𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐍. baptized in fear

THOMAS SAT THERE, HIS EYES RED AND puffy, stinging every time he blinked. They weren't just irritated from lack of sleep or from the wind that had been whipping over his eyes every time he went to get fresh air — they were raw with grief, with terror, with the kind of helplessness that clawed at your insides and didn't let go.

He clung to Carl's fragile, unmoving hand like it was a lifeline, a tether to something stable in a world that had long since fractured into chaos, like a thread of warmth in a universe grown cold.

Carl's skin was clammy. Pale. Too pale. His chest rose and fell in stuttering breaths, each one a battle, each one betraying the war being waged inside his small body. Thomas watched, horrified by the delicacy of it all. By how easily something so young, so full of life, could be undone by one random moment, one bullet, one careless second in a world gone mad.

One moment, Thomas had been on the highway with Dale and T-Dog, sharing water and trying to keep the tension down as the others pushed deeper into the woods to look for Sophia.

It had been hot, the kind of sticky heat that soaked into your clothes and made tempers rise, but nothing had felt out of the ordinary. The world, while broken, had been quiet.

Then, the next breath, the ground had shifted under his feet. He hadn't even seen it happen — just heard the sharp shout, the panic, the desperate yelling, and then Glenn appeared out of the trees, forming them of a woman on a horse, telling them that Carl had been shot.

Everything had become a blur after that. The rush through the roads. The frantic push to the farmhouse. The blur of shouted names and smeared red across everything. The panic as the sun dropped lower and time bled out with Carl's life. Now they were here. In a farmhouse that smelled of aged wood and iodine and something faintly floral, like old potpourri left in corners too long.

The place was surreal — too peaceful, too clean — like a ghost from the old world that didn't belong in this new, terrible one.

The man who owned this land, Hershel, was a veterinarian, not a surgeon. And yet, in this world, that made him the closest thing to a miracle. He had stepped in without hesitation, as if he'd been waiting all his life for someone to knock on his door, bleeding and broken, in need of saving.

Thomas remembered hearing them behind the closed door. Rick and Lori's cries were guttural things, torn from places language couldn't reach. Lori's voice was like broken glass ground underfoot, brittle and sharp and full of agony. And Rick — Rick wasn't even making words anymore. The sounds he made were raw and hollow, like the universe had scooped out everything inside him and left only grief behind.

Thomas wanted to scream. Wanted to tear down the walls of this strange, quiet house. Punch the floor until his knuckles broke. Anything to not feel this way — to not be helpless. To not be here, holding the limp, small hand of his cousin while life slipped away by the minute.

It shouldn't have been Carl.

It should have been anyone else.

Even if it was an accident, it didn't matter. Not really. Because the truth was that a child lay dying. The truth was a bullet had found Carl, and now nothing else mattered.

It gnawed at Thomas like something alive. It moved in his chest, in his gut, in the marrow of his bones. This helplessness. This horror. This aching, gnashing wrongness. What kind of world lets this happen? What kind of world turned hunters into killers and children into corpses? What kind of world left them with a vet and a prayer and a boy's life hanging by a thread?

Carl looked so small in the bed. Smaller than Thomas remembered. His face was pale, almost translucent in the amber light of the farmhouse.

And Thomas could see Rick in him — God, he could see Rick.

The same stubborn tilt to his chin, the same lashes casting shadows over his cheeks. And it shattered him, because he knew what this boy meant. Not just to Rick and Lori, but to all of them. He was the future. The hope. A symbol that something good, something worth fighting for, still existed in this hell they lived in.

Thomas's mind began to spiral. What if he had gone with Rick and Shane into the woods? Would he have seen the deer? Would he have stepped in front of Carl? Could he have been the one shot instead? Could he have taken that pain and spared the boy this agony? Could he have changed it? The what-ifs grew louder, overlapping, crowding his head with impossible scenarios. He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting the images, the voices, the guilt.

But it didn't matter. None of it mattered. Because reality was brutal and immovable. Carl was here. Shot. Bleeding. Barely breathing. And Thomas was here, holding his hand and trying not to fall apart. Trying to keep himself anchored by sheer force of will. Because if he let go — if he let himself break — he might never come back.

Thomas Grimes hadn't prayed in years.

Not since he was a teenager and the world still felt like it made sense. But now, with everything upside down, with the dead walking and children dying, Thomas found himself whispering to the air. To the ceiling. To the silence. To anyone or anything that might be listening. His words weren't structured. They weren't holy. They were desperate, quiet pleas. Words half-remembered from church pews and bedtime prayers. Words soaked in tears and guilt and love.

Please. Please. Don't take him. Not Carl. Not like this.

The farmhouse creaked gently, a sound almost soothing in its constancy. The wind shifted outside, rustling through the golden fields. Somewhere beyond the barn, a horse whinnied softly. And on the porch, muted voices murmured, too low to make out. The others were out there. Waiting. Holding vigil in their own way. Fear and hope coiled in their chests just as it did in his.

Inside the room, the air was heavy. The smell of sweat and blood clung to everything. The light dimmed further as the sun dropped below the horizon, casting long shadows across Carl's face. Thomas wiped at his eyes again, but the tears kept coming. Silent, steady. He didn't even notice them anymore.

One fell onto Carl's arm. Warm. Human. Real.

Thomas stared at it for a long time, willing it to mean something. Wishing, absurdly, that it could transfer something to Carl — life, strength, anything.

Still, Carl didn't move.

Still, Thomas prayed.

Still, the world turned.

The only thing Thomas could do was wait.

And hope that the gods, or fate, or luck — whatever ruled this broken world — would show mercy. Just this once.

Suddenly, there was a twitch.

It was small, almost imperceptible — a flicker of movement, a subtle contraction of muscle that could have been mistaken for the shudder of a dream or the body's involuntary adjustment to the pull of gravity. But Thomas saw it. He felt it. The shift jolted through him like a current, snapping his attention from the static haze of grief into something sharper, rawer — hope, or the dangerous semblance of it.

His head shot up, eyes wide and red-rimmed, breath caught like a thread snagged on barbed wire. The moment stilled him, paralyzed him in a way nothing had since the world had fallen apart. He didn't dare move, didn't dare hope too hard.

Across the bed, Lori gasped — sharp and sudden, a sound too jagged to be joy, too tentative to be relief. Rick leaned forward so fast the chair beneath him creaked against the wooden floor, a tired groan that echoed in the stillness of the room. All three of them were caught in that fragile moment now, orbiting around a single axis: Carl.

