Walking With the Dead

And it did get easier.

With each passing day, life was becoming bearable. Every morning Emma would spend a bit less time wallowing in bed than she had the day before. She was slowly playing a more active role in the group, regaining her old responsibilities and earning new ones. She even started developing an appetite, especially on the days she worked with the men to clear walkers from the fields surrounding the prison.

She would still wake up in middle of the night, drenched in sweat and heart pounding from her latest night terror, and it would take hours to lull herself back to sleep. But still, life was getting easier. Slowly.

One morning, about a month after moving into the prison, Emma was in the infirmary, taking stock and organizing everything. It was mindless work that kept her hands busy, but most of all Emma enjoyed the peaceful silence.

Silence. She smiled to herself. Just a few months ago the absolute silence put her in a constant state of paranoia; she was always looking over her shoulder, expecting to see a walker ready to pull her to the ground and devour her. But now, the silence was comforting. It was a safe space where she could do or think anything she wanted.

It helped that she knew the prison was completely secure, or at least the portions they used were secure. C Block, the prison cells where they slept, and B Block, which consisted of the public areas like the cafeteria, library and infirmary, were completely walker-free. Every day for two weeks the men would patrol the halls every morning and every evening, but not a single sign of a walker arose.

According to the inmates, A Block, which is where the prison guards’ kept their uniforms and weapons, was still infested with walkers. As a means to survive, the inmates had locked all the walkers in the A Block. But that area was triple-padlocked. There was no way those walkers were going to get free. Not on their own.

“Good. Someone is in here.”

The sudden voice breaking through the silence made Emma jump, and the clipboard she was using to take inventory clattered to the ground. She turned to the open doorway and was immediately drawn to a pair of black eyes.

“Miguel, I didn’t hear you come in.”

Miguel just gave a slight smile. “I have a quiet walk.”

“I’d say.” Emma glanced down and saw Miguel’s left hand was wrapped inside a rag with a growing red stain on it. “You’re hurt. What happened?”

“Oh,” he started, a sheepish grin claiming his face. “I was outside with the others, mending a hole in the chain link fence and I accidentally cut my hand open. Think I might need stitches.”

“Let me take a look,” Emma said, and she led Miguel over to a table where they both sat down. Miguel placed his hand on the table, and Emma tenderly loosened the rag. She had to mop up the blood with a piece of gauze before she could get a clear view of the wound. It was a two-inch, straight gash at the base of his thumb. It wasn’t too deep, but it definitely would require stitches. Emma was surprised that she was able to look at the wound so analytically. The Emma from half a year ago would have fainted if she looked at a wound like that. I guess all that time spent hacking walkers to pieces has desensitized me to gore, she thought with a wistful smile.

“Well, the bad news is you’re going to need stitches. Good news is that the cut is really clean, so it should heal relatively easily.” Emma stood up and went to the shelf. She grabbed an instant ice pack and tossed it to Miguel. “Twist the bag a couple times to break up the insides to activate the cooling agent. Then put it on your hand. You’re going to want to numb the skin as much as possible.”

“No. I think I will be fine without it,” Miguel said humbly, placing the ice pack on the table. “It’d be best to save that for when it’s really needed, don’t you think?”

Emma shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She searched for sterilizing wipes to clean her hands, and a fresh pair of latex gloves. She then grabbed a pair of forceps, some scissors, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, some lidocaine, and finally a suture kit. She took a seat next to Miguel, and turned up the power on the gas-powered lantern that was her source of light. The infirmary had a fair amount of natural light, but for such delicate work she wanted to make sure she had the most light possible.

Emma sterilized her hands, pulled on the latex gloves, and grabbed the hydrogen peroxide. “This is going to sting a bit,” she said, undoing the cap. She grabbed a hold of Miguel’s hand, and with the other tipped the bottle until the clear liquid trickled down and splashed onto Miguel’s palm, foaming into a pink froth. Emma quickly glanced at Miguel, expecting to see a grimace of pain on his face. She was surprised to see Miguel was looking at her, instead, his face devoid of any pain.

As if reading the confusion on her face, Miguel smiled and said, “I’m tough when it comes to pain.”

