Lucien pushed the skateboard forward. The wheels rattled over asphalt as he wove between two abandoned cars.
He was running through the timeline in his head, trying to remember exactly how this part went.
Rick and Merle would've had their confrontation by now. Rick would've handcuffed him to that pipe on the rooftop after Merle pulled his racist bullshit and nearly got everyone killed. That part was done.
Next would come the consequences.
Merle's gunshots would draw walkers to the department store. The glass doors wouldn't hold. Glenn would suggest the sewers, but that route was a dead end, literally blocked off.
So Rick would come up with the walker disguise plan. Guts and blood smeared all over, making them smell like the dead. It was brilliant in its simplicity and disgusting in execution. The proto-Whisperer strategy, years before anyone else thought of it.
Lucien ducked under a fallen street sign, his backpack bouncing against his spine.
In the show, Rick and Glenn had almost pulled it off. They'd walked right through the horde, brazen as you please, and the walkers hadn't noticed. They would've made it to the trucks, driven back for the others, and gotten everyone out.
Except for the rain.
That's what had fucked them. A sudden downpour washing away the walker blood, destroying their disguise in the middle of the horde. They'd had to run for it, Glenn in a sports car, drawing most of the dead away, Rick in the truck going back for the group.
Everyone escaped.
Well. Almost everyone.
Rick had given the handcuff key to T-Dog before they left. During the chaos of the escape, T-Dog dropped it and watched it slip into a sewer grate. Merle had been left behind, locked to that pipe with walkers breaking through the door, nothing but a hacksaw for company.
In the show, he'd cut off his own hand to survive. He sawed through bone, tendon, and nerves, then cauterized the stump with a piece of heated metal. It was one of the most brutal things Lucien had ever seen on television, and that was saying something.
He glanced up at the sky.
Still clear, no sign of rain yet.
His original plan had been to arrive before the group left the rooftop. He would get the key from T-Dog somehow and free Merle himself. The more dramatic alternative was to show up after everyone had abandoned Merle and play the hero at the last possible second. That would have earned maximum gratitude. Merle would have been desperate, convinced he was going to die, and then Lucien would appear like an angel. That kind of timing created loyalty that went deep.
But it was also insanely dangerous for both. One minute too late and Merle would be dead or turned. Or in the process of cutting off his own hand, which... yeah. Lucien wasn't eager to deal with that level of trauma.
So he had planned for the safer option. He would get there early, be useful, and save the day without quite so much blood and screaming. Except he'd misjudged his own stamina, and now he was running late, and...
Thunder rumbled overhead.
His head snapped up.
The sky had gone dark. The temperature dropped so fast he could feel it.
"No, no, no..."
The first drops hit. They were fat and heavy, splattering against his face and arms. Within seconds, it became a downpour. Rain fell in sheets and turned the world into a blur.
Lucien pushed harder, his feet slipping on the wet skateboard. The rain washed away his sweat and soaked into his clothes, leaving him cold.
And if it was raining here...
"Shit!"
He abandoned caution, using the Levitation Charm to keep his balance as he picked up speed. The skateboard flew over puddles and debris, wheels barely touching ground.
He had to get there...
Lightning split the sky. The thunder that followed was instant.
He nearly fell off the skateboard.
Another bolt. This one struck somewhere to his left, hitting a building with enough force that he heard glass shattering even through the rain and thunder.
The show had mentioned rain, but not a storm that felt like the end of the world, with lightning striking every few seconds like artillery fire.
But he couldn't stop. He just pushed forward.
---
Rick had experienced fear before.
Fear had followed him from the moment he woke up in that hospital. It was there when he realized the world had ended while he lay in a coma. And it tightened into something worse when he thought about Lori and Carl, not knowing if they were alive or dead.
But this was a different kind of terror.
The rain had started so suddenly. One second they were halfway to the truck, moving slow and careful, and the next it was pouring, washing the gore from their clothes and skin.
He felt it happening. The disguise was failing. The smell of the dead faded, replaced by the scent of living, breathing humans.
The walkers noticed.
They started turning, slowly at first and clearly confused. Then they moved faster.
"We're exposed," Glenn whispered. "Rick, they know..."
A walker stepped toward them.
Rick didn't think. He swung the fire axe, putting every ounce of strength into it, and felt the blade crunch through skull and brain. The walker dropped.
"RUN!"
He grabbed Glenn's arm and they bolted, abandoning stealth for speed. The horde erupted around them.
The truck was still twenty yards away.
Lightning struck.
The bolt hit somewhere behind them, so close Rick felt the heat. Thunder followed like a bomb going off, and for just a second, every walker in the area froze.
"GO!"
They ran. Rick's boots slipped on wet pavement but he kept his feet, half-dragging Glenn toward the truck. Walkers were already unfreezing, starting to move again, reaching for them.
