“Thanks to you, I’m still alive and kicking,” Magnus Vane replied weakly as he sat by the fire with a bowl of meat broth in his hands.
Then he remembered something and pointed toward the fire engine parked nearby.
“By the way, did Daryl and Merle settle what they owed the farm for the last couple of days?
If the hunting meat wasn’t enough, take the difference out of the food I brought back.” He had scavenged more than enough during his trip through town to make up for anything his group owed Hershel.
Maggie, Otis, and Jimmy exchanged curious looks before hurrying toward the fire engine.
They opened the large rear storage compartments and immediately found them packed with bottled water, canned goods, packaged food, and other supplies Magnus had collected.
The Greene farm had plenty of crops and livestock, but processed food had become increasingly rare since the outbreak.
All three stared at the haul in surprise.
“You brought all of this back from town?” Hershel asked, looking from the supplies in Maggie’s arms to Magnus.
Magnus simply nodded.
He had no intention of mentioning the raider compound.
There was nothing Hershel could do with that information except start asking questions Magnus didn’t feel like answering.
In some ways, Hershel and Rick shared the same basic moral instincts, although Rick was already more willing to accept what survival demanded.
If Hershel learned that Magnus had deliberately led a Blood Moon horde into another survivor camp and watched it get wiped out, the resulting argument would accomplish absolutely nothing.
Magnus hated unnecessary trouble.
Hershel looked toward the fire engine next.
“And where exactly did you get—”
“Hershel.” Magnus raised one hand before the older man could finish.
“Why do you ask more questions than a cop doing an interrogation?” He grinned and gestured toward the supplies.
“I also brought back plenty of liquor.
How about everybody eats well and has a drink tonight instead?”
Hershel opened his mouth, then slowly closed it again.
Technically, he was already the old man Magnus was teasing him for being, which made the comment even more irritating.
Still, he had plenty of questions about Magnus’s two-day disappearance, Sophia’s sudden arrival, and the massive fire engine sitting on his property.
After a moment, Hershel sighed and agreed.
Two hours later, the farm looked nothing like its usual quiet self.
A large campfire burned between the tents while members of both groups drank from plastic cups, laughed too loudly, and moved around even without any music playing.
Since the outbreak, almost everyone had been holding fear, grief, anger, and exhaustion inside with nowhere to release it.
For one night, they simply stopped caring.
Nobody was really dancing with anyone else.
Most were moving to music that existed only inside their own heads, enjoying a rare moment where the dead, food shortages, and tomorrow morning didn’t matter.
Andrea and Amy laughed together near the fire, Merle was far louder than necessary, and even Daryl had eventually been dragged into drinking more than he intended.
Hershel made the mistake of trying to keep up with Magnus.
Thump!
Hershel dropped heavily onto the ground beside the fire.
Magnus was sitting next to him with one arm hanging across the veterinarian’s shoulders, both men far past the point of making sensible decisions.
“I’m telling you, Hershel…” Magnus hiccupped and pointed vaguely toward the barn.
“You really shouldn’t keep all those walkers in there.”
Hershel blinked slowly.
“They’re dead,” Magnus continued, slurring slightly.
“Virus, infection, whatever you wanna call it…
those things aren’t your neighbors or relatives anymore.” He raised his cup as if making the most important argument of his life.
“Tomorrow we get some heavy equipment, open that barn, and deal with all of them.
Trust me.
Great plan.”
Hershel smiled stupidly.
“You’re…
you’re right.”
Magnus’s eyes immediately brightened.
“Right?”
“Right.”
Hershel nodded repeatedly despite clearly having no idea what he was agreeing to anymore.
Magnus grinned like he had just won a major debate.
Hershel had originally joined the gathering hoping alcohol might loosen Magnus’s tongue enough to answer some questions about where he had been.
Instead, the opposite happened.
The old veterinarian had gotten drunk enough that Magnus was now halfway to convincing him to clear his own barn.
Of everyone still awake, Sophia was probably the most sober person there.
She sat safely away from the adults with her doll in her lap and a nonalcoholic drink in both hands, watching everyone behave in ways she clearly didn’t understand.
Her eyes eventually settled on Magnus, who was laughing beside an equally drunk Hershel.
Sophia stared at him for a long time before hugging her doll a little closer.
The next morning began painfully.
“Damn it.”
Daryl Dixon crawled out of his tent with one hand pressed against his forehead.
His head felt like someone was driving a nail through it from the inside, and even the morning light seemed personally offensive.
“If Magnus ever talks me into another drinking night, I’m breaking every bolt I own.”
Merle emerged nearby smelling like a distillery and squinted at him.
“Bullshit.
