First Blood at the Quarry

New chapter is live.

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

✦

"Flashlights! Any light you have! Back to back, everyone grab a weapon!"

Rick's shout cut through the camp.

The Quarry's first real fight had begun.

He pushed Carl toward Lori and handed her the pistol from his waist, then raised the shotgun and blew apart the skull of a wandering walker.

Once it dropped, Rick glanced toward Evan.

If Evan had not suggested gathering everyone for a welcome fire that night, most of the camp would have been asleep when the walkers arrived.

Rick did not know what that would have cost them.

He did not want to know.

A chill raced up his spine, raising the hair at the back of his neck and wiping away the last trace of sleep.

Merle and Daryl stayed not far behind Evan. The others watched in disbelief as Evan walked into the trees like he was heading into a job, not a fight.

They remembered the way he had crushed a walker's head with three hammer blows. The sight still turned their stomachs, but it also made them feel safer.

Good thing he was on their side.

More than a few people in the Quarry Camp were thinking the same thing.

Compared with Merle, Evan looked steadier. Gentler, even.

At least until he started swinging.

"Don't go too far!" Daryl shouted after him. "I can't watch your back if I can't see you!"

The bolt from his crossbow hissed through the dark and punched through a walker's skull. Brain matter slid down the shaft before the body finally collapsed.

"You worried about that savage?" Merle barked. "Worry about me instead!"

His handgun cracked again and again, dropping walkers one after another. Even so, the barrel kept drifting toward the direction Evan had taken, clearing anything that tried to move in behind him.

Faced with all that help, Evan only wanted to say one thing.

"Slow down! All of you slow the fuck down!"

The headshot chance triggered.

One swing of the Horse-Bone Sledgehammer burst another walker's skull. Gold light flashed across Evan's body as he reached Lv. 4.

He ignored the level-up notice and hurried toward the next edge of camp, harvesting every walker head he could reach.

Everyone had firearms now, and the number of walkers dropped fast.

Evan had hoped the surprise attack would give him enough kills to push past Lv. 6.

So much for that plan.

Bang!

He stopped, looked down at the smoking bullet hole near his boot, then lifted his gaze toward Andrea, who stood a short distance away with both hands locked around a pistol.

"She's in the RV!" Andrea shouted, panic raw on her face.

Evan turned.

Three, maybe five walkers were staggering around the RV door.

He strode toward them.

One blow.

Then another.

If a walker still moved, hit it again.

Thanks to the reach of the sledgehammer, the walkers all staggered and dropped, stunned for just long enough.

Evan bent over them like an old farmer working through a stubborn field and finished each one with another hammer blow.

"Easy," he said, almost conversationally. "After years in slaughterhouses, I know your kind better than some of my own family."

"So wait your turn. One at a time."

His calm voice did not fit the chaos at all. His hands did. Every strike was vicious enough to keep the dead from getting back up.

Thud.

After killing the last walker nearby, Evan did not open the RV door right away. Instead, he knocked hard enough to rock the vehicle.

A frightened yelp came from inside.

Evan sighed. "Stay in there. Don't come running out. I've got this side covered. Nothing's getting in."

The sounds inside the RV quieted.

Evan looked back across the camp and gave Andrea an OK sign. Only then did he rest the Horse-Bone Sledgehammer in his arms and watch the camp's first real group fight unfold.

They had panicked at first, but with Rick taking command and Shane, Daryl, and the others backing him up, the camp steadied fast.

More than anything, the guns and ammunition from Atlanta gave them courage.

"For a little quarry camp," Evan murmured, "this place has the bones of a kingdom."

Without turning his head, he lifted the hammer and knocked down a walker that had slipped too close.

Before he could finish it, a crossbow bolt flew in and sank cleanly into the side of the walker's skull.

Across the camp, Daryl tipped his chin at Evan.

His eyes said the rest.

Paid you back.

Evan had insisted more than once that Merle no longer owed him anything.

Daryl clearly disagreed.

The man was stubborn enough to make it almost endearing.

After the last few gunshots faded, smoke from firewood and spent gunpowder drifted through the air. Far away, the first pale line of dawn touched the horizon.

Only then did the camp's first major fight truly end.

"Is everybody all right?" Rick called. "Anybody hurt?"

He checked Lori and Carl first, then looked over the rest of the camp before letting himself breathe.

Amy ran out of the RV in her white cartoon-print shirt and threw herself into Andrea's arms. The sisters held each other for a long time.

Amy rested her head on Andrea's shoulder and stared at Evan as he walked back. Her face was still pale. She said nothing.

"Thanks," Andrea said, eyes red. "I owe you."

She could have died.

Amy could not.

"We're in the same camp," Evan said. "It was nothing."

Evan always brushed off credit before anyone could make a thing of it.

"Fuck! Fuck, fuck!" Merle shouted.

He mimed swinging a golf club at Evan. "You busted that walker's head open with one damn swing. You know how crazy that looked?"

He kept swearing, loud and shameless, until Lori's expression tightened.

Without making a scene, she covered Carl's ears with both hands.

Merle was bad enough. Evan was not much better.

Rough men, all of them.

Carl's path to adulthood was getting rougher by the day.

Irritation flickered through Lori, sharp enough to bring a faint, uneasy twinge low in her abdomen.

By midday, the bodies had been dragged away from camp and lunch preparations had begun.

Evan walked up the small hill east of camp and stopped behind Carol, who stood in a coarse floral dress with a hoe clenched in both hands.

Ed's body lay nearby.

There was a bullet hole in his forehead. The walkers had torn out his throat and jaw while he slept, leaving the lower half of his face exposed.

Strangely, dead Ed looked less hateful than living Ed ever had.

"Heard you turned down everybody's help," Evan said. "Wanted to bury Ed yourself."

Carol did not answer.

Evan looked back.

People across the Quarry Camp were pretending not to watch. Worry sat plainly in their eyes. Lori held Sophia and Carl close, and Rick stood with his hands on his hips, his gaze sweeping the area around Evan.

The predawn attack had put Rick on edge, sharpening instincts he was still growing into as a leader.

Evan turned back and stepped closer.

Carol still seemed locked somewhere inside her grief.

So he reached out, took the hoe from her hands, and drove it into the loose earth.

"Let me," Carol said quickly, standing. Her voice sounded small.

Evan ignored her.

He kept digging with the same silence she had worn a moment ago.

Before long, a grave as long as a man and roughly three feet deep had opened in the dirt.

Evan exhaled, wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, and handed the hoe back to Carol.

Then he turned and walked back toward camp without hesitation.

'This is Carol's hurdle to cross. It's the first step toward becoming someone new. She only needs a little help.'

The others did not know Carol.

Evan did.

She was resilient. Gifted. Ed had kept her penned in and bound for years.

Someone had to help her break that first link, even if she kept insisting she did not want help.

✦

✦

✦

Want to keep going?

You can read ahead on my Patreon, with early access, previews, and extra story updates 🔑

https://www.patreon.com/c/EliasVane