Future Ghosts • TWD

52. Death and Dying.

By the time the sun set that night and rose again in the morning, at least 12 more people joined Rosie in cell block A. Rosie ended up moving to a cell on the second floor because a lot of the people who were coming in could barely walk, let alone climb up a set of stairs. Some people were shaking constantly and others had started to cough up blood. Rosie was getting worse, too. She began coughing much more and was overwhelmed with tiredness. She couldn't stop sweating, but she felt like she was freezing. Her head was pounding and she was sure that someone on the lower level had died and turned, due to the faint growling noise from below.

Dr. S was sick now, too. And Sasha. Even Glenn had come to join them in cell block A. He was just about as sick as Rosie was, maybe even worse. When he came in, he ended up in the next cell over from Rosie's. He told her that Daryl was going on a run with Michonne and some others to get them medicine.

"Rosie?" a small voice said from the doorway. Looking up from her arms, Rosie could see that it was Lizzie, standing there with a fearful expression on her face. "Can I stay in here with you?" she asked.

"Um, sure," Rosie answered, sitting up in bed. Lizzie came into the cell and sat down on one of the chairs, pulling her knees up to her chest. "You're sick now, too?" Rosie asked.

"Yeah," Lizzie said solemnly. "Carol said I had to come in here. She said Glenn's in here now, too."

"He is. He's real sick. So is Dr. S," Rosie said, furrowing her eyebrows. The more time she spent in there and the more people that came in, the more worried she became. She wasn't sure if they would all survive. One person had already died, and others were coughing up so much blood that they were damn near close to dying. "Do you think we're gonna die?" Rosie asked.

"No," Lizzie said, a small smile appearing on her face. "Even if we did, we'd come back. The sickness doesn't hurt our brains."

"What? You mean as walkers?" Rosie asked, her eyebrows pinched together.

"Like Nick," Lizzie said, nodding in confirmation.

Rosie sighed and shook her head. "Lizzie, that's not the same. We'd be dead," she said. Lizzie's inability to understand that the walkers were dead frustrated Rosie endlessly. She worried that if Lizzie were to get face to face with a walker, she wouldn't be able to kill it. She wondered what happened before Lizzie got to the prison- what she was like out there, on the road.

"We're not gonna die, anyway," Lizzie said. She seemed so confident about the fact, and Rosie didn't understand why.

"How do ya know?" Rosie asked.

"Because your dad's gonna come back with the medicine and it'll make us better," Lizzie said, shrugging her shoulders a little.

"What?" Rosie asked, her face scrunched up with confusion. My dad?

"They're going to get medicine. I thought you already knew," Lizzie said.

"No, who are ya talkin' about?" Rosie asked. Lizzie had said that Rosie's dad was going out to get medicine, but that didn't make sense because her dad was dead. And even if he weren't dead, there was no way in hell he'd go out and risk his life for the people at this prison.

"What do you mean?" Lizzie asked, her eyebrows now scrunched together with confusion, too.

"Who do you think my dad is?" Rosie clarified her question.

"Daryl," Lizzie said, as if it were obvious. She raised her eyebrows. "He's not your dad?"

"No," Rosie said, shaking her head. The fact that Lizzie thought Daryl was her dad made no sense. She looked nothing like him! "My dad's dead," Rosie added, just to further prove her point.