Survival Guide: To Surviving the Living Dead 101

Rule #25

Don't Get Sick

Don't get sick in this world. It's a death sentence. Sure people would die from the flu in the old world too but we had hospitals and medication that could help prevent that. We don't have that anymore. We don't have hospitals and medication to help make it better. And if you die you come back and all hell breaks loose. That's exactly what happened the next morning. Cell block D turned into a nightmare.

Daryl had stayed in my cell last night. It was nice to have someone hold me while I slept. It kept the nightmares away. When I woke up I turned around and brushed the hair out of his face and just looked at him. He looked so peaceful and relaxed. "Stop staring." I chuckled and placed a kiss on his lips. "I'm not staring," I said. He opened one eye and hummed. His arm wrapped around me tighter, pulling me closer. "What time is it?" He asked, putting his face in the crook of my neck. "Mm… probably almost six. We should get up and get ready for the day." Daryl hummed and placed a kiss on my shoulder.

Once we were up and got changed we got ready for the day we started hearing gunshots coming from somewhere. Everyone was rushing around and ran for cell block D. When we got there it was complete chaos. It was overrun by walkers. And those walkers were the people from that cell block. We took care of them and made sure those who weren't bitten were out of the cell block. After thing settled and we checked the upper cells I watched Rick closely.

Daryl and I stood close by at the last cell where Rick put down a walker. But the cell door had been closed and when we opened and checked him he had no bots or scratches on him. He just died from something else. Blood stricken down his face from his eyes. His mouth was covered in blood from where it must have gushed out of his nose and mixed with the blood from his mouth. Blood had come from his ears as well. Hershel and Dr. S came up to the cell block to look at him and see what had killed the guy.

"No bites. No wounds. I think he just died," Rick said. Dr. S knelt beside him and examined the guy. "Horribly too. Pleurisy aspiration," he said. "Choked to death on his own blood. Caused those trails down his face," Hershel told us. Rick looked up at him, "I've seen this before on a walker outside the fences." I looked down at the guy and sighed. "Insaw them on Patrick too," Daryl said. "They're from the internal lung pressure building up, like if you shake a soda can and pop the top. Only imagine your eyes, ear, nose, and throat are the top," Dr. S explained to us. "That's fucking horrible," I said, closing my eyes.

"It's a sickness from the walkers?" Bob asked. Dr. S Shook his head, "no, these things happened before they were around. It could be pneumococcal. Mostly an aggressive four strain," he said. "Looks like someone locked him in just in time," Hershel said. Daryl shook his head, "no, man. Charlie used to sleepwalk. Locked himself in. Hell, he was just eating barbecue yesterday. How can somebody die in a day from a cold?" He asked. Rick looked up at us, "I had a sick pig, it died quick. Saw a sick boar in the woods."

"Pigs and birds. That's how these things spread in the past. We need to do something about those hogs," Hershel said. Dr. S stood up, "maybe we got lucky. Maybe these two cases are it," he said. "Haven't seen anybody be lucky in a long time," Bob said. "Bugs like to run through close quarters. Doesn't get any closer than this," he added. "All of us in here, we've all been exposed." I looked at Hershel and sighed.

Carol, me, Daryl, Sasha, Hershel, and Glenn went to the library and had a meeting. We were all in that cell block. "Patrick was fine yesterday and he died overnight. Two people died that quick?" Carol asked. Nobody said anything so she continued. "We'll have to separate everyone that's been exposed," she said. "That's everyone in that cell block," Daryl said. I nodded, "and all of us too. Maybe more," I said. Hershel sighed through his nose. "We know that this sickness can be lethal. We don't know how easily it spreads. Is anyone else showing symptoms that we know of?" He asked.

"We can't just wait and see. There's children. It isn't just the illness, people die they become a threat," Carol said. "We need a place for them to go. They can't stay in D," Hershel said. "We can put them in death row. Plenty of cells and it's closed off more because of the glass. If family wants to visit and they can move they can use the visitation room. There's class in there so they won't be in contact," I said. "I don't know if that's much of an upgrade," Glenn said. I nodded in agreement. "It's clean. That's an upgrade. Do you think that will work for Dr. S?" Daryl asked Hershel. "I'll help Celab get it set up," he said.

Daryl and I got to work on digging graves for those who died. Hershel told us to make sure we wore gloves and a mask. So we found gloves and used bandanas to cover our nose and mouth. We would need to have a meeting later on how we were going to take care of those who are sick. We have a very limited amount of medication. And we would need to figure out a place to get more. Of course that would be the tricky part. The best place to go for mediation for something like this was a hospital. But the hospitals were overrun, cleaned out, or burned down.

Any pharmacies have been cleaned out a long time ago too. We would most likely need to go pretty far out to find anything. And the way it looks we don't have the time to take a week to go searching for medication. Whatever this was moved fast. We would need to find somewhere close by. That was going to be the fun part.