"Someone help him! What's wrong with him?!"
The camp erupted into panic. People surged forward, nearly knocking each other over in the rush to see what was happening beneath the oak tree.
Dale was the first to reach him.
He dropped to his knees beside Jim and pressed two fingers to his neck, finding a weak pulse. He lifted Jim's eyelids one at a time, checking the pupils beneath.
"He's alive," he said. "Heatstroke and dehydration. He worked himself into a frenzy on top of it, and his body just shut down."
He sat back on his heels. "Get him into the RV. Out of this goddamn heat. Someone bring water. Cool, not cold. And get a wet cloth for his neck."
People moved. The ropes came off Jim's wrists and chest, leaving red marks in the skin beneath. Four men lifted him, cradling him between them like a stretcher, and carried him toward Dale's RV.
The camp exhaled.
But the exhale was shaky. Jim's words before he'd gone down were still rattling around in people's heads, and nobody quite knew what to do with them. A man standing in the sun for hours, babbling about dreams and holes and hope, it wasn't the kind of thing you could just file away and forget.
The kids had noticed.
They'd been playing near the lake when the commotion started. The shouting had drawn them back toward camp, and they'd drifted closer to the adults, watching with wide eyes as Jim was carried away.
Carl broke away from the group and jogged over to where Lori was standing with the other parents. He tugged at her sleeve, looking up at her with a furrowed brow.
"Mom? What did that man say? Before he fell down. What did it mean?"
Lori looked down at her son. She crouched, pulling Carl close.
"He had heatstroke. When people get too hot like that, their brains get confused. They say things that don't make sense." She tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. "It doesn't mean anything. You don't need to worry about it."
She didn't want Jim's rambling stuck in Carl's head. Kids remembered things like that. Turned them over and over in their minds until they became something bigger than they were.
"But—"
"Was he talking about Lucien?"
The question drew everyone's attention, and they turned toward the voice.
Duane stood a few feet back, his hands shoved into the pockets of his shorts. He was still new enough to the camp that a trace of shyness clung to him, the way he kept himself slightly apart from the others. His eyes, however, were sharp. Maybe too sharp for a kid his age. Then again, most kids around here had seen things that forced them to grow up fast.
"I heard him," he said, looking at Carl. "He said your dad would bring back hope. And your dad went back to Atlanta for Lucien, didn't he?"
"Lucien?" Morales had just finished helping carry Jim inside. He walked over, wiping the sweat from his face with his forearm. "Rick did go looking for him today, yeah. But what's that got to do with what Jim was saying?"
Shane stood off to one side, arms crossed. His mind was already running at full speed and coming up empty. Lori's conversation that morning was still sitting in his chest like a stone. Jim's breakdown had added another layer of shit on top of that. And now this, kids picking up on something the adults couldn't quite put together.
He wanted to shut it down, move on, and deal with the next problem.
"I think it's just a coincidence. Jim had heatstroke. He was talking nonsense."
"Let me tell the story."
Morgan stepped forward and drew Duane to his side. He looked around at the faces watching him, then took a steadying breath.
"I think Duane is just remembering something that happened to him. Something that involved Lucien. Duane got sick, and the fever wouldn't break. We tried everything we had, which wasn't much."
He shook his head slowly.
"We ran into Lucien at the hospital. He took care of Duane and even gave him his own antibiotics. By the next morning, Duane's fever was gone. He woke up like nothing had happened."
The camp fell silent. People exchanged glances, turning the story over in their minds as they tried to understand what it meant.
Shane's expression did not change, but his mind was already at work. He thought about the office building, about the kid with the crowbar smashing a walker's skull as if it were routine. He remembered the way Lucien had moved. The kid had survived things that should have killed him, and Shane had been there for part of it.
He did not doubt Morgan. Not for a second. Because he had been the first person to witness something about Lucien that did not quite add up.
"He sounds like a lucky charm," said a small voice from somewhere near the bottom of the group.
Sophia was sitting cross-legged on the ground, her doll tucked under one arm, looking up at the adults.
"A kind lucky charm," she added quietly.
Something shifted in the air. The heaviness that had settled over the camp all afternoon did not vanish, not completely, but it eased slightly.
Carl's face had grown more animated as Morgan told the story. Now he was nodding along eagerly.
"That's right!" he burst out. "Dad got out of the hospital because of Lucien. If it wasn't for him, he would've..."
He stopped, unwilling to finish the thought.
"Jim was right. Dad's going to bring him back. He's going to bring everyone back!"
It was the kind of thing that should have sounded naive, maybe even cheesy. But coming from Carl, from a kid who had already lost his father once and somehow gotten him back, it landed differently.
Morales slapped his knee, shaking his head with a laugh. "So Jim's a goddamn prophet now? First guy to have a vision since the world ended, and it happens right here in our camp."
People laughed. It felt good. It felt like breathing after being underwater for too long.
The mood had just started to settle into something approaching normal when Ed opened his mouth.
"What a load of crap."
He was sitting on a flat rock near the edge of the fire pit, one leg crossed over the other, jacket hanging off his thick frame. He had the look of a man who'd been waiting for exactly the right moment to ruin something.
"You people really believe this shit?" He looked at the group like they were children who'd just told him Santa Claus was real. "They might not even make it back alive. And here you all are, sitting around talking about hope like it's gonna save anybody."
The smiles vanished.
He had been in a foul mood all afternoon. Shane's warning earlier had left him simmering. He couldn't take it out on Carol right now, not with everyone watching. So he'd been waiting. And now here was his chance to take a bite out of something.
Lori's expression went cold. She straightened up, her eyes fixing on Ed.
"What did you just say?"
Ed had the good sense to look slightly uncomfortable under that stare, but not enough to back down. "I'm just saying what everyone's thinking. They might not—"
"Ed." Carol had appeared at the edge of the group, wringing her hands. "We should go. We should head back to our tent."
She moved toward him quickly, reaching for his arm. "Please, Ed. Let's just—"
Bang!
The slap cracked across the campsite like a gunshot.
Ed's hand connected with the side of Carol's face, snapping her head sideways. The force of it sent her stumbling, her knees buckling, and she hit the ground hard enough to raise a cloud of dust.
For a second, nobody moved.
Then Ed lifted his foot, clearly intending to follow up with a kick, and his eyes drifted sideways.
Shane was staring at him.
Ed's foot freeze in midair. After a moment, he lowered it slowly.
"Carol!" Lori was already moving, dropping to her knees beside the woman, hands reaching out to help her up. Carol's lip was split, blood beading bright against her skin.
"Mama!" Sophia came running, tears streaming down her face, and threw herself into Carol's arms the moment Lori got her sitting up. Carol wrapped around her daughter instinctively, one hand cradling the back of Sophia's head, her own tears falling silently into her daughter's hair.
The camp had gone to absolute zero. Every adult was staring at Ed. The anger in their faces was unified.
Ed shifted on his rock, suddenly very aware of how many people were looking at him. He opened his mouth to say something...
An engine broke the silence.
At first the sound was distant. Then it grew louder as a vehicle climbed the road toward the quarry entrance. Heads turned all at once, and hands reached instinctively for weapons.
Dale was already on the roof of the RV, binoculars pressed to his face as he scanned the road. A few seconds passed
Then his voice rang out, bright and loud enough to carry across the entire camp.
"It's Rick's truck! They're back!"