Faded Dreams (Shine Brightly Now) - EmlynC (2024)

Chapter 1: Silence

Chapter Text

Carl Grimes is dying.

Sitting on a rotted log with trees all around him, he can’t quite wrap his head around it, and he wonders if anyone ever does. If it’s even possible to ignore that voice in the back of his head that’s shouting No, no, no—not me.

Because after everything he’s been through, how can this be the end?

He survived everything the world has thrown at him—got shot twice, lost an eye, killed more walkers and people than he can count. Now, the walker bite on his stomach burns like hell, and he knows there's no surviving this.

The fever’s starting to set in, and his pistol feels cold and heavy in his hand.

He doesn’t have long—he knows that, knows that this is the end—but the only thing he can think of is still How could this happen to me? He always thought that it’d be a person that would kill him one day—some asshole like the Governor, like those cannibals at Terminus, like Negan.

Not a goddamn walker bite.

Carl knows better than this—should have been better than this. But a single second is all it takes. He’s seen it happen before, too many times—to friends and family, or to people he was glad to see dead—but he never thought it would happen to him. And maybe he should have, but he could take care of himself, and he thought that was enough. When he woke up this morning, death was the last thing on his mind.

But that’s just how it goes, right? Everyone’s fine until they’re not.

Carl stares blankly out into the woods.

He put on a brave face for his dad, but now he’s shaking—shoulders hunched in a pain that’s more than just physical, breaths coming in short, ragged gasps.

Carl’s afraid. He’s terrified, and who wouldn’t be? But he’s angry, too—at himself, at the world, at that f*cking walker that bit him. He doesn’t know whether he wants to scream or cry, but if he does either, he knows he’ll never stop. He remains silent instead, lips clenched so tight that it hurts.

His dad left, but he’s still close—Carl doesn’t want him to hear any more than he has to. Rick will never see his son this broken, slipping off the log to kneel defeated on the forest floor. He won’t bear witness to his son’s cries, his screams—won’t hear him rage against this unfair tragedy, this sick joke.

Because how his dad will remember him? That’s the last choice he has to make, and Carl chooses to stay strong. He chooses silence, chooses to bear his pain alone so his family doesn’t have to.

'People are gonna die,' Rick once told him, and Carl wonders if his dad ever considered the possibility of his son dying before he did.

He turns his gaze downward, fingers tightening around the dark metal of the loaded gun. This pistol saved his life so many times, and now it’s going to be the thing that ends it.

How’s that for poetry?

If he were a different person, he might have prayed, but Carl only scoffs bitterly at the thought. If God exists, He must be a cruel and twisted son of a bitch, to let the dead walk and the world fall apart, to let children die and monsters live.

He raises the gun to his temple, and his right arm disappears into the blind spot of his missing eye.

He looks up at the trees, green leaves blowing in the golden afternoon light.

It’s the last thing he’ll ever see.

He takes in one last breath—despite his best efforts, his vision blurs, and he’s blinking back tears.

Carl rests his finger on the trigger, and a memory comes unbidden to his mind. He can practically hear his father’s voice, and maybe he’s starting to hallucinate, but he listens to his words anyway: ‘Never put your finger on the trigger unless you mean it, Carl. Don’t ever aim a gun at anything you don’t mean to shoot.’

He doesn’t want to mean it, but he has no choice—he has to do this, because there’s no way in hell he’ll let himself become one of them. A walker.

Carl steadies his hand one last time—

Dad, Judy, I love you.

—and pulls the trigger.

.

.

.

Carl opens his eyes—his first thought, blinking dazedly upwards, is that he has eyes. Plural.

For a long, stunned moment, he just stares, taking in the sight of a green tent ceiling in beautiful, gorgeous, three-dimensional clarity.

And then he remembers that he died.

His next moments are a panicked, frantic blur—disoriented. That’s the word his dad used to describe how he felt at the start of everything, waking up into a world gone to sh*t.

Disoriented.

Carl can’t find a better word either as he scrambles upright, flinging blankets off himself with too-short arms, stumbling outside on too-short legs. His hair’s shorter, too—no longer falling in his face like he’s used to.

He hasn’t had it cut this way in years, not since—

“Carl?” a familiar voice calls, and it takes him longer than it should to place it. But then he does, and he whirls around so fast he almost falls over.

Because he’s staring at a ghost.

When Carl speaks, his voice doesn’t sound right either, but right now he’s too shocked to care.

“Mom…?”

Chapter 2: Ghosts

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Blood.

The blood is everywhere, staining the floor red, and his mom’s agonized screams as Maggie cuts her open are the worst sounds he’ll ever hear.

There’s so much blood he can smell it, but there’s nothing he can do—he just stands there, trapped in his body, until Judith’s quiet cries echo off the Prison’s concrete walls.

His mom has stopped moving, stopped breathing.

And then, with shaking hands and a heavy heart, Carl presses his pistol to the side of her head and ends it.

His mom was long since dead and buried, but the Lori Grimes that towers over him now is undeniably alive, eyes clear and concerned.

“Sweetie? What’s the matter?” She kneels down beside him, and Carl doesn’t hesitate to throw himself into her open arms.

Clinging tightly to the back of her shirt, failing to hold back a sob, he feels like the child he looks like—because there’s no denying anymore that he’s twelve years old again, back at the start of it all. It’s been five long years since he’s seen this place, but there’s no mistaking this camp, this quarry.

He’d think he was dreaming, except the ground is solid beneath his feet, the sun is warm on his shoulders, and his heart beats erratically in his chest.

No, this is real.

He should be dead, and so should she, but somehow they’re both here, and Carl doesn’t care how or why. It’s not his job to make sense of the world, but maybe there is a God after all—either way, he’s grateful as hell.

If this is a second chance, he’ll gladly take it.

Carl doesn’t want to worry his mom too badly, so he forces himself to pull away, even if a large part of him is afraid she’ll disappear the moment he lets go.

“I saw you die.” The words slip out of his mouth before he can stop them, but he has enough sense to tack on “in a dream” a moment later.

She wouldn’t believe the truth.

Lori’s expression softens, and she gently ruffles his hair. He leans into the touch. “I’m right here, baby,” she says, “and I’m not going anywhere.”

Carl desperately wants to believe her. He doesn’t quite manage to, but he nods anyway and wipes the evidence of tears from his face. “I know,” he replies, and it’s the tone he uses when he doesn’t know, not really, but someone else needs to believe it more than he does.

It always seems to work.

His mom smiles, and it strikes him then just how much he’s missed her. It was easy to push everything aside when he was in constant danger, always thinking ahead to the next problem, then the next. But now?

Damn it, but this time Lori Grimes is going to live.

“I should go help Carol and the others with laundry duty,” she admits with a playful grimace, giving him one last hug before standing. Her next words come as such a shock that all he can do in response is smile tersely and stumble off, still not used to how short his legs are now.

“Why don’t you go find Shane?”

Shane.

Shane.

Shane was dead too, but now he’s not, and Carl doesn’t know how to feel about that. He remembers how unhinged he was, in the end, but he also remembers trying and failing to catch frogs with the man, learning how to shoot, confiding in him over the stolen pistol when he couldn’t bring himself to tell his own dad.

He remembers the way Shane was like an uncle to him, remembers what it was like in the old world even if it feels so long ago he can hardly believe there was ever a time when the dead stayed dead and the buildings weren’t scavenged ruins.

Shane was a walker, and now he’s right there, patrolling along the edge of camp with his hands on his hips. His dark hair’s longer and curly, not shaved close to his head like it was on the Farm.

Carl watches him for a moment.

He hates him, more than a little, for what he’d done, for what he tried to do, but he also loves him. And the Shane he sees here, this Shane? It’s not the man who tried to kill his dad, but the one who led Carl and his mom to safety, the one who did all he could to keep this camp up and running.

This Shane hasn’t lived those weeks yet, hasn’t grown desperate and dangerous. He’s still his dad’s partner and best friend, and hopefully he’ll stay that way.

Oblivious to Carl’s staring, Shane continues his slow circuit of the camp’s perimeter, and there’s a strange feeling of relief as he turns out of sight. His mom wanted him to find Shane, but he doesn’t know if he’s ready to talk to him yet.

Instead, he wanders between the tents, taking in their little camp with the critical mind of a seventeen-year-old apocalypse survivor. Although, he supposes he didn’t survive, in the end.

Still, as Carl looks around at those too-young, too-clean, too-alive faces, all he can think about is how stupid they all had been. These people—and it’s startling to realize how many he can’t put a name to—are untrained, untested. They move about their routines with careless optimism, none of them truly understanding the danger they’re in.

And everyone is so loud.

Loud in a way that attracts walkers, attracts people—and while most groups they could encounter might not be too bad yet so early on, it’s still a risk they shouldn’t be taking in the first place.

They remind him of how the Alexandrians were at first, content with their false sense of security. Except there aren’t even walls here to hide behind, no barriers at all to prevent walkers from wandering in here and attacking the first person they find.

Most of them don’t even have weapons. They’re just strolling around, completely unarmed, like this is some goddamn camping trip. The quarry might be more sheltered than most places so close to Atlanta, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe.

Nowhere is safe.

But then…they still think this is temporary, don’t they? Still clinging to hope that some part of the government is still functional, still looking for a salvation Carl knows will never come. The world has ended, but they don’t know it yet. Not really, not like Carl does.

He really has his work cut out for him, doesn’t he?

Their fortifications are sh*t—nonexistent, really—and he’s glad that Shane at least seems to be taking security seriously.

Him and…and Dale.

Carl stops walking for a moment when he spots the older man sitting in a fold-up chair on the RV, rifle leaning against his shoulder. His heart clenches at the sight—he’s never been able to entirely let go of his guilt over Dale’s death. Because no matter what anyone said before, it had been Carl’s fault.

Maybe he can change that, too.

Dale waves at him from the top of the RV, and Carl keeps walking, doubles back to head out toward the cliff that overlooks the quarry. He catches another glimpse of the former sheriff through the trees, and his thoughts circle back to Shane.

The man himself might not be a problem, but Shane and his mom…and his dad, wherever he is at the moment…

sh*t.

Carl kicks a loose rock, watches it skitter across the dirt, cursing the world that the one left to sort his parents’ marital drama is him.

At least he’s not actually twelve, despite appearances. It’ll certainly be awkward for everyone, but he’ll figure something out—Carl can handle a little embarrassment if it’ll save lives. He’s always done what he has to do, and now’s no different.

And Judith…

Carl sighs heavily and sits down by the edge, resting his arms on his knees. His eyes find his mother, sitting down there by the water’s edge. He smiles as he spots Carol sitting beside her, followed by a blond head of hair that belongs to another ghost.

He thinks it’s Andrea at first, but that doesn’t seem quite right—he takes a closer look, subconsciously leaning forward as if a few inches make any difference.

No, not Andrea—her sister.

Amy?

Right, she’d be alive now, too. He doesn’t remember seeing Glenn or T-Dog, so that group must have already left for Atlanta. Which means Daryl should be out hunting, and Rick…

Carl grins, even as he worries.

Because his dad will be here soon.

Chapter 3: No More Kid Stuff

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The sound of footsteps coming up behind him sends Carl’s hand fumbling against his side for a pistol that’s not there. But the steps are soft and light against the grass and even, too—not a walker.

He slowly turns to look over his shoulder, and the young, freckled face that greets him is one that had starred in his nightmares. She was his friend once, and even though they hadn’t known each other for very long, this world has a way of bringing people together—her death left a mark on him that he could never forget.

“Hey, Sophia,” he breathes.

He stares up at her, and she squints down at him, holding up a hand to shade her face from the sun. “What are you doing over here?” she quietly wonders, peeking down at the quarry as if it holds all the answers.

Carl follows her gaze down to where their moms work on the laundry alongside Amy and a woman he doesn’t recognize. They’re talking and laughing—he can’t tell what they’re saying from here, but their voices carry, echoing off the water.

“Just thinking,” he responds, idly watching the glimmer of sunlight on the lake.

Sophia has no idea how much of an understatement that is, but she’s observant, and when Carl remains silent, she remarks, “You're different.”

He tears his eyes away from the quarry. Sophia looks thoughtful, curious—she tilts her head to the side as she studies him, and her face is serious when she asks, “Carl, are you okay?”

I’m fine. The words are on the tip of his tongue, but they’re a lie, and he pauses with his mouth half-open.

It’s weird, for Sophia to be actually twelve when Carl just looks it, but age doesn’t matter much anymore. He looks at her and remembers how everyone always tried to protect him instead of letting him handle himself. He looks at her and hears ‘no more kid stuff’ in his dad’s voice and decides to tell her the truth.

“No,” he admits, and it comes out in a whisper. “Not really.”

Sophia steps closer and sits down beside him, folding her legs under herself. She doesn’t pry, just sits there quietly, and Carl relaxes, following her gaze back down to the water.

He knows he can’t do this on his own, can’t lead these people in the right direction if he’s the only one who knows what came before. He doesn’t think there’s a single adult in this camp who’d believe him, doesn’t think his dad would either.

But Sophia? Kids should never be underestimated, and out here there are just survivors and the dead.

It was a long time ago, but she was his friend once, so he tells her, “My dad will be here today.” He almost laughs at her baffled expression as her head whips around to face him, except he’s serious, and he needs her to see that.

“Isn’t your dad…gone?” she ventures hesitantly.

Carl shrugs. “I don’t expect you to believe me, not yet, but hear me out, okay? My dad was in a coma, but he’s alive, and in a few hours, or whenever Glenn and the others get back, he’ll be with them.” He pauses, then adds, “And Merle—Daryl’s brother—he won’t be. Because he’s high off his ass, and he picked a fight, and my dad handcuffed him to a roof.”

Sophia just stares at him, and Carl can’t entirely read her expression, but she must think he’s crazy. “You can’t know any of that,” she says finally, softly. “Why are you saying this?”

Carl smiles grimly. “Because I need your help, and I think you might just be the only one who’ll believe me.”

Sophia stares at him some more, and Carl knows she’s trying to find signs that he’s joking. He doesn’t think she finds what she’s looking for, because she frowns.

He braces himself for judgment and disbelief, but all she says is “A few hours?”

Relief courses through him, and he breathes out the breath he didn’t know he was holding. Because she’s willing to listen, even if she doesn’t believe him yet.

He can work with that.

Carl looks up at the sun—it’s almost midday, maybe ten or eleven. He must have slept in, and he’s not sure if that happened last time or not. “Should be,” he answers. “I don’t remember when exactly the group gets back.”

Sophia nods and leaves, and Carl has no idea if that conversation went well or if she’s running off to tell her mom that her friend lost his mind.

He feels invisible as he wanders back through camp, eying the Morales children he forgot the names of and knowing they don’t live long. They’re fighting over something—some toy—and their mom shushes them, and Carl wants to yell at them for how stupid they’re being, and how can anyone be so relaxed this close to the heart of Atlanta?

But he just walks on past them instead, thinking about all the kids who were Carl’s age or younger when the world fell apart. He always wished he could have a friend, someone like him, but it never worked out that way before.

So few of them made it, and it never took long for him to outlive the ones who did.

He doesn’t have a destination in mind, but he somehow ends up by Daryl’s bike, staring at the saddlebag and thinking about the pistol it contains.

Soon, he promises himself.

Carl leans against the side of the RV, Dale facing in the opposite direction, and watches the treeline. He doesn’t have a weapon, but his gun’s nearby, even if it’s still technically Daryl’s.

He can do this—he can keep watch—even if no one knows that’s what he’s doing. Carl crosses his arms, glances once more at the position of the sun, and settles in to wait.

It starts with a car alarm and a red Dodge Challenger, a sheepish, fresh-faced Glenn at the wheel. Carl looks at him and sees Lucille swinging in lazy circles and blood dripping off barbed wire and never again.

He watches expectantly for the box truck that pulls up behind—his mom finds him, comes over and rests a hand on his shoulder, but he barely notices. The truck slows to a stop, the doors open. His eyes slide right over Andrea and T-Dog and the others, and then he sees him.

He sees his dad for the first time since he woke up in that tent, and it’s like falling off a cliff, realizing that the Rick he left behind is gone forever. Because this isn’t Rick Grimes, the grizzled survivor and leader who’d do anything to save his own. This isn’t the man who slaughtered an outpost of Saviors in the middle of the night, a man hardened by war and loss and haunted by the ghost of his wife.

This is Officer Grimes, newly awakened from his coma and caught off guard by how much the world has changed around him. He’s clean shaven and still wearing that beige sheriff uniform, and the hat on his head belongs on Carl’s.

He’s so different from the man Carl remembers that it hurts, but he’s still his dad, and when Rick’s stunned gaze meets his own, Carl finds himself running forward and crashing into his dad’s arms.

He’s probably crying, but his dad is too, and he can hear his name being repeated over and over in a voice cracking with emotion.

“I missed you,” Carl mumbles into his dad’s shirt, and though his words are barely audible, he can tell Rick heard them by the way his arms tighten around him.

And then his mom’s there too, wrapping them both up in her trembling arms, and the three of them are together and alive. He lets his eyes fall shut for a moment, savoring the feeling of his parents’ arms encircling him, because he knows better than anyone just how precious moments like these are.

Carl lets out a shaky exhale—when he lifts his head, he makes eye contact with Sophia over his dad’s shoulder.

She stares at him intensely from Carol’s side, and Carl doesn’t look away. The girl looks shocked, but also strangely determined, and when Daryl gets into a fight with his dad the next morning over leaving Merle behind, she slips around to his side during the commotion.

“How did you know?” she whispers to him.

The crowd disperses as Rick, Daryl, Glenn, and T-Dog prepare to head back into Atlanta on a rescue mission Carl already knows is doomed.

“I lived this before,” he whispers back. “Five years of it. I got bit, and I died, and now I’m back here.” The words tumble out of his mouth, and it’s a relief, like a heavy bag of supplies he’s finally able to put down. It’s only been a day, but Carl thinks he’d lose his mind if he had to pretend to everyone that everything’s normal, that he’s still the same boy he was the first time around.

He’s not.

He’s not a kid anymore, hasn’t been one in a long time. No matter what he looks like now, he’s seventeen, not twelve. Carl Grimes is a killer, a soldier, a survivor.

A brother.

“I can’t explain it,” Carl continues, “but it happened—I just woke up yesterday morning.”

This time, there’s no disbelief in Sophia’s eyes.

“Time travel,” she muses, and Carl never thought he’d live to see the day someone used those two words so seriously. Sophia cracks a smile. “Why not? We’ve already got the zombies, right?”

“Walkers,” he corrects absently, and she sticks her tongue out at him.

Carl just smiles, and maybe this is how it feels like to have a friend.

They stand there, side by side, watching the camp in motion around them. Their parents will find them eventually, but not now, and it’s peaceful—standing unseen amongst the chaos.

“Carl?” It’s Sophia, and he turns to face her.

“Yeah?”

“Maybe we’re both crazy,” she tells him, “because I believe you.”

Chapter 4: Choices

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His dad leaves, and Carl doesn’t know if he’ll come back.

It’s nothing new—the waiting, the uncertainty. The worry is always there in the back of his mind, a persistent buzzing he can’t entirely ignore. It’s the nagging thought of What if this is it? What if I’ll never see them again?

Carl told his dad he understood, told his mom not to worry, but he’s not as confident as he’d usually be. Because Rick, Daryl, Glenn, T-Dog…no one’s quite the way he remembers them.

His dad’s still clinging to the mindset of a sheriff, trying to be the good guy in a world that’ll eat you alive—both literally and figuratively.

Daryl was always a badass with his crossbow, but he’s more impulsive, more angry, less trusting than Carl remembers him. He doesn’t see them as family yet, won’t do everything for them because he hardly even knows them.

This Glenn’s brave, but he’s still just the guy who used to deliver pizzas. He doesn’t play well with others, and he’s more childish than Carl despite being several years older.

And T-Dog…Carl was never very close to the man, but he’d seen how much he changed over the months. He became more sure of himself—less clumsy, less afraid.

It’s hard to reconcile these two versions of everyone—who they used to be and who they became to survive. They’re all so new to this, and the luck that carried them through these first few weeks might have run out.

Carl reminds himself that the four of them made it back last time. They’ll probably be fine. But it’s the probably that gets to him. He may have lived this before, but he doesn’t know what happens next. He can’t rely on things being the same, because he’s not the same. Carl’s read enough comics to not underestimate the butterfly effect.

Outside of this camp, it’s probably not too different, but here? There’ll be changes all right, and despite his best efforts he knows they won’t only be for the better.

He tunes out the soft scritch-scratch of pencils against paper, mindlessly answering the math problems his mom forced on him. Like before, she insists that education is important, even now.

Carl doesn’t disagree, but this—math and English and whatever else his mom and Carol are prioritizing—isn’t the stuff they need to be learning. Kids should be taught to survive, not this old world nonsense. Weapons, medicine, hunting, farming—those are the skills they need.

“These lines are parallel, see? So the angles here are the same.” Carl’s eyes snap up at that familiar voice, even if the tone is all wrong.

Carol smiles gently at her daughter, pointing out a mistake on her page.

He hasn’t been this close to Carol since he woke up in his tent, and seeing the way she is now just makes him…sad. She was so strong before, so sure of herself, but the woman who sits across from him is timid and soft spoken. Carl doesn’t miss her nervous glances toward the edge of the forest, where Ed Peletier stands with his arms crossed.

Carol’s abusive piece-of-sh*t husband scowls in their direction with cigarette smoke blowing from his lips, and though Carl looks away before the man can see him staring, his fingers clench around his pencil so hard his knuckles turn white.

He breathes in deep and slow, and tries unsuccessfully to focus back on his basic geometry.

f*cking triangles.

Carl gives up after half-heartedly scratching in a few numbers, but no one notices. Sitting in a chair beside him, his mom is lost in thought, staring out toward Atlanta and undoubtedly thinking about Rick and Shane.

Sophia and her mom are preoccupied too, and Carl glances up at Carol again. Her hair’s shorter than ever—shaved close to her head—and his mind quickly supplies the reason. Short hair’s smart for the apocalypse, but it also prevents a certain drunk asshole from grabbing onto it…and Carol’s hair was that short when they first met on the jammed up highway.

Carl fiddles with his pencil.

He can tell that the women think he and Sophia will go back to school someday, that everything will go back to the way it used to be. Sophia catches his eye when Lori says something about not falling behind, and Carl shakes his head at the silent question on the girl’s face.

We’re not going back.

Sophia bites her lip and focuses back on her “homework,” but Carl knows she’ll corner him later when the adults aren’t watching.

She does.

After the lessons, Carl’s down by the water, skipping rocks and avoiding his mom and Shane. He feels smothered by the way they treat him, and whenever he looks either of them in the eyes, he can’t stop remembering shooting them.

He wonders if he’ll ever be able to look at the ones who died and see them solely for who they are now.

When he recognizes the crunch of Sophia’s footsteps coming near, Carl speaks first, already knowing what she’s about to say. “The world’s not going back to the way it used to be. No one wants to believe it, but there’s no fixing this.”

He looks up at her from his perch on a low, flat rock and gives her the time she needs to process that.

Sophia’s eyes are distant, and she’s quiet for a long moment. Eventually, she flashes him a small smile and says, “Who likes school anyway, right?”

Carl can’t help but laugh, and Sophia laughs too.

“You really seem different though—older,” the girl adds. “But I guess that makes sense.”

Carl doesn’t know what to say to that, because it’s true. He is different. He doesn’t remember how to be a kid anymore, even though he looks like one.

He throws another rock into the lake, watches it skip twice before sinking into the water.

Minutes later, he replies, “I’m seventeen. Or I was, before.”

Sophia kicks her shoe at the edge of the lake, toeing the line where the rocks meet the water. “Is it weird? Being younger again?”

Carl chuckles and shakes his head, saying, “Hell yeah it’s weird.” He runs a hand through his short hair, then stares down at that small, unscarred hand. “I feel so small now. Did you know I used to be taller than your mom?”

Sophia looks up toward camp, probably trying to spot her mom, but Carol’s not visible from here. “You were short, then,” she teases with a smile. “Were you taller than me?”

A small shape stumbles out of the barn. Her jaw-length hair is dull and dirty, her eyes are cloudy, her face is decaying, but there’s no mistaking who she is. He falls into his mom’s arms and sobs, mourning the loss of his first friend in this scary, new world. Carl cries because Sophia is dead, and he could be too.

“Sophia,” he chokes out, and his throat feels tight. “You…”

“I’m dead, aren’t I? In the future?” she interrupts, and Carl flinches. “You look at me sometimes like you can’t believe I’m here.”

Does he?

He thinks back, trying to remember the moments Sophia’s talking about, but he doesn’t know. Maybe he looks at everyone that way.

“Yeah,” Carl says with a grimace, focusing on the living girl before him and not the walker in the barn. “You were. But that’s not gonna happen this time, alright?”

He takes a deep breath and looks her in the eyes. They’re brown, and clear, and alive. “You’re going to be okay,” he declares, and while he knows it’s not a promise he can keep, he’ll do everything he can to make it happen. “We all will.”

Carl doesn’t know if he can handle losing her twice. Last time it wasn’t anybody’s fault, but this time it’d be on him.

It’s all on him.

“Okay,” Sophia says, nothing but trust and belief in her voice. “Okay.”

Carl sighs and leans back. He feels the weight of all the lives that unknowingly depend on him, and nothing’s even happened yet. How did his dad do it?

When he looks up at the sun, Sophia does too.

It’s late afternoon, and he knows what the night will bring. Walkers will overrun the camp—maybe not at the exact same time as before, but Carl doesn’t doubt that they’re coming.

“Will they find him?” she asks. “Daryl’s brother?” It doesn’t look like she cares one way or the other, and Carl can’t blame her. Daryl’s brother or no, Merle’s an asshole.

The Governor can have him.

“No, they’re too late,” Carl responds, shaking his head. “He’s alive, but with some bad people that I hope we never run into.”

“Then we won’t,” Sophia says simply. “You know where they are, right?” Carl nods, and she continues, “So we won’t go there.”

Huh.

He already plans on keeping as far from DC as possible, avoiding train tracks and Terminus, but not going to the Prison?

It was home for a while…but it was also death and sickness and war. It was where his mom died, where his dad lost his mind, where a discarded baby carrier lay in the ruins, bloodstained and empty. Judith didn’t die there—she survived—but that’s a sight he’ll never forget.

Maybe Sophia’s right.

“We won’t,” Carl agrees, and he clenches his jaw as he remembers comic books and Crazy Cheese and laughter. As he imagines Michonne wandering this world like a ghost, walking with the walkers and unable to let go of the family she lost.

She was like an aunt to him—a mother, even—but this time she’s gone, and Carl won’t find her no matter how much he wants to. It was pure coincidence, before, that led Michonne’s path to cross with Andrea’s.

It won’t happen a second time.

She’s alive though, and Carl knows she’ll keep on surviving—he misses her, and he always will, but she’ll be okay.

She will.

She has to be.

“What are you going to do?” a young voice wonders, and Sophia’s still there, looking to him for answers.

“Huh?” comes Carl’s extremely articulate response. He blinks away dreadlocks and katanas and focuses on the present moment. He’s at the quarry, down by the lake, and Sophia’s here and alive.

“You know stuff,” she says. “Well, what are we going to do about it?”

The chirp of crickets and chatter of the camp fill his ears as he thinks. Sophia said we, not you—he’s not alone in this. And as he takes in Sophia’s young, childish appearance and her steely, determined eyes, he knows exactly what to do.

Chapter 5: Consequences

Chapter Text

The first thing he does is take the Beretta out of Daryl’s saddlebag. Carl’s hands are smaller, and the pistol is newer, but that weapon will always be his.

Daryl will just have to deal with it.

He casts a wary glance around him—no one seems to notice him, but he turns his back to camp anyway, just in case. Then he looks down at the gun that had ended his life.

It feels right in his hands, practically like a missing limb. Carl checks the ammo on autopilot, finds it fully loaded—fifteen rounds.

For a moment, he forgets that his hands should be larger and rougher, callused and scarred. He forgets that he should be taller, and that the right half of his vision shouldn’t be there at all. Standing there with that gun in his hand, the world begins to make sense again. Despite the impending danger—or maybe because of it—he feels more normal, more like himself.

Until a soft rustling draws his gaze upwards, and his breath catches in his throat.

Green leaves flutter in the wind, lit by the dying glow of a golden sun, and Carl’s back in those woods, silent and alone as the fever wracks his body and a battle rages in his mind. It’s stupid, but his heart won’t stop racing, and when he blinks down at the pistol, he finds his finger resting on the trigger.

I’m not dying, he thinks, so hard he almost believes it.

(He doesn’t believe it until he lifts the hem of his shirt and takes in the pale, unblemished skin where the bite used to be.)

It’s stupid, so Carl ignores those rustling leaves. He slides his finger off the trigger and reaches back into Daryl’s saddlebag for a handful of extra bullets and pockets them. Closing the bag, he checks to make sure the safety’s on before shoving the pistol into the back of his jeans—the last thing he needs is to accidentally shoot himself in the ass.

The loose bullets in his pocket clink and jingle as he walks, and he stops with a frown, moves half of them to his other pocket so they’re not as loud. He has to keep them hidden until the walkers come.

Carl knows there’s yelling and scolding in his future—no one’s used to kids having guns yet, and his mom will throw a fit when she finds out. But he never stopped fighting for his family, and he’s not about to stop now. Carl can help—he can save people—so he will. The thought that Lori’s even alive to yell at him just brings a smile to his face.

Streaks of pink and orange paint the sky, and if he paid attention to those kinds of things anymore, he’d note that the sunset tonight is a pretty one. All the colors mean to him is that it’ll be dark soon, and the nights are always dangerous—not just this one. Walkers lurk in the woods, drawn by light and movement and sound. He knows they’re out there now, shambling closer and closer as he waits, searching the gaps in the trees for a hint of color.

Carl creeps closer to the treeline and strains his ears for sounds that don’t belong to the living, but there’s nothing. Though dusk approaches, the regular sounds of the forest have fallen quiet, eerily muted, and he knows the animals can sense the danger that the people behind him don’t.

Pacing back into camp, he finds most of the adults he knows gathered around a campfire—the Morales parents, Jacqui, Jim. His mom’s there too, and Shane’s nearby, loitering by the edge of the firelight and shooting conflicted glances at Lori that no one sees but Carl.

“There you are,” his mom greets him warmly, patting the spot next to her for him to sit down. He listens, does his best to hide the bulge in the back of his jeans, tries not to think about a different log in the woods when he sinks down beside her.

He looks up at Lori Grimes—a little tense but overall content as she ruffles his hair—and wonders what she would think if she knew everything that he does. If she knew that her son would gladly sacrifice every single person in this camp he still doesn’t know the name of if it meant saving the ones that he does. He doesn’t want them to die, but family’s always first.

‘You gotta do what’s right,’ she’d told him, lying in a growing pool of her own blood, and Carl’s not sure he knows what that is anymore.

He’s not the “good man” his dad thought he was, in the future he’d left behind—somewhere between the Prison and Terminus, his childish optimism crumpled to ash, and something darker took its place. It was sometime then that watching a stranger get ripped apart went from a horrifying tragedy to ‘what a waste.’

Because the most important resource in this world? It’s not shelter, or food, or even water. It’s people. People you can trust, people you can rely on—family. (Everyone else is either a lost cause or a twisted bastard best left with a hole in their brain and no one to mourn them.)

So yeah, Carl’s long since accepted that he’s not a good person. He’s done things—because he had to, because he wanted to. He’s not someone to be proud of, but that’s okay.

“I’m gonna go join Sophia and the others in the RV,” he says casually, and Lori just kisses the side of his head with a smile and sends him off with a “Have fun.” Carl knows the relaxed, easy way she lets him have free rein of camp, the way she lets him out of her sight without the slightest worry, will be gone by morning.

What he told his mom isn’t a total lie—he does go to the RV, slipping under Dale’s notice with a terrifying ease and lingering by the door.

But he doesn’t go inside.

Light shines through the vehicle’s curtained windows, and laughter wafts out of the open hatch on the roof. Sophia’s keeping them distracted in there with a card game, and she’s doing an excellent job of it. She’s in there with her mom, Amy and Andrea, and the Morales kids—Eliza and Louis.

Carl taps his fingers against his leg as he waits, keeping close to the side of the RV to stay beneath Dale’s notice. As the minutes tick by, he slips his foot under the edge of the RV and drags a long scrap of rusted metal out with his shoe—he and Sophia had found it earlier, scouring the quarry for the remains of old camps.

He props it up next to him, within arm’s reach.

The last colors of sunset fade away, replaced by smudged blacks and greys and deep, indigo blue. Carl stands there like a sentry, watchful and ready as chatter echoes from the inside of the RV and voices carry from the campfire, and when the first bloodcurdling scream splits the air, he seizes that piece of metal with both hands and quickly, forcefully jams it under the door latch.

Then he takes off running.

The camp’s in chaos, scattered cracks of gunfire interspersed with shouts of panic and trampling footsteps and the groans of hungry walkers. He’s surrounded by death and fear, but as he pulls out his Beretta and his hands wrap around the familiar grip, Carl’s heart beats steady in his chest. The walkers don’t scare him anymore, not like they used to.

A chorus of terrified screams echoes behind him from the RV, the timbre of Dale’s voice just barely audible as he picks off walkers with slow, steady shots of his rifle. Carl catches a glimpse of Shane by the campfire, determined and deadly with his shotgun, and a small smile flickers over Carl’s face as he presses on, sprinting toward the other side of camp. If he trusts Shane with anything, it’s protecting Lori.

He finally sees them—a group of walkers stumbling forward in the moonlight—and nothing is the way he remembers. This isn’t a herd, isn’t one of those endless masses of rotted flesh and snapping teeth. It’s hard to count them in the dark as he rushes ahead, closing in on the high-pitched, grieving wail of someone who just lost a loved one, but there can’t be much more than twenty. At the time, cowering behind his mom and Shane, it had felt like an army.

Carl slows, takes aim at one rotted skull, and pulls the trigger.

He misses.

Amid the shouts and screams, the crashing of footsteps through the underbrush and guttural moans of the dead, he gapes at the walker that ambles toward him, undeterred. What had once been a tall, bearded man wearing a hiking backpack is now a mindless husk with cloudy eyes and snapping teeth. Carl fires again, the recoil seeming stronger than ever to his scrawny, childish arms, and the shot lands too far to the right, blasting a hole in the walker’s shoulder instead of between its eyes.

He’s used to being stronger and a good six inches taller, but he doesn’t realize until right then that he’s been overcompensating for the loss of an eye he isn’t missing anymore. Carl curses as he steadies his gun for a third time, aiming at the walker’s skull and not at the air beside it—he hits his mark, and he’s firing again before the first one even hits the ground.

Seeing them up close, it’s startling how intact they are, not having had years to decay like the ones Carl’s used to seeing. The walkers he shoots now still look more or less like people, and it’s a glaring reminder that all of this started only a few weeks ago.

A few weeks.

He downs four more walkers before spotting two people huddled beside a collapsed tent—a boy and a girl, maybe around Amy’s age. It was the girl’s scream he had followed, and she clutches a limp figure with a torn-out throat. A walker is heading straight for them—a woman with stringy hair and yellowed teeth—and the boy’s holding a stick like a baseball bat, keeping the walker at bay as he yells at the shell-shocked girl, “Sydney, run!”

Several yards past them, a larger group of people—maybe five or six—flee toward the smoldering remnants of the campfire, toward Shane and Dale and the RV. Carl tears his eyes away from them just as the boy’s stick breaks and the walker falls on top of him in a mass of flailing limbs.

There’s no room to think, no room to doubt, as Carl lines up a shot and pulls the trigger. With a resounding bang, the walker goes still, and so does the boy pinned under it.

“Ethan!” Sydney shrieks, abandoning the body of her—sister? friend?—to rush over to his side. They’re both covered in blood, and it barely looks red in the darkness.

For a couple of seconds, Carl stands there, frozen, because he might have missed and hit the boy too. The bullet could have gone through them both, and the first person Carl killed in this new life was someone he was trying to save.

But then the boy—Ethan—shifts, struggling to push off the deadweight, and Carl runs in to help. Sydney pulls Ethan to his feet, and the two of them turn to Carl, staring at him with matching baffled expressions as they finally realize who had come to their rescue. They start to talk over each other, either to thank him or to wonder what a twelve-year-old is doing with a gun, but they immediately shut up when Carl shoots another walker that was coming up behind them.

“Get to the RV!” he shouts, gesturing behind him with his pistol—whether it’s the confidence in his voice, his ease with a gun, or they’re just too dazed to do anything else, they follow him without question. Carl reloads as he runs, and there’s only one more walker in their path before the roar of an engine cuts off and Rick, Daryl, Glenn, and T-Dog run into the fray with shotguns and rifles, putting down the rest of them.

The sudden silence rings in Carl’s ears, and he hesitates, glancing down at the Beretta in his hand, then over at his dad, his mom. He tucks the pistol into the back of his jeans, hopes that the darkness and the chaos of the night will conceal it from his dad’s perceptive eyes. He just got it back, and he’s reluctant to part with it just yet.

“I was never here,” Carl hisses at the young adults who are still lingering at his side, grief-stricken and uncertain. They look through him more than at him when he speaks, their eyes nearly as dead as the walkers’, and it’s not too different to how Rick looked after Lori died.

He frowns at them in sympathy, but he doesn’t think they’ll be telling on him anytime soon, so Carl leaves them there and barrels toward his dad in his best imitation of a scared pre-teen.

“I knew you’d come back,” Carl proclaims, and his dad holsters his revolver with a heavy hand, his relief palpable.

“Carl!” His mom collides with him so hard he almost falls right over, and she hugs him like it’s been years instead of barely an hour. Tight like she never wants to let him go.

Relaxing into her arms, he can almost trick himself into thinking it’s the Lori from before, but there’s no recognition on her face, no sign that she remembers like he does. He looks at her and only sees a scared mother reuniting with her son. There’s none of the hardness from months on the road present in her eyes, no memories of Hershel’s farm, of that harsh winter, of dying quietly in the cold walls of the Prison.

He doesn’t find what he’s looking for, so he stares down at the grass between their feet instead. Carl can’t say he’s not happy to have her back—he is—but why is he the only one who’s living this again? Why did he come back when she didn’t? When no one else did?

Why him?

