CHAPTER FOURTEEN － NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY

Daryl told Beth the unfortunate news later that night, and from what Kate had been told, the teenager took the news as good as she could have. But Zach had been alone when found two months ago, and therefore only had one girl to truly mourn him and his memory. None of them knew what was worse anyways; his screams, or the looks on everyone faces when they arrived back empty handed, with one man injured and another deceased.

Kate spent most of the night after alone in her cell, white bedsheet draped over the open doorframe for privacy. She'd been doing her best to decorate the tiny cell, but it kind of hard when there was a toilet in one corner of the room. She'd long since turned ino a makeshift chair, but it didn't brighten up the stone walls very much. Still, sleep was tempting, a chance to forget about life's problems and relax while she could.

"Quick! Help!"

While she could.

At the cries of the two young girls, Kate hopped from her bed, almost instinctively running towards sisters Lizzie and Mika, who were bolting out of Cell Bock D, the one they and many people from Woodbury stayed in on the property.

"Walkers," Mika cried, braids smacking against her teary eyed cheeks. The girl was only about ten, one of the youngest, yet brightest. "I woke up and the first thing I heard was screaming. We can't find our dad."

Kate kneeled down for a moment, rubbing her arms, along with Lizzie's, though the twelve year old was silent, just breathing heavily. "Okay, you guys stay out here. Get to the others. I'll go in and see if I can find your dad."

"But the－"

"Go," She cut Lizzie off. "I'll be fine."

Kate wasn't sure if it was a breach, or if something awful had truly happened. What she did know, though, was that the cell block was utter chaos. Screaming, people running around from place to place. Scarlet red was soaking through numerous people's clothing, young and old. Most of the dead were on the floor level, though some had climbed up as well.

The first person she saw was Karen, who ran up her with haste. "I can't find my gun, I must have left it I Tyreese's room!"

"Here," Kate scrambled, pulling the pistol from her pocket and handing it to the woman before pulling out her dagger. "Get as many people put into the yard or locked in a cell as you can."

Others entered in behind her, one after another, only filling the room with even more potential victims. Daryl was carrying a kid, shooting an arrow into a walker. Carol was dragging a man into a cell. Tyreese was trying to lock in as many people as he could. One person was yelling, asking someone a question － Rick.

"Kate," He yelled again. "Are you bit?"

"No!" She shouted breathlessly, yanking her dagger out of a walker's thick skull. She hadn't even realized that blood was beginning to soak her arms with every kill. Every person she prevented from coming back to kill more. "Have you checked the top levels yet?"

"Sasha's up there right now! So is Glenn!"

Kate turned, ushering a few others into a cell before hearing a small scream. A little girl. Snapping her entire body back, she turned, spotting a walker trying to snap its claws into the arm of a little girl, with thick black curls and tan skin, who was trying desperately to push the beast away.

Blood would smaller onto that little girl's forehead as Kate shoved her dagger intimate the walker's skull, dragging it away from her by its pajamas. The small thing must have been her brother or father. The little girl, however, couldn't be any older than ten years old.

"Are you hurt? Any bites or cuts?" Kate inquired, kneeling down to her height and brushing the curls out of the girl's face.

The little girl shook her head. "He was trying to－ my brother－"

She shushed her. "It wasn't him. That wasn't your brother, it just wore his face. Here, get in." The woman directed the girl into one of the cells, where at least five others were hiding.

Rick called out, looking up at the empty second level. "Are we okay? Are we safe?"

"Yeah," Sasha yelled back. "But a lot of people got bit. I'm counting eight so far."

Rick glanced at Kate, nudging for her to follow him as they made their way upstairs, passing by a few bodies on the way. Even more were waiting downstairs, either having to accept what may be their final moments, or biting onto something while others began to treat them the only way thy could. By ending their suffering, or by cutting off limbs in order to potentially save them.