"Carl?" Rick's voice cracked the silence first. It came out soft, trembling, like it had been wrapped in gauze. There was a brittle edge beneath it, as though if he said it too loud, it might shatter the miracle blooming in front of him. He leaned closer, fingers hovering just over his son's chest, too scared to touch but desperate to feel something real.

Carl's eyelids fluttered open.

Light — faded through the old cotton curtains, filtered through the hush of early evening — met his dilated pupils. He blinked rapidly, disoriented, the movement slow and unsure, like someone emerging from underwater. His eyes didn't focus at first; they wandered, searching the room with a glassy aimlessness. Then they settled somewhere past Rick's shoulder.

"Sophia?" he murmured. His voice was dry and papery, barely more than breath. "Is she okay?"

There it was.

The first words Carl had spoken since the world had nearly lost him. Words that belonged to another lifetime, a simpler moment before the gunshot, before the blood, before the farmhouse and its creaking walls.

Thomas smiled — a sad, hollow curve of his lips that didn't reach his eyes. The sound of Carl's voice, even hoarse and weak, felt like a balm and a blade all at once. He could have wept right then, not just from relief but from the cruelty of the question. Carl, in his haze, still remembered. Still thought of her. And they had no answer.

No certainty. No child. No trace of Sophia in the woods, no clue whether she'd wandered too far, whether something had found her, whether she was beyond saving.

Sophia was still gone. Still a question mark etched across the landscape of their days. And that uncertainty pressed down on them with a weight as real and brutal as the bullet wound Carl had just survived. Her absence loomed in every breath, every pause in conversation, every moment where silence said more than words.

Thomas glanced toward Rick, whose face had become a study in stillness. The man looked down at his son, at the small, pale face against the pillow, and Thomas could see the conflict rippling through him — truth or mercy. Pain or comfort. Honesty or hope.

Thomas opened his mouth, ready to answer, ready to tell Carl the truth. That they didn't know. That she was still missing. That the world didn't deal in happy endings anymore.

But Rick held up a hand. Just a small, quiet gesture, and Thomas stilled.

"She's fine," Rick said, voice low, steady, and aching with the weight of the lie. "She's just fine."

It was a lie wrapped in love, and Thomas didn't interrupt. Couldn't. Not when Rick looked like he was holding himself together by sheer force of will, not when Carl's eyes, slowly closing again, seemed soothed by the words. Lies had their place now, when they could buy someone peace, even for a few minutes.

Lori spoke then, her voice thin but warm, the sound of it frayed from crying, like a thread pulled too long.

"Rest," she whispered, brushing a curl from Carl's damp forehead. "We'll be right here, okay?"

Carl nodded, a minute dip of his chin, just enough. Then, just like that, he was gone again — back into the quiet hush of unconsciousness. The breath he left behind felt fuller somehow, steadier. Thomas let out his own breath, a long, shuddering sigh that seemed to uncurl from his ribs like steam rising from cold ground.

He stood, bones aching with exhaustion, mind spinning with everything unsaid. The emotional toll felt deeper than physical fatigue, like something dug into his marrow. He was about to sink back into the chair, back into the stillness that had swallowed the afternoon, when the door creaked open.

T-Dog slipped inside, moving like someone afraid to break the spell of silence. His frame filled the doorway, silhouetted against the dusky gold of the morning light. He didn't speak right away, just looked at the boy in the bed, the parents clinging to hope.

"They're here," he whispered at last, barely louder than the wind through the grass.

Rick nodded once, solemn. Lori echoed the movement, eyes still locked on her son. Thomas hesitated, then reached down and patted Carl's head, gentle and brief, like he was touching something sacred. There was so much left unsaid in that touch — relief, sorrow, apology, love. Then he turned, following the others out of the room.

The porch creaked beneath their weight as the three of them stepped out into the light, Thomas trailing behind Rick and Lori with the cautious tread of someone emerging from a nightmare only to find another one waiting. The door clicked shut behind them, and the hush that had cocooned Carl inside seemed to echo outward, rolling over the gathered group like a ripple across still water.

The others were already there, scattered across the front yard of the farmhouse, their silhouettes etched against the amber horizon like forgotten scarecrows — tired, worn, too familiar with the ache of waiting. Heads turned. Eyes lifted. The Grimes family, stepping out into the open, drew every gaze like gravity. The expressions were varied — relief, curiosity, dread — but underneath it all was a shared weight. A burden of empathy.

It was Dale who broke the silence first. Of course it was Dale. He stood near the edge of the porch, his old bucket hat casting a soft shadow over his lined face. His voice was a low hum in the cooling air.

"How is he?"

Lori answered, her voice a quiet wind through wheat stalks. "He'll pull through."

It wasn't just the words — it was the way she said them. With a kind of fragile reverence, as if speaking too loudly might unravel what little they had left. And yet there was pride there too, quiet and unyielding, rooted in a mother's refusal to bow to despair. The kind of pride that makes you straighten your spine even when your heart is sagging.

The group let out a collective breath, and nods rippled through them like a silent wave. Shane was off to the side, arms folded tightly across his chest, brow furrowed in a way that made Thomas's shoulders stiffen. T-Dog stood behind Dale, his eyes soft, Glenn to the right, fingers fidgeting with the hem of his shirt, Andrea not far behind with her arms folded, her expression carefully neutral.

Lori's voice broke through again, just a touch louder this time, carrying weight. "Thanks to Hershel and his people."

There was a murmur of agreement, nods directed toward the porch where the farmhouse loomed behind them like a gentle fortress, cradling the wounded boy in its wooden ribs.

"And Shane," Rick added.

Thomas flinched at the name. He didn't mean to. It was reflex, like touching a bruise. His jaw clenched, hands tightening at his sides. That name — Shane — struck like a dull blade, not because of what he did, but because of what he represented. That ceaseless pressure. The constant reminder of inadequacy. The not-so-subtle implication that Thomas wasn't enough. That he never would be.

Even now, as Carl lay recovering, the weight of what-ifs pressed on him like a vise. He had thought them himself, over and over again — what if he'd gone instead? What if he'd taken Carl's place? But hearing it echoed in the silence that followed Rick's words only made it worse.

Because he knew Shane had thought it too.

You could see it in the way Shane looked at him — like he was calculating the math of who should've been hit, who should've taken the fall.

Rick, oblivious or simply determined to give credit where it was due, continued. "We'd have lost Carl if not for him."

The group responded not with words, but with movement. Dale stepped forward, folding Rick into a weathered embrace, their figures sagging together with relief and the long exhale of narrowly escaped tragedy. Carol moved to Lori, her hands trembling as they wrapped around her, one mother to another, the weight of what could have been loss still clinging to her bones. Glenn stepped toward Thomas and gave his shoulder a gentle pat. Just once. A simple touch. A gesture that said more than words.

