Chapter 29: Scattered
POV: Jake
The woods of central Georgia stretched endlessly in every direction, a maze of pine and oak that had swallowed their small group like a hungry mouth. Three days since the farm's destruction, and Jake's fragment of survivors had found a rhythm that balanced survival with the constant fear of discovery.
His backpack manifested four rations every morning now—Jake, Daryl, Carol, and Sophia. The Survivor's Bounty had adjusted to their reduced numbers with mechanical precision, providing exactly what was needed to keep them alive. No more, no less.
"Least we won't starve," Daryl observed, accepting his portion of canned peaches and protein bars. "Long as you keep that magic food trick working."
Jake nodded absently, his attention focused on the walker corpse he'd found during their morning reconnaissance. The thing had been a jogger once, its athletic wear still clinging to desiccated flesh. Now it served as a training dummy for Jake's increasingly desperate attempts to strengthen his necromancy.
"Stand. Walk. Turn left. Stop."
The corpse obeyed with mechanical precision, responding to mental commands that Jake no longer needed to voice aloud. His range had expanded to thirty feet through constant practice, and he could control six walkers simultaneously for extended periods. But it still wasn't enough.
"You're pushing too hard, honey," Carol said softly, settling beside him with Sophia close at her side. "You've been practicing for hours."
"Not hard enough." Jake released his control, letting the walker collapse back to the forest floor. Blood trickled from his nose, but the flow was lighter than it used to be—his body adapting to demands he'd never imagined possible. "Shane almost killed me because I was weak. Next time, I need to be ready."
Daryl looked up from where he was fletching arrows with meticulous care. "Ain't about being weak, college boy. Shane was broken, plain and simple. Some people just can't handle this world without snapping."
The tracker's words carried the weight of hard experience. Daryl had seen men break before, had watched the civilized veneer crack under pressure to reveal the animal underneath. Shane's attempt on Jake's life hadn't been about strength or weakness—it had been about a mind that couldn't accept its own limitations.
"But I can't afford to be limited. Not when people depend on me for food, for healing, for protection from threats they can't even see coming. I have to be stronger, faster, better than human limitations allow."
Jake reached for the walker corpse again, preparing for another training session, but Sophia's small voice stopped him.
"Jake? Are we ever going to see the others again?"
The question hit him harder than any physical blow. Here was an eleven-year-old girl who'd already lost her father, survived being lost in the woods, watched her temporary home burn to the ground. Now she was asking if she'd ever see her extended family again, and Jake didn't have a good answer.
"Yes," he said finally, putting conviction into his voice that he didn't entirely feel. "We'll find them. All of them."
Carol's hand found his shoulder, squeezing gently. She understood the weight he carried, the responsibility he felt for everyone's survival. But she also understood that some burdens were too heavy for one person to bear alone.
"Come on," she said, standing and brushing dirt from her jeans. "Let's find some dinner. The real kind, not the kind that comes from your pack."
It was a gentle reminder that normalcy still mattered, that they were still human beings who needed more than supernatural sustenance to survive. Jake followed her deeper into the woods, leaving his training behind for now.
But his mind was already planning the next session, the next attempt to push his abilities beyond their current limits. In a world where strength meant survival, there was no such thing as strong enough.
POV: Rick
The abandoned gas station sat like a monument to the world that was, its broken windows and empty shelves a reminder of how quickly civilization could crumble. Rick's group had taken shelter in the attached service bay, using overturned cars as windbreaks while they tried to stretch their dwindling supplies for another day.
"We're down to maybe two days of food," Hershel reported quietly, his medical bag open as he checked Lori's condition for the third time that morning. "Less if Lori's nutritional needs increase."
Rick nodded grimly, his hand unconsciously moving to his empty stomach. They'd been rationing carefully since the evacuation, but four people could only stretch so much food for so long.
"We need to find the others," Rick said, voicing what they'd all been thinking. "Especially Jake—we need his food supply."
Lori looked up from where she sat resting against a tire pile, her face pale but determined. "We can't depend on one person like that. What if something happens to him? What if he's already..."
She couldn't finish the sentence, but Rick heard the unspoken fear. What if Jake was dead? What if the one person who could guarantee their survival was already feeding the worms?