The chatter of voices coming up from behind him prompts him to turn around, and Lori lays her hands on his shoulders as she follows his gaze. It’s Dale, face grim and rifle slung over his shoulder, followed by Andrea and Amy, Eliza and Louis, Carol and Sophia.

The Morales kids run over to their mother, sobbing, and Miranda holds them close, a similar look on her face that he’d seen on Lori’s. Amy clutches her sister’s hand, and a silver mermaid pendant rests against her throat. Sophia shoots him a weak smile before her mom leads her away.

“I thought you were…” Lori looks between Carl and the other group with confusion, and sh*t, she thought he’d been safe in there, too.

“Uh,” Carl flounders, wishing he had more time to think of something more convincing. He’s been so preoccupied thinking about the attack that he barely spared a thought to what would happen after. “I was gonna play with Sophia, but I…went out to explore the woods instead,” he finishes weakly.

Shane breaks away from his standoff with Rick to turn incredulously to Carl. “You wandered off without telling anyone…at night…alone?” His dad’s partner looks like he can’t decide whether to be angry, worried, or call bullsh*t on Carl’s dubious excuse.

Unlike in whatever argument the two former sheriffs were having—probably about where to go next, the CDC or Fort Benning—Rick is suddenly of the same mind as Shane, and Carl finds himself pinned beneath his dad’s intense gaze.

“Carl?” he prompts in a low voice, and it’s the same tone he used when he confronted Carl about killing one of the Governor’s men, when he wanted Carl to stay behind to protect Judith, when something was wrong and Rick knew it. It’s something familiar from the clean shaven stranger in the sheriff hat, the one who’d yelled, in a different version of this same night, ‘We don’t kill the living.’

“I…” Carl trails off, mind racing as he tries not to dig himself into a deeper hole. But it’s not too far off from something he has done—he remembers throwing rocks at a walker trapped in the mud, the one who had gotten free, the one who had killed Dale. So Carl squares his shoulders and says, “I wanted to see one of them. A walker. But there weren’t any, and then I heard the screams and ran back. I hid until I saw you.”

Whatever judgment Carl is about to face is abruptly put on hold as a commotion breaks out on the far side of camp.

“No!” ahigh-pitched voice screams, and Carl takes off running before anyone can stop him. If he wasn’t afraid before, surrounded by walkers and gunfire, he is now.

Because it’s Sophia.

Carl stops short as he reaches the crowd of bystanders—he doesn’t realize Ed’s alive until the man’s dragging Carol and Sophia toward their car, ranting about how they need to ‘leave this sh*thole behind.’ He has a bruising grip on Sophia’s upper arm, and his other waves angrily at a resigned Carol whose pleas fall on deaf ears. “Ed, please,” Carl hears her say. “At least wait until morning.”

He sees red.

Carl’s fingers twitch with fury, and he wants nothing more than to blow a hole in that bastard’s brain—the pistol in the back of his jeans has never felt so tempting.

He fixes his glare on the side of Ed’s head.

He could do it.

He could…

He doesn’t.

But no one makes a move to stop Carol’s husband—not Lori or Miranda, not Andrea, not Dale. Not even the two former sheriffs so much as lift a finger to stop what’s happening, though Shane levels a murderous glare in Ed’s direction, and while Rick doesn’t look happy either, he pointedly places a restraining palm against his partner’s chest.

Ed keeps moving, pulling along an unwilling Sophia and Carol. Beyond the asshole’s agitated mutterings, the silence is deafening.

Why is no one doing anything?

How can anyone think that this is okay?

Carl knows the answer—they think it’s not their place, that it’s not their family. But they’re his, and all it takes is Sophia’s terrified eyes landing on Carl for him to push his way forward and yell, “You leave them the f*ck alone!”

The world around him freezes, and he ignores the stares, evades his mom’s arm as she tries to grab him, and turns to look at everyone’s stunned faces. Carl glares at them all, jabs a finger in Ed’s direction. “No,” he repeats, not as loud but just as firm, and if his words would have held more weight five years from now, there’s nothing he can do about that. “How can you all just let this happen? It’s not right—not then and not now.”

His dad says his name, making his way over to him, but Ed’s even louder.

“What did ya say to me, boy?!” The man’s red in the face, practically purple, and his eyes bulge in unhinged fury. He drops the too-tight grip he had on his wife and daughter, stalks forward—stumbles really, and Jesus, is he still drunk?

“Hey, hey,” Rick says, holding out his hands and stepping protectively in front of Carl. “Why doesn’t everyone just calm down…”

Trying to reason with Ed Peletier is a lost cause—Ed ignores the former sheriff, his eyes still focused on Carl. He steps around the bodies, almost trips over one, and snarls, “What I do with my family ain’t none of your business! Ain’t no one’s but mine.”

Carl sees the rotted hand twitch by Ed’s boot, but nobody else does.

As Rick and Ed continue to yell at each other, Shane sidles up to Carl with his hand resting by his holstered pistol. Everyone else stands in a circle, too scared to intervene, and then Daryl steps in, snapping at the two of them to shut up before more walkers follow the noise. Carl doesn’t miss the pinched expression on Daryl’s face when he glances at Sophia, who’s cradling the arm Ed had grabbed and sticking close to her mom.

On the ground, its torso pinned by another body, the fallen walker snaps its jaws weakly—once, twice.

Carl looks at Sophia, her face unnaturally blank as she clings to a trembling Carol.

He looks back at Ed as the man unknowingly steps closer and closer to that reaching hand.

Carl says nothing.

“Pack your things, both of ya,” Ed commands, twisting around on unsteady legs to face the family he doesn’t deserve. “We’re leaving, now, and no one can—”

The hand wraps around Ed’s ankle and pulls.

He yells and pitches forward, cursing loudly as he hits the ground, and no one is fast enough to stop that set of blackened teeth from tearing into Ed’s leg.

A raw, agonized scream escapes the man’s throat—Carl watches as the meat of his calf gushes red and feels nothing. And as a gunshot rings out and a couple pairs of strong arms heave the flailing man away from the dead, he tells himself that Ed deserved it, that it happened before, that it was supposed to happen.

But that’s bullsh*t.

Ed Peletier’s going to die because Carl doesn’t want him to live.

He only hopes that Sophia will someday forgive him.

The sound of a single gunshot echoes through camp as Carl reaches for the flap of his tent. Everyone’s on edge, and there’s a flurry of movement as they run toward the sound or scan the shadows of the trees for danger.

It could be a walker…

But Carl knows.

He knows even before T-Dog cries out in grief and Jacqui’s name hovers in the air like a ghost, before those three words meet Carl’s ears in a muted murmur—‘She was bit.’ He knows, because it wasn’t too long ago that he was the one staring down the barrel of his own pistol, weighing the decision that hadn’t felt like a decision at all.

(The whole time he spent in that forest, all he could see was increasingly horrifying images of his undead corpse attacking his family—biting his dad, scratching Michonne, eating Judith alive as she cried and cried and cried.)

He’d done what he had to do, and so did Jacqui.

There’s no walker, no threat.

Just someone who made the last choice they had left to make.

Carl closes his eyes for a second in regret before turning his back to them all and crawling into his sleeping bag. He sleeps, and his dreams are filled with rivers of blood and gnashing teeth and green leaves blowing in the wind.

And, despite everything, it’s the best sleep he’s had in months.

Chapter 6: Daybreak

Chapter Text

Carl rises with the sun and, as he blinks his eyes open, reminds himself that Amy is alive—Jim, Sophia, Dale, Shane.

His mom.

Lori sleeps just a few feet away, Rick’s arm thrown protectively over her waist, the two of them sound asleep.

Glenn’s alive right here in this camp, and somewhere out there is Beth and Hershel.

Tyreese.

Bob.

Abraham.

Lizzie and Mika.

And Carl—Carl’s alive too, even if he keeps expecting this all to be some kinda cruel joke, a fever-induced delirium from being bit five years in the future.

And maybe he’s thinking too much, and he should just go out and…do something.

Sneaking out of the tent is easy, but he only makes it a single step before pausing, because someone else is out here, too. The rustle of his tent flap has Carol freezing like a startled deer as she steps out of her own tent, and Carl’s eyes zero in on the bloodied knife she holds in a white-knuckled grip.

Huh.

They stare at each other in a mutually shocked silence before Carl looks past Carol, peering into the dimness of her tent, and asks, “He turned?” Carl can just barely make out the shape of a limp hand before Carol steps forward, blocking Ed’s body from his sight.

Carol nods wordlessly, but Carl can tell by the steely glint in her eyes and the hard set of her jaw that it’s a lie.

Good riddance.

Carl nods back, tilts his head in question. “Where are you going?” he wonders, and something in Carol relaxes. Her grip loosens a little around her knife, and Carl spares a passing thought to wonder where she had gotten it—it could have been a cooking knife, or maybe it was Ed’s.

“Just down to the water,” comes her quiet reply, but she lingers in the doorway of her tent and doesn’t make any motion to leave.

“I’ll come with you,” Carl decides. When she looks hesitant, he adds, “No one should go out there alone.”

Carol seems to war with herself for a moment, glancing over at the tent where Carl’s parents are still sleeping. She zips her own tent closed, sealing her husband’s body inside, and a frown settles on her face.

“Come on, then,” Carol finally says. As they walk, she deliberately positions herself to his right, hiding the evidence of her entirely-justified murder—Carl pretends he doesn’t notice.

The rhythmic crunch of footsteps over gravel are the only sounds to disturb the early morning quiet. Daryl always rises early—Carl’s sure that’s true even now—but there’s no sign of him. When he looks over his shoulder at the cluster of tents and vehicles that are growing steadily smaller behind them, there’s no sign of anything at all, living or dead.

They reach the bottom of the quarry, and Carol kneels down by the shore of the lake. She’s scrubbing blood off her hands—off the blade of her knife—and Carl is the first one to break the silence between them.

“Where’s Sophia?”

Carol startles a little at the sound of his voice, as if she’d forgotten he was there. “She slept over in the RV with Eliza and Louis,” she explains. “Their dad didn’t make it.”

“Oh,” is all Carl can say, because that hadn’t happened before.

He pictures Miranda’s husband in his mind, and while he can remember his face, Carl realizes right then that he doesn’t even know the man’s first name. No one says it, really, just…Morales. He doesn’t know why it matters, but suddenly it does, and he finds himself asking, “What was his name?”

Hours later, Carl counts the graves.

They’re lined up in an even row on the hill—mounds of freshly-dug earth marked with handmade wooden crosses. The sight of them is so viscerally familiar that he can’t stop staring at his mom, just to make sure she’s really there. That she’s alive outside his memories, a name carved into a piece of wood, and that single, worn photograph of his parents and him.

After the Prison fell, he’d often think about all those graves they left behind, wonder if the crosses were still there or if they’d rotted away to nothing.

He doesn’t have to wonder anymore.

Here at the quarry, he counts eight of them, and it feels like failure—even if last time, in the past that only he can remember, there had been fifteen. He tunes out the halting eulogies that are delivered with haggard faces and red-rimmed eyes, because if he never attends another funeral, it’d still be too soon.

As Carl stares blankly at the row of crosses, a nagging thought forces its way into his mind—if his old timeline is still going on somewhere, somehow…if Rick and Michonne had heard that lone, echoing gunshot and carried on with their lives…did they ever come back for him?

Will his body be marked with one of those horrid, wooden crosses? Or is it still lying there, open to the elements, left to be eaten by walkers and animals and decompose into the roots of the trees? Would it even be there, at all?

He doesn’t know which possibility is worse.

Sophia nudges his arm, and she wasn’t there a moment ago—Carl blinks, and everyone is gone but them. The group has dispersed, Rick and Shane continuing to argue in low voices off to one side, Lori resting a comforting hand on Carol’s shoulder on the other, their voices an indecipherable murmur.

Carl turns to Sophia, and somehow she knows, without him saying anything, the direction his thoughts have turned.

“I’m alive,” she whispers to him, “and so are you.”

They are—he is—but even as he dips his head into a nod and forces a smile that Sophia undoubtedly sees right through, a not-so-small part of him feels like one of those graves belongs to him.

Like this funeral is his, too.

A group of six leaves in a beat-up minivan, and Carl doesn’t miss the way one of them wears a long-sleeved shirt in the Georgia heat, arms carefully folded across his chest. That man’s dead, and they all must know it, but they leave anyway with the rumble of an engine and a trail of dust swirling in their wake.

The afternoon sun beats down on Carl as he watches them go, and he throws a longing glance toward Rick’s hat as he lifts a hand to shield his face against the brightness. It’s late October—at least he thinks it is—but the leaves haven’t changed yet, and by the unrelenting heat, he could have believed it was still summer.

Carl looks around at those who remain.

Jacqui’s dead, and while Morales—Juan—is too, his wife and kids are still here. Amy is alive to stand beside her sister, and Jim won’t be left on the side of the road this time.

And then there’s two more, the ones Carl saved who huddle together now with bloodstained clothes and haunted eyes. Ethan and Sydney. They haven’t spoken much, except to each other, but he can’t blame them—Ethan’s sister and parents number among the dead, and Carl thinks Sydney is something like a family friend. He doesn’t know what her deal is, but she has the look of someone who’s lost everything.

Every death feels like a noose around his neck, but the lives he saved are on him, too, and he thinks he can live with that. Some of the faces he sees now hadn’t been there before—that has to amount to something.

There’s only so much he can do.

His mom is waiting for him when he heads back to his family’s tent, hoping to catch some relief from the heat. She looks down at him, all irritated and upset, and it looks like his plan to have a moment of peace to himself in the shade is ruined.

“…Hi?” Carl says uncertainly, holding back a wince at Lori’s stormy expression.

And then she says those four words that never mean anything good.

“We need to talk.”

In her hand is a very familiar pistol.

Oh, sh*t.

Carl sighs, his mom’s heated words still ringing in his ears as he heads over to Daryl. The hunter’s hunched over his bike, rummaging through his saddlebag and cursing intermittently, and Carl thinks he knows what he’s looking for.

Carl holds it in his hand, lowered at his side—his—no, Daryl’s—Beretta.

Carl takes a deep breath, glances one last time to where Lori stands by the treeline. Her arms are crossed and she watches him with a sharp gaze, but, thankfully, she remains just out of earshot.

“Looking for this?” Carl voices, cringing back slightly from Daryl’s glare when the man notices the proffered pistol.

Daryl steps forward, and Carl relinquishes the weapon without a fight. He watches the hunter turn the gun over in his hands, slide the magazine out briefly, and Carl can tell the exact moment he notices the missing bullets.

Daryl returns the gun to his saddlebag without a word—Carl sadly watches it disappear—and then the hunter’s squinting down at him in suspicion. “You fire this?”

He looks more curious than angry, and Carl barely manages to stop himself from smiling—Daryl’s always had a soft spot for kids. Had Carl been any older, he’d surely have received a fist to the face instead.

“Last night,” Carl admits, caving to Daryl’s piercing stare. “Killed a few walkers and helped Ethan and Sydney…I really am sorry for taking your gun, Daryl, but please don’t mention that part to my parents?”

Daryl just looks at him, and he can’t tell if that incredulous look on his face means Why would I? or Why shouldn’t I?

“I know I’m young,” Carl continues into the silence, “but what does it matter in the end? The world’s dangerous now, and anyone who wants to survive has to be able to fight, has to defend themselves—they don’t get that yet.” Especially his mom.

He’s probably talking too much, but there’s something comforting about Daryl’s presence. The hunter’s not the same man he was in Carl’s future-past, but out of everyone, he might have changed the least since the start of it all. Right now, that’s a good thing.

“You seem to get it just fine,” Daryl points out, and Carl has no response to that.

He gave the gun back like he was supposed to, so Carl turns now and walks away, and when Daryl loudly calls out, “Don’t touch my sh*t!” behind him, he finally allows himself to smile.

Daryl’s next words are much quieter, muttered under his breath. “Kid’s got balls.” Carl doesn’t know if he was supposed to hear that or not, but his smile widens anyway.

Yellow-orange flames crackle in the deepening shadows of twilight as seventeen survivors sit around the fire, logs and fold-up chairs arranged in a wide circle. There aren’t enough seats for everyone, so the rest settle down into empty spots on the grass.

Lori has a green camping chair, and Carl sits by her feet. The navy blue chair beside his mom was occupied by T-Dog, but he relinquished it to Carol with an easy smile that didn't quite reach his eyes—Sophia sat down next to Carl. Outside the fire’s warm glow, everything’s in shades of grey and blue, and despite the nervous glances aimed toward the treeline, the only movement Carl can see is right here by the fire.

At one end of the circle, holding everyone’s attention, is a single man who remains standing—Shane. There’s confidence and authority in the set of his shoulders, and Carl sees no madness in those steady eyes that meet his for a brief moment as they scan over who remains. There’s only determination, and Carl hopes it can last.

“We’re going to the CDC,” Shane begins, his voice seeming louder than it is in the muted, solemn atmosphere. “I know that wasn’t the plan before, but I’ve known Rick for…” He tilts his head as if trying to count the years, but quickly gives up, continuing, “for most of my life, really, and I trust his judgment.”

Carl looks up at his dad—still in that sheriff uniform, still with that hat that’s more Carl’s than his—just as he nods at Shane in acknowledgement.

“We’re going to the CDC,” Shane repeats. “Now, I can’t make any of you come with us, can’t make that decision for you, but we’re going, and anyone who wants to is welcome to come along. It’s dangerous out there,” he finishes, hands on his hips, “and we’re safer and stronger together.”

Shane’s last words have barely faded into silence before Miranda stands, her children’s hands held in her own. “You want us to go back to the city, after we’ve escaped it?” the woman exclaims. “They bombed Atlanta! What if there’s nothing left?”

“She has a point,” Glenn tentatively adds. “Atlanta’s full of geeks—a group this size passing into the city? We’d be ringing the dinner bell.”

“We ought to be leavin’ the city, not runnin’ blindly into it,” Daryl grunts in agreement, twisting a crossbow bolt between his fingers.

“Why don’t we put it to a vote?” Andrea demands more than asks, standing to mimic Shane’s resolute stance. “This affects all of us. Like you said, we shouldn’t be splitting up—not after last night.”

A rumble of agreement ripples through the group, and apparently they’re a democracy now. Despite Andrea’s words, Carl doesn’t get a vote—neither do Sophia or Eliza or Louis. It’s not a surprise, being ignored, but Carl still thinks it’s bullsh*t.

And so they vote.

In the end, Carol and T-Dog are the only ones—other than Rick, Lori, and a reluctant Shane—to vote for the CDC. Dale had his hand up originally, but he lowered it with a sigh when Andrea and Amy made no move to do the same.

The rest of camp votes the other way, and, amid the sea of raised hands, Shane shrugs at Rick as if to say I told you so.

Carl’s dad bows his head, runs a tired hand over his face, and stands. With a begrudging head tilt that says you win as surely as if he’d spoken it aloud, Rick declares, “Fort Benning it is.”

‘What?’ Carl mouths to himself, wondering if he’d heard that right.

Sophia looks at him, and he shakes his head, dumbfounded, because this…this certainly hadn’t happened before. Carl feels sick, like someone’s pulled the ground out from beneath his feet.

They’re going to Fort Benning.

Chapter 7: The Road

Chapter Text

It’s a caravan of five vehicles that rolls out the next morning, led by the rumbling engine of Daryl’s motorcycle. Carl can see him through the dirt-smudged windshield of his family’s car—sitting here in the backseat is familiar in a nostalgic kinda way, bringing to mind faded memories of real camping trips and trips to the zoo.

His dad’s driving now, Lori in the passenger seat and Carol behind her, and the diagonal line of his seatbelt slips off his shoulder as he twists around to look through the rear window. He can barely spot the last two cars past the looming bulk of the RV—the Morales’ light grey not-a-Jeep where Jim sits instead of Juan, followed by Carol’s pale yellow SUV that’s being driven by Shane and Glenn.

Though its extra seats would have come in handy, they’d left T-Dog’s church van behind at the quarry, siphoned the remaining fuel in its tank into a gas can and loaded it into the RV—Dale waves at him from behind the wheel, and this time Carl waves back. T-Dog’s helping navigate, seated up front next to Dale, and Andrea, Amy, Sydney and Ethan are in there too, farther back and out of sight.

Carl watches the procession of vehicles trailing behind them, and, in his peripheral vision, Sophia watches him.

“Just looking,” he answers her with a shrug as he faces forward again, though she hasn’t said anything in the first place. “There’s a lot of us,” he adds, the unspoken more than there were before, hanging in the air between them, loud and clear. The adults in the car don’t catch the hidden meaning of his words, focused on the road and missing half the context.

The crinkle of paper draws his gaze to the front seat—to the map his mom smooths out over her lap. It must have been stowed away in the glove compartment, and Carl recalls suddenly that there’s a gun in there, too.

He can’t remember the last time he thought about his mom’s pistol, can’t remember the last time he’d seen it, either. The small .22 was gifted to her by Rick, once upon a time. ‘A sheriff’s wife should never go unarmed,’ he’d joked with a wide smile and serious eyes. Of course, it wasn’t really a joke at all—that had been obvious enough even to a nine-year-old Carl—but Lori accepted the gun anyway with a fondly indulgent eye roll, and it’s had a home in that glove compartment ever since.

She’d never used it.

Carl thinks the pistol must have been left behind when they’d abandoned the car at the CDC—a dusty relic of the past, lost and forgotten. He wonders if anyone had ever found it there, locked away in the glove compartment of that ten-year-old navy blue SUV.

It’s strange, the things you remember when you find yourself reliving the past.

He turns to his left, watches dilapidated buildings and still-green trees flash by outside the window. When they head west—not east—and pull up onto I-285 instead of SR 85, Carl doesn’t know how to be surprised anymore.

It makes sense that they’re driving away from Atlanta, taking the route that’s closer to the quarry, but a part of him still expected them to go the other way. He feels like a dumbass for thinking otherwise. Hoping otherwise.

‘Cause that’s what it was, right? Hope. But where has hope ever gotten him?

He’s had trust, sure. Faith, even—that his family would be okay whenever they left his sight, that they’d come back and they’d be alive when they did. Even as they’d fallen around him, one by one, he had to believe in them, in himself, because it was the only way to keep going.

But hope?

He’s in a world he doesn’t recognize anymore—the road that stretches ahead of them is uncharted territory. His half-formed plans to reach the Farm shrivel and die, and all he has left is the dubious certainty that Fort Benning will fall in a week or two…if it hasn’t already. That place is doomed like everywhere is doomed, but Carl keeps that thought to himself, painfully aware that it would be explained away as the inconsequential fears of a child—he’d be more likely to be comforted by a well-meaning adult than taken seriously.

But it’s knowledge, not fear, that weighs on him now.

How long until that massive herd comes for the Greenes? Three weeks, maybe sooner? He’d rarely had the luxury of keeping track of the days, but he curses himself now for not paying more attention. Carl couldn’t have known this would happen, that he would end up back here, but he can’t stop those damning threads of thought that all start with if only…

Getting shot has a tendency to skew one’s perception of time, and even after he had recovered enough to walk around, his thoughts were preoccupied by other things. Like Sophia, or walkers, or whether his dad would kill that guy. And, in between all of that, he was just happy to be someplace safe—safer than the CDC, safer than the highway. He remembers wondering if that farm would become his new home. If they all could just…live there, and life could go back to normal. Whatever “normal” even is.

Now, all Carl wants is to be alive—for his family to be alive. He can handle everything else as long as he has that.

It’s slow going, even on the highway—the abandoned cars littering the cracked pavement close in at some places, making it hard to get by. They continue along for several miles in a steady, meandering path, stopping once, briefly, to load up on fuel while they can.

Just under a mile from exit 2, when the signs at the side of the road begin to enthusiastically advertise the approaching Atlanta International Airport, they slow to a standstill, and his dad curses quietly from the driver’s seat. It could just be his faulty memory, but the traffic jam here looks even bigger than the one where they’d lost Sophia.

The sea of abandoned cars is endless, spanning across every lane on both sides of the divider. Carl sees SUVs and minivans crashed into the ditches on the edges of the road, sees a school bus lying on its side at the end of a long stretch of torn-up grass. If there are too-small walkers in there, banging feebly at the windows, Carl doesn’t want to know—he doesn’t look, turning instead to take in the haunting aftermath of human panic.

All manner of vehicles lay in broken, twisted paths, many with doors hanging open, and more still with large, spiderwebbed cracks across their windshields—smashed-up bumpers, caved-in sides. A bright red pickup truck hangs half in the air, driven up into the smashed back of a Honda Civic.

Farther ahead, an eighteen-wheeler lies at the end of a line of devastation—it had plowed right through the traffic, heedless of all the people who’d been sitting in those flattened cars. Weather-worn luggage and broken glass litter the road, and Carl double takes when he spots a yellowish stick that might be a femur.

It had been a slaughter—the frantic press of people flooding toward the airport in a desperate bid to escape Atlanta. As if there’s anywhere to escape to.

Carl’s used to seeing all sorts of f*cked up sh*t, but he can’t help but shiver at the sight, at the sheer scale of the wreckage, at the echo of death lingering in the air. His eyes catch on a muted scrap of color, and it’s a head caved in under the tire of a heavily-dented mail truck. It’s impossible to know if it had been a walker or a person.

In this moment, staring out at a macabre scene that’s frozen in time, Carl feels immense gratitude toward the man who had, in another lifetime, tried to kill his dad.

Because holy sh*t.

If it hadn’t been for Shane Walsh, this could have been him. This could have been him and his mom, dead in their car.

Beside him, Sophia is just…frozen, her eyes blown wide with utter shock, and Carl wonders if she’s thinking about what he said before, about the world not going back to the way it was. They had been isolated over there at the quarry, but out here is different. It all becomes impossible to ignore—the lightless buildings, smokeless smoke stacks, desolate roads…it’s everywhere, and he can tell that Sophia’s starting to get it now.

He thinks, looking at his dad, his mom, Carol, that everyone is.

“We gotta double back,” Rick says when words no longer fail him. Carl glances at his dad in the rear view mirror, and he doesn’t think he’s imagining the way his face is a shade paler than before. “No way through that.”

“We’ll just take the local roads.” Lori sounds dazed, and she shakes her head as if that small movement could dispel the sight stretching before them. Carl’s mom turns the map over in her hands, continues, “Parallel the highway until we get past the city.”

His dad nods just as Daryl circles back, shaking his head sharply—he must have gone a bit farther to scout up ahead on his bike, but Carl didn’t even notice him leave.

To his right, Carol wraps an arm around Sophia’s shoulders, pulls her gently into her side. Whether the gesture is for her daughter’s comfort or her own, Carl can’t tell.

He sighs and looks back out the window as the caravan makes a slow and careful U-turn, watching the landscape pass by in reverse.

About twenty miles later, the RV sputters to a halt with an ear-shattering screech and smoke billowing out the front. Carl knew it would happen eventually, and he’s glad it’s held together until now, when they’re far enough from once-populated areas that the noise doesn’t attract any walkers—at least not ones he can see.

The highway he glimpses through the trees looks deserted, and nothing’s on the other side except the rolling, overgrown hills of a golf course.

It’s not as hot now, maybe mid-seventies, and a layer of clouds blanket the sky. Carl stretches his arms up over his head as he climbs out of the car, and he looks back to find everyone else getting out of their vehicles too, gathering in a loose crowd around Rick.

“Can you fix it?” his dad asks Dale, who’s wrists-deep into the hood of the broken-down RV.

The older man sighs and slams the grille closed a little too hard in his irritation. “Not with what we have here. I’d need a truck—an eighteen-wheeler, a bus, another RV. Something like that.”

“I can have a look around,” Glenn offers, scanning their surroundings with a critical eye. “See if I can find something.”

“I’ll come along,” Shane says, patting the younger man on the shoulder, “watch your back.”

“But I—”

“Work better alone,” Shane finishes for him. “I got that. But we’re not in Atlanta anymore, pizza boy, so unless you’ve been here before, I’m coming with you.”

Glenn purses his lips but doesn’t argue, and the two of them head up the hill.

“I’ll go down the road some more,” Daryl mutters before taking off on his bike—Carl thinks he just doesn’t want to have to talk to anyone.

“Don’t be gone too long,” Rick calls after them, but Daryl’s already speeding down the road. “If you’re not back in an hour, we’ll come looking for you.”

“We’ll be fine,” Glenn whisper-shouts over his shoulder when Shane remains silent. “But thanks!”

The two groups leave, and there’s nothing to do now but wait.

Carl looks up at the empty road that stretches ahead, at the golf course, the front of the RV where Dale wafts away smoke with his bucket hat, talking quietly to T-Dog and Jim. He’s never had many belongings other than his hat and his gun, but standing around with nothing to pass the time, Carl misses his scavenged collection of comics—he misses Michonne even more.

“Wanna play checkers?” Sophia asks. Carl remembers the night they met, playing that same game on the hood of Carol’s car as the bombs dropped over Atlanta and the city burned. “Got nothing better to do,” he agrees, and Sophia runs off to that pale yellow SUV to retrieve the checkerboard.

“Can we play too?” It’s Eliza, nudging her younger brother with her elbow, subdued because she lost her father not two days ago—Carl’s glad, at least, that she didn’t see it happen. Neither of them had.

He looks at the girl more fully, and his heart stutters in his chest when he takes in that familiar doll she cradles in her arms. It was the same one Daryl had found, left abandoned in the bed of a creek—by then, Sophia was already dead and turned, locked behind those barn doors by an unwitting Otis.

“Yeah, of course,” Carl answers distractedly, shaking away that mental imagery.

A suggestion to play in the RV is on the tip of his tongue, but he holds himself back with a frown. He keeps forgetting that it technically belongs to Dale. It’s been a while since he had to think about things like vehicle ownership, and they’d gone through so many cars and trucks and buses over the years that he didn’t bother keeping track.

But remnants of the old world bleed into this one, and…manners. Manners are a thing.

“Hey Dale,” Carl says, turning to the older man. “Mind if we play checkers in the RV?”

Dale gives up his poking and prodding at the damaged machinery long enough to wave an acquiescing hand toward the door. “Go right ahead,” he replies with a kind smile. “We’re not going anywhere anytime soon.”

Carl wins.

He tries not to feel too smug about that fact, but by the way Sophia’s looking at him, seemingly unable to decide whether to scowl or smile, he isn’t very successful. Sure, he’s mentally at least five years older than them all, has had more long days with few ways to pass the time, but still…it’s kinda funny.

And as he wins for the third time against the combined might of Sophia, Eliza, and Louis, he can’t help but laugh. Sophia rolls her eyes with a groan, and Carl winks back.

Because he can do that now.

Eliza’s ten and Louis is eight, and while the Morales girl remains almost exaggeratedly unimpressed, her brother looks at Carl like he’s the god of checkers. And you know what? He’ll gladly accept that title. After all, how many times had he lost miserably until finally beating—

Maggie.

His face falls, and his fingers wrap around the round, flat shape of a red checker, turning it over in his hand. Hershel and Maggie and Beth are living on that farm, oblivious to the danger that lurks nearby, and here Carl is, playing checkers and laughing with the alive-again ghosts of three kids who’d died long before he had.

He should be doing more than this.

He should be doing something—anything.

(But what can he do, really?)

Sophia is alive, Eliza and Louis are alive—Amy, Jim, Dale, Shane, Lori, T-Dog—all alive—but he can’t stop that part of his brain that whispers for now.

A sudden roar has him flinching, and he comes back to himself as Daryl returns, pulling up beside the front of the RV.

The first rays of sunlight are just now beginning to burn through the clouds, gleaming off the silver metal of Daryl’s motorcycle—Carl sets down that small, red checker, and their next game is forgotten when the hunter jerks his head in the direction he’d returned from and says in a gruff voice, “How ‘bout a school bus?”

Darkness settles over the cluster of vehicles parked on I-85 some forty miles later, at the top of an exit ramp to bumf*ck nowhere. They’d been passing through farmland for hours, but the only one Carl cares to see is way off to the north and east, painfully out of reach.

Two pairs of legs swing through empty air, dangling over the side of the RV.

“Tell me what happened?” The question is vague, but Carl knows exactly what Sophia is asking—he deliberates for a while, staring up at the oblong shape of a waning moon.

The moon’s cold glow is all that’s left to drown out the brilliance of the stars—Sophia looks entranced by them, because it hasn’t always been this way, what with the massive amount of light pollution that once spilled out from cities and towns across the globe.

Upside of everything, he thinks darkly.

She looks at him again with those earnest eyes, wanting to understand—needing to—so Carl takes a deep breath and starts to talk.

He tells her about Dr. Jenner and the CDC, the things they’d learned there.

He tells her about the jammed-up highway where they’d lost her, about the Farm and getting shot and the days they spent combing the woods for any sign of her. How desperately Daryl tried to find her—how he never gave up, not until the end.

He tells her about the Greenes, about what Shane did to Otis, about the walkers in the barn. His part in Dale’s death. The herd that took away another place they thought was safe, and the bullet he’d put between the eyes of an undead Shane.

Carl talks about the road, about that long winter and Lori’s pregnancy, about the Prison. Losing his mom and his dad at the same time, even if only one of them had been dead.

And Judith—his adorable, precious little currently-unborn sister who he just knows is going to grow up to be a menace someday.

After a while, he almost forgets who he’s even talking to, just letting the past five years tumble past his lips.

He talks about the Governor, about Merle and Michonne and Sasha and Tyreese. About the handful of good months before tragedy found them again in the form of sickness rampaging through the cell blocks and walkers piling up along the fence.

Carl talks about Hershel dying to a madman and the Prison burning down and that goddamn tank—thinking Judith was dead, finding his dad and being afraid he’d lose him too. The way Michonne’s face had lit up when she found them both, and the little family they’d started to become.

He tells Sophia about Terminus in a grave voice, not sparing any details, and even as horror mounts on her face, she doesn’t interrupt him, doesn’t tell him to stop.

He tells her about Abraham and Eugene, Rosita and Tara.

Beth and Grady and Bob and Tyreese.

He tells her about Alexandria and losing an eye, about Negan and the war that was always inevitable, a baseball bat dripping his family’s blood into the street.

He tells her about the walker in the woods, the loaded gun in his hands.

Carl speaks, and Sophia listens, his voice a low whisper in the darkening night. And then, when his voice goes hoarse and both of their eyes are a little damper than they usually are, Sophia leans in and hugs him.

Chapter 8: Struggling Man

Chapter Text

He sees the back of a blonde ponytail—a young woman singing softly to the small, bundled shape cradled in her arms. The music echoes off grey, concrete walls, and something about that isn’t right.

Carl can’t think of why that is.

He walks toward the pair, a smile on his face. “Can I hold her?” he asks. But then he blinks, and Beth’s wearing a white hospital gown that hangs loose around her knees, and this is all wrong.

When he calls her name, she turns around.

There’s a bullet hole in the middle of her forehead, blood streaming down into her lifeless eyes. Judith is quiet, too quiet—perfectly still in Beth’s too-pale arms. Neither one of them is breathing.

Carl scrambles back with a wordless shout. He trips over something and falls, but it’s dirt and leaves that press against his back and hands as he hits the ground.

The Prison is gone—Beth and Judith are gone.

He’s in a forest, and his hands are covered in blood.

Carl looks up just in time to glimpse his dad and Michonne’s retreating figures. They slip away through the trees like sand between his fingers.

His arm shoots forward, lightning fast—bloody, red fingers reaching toward them. “No, wait!” he calls desperately, but they’re gone too, and a deep, throbbing pain flaring up at his side forces him to the ground.

Carl feels drained, weak, exhausted, but he manages to push himself up, leaving messy red handprints in the dirt, and lean back against the rough bark of a tall oak. Clumsy fingers scrabble at the hem of his shirt, searching for the source of the pain. He peels it back as dread climbs up his throat, and the bandages are there, a red crescent staining through the white.

“No, no, no, no,” he mutters, his mouth barely able to form the words.

He tears off the gauze, flinging it forcefully away from him with all the strength he has left.

An unmistakable set of teeth marks mar his skin.

He feels like he’s on fire, and he knows why, and he can’t do anything to stop the shivers that wrack his body.

“P-please,” he stammers to no one, to anyone, but he’s alone and there’s no surviving this.

The dark shape of his Beretta mocks him from its resting place on that rotted log. It’s only a few feet away, but with the way he can hardly move anymore, it might as well be miles. Carl still reaches for it, because the distance doesn’t matter—he needs it, needs to end it before it’s too late.

He knows what he has to do, but he’s not strong enough, and his fingers grasp feebly at empty air.

Something shifts, and when he looks down, his hands are rotten, nails yellow, strips of discolored flesh peeling off his bones. Carl tries to scream—a wheezing rasp forces its way past his lips instead.

This can’t be real, he thinks, because he can’t say anything at all. This isn’t f*cking real!

He collapses onto his back, and the canopy of leaves above him is green, green, green…

.

.

.

It’s his racing heart that wakes him up, but he wakes up slowly, blinking his bleary eyes open to find his face pressed against the cool glass of a car window.

A flat landscape of patchwork green rolls steadily by.

They’re going to Fort Benning, and he doesn’t know what they’ll find there—what’ll happen next—but neither does anyone else.

Carl sits up, runs a hand over his eyes.

Just a stupid dream.

Every mile that goes by, Carl sees more and more stopped cars on the other side of the highway, pointing away from the city they’re now approaching. Columbus is visible in the distance now, a skyline as dead as Atlanta.

“Are we there yet?” he asks cheekily, and his dad casts him an amused glance through the rearview mirror.

“Just about,” Rick says. “We have to get around Columbus first, but we’re getting there.”

Sophia hums idly beside Carl. “I’ve never been to a fort before,” she remarks.

“Maybe they’ll have showers,” Lori chimes in, twisting half around in her seat. She chuckles and adds, “God knows we could all use one of those.”

“I wouldn’t say no to running water,” Carol says wistfully. “Or a hot shower.”

Carl, though, is thinking about more important things. “I wonder if their food’s any good.”

Everyone laughs like it’s a joke, but he’s dead serious. They have no idea the kinds of things you just can’t get anymore, several years in. To her credit, Sophia stops laughing when she catches his expression, but she still looks at him funny.

A military base would have a pretty sizable stockpile of food, right? Although he’s not sure how much of it will be left by the time they get there—food disappears fast in large groups, and there’s bound to be a lot of people there. Which, of course, is dangerous, but they’ll see how it goes.

