closed around her hip and he stepped up behind her, "Ya love pushin' me, don't ya woman?"

Tamara didn't dare move wondering what he was going to do next. His next words sent a shot of heat right through her.

Voice deepening with every word, Daryl leant down and murmured heatedly in her ear, "This block gets cleared out and we're goin' up inta that guard tower and ain't leavin' 'til yer good 'nd knocked up."

A crimson blush flooded Tamara's cheeks. "You want me big with your baby, Dixon?" she asked, her breath speeding up a little as his hot breath fanned over her neck.

A barely stifled groan rumbled through his body at her words, "Yeah, woman. I want ya big with my baby." He kissed the back of her head, his hand squeezing her hip gently before he stepped away and got back to getting ready to fight walkers.

"Let's go." Rick told them.

The group said their goodbyes quickly, Maggie and Beth hugging while Tamara smiled at Carol. And then the hunting party left for the corridors deeper in the bowels of the prison, Carl locking the gate behind them.

Daryl and Rick led the group deep into the prison. The air was dank with mould and rotting corpses littered the cement under their feet. They all moved carefully, not wanting to make too much noise because there was no telling how many walkers were down there. Glenn and Tamara marked the walls with spray painted, luminescent arrows so that their group could find their way back out even in the near dark. The stench was almost unbearable and Tamara had to force down the rising bile in her throat as then trekked deeper and deeper into the prison. Everyone was on high alert and so, when they turned down a short corridor only to find it filled with inmate walkers, the group moved quickly.

"Go back, go back!" Rick ordered them as the walkers turned to lumber after them.

They turned back and hurried back the way they had come only to be cut off by another group of walkers. Tamara lost sight of Maggie and Glenn a few moments later and tripped over the corpse of an inmate lying in the middle of the hallway. T-Dog's arm shot out and wrapped around her waist dragging her to her feet and away from the group of walkers shuffling after them. She slipped from his hold and followed him, Daryl, Hershel and Rick into a small room a few feet down another corridor.