Haven't edited this, sorry :p
It was when the coughing started that things started to go down hill... well... the slope got steeper at any rate. It wasn't that I hadn't already been coughing, but this... this felt like the end. Like my last breath had been taken and half way through it someone shoved a cork down my throat and now all that was left was to wait for the pains of suffocation to start. I knew all about that. The sledgehammer that would begin to pound in my head, the high pitch ringing in my ears, the desperate reflex as I tried to gasp for air, but would fail as my throat glued itself together. But I only knew of it in theory I certainly never experienced it and the idea that I was about to made the panic set in.
You can try it if you like. Try closing your throat off and make a motion to breath without taking in any air. It will show every tendon and vein as the skin suctions in around your throat. It's a silent motion, how could you make any noise when your voice box is trapped on the inside. Now imagine yourself doing that without control, your body's own reflex that you couldn't stop. Your chest thumping in fear and anguish, the pain beginning in your starved lungs. Hands reaching and clawing at your throat as if it would help. You might as well be underwater.
I would have rather face 50 walkers on my own then that moment. It's a very particular kind of panic. Half shock, half terror and no ability to do anything. I stopped hearing, there was no sound anymore and slowly sight began to go with it as if looking down a tunnel, the light at the end the only thing I could see. Tunnel vision it's called.
Frantically moving is all I could to as if I'd magically find a position that makes everything comfortable again. That allows me to finally gasp for air.
Then everything went dull and numb and for the first time I slept... or passed out rather. But once I was unconscious the panic subsided and my throat opened up as oxygen found its way to my lungs. It was just another cough like any other, but I had over thought it I realised as I woke from unconsciousness. The pounding headache and ringing in my ears was my only proof that it had been real... or maybe it hadn't. Maybe sleep had finally come and it was just a nightmare, the headache just another symptom.
I honestly didn't know the answer. But that fear. That fear had been real, the panic had been real. Dream or not.
Another cough came. This time it did make a sound, it was a convulsive, heaving, wretched sound.
"Sit up." Glenn ordered as he came into the room, helping me sit and then keeping his hand on my back for support. With shaking hands I took the cup he placed in my palm and took a drink.
My voice was strained and broken and there was a crackle in my throat with every breath, but I managed a "thank-you." He nodded and I started to lean forward, the upright position too exhausting, but Glenn grabbed my shoulder and pushed me back up again.
"To much pressure on your lungs, remember."
"Smartass." I smiled back, thinking on what I'd told him earlier. "How's Henry?"
"I took over from Sasha for a while, Hershel's back in there now. He sent me to you."
"Sounds like it's my turn."
"You don't have to."
"Yes I do. It's good to be doing something anyway." I managed to get to my feet and wander into the next cell, kneeling down beside my father. "I got this."
He nodded, placing a hand on my shoulder and stood up. I pumped the oxygen until it was time for another shift change and Glenn took over again while Sasha had moved downstairs to her cell for some rest. I couldn't go and lie back down again, not in that cell, not alone, not again. So I walked out onto the balcony and started slowly pacing. The funny thing about jelly legs was that they may not have felt capable of holding you up, but they just naturally bent on their own and once you got used to it, it took half the work from you.
"How you feeling?" I asked Lizzie as I walked by her cell.
"Better than most." She answered, looking surprisingly well, but clearly still running a fever. "Luke's downstairs."
"He is?"
"They brought him in last night." She nodded.
"Okay, I'm going to go see him. Keep an eye on things up here will you?" She nodded before I made my way to the stairs. Looking down was the worst thing I could have done. A disorientating feeling set in like a vertigo effect and I had to close my eyes or look only at my feet as I gripped the railing and made it down.
"I don't think I did a good enough job a staying away from people." Luke said as I entered his cell.
"That's alright. I didn't either." I said back, taking a seat on his bed.
"You look tired."
"Yeah, trouble sleeping. You." He shook his head.
"My dad used to say I could sleep through a war." I chuckled.
"Lucky. What are you playing?" I asked, looking at a deck of cards he had spread out.
"Nothing really. I'm just organising them. Do you want to play snap?" He then asked.
"Sure."
"Here." Luke bunched all the cards up and held them out to me. "You can shuffle. I'm not very good at it."
I smiled and took the cards and proceeded to play snap for the first time in probably ten years. He'd beat me every time. I liked to imagine it was because I had been sick for longer and therefore my reflexes were more impaired.
It wasn't long before my dad began to make some rounds, closing cell doors and locking people in for the night. When he came up to ours and I went to move Luke shook his head.
"Please stay. I don't like the sounds in the dark in here." I would have, but I couldn't. I was worse than he was and if I turned he would be helpless.
"I can't, Luke. But I can stay a little while longer." I turned back to my dad. "Just half an hour. I'll shut the cell when I leave."
"Okay." He nodded. "But I don't want you going back up those stairs. Use that empty cell." He pointed to the one next to us.
That half an hour never had a chance to come around in peace.
"Hershel." Lizzie's voice carried down the stairs. "Hershel!"
There was a growl of a hungry walker and the nearly asleep, but not quite, Luke suddenly shot right awake.
"Stay here." I told him, straining to get to my feet.
I saw Lizzie first, standing on the balcony, looking down at someone on the ground, but not the walker that was waking in front of her. The walker was Henry, which meant the person she was looking at, concerned for, was Glenn. I grabbing hold of the cage door for support as my head span before my attention was drawn to the sounds of the walker. I woman leaving a not yet closed cell. She was right near my dad and she went right for him, knocking him as he held her up off him, but not in a position to take her out.
