Chapter 3: The Dairy Farm

  The courtyard of the Motor Inn felt like a powder keg waiting for a spark.

  Andy and Danny St. John stood on the other side of the heavy dumpster gates, waiting patiently for an answer to their impossible offer. Inside the walls, the group was tearing itself apart.

  "We are not going," Lee said, his voice hard. He crossed his arms, glaring at the gate. "Strangers don't just walk out of the woods and offer a starving camp a free feast. It's a trap. We lock the gates and we figure out another way."

  "What other way, Lee?!" Kenny shot back, throwing his hands up. "Look around! The woods are empty, the stores are looted, and my boy is crying because his stomach feels like it's eating itself. We have to go."

  "I hate to say it, but the redneck is right," Larry grunted, clutching his chest. "I'm running on empty. If that farm has real food, I say we take it."

  Lilly, who usually agreed with Lee on security, shook her head slowly. "I can't believe I'm saying this... but I agree with my dad. We can't survive another week like this, Lee. We have to at least check it out."

  "It's too dangerous," Katjaa argued softly, holding Duck close to her. "What if they are bandits?"

  "Then we send a heavily armed scouting party," Carley countered, checking the magazine of her pistol. "If things go south, we shoot our way out. But I'm with Lee. It feels wrong."

  "Let's vote," Mark suggested, looking exhausted.

  The vote was a dead tie. Kenny, Lilly, Larry, and Ben voted to go to the farm. Lee, Carley, Mark, and Katjaa voted to stay behind the walls and refuse the deal.

  The silence that followed was suffocating. The decision rested on a knife's edge.

  Lee looked down. Clementine had walked up beside him, clutching her teddy bear. Her face was pale, and she looked smaller than she ever had.

  "Clem?" Lee asked softly, dropping to one knee. "What do you think?"

  Clementine looked toward the gates, then back at Lee. Her big golden eyes filled with tears. "Lee... I'm just so hungry."

  It broke him. All his logic, all his paranoia about traps and bandits, just evaporated. He couldn't let her starve.

  Lee stood up and looked at the group. "Alright. We're going. But we don't bring everyone. Mark, Carley, Ben... you're with me. We're going to scout this dairy. If it's safe, we'll send for the rest of you."

  Before he turned to open the gates, Lee knelt back down in front of Clementine.

  "You stay right here with Katjaa and Duck, okay?" Lee told her, his voice full of protective warmth. "Don't open those gates for anyone but us. I'll bring you back something good to eat. I promise."

  "Okay, Lee," she whispered, giving him a tight hug. "Be careful."

  The Woods

  The Georgia woods were sweltering. The scouting party—Lee, Mark, Carley, and Ben—followed closely behind Andy and Danny St. John as they navigated the dense, overgrown trails.

  Andy was surprisingly talkative, completely unbothered by the tense silence of Lee's group.

  "So, where you folks from?" Andy asked, hacking away a low-hanging branch with a machete. "You don't look like Macon locals."

  "We're from all over," Lee answered vaguely, keeping a tight grip on his axe. "Just ended up at the Motor Inn when the roads got blocked."

  "Got family down here?" Andy pushed, glancing over his shoulder with a friendly, inquiring smile. "Wife? Kids? That little girl back at the motel yours?"

  "No," Lee said, his tone making it clear the subject was closed. "Just trying to keep her safe."

  "Well, you're doing a hell of a job. Running a camp like that can't be easy," Andy chuckled. "Who's in charge over there? Seemed like the big guy with the temper was trying to run the show."

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  Before Lee could answer, Danny held up a hand. "Hold up. Get down."

  The group immediately crouched behind a thick embankment of dirt and fallen logs. Through the trees, angry, echoing voices bled through the silence.

  Lee peeked over the log. About fifty yards away, in a small clearing, two men wearing ragged, dirt-stained clothes were screaming at each other. They looked feral, their faces sunken and desperate. Bandits.

  "You took half the can!" the first bandit shrieked, shoving the other man hard. "That was my share, you lying piece of trash!"

  "I haven't eaten in four days!" the second bandit roared back, raising his fists. "I found it! It's mine!"

  "I'll kill you for it!"

  The escalation was instantaneous. The first bandit didn't throw a punch—he reached into his coat, pulled out a sawed-off shotgun, and pulled the trigger at point-blank range.

  BOOM.

  The roar of the gun shook the trees. The second bandit was thrown backward onto the dirt, his chest completely torn open. He was dead before he hit the ground.

  The shooter didn't even flinch. He just dropped to his knees, ripped the half-empty can of beans from the dead man's pocket, and started frantically eating with his bare, blood-stained hands.

  Behind the log, Ben clamped a hand over his mouth to muffle a gasp. Carley looked sick to her stomach. Lee's blood ran cold.

  That, Lee realized, is what we are turning into. "Savages," Danny whispered in disgust. "Let's move before the noise brings the deaders."

  The St. John Dairy

  They gave the clearing a wide berth, walking another mile before the trees finally broke.

  When they stepped out of the woods, Lee had to blink to make sure he wasn't hallucinating.