Thomas remained silent.

His eyes scanned their faces — lined with exhaustion, shadowed by grief and hope in equal measure. He saw the tears that clung to Carol's lashes, the tremble in T-Dog's jaw, the way Andrea's arms were wrapped tightly around herself like she was holding her ribs in place. These people — they were a family now, forged not by blood but by fire.

And Thomas, despite the hand on his shoulder, still felt just slightly outside of it. Like he was standing behind glass, watching something he was not a part of.

Dale's voice returned, softer now, carrying the weariness of a man who had asked too many hard questions. "How'd it happen?"

Rick hesitated for a heartbeat. Then he spoke, each word carefully shaped, stripped of flourish.

"Hunting accident. That's all... just a stupid accident."

Silence followed, stretching long and taut, the kind that hummed beneath the surface like a taut fishing line about to snap. No one questioned it.

It didn't take long for the group to splinter off, like broken pieces of driftwood carried by a slow and inevitable tide. There was a heaviness in their steps, a shared reluctance to move forward, but move they did, toward another corner of the farm where the Greene family had gathered, their faces lined with fresh sorrow and exhaustion.

Thomas followed in silence, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans, his boots scuffing against the dry, cracked earth with every reluctant step. He didn't want to be here, didn't want to be part of a mourning he didn't feel he had earned, but duty — an invisible leash around his neck — tugged him along with the others.

They found themselves forming a circle around a growing pile of rocks, smooth stones stacked high and precarious like a child's forgotten game. At the front stood Beth, young and pale, her hands trembling as she placed yet another stone atop the heap. The rock slipped for a moment, teetering dangerously, but settled into place with a finality that made Thomas's throat tighten.

Hershel stepped forward next, the old man clutching a battered Bible so tightly in his weathered hands that his knuckles had turned white. He cleared his throat, the sound carrying across the open field, cutting through the brittle quiet.

"Blessed be God," Hershel began, his voice firm but sorrowful, like a bell tolling at a funeral no one had been ready to attend. "Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Praise be to him for the gift of our brother Otis, for his span of years, for his abundance of character..."

The words floated in the air, weightless and heavy all at once. Thomas shifted his stance, the toes of his boots digging into the dirt. He kept his eyes fixed somewhere just above the heads of the others, at a blank stretch of sky smeared with bruised purple clouds. Anything to avoid the faces — the grief, the reverence, the complicated expressions of people mourning a man Thomas had never known.

"...Otis, who gave his life to save a child's, now more than ever, our most precious asset. We thank you, God, for the peace he enjoys in your embrace. He died as he lived, in Grace."

Silence folded in around them, thick and itchy like a poorly spun wool blanket. Somewhere behind the group, a cicada buzzed, its song sharp and electric against the stillness. Thomas swallowed against the dryness in his throat, wondering distantly if this was what funerals would always be like now — abbreviated, raw, happening not because they were ready to grieve, but because time and danger demanded they move faster than their hearts could process.

He felt strangely adrift, a spectator to sorrow he didn't know how to own. Otis had been a name to him, a passing figure glimpsed only briefly before everything went to hell. He had no memories to cling to, no shared jokes, no kind looks or lingering glances across a campfire. Nothing to mourn, really. Except, perhaps, the complicated wreckage Otis left behind.

The man who had pulled the trigger that fired into Carl's small, fragile body. By accident, Thomas reminded himself fiercely, like a mantra. As if repeating it would make it easier to forgive.

He wanted to be better than anger. Anger rotted you from the inside, made you reckless, stupid. It was a luxury he didn't think he could afford anymore. Forgive and forget, wasn't that what his mother used to say? But how did you forgive a mistake that nearly stole away a life so young it barely knew the meaning of survival? How did you forget the way Carl's small hand had felt in his own, cold and trembling, tethering Thomas to a reality he desperately wanted to deny?

Thomas blinked, and the image of Carl's pale face under the dim farmhouse lights burned against the inside of his eyelids.

Did Otis deserve his fate? Thomas didn't know. Couldn't say. The answer twisted and snarled inside him like a knot he couldn't untangle. He recognized grief when he saw it, though. Otis had been grief-stricken, they said. Overwhelmed by what he had done. The supplies Shane had brought back had been enough, just barely. Enough to justify, maybe, a death.

But even that was a dangerous thought. A slippery, treacherous place his mind could get lost in if he let it.

He cast a glance sideways at Shane, standing rigid as a tombstone across the circle, his face a mask of grief and rage so tightly wound it looked ready to shatter. Thomas didn't trust Shane. Never had. There was something broken in him, something hollow and furious that rattled behind his eyes. But even Thomas could see the wreckage on his face now. Whatever had happened out there—whether Otis had sacrificed himself or Shane had pushed the scales of survival with bloody hands—it weighed on him. Heavy. Suffocating.

The prayer ended. Hershel closed his Bible with a soft clap that sounded louder than it should have in the charged air. People began to step forward one by one, placing their stones, murmuring soft words Thomas couldn't hear. He hung back, feet rooted in place, the weight of indecision pressing down on him. Was it disrespectful to stay back? Would it be worse to pretend grief he didn't feel?

Thomas rubbed the back of his neck, his skin prickling under the scrutiny he imagined he could feel. In the end, he stepped forward, picked up a rock from the sparse grass, and added it to the pile without a word. It was small, an action so minor it felt almost absurd. But it was something. A gesture, if nothing else, to acknowledge the complicated grief that bound them all tighter together now.

As he retreated, he caught a glimpse of Maggie's face — eyes rimmed with red, hands clenched at her sides — and the rawness of it struck him deep. This wasn't just about Otis. It was about survival. About what it cost, and what you could never get back.

The circle tightened and loosened again, breathing like a living thing. People touched each other briefly — hands on shoulders, arms around waists — anchoring themselves against the darkness that threatened to seep in from the edges of the world.

It was so damn complicated now. Nothing clean. Nothing simple. Every act, every death, every survival — it all came wrapped in layers of blood and forgiveness, shame and mercy. And Thomas, standing there with his hands trembling slightly and his heart bruised and battered inside his chest, wondered how much longer they could keep surviving like this.

Wondered how many more rocks would be added to piles like this one before the world itself just buried them all under the sheer weight of it.

Hershel, his voice still ragged from the prayer, turned toward Shane, a slow, deliberate motion that pulled the attention of everyone gathered in the sagging circle.

"Shane," he said, his voice steady but with an old sorrow coiling through it, thick as smoke. "Will you speak for Otis?"

