Nate woke up with an ugly cough. It was one so bad that made him sit up and grip the edge of the mattress. He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair when it was over. That was..weird, he thought. He could hear Rick's alarm go off and looked up when the other man pushed open their curtain.
"You're awake." Rick said as if the idea of Nate being awake before an alarm clock was unheard of. Nate raised his eyebrows and hummed. "Carl?" His eyes looked up to the top bunk and Nate shrugged. "Carl." He said a bit louder and Carl groaned, Rick tilted his head the other way and Nate nodded. He rubbed at his eyes one more time and then stood up on the side of the bed to smack Carl awake.
"Ri-Rise and shine, dude." He said, for some reason his voice came out a little scratchy and he saw Carl furrowed his brows and then opened his eyes.
"What's wrong with you?" Carl asked and Nate shrugged. Maybe it was just the effects of their run yesterday still lingering, he didn't mention that though.
The two boys got dressed and had a quick breakfast, they met Rick outside and the three of them walked along their pathway out in the courtyard with buckets while Michonne brought out her horse.
"Any requests? Comics, books?" She asked them. Nate shook his head. "Stale m&m's?" Carl laughed. If you had told Nate a month ago that Michonne would still be with them, making jokes like this, he wouldn't have believed you. She'd taken a while to warm up to everyone but ultimately, Nate was glad she had decided to stay.
"You're the one who likes stale m&m's." Carl shot back with a wide grin.
"And I'll definitely be looking for some." She replied. "I'll look for some stuff you like too." She said to Rick, who Nate almost forgot was there.
"Oh, I have a request. Find him a razor." Nate said, gesturing to the right side of his face where a beard might be. Michonne giggled and Nate turned to follow RIck to their pig pens.
"Why don't you wear your hat anymore?" Michonne called out to Carl.
"It's not a farming hat!" Carl said back. "See you soon?"
"Pretty soon."
They got to work fairly fast. Rick started shoveling dirt into Carl's bucket with his hands while Nate pulled at their ripe tomatoes. This was how they had been spending most of their mornings. They stayed silent for a while, Rick seemed like he was thinking about something, Nate was still mourning Zack.
"They only took out one cluster yesterday..maybe we could help." Carl started to say, his gaze lingering on the fences. Nate stopped what he was doing to watch. One of them looked like it was threatening to fall over.
"I got other plans, involving dirt and cucumbers. Keeping people fed." Rick shoved more dirt into the next bucket.
"Well,if you don't want to, maybe Nate and I could." Carl made eye contact with Nate and Nate grimaced with an immediate shake of his head.
"No," He firmly said. "also I do know that you went on that run yesterday, Nate. I heard about what happened with Zack-" Nate froze as Rick stood up, placing his hands on his hips. Nate's eyes widened. Shit. He couldn't look at Carl and so he dropped his gaze to the tomatoes in his bucket.
He didn't have to respond because suddenly someone screamed for help and they could hear loud bangs coming from inside. Gunshots? Nate slowly got to his feet, wondering where it was coming from.
"Carl, get in the guard tower with Maggie. Don't argue. Nate, with me. Go!" Rick said, Carl left them and Nate ran a few feet behind him towards the gates.
"Walkers in D!" Glenn yelled to them, near Carol and the two little girls whose names Nate had forgotten.
"What about C?!" Rick shouted, their cellblock. Nate thought with horror.
"Clear!" Sasha said coming through the door. "We locked the gates to the tombs." Daryl and Tyreese were right behind her on the stairs, the three of them started to run towards D. "Hershel's on guard."
"It ain't a breach!" Daryl exclaimed, Nate threw a confused look his way.
"Then what is it?" He asked, looking back and forth between them and Rick.
"We followed the plan!" Sasha told them with a shrug and a shake of her head and Nate looked at Rick once and the two of them followed everyone else to D block. D block was in absolute chaos. Nate froze as he watched walkers attempt to attack their people while others were screaming. He didn't know what to do.
"Nate? Oh thank god!" Alice had come out of a room and threw her arms around his neck. Nate grimaced as she buried her face into his shoulder. His hand automatically went to her back.
"Do you know what happened?" He asked her, she shook her head and pulled her head back and brushed her hair out of her face. She looked upset.
"I woke up this morning to this." She wrapped her arms around her sides, jumping as someone else let out a scream. They looked around once more, Nate pushed her back as a walker tried to come after them again and he put his machete through its forehead. Alice moved to grip onto his arm and his face twitched at the contact.
"Go, get out of here!" Rick hollered, he kept asking people coming down the stairs if they were bit and got head shakes as confirmations.
"Are we clear down here?" Rick asked them.
"Yeah!" Sasha answered with a nod.
"Up here!" Someone called, Rick, Glenn, and Daryl moved upstairs and Nate looked up as Daryl shot a walker with an arrow as it tried to grab for Glenn. It was the one thing he had seen as they inched into a room. Rick suddenly glanced down at him with a sullen look on his face. Nate raised an eyebrow.
"What is it?" He called, Rick gave a shake of his head. Daryl came down the stairs and Nate didn't like the look on his face.
"Patrick." He told him and Nate dropped his shoulders and let out a deep sigh. Alice moved to bury her face in the crook between his neck and shoulder.