Glenn hit the passenger door first, and wrenched it open. Rick dove into the driver's seat, hands fumbling for keys he'd left in the ignition because he'd known they might need to leave fast.
The engine turned over, caught, and roared to life.
Walkers slammed against the truck. Rick threw it in gear and stomped the gas, and they lurched forward, running down anything that didn't get out of the way fast enough.
---
Lucien arrived at the department store just in time to see the tail end of it all.
The red sports car was already a blur in the distance. The truck roared past going the opposite direction, loaded with people he recognized from the show.
The entrance to the store was completely blocked. Walkers packed so tight they could barely move, all pushing and shoving, trying to get inside where the noise and movement had been.
His heart sank.
He was too late.
The group was gone. Merle was still up there...
Lightning struck.
It didn't hit a building or the street. It hit the walkers.
The ones directly in front of him, the thickest part of the horde, took the strike dead-on. Electricity arced through them, chain-lightning jumping from body to body, and they went down. The smell of burning flesh rolled over him.
The walkers that hadn't been fried scattered, confused by the sound and light, stumbling away from the blackened corpses of their fellows.
And there, right in front of him, was a gap.
He stared.
That... that shouldn't have happened. Lightning didn't target specific spots with that kind of precision. But he couldn't think about that now. The gap wouldn't last forever.
He pushed off on his skateboard and shot through the opening before his brain could catch up with how insane this was.
The department store's interior was dark. A few walkers shambled between overturned clothing racks and shattered displays, but nothing he couldn't avoid. He spotted a stairwell marked FIRE EXIT and made for it, abandoning the skateboard by the door.
His legs screamed as he started climbing. His magic reserves were dangerously low, his body was past exhausted, and every step felt like wading through concrete.
But he kept going.
From above, he could hear a voice.
Merle.
He pushed harder, taking stairs two at a time despite the way his muscles threatened to give out. The voice got clearer.
"... gonna die like this, you understand me? Not chained to a fuckin' pipe like some goddamn—"
Lucien hit the rooftop door and shoved it open.
The rain had stopped. The sky was still dark, but no more water was falling. On the far side of the rooftop, a door rattled in its frame. And in front of him, maybe twenty feet away, Merle knelt on wet concrete with his arm stretched out to the pipe he was handcuffed to.
He had a hacksaw.
Blood pooled beneath his wrist. Merle's other hand gripped the saw, moving it back and forth.
His face was pale.
"Stop!" Lucien shouted.
Merle's hand froze mid-stroke.
He looked up slowly, like his neck muscles weren't working quite right. His eyes struggled to focus, squinting through blood loss and pain and what had to be the beginning of shock.
"The fuck..." His voice was hoarse. "Where'd you... when did..."
He trailed off, staring at Lucien as if he couldn't quite process what he was seeing. It was a kid with a backpack, standing on a rooftop that should have been impossible to reach, in a building surrounded by walkers.
"Am I dead? This what dyin' looks like? Some kid shows up and..."
"You're not dead," Lucien said, already moving. He dropped to his knees beside Merle, pulling his backpack around. "But you will be if you keep that up."
His hands found the medical supplies he'd packed. There was gauze and alcohol. It wasn't enough for this, not nearly enough, but it would have to do.
Merle just watched him, eyes half-lidded, the hacksaw still loose in his grip. "This ain't real. Can't be real. Lost too much blood, started seein' things..."
"It's real." Lucien grabbed the saw and pulled it away, tossing it across the rooftop where Merle couldn't reach it. "And your wound needs treatment. Now shut up and let me work."
He uncapped the alcohol and dumped it directly into the cut.
Merle's back arched, a scream tearing out of his throat that was probably loud enough to reach the street. His free hand clamped onto Lucien's shoulder hard enough to bruise, but Lucien didn't pull away.
"Fuck! Jesus Christ! Fuckin'—"
"I know!" Lucien pressed gauze against the wound, trying to staunch the bleeding. It immediately soaked through. He added more, wrapping it as tight as he could. "I know it hurts, but you need to stay with me. You understand? Don't pass out."
The pain had shocked Merle back to something like awareness. His eyes were clearer now, focused on Lucien's face.
"Who the hell are you? How'd you... there's no way... the whole building's..."
"Surrounded by walkers, yeah. I noticed." Lucien tied off the bandage and sat back, checking his work. It wasn't great, but it would hold. Long enough to matter, anyway. "Lucky for you, I'm stupidly stubborn."
Merle looked at him.
"You real?" he asked quietly. "You gotta be real. Hallucinations don't... don't hurt like that."
"I'm real." Lucien met his eyes. "And you're not dying today."
The words seemed to hit Merle harder than the alcohol had. Something shifted in his expression.
He had been ready to die. He had accepted it. And he had made his peace with sawing off his own hand if that was what it took to maybe survive.
Then a kid had appeared out of nowhere and told him he was going to live.