The request hovered in the air like mist, damp and persistent. For a moment, Shane said nothing. His body shifted subtly, an animal tensing under scrutiny, and Thomas, watching from the edge of the group, saw the hesitation flicker across his face like a ripple across the surface of a black pond. Shane's eyes darted from face to face, grazing across Hershel's bowed head, Carol's tear-glossed cheeks, Lori's tight mouth, before finally falling to the ground between his boots, as if the dirt itself might offer him a script he could read from.

"I'm not good at it," Shane muttered, the words thick and clumsy, almost swallowed by the night. "I'm sorry."

The apology fell limp between them, an unfinished thought, a wound reopened.

From somewhere in the circle, a new sound burst forth — sharp, keening, helpless. Patricia. Her grief poured out of her in jagged sobs that rattled the fragile silence.

"You were the last one with him," she cried, her voice a raw thing, stripped of any pretense, any dignity. It was a primal plea, unshaped by politeness or shame. "You shared his final moments. Please. I need to hear. I need to know his death had meaning."

There was a desperation in her, a need so profound it seemed to reach out and grab hold of Shane by the throat, dragging him back into the moment he clearly wanted to flee.

Thomas watched it happen, watched the way Shane's body seemed to sag under the weight of her words. Watched as his jaw clenched so tightly the muscles twitched beneath his stubble. Watched as he nodded once, sharply, like a man preparing for an execution.

"Okay," Shane said, his voice quieter now, almost reverent. He took a breath, the kind that fills your chest with broken glass, and began.

"We were about done," he said, eyes still locked on the ground, as if looking at them might shatter whatever fragile armor he was trying to keep intact. "Almost out of ammo. We were down to pistols by then. I was limping. It was bad. Ankle all swollen up."

He paused, and the air between them seemed to pulse, waiting.

"'We've got to save the boy,'" Shane continued, his voice tightening at the edges, curling inward like burnt paper. "See, that's what he said."

Thomas felt the hair on his arms rise, a cold shiver running through him. Shane's voice was doing that thing — that trembling, that rawness that didn't sound rehearsed but didn't sound entirely honest either. It was the performance of a man who knew grief was expected, demanded, and was willing to bleed for it if necessary.

"He gave me his backpack," Shane said, swallowing thickly. "He shoved me ahead."

There was another pause, longer this time, heavy as a tombstone being lowered into a grave.

"'Run,' he said. He said, 'I'll take the rear. I'll cover you.'"

Shane's voice broke, a small, deliberate crack in the surface, and Thomas, standing with his arms crossed tightly over his chest, felt the knot in his gut twist even tighter. He didn't know if Shane was lying. Didn't know if it mattered. All that mattered was the story now, the story that gave meaning to a death that otherwise would have been another senseless subtraction from their dwindling numbers.

"And when I looked back..." Shane's voice fractured, a long, aching pause that stretched thin and fragile over the assembly.

The wind shifted slightly, carrying the scent of old hay, damp earth, and distant woodsmoke across the circle. It curled around them, wrapping their shivering bodies in the scent of endings.

"If not for Otis," Shane said finally, and his voice was so quiet now Thomas had to strain to hear it, "I'd have never made it out alive. And that goes for Carl too. It was Otis. He saved us both. If any death ever had meaning, it was his."

There it was. The eulogy. Simple.

Patricia's sobs erupted anew, tearing through the group like a sudden gust of wind toppling brittle branches. Her body folded in on itself, hands clutched to her chest as if trying to keep herself from collapsing entirely. Maggie moved to her side, steadying her, whispering soft nonsense words meant to soothe but which Thomas knew could not possibly reach the depth of that kind of pain.

Shane stepped forward, slow, deliberate, and bent down to pick up a stone from the ground. It was flat, round, the kind of stone you might skip across a lake in better times. He turned it over once in his hand, then added it to the pile with a clack that sounded louder than it should have, like a door closing forever.

Thomas stood very still, his arms wrapped so tightly around his chest it hurt, watching the scene as if through thick glass. If he hadn't been so wrung out, so hollowed by worry for the boy lying inside that farmhouse with tubes and wires keeping him tethered to this world, he might have cried too.

He might have let the grief that lived like a stone in the pit of his stomach rise up and spill over. Might have let it drench him, soak him through, until he was nothing but sadness and guilt and endless aching gratitude.

But all he could feel was the endless drumbeat of Carl's heartbeat in his mind — weak, fragile, but present — and the knowledge that even amid the lies, the half-truths, the performances, something had been salvaged from the wreckage.

Carl was alive. That was all that mattered.

So Thomas stayed quiet, hands fisted in the sleeves of his jacket, his eyes dry and burning, as the night deepened and the world kept turning, indifferent to the tiny griefs blossoming and dying on its surface.

The circle slowly began to unravel, people stepping away one by one, their footsteps muffled against the dry earth. But Thomas lingered a moment longer, watching the rocks piled high against the light, a crude monument to a complicated man, a complicated death, a complicated world.

THE DAY HAD AGED INTO A BLEACHED, BUZZING heat, the kind that clung to your skin like a wet shroud, the kind that made every breath taste faintly of dust. They stood there, a loose knot of bodies in front of the truck's white hood, which shimmered in the sun like a mirage. Andrea, Daryl, Rick, Shane, Maggie, and Hershel — all gathered in a strained, uneasy silence, each weighted down by their own private calculations of time, loss, and failure.

"How long has this girl been lost?" Hershel asked, his voice steady but brittle, as if he already knew the answer but needed to hear it aloud, needed to carve it into the record of their failures.

Rick rubbed the back of his neck, the motion slow, exhausted. "This'll be day three," he said, the words dry and thin, stripped of hope.

Maggie knelt and unfurled a large, wrinkled map onto the hood of the truck. The paper fought her, curling stubbornly at the edges, so she pinned it down with rocks scavenged from the driveway — ordinary stones, worn smooth by years of wind and rain. It felt symbolic somehow, this small act of taming the wildness, forcing order onto a world that no longer obeyed.

"County survey map," Maggie said, brushing the hair from her face with the back of her hand. "Shows terrain and elevations."

Shane leaned in, nodding, his face set in grim appreciation. "This is perfect," he said, already feeling the pull of something that had been missing the last few days — order, control, the comfort of action. "We can finally get this thing organized."

Rick nodded too, his mind grinding forward despite the fog of blood loss and sleeplessness. "We'll grid the whole area," he said, voice taking on a sharper edge, a glimmer of the sheriff he once was. "Start searching in teams."

But before the plan could solidify, Hershel cut through, his voice firmer now, lined with the authority of a man who had seen too many good intentions turned into graves.

