CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Andie walks up outside of Beth's cell, and the blonde looks up at her from where she's laying on her pillow. "Hey." She greets, but the older girl just looks at her. "What is it?"

"It's, uh... It's Zack." She says, and Beth's gaze drops to her pillow for a moment.

"Is he dead?" Beth asks, and she nods. "Okay." She sits up, letting her feet land on the concrete by her bed.

After a moment, the teenager stands up and walks over to a sign that she has in her cell. It tells them how many days they've gone without an accident. She removes the three, leaving only the zero on the board.

The blonde looks over and realizes that she's watching her. "What?"

"Are you alright?" Andie asks, and she nods.

"I don't cry anymore, Andie." She tells her as she walks over to the doorway. "I'm just glad I got to know him, you know?"

She nods. "Yeah."

"Are you okay?" Beth asks, and she looks down with a furrowed brow.

"Yeah. I, uh... I've just never really been good at this part." The brunette tells her. "And I'm really tired of losing our people."

The younger girl walks forward then and wraps her arms around her. "I'm glad I didn't say goodbye." She says. "I hate goodbyes."

After leaving Beth's cell, Andie ends up in the courtyard where they usually have breakfast in the mornings. She's sitting at one of the tables that aren't under a patio cover when Daryl walks over to her, then he sits on the bench beside the younger girl. He overheard her talking to Beth in their cell block and wanted to make sure that she's okay.

"She's spent the last six or seven months trying to be more like me." Andie says, staring at the darkness in front of them. "Is that who I seem like? Someone who doesn't cry over their dead anymore?"

"She's just trying to be as strong as she sees you as." He tells her.

"Strong." She scoffs as she looks down.

"You think you're not?"

"I don't know. Maybe Beth is onto something." She shrugs. "Numb does feel like a more accurate word lately."

"The way you acted back there, when you knew that he was gone — that we couldn't save him — that's not how someone who's numb to it all would've responded." Daryl argues. "You didn't want the walkers to be the ones to kill him, you didn't let the helicopter be what did it. You ended his pain, you didn't let it drag out. You put his comfort above your own safety."

"Oh, please, not this fight again." The brunette sighs as she leans forward, dropping her head into her hands.

"That's not where I was going with this... I just meant that it wasn't the way someone would act if they were numb to the way the world is." He says, and she turns her head to look at him. "You acted with...compassion. Caring is the exact opposite of numb."

"Losing Zack like that... It made me think of T-Dog." She tells him, and he sighs as he looks down at the asphalt. "I saw what the walkers did to him before I ran. I didn't have any bullets then, but I did this time. I just didn't want Zack to die like T did, you know? I didn't want him to suffer. Not in that kind of pain."

"Maybe you're changing, but you ain't numb to any of it."

Andie takes a deep breath as she sits up straight, letting her back rest against the table, and neither of them says a word as they both stare straight ahead. She shifts and her arm brushes against his, causing him to turn his head in her direction.

"Goodnight, Daryl." The younger girl gets to her feet and walks away from him, leaving him sitting in the courtyard alone.

—

Andie wakes up the next morning and she jumps when she rolls over and sees Karen sitting up in her bed. The younger girl pulled the mattress off the top bunk and slept there last night. They had been talking, but went to bed before it got too late because Andie has early responsibilities.

The blonde chuckles as she looks at her. "Sorry."

"I'm not used to having a roommate." Andie tells her. "I'll have to go back to my own cell tonight."

"Only if you're feeling up to it." She leans over and grabs her hand. "You know you're always welcome with m—"

The two women look toward the door when they hear a strange noise, and then a person stumbles into the cell. Karen's eyes widen as Andie rolls back toward the wall, lunging for the knife that she left there when she got ready for bed the night before.

Karen's scream echoes through the cell block as the walker trips over the end of Andie's mattress and falls on top of her. They hear the chaos starting outside of their cell as the younger girl struggles with the corpse, then she manages to stab it through the skull.

"Andie!" Theo's voice booms, and she throws the dead walker off of her before jumping out of bed and running out of the cell.

"How many?!" She yells as she kills one going after the kids.

"Too many!"

"Go! Lizzie, Mika, run!" Andie ushers them out of the cell block, toward the common area. "Get help! Get Daryl and Glenn! Go!"

"Help!" A scream comes from behind them, and the brunette whirls around to head back toward the group of walkers invading the cell block.

"Andie, here!" Karen tosses her the rifle that the brunette left by her door when she got to the cell block the night before.

