Skimming over some bits and changing minor details that aren't relevant. I need to do some catching up with this show and I don't want to waste any time on things like Tyreese not letting go of the walker in the vines. Hope you enjoy.
Third person – Medical run
The car got them most of the way, but it couldn't get them past the walkers that had formed a herd... hundreds of them. The biggest they had seen. The car had come to a skidding halt after ploughing down a few of them. Daryl tried reversing out, but the bodies only piled up under the car, bogging them in the dead.
Daryl had jumped out of the car through the sun roof while the others took off for the woods. Tyreese almost didn't make it out. While the others ran from the herd that they had no chance of defeating, Tyreese was overcome by rage, swinging his hammer at anything that came near him. He met up with the others in the woods, they thought he was dead. He was covered in blood and he could barely stand he was that exhausted. Daryl grabbed Tyreese and the group kept running.
He wasn't concerned for the car, he didn't mind running, making the trip on foot, but it meant it would take longer. He wasn't sure how much time they had to make it back, but it wasn't long.
The night came and went and in the morning they were discussing options. Tyreese washed his bloodied shirt in the river while the others stood up on a bridge that crossed it.
"We need another car." Daryl was saying.
"This is Turner Creek," Michonne informed, "so Barnesville must be a few miles downstream."
"Sounds like our best chance at finding a new ride." Bob nodded.
"Yo, Ty!" Daryl yelled down to him. "Come on, let's go. Vamonos." Tyreese continued washing his shirt as Michonne and Daryl headed on their way.
Bob stopped for a moment waiting for the other man. "Ty!" He yelled when the man didn't move. "There should be a town a few miles south."
"Lost a whole night." Tyreese shot back, ringing out his shirt. "My sister, everybody else... they're probably dead."
"Well, it helps to keep moving."
"No, it doesn't." Tyreese shot back, looking up. He got to his feet and eventually they were back on their way, following the other two.
Barnesville was a mess. It had been hit by a storm some while ago. Trees were snapped off at the trunks, falling on buildings. Vines had grown all up and around them.
"You see something?" Bob asked Daryl as he became distracted by a pile of branches, leaves and vines.
"I don't know. Maybe."
The other came over and together they pulled the shrubbery off an old car. It was still covered half in vines just like the building next to it and the car itself was going to need even more work. But it was a start.
Daryl got into the front, using the wires under the steering wheel trying to hot wire the engine. Nothing happened.
"We gotta find us a new battery." Daryl explained. He looked through the window of the building the car was stopped nest to. Hands came up fast, slamming against the window as Daryl jumped back. "Got some friends inside." He nodded to the walkers.
"There's a back entrance with none of this debris over it. Looks like it was an auto shop." Michonne explained.
"Stroke of luck." Daryl shot back before gesturing for Bob to following him and left Michonne and Ty on guard.
It was dark inside, the vines blocking out most light that would have come through the windows. Daryl's flashlight led the way as Bob trailed along behind him. There didn't appear to be any walkers inside, but Daryl soon found the car batteries at the back of the shop.
"Here we go."
"Those cells look pretty dry." Bob observed.
"Little still water will clear that right up." Daryl shrugged. "Come on."
By the time they got back outside with the battery, Michonne and Ty had cleared the car of the debris that covered it. Daryl got to replacing the battery right away, the others leaving him to it. Michonne and Ty were out of ear shot, sitting by and waiting while Bob leant against the wall by the car. The divide between the group was mostly because Daryl had grabbed a pack of cigarettes on his way out of the auto shop and he and Bob had lit one each while the other two weren't overly fond of them.
"You never told us about the group you were with before us." Daryl broke the silence. They didn't know much about Bob, really. He hadn't told anyone his story and no one had really asked. For the most part he kept well to himself.
"Which one." Daryl looked up at him, a cigarette hanging in his mouth as he nodded in understanding and turned back to the car. "You know when you found me out on that road, I almost kept walking."
"Why's that?"
