Merle woke up to the smell of death in his face.
Not the general stink of the apocalypse. He'd grown used to that. This was the heavy, sour rot of flesh that had been dead for days, baking under the sun and stewing in its own decay.
His eyes snapped open.
A face filled his vision. Skin like wet leather left out to rot, stretched tight over a skull. Patches were missing where the flesh had simply given up. Empty eye sockets, once home to eyes, now crawled with fat white maggots.
One of them wriggled free, dropped, and landed on his cheek.
"FUCK!"
The scream left his throat before thought had a chance to follow. Panic took over. He shoved at the corpse with both hands. The body rolled off him.
He scrambled backward until his shoulders hit the wall, his heart trying to burst through his chest. His breathing broke into ragged, noisy gasps.
Then he noticed the other two.
One lay to his left, another to his right. Each was as dead and as rotten as the other. They looked as though someone had arranged a corpse buffet around him while he slept.
"What the fuck?!"
He kicked out instinctively, his boot connecting with the nearest walker body and sending it sliding across the rooftop. Then the other one, just to make goddamn sure it wasn't about to lunge at him.
But they didn't move. They were dead-dead, not walker-dead.
His breathing started to slow as the panic faded and his brain came back online. The memories from before he'd blacked out filtered back in fragments.
The kid.
Those throwing knives that had appeared out of nowhere, spinning through the air. The walker horde. His hand...
He looked down at his left wrist.
It was bandaged. Neat white gauze wrapped around the spot where the cuff had been. The bleeding had stopped. The pain was still there, but it was only a dull throb now, instead of the screaming agony he remembered.
He flexed his fingers.
"I'll be damned."
His eyes found the kid.
The boy was curled up against the far wall, maybe ten feet away, still as death. His face was pale, not just pale but bloodless, as if every drop had been drained from him. Dark circles beneath his eyes made him look like a corpse himself. But his chest was moving.
Merle pushed himself to his feet. Everything hurt. His back felt like someone had been using it as a punching bag, his legs were stiff, and his head was pounding like he had the worst hangover of his life.
He stumbled toward the rooftop access door and shoved it open.
The sky outside was painted in shades of orange and red. It was sunset. Which meant he'd been out for... six hours?
He stepped out onto the rooftop, away from the overhang where he and the kid had been sheltering, and looked down at the street.
The walker horde that had been packed around the building was mostly gone. Scattered groups shambled through the streets below, but nothing like the concentrated mass from before. The gunfire must've drawn them off to other parts of the city.
But there were more of them overall. Every street he could see had walkers on it, and as the light faded they were getting more active.
Night was coming.
Leaving now would be stupid. Even with the horde dispersed, trying to navigate Atlanta in the dark with a half-dead kid would be suicide.
He made his decision and went back inside.
He needed to figure out what the hell the kid had done while he was unconscious. And why he was still alive when by all rights he should be walker chow.
First thing: his hand.
He unwrapped the bandage, hissing through his teeth when the gauze stuck to dried blood. The wound underneath looked better than it had any right to. The edges were clean, like someone had taken the time to wash it out properly. More than that, it didn't look infected, not that he was a doctor.
"Kid knows first aid. Fancy that."
His gaze drifted back to the walker corpses piled near where he'd been lying. Then to the boy's face.
It clicked together slowly.
The kid had found him unconscious. With walkers still in the building, there was no way the kid could fight them all off or drag him somewhere safer.
So he'd improvised.
He piled the corpses on top of a living man, using the stink of the dead to mask the smell of the living. It was crude. It was disgusting. But in a twisted way, it made sense.
"Smart little shit," he muttered. "Kid's got bigger balls than half the grown men I know."
He was about to check on the boy when he heard a faint beeping sound, drifting up from somewhere below.
Every nerve in his body went on alert.
He grabbed the fire axe the kid had left leaning against the wall, hell of a weapon for such a young boy to be hauling around, and moved toward the stairs.
He followed the beeping down one level, then another, until he reached a floor with most of its windows blown out. The sound was louder here, coming from outside.
He crept to the edge of the shattered window frame and looked down.
What he saw made him stop dead.
Hanging from a makeshift rig was an alarm clock. A pipe and a length of curtain had been tied together to suspend it, the little bastard beeping away happily. It dangled maybe two feet above the ground, just outside a lower-level window.
And the walkers were losing their minds over it.
They shambled toward the sound, crowding around the window opening. One by one, they reached for the clock, lost their balance on the broken glass, and tumbled through the gap.
He watched another walker pitch through the window. It hit the growing pile of broken bodies below and didn't get up.
"I'll be goddamned."
There weren't many living people left in this building. Hell, there probably weren't many living people left period. Which meant the kid had set this up.
While he had been passed out.
