Li'l Sparky // [Daryl Dixon]

Disease

Season: Four

Episode(s): Infected - Isolation

*Ryan's POV*

"Help! Help! Please, come quick!" a girl named Lizzie came running out of the prison with her little sister, Mika. 

"Cell block?" Maggie yelled. 

"I don't know," Rick yelled back. I jumped over the railing and landed on all fours. 

"Walkers in D!" Glenn screamed. Oh, God. 

"What about C?" Rick asked, fearing for his daughter's life. Oh, please, no, Beth was in C! 

"Clear!" Sasha exclaimed. "We locked the gates to the tombs! Hershel's on guard." 

"It ain't a breach!" Daryl appeared. I stayed by his side. 

"We followed the plan," Sasha said. I followed her, Daryl, Rick, and Glenn into the prison. When we got into cell block D, my heart nearly stopped. People were screaming, guns were being fired, and walkers were moaning. 

I pulled an arrow from my quiver and shot a walker down. 

"Anyone who's not bit, get outta here!" I ordered. I picked up a girl named Molly and put her in a cell with her friend, Luke. 

"Check all of them! Every cell!" Rick instructed. "Are we clear down here?" 

"Yeah," Sasha nodded. 

"We're safe?"

"Yeah." 

"Up here!" someone on the upper level yelled. We went upstairs to see Glenn being harassed by a walker. 

"Get down!" Daryl shot the walker. I pulled Glenn back onto his feet. 

"Thanks," he gasped. Rick whipped the curtains away to see the walker. I recognized him immediately.

"Oh, it's Patrick," Daryl gasped. "That's all of 'em." Another girl was in the cell, dead. "I got it." He put an arrow through her head. 

---

Daddy and Dr. S started doing checkups on the survivors. I was still shaking. Something like this hadn't happened in months. 

The two doctors took a look at the dead. 

"No bites. No wounds," Rick addressed. "I think he just died."

"Horribly, too," Dr. S examined. "Pleurisy aspiration."

"Choked to death on his own blood," Daddy added. "Caused those trails down his face."

"I've seen them before on a walker outside the fences," Rick said. 

"I saw them on Patrick, too," Daryl added. 

"They're from the internal lung pressure building up-- like if you shake a soda can and pop the top," Dr. S explained. "Only imagine your eyes, ears, nose, and throat are the top."

"It's a sickness from the walkers?" Bob asked. 

"No, these things happened before they were around," Dr. S shook his head. "Could be pneumococcal. Most likely an aggressive flu strain."

"Someone locked him in just in time," Daddy pointed out. 

"No, man," Daryl shook his head. "Charlie used to sleepwalk. Locked himself in. Hell, he was just eatin' barbecue yesterday. How could somebody die in a day just from a cold?"

"I had a sick pig, it died quick," Rick explained. "Saw a sick boar in the woods."

"Pigs and birds," Daddy said. "That's how these things spread in the past. We need to do something about those hogs."