"Liz.." My voice broke. I wanted to yell at her to get away from Henry while I ran for my dad, but a nearly soundless crackling whisper was all that came out and my legs fumbled as the desperately tried to make it to him. I managed to slam Luke's cell door shut as I went, but my legs weren't jelly anymore and if they were they weren't set jelly. The wall was my only support as my fingers curled around the cages keeping me up right.
I had a knife. I always had a knife. I kept it in my boot, but fumbling for it was even more pathetic than my steps, but I pulled it out and then forced every ounce of energy I had left into my next motion. I stepped as quickly as I could and with the best aim I could manage I drove the blade into the walkers cheek and half fell on her, knocking her off my father as the both of us fell to the floor. I scrambled up right, she was still knurling, I pressed my palm to her chest to keep her down, ripped the knife back out and drove it into her skull before collapsing backwards onto the cold cement.
"Kat!" My dad scrambled to his knees and slid over to me. "Katherine? Everybody, stay in your cells." He yelled out when some people began to come and look, but a couple were already out.
"L.... Lizzie." I managed to say and his head snapped up to the walkway on the second floor. She was leading Henry away from where Glenn was, calling him to follow her. He at least still had the bag taped to his mouth, but that didn't mean he couldn't do other damage. "Go." I told him in a whisper and slowly he nodded and got up to head for the stairs.
He was halfway up them when a man screamed behind me, a scream accompanied by a gun shot. I strained to turn me head. A walker had left another cell and come up behind him where he had stood distracted, looking at the scene before him, perhaps about to help me to my own cell. The gun I presumed he had brought with him in an attempt to help with the first walker, but perhaps never got a good aim. Now he shot because his hand squeezed the gun at the pain in his neck. The bullet buried itself in the cement. It bit down on his neck and knocked him to the ground, falling after him and munching down in an animal like fashion.
I rolled onto my stomach and pushed myself up onto my elbows, looking back over to my father where he had stopped, almost ready to come back down.
"Go!" I somehow managed to yell.
Just one more walker. I could handle one more walker. He did. Faster now as he ran for Lizzie on his one leg and crutches.
The knife. I had to get the knife back. I heaved myself up further, a wheezing cough escaping me as it did. My legs had completely given out on me now. They had had enough, the aches had won out. I crawled to the female walker and once again ripped the blade from her head before managing to get to my knees. The other one was still distracted by it's fresh food, not caring about anything else. It made the job easy, but not the effort. I half fell onto him as I drove the knife into the back of its head, this time ripping it out as I did and falling back onto my elbow, wincing in pain.
I scrambled backwards, away a little and then fell the rest of the way flat on my back again. The wheezing kept coming and then some more cough. MY head was still spinning despite being on the floor now. My head lulled to the side just in time to see my father, the one-legged old man flip Henry the walker over the ledge, away from Lizzie and on to a wire netting that ran across the outside of the walkway. It was put in place to stop prisons from jumping perhaps, or attacking and throwing guards over the ledge. I didn't know.
He looked down to me, two dead walkers and one dead man surrounded my collapsed body as I heaved for air. I gave him a nod saying it was okay, I was just tired and that he should go to Glenn. If he knew about Glenn, but Lizzie told him and off he went.
I lay in silence for a moment, listening to my dad's encouragements, telling Glenn to hold on. I couldn't move. Not anymore. Each breath hitched in my throat and then I heard another struggle. I looked back up the way I had before and found my father over the railing and wrestling with Henry, reaching for the oxygen bag.
I couldn't keep my eyes open, not until that awful groaning and moaning of the dead sounded again. My grip tightened on the knife, at least I think it was a tight grip and the suddenly a dark hair walked with a ripped out throat was hovering over me. Foolish. I should have stabbed him right away, but the idea never even crossed my mind. I couldn't think straight. I could barely breath or move. My father was wrestling another walker, but the image wasn't processing in my mind correctly.
The blood the dripped onto my cheek from the walkers still fresh open wound I did understand, however. And when he leant down to take a chunk from my stomach and drove the knife up into his temple and the weight of his body collapsed half on me, covering my torso.
Everything started to blur and dull in colour and the weight of the walker was pushing down on my already weak lungs. I thought I hard Maggie's voice screaming to open something. The door maybe? No. She couldn't be in here. But then she was. She came running in, I heard another gun shot and then the weight was gone and my sister was leaning over me.
"Kat? Kat can you hear me."
"The... Oxygen bag." I managed to choke out. "Dad," A fit of coughing tore the rest of the sentence from me for a moment. "Dad will need help. Glenn."
"I can't leave you like this."
"He's worse." I managed to say. He was worse. If he needed that bag he was much worse. He was looking to be the healthiest of the three of us not long ago; me Sasha and Glenn. But looks could be deceiving and all it took was one bad cough. Slowly she nodded and then ran up the stairs.
"Clear his airway." My dad was instructing, their voicing carrying down to me as I listened. All I could do was listen. "Put him on his back."
"Dad." Maggie was repeating in a panic over and over.
"Hold his arms down. Come on, Son. Come on now. You now how this works. Stay with us." It went silent and my eyes got heavier.
"You're gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay now." I heard Maggie finally whisper.
The door flew open and a rough voice yelling my name was the last thing I heard as I felt a warm hand touch my cheek and my body being propped up against his chest.
"You made it." I barely managed to whisper to Daryl as my eyes closed and the knife fell out of my hand and clattered to the floor.
Thoughts?
So close tot he end of this season, to be honest. The next two eps are the governor so I won't be writing those then the mid season final and when they're all out on their own it'll go by pretty quick.