"We already do depend on him," Rick replied, the admission tasting bitter in his mouth. "Have for months. Jake's food manifestation has been keeping us alive since the quarry. Without it..."
The implications hung in the air like smoke from a distant fire. Without Jake's supernatural food supply, they were just another group of survivors competing for increasingly scarce resources. With it, they were a sustainable community that could weather almost any crisis.
"When did we become so dependent on one person's abilities? When did Jake Martinez become the lynchpin that our entire survival strategy revolves around?"
The answer was obvious—gradually, one crisis at a time, as Jake's powers proved themselves indispensable for group survival. But recognizing their dependence and figuring out how to reduce it were two very different challenges.
Carl appeared in the doorway, his sheriff's hat askew and his face bright with excitement. "Dad! I found tire tracks. Fresh ones, heading north on the main road."
Rick's heart leaped with sudden hope. Fresh tracks meant survivors, and survivors might mean news of their scattered friends. Or it might mean hostile forces looking for exactly the kind of vulnerable group they'd become.
"How fresh?" Rick asked, checking his weapon out of habit.
"Maybe a day, day and a half. Two vehicles, looks like a truck and a car."
It could be anyone—other survivors, raiders, government remnants, or even their own people searching for rally points. But it was the first concrete lead they'd had since the evacuation.
"We follow the tracks," Rick decided. "Carefully. If it's trouble, we back off. If it's our people..."
He didn't need to finish. If it was their people, if Jake was still alive, then they had a chance at something more than mere survival.
They were depending on hope now, and hope was a dangerous thing in a world that specialized in crushing it.
POV: Maggie
The campfire painted Glenn's face in shifting shadows and orange light, but Maggie could see the worry etched in every line of his expression. They'd been searching for three days now, following every road and trail that might lead to the other survivors, and each empty mile felt like another step toward despair.
"We'll find them," Glenn said for the dozenth time, his voice carrying determination he might not entirely feel.
Maggie stared into the flames, watching the wood collapse into glowing embers that reminded her uncomfortably of the farm burning in the distance. "What if Jake's dead? What if he died in the evacuation and we're out here searching for a ghost?"
The words spilled out before she could stop them, giving voice to the fear that had been gnawing at her since they'd fled into the night. Jake had been unconscious when they scattered, his body pushed beyond its limits by whatever he'd done to save Lori and her baby.
What if he'd never woken up? What if he'd died alone in the back of Daryl's truck while she was safe in another vehicle, unaware that the man she was falling in love with was slipping away?
"He's not dead," Glenn said firmly. "That guy's too stubborn to die. Too important to the group."
Beth looked up from where she was tending their small supply of medical provisions. "Glenn's right. Jake's got those powers, that supernatural resilience. He'll be okay."
But Maggie could hear the uncertainty beneath her sister's optimism. They were all whistling past the graveyard, trying to convince themselves that hope was more than wishful thinking.
"I never told him how I really felt. We had that one kiss, that one moment of connection, and then everything went to hell. What if I never get the chance to tell him that he's become the most important thing in my world?"
The realization hit her with startling clarity. Somewhere between their first meeting on the highway and their last conversation by the creek, Jake Martinez had become essential to her happiness in ways that went far beyond survival or convenience.
She was in love with him—completely, irrevocably, with the kind of intensity that only came from finding someone worth saving in a world determined to destroy everything good.
And she might never see him again.
"Tomorrow we try the highway," Glenn said, banking the fire for the night. "If they're moving north like we are, that's where they'd go. Back to familiar territory."
Maggie nodded, clinging to the hope that tomorrow would bring reunion instead of more empty road. But as she settled into her sleeping bag under the Georgia stars, her last thought was a prayer to whatever forces governed this broken world.
"Let him be alive. Let him be safe. Let me have the chance to tell him what he means to me."
In the darkness around their small camp, the dead wandered through forests that had once known only life. But somewhere in that same darkness, Jake Martinez was still breathing, still fighting, still being the impossible man who commanded death and created life with equal ease.
Maggie had to believe that. Without that belief, the future was just another empty road leading nowhere.
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