Stale M&M's (recently plagiarized as "Sweet Tooth") The Walking Dead Fanfiction

8. Season 4 ~ The Office Blocks

Summary: As the sickness spreads, Carl and Oliver must go into quarantine to look after those most vulnerable. Carl's resentment against his father continues to grow. Oliver mourns his brother and grapples with his feelings for Carl.

~

The next morning, Carl woke up alone in his cot. Oliver wasn't in the top bunk either, but a wrinkled book was. Not one Carl had ever read, called Dream Boy. Carl checked his clock and saw that he'd slept in. He showered and got dressed. It was strange not to go and see his sister. Instead he left to farm in the gardens. His father was already down there working. Oliver, Maggie, and Glenn were digging multiple graves in the lot of grass on the far side of the driveway, where, before today, only T-Dog, Axel, Andrea, and the little remains of Carl's mother were buried in marked graves.

Carl soon learned that many more from D block had fallen sick overnight, as well as a few from other cell blocks, too, like Sasha and Dr. Subramanian. As a result, Michonne, Tyreese, Daryl, and Bob had left on a medical run to a college Hershel put them onto for the specific tools and medicine they'd need for proper treatment. It was far away, so they'd be gone at least until the next day.

Without the pigs, Carl and his father only had the gardens and Flame to tend to that morning, but were finished around the same time as usual considering Carl's father had let him sleep in again.

While Rick split off across the driveway to help Carol with something at the water pumps, Carl went to meet Oliver in the graveyard. He'd just finished burying Patrick, by the looks. Oliver was sitting beside his grave with his hands in his lap, looking lost. He let Carl sit with him for a while. Glenn and Maggie, who were still digging graves —wearing thick gloves and bandanas over their faces— gave them both sorry-looking nods.

Oliver had Patrick's glasses in his hands. He rotated them around his fingers, then propped them on the corner of his brother's headboard. Scratched out across the wood, read:

'Patrizio Abel de Luca
1994 – 2011.'

When Oliver got up and headed up the driveway, Carl followed him. As they crossed the courtyard it was strange not to see the cafeteria bustling with the morning breakfast rush. That morning, everyone was keeping to themselves, eating tinned preserves in their cells. Oliver went to the latrines outside B block and washed his hands and face with the rain buckets.

The sun glistened in the water on his skin. Carl had the urge to draw him, but pushed it away.

"Wanna go read?" he asked, wishing for things to feel normal again.

"Nothing to read. All my books are in my cell, contaminated."

"Knew you kept a stash outside the library."

Oliver unsurprisingly didn't feel in the mood for joking around.

"You have a book," Carl said. "I saw one in your bunk."

Oliver looked at him. He swallowed. He looked at the ground. "Oh, yeah. That book. I already finished it this morning."

"What's it about?"

"A boy," Oliver said, avoiding Carl's eyes, "who... likes another boy, who... likes him back."

Carl thought about this. He carefully didn't let any thoughts leak into his expression.

He asked, "Is it any good?"

"It's sad."

"Why is it sad?"

Oliver shrugged. "Because bad things happen to the kid. He's abused, lives rough in the woods, gets humiliated, and then, just when things seem to finally be going okay, he's beaten... and raped... and in the end, he dies..."