Theo and Carter are both shooting as their people scream around them. There are cries as walkers tear into people's flesh, and Andie ducks into Karen's cell to grab her pistol. She wants something with a little less fire power while there are people running, trying to get to safety.

Daryl runs past Andie, grabbing a kid and handing him off to Karen. He turns back to look at the brunette as she stabs one walker before running to pull another off of a girl before it can bite her.

"Go, go, go! Go to Karen!" Andie instructs, and she runs to the blonde before her cell door is pulled shut to protect the kids that she's already got inside.

The brunette turns back only to find a walker coming right up on her, but someone else kills it before she can. She sees Merle pull the blade connected to his arm out of the walker's head, and she mutters a brief thanks before they both go to put down more corpses.

Rick and Glenn are helping their people get out when Tyreese comes running in to look for his girlfriend. Carol grabs Lizzie and Mika's father to try and tend to him after Glenn killed the walker that bit his forearm.

"Check all of them!" Rick orders. "Every cell!"

"Theo, lower level!" Andie shouts as she sprints up the steps with her pistol and knife each in a hand.

"Are we clear down here?!" He asks after the chaos finally seems to settle.

"Yeah, we're good." Theo tells him.

"We're safe?"

"Andie?!" Carter moves so he can look up at the upper level as she's checking cells, and Daryl rushes up the stairs to back her just in case.

A walker comes out of the very last cell, and the brunette stops walking as she lowers her weapons. All the fight drains from her body as she looks at what used to be Patrick. Even as it starts advancing on her, she can't bring herself to react.

An arrow whizzes past her head, and she watches as the corpse drops to the floor. Daryl lowers his crossbow as Theo rushes past two of them, going to check the other cells between them and the now dead walker.

Andie can't take her eyes off of the corpse that used to be the teenage boy she'd tease every morning at breakfast, even when she feels a hand on her shoulder. Patrick was such a sweet kid, and she thought his crush on her was adorable. Someone blocks her view of him, and she looks up at Theo as he reaches up to wipe a few specks of blood from her face.

"I-I'm good." The brunette clears her throat as she blinks the tears from her eyes, and he nods before going to help the others with what needs to be done now.

They start the process of making sure that no more of their people turn, and Andie flips the safety of her gun back on before tucking it into the waistband of her jeans. She didn't have any pajamas to change into when she went to Karen's cell, and she fell asleep in yesterday's clothes.

"Are you alright?" Andie asks as she walks over to the blonde, and she nods.

"Thanks to you." Karen takes a deep breath as she looks at her. "I'd be dead right now if you hadn't slept here last night." She says, and Daryl stops walking above them when he hears that.

"Yeah, well, glad to be of service." She mumbles as Carter walks over and hugs his mom.

"Oh, God..."

Andie looks up at Karen, but she's looking behind the brunette. She turns and sees Theo kneeling over Angela's body; she has a bite to her neck and the wound is where she bled out.

Daryl, Rick, Merle, and Hershel are making their way down the stairs when they see Andie kneel down in front of Theo. She takes the knife from his hand, telling him that he doesn't have to be the one to do it.

Theo looks up, his gaze going over her shoulder, but he's not looking at anything in particular. "I knew you were here, and I heard Karen scream. I didn't even think about it, I just got up and ran to make sure that you were okay... She didn't know how to handle the walkers, and I left her unprotected. This is my fault." He stands up straight and walks past her.

"Theo..." Andie stands as she turns to face him. "Theo!" She calls after him, but he leaves the cell block.

The brunette sighs as she turns back to the girl at her feet. Her jet-black hair is matted with blood and her clothes are stained crimson red. Andie kneels down again before driving her knife through the dead girl's ear.

Andie leans back and then lets herself fall onto her butt. She takes a deep breath as she lifts her head, staring into the common area; there's significantly less blood there, less dead bodies. She ignores the footsteps headed her way, not caring who's coming to check on her.

"You have an awful strange habit of pretending not to care about your friends." Merle says, and she doesn't look at him as he kneels beside her.

"We're not friends, and I still don't like you." The brunette says, and he chuckles.

"What's the deal with that one anyway?"

"Who, Theo?" She asks, and he nods as she glances at him. "He pretended to be something he wasn't. I trusted him, turned out he was a liar and a master manipulator. Screwed us all over in ways I won't explain."

"You really think he can't change?" He asks, and she shrugs.

"No. I don't know." She sighs. "I'd like to believe that he really is now who he pretended to be then."

"And why don't you?"