“That’s a good skill to have,” Emma mused, wiping away the excess hydrogen peroxide with some gauze. She then wetted a new piece of gauze with lidocaine. “This is lidocaine,” she explained as she started to paint the palm of Miguel’s hand with the liquid. It turned his already bronzed skin a deep golden yellow. “It’s a topical numbing agent. Basically, it numbs the nerves in the skin so your brain doesn’t recognize that you’re in pain.”

“That’s handy.”

Emma didn’t quite know what to say to that, so she just grabbed the suture kit and tore it open. She grasped the tiny, hook-like needle in her hand, and in her other hand she grabbed the forceps which she used to lift the skin on one side of the cut.

Right as she was able to pierce the skin with the needle, she had a flashback, back to the day on Hershel’s farm where he made her piece together an orange peel. That day felt like half a lifetime ago. So much had happened since that day. So much had been gained, and so much had been lost…

Emma punched the needle through the skin. Hershel had been right; the human skin was just like an orange peel. Tough on the outside, tender on the inside. She pulled the needle through the other piece of skin, then tied the ends together, pulling the wound shut. One suture done.

Miguel watched on in silence as Emma completed the second stitch, then the third, and the fourth. Finally, he spoke out. “You’re very good at this.”

“Thank you.”

“Were you a nurse? Before the Rising?”

The Rising. I kind of like the sound of that. “No. I was in college. Studying English literature at the University of Washington.”

“You’re far from Washington. What brought you to Georgia?”

Emma gave a soft sigh. “I ran away.”

“From what?”

“What does everyone run away from? Their past? Because they’re scared and unhappy? They want to change who they are? Take your pick.” Emma finished up the sixth stitch. Only a couple more. “What about you? What’s your story?”

“I’m afraid it’s not a pleasant one.”

“No one’s ever is.”

Talking with Miguel made time pass quickly, and before Emma knew it, she had finished up the tenth and final stitch. She cut the suture close to the skin, and then placed a large butterfly bandage over the stitches, to protect from infection. “Well, that should be it. Make sure not to move your hand too much for the rest of the day. You don’t want reopen the stitches. Next week I’ll take a look and see if the stitches are ready to come out. Okay?”

“Sounds great,” Miguel said, smiling, his white teeth shining. “Thanks, Emma. This was really nice. We should do it again sometime. I mean, minus the physical injury part,” he said, waving his bandaged hand in the air.

Emma found herself smiling in return. “Yeah. I haven’t had a chance to talk to someone like this since…” Daryl, she added silently, her stomach suddenly roiling unpleasantly.

“Hope I’m not interuptin’ anything.”

Speak of the Devil, Emma thought as Daryl suddenly appeared in the doorway to the infirmary. He was looking at Miguel with dark eyes, and Emma noticed his hand grasping the strap of his crossbow. Emma had seen Daryl take that stance many times. Whenever Daryl hunted and came across some game trail, he would stand like that, tense, ready to draw his crossbow.

If Miguel took any notice of Daryl’s hostilities, he didn’t show it. He simply stood up and gave an amiable smile. “Not at all. I was just about to leave. Again, thanks Emma. I’ll see you around?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Miguel smiled once more and moved towards the infirmary door. For a moment, Daryl didn’t move to the side, and the two just stood there, staring at each other. Emma was reminded of the specials she would watch on Discovery Channel as a kid, of African lions fighting to become the leader, or of mountain goats ramming their heads together to win a certain territory. All those fights started with a staring match very much like the one going on between Daryl and Miguel.

Finally, after several tense seconds, Daryl moved to the side and allowed Miguel to pass. Once Miguel’s footsteps had disappeared down the hall, Daryl turned to Emma, his eyes unreadable. “What was he doing here?”

“Miguel needed stitches. He cut his hand while mending the fence.” Emma didn’t even look Daryl’s way. She snapped her latex gloves off and rolled them in a ball before forcefully tossing them in the waste bin.

“Funny. I was just outside fixin’ the fence too, and I didn’t see him out there.”

“It’s a big fence. Isn’t it possible the two of you were in different areas?”

