Friday, November 20th, 6 PM.
Downtown.
The interior of the police SUV stank of sweat, adrenaline, and the faint metallic tang of gunpowder. It was late, and the light filtering through the armored windows seemed stained a chaotic, ashen orange.
Shane, seated in the passenger seat, stared out at the street, which had become a chaotic snarl of abandoned metal. They had been trapped for an hour in the futile attempt to reach the military containment perimeter that was supposedly forming. The mission was simple: transport Kevin, the whiny brat, to safety.
Kevin, the Captain's son, hadn't stopped complaining from the back seat, his sharp voice drilling into Shane's skull.
"This is how badly you work!" the young man ranted, his nervousness disguised as arrogance. "An hour to move three blocks. I don't know why you're paid so well if you can't even do your job right. Also, I'm warning you, I'll tell my dad you shot that officer... Were you guys out of your minds?"
The sound of Kevin's voice was like a hammer striking a plate of already cracked metal in Shane's mind. Every word was a distraction, a brutal reminder that he was babysitting while the world fell apart, and while the only person who truly mattered to him might be in danger.
Shane closed his eyes for an instant. His head throbbed, not just from the noise, but from the moral hangover. He remembered the last hour: Walker's face, straining under the obligation to follow a brutal protocol; the plea in the bitten officer's eyes. And then his own voice, cold, dictating the sentence: "Do what you have to do."
He had allowed an execution. He had crossed the first line, and he had done so not out of duty, but out of cold calculation. He knew that if he pulled the trigger himself, the point of no return would come too soon.
But that point was already close.
His mind was a battlefield. On one side, the badge, the uniform, the loyalty to Rick, the promise of law and order. On the other, a fixed, terrifying image: Lori. Alone, vulnerable, believing her husband, Rick, the man of the law who trusted the system until the very last second, would save her.
Rick won't be able to save her.
The thought was a sweet, tempting poison. Chaos was hours away from swallowing the entire city. The "infected," as they were now called, were real, and the only way to survive was through brutality and speed.
They opened the SUV doors for the umpteenth time to push a blocked sedan. The street was deserted, littered with garbage and broken glass. Two blocks away, a column of black smoke rose against the orange sky. Returning to the car, Shane felt the pressure in his chest. He wanted to start the engine, turn around, abandon everyone—Walker, Kevin, the law—and race toward Lori.
Just then, Kevin, feeling he had won the moral battle by mentioning the officer's "murder," redoubled his offensive.
"Are you even listening to me? My dad is going to hear about this! And about how you let criminals and... and infected escape!"
Shane couldn't take it anymore. The fury, contained for days beneath the facade of the model officer, spilled out. It wasn't the fury of anger, but the fury of primal fear.
Shane spun in the passenger seat with such a sudden movement that the seatbelt tightened across his chest. His right hand, solid as a rock, held his service weapon and pointed it directly at Kevin's pale, sweaty face.
Time stopped.
The silence was absolute, broken only by the distant roar of an engine at high speed. The two officers in the back immediately snapped to attention, their hands searching for their own weapons.
Kevin froze. His mouth opened, but the torrent of words halted, replaced by naked terror. It was the first time in his life someone had genuinely aimed a gun at him, and not just any cop, but one with the eyes of a man who had already lost his mind.
The fear made Kevin's wounded pride manifest in a ridiculous bravado.
"What do you think you're doing, Officer? Put that down! Do you think you have the guts? My father will ruin you!" Kevin stammered, his voice rising again in a desperate attempt to regain control.
Shane didn't blink. Slowly, methodically, with an audible and definitive click in the oppressive silence, he flipped the safety off the weapon.
The tension spiked. The officers in the back braced for disaster, their ragged breaths audible.
After a few long seconds of silence that felt like an eternity, Shane spoke. His tone wasn't rageful; it was sordid, cold, and profoundly irritated.
"Listen, kid," Shane said, using the derogatory word Rick often used, but with a different venom. "I've been babysitting you for an hour now, and I'm at my limit. We're pulling you out of danger, playing nursemaid, and all you do is bitch about how we're mistreating you and your daddy."
The pressure on Kevin's head did not lessen.
"Do me a favor and shut your mouth for the rest of this ride, or, I swear to God, I'll decorate that pretty face with a lead earring. You understand me?"
