Seven Days Without Them

New chapter is live.

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

✦

Greene Farm.

Rain had turned the sky a cold, luminous blue. From a distance, the whole world looked changed, stripped of the sunlight that had made the farm seem almost peaceful.

In camp, everyone went about their work.

What felt wrong was the silence.

There was no easy talk, no tired laughter, only the steady tap of rain on canvas, leaves, and metal.

On most days, rain would have been welcome. It covered the sounds people made and added another natural barrier between the farm and the walkers in the woods.

Stored rainwater could irrigate the fields. Boiled, it could keep people alive.

But today, Greene Farm felt heavy and airless.

Everyone carried the same weight. They wanted to speak and had nothing they could say.

Far across the plain, a motorcycle approached through the rain.

Andrea lay prone on top of the RV, looking through her scope. The rain blurred the sight picture. She pushed herself up and shouted down.

"Someone's coming! I can't tell who through the rain!"

Several people moved at once.

Rick led the way out of camp with Shane, Merle, T-Dog, and the others behind him.

None of them brought firearms. In weather like this, wet ammunition could fail them at the worst possible time.

Rick drew a machete a little longer than his forearm and narrowed his eyes at the figure approaching through the gray sheet of rain.

Only when the motorcycle came within fifty yards did he let out a breath and lower the blade.

"Weapons down!" Rick shouted over the rain. "It's Daryl!"

The camp's faces eased a little.

Rick pulled on a raincoat and jogged to Daryl before the man could even fully stop.

"Did you find any sign of them?" Rick demanded. "Anything at all?"

Rain dripped from the brim of his hood, but his eyes stayed fixed on Daryl. He did not even think to let Daryl catch his breath first.

It had been seven days since Evan took Carl away for training.

Seven days, and neither of them had returned once.

Even with a survivor as strong as Evan, Rick could not stop preparing himself for the worst. No one in this world could promise they would come back. Walkers were not the only danger left on the earth.

On the fourth day without them, Rick had organized a search.

They found nothing.

On the sixth day, rain began falling over the farm and did not stop. Lori had already been sick with worry, and the sudden cold pushed her into a fever. Now she lay half-conscious in the tent, murmuring Carl's name again and again.

Carl's disappearance had hollowed her out.

If she truly lost him, Lori might not survive this world much longer.

Shane and Carol had been taking care of her.

From the moment Lori collapsed, Shane had barely left her side.

He looked even more worried than Rick, though no one knew whether that was because Lori had never made a clean enough break from the old tie or because Shane had learned something else over the last few days.

"Too much rain," Daryl said, climbing off the motorcycle. His voice was flat and rough. "Couldn't find 'em."

Soaked through, crossbow in hand, he walked back into camp.

Everyone looked at him with desperate hope.

Daryl avoided their eyes.

He was the best tracker in the group. If even he could not find Evan and Carl, then either they had left the area...

Or something had happened.

No one wanted to think too hard about that second possibility.

Losing Evan would be bad enough.

Carl was missing too.

The way Lori looked now might be what Rick became next.

And if Rick broke, where would that leave the group?

In one week, the camp had gone from hope to dread.

Inside the farmhouse, Hershel's family was grieving too.

The difference was that their sorrow also came from finally losing the dead they had kept in the barn.

On the second day after Evan left with Carl, Shane noticed Glenn acting strangely and followed the thread. It led him to the barn and the walkers packed inside.

Shane Walsh was never going to tolerate a herd of walkers beside their sleeping place.

Not that many.

Not one.

Not for a single day.

That was where the group's conflict truly began.

Evan's words had kept echoing in Shane's head: a crisis needs a chain of command.

After several arguments went nowhere, Shane took the Remington shotgun and opened the barn himself.

The thunder of the shotgun brought everyone running.

Once the walkers staggered out, no one had any choice but to raise their weapons and put them down.

No one knew what to feel afterward.

No one could bring themselves to blame Shane.

Even Hershel's family knew, deep down, that Shane had been right. The things he killed were not Hershel's wife or Beth's mother anymore.

They were corpses that ate people.

Hershel was no longer the same man he had been a month ago.

"Evan hasn't come back. Carl is missing with him." Hershel looked as if he had aged ten years. "What are we supposed to do now, Rick? Leave for the Prison like we planned? Stay and keep searching?"

In Evan's absence, Rick was the man Hershel looked to.

"We don't stop searching for Carl and Evan," Rick said at once.

"If it takes a day, we search for a day. If it takes the rest of our lives, then we search for the rest of our lives."

"One way or another, we find them."

Rick leaned close to Hershel, keeping his voice low but hard.

Yet the same despair spreading through everyone else had begun to creep into Rick's eyes too.

Only Shane still seemed to be holding himself upright by sheer force.

In his mind, as long as Lori was still alive, there was still hope.

Another day passed.

The dark sky grew darker. The rain finally began to slacken, leaving water ticking from every surface in camp.

Rick sat on the roof of the RV with his Colt Python in his hand.

At some point, cold rain on his face had mixed with hot tears.

His crying made almost no sound.

Then an engine rose in the distance.

Rick lifted his head.

A vehicle the size of a small bus was racing toward the farm.

✦

✦

✦

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