Daryl made a sound, a sort of dissatisfied grunt mixed with a scoffing sneer. Clearly he wasn’t satisfied with that answer.

“What’re you doing here?”

“Need some Band-Aids. Carol cut herself.”

“She couldn’t come up here to get them herself?”

“She’s busy cooking supper. She could’ve come, if you wanted the rice to be overcooked.”

Emma rolled her eyes, and intentionally made a noise very similar to the one Daryl made not even a minute before. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with Carol, lately.” Emma started clearing her work space, throwing away the used gauze and sutures, and setting aside the forceps and scissors to be sterilized later. Her movements were tense and jerky from the sudden adrenaline that surged through her veins.

“She’s a nice person.”

Those four words set that adrenaline on fire. “Yes, she is. Oh, but before things get too serious between the two of you, you’d better warn her that you don’t believe in relationships. That you’ll only use her for her body, and when things start to get too serious for you, you’ll kick her out of your own bed in middle of the night without a second thought to how it will make her feel like a used slut.”

Daryl’s face darkened, a thundercloud ready to burst. “Fuck you.”

“No thanks. That’s how I got in this mess.” Helpless to get rid of her rage, Emma grabbed a box of bandages and threw them at Daryl. “There’re your damn Band-Aids. Now get the fuck out of here.”

Everything was quiet – too quiet – as Daryl bent down to pick up the small box. Emma expected Daryl to return Emma’s rage back to her, but when he straightened up his demeanor was calculated and cool. “You should stay away from Miguel.”

Emma couldn’t do anything but laugh. “Is that the real reason you came here? To tell me who I can and cannot see? What, like you’re my father or something? Like you’re someone who actually cares about me?”

Daryl’s expression didn’t change except for a slight tightening of his jaw. “You don’t know who he is. You don’t know if you can trust him—“

“You right. I don’t know if I can trust him,” Emma said, cutting Daryl off short. “I don’t know if I can trust anybody. You helped teach me that.”

An emotion that Emma couldn’t read rippled over Daryl’s face. Daryl shook his head and muttered something under his breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing you wanted to hear,” Daryl responded.

Emma simply pressed her lips together. “You should leave.”

Daryl didn’t need to be told twice. He turned around and left, his footsteps slowly disappearing in the distance, leaving Emma in a numb silence.

Afterwards, Emma couldn’t clear her mind. Her conversation with Daryl kept playing through her mind, only to be broken by images of Miguel’s black eyes and bright smile. After she miscounted the number of bandage wraps for the fifth time in a row, Emma gave up. I’ll finish this tomorrow, she decided as she turned down the light on the lantern and begun to gather her things. When she looked at the shelf by the door where she placed her personal belongings upon entering the infirmary, she froze.

Her handgun was there, but her knife was nowhere to be found.

Her buckle on her belt had broken a few weeks ago. Because of that, Emma hadn’t been able to wear her gun and knife on her belt like she used to. She still carried her weapons around, for protection, but if she was going to do actual work she had to set them down.

Still, out of reflex, Emma’s hand went to her lower back where she used to keep her knife. Nothing.

“Where could it have gone?” Emma mused aloud. She fell to her knees and searched on the floor. Nothing. She then looked over at the table where she had sutured Miguel’s hand together. Nothing.

“Maybe I left it in my room this morning,” she thought. It was entirely possible. She had been so busy lately that forgetting things was becoming increasingly common. Last night she had gone to bed, forgetting dinner all together.

But that night when Emma returned to her cell, she searched high and low for her knife, but couldn’t find it anywhere. When Emma crawled into her cot, she thought about all the places she’d been in the last day, planning to retrace her steps in the morning.

It will turn up, she convinced herself. It’s not like the knife grew legs and walked away, she thought with a smile.

That night, Emma dreamt she was running from a hoard of walking knives, but she was rescued when a masked stranger came riding towards her on a brilliant white horse. He effortlessly grabbed her and pulled her onto the horse. She sat behind him as they rode into the sunset, the zombiefied knives becoming nothing more than toothpicks in the distance.

When Emma awoke the next morning, she realized the masked stranger had black eyes.