New chapter is live.
Settle in, take your time, and let’s see what waits in the dark 🖤
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Daryl looked back at Merle.
Merle gave a silent nod, and Daryl turned back toward the car.
He climbed in with his precious crossbow in his arms, still chewing on raw meat from that morning’s hunt.
His anger had not cooled.
Evan met Merle’s eyes and gave the smallest nod.
He knew what this was.
His first problem to solve as the leader of his own group.
If he failed, the loss would be more than two motorcycles.
The two hard men he had only just brought into the group would start drifting away.
Merle was trouble by nature.
Daryl was no pushover either.
If he couldn’t even recover two stolen bikes, why should either of them keep following him?
“Let’s go,” Evan said.
“Farm first.”
Andrea started the car, and they tore down the road in a cloud of dust.
Under warm golden sunlight, Maggie Greene leaned low over her horse.
Her eyes fixed on the farmhouse ahead, as if reaching it would make every problem disappear.
“Dad!
Dad!”
She was calling out before she had even dismounted.
Within seconds, an older man with white hair stepped out of the house.
A heavyset man and a woman followed behind him.
A blond head appeared at an upstairs window, and a tall, thin man came hurrying in from farther out.
That single moment said a lot about the farm.
When trouble came, no one stayed idle.
Greene Farm.
“What is it?” Hershel Greene asked, hurrying toward Maggie with alarm in his face.
Life on the farm had been quiet for too long.
Danger struck Hershel harder than he wanted to admit.
In the end, he was an old man trying to keep his family and the people who had stayed with him alive after the world had broken.
“A car,” Maggie said, pulling a rifle from the leather scabbard on her saddle.
“Coming straight for us.”
Everyone looked toward the fields.
As if to prove her right, a silver-gray car came racing toward the house with dust rolling behind it.
It stopped abruptly in front of the farmhouse.
Maggie, Otis, and Jimmy raised their guns.
All three swallowed hard as the first man stepped out.
He stood around six foot three, dark-haired and brown-eyed, solidly built without being bulky.
Tall enough to stand out anywhere.
Even at a distance, there was something imposing about him.
When he looked over with the Horse-Bone Sledgehammer in hand, everyone on the porch felt their heart jump into their throat.
‘These people won’t be easy to handle.’
Merle and Daryl getting out behind him only confirmed it.
Then Andrea and Amy stepped out, and Hershel visibly relaxed.
One of the two women looked young enough to make the whole group seem less like raiders.
Maybe they were not as dangerous as they first appeared.
“Don’t shoot,” Hershel said, lowering Maggie’s barrel with one hand.
“Let me talk to them first.”
He feared his daughter’s nerves might start a fight none of them needed.
“I’m the owner of this farm,” Hershel called.
“What business do you have here?”
The formal wording almost made Evan laugh.
Still polite.
Somehow.
“You can call me Evan Ward.
This is Merle, Daryl, Andrea, and Amy.”
Evan introduced them first.
He was the one coming to someone else’s door.
A little sincerity was useful.
“We’re looking to stay on your farm for a while.
Not in the house.
Just the open ground beside it.”
He pointed toward a clear patch near the farmhouse and immediately saw refusal gathering on Hershel’s face.
Evan raised both hands.
“Don’t decide too fast.
Maybe we should talk inside first.
Trust me, if we wanted to take this place, we wouldn’t walk up in broad daylight and start a conversation.”
The old man’s mouth opened slightly.
Warning filled his eyes, but the harsh words never came.
If Hershel had been twenty years younger, he probably would not have agreed to any of this.
“Come in,” Hershel said at last.
“But no weapons inside.”
He led them toward the farmhouse door and gave Otis a look.
Otis understood and stepped forward to collect Daryl and Merle’s weapons.
He almost caught a crossbow stock and a rifle butt to the face.
“Hey,” Evan said.
Daryl looked away, then grudgingly handed over his crossbow and knife.
Merle did the same, though the rise and fall of his chest told Evan he was near the end of his patience.
Evan set the Horse-Bone Sledgehammer beside the door as well.
First the bikes were stolen.
Now Merle had to surrender his weapons too.
Merle Dixon was not built for peaceful coexistence.
Even back at the Quarry, he needed to kill a few walkers every day just to bleed off the anger.
Evan leaned close and patted his back once.
“Give me time,” he said quietly.
“I won’t let the thieves walk away.
For now, rein it in.
We need a place to live.”
Only then did Merle glare at the people of the farm and follow Evan inside.
In the house, small cups had been set in front of them, each filled with freshly warmed milk.
In the apocalypse, that was rare.
For Hershel, a farmer, it was ordinary.
Or at least it had been ordinary before the world ended.
Now even simple comforts had to be measured.
Andrea and Amy gave Maggie shy smiles and sipped carefully.
Daryl and Merle said nothing.
They had already drained theirs and were still savoring it.
“Mr.
Ward,” Hershel said stiffly, still angry over Evan’s earlier implication.
“Now tell me why you’re here.”
“Then I’ll be direct,” Evan said.
He looked over everyone who belonged to the farm.
Calling it a camp was generous.
There were only six of them, which was part of why their supplies still looked comfortable.
Hershel’s daughters, Maggie and Beth.
Otis and his wife, Patricia.
Jimmy, Beth’s boyfriend, tall and thin.
All three had stayed with the Greene family after the outbreak, holding together for warmth in the ruins of the old world.
Evan’s gaze returned to Hershel.
“Even if you’ve been staying on the farm, you should know what the world has become.”
“Walkers are everywhere.
They bite anything living.
They eat flesh.
I’ve seen them tear people apart while they were still alive.”
Evan had not come here to comfort them.
The first sentence alone put pressure on a group that had spent too long sheltered behind fields and fences.
Hershel held himself rigid.
Behind him, his daughters reacted more openly.
Beth moved closer to Maggie.
Maggie’s face tightened.
“They’re sick people,” Hershel said.
“That’s all.”
“Are they?” Evan asked, one brow lifting.
“If you were bitten, do you think you would stop because the person in front of you was your daughter?”
Life on Greene Farm had been too easy.
Hershel had seen too little, so he could still say things like that and believe them.
Or maybe his faith was simply different from Evan’s.
Hershel still lived partly in the world before.
Evan trusted his own people and the hammer waiting just outside.
“If you came here only to frighten us,” Hershel said, “then you can leave.”
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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.