Double Crossbow (Daryl Dixon) [The Walking Dead]

Chapter 49 ↣ Are you seeing this?

"When your sadness starts to feast,
she carries the light down from the
mountain and hands it to you,
tells you to set it on fire.
Think Prometheus. Think savior."

— Caitlyn Siehl, What We Buried

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Kathryn

I GRABBED MIKA and Lizzie by the shoulders, turning them towards me. "Listen you two. Run out that door as fast as you can and—" I paused as a threw my knife into an oncoming walkers forehead. "—warn the others what's happening. Go!"

As soon as I saw them disappear out the door, I ran back to the walker that had my knife and retrieved it. I had no idea where to even start. The cell was an in a state of absolute chaos. My group blended in with the walkers at every turn. Upon hearing a scream from the upper level, I raced up the stairs. However, I was stopped at the tee by two walkers. I took a few steps backwards and tried not to think of who they were behind the infection. As one approached, I shoved my knife into the underside of its chin. It fell to the ground revealing the second. I then lifted myself up onto the railing, and with a well aimed kick to its chest, I sent it tumbling down the stairs. "Incoming!" I called as it made its decent. Looking to the entrance, I saw reinforcements filing in.

Daryl

I didn't even have time to say her name before Kathryn disappeared from view again, chasing after whatever had caught her eye. Of course she was already here in the middle of all this chaos. I shook my head before jumping into action. Luke was cowering in the corner as a walker had turned its attention to him. I released a bolt, killing the walker. Then scooped the little boy up in my left arm.

"Check all of them—every cell!" Rick shouted above everyone.

I saw Karen ushering those who weren't infected into a cell. I quickly handed Luke off to her before running up the stairs to Kathryn. I looked up and down the catwalk, but saw no signs of her. "Kath?"

I glanced back over my shoulder as I heard footsteps. Rick appeared at the top of the stairs. When I looked back over, Kathryn was standing at the railing. Her back turned to the cell she must've just walked out. We cautiously approached her.

"You all right?" I asked. She didn't look at me.

Rick and I shared a glance before pulling back the curtain of the cell. I cringed. "Oh, it's Patrick," I said, my heart sinking further into my stomach. An eerily silence had fallen over the cell block now. I glanced over the railing. There was no movement. Nothing. "That's all of 'em."

Kathryn stood stoic at the railing. Her face skewed into something cold and unreadable.

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The next couple of hours were spent clearing the bodies, figuring out who they were, and making sure none came back. In other words, the worst hours I've had in awhile. Kathryn had been in here the longest, and I didn't want to think about what other horrors she could've seen. We finally made it to the end of a row of cells. Rick silenced the growls behind the bars before unlocking the cell door. Something was wrong about all this.

"No bites. No wounds," Rick said, looking over the body. "I think he just died."

"Horribly, too," Dr. Subramanian said. "Pleurisy aspiration."

Before I could ask for that translated into English, Hershel said, "Choked to death on his own blood. Caused those trails down his face."

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