Another mile or two later, Rick grabs his radio, holds it up to his mouth. “We’re approaching the exit now,” he announces as he turns the wheel, steering into the rightmost lane. “Keep close, and radio if there’s any trouble.”

“…Copy that,” comes Shane’s reply, tinny through the speaker.

“Got it,” Andrea acknowledges a moment later from the RV.

Daryl on his bike and the Morales’ car don’t have radios, but they have maps, and the other three vehicles are impossible to miss anyway.

A large green sign at the top of the exit ramp proclaims ‘Welcome to Columbus’ in faded, white letters—clusters of round dents are grouped around the ‘o’s, like someone used them for target practice. No one speaks as their caravan slows and enters the city’s edge, passing through rows of stores and houses with boarded-up windows and busted-in doors. As if the dead can hear them over the sounds of their engines.

An overturned dumpster spills trash into the street, and the car bumps as they drive over it, tires skidding briefly before catching on the pavement ahead. They turn onto a road that parallels the river, and Carl sees this tiny, pink bicycle left behind on a bike rack, secured by a heavy padlock. Purple and white streamers dangle from the handlebars, all tangled and dirty now.

They’re lucky in the beginning—few obstructions and only a handful of walkers that they steadily outpace.

And then, suddenly, they’re not.

“Look out!” his dad yells, an instinctive reaction as something solid and heavy thunks onto the hood of their car.

The car swerves, and it falls to the ground—a greyish shape Carl realizes is a walker.

What the hell…?

There’s movement at the top of the parking garage that looms on their left, the briefest flash of a stumbling figure, and then it happens again.

Thud.

The body impacts the roof of their car, and its head splatters apart, cracking the skylight above them and staining it a thick, chunky red.

His mom screams, his dad curses.

Carol gasps, and Sophia goes very, very still.

Carl’s gaze shoots to the rearview mirror in time to see his dad’s eyes widen in shock. “Oh shi—!”

Rick slams his foot on the accelerator.

The fake leather of the seat back presses hard against Carl’s back.

Decomposing bodies rain from the sky, slamming into the asphalt, into the RV, into the two cars trailing behind. Daryl shoots ahead of them, turning so sharply he almost takes a tumble when a corpse lands just short of his back wheel.

Everything happens so fast—a few seconds later they make it out the other side, intact and alive, and the relative silence lies heavy in the air. Five vehicles slow as their inhabitants breathe a collective sigh of relief. But there’s another sound there, and Carl rolls down his window, ignoring his parents’ protests. He sticks his head out and listens. Over the rumble of the engines, he hears…he hears…

Groans.

“f*ck, a herd’s coming,” he announces, pulling his head swiftly back inside, and it says a lot about the whole situation that no one says a single word about his language.

They drive and drive, staying as close to the winding river as they can, but the buildings grow taller and closer around them.

“We’re almost there,” Rick says tersely, knuckles tight around the wheel.

The river bends—the street bends with it—and then they stop so suddenly that Carl begins to fly forward, seatbelt tugging across his chest, and he grabs the seat in front of him to brace himself. “What…?” he trails off as he looks up through the windshield.

A wall of faded color and grey-tinged skin bars their path. Reaching arms and swaying heads. They’re loud—a chorus of moans and shuffling feet—and Carl can’t see where it ends.

This is…not good.

“Turn around, turn around!” Rick yells into his radio, and Shane’s reply is immediate.

“Damn it, we’re pinned down!”

Carl can’t see behind him, but his dad can, and Rick exhales a sharp, unsteady breath. “Okay,” he murmurs to himself, looking quickly between his side-view mirror and the slowly-approaching herd of walkers ahead of them.

There’s no room to turn—not for them, and certainly not for the RV behind them.

Rick rolls down the window, aims his revolver through the gap—six bullets. It’s not enough, not nearly enough. They could empty every gun they have, use up every spare box of ammo, and the walkers would keep on coming.

Carl knows that, and his dad must know that too.

You don’t fight a herd this size—you run or you hide. Distract it if you can, deflect it away. Guns will only draw more…but how much worse than this can it get, really?

The first crack of a gunshot sounds out from behind them, and it’s quickly followed by more.

Carl covers his ears when he sees Rick’s shoulders shift, and the roar of a Colt Python splits the air. He counts the shots.

Two.

A soft click signals the opening of the glove compartment, and that small .22 finds its way into Lori’s hands. She keeps it loaded, but it’s never been used. Until now.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Sophia clenches her mom’s hand, and her other one finds Carl’s. She’s got his hand in a death-grip—he squeezes back, but they’re not dying today. Even if they have to swim across that gross, swampy-looking river that Carl forgot the name of, they’re not gonna die.

Six.

The walkers keep coming, Rick fumbles with a box of bullets, and this is hopeless. They should be ditching their vehicles and running, but the quarry group keeps firing, not willing to give up just yet, and it takes Carl longer than it should to realize that the gunfire’s too loud for fourteen adults.

There’s something up ahead—past the walkers, or maybe through them—twin engines that can’t be theirs, because they’re stopped…

A flash of bright yellow, and two big-ass trucks barrel toward them down the street, heavy duty snow plows hooked onto the front. Pieces of walkers go flying into the sidewalk, splattering on cracked windows, and churned-up piles of flesh pile up on the curb.

The trucks pull to a stop, and Carl can finally see them properly past the bodies and the blood. The plows are bright, but the trucks are a dull, muddy green—Army camo.

“Get in, dumbasses!” a man shouts from the open bed of the truck nearest to them. His uniform, covering him from head to toe, matches the paint on the trucks, and his dark hair’s shaven close to his head.

He shoots a burst from a military-grade rifle—perfect headshots at a few walkers clambering over the guts of their comrades.

“And welcome to Fort Benning.”

Chapter 9: The Box

Chapter Text

It’s funny how at home he feels in a concrete box. Twenty by forty, one and a half stories tall with metal rafters and two high windows. It reminds him of the Prison, and, well, it sort of is a prison. Holding cell. Whatever.

Carl thinks it used to be a barrack, now stripped bare of everything except the mattresses—twenty of them scattered along the walls, bed frames gone and tidy arrangement broken. It’s clear that they’re not the first ones to inhabit this room.

There’s a bathroom, fortunately—a small one attached to the sleeping area, with a working toilet and sink. This whole arrangement would have been pretty awkward otherwise.

Carl sits on one of the mattresses, and they’re thin like the beds in the Prison, too. Any mattress is better than none, but he actually prefers it this way, with only the thin cushion separating him from the cold, hard floor. Countless nights of sleeping on the road will do that to a person, he supposes. He could never quite get over how unnaturally soft real mattresses feel, like they’re trying their best to swallow him whole.

He remembers then the moment Negan decided to take them all away, every single damn mattress in Alexandria. How he stood there with that maniacal grin and Lucille resting casually on his shoulder.

‘Christ, that is disgusting, no wonder you cover that up!’ Carl hears when he rubs his hands over his tired face, but this time he smiles. I got two eyes now, you f*cker, he thinks, then tries very hard to not think of him at all.

He watches Daryl pace back and forth by the door like a caged animal, features twisted into a deep scowl. This must be a special kind of hell for a man like him, who’s more at ease outside walls than within. But Daryl’s right here alongside them anyway, locked in a 24-hour quarantine at the behest of the US Army…or what’s left of it.

Carl leans closer to his dad, reads the time on the worn clock face of his silver watch.

Two hours in.

He lies back on the mattress and stares up at those metal rafters.

Twenty two to go.

“And welcome to Fort Benning.”

The soldier’s pronouncement hangs in the air, and the gunfire tapers off as eighteen survivors take in the sight of the two camo-painted trucks parked in front of them. The street beyond is paved in walker guts, more brown and grey than red, and Carl watches in morbid fascination as a severed arm slides slowly down one of those garishly yellow snow plows.

There’s a long pause as his dad stares at their savio—at their rescuers through the windshield, but then he’s moving, grabbing his radio and stepping out of the car.

“Everybody into the trucks!” Rick yells. “Grab what you can and go!” He turns in an aborted motion to open his son’s door—Carl’s already there, jumping out with his bag in his hands.

Lori, Carol, and Sophia come around the other side, and then they’re running, closing that short distance to the lead vehicle. Carl glances to the side when a strong hand rests on his back—his dad’s practically pushing him along as they run, but Carl can’t really blame him.

The second herd is still behind them, and the gunfire picks up again, mostly from the soldiers. Carl lets out a choked noise and flails his limbs in shock as his dad suddenly hoists him into the air, setting him into the high bed of the truck. Rick heaves himself up beside him a moment later and turns to help up the others—Carl blinks after him, incredulous.

Jesus, is he really that small?

Their group is quick to climb into the backs of the trucks, but there’s someone missing, and Carl’s heart rate spikes as he realizes he can’t find Daryl. The truck rumbles beneath them, and they just begin to roll forward—Carl’s about to say something to his dad when he spots him, slinking up from the waterline and vaulting into the back of the second truck.

Daryl’s crossbow is conspicuously absent.

Carl turns his gaze speculatively toward the riverbank, and his lips quirk up into a small smile. Someone’s thinking ahead.

“Corporal Dolgen,” the soldier beside them introduces. “It’s nice to meet y’all—we haven’t found anyone out here in a long while.”

“Officer Grimes,” Rick responds, shaking his outstretched hand. “King’s County.”

Dinner arrives a few hours later, delivered through a slot in the door by an apologetic soldier—Carl hears her muffled voice as she passes metal trays through to Lori and Carol. The slot cover slides shut with a scrape and a clank, and Carl strains his ears, trying to make out the faint sounds of footsteps and voices.

He doesn’t really know why he does that, doesn’t know what he’s trying to hear, what he expects to find. Dolgen—both of them—had seemed normal enough, as had the other soldiers they’d seen so far. In fact, everything about Fort Benning seems normal.

Maybe that’s why.

Carl sees normal and can’t help but think they’re hiding something. He’s probably being paranoid, but when people can go from offering you barbecue with cheery smiles to locking you in a train car and trying to f*cking eat you, anything’s fair game.

A not-so-small part of him wishes the soldiers were just straight-up hostile, attacking them on sight and making their intentions clear, because Carl keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, for kindness to give way to cruelty. It doesn’t help that he knows this place falls eventually—probably even soon. But he doesn’t know when, and, more importantly, he doesn’t know why.

Will it be walkers or people? Sickness? A food shortage?

Carl looks at his family as they sit around on thin mattresses, eyes bored and hands empty, and thinks about how wrong it feels that their group isn’t the one in charge. For his dad to be sitting there in that beige uniform, tired and relieved and trusting.

They’re at the mercy of these soldiers, these strangers, unarmed and locked up, and it’s nothing like the Prison, after all.

Carl wants to have faith in Fort Benning like his dad—he really does, wants to believe that people sometimes save others just because they can, because they want to. Because they’re good, and good people can still exist, even if Carl isn’t one of them.

He tries, but trust doesn’t come as easy to him as it once had.

Carl sits there and counts the minutes and plans for the worst, his cynicism and practicality winning out over the part of him that still hopes.

The herd’s ahead of them, but they keep driving toward it, back in the direction they’d come from.

Rick points behind them in confusion. “Shouldn’t we be…?” he begins to ask, because they’re not going the right way for Fort Benning.

“Can’t turn around,” Dolgen replies with an unconcerned shrug, patting the cab of the truck. “Not with these anyway—streets are too narrow. But don’t you worry, Officer, we’ll make it there.”

Carl leans over the side rail and looks ahead, catching a glimpse of the herd they’re barreling toward before a hand grabs his shoulder, pulling him back. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, kid,” the Corporal says, getting settled near the middle of the truck bed. “It’s about to get real messy.”

Across the room, Amy is talking quietly with Sydney and Ethan—three of the many once-dead people who are now alive and breathing. Sydney is sobbing, and Ethan looks numb, staring at the floor with a blank look on his face.

A few yards away, Miranda is holding her children close, and Jim keeps shooting them these sad, wistful looks—Carl thinks his family is dead, but it must have happened sometime before the quarry if he’s this calm.

Well…maybe resigned is a better word for it.

A couple mattresses over, Sophia’s scribbling something on a piece of paper that Carol had managed to salvage—it looks like either a crossword puzzle or a word search, and his friend stares down at it diligently, tapping her pencil against the page.

“Hey, Carl,” his dad calls gently, offering him a tray of food—he takes it. “You’ve been awfully quiet lately. Everything okay?”

And wasn’t that the question of the week?

“Just…tired,” he replies, and it has the benefit of being true—even if he can’t tell his dad everything, he doesn’t want to lie to him. But it’s hard to talk to this version of Rick Grimes—it’s like he’s a stranger, even though he’s not a stranger at all. And, judging by the way Rick looks at him, stilted and unsure, it goes both ways.

Two months—because that’s about how long it’s been, to Rick anyway—didn’t used to be a lot. But danger fills each step, and threats lurk around every corner, and time means more at the end of the world. Though to Carl, it’s not really the end—it’s just the world.

He’s not the kid his dad remembers, just as his dad isn’t the one Carl still expects to see. He doesn’t know how to stop. He doesn’t know how to stop expecting people to be who they were before. Carl knows where he is, knows when he is, but there are moments when he forgets, just for a second, and it all crashes down on him again.

He hates it—that feeling of relief that’s followed immediately by shame and disappointment. Because for all he’s glad for the people who are alive who didn’t used to be, he can’t stop mourning who he’s lost, even when they’re standing right in front of him.

Especially then.

A few days’ worth of stubble cover his dad’s jaw, and he’s starting to look like the man he became in Carl’s past. But those eyes…they haven’t seen sh*t yet.

(They will.)

Those bright blue eyes focused on him now are the eyes of a sheriff and a father, a man who’s riding on a wave of hope that hasn’t broken yet. They’re still soft and kind, not cold and intense with the promise of retribution. These eyes don’t belong to the man who’d bit out a man’s throat because…

Well, Carl knows why.

This Rick isn’t the man who crawled through hell to keep Carl safe, but this time, he doesn’t have to be. Carl can save himself now—he can save them now.

He takes a bite of the beans on his tray and smiles at his dad. “I was right about the food,” Carl declares with his mouth half-full.

Rick laughs and smiles back. “I think you just might be.”

Everyone’s all stiff and nervous, huddled along the centerline of the truck bed, but Carl’s having the time of his life.

The vehicle shakes with the force of multiple impacts but barely even slows, and smashed-up walkers are flying off to the side, the stragglers swept away by the plow of the truck behind them.

The trail of carnage spreads in their wake.

“We have routine patrols sweep the city!” Corporal Dolgen yells to be heard over the cacophony. “Destroy the dead so they don’t follow us back to base!”

“Is it safe there?!” Rick asks, daring to hope.

“Safest place around! Fort’s locked down tight!”

For now, Carl thinks.

The shadows deepen, and Carl slips off to the bathroom as everyone arranges their mattresses and settles in for the night. He’s not expecting the door to click shut before he has a chance to turn around—and when he does turn around, unabashedly spooked, the last thing he expects to find is Sophia leaning against the door, watching him.

“Umm, hi?” Carl whispers. He has no idea what this is, though with the sixteen other people in the main room, he supposes this is the only place where a private conversation is remotely possible.

Sophia looks like she’s deep in thought, working up the courage to say something important, so Carl waits, baffled and curious and really having to pee.

“I never said ‘thank you,’” she finally says. Half of her face is illuminated by the moonlight streaming through the small window behind him, and Carl spares a fleeting thought to what he must look like to her—a dark silhouette outlined in silver. “For stopping him,” she continues, and Carl doesn’t have to ask what “him” she’s talking about. “No one else said anything, but you did.”

“I’m sorry that even happened,” Carl says quietly. “It shouldn’t have,” he adds, and he’s not entirely sure whether he means to say that someone should have stood up to Ed, or that it hadn’t happened before. (Before, Ed had already been dead.)

“Maybe,” Sophia replies, looking down at her feet. “But it did—and you did—so…thank you.”

You don’t have to thank me for that, he wants to say, but it’s not what she needs to hear. “You’re my friend,” he says instead, “and Carol—your mom—she’s family. Both of you are family. And family protects each other.”

If it were up to him, Carl wouldn’t be having this conversation in a small barrack bathroom, but it is what it is. “Ed?” he continues, and Sophia’s eyes snap up to him at the name. “He was your dad, but he wasn’t your family—you don’t have to let him be.”

Silence stretches between them, but it isn’t a bad thing.

Sophia shifts a little on her feet, and Carl thinks she’s going to leave, that the conversation’s over, but she doesn’t, and it isn’t. “I’m glad he’s dead,” she admits fiercely, as if daring Carl to argue—he sure as hell won’t. “I probably shouldn’t say stuff like that, but I am.”

He doesn’t know what to say, but Sophia continues before he has a chance to figure it out, “You were right—none of it was okay. I wanted to be brave like you, but I just…I couldn’t move. I could never do anything about it, even when I wanted to.”

“Sophia, you—“

“That’s how I died,” she interrupts suddenly, voice shaking and eyes widening in realization. “I got scared, and I stopped moving, and then a walker bit me. You don’t know what happened, but I do. I mean I don’t, but I know myself.” She looks at him in that shadowy bathroom with fear in her eyes, and it’s the same one that’s been haunting Carl for days. “What if it happens again?”

He chokes on air, and it turns into a sharp, hacking cough. Her question resonates in his mind, because it’s already there.

What if Sophia dies…

What if my mom dies…

What if Hershel and Beth die…

What if Glenn dies…

What if I die…

again?

Carl inhales sharply and shakes the demons from his head. “No,” he says—to himself or her or both of them. “I won’t let it. I mean, I’d be a pretty sh*tty time traveler otherwise, right?”

His eyes are beginning to adjust to the dark, and he thinks he can make out the barest hint of a smile on Sophia’s lips. “And you won’t let it either,” he adds firmly. “You’re not helpless, Soph. You saved Amy—you did that.”

“I just played a game,” Sophia protests, but Carl’s shaking his head.

“A game that saved her life.”

The trucks’ engines are loud, but the world is a lot quieter once they mow down the last of the walkers and pass through into empty streets. Carl looks around at the city as they drive, eyes scanning over all those windows that are cracked, shattered, boarded up, or covered. Each one is a gaping hole of darkness in the skyline, and he wonders if anyone is inside any of those buildings, peering down at the two trucks that rumble by.

There has to be—with the Army base so close, the soldiers clearing the streets of walkers? It’s the perfect place to be for the lone scavenger or untrusting group. But anyone who might be out there knows better than to draw attention to themselves, and Carl sees no signs of life in the deserted landscape.

They leave the city behind in a few short minutes, tall buildings giving way to neighborhoods and trees. Then the forest thickens, the houses disappear. Overgrown fields flash by, followed by a golf course.

And then they’re there.

Carl walks by Shane on his way back to bed, and his steps slow as he’s struck by indecision.

Shane’s deluded and dangerous, but most people these days aren’t exactly the perfect picture of harmless and sane…or they won’t be, a few months or years down the road.

And the worst part?

Not wanting to go to the CDC, killing Randall, his reaction to the walkers in the barn…Shane’s a hotheaded and stubborn son-of-a-bitch, but Carl can’t really say that he was wrong. At least not about most of it. His dad grew to realize that too, years later, and Carl knew it ate him up inside.

After all, hadn’t Rick done worse? Hadn’t they all?

Carl’s hesitating too long, and Shane looks over at him questioningly. Shane—his honorary uncle, dad’s best friend. Judith’s father.

f*ck it, he can’t avoid the man forever.

“G‘night, Shane,” Carl says determinedly, and, before he can talk himself out of it, he darts in to give the man a quick hug.

Shane tenses in surprise, and it makes Carl feel sad and amused at the same time. But the former sheriff recovers quickly, reaching out a hand to ruffle Carl’s hair. “Night, Carl,” Shane replies, sincere but distracted, eyes flicking toward Rick and Lori. The smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

Carl moves on with an awkward shrug, and when he reaches his own mattress, he gratefully flops down onto it, letting out a soft groan.

So much better than sleeping in a car.

His mind drifts into a blessedly empty darkness, and he wakes to the yellow-grey glow of dawn, not able to recall a single dream.

Tall, chain-link fence gleams dully in the sun’s golden light, tipped with coils of barbed wire. Home sweet home, Carl thinks dryly, but the Fort’s similarity to the Prison ends there.

A frankly impressive array of vehicles is parked along the inside of the fence, reinforcing it and serving as look-out posts for the uniformed soldiers who scan the world beyond. They approach this huge gate, and the trucks roll to a stop—the two guards stationed there look down at them from the roof of a city bus as Corporal Dolgen ushers the quarry group out onto the pavement.

“As I’ve already told Officer Grimes here, I’m Corporal Dolgen,” the man begins. “No matter what’s happening out there, this is still the Army, and the Army has rules.”

Every word that soldier said makes perfect sense, but Carl doesn’t like where this is going.

“First and foremost, it is strictly prohibited for civilians to carry firearms on the base. So before we pass through the gates, I’m gonna need everyone to hand over their weapons.”

…and there it is.

Andrea shoulders her way to the front, scoffing in disbelief. “Are you kidding me?” she protests. “My dad gave me this gun.”

The Corporal holds his hands up in a placating gesture. “And it’s still yours,” he insists. “But inside the walls, all guns go to the armory. It’s safe here—the perimeter’s manned 24/7, and we do regular patrols through the city to clear out the dead.”

Around Carl, the group breaks out into hushed murmurs.

An exasperated Andrea talks quietly to a patient Amy, and Jim says something Carl can’t quite make out to T-Dog and Glenn. Meanwhile, his dad seems to be having some kind of silent conversation with Shane.

“This ain’t up for debate!” one of the soldiers on the wall snaps, glowering down at them. “Chrissake, people! Turn over your guns or turn around.”

“Thanks, Mitch,” the Corporal snarks, rolling his eyes. “That’s my brother, Sergeant Dolgen,” he says to the group. “He lacks tact, but he’s right—there are no exceptions. We got people to protect, and this is how we do it.”

Dale, ever the optimist, is the first to respond, stepping forward and sliding his hunting rifle off his shoulder. “That’s fine by me,” he says cheerily, passing it off to one of the Corporal’s men.

After another moment of hesitation, Andrea sighs in defeat and glumly surrenders her pistol.

Shane frowns, Rick shrugs.

“Alright,” Shane gives in, handing over his shotgun and, more reluctantly, his pistol.

As a half dozen guns make their way into the hands of the soldiers, Carl watches his dad unholster his revolver and surrender it to Corporal Dolgen with a nod.

He wonders if he’ll ever see it again.

The Corporal waves a hand, and his squad loads the weapons into the back of the trucks and climbs in. The gate opens, and the trucks pass through, leaving them behind as they drive off presumably in the direction of the armory.

Corporal Dolgen claps his hands once as they stand there, gathered at the threshold of Fort Benning. “Now that that’s over with, there’s one last thing…”

There’s breakfast, then lunch, the sun tracing shadows across the floor. And then, right on time—a click and a thud as a latch slides open, the creaking of hinges and a sliver of bright light spilling in from the now-open doorway.

“Still alive in here?” Sergeant Dolgen bellows, poking his head inside. His eyes scan over them quickly, counting, and he nods to himself. “Good,” he adds with a smirk. “This quarantine is officially over, and apparently I’ve got nothing better to do than show you folks around, so let’s get to it.”

Daryl’s the first one out the door, and all the rest are quick to follow.

Shane goes next, and Sophia and Carl walk ahead of their parents—she turns to him with a question in her eyes, and he shrugs at her. “I’ve never been to a fort, either,” Carl admits. He glances over his shoulder as they approach the door, taking in one last time the bare, grey room with messy rows of thin mattresses laid out on the floor.

Then Carl faces forward, squints his eyes, and walks into the light.

Chapter 10: Echoes

Chapter Text

Carl’s eyes adjust to the brightness, and no one told him how big it would be. Fort Benning is huge—a sprawling compound of sturdy buildings and training fields that seems to go on forever. There’s a whole-ass town in here, the kind that can house thousands of people.

And it does.

Sergeant Dolgen mentions the number offhandedly, as if it’s nothing. Normal. Carl watches his dad nod appreciatively, sees his mom’s bright and unburdened smile. Shane looks satisfied, Daryl’s eyebrows lift, and Sophia frowns—thinking, maybe, about what will happen to all these people when Fort Benning inevitably falls.

Carl can’t comprehend the number his ears just heard. He turns it over in his mind, but it feels impossible, as if someone told him they saw a unicorn prancing up to the gates with a two-handed Merle Dixon on its back. He feels, for a moment, like his mind’s untethered to his body, beginning to slowly float away in a confused haze—his steps falter, and it takes Sophia’s hand tugging at his elbow for him to snap out of it.

Fifty thousand.

Fifty. Thousand.

Carl can’t—he just…how?

“There were a lot more of us at the beginning,” the Sergeant continues, as if fifty thousand isn’t more people than Carl ever thought he would see again, outside distorted memories of a world that now feels far stranger than this one. “Not everyone had family on base—some deserted to find them, and others were deployed elsewhere, back when we still had contact with Washington.”

As they wait to cross the street, green-painted military trucks driving by in an orderly line, Carl’s dad takes a step closer to Sergeant Dolgen, his focus narrowing in on the soldier at the mention of the capital. “Have you heard from the CDC?” he asks intently. “Is anyone working on fixing this thing?”

No, dad, Carl thinks sadly, just as Sergeant Dolgen replies, “Oh yeah. Folks at the CDC are working on it, last I heard. Communication’s been spotty, but it’s only a matter of time before they figure this sh*t out.”

“Don’t y’all worry,” he says louder, spinning around and walking backwards to face the group at large, “We’re all goin’ home. Might be months, might be weeks—hell, might even be tomorrow. Just gotta hold out ‘til then.”

Carl looks away. He doesn’t want to see the relief on his family’s faces, doesn’t want to see it fade to hopelessness when they realize it’s never gonna happen.

It’s been a few days since the quarry attack—the CDC is gone, Jenner is dead.

Help isn’t coming.

They arrive at the front of a looming, four-story structure with beige walls and red-orange roofs. “Abrams Hall” is proclaimed in neat, black text above the arched entryway, but Carl kinda thinks it resembles a hotel. Because it is a hotel, he realizes a moment later as their group steps through the sliding glass door and enters the bright lobby of a Holiday Inn.

Carl can’t help himself anymore. Incredulous laughter bubbles past his lips, and it’s fortunate that his family is reacting, too—pleased exclamations, sighs of contentment and relief. Fortunate that he’s mistaken for an overjoyed child and not a guy who feels like he’s starting to lose his mind.

He just keeps thinking, How can this be real?

At least Sophia seems to be enjoying herself, taking in the sight of the lobby with thinly-disguised awe. She shrugs self-consciously at him when she meets his gaze, murmuring, “Never really been to a hotel before.”

Carl zones out, staring up at a fake crystal chandelier as the Sergeant conveys their housing placement to an attentive Rick and Shane, but his focus returns to Sergeant Dolgen as the man turns to leave. The soldier only makes it a handful of paces toward the exit before stopping himself, as if remembering something.

“Speaking of the CDC,” he begins, though it’s been a good few minutes since the CDC was mentioned by anyone, “there’s something you all ought to know, if you don’t already.”

Curiosity spreads across everyone’s faces as the group turns back to face the Sergeant—Carl is no exception. His eyes widen along with everyone else’s with Dolgen’s next words, even if it’s not for the same reason. “Whatever this virus is, that brings back the dead? We all got it. Doesn’t matter how you die—we all come back. And make no mistake, there’s nothing left alive in those walking corpses. Whoever they once were is gone.”

He’s surrounded by disbelief and denial, and Carl…is ashamed to have entirely forgotten. Not that it happens, obviously, but that his family didn’t know. It became such a deeply ingrained fact of life that he didn’t even think about it.

“A lot of us saw it happen during the rioting,” Sergeant Dolgen adds into the dumbfounded silence, shifting a little on his feet and clearly wanting to be anywhere else but here. “Anyway,” he says, clearing his throat, “if you need anything else, feel free to bother my brother—Pete, that is. The Corporal.” He leaves before the silence breaks and the questions begin, retreating from the crowd of horrified civilians with slightly hurried steps.

Carl’s eyes follow him.

The door slides shut behind the Sergeant with an electronic whoosh—the lobby is quiet for a few seconds longer, and then everyone’s talking at once. Carl stands at the edge of the group, and though the voices blend together, the snippets he makes out are the same thing repeated over and over in different words.

They don’t want to believe Sergeant Dolgen…but they do. And they’re afraid of what that means, that the threat is all around them and can’t be contained behind chain-link fences or barbed wire. Because even if they hold out hope for the CDC, for a cure, there’s no cure now.

Carl remembers a storm and a barn, doors shaking and trees falling and walls rattling against the wind and the walkers. Closing his eyes and failing to sleep, listening to the adults talk instead when they thought he couldn’t hear them. ‘We tell ourselves that we are the walking dead,’ he hears in the back of his mind and, well…his dad wasn’t wrong.

Following the subdued procession up the wide staircase to the second floor, Carl wonders what it says about him that the dead eating the living feels more normal and natural than a Holiday Inn.

Hours later, Carl stares up at a popcorn ceiling, surrounded by quiet, steady breathing. While he’d managed to convince his parents to let him take the couch—insisting, truthfully, that the mattresses were too damn soft (though in different words than those)—his brain’s still on overdrive.

Being here instead of the CDC, the road, the Farm…for all he knew things would go differently, he should have expected this. But the differences between his old life and this one leave him feeling unbalanced, despite his best efforts, and they’ll only get bigger from here, growing and spreading like cracks in a windowpane.

It’s a second chance—for Carl, for his loved ones. But what if he f*cks it all up?

Lying there in the darkness, the thought won’t leave his mind.

What if, in his efforts to make things easier for the group, they don’t become who they need to be to survive? If, by trying to save them, he dooms them all instead? After all, who would Carl be, if he hadn’t been through what he had?

An answer worms its way into his mind: dead.

But didn’t he die anyway, despite everything?

His left hand fiddles with a corner of the spare hotel comforter he’d ended up lying on top of rather than beneath. It felt too restricting—white and puffy and heavier than a simple blanket should be.

Sophia believes in him, and as much as it’s a relief to have his old friend back, it’s also a curse. Because, honestly, Carl thinks she trusts him far more than she should.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Carl’s afraid that Sophia looks at him and sees someone he’s not, some fairytale hero from the future who’ll make everything okay. And what will happen when he fails to live up to who she thinks he is? He dreads witnessing the moment her faith crumbles and falls apart like a shaky foundation, dreads having ‘Did you know that would happen?’ flung at him as an accusation.

But she wouldn’t, would she? Sophia’s not confrontational—it’s more likely that the thoughts and resentment would simmer in the back of her mind, expressed only in the movement of her eyes and the quality of her silence.

Carl turns his head to the side and glances at her now, sleeping peacefully in that cushy double bed with her arms wrapped around an extra pillow and her face slack and untroubled. Even knowing as he does that these accommodations are only temporary—and not because the now-nonexistent CDC will invent some miracle cure—Sophia found it in herself to relax. Even her, and Carl reminds himself that there’s a big difference between knowing something and living it.

Carol’s sleeping soundly beside her, and the bed closest to the door is occupied by Carl’s slumbering parents. (His dad snores a little, no matter how much he denies it.)

They’re all wearing pajamas—ones they’d been provided with after dinner, dug up out of whatever standard-issue stockpile of sleepwear the Fort maintains. Pajamas that he had begrudgingly put on, leaving his clothes and shoes piled on the floor beside the couch he’s supposed to be sleeping on.

He can’t sleep.

Carl can’t relate to whatever feelings of relief and safety this place inspires in his family. Safety isn’t high walls or comfy beds, backup generators or a hotel full of strangers. Safety is barricaded doors, multiple escape routes, and his Beretta within arm’s reach. It’s people keeping watch and supply runs being planned and that sheriff hat Carl is sorely tempted to steal.

He sighs and leans back, adjusting the arm that’s supporting his head—the pillow he was given has long since been discarded to the floor. He closes his eyes, but they don’t stay closed for long.

Several more minutes tick by in agonizing slowness.

Sitting around doing nothing is very much not Carl Grimes’ preferred state of being—he only lasts an hour amid the chorus of peaceful sleepers before he’s sitting up and stalking quietly across the room. His shoes are already on—the pajamas were swapped back in favor of his regular clothes the moment he was sure the others had fallen asleep.

Carl passes his parents as he reaches the door, and the absence of his dad’s Colt Python is jarring. It should be sitting on that nightstand, silver metal gleaming dully from the moonlight filtering through the half-closed blinds. But it’s gone, locked away in the armory—Rick’s watch lies there instead, ticking away the seconds behind a pane of lightly-scratched glass.

Carl sweeps his gaze one last time over the room, lingering on the four slumbering figures.

And then he leaves.

He steps outside through one of the hotel’s back doors, and the cool night air makes him shiver. Carl frowns, hugging his arms to his chest, and wishes he’d thought to bring a jacket. He has one—a light one that’s really more of a shirt than anything else—but it’s in his backpack in that second-story hotel room.

He pauses right there on the sidewalk, surrounded by the looming structure of the hotel. It’s pretty big, multiple wings branching out in every direction giving the impression of five or six smaller hotels fused together into one. Carl turns around and tilts his head toward the second floor, imagines he can find the windows where his family sleeps even though he’s on the wrong side of the building.

He considers going back.

It really wouldn’t take long, running back up and snagging the jacket from his backpack. He can practically see it already—see himself reaching for the dark shape of black fabric leaned up against the couch. He’d unzip it slowly and silently, grab the jacket, and leave. It wouldn’t take long at all.

But while it might be cold for Georgia, it’s not that cold.

He’ll be fine.

Carl keeps walking, makes a mental note to remember the jacket next time. There’s no doubt in his mind that there will be a next time, that he’ll be driven out here again, night after night, by the unease that crawls beneath his skin, the nagging thought that there has to be something wrong with this place, that it’s too perfect and perfect things don’t exist.

Every night, at least, until the inevitable happens.

He walks east, toward the rising moon, passing block after block of identical white houses with red roofs. The streets are empty and the windows are dark. It means nothing, other than the Fort’s saving power, or people are sleeping, and probably both. Carl wonders how many of these houses are just empty—if there used to be more people here than there are now like Sergeant Dolgen said, then a lot of them must be.

He listens for vehicles or footsteps but hears neither, and his fingers twitch uselessly at his side. Silence is a good thing when it comes to walkers, but with people? Not so much.

Is he being paranoid?

As he walks, he admits to himself that the answer is a solid maybe.

He was in a war, and then he died, and now he’s here, and maybe…

(Maybe he can’t help but feel that the war never ended, that a goddamn Savior will pop around the corner the moment he lets his guard down, like Negan will stroll up here and—)

Jesus, Grimes. Get a grip.

Carl keeps walking.

It’s late, and the street is deserted, but he’s not going back until he finds what he came for. Even if he’s not entirely sure what that is.

A few large fields open up on his right, empty and flat and dark. More of those houses are on his left, and he moves closer toward them to avoid the circle of light shined down by a lone street lamp. There’s another field—on the left this time—and four or five more blocks of houses before he reaches the end, his path barred by a long stretch of chain-link fence. There are a few cars braced against the fence a bit farther down, but none over here, and all Carl can see through the crisscrossing metal is grass and distant trees.

Something catches his attention then, something lingering at the edge of his vision. Something close. It’s a flaw in the uniformness of his surroundings, and his gaze is drawn upward, settling on a small break in the coils of barbed wire that line the top of the fence.

A mangled opening that a small twelve-year-old boy could probably fit through.

Carl steps closer until he’s directly beneath it and stares contemplatively at the frayed edges. For a solid minute, he stupidly considers climbing to the other side, just because he can. Because he wants to—because out there feels so much safer than in here. His distrust of this place wars with his desire to not get caught, and he lingers there, biting his lip.

The decision is made for him when he hears a voice.

It’s carried on the breeze, male and amused, and Carl steps away from the fence, head snapping toward the sound as he silently curses his lack of a weapon. He doesn’t see anyone, but the halo of light spilling out between the gaps of the buildings shifts strangely—he thought it was just another street lamp before, but he realizes now that it’s not.

It’s a flashlight.

There’s no thinking involved as he hunches close to the ground, making himself a smaller target as he runs for the side of the nearest house with long, even steps. This close to the fence, he bets these houses are vacant, but he doesn’t know, so he makes sure to keep his head down, out of sight of the windows.

Carl creeps around the side of the house, darts over to the next one.

He peeks around the corner.

Though it’s facing the opposite direction, the glint of the flashlight is blindingly bright to his night-adjusted eyes—he blinks several times against the glare, and then he sees them.

Two soldiers stand in the raised bed of a pickup truck, rifles lazily propped against their shoulder as one of them sweeps the wide beam of a flashlight over the dark world beyond. They talk quietly in the night, and Carl can hear them now.

“...that group Dolgen brought in?” one of them says, and Carl doesn’t know if he’s really surprised that they’re talking about his family.

“Which one?” the other replies with a scoff.

“The Corporal, dumbass. You think the Sergeant has time to go on clearing runs?”

“Oh come off it, Jack…it’s not like he’s the goddamn General.”

If Carl wasn’t alone in his eavesdropping, if anyone asked—if anyone knew to ask—he’d tell them he didn’t flinch, didn’t hear the echo of a different three-syllable word ringing in his ears like a warped song.

(He would be lying.)

He’ll never forget the sight of him standing outside a different chain-link fence, holding Michonne’s sword over Hershel’s head like a f*cking trophy. He’ll never forget the sound of Maggie and Beth’s grief-fueled screams as they watched their father die.

And, well. Carl doesn’t want to forget. Not when memories are often all that’s left of a person, not when he alone is left to remember what came before.

He doesn’t know why he’s thinking about the Governor now when the man has been dead for years, his body reduced to a bloodstained, sunbleached pile of bones in the rubble of an overgrown prison yard. Except that’s not quite right, is it? The Governor’s out there right now, as alive as Carl is.

Hiding out in the cold with his mind stuck in the past, Carl doesn’t realize the soldiers have lapsed into silence until it’s broken.

“This shift sucks ass,” Jack grumbles. “I mean, look out there! The hell they think will burst out of them woods? Too many trees out here for a big crowd of those dead f*ckers. Besides, Dolgen—sorry, Corporal Dolgen—and the others made a sweep a couple hours ago.”