Kevin, trembling but with the anger still beating beneath his fear, dared to grumble, "You're crazy."
Shane seemed to relent. His body began to turn forward, as if returning to his seat to resume driving. Kevin let out a premature sigh of relief, and the officers in the back half-relaxed.
But Shane stopped, brought his gaze back to the young man, and without a word, he fired.
The roar inside the closed SUV was deafening. The driver yelled, almost losing control of the wheel. The officers instinctively ducked, their hearts hammering. Kevin flinched, expecting the pain, bringing his hands to his torso and head, desperately searching for a bloody exit wound. His breathing was erratic, and his face was covered in liquid terror.
The rest of the officers only relaxed when they noticed Kevin was intact, and the only visible mark was a small, smoking hole in the padded ceiling of the SUV.
Shane did not take his eyes off the young man, who was still checking himself for injuries.
"The first round is always a blank," Shane warned, his tone deathly cold, as he picked up the smoking casing. "Next time you open your mouth, you won't be so lucky."
The silence was absolute. Kevin sank into his seat, broken. Shane had ensured the terror he felt was a hundred times greater than the fear of facing the chaos outside. He had broken the only person who dared to challenge him. He had won, but at a cost he dared not calculate.
An hour later.
The SUV finally stopped at a precinct on the outskirts of downtown, a temporary base of operations before the total collapse. The entrance was guarded by exhausted officers.
Shane watched as the two officers from the back seat escorted Kevin, still silent and in shock, toward the commander's office to arrange his transfer to the Captain's house. Walker, the other officer from his unit, approached him.
"Looks like you made a statement, Shane," Walker commented, rubbing his temple.
"The kid needed a lesson," Shane muttered, leaning against the SUV door. His mind was already planning his getaway.
While Walker went inside to look for supplies, Shane saw a precinct patrol car parked nearby. The keys were dangling from the ignition. The excuse was served. He could simply take it and leave.
But that would be outright abandonment. He needed confirmation, validation.
Just as his hand neared the keys, the idea of the phone call lodged in his mind. It was so simple he had overlooked it.
Why hadn't he called earlier?
The urgency of the afternoon had clouded his judgment.
He quickly pulled out his phone and dialed Rick's home number. The sound of the line connecting was torture, a slow rhythm marking the distance between him and his obsession.
After a few seconds that felt eternal, Shane heard Lori's voice. It was strained, but alive.
"Lori," Shane said nervously.
"Hello? Shane?" Her voice was a thread of fear.
"Yeah, it's me, it's me," Shane felt a tsunami of relief, but controlled it immediately. "Are you okay? Is everyone okay?"
"We're home, Shane. Carl and I. But I'm so scared... We don't know what's going on."
"Don't go out, Lori. Don't go out for anything. Is Rick with you?"
The pause on the other end of the line made Shane's blood boil with a mixture of rage and opportunity.
"No. He... he went out this afternoon. He said there was an emergency at the city hospital and he had to go. He warned me to stay home, that he'd be back soon... But he hasn't returned yet."
Shane clenched his jaw. Rick, the idealistic hero, absent, playing savior while his family was alone! The rage toward Rick was as strong as Shane's determination. The die was cast. Rick was out of the picture.
Shane took a deep breath, forcing an unshakeable calm into his voice. His promise was absolute, dictated by the panic and affection that defined his new reality.
"Listen to me, Lori. Don't move from the house. Lock everything. I... I'll come. I promise I'm coming to get you. I promise. I'm going to get you out of there. I'm going to protect you."
He didn't wait for a reply. He hung up, feeling the adrenaline rush through his veins, no longer due to chaos, but due to purpose. Law and order were ash. His only mission was Lori. The need for excuses had vanished.
Two hours later.
The patrol car's V8 engine purred beneath Shane, a powerful sound that vibrated the steering wheel in his hands. Two hours had passed. Two hours since he had hung up the phone with Lori and ignored Walker's shouts back at the precinct.
The uniform itched, but he wouldn't take it off; the uniform was his armor and his pretext. As he drove out of the precinct parking lot, Walker had run after him, yelling questions about where the hell he was going and why he was taking the vehicle without permission.
Shane had barely slowed down. He had simply shouted something unintelligible about "confirming situation" and slammed the accelerator to the floor, leaving behind the lights and the burgeoning anarchy of the big city.
