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C A R L

After my mom and the others tended to Hershel's bloody stump, I decide to take it upon myself to find the infirmary they were talking about. God knows they could use the supplies. If he's even listening to their desperate pleas.

My boots click against the cement floor of our new home as I quickly creep past the rest of the group and into the tombs.

I shine my flashlight over the top of my gun down the hall of the tombs, listening for anything. For a few moments, all I catch is pulsating, lingering silence.

"Hey!" A hushed yell is sent echoing from the walls behind my back.

As a reflex—of which I quickly picked up while living out in the open for so long—I aim both my flashlight and my gun at the first sign of noise, not even recognizing it as a lone word.

My finger twitches against the trigger before my eyes land on the cleanliness of the walker in front of me.

Soon, I realize that this is no walker.

"What the hell are you doing in here?" The voice says, as I'm able to match it with the person it comes from.

A girl. Her pale skin glowing under the harsh illumination of my flashlight. Her forehead wrinkling a bit, along with the crinkles of her eyes as she squints at the light.

Her wavy, ashy hair tussled about, a few strands sticking outward from her pale face. My eyes trace down her neck, to the rest of her body. Her glistening arms roam free as her jumpsuit remains tied at her waist. The girl's upper half left concealed in an aged, sleeveless top.

In the belt loop of her jumper, sits a knife, one that I don't recognize to be one of our own.

Once I take a moment to establish that she's one of the few prisoners my dad was arguing with earlier, I lower my flashlight, keeping a tight grip on my gun.

"Where's the infirmary?"

☆

The girl I've grown accustomed to finally begins to sleep after tossing and turning for a long while. After the frequent rustling of her sleeping bag, silence consumes the cabin of the guard tower that we've made our own over the past few weeks.

I once again hear the muffled sound of the girl's sleeping bag crinkling as she rolls over on her side.

Most days—I spend them sleeping, so that I can take night watch, while the girl sleeps. Though, I hardly ever feel fully rested.

It's for the best that, tonight, the nervous girl gets some rest, as we already have quite a few challenges to face tomorrow, which hasn't even come yet.

Megan seems awfully hesitant about our separation from this place. Although my eagerness is encouraging her to join me in the outside world, I can tell that she doesn't really know why I want to leave.

Selfishly, I've been allowing the girl to think of the prison as a cushion, that we can fall back on at any time, in order to ease her into leaving with me. While I really don't plan on coming back so easily. But the girl might not even want to come back, given her history with the place.

Megan being in prison since before the outbreak should rattle me, or at least raise some suspicion, but it doesn't. Instead, it instills a feeling of curiosity and slight pity for the girl.

It couldn't have been easy being trapped with those two airheads we found her with. She clearly never even fit in with the two people she had most in common with around here.

Megan's growing disdain for the prison, as well as her lack of knowledge about the outside, have been a helping hand in getting her to agree to our little plan.

I break my eyes away from the tree-line and look over at the girl.

Her back faces me and her pale hair lays somewhat across her sleeping bag and onto the floor. Her chest slowly rises and falls as she sleeps heavily like she has been for the past half-hour.

Unfortunately, that's all the sleep that the girl will be able to get for the night because it's slowly approaching the time we need to pack up and leave.

☆

"Okay, is that everything?" The girl asks me, her voice sounding strained and hoarse because she woke up only a few moments ago.

I scan the room once more, pat my pockets with my hands and then make sure I feel Megan's gun in my thigh holster. "Yeah," I breathe out, turning my head. "You have the flashlight?"

The girl pats her pockets. "Got it."

I take one last look at the room where our sleeping bags were all once sprawled about, our supplies laid neatly organized—courtesy of Megan—and our ventures were schemed. Opening the door, I motion with my hand for the girl to enter the stairwell before me.

Following the girl as she steps out onto the gravel, I plant my feet and turn towards the fence. "Okay, just like we planned."

She grips her flashlight and clicks the light to the dimmest setting, as to not attract any unwanted attention from the dead as well as the living.

I grab the bolt-cutters I'd previously left against the fence and begin cutting the wire link by link, while Megan holds the flashlight. As I cut our exit in the fence, I notice the girl stifling coughs into the thick sleeve of her jacket.

After cutting about three feet of wire close to the ground, we have our exit.

"There," I breathe out and take a step back from the hole in the fence. "Can I see the light?" I ask the girl, reaching my hand out.

Once she places the small flashlight in my hand, I turn it around to shine it on her. Her under-eye bags remain a faint shade of purple, her lips lacking in color and her overall demeanor is strikingly pale.

"Are you okay?" I ask the girl.

"Yea, I'm fine. Don't worry about me." She says, quickly shaking her head and avoiding the question.

"Alright," I roll my eyes.

I pry the hole open wide enough for the girl to get through, without much risk of snagging herself. "After you."

Once she's through the hole, she reluctantly does the same for me and I shimmy through the broken fence to the other side. Megan let's go of the fence and lets it carefully snap back into place.

I sit on my knees for a second and then search in my bag for the wire we got from the tool shed.

"Can you hold it closed?" I ask the girl and she nods before clearing her throat and then pulling the two sides of the fence together.

I weave the wire in between the links of the fence and tighten it with every loop. When I weave the wire to the bottom, I twist until there's no more slack left and then tuck the end back through the fence.

Standing up and brushing the gravel off my knees, I grab the fence and give it a sturdy pull to make sure the wire will hold it together until someone notices the hole.

"And, we're out." I loosely breathe out, and look to the girl for her response.

The look of pure nausea written on her face leaves illness to be assumed rather than worry. "Just like that."

"Are you sure you don't want to stay another night?" I ask the sickly-looking girl.

"No, I'm fine." She groans, with a sniffle. The hot air from her breath rises up with the cold wind. "Lead the way."

I take a few steps away from the prison fence, waiting for Megan to follow. Once I hear her dainty footsteps in the gravel behind me, I pick up my pace and head toward the path in the forest that we picked to follow a few days ago.

As we approach the tree-line, I quietly pull Megan's gun from my holster, as the girl grips her knife.

"The armory is about a mile and a half towards Macon," I whisper to the girl, who is attentive to my every movement. "Should take us about half an hour if we take our time."

"Okay." Her raspy voice breaks out into a whisper.

The girl walks into the tree line with subtle steps, leading the way. She doesn't bother to wait for me as I take one last look at the gloomy, quiet prison over my shoulder before, hopefully, we disappear for good.

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1458 words

A/N

Okay the s4 storyline of them leaving the prison is literally so out of character for Carl and it seems really bad I KNOW

but I think I do it justice in the next few chapters OKAY

☆one vote = one good vibe for Megan's sickness ☆