Not-Jack grunts, and the flashlight wobbles. “Yeah, well someone’s gotta be out here. Quit complaining.”

“I’m telling you, man, someone up the chain must hate us.”

And then it’s quiet again, the background hum of insects and the lone hoot of an owl the only sounds disturbing the night. Carl doesn’t move for hours, crouched in the shadow of a bush until his toes and fingers grow numb, his teeth start to chatter, and the moon is a little higher in the sky.

He waits, and he watches, and he listens. And, eventually, hypothermia becomes a valid concern and he reluctantly slips away.

He could blame it on the direction of the wind—on his eagerness to get back inside to the warmth or his twelve-year-old body for needing more rest than he’s used to needing.

He could blame it on any number of things.

None of his excuses change the fact that he went to the front door instead of the back one and came face to face with Daryl Dixon. The hunter spots him instantly, lowering the cigarette from his lips and pulling out a switchblade from a pocket in his vest. He tucks it away a moment later when he recognizes Carl’s slight form, frozen in surprise.

Carl really shouldn’t be surprised.

He knows Daryl—knows he wouldn’t be able to sleep well in a place like this, especially not on the first night. That he feels as trapped here as Carl does. He wouldn’t feel comfortable in some hotel room, sleeping alongside whoever the hell he’s sharing the room with.

So it’s really no wonder that Daryl found himself out here where Carl is, too.

But he’s staring—Daryl’s staring at him, and Carl doesn’t know what to do. He knows Daryl, but he has no idea what this version of the man thinks of this version of him, what he thinks of the “twelve-year-old” who doesn’t act quite how he’s supposed to. The boy who stole his gun and claimed to have killed walkers and sneaks out in the middle of the night.

Carl stares back, and it occurs to him that maybe Daryl doesn’t know what to do either.

After a few long seconds of awkward eye contact, Carl just…keeps going. He takes a single step forward, then another and another until he’s walking, giving Daryl a small nod as he passes by—because not acknowledging him at all would only make it weirder.

He rubs his arms as he steps inside to the relative warmth of the hotel lobby, cups his numb hands up to his mouth to warm them up. Daryl doesn’t say anything, but he’s still right there behind him on the other side of that sliding glass door. Carl can feel his eyes on his back all the way up until he rounds the corner of the staircase. And even then, he’s probably still looking at the spot where Carl disappeared from his sight—thinking, wondering.

(Carl really, really wants to know what Daryl makes of all of this. What he makes of him.)

His mind replays that unexpected encounter with Daryl, and it was ridiculous. It is ridiculous, and he slaps his hands over his mouth to muffle his laughter. Carl continues on down the hall, smiling all the way back to the room where his dad snores and his mom turns and Sophia slowly but surely steals the blankets from an unwitting Carol.

He kicks off his shoes and settles back onto the couch, and this time it isn’t long before his thoughts quiet and sleep finds him.

Chapter 11: Corpses

Chapter Text

“Won’t it be nice to make some more friends your age?” Lori asks, and it’s a rhetorical question. He’s supposed to say ‘Yep!’ with a cheerful little smile and move on with his life, and five years ago that’s exactly what would have happened.

He can’t tell her that they won’t be his age, that he’s actually closer in age to Ethan or Sydney. If the world hadn’t fallen apart, he would be graduating high school soon, not going into seventh grade. Hell, he’s older than Beth now. She always seemed so much older than him, but she was sixteen at the start—she is sixteen.

God, he misses the Greenes. He misses Hershel’s kindness, Maggie’s steadiness and Beth’s light. (Whenever he heard her singing, he couldn’t help but think that everything would be okay.)

“I guess,” Carl replies to his mom’s expectant look.

Not the most ringing endorsem*nt, but it’s evidently good enough for Lori, who only says, “It’ll be fun, Carl, you’ll see. Getting back to normal will be good for all of us.”

There’s nothing normal about any of this. Not to Carl. But he nods anyway—he smiles. Like he’s supposed to.

He turns to where Carol is walking with Sophia, holding her daughter’s hand, and his smile turns genuine as he takes in the sight. It should always be like this—the two of them should always have each other. Ed is gone, and Carol is starting to come out from her husband’s shadow. She looks so happy, and it hits Carl like a punch to the gut. He doesn’t realize just how much Sophia’s death affected Carol until he sees her now, free from that pain.

For all he’s used to her sharp edges and cutting gaze, this lightness…it suits her.

It doesn’t take them long to arrive at their destination—a wide, brick building with a navy blue metal roof. He looks up at the sign for “Faith Middle School” and feels like the universe is mocking him. (Carl has no faith in this place.)

His mom tugs lightly on his shoulder and kneels down, pulling him into a hug—he surrenders willingly into her arms. While the Carl of five years ago might have balked at the gesture, embarrassed at hugging his mom out in the open for anyone to see, this Carl thinks nothing of it. Not even when she kisses his forehead before letting him go.

There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. He can’t even begin to count how many times he’s seen his family hug each other—in greeting, in goodbye, in comfort. Doesn’t know how many times he’s hugged Michonne or Maggie or even Daryl. Everyone, really.

That’s just what family does. (And you never know when it’ll be the last time you see someone.)

“I love you, sweetie,” Lori says softly. “You and Sophia try to have fun, alright?”

“Love you too, mom,” Carl replies, and how many times has he said those words to a wooden cross or in the privacy of his mind?

Only this time she’s here, and she hears them, and she smiles with a love that makes his heart ache.

He missed her so much.

Carl and Sophia walk inside to a hallway full of corpses.

Not really—the kids that mill around are talking and smiling and very much alive. It’s like stepping into the past, and Carl knows exactly how that feels. But if he felt disoriented waking up in that tent with both eyes wide open, that’s nothing compared to how he feels now.

He felt it as soon as they passed through the gates, felt it as they walked down actively-used streets and entered a goddamn functional hotel. And yet, it didn’t hit him then as strongly as it does now, standing here in the crowded lobby of a middle school.

Carl’s living in a snapshot of collective mass delusion and he’s the only one who’s sane. (Or maybe he’s the crazy one. Maybe he should miss this, want this, but he doesn’t. There’s no going back to those days, when he went to school and his dad was a cop and his mom burned pancakes.)

There are no walkers here, but Carl’s expression shutters, and all he sees are walking, talking corpses.

He glares down at the shiny, tiled floor as Sophia moves a few hesitant steps ahead of him. He hates himself, just a little, for the way he’s reacting to all of this. Carl’s annoyed—no, he’s pissed.

Because he can fight the dead and the living with no problems whatsoever, can face walkers and war and f*cking dying, but middle school is too much for him?

It’s stupid. Stupid in the way he still has nightmares sometimes of baby Judith being torn to pieces, stupid in the way he touches his stomach sometimes and a part of him expects it to hurt. Stupid like missing a hat.

But he knows, as he numbly follows Sophia into a classroom, that it’s not school that’s the problem. It’s them—all those kids who are living on borrowed time, unaware of the ax hanging over their heads. They’re soft and weak in a way that you just can’t be anymore, not if you want to live.

He was just like them, once.

Carl musters up a smile when Sophia turns toward him—she’s too overwhelmed in her own way to see how fake it is.

Thankfully, it’s a Saturday, so it’s more “go play games and don’t bother the adults” than “why is this angle the same as that one?” Carl’s not looking forward to going back to useless math and history.

Their teacher—an older woman who introduces herself as Ms. Beckens—has a distant look about her, and Carl thinks that the way she hesitates when saying her name (as if deciding between “Ms” and “Mrs”) has something to do with it.

Scattered around the room, the twenty-something other kids are just…playing.

Carl follows Sophia over to the low bookcase where a haphazard collection of board games and puzzles and all sorts of other things are crammed onto the shelves. Sophia tilts her head for a moment, examining the mess, before carefully extracting a crinkled deck of cards and sitting down right there on the floor. She dumps the cards out of their casing and starts dealing them out in front of her.

“What are you doing?” Carl wonders, peering down at his friend.

“I’m playing Solitary,” she declares and continues to arrange the cards into seven neat columns.

Carl frowns. “You mean Solitaire?”

Sophia finishes setting up her game and pauses, looking up at him for a long moment with a furrow between her brows. “Sure…Solitaire.”

An amused smile tugs at Carl’s lips before he realizes he has to find something to do for the next few hours. It’s a “half day” or whatever since it’s Saturday, but still.

He turns to the shelves of games.

Carl doesn’t expect to find anything, really, which is why his face lights up when he spots a stash of comic books crammed between a box of Jenga blocks and some word game he’s never heard of. Even better, he discovers as he smooths out the wrinkled pages, they’re ones he hasn’t read before—four out-of-order X-Men comics whose issue numbers are missing from the growing list he’d seared into the back of his brain.

He waves them in front of Sophia’s face with a grin, catching her attention. “This is the good shi—” Carl side-eyes their teacher. “—stuff,” he finishes. “I said stuff.”

Sophia giggles. “If you say so.”

“I do say so,” he insists. “I’m telling you, this stuff’s rarer than gold.”

The ridiculously-muscular shape of Wolverine dominates one of the covers, metal claws out and an exaggerated snarl on his face, and as Carl flips to the first page, he doesn’t think about Enid. He doesn’t think about Michonne either.

(Except he does.)

He sits down next to Sophia, and a few minutes pass in relative silence. The room around them, though, is far from quiet, and he grows tenser and tenser the longer he sits there. A few times, he has to go back a page or two because he can’t remember what he just read. Then he rips one of the pages a little near the spine when he turns it too fast—he stares at the small tear in faint surprise before moving on.

Loud voices and laughter echo through the classroom, and they grate on his nerves because of how wrong it feels. When he sees someone approaching him in his peripheral vision, he’s forced to admit, at least to himself, that he was barely reading the comic at all.

Carl looks up quickly out of habit, resisting the urge to spring to his feet and reach for a weapon that isn’t there. He looks up, and there’s another dead boy, one with dreadlocks and braces and a hesitant smile on his face.

Their brief eye contact seems to only encourage the newcomer, who wastes no time in plopping down beside Carl on the floor. “No way, are those X-Men comics?” he breathes.

“…Yeah,” Carl answers warily.

“Can I read one? I used to have most of them at home, but then…” The boy shrugs, and there’s really no need for him to finish that sentence, so he doesn’t.

“Knock yourself out,” Carl says, picking one out at random and sliding it across the floor.

“Sweet, thanks!” The boy stares down at the cover for a moment before looking back at Carl. “I’m Jackson, by the way, but I go by Jax.”

“Carl,” he returns reluctantly.

And then they’re back to that relative silence, except there are three of them now, and Carl’s just staring blankly at the comic in his lap, giving up the pretense of reading.

He can’t stop wishing that the boy never gave him his name.

Because Jax is dead, Carl thinks as his eyes wander, landing briefly on every child in that room.

They all are.

He stands up, asks Ms. Beckens if he can go to the bathroom, and as he steps out into the hallway, starting in the opposite direction she told him to go, he tells himself he’s not running. Carl’s not running away from that room of bright-eyed, doomed kids, even if every step takes him farther away.

Eventually, it’s quiet—truly quiet—and he breathes out an audible sigh of relief. He pushes open a door at random and finds himself entering the bottom of an empty stairwell. It’s…nice, or at least a million times better than that corpse-filled classroom.

Carl sits down heavily on the bottom step.

The thing is, he doesn’t want them to die—not Jax, and not anyone else in this building. In this Fort. He doesn’t want them to die, but he knows with a dark, creeping certainty that they will.

It’s only a matter of time.

There’s something clenched in his hand, he realizes as his ears register the sound of crinkling paper. Carl looks down and finds Wolverine staring back at him, that snarl perpetually frozen on his face.

He huffs a laugh.

What a weirdass coincidence it is—Carl’s thinking about death, and here’s a comic book character whose power is to live forever. He doesn’t know how long he stays there, looking down at the cover as his thoughts wander. There’s no clock in here, and no windows either for him to judge the time from the position of the sun.

At some point, he forces himself to stop thinking about it. Carl takes a deep breath, settles the comic on his knees, and reads.

He’s almost finished with the comic when Sophia finds him, because of course she does. The stairwell door creaks loudly, and a familiar head of strawberry blond hair pokes through.

Carl looks up just as the door bangs shut.

Sophia looks startled too, whipping her head back to glance at the door—she’d obviously misjudged how heavy it is, hadn’t thought it would close so fast. She shakes it off after a second, focusing back on Carl and asking, “Why’d you leave?”

He doesn’t know if he has the words to explain it. Doesn’t know if he wants to. But he meets Sophia’s gaze, setting his comic aside, and tries anyway. “All these people…” are going to die, he finishes silently.

She has no way of hearing the words he didn’t speak, but she hears something, and however she chooses to interpret the end of his sentence must not be too far off. Sophia bites her lip, takes a step closer. “Can’t we help them, too?”

“How?” Carl asks, and it’s not dismissive. He’s just…tired, because he can’t think of anything that would work.

Sophia frowns, face scrunched in thought. “We could warn them…?” she trails off hesitantly, doubtfully.

“And tell them what?” Carl asks her. He sighs, shakes his head. “I wish there was something we could do, but I don’t even know what the danger is. I don’t know what will happen to this place, and I don’t even know when. Soon, sure, but does that mean a couple hours or a couple weeks? I just…I don’t know, Soph.”

Sophia deflates. “I know,” she says—annoyed, upset. “You’re right, but…how can you just be fine, knowing…” She doesn’t finish her sentence, either, but Carl fills it in anyway: knowing they’re probably gonna die.

But then he processes her words, and they send him reeling. Carl gapes at her, because, “You think I’m fine?”

Sophia takes in his expression and backtracks, “Well, maybe not fine…but…but you just seem so okay with it. With this, with all of it. How do you do it?”

The answer is simple. “I don’t,” he says. “I mean, I’m not okay. Not all the time—no one is. People are gonna die, people you thought would live forever. People you thought you couldn’t live without. But you can and you will, because you have to keep going.”

Sophia moves closer and sits next to him on the steps. She pauses, looking ahead at the closed door as she thinks.

“Sometimes you can save people,” Carl continues, “but sometimes you can’t. I hate it too, but that’s just how it is.”

Miranda picks them up afterwards, waiting by the front entrance with Eliza and Louis in tow. There’s an elementary school right next door where Eliza’s in fifth grade and Louis is in third, and the hotel is just as close, forming a triangle with the two schools—Carl can see it rising up on the other side of a baseball field.

They cross the street as the other kids flood out of the school behind them, meeting up with friends and parents and splitting off in every direction. Eliza leads the way with her mom, launching into the middle of a story about the other girls in her class. Louis hovers behind them like a sullen shadow, and Carl and Sophia bring up the rear.

They walk through an empty parking lot and cut across the grass.

Sophia seems pensive and Carl just…looks around. No matter how many times he takes in the rumbling vehicles and uniformed soldiers and crowds of people enjoying the lingering warmth of summer, it never stops surprising him. He keeps expecting the people to vanish and the buildings to fall into disrepair, for the trucks to screech to a stop and broken glass to litter the clean-swept streets.

It’s a short walk—before long, they’re stepping into the ground floor of that Holiday Inn and climbing up the stairs.

Carl puts one foot in front of the other, and his thoughts churn like storm clouds, the kind that hang dark and heavy on the horizon. Is it wrong to hope that something happens soon—the same something that destroyed the Fort the first time around? The five of them go down the hallway, and it feels like the start of a routine. But they won’t stay here…they can’t.

Every day that passes without incident, every night spent comfortably passed out in plushy beds, it’ll put everyone’s guards down more than they already are. They can’t get used to this, to feeling safe when it’s just an illusion. Just another lie. His first days in Alexandria had felt the same way. Only then, he hadn’t been alone in his unease—they all had felt it.

Take our guns and split us up, Carl thinks sarcastically. Where have I heard that one before?

Then, they had all spent the night together in one house, watching each other’s backs. But everyone here and now just let it happen.

He tries not to be angry at his dad and the others—he really does. Because Carl had been so much worse, just a stupid little whiny kid who got Dale killed. (But f*ck it if he doesn’t feel alone in all of this.)

Carl figures he can rely on Daryl at least to not get too cozy here, but everyone else? They think this is it—that it’s over. They made it, they’re safe, the worst is behind them.

“See you later!” Eliza waves at Sophia. She grabs her brother’s hand, and the two of them disappear into their hotel room.

Carl wants to scream.

“Oh,” Miranda abruptly says, turning to him and Sophia in the middle of the hallway. “Your mothers should be getting back from lunch soon, but your dad, Carl, was in your room last I heard.”

He nods slowly, frowning—he wonders why his dad stayed behind. Then Carl remembers he’s supposed to be twelve and Rick probably wanted to meet him as he came back from that god-awful school.

“I’ll wait for my mom with Eliza,” Sophia decides, eliciting a ghost of a smile from Carl. Carol’s not the only one who’s coming out from Ed’s shadow.

Miranda smiles warmly, patting Carl gently on the shoulder as Sophia slips away. “Why don’t you go find your dad? I’ll be here if you need anything.”

“Thanks,” he says, clearing his throat. Louis and Eliza’s mom follow her children’s example, leaving Carl standing alone in an empty hallway. He stands there for a beat longer than he should have, then sighs and moves to the next door over, barely three paces away.

Carl’s fingers wrap around the handle—it turns sharply under his hand and jerks inward, sending him stumbling into the chest of a tall figure. Well, everyone is tall, because Carl is f*cking tiny…

It’s his dad.

Rick looks down sharply and reaches his arms out to steady him. “Oh—hey, Carl,” he says, surprised. “How was school?”

Carl takes a step back into the hallway, recovering, and shrugs at his dad. “It was fi—” His muscles lock up in shock as he’s cut off by a sound that makes him freeze.

Laughter.

High-pitched, joyful laughter.

Like…

Like a baby.

Well, toddler, he amends, whirling around to find a girl with wild black hair who can’t be more than three years old. She waves a chubby hand at them, grinning a gap-toothed smile.

Her grey eyes are wide and inquisitive. “Mama says we have new nay-bohs,” she proclaims. “But nobody lived here b’fore.”

Rick leans forward and joins Carl in the hallway, smiling in that crooked way of his that means he’s trying not to laugh. “Your mama’s right,” the former sheriff says, his eyes shining with amusem*nt. He kneels down to her level. “Is she in there?” he asks, tilting his head toward the door behind the girl, which is slightly cracked open.

The girl looks back and opens her mouth.

“June?” The door opens, and a woman in her mid-thirties with matching dark hair—though it’s considerably neater than the maybe-three-year-old’s—steps out. “June?” she calls out again, before spotting the girl who’s almost definitely her daughter. “Oh, there you are.”

The woman leans down to pick up June, settling the toddler on her hip, and faces Carl and Rick with a tired smile. “Sorry about that,” she says. “She knows better than to run off, don’t you, Juney?”

For the briefest flicker of a moment, Carl hears a different name—Judy. He shakes it off.

“Sorry, mama,” the girl replies, looking down as her feet swing slowly in the air.

Rick stands up and offers his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, ma’am. I’m Rick Grimes, and this is my son, Carl.” Her right arm full of toddler, the woman reaches out with her left, twisting it around to awkwardly shake Rick’s hand. “Delora Middleton,” she responds warmly. “It’s nice to meet you too, but I think this one’s due for a nap.”

“I understand,” he reassures with a chuckle, resting a hand on Carl’s shoulder. “My son was a handful at her age.”

Carl rolls his eyes, even if his dad is probably right.

“See you around, Rick,” Delora says and turns away.

When their neighbors disappear behind the closed door across the hall, Carl looks up at his dad. “Where were you going, anyway?” he wonders.

“Sergeant Dolgen wants to meet with me—well, me and Shane,” Rick explains. “Says he’s got a job for us.”

“Huh…”

“Did you eat lunch yet? Mom and Carol went to eat a half hour ago, but they ought to be back soon.”

“Yeah, at school,” Carl answers distractedly, before adding, “You should go meet that Sergeant guy. Sounds important.” Or maybe it’s not, but either way, he really wants to know what that’s about.

“Alright, alright, I’m going,” his dad chuckles with his hands held up in surrender. He backs up a few steps before pausing, his expression turning serious. “You sure you’ll be okay by yourself? I could wait.”

“No, it’s fine. Sophia and the Moraleses are next door,” Carl replies, and if his dad assumes that means he’ll be joining them, that’s not his fault.

He watches his dad’s still-uniformed figure recede down the hallway until it’s gone, and as Carl reaches again for the door handle, he hesitates, turning his head to look at the door across the hall.

He can’t save everyone, he thinks, but maybe he can save someone.

(Maybe he can save that one little girl with big grey eyes and innocent curiosity on her round, chubby face.)

Maybe.

Chapter 12: Normal

Chapter Text

Snip.

Snip.

Snip.

Clumps of brown hair fall to the tiled floor, slowly but steadily forming a half-circle around the wooden legs of a chair. Cool, gentle fingers card through his hair, and Carl missed this—not haircuts, but her. He looks up at the bathroom mirror and watches his mom as she works, every cut of the scissors in her hand sending faint vibrations through his scalp and more strands of loose hair fluttering to the floor. He closes his eyes and imagines that it could always be like this. (Maybe it can be.)

The repetitive motions slow, then still, and he’s halfway asleep—Carl’s more tired than he would like to admit after staying up so late the night before, watching flashlights and shadowy figures in the dark. “How’s that?” Lori asks, and his eyes snap open, meeting her gaze in the mirror.

“Looks good,” Carl says with a wide smile, and it does. But the truth is, he doesn’t really care how it looks—how could he, when most of his haircuts since the Prison consisted of him hacking away the ends of his own hair with a knife? It always turned out looking frayed and uneven, and if he turned down any offers to help straighten it out, that was between him and…well, just him now.

“Great,” Lori replies as Carl stands up, doing his best to avoid stepping on the fallen hair. She waves a hand at the mess on the floor and adds, “I’ll go clean this up, and then you can take a shower, get the rest of that hair off. How does that sound?”

He nods in agreement and hugs her, mumbling, “Thanks, Mom,” into the fabric of her shirt. He’ll never tell her that he prefers his hair longer. And, as he stands there and his mom’s hands pass through his hair one last time, admiring her handiwork, he thinks that maybe he likes his hair short after all.

Slipping away for a few minutes at dinner is laughably easy, Carl thinks as he pushes his way through an “employees only” door and emerges into a narrow hallway. No one suspects a kid.

The back of the mess hall is like a maze, and Carl makes a wide berth around the kitchens as he goes deeper into the building, knowing it’ll be bustling with activity at this time of day. He doesn’t know where he’s going, exactly, but it has to be around here somewhere—the room he’s looking for.

He ducks down as he passes by a few offices, slipping under the small windows set into the top half of the doors. Carl doesn’t know if anyone’s inside, but some of the lights are on, and he’s not taking any chances.

Come on, come on…

There.

Conveniently, it’s labeled, the words “Food Storage” traced out neatly in white paint above the door frame. The thick, metal door is cracked open, light spilling out into the hallway, but he doesn’t question it—there’s no time to question it. He only pauses for a moment, listening, before nudging the door open just a little bit more and slipping through the crack.

Carl knew it would be here—knew it’d be somewhere—but that still doesn’t prepare him for the absolutely massive stockpile of food that stretches out before him.

Countless rows of high shelves fill the space, packed with stacks of canned food and boxes of MREs. It’s almost like a grocery store…or, rather, how grocery stores used to be. The shelves aren’t full by any means, but there are so many of them that it doesn’t matter. They have a lot. Enough. More than enough.

He walks down the aisles, eyes quickly scanning over the cans and MREs. He’s so used to just grabbing whatever’s left that he almost doesn’t know what to do when he actually has a choice.

Carl stops, unzips his backpack, and—

“Hey!”

He whips around, and a soldier stands in the doorway…the other doorway on the other side of the room. Carl watches the man step closer, door shutting behind him with a bang. “You can’t be here, kid.”

Well, ain’t this awkward.

He shrugs his backpack back on, fervently hoping the man doesn’t notice. Carl’s mind races. He has to get out of here, and he opens his mouth to spout some apologetic lie about sneaking around, but a sudden noise cuts him off. The door behind the soldier opens for a second time, and a small figure darts inside, weaving around the man and sprinting at Carl…

“You’re it!” Sophia pokes his shoulder with a mischievous grin, before spinning sharply on her heels and running back the way she came.

That was not the plan, but Carl recovers faster than the soldier does. “Hey, no fair!” he calls after her, fleeing just as quickly. He doesn’t look back as the soldier stares after them, and as he runs outside, he hears a quiet grumble echoing from the storage room before the door slams shut.

“Damn kids…”

They stop running once they’ve circled the outside of the building, arriving back at the front entrance. Carl shakes his head and breathlessly asks, “What happened to letting me know if someone’s coming?”

Sophia scowls. “He came out of nowhere!” she insists. “If I did anything, he’d see me standing there.”

Carl leans against the side of the building as they catch their breath. He tilts his head back against the bricks to look up at the sky, thinking over the past few minutes. “Well, at least we know what it looks like, now. That’s something.”

“We can try again tomorrow?” Sophia says, halfway between a suggestion and a question. Tomorrow is Sunday and the schools are closed—they’ll have all day.

“Yeah,” he agrees, “tomorrow.”

(He hopes the Fort will still be standing when tomorrow comes.)

Night falls, and he finds himself back in those stupid pajamas, lying on a couch in a hotel room. His mom is already out like a light, but everyone else will take longer—Carl closes his eyes as he waits for the rest of them to fall asleep.

He’ll go back to where he found those two guards last night, watch them for a while. It’ll probably be the same guys if he arrives around the same time—he doesn’t know when the shift begins, but it lasted longer than he had in the cold.

Because…right. The jacket. He’ll make sure to bring it this time. Maybe then he can stay out longer, and…and…

.

.

.

He wakes with a jolt to the orange glow of sunrise, rays of light glinting off the white slats of the blinds.

Carl sits up, rubs his hands over his face.

Damn it.

A halting breeze blows from the west, ruffling Carl’s newly-cut hair. Grass crunches under two pairs of feet. They walk among buildings and streets and fields, and there’s not a single walker in sight.

“It’s nice here, isn’t it?” his dad says, and Carl hums absently in reply. He’d rather call it weird than nice, but he knows his dad doesn’t feel that way yet, that it’s only been about a week since he woke from a coma and his world turned on its head. “Hey, uh,” Rick continues, “when I talked with Sergeant Dolgen yesterday, he said something real interesting.”

Cark frowns, trying to interpret his dad’s expression. It’s almost serious, but not quite, and he almost looks…excited? Or happy, or something. “Yeah?” he prompts.

“I know we haven’t really been keeping track of the date, but the Fort does…and today’s the thirty first.”

Carl opens his mouth to say ‘So?’ when it suddenly clicks. “No…” he breathes.

Rick grins. “Yep, it’s Halloween. Mitch—the Sergeant—said there’ll be a little celebration tonight, just around sunset. Can you believe that? They’ve got candy and everything.”

“...Weird” is all Carl can say, because what the actual f*ck is this? Halloween? Really?

“Maybe you can borrow my hat,” Rick teases, “be a little cowboy.”

Carl flushes in embarrassment, and oh god, what has he done to deserve this? “Dad,” he groans, hating his life.

“It’ll be fun,” his dad says, and no, it won’t be. That’s exactly what his mom said about going to school, and look how that turned out.

“What did Sergeant Dolgen want with you anyway?” Carl asks, because he can’t handle this anymore. “You and Shane?”

Rick shoots him an amused look—he definitely didn’t miss the blatant redirection, but he mercifully lets it slide. “He wants us to meet everyone at the hotel. Well, the first two floors at least. If anyone has any problems, they’ll come to us, and we’ll pass it on to Dolgen.”

Carl squints at him. “So you’re like…a hotel manager?”

His dad laughs. “I guess so,” he replies, shaking his head. “But it means a lot that they let us stay here—you saw what it’s like out there. It would be wrong not to help.”

Carl privately thinks that Rick isn’t obligated to match the soldiers’ savior complexes with his own, but what does he know? “He thinks people will listen to you because you were a cop?”

“I am a cop,” Rick corrects. “Or I will be, once all of this blows over.”

“Uh huh,” Carl says, unconvinced.

“Anyway,” his dad continues, “we were gonna do that today before the celebration—introduce ourselves to people at the hotel. I can swing by our room when I’m done, and we can go get some candy. Deal?”

Carl looks at his dad, considering. Halloween sounds like a hellish nightmare, but if there’s really candy, he’s in.

“Deal.”

It occurs to him, as the sun sinks toward the horizon and hundreds of costumed children fill the streets, that this is the perfect time to sneak back into the mess hall. Now, while everyone is distracted and a lot of the soldiers are outside making sure everything is running smoothly.

Most of the kids Carl sees run around wearing capes made of curtains or white sheets with eye holes cut out, and one girl passes by wearing a red and black polka dotted sweatshirt and a ladybug headband. There are a few others, like him, who just wear their normal clothes—as much as Carl would like his hat back, he refuses to suffer the indignity of people thinking he’s dressed up as a cowboy.

He scans the crowd for Sophia.

With her light hair and blue cape, she shouldn’t be too hard to spot, but the adults and “older” kids loom over him, and he once again finds himself cursing his height. She had split off with Eliza and a few girls from the elementary school about a half hour ago, and he doesn’t know where she is now. And, as he continues his futile search, it’s obvious that he won’t be able to find her.

His dad had been the next one to leave, wandering off to talk to one of the parents. Everyone has spread out, really, and Carl thinks they all missed having more people to talk to, people outside their group of eighteen. He’s left with Lori and Carol, and the two mothers are so busy chatting about the Fort and holidays and other inane things that it’s like Carl’s not even there.

Then he leaves, muttering something about finding Louis, and he’s actually not there. His mom barely glances his way.

He does, in fact, see Louis—Carl spotted him through a gap in the crowd, walking beside Miranda. He swings by them on the way to the mess hall. And, for good measure, he tells them he’s going to find Eliza and Sophia—he figures she would cover for him if it came to that.

He doesn’t think it will, though, because this…spectacle, this Halloween celebration? It’s distracting.

Carl takes some candy along the way, quietly thanking the adults who line the street. They don’t comment on his lack of a costume, and he gets some chocolate. It’s fresh too, he remarks as he crunches on a Kit Kat.

Hard candy lasts a while, so he snatches up the candy bars, enjoying them while he can. It’s like he told Sophia—some things, some food…there’s just no replacing them. They expire, and then they’re just gone.

A couple minutes later finds him chewing on a Twizzler, ducking behind the middle school as he circles toward the mess hall.

“Carl?”

He stops, groaning internally, because he recognizes that voice. Carl clears his throat, turns around. “Jax, right?” he says, blinking in surprise at the boy.

A floppy red mask is secured over his face, ringing his eyes and wrapping around the back of his head. His cape has the same pattern and color, made from what looks like either a heavy curtain or a thin bed comforter.

“That’s me,” the boy replies with a grin. “I’m trying to be Scott—you know, Cyclops, the X-Man—but this is the best I could do for the glasses.”

“Cool,” Carl replies, out of his depth. Is this the way kids were before? There’s an awkward pause, and he shifts on his feet, his hands wrapping around the straps of his backpack. “Listen, uh, Jax,” he says. “It was nice meeting you, but I should go find my dad.”

“Oh, sure…” Jax says with a shake of his head, and if he looks disappointed and a bit crestfallen, that’s not Carl’s problem. “Of course. I’ll just…yeah. See you at school.”

“See you,” Carl echoes as they go their separate ways.

He walks down an empty sidewalk, a lone figure casting a long shadow, his path lit by the sunset and the streetlights. The mess hall comes into view, and he approaches the back door—the one he and Sophia escaped out of in their first, failed attempt.

Of course, it’s locked, but Carl doesn’t let that stop him. He looks around, making sure the coast is clear—it is. Then he reaches into his pocket, pulling out a pair of paper clips, and gets to work. He hasn’t done this in a while—it’s usually easier to break the lock than pick it—but still, less than a minute goes by before he hears that distinctive click.

Carl tucks the paper clips back into his pocket, takes a deep breath. He reaches for the door handle and pushes it down slowly, grinning as he meets no resistance. He pulls the heavy door open—slowly, carefully—and though the hinges squeak a little, he doesn’t think anyone is close enough to be able to hear the quiet noise.

Carl steps into the pitch-black pantry.

He stands there for a moment, willing his eyes to adjust, ignoring every instinct that screams danger-danger-danger because he can’t see. If there are any walkers in here, waiting to take a bite out of his ankles, he won’t be able to see them until it’s too late.

Except there are no walkers in here, Carl reminds himself. This isn’t some broken-down store he’s scavenging—it’s just a glorified pantry. It wouldn’t make sense for them to be locked in this room. And, he thinks as he begins to make out the outline of the looming shelves, he doesn’t need to see to know he’s alone in here. He’d hear them, smell them.

No, he’s alone.

The room has no windows, but he left the door cracked open, and the reflected light of a street lamp is enough to see by—at least it is if he limits himself to the closest shelves.

He shrugs off his backpack, unzips it. The smaller, front pocket holds his candy, so he opens the main one, pushing aside his spare clothes to load in the stolen food. Carl grabs stuff at random—some MREs, some cans, taking them from different parts of the shelf in case they’re organized by type. After all, he’d rather not end up with five cans of green beans.

(That’s an experience he’d rather not repeat.)

It doesn’t take long—Carl’s been on plenty of runs before, and he’s used to being quick and quiet, grabbing what he needs and getting the hell out of there.

So, just a minute or two later, he’s putting the last can into his bag. It’s something that feels heavier than the others, but he can’t see well enough to read the label. It doesn’t really matter what it is—food is food. He reaches in, adjusting the clothes to cover his stash, then zips up the bag and hefts it back onto his shoulders.

But then he sees something, a faint shape beside an open box of MREs. Carl frowns and steps closer, straining his eyes to see. He tentatively reaches out a hand, his fingers brushing against metal.

He inhales sharply, staring at that shape in disbelief.

It’s a knife. A goddamn knife! And it’s a good one, too—a combat knife, because he’s in an Army base and whoever left it there was almost definitely a soldier.

Carl grins in the darkness, wrapping his fingers around the handle. Oh, he is so keeping this. He opens his backpack one last time, wrapping the blade carefully in a pair of jeans—he has no doubt that a knife like this is wickedly sharp, and the last thing he needs right now is to have to explain to his dad how he managed to stab himself.

Carl leaves, slipping back out the door and using his paper clips to lock it behind him. And then he strides away, the weight on his back significantly heavier than before. He returns to the Halloween celebration, seamlessly enters the crowd, and it’s like he never left.

It’s almost too easy.

“You should keep it,” Carl says quietly, tilting his head toward Sophia’s cape as she takes it off. Carol had helped her make it out of a blue, cotton hotel blanket, and Sophia folds it up now with a nod, tucking it away into her own bag. Winter’s creeping up on them, and it’d be good to have an extra blanket, even a small one.

“Are you sneaking away again?” she asks shrewdly, and Carl laughs in disbelief.

“Nothing gets by you, huh?” he mutters to himself, before saying, a little louder, “Sorry if I woke you up.”

“You didn’t,” Sophia reassures him. “I woke up, and you weren’t there. The bathroom door was open, and your shoes were gone. I fell back asleep, and you were there again when I woke up.” She tilts her head, eyeing their parents. “I don’t think anyone else saw—they woulda said something otherwise.”

Carl grimaces at the thought. “Yeah, they really would.” He takes off his backpack, leans it against the couch. “I got the stuff we were talking about before,” he adds vaguely, conscious of the adults in the room. “At the Halloween celebration.” If Carol or his parents overheard, they’d assume he meant candy. “I tried to find you, but you’d already left with Eliza.”

Sophia studies the shape of his bag for a moment before turning her gaze back to him. “Did it go okay?”

“It was fine,” he replies. “Don’t know what I got, really, since there was so much of it. And it was dark.”

Sophia bites her lip. “That’s…good. I just can’t stop thinking, y’know? About what’ll happen. I wish we knew how long it was.”

And wasn’t that the crux of it? He could have known, but he didn’t. He didn’t count the days, didn’t pay attention—no one did. “Sorry,” he says, feeling guilty despite his best efforts.

Sophia’s eyes widen. “I didn’t mean…it’s okay,” she hurries to say. “You didn’t know.” She fiddles with her fingers, asks, “So, are you? Leaving again?”

“I am,” Carl admits softly. “It’s just weird for me, to be in a place like this.”

“Because it’s normal?”

“Too normal,” he shoots back. “So normal that it’s not normal. I dunno, Sophia, maybe it’s just me. It’s just…” Carl pauses, trying to put his thoughts into words. “All of this…it’s like how it was before—before the walkers. It wasn’t that long ago for you, but I haven’t lived in that world in a long time. The old world’s gone, and it feels like everyone here is just pretending. And maybe they have to—maybe they need to pretend, but it’s dangerous to forget what’s out there.”

“I won’t forget,” Sophia says, just as quietly.

“Good.”

The lights turn off, their parents climb into bed.

“...Be careful, Carl,” she whispers.

“I always am,” he whispers back, wondering faintly if it’s strange that she never asked him where he’s going.

He remembers his jacket this time.

Carl makes his way out to the fence and starts to turn to the right, ready to return to that spot where the soldiers were. But when he reaches the end of the road, he stops just like he had the first time. The broken gap in the barbed wire looms above him invitingly, and he stares. And stares. And stares. And then he closes the gap, reaching a hand out to wrap his fingers through the wire mesh of the fence.

He climbs.

Carl holds the hilt of his newly-acquired knife between his teeth as he scales the fence, slowing as he nears the top. The opening is just barely wide enough to fit through, but with some careful maneuvering, he makes it around and down the other side. His feet hit the ground, and he’s out.

He takes a few steps forward, and no one’s there to stop him—while he can see the flashlight from that guard post in the distance, they’re too far away to spot the small figure in the darkness.

Carl walks across the grass and approaches the treeline. He remembers one of the guards saying earlier that there aren’t many walkers on this side of the Fort, but surely there are some.

It doesn’t escape his notice that he’s doing exactly what he’d intended on doing that day he snuck away on the Farm, the day Dale died. It’s a knife this time instead of a gun, but no one knows where he is. No one knows he’s out here—he’s on his own, just like he was then.