"No." She said quietly, putting her hand over her mouth. He shrugged her off of him and went up to the room they were standing at and saw Patrick's lifeless body looking back up at him. He let out a gasp and backed up into the railing. He started coughing as air got caught in his throat. He shook his head.
"Nate, I'm so sorry." Rick said, Nate threw a glare his way and went back downstairs, without even looking in Alice's direction and walked out of the cell. He went out to the courtyard, placing his hands on his hips and began pacing. He hadn't noticed Alice had followed him but he looked up at the sound of her footsteps.
"It'll be okay." She whispered to him.
"How? There weren't any walkers in the prison. Daryl said there wasn't a breach. How did he turn?" Nate asked, he put his hands to his neck, weaving his fingers together over it, and looked up at the sky. Patrick deserved to live, this wasn't fair. Especially right after Zack.
"Everybody turns at some point." She said and he snapped his head over to glare at her and dropped his hands.
"That's bullshit." He shook his head. The conversation was reminding him a lot of the one he had with Beth after Zack died, yesterday. Why were girls so weird? Was it just a universal girl thing? He didn't know. He heard the door open again and saw Rick walking towards him.
"Nate!" He looked back as his name was called and saw Maggie and Carl helping Michonne walk over.
"Are you okay?" Alice asked her and Michonne nodded.
"Hey, you might want to stay back." Rick warned as Carl ran up to him, he didn't even hesitate as he buried his head into his father's chest.
"Dad, I'm sorry. I didn't see you come out." Carl told him. Nate averted his gaze as Rick comforted his son. It was so strange, seeing Carl like this. His eyes landed on Maggie and Michonne and he almost walked over to them to help Michonne walk but then he decided against it, Rick had been right. No one should be near them so he stayed by Alice's side. Carl pulled away from him.
"I had to use one of the guns by the gate, I swear I didn't want to." He told him.
"I was coming back, I fell. They came out and helped me." Michonne said from Maggie's side, her arm still wrapped around her shoulders.
"Are you alright?" Rick asked, she nodded.
"What happened in there?" Maggie asked. Rick hesitated but Alice beat him to the punch.
"Walkers got in somehow." She replied
"Patrick got sick last night. Some kind of flu, it moves fast." Carl's eyes flickered over to Nate for a moment and he looked off to the side, where a blonde woman was coming out with a small body in her arms. "We think he died and attacked the cellblock." Nate felt a hand touch his arm and he shrugged it off.
"Look, I know he was your friend and I'm sorry, he was a good kid." Rick whispered to Carl, bending down to his level to look him in the eyes. "We lost a lot of good people." He looked up back to Maggie and Michonne. "Glenn and your dad, they're okay but they were in there." She nodded.
"You shouldn't get too close to anyone who might've been exposed, at least for a little while. Carl, all of you." He glanced back at Alice and Nate, while Carl went back to Michonne's side to help her walk.
"Nate-Nate was coughing this morning." Carl told him and Nate opened his mouth to argue.
"Yeah..yeah I know." Rick said, looking back at him again and it made the boy shrink back a little. "We're having a council meeting later, Nate, Alice make sure you guys don't get too close to anybody." Nate pursed his lips while Alice nodded. Carl and Maggie took Michonne inside.
"Where am I supposed to go?" Nate asked, crossing his arms. Rick glanced back at him. "I can't go back to C, not around Judith. Carl and I share a room, if you think it spreads that fast..is he at risk too?" He didn't want to think that he infected them all. He couldn't tell what Rick was thinking, he could never tell.
"We all need to stay away from each other, just for a while until we figure out what to do." Rick said, he looked out into the field and Nate followed his gaze to where Daryl was starting to dig graves. The thought of Judith was what made him reluctantly agree. Rick left them both and Alice brushed a strand of her hair behind her ear. They were alone for only a few minutes, Nate had decided to sit down on the bleachers, resting his chin on top of his knees and then he heard Maggie screaming for Rick and Daryl by the fences. He watched in horror as the walkers attempted to bust through and he and Alice looked at each other with wide eyes and then they started to run over to help. The others were pushing their weapons through walkers eyes but it didn't seem to be of any use.
"Give us something, we can help!" Nate exclaimed, Maggie pulled back and went to hand him a tool and he went to grab for it but froze once Rick shouted at him.
"No, stay back!" Rick stabbed a walker through its eye and it fell to the ground. Nate pursed his lips and huffed out an angry breath and took it from Maggie's hand anyways and stabbed at a walker closer to Glenn. It wasn't fucking fair. Nate hated that Rick constantly did this. He crossed the lines between being a parental figure and a leader too many times and it pissed Nate off. He had a father, one who was still out there somewhere. He killed another walker.
"This isn't working!" Glenn shouted. They all pulled away as the fence moved forward again.
"I've got an idea." Rick said. They ended up using their pigs as walker bait. Rick got into the back of the pick up truck as Daryl drove it further away from the prison and Nate brushed a hand through his hair in relief as he realized the plan was working. The fences would be okay for now.
"Nate-" Rick attempted to talk to the boy after he got off the truck and Nate rolled his eyes and walked away from him, back towards the prison. Rick let out a sigh as he watched the boy go. Daryl rested his arm on the window, still in the driver's seat.
"He's just being a stubborn kid. He'll come around." Daryl told him and Rick glanced back at him with a short nod.
"Yeah, I hope that's all it is."