"Because I was done being a whiteness. Two times, two different groups." He was explaining as Daryl poured water into the car. "I was the last one standing. Like I was supposed to see it happen over and over... but when it's just you out there in the quiet... used to be I'd drink a bottle of just about anything just so I could shut my eyes at night. Being at the prison, people, I thought it'd be easy... The run to the Big Spot, I did it for me."
"Ah, you gotta keep busy." Daryl shrugged before taking a drink of the water he had been using to pour into the car.
"No." Bob shook his head. "I did so I could get me a bottle. Of anything. I picked it up, I held it in my hand, but I put it down. I put it down so hard it took the whole damn shelf with it. That's what brought on the walkers and that's what got Zach killed."
Daryl looked him up and down for a moment in silence before finally replying. "That bullshit." He paused again. "Get in there and try the engine." He gestured for the car. "It's the red and the green wire. Go on, it ain't rocket science." Bob eventually moved. "Give it some gas." Daryl said as he headed for the driver's side door.
The car choked a little and then started as Daryl took another breath of smoke and gave a little clap. He turned around and whistled to the other two to grab their attention and then moved to speak to Bob again.
"Sasha and me picked that spot. Took you with us. Ain't no way anybody could of known. You ain't gonna be standing alone. Not anymore." He finished and turned before he could say anything back. "Lets go!"
Bob drove while Michonne took over, reading the directions off the map. When they got close they parked the car in a safe spot so as not to draw too much sound when approaching the building in case of any walkers.
Tyreese flipped the map over to the back where a blank square in the top right corner had been scribbled over. It was Kat's own map drawing of the college so that they could find the right building with ease.
"Should be just up ahead." Tyreese informed after having taken the map from Michonne once they had started on foot.
It was a great big brick building with at least five levels, but matching ones surrounded all around filled with dorm rooms and other buildings for other electives.
"Can I see that." Bob asked, looking over the drawing to double check it was the right one. "Hershel drew this?"
"Kat did." Michonne informed. "She went to college here."
"Huh. Tough school to get into." Bob informed.
Daryl turned around and took two steps back over to the others to take the map off them. "Not for her." He grumbled and then kept walking, picking up the pace. "Come on." He called over his shoulder. He didn't want the reminder of why they had to hurry right then. He didn't want to think on it until they got back. Right now he was on a run, that was it. Just another run.
They went through a building labelled Learning Resource Centre and then out into another one. The inside was layered in posters of anatomy of both people and various animals. The counter tops had cages on them. Some were empty, others had what remained of the animals that used to be living, mostly rats. There was a sink at every bench and a neat assortment of tools such as scalpels.
"Alright, let's make this quick." Daryl said.
Bob and Michonne found their way to a medicine cabinet and Bob began instructing her in what they were looking for. "Anything ending in cilin or cin. C I N." He spelt out for her just in case. "Grab it. We'll dissolve the pills in the IV's and put it straight into the blood stream. Dosage will be tricky, but considering the time we lost." After a little while Daryl and Tyreese soon joined with their own bags filled. "How'd you do?" Bob asked them.
"Bags, tubes, clamps, connectors, everything on the list." Tyreese answered.
"What 'bout ya'll?"
"Yeah, we got it all." Bob answered Daryl.
"Yeah, we're good."
"Alright, let's roll." Daryl begun to lead the way once again.
They shuffled along the darkened corridors with nothing but the flashlight once again. Groans and gurgles from walkers in some of the classrooms were heard as they passed, but they kept moving, not wanting to draw too much attention or waste any more time. But that didn't stop the dead following after them, exiting the rooms they had been and trailing them down the corridor, more and more adding to their ranks.
Further down they found the stairwell, Ty taking out one walker as they went, but just the one. The door was chained and bolted and as Michone rattled the chains a bang and sickly groan sounded from the other side, as a desperate and decaying hand slid between the crack in the door, reaching for food.
"How many?" Daryl asked.
"Can't tell." Michonne shook her head.