She lifts her head and looks up at him. "Hi, I'm Andie Gataki, and I have raging trust issues." She holds her hand out toward him. "Not entirely sure how that one slipped under the radar."

"Oh, it didn't, señorita." He takes her hand and pulls her to her feet as he stands up straight. "And it was very considerate of you to offer me the proper hand. I knew I was growing on you. You act less and less like a bitch to me everyday."

The brunette smirks as she shakes her head at him. "Fuck you, dude."

—

"Patrick was fine yesterday, and he died overnight." Carol says as the council's sitting around their usual table. "Two people died that quick?"

"It's not exactly common, but I've seen it before." Melissa says from the other side of the room; she's keeping her distance because she wasn't exposed in cell block D like the others were.

"We'll have to separate everyone that's been exposed."

"That's everyone in that cell block." Daryl says. "That's all of us. Maybe more."

"We know that this sickness can be lethal." Hershel says, and they all look at him. "We don't know how easily it spreads. Is anyone showing symptoms that we know of?"

"We can't just wait and see." Carol says. "There's children. It isn't just the illness. If people die, they become a threat."

"Well, then we need a place for them to go." Stilinski says. "They can't stay in D."

"And we can't risk going in there to clean it up." Melissa adds.

"What about cell block A?" Andie asks.

"Death row?" Glenn looks at her, and she shrugs. "I'm not sure that's much of an upgrade."

"It's clean. That's an upgrade." Daryl argues. "Think that'll work for you and Dr. S.?" He asks as he looks over at Melissa.

"We'll make it work." She tells him.

"I'll help Melissa and Caleb get it set up." Hershel says, and they all look toward the door when they hear someone coughing.

"You okay?" Tyreese asks Karen as they walk past the council room.

"Mhm." She nods.

"Karen, hold up." Andie calls as she walks out of the room with the others right behind her, and the two down the hall turn back.

"Are you sure?" Carol asks. "You don't sound so good."

"We're just taking her back to my cell so she can rest." Tyreese tells them.

"Tyreese, I don't think that's a good idea." Hershel says, causing them both to grow more concerned.

"Why? What's going on now?" The blonde asks as she looks at the members of the council.

"We think it might be a flu." Andie tells her when no one else quite knows what to say. "That's how Patrick died."

"Judith is in that cell block." Hershel says as he steps forward. "She's vulnerable. Anyone that may be sick or exposed should stay away."

"It— It killed Patrick?" Karen asks, the worry evident in her voice.

"She's gonna be okay." Tyreese says. "And now that we know what Patrick died from we can treat it, right?"

"Don't panic, we're gonna figure this out." Hershel says, and Andie walks past him.

"Hey, we lucked out with a medical team, remember?" The youngest says as she reaches out and takes Karen's hand in hers. "Hershel's right, we shouldn't panic. We didn't know there was anything to watch for with Patrick, but we do now. We'll get things handled. Right now, keeping you separate from the others is just a precaution — there's no guarantee that your cough has anything to do with what killed Patrick."

"Has anyone ever told you that you're too grown up for only being twenty?" Karen asks, and she smirks as she glances over her shoulder.

"You should've seen her at sixteen." Melissa hums.

"Or six." Stilinski chuckles, shaking his head.

"Should you even be holding my hand right now?" Karen asks, and Andie squeezes her fingers.

"I slept in your cell last night. I'm about as exposed as I can get." The brunette tells her. "Melissa and Dr. S. will give you a once over, get you somewhere comfortable to lay down. Then you and I can share a cell in another block tonight." She asks, and the older woman smiles.

"I'll see what we have in the way of medications." Hershel adds, and she nods as she looks at him over Andie's shoulder.

"Oh, um... David from the Decatur group, he's been coughing too." Karen tells them.

"I'll get him." Glenn says as he starts away from them. "There's some empty, clean cells in the tombs, right?"

"Yeah, we'll meet you there." Sasha tells him, then she walks over to guide Karen and Tyreese away from the others, and Melissa goes with them.

"Have to call another meeting later." Hershel says as Andie walks back over to the group.

"Alright." Daryl nods. "I'll get to burying the dead ones."

"You wear gloves and a mask."

"I'll help you." Andie says, and Daryl looks at her. "I'm gonna go stir crazy if someone tries to stick me in a cell."

"Are you feeling alright?" Hershel asks, and she looks up at him.

"Healthy." She shrugs. "For whatever that's worth these days."

"That's worth everything." Stilinski says, and she turns to him. "Your health is worth everything to some of us here."

"I'm not going anywhere, Pop." She reaches out and squeezes his arm before walking away from them.