But it’s different now. This time, he doesn’t want to kill a walker. He needs to. Needs to remind himself what it’s like out here, that he’s not crazy.

Carl stops just short of the shadows of the trees and waits.

As he keeps his ears out for the shuffling footsteps of walkers, he examines his knife, not really having had time to do that until now. It’s dark here, but not quite as dark as the storage room had been. He turns the weapon over in his hands—that black combat knife with a round handle and a razor-sharp blade. Honestly, it’s perfect.

He doesn’t feel the slightest bit bad for whoever he’d stolen it from—they’re the one who forgot about it, and he’s sure they can get another. Carl, on the other hand, is now in possession of one hell of a badass knife.

He smiles, and then he hears it.

Carl’s head whips up, and he squints into the forest.

He hears it again—a snapping twig, a quiet moan. It gets louder and closer, and Carl shifts his feet, holding the knife up defensively. Uneven footsteps crash through the underbrush in a slow rhythm, and finally there’s a hulking shape materializing out of the darkness. It stumbles, swaying on its feet as it catches sight of him, and the pattern of its footsteps changes as it lumbers in his direction.

Carl hesitates. Because it’s big, the walker that heads for him now, staggering side to side as it moves. Even for an adult, it would be big, and he’s cursed with the body of a scrawny twelve-year-old.

But it’s just one, he reminds himself—he can do this.

He lets it approach, watching for an opening. As it comes closer, it seems to get larger, and Carl extends his knife hand up, judging the distance. The height. He’d never taken on a walker before when he was this age—not without a gun. The walker closes in on him, and Carl narrows his eyes at that swaying skull, a target that seems to get higher and higher with every passing second.

He can do it.

The walker snarls, getting closer and closer and…

Carl lunges forward, thrusting his arm up and piercing through its jaw—or at least, that’s what he tries to do. The blade sinks into the walker’s neck instead as it takes another limping step forward, dislodging Carl’s grip on the handle.

He retreats with a startled gasp, barely managing to avoid those long, reaching arms. The walker continues onward, undeterred, and his only weapon is embedded hilt-deep in its neck, six feet in the air. Maybe Carl should feel afraid, walking backwards across the grass as a huge walker pursues him with halting footsteps, but he’s just angry.

That stupid walker has his knife.

He glares at it and ducks past its arms, aiming a kick at its left knee—it buckles, and the walker rights itself with a roar, leaning down to snap its teeth at him. Carl backs away, circles around it. He’s getting that knife back.

He kicks again at the same knee, and something crunches. The walker staggers, begins to topple—Carl helps it along with a shove to the back, and it falls, flopping heavily onto its wide stomach. It hits its head on the ground, but not hard enough, and its arms come up as it twists around, trying to stand. But its knee is mangled—he spots pieces of bone sticking out at sharp angles, piercing through the weather-worn jeans of its leg.

Carl kicks the walker again, in the face this time, sending it crashing back down. While it’s distracted, he lunges forward and yanks the knife out of its neck. Yellowed teeth snap in the air, inches from his fingers.

A voice at the back of his mind yells at him about how reckless he’s being, and it sounds like his dad—his dad from before. (Carl ignores that voice.)

He scrambles backward as twisted, sickly hands reach for him, but he got his knife back. He has a weapon now, and Carl looks down at the walker. It wheezes, staring at him hungrily through cloudy eyes, and tries to crawl, still reaching for him with its bony fingers and cracked fingernails.

For a few moments, Carl just…watches it, face impassive and knife held above his head. Because this is what’s out here—what’s out everywhere.

Nothing about Fort Benning is normal—not the soldiers, not the schools, and not that goddamn hotel.

Halloween isn’t normal.

This is.

The walker groans, and Carl moves. He stomps down on one of those outstretched arms, leans over, and drives his knife into the back of its skull. It falls still, collapsing limply on the ground, and Carl pulls the knife out with a wet shlunk.

It’s only then that he realizes he could have gotten blood all over his clothes (that is not something he could explain away). But he didn’t—at least he doesn’t think he did.

Carl leans back into the grass, panting. He looks up at the starry sky as he catches his breath, and it doesn’t register until that moment that he’s smiling.

Chapter 13: Whispers

Chapter Text

Carl brings his backpack to school. He doesn’t know why he didn’t before, but now that he has food and a knife, he doesn’t want to risk leaving it behind—he has to be ready for whatever’s coming. Sophia takes one glance at him before bringing hers, too.

Carol walks with them today, Lori and Miranda staying behind to do whatever it is they do in the mornings. Read, maybe, or drink coffee—all the adults had been overjoyed at the discovery that Fort Benning has a supply of the stuff, albeit one that’s strictly rationed.

Carl…doesn’t get it.

He expressed as much in an offhand comment to his dad, who replied that Carl would understand when he’s older—Carl couldn’t hold back his snort at that, because yeah, right. He doubts there’ll be very much coffee at all ten years from now. (There certainly wasn’t after five.)

They walk across the baseball field and angle toward the elementary school. Sophia’s face is solemn and serious, a literal weight on her shoulders as well as a figurative one—as if now that they’re ready for the Fort to fall, it finally will. She taps the straps of her backpack with anxious fingers and lets Eliza’s chatter fill the air.

Hanging a few paces back, Carl watches the Morales siblings.

There’s no denying that Fort Benning is good for them, that this little slice of supposed normalcy is easing the pain of their father’s death in a quiet, steady way. He knows they’ll never completely get over it—Carl sure as hell hasn’t, even knowing that his mom is safe now, alive now.

The loss of a parent is no small thing.

Eliza seems happy with the new friends she’s made, and even Louis seems to be doing a little better. But if this is when they feel safe, what will happen when they don’t? When they’re not? Here’s a place that, to their eyes, looks indestructible—soldiers, walls, people. Hotels and schools. Finally safe from a months-long nightmare, only to discover that this isn’t the kind of nightmare you can wake from. It isn’t over—it never will be, and it never was.

Losing this place, Carl realizes, will be the hardest on them. They’re struggling already—from losing their dad, sure, but from losing everything else, too. Their friends, family, everyone they’ve ever known. Carl’s had to come to terms with that a long time ago and every day since. Because it never ends, does it? There are always more people to lose.

It’s hard to remember how he felt when everything was new for him, too. He remembers the fear, but missing people from his old life…he doesn’t think he had time for that—doesn’t think he ever allowed himself to have time for that. He didn’t think about his grandparents or Uncle Jeff, because he had his dad, his mom, Shane. (Until he didn’t.) He didn’t think about his friends, because he had Sophia. (And then he lost her, too.)

The sign for “Dexter Elementary School” looms overhead, and when Eliza turns around, her eyes are glowing with excitement. “Bye, Sophie!” she says, darting forward to give her friend a hug. She pulls back with a small wave aimed at Carl, who nods back.

“I heard they’re serving pancakes today,” Carol says brightly in goodbye, eliciting a muted smile from a quiet Louis.

They stand there for a moment as the Moraleses disappear inside. Two soldiers pass by, walking down the road at a clipped pace. “...been a week,” Carl hears one say to the other. “What if…” A gust of wind blows, stealing the rest of his words.

Carl stares after them.

There’s a rustle of clothes as someone shifts beside him. “Come on,” Sophia urges—he turns, tearing his eyes away from the soldiers’ backs, and walks beside her as they continue on toward the middle school.

Three sets of footsteps scuff against the pavement.

“Are you looking forward to school?” Carol asks her daughter, and Carl’s eyes snap over as he registers the unassuming tone of her voice. She’s not the same person who rescued them at Terminus, not the same woman who blended seamlessly into Alexandria with smiles and cookies and calculating words. But for all her differences, she’s still Carol.

Sophia’s fingers drum against the strap of her backpack. “It’s alright,” she says noncommittally.

Carol looks at Carl next. He doesn’t know what to say, really—doesn’t want to straight-up lie, either—so after a second of silence, he provides, “I found an X-Men comic the other day. It was good.” At least he thinks it was, through his hazy recollection of that day. “It was one I haven’t read before,” he adds.

Carl meets Carol’s gaze, and he doesn’t think her suspicion has completely abated, but she doesn’t pry. (Of course, when it comes to Carol, that could mean anything at all.)

Those stormy eyes are knowing as they linger on their backpacks.

Every lesson is more pointless than the last.

There’s English, and his handwriting sucks, but who the hell cares? He can talk and read and write, and that’s all that really matters. (It’s not like he’ll ever take the SAT.)

They learn the history of a country that doesn’t exist anymore—stories of a dead world, a civilization as lost as the ancient Greeks or Romans. He thinks about Judith, about all the kids like her who will grow up not having known the old world at all. He remembers the way his sister would ask him about airplanes, as if they were just as distant and unreal to her as the dinosaurs are to him.

Geometry’s next, and Carl glares holes into his paper, occasionally scratching in answers he’s sure are wrong just to seem like he’s doing something. Ms. Beckens doesn’t seem to notice, at least, so he takes that as a win. (Honestly, he doesn’t want to know how badly he’d do if he did try. Math has its uses, but he’s no Eugene.)

They have lunch then, and that’s not so bad—Carl missed cheeseburgers. They didn’t have any cows in Alexandria, and there’s something oddly nostalgic about overly-processed hamburger buns and floppy squares of cheese.

“We’ll be back to eating squirrels soon,” Carl tells Sophia as she picks at a soggy piece of lettuce.

She wrinkles her nose.

He laughs.

They go back to class—music theory of all things. Maybe it was his reminder that their time here is finite, but there are moments when Sophia’s eyes turn sad and she makes a point of looking around at everyone, as if trying to commit their faces to memory.

Carl wants to tell her that it’ll only make it worse—she’s better off if her ghosts don’t have faces, don’t have names. He averts his gaze from the dark head of hair in front of him, the one belonging to a boy who loves comics and X-Men. If things were different, if the world was how it used to be, they would have been friends. But they’re not, and it isn’t, and all they’ll ever be is two strangers whose paths crossed for a few days.

(And who knows, maybe Jackson “call me Jax” won’t be just another dead boy—maybe he’ll survive like Carl did until the walker in the woods. Maybe he’ll understand, then, why they couldn’t be friends. Maybe he’ll wish he didn’t know Carl’s name, either.)

Short grass prickles against Carl’s hands as he leans back, soaking in the sun. His mom, Carol, and Miranda sit together on a blanket a handful of yards to his left, and, in front of him, Sophia and Eliza race each other across the field—Sophia’s taller, and she wins, but the other girl isn’t too far behind. Louis sits a few feet to his right, hunched in on himself until Carl reluctantly offers him a handful of jelly beans.

Carl munches on the rest, tucking the empty wrapper into the front pouch of his backpack.

It’s warmer than it’s been in a while, the sun shines bright from the cloudless sky, and the large field stretching out from the hotel’s empty parking lot is filled with people. They’re people Carl doesn’t recognize—people from the hotel, probably—and it’s a surreal experience to see all these strangers gathered here with no weapons and no supplies. They have clean clothes, clean faces, and give greetings with smiles instead of threats with wary eyes.

Sophia and Eliza return, happy and breathless, and Louis’ sister coaxes him to join them for a game of freeze tag. But the younger boy slinks over to Carl first, timidly asking, “Hey, Carl, wanna join?”

A polite refusal’s on the tip of his tongue, but he hesitates. Because he needs to get used to running in this smaller body, and with that in mind, a game of freeze tag isn’t the worst idea. So, instead, Carl finds himself standing up, wiping his grassy hands on his jeans, and saying, “Sure.”

Sophia whirls around, surprised. “You’re playing?”

“I guess so,” he replies with a shrug.

Lightning-fast, Sophia lunges at him…

…and pokes his shoulder. “You’re it!” she calls with a wink, racing away as the Morales siblings scramble to do the same.

Carl laughs, shaking his head in amusem*nt as he chases after Eliza.

“Hey, Rick? Do you have a minute?” Carl pauses in the doorway of his hotel room as Glenn’s voice filters in from the hallway. His mom’s taking a shower, and Carol and Sophia are in the Morales’ room, leaving the room behind Carl empty and quiet.

“Sure, what’s up?” his dad replies, and it’s too close for comfort—Carl slowly eases the door closed, leaving it open just a crack.

Glenn seems nervous, not responding right away. “I’ve been walking around a lot,” he begins, “just looking around, and I’ve been hearing some things…”

“What sort of things?” Rick asks.

“Just…” Glenn hesitates. “Has Sergeant Dolgen said anything to you or Shane about the CDC?”

Carl’s eyes widen, and he inches closer to the door.

“…Can’t say he has,” Rick says. “What have you heard?”

“It’s been a week now since they’ve lost contact—a lot of the soldiers have been saying so.” A pause, then, “They’re worried, Rick. And if they’re worried, then how will everyone else react?”

Carl catches Glenn’s meaning right away, and it doesn’t paint a pretty picture. He glances behind him at the window, turning over that number in his head—fifty thousand. Fifty thousand people…fifty thousand panicked people…

“A week isn’t so long,” Rick rationalizes, but there’s doubt creeping into his voice.

“Listen, man, you never saw how bad it got in the beginning. Atlanta, the rioting, it was bad. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if more people were killed by other people than by walkers.”

“What are you trying to say?” Of course, his dad has to know what Glenn’s saying by now, but Carl thinks he just wants to hear him say it.

“I don’t think we’re safe here,” Glenn declares. “If the CDC is gone and people find out about it…”

A sigh. “I hear you, Glenn, but what would you have me do? We can’t just leave.”

“Why not? We did pretty well out there on our own, before that herd. Just…think about it, okay?”

Another sigh. “I’ll think about it,” Rick promises. “Thanks for letting me know.”

His dad’s footsteps come closer, and Carl hurriedly closes the door.

The mess hall serves spaghetti for dinner that night, and Carl pointedly doesn’t think about the last time he had that particular meal. He eats slowly, looking around at the other people seated at the long table.

At one end, Jim is talking to Miranda, and Carl’s surprised to find the man smiling—he doesn’t know if he’s ever seen Jim smile. Louis asks Jim a question, something Carl can’t make out over the chatter filling the room, and Jim’s smile widens.

Sydney and Ethan are talking to Dale, and, across from them, Amy is telling her sister an exaggerated fishing story, complete with sweeping hand gestures that threaten to knock over T-Dog’s drink.

Next to T-Dog, Shane picks quietly at his food.

Glenn is next, his eyes glued to a nearby squad of soldiers, followed by Carol and Sophia—Carl sits across from them, sandwiched between his parents. He rolls his eyes as they talk over the top of his head.

Daryl’s not here, but that’s not unusual, so Carl doesn’t think anything of it. It took a while, last time, for the hunter to feel like he had a place in their group. The crowded Fort probably doesn’t help with that.

The table’s long, and the people seated farther down are strangers—Carl recognizes a few of them vaguely, and he spots their neighbors a few places down—Delora Middleton with her daughter, June, perched on her lap. The young girl managed to get sauce all over her face, and the exasperated mother wipes it away as she attempts to convince her to use a fork.

Delora catches his gaze and smiles—Carl smiles back. June raises her head, black hair falling in her face, and waves a sauce-stained hand at him.

The sound of raised voices draws his attention over to the entryway, where he spots Corporal Dolgen with his hands out, trying to placate in hushed tones the two soldiers who had come up to him. Carl frowns, and a quick glance around the room shows that he’s not the only one who noticed the scene. There’s a drawn-out pause before the soldiers salute stiffly, turn on their heels, and walk off.

“What was that about?” Shane calls as the Corporal passes by.

“Just smoothing some things over,” Corporal Dolgen replies. “Nothing to worry about.” He continues on then, heading back outside into the dark.

Rick and Glenn exchange a loaded glance.

Nighttime finds him outside once more, wrapped in the threadbare warmth of his jacket.

He recognizes the voices of the two guards on watch, but there’s something different in the way they stand, a tension in the shape of their words as one of them periodically sweeps the beam of a flashlight back and forth through the darkness beyond the fence.

“No contact...almost a week,” Carl hears one mutter. “They’re gone, man,” the guard continues, daring to talk a little louder. “The whole world’s gone, and we’re still here like a bunch of pushovers.”

“Come on, Jack, don’t start with that sh*t again.”

“I mean it, Ben—this place is f*cked. But the two of us? We could make it. You think anyone around here gives a sh*t about us? You’re lying to yourself…I doubt anyone would even notice if we just…disappeared.”

Crouched by the corner of a house, Carl narrows his eyes—watching, waiting.

The flashlight’s beam cuts through the black, swinging around to land on Jack’s face. “What did you just say to me?” Ben growls, so low that Carl can barely make out his words.

Jack holds up a hand, shielding his face from the light. “We should—”

“Yeah, yeah, I f*cking heard you the first time,” the other soldier interrupts. He swears, something too quiet for Carl to hear. “Christ, man,” he exclaims, “there are kids here! f*cking babies! And you want us to f*ck off into the woods?” The flashlight lowers, angling down to illuminate the bed of the truck the two soldiers are standing on. “That ain’t right, man,” Ben continues, shaking his head. “That ain’t right.”

Jack takes a small step forward, says, “Don’t you see? We’re on our own here—no one can fix this. No one…”

“You wanna run that by Sergeant Dolgen?” Ben challenges. “Or, hell, how ‘bout the f*cking General, huh? Tell ‘em you think we’re all doomed? That this place isn’t worth protecting? Be my f*cking guest!”

Silence.

“No?” Ben scoffs—the beam of the flashlight shifts. “Didn’t know you were such a puss*.” The soldier’s voice is flat and cold.

Jack swings a fist at Ben’s face. It connects, sending the other man staggering. “The hell?!” he cries, ducking another punch and springing forward. The flashlight flickers wildly—a body falls, tumbling down as it’s shoved over the side of the truck, landing with a crunch that has Carl flinching in surprise.

“...Jack?”

There’s no answer.

The beam of the flashlight sweeps over the motionless body, and Carl catches sight of a helmeted head twisted at an unnatural angle. The flashlight falls, striking the pavement and going dark.

“Oh f*ck, no,” Ben says, horrified. “No, no, no…motherf*cker!”

There’s a faint scuffle, and then the flashlight clicks back on, illuminating the lone figure crouched over the body. “Shiiiit, man.” There’s a glint of a knife, a soft squelch.

The soldier stands and manically whips his head side to side, flashlight cutting across the rows of houses.

Carl stays very, very still, fingers tightening around the hilt of his knife.

Ben swears again, the light wavering as both his hands come up to his head. He paces back and forth, muttering to himself.

He stops. “f*ck,” he hisses, before climbing back into the bed of the truck. The guard flings a heavy blanket onto the fence, covering the barbed wire, and tosses a bag over. It lands on the other side with a thump, and he quickly heaves himself up and over to follow—he shoulders the bag, the flashlight clicks off, and a dark figure jogs away into the blackness.

Carl doesn’t move for a long moment, remaining frozen until a light flickers in his peripheral vision, until he hears voices approaching down the street from his right.

“The hell was that?” one of them says.

Only then does he move, staying low and close to the side of the building as he backs away.

Carl turns and runs.

“Holy hell!” a second voice exclaims behind him, those words carrying far in the stillness of the night.

He doesn’t look back, doesn’t slow as he makes his way back to the hotel at a dead sprint. He doesn’t stop until the sprawling shape of the Holiday Inn is looming above him, until he’s stumbling through the back door with burning lungs.

Carl falls to his knees and gasps for breath.

He doesn’t know what he would do if someone found him there, eyes blown wide with adrenaline and hands shaking, knuckles white around a stolen knife.

Fortunately, he doesn’t have to find out.

Chapter 14: Trust

Chapter Text

Carl’s hand hovers inches from his dad’s shoulder.

He’d returned to the second floor without incident, slipped through the hotel room door with hardly a sound, and the first thought in his mind was that he had to tell his dad what he saw. If the soldiers are turning on each other like that, Rick needs to know.

Glenn was right—it’s not safe here.

(Carl already knew that. Of course it’s not safe here, not when he knows the Fort will fall, and soon. But seeing something like this…it’s not good.)

Rick needs to know, but here he is, leaning over his dad’s sleeping figure, outstretched hand wavering in the air. He’s not quite able to commit to the motion—something holds him back, some shapeless thought, and as he stares down at his dad’s clean-shaven face and the silver watch sitting on the bedside table, Carl realizes what it is.

This isn’t the Rick that he needs.

This man who’d been all too relieved to surrender their guns and lives to a bunch of strangers just because they wore army green, who’d teased Carl about dressing up for Halloween, who hands out trust like Fort Benning hands out candy.

If Carl told him what he saw, he’d go to Sergeant Dolgen about this—ask around, paint a target on his back. Dolgen might seem to like Rick, but at the end of the day they’re not much more than strangers. Would he really trust Carl and his dad over his own men?

Carl has no idea what he’s dealing with here, has no idea who he’s dealing with. What kind of a man is Dolgen, really? What is he willing to do to save this place?

Carl can see it all too clearly—Dolgen pinning the murder on Rick, using the opportunity to restore order by making an example of him. Public execution in the square, a short yet pointed speech to the masses that dissent will not be tolerated. And Carl would be helpless to watch, unarmed and surrounded—because what use is a knife against an army?

He blinks, watching the steady rise and fall of his dad’s chest. He doesn’t know if it’ll come to that. But it might, and the possibility of disaster is too great to ignore.

He can’t tell him.

Rick’s not…

Carl can’t trust him.

(That’s what it comes down to—that’s what causes him to lower his hand back to his side and make his way silently over to the couch, slinking through the darkened room like a ghost.)

He can’t trust his dad—not here, not right now. It’s f*cked up, but Carl doesn’t see it ending well if he tells his dad what he saw. His hands are still shaking as he unzips his backpack and sets his knife carefully inside. He closes up the bag and flops onto the couch, lies on his back and throws an arm across his eyes.

He can’t tell his dad.

Carl sighs—a heavy, aggrieved noise that blends in with the others’ breathing.

So what can he do?

He rolls over, shifting his arms to prop up his head, and stares across the shadowy room as he weighs his options. Hours pass, and sometime later, the sky outside the windows begins to lighten, causing the shadows to soften and a grey glow to permeate the room. Carl’s mind grows numb and blank, his swirling thoughts slowing into an indecipherable mess—his eyes close, and, through no conscious choice of his own, he falls asleep.

He wakes not long after to a hand shaking his shoulder and Sophia’s face looming over him, feeling more tired than he did before.

He groans, forces his eyes to open.

And then he gets up, ignoring Sophia’s worried looks as he gets ready for the day.

The crackle of a radio interrupts Ms. Beckens’ science class barely ten minutes after lunch. The teacher cuts off mid-sentence, the word “viscosity” hanging in the air as a feminine voice echoes flatly from the ceiling.

“Attention all students and faculty,” the voice announces, and it’s not a radio—it’s the intercom. “Due to unexpected inclement weather, all school activities are canceled effective immediately. Please proceed to the front entrance in an orderly fashion and await further instruction.”

Carl tears his gaze away from the speaker in the ceiling, and his eyes meet Sophia’s.

“Think it’ll snow?” Jax says to a boy Carl doesn’t know the name of. The boy’s reply is drowned out by twenty other enthusiastic young voices and the stern commands of the teacher trying to quiet them all.

As Carl stands, slinging his bag over his shoulder, Sophia drifts over to his side. She leans in close to his ear and starts to ask, “Do you—”

He shakes his head. “I don’t remember there being any bad storms last time, but I was out of it for a while after I got shot. And we were in Senoia then, not Columbus.”

Ms. Beckens regains control over the room at last, successfully corralling her students into a line and ushering them through the door. Sophia walks a step behind Carl as they follow the older woman down the hall—he glances over his shoulder and finds his friend’s fingers tapping a nervous rhythm against the straps of her backpack. Her brows are furrowed, and she chews absently on her lower lip.

He doesn’t tell her not to worry, doesn’t tell her it’s gonna be okay. He doesn’t tell her that this means nothing, that sometimes a storm is just a storm. Carl doesn’t say any of that, because pretty lies might make her feel better, but they won’t keep her alive.

It’s a short walk to the front entrance where the rest of the school has begun to gather—a semi-organized crowd that trickles slowly outside through propped-open doors. There’s a chill in the air that seeps into the entryway, and the cool breeze that blows in past the funneling lines of students and teachers is a nagging reminder that winter isn’t too far away.

Carl looks around at everyone, feeling disconnected from all the students who joke and laugh with excited grins plastered across their faces. School getting canceled is something new and different, and they think that “different” means “good.” He can’t say he’s not happy to have gotten out of the rest of the day’s lessons, but when this storm is probably related to the reason the Fort falls—hell, it might be the reason—he finds himself nearly as tense as Sophia is, just waiting for something bad to happen.

There’s certainly nothing to celebrate.

Ms. Beckens’ class makes its way outside, joining several other haphazard lines whose edges aren’t clearly defined. They shift and blur as kids run over to greet their friends—Carl eyes the teachers who linger at the front, waiting. Then he takes a step forward, away from the crowd, and looks up.

The sky is a glum, steely grey, blanketed thickly by clouds, and the western horizon lies dark with the promise of rain. Gusts of wind whip across the flagpoles, sending stars and stripes swirling uncertainly in intermittent bursts. (Someday, Carl knows, those flags will grow tattered and faded, mildew creeping into their uneven edges as they flutter endlessly over the remains of an abandoned fort.)

The wind tousled his hair, and he reflexively brings a hand up to his head to stop his hat from flying off—a hat that he’s not wearing, because it still belongs to his dad. “Forgot I wasn’t wearing my hat,” he mutters to Sophia, feeling the need to explain himself as her eyes dart uncertainly between his hand and his head.

“May I have your attention please!” calls a man who stands on a half wall by the street, a megaphone held up to his mouth. His amplified voice effectively cuts through the chatter of the students—Carl glances over at the fenceline, but the world beyond is empty and quiet. There’s only the whistle of the wind, the dying chatter of the crowd, and the authoritative voice of a man he figures must be the principal. No walkers in sight.

“Thank you,” the man continues. He’s wearing a suit, Carl realizes suddenly, and it’s so ridiculously impractical that he can’t help but crack a smile. It’s black like Gabriel’s, and…and.

The smile freezes on his face.

The principal is talking, but Carl can’t hear him—the steady cadence of his voice grows warped and faded, the words themselves registering as an incomprehensible string of half-processed sounds.

Because Gabriel will be dead within a couple of years without Carl there to save him, torn apart outside that goddamn church he can’t remember the name of. (He doesn’t know where it is, wouldn’t know how to find it. Carl didn’t register much after Terminus—he doesn’t know which way they went or how long they walked. Gabriel is going to die, and Carl can’t do a f*cking thing about it.)

Because Abraham, Eugene, and Rosita are on the road somewhere in Texas, making a long trek to D.C. (Eugene’s lying his ass off to save himself, and Carl wonders darkly if Rosita alone will be enough to stop Abraham’s rage when he finds out the truth.)

Because Tara is in an apartment with her sister and niece and dying father. (She doesn’t know that he’ll turn when he dies, doesn’t realize the danger she’s in.)

Because Carl has to accept that despite all the memories he has that say otherwise, they’re not his family anymore. They are, but they’re not—they won’t be, and he has to let them go if he wants to retain any semblance of sanity.

And that is something Carl doesn’t want to think about. That is something he doesn’t want to accept. He doesn’t want to lose them, but he already lost them the moment he pulled the trigger in that forest. The moment he woke up in the past.

They’re gone.

They’re just…gone.

It feels like his heart’s been carved out and it’s all because of a black suit—one worn by a man that Carl’s supposed to be listening to. He blinks the world back into focus as his ears latch onto a couple of familiar words.

“…and the Holiday Inn,” the man says, no longer using the megaphone. “Everyone else will remain here until transport can be arranged.”

With that, the black-suited principal steps down from the half wall and disappears back into the crowd—Carl turns his confusion on his friend, asking, “What about us?”

“We’re good to walk back alone,” she replies, thankfully not questioning his lapse of focus. She’s frowning at the dark horizon, at the wind-whipped flags.

“Great, let’s go.” Carl starts forward, pauses. “What about the elementary school?” He imagines the Fort will be less willing to let the younger kids wander off on their own.

Sophia shrugs. “He didn’t say.”

Carl glances down the road. “Come on,” he urges her, tilting his head as he changes directions. Sophia follows him, and he unnecessarily clarifies, “We’ll pick them up on the way back.”

They arrive at the elementary school to find the students similarly gathered outside the front entrance—the teachers there are all too happy to relinquish the Moraleses to the middle schoolers, clearly relieved to have two less children to deal with.

The dark horizon draws nearer during their walk back to the hotel, and it starts to lightly drizzle as they cross the field.

Carl leads the way, Louis walking quietly beside him. The younger boy coughs a few times—Carl’s heart beats the slightest bit faster at the sound, and he wonders if he’s overreacting as his mind flashes back to the plague at the Prison. (He sincerely hopes that he is.)

Sophia lags behind with Eliza, listening to the other girl enthuse about the upcoming show and tell. Carl privately thinks Eliza’s too old for that kind of thing, but what does he know?

“Thanks,” Louis mumbles as they step into the lobby with damp hair and clothes. “They were going to make us wait there forever.”

The four of them wind up the staircase, start down the hall. “No problem,” Carl says back.

Eliza and Louis slip away into their room with matching waves, and Carl and Sophia step into the room next door.

A lone figure whirls around at their entrance, a book held absently in one hand. “Carl?” His mom’s bewildered voice echoes in the air. Lori crosses the room in a few quick strides, frowning. “Sophia? What are y’all doing back so soon?”

Carl goes up and hugs her, because he decides he doesn’t do that enough—he can feel her relax as her arms wrap around him and he explains, “School ended early because of the storm.”

Carol emerges from the bathroom in the middle of his sentence, a flicker of surprise flashing across her face.

Lori pulls away as Carol steps past her daughter, and both women look to the windows at the storm brewing outside. Carl looks, too—the rain picked up in the short time it took to get here from the front door, and the sky looms a shade darker than before.

“Good thing there wasn’t a storm like this when we were on the road,” Carol notes to no one in particular.

“Yeah,” he agrees when no one else does.

Good thing.

Sheets of water batter the windows, smearing blurry streaks down the glass. The panes shift and creak against the howling wind as he looks out over the front lawn of the hotel.

Carl spots a pair of soldiers down there in the flooded grass, wrangling with the cables at the base of a flagpole—the American flag they struggle to lower is a bright scrap of color in the grey haze of the downpour. He watches the flag’s slow progress down the pole as the cables thrash wildly, producing ringing and clanging sounds that he can faintly hear.

Again, he finds himself looking to the distant line of the fence, but it’s barely visible from here on a good day—he can’t see sh*t through a storm like this.

The soldiers finally get the flag down. It’s folded between them in a few practiced motions before it can be torn from their hands, and the clattering of the cables stops abruptly as they tie the loose ends around the pole. They yell something to each other, exchanging words through moving lips and waving hands—Carl’s eyes follow the two figures as they jog over to their parked vehicle, climb in, and drive off.

The army truck fades away into the rain, leaving behind an empty, raging world.

“The storm will pass.” He turns to find his dad there, coming up to stand beside him. Rick glances outside, rests a hand on his shoulder in reassurance, and states with conviction, “We’re safe here.”

Carl stares out the window at the cascading water and vacant flagpole. (His dad’s earnest eyes set his teeth on edge.) Rick thinks Carl is afraid—he’s not.

But what if he was?

This Rick may not be the one he needs, but he’s the only one he has. His dad will only see what he wants to see, and Carl thinks, I can use this.

‘We’re safe here,’ Rick said—Carl looks up at him now and replies, “What if we’re not?”

Rick opens his mouth to offer more empty reassurances, but Carl presses on. “I overheard you and Glenn earlier, about the soldiers acting strange. I’ve noticed it, too.” He almost wants to laugh at what an understatement that is, calling manslaughter and desertion ‘acting strange.’ He sure noticed that. “If they’re afraid,” Carl asks, “then shouldn’t we be?”

Rick shakes his head, shifting his weight into what Carl privately calls his cop stance. “Hey, no one’s afraid,” he refutes calmly. “They’re just worried, is all. But there are a lot of good people here—they know what they’re doing.”

Carl feels like he’s talking to a brick wall, and it’s all too frustratingly familiar. Why can’t his dad see the danger they’re in? How does he look at this place and think it’s safe?

(‘You are not safe.’)

“What if Glenn’s right?” he tries, fighting to keep his voice level. “If the Fort gets overrun like Atlanta, where would we go?” Carl stares at Rick, hoping for…for something, but his dad remains unswayed.

“That’s not gonna happen, alright?” Carl digs his fingernails into his palms as Rick goes on, “When the CDC figures this out—and they will—we’re right where we need to be. I know it’s hard waiting, but that’s all we can do.”

He takes a deep breath, looks at his dad who’s still wearing that goddamn sheriff uniform.

And loses it.

“The CDC’s gone!” he snaps. “Whoever was there before is probably dead, and you know it.”

Rick frowns, equal parts concerned and confused. “Where’s this coming from?” he asks. “Sure, it’s been a while, but only about a week—there could be plenty of reasons for that. We shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions when we don’t know anything.”

But I do. The words burn in his chest, begging to be let out—Carl bites his tongue to stop himself from doing something he can’t take back. It’s true, but he can’t say it—not now, and maybe not ever. Rick won’t believe him.

Carl seethes in silence for a moment, trying and failing to think of something else to say. Or, rather, something civil to say. Would it kill you to f*cking listen to me for once? he thinks, but he doesn’t say that either.

“It makes sense,” Carl finally replies. He’s already sick of this conversation, but he can’t stop now, won’t stop until he actually accomplishes something. He needs to find a way to make Rick listen.

“Dad…” he trails off and sighs, feeling more exhausted than he has a right to be.

When the Prison fell and he thought Judith was dead…when everyone was gone and he thought his dad would die, too…Carl knows the soul-crushing hopelessness of being alone out there, and he never wants to feel that way again.

“We need a meeting spot,” he insists, and the frustration that bleeds into his tone sounds enough like fear. “For if something happened. Because if we do get split up, we might never find each other again. Just…” Carl fixes his glare at the rain lashing against the window in front of him, no longer able to face his dad and his misguided faith. “...please.”

That’s all he’s got.

For a long, breathless moment, there’s a pause.

They’re at a crossroads, a precipice, and Carl glares harder at the grey storm outside—the deafening silence is filled by the patter of rain and the sounds of trees groaning under the strain of the wind, the barest hint of fall colors seeping into their dark green leaves. (Standing there with memories of the Prison fresh in his mind, he can’t stop remembering that moment—that long, awful moment when he was alone and he thought his dad had turned, and he decided that he’d rather die than have to shoot Rick, too.)

Glaring out the window, Carl is utterly mortified to realize there are tears in his eyes—he tells himself that it’s only because of how angry he is, but he can’t quite manage to fool himself.

Rick clears his throat to speak, but someone else is there—someone Carl hadn’t noticed sneaking up to them. “They had us all meet up at the front of the school today when it ended early,” comes Sophia’s timid voice behind him. “We should have someplace like that.”

Carl flashes her a small, grateful smile, adding, “Somewhere outside the Fort. Just in case.” He risks looking at his dad then, his heart in his throat. Come on, come on, come on…

Rick’s face softens, and Carl’s legs feel weak with relief before his dad even speaks. “Alright,” he concedes. “If it’ll make you two feel safer, we can pick a place.” Rick tilts his head, thinking. “How ‘bout I arrange a meeting with everyone, maybe play some games after? I hear Dale’s found a couple decks of cards.”

“That sounds fun,” Sophia agrees, and Carl manages a nod.

His friend grabs his hand and pulls him over to the other side of the room—Carl lets her, and he pretends not to notice the way Rick’s gaze lingers consideringly on their clasped hands.

Thunder crashes over a barn, its large, wooden doors shaking from the weight of the walkers trying to get in. Sheets of rain hammer against the roof in an unending roar, and the groaning of the barn’s old but sturdy walls is almost as loud as the walkers.

A press of bodies huddles by the doors, bracing them shut from the inside, and Carl rushes over to help. It’s hard to see their faces in the dark, but he knows they’re all there—twelve living bodies against an army of dead ones. He throws his scrawny weight against the doors, joining his family, and it’s enough.

Just barely, but it’s enough.

Chapter 15: Contingency

Chapter Text

The sky is lighter in the morning, its thin cloud cover glowing an even white with the mid-autumn sun. Slashes of blue cut across like faded claw marks, letting in rays of misty light that shine down on the glistening grass and the asphalt ahead. The wind has died down to a mellow breeze, and the flags are back on the flagpoles—they wave slowly like solemn monuments as three small figures walk across a water-logged baseball field.

“Probably should have gone the other way, followed the road instead,” Sophia notes, stepping around a particularly large puddle.

Carl looks down, frowning at the squish of mud beneath his shoes. “Probably,” he agrees. “But there’s no point going back now.”

They’re already over halfway there.

Charting her own path across the rain-soaked field, Eliza hums wordlessly in agreement. Though it’s slightly dirtied already, she clutches her doll carefully to her chest as she walks, keeping it well above any potential splatters of water or mud. “It’s too bad Louis got sick,” she says. “He has this cool fossil rock he wanted to show off. I don’t really have anything like that…”

“Anything can be cool if it has a good story,” Sophia replies with a shrug. “Tell me about your doll?”

Eliza smiles softly as she looks down at the small shape in her arms—Carl glances over at the miniature pink dress and brown pigtail braids. “My abuela gave it to me when I was really little,” the girl explains. “Maybe three or four? I don’t remember. All I know is that I saw it in a gift shop somewhere and decided that I really wanted it. She told me she would buy it for me if I promised to never lose it, so of course I never did.”

Her smile dies like a wilting flower, the happy memory turning into something darker as she continues, “My abuela…she lives in Alabama, in Birmingham. We were going to go there, but then…you know.” Then her father died, and her mom didn’t feel safe splitting off on her own with two kids. They stayed, because of Carl. (They stayed, and they lived.) “I hope she’s okay.”

There’s no way of knowing, but Carl’s sure that she’s not. Just like Uncle Jeff or Glenn’s sisters or Andrea’s dad—just like half the world and far more than that.

“I’m sure she is,” Sophia reassures, but she ducks her head when she catches whatever look is on Carl’s face.

They reach the end of the field, stepping onto the damp but solid surface of the road, and the three of them scuff their shoes against the pavement in a near-perfect unison, scraping off the worst of the mud that clings to their soles in stubborn clumps.

