Carl slowly pushed the gate open wider for me, whilst I shakily gripped onto the cold metal bar.
"We should do it before my dad gets back." Carl instructed, touching the handgun tucked under his belt.
"Yeah..." I nodded, stepping sideways into the dark corridor. The walls were cement as far as my eyes could see in the darkness, a sight I was beginning to tire of.
I didn't like the feeling I had inside this place. Rick hadn't checked it over, so nobody knew what was in here. It could have been teeming with roamers, and we were about to walk into our deaths. There could have been more prisoners, more people...
"Stay behind me," Carl whispered, taking his handgun from his belt. He also reached down to the pocket of his jeans, and grabbed a small flashlight. Where did he even get that from? I would have loved to own a flashlight of my own, instead of walking around in the dark or following someone else's light.
He didn't even need to see my curious expression when he muttered, "It's my dad's."
There was a slight pause as a thud sounded from a while away, echoing through the tunnel in an especially eerie way.
Carl immediately stepped forwards, ready to take attack if anything came wandering down the concrete hall.
I frowned slightly, pulling a knife from my pouch.
Was I really so low down in the pecking order, that even a barely-teenage boy felt responsible for me?
"Do you know where this infirmary is, then?"
Carl looked back at me as he began the first few steps down the cold corridor, nodding slightly.
"Okay." I sighed, pulling the knife upwards, ready to throw just in case something popped out at me. If I was totally honest, I was absolutely terrified in this place, without someone with more authority around.
My hands were prepared to strike, my walking slow and cautious as my eyes darted around the floor after the light of Carl's flashlight. The way I was moving only reminded me of a certain hunter's stance, when he was wielding his weapon.
I felt like an idiot, walking like Daryl when I was so clearly not Daryl.
Just as this thought crossed my mind, my foot skipped a step, making a loud squeaking noise as I regained my stride. I smothered a laugh, blushing a deep red as I shook Daryl from my mind.
It took me a while to realise Carl had slowed his walking, and when I looked up, I saw the young figure slowing to a stop.
Carl had stopped beside a body.
"That's..." I groaned, "That's dead, right?"
"Yeah."
I thanked the stars for this, as my eyes fell upon a ravaged body, arms outstretched behind it, looking thin and bony, whilst its rip cage protruded into the air, all the flesh around its bones ripped clean from the body, leaving a bloody stain puddled on the floor around it.
The jumpsuit he wore was barely visible, ragged and torn and rotting and losing itself in the masses of decay and blood.
"Let's go." Carl urged, as I blinked back my blatant disgust.
"That means there's more up the corridor, though!" I whispered harshly. "If there's a lot..."
"If there's a lot, I'll scream for help, and I'll use this to hold them off." He held up his weird gun, with the weird metal thing on it.
It made sense, but it still seemed like a stupid idea.
Carl stared up at me, his hat shading his eyes the minimal amount of blue light that was created by his flashlight. "That'll get everyone's attention from out there and--"
"It'll be too late." I said, looking over ahead of us. "Carl, we should just..."
I paused.
And I didn't know why at this point, but I had a realisation that I didn't quite agree with one-hundred percent.
Calling for Daryl, for Rick, would be proving that we truly were useless, that they were right about how the other men and women looked at us...
Carl and Amy, useless and annoying and totally irrelevant.
Why couldn't we do something for a change?
"I'm trusting you, okay?" I whispered, "If something happens, or something, just run back to the cellblock, lock the door."
"I will." Carl nodded shortly.
"Okay," I said for the second time in the past five minutes.
We continued forwards, my hands shaking furiously, as Carl led the way.
Every movement felt like it were pulling down on me, my knees feeling as though they were going to buckle with every movement, every step sounding like an explosion of sound as the sole of my sneaker hit the concrete floor.
Carl lifted a hand, as though signalling me to stop walking. This was just as we edged towards a large door, which was still left ajar.
I did stop, most of my weight leaning into my front foot whilst I hesitated to take one last step.
Carl shuffled slowly to the door, handgun raised.
My heart rate was going through the roof as I stood behind the boy, knife prepared for throwing. He looked back to me then, nodding in the tiniest of movements, the flashlight still centred into the room.
"There's five." Carl mouthed, the sound coming out as almost silent breaths.
