Chapter 33 A Small Herd Gathers

“Thank God.” Watching from a distance, Magnus Vane finally loosened his grip on the Stone Sledgehammer and let out the breath he had been holding.

Carl hadn’t been bitten or scratched by the walker in the storm drain, and more importantly, he hadn’t frozen when things went wrong.

For a first real encounter, that alone was enough to satisfy Magnus.

He expected Carl to get back on his feet and continue toward the far end of town.

Instead, Carl did something Magnus hadn’t anticipated.

The boy pushed himself upright, wincing at the burning scrape on his elbow, then turned and stared at the walker still growling from inside the storm drain.

His frightened expression slowly hardened.

Carl looked around until his eyes landed on an old backyard grill behind a nearby fence, then limped over and pulled free a long two-pronged barbecue fork.

Magnus stayed where he was.

Carl returned to the drain and looked down through the narrow opening.

The smell rising from below was enough to make him grimace, and both of his hands trembled slightly around the metal handle.

For several long seconds, he simply stood there fighting with himself.

Then he made his choice.

Carl lowered the fork through the opening, lined up the point as carefully as he could, and drove it forward with both hands.

Squelch.

The metal prongs entered through the walker’s open mouth and punched into its skull.

Its snarling stopped almost instantly.

Carl yanked the fork free before the corpse slumped farther into the darkness, then stood over the drain breathing hard.

He didn’t celebrate.

He simply stared downward.

Magnus could tell Carl was replaying the entire encounter in his head—the mistake of leaning too close, the sudden grab, how he had braced against the pavement, and how he had finally gotten free.

That kind of reflection mattered more than blindly charging forward.

Magnus had sent him through town to learn, not merely to reach a destination.

Carl remained there for only a few minutes.

Then he looked down at his injured elbow.

Using the barbecue fork, he tore a strip from the bottom of his shirt and wrapped the cloth tightly around the abrasion.

It was crude, but it slowed the bleeding and protected the wound from dirt.

When Carl looked up again, the panic from earlier had mostly disappeared.

“I can do better,” he muttered.

He tightened the makeshift bandage.

“I can do better.” Magnus watched from behind an abandoned vehicle and nodded to himself.

That was the reaction he wanted.

Carl wasn’t fearless, and Magnus didn’t want him to be.

Fear kept people careful.

What mattered was whether Carl could feel that fear, make a mistake, survive it, and still keep moving afterward.

The boy started forward again with the barbecue fork in one hand and his injured arm held carefully near his body.

He looked much less like the protected child who had left Hershel’s farm that morning.

Wooden armor, a makeshift weapon, sweat, blood, and caution had already changed the way he carried himself.

Magnus quietly followed.

Carl had always admired people he considered strong, especially Shane, and Magnus could understand why.

Shane had once represented the kind of man Carl thought could handle anything the world threw at him.

Now Rick had returned, and Magnus had entered the picture as well, giving the boy more examples of what survival could look like.

The remaining distance took nearly two hours.

Carl moved slowly, sometimes walking only a few dozen yards before stopping to listen or catch his breath.

He avoided open doorways, crossed streets only after checking both directions, and never again leaned near a dark opening without first watching it carefully.

By the time he reached the eastern edge of town, the sun was high overhead and his face was red from exhaustion.

The fire station came into view.

Carl stopped in front of it and bent over, breathing hard.

The same apparatus bay doors Magnus had found open on his earlier scavenging trip still stood partly exposed, and nothing obvious had changed around the building.

Carl looked toward the road behind him, then up at the sky, clearly thinking about the return trip.

Instead of immediately turning around, he quietly entered the station.

Magnus slapped a hand against his forehead.

“Of course.” Carl was running low on energy and had clearly decided to look for food and water before heading back.

The problem was that Magnus had already stripped almost everything useful from the station during his previous search.

He had taken the canned food, bottled drinks, emergency crackers, firefighting gear, and the fire engine itself.

“There’s nothing left in there.” Magnus grimaced.

His thorough scavenging was now working against his own student.

Fortunately, he knew the building better than Carl did.