When the final walkers had been defeated, the group remaining upstairs paused, noticing a body that had no intestines fug out or bite marks. A fifteen year old boy who was friends with Carl, blood on his mouth, hands, and the sides of his face. Patrick had died naturally, but by choking on his own blood. He had been the one to start it, but he wasn't the only one to die that way.

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

"This is the fourth one so far. I thought it was just Patrick." Kate murmured.

"They're from the internal lung pressure building up, like if you shake a soda can and pop the top. Only, imagine your eyes, ears, nose, and throat are the top." Doctor Caleb Subramanian explained, who'd really just been a fifth year resident at a hospital in Atlanta when the world collapsed, but he was the most experienced they had, save for Hershel The Veterinarian and Bob The Army Medic. Dr Stevens, the woman who'd been Woodbury's only source of real treatment, had perished today as well.

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

"No, these things happened before they were around. Could be pneumococcal, most likely an aggressive flu strain."

"Someone locked this guy in just in time." Hershel hummed. "Things would've been worse."

"Nah, man." Daryl quietly spoke. "Charlie used to sleepwalk. Locked himself in. He'll, he was just eating barbecue yesterday. How could somebody die in a day just from a cold?"

"People died all the time from the flu a hundred years ago." Kate sighed, rubbing her nose. "Just not so suddenly."

"I had a sick pig down by the animals. It died quick." Rick commented from her right. "Saw a sick boar in the woods."

"Pigs and birds; that's how these things used to spread in the past." Hershel adjusted his grip on his crutch. "We need to do something about those hogs."

"Maybe we got lucky," Caleb said. "Maybe these two cases are it."

"Haven't seen anybody be lucky in a long time." Bob tilted his head back, leaning against the door frame. "Bugs like to run through close quarters. Doesn't get any closer than this."

"All of us in here－ we've been exposed." Hershel said. "We need to start quarentining everybody who's been in here away from everyone else in the prison. It could get ugly."

Twelve had died, each of them being those who resided in Cell Block D. Most were adults, who'd been asleep or unsuspecting. Four were children. One was Lizzie and Mika's father, Ray. The council agreed with the motion to start separating people, starting with the two that had symptoms, Karen and David.

Even worse, the crowding happening by the gates had since become worse, due to all the gunshots and the screaming that morning. It'd already been a small problem, one that the council was looking into earlier that week, but it'd never been this bad. Never over thirty, let alone sixty of them, all shaking the repaired fences at once.

One after another though, it didn't feel like it was going to end any time soon, and as more rotting bodies piled up over one another, it was just making the live ones trip and topple over.

Sasha gasped in disgust, pausing and taking a step back. Her eyes were trained on the ground, where a few, half eaten rats lay. "Are you guys seeing this? Is someone feeding these things?"

Even stopping for a moment had detrimental effects, the gate beginning to give in towards the middle so badly, it looked more like the tilted shape of the letter C, even with eight people pushing back against it, screaming in pain as the weight of tens rested against their backs and shoulders.

"Everybody back! Get back, now! " Daryl yelled, dragging Kate and Rick, who were each on either side of him, back by their forearms. The others followed, standing with their backs against the second fence line behind them.

"Fence keeps bending like that, the walkers will come in right over it." Sasha cried out, still attempting to stab a few of them from her far back position.

Rick rubbed someone the sweat off his fave, though it seemed like he was doing it more out of mental exhaustion than physical. "Daryl, get the truck. Everyone else, get ready to let us through. Try and get the rest of 'em, but get out if they break th fence or start crawling over."

The truck, as Rick would have it, held a box of piglets, who would each holler in pain as he cut them amd tossed them over the back one at a time, slowly luring the hoard of walkers at least a mile away. It'd definitely done the job, leaving just about ten stragglers behind, but when he came back, soaked in blood, with less food, Rick was silent, walking back towards the pig pen with a can of gasoline in his hands.