His mind was now a tunnel of absolute focus, a brutal contrast to the chaos of the afternoon. There were no doubts, no morality, just one imperative: Lori.
As he approached the neighboring town, where Rick, Lori, and Carl lived, a mix of nostalgia and strangeness hit him.
This was his town, the town where he had grown up, where he had sworn his badge alongside Rick, and where his feelings for Lori had become so unmanageable that he had forced himself to request a transfer to the larger, busier city. He had needed the emptiness, the distraction, and the noise to fill the void Lori had left by choosing his best friend.
Now, seeing the dim lights and the familiar silhouette of the horizon, he felt that time hadn't passed. He hadn't overcome anything. The love he felt for her hadn't arrived too late; it had been there all along, latent, waiting for an opportunity.
He slowed down upon reaching one of the main access points. He noticed the chaos here was of a different nature. The town was smaller, more suburban; there were no massive traffic jams or barricades.
But there was tension.
At the makeshift checkpoint, there was only one officer. A young man, his cap askew, his face covered in soot and exhaustion. Most of the officers in this jurisdiction were likely trying to direct outgoing traffic or dealing with problems inside the town.
Shane stopped, feeling a momentary pang of fear. His mind, still wired to "protocol," feared the punishment for taking the SUV. But the reality of the exhausted officer reassured him.
The officer approached, raising a tired hand. Shane rolled down the window.
"Curfew started at twenty hundred hours, Sergeant. Business in town?"
Shane briefly flashed his badge, letting the officer see the insignia.
"Personal business. I'm checking on family. I'm leaving immediately after," the lie came out smooth, professional, without the slightest hint of hesitation. "By the way, how are things in town?"
"Yes, Sergeant. Whatever you say," the officer shrugged, more interested in not being bitten or attacked than in enforcing the rules. "The situation is... bad. We have serious problems at the hospital, and there's 'looting' in the lower area. But the residential areas are quiet, for now."
Shane nodded, his face expressionless.
"Carry on, Sergeant. Be careful."
He pressed the accelerator, passing through the improvised barrier. The relief of not being reported was immense. Chaos was his shield. If the officers couldn't control the city accesses, they certainly wouldn't worry about the disappearance of an SUV from a neighboring jurisdiction's precinct.
Lori and Rick's town didn't have the scars of the urban warfare he had seen in the metropolis. There were distant fires, crashed cars on the avenues, and broken glass from a few storefronts. But the center was empty. People weren't rioting; they were fleeing.
Shane droves slowly, observing everything with the cold mind of a police officer. He heard muffled screams, sirens sounding without purpose, and the occasional gunshot that was lost in the night.
He noticed the faces of desperation plastered against the windows of the few remaining cars, the fear and pleading in the eyes of people shouting for help from the sidewalks.
No. It's not my job. My job is over.
His gaze remained fixed, moving forward without a single hesitation, ignoring the outstretched arms, the crying children, and the pleas. He had crossed the moral line with the shot in the car; now, crossing the line of his civic duty was trivial. The system had failed, and only his own private law of survival and protection was valid.
Venturing into the residential zone, the feeling of abandonment became more pronounced. There were no obvious zombies here, no overturned cars. The lights in the houses were mostly off, indicating that families were in the darkness, in silence, terrified.
He saw some open doors, homes looted or abandoned out of panic, but Rick and Lori's house, with its well-kept lawn and darkened lighting, seemed like an oasis of normality.
Shane stopped the patrol car in front of the house. He turned off the engine, and the silence that followed was more terrifying than the previous noise. His hand trembled slightly as he unbuckled his seatbelt.
He got out of the car, approaching the front door. He was about to yell, to call Lori at the top of his lungs, to end the agony of uncertainty. But a primal instinct, forged in the fear of attracting something unwanted, stopped him. He knocked loudly, but with a controlled tone.
"Lori! It's Shane!"
He waited. The cold suburban night air stung his skin. The fear that the house was empty, that they had disobeyed, that Rick had arrived and taken them out, was a punch to the gut.
Then, he felt movement. A shadow behind the second-floor window. Sounds of urgent steps descending the stairs, and then, the familiar sound of the deadbolt sliding open.
The door opened.
There she was. Lori.
Her eyes had no tears, but they were bloodshot, as if she had cried herself dry. Her face was pale, and her usually immaculate hair was messy. But she was there, alive, intact.