"Not you," Hershel said, looking straight at Rick with the sternness of a doctor addressing a stubborn patient. "Not today. You gave three units of blood. You wouldn't be hiking five minutes in this heat before passing out."

Rick opened his mouth to argue, but Hershel wasn't finished. His gaze swung to Shane, pinning him too.

"And your ankle... Push it now, you'll be laid up a month, no good to anybody."

The two men sighed in near unison, shoulders sagging with the double weight of guilt and helplessness. Action was the only balm for grief, and now they were being asked to stand still, to do nothing.

Daryl, standing slightly apart, shifted his weight and cut through the disappointment like a blade. "Guess it's just me," he said, the corner of his mouth curling up in something that might have been a smirk if it weren't so tired, so worn down. He jabbed a calloused finger at the map, the movement quick, almost aggressive. "I'm gonna head back to the creek," he said. "Work my way from there."

Shane, not content to be sidelined entirely, pushed forward, seizing on any scrap of usefulness. "I can still be useful," he said. "I'll drive up to the interstate, see if Sophia wandered back."

Rick nodded, approving the division of labor, the restoration of some semblance of purpose. Then he turned back to Daryl, voice low but insistent. "Take Glenn with you," Rick said. "Or Thomas."

Daryl stiffened immediately, the line of his shoulders hardening. "I work better alone," he snapped, and the words hung heavy between them, laced with a stubbornness that was nearly tangible.

Rick didn't budge. His face was carved from stone, unreadable. His exhaustion had boiled away any patience he might have had left. He wasn't asking; he was telling.

Across the hood of the truck, Shane shifted uncomfortably, feeling the tension ratchet higher like a noose tightening around all their necks.

"Daryl's right," Shane said, surprising himself with the defense. "It's not a good idea. Glenn... well, Glenn's fast, but he ain't a tracker. And Thomas —" Shane caught himself, clamping down hard on the end of the thought that almost spilled out.

Thomas.

Even the name irritated Shane, scratched at him like a burr under his skin. He didn't know why exactly — only that the boy, with his lanky build and soft hands, was a symbol of everything wrong with the world now. A grown man who couldn't shoot straight, who froze when the moment demanded steel and fire. How had Thomas managed to survive this long? Dumb luck? The charity of others?

It galled Shane in a way that was primal, instinctive. In a world where the weak were supposed to die off, Thomas kept floating along, carried by the goodwill of people too soft to recognize dead weight when they saw it.

He thought about the way Thomas would smile shyly as he helped with the laundry, or the way he would fumble awkwardly when trying to bandage a scratch on one of the kids. The way some of the women would praise him for his gentle heart, as if a gentle heart could stop a walker from tearing out your throat.

It wasn't jealousy. Shane was certain of that. It wasn't about the way Thomas seemed to attract kindness the way a flame attracted moths.

It was contempt.

Contempt for a man who seemed perfectly willing to be helpless, to be protected, to be carried.

Daryl working with someone like that was a risk — a needless one. Daryl was too valuable. Too necessary. Sending him into the woods babysitting Thomas was a good way to get Daryl killed. And for what? To preserve Thomas's useless, undeserving life?

No.

Shane swallowed all of that back, though. He didn't say it aloud. Maybe because he knew it would sound ugly. Maybe because he wasn't ready to admit how much darkness had been growing in him lately, curling up inside his ribcage like a second, coiled heart.

"They need the gun training we've been promising," Shane said, pitching his voice low but firm, speaking to Rick without looking at him, like he was stating a simple, unavoidable fact of physics. "Daryl can go alone. Thomas can work with me, Andrea, Carol. We'll get 'em started."

Rick hesitated, shifting his weight like the words made his bones ache. His mouth was set in a hard, thin line. His instincts screamed against splitting forces even more. But his logic — steady, grinding, merciless — recognized the sense in it.

Finally, he nodded once, the motion stiff, reluctant, but final.

Thomas was tying hammocks between two trees, his fingers fumbling more than they should have for a task so simple. His arms ached with the effort of holding the rough canvas taut, and the knots he managed were ugly but functional. He tugged one last time, making sure it wouldn't collapse at the first sign of weight.

Not far from him, Glenn moved through the underbrush, quick and nimble, stooping and rising, collecting sticks and broken branches with an almost unconscious efficiency. He wasn't just gathering firewood — he was clearing the area, making it safer, cleaner, a little less wild. Every movement was calculated but casual, a kind of muscle memory born from weeks of surviving on the edge.

Thomas tied off another hammock with a grunt, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his wrist. The heat clung to them like a second skin, buzzing with cicadas and the smell of churned earth.

Finally, unable to hold it in any longer, Thomas said, "What d'you think they're talking about over there?"

Glenn shrugged, the motion exaggerated, tossing a stick onto a growing pile without even looking. "Probably deciding which one of us they can live without."

Thomas barked a short, humorless laugh. "Figures," he said, pulling another length of rope taut. "My money's on me."

"Don't sell yourself short," Glenn said, grinning. "You're prime walker bait."

"Thanks, man. Really boosts the confidence," Thomas muttered, yanking the knot a little too tight, the rope creaking in protest.

Their easy, snarky rhythm continued, sparking with the kind of cheap humor that people used to armor themselves when reality started cutting too close to the bone.

"Bet they're flipping coins over it," Glenn went on, voice dry as kindling. "Heads, you freeze and die. Tails, you trip and die."

Thomas rolled his eyes. "Real inspirational. Should hang that on the wall."

"Motivational poster material," Glenn agreed solemnly. "Maybe with a kitten hanging from a tree branch."

Thomas snorted, shaking his head, and was about to toss back another retort when movement caught his eye. He straightened, subtly adjusting his posture.

Maggie was walking toward them, her strides confident, the heat lifting her hair in little wild strands that framed her face. Glenn didn't seem to notice her at first, too focused on balancing a precarious armful of sticks.

Thomas coughed — a small, deliberate sound that was both a warning and an invitation.

Glenn glanced up, startled, and caught sight of her. His reaction was almost comical: a full-body jolt, like someone had dropped a stone into the still pond of his thoughts. He shifted awkwardly, almost dropping the bundle of wood.

Thomas turned away quickly, pretending not to watch, but it was the worst kind of pretending, the kind where every muscle was tense with the effort of not turning back around.

Maggie came to a stop a few feet away, her presence filling the space between them with something electric.

"I hear you're fast on your feet and know how to get in and out," she said, her voice easy, but direct. Pure silence followed. The air itself seemed to hold its breath. "Got a pharmacy run. You in?"

Thomas bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.

