SHELTER | DIXON

|28|

Once the sun fell below the horizon, it was hard to see much of anything as they made their way through the woods. Eventually they circled back around to where they started and Glenn dug out his flashlight, handing it over to Daryl, who was doing most of the tracking. Madison was using hers to watch their surroundings. "There's two sets of tracks right here," Daryl told them as he shined the light on the ground. "Shane must've followed him a lot longer than he said."

Madison turned to see what he was looking at, and her light flashed across something on a tree that had her doubling back. "Is that blood?"

Daryl stepped closer to get a better look. "Yeah, and it's fresh," he said, before looking back down at the ground. "There's more tracks. Looks like they're walking in tandem."

Glenn glanced around them as the distant sound of an animal echoed through the night, accidentally bumping into Daryl and immediately jerking back. "Sorry," he mumbled when the redneck looked at him. Daryl didn't bother to respond as he turned back to the task at hand.

"Yeah, there was a little dust-up right here."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean somethin' went down."

Glenn shivered, exchanging a glance with Madison. "This is getting weird." She nodded in agreement.

"Had a little trouble," Daryl told them, leaning down to pick up a discarded piece of cloth. He started to say something else, but the sound of something approaching had him dropping the cloth as the three of them hurried to hide behind a couple of trees. Daryl grabbed Madison and pulled him behind one of the trees with him, while Glenn hid behind the one a few feet away. He tossed Glenn his flashlight so that he could ready his crossbow, while Madison pulled one of her hunting knives out.

It happened quickly. One moment Glenn was peeking around the tree to see what was approaching them; the next, a walker had lunged at him. Glenn fell to the ground as Daryl tried to shoot the walker, but it was too quick— which meant that the walker had recently turned. It whirled around, grabbing at Daryl's crossbow and pushing him backward as it tried to get a bite out of him. Madison moved behind the walker and grabbed its arms, yanking it away from Daryl. The momentum had she and the walker both sprawling to the ground, her hunting knife accidentally falling from her hand. Daryl hurriedly stood himself back up, ready to help her, but Glenn had already pushed the walker off of Madison and stabbed it in the head. He grabbed Madison's hand and pulled her to her feet, the three of them standing around the walker's body and looking down at it in shock.

"Is that... Randall?" Glenn asked them.

Madison frowned, crouching down next to the body. Daryl crouched down on the other side of it and watched as she reached out and moved Randall's head. "His neck was snapped," she told them. "That's what killed him."

"Well, he has to have bites somewhere," Glenn said.

Daryl gestured for Madison to back up as he started examining Randall's body, rolling him over to look at his back as well. "He's got no bites."

"Yeah, none that you can see."

"Nah, I'm tellin' you. Mads is right," Daryl said, gesturing toward Randall's neck. "He died from this."

Glenn's eyebrows pulled together as he tried to understand what Daryl was saying to him. Randall had turned into a walker, but he hadn't been bitten by one. It didn't make sense. "How is that possible?"

Madison's face paled as she thought of the only possibility there was that could explain it. "Oh, my God," she breathed, looking up at them with wide eyes. "We're all infected."