I waited until the camp had gone quiet and Jim was alone by the water. He didn't look surprised to see me.
"You know," he said.
"I know."
He pulled back his sleeve. The bite was clean, small, and already angry. "I was digging. I never saw it."
I sat beside him on the log. For a while we just listened to the water. I had checked the store three times that afternoon, scrolling through every medical item the system sold: antibiotics, surgical kits, field dressing, even a few things I couldn't pronounce. Nothing listed a cure. The system didn't have one, and it told me so, in plain text.
No item in the store can reverse infection.
I had been so sure that the store would fix everything. That was the first limit I'd hit, and it hit hard.
"Is there anything I can do?" I asked. "Anything."
Jim shook his head. "You've already done more than anyone. You got us walls, a fence, a night where most of us lived. I'd like to see the end of this, but I can't." He paused. "I don't want to turn in the camp."
"You won't."
"Will you tell them?"
I thought about it. "Rick, Dale, and Rose. No one else. That's your call, though."
Jim nodded slowly. "Rick. And Dale."
We told them in the morning, behind the RV. Rick took it hard. He said nothing for a minute, then crouched in front of Jim and put a hand on his shoulder, and I understood why this man would lead us.
"What do you want to do?" Rick asked.
"I want to see them go," Jim said. "Whatever's next. I just don't want to be in the way when it happens."
I spent the rest of that day doing what I could, which wasn't much. I gave Jim a handgun with ten bullets from my inventory, and a canteen. I gave Dale a chart of the road to Atlanta. I paid for a ration of the best food in the store, because it was the one thing the system could do. Jim sat with the squad for a few hours, and the dogs rested their heads on his knees as if they knew.
That night, with the whole camp asleep, I told Rick I needed to talk to him alone.
Chapter 16
Truth by the Fire
Rick sat across from me with the embers between us. I had rehearsed this in my head a dozen times, and every version sounded insane.
"I'm not from here," I said.
He waited.
"I died in another world. God gave me three wishes and sent me here, to your world. In mine, this was a TV show. I know your name, your family, your friends, and what happens to them. I know what happened to the thieves Shane chased the day you were shot." I took a breath. "I know how this ends if I do nothing."
Rick's face didn't move. "That's a very strange story."
"I know."
"Do you have any proof?"
I had thought about this. "One thing. The system lets me show a screen to one person, once, for thirty seconds. It costs five coins." I tapped the confirm button. "Look in front of you."
A blue window appeared in the air, visible only to Rick. He flinched, then read it in silence: my stats, the skills list, the wallet, the pack, even the quest log.
When the thirty seconds were over, he sat back. "Okay," he said at last, very quietly. "Okay."
"You believe me?"
"I believe you believe it. And I believe what I saw." He stared into the fire. "Why tell me?"
"Because I've been making decisions for this whole camp and I'm not the leader. You are. You deserve to know why I do what I do. And because there's something coming that I can't fight alone."
I told him about the CDC. I told him that everyone was infected, whether they'd been bitten or not, and that when you died, you came back. I told him the people at the CDC were trying to find a cure and failed, and that the building was going to burn.
"So there's no point going," Rick said.
"There's a point," I said. "Jenner knows things nobody else does, and Jacqui and Dale are going to want answers. If we skip it, we'll spend months wondering. If we go, I can get everyone out."
Rick looked at me for a long time. "Everyone?"
"Everyone who wants to come."
He nodded. "Then we go."
The next morning, Shane argued with Rick in front of the whole camp. He wanted to stay at the quarry. He said Atlanta was a death trap and that the CDC wouldn't be any different. But Dale, Andrea, and Jacqui all wanted to go, and most of the camp followed. The vote was close, but Rick's word carried it.
Shane stared at Rick for a long moment. Then he looked at me.
"This is your doing, isn't it, kid?"
"It's the group's decision," I said.
"Sure it is." He walked away.
I watched him go, and I had a bad feeling that Shane's story wasn't done with me yet.
Before we left, I left Walt and his builders at the quarry with the van and a week of supplies, and told them to meet us on the highway north if the CDC didn't pan out. I closed the system menu, and a notice blinked in the corner.
Quarry Camp: upkeep 5 rations per day. Fed.
I had a territory, a plan, and a secret I'd just told the one person who needed it. For the first time since I'd arrived, I felt like I was building something real.
The Road to Atlanta
We left at dawn. Dale's RV led with Rick's jeep behind it, and Morgan's van brought up the rear. Jim rode in the RV with Dale, Lori, and Carl, and he didn't say much. He just looked out the window as if memorizing it.
He lasted until the first rest stop.
When the RV pulled over, Jim stepped outside, walked a hundred yards to a tree, and sat down against the trunk. I followed him with the dogs.
"I'll stay here," he said.
"Jim."
"I won't turn near anyone. I've got the gun and your water. Please. Let me do this."
Rick came up behind me. For a moment, the three of us stood there, none of us wanting to be the one to say it. Then Rick crouched down and shook Jim's hand.
"Thank you," he said.
I took a ration from my inventory, a good one, and set it next to Jim along with the canteen. "See you on the other side," I said, and then felt stupid for it. Jim smiled anyway.
We left him there under the tree. I looked back once, and he waved.
The rest of the drive was almost quiet. The RV broke down twice. The first time, I fixed it with Building skill and a gasket from an abandoned truck, and the second time, Merle took the engine apart, grumbled the whole time, and put it back together in fifteen minutes. I stared at him.
"What? I was a mechanic," he said.
"I thought you were a drug dealer."
"I was a mechanic who sold drugs. Hand me that wrench."
Glenn laughed so hard he fell off the bumper. Daryl, who had been walking beside the RV, almost smiled. For the first time since the roof, I thought Merle might survive after all.
We reached the outskirts of Atlanta in the late afternoon. This time the walkers were out, hundreds of them, ambling through the streets like they had somewhere to be. I counted the dead on the way and thought about the wallet: 494 coins before today, and every one of these was another coin if I wanted it. But I couldn't kill hundreds with a family in the back of an RV.
We took a side road, and I stood on the jeep's roof with my rifle, picking off the ones that came too close. Each shot was another coin and another second the group stayed alive. By the time we reached the CDC's front gate, my wallet read 531.
The building loomed ahead, huge and silent, its front doors sealed.
"That's it," Rick said, stepping out. "That's where we're going."
I looked up at the camera over the door and felt the clock start in my head. Every story I knew said this was where the trouble began, and for once, I knew how to use that.