New chapter is live.
Settle in, take your time, and let’s see what waits in the dark 🖤
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After thinking it over, Evan did not head straight for the marker.
Instead, he turned back toward Greene Farm and called Daryl and Merle out of the woods.
“What?” Merle snapped.
His temper had only gotten worse.
A few minutes earlier, he had smashed a walker’s skull in front of Evan with the butt of his rifle.
“I found the motorcycles,” Evan said.
“What?”
Daryl, who had been silent until then, looked at him at once.
His nostrils flared, and his breathing grew rougher.
“Then what the hell are we waitin’ for?” Merle growled.
“Let’s go get ’em.
I’m gonna break that son of a bitch’s nose, then every other bone he’s got.”
He laughed through his anger, teeth clenched, looking like he wanted to peel someone alive.
“Slow down.” Evan looked at him.
“If I’m right, there are a lot of them.
Maybe ten times as many as us.”
Merle narrowed his eyes.
“You scared?”
“I’m saying we move tonight.”
There was something faintly ugly in Evan’s smile.
Night did not belong only to the dead.
Darkness could also hide tracks, movement, and retreat.
The group ahead had too many people to take out in a single clean attack.
If they proved too much to handle, Evan’s team could fall back to Greene Farm under cover of night.
“All right,” Merle said, rolling his shoulders.
“Your call.
You’re the boss, ain’t you?”
Then he stormed back into the trees with his rifle, looking for something else to kill.
“Don’t mind him,” Daryl said in a low voice.
“He’s always like that.”
Daryl was making excuses for Merle because he did not want the tension to drive a wedge between them.
More than that, Daryl had been watching Evan.
Before, his concern had been mostly because of Merle.
Now he genuinely wanted Evan on his side.
Evan had strength.
More importantly, he had already proven he was one of theirs.
“I never took it personally,” Evan said.
The Dixon brothers were a two-man wolf pack.
Ordinary rules did not work on men like them.
From the beginning, Evan had intended to win them over one step at a time.
Not with speeches.
With results.
After sending Daryl after Merle, Evan returned to camp.
“We may need the car for one more day,” he told Andrea.
“I’ll bring it back when we’re done.”
He left it at that.
Under Andrea and Amy’s watchful eyes, he chose a blue tent, crawled inside, and slept.
He slept straight through to evening.
“Hey.” Daryl nudged him with one boot.
“Get up.
It’s time.”
Evan rolled upright, shook the sleep from his head, and felt clear again.
Daryl and Merle were already fully armed and standing over him.
The moment he woke, both men stared at him with open impatience.
“Let’s go,” Evan said.
“I’ll drive.”
He was not sure of the exact time, but the light had dropped.
From a distance, Greene Farm looked empty, quiet, and asleep.
The golden exclamation mark still hovered in the distance, bright enough to stand out against the dark.
The three of them got in the car.
Evan followed the Apocalypse Quest marker until they were about five hundred yards from the target, then stopped.
“This it?” Merle asked, licking his lips.
Evan stepped out.
“The place is five hundred yards ahead.
We walk from here.”
A car engine was too loud, especially at night after the world had gone quiet.
If they drove right up to the target, they would be heard long before they arrived.
And Evan refused to believe an active group of at least thirty people had no one standing watch after dark.
They moved in single file, jogging carefully through the shadows.
Past a supermarket that had already been stripped clean, they found a fortified house behind it.
The iron gate was closed.
Concrete walls boxed the place in on every side, barbed wire crowned the top, and weak light glowed from inside the yard.
Evan looked back at Daryl and Merle, met their eyes, and gave a hand signal.
The brothers nodded without a word.
They took position at the base of the wall, one on each side, grabbed Evan’s boots, and boosted him up.
Only his eyes rose above the wall.
Inside the yard, several vehicles sat in a row.
In one corner, he saw the missing custom bikes.
They had been spray-painted.
Badly.
Crude drawings and ugly graffiti covered both motorcycles, changing their entire look.
Evan’s mouth twitched.
He glanced down at the two men beneath him, both already baring their teeth from the strain, and silently mourned the people inside.
He pointed to himself, then into the yard.
Then he pointed to them.
The message was clear: Evan would go first, then the two of them.
Evan wedged the Horse-Bone Sledgehammer under the barbed wire, lifting it just enough to make a gap.
Then he slipped through, dropped into the yard, and landed with only a soft puff of dust.
He took a few careful steps forward and started around the corner.
Then his body went still.
He backed up, pressing his spine flat to the wall.
Just beyond the corner, a heavyset man in a hood stood drowsing with a gun in his arms.
Evan considered it, then returned to the wall and tapped lightly on the outside.
A moment later, Daryl and Merle slipped in through the same gap in the wire.
Evan pointed around the corner, then pointed at Daryl’s crossbow.
The three men confirmed the plan with looks alone.
Not far away, Dave shook his head, still half asleep.
When he realized he had been nodding off, a cold jolt ran through him.
He snapped awake, swept the yard with his eyes, and exhaled.
“Next supply run, I’m goin’ out too,” he muttered.
“Then I won’t have to stand out here all damn night.”
“Bad timing,” a low voice said near his ear.
“You don’t have a next time.”
Dave froze and tried to turn with the gun in his arms.
He never made it.
Something cold punched into his forehead.
A hand clamped over his mouth, and his body was dragged backward into a strong grip.
“Shh,” Evan whispered, pressing his palm hard over Dave’s mouth and nose.
“Feeling dizzy is normal.
It’ll pass.”
Merle caught the rifle as it slipped from Dave’s arms.
Daryl moved in, planted one boot on Dave’s head, and pulled the bolt free from his skull.
When it was done, both Dixon brothers looked at Evan with barely contained excitement.
Evan silently pointed toward the corner where the ruined bikes waited, then gave a helpless little shrug.
Daryl and Merle crept over.
Their fingers trembled as they touched their motorcycles, checking the frames, the tanks, the damage.
Merle’s face twisted.
He raised the rifle and started toward the house.
Evan and Daryl caught him together.
Merle glared at them, furious and confused, especially at his brother.
Daryl pointed at the bikes, then at the gate, and shook his head.
Evan patted both men on the shoulder and guided their attention toward the fuel tanks of the parked cars behind them.
All three men went still.
Then their eyes lit up.
Their mouths curved in almost the same way.
They had thought of the same thing.
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Want to keep going?
I hope this chapter gave you another reason to stay with the story.
There’s still plenty ahead, and things are only starting to unfold.