Carl turns to Eliza. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you stayed with—”

His eyes narrow as he spots a group of soldiers up ahead, their hands tight around their rifles. They mutter to each other, stiff and uneasy, and one of them reaches for a radio.

“—us,” he finishes. Carl frowns, his steps slowing as he scrutinizes the soldiers. They’re pretty far away, standing on the edge of a perpendicular street, but the sight of them makes his heartbeat quicken and his fingers itch for a gun.

Sophia says something to Eliza—Eliza says something back.

A convoy of trucks speeds past the soldiers, the first outfitted with an orange snow plow and the ones behind it bare. They don’t slow down—no, they’re accelerating. (But where are they going?) Carl looks to his right, and there’s nothing there. Just the elementary school, some houses, and…

“Hey,” Eliza says, spinning around to walk backwards. “Maybe before dinner we can—” A deafening roar fills Carl’s ears. A spray of hot liquid splashes across his face, and everything is falling—Eliza lands with a muted thump, and he’s tackling Sophia to the ground before his brain even registers that the sounds he’s hearing are gunshots.

There are so many of them, a reverberating echo from two directions.

Stray bullets whiz overhead.

Sophia screams.

He spits out metallic red, and it’s blood—Eliza’s blood. He raises his eyes a little bit farther, and his breath stutters. (The girl’s face is unrecognizable, the exit wound having turned it into a mess of mangled red. Her doll lies on the pavement, wet and muddy, inches from her slack fingers.)

“f*cking traitors!” he hears someone yell, right before a loud, metal screech fills the air.

Carl lifts his head, blinking dazedly at the convoy of trucks bursting through the fence and speeding off into the distance, billows of dust kicking up in their wake.

They…

They just…

Oh god.

The group of soldiers he’d seen before are scattered—lying, crouching, or kneeling by the sides of the road, rifles trained on their fleeing comrades. Some of them are dead. The gunfire tapers off, and Carl catches the muzzle flash of one last parting shot.

What follows is far from quiet. The soldiers yell amongst themselves, barking orders and swearing viciously before running off with pounding footsteps, but that’s not what catches Carl’s attention.

It’s something deeper, something all-encompassing…it’s a sound like the ocean, like whispers, like voices…

Like fifty thousand panicked people and a massive horde of walkers.

He pulls Sophia to her feet, grabs her hand, and runs.

Eliza is dead, Fort Benning is falling. (A horrible part of him is relieved that at least the waiting’s over.)

“You really think we’ll need to leave this place?” Dale frowns, looking uneasy at the thought.

A flash of light sweeps into the room from the windows, accompanied by a near-immediate crack of thunder—the storm’s right on top of them, now. Several pairs of eyes dart over at the sound, but it’s difficult to make out much of anything at all outside through the deepening shadows of dusk.

Rick looks at Glenn, at Carl, sweeps his gaze over the rest of the gathered group and turns back to Dale. “I don’t think it will come to that…but it can’t hurt to have a backup plan, just in case.”

Leaning against a wall, Shane taps his fingers against his leg, similarly conflicted. Carl knows how much the two of them want it to work out here—while they had their disagreements about the CDC, his dad and Shane both thought that Fort Benning would be a safe place to go, and the thought that it might not be…

“Makes sense to me,” Andrea voices with a shrug. “What do you have in mind?”

Rick shifts slightly on his feet as everyone turns to him. “Nothing too crazy,” he says, “just a place to meet up if the worst should happen—thought we could all decide on it.”

Carl Grimes is back in a warzone.

People are everywhere—running, screaming, dying. He and Sophia run straight for the Holiday Inn, ignoring the mud that pulls at their sneakers and splatters on their clothes. Distant gunshots ring from everywhere, and Carl hears something that sounds suspiciously like a grenade. (And then another one.) Truck engines and squealing tires, soldiers trying and failing to keep order as people flood out from every building in a chaotic stampede.

Several planes and helicopters take off from an airfield somewhere on his left in a rumbling chorus he thought he’d never hear again—Carl’s more surprised to see them flying than he is to find one of the helicopters crashing down moments later, spinning out of control and colliding with the side of the hotel in a blaze of fire and smoke.

A few meters from the nearest entrance, he stops, forcing Sophia to stop with him. Her face is blank, her eyes wide, and he can feel her hand shaking in his. (But she’s alive, and so is he.)

“Look at me,” he says, and she startles at the sound, eyes flicking up to his face. Her gaze freezes there, seemingly glued to his left cheek, and she almost screams again—Carl wipes a hand across his face, and his fingertips come away damp and red.

He wipes his face harder, swallows thickly, scans for familiar faces in the fleeing crowds as he fumbles with his backpack. He extracts his knife from a pair of folded jeans, and, in his hurry, narrowly avoids grabbing the wrong end and slicing his hand open on the blade. It doesn’t feel like enough—the knife. Not against something like this.

“Eliza…” his friend chokes out. She’s crying, silent tears streaming down her face. The dead girl’s blood is still smeared across Carl’s face, but Sophia meets his eyes this time.

Carl shoulders his backpack and shakes his head, shushing her. He pulls Sophia into a hug with his knife in his hand and his eyes and ears alert for danger. (There’s danger all around them, from too many directions—they’re too exposed out here.) He leans back, gripping her shoulders. “Don’t think about it,” he says firmly. “Not now.”

His eyes flicker over to the hotel, watching smoke billowing out from shattered windows. The building’s burning, an entire wing aflame from the helicopter crash—their rooms are mercifully on the opposite side, but between the fire and the people racing to escape the building and the walkers Carl can hear but not see…

They could make it in, probably, but he doubts they’d be able to make it back out. (Not alive, at least.)

He turns to Sophia, mind racing. “We’re going to get out of here, okay?”

She pauses for long enough that Carl begins to think she didn’t hear him—when she finally speaks, her voice is barely audible. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Carl echoes back. He grabs her hand with the one that’s not holding the knife and starts jogging away from the hotel, veering off to the right. “Stay close to me and let me know if you see anyone you recognize,” he orders gently. Through some twisted stroke of luck, those words barely leave his lips when he glimpses a crowd of people—some soldiers, some not—with a familiar figure looming above them.

It’s Sergeant Dolgen, standing on something tall, and his bellowing voice, if not his exact words, is distinct to Carl’s ears. The Sergeant’s dark-haired brother lingers by the edge of the crowd, watching his surroundings warily.

Carl runs faster, pulling Sophia along with him. There are a few vehicles here, too, and they’re gathered by the gate—the one Carl’s family had gone through when they first arrived at the Fort.

“Have you seen my dad?” he demands once he’s close enough to the Corporal that his voice can be heard. “Rick Grimes?”

The soldier looks surprised to see the two of them, but he shakes his head. “Haven’t seen him,” the man admits, “but you should come with us—the dead knocked down the fences to the west, and it’s not safe here anymore.”

Carl rocks back on his heels, scanning the crowd quickly despite knowing that the Corporal is probably right. Some of the faces look vaguely familiar, but he dismisses the thought with a sharp shake of his head, figuring he’s seen them before somewhere around the Fort. His dad’s not here—neither is Shane or anyone else.

“…follow the river north.” Sergeant Dolgen’s voice cuts through the chaos, and Carl follows the sound with his eyes.

He looks higher and higher, craning his head back…

Carl sees him through a gap in the crowd, and his blood runs cold. His hand unconsciously tightens around Sophia’s, because sitting in front of them, flanked by two bulky military trucks…is a tank. A f*cking tank. Sergeant Dolgen leans out from the open hatch and begins to bark orders to the soldiers in the trucks.

Carl takes a small step backwards. Then another.

He stares, and it could be a coincidence. (It could be, but in a world this small…what are the odds?) A chill runs down his spine as Sergeant Dolgen grins.

A deafening boom rattles the Prison’s walls, dust and debris raining down from cracks in the ceiling. Tire treads roll over a chain link fence, barely even slowing…

(Had he been smiling then, too? Smiling as he mowed down a fence so similar to the one that’s in front of them now?) Carl looks around at those faces—faces he thought were familiar. It is them, isn’t it? He’s killed some of these people.

“We gotta go,” he hisses to Sophia under his breath. “Now.” He tugs on her arm, and she doesn’t argue, practically glued to his side.

They turn, facing the fires and the smoke and the gunfire and the screams, the mud-covered walkers he finally sees and the rubble of a fallen fort.

“Hey, wait!” the Corporal calls, but they’re already gone.

With expressions ranging from skeptical to serious, everyone pauses for a moment, thinking. Eliza talks softly to her brother, obviously bored, and Miranda lays a concerned hand on Louis’ brow as he shivers slightly, sniffling.

T-Dog speaks first. “How ‘bout the place where Dolgen found us? It shouldn’t be too hard to follow the river north, right?”

“That might work,” Rick agrees.

Dale perks up, saying, “Our vehicles are there, too—we could leave the way we came.”

Daryl scoffs quietly from the corner as Glenn shakes his head. “You really think they’ll still be there?” Glenn replies doubtfully. “I hate to break it to you, Dale, but that RV is gone…or the gas is, at least.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Lori says as Dale opens his mouth to argue. “There’s no use worrying about it now, and like Rick said, this is only just in case.”

“Any other suggestions?” Rick prompts after a moment. When there’s no response other than shrugs and head shakes and a few mumbled ‘no’s, he continues, “Alright, then. I hope we’ll never have to make use of this, but you all know where to go if we do.”

Lightning strikes again, illuminating the room in a harsh flicker as thunder rumbles overhead, the force of it rattling the windows.

“Can we play cards now?” Eliza asks, tugging on Dale’s sleeve.

The older man winks at her, a deck of cards materializing in his hand. “Thought you’d never ask.”

The fences are down in the west—Carl can’t even see them past the endless wave of walkers flooding down rain-soaked streets. He moves toward the horde, because as their groans and snarls grow closer and louder, the Fort’s cacophony dims behind him.

People are more dangerous than walkers will ever be—the frantic press of people and stray rifle rounds, this mutiny or civil war or whatever-the-f*ck it is causing soldiers to gun each other down…he’d rather take his chances with the sea of shambling dead.

Carl moves quickly, not quite running but not quite walking, and he clutches Sophia’s hand as tightly as she clutches his. (As if she’ll disappear the moment he lets go, as if he’d turn around to find the walker in the barn instead of his friend.)

They skirt the edge of the horde—a rippling mass of wet, mud-stained corpses. Only when the walkers have thinned somewhat and they near a downed section of fence that Carl can finally see does he release Sophia’s hand and come to a stop.

He takes a moment to breathe, flexing his tense fingers, passing his knife from hand to hand as he scans his surroundings. They’re almost out of the Fort, but it’ll be a little ways longer to get to where they need to go. (And Carl…has a plan.)

He sets his sights on a lone walker, whistles lowly to catch its attention. “Hey, Sophia?” he says, keeping his eyes on his target. It looks like it was a teenager once, and it swipes at the air futilely with its arms as it closes in on him.

Sophia hums a quiet reply, and Carl readies his knife, narrowing his eyes at the walker’s skull.

“Did I ever tell you how my dad got out of Atlanta?”

Chapter 16: River

Chapter Text

As they clamber over the downed fence and stumble along against the tide of walkers, cloaked by the stench of death and rot, all Carl can think about is Eliza.

Eliza, fighting with her brother over a toy at the quarry camp.

Eliza, sad but not broken by the loss of her father, scowling playfully as Carl beats her at checkers in the RV.

Eliza, laughing as she races Sophia across a grassy field. Happy to have met more friends her age, excited to show off the doll she’s held onto at the end of the world.

Eliza, dead on the pavement just a few feet away—dead at ten years old.

Carl grimaces as a mud-slicked arm brushes past his shoulder, belonging to yet another walker that’s unnervingly taller than he is. They’re drawn by the gunfire, the smoke, the screams, the final few fleeing vehicles. The ruined Fort is a beacon, and Carl turns his head the slightest bit to take them all in—all those grey-tinged bodies and murky eyes whose vacant gazes are trained on a point somewhere behind him, the same direction as their shuffling footsteps.

The cape Sophia wore so proudly that Halloween night is draped over her shoulders and back like a macabre poncho—once-blue cotton is now drenched in red, a few purplish strands fraying from the edges. Blood, dark and putrid, is smeared across their faces, coating their hands, staining Carl’s clothes.

At least, he thinks, most of the blood on his face now doesn’t belong to Eliza. (Eliza, whose crumpled form lies abandoned on a road, not too far from an elementary school that will never be a school again.)

Carl’s grown to hate the sight of those makeshift wooden crosses, but he wishes there could have been one now, that Eliza could have had the dignity of a funeral. (He hates funerals, too, but he would have gone to hers—even if it meant listening to bullsh*t about how she’s in a better place.)

Sophia gasps quietly as a rotted head swivels in her direction. It comes closer, seems to stare right at her, at him, and Carl tenses, subtly nudging Sophia behind him as he takes a step toward it. He holds his breath, raises his knife…

The walker ignores them, turning away and following the horde.

Carl stops, watching it go—it staggers out of sight as walker after walker continues to move around them like a river around a rock. He doesn’t have to imagine what would happen to him and Sophia if they drew attention here, but his brain decides to anyway, supplying an unwelcome and gruesomely accurate image of countless arms and teeth descending over them, tearing them apart.

(A phantom pain twinges at his side.)

Carl tilts his head at Sophia in a silent urge to keep moving, but she just looks at him, frowns at the walkers, opens her mouth…

“Walkers make noise, too,” she whispers, and Carl’s heart stops.

His grip tightens on his knife, his eyes darting wildly between the walkers roaming all around them. There are too many, too close, and Carl watches their movements, waiting for them to notice the sound, waiting for a deviation in their path—a lunging arm, a pair of snapping teeth, a circle of undead bodies closing in on them.

There’s nowhere to run, no escape, and he’s waiting…

Waiting…

But nothing happens.

“Don’t talk,” he hisses back, eying the walkers around him with unease. They don’t notice him, either, and Carl has the sudden thought that this is the kind of thing Eugene would find interesting, that he’d get all weird and excited and spew some rambling, half-incomprehensible theories on how walkers think.

Because Sophia has a point—the horde is loud, growls and moans and long, wheezing breaths forming an ominous chorus that hangs in the air. (Loud enough to mask the quiet noises of two blood-soaked figures hiding in their midst.)

But while talking like that might work, might be safe, he’s not willing to risk their lives for a couple of whispered words. Carl motions at Sophia again, and this time she listens, looking up at the walkers with a furrowed brow as they continue on. He gets it—it is weird to see them up close like this, to be able to walk right past them without having to fight or run. It’s as if Carl and Sophia aren’t even there, as if they are dead, too.

(In another world, they were.)

They walk.

They walk until the horde thins, until they’re breaking away from the last few stragglers and turning onto a desolate road.

And then they walk some more.

Unaccompanied by the dead, Carl and Sophia head north, stepping up onto the sidewalk in an unspoken agreement as the fields and trees turn into buildings. Normally, it would be safer to stick to the middle of the road, but normally they wouldn’t be covered in walker guts. Normally, Carl wouldn’t be concerned that vehicles could race by at any given moment and mistake them for walkers.

It’s obvious that this street hasn’t been patrolled for a while, but the evidence never fully went away—piles of fragmented bones litter the curb, stuck together by a rusty brown sludge that lends a red tinge to the rainwater flowing toward clogged storm drains.

(He’d rather not end up like that.)

The occasional roar of an engine disturbs the quiet stillness of this dead city, and Carl lifts his head at every one. But none of them pass too close, and soon there are no noises at all beyond the crunch of their footsteps against a sidewalk coated in dirt and dead leaves and broken glass.

Sophia absently kicks a can, sending it skittering forward on the concrete, and Carl doesn’t have the heart or the energy to tell her to stop.

There’s nothing here.

No one.

It doesn’t occur to him until there’s a crossbow pointed at his face that strangers aren’t the only ones who might mistake the two of them for walkers.

Carl stops in his tracks, hurriedly throwing his hands up in surrender. “Still alive!” he blurts, and the man behind the weapon doesn’t move for a long moment, seemingly stunned into silence.

“The fu…” he trails off, lowers the crossbow with a disbelieving huff. “Carl?” Daryl’s eyes flick over to Sophia, and his expression twists as he glances behind her, looking for the girl who isn’t there. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters, leaving Eliza’s name a silent echo in the air. “Could’ve shot y’all.”

Carl takes a few steps to the side. (He looks up and down the street and sees the ghost of two trucks barreling through a herd of walkers—sees Corporal Dolgen looking down at him from the raised bed, the brother of the man who drove a tank through the Prison’s outer walls now welcoming them to Fort Benning.)

As Glenn had predicted, the cars they’d driven here from Atlanta are gone. So is Daryl’s motorcycle, and while the RV is still where they left it, the gas cap is hanging conspicuously open.

Sophia speaks, asking something, and Carl’s lips twitch as he hears her address Daryl as “Mr. Dixon.”

“Nah,” Daryl replies. “Ain’t seen anyone else.”

“Then we’ll wait,” Carl says, as if that’s even in question. “Everyone else must have been cut off by the horde.” Or they’re dead, but he refuses to believe that.

Daryl grunts an acknowledgment as he leans against the pole of a streetlight, propping his crossbow up against his shoulder.

Carl turns toward the river. It’s wide and swollen from the storm last night, a force of churning, brown water that sweeps along sticks and logs from the edges of the woods on the far bank. The river’s dirty, but it’s water, and as he glances down at his sticky, bloodstained hands, he figures that’s good enough.

“C’mon,” he urges quietly to Sophia. “Let’s get some of this cleaned off.”

His friend wrinkles her nose at the reminder, slipping her blanket-poncho off over her head and discarding the ruined cotton in a crumpled heap on the ground. “Y-yeah,” she murmurs back.

With a hesitant glance aimed at Daryl, Carl heads down to the riverbank, Sophia right behind him. But the hunter doesn’t try to stop them—he only grumbles “Don’t go too far” in a warning tone, before shifting slightly in place to keep them in his line of sight.

Still, Carl finds himself frowning as he kneels by the water, scrubbing his hands until he can see his own skin again. He’s replaying the way Daryl had looked at him, the way his eyes lingered on the knife in Carl’s hand. There was something weird about it all, and he wonders if Daryl’s starting to believe that the weird kid who steals weapons might actually know how to use them.

Carl grimaces at the cold sting of the water as he splashes some on his face—the swishing noise to his right tells him that Sophia’s doing the same. He cleans the knife next, and while his clothes are a lost cause, he can change into a spare set later.

He lifts his head and watches one of the logs floating by, carried by the rushing current. But he’s distracted seconds later with the sound of running and a male voice shouting, “Miranda?! Anyone? Is any—”

There’s a faint scuffle, then, “Shut the hell up, man!” Daryl hisses, sounding absolutely pissed. “Your dumbass is gonna draw the walkers back!”

Carl looks up to the spot where he’d last seen Daryl, but the man is no longer there, evidently having abandoned his post to intercept the newcomer. Carl exchanges a confused glance with Sophia, and the two of them edge closer, approaching cautiously as Daryl says something else too softly to make out.

A garbled noise draws Carl’s gaze back to the water, and his eyes widen. The shapes drifting by in the river—he’d thought they were logs, and some of them are. But as limbs flail in the air and walkers collapse out onto the riverbank, crawling through the mud and rising to their feet, Carl realizes that most of them aren’t logs at all.

All those walkers he’d seen that were damp and muddy…

“They’re coming from the river!” he calls, rounding the side of the RV with Sophia to find Daryl scowling at a glassy-eyed Jim. (The extra noise does nothing at all, because they’re already here, their moans accompanied by splashing water and squelching mud.)

Daryl curses, readying his bow.

“This way!”

A dingy storefront door bursts inward on its hinges, sending splinters of wood flying through the air.

An arrow shoots through the opening, felling the lone walker inside.

And four figures charge into the room.

Chapter 17: Hope

Chapter Text

Carl peers down at the street from a third-story window, watching the walkers milling around Dale’s RV through a gap between the window frame and the lowered blinds. The clouds have melted away at some point, the morning’s even cloud cover reduced to long, feather-like streaks against a canvas of blue—sunlight glints off the roof of the RV, off the murky river beyond, and it’s funny how disaster always seems to strike on the nicest of days.

The sun was shining the day the Prison burned, when it felt like he was the only one left in the world. It shone on a train car at Terminus where he waited, with fury and fear, for signs that his dad and the others were still alive. During that week-long war, it was sunny, too, and the day he put a bullet in his skull was no different from the rest. (It wasn’t even a Savior that killed him in the end, just a walker in the woods.)

Carl sighs, stabbing his knife into the windowsill and twirling it in a lazy circle. He can practically feel Daryl staring at him from across the room, waiting for him to slip up—waiting for Carl to bump the blinds with his elbow and send them clattering loudly against the glass, waiting for a reason to tell him to get away from the window.

But Carl doesn’t give him a reason—he doesn’t draw attention to himself from the horde outside, and Daryl doesn’t say anything.

Time passes, the divot in the windowsill from Carl’s knife grows incrementally larger, and Daryl eventually relaxes a little and glares at Jim instead. The mechanic looks haggard, eyes flickering at the slightest movement, body flinching as the walkers at the bottom of the stairwell renew their mindless efforts to break through.

The echoing sounds of banging and growling are just barely audible from Carl’s perch on the edge of an office desk—the walkers outside are much louder, the thin pane of window glass doing little to muffle the noise.

He leans back, twisting around to survey the cluttered office space for what feels like the billionth time. There are tons of computers scattered across the desks, along with some abandoned laptops, and places like this are always weird to him—people worked here once, typing away on screens that are now just inoperable hunks of metal and glass. Worthless.

Sophia sits on the ground a short distance away, her back against the exterior wall as she fiddles with a zipper on her bag.

Daryl lingers by the stairwell door they’d barricaded with a low but heavy filing cabinet. His crossbow’s propped against a wall by his feet, within reaching distance, and he taps an idle finger against the satchel that had once been strapped to his motorcycle.

Sitting in a thinly-cushioned office chair in the middle of the room, Jim stares up at the water-stained ceiling.

Thoroughly bored, Carl flips his knife in the air like the dumbass he is—not quite used to the weapon’s weight and balance (and his newfound depth perception, not to mention his accursedly short arms), he fumbles his catch, just barely managing to avoid dropping the knife as his fingers close around the hilt.

He looks up, cringing, to find Daryl frowning at him, because of f*cking course the man happened to be looking at that particular moment. Carl blinks back, face burning, and slowly sets the knife down on the table.

He turns back to the window.

Jim ends his staring contest with the ceiling sometime later. He pauses, looks between Carl and Sophia, and finally asks, “Is Eliza…?”

Those two words hang in the air for a moment, trailing off into an unspoken ending that Carl can’t tell is “dead” or “alive.” (Maybe Jim doesn’t know either.)

“She’s dead,” Sophia says from her spot on the floor, so decisive and final—not ‘gone,’ not ‘didn’t make it.’ Dead.

When Carl thinks of Eliza now, it’s not her body he remembers, or the mess the bullet made of her face. He sees a slack arm and a mud-splattered doll, hears ‘I promised to never lose it’ in a proud, young voice. (She never did.)

The mechanic hunches forward, rests his head in his hands. “We’re all dead,” he mutters to himself. “All of us…”

Daryl scoffs. “We ain’t dyin’ here.”

The room lapses back into silence—silence apart from the walkers outside and on the ground floor two stories below.

Carl looks over as Sophia rises slowly to her feet, Jim’s sorrow reflected by her own. “Eliza’s dead,” she repeats softly, solemnly, “but we’re not.”

Carl unzips his backpack when he hears Sophia’s stomach growling, rummages through contents that are slightly emptier now that he’d changed out of his bloodstained clothes. His stash is just how he’d left it, and a couple of cans clank together as he finds what he’s looking for.

“Chili or raviolis?” Carl addresses the room as a whole, holding up an MRE in each hand.

A faint smile spreads across his lips at the dumbfounded look he receives from Jim. Sophia begins to inch closer, and Daryl stalks across the room, peering into Carl’s open bag at the rest of the stolen food.

The hunter catches Carl’s gaze. “Why?” he asks, looking begrudgingly impressed.

“Same reason you hid your crossbow,” Carl shoots back.

Daryl hums with the ghost of a smirk and takes one of the proffered packages without another word.

Carl’s back at the window, watching the walkers outside. A whole section of the windowsill is chipped away, and he carves his initials there instead, struggling with the curves of the letters.

He sighs, giving up for now when the “C” comes out looking like a lopsided “L,” and shakes his head in response to Daryl’s questioning glance—the walkers are still there.

They break open a few cans of tuna as the sun sets, and Daryl pauses by a window as he paces by—he frowns, squinting out past the blinds. “Walkers are gone,” he remarks. “‘Bout time.”

“People?” Carl prompts.

Daryl shakes his head, pacing back across the room. “Nothin’.” He stops near Carl and hesitates, thinking something over, and Carl’s eyes grow wide when Daryl opens his satchel and pulls out a very familiar pistol. “Know how to use this?”

Jim does a double take, incredulously spluttering, “He’s just a kid!”

Daryl ignores him, lifting the gun in a silent repeat of his question. He doesn’t take his eyes off of Carl, leveling him with a ‘don’t bullsh*t me’ look that rivals Michonne’s.

“…Yeah,” Carl admits.

The hunter nods, unsurprised, and presses the gun into Carl’s hands. Carl studies it for a moment, running his thumbs over the metal, and looks back up as Daryl says, “Prove it.”

Carl can’t hold back a grin.

“Bullets go here,” he says obligingly, sliding out the magazine briefly before clicking it back into place. “Safety.” He turns the pistol sideways to point out the small switch. Carl aims at one of the windows, keeping his finger off the trigger. “Point and shoot,” he finishes, before lowering the gun back to his side.

Daryl grunts in approval. “Good enough,” he says, and Carl tries not to be offended by that.

He stands in the deepening shadows of the buildings and the RV with the comforting weight of his Beretta in his hand. Carl doesn’t really plan on using it—not in a city with an unknown amount of walkers around, and especially not so close to a fort where fifty thousand people once lived—but a gun’s more effective than a knife at discouraging any potentially hostile strangers.

He circles around the RV again with Sophia, looking up and down the street as Daryl curses from the inside of the vehicle. Judging by the scowl on the man’s face when he steps back out, anything worth salvaging has already been picked over by others during the week they’d been at the Fort.

Carl glances over at Jim, who had grabbed a tire iron from a half-empty toolbox in the back of the RV. Holding the make-shift weapon loosely by his side, he hesitantly voices, “What if they never come?”

The four of them wait there as the last sliver of the sun sinks past the horizon.

“They’re not dead,” Carl insists, but no one approaches their little meeting spot—no unfriendly faces, and no friendly ones.

“We’ll find ‘em,” Daryl proclaims in the dim glow of a flashlight he’d found in a desk drawer. “Just ‘cause no one made it here don’t mean they’re dead.”

Morning dawns, ever later in the shortening November days.

Carl, Sophia, Daryl, and Jim descend the stairs of the office building for the last time—they reach the bottom, pass through the empty store, step outside onto the street.

The dingy, urban landscape around the RV is as empty as before.

They walk.

They follow the river north until they’re out of the city, outpacing the occasional walker. Daryl leads the way with his crossbow, taking out the ones that get too close and straying over to the fallen corpses to retrieve his bolts.

They decided to head back to the quarry, the one place that all of them know how to find.

Carl still doesn’t fire his gun, not wanting to waste the ammo or risk the noise. He gestures at Daryl when they hit a crossroads, saying, “We should avoid the highways—too much of a chance that we’ll find someone we don’t want to find.”

Daryl silently agrees, oblivious to the small, satisfied smile that spreads across Carl’s face as they turn east.

“It still doesn’t feel real,” Sophia whispers to him a few miles later. “I keep expecting to see Eliza here, even though I know she won’t be.” The two of them walk a handful of paces behind Daryl, a despondent Jim taking the rear. “And my mom, your parents…everyone else…do you really think they’re okay? That they made it out like we did?”

Carl thinks, remembering the burning hotel, the panicked crowds flooding out into death-filled streets. Right after the storm, everywhere was muddy and damp—not much to do, not many places to go. Most of them, Carl’s sure, would have been in their hotel rooms when it all happened.

Wherever they are, they’re together.

“If my dad’s with them, then they’ve gotta be, right?” he reasons. “Besides, if anything, Carol will be the one keeping everyone safe. It might not seem like it to you, but your mom’s a badass.”

They hole up in an abandoned farmhouse that night—a small one with peeling, grey paint. There wasn’t a single walker inside, and Carl wonders where the house’s original occupants had gone. He digs around in his backpack, pulling out food for dinner, and pauses, frowning, as his fingers brush something smooth and crinkly at the bottom.

He pushes an MRE to the side and extracts the papery object. It’s like a magazine, or…

A two-dimensional Wolverine snarls at him from the colorful cover, striking an intimidating pose with his metal claws, and Carl chuckles in disbelief. He turns to Sophia, holding up the comic. “When did you…?”

His friend only smiles innocently and replies, “I was wondering when you’d notice.”

In the morning, they can’t find Jim.

A quick search of the house turns up nothing, and Carl soon finds himself outside, wading through waist-high grass. He moves slowly, warily, listening for signs of walkers concealed by the farmhouse’s overgrown lawn. Sophia follows a step behind him, eyes alert.

“Jim!” Daryl calls distantly from the other side of the house.

Sophia suddenly gasps, grabbing his sleeve. “Carl,” she says shakily. Her face is stricken, and she points a trembling hand toward a big oak tree.

Carl lifts his gun at first, expecting some sort of threat—a pair of soldiers, maybe, from Fort Benning. But when he follows her gaze and looks up, his gun falls back to his side.

Because it’s Jim.

“Damn it,” Carl swears softly.

A limp figure swings in the wind, suspended from a sturdy tree branch by a thick length of rope. His throat is dark and bruised, his eyes wide and unseeing. (Jim hasn’t turned yet, but he’s been there for a while.)

“He…he just…” Sophia stammers, backing up a step. “Why? Why did he…?”

Carl sighs heavily, shaking his head. “He gave up…like the scientist at the CDC. Thought there was no hope.”

Sophia’s brown eyes are desperate as she asks him in a small voice, “Is there? Hope?”

He thinks of a little girl tugging on his long hair with a bright smile, somehow managing to say his name wrong a good half of the time, always trying to steal his hat even though it was large enough to swallow her entire head. Drawing cheerful family pictures with colored pencils, never thinking it was weird that her older brother was missing an eye. Carl thinks of her and says, “Maybe.”

Then he thinks about everything else, and adds, “But it doesn’t matter. Even if there isn’t, we don’t give up—we never give up.”

Carl calls Daryl over, and the hunter immediately lunges forward, pulling out his switchblade and reaching for the rope.

Jim’s foot twitches—Carl stops Daryl with a hand on his arm. He’s not strong enough to actually stop him, but it comes as enough of a surprise that Daryl pauses.

“Stop,” Carl says. “It’s too late.”

Jim’s still-open eyes are now cloudy and dead, focusing sharply on the three living bodies standing beneath the canopy of yellow-green leaves.

Daryl lowers his hands and tucks the knife away.

The walker with Jim’s face thrashes futilely in the air. It snarls, jaw snapping as it tries to grab at them with its arms, and Carl stares at it, squeezing Sophia’s hand until a crossbow bolt pierces through its eye and the frenzied corpse goes still.

Jim’s body just hangs there, swaying on the rope.

“We should bury him,” Carl says.

Daryl lowers his crossbow, looking up at the limp figure hanging from the tree. “...Yeah.”

They set out a couple hours later, walking toward Atlanta on a long, country road. Just the three of them. Jim’s left on the side of the road again, but he has a grave this time.

(Is that really any better?)

Chapter 18: Country Roads

Chapter Text

“Senoia? The hell’s in Senoia?”

Daryl spreads out his map on the dash of their newly-acquired vehicle, finger tracing a path against the crinkled, glossy paper. The bench seat of the old pickup would have been cramped to fit three adults, but with Carl and Sophia being smaller, there’s plenty of room.

Carl shrugs lightly from the middle seat. (As if Maggie won’t be there. Beth. Hershel.) “We need gas, right?”

Daryl starts the engine, and it comes to life with a sputtering roar that proves Carl’s point—the hunter frowns at the fuel gauge as they accelerate down the road.

“We won’t make it to the quarry today, anyway,” Carl continues over the truck’s steady rumble. “Not unless we drive through the night, and…” He pauses, deciding on a version of the truth. “I know some people who live around there.”

He can see Daryl glance at him in his peripheral vision, sees Sophia turning toward him—one curious, one knowing. Carl stares contemplatively through the windshield, watching the pavement disappear beneath the light blue hood of the truck.

While his words are twisted to fit the strange situation he finds himself in, Carl’s grimace is real as he adds, “Well, it was a while ago, so I don’t know if they’ll remember me, but they’ll let us stay the night there anyway.”

The Greenes won’t remember him—he knows they won’t, because to them, they’ve never met. But even if Hershel’s convinced that walkers are sick, not dead, he’d never turn away two children looking for shelter for the night on their way to find their parents.

“They’re good like that,” Carl finishes quietly, because no matter what happens, that will always be true. The Greenes are good. (He owes them so much, even if they’ll never remember.)

Daryl grunts—skeptical, maybe—but he keeps on driving, each mile bringing them closer to a farm that had once felt like home.

Downtown Senoia is small, a single-lane road with a grassy divider and a handful of squat, brick buildings on either side. The storefronts are dark and empty, and several cars are still sitting in the parking spaces—Daryl pulls up to a bicycle shop and cuts the engine.

Carl looks up at the pale yellow facade, patches of red-orange bricks showing through the faded paint. It looks old, but in more of a charming, small town kind of way than an end-of-the-world kind of way. It’s almost eerie how happy the place looks, and Carl wonders if Woodbury had been the same. (He’s perfectly content to never know the answer.)

Daryl hops out to siphon fuel from the abandoned vehicles—he tells them to stay in the truck, but, of course, Carl doesn’t listen. Just because Daryl can handle himself doesn’t mean he has to, doesn’t mean Carl can’t watch his back.

(‘It only takes one second. One second and it’s over.’)

After all, Carl could handle himself, too. Until he couldn’t.

Daryl shoots him an annoyed look when he spots Carl and Sophia standing on the pavement, but they don’t stray far from the passenger side door—Sophia raises her arms above her head, stretching after sitting still for so long, and Carl keeps an eye on their seemingly undisturbed surroundings, Beretta at the ready.

In the distance, a single walker shuffles by.

“What are you going to say to them?” Sophia wonders, looking out at that distant walker. It doesn’t seem to notice them, its back to them as it moves farther down the street.

“I don’t know,” Carl admits with a sigh. “I guess I could pretend I’m looking for one of their neighbors…” If he could remember their names. “...or claim I met Beth during some school trip.”

The more he thinks about it, the more it sinks in—the reality that when he meets the Greenes, it’ll be as strangers, not family. As great as it would be to see Beth and Hershel alive again, imagining how they’ll look at him, like he’s some kid they’ve never seen before…

Carl would rather face Hershel’s disappointment than his apathy, rather have them recognize him and hate him than be faced with these younger versions of the people he once knew, confronted with Beth’s shy curiosity or Maggie’s guarded friendliness.

They won’t want to leave their home, and Carl can’t make them—the warnings of a stranger, no matter how dire, could never override a lifetime’s worth of peace and safety.

Their “first” meeting will feel more like a goodbye.

“I don’t know,” Carl repeats as Daryl returns with a couple of gas cans.

The sun casts long shadows of the trees as they walk up the Farm’s long, winding drive. It feels so weird to be back here—there’s something about a familiar place that brings back all sorts of memories. (Most of them are bad, but not all of them.)

They round the last bend, and the woods clear out into open, rolling fields.

Carl sees the barn first—a hulking, red-roofed structure to their left. The last time he’d seen it, it was burning, collapsing in pieces as flames ate away at the rafters. Yet here it is, untouched. Intact.

He keeps walking, and there’s a strange feeling of déjà vu as he takes in the sight of that barn. The closer he gets, the more certain he is that something isn’t right. Carl can’t pin down what exactly is wrong, until he realizes that the barn, while unburned, is just how Shane left it—chains broken and large doors gaping wide open.

Carl freezes.

The barn is open. Open and empty.

He looks up at the farmhouse, then, stumbling a few steps up the gently-sloping hill, and it takes a moment for his mind to process what he’s seeing. That stately, white house with its three brick chimneys and wraparound porch…isn’t there.

Carl’s brow furrows and he shakes his head, willing the world to make sense, but nothing changes—the house is gone, replaced by a collapsed mass of blackened wood. Charred. Burned. And recently, parts of the ruin still sending thin trails of smoke into the sky.

He won’t be telling anyone anything, because no one is there, and Carl just stands there, staring blankly at the leveled farmhouse. Darkness creeps into the edges of his vision as a buzzing fills his ears.

What…?

He takes an unsteady step forward. Someone calls his name, but he barely hears them—he keeps walking, step after step, toward that pile of soot-stained debris. His footsteps sound muted over the echo of his thundering heart, and it feels like he’s falling—his steps come faster and faster, as if he’s going down a hill and not up one. Drawn by a power he doesn’t have the will to stop.

He ignores the voices behind him without a second thought, ignores the distant sound of pursuing footsteps and the warped syllable of his name.

He’s running, flying, feet pounding across the grass.

And then he’s there—Carl slows, then stops, taking in the destruction. He doesn’t want to look but he has to. He needs to see, so he does.

Long pieces of burned, splintered wood mingle with cracked windows and loose shards of glass. Chips of white paint litter the area like some kind of f*cked-up confetti, smudged grey with ash, along with scraps of discolored fabric that had once been couches and beds.

It’s not even a house anymore.

How…?

His legs fail him then, depositing him roughly onto his knees in the grass. The impact is jarring, but his eyes don’t leave the wreckage in front of him.

They’re gone.

Maggie, Beth, Hershel…they’re just gone.

Someone catches up to him, approaching cautiously, and it’s Sophia.

His eyes are wet—he scrubs the tears away before they can fall. “They should be here,” Carl whispers to the lone pillar of a half-crumbled fireplace. “They should…”

She doesn’t say anything, just slowly sinks down to sit beside him like she had at the quarry as he looked out over the lake. When he told her the truth. (The only truth he can come to now is that the Greenes are gone, probably dead, and it’s no one’s fault but his.)