The fence was handled, for now, but the hoard was gonna make it way back eventually. Kate knew that, and had decided that her best course of action was to leave it alone. The more people along the gate, the stronger their scent would be to walkers. Still, she didn't want to stray too far, opting to remain in the large field with a bag of the guns she'd taken from inside. No bullets, just a few guns; a sniper rifle, an automatic rifle, and a pistol.

Her pistol, now. It had been for several months now, ever since the spring, when she'd taken it from Jared the day she left Woodbury for good. Karen had been right, when she'd said he'd taken off with the few who'd survived the attack on the prison, but it wasn't that which bothered her. It was the fact that he'd been there, when days prior, he was begging for her back, assuring her that bygones were just bygones.

She couldn't pass it off as ignorance, like the rest of Woodbury, or self defense, like Carl did when he'd shot that boy－ which ultimately got his gun taken away by his father. Jared was there that day, and he mightve killed her if he'd seen her, or worse. Her ex-fiancé was a cold blooded killer, and these days, you sometimes had to be. But he'd done so against her, against her brother, against a group that had, at that time, maybe seven physically capable people to fight back.

Kate tossed the unloaded gun back into the bag, lifting up the sniper and adjusting the weight of it against her chest. Heavy, uncomfortable, not meant for close contact at all, and half of the time, it felt like she only ever saw the dead when they were up close.

"You're holding it wrong."

She lifted her head up, slowly dropping her arms as Rick made his way up to her, freshly changed. In the direction he came from, a graveyard was being built by six people, a mountain of death wrapped up in white sheets. Three more bodies were being handed off over there now, covered up in it's own way.

Kate tucked a strand of her long raven hair behind her ear, turning away from the scene. She cleared her throat, "And you have a black eye now. What happened?"

His hand flexed, resisting the urge to touch the purple and grey spot sprouting underneath his eye, right by his cheekbone. "Your right arm was raised too high. If you lower it, the kickback won't be that bad."

"I thought you refused to carry your gun around anymore." She said, eyes trailing down to his belt, where his revolver was tucked in. He didn't want to talk aout whatever fight he'd just have, fine. Better than to start another by pressuring him.

"Guess its time I did again. Here, try it again," Rick gestured to the sniper, stepping a foot closer. "Just don't shoot anything."

"I made sure they weren't loaded. I just wanted to work on my aim."

He came up next to her, lowering her right elbow slightly for her, eyes trained on her stance and form. It must have been at least seventy five, if not eighty degrees outside, but the hairs that stood up on Kate's spine would've had her confusing it with fifty.

She sighed, setting the gun back into the bag with a gentle toss. "I'm just not comfortable with the bigger guns. I feel better using my knives on the walkers."

"You might not be able to." Rick explained, noticing that the only smaller gun in the bag was the one she used best, even if it had bad memories. Still her aim with it wasn't that great. "If a hoard breaks through, you're not going to have the energy to continuously stab eighty walkers in the head. If someone comes in, waving a gun in your face, bringing a knife isn't gonna do much."

"You'd probably still be able to take them down." Kate huffed. "I used to wear glasses, so im not very good with guns."

"You're great in close combat. Better than I am." He gestured to his cheek. "You're fast, nimble. Works in your favor."

"Not faster than a bullet." Kate placed her hands on her hips, glancing back at the graveyard. "I only got taught how to use a pistol, and it wasn't by a very good teacher. Sort of winged it on the rest."

"You never got any sort of training in Woodbury?"

"Jared－ he didn't really going very close to the walls. He stopped trying to show me the second we got there. The Governor agreed with him, kept trying to encourage me to garden instead."

Rick locked his jaw for a second, nodding in thought. "I can teach you."

"Really? In between all the gardening, I took you as a busy guy." She teased with laugh.

"Do I not look like a proper farmer to you?" He asked, the grimace of a smirk peeking out of he corner of his mouth. "Was it the lack of suspenders?"

Kate nodded. "That, and I think it'd drive you crazy eventually. You like having something to do."