"Uh..." Glenn managed, his voice cracking slightly under the pressure of attention.

Before the awkwardness could stretch any further, Dale ambled into view, waving a sunhat like a white flag of peace.

"Miss, what's the water situation here?" he asked, squinting up at her with open, guileless curiosity.

Maggie turned to him smoothly, no sign of impatience, as if she was used to answering endless questions from endless people.

"Got five wells on our land," she said. "House draws directly from number one. Number-two well is right over there." She gestured past the trees, where the land dipped and shimmered in the sun. "We use it for the cattle but it's just as pure."

Glenn stared at her like she'd just spoken an incantation, his expression half awe, half disbelief.

Thomas had to bite down hard on his tongue to stop from cackling.

Maggie continued, oblivious or simply too polite to mention it. "Take what you need. There's a cart and containers in the generator shed behind the house."

She turned back to Glenn then, a faint, mischievous glint in her eye.

"I'll go saddle your horse then," she said, casual, as if this were a perfectly normal thing to say, and then she spun on her heel and walked away, leaving a trail of dust and stunned silence in her wake.

The three men stared after her for a beat, the moment stretching absurdly long.

Thomas finally broke first, snorting and clapping Glenn on the back with a stifled laugh. "Horse?" he echoed, his voice trembling with barely contained amusement.

Glenn mumbled something unintelligible, staring at the spot where Maggie had disappeared like she might materialize again at any second.

But their levity snapped like a twig underfoot when another figure approached — Shane.

He came striding toward them with that bulldozer kind of energy he carried everywhere now, his jaw set, his eyes dark and hard.

"You," he said, jabbing a finger toward Thomas. "Get ready. You're coming with me."

Thomas's laughter dried up instantly, his mouth opening and closing in a useless stammer. Every ounce of swagger evaporated under Shane's gaze.

Shane didn't wait for a response. He turned and stalked off, leaving a silence behind him that buzzed in Thomas's ears louder than any cicada.

Thomas swallowed hard, his earlier bravado crumbling into dust. His hands trembled slightly as he wiped them on his jeans, already feeling the weight of the coming expectation settle like a stone in his gut.

And now it was Glenn's turn to laugh, low and wicked, savoring the sudden reversal.

"Good luck with that, fishbait," Glenn said, grinning wide, and tossed a stick onto the woodpile with a flourish.

Thomas could only grimace, watching Shane's retreating figure with the sinking realization that today was going to be a lot longer than he thought.

THE FIELD STRETCHED OUT BEFORE THEM like an ocean, waves of golden grass swaying and parting in the sluggish afternoon wind. The sun hung low, fat and indifferent, baking the earth and casting long, watery shadows behind them. Shane led the small procession, his figure cutting a decisive line through the tall grass, Andrea close beside him, her shoulders square and strong as if she could carry the weight of her new ambition by posture alone.

Thomas trailed behind them, his own path less certain, the stalks brushing against his arms and hips, sometimes nearly swallowing him whole. The grass, wild and unkempt, reached nearly to his chest in places, and it whispered against his body with every unsure step, a constant reminder of how small he still felt in a world that demanded otherwise.

He kept his distance, letting the others forge ahead. Shane and Andrea had fallen into conversation, low and easy, the rhythm of their words carried by the wind but not their meaning. Thomas didn't bother trying to catch their voices. It wasn't for him — the camaraderie, the familiarity, the sense of belonging to a conversation instead of orbiting around it like an awkward, unnecessary moon.

Every few paces, he glanced over his shoulder. Carol lagged further behind, her steps slow, deliberate, almost as if she were moving through water rather than air. Her gaze was fixed on some point far beyond the horizon, somewhere unreachable. Once or twice, Thomas had tried to bridge the distance between them, offering soft words, empty sympathies he barely believed himself. She had shooed him away without a word, only a weary look that spoke volumes. She had grown tired of condolences, tired of pity being handed out like scraps, and Thomas — awkward, fumbling Thomas — had no choice but to respect that.

There were wounds words couldn't reach.

He turned back to face forward, watching Shane and Andrea disappear and reappear among the taller stalks. Watching them, a strange knot tightened in his chest.

Andrea had been like him once — green, unsure, trembling on the precipice of survival but unable to leap. She had struggled, she had hesitated, she had cried when she thought no one was looking.

And yet, here she was now, talking to Shane like she belonged there, like she had carved a space for herself out of the brutal chaos. Shane, who barely spared Thomas a glance except to glare at him like a wart he couldn't cut off, was nodding at Andrea's words, his mouth twisting into something that wasn't quite a smile, but wasn't pure scorn either.

Thomas knew what Shane thought of him. Knew the look Shane gave him when he stumbled, when he missed, when he hesitated. The disappointment so thick it was practically tangible. And Thomas couldn't even blame him.

It wasn't fair, but it wasn't undeserved.

He tightened his fists, feeling the rough stems of the grass snap beneath his fingers.

It wasn't like he wanted to be useless. It wasn't like he had chosen to freeze that day, back when it had mattered most, when his parents had screamed and fought and been torn away right in front of him, and all he had managed to do was stand there and watch it happen.

He could still feel the helplessness like an echo inside his bones. He could still hear the sound of their voices breaking apart in the air, still see the way their bodies jerked and flailed against the inevitable. Trauma, they called it, as if labeling it could somehow lessen its power. As if recognizing the wound could heal it.

But Thomas knew better. Some things festered quietly, unseen. Some things grew roots.

Still.

It had been too long. Too long to continue being weak. Too long to let that one moment define the endless chain of moments that followed.

If Andrea could do it — if she could climb out of her own pit, drag herself into the light with bloodied hands and a broken heart — then maybe he could too. Maybe it was just a matter of faking it long enough until it became real. Until the trembling stopped. Until the mask he would put on fused with his skin, became part of him, indistinguishable from whatever real thing still remained underneath.

So he moved forward through the field, trailing behind Shane and Andrea, letting their path carve a tentative road for him to follow. He told himself he would learn. That he would be eager. That he would force his hands to stop shaking and his mind to stop flinching.

He would act like he was strong. And maybe, if he was lucky — or stubborn, or desperate enough — the act would one day become the truth.

And if not, well. At least no one would see the difference.

Shane stood with one hand on his hip, the other cradling a rifle across his shoulder, posture loose but loaded with some coiled animal tension that never seemed to ease. Andrea stood beside him, her arms crossed and brow furrowed, her lips pursed in quiet concentration as she listened to Shane speak. Their conversation had dulled now, something mundane — gun oil or recoil or the difference between front and rear sight — but it felt like a wall Thomas couldn't climb. Still, he approached, stomach tight, throat dry.