"We can take them!" Ty declared, looking back down from where they came and listening to the sounds of the walkers that were now catching up.
"No!" Bob quickly jumped in. "They're infected." He observed. "Same as at the prison. We fire at them, get their blood on us... we didn't come all this way just to get sick."
"How do we know the ones in there are going to be any different?" Ty shot back.
"We don't." They knew they had no other option so Michonne and Daryl prepared to open the door. She drove her Katana between a part of the rusted chains and yanked it in an unnatural direction and it snapped.
The doors swung open instantly and the dead came at them. Bob fired a shot, Michonne severed two heads, Daryl ducked through the doorway and they kept moving. The next level was just as infected and had even more of the dead. They took them out one by one as the walkers popped out of the rooms along the corridor. The only way out they discovered at the end was through a window and out onto a ledge created by the roof of the undercover area of the pathway bellow.
Tyreese ripped a fire extinguisher off the wall and pelted it at the window, shattering the glass and allowing his friends to take their exit. Bob was the last to jump and as he landed he lost his footing, the bag he held in his right hand flung ahead of him and dangled over the ledge, but he held on to it tight.
A tug at the bag tightened his grip and when he looked down he saw more of those dead hands clinging on to it.
"Bob, let it go." Michonne advised as he wrestled with them in a desperate attempt to keep his bag. Tyreese and Daryl soon followed suit, but Bob didn't listen until he had ripped the bag from their grip and it flung over his shoulder and clattered on the ledge they stood on. All three of his friends looked to it in confusion before Daryl walked over and picked up the source of the glass like sound. A bottle of scotch.
"You got no meds in your bag?" He asked, looking down at the bottle. "Just this." Bob looked up in shame as anger flashed across the redneck's face. "You should have kept walkin' that day." He spat.
He was mad. He was more than mad. He was furious. He gripped the bottle so hard he was surprised it didn't shatter right there in his hand. The bottle was one thing, but for it to be the only thing? Bob had another bag filled with meds, but would it have been so hard for him to more in the second one as well. They had already wasted so much time, he didn't know what they would be heading back to and the images he had done so well to push back began to surface;
Kat's shaking hands as the bottle of water lowered from her lips.
"How many of those have you had?" He had asked.
Daryl got ready to toss the scotch as far as he could throw it, but Bob's voice stopped him, but it wasn't the word "Don't" that left his mouth that caused the rise in anger again, it was how his hand reached up to the hilt of the gun at his belt.
Michonne and Ty looked on in shock while Daryl stared the man down before stepping over to him, closing any space between them in a threatening way, daring him to pull the gun out.
"I feel fine," She had whispered
"Yeah, well you're not."
Bob's hand dropped, and Daryl snatched the gun from him before ripping at his collar and holding him up right. He could have given one shove and Bob would have fallen to the walkers bellow. The walkers he'd rather look to now than to Daryl.
"Just let it go, Daryl. The man's made his choice." Tyreese spoke up. "Nothing you can do about it. Just gotta let it go."
Daryl's grip loosened and he took a step back, but he was by no means calm.
Kat's hand had shook when he held it out, she hadn't even noticed. Much like Bob didn't seem to realise that his to were also shaking.
"Don't." She had told him as he stepped forward, desperately wanting to put space between them in fear of giving the virus to him. "Daryl, don't." That next silence then was nearly unbearable, "I'll see you when you get back."
Would she?
That was it. That was the question he had desperately been avoiding since they left. What had happened after, what was happening now... Patrick had seemingly died over night... they had been gone a night.
"I didn't want to hurt nobody." Bob's voice stopped his thoughts for a moment. "It was just for when it gets quiet."
Daryl shoved the bottle hard into his chest. "Take one sip before those meds get in our people... I will beat your ass into the ground." He growled as Bob's shaking hands fumbled to take it from him, not yet looking his way, not daring to. "You hear me?"
Daryl walked off, Michonne and Ty right behind him. Bob soon caught up.
