Chapter 13: Adaptation
The woods north of Atlanta had become Jake's classroom, and Daryl Dixon was the harshest teacher he'd ever encountered. Three days of training had left Jake's body aching and his ego bruised, but his understanding of his own abilities had deepened considerably.
"Again," Daryl said, pointing toward a walker that had wandered into their practice area—a construction worker whose hard hat had somehow survived whatever killed him. "But this time, don't try to make him dance. Just stop him."
Jake wiped blood from his nose with the back of his hand, a familiar gesture by now. His death sense had expanded to a twenty-foot range, but the strain of sustained use was still considerable. Each command sent needles of pain through his skull, each extended session left him nauseated and exhausted.
But he was getting stronger.
Jake reached out with his necromancy, feeling for the cold spark that animated dead neural tissue. The walker stopped mid-shamble, arms dropping to his sides like a marionette with severed strings. Jake held the command for twelve minutes—a new personal record—before the pressure behind his eyes became unbearable.
"Better," Daryl acknowledged, shouldering his crossbow. "But you're still pushing too hard. Use that power in a real fight, you'll drop like a stone and leave the rest of us to clean up your mess."
"So when do I use it?" Jake asked, accepting the canteen Daryl offered him. The water was warm and tasted faintly of rust, but it helped wash the copper taste of blood from his mouth.
"When you got no other choice. Walker's got you cornered, group's in trouble, situation's gone to hell." Daryl's pale eyes were serious, lacking their usual sardonic humor. "Powers are useful, but they ain't reliable. Body gives out, mind gets scrambled, you're worse than useless."
It was harsh but fair criticism. Jake had been thinking of his abilities as solutions to problems, but Daryl was right—they were tools with limitations, not magic wands that could fix everything.
"Knife's always gonna work," Daryl continued, pulling out his hunting blade. "Don't need concentration, don't give you headaches, don't make you puke blood all over yourself."
The lesson that followed was brutal in its simplicity. Daryl taught Jake how to kill walkers efficiently—where to strike, how to avoid grabbing hands, how to stay mobile when surrounded. It was ugly, practical knowledge that no medical textbook had ever covered.
But it might keep him alive.
"You're learning," Daryl said as they walked back toward the highway. "Still too much college boy, not enough survivor. But you're learning."
The backhanded compliment felt better than any grade Jake had ever received.
Carol found him that evening, sitting apart from the others while they shared dinner around a small campfire. She carried two portions of food, both from his pack, and settled beside him with the comfortable familiarity of someone who'd appointed herself his caretaker.
"You gonna tell me where this food really comes from?" she asked without preamble, holding up one of the impossible rations that had appeared in his pack that morning.
Jake nearly choked on his water. He'd been careful about the Survivor's Bounty, always making sure no one was watching when he distributed the daily rations. But Carol was observant, and she'd been watching him closely since the CDC.
"Would you believe magic?" Jake asked, aiming for lightness and failing completely.
Carol studied his face in the firelight, her eyes kind but knowing. "At this point? Maybe." She smiled, the expression transforming her worn features. "Your secret's safe with me, honey. Long as you keep feeding my girl."
The unspoken understanding that passed between them was worth more than gold. Carol knew he was hiding something significant, but she was willing to let it slide as long as it benefited the group. It was pragmatic trust, the kind that might actually last in a world where idealism got you killed.
"Thank you," Jake said quietly.
"Nothing to thank me for. We all got secrets now." Carol's voice carried the weight of her own hidden depths. "Question is whether they help us or hurt us."
Jake thought about his speech block, his foreknowledge, the terrible burden of knowing tragedies he couldn't prevent. "Sometimes I'm not sure there's a difference."
Carol squeezed his shoulder. "Then I guess we just do our best and hope it's enough."
Simple words, but they carried more comfort than any philosophical treatise Jake had ever read. Sometimes survival came down to basic human kindness, one small gesture at a time.
"Can you teach me?"
Carl's voice was barely above a whisper, but it cut through Jake's concentration like a blade. The boy had approached while Jake was practicing his alchemy on discarded car parts, transmuting rust into clean metal with patient focus.
"Teach you what, buddy?"
"To do what you do. The... the power thing." Carl's eyes were bright with curiosity rather than fear. Children adapted to impossibility faster than adults, accepting the supernatural as just another part of their strange new world.
Jake's heart clenched. In the original timeline, Carl would grow up hard and fast, forced to make impossible choices that would scar him in ways that never fully healed. Looking at him now—still young, still hopeful—Jake wanted desperately to preserve that innocence.
"I don't think it works like that, buddy," Jake said gently. "It's not something I can teach."
Carl's face fell, but only for a moment. "Then teach me other stuff. Survival stuff. How to track, how to fight, how to stay alive."
The request hit Jake harder than any walker's grasp. Here was a ten-year-old boy asking to be taught how to kill, how to survive in a world that wanted to devour him. It was wrong on every possible level, but it was also necessary.
"This is what the world has become. Children asking for lessons in violence because the alternative is death. And I'm going to say yes because keeping him alive matters more than keeping him innocent."
"Okay," Jake said finally. "But we start with the basics. Tracking, observation, staying quiet. The dangerous stuff comes later, when you're older."
Carl's grin was radiant. "When do we start?"
"Tomorrow morning. But this stays between us for now, alright? Your mom might not understand."
As if summoned by the mention of her name, Lori appeared at the edge of their conversation. Her face was carefully neutral, but Jake could see the tension in her posture. Another capable man taking interest in her son, offering to teach him skills she couldn't provide.
"Carl, time for bed," she said, her voice carrying the authority of maternal concern.
"But Mom—"
"Now, Carl."
The boy trudged away with the exaggerated suffering of a child whose fun has been interrupted. Lori watched him go, then turned to Jake with an expression that was equal parts gratitude and wariness.
"He looks up to you," she said simply.
"He's a good kid. Smart, brave."
"Too brave, sometimes." Lori's voice carried the bone-deep worry of a mother in an impossible situation. "This world... it's going to change him. Make him harder than any child should have to be."
Jake thought about the Carl he remembered from the show—the boy who would kill his own mother to prevent her reanimation, who would grow up shooting first and asking questions later. The transformation had been necessary for survival, but it had cost him something essential.
"Maybe," Jake said carefully. "But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Being hard doesn't mean being cruel. Being strong doesn't mean being heartless."
Lori studied him in the flickering firelight. "You sound like you're speaking from experience."
"We all are now. Experience in losing things we never thought we'd have to give up."
She nodded slowly, understanding passing between them. In the old world, mothers worried about grades and peer pressure and whether their children were eating enough vegetables. Now they worried about teaching them to kill without losing their souls in the process.
"Just... be careful with him," Lori said finally. "He's still my little boy, no matter how grown-up he thinks he is."
"I will," Jake promised, and meant it completely.
As the camp settled in for the night, Jake lay in his sleeping bag and stared at the stars. Tomorrow would bring new challenges, new opportunities to help or fail. But tonight, surrounded by people who trusted him despite his secrets, he felt something that might have been peace.
It wouldn't last. In this world, peace was always temporary, always balanced on the knife's edge of the next crisis. But for now, it was enough.
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