Go Downstairs

We were all tired and aching. My throat hurt from screaming and my head was pounding in my skull. I sat down on the ground, not caring that I was in contact with the remains of the dead undead. I glanced to my left and noticed Andrea had done the same. She was holding her forehead in one hand and her unloaded pistol in the other, the slide locked open.

I propped up my elbows on my knees, exhausted and just wanting to sleep. Nobody seemed to be in too much of a panic now that the walkers were distracted, but something seemed off. I looked up at Daryl’s tired eyes (who were looking back at me with concern) and around at the others. Then I noticed; Rick was nowhere to be found.

“Where did Rick go?” My voice was hoarse.

“Rick? Oh…” answered Andrea, who was in a sort of trance.

“T-Dog, did you see where Rick went?” I started to get worried but had no idea why. I still hadn’t forgiven him for what he’d done. Not one bit.

But T-Dog wasn’t listening either; he was making his way downstairs. Daryl helped me to my feet and I purposefully kept our hands intertwined as we joined him down the bloodstained stairs. It made me feel more safe and secure to be holding on to something other than my empty gun.

I heard shuffling behind me and whipped around. To my relief it was just Glenn, Maggie and Andrea who had decided it was time to see the damage themselves. We turned the corner and finally got a real good look at the place. One of the windows was smashed through and a pack of walkers had thrown their bodies into the hole trying to get in. Thankfully none of them were moving. The whole house was trashed; the couch had pieces of fluff torn out of it, the table was broken in two, there were blood splatter patterns on almost every wall, and the floor was barely seeable.

I let go of Daryl’s hand to walk into the room we had been in when we discussed what to do about the walkers; the room I had made our final decision in. There, among the dead walkers, lay Hershel and Jimmy. But they didn’t lie there for long. I saw Hershel’s arm twitch (just like I had felt when Shane had been reanimated) and he slowly started to sit up. He had a huge bite on his left shoulder and his white hair was stained red along with his once white shirt. His eyes were drooping and his skin was already grey. Because of the massive amount of walkers around him he struggled to get up, but it didn’t matter. An arrow had just gone through his skull. Another THWACK and sound of blood spattering gave evidence that Jimmy had also become one of them. I turned around to see Daryl lowering his crossbow.

“Damn glad I found this,” he said. “Left it here for stealth reasons. Thought I wouldn’t get the chance to get it back.”

He walked passed the bodies of the undead and pulled out his crossbow bolt, then walked over to another window to pick the arrow out of Jimmy’s brain. Luckily, Maggie hadn’t seen her father reanimated.

“Rick...? Riiiick?!” Andrea called out.

“Over there!” Glenn pointed at the door that led to the basement. It was wide open. Maggie started towards it, but Glenn pulled her back. “Wait! You don’t know if that door is open because they’re coming out…or…” he paused to swallow what I was sure was a giant lump in his throat “Or if they got in there somehow.”

That turned my body to ice and by the look on everyone's faces, theirs did too. We stood there frozen until we heard shuffling from the basement. Daryl stepped in front of me since I was the closest to the stairs and shielded me from what was lurking beneath.

“Well... where else could Rick’ve gone?” I asked, eyeing the basement.

“There’s only one way to find out.” Daryl held his crossbow tightly in both hands and edged his way towards the noise.

“Wait—!” but he ignored me and descended down the stairs anyway. We all held our breath, waiting for something to happen.

“Hey!!!” a shout echoed back to us and I instinctively dashed down the stairs, praying he was alright, that they were all alright.

“What? What happened?” I said breathing heavily. Footsteps behind me meant the others had followed.

The light in the basement was on, and all of the people who had gone down there for safety were huddled on the ground. They were all a pasty white, almost as if they’d been scared out of their skin.

That’s when I felt my heart fall down to my stomach. I realized Rick and Carl were in the middle, hovering over something—someone.

“No… Lori—wake—up.” Rick said between sniffles.

The girls around them were sobbing and whimpering hysterically.

“What… happened?” I asked again.

“She was getting Carl who’d gone up to see if his dad was okay, she stumbled, fell down the stairs, all the way down… onto her back. And she hasn’t woken up since. It’s been about half an hour…” Beth was biting her nails and Maggie went over to hug her. I swallowed a lump in my throat.

“W-we couldn’t do anything! W-we heard n-noises upstairs… didn’t know if th-they had gone and d-didn’t wanna risk any th-th-thing!” Carol turned from the ground to face us. Her whole face was drenched in tears.

“It’s… all my fault…” I heard a small voice croak.

“Get him away… get him outta here…” Rick was talking to Carol about his son. She stood up and picked up a motionless child. At first I thought Carl had been hurt too, but then I saw his eyes were open and his face and shirt were drenched in sweat and tears. He was in pure shock.

She began to carry him near the stairs, but Daryl stopped them.

“You don’t want to go up there… the place’s a mess…” he warned her. She nodded and turned around to occupy a corner instead.

Carl lay in Carol's arms, the both of them staring off into space.

“Is… is she dead?” Andrea said so quietly I didn’t know if she had even spoken at all.

“There’s still a heartbeat.” Patricia answered. “She’s just knocked out cold and we don’t know when she’ll wake up. She could have a concussion or a mis—” She stopped dead in her sentence, afraid that if she said “miscarriage” she’d have jinxed it.

“We have to bring her upstairs, get her to a bed.” Rick said, still at Lori’s side.

The groups of people that had been fighting the walkers all looked at each other including the one I’d been in. I didn’t know if that was possible; the house was in no state for someone to be able to lie in a nice, clean bed.

“We’ll have to do our best…” Andrea said, reading my mind.

T-Dog, Andrea, Glenn, Maggie, Daryl and I all treaded back up the stairs and at once started to haul walkers out of the house. We started a pile of bodies outside where we could burn them in the morning (the night was too risky to draw in more walkers). Higher and higher the pile grew and as the sun crept over the earth and into the sky, we had finished bringing them all out.

They had brought Lori upstairs and onto the couch that had fluff torn out of it. It was better than the broken down beds and bloodstained floor. The group that had been working all night all crashed in the sitting room. I had a dreamless sleep which was surprising since so much had happened.

But when I woke, I heard angry voices all around me. The group was having another heated argument.

The Argument