“I’m sorry,” she finally says. Then, quieter, “It’s not your fault.”

Carl nods dully—he wants to believe her, but he can’t quite agree.

(Maybe he should have stayed dead.)

There’s a body in the grass, dead from a shotgun to the chest.

There are other bodies, too—walkers, mostly—but the splash of red catches his attention, standing out in the orange, late evening light. Carl approaches the fallen form, crouches by its side, and he knows that face. He’d seen the same young man on his knees in the barn, Rick’s Colt Python leveled with his head—Randall.

He chuckles darkly, feeling like a part of him has broken. (Or maybe he was already broken, maybe he broke a long time ago.)

That son of a bitch.

Carl looks up at the ruin of the farmhouse, and he can see it—Hershel on the porch with his shotgun, eyes cold with righteous fury as he defends his home, his daughters.

Randall’s skull is undamaged, but he hasn’t turned yet. (He never will.)

Carl’s expression twists, and he plunges his knife through the man’s temple, wishing he was still alive to feel it. He does it again for good measure—even then, it doesn’t feel like enough, but he forces himself to stop, listening to the whisper of sanity in the back of his rage-filled mind.

Carl leans back, gritting his teeth. The still-smoldering debris, the unturned body, the busted-open barn doors…this couldn’t have happened much longer than a few hours ago.

A pair of footsteps crunch toward him—Carl raises his head, staring up at Daryl.

He knows he’s not the perfect picture of sanity, an apparent twelve-year-old crouching over a corpse with a blood-stained knife in one hand, wearing an intense expression that vacillates between anger and devastation and emptiness. He should probably be concerned that Daryl’s seeing him like this, but he’s just…not.

(He’s too exhausted.)

He wishes he could sleep for a hundred years and wake up back in the middle seat of that light blue pickup truck—that all of this could’ve been a twisted nightmare instead of a twisted reality. (If only his life could be that easy.)

“People did this,” Carl voices the obvious, gesturing with his knife toward where the farmhouse once stood. “I knew them—know them.” (He doesn’t know whether he’s talking about Randall’s people or the Greenes.) He scoffs, wiping the blade of his knife on the edge of Randall’s jacket and rising to his feet.

He takes a few shaky steps backward. “I don’t even know if they’re…” Carl shakes his head.

The silence between them is heavy—Daryl chews on the side of his thumb, watching Carl with an indecipherable look, and Sophia picks through the edge of the ruins several yards ahead.

What is there to say, really?

Eventually, Carl turns away, wandering off in the direction of the ironically intact barn.

Orange flames crackle in the night, creating a dim glow behind him as Carl sits on that hayloft ledge, staring out at the darkness.

The spot to his left feels empty—his dad’s not there, sitting on the floor beside him. Rick doesn’t give him the gun, but Carl has it anyway, tucked into the waistband of his jeans. He takes it out and holds it between his hands just to have something to do—he doesn’t see any walkers out there, and even if he did, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to fire it. (Not after what happened before.)

“No more kid stuff,” he whispers to himself, just because it feels like someone should. (He stopped being a kid a long time ago.)

He wants to believe that they’re alive—Hershel, Maggie, Beth…maybe even Patricia or Otis or Jimmy. The state of the house paints a damning picture, but that doesn’t mean anything—it doesn’t have to mean anything. The Prison had looked even worse, and most of them had made it out then.

But Carl…doesn’t know.

He just doesn’t know.

(There could be bones out there, buried under tons of burned debris, and he knows he’d never find them.)

Carl closes his eyes, but the sight of the ruined farmhouse is imprinted even there—he can still see it.

He passes out hours later in a pile of hay, and he wakes to the barn’s low, wooden rafters looming over his head, the stench of death still in the air from the walkers that had once filled the space below.

Carl grabs his bag.

He smiles tensely at Sophia, nods at Daryl.

The three of them climb down to the ground floor of the barn, Daryl unblocks the doors, and then they’re gone, stepping out into the morning light.

The pickup truck is right where they left it—Daryl sits behind the wheel as Carl and Sophia slide onto the bench from the other side.

And the blue-colored vehicle rumbles away into the distance.

Chapter 19: Home

Chapter Text

The few hours it takes to drive to the quarry feel impossibly long, the uneventful trip and relative quiet bringing out all sorts of thoughts Carl would rather ignore. Destruction and death hang like a silent spectre in the air—a girl falling to the pavement, a man who lost all hope, a farmhouse smoldering in the night.

Randall.

And…the quarry. What they might find—what they might not. Because sometimes people don’t just die. They disappear. Maybe dead, maybe alive, maybe wandering for eternity as a soulless husk of who they once were.

A burst of static fills the cab as Daryl flicks idly through empty channels, scanning through airwaves that are as dead as the rest of the world.

Buildings flash by through the windshield.

Glenn, Carol, his dad, his mom…(oh god, Judy.) It’s that last thought that has him violently rejecting all the rest. Because if he’s gone this far only to lose his sister before she’s even born…

No.

Just…no.

They arrive at the bottom of that curved dirt road sometime before noon, the angle of the sun a near-perfect match to the day he woke up in that tent. There are no tents left when they trudge up to the campsite—they’d all been dismantled the day they set out for Fort Benning.

Daryl takes the lead, crossbow half-raised as he stalks forward. Carl’s right behind him, and Sophia crosses her arms nervously as she follows.

There’s not much here—old tire tracks in the dirt, a large rectangle of dead grass where the RV was once parked. T-Dog’s church van is still where they left it, as are the remains of a couple campfires with pieces of logs arranged haphazardly around them.

Carl glimpses the single row of crosses on the hill.

But no people.

They’re in the middle of camp now—or, rather, the middle of where their camp once was. Carl’s eyes linger on a piece of rusted scrap metal. And then Daryl abruptly stops, flinging up an open hand in a gesture Carl immediately obeys. Sophia freezes a moment later.

It’s quiet.

Daryl aims his crossbow toward the woods, and Carl raises his gun in the same direction, trying to find what the other man saw.

He leans slightly to the side, and he sees it—a dull gleam of silver metal shining through the underbrush. A car deliberately covered by large, leafy branches. Daryl shifts, goes to say something, but his bow snaps up again at a sudden rustle in the trees. Carl takes a slow step forward, standing beside the hunter as a man steps out from the edge of the woods…

Shane walks into the light, grinning, a shotgun leaning casually against his shoulder, aimed up at the sky. “Fancy seeing you here,” he says, and Carl hesitates for a beat too long before lowering his Beretta. (Daryl hesitates even longer, scowling.)

“Look who I found!” Shane calls over his shoulder, the noise causing Daryl to tense.

When a second man steps out, Carl doesn’t recognize him at first—the beige sheriff uniform is gone, replaced by a plain, black shirt and jeans. There’s a brown hat on his head, and while the seven-pointed star is conspicuously absent…

“CARL!”

…he’d know that voice anywhere.

Rick runs forward, more of a blur than a person, and Carl barely manages to tuck away his gun before a strong pair of arms are literally sweeping him off his feet. Carl chokes out a startled sound, clinging to his dad as his feet leave the ground.

“I’m okay,” he gets out when his dad puts him back down again, and Rick nods, silently reaching out with his other arm to gently pull a surprised but pleased Sophia into the hug. Carl meets her gaze, smiling at her flabbergasted expression.

Rick, kneeling on the ground with a kid under each arm, looks up at Daryl with sheer relief, blue eyes shining with gratitude. “Thank you,” he breathes, and Daryl ducks his head, shifting uncomfortably on his feet.

“Don’t gotta thank me fer nothin’,” the hunter replies gruffly.

Carl’s dad leans back, dropping his arms as Shane comes closer. Shane frowns at the empty space behind Daryl—Carl scans the woods beyond the two former sheriffs.

“Where’s everyone else?” Shane asks, just as Carl says, “Where’s Mom?”

“We were looking for Sergeant Dolgen when it all happened,” Rick explains, pacing across the torn-up grass. “We…” He sighs, shakes his head. “Well, it doesn’t matter now. Shane and I, we ran back to the hotel when the shooting started, but it was too late—the rooms were empty, everyone just…gone.”

Rick runs a hand over his face. “We hoped that they’d found you, that you were all…” He clears his throat, continues, “Our, uh, meeting spot was overrun when we got there, so we thought to look here. We drove in last night,” he finishes, gesturing with a wave of his arm at the half-hidden car behind him.

“Eliza’s dead,” Carl says quietly. “Jim, too. We didn’t see anyone else.”

Shane’s looking blankly out at the horizon. “That many people…they’ll be on foot,” he mutters, as much to himself as anyone else. “Gotta be. Harder to move fast…”

Daryl crouches by one of the old campfires, poking at the half-burned logs.

Rick covers his mouth with a hand. He looks down at Carl, at Sophia, and lowers his hand. “They’ll be here,” he declares, but Carl sees right through him.

They eat a couple of squirrels Daryl finds and the rest of the food in Carl’s backpack.

Rick gives Carl a look when he realizes where the food’s from—Carl looks back with a shameless shrug.

His dad doesn’t mention the gun.

Sometime later, Daryl brings the blue pickup into camp, and Shane and Rick move their own vehicle out from its hiding place at the edge of the woods.

They sleep in the vehicles, the three adults alternating watch.

As it is, they have more guns than people—Rick and Shane had stopped by the Fort’s armory on their way out and recovered most of their group’s weapons. Carl glimpsed Dale’s rifle and Andrea’s pistol in the trunk of their car, Shane has his pistol and shotgun, and his dad’s Colt Python is back where it belongs.

Lying in the flat back of T-Dog’s church van, Carl looks up through a side window at a sliver of starry sky. It’s a clear night—dark with the lack of a moon—and Carl watches a bright, unblinking light drift across the sky, follows it with his eyes until it disappears behind the van’s metal roof. It could be the space station, and he wonders, gruesomely, if there are walkers up there, bouncing around in the null gravity. Or maybe the virus never reached them, and those astronauts got to die the way people used to.

The shape beside him shifts, blonde hair gleaming brighter than anything else. “Are you awake?” Sophia whispers.

Carl turns his head, looking over at her in the darkness. “Yeah,” he replies.

She pauses. “Tell me about them? The Greenes?”

Hershel on his knees, the sword coming down…

Daryl stumbling out the door with Beth in his arms, her blonde ponytail stained red…

He wants to say no. (But how can he, when the people he knew were her family as much as they were his?)

“Beth…” Carl starts hesitantly. There are a million things he could say about her, but he settles on, “She likes to sing.” He closes his eyes, remembering the way her voice echoed warmly off the cold walls of the Prison. “She saw how things are, but never stopped thinking it could be better—always holding onto hope. Beth looked after my sister when my dad…couldn’t…and she was the closest thing I had to a friend, for a while.” Carl opens his eyes, huffs a laugh. “She’s sixteen, so I’m older than her now, technically.”

“You’re also twelve and shorter than me,” Sophia dutifully reminds him, and Carl snorts.

“For now,” he concedes.

Sophia sits up, wrapping her arms around her knees. “What about Maggie?”

Maggie, falling to her knees, face contorted in grief—her father, her sister, her husband…

But, she always got back up again.

“Maggie’s strong,” Carl says with a smile. “She lost a lot but never stopped fighting—for others, and for herself. She’s…a leader. Maggie’s twenty two now, like Glenn, and they’d always go on runs together. They were happy, until…” he trails off, shaking his head, because he is not thinking about Negan right now. “They were happy,” he finishes.

Sophia’s still looking at him, and he continues before she has to ask. “Hershel saved my life when we first met him.” His fingers brush against his stomach, and how weird is it that he doesn’t even have that scar? “I always remember him being so calm. People just listen to him, and it seems like he always knows what the right thing to do is. Maggie was gonna name her baby after him, if it was a boy,” he adds.

After a moment, Carl sighs and rolls over, closing his eyes again and trying to sleep—Sophia reaches over and pokes his shoulder. “I hope I’ll get to meet them one day,” she says, and it’s only then that Carl realizes he’s been talking about the Greenes in the present tense.

He’s woken by voices in the morning, and his pistol quickly finds its way into his hand. Carl sits up. Through the van’s smudged windows, he can see his dad, Shane, and Daryl standing outside, facing the road, but he doesn’t see anything else.

Sophia stirs, clothes rustling, and blinks up at him with bleary, confused eyes. “Who’s…?”

“Stay here,” he replies as he crawls forward and climbs out of the van.

A wall of cool air hits him as his feet touch the ground.

The sun hangs low over the horizon, that annoying angle that shines right in his eyes, and he blinks away spots with a grimace. He crosses camp quickly, reaching Shane’s side as his dad moves away, toward…

Carl lowers the gun with a blinding grin, calls for Sophia over his shoulder. Because walking up the dirt road, a tired but relieved smile stretched across her face, is Lori Grimes.

And behind her is everyone else.

Chapter 20: This Is It

Chapter Text

It’s chaos, but the good kind—overlapping voices and flurries of movement, tired eyes lighting up and smiles spreading across people’s faces. That overwhelming, hysterical happiness of finding someone you feared was gone forever.

Lori jogs forward with a laugh, meeting Rick halfway and pulling him down for a kiss. The worn backpack she’s holding falls to the ground.

“Mom!” Sophia races past them, barreling into Carol’s arms.

An arm reaches out, and Carl finds himself being pulled against his mom’s side—a hand smoothing over his hair, a kiss pressed to the top of his head. “Thank god you’re both okay,” Lori says, and when her eyes land on Shane, Carl’s surprised to find her smiling just as wide.

Carol’s sobbing in joy and relief, tucking Sophia’s head under her chin, holding onto her like a woman drowning, and this is how it was supposed to be. (It feels like a dangerous daydream of his twelve-year-old self, except it’s real—the sight of them, still together despite everything, has Carl finally crying, too.)

Sophia meets his gaze with a watery smile, and Carl tilts his head toward Carol. ‘Badass,’ he mouths, and his friend looks away, amused.

“…Jim?” T-Dog asks Shane, and Carl’s smile dims, heart sinking when he spots Miranda in the middle of the crowd with Louis, her eyes scanning the faces, and—

“Where’s Eliza?” she says, voice tense and frantic. Her hand tightens around her son’s, pulling him along as she takes a staggering step forward.

The camp goes silent.

“Where’s my baby?” Miranda demands, looking to Rick, to Shane, eyes darting between Carl and Sophia. “Where is she?!”

Rick approaches her with heavy steps, drawing the attention of the stricken crowd. “I’m sorry,” he says, pained.

“Oh god…” Amy murmurs, clinging to Andrea.

Carl watches the fragile, desperate hope shatter in Miranda’s eyes—she falls to her knees and shrieks, a wordless howl of grief clawing past her lips.

Carol rushes over to her side, Lori following a stunned second later.

“No, no, no, not my Eliza…not my baby…” Miranda moans, choking out the words through a throat clogged with tears.

Carol gently pries Louis from Miranda’s hysterical grip—the boy looks terrified, and Carl remembers standing outside C block with bloody hands, his mom dead and his dad curled up on the ground like he wanted to join her. (Realizing numbly that Rick couldn’t be strong, so he had to be.)

There’s nothing more terrifying than a parent breaking down, and Louis has that same, hollow look in his eyes.

A couple walkers stumble out of the woods—the first one collapses limply a moment later with the thunk of a crossbow bolt, and Daryl stalks over to the other, takes it down with a swing of his knife.

“We can’t go on like we were before. This…” Rick steps up onto a low boulder, sweeping an arm out in the direction of downtown Atlanta, at the tops of ruined skyscrapers looming above the treeline across the quarry. “This isn’t temporary. There’s no one coming for us.” He looks down at the sea of resigned faces, and his eyes catch briefly on Carl’s. “This is it,” Rick continues, his voice grave and quiet, “and we decide what happens next.”

“We can make this place safe,” Shane cuts in, stepping up beside Rick. Something has shifted between them, and Carl’s left wondering what the hell happened on that little road trip of theirs. (Carl’s dad doesn’t react, doesn’t look surprised by the interruption, because it isn’t an interruption at all—they planned this.)

Shane glances toward the woods, says, “We were scared off by that herd before, but how many was it, really? A couple dozen?” He scoffs. “There’s much more than that out there—we saw that.”

“We’ve got plenty of water here,” Rick adds, “and while the city’s dangerous, it’s got supplies…supplies we desperately need.” He pauses, and in the wake of his words, the camp is so quiet. “Now, we’re not saying we stay here forever—maybe a few weeks. Just until we can get back on our feet, get some vehicles, stuff, weapons…until we decide on where to go next.”

Rick nods to himself, looks out at the gathered group.

“Until we find a place where we can live.”

Carl looks around, waiting for a call for democracy—for someone to disagree, demand a vote—but it never comes.

Dale looks determined, Glenn frowns in the direction of the Atlanta skyline.

Andrea steps forward.

“What do you want us to do?”

Chapter 21: Dirt

Chapter Text

“Come on, guys, I’ve been doing this for months.” Glenn huffs, leaning against the side of the church van. “It’s easier to stay unnoticed if it’s just me.”

“And it’ll be easier to carry the supplies if you’re not alone,” Rick counters. “No one should be going out without backup, anyway.”

Glenn opens his mouth to argue, but Shane cuts him off, stepping forward and clapping the younger man on the shoulder. “I got this one,” Shane says to Rick as he moves past Glenn and climbs into the driver’s seat.

Andrea makes a beeline for the passenger side with her newly-returned pistol in hand, declaring, “I’ll go, too.”

Glenn sighs, looking between Shane, Andrea, and Rick. T-Dog glances over from his spot by the back of the van, pouring in fuel that had been siphoned from the other vehicles. “What’re you looking at me for?” he says with a shrug when Glenn’s gaze falls on him.

“I…fine,” Glenn relents, turning back to Rick for a moment before reluctantly climbing into the back of the van.

“Looks like that’s settled, then,” Rick says over the sound of the door closing.

A flash of movement and blonde hair draws Carl’s attention to the middle of camp, where Amy abandoned her spot by the unlit campfire to race over, calling, “Andrea!” She goes over to the passenger side and glares at her sister through the van’s open window. “You’re leaving? We just got here!”

“We won’t be gone long,” Andrea replies placatingly. She tilts her head toward Shane and Glenn, jokes, “Besides, someone’s got to keep these two in line.”

Shane snorts, fingers tapping against the wheel. “Yes, ma’am.”

Amy rolls her eyes. “Don’t die,” she orders, leaning in to give Andrea a quick hug before retreating back the way she came.

“Love you, too!” Andrea calls after her.

Shane looks down thoughtfully at the shotgun resting on his lap. “Hey kid,” he says over his shoulder, unholstering his pistol and offering it to the man in the back seat, “know how to use one of these?”

Glenn aims a dubious glance at the gun. “...Not really,” he admits. “But we should avoid gunfire in the city, anyway—that’s how we got trapped last time with Officer Dumbass here.” He directs that last part toward Rick with a teasing grin.

“We could use the extra gun at camp,” Rick muses, thoughtfully adding, “Lori knows how to shoot…”

“That’s right,” Shane mutters. He leans forward, passes the pistol to Rick instead.

Then T-Dog’s closing the gas flap with a soft click and Shane’s starting the engine, the sudden sound turning everyone’s heads for a brief moment.

“Stay safe out there,” Rick says—Shane nods in reply as he turns the wheel and begins to pull away.

The van recedes down the curved road, and Carl watches it go, silently wishing them luck.

“Is the safety on?”

He nearly jumps out of his skin at his dad’s sudden question, and he hesitates for a second as his brain processes the words. “Yeah,” Carl says, surprised that Rick’s finally mentioning it. He slowly pulls the pistol out from the back of his jeans and angles the side of the gun toward Rick, extra conscious to keep the barrel pointed firmly at the ground lest his dad decides to never let Carl handle a gun again.

“It stays that way,” Rick declares. “And I don’t want to see it in your hands unless there’s an actual emergency—no more wandering off,” he adds pointedly, and…yeah, Carl deserved that.

But it’s more than fair, so Carl just nods.

Dirt flies in the air in rhythmic beats, forming twin plumes that disperse as a dusty haze. The two shovels left abandoned on the hill beside the row of graves have found a new purpose, digging once more for the dead, but this time for the walking kind.

Carl sits in the bed of the pickup truck and watches his dad and T-Dog, their backs and arms shifting as a shallow trench slowly takes shape along the edge of the woods. Rick’s declaration that they need to start fortifying the place had been met with easy agreement—their time living behind fences (and then seeing them fall) has evidently changed people’s views on what safety means.

In the middle of camp, one of the fires is lit—Amy, Ethan, and Sydney sit around it on log-stump chairs, boiling lake water in an old cooking pot someone had scrounged up. His mom sits with Miranda in the silver car, and Carol stands near the drop-off with Sophia and Louis, seemingly telling a story of some sort. Daryl has already vanished into the woods, off to track something for dinner.

Carl feels stagnant and useless just sitting around here doing nothing. It feels weird—feels wrong—to be in a camp like this and have no real responsibilities. To not be expected to do anything at all. He watches his dad and T-Dog, watches the trees, and part of him hopes that a walker will stagger into sight just for an excuse to use his gun. To see the look on his dad’s face when he headshots it from here. (The only figures he sees are living ones, and it’s probably for the best.)

He leans forward, rests his arms against the side of the truck. The pistol tucked into the waistband of his jeans shifts a little with the movement, and Carl pushes it back into place, thinking to himself that he should really get a holster.

Something moves in his peripheral vision, and he finds Dale’s sharp gaze trained on him when he looks up. The older man is only a few feet away, perched on the top of the cab for lack of a better vantage point, his rifle resting across his lap.

Carl taps the exposed grip of his Beretta. “My dad knows,” he says, and Dale mercifully turns his disapproval toward Rick with a silent frown instead of spouting whatever morally upright rant is bouncing around in his brain.

“I’m gonna take your job soon,” Carl jokes, but Dale only looks sad.

Daryl emerges from the trees a couple hours later with a few rabbits and a squirrel.

The trench is a little wider, a little deeper—Ethan and Amy have taken over the digging, and Rick’s fiddling with his radio nearby. T-Dog drinks water by the campfire, sitting with Sydney.

Miranda’s still in the car, though Carl can’t see her from here—Lori slipped outside maybe a half hour ago, flashing Carl a warm smile as she went over to discuss something with Carol.

Dale hasn’t moved from his post, and Sophia joined Carl in the bed of the pickup truck, watching people move about camp at first, but now laying flat on her back in either thought or boredom.

Their moms are still there by the cliff’s edge, but Carol stands when she spots Daryl, crossing camp with a determined look on her face and intercepting the hunter on his way to the fire. The distance is too great to make out what they’re saying, but judging by the self-conscious set of Daryl’s shoulders, Carol’s either thanking him or being generally nice. She retreats a moment later with a faint smile that Carl finds himself matching as Daryl ducks his head and looks away.

Carol returns to Lori’s side—Carl frowns, a realization striking him as he looks between them, Sophia, and the silver car Miranda’s in that Lori left but no one entered.

Louis is nowhere to be found.

“I’ll be right back,” he tells Sophia, and she hums distractedly as he clambers down and paces over to the sloping path to the lake.

Carl peers over the side of the quarry, eyes scanning the rocky shoreline, and sees no one. He thinks for a minute, then spins around and looks consideringly at the wooden crosses on the hill.

Eight crosses stand on the hill, each marking a mound of upturned earth. The once-dark soil has since lightened to match the rest of the landscape, and tangled weeds sprout in the shadow of death.

A small figure kneels beside one of the graves, his back to Carl. (Though the crosses are unlabeled, he doesn’t have to guess to know which one this is.)

Louis hasn’t noticed him yet, and Carl’s quiet footsteps waver with indecision. Because the boy is alive and unharmed, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing here, intruding on a moment that doesn’t belong to him. Because he thinks that if this was him, he’d want everyone to leave him the f*ck alone. (But would he, really? Did he?)

Carl looks at Louis, and he sees himself. Wandering the cold halls of the Prison with pitying looks thrown his way even as he was overlooked and ignored—walking down an empty street in a vacant neighborhood, angry and alone.

(‘You gotta do what’s right,’ whispers the ghost of his mom from a world that no longer exists, and maybe he does know what he’s doing, after all.)

“Hey,” he greets the other boy quietly, closing the remaining distance and sitting down beside him.

Louis turns his head a little but remains silent, eyes fixed on the cross that looms in front of them. His fingers fiddle with the stem of a small, flowering weed.

“How did she die?” Louis is looking at him with dull eyes, and Carl doesn’t look away.

Maybe he shouldn’t tell him—maybe most people wouldn’t—but Carl knows that sometimes not knowing is worse than knowing. (If you don’t know, then you wonder, your mind filling in the blanks with more and more detail, piece by gruesome piece until what’s in your mind surpasses reality.)

“She was shot,” Carl finally says. “It was the soldiers.” It was an accident, he thinks, a stray f*cking bullet, but it makes no difference in the end.

“Did you see it happen?”

Warm blood splattering across his face…the taste of iron filling his mouth…

Carl blinks, suppressing a shudder. (He wasn’t fazed by the blood so much as by the fact that it belonged to the ten-year-old girl who’d been talking moments earlier. That it was Eliza’s blood.) “Yeah,” he whispers.

Louis is quiet for a while, looking down at that weed in the dirt of his father’s grave, and his fingers twist and twist around the stem until it bends and breaks. A loose petal flutters to the ground, small and white.

“Do you think it hurts?” the boy wonders, raising his head to look at Carl again. “Dying?”

Carl is, perhaps, the only person in the world who doesn’t have to think to know the answer. (He died the same way she had—a bullet to the brain.)

“No.”

Chapter 22: Colorful Death

Chapter Text

The leaves turn quickly, greens and yellows giving way to fiery oranges and reds. They spin lazily through the air as they fall, swept along by a gentle breeze—handfuls of stray leaves settle in the weed-filled grass of the quarry camp, and the forest floor beyond will soon be covered by a blanket of colorful death.

The assortment of bright orange tents surrounding the main campfire would have looked out of place during any other season, but it blends in with the backdrop of autumn.

The metal roof of a white car is cool under Carl’s hands when he leans back, turning his gaze outward. His dad and Shane had taken inspiration from the Fort, arranging a ring of vehicles in a makeshift wall that encircles camp—Andrea paces across the roof of a blue-grey minivan a few cars over, holding her pistol loosely in a lowered hand.

There’s always one lookout during the day, and two at night.

An uneven crunch of footsteps meets Carl’s ears, and he looks over at the trees, spotting the walker stumbling toward them at the same time Andrea does. She raises her pistol but lets it approach, waiting for a clearer shot.

Carl watches the walker come out of the trees. It’s dragging one foot, the ankle turned completely sideways, and the leg noisily sweeps up handfuls of fallen leaves. Somehow, it doesn’t trip, and once it’s halfway between the edge of the woods and the minivan where Andrea stands, she steadies her gun and pulls the trigger.

The walker lurches sideways at the same time, its twisted ankle making its movement unpredictable. The shot misses, hitting the ground beside it with a puff of dirt. It straightens with an almost drunken wobble, snarls up at her, and keeps going.

Andrea sighs.

The walker gets closer and closer, and she waits longer this time, letting it reach the trench that runs parallel to the woods, spanning the length of camp. It’s three feet wide and almost as deep—enough to slow down walkers, but not to stop a person from jumping across.

The walker tumbles forward in a sprawl of rotting limbs, lands with a thump. It hits its head on a car tire, but its skull is still intact—Andrea takes aim as it starts to move again, frowning in concentration and annoyance.

Her second shot doesn’t miss.

Carl glances behind him—no one is fazed by the gunshots anymore. They only look up briefly before resuming their activities, because even if the walker had made it across the trench, it would have had trouble getting in—the displaced dirt from the trench fills the gaps under the vehicles, and waist-high wooden spikes fill the spaces between, angled outward.

Not bad at all for a week’s work.

“That’s the fifth one today,” Andrea notes, directing her words over her shoulder. “We’ll be running out of ammo soon.”

Rick looks up at her, nodding thoughtfully and patting the pocket of his jeans with an absent hand as he says, “I might know a place…”

Shane stares at him, baffled and incredulous and amused. “You’re still carrying those around?”

Carl’s dad grins sheepishly as he pulls out a set of keys. “Habit, I guess,” he replies. “I’m surprised you don’t have yours.”

Shane only shakes his head in disbelief.

“What are the keys for?” Carol asks quietly.

“The King County station,” Rick explains. “It’s where I got those guns before.” He pauses, and a grim frown settles on his face. “At the time, I thought I was just borrowing them. If no one’s taken the rest by now…”

…then no one ever will.

“Come on, Carl, get down from there.” Lori looks up at him from the ground, and Carl reluctantly obeys, climbing down onto the hood of the car and sliding off the side, landing on his feet beside her.

His dad left a couple hours ago, along with Daryl, Glenn, and T-Dog, and they probably won’t be back until sometime tomorrow. Hopefully with guns and enough bullets to last them a while. Carl wonders if it’ll be weird for his dad to be back at that station, just a few weeks after he left it—coming back this time as a survivor instead of a disoriented and injured sheriff.

“Dinner’s ready?” he asks.

“Yep—we cooked up those fish Andrea and Amy managed to catch earlier. Can’t you smell it?”

Now that she mentioned it, he can, and he finds his mouth watering.

Between the fish and some canned vegetables found on one of the supply runs to the city, there’s plenty of food for everyone, and it’s a sharp contrast to those days in Carl’s memories when they had to share a can of beans among them all, when he found himself staring at a sad little lump of food on a paper plate. He knows that days like those are inevitable, that the bad days will find them eventually—here, or wherever they decide to go next—but Carl dares to tempt fate by calling today a good day.

“What about north?” Sydney wonders. “You think the walkers will be frozen up there?”

“We’ll be frozen up there,” Ethan jokes, more than half serious. “I don’t know about you, but the rest of us aren’t built for the cold.”

Sydney rolls her eyes and nudges his shoulder. “Seattle’s not that cold. But I meant more like in the mountains or something.”

“Where would we find enough food?” Dale points out.

“The ocean, then,” Amy chimes in. “Walkers can’t swim…right?”

“I sure hope not,” Carol says with a shudder.

Louis pokes sullenly at his fish and grumbles, “I can’t swim either.”

“But if we find a boat…” Amy presses.

Shane crosses his arms. “The cars we left outside Fort Benning were gone within a week. Whatever boats there once were on the coast are long gone.”

Amy shoots a pointed look at Andrea, who says, “Maybe not all of them.”

“You have a boat?” Sophia asks.

Amy nods. “Our dad did…maybe it’s still there.”

A contemplative silence settles between them all. Then there’s a faint groan carried on the breeze—leaves crunch, and the sound gets closer. A thud, a wet gurgle. The scrape-clank-bang of hands clawing at the side of a car.

“I’ve got it,” Dale says, excusing himself. He shoulders his rifle and makes his way toward the persistent rasp of the dead.

A moment later, there’s a single gunshot. The older man returns.

“We don’t need to worry about leaving just yet,” Lori reasons. “We have plenty of time to decide, and we should wait for the others to get back, anyway.”

“Where do you think we should go?” Sophia asks him later, when the two of them are sitting inside one of the cars.

Carl has thought through similar questions so many times before that it takes him no time at all to come up with an answer. “Somewhere with walls,” he starts. “Or somewhere we could build walls. Close to a city or a town for supplies, but not too close…maybe someplace high up, or with a tall building nearby that we could use as a watchtower. And some open land for farming…” (He feels like he’s describing Alexandria, or maybe the Hilltop.)

“But where?”

This time, he pauses. Carl leans back in his seat and turns his head, watching the long, finger-like shadows cast by the campfire flicker between the tents.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “I just know where not to go.”

And who not to trust.

Sophia shifts in her seat, bringing her legs up and folding them into a pretzel. She yawns and rests her head in her hands—her hair falls over her face like a messy curtain as she mumbles, “As long as it’s not another fort.”

The following morning, Carl finds his mom reaching for the door of a van in their makeshift wall, a large cooking pot in one hand. “Where are you going?”

Lori jumps, startled. She turns around. “Down to the lake,” she explains, waving the pot in the air. “We need more water.”

Carl nods slowly and bites his lip. “Can I come?” He’s barely stepped outside the ring of vehicles since it was set up—the adults have all been more cautious in the wake of Eliza’s death—and he can only sit on the “wall” for so long before wanting to go beyond it.

Lori sighs tiredly, eyes flickering around camp as if looking for an excuse for him to stay. Louis is with his mom over by the tents, and Sophia is sitting on top of a minivan, chatting with Dale. “I don’t know, Carl. You know it’s not safe out there…”

(She has no idea.)

“You have a gun,” Carl points out—she still has Shane’s pistol, the man having held onto his shotgun instead. “I have a gun.”

Lori looks at him sharply, and reminding her of that last part might have been a mistake. “That gun is for emergencies only,” she reminds him sternly. (His mom would be a lot less intimidating, Carl thinks, if she wasn’t towering over him, the top of his head barely reaching her shoulder.) “You will not be using it.”

Carl smiles innocently up at her. “Exactly,” he says. “I won’t need it.”

He twisted her own words against her, and his mom gapes for a moment. She fiddles with the pot in her hands, glances in the direction of the quarry. Looks back at him. “You know what? Fine,” she concedes. “But you’re staying right next to me, got it?”

“Absolutely.”

Lori looks at him some more and squints her eyes, maybe trying to decide whether that was sarcasm. (It wasn’t, but he could have put in the effort to sound more serious.) “Alright, come on,” she finally says. She slides open the back door of the van, climbs inside—Carl follows her, closing the door behind him, and she leads him out the others side.

With all the vehicles parked like this, each of the unlocked doors acting like a gate, it’s easy to get out. It’s convenient, but Carl can’t stop thinking that as easy as it is for them to get out, it would be just as easy for someone else to get in. (They have lookouts, at least, but until his dad gets back with more guns and ammo—until people actually learn how to use them—Carl doesn’t know how much that would really help.)

Lori ruffles his hair as they walk, eyeing it appraisingly and noting, “Your hair’s getting long—I’ll have to see about finding some scissors.”

Carl shrugs. As far as he’s concerned, if his hair isn’t brushing his shoulders, it’s still short, but he figures she’s not entirely wrong.

The rest of their walk is quiet, gravel crunching underfoot as they follow the path down to the lake. The camp disappears behind them, hidden behind the rising walls of the quarry, and soon it’s just the two of them in an empty world.

The lake is calm and still, and it doesn’t take long to reach the shoreline—it would be just as fast to fill up that pot with water, turn around, and go back the way they came. But Lori lingers there, kneeling on the rocky ground with the still-empty pot held absently in one hand.

Carl takes a step closer, furrowing his brow. “Is everything okay?”

His mom snaps out of her thoughts with a forced smile. “Of course, sweetie,” she lies. “I’m just thinking about how nice it is out here, without the walkers or the buildings…it almost feels normal, doesn’t it?” She dunks the pot in the water now, and Carl doesn’t miss the way one of her hands lingers by her stomach.

(He looks away, pretends not to have noticed.)

“Sure,” he says noncommittally as he sits down next to her. He picks up a rock, rolls it between his hands.

Lori pulls the pot out of the lake and sets it on the ground. It’s filled nearly to the brim, and the water sloshes back and forth with the motion. “Do you remember that time when your dad tried to build you a treehouse?” she suddenly asks.

“Yeah,” Carl replies breathlessly, surprised to find he actually does.

His mom smiles, remembering. “It was spring, maybe late March or early April. You were, what, five years old? And your dad got the idea in his head that he was gonna build you a treehouse for your birthday—all by himself, wouldn’t let anyone help.” She laughs. “I have no idea what that man was thinking.”

“I caught him building it,” Carl adds. “He said it was a birdhouse.”

“God, that’s right…” Lori shakes her head in disbelief. “He managed to finish it eventually, somehow, but I didn’t let you anywhere near that thing. Your dad climbed up there—you know, to show us that it’s safe…he fell right through the floor and broke his ankle.”

Carl chuckles. “Yeah, that wasn’t the best birthday.”

Lori laughs again and wipes away the tears at the corners of her eyes. “I swear, he singlehandedly traumatized you out of the idea of treehouses.”

“I still climbed trees,” Carl feels obliged to point out.

“Unfortunately for me.”

He doesn’t know when it started, what exactly happened, or why. But sometime after midday, Miranda’s voice rises sharply, a softer voice responds, and then—

“You don’t know what it’s like to lose your daughter!”

Everyone stops what they’re doing, heads turning toward the two women, and Carl is no exception.

Carol doesn’t even flinch. “No, I don’t,” she agrees calmly, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t be there for a friend.”

Miranda stares at the other woman for a minute, still fuming but caught off guard by Carol’s lack of a reaction. Carol stares back, and Miranda deflates, shoulders slumping. “I’m sorry,” she says softly. “That was cruel of me.”

Carol’s thin smile is somehow both brittle and strong. “I’ve heard worse.”

Miranda shakes her head sadly. “You shouldn’t have had to.”

Ethan spots the church van first, the familiar vehicle returning down the quarry’s long drive—the sound of the engine and dry skid of tires against the leaf-strewn dirt can be heard shortly after, and Shane leads them all to the road.

The van gets closer, closer…

Carl didn’t think he was nervous, but something in him relaxes at the sight of his dad behind the wheel. Daryl’s in the seat beside him, and while the others aren’t visible yet, Carl is suddenly certain that they’re okay too.

The vehicle pulls to a stop.

Daryl jumps out first and goes around to the back, getting ready to unload whatever it is they’ve found.

Rick twists around in his seat, says something over his shoulder.

One of the side doors open, and Glenn and T-Dog emerge, grinning. Glenn flashes them a thumbs up, and the two of them move to help Daryl.

People talk around Carl, chattering and asking questions and walking over to help unload supplies, but he stays put, watching his dad. Rick finally gets out of the driver’s seat, and Carl gapes—not at his dad, but at the man who climbs out of the van behind him.

“Everyone,” Rick says, and the other voices all fall quiet, wary eyes staring at the newcomer, “this is Morgan.”

Chapter 23: Crosshairs

Chapter Text

Sporadic cracks of gunfire ring through the grassy clearing. There’s metallic clangs of bullets hitting their targets, and a row of empty soup cans topples over one by one, falling off the log they’re balanced on.

