Chapter Text
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chapter one: ❝ infected ❞
warnings: gore, death, language, weapons, violence
word count: 2065
└── ⋆⋅ ✘ ⋅⋆ ──┘
With the morning sun shining on his skin, our main character's eyes flutter open with a smile and he silently stretches his arms above his head. He asked, specifically, for the thin white curtains that had been picked up on a run during the second week of moving into the prison cells. He did it for exactly this reason--so he could feel the warmth of the sun upon waking up every morning. It reminds him of the times before the breakout.
Between taking care of Judith and making friends with Beth, he's managed to work himself up to the top of the chain with the people in charge. He shares a cell block with everyone that's considered important here. He doesn't mind this; he enjoys spending time with the baby and most of the people around. It gives him a sort of safe feeling to be around so many strong personalities.
An alarm goes off outside, and he knows that it's around six in the morning. That's the time that people start waking up and doing their part. Whether it be going on runs or watching the small group of kids, everyone has something to do during the day.
Tobey's 'something to do,' is to wake Beth as rambunctiously as he can so they can take the baby for an early morning walk around the cell block. If they're lucky, it'll wear her out and she'll go down for a nap sometime around lunch. She tends to get fussy in the afternoon and goes to sleep too early without her mid-day nap.
And so, he sits up to stretch some more and work his way to his dresser. The soft sleeve of his oversized nightshirt rubs against his fingertips as he opens the top drawer, pulling out a different long-sleeved shirt and tightly fitted jeans. This is pretty much his usual day-to-day outfit. Paired with his worn-out sneakers and a jacket of his choice, he's undeniably recognizable.
He changes clothes slowly, having no reason to rush. Beth is a heavy sleeper, a trait not too lucky for times like these, so he's free to take his time. He runs his fingers through messy blonde hair and shakes it into place, seeing no need to brush it out. Finally, with his shoes laced correctly and his jacket lying on his bed, he moves his curtains aside and steps out into the open hallway. No one else is visibly out of their rooms besides a smiling Rick, who's holding baby Judith.
"Morning." He turns so Judith can see Tobey and acknowledges his presence with a forced-baby-wave. He holds up her hand so she can wave to him. "Say 'good-morning', Judy." She coos in response.
"Hello there!" Tobey's thick accent is covered up slightly by his baby voice--the high-pitched tone he uses sometimes when talking to Judith. She giggles and waves her hands around in glee.
"Here you go," Rick hands her over, pressing a kiss to her cheek when Tobey has her in his arms. "She's already been fed breakfast." He motions to an opened jar of mashed apples on the table. It's nearly empty. "If you wanna give her the rest of the jar, that's fine. She shouldn't be hungry again for a few hours." Tobey nods along to his instructions, holding the baby on his hip with both hands.
"Alright, noted." He talks normally, nodding to show that he understands. The man in front of him pats him on the shoulder before making his way over to his son's cell. Tobey closes the baby food jar and walks toward Beth in the opposite direction. She ends up meeting him halfway, already awake.
"You're up early." He points out, and Judith grabs at her face. "Tell Beth 'good-morning', Judith." He mocks Rick's tone, deepening his voice and trying his best at an American accent. He fails miserably, but it still makes both girls laugh.
"She already ate?" Beth asks, to which Tobey nods and points to the almost-empty apple food jar on the table. "Good, did he tell you anything specific?" She holds out her arms but Judith clings to the boy, making him laugh.
"Not really, just that she shouldn't be hungry again for a few hours." He shrugs, looking at her as he speaks and booping her nose softly. She giggles again, raising one hand up to chew on her fingers. "Think she may be teething." He says, humming afterward.
"We should ask Michonne to look out for teethers and things on her next run." Before she can finish her sentence, gunfire is heard coming from another cell block. Judith jumps at the noise and grips Tobey's shirt in surprise. Both adults glance around to try and see where it's coming from.
"What was that?" He asks, quickly handing the baby to Beth. His pocket knife is poking out of its place in his pocket, but he left his preferred weapon back in his room. He doesn't use it often when he's taking care of Judith; only when going on runs, which has died down lately because of the new recruits. "Stay here, lock your cell if anything happens." He snatches the baseball bat from his dresser and grips the dark tape at the bottom so he doesn't drop it, swiftly making his way to the source of the sound. Beth does as she's told and closes the cell door to his room, considering that it's closer.
"Walkers in D!" He opens the door and recognizes this voice to be Glenn's, who's running in the direction of the entrance to cellblock D. Tobey slams the C door shut and follows him, weapon in hand.
"What about C!" Rick darts to the door with them.
"Clear." Sasha. "We locked the gates to the tombs. Hershel's on guard." More sentences and random jumbled words are thrown around as the entire group makes their way to block D.
"Tobey!" Rick gives him a questioning look, and the smaller boy knows exactly what he's asking.