Those crossbow bolts are practically your children.” He waved dismissively before a crooked grin appeared.
“You’d break your own hand before you snapped all of those.”
Daryl glared at him.
Merle stopped smiling.
“Actually…
you might.”
“Fuck off.”
Merle laughed and immediately threw an arm around his younger brother’s neck before Daryl could properly load the crossbow.
“Easy there, baby brother.
No need to murder family before breakfast.” Daryl shoved at him while Merle continued laughing, neither of them looking particularly healthy after the previous night.
“Morning.”
Andrea’s head appeared from another tent, her blonde hair sticking out in every direction.
Amy crawled out behind her, followed shortly by Sophia with her doll still tucked beneath one arm.
The three looked so disheveled that Merle opened his mouth to make a joke, thought better of it after Andrea glared at him, and wisely kept quiet.
Hershel’s family had been helped back to the farmhouse the previous night, and the people at camp gradually recovered enough to laugh at one another’s miserable condition.
After several minutes, however, somebody noticed something important.
Magnus’s tent was empty.
He had disappeared again less than a day after finally returning.
“Where the hell did Magnus go?” Andrea asked.
Merle yawned.
“Ask Hershel.
Old man probably knows.”
That seemed reasonable until they reached the farmhouse and discovered Hershel was missing too.
Maggie, Otis, Patricia, Beth, and Jimmy were only just waking from their own hangovers and knew no more than anyone else.
Concern quickly replaced amusement as people searched the nearby property and found no sign of either man.
Amy finally crouched beside Sophia.
“Did Magnus say anything to you last night?”
Sophia hugged her doll and thought for a moment.
“He said he was going to take Hershel hunting.”
Amy frowned.
“Hunting what?”
Sophia answered quietly.
“Walkers.”
Everyone went silent.
“Magnus took Hershel walker hunting?” Andrea repeated.
Maggie’s expression changed immediately.
Her father was a veterinarian and farmer in his sixties, not Daryl Dixon.
More importantly, Hershel still believed walkers were sick people rather than monsters that needed to be destroyed.
The idea of Magnus dragging him into the woods to hunt them sounded exactly like the sort of insane plan Magnus might think was useful.
Maggie didn’t wait for anyone else to decide what to do.
She rushed toward the stable, mounted her horse, and headed toward the woods to search for them.
Daryl grabbed his crossbow and followed after telling Merle to stay behind and watch the camp.
Whatever Magnus had done this time, Daryl wanted to find them before Maggie’s father ended up dead.
Meanwhile, the man everyone was worrying about slowly opened his eyes in complete darkness.
“Oooh…”
A low groan drifted through the air.
Magnus stared at the dark wooden ceiling above him.
Then he closed his eyes again.
His head hurt, his mouth was dry, and every part of his body wanted another hour of sleep.
Magnus rolled onto his side and decided whatever was making that noise could wait.
Five seconds later, his eyes snapped wide open.
That wasn’t a person groaning.
Magnus slowly lifted his head.
Walkers filled the barn below.
Dozens of them wandered between the stalls, perhaps thirty or forty in total, turning the enclosed space into something close to a small herd.
Their pale faces drifted through the darkness while rotten hands scraped against wood and fencing.
Magnus’s hangover disappeared almost instantly.
His hand shot toward the place where he normally kept the Stone Sledgehammer.
Nothing.
Instead, his fingers closed around an arm.
Magnus’s heart nearly stopped.
Then he felt warmth.
“Body temperature.”
He quietly exhaled.
“Not a walker.”
Magnus turned and found Hershel sprawled comfortably in the hay beside him, snoring as though they were sleeping in a hotel instead of directly above a barn packed with the dead.
Apparently, sometime during their drunken brilliance the previous night, both men had ended up in the hayloft.
The elevated floor was the only reason neither of them had been torn apart in their sleep.
Magnus stared at Hershel for several seconds.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
Hershel snored again and rubbed his stomach.
Magnus almost laughed.
“Some people really are too lucky for their own good.”
Then he paused.
“Wait.
That includes me.”
Magnus shook his head.
Whatever.
He leaned over and slapped Hershel across the cheek.
Hershel jolted awake.
“What the—”
His eyes landed on Magnus and immediately relaxed again.
“Magnus?
What the hell are you doing waking me up this early?”
Magnus slapped him once more.
Hershel’s expression darkened, and he looked ready to curse him out.
Magnus immediately raised one finger to his lips.
“Shh.”
Then he pointed over the edge of the loft.
Still half asleep, Hershel leaned forward and looked down.
Thirty or forty walkers wandered through the barn beneath them.
Every trace of drunkenness vanished from Hershel’s face.
Cold sweat broke out across his forehead.
[Goal Tracker]