Kat POV
It was a horrible gargling cough. The kind where your throat was filling with saliva and blood.
"Henry, I need you to calm down. We're trying to help." My dad's steady voice instructed as Glenn, Sasha and I held his limbs in place while dad lowered a tube down his throat to open it up and get air to his lungs.
The three of us were weak, Henry was weak, but Henry was panicking and that made it difficult to hold him still, but eventually it happened. Dad pumped the bag on the other end of the tub, forcing oxygen into Henry's body.
Glenn and Sasha began to cough, the fatigue of holding the man in place catching up to them.
"Drink some of that. Both of you." Dad gestured over his shoulder to the elderberry tea while I slumped backwards and leant against the closest wall. "Some council meeting, huh?"
"We're two members short." Sasha spoke.
"Kat?" Glenn offered me the cup when he and Sasha had both had some. I wasn't coughing, but I took it regardless and had a sip.
"You okay to take over?" Dad asked Sasha before she nodded and moved to resume pumping the air into Henry. "Every five to six seconds, squeeze. If you start feeling light headed, grab somebody else to take over." She nodded, unable to speak anymore. "We'll take it in shifts."
Her eyes had horrible red bags until them and her normally even toned dark skin was dotted in sickly pale patches. Glenn didn't look much better and when my dad asked him instead of me to go on his rounds to check in on everyone else and the look Glenn threw my way before agreeing I knew I looked even worse.
I didn't want to move, not even an inch. Breathing was painful, my lungs burned and my muscles ached just from the rising and falling of my chest. My arms felt like jelly since I had let go of Henry's legs and there was a deep rhythmic thumping sound in my ears. The only comfort I could manage to summon was that my nose wasn't blocked... I always hated that.
Sasha and I didn't speak. We were beyond that. The strength I had had the day before when speaking with Glenn was gone. It was beyond ludicrous to think that just 24 hours ago I was feeling well enough to go on a run, yet here we were. It had come on so slow, but once the real signs had started to show it all came barrelling into me all at once. The aches, the coughing, the fatigue, the tiredness that never left because with it came insomnia. The worst kind of insomnia. The one where you needed sleep, not because you had to wake up early or because you'd had a long day, but the kind where you felt every ounce of tiredness and weariness and exhaustion and your eyes just close themselves without your meaning to and couldn't stop them or keep them open longer than two seconds before they did it again, but... sleep... sleep just never came. Like some cruel joke.
Time passed, but I didn't know how slow or how fast. It felt like it could be both at the same time, but also like it was frozen, frozen until the next cough was heard.
"You should go lay down." Sasha finally spoke after too long a time. "I'm fine doing this and if you going to rest you might as well get as comfortable as possible."
"Yeah." I agreed, but I didn't move, not for some time. Then slowly one knee bent and then the next. It felt like I was a barbie doll who's joints were being moved for the first time, stiff at first but then slowly it got easier until I found my way to my feet.
My cell was blessedly just one over and the mattress, as thin and worn down as it was, could have been a cloud when I hit it. More time passed. Time spent with my eyes closed, focussing on breathing in and then out, but not sleeping. Never sleeping.
I heard the sound of shuffling and crutches in my room and my eyes finally opened to see my father back from his rounds.
"Sorry to wake you."
"I wasn't asleep." I croaked. "I can't sleep."
"You'll tune the coughing out eventually."
"It's not that. Everything ache's and there's this loud thump in my ears and high pitch ringing behind it."
"Well... at least your nose isn't blocked. You've always hated that." I laughed when he mentioned it. "And you used to make it worse for yourself, sneaking nose spray more often and for longer than you should have been."
"Never been good at self-control." I whispered, my eyes closing again.
"I think you're better than you think you are." He sat down on the edge of my bed.
"They should be back now."
"Daryl will be fine."
"It's not him I'm worried about."
"You're going to be fine." He cut in quickly and I smiled.
"It's not me I'm worried about either."