"Beth has Judith back in C locked inside a cell, they're safe." Michonne can be seen hurrying back into the gates, Carl racing over to help her into the safety of the fences.
Once inside D, it's obvious that the outbreak happened early in the night. Had it been later, there would have been fewer walkers running around. No pun intended. The group disperses, each one beginning to get rid of them slowly. Tobey swings his bat so hard he feels the tape rubbing against the calluses on his hands--the ones formed from hours of protecting himself in the months before the prison.
They start ushering children and smaller people out of the block as soon as they can, handing weapons out to the ones deemed useful enough to help. Tobey focuses on killing as many dead as he can. It's complete chaos for a few minutes; knives slashing, arrows flying, guns shot repeatedly, and the brit keeps his bat close.
"Are we clear down here?" Rick's voice echoes over everyone else's and Tobey looks around the room to make sure they've gotten everyone out. "We're safe?" He asks, again.
"Yeah." A couple of people respond, and the group closes in around the middle to talk about what just happened and investigate the cause. He heads upstairs to help make sure they're safe.
"Get down!" He instinctively ducks, clutching his blood-splattered weapon close to his chest. He hears another arrow glide to somewhere right behind him and sighs in relief that it didn't get him. Turning around, he figures out why he'd been instructed to move.
"Oh, it's Patrick." The rest of the group heard the command and they're all surrounding the pair to get a good look at the boy. And Tobey does exactly that; he gets a good, long look at him and regrets it. "That's all of 'em." Daryl's the one talking; the archer that stays on watch in C most of the time.
Tobey stands up with the rest of them just as Daryl reaches down to snatch his arrow back.
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Too many people cry that morning, Tobey included. He sheds a tear or two for the death of Patrick, with who he had shared many conversations during Carol's storytimes with the children. The older boy often keeps watch near the back to make sure that no one is stepping out of line. Patrick is there purely for the stories. He and Tobey frequently chat--or, chatted--about superhero movies, multiverse theories, old comic books, and many more things that no one seems to talk about anymore. It was fun for both of them.
"No bites." Rick starts, from inside the cell of a boy that Tobey has never talked to before. "No wounds. I think he just died." It sounds like more of a question or a suggestion. He doesn't sound very sure of himself at all.
"Horribly, too." Comes the voice of the doctor. "Pleurisy aspiration." Tobey recognizes the term.
"Choked to death on his own blood." Hershel elaborates for them, from the back of the pack. Tobey has his pocket knife in one hand from where he had been preventing the turning of others with the group; killing the brain before it had a chance to wake up again. "Caused those trails down his face."
"I've seen them before," Rick crouches down to inspect the boy. "On a walker outside the fences."
"They were on Patrick, too." The blonde adds, leaning against the doorway of the cell.
"They're from the internal lung pressure building up--like if you shake a soda can and pop the top." The doctor explains, from his spot on the floor. Tobey doesn't want to picture the next thing that he says. "Only, imagine your eyes, ears, nose, and throat being the top." He silently gags and turns away from the sight.
"It's a sickness.. from the walkers?"
"No, these things happened before they were around. Could be pneumococcal. Most likely an aggressive flu strain." Tobey gags again, covering his face with the collar of his shirt this time.
"Did someone lock him in without telling us?" He asks, turning to give the group a concerned look. Rick hums and stands up to join the conversation more formally.
"Nah, Charlie used to sleepwalk," Daryl speaks up from beside the shorter boy, turning to face him for the answer. "Locked himself in." He turns back to the corpse on the floor. "Hell, he was just eating with the rest of us yesterday. How could somebody die in a day just from a cold?" All eyes turn to the doctor.
"I had a sick pig, it died quick." Rick says, southern accent affecting his grammar. Tobey wants to correct him, but it isn't a good time. "Saw a sick boar in the woods."
"Pigs and birds. That's how these things spread in the past." Hershel pauses and looks away from the body, turning to Rick, instead. "We need to do something about those hogs."
"Maybe we got lucky." Stutters the doctor, frantically. "Maybe these two cases a-are it." He nods to try and show that he genuinely believes it, but the group knows that if it's anything like the flu, it spreads like wildfire. These two cases are just the beginning of the outbreak.
"Haven't seen anybody get lucky in a long time," Tobey remarks, from the side of the room. His arms are crossed and he can't look away from the man on the ground where his body lay, slowly approaching the state of rigor mortis. His nose wrinkles up and he looks, instead, at the ground.
"All of us in here, we've all been exposed." Hershel points out, making Tobey's mood drop even more. This means that he's at a higher risk of getting the disease. This means that he's at risk of giving Judith or Beth the disease. He can't be around them for a while.
He clears his throat as the six of them go silent, before clearing out back into the hallway and staying close to them so he can wait for further instructions.
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hope you enjoyed the first chapter, it's 12 in the morning and i'm going to bed 🚣