Tall Tales by Firelight

New chapter is live.

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

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After dinner, the group circled the tents into a simple camp.

No one was ready to sleep.

They kept looking around, too excited by the yard beneath their feet and the walls beyond the fence.

The kids gathered around Evan first, pestering him to tell them what had happened over the last two days.

When the adults started paying attention too, Evan gave in and began telling it half true and half ridiculous.

"Oh, that night?"

He leaned back as if the memory alone deserved respect.

"That night shook the earth and woke the dead."

"Women would've cried. Children would've stopped crying. Old men would've slapped their knees and called it the ugliest miracle they'd ever heard."

"Even those two pigs we dragged back would've tucked their ears down and hidden in the pen."

"Honestly, with kids here, I shouldn't tell it at all."

His face said the opposite.

The more he claimed he should not tell it, the more animated he became.

The children listened with shining eyes.

The older people fought back smiles.

The adults treated it as a story, because Evan's voice had already gone too large to be taken straight.

Carol sat nearby, working on one of the small trinkets she had carried with her. Firelight warmed Evan's face while he held the children in the palm of his hand.

"So there I was," Evan said, lowering his voice. "A hundred walkers coming at me."

"And not normal walkers either. These things ran faster than people."

"But who am I?"

He thumped a hand against his chest.

"Evan Ward. Future Warden Ward, if the universe has any sense of humor."

"I looked around, and there, beside me, I found two strips of fish jerky."

"I checked the label."

He leaned forward.

"You know what it said?"

Carl, sitting closest, held his breath.

"What did it say?"

The fire danced in Evan's eyes.

He swept his gaze around the circle, waited until everyone was looking at him, then whispered with absolute seriousness.

"Made in... Florida."

Florida?

The children stared, suddenly convinced that this meant something profound.

"Exactly," Evan said. "Florida. At that moment, I knew I wasn't holding fish jerky. I was holding two sacred weapons."

"So I took one in each hand."

"Thunder cracked. Lightning flashed. Dust flew. Clouds rolled in. A hundred red-eyed walkers stormed that church."

Evan snapped the last sentence hard enough to make the children flinch.

"But like I said, who am I? Ward. Future Warden."

"When they got close, I used those two strips of fish jerky like nunchucks."

"Left, right, over the head. I beat them back so hard they started running into the walls to finish the job for me."

He paused.

Then he hooked an arm around Carl and lowered his voice beside the boy's ear.

"You know why I used fish jerky?"

Carl shook his head quickly.

Beth had drifted closer as the story went on, almost close enough to tumble into the same circle as Carl.

Evan looked around to make sure everyone was properly listening.

Satisfied, he nodded.

"Because the walkers smelled that dead fish and thought I was their rotten old daddy."

For a second, no one knew what to do with that.

Then Beth burst out laughing.

"Evan, that's awful!"

The adults around the fire cracked too, accepting the story fully as a joke.

Only Daryl and Merle exchanged a strange look in the crowd.

"Little brother," Merle muttered. "You remember the blood dried on Ward when he found me?"

"You saying that part was real?"

"I'm saying this doesn't sound like all bullshit. Weird as hell, sure. But not all bullshit."

"Walkers don't run that fast," Daryl said. "And fish jerky as weapons? That's stupid."

"Nah, that's not the part I mean."

"Then what?"

"Walkers smashing their own heads into walls. That part almost sounds right."

"Damn it, Merle. Are you helping him mess with me now?"

Merle grinned.

"Same family tree, little brother."

Laughter spread through the yard.

The camp felt nothing like it had while Evan was gone.

Rick sat with Lori resting against him. One arm had gone a little numb, but he freed it long enough to lift a beer bottle toward Evan.

Evan saw him from across the fire and lifted his own.

Both men tipped their heads back and drank.

"Whew."

Evan let out a long breath. The faint scent of malt and alcohol lingered under his nose.

"Not cold," he said, "but out here? Plenty of people would kill for this."

The beer went to his head a little, and Evan allowed himself to feel proud.

He had earned it.

No one else knew what had happened inside the church.

No one had seen him shoved to the edge by the Berserkers, bloodied and nearly spent.

With a little rearranging, it became a very different kind of story.

Whether the others believed it or not did not matter.

Evan had no intention of telling the full truth. Even if he did, they might not believe him.

Better to let it live as a campfire tale.

He played with Carl a little longer, then got to his feet.

Humming a half-remembered tune about heroes no one ever sees, he shouldered the Stone Sledgehammer and started another circuit of the yard.

The fastest way to lose everything was to celebrate too soon.

So even with beer warming his blood, Evan forced himself to check every corner of the yard again and make sure no gap in the fence would let walkers through.

Canon was canon.

Reality was reality.

Who knew what tiny detail this world had changed?

The Prison would be their future base. That meant he had to be careful.

He did not notice the figure who quietly followed him from the camp.

"Evan."

The sudden voice behind him snapped him sharp again.

His right hand swung the Stone Sledgehammer backward in a full arc.

The hammer stopped with the barbed wire less than two inches from Shane's cheek.

Even through the night air, Shane caught the smell of rust and old blood on it.

Evan had used that hammer to kill a man that afternoon.

Shane swallowed.

"I just wanted to talk."

"Oh."

Evan's mouth curved.

"Shane. What could we possibly talk about?"

"I'm not Lori."

Shane's pupils widened.

Evan looked at him with a faint, knowing smile, not at all like a man who was drunk.

For a second, Shane wondered if Evan had noticed him following from the very beginning and simply chosen not to say anything.

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