Five roamers. That didn't sound like an enormous amount. And if they were spread out within the room then there was a chance we could actually do this seamlessly.
"You..." Carl straightened his stance, "You ready?"
I brushed a strand of my sweaty hair back, nodding slightly as I tightly gripped my knife.
"I've got five knives. If I hit two, I'll be happy." I nodded, my stomach churning.
"Let's go."
Carl swung the metal door open, letting it clang against the door loudly as he took an immediate step into the room.
The movement shared between the roamers inside was instantaneous, all of the creatures turning their heads to the sound, and, much like a pack of hungry wolves, growling when they caught our scent.
Carl took the first shot, hitting the closest roamer in the head...
It happened so fast.
The movements were insanely quick, everything feeling as though it happened in the space of mere milliseconds... As my mind drifted from focussing on what I was doing, what I was seeing.
All I could focus on was these roamers, on their guard uniforms, as I took in a deep breath to try and calm my spinning head, which sounded more like a gasp as I stepped forwards twice, before darting my hand forwards.
My wrist cracked as I swung it through the air to hit another man, my knife hitting him in the side of his skull.
I couldn't control the leaping feeling of success as Carl shot another roamer, making another strange airy pop.
Two left.
I aimed for the roamer stumbling towards me. I was surprised at just how quickly it managed to creep up on us, whilst I was taking out the other roamer.
My hand was quick to jam into my belt pouch, fingering for a handle of one of the four knives inside.
"There's more coming in!" Carl called.
I groaned loudly as I aimed, my hand lifting to the side of my neck as I built momentum for the hit.
The moment the knife left my fingers, I knew I'd missed.
Just the slightest tremble in my movement had sent the knife clattering further beside the roamer, hitting against a desk.
"Amy, there's more coming!"
"Carl, I can't right--" I stopped myself as I kicked the approaching roamer back, a strange sound at the back of my throat escaping. Panic was creeping in again, and panic was usually what led me to making rash mistakes... Rash decisions.
Grab another knife.
I straightened my back, relaxed my shoulders, letting a soft breath out through my nose as the roamer pushed itself to the floor in one clamouring movement.
My hand darted for a knife, pulling myself back into that prepared stance, my eyes narrowing quickly at the corpse.
Aim to kill.
Another gunshot sounded out from Carl, as I attempted to regain that all important composure. And that was the hard part, when something was approaching me so quickly, ready to kill... I had to focus.
"They're coming from that door." After he said this, the sound of him reloading echoed through the space, followed by a loud groan from the roamer in front of me.
Relax your shoulders.
My eyes focussed in on its eye, it's cold, pale, lifeless eye. Maybe aiming small was the way to go, as often I found when I just aimed for the entire head I'd miss by a big space, but when I aimed small... I'd miss the mark by millimetres, and still hit the head.
Go.
"Ungh!" The shout sounded so loud and stupid, but I continued through with the movement, my hand whipping through the air as the knife left my fingers with a short zipping noise.
Another gunshot.
My eyes were still staring ahead as the body fell forwards, just a metre from where my feet stood on the cold linoleum flooring.
"I got the door!" Carl grunted, as a loud clang signalled the beginning of the silence that followed.
"That was..." I heaved in deep breaths, realising just how shallow my breathing had been. "That was... God."
That was scary... Exhilarating, frightening, intense. Not one word could describe the way I felt during that stressful situation.
"What does this room look like to you?" Carl asked quietly, whilst the thumps of roamers continued to sound out from behind the door he'd just closed.
My eyes blinked open as Carl darted the flashlight around the room, his eyes following the light.
The walls were white, much unlike the rest of the prison, and desks lined the walls, one, two, three, four... Four desks.
Three guards, two prisoners on the floor. There were bits of paper littering the floor around these bodies, office chairs laying abandoned on the floor, some still pressed under the desks they sat in front of.
I began to walk towards the desks, looking at what appeared to be forms ad documents, pens chained to the tables like those desks in a bank.
"This looks like... Like a staff room, or something."
Carl didn't reply, wandering around the same side of the room.
"Is this a metal detector? What is this?" Carl asked loudly, his flashlight pointed at the two large structures which stood beside another door, on each side.
"I don't know what a metal detector looks like..." I murmured. They looked a little like those things you'd find at a library, the scanners that'd beep at me if I had an overdue library book with me. "They must be, though."
