Shock

Chapter 11

I slung my bow over my shoulder, and took out my knife again, I couldn't see the pins on my bow, so shooting was useless if I couldn't aim.

"Everyone in a circle!" Sasha called out, and the little kids, some crying, some screaming when a walker got too close, all stumbled and ran towards each other.

As the huddle began forming, Tyreese, Sasha, and I took places on the outside, killing any walkers that came at any one in the group.

All you could hear, besides the little kids that never stopped crying or whining, or screaming, was the snapping of branches and deep growls of the oncoming walkers.

The pile of dead bodies was slowly increasing at our feet.

"We can't stay here," Sasha harshly whispered to Tyreese over all the noise before plunging her knife into another walker's skull.

"Tyreese take the back, Sasha go some where in the middle, I'll take the lead," I say so they both hear me.

With the slight light that there was, I could see the confused looks on their faces.

Holding my pocket knife in my right hand, I grabbed the hand of the person to me with my left hand.

"Grab some one else's hand," I instructed to the little girl I was holding onto to.

And she did, and within a couple of seconds, a chain began forming, and I started heading for the road.

What seemed like every few seconds, some one would trip or stumble on a fallen branch, or kick their shoe on rock, sending the wave of unbalance up and down the line-but it was working.

The walkers seemed to be having as much trouble, if not more, than us walking through the woods, and when my feet firmly found the pavement of the road, we were able to move faster.

The amount of fear the walkers put into the group caused the people to continue to push themselves faster into the dark road ahead of us, no matter how badly they wanted to stop, just anything to get away from the walkers.

Running blind, with a large group of people dependent on you makes you focus, and listen to every little thing, and just hope that you're going the right way.

I noticed our group became very quiet, the only sounds were the sniffles of the kids that were crying earlier.

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Some how, we were able to travel through out the night, only stopping a few times to catch our breath.

The sun was just beginning to rise, giving us the bare minimum of light we had when the walkers caught up to us last night.

I had my full body weight leaning up against the gate, completely exhausted, watching Rick slowly come down towards our group.

Yeah, we had just arrived here a couple minutes ago, but I wanted nothing more than to lay down and sleep. It shouldn't be a problem if I stayed one more night, then left.

With out looking over my shoulder, I told the group to stand up as Rick was approaching quickly. I didn't have to fight back a smile for long for what I had just accomplished because as soon as I could see Rick's face I knew he was pissed.

I took a step back away from the gate and looked at the ground out of habit, waiting for him to reach the gate.

"Hallie? What are you doing here with all these people?" he began inquiring.

"I found them at Woodbury, they have no where else to go, and I couldn't just leave them there so-"

"You brought them here?" Rick interrupted me, stress clear in his voice.

"Yeah," I said quietly still looking at the ground.

"And what makes you think that you can just bring a group here? We are barely getting by the way we are now, how are we going to take care of more people? We aren't a day-" Rick began a rant, but stopped suddenly for some reason when I looked up at him.

He ran his hands through his hair, before letting them fall back down and hit his legs.

"Fine, you all can come in," he announced to the group as he began unlocking the gate.

We made our way up through the prison yard, through the gates, and into the prison's cafeteria.

Everything was still relatively dark causing all of us to walk closely together so we weren't separated.

Once we got to the cafeteria I began feeling light headed, and my stomach began to churn painfully.

As Rick began introducing the new group to the prison, I zoned him out, I found that each breathe I took became harder to take, and were becoming closer together to the point where I had to lean my weight on a table.

My head was throbbing, my stomach felt like it was pulsing in rhythm with my heart, and my lungs felt like they were caving in on themselves.

I closed my eyes and tried to focus on breathing but it didn't help.

I felt a tapping on my shoulder, and I shifted my gaze to see Rick looking concerningly at me, as if he was almost scared for me.

"Hallie? You okay? What's wrong?"

"I.. think.. I.. was..bit.." I managed to get out between breathes.

Rick shifted his weight around a lot before raising his eyebrows and asking "think?"

"Not.. break..skin.." my breathing continued to become increasingly rapid.

"You want to lay down? Have Hershel check on you?"

I shook my head no, and went to stand back up straight, but my vision immediately blurred, my knees buckled, and as the blackness began seeping in around the edges of my vision, all I could hope was that some one would catch me.