He cleared his throat, the sound barely audible above the breeze.

Shane turned his head, slow and measured, eyes narrowed just enough to make Thomas second-guess whether stepping forward had been a mistake. Andrea tilted her head, offering a polite, if distant, smile before looking away again.

Thomas hovered, then gestured loosely toward the rifle. "So... why that one?" he asked, voice quieter than he meant it to be.

Shane didn't answer at first. He looked Thomas over, like he was trying to figure out if the question was sincere or some kind of joke he didn't get yet. Finally, he said, "'Cause it works," his tone flat, clipped, like he'd answered the same question a hundred times and still found it stupid every time.

Thomas gave a small, uncomfortable nod. "Right... but I mean — is there a reason it's better than — like, a handgun?"

Shane scoffed, eyes rolling as he shifted his stance. "Depends on what you're tryin' to do. You tryin' to scare somebody or put 'em down?"

Andrea chuckled under her breath, quickly glancing away when Thomas looked at her. The sound wasn't unkind, but it felt sharp anyway.

Thomas frowned. "I'm just trying to learn."

"You sure?" Shane muttered, eyes on the field now, on the paper silhouettes in the wind. "'Cause you keep showin' up like you're waitin' to be asked to leave."

That stung. A flash of warmth bloomed in Thomas's chest — humiliation, maybe anger — but he bit it back. He stepped closer. He forced himself to.

"Okay," he said, pressing forward. "Then how do you know where to aim if it's moving? You can't just... aim for the middle, right?"

That got Shane's attention. He glanced at Thomas again, slower this time. "Better question," he admitted, grudgingly. "Still not gonna help you much."

Thomas sighed, the sound thin and defeated. "Man, I'm trying. You think I wanna stay useless?"

Shane raised a brow. "Didn't say that."

"You didn't have to," Thomas muttered.

For a moment, Shane just watched him. Then he stepped forward and pointed out to the field. "Paper targets," he began, his voice hard now, heavy with the weight of something deeper, something bitter. "They're easy. They don't move. They don't look like your sister or your best friend or your mom when the light hits 'em wrong."

Thomas blinked, caught off-guard. His chest tightened, but he didn't speak.

Shane continued, low and relentless. "But taking down an assailant — one that's trying to kill you — that's different. They say time slows down. That's crap. Things speed up. You don't get slow-mo clarity. You get noise. You get blur. You get adrenalin jammed in your throat like you're choking on it."

He turned to Thomas, eyes like steel. "That stuff? It'll cripple you if you let it. You think you're gonna pause, breathe, think things through?" He shook his head. "You won't. You can't. You have to use your instinct. You have to override it. Because somebody's gonna die, and you'd better hope it's not your person. You'd better hope you're the one making that decision. Not the other guy."

The words settled between them like ash, heavy and choking.

Thomas opened his mouth but found no sound there. All he could think of was his parents. Their faces. The moment the world had snapped in half and taken everything with it. Could he ever do what Shane was talking about? Not just point a gun and fire — but decide that someone else should die?

He didn't think so.

Andrea finally broke the silence. Her voice was quiet, careful. "How?" she asked.

Shane didn't look at her. He kept his eyes on the field, as if the targets out there could somehow offer penance for the things he was saying. "You turn off a switch," he said, simply. "The switch. The one that makes you scared, or angry, or sympathetic, whatever. You flip it off. You don't think. You just... act."

He paused, swallowing something thick.

"Because odds are somebody else is counting on you. That's your partner. That's your friend. There ain't nothing easy about taking a man's life, no matter how little value it may have. But when you get it done, you have to forget it. You have to bury it before it buries you."

Silence returned, and this time no one rushed to fill it.

Thomas stood there, rooted in place, the wind brushing against his face, lifting the edges of his shirt like a breath. He felt the mask he'd crafted — the one he hoped might one day become him — begin to tremble at the edges. Could he turn off that switch? Could he act without mercy, without fear, and then forget it afterward?

He didn't know. That was the truth. He didn't know if the mask was strong enough to hold the weight of what Shane was asking.

And the worst part was — he wasn't sure he wanted it to be.

THE TOWN STRETCHED OUT BEFORE THEM like a forgotten photograph, colors faded under the heavy, brittle sun. Glenn and Maggie rode in slowly, the horses' hooves clopping hollowly against cracked asphalt, the sound small and lonely in the vast, empty air. Dust kicked up in soft plumes around them, catching the light, making it look for a moment like the whole town was smoldering in slow, unseen ways.

Glenn tried to fill the silence at first, tossing out a few half-hearted jokes about the place, about the way the buildings leaned like old men with crooked backs, about how they were probably the first visitors this town had seen since dinosaurs walked the earth. But Maggie gave him nothing more than dry hums or absent nods, her eyes fixed far ahead, her mouth a tight line. After a while, Glenn stopped trying. The silence thickened between them, a living thing that climbed up his arms and settled at the base of his throat.

It was a small town — one of those places that probably hadn't even made it onto most maps back when people still carried maps. A church steeple leaned drunkenly over a row of collapsed houses. The remnants of a gas station slouched at a crossroads, windows long since kicked in, pumps stripped bare.

Glenn had never been here before, but Maggie had. She had told him so back at the farm, said she'd gone on a run to this place once, after the world crumbled.

Maggie pulled her horse to a sudden stop, the reins jerking in her gloved hands. Glenn mirrored her instinctively, glancing around, the skin between his shoulders tightening. He followed the line of Maggie's squinting gaze, but all he saw was the same dried-out emptiness, the same brittle bones of a town too stubborn to blow away.

"What?" Glenn asked, voice pitched low against the heavy air.

Maggie didn't answer right away. Her brows knit together, deep enough that the little line between them carved a shadow. "It's weird," she said finally, her voice more thoughtful than alarmed.

"What's weird?" Glenn pressed. He shifted in his saddle, glancing from Maggie to the silent storefronts and back again. He didn't know this place the way she did. To him, it was all just another stretch of forgotten America, another place death had eaten and left hollow.

Maggie pointed with a slow nod of her chin toward a battered pickup truck, rust eating its frame like a slow infection. It was parked near what looked like the remains of a pharmacy, its bed half-covered with a sun-bleached tarp flapping in the breeze.

"That wasn't there before," Maggie said. Her voice was firmer now, anchored in memory. "Last time I was here... it wasn't like that."

Glenn narrowed his eyes, studying the truck. From here, it didn't look like anything special — another junker abandoned by the side of life. But Maggie's certainty prickled under his skin, raised a nervous heat in his chest.