The relief was physical, a warm torrent that dissolved the knot of tension that had paralyzed him for hours. The love he had always professed for her, the love that had forced him to flee, blossomed again, not as a forbidden feeling, but as a tangible truth. Years, distance, or Rick didn't matter; their bond was absolute.
Shane grabbed her and wrapped her in an embrace. A desperate, protective, possessive hug.
Lori stiffened for an instant, and then collapsed against him. Her embrace wasn't romantic; it was the hug of a person who has been holding her breath for hours and finally finds air. In that relief, Shane felt justified, powerful. It was him, not Rick, who was there. He was the protector.
"Shane, oh my God, Shane. I was so scared," Lori murmured, clinging to his uniform.
Shane separated her slightly, his hand on her shoulder.
"Shh, I'm here. You're safe. Now listen to me, Lori. We need to move fast."
His voice was authoritative, yet tender. He began giving her orders with a subtle urgency.
"Go upstairs. You need to pack the bare essentials. Just a carry-on bag, no big suitcases. Warm clothes, medicine. We need to get out of here. Now."
While Lori nodded, with the expression of someone who finally has an adult in charge, a noise was heard on the stairs. Carl, wearing his favorite superhero t-shirt, was running down, his eyes wide with relief.
"Shane!" the boy yelled, and ran to hug his father's friend.
Shane felt the innocent weight of the child and hugged him tightly. It was for the two of them. His mission. His self-imposed responsibility.
"Hey, kid. What's up? We're taking a trip. Quick, we gotta go."
Lori, with newfound determination, was already heading up the stairs.
"I'll get the bags, Shane."
Carl, not understanding the seriousness of the moment, asked with a nervous voice.
"Is Dad coming with us? Should we wait for him?"
Carl's question was like a cold punch.
Rick.
The truth crashed against Shane's facade. He wasn't going to look for Rick. He wasn't going to the hospital—which, according to the officer's news, was a pit of infection and chaos. It was dangerous. And, more importantly, Rick was an obstacle to the family he was about to build.
Shane tensed. His mind raced, creating a clean, unassailable excuse that honored Rick's image while simultaneously erasing him from the board.
He knelt down to Carl's level, looking him directly in the eyes.
"Sure, Carl. Of course," Shane said with a forced calm, a false but reassuring smile. "But we have to leave first. Your dad... he's helping a lot of people in the city. He'll catch up with us later, on the road."
He gave him a loving pat on the shoulder.
"Besides, you know very well your dad's the best cop in the city, right? He can protect himself, Carl. He's awesome."
Carl nodded with total innocence, illuminated by pride.
"Yeah, Dad's awesome."
Shane felt a pang of guilt that he quickly buried under a layer of resentment.
Yeah, real awesome, and that's why he's not here protecting his family.
The thought was the engine of his decision. Rick had put himself in danger; Rick had abandoned his primary duty.
It's not my fault. I'm saving what he left behind.
Shane entered the house behind Carl, his uniform and service weapon creating a grim contrast to the cozy living room. While Lori rushed upstairs and Carl scurried to gather his favorite toys in a backpack, Shane's mind was already working on the next stage of his lie: what to tell Lori when Rick didn't show up.
He would protect them. And that was all that mattered. The law, Rick, protocol: it was all ash. Only Lori and Carl remained, and his only mission was to be the man they needed. The one who had stayed.
.
----
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[A/N: CHAPTER COMPLETED
Hello everyone
A new chapter, I didn't go anywhere, haha.
Here we have a chapter about Shane again. For those who don't remember, he appeared in chapter 62, I think.
By the way, the chapter and Shane's behavior are consistent with what he shows in the series, including some of the flashbacks he himself shows.
On another note, if you want to see a chapter about Rick, let me know soon, because the next chapter is from another section of the novel, and then I'll be back with Alex, so we have at least a week to let me know.
SMALL WARNING: The next chapter will contain R-18 scenes of cruelty, gore, and abuse. So you might want to come back for the next chapter.
---
Read my other novels
#Vinland Kingdom: Race Against Time (Chapter 123)
#The Walking Dead: Emily's Metamorphosis (Chapter 34) (INTERMITTENT)
#The Walking Dead: Patient 0 - Lyra File (Chapter 12) (INTERMITTENT)
You can find them on my profile.]