(unsheathing her katana) “Or a tomb.”
“Violet. The pig. She won’t eat. Her eyes are weeping.”
“Ain’t nobody touched this? Smells like a trap.”
Rick’s eyes. The calm is gone. The survivalist is back. But now, he’s terrified not of the dead—but of the living he must protect from the poison inside his own walls.
“We’re low on antibiotics. Sasha’s pregnancy is high-risk. If she gets a fever…”
“The pig is sick.”
Hershel limps up behind him.
“And the fences? We lost three feet of the north perimeter yesterday. The mud is pushing them over.”
Inside, a walker is chained to a radiator. But it’s not dead. It’s sick . Its eyes are milky, but it’s crying. Black, tarry blood oozes from its eyes and mouth. It sees them. It doesn’t snarl. It speaks —a wet, gurgling whisper: “Don’t… let me… turn…”
Then it vomits a torrent of black sludge onto the floor.
Inside, the quarantine is immediate. The council locks down Cell Block A. Zach is already dead. He turned in the van. They had to put him down. Beth watches from a window, her song dead in her throat.
“New variant. Airborne? Fluid-borne? We don’t touch anything.”