"Son of a bitch."
He set the axe down and scrubbed both hands over his face. Or tried to, before the pain in his left hand reminded him why that was a bad idea.
The kid's "crooked ideas," as Merle's ma might've said, were actually pretty damn impressive.
He leaned against the wall and watched the walker suicide show for another minute. A few hours ago, he'd felt untouchable. He'd survived being left to die by that pansy-ass cop. He'd told himself he didn't need anyone.
Now it turned out he was the one who needed saving.
"Fuck," he muttered.
One thing was clear: the kid had saved his life. Which meant they were on the same team now, whether he liked it or not.
And that meant he owed the little shit.
He didn't like owing people. But he paid his debts. Worst case, he'd just have to look out for the kid from now on. Maybe teach him how to shoot straight. He could do that.
The alarm clock finally ran out of battery. The beeping stopped, and the last few walkers stumbled through the window in silence.
He watched them fall, then turned and headed back upstairs.
The kid was still out cold when he got back. He grabbed the walker corpses, and piled them back around the boy. If more walkers showed up during the night, the camouflage might buy them time.
Then he settled in to wait for morning.
---
The next day started with Lucien feeling like he'd been run over by a lorry. His head was pounding.
He cracked his eyes open.
The world was moving backward. Buildings slid past. Overturned cars followed. A walker staggered briefly into view before slipping out of sight again. Everything was rushing by fast enough to tell him one thing.
Someone was running. And he was being carried.
"Where..." His voice came out as a croak. "Where are we?"
"Well, well!" The voice above him was rough. "Sleeping Beauty's finally awake. Was startin' to think you'd kicked it."
That was Merle's voice.
Lucien's hand shot to his back, patting frantically until he felt the familiar weight of his backpack still strapped on. He let out a breath.
That's when his brain registered the rest of the situation. He was draped over Merle's shoulders.
"Put me down. I can walk."
"Don't be a pain in the ass, kid." Merle didn't slow down. "You just stay put."
"I'm going to be sick."
That wasn't a lie. The combination of magical exhaustion, dehydration, and being jostled around like luggage was doing terrible things to his insides. His stomach was churning, and he could taste bile at the back of his throat.
"Then why the hell didn't you say so earlier?!"
Merle came to a stop, setting Lucien down with less gentleness than was probably necessary. Lucien's legs nearly gave out when his feet hit the ground, but he managed to catch himself against the nearest wall.
He dry-heaved. Nothing came up. His stomach was empty, but his body seemed eager to try anyway.
While he was bent over trying not to vomit, his hands found his backpack again. He pulled it around to his front and started checking through it. Spellbooks, wand case, cloak... Everything was intact.
Relief flooded through him so strongly it made him dizzy.
Merle was watching him. "You done inventory?"
Lucien nodded.
"Good. 'Cause nobody wants your damn fairy-tale books anyway." Merle patted the empty pistol holstered at his waist. "These days, this is what matters. Metal and bullets. Everything else is just dead weight."
The dismissal stung more than it should have. Those books were the only connection he had to magic. They were...
"They were my parents'," Lucien said quietly.
Merle's cocky grin froze.
For a moment, the big man just stood there, looking like he'd been slapped. Whatever smartass comment he'd been about to make died unspoken.
"Yeah," he finally said. "Yeah, alright. That's fair."
Silence.
Lucien used the moment to dig through his bag for the medicine he knew was there. His fingers closed around the box of paracetamol, or acetaminophen, as the Americans called it. He pulled it out along with a water bottle.
His hands were shaking as he tried to open the box. The magical exhaustion hadn't worn off yet. He felt weak.
He managed to get two pills out and popped them in his mouth, then unscrewed the water bottle.
The nausea hit him again the moment the water touched his tongue. His stomach rebelled, and he gagged, the pills threatening to come back up before he'd even swallowed them.
"Hey! You sick or somethin'? Don't you die on me now, kid!"
Lucien tried to swallow. He failed. He tried again, but the pills were stuck halfway down his throat, and his stomach was doing its level best to reject them.
As he was about to spit them out, Merle's hand clamped over his mouth.
"That shit's valuable," Merle growled, using his other hand to tilt Lucien's head back. "You swallow it down, you hear me?"
Lucien's eyes went wide. He tried to shake his head, but Merle's grip was iron.
"Swallow!"
He didn't have a choice. The angle of his head and the pressure of Merle's hand forced the pills and water down his throat in one gulp.
Merle kept his hand there for another few seconds, making sure the medicine stayed down, before finally letting go.
Lucien coughed and gasped, his throat burning.
"You're welcome," Merle said, completely unapologetic.
Before Lucien could respond, a voice came from somewhere behind them.
"Hey! Asshole! Let go of that kid."