Chapter 20: The Barn - Part 1
The storm hit at two in the morning with the fury of nature unleashed, turning the peaceful Georgia night into a maelstrom of wind and rain and lightning that split the sky like fractures in reality itself. Jake lay in his borrowed bed, counting barn voids obsessively—sixteen now, growing every day—when the sound reached him.
Metal screeching against metal, the high-pitched shriek of structural failure echoing across the farmyard.
His sabotage had worked.
Jake was moving before his conscious mind fully processed what was happening, rolling out of bed and grabbing his clothes as the barn door collapsed with a crash that shook the farmhouse windows. Through the rain-lashed darkness, he could see shapes pouring out of the breach—sixteen walkers suddenly free after weeks of captivity, spreading into the storm like a plague given form.
"WALKERS!" Jake screamed, his voice cutting through the thunder as he sprinted toward the farmhouse. "BARN BREACH! EVERYONE UP!"
Chaos erupted across the farm. Lights blazed to life in windows, voices shouted questions and warnings, the sharp crack of gunfire began to punctuate the storm's roar. Jake reached the barn area just as Rick emerged from the farmhouse, Colt Python in hand, his face grim with the knowledge that their safe haven had just become a battlefield.
"How many?" Rick shouted over the wind.
"Sixteen!" Jake called back, his death sense painting the escaped walkers in stark detail despite the darkness and driving rain. "Spreading in all directions!"
The walkers were moving with the mindless persistence Jake remembered from his nightmares, some drawn toward the lights and sounds of human activity, others shambling into the storm with no apparent destination. In the chaos and limited visibility, they were almost impossible to track—except for Jake's supernatural awareness.
He reached for his necromancy desperately, extending his power to its maximum range. At twenty feet, he could sense eight of the escaped walkers clearly. The strain was immediate and brutal, like trying to lift weights with his mind, but he gritted his teeth and pushed harder.
"STOP! ALL OF YOU!"
The mental command erupted from him with all the force he could muster. Four of the eight walkers froze mid-shamble, their primitive nervous systems overwhelmed by his psychic intrusion. Blood exploded from his nose as the effort tore through his consciousness, but he held on with everything he had.
Twelve minutes. That was how long he could maintain control before the pain became unbearable. Twelve minutes for the group to kill the frozen walkers and deal with the others.
Gunfire blazed around him as Rick, Shane, Daryl, and the others moved with practiced efficiency. The frozen walkers died easily, unable to dodge or fight back while Jake's will held them in place. But the remaining walkers continued their spread, and Jake could feel his control beginning to slip.
Then he saw them—two figures in the distance, moving with the wrong kind of purpose.
Annette Greene. Hershel's wife, dead for months but kept alive in his delusion of hope. And Shawn, his stepson, both of them walkers that had been part of Hershel's tragic collection.
Jake's control shattered like glass, the psychic backlash slamming through his skull with enough force to drop him to his knees. The remaining walkers resumed their advance, and in the confusion of rain and darkness, Annette and Shawn stumbled directly into the path of Shane's shotgun.
The deputy didn't hesitate. Two blasts echoed across the farmyard, and Hershel's dead family collapsed into the mud, finally at rest.
Jake collapsed beside them, unconsciousness taking him like a black tide.
He woke to firelight and accusation, surrounded by faces that ranged from concerned to terrified to openly hostile. The storm had passed, leaving behind the clean smell of rain-washed air and the terrible clarity of morning.
Shane stood over him with his pistol drawn, the barrel pointed directly at Jake's chest. The deputy's face was a mask of rage and something that might have been fear.
"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU?!" Shane screamed, his voice cracking with strain.
Jake tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. The psychic backlash from his necromancy had left him feeling like his brain had been put through a blender. Every movement sent spikes of pain through his skull.
"I told you," Jake managed. "I can influence the dead. Control them, for a little while."
"Everyone saw," Rick said quietly, his own weapon holstered but his hand resting on the grip. "The way those walkers just... stopped. Stood there like statues while we killed them."
Hershel stood apart from the group, his face ravaged by grief and rage. The old veterinarian looked like he'd aged a decade in the space of a few hours.
"You broke my barn," Hershel said, his voice hollow with loss. "Killed my family. My wife. My son."
The accusation hit Jake harder than any physical blow. He'd known this was coming, had planned for it, but facing the reality of Hershel's pain was devastating.
"They were already dead," Jake said gently. "They were walkers, not people. You were keeping walkers in your barn."
"They were SICK!" Hershel exploded. "They could have been cured! You murdered them!"
Dale approached the barn's wreckage, kneeling to examine the collapsed hinges with his engineer's eye for detail. When he looked up, his expression was troubled.
"These were tampered with," he announced. "Deliberately weakened. The metal's been... changed somehow. Made brittle."
The implications hit the group like a physical blow. Jake hadn't just revealed his necromancy—he'd been caught actively sabotaging their refuge, forcing a confrontation that had cost lives.
"You did this on purpose," Andrea said, her voice tight with accusation. "You wanted this to happen."
Jake struggled to his feet, swaying slightly from exhaustion and pain. Around him, the faces of people he'd fought beside, bled beside, saved and been saved by, looked at him with expressions ranging from confusion to outright hostility.
Maggie stood at the edge of the group, tears streaming down her face, refusing to meet his eyes. The kiss they'd shared the night before might as well have happened in another lifetime.
"They're right to be afraid. Right to question what I am. I forced this confrontation, changed the timeline, made choices that weren't mine to make. I played god with their lives and now I have to face the consequences."
But underneath the guilt and self-recrimination was a spark of desperate hope. He'd checked the barn during his count the night before—Sophia hadn't been added to the collection. His interference had worked. One innocent life had been saved, even if the cost had been his relationship with the group.
"I knew what was in the barn," Jake said quietly. "I knew it would come out eventually, and I knew people would get hurt when it did. So I forced it to happen on my terms, when I could be ready to help."
"Help?" Shane's voice was incredulous. "You call this helping? You nearly got us all killed!"
"I saved Sophia," Jake said, though he couldn't explain how without revealing his foreknowledge. "She wasn't in there when it happened. If I'd waited, if I'd let it happen naturally..."
He couldn't finish the sentence. Couldn't voice the truth that his speech block prevented him from sharing. But the implication hung in the air—that waiting would have been worse, that his interference had prevented an even greater tragedy.
Rick holstered his weapon, his cop instincts reading the truth in Jake's exhausted honesty. "The walkers are dead. The barn's destroyed. What's done is done."
"Just like that?" Shane's face was flushed with rage. "We're supposed to just accept that he's some kind of... of freak who can control the dead and sabotage our shelter?"
"We accept what we have to accept," Rick replied firmly. "Jake's saved our lives more than once. Whatever he is, whatever he can do, he's one of us."
But Jake could see the cracks forming in the group's unity, the fear and suspicion that his revelation had created. His secret was out now, exposed for everyone to see and judge.
He was no longer just Jake the medical student with useful skills. He was Jake the necromancer, the one who commanded the dead and forced terrible choices on the living.
And there was no going back from that.
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