"I also like working with my hands," He sighed. "But you're right. Hurts my back." Rick tugged his silver revolver out from his pocket, opening the barrel to take out the bullets still inside. "At the least, try to get comfortable with different guns. Get the feel for them."

Her eyes widened as he handed his revolver to her by the handle. Slowly, she raised her arms, pointing it out at the fence line where the walkers were beginning to pile up a bit again. It felt better than her pistol, provided it didn't belong to a man who'd emotionally tore her apart for months on end. It just didn't feel...perfect, like she could see herself actually carrying it and using it whenever need be.

Kate lined it up with her eye, though she lowered it a short bit after, feeling her arms grow a tiny bit strained when she handed it back to him. "Thanks."

He bowed his head, freezing for a minute before tucking the gun back into his holster. "I need to tell you something. Tyreese, he found two bodies about an hour ago."

"More people killed in D this morning?"

"No," Rick confessed, shaking his head solemnly. "No, they were murdered. Stabbed in the head, then set on fire. It wasmt the illness. Tyreese, he's the one who gave me the bruise on my face."

Kate gulped down some air, preparing herself for the worst. Well, not the worst. Rick was emotionally okay, sort of, so it wasn't his kids. She'd just seen Glenn and Maggie, so it wasn't him either. And Michonne was inside, bitterly recovering from an injury she'd sustained earlier. "Who?"

"Karen and David."

That explained Tyreese's lethal punch. She ran a hand through her hair, pursing her lips before unloading all of today's baggage to the dirt in an exhale. She didn't deserve to mourn, not like Tyreese, or Sasha, or the many others friends with Karen and David. She barely even knew David, as he'd arrived a month and a half ago with some friends he'd met out west. Hell, Kate had been annoying, keeling her distance from her old friend ever since the prison merged with Woodbury at the end of the war.

Karen, who'd tried time and time again to apologise and work things through in order to mend their friendship, had met her end under the guise that Kate hated her. But she hadn't, not really. It was just hard to be around her, some days more than others. She hadn't even been the one pleading upon Kate's death in Woodbury, way back then. It'd been everyone else, absolutely everyone else there.

Why couldn't she just try? Why was it so hard to look past one cruel thing Karen did, when she came to the prison with a gun pointed towards her, even just for one minute. Why was it so hard to just move on and forget about what happened? Daryl moved on, Glenn moved on, even Maggie. And they'd gone through so much worse han she had, so why was it only her still struggling?

"I'll figure out who did it," Rick insisted gently. "For you, and for Tyreese."

She shook her head. "I don't want to know. I...I shouldn't."

He slowly turned her to face him, rather ha the grass. His hand on her elbow, just as it had been when he was fixing her shooting form before. "You do deserve to know. You were still her friend."

"Not a very good one." Kate shuddered, rubbing her face with her other hand. "I know I've been isolating myself ever since they came here. I know it was the right decision, bringing them back here. I know that."

"I wouldn't have brought them back if I thought they'd hurt you－"

"It's not that. I know they won't. I just..." She groaned, physically struggling with how to word it. "I'm working through it. The flashbacks, and the anxiety I get around some of them."

Rick paused, his eyes flashing with recognition. "You slipping?"

"I don't think so. Just...I hear it. That day we met, when Daryl and I were taken. That whole day sucked, really. I just hear it, sometimes. Relive it in my head." Kate explained. "I know it's been months, and I know I'll be okay. I'm doing better, aren't I? Glenn actually trusts me around my own shadow again. That means something, right?"

"It does, but it doesn't mean you're done slipping yet." He said. "When I lost Lori, I saw her. It's the same thing with you, but it's voices. Am I right?"

"Yeah, but also...I have to rub my jaw when I do."

Rick furrowed his eyebrows, and then he softened them. The day they met, Kate was an oddly shaped bruise on her jaw. And he'd been too distracted at the time to ever ask her about it, but it didn't matter. He knew who gave it to her.

"It'll stop over time. I know that, because you stopped slipping too. And if you can survive something, so can I."