"So this would be the infirmary, then." Carl looked around the wall for a sign or something to signify this. "It should be..."
"Up there." I pointed to a green cross atop the door, "That means first aid, right?"
"Pretty sure."
There was a brief pause, as I looked back around.
"Just let me grab my knives..." I whispered, waiting for him to guide the light of his flashlight onto the two bodies in front of my feet.
I leant over slightly to the first body, reaching for the handle protruding from its head. My foot found its way to the roamer's cheek, like T-Dog had done just the day before.
One, two... Three.
I counted silently in my head, and on the third count I heaved my hand upward, pulling the knife from the roamer's skull with a horrible sound. The crack of bone against cement was the next to follow, as its head rebounded against the floor.
"Oh... God." I muttered, before doing the same with the other roamer.
It wasn't something I could just get used to, the smell of death, the bodies everywhere. It just... It was hard to not throw up every time I smelt the rotting of flesh, the sight of decomposing bodies...
"That last knife's over there." Carl said quickly, pointing the light to the side of the room.
"I missed." I laughed half-heartedly, "It was terrifying."
"Why'd you even use those knives, anyway? They're stupid."
"They're... They're not stupid!" I insisted, bending over to grab my fifth knife.
"You only have five." Carl said, as though he could read the thought process in my mind, "You miss most of the time, and you've been practicing all winter and have only now been able to hit a walker."
"Throwing knives... They take concentration, strength... Determination. Those are things I need more of." I said quietly, "Well, and aim, they need a good aim."
"Besides..." I smiled to myself, my voice trailing off, "They were a gift."
Carl didn't ask any further, his attention drawn to the door once again.
"Antibiotics, painkillers, sterile gauze." Carl breathed, his hand resting on the door as he hesitated to push it forward, "Let's go in, then."
The infirmary was much smaller than I thought.
I'd imagined it to be much like a hospital ward, with beds and beds separated by curtains, with medicine everywhere and bandages laying on the ground, roamers crawling from beds in hospital gowns and the floor splattered with bloody footprints with--
I could have continued imagining this made-up room forever...
Instead of the scene that could have been passed as one from a horror film, we were met with the unusually disappointing county prison infirmary.
"There's no walkers." Carl stated the obvious.
We were both standing just at the door, weapons raised in panic, looking in at a room which looked as though it had been untouched. There was only one bed, a neat-looking plastic blue mattress which looked to be attached to wheels.
Beside that was a cabinet, a metal shelf and a big black first aid bag.
And that was all.
"Is this it?" I asked aloud, poking my knife back into its pouch. "It doesn't look like much at all."
Carl looked up at me with his blue eyes, a hint of embarrassment, desperation in his expression as he glanced over to the cabinet and shelf.
"There's gotta be something in there..." Carl muttered, placing his gun on the bed and launching for the cabinet. "There's gotta be."
I glanced around the room again, taking in the white walls, the grey linoleum flooring... The discarded lamp looking over the bed. I let myself relax a little as Carl fiddled with the lock and the keys he had taken from Rick.
"Amy!" Carl whispered, his voice sounding excited. My head darted back to where he knelt before the cabinet. "Amy, look!"
"What is it?" I asked quickly, stepping towards him so I could see down inside the cream coloured metal cupboard.
Inside this cabinet were all kinds of bottles, boxes... Filled with medicine and pills and bandages, with tools and with ointments and syringes and ... Just, everything we could ever need.
"What do we need again?" I asked faintly, unable to contain my grin.
"Let's just... Let's just take it all." Carl looked over at the first aid bag by the corner. "How full is that bag?"
I paused, before darting to grab the handles of the leathery bag. When I pulled it open, I was met with a large metal electronic device. It looked like one of those resuscitators or whatever... Not that it'd do us any good nowadays.
My fingers wrap around the smooth metal corners, before pulling the box from the bag.
Without a second thought, I sent the useless object flying over my shoulder. A loud clang echoed through the room, sending Carl straight upright from where he slouched to look in the cupboard.
"Now that box is out, there's heaps of space." I slid the bag over to him.
"I can't believe we did it..." Carl breathed, speaking more to himself. "This could be the stuff that saves Hershel."
"We'll take it all." I said, motioning for Carl to hurry up, "Let's just take all of it, because I have no idea what any of it does."
"Me either."