"This place isn't exactly easy to find," Maggie said. She dismounted without hesitation, her boots crunching softly against the brittle dirt as she hit the ground. Glenn followed suit, landing more heavily than he meant to.

He glanced up at the pharmacy, his stomach dipping. The front windows — what little Maggie had said had once been intact — were smashed now, glass shards glittering on the ground like broken promises.

Something had changed here.

He caught up to Maggie quickly, pulling his knife from his belt with a hand he hoped didn't tremble. Maggie mirrored him, her own blade already gripped low and tight, ready but not desperate. They moved in tandem without speaking, each step calculated, every noise — a loose rock, a creak of metal — snapping the world sharper around them.

"You sure about the truck?" Glenn asked, his voice tight. "Could've been here longer than you think."

Maggie shook her head, her ponytail swishing against the collar of her jacket. "No. I remember this street. I remember every damn crack in the pavement."

They skirted the edge of the pharmacy's wreckage, careful where they stepped, eyes darting to every doorway, every broken window that could be hiding something worse than silence. The air smelled faintly of rot, but old rot — nothing fresh enough to make them bolt just yet.

"It's strange," Maggie said again, voice barely a whisper now. "The car, the windows. People around here..." She hesitated. "They're respectful." Maggie's mouth pulled down at the corners. She didn't speak for a moment, just stared at the smashed doorway, at the shattered remnants of someone's old life strewn across the sidewalk.

Glenn exhaled through his nose, the breath heavy. "Survival can change a person," he said quietly, though he wasn't sure he believed it, not really. He wanted to think people clung to their decency the way you might clutch a photo, even as the world stripped everything else away.

Maggie only shook her head, slow and stiff, a gesture full of something Glenn couldn't quite read — denial, sorrow, or a kind of bitter understanding that scared him more than anything.

They rounded the corner, shoes crunching across loose gravel and broken glass, the kind that shimmered with deceptive beauty under the late morning sun. Glenn was about to say something — another attempt to ease the tension curling like wire through the silence — when Maggie stopped so abruptly he nearly walked straight into her.

A sound escaped her throat. Not quite a gasp, not quite a sob. Something raw, fragile, living in the space between horror and disbelief. Her hands flew to her mouth as though to keep herself from screaming — or retching. Her whole body recoiled, jerking backward half a step like she'd been struck, and Glenn's stomach knotted before his eyes even followed hers.

Then he saw it.

There, slumped grotesquely against the crumpled door of the passenger side of the truck, was a man whose face no longer resembled a face. His skull had been split against the metal — what remained of his features smeared in wide, viscous arcs along the chipped paint. It was a red so vivid it seemed impossible, almost luminous in the cold daylight. The angle of his body was all wrong: legs bent the wrong way, arms sprawled, one shoe missing, fingers curled inward like he'd died clenching something invisible.

But it wasn't just him.

Further up — half hanging out of a shattered bar window, arms stretched stiff toward the street as if still reaching for help — was another man. Or, at least, he had been a man. Now his jaw hung slack, bloodied teeth exposed in an eternal snarl. One of his eyes had ruptured, collapsed into the socket, but the other was milky and cloudy, still moving as it twitched toward the sound of their footsteps. A walker, but not for long. Most of his body remained lodged inside the building, but his upper half swayed slightly, mouth opening and closing like a fish dragged from water.

It was too fresh.

All of it.

Not days ago. Not even one.

This had happened recently — hours ago, maybe. Maybe just that morning, while they'd been back at the farm, during the funeral service and pretending life was fine. The air still carried the metallic tang of blood, and the bodies hadn't yet sagged with the stink of decay.

It was as if the scene had frozen mid-scream, a painting rendered in guts and violence.

Glenn turned his head, gagged once, then swallowed hard. He had to focus.

Maggie stumbled away, boots scuffing the pavement. She doubled over at the edge of the sidewalk, hands on her knees, heaving, though she didn't quite vomit. She was pale beneath the grime and sun, her eyes glassy and wide with something Glenn couldn't name — shock, maybe.

He wanted to go to her, to offer comfort or steadiness or whatever else he could, but his eyes caught a glint of something further down the alley. Something small. Metallic.

Blood.

A trail of it.

Thick and wet, still glistening in places, leading away from the truck and the bar and toward the back of a building that looked like it had once been a tailor's shop, though the awning now sagged like weary shoulders. Glenn took one last look at Maggie, who had pressed her back to the wall and turned her face to the sky, as though asking the clouds for answers or forgiveness. He followed the blood.

There, not far from a toppled trash can, he found them.

Two more walkers, crumpled in the shadow of a brick wall. They had both been dispatched cleanly — too cleanly. One had a knife wound straight through the temple, still seeping, and the other —

Glenn stopped cold.

An arrow.

It protruded from the walker's left eye socket, angled downward. Black shaft, gold fletching, clean spiral cut. But it wasn't just the craftsmanship that made his blood run cold.

Along the base of the arrow, right above the fletching, were the initials.

Not engraved, but painted in the delicate cursive his mother used for everything important. The same handwriting she'd used on birthday cards, on lunch notes slipped into his backpack, on the wooden quiver his sister used to carry like it was part of her.

W.R

His heart stuttered in his chest, once, twice.

There were a thousand possibilities, a thousand explanations that could spin themselves out into lies if he needed them to. Maybe it was just one of her old arrows, traded or stolen. Maybe someone else had taken it from their house during the early panic.

But deep in his bones, Glenn didn't believe that.

Because only one person had those arrows. Only one person's hands had brushed them with care, tied the fletching tight, inked the shafts with love and precision.

Maggie hadn't followed yet. She was still on the sidewalk, somewhere between grief and disbelief. Glenn stayed crouched beside the walker, staring at the arrow like it might vanish if he looked away. He reached out, touched the shaft with trembling fingers, not pulling it free, just resting there. The wood was warm from the sun, as though it were still alive, as though it still carried the breath of the one who fired it.

He didn't dare say it aloud.

Not yet.

But something had changed.

And the world, broken as it was, had just cracked open a little wider.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

had to write a thomas chapter before going back to wendy and yes i skipped like 3 episodes

i really wanna explore thomas and shane's relationship so y'all tell me, do i make thomas shane's protege or have him as like..... shane's guide to his human side

does that even make any sense.

ngl i loved shane

still gonna kill him off but we love character development for thomas!!

and yes i skipped the well walker scene bc i didn't see thomas helping at ALL LMFAO

did we like that last part with glenn and maggie????

glenn and wendy are so close yet so far </3

and don't worry i'll be obviously going deeper in depth with what happened in the next ch!!!!

much love,