“Nice shot, Carl!” Rick calls out as he paces behind the firing line.

It wasn’t, really—from this distance, he should be nailing that thing right in the center. Instead, the bullet clipped the top corner, denting it and sending the can into a precarious wobble.

Carl glares at it, but it remains stubbornly upright.

He did pretty well that night when the camp was overrun by walkers, but those were easy targets—close targets. What if he has to take a shot from farther away? What if it’s a person, who would move in unpredictable ways? Because right now, if it came down to it, he doesn’t know if anyone else would take the shot. Shane, maybe, or Daryl, but would Andrea really shoot to kill? Would his dad?

(No. No, they wouldn’t.)

So, no. That wasn’t a “nice shot” at all. Maybe it would be for a kid who’s shooting a gun for the first time, but not for Carl.

He shoots again and misses entirely.

Carl Grimes, defeated by a soup can.

He scoffs, lowers his gun. Beside him, Sophia has a pistol raised, aiming carefully at her own target. She hasn’t managed to hit it yet, and Carl’s honestly impressed by how calmly determined she is. Her focused expression is a near perfect match to Carol’s, and Lori stands on the woman’s other side, her shots rusty but practiced.

Andrea and Amy are together at the end—despite barely having shot a gun before, they both got the hang of it pretty quickly. They’ve made a game out of one-upping each other, moving their cans farther and farther back until one of them misses.

“...I bet I could hit it with Dale’s rifle,” Amy gripes as Andrea wins another round.

Carl faces forward again, adjusts his stance. He raises his arms, both hands gripping his gun. It’s a can—just a stationary can. He should be able to hit it.

Carl takes a deep breath and aims.

Exhales.

He pulls the trigger, and—

Click.

Still glaring at his target, Carl grabs a spare magazine and swaps out the empty one. He raises the gun again…

“Damn, Carl,” Shane says in surprise, “you been practicing that?” The former sheriff’s looking at the gun, at Carl’s hands, referring to the way Carl reloaded like he’s done it a thousand times…because he has.

But no one knows that. No one except Sophia, who’s watching him curiously from the corners of her eyes.

“I…maybe?” He’s so caught off guard that he can’t think of something better to say, but, thankfully, Shane only seems amused by his response. Shane claps him lightly on the shoulder before walking away, and Carl exhales a sigh of relief.

It’s hard to remember, sometimes, what he’s not supposed to do. What he’s supposed to say or know…what’s “normal” and what’s not.

Sophia suddenly laughs.

Carl stares at her.

“I’m sorry,” his friend wheezes, covering her mouth with one hand. “I’m just…picturing you hiding in one of the cars at night, like…reloading your gun over and…and over until it looks cool.”

Carl has to chuckle at that mental imagery, but he firmly insists, “That never happened.”

Sophia is still laughing, so hard that there are tears in her eyes, and she tries—somewhat successfully—to calm down. “I know that,” she says, “but Shane doesn’t.”

And Carl stops, thinks for a minute.

“...God damn it.”

He fires three rounds at his can and misses them all.

A few minutes later, Carl hits the side, and the can wobbles again. He pauses, looking between the gun and the target. Obviously, the gun’s not the problem—he’s fired this Beretta more times than he could ever begin to count. The can isn’t at fault, either, as much as Carl wishes it were.

But the frustration is getting to him, because why is his aim so goddamn sh*tty when he has two f*cking eyes?!

He stares out at that can on the log—that stupid can that’s dented and scratched from his repeated, failed, efforts. The center, where he’s supposed to be hitting, is perfectly smooth.

Carl blinks.

He blinks again.

He experimentally closes his right eye and pulls the trigger.

The bullet hits the can, landing closer to the middle this time, and he opens his eye again with a scowl.

He’s almost out of bullets by the time he finally figures it out, pushing past his screwed-up instincts and fighting to ignore two years’ worth of learning how to aim wrong. He manages to convince himself that he does, in fact, have two eyes now, because however tempting it may be to just close his “bad” eye when he shoots, it’s smarter to keep both eyes open.

(After all, that’s how he got bit. That’s how he died. Because there was a walker in the woods, and he couldn’t f*cking see.)

Carl does it—he hits the can, dead in the center. It tips backwards and falls off the log, lands with a muted thud in the grass, and whatever sense of accomplishment he may have had is tainted by the knowledge that he should have been able to do this all along.

His dad is right behind him, and that makes him angry, too, because he should’ve noticed something like that. “Well,” Rick drawls, plopping his hat on Carl’s head. It’s comically large, the rim falling over his eyes. “Looks like you are a cowboy after all.”

…But he has his hat back, and for a moment, he forgets why he’s angry. Rick called him a cowboy, though, and he can’t let that stand.

“Really?” he deadpans, pushing the rim of the hat above his eyes. (The hat is tilted at a ridiculous angle, and he feels like Judith pretending to be him.) His dad looks stupidly smug, so Carl raises his pistol at the target—one-handed, arm extended, barrel tilted slightly downward—and says, “I’m not the one who shoots like this. They teach that at the police academy?”

Shane snickers, passing behind him as Carl lowers the gun. “He’s onto you, Rick.”

Rick huffs a laugh and shakes his head. “No, they do not,” he says to Carl. “Bad habit, I guess.”

“Sure…” Carl replies doubtfully, giving his dad a look that conveys just how believable he finds that statement. Honestly, he’d bet anything that his dad’s watched too many 80s westerns.

(It works, though—it is intimidating, even if it doesn’t quite have the same effect when Rick is squaring off against soup cans.)

His dad looks out at the row of fallen cans. The gunfire has gradually tapered off, and the only people still shooting are Amy and Andrea. “We should start heading back,” he announces, and Carl magnanimously allows him to change the subject.

Rick and Shane leave then to round up the others, and Sophia holsters her pistol. “It feels weird,” she notes, “to shoot a gun. It’s kind of fun, though…” She frowns and adds, “At least for cans.”

Carl nods absently and looks down.

The too-large brim droops over his forehead. The hat’s brown fabric is strangely clean and new. But it’s his, just like the Beretta in his hand, and the holster strapped to his thigh is so similar to the one he used to have.

He stares down at himself, and it feels…weird.

Weird, but good.

Carl takes one last look at his Beretta before holstering the gun.

“I got you this,” Rick says, holding out a half-tangled mess of black fabric and straps, and Carl’s smiling before his dad even begins to explain what it is. “It’s a thigh holster, for your gun. It’ll be easier to carry it around this way—safer, too.”

His dad moves closer as Carl reaches up to take it, saying, “Here, let me help you put it on.” He does, and Carl lets him, even though he doesn’t need him to.

“Thanks,” Carl says quietly as his dad steps away and he puts his Beretta back where it belongs. (It feels a little bit heavier than it should.)

“We’re gonna practice shooting later,” his dad adds. “Daryl says he found a good clearing not too far away. It’ll be a bit of a hike, but we don’t want to make too much noise near camp.”

“Okay,” Carl replies. It’s about time, really, and as he catches a glimpse of blonde hair, he thinks to ask, “Can Sophia come?”

“That’s up to her mom.”

Rick excuses himself to go bring the haul of guns and ammo into camp, and Carl’s eyes settle on Morgan. He stands off by himself, near the front of the van, looking around warily at all of the strangers. He knows Rick, but not anyone else, and Carl can’t imagine how weird that must be.

Morgan has a defeated look to him, and it doesn’t take long for Carl to realize why. He had a son, didn’t he? That’s…why he was crazy before. He was in grief and alone, and neither of those are easy things to be. (He also almost shot Carl from a rooftop, and Carl almost shot him back.) As the guns get unloaded from the van, Carl wonders which version of Morgan they’re dealing with here. Is this the man who refused to kill, or the one who killed everything in sight?

Maybe he’s neither of those things—maybe he’s something new.

Morgan flexes the fingers of his right hand, and Carl narrows his eyes, moving subconsciously closer. Morgan’s knuckles are red and raw, and as Rick walks by with an armful of bullets, Carl finally notices the matching bruise along his jawline. (It’s kind of ridiculous that he didn’t see it before, when his dad was right in front of him earlier, but…well. Carl has seen Rick in all kinds of blood-covered and beat-up that the bruise didn’t even register.)

“Do you know him?” Sophia slips over to his side and follows his gaze.

Carl blinks. “Oh, yeah, that’s…” He stops staring at Morgan and turns to his friend. “I went on a run with my dad and Michonne when we were at the Prison, about a year in, and…well, when I met him for the first time, he was shooting at us from a rooftop.” Sophia looks at him incredulously, and Carl winces. “Yeah. He, uh, wasn’t exactly…sane. He was obsessed with killing walkers, yelling about needing to ‘clear.’ Completely out of his mind.”

“He found us later in Alexandria,” Carl adds. “He was a lot calmer, then, and this time he was obsessed with not killing. So…I don’t really know where we stand with him.”

“Is he dangerous?”

Carl smiles wryly. “Everyone is. But…no, I don’t think he’ll hurt anyone. At least not on purpose.”

Sophia glances at Morgan. “Why was he shooting at you? You know, before?”

“He had a son,” Carl explains. “About my—your—age. He died…well, now, I guess. Sometime in the last few weeks.” He pauses, because Carl was here, then. In this new timeline. Maybe he could’ve…but it doesn’t matter now. Carl sighs. “Morgan’s son died, and I guess he just…snapped. Like my dad. Only he didn’t have anyone to pull him away.” He frowns, because now that he made that comparison, he can’t help wonder what Rick would have become at the Prison if he had been completely alone. Without Hershel, without Michonne, without Carl or Judith or anyone. (Maybe he’d just be dead, and Carl wonders if that’s better or worse than becoming a monster.)

He was quiet for too long—Sophia pokes him, frowning in concern, and Carl shakes his head. (There’s no point thinking about that. It didn’t happen, and it won’t.)

The eight of them make the short trek back to camp, passing between colorful autumn trees. Shane walks up front, Rick trailing a little bit behind him, and Carl steps up beside his dad.

Rick looks over at him.

“…I’m not getting that hat back, am I?”

“Nope,” Carl confirms unapologetically. “It’s mine now, Dad, you can’t take it back.”

Rick sighs dramatically, lips twitching, and raises his hands in surrender. “Alright, you win.”

Carl grins.

Ahead of them, Shane chuckles. “You better watch yourself there, Rick,” he says over his shoulder. “He'll be taking your Colt next.”

“Can I go, too?” Sophia pleads with her mom as the group prepares to leave. She locks eyes with Carl and adds, “Carl’s going.”

“Sophia, I don’t know if that’s—”

“I want to, Mom,” Sophia interrupts her, and Carol looks briefly shocked. (Carl’s either a very good influence, or a very bad one.) She stares at her daughter—Sophia stares back hopefully, and Carol’s uncertainty melts away.

“Okay, then,” she says, “let’s go.”

Chapter 24: Radio

Chapter Text

“The range is pretty good on these things,” Rick says to T-Dog, offering the man a radio, “so you shouldn’t have a problem reaching us. Be sure to keep us updated.”

The guns and ammo were a great find, obviously, but the radios are some of the most useful things Carl’s dad found at the station, along with—

Rick hands Glenn a couple of flares. “Take these, too.”

“What, nothing for me?” Andrea asks, hands on her hips.

Rick shrugs with a small smile. “You’re a better shot than the two of them put together—I think you’ll manage.” Though Glenn and T-Dog protest half-heartedly at Rick’s assessment, they can’t really disagree with that.

“I’m going with you one of these days,” Amy tells Andrea as the others climb into the van.

Andrea sighs, and it’s easy to tell that this isn’t the first time they’ve had this conversation. “You’re too young,” she protests.

“I’m older than Glenn!”

“Sure,” Andrea replies easily, “but Glenn’s not my baby sister.”

“Definitely not!” Glenn cuts in, leaning his head out the passenger-side window.

Amy laughs and concedes, “Alright, fine, I’ll stay here…this time.”

They’re going east—to Andrea’s dad’s house—and then to the coast.

Carl can’t entirely tell whether it’s a great idea or a terrible one, but he supposes he’ll just have to wait and see. At the very least, they have a destination, which is more than they had before, when they left the Farm. (Lost and demoralized, wandering in aimless circles through the suburbs.) Carl knows Oceanside has—had?—boats, but he hasn’t been on one, not since that time he went on a ferry as a kid. He doesn’t know if he really believes they’ll find one, but…maybe they will.

They just need gas first.

His dad and the others spotted the gas station on their way to King County—one on the southern edge of the city that escaped the bombing. There are supposedly a lot of cars abandoned there, which, hopefully, means a lot of gas.

“All clear so far,” T-Dog’s voice crackles over the radio about an hour later.

“Copy that,” Rick replies. They have four radios now—Rick still has his old one, and Shane and Daryl have the other two.

Carl leans back against the side of a car, his backpack propped up by his feet. His hat actually fits now—his dad helped him pad the inside like he did the first time around.

“When’s the last time you went swimming?” Sophia wonders.

Carl hums, looking up at the overcast sky. “I think…” he trails off. (He doesn’t remember.) “It must have been before everything.”

“It was a birthday party, for me, in the beginning of July—one of the girls in my grade…Anna.” She shrugs sadly and doesn’t say the obvious, that she hopes the girl’s okay, that she knows she’s probably not.

Most stories end like that, these days.

“Sounds fun,” Carl offers.

“It was.”

They stand in silence for a while, just…waiting.

“I can’t imagine it now,” Sophia confesses. “Just…being able to swim. Have fun the way I used to.”

Carl doesn’t know what to say to that.

“It looks like we were right about the gas station,” Glenn’s voice says a little while later.

Carl lingers within earshot of his dad’s radio, wanting to keep track of what’s going on.

“Alright,” his dad replies, “that’s good.”

“It should only take a few minutes,” T-Dog adds.

Except it doesn’t.

The minutes tick on and on, and there’s no response over the radio.

Rick paces back and forth through camp, failing to hide how nervous he is. His radio hangs limply in his hand.

Carl fiddles with a strap on his holster. “They might have lost it,” he tells Sophia. “Maybe it broke, or it ran out of batteries…”

…or maybe they’re all dead.

Hours pass.

Amy stands on the wall, shooting walkers with a vengeance, trying not to fall apart.

Rick looks guilty, and Carl knows he’s wishing he’d gone with them. Lori lays a hand on Rick’s arm—he stops pacing.

The sun begins to set, and colors bloom on the horizon.

The radio is silent.

Dinner that night is solemn, muted.

“We have to go after them,” Amy says. “They could…they could be trapped, or hurt…”

“Not at night,” Shane replies. “Too much could go wrong.”

“That’s my sister!” she yells back, before storming off to the wall. No one stops her.

“I’ll go in the morning,” Rick voices a moment later. “We’ll find them.”

(Carl tries his best not to think about it.)

In the silence of the night, three radios crackle, sending out a burst of static that lingers in the air—Rick, Shane, and Daryl freeze in unison, exchanging quick glances.

Rick stands up, pacing slowly away from the campfire. He frowns and grabs the radio at his belt, holds it up to his mouth. “T-Dog?”

There’s a pause.

The radios crackle again, and the voice that responds is blood-chillingly unfamiliar.

“...Is this Rick Grimes?”

Chapter 25: The Voice

Chapter Text

It’s a man, but not T-Dog or Glenn.

Rick’s hand freezes, the radio hovering by his mouth.

Louis went to bed already, but the rest of camp is awake, sitting by the fire, perfectly still. Carl finds himself moving closer, and his dad only spares him a passing glance.

“…Who is this?” his dad rasps. “How do you know my name?”

“Captain Luke Hanson, APD,” the voice replies after a brief pause. “I believe we’ve got one of your men. He said his name was Theodore?”

“‘One?’” Rick echoes quietly. He swallows, glances at a blank-faced Amy. “What about the others?”

“…We didn’t see any others. With the…rotters…barely…”

The last sentence devolves into static, and Rick shakes his head slowly, holding the radio closer to his mouth. “...Can you repeat that?”

“My officers barely managed to get him out with all of the rotters around—they found him running from a horde of them with a flare in his hand.” A sigh. “He was in bad shape, Rick…we amputated the limb, and he’s stable for now…I would have contacted you sooner, but the doctors didn’t know if he would live.”

“Doctors?” Rick asks uncomprehendingly. “Ampu…what are you talking about?”

There’s a long pause, and Carl inhales sharply in realization.

“Now, I don’t want to alarm you, but Theodore was bit. It looks like we got to him soon enough, but we won’t know for sure for another few hours.”

There’s supposed to be a woman in charge—Dawn. But the way Hanson said doctors…maybe it is them. Grady hurt Carol, killed Beth, but at the very least, Carl knows they have the medical supplies. They could be telling the truth.

Shane shoots to his feet with an angry scoff. “Sounds like bullsh*t,” he snaps through his own radio, staring at Rick as if daring him to stop him. “No one survives getting bit.”

Hanson’s reply is immediate. “I’m afraid that’s simply not true…sorry, was that Shane or Daryl?”

Shane seethes but says nothing.

Rick seems conflicted, looking between his radio and the skeptical faces of the group behind him. Sophia looks at Carl, and—

“He’s right.” Carl’s heart hammers in his chest as everyone’s attention falls on him, puzzled by the certainty in his voice.

Glenn and Andrea…maybe they’re dead, and maybe they’re not. Carl doesn’t let himself think about it, because either way, there’s nothing he can do for them. But T-Dog? He doesn’t know what Hanson is up to, doesn’t know if he can truly be believed, but there’s a chance. There’s a chance that T-Dog is alive, and there’s no way in hell he’ll sit back and watch his dad blow their shot at getting him back.

“I heard one of the soldiers mention that at the Fort,” Carl lies smoothly. “If they were fast enough, T-Dog could be alive.”

He ignores everyone else—everything else. All of Carl’s focus is on his dad, and he watches the precarious balance in Rick’s eyes shift from doubt to hope.

Rick nods in wordless thanks, and his eyes harden as he turns toward the dark shape of the Atlanta skyline looming over the distant trees. “I’d like to speak with him.”

“I said ‘stable,’ not ‘conscious,’ but the doctors are optimistic. I’ll put him on the radio as soon as he wakes up.”

Rick turns back to the fire. Daryl looks suspicious, Shane looks annoyed. Dale is simply worried, turning to whisper something to Amy as she muffles a broken sob with her hands.

Carl sits down again, shivering against the chill of the night, and holds his cold fingers out to the warmth of the fire. His dad takes a seat beside him and stares intently down at the radio in his hand, wavering.

“…Thank you,” Rick says hesitantly, and his words are met with a staticky sigh.

“You don’t trust me,” Hanson notes. “Believe me, Rick, I get it—you don’t know me, I don’t know you. But all we’re trying to do here is help people. Keep this place running until the world goes back to the way it’s supposed to be.”

Just like Fort Benning—a desperate hope, hard and brittle like glass. Clung to by tight fingers as it fractures and cracks, growing weaker and weaker until it shatters into a million tiny splinters.

Rick presses his lips into a tight line, but he doesn’t refute that statement, doesn’t shatter Hanson’s hope. (Those splinters are dangerous—jagged shards of despair that slice and maim.)

“I’ll hold you to that,” he finally says. “Over and out.”

His mom ushers him to bed an hour later, but the thought of actually going to sleep is a ridiculous impossibility. Carl lies awake beneath the curved, orange walls of the tent, straining his ears for the crackle of a radio or a snippet of his dad’s voice.

All he manages to hear is Shane arguing with his dad—calling Rick foolish and naïve, saying that T-Dog is dead and Hanson is playing them. Dale urges everyone to calm down, to give the stranger the benefit of the doubt.

And then Carl hears an approaching rumble of an engine and bolts upright.

He slips out of the tent and runs, following the tide of everyone else. Carl’s tempted to slide across the backseat of a minivan and pass through the wall, but he climbs on top of the vehicle instead, wary of his parents spotting him. He gazes out at the blackness, squinting against the glare of approaching headlights.

Those headlights come closer, and as they begin to turn, pulling to a stop in front of the gathered crowd, Carl recognizes the shape of T-Dog’s church van.

“Andrea!” Amy breaks into a sprint, colliding with her sister in a tight hug as soon as Andrea’s feet hit the ground.

“I’m alright,” she reassures Amy quietly, pulling away after a moment but keeping an arm around her shoulder.

Glenn cuts off the engine and hops out the driver’s side. He approaches Rick with a grim look on his face. “T-Dog—”

“I know,” Rick interrupts, and the younger man splutters in shock.

“What? How?”

Carl watches his dad pause for a moment and look around, at everyone standing out in the open in the middle of the night. “How about we go inside first?” he suggests.

“The gas is in the back,” Andrea tiredly supplies. “We got overrun by walkers as we were loading it up…”

Rick nods in acknowledgement. “Alright. We can deal with that tomorrow.”

The group filters slowly back through the wall, and Lori stops beside the minivan Carl’s sitting on. “Carl,” she prompts, exasperated, and he climbs down obligingly, returns with the others to the smoldering remnants of the fire.

“We were cut off from the van,” Glenn’s saying. “There were walkers everywhere, and T-Dog got bit…” He grimaces. “I suggested using the flares to turn them away, but T-Dog just…grabbed them and ran. Wouldn’t listen to us. He led the walkers away, and once it was clear, we spent hours looking for him, but…”

“He was gone,” Andrea finishes.

Carl frowns out at the faint red-orange glow of dying embers—their story lines up with Hanson’s.

“You said before that you knew,” Glenn says. “How?”

Rick and Shane share a glance.

“Rick?” It’s T-Dog, and Rick fumbles for his radio.

It’s late—so late it’s almost early—but his mom gave up on trying to get Carl to go to sleep. Sophia’s awake, too, leaning her head against Carol’s shoulder and struggling to keep her eyes open.

“I’m here,” his dad replies quickly. “Are you alright?”

“...Yeah.” T-Dog’s surprise is palpable. “I think I really might be, give or take an arm.”

“Where are you?” Shane asks. “Is Hanson there?”

“...I don’t know. Some hospital. And the doc just left—I think Hanson’s on his way.”

“We’re okay, too,” Andrea informs him, borrowing Shane’s radio. “Me and Glenn.”

“...Oh, thank God!And you got the gas?”

Andrea shakes her head in disbelief. “Yeah,” she replies bitingly, “we did. But you better never pull anything like that again, you asshole, got it?”

A faint laugh. “No promises.” There’s silence for a few seconds, before T-Dog says, “Hold on, Hanson wants to talk to you.”

A crackle, then—

“We can get him back to you in the morning. Where do you want to meet?”

Rick doesn’t hesitate—he must have already planned what to say. “The gas station—T-Dog knows which one. Sunrise. Just you and him.”

“I’m bringing one of my officers along with me. It’s never a good idea to go anywhere alone.”

“Fine,” Rick concedes, “but that’s it.”

“…See you at sunrise.”

Chapter 26: Sunrise

Chapter Text

Carl is woken by voices and light.

An orange glow greets him when he opens his eyes—mid-morning sunlight shining through the tent’s curved walls. He dimly remembers his mom corralling him to bed as he stubbornly but futilely fought against the heavy pull of his eyelids. He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he supposes that no one ever really does.

Carl sits up slowly, yawning, and, for a fleeting moment of blissful ignorance, his mind is calm and blank. (Well…calm, blank, and annoyed, because with his younger body, he can barely stay up late anymore before passing out.)

But it’s bright, and there are voices—sunrise has come and gone, and that’s the church van he hears, pulling to a stop outside the wall. Carl grabs his hat and his holstered pistol. Unzips the tent and steps outside.

The voices are louder now, and he sees his dad first, climbing through one of the vehicles in the wall. Shane, Glenn, Andrea…

…but no T-Dog.

Rick’s eyes are pinched, and, beside him, Shane is seething. Glenn looks stricken, and Andrea is the one who finally explains what the hell happened.

“They didn’t show.”

Dale takes a single, baffled step forward. “‘They?’” he echoes.

“Anyone,” Andrea clarifies. “We waited, but no one came.” She shakes her head slowly. “They just…didn’t show.”

“What about the radios?” Amy asks.

Shane huffs a mirthless laugh. “They’re f*cking ghosting us. Like a bunch of pansy-ass highschoolers.”

Carl frowns, not quite surprised. (He didn’t really expect it to go right, not with Grady.)

Shane’s words linger in the air for a moment, fading into the silence of a million unspoken words.

“So,” Lori voices quietly. “T-Dog, is he…?”

Rick runs a hand over his mouth. Exhaustion and responsibility weigh down his shoulders as he sighs and says, “We don’t know.”

Shane narrows his eyes, glaring out at the Atlanta skyline. “They go out of their way to save him, and then turn around and disappear a few hours later? How awfully convenient.”

“Here,” Daryl says a few minutes later, pointing down at a map. “Grady Memorial. T-Dog said he was at a hospital, right?”

Rick leans closer, peering down at the map. “They wouldn’t have found him unless they’re nearby,” he muses. “That could be it.”

“The hell are we waiting for, then?” Shane demands hotly, fingers tapping impatiently against the side of his shotgun. “Let’s go.”

Andrea’s already moving, turning to head back to the van with Amy following stubbornly on her heels. Glenn lingers uncertainly as Daryl puts the map away and crosses his arms, glancing at Rick.

“Now hold on a moment,” Dale interjects. “I want T-Dog back as much as any of you, but what’s the plan here? Running off all half-co*cked, guns blazing won’t help T-Dog—it won’t help anyone.” He looks around imploringly. “A-and this is a hospital,” Dale adds. “We’re talking about cops and doctors, for god’s sake! It might look bad, but not everyone is out to get us.”

“Sure, a hospital,” Shane agrees bitingly. “A hospital like the one Rick was at, with soldiers gunning everyone down as they tried to run away. That kind of hospital?” He pauses, smiling spitefully at Dale’s shocked face. “Yeah…” he scoffs. “I’m sure they’re all such fine, upstanding citizens.”

Carl blinks. His mom looks horrified, her brown eyes widening. Miranda walks away, dragging her son along with her.

“You saw that,” Rick says slowly, incredulously, “and you thought Fort Benning would be safe? Why?”

Shane hesitates, eyes narrowing. “Is now really the time for this?”

“Will it ever be?”

Carl finds his hand inching toward his gun, remembering that night on the Farm, the sight of two silhouettes facing off under a dark, clouded sky. He wonders if he would have shot him, then—Shane—if things went differently. If Shane survived and his dad didn’t. Carl wonders, but he doesn’t know. (Maybe he would, maybe he would have been too afraid to, but he knows with a cold, clear certainty that he would now. He will if he has to.)

“‘Why?’ You want to know why, Rick?” Shane bites out. “Because it makes sense.” He exhales sharply and runs a hand through his hair. “What they did at the hospital…it’s horrible, and I wish it never happened…but it makes sense. Turning away a group of healthy civilians from an Army base when who the hell knows how many people are left in the world? That doesn’t make sense.” He looks pointedly around at the group, adding, “And it didn’t happen.”

“Are we gonna get T-Dog now,” Shane asks exasperatedly as the silence stretches on, “or do you need more time to climb down from that high horse of yours?”

Rick stares levelly at Shane, a muscle in his jaw twitching. After a tense few seconds, he sighs, his posture relaxing as he tilts his head toward the wall. “Alright,” he says, “let’s go.”

Carl’s hand drops back to his side. Sophia looks at him, frowning.

“Rick…” Dale pleads, but Carl’s dad shakes his head.

“It doesn’t have to come to that,” Rick insists. “We’re just going to talk to them. I figure if we show up there—a lot of us—then they’ll think twice before trying anything. They let T-Dog go, and we’ll go our separate ways.”

(It sounds too good to be true.)

Half of the group decides to go—Shane, Daryl, Glenn, Andrea, Amy, Ethan, Sydney—and Rick stops by Carl before joining them.

“We’re going to get him back,” Rick says, and Carl nods.

“I know.”

(He doesn’t. Carl wants to believe they’ll get T-Dog back the same way he believed they’d get Beth back, but how can he, really, when he knows how it turned out last time? When he waited outside that same hospital only to watch Daryl walk out the doors with her corpse?)

His dad nods back and pulls him into a hug that only reminds Carl how goddamn short he is—that Rick might look at him, but he doesn’t see him. (He doesn’t know what Carl has done, doesn’t know what Carl has seen him do. Rick notices that he’s different, maybe, but the world is different, too, and no one here has any reference for how kids are supposed to adapt to the apocalypse.)

“Good,” his dad continues, stepping away. He pats him on the shoulder. “How about you keep Dale company? Look after camp while we’re gone.”

Carl smiles wryly, because it’s not so different from things Rick has said before about protecting the Prison or Alexandria…except the other Rick actually believed that Carl could. (Now, he’s just a kid with a gun and an oversized hat, only he’s not a kid, and some days he feels even older than his dad.)

Rick leaves to join the others, and Carl’s smile turns genuine as his dad twists around to call out, “And don’t cause your mom any trouble!” (Because how long has it been since he’s heard that?)

Carl glances over at his mom—she’s smiling at something Carol said, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to this. To her just…being here. Being alive.

Lori turns as Rick approaches. She says something to him, they kiss. Rick walks off to the wall, raising his radio to his mouth.

“Hanson?” Carl hears him say.

No response.

There’s a stillness to camp with so many people missing, a quiet punctuated only by the mothers’ chatter and the occasional shot of Dale’s rifle.

Lori, Carol, and Miranda huddle together by the edge of camp, dividing their supplies and gas between the cars they’ll be taking when they finally leave this place. (Hopefully it’ll be soon.) Dale sits on the wall, keeping a lookout with Louis sitting quietly beside him, staring out at the trees—Carl and Sophia are on the wall, too, but on the other side, overlooking the quarry. Morgan mutters to himself by the unlit fire in the middle of camp, and Carl keeps an idle eye on him.

The sun is out, but the weather has been getting colder—he and Sophia wear oversized ‘I ♡ Atlanta’ sweatshirts found on one of the supply runs, black fabric with bold, white text.

“I’m surprised my mom gave in so easily about this,” Sophia says, tapping the pistol that’s holstered at her side.

Carl smiles. “If you saw the same Carol that I did, you wouldn’t be.”

Sophia huffs a laugh. “Sure, yeah, she’s a ‘badass,’” she replies, the quotes audible in her words. His friend shakes her head, adding, “And I believe you, it’s just…she’s my mom. When you talk about her, it sounds like a completely different person.”

“I guess she kind of was,” Carl says. “She wasn’t the same after the Farm.” After she lost you.

Sophia glances over at the three women, noting, “Miranda’s not the same either.”

Carl follows her gaze. She isn’t—losing her husband, her daughter, Jim…Miranda’s colder, sharper. More protective. Carl doesn’t miss the way she keeps Louis in her line of sight, looking at him almost as much as the supplies she’s sorting.

He turns away, facing the quarry and the skyline of a broken city that looms beyond. Carl looks at Sophia’s sweatshirt, at the lettering that matches his own—‘I ♡ Atlanta’. He doesn’t. Not this Atlanta—the Atlanta that took Beth, that has T-Dog. The Atlanta where Carl’s hope first died and he almost died too, locked behind bulletproof glass.

He hates this city now.

“All she wants is to keep you safe,” Carl finally says. “Carol. Even if that means letting you protect yourself.”

Carol, sitting in the Prison’s library, teaching the younger kids about guns, knives, plants, anything she could think of. She wanted them to survive—needed them to. (None of them did.)

Chapter 27: Temporal Dissonance

Chapter Text

The group returns, familiar faces spilling out from the church van, and Carl’s eyes scan over them—counting them, naming them. They’re all here.

T-Dog walks slowly, weakly, his good arm slung around Daryl’s shoulder while his right ends at the elbow, bound tightly in clean, white gauze. A strained but relieved smile stretches across his face.

Hanson is dead, Carl learns later, overhearing Andrea talk to Dale. Someone killed him, the woman who is now in charge—her name is Dawn, and she’s disappointingly alive. (Wherever she is, Carl hopes that Beth is alive, too. Hopes that the Greenes don’t lie, trapped and dead, in the ruins of their burned-down home.)

Carl wonders if it was the same before—with Dawn, with Hanson. He’ll never know, and it doesn’t matter, but he wonders anyway.

They’re on the road the next morning, leaving the quarry behind. (Again.)

Morgan’s here with them, not alone in King County, slowly losing his mind, but Eliza and Jim are dead, T-Dog missing half his arm. Like before, Carl’s in a car with his parents, Sophia, and Carol, but this time it’s a car he doesn’t recognize. One of the ones from the wall.

Progress is slow as they cut through the edge of the city—even the minor streets are clogged with cars, and they have to make frequent detours when the roadblocks are too large to move or go around. The looming skyscrapers of downtown grow steadily fainter as the minutes pass, until, finally, Carl can’t see them at all.

(Good riddance.)

Their speed picks up as the obstructions grow sparser and the buildings grow smaller, the urban sprawl transforming slowly into neighborhoods and trees. Eventually, the walkers gathering behind them, drawn by the sounds of the engines, disappear too, and there’s only the church van and two other cars trailing behind and a long road stretching ahead.

Carl sits in the backseat, staring idly out the window as the sun makes its slow trek across the sky.

“It feels weird to be back here,” Glenn says, stepping over the threshold of an empty home. Four vehicles are parked outside on the shared driveway, and Carl follows everyone else into the small, one-story house with yellow shingles.

The house’s occupant left two or three months ago, and it doesn’t look like anyone’s been here since—dust coats every surface, and while there isn’t much left in the kitchen, the lone soup can tipped over in the back of the pantry sits undisturbed.

T-Dog slumps gratefully into an armchair in the living room. His eyes are slightly pinched despite the painkillers from Merle’s stash, and his skin is slightly pale from the blood loss. He rubs his right shoulder with a grimace.

The world outside dims, the glow of twilight fading quickly, and as everyone gets settled, Carl paces over to the framed pictures hanging on the wall beside the dead TV.

In one of them, there’s a sandy beach, a smiling, teenaged Glenn front and center. Two young women stand on either side of him, their smiles just as wide—they both have dark eyes and hair, one with a long ponytail and the other with hair cut just below her jaw, slightly wavy in the wind. In the distance, the white and red tower of a lighthouse reaches toward a cloudless sky.

Carl turns at the sound of approaching footsteps and finds Glenn—the real one—looking past him, smiling sadly at the picture. “Those are my sisters,” Glenn says, glancing down at Carl. “Sarah and Riley—they’re a few years older than me.”

“Where was this?” Carl asks, looking at the beach, the lighthouse.

“Lake Michigan. It was the summer before I went to Atlanta for college—my sisters had some time off from work, so they came home for a few weeks.” Glenn pauses. “I hope they’re okay, wherever they are.”

(If Sarah and Riley are anything like Glenn, they just might be.)

Sophia’s avoiding him.

He didn’t notice earlier, in the commotion of T-Dog’s return or as they made their final preparations to leave the quarry the next morning. He didn’t notice in the car, because how can you avoid someone you’re sitting right next to? But she was—she is.

And Carl has no idea why.

Sophia’s always coming up to him—to chat, or just to sit or stand quietly nearby—and he doesn’t realize how used to it he became until he turns his head and she’s not there. During dinner, she sits as far away from him as she can get away with, placing Carl’s parents and Carol between them. He can feel her looking at him, but whenever he turns in her direction, she looks away.

Later, as Rick discusses watch shifts with some of the others, Sophia isn’t sitting beside her mom on the couch. She isn’t lurking in the corner. She isn’t there at all. Carl’s heartbeat hitches as his eyes scan across the small living room everyone’s crammed into—everyone except her.

It’s with mild alarm that he searches the house, fighting down the deeper panic that he can’t afford to feel. (There’s no point. She’s either okay, or…) Carl’s legs itch to run, but he forces himself to walk—to look unhurried and unconcerned, to make it look like he’s snooping or exploring rather than searching for his missing friend.

He finds her in the guest bedroom, idly glancing around. She doesn’t look up when the door opens, but she does when he closes it behind him and steps into the middle of the room. Sophia bites her lip and sits down on the end of the bed as Carl bluntly asks, “What happened?”

She’s not hurt—not physically, anyway—and he has no idea what’s wrong, why she’s acting like this, what could have happened to make her so withdrawn. Sophia used to be skittish and shy, but she isn't anymore. Not with him.

His friend stays quiet for a moment longer, frowning and knotting her fingers in her lap. Finally, she says, “He could have survived, couldn’t he? Like T-Dog. If someone chopped off his leg?”

Oh.

Sophia stares at him, and Carl stares back. “...Yeah” is all he can say.

She nods, because it wasn’t really a question. She already knew the truth—she just wanted to hear him say it. (Carl knows what that’s like, knows how it feels to be on the other side of a conversation like this.)

He takes another step into the room and confesses, “I saw the walker—the one that bit him. I could have said something, but I didn’t.” She deserves to know—she always did. (It was selfish to keep that from her.) “Sophia, I’m…” He can’t say he’s sorry. He isn’t.

Sophia opens her mouth, closes it. She sits there, wordlessly staring at him.

He didn’t do anything—he did nothing. He chose to do nothing. Sophia knows that, and she has every right to hate him. Just because she’s glad Ed’s gone doesn’t mean she wanted him to be gone. Just because she hated him doesn’t mean she didn’t love him, too.

Carl can’t pretend to understand what that’s like—for a parent to be an abuser, for love and hate to be so tangled together that it’s impossible to tell them apart. His dad might have made some bad calls, might not always be the best leader or the best father, but he never hurt him. Rick would kill and die for his children, and someone like Ed Peletier could never say the same.

“I’m sorry,” Carl says, because he is. Not for letting Ed die—he will never regret that, just as he will never forget seeing Carol cower and Sophia clutching a bruised arm to her chest. Two of the strongest people he knows subjected to the kind of pain and fear that no one deserves, suffering a man who twisted safety into fear.

I’m sorry you had a father like him, Carl thinks. I’m sorry that a part of you still misses him, even though he doesn’t deserve it. I’m sorry.

“I know,” Sophia replies softly. “It’s…” She doesn’t say it’s okay, because it’s not. The world is messy and sh*tty and her dad died because Carl didn’t want him to live. She narrows her eyes, then, back straightening as she asks, “Is there anything else you want to tell me?” and he’s proud of the way she’s standing up for herself, even if it’s against him.

Carl shakes his head. No.

Sophia looks at him, takes a deep breath. She exhales and says, “Okay.”

(It’s not okay, but maybe it will be.)