Magnus circled around the rear of the fire station, climbed the exterior ladder to the second floor, and moved carefully enough that Carl wouldn’t hear him.

From above, he briefly spotted the boy searching the first floor room by room.

Once Carl disappeared from view, Magnus reached into his system inventory.

Two pieces of bread.

One pack of compressed emergency crackers.

One bottle of water.

Magnus initially tucked them beneath the counter in the upstairs lounge, then immediately reconsidered.

Carl was tired enough already; making him search every cabinet for supplies Magnus had deliberately planted would be pointless.

He moved everything onto the counter where it would be impossible to miss.

Then Magnus slipped back outside the same way he had entered.

He crouched behind the rear wall and listened.

A door creaked open downstairs.

Carl suddenly gasped.

Magnus’s hand tightened around the Stone Sledgehammer.

Nothing followed.

He relaxed slightly.

The boy had probably discovered the walker corpse Magnus had killed during his first visit.

A few moments later came the sound of footsteps climbing the stairs.

Then another startled sound.

This one was different.

Magnus smiled.

Carl had found the food.

“Still jumps at everything.” He waited patiently.

When Carl finally emerged from the fire station, he carried a slightly battered shoulder bag he had apparently found inside.

Half a bottle of water and one piece of bread remained in it, while his fuller stomach and improved color made it obvious what had happened to the rest.

He had eaten enough to continue without wasting everything at once.

Carl stood outside for a moment.

His expression suddenly softened.

“Mom…” Magnus heard the quiet word from his hiding place.

For the first time that day, Carl looked less like a trainee and more like a tired child who wanted to go home.

Over only a few hours, he had gone from excitement to fear, from pain to determination, and then pushed himself all the way to the fire station alone.

For someone who had spent the apocalypse surrounded by Rick, Lori, and the quarry group, this was one of the hardest things he had ever been asked to do.

Carl took a deep breath.

Then he turned around.

He started walking back.

Magnus waited until the boy had put some distance between them before stepping out from behind the station.

The easy part was over now.

Food and water could help, but they wouldn’t instantly restore the strength Carl had already burned through.

From here on, willpower mattered.

Magnus watched Carl’s unsteady steps and forced himself not to call the exercise finished.

“You’ve got this.” He said the words quietly enough that Carl couldn’t hear.

“You already made it there.

Now make it back.” Magnus followed at a careful distance, staying alert for anything that could threaten the boy.

He had already decided Carl’s performance had exceeded his expectations, but ending the training every time Carl became tired would defeat the point.

Magnus wanted him to learn the difference between being uncomfortable and being truly unable to continue.

Ten minutes later, Carl was sweating heavily again.

The heat soaked straight through his shirt beneath the wooden armor.

Worse, the bandage around his scraped elbow had become damp with sweat, and salt worked into the abrasion every time he moved.

Blood slowly stained the cloth darker.

Magnus saw it.

His instincts told him to step in.

He forced himself to wait.

Carl was still moving.

Then Magnus noticed movement in the houses lining the street.

One walker stumbled out through an open doorway.

Another emerged from behind a fence.

Then another appeared farther back.

Carl’s blood and movement were drawing attention.

Low growls began spreading behind him.

Magnus immediately changed position.

He circled through a side yard and moved ahead of Carl, making sure the walkers didn’t spot him and shift their attention away from the boy.

When he found another clear line of sight and looked back, his expression changed.

There were more than ten walkers now.

A small herd had formed.

Magnus tightened both hands around the Stone Sledgehammer.

Even for him, fighting that many at once in close quarters would require care.

For an exhausted eleven-year-old carrying nothing but a barbecue fork, it was potentially fatal.

Carl was still only halfway back to the fire engine, and his pace had already begun slowing noticeably.

Carl wiped sweat from his eyes.

His breathing came in ragged bursts.

Then he suddenly stopped.

Magnus watched him grab the strap of the shoulder bag.

Carl ripped it off.

The bag hit the pavement.

He had reached the point where even a few extra pounds felt too heavy.

And behind him, the walkers kept coming.