The Lucky One//twd

034. Strays

Madison's POV

I found the blood trail on a Tuesday.

It was faint — just a few splashes on the frost-bitten grass near the southern fence line. Blake and I were checking snares, but the second I saw the blood, I stopped cold.

It was fresh.

He noticed too.

"You think it's a walker?" he asked.

I shook my head. "Too red. Too recent."

We followed it — not because we were brave, but because we didn't know how not to. It was in our blood now: curiosity, survival, suspicion. That's what the world had made us.

We didn't get far before we heard it.

Groaning.

Not undead. Not mindless. Just... pain.

Blake raised his crowbar. I gripped my knife tighter. We stepped past the thicket, and there he was.

A boy. Seventeen, maybe eighteen. Leg impaled on a piece of rebar, face pale as the winter sky. He had a backpack, half-zipped, and his jacket was torn like he'd been running.

He looked at us like we were ghosts.

"Help me," he gasped.

And my stomach dropped.

Because I knew what this meant.

⸻

Shane flipped when we brought him back.

"ARE YOU OUTTA YOUR DAMN MINDS?" he shouted, pacing in a furious circle like he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

"He was dying," I said. "We couldn't leave him."

"Yes. We. Could," Shane snapped. "We should. You don't bring strays back to the gate, Madison. You don't know what group he's with — if he has one. You don't know what he's seen. You don't even know his name."

I looked him dead in the eye. "You think I care what his name is?"

"I think you care about dragging us all into another firefight," he growled. "You think this is still a goddamn school field trip, Mads? This is war."

"You said it yourself," I shot back. "Sometimes good people do bad things."

He flinched. Just a little. Just enough.

Blake stepped in between us. "He was going to die, Shane. We brought him in. That's it."

"He doesn't stay here," Shane said flatly. "He doesn't eat our food. He doesn't get to know our faces. We patch him up, we drop him far away. And that's if I don't put a bullet in him first."

"That's not your call," I said.

"It damn well is," Shane barked. "Because I'm not burying my sister. Not again. Not ever."

His voice cracked on the last word.

Nobody moved.

Then Rick spoke, voice low but firm. "We keep him in the barn. Guarded. No interaction unless necessary. Once he's healed enough to move, we deal with it. Together."

Shane didn't like it. But Shane was outnumbered.

For now.

⸻

Later that night, I sat outside the barn, arms wrapped around my knees.

Inside, the boy was unconscious, leg wrapped, fever high. Maggie and Hershel had done what they could.

Blake sat beside me.

"You think he's dangerous?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Everyone is. Including us."

I leaned my head on his shoulder.

He didn't move. Just let me rest there.

"Do you think Shane's right?" I asked quietly. "That I don't know what I'm doing?"

"I think you scare him," Blake said. "You're not a little girl anymore. He doesn't know where the line is between protecting you and controlling you."

I closed my eyes.

"Maybe I don't either."

⸻

In the distance, a walker groaned.

We didn't move.

We just sat in the cold, under a sky full of stars, and listened to the world go on without us.