Preparing to Enter the Prison

New chapter is live.

Settle in, take your time, and let's see what waits in the dark 🖤

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After dinner, the group set up tents inside the cafeteria.

Concrete covered them overhead. Metal bars protected the doors and windows. There was no need to take turns keeping watch through the night.

The bars would keep walkers out.

The outer fences of the Prison, along with the walkers wandering near them, would discourage living intruders.

One by one, people said good night and crawled eagerly into their tents.

Evan went back up to the third floor.

He stretched out on the couch in the warden's office.

A faint bloodstain still marked the center of the room where cleanup had not quite erased what happened there.

Evan lay on the couch, staring at the ceiling, wide awake.

Was it because he refused to sleep in the cafeteria?

Not exactly.

Back at the farm, he had given his tent to Rick's family.

He was not especially interested in sleeping inside a sleeping bag either, so the office couch was simply more comfortable.

There was another reason too.

Carol had seen his eyes turn red over the spaghetti.

After that, she kept sneaking glances at him. Whenever Evan noticed and looked back, she gave him a warm, motherly smile that said she understood completely.

So rather than saying Evan had gone upstairs by choice, it might have been more accurate to say he had escaped.

"This is so annoying."

Evan pulled his shirt over his face and scrubbed at it with both hands.

The authority he had worked so hard to build, through blood, sweat, and real danger, felt as if it had collapsed in one instant.

The worst part was that every time he saw Carol's smile, he felt like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin.

If conditions allowed, he would have used a system tool to open a crack in the floor and buried himself in it.

"Damn it."

He sighed again, dragged the shirt down from his face, and covered his stomach with it.

For all his sighing, a quiet sweetness sat in his chest.

He smiled.

The smile froze almost immediately.

Slap.

Evan smacked himself across the face.

"What are you thinking about? Sleep."

He rolled onto his side, pushed his hips back into the couch, and stayed that way.

Half a night passed.

He still did not sleep.

By morning, Evan appeared outside the first-floor cafeteria with dark circles under both eyes.

"Up. Everybody up."

He knocked on the closed metal door a few times.

Within seconds, lazy yawns began drifting from the tents inside.

"Evan, can we take a rest day?" Glenn groaned.

Youth really was unfair. After a very busy night, Glenn was still the first one to stick his head out.

"You're clearing the cell blocks today?" Beth asked before Evan could answer.

She climbed out of a tent near the door in shorts and a T-shirt, boots half-slipped onto her feet, and opened the door for him.

Her voice was soft.

"Not today," Evan said, his tone gentler without him meaning it to be.

"What?" Glenn gave a pained wail. "Then why are you waking us up? I was sleeping great..."

He covered his eyes with one hand. Once he woke up, he knew he would never fall back asleep.

"Early to bed, early to rise," Evan said cheerfully. "Healthy habits."

He rapped his knuckles against Shane's tent.

Shane had just finished dressing and stepped out.

Evan looked at him.

"You're coming with me today."

Shane said nothing. He studied Evan's face for a moment, perhaps wondering where the dark circles had come from, then nodded.

"Come on, Glenn," Hershel said stiffly. "Act like a young man while you still are one."

This was his eldest daughter's boyfriend now, possibly his future son-in-law.

Glenn gave an embarrassed laugh and ducked back into the tent.

"Where are you going?" Rick asked, pulling on his jacket as he came over.

Evan was ready.

He slapped a yellowed sheet of paper down in front of Rick.

Evan, Shane, and Rick gathered around it.

On the damp, yellowing page, someone had drawn a rough map with a ballpoint pen.

A few crooked lines wound across the page. Short marks appeared at even intervals along each section.

There was also a large black star.

"Is this a prison map?" Rick asked after studying it for a moment.

"That's right."

Evan pointed to the start of the lines.

"Here. Beside the administration building. The door we saw leads into Cell Block C through the back."

"The Prison also has A Block, B Block, and areas for labor, recreation, and study."

"Our target today is here."

His finger traced the lines until it reached the black star, then tapped it twice.

"That's a guard station," Shane said.

"Yeah." Evan looked at him. "You know that?"

"I can guess."

Shane told the truth.

"In a place like this, inmates eat, sleep, work, exercise, and study inside the facility instead of mixing with the outside. Guard stations get placed at the key choke points."

"The blocks are divided partly by offense, but mostly so the prison can manage inmates by danger level."

"What I don't understand is why the two of us need that station."

Shane looked at Evan.

Evan was still surprised.

He knew because of the map on the third floor.

Shane had recognized it after one glance.

It was a shame canon had never let Shane reach the Prison.

At least now, because of Evan, Shane was alive and standing right here.

Evan shook off the thought and explained the idea he had formed upstairs.

He also made the danger inside the Prison clear.

The whole place was now an Apocalypse Quest area, so clearing walkers had to be done with as little unnecessary risk as possible.

When Rick finished listening, he lowered his head and thought.

Shane reacted differently.

He gave Evan a single nod, turned, and went back to his tent to put on the Heavy Tank Suit.

Getting into it alone was awkward.

Glenn, who had just climbed out of his tent, started to step forward to help.

Then he stopped in surprise.

Andrea had moved first, almost soundlessly. She began helping Shane into the gear.

"Thanks," Shane said, turning his head. He looked genuinely surprised.

He had not expected Andrea to come close on her own.

"Payment for teaching me to shoot back at the farm," Andrea said. "Don't read into it."

She said it lightly, but when her hands pressed against Shane's broad, furnace-warm body through the suit, her mouth went a little dry.

Evan noticed.

'Shane and Andrea did have something in canon, didn't they?'

'When was that, exactly? Forget it. I don't remember.'

He pulled his gaze away and looked back at Rick.

Rick still had both hands braced on the table. His lower lip caught between his teeth as his eyes moved across the crude prison map again and again.

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