001 - Ward Off Death
Dizziness.
A hard, violent wave of it.
Evan Ward's mind swam so badly he nearly threw up whatever he had eaten the night before. The figures around him had blurred into smears of shape and shadow.
A constant ringing drilled into his ears.
He pressed a hand hard against his chest and realized he was trapped inside a cramped metal compartment, the air so stale he could barely draw a full breath.
He forced himself upright, lowered his head, and shook it once. The dizziness slowly began to fade.
When he opened his eyes, the doubled world in front of him slid back into one.
Then he raised both hands.
"Officer, what exactly am I being arrested for?"
He stared at the black muzzle almost touching his nose and pulled his head back.
The man in front of him wore a sheriff's deputy uniform, damp and grimy, with a gold star pinned to his chest. In his hand was a .357 Colt Python revolver, a weapon that looked heavy enough to hurt before it ever fired.
The acrid smell of burnt powder still clung to the barrel.
"Deputy," the man corrected him.
The deputy, crouched in front of him, let out a small breath when he heard a normal human voice, but he only shifted the muzzle aside. He did not lower the gun completely.
The father and son he had met the day before had taught him to be careful around the living.
Leaning back against the steel wall, the man lifted his chin slightly.
"Rick. Rick Grimes." His eyes stayed locked on Evan. "What happened to the Army?"
Rick's uniform was soaked through in places. His finger, resting near the Colt's trigger, twitched, though his gaze remained steady.
Only then did Evan notice the dead soldier lying not far from Rick.
A large-caliber round had blown through the soldier's jaw and punched upward through his head. Blackened blood seeped from the wound.
But the wound was not the part that froze him.
The corpse's skin was gray-black and cracked like old leather. The muscle tissue had gone necrotic. The eye sockets were hollow.
None of it looked like an ordinary dead body.
Evan's pupils widened. His lips parted, and the word slipped out before he could stop it.
"Walkers?"
His voice came out sharper than he intended. He cleared his throat and forced himself back under control.
He was starting to understand exactly where he was.
Before Rick could ask anything else, Evan shot to his feet, grabbed the tank's upper hatch, and yanked it down.
The hatch clamped down on a pale arm reaching through the opening. The fingers had been inches from his skin, and the reek of rot hit his nose like spoiled meat left in the sun.
He was almost certain one swipe from those fingers could have torn his skin open.
Acting on instinct, he threw all his strength into the hatch.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
Cartilage snapped with a brittle crunch, like bone under a cleaver. Flesh clung wetly to bone as the arm tore loose, and a chill ran through him.
He gritted his teeth and forced the hatch the rest of the way shut.
Thud.
The severed arm dropped between his boots, twitching twice as black blood smeared the floor.
The whole thing had taken less than ten seconds.
A thin sheen of sweat had formed on his forehead.
"My name's Evan Ward," he said, looking back at Rick. "And I think I know why you look like hell."
For a moment, too many feelings hit him at once.
Before this, he had been ordinary.
He had graduated into a dead job market, the kind that could kill a career before it even started. To keep his family from worrying and to keep himself fed, he had taken the work he could find.
A slaughterhouse.
Knives, blood, stunned livestock, carcasses hanging from hooks. That had become his world.
He had gone from a college graduate to a butcher who could run the whole line with his eyes half-closed: stunning, slaughtering, bleeding, cutting, and deboning. He had paid for every bit of skill with sweat and blisters. Even the head butcher at the plant had said he had talent.
He had finally saved enough to think about opening a shop of his own.
Then, without warning, he had woken up here.
He looked down at the combat uniform he was wearing, then at the sealed steel belly of the tank around him.
Going back was probably not on the table.
He exhaled and chose the lie that would keep him alive.
"I don't know," he said. "We got scattered. When I woke up, you were already here."
Rick gave a slight nod. His mouth tightened as if he wanted to ask more, but in the end, he swallowed the questions.
Silence settled between them.
Outside the tank's steel shell, the dead kept pounding.
Scrape. Drag. Scrape.
Static crackled from the radio.
Both men looked up almost at the same time.
Their eyes landed on the radio at the front of the tank.
Rick looked stunned.
Evan, who had only just steadied himself, felt something spark in his chest. Hope, thin but real.
He hurried forward and grabbed the receiver.
Rick moved beside him like a drowning man reaching for a rope.
"Hey, dumbass. Yeah, you in the tank. Cozy in there?"
A young voice crackled through the radio, carrying a trace of mockery.
At this point, neither of them cared.
Evan pressed the receiver to his mouth and asked, "Are there still walkers outside the tank?"
Static scraped through the speaker.
"Finally, somebody answers. Man, you should see it from where I'm sitting. You'd piss yourself. But you're lucky. Most of them are busy with the horse. You can get out now."
'So my presence hasn't changed the story too much.'
He let out a quiet breath.
Rick leaned in at once. "Our weapons and ammo are in a bag outside. Do we have a chance of getting them back?"
The radio hissed again.
"Forget the damn bag. Don't even think about it. Take whatever you've got and get out of there now."
The mockery vanished from the young man's voice, replaced by urgency. After giving them directions, he cut the transmission.
The two men looked at each other.
Then they moved.
From the dead soldier, they recovered one grenade, a military entrenching tool longer than Evan's forearm, and a Beretta pistol with fifteen rounds in the magazine.
Evan wore combat gear, but that did not make him a soldier. His experience with weapons had come from slaughterhouse blades, not firearms. Compared to a former sheriff's deputy like Rick, he was a complete amateur with a gun.
So he gripped the entrenching tool with both hands.
A bead of sweat slid down his temple.
He could hear his own heartbeat.
"Ready?" Rick asked, looking back.
Evan gave one hard nod.
Rick opened the upper hatch.
The hinge gave only the faintest creak, but it was enough to draw the attention of two or three walkers nearby.
Bang!
Rick fired the Beretta the moment a walker got too close.
The gunshot cracked down the street.
One walker tumbled off the tank. All around them, thousands of cloudy eyes turned toward the noise.
"Damn it. We need to move!" Rick growled, climbing out through the hatch.
Evan followed him out of the tank and swung the entrenching tool into a walker shuffling toward them.
Under his breath, he muttered, "Ward off death. Ward off the dead."
He tightened his grip and muttered, "You blind old bastard... you better not have lied to me."
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