  It was perfect. The St. John Dairy Farm sat on a massive plot of clear, rolling green hills. A beautiful, pristine white farmhouse sat in the center, flanked by a large red barn. And surrounding the entire property was a heavy, industrial chain-link fence humming with a visible electrical current.

  It looked like the world hadn't ended at all.

  As they walked through the heavy front gates, the wooden screen door of the farmhouse squeaked open. An older woman stepped out onto the porch, wiping her hands on a floral apron. She froze for a second, looking at the heavily armed, dirt-covered strangers.

  "Momma, it's okay, put the worry away," Andy called out, waving a hand. "We brought some guests. They've got a camp a few miles down the road. They're looking to make a trade."

  The woman’s cautious expression melted into a wide, crinkling smile. She practically rushed down the porch steps.

  "Oh, my heavens, look at you poor things," she gasped, her eyes scanning Lee and Carley's hollow cheeks. "You look like you haven't eaten a square meal in months. I'm Brenda St. John. Welcome to our farm."

  "Thank you, ma'am," Mark said, genuinely starstruck by the safety and cleanliness of the place.

  "Andy, don't just stand there, go fetch that basket from the kitchen," Brenda ordered her son before turning back to Lee. "We just finished baking. It's not a full supper, but it's a start."

  Andy jogged inside and returned a moment later, handing a heavy woven wicker basket to Carley. Carley peeled back the checkered cloth. The smell radiating from the basket was intoxicating—freshly baked biscuits, cured meat, and sharp cheddar cheese.

  Lee’s mouth actually watered. His stomach gave a painful, hollow clench.

  "You take this back to your people," Brenda insisted warmly. "You tell them the St. Johns are happy to share. Bring your whole group back here, and we'll have a real dinner tonight."

  Carley looked at Lee, her eyes wide. The suspicion that had been etched into her face all morning was completely gone. "Lee... this is real."

  Lee stared at the food. It felt like a miracle, but he couldn't shake the knot of paranoia in his chest. Still, his group was starving.

  "Go," Lee nodded, keeping his voice low. "Take Ben. Bring this to Lilly and Kenny so they know it isn't a trap. Get everyone packed up and bring them back before dark."

  "We'll be back in an hour," Ben smiled eagerly. He and Carley practically jogged back toward the gate, the basket clutched tightly in Carley's hands.

  As they left, Brenda excused herself to start preparing the dining room. Lee took a slow breath, letting his guard down just a fraction, and looked around the compound.

  Near the porch, a wooden swing set was leaning dangerously to one side, the main support beam completely dislodged from the dirt housing.

  Lee walked over to it, running his hand over the splintered wood. He thought of Clementine, sitting on the cold concrete of the Motor Inn. She hadn't played on a real swing since the world ended.

  Lee set his axe down, inspected the heavy wooden beam, and put his shoulder into it. With a loud, straining grunt, he shoved the support post back into the buried hole, locking the swing set back into a sturdy, upright position.

  "Kids used to love that thing," Andy sighed, walking up behind him with two long, wooden pitchforks in his hands. "Been meaning to fix it, but there's always too much work to do. Much obliged, Lee."

  "My little girl is going to want to play on this when she gets here," Lee said, dusting his hands off.

  "Well, I'm glad it's ready for her," Andy smiled. "Much obliged, Lee." He rubbed the back of his neck, glancing toward the large red barn. "Hey, speaking of chores... my generator is working overtime today. We get walkers stumbling out of the woods and getting tangled in the electric fence. It short-circuits the whole system."

  Andy pointed toward a small utility shed near the farmhouse. "I'm gonna head over there and kill the power to the fence for a bit. You and your buddy mind grabbing some pitchforks and walking the perimeter to clear off the fried ones while the juice is off?"

  "Sure thing," Mark agreed, stepping up. "Least we can do for the hospitality."

  "Appreciate it," Andy nodded. "I'll holler before I turn it back on."

  The Perimeter

  The comforting electric hum of the fence was gone, leaving the farm eerily quiet. The smell, however, was atrocious.

  As Lee and Mark walked the perimeter of the farm alone, they found three walkers pressed against the chain-link. Their flesh was charred and still smoking from where thousands of volts of electricity had cooked them before Andy cut the power.

  Even knowing the generator was off, Lee's heart skipped a beat as he wedged his pitchfork into the chest of the first smoking walker. He shoved hard. The dead body peeled off the fence with a sickening, wet shhhhccckk sound and collapsed into the tall grass outside the wire.

  They cleared two more without issue, the rhythmic work almost feeling normal. But the last one was a problem.

  At the far edge of the property, where the farm met a thick, dark line of pine trees, a massive walker had managed to get its arms and head completely tangled through the chain-link.

  Lee pushed with the pitchfork, the wood groaning under the pressure, but the body was wedged completely tight into the metal diamonds.

  "It's stuck," Lee grunted, stepping back and wiping sweat from his brow.

  "We're gonna have to pull it free from the outside," Mark suggested. He pointed to a small wooden maintenance gate a few yards down the fence line.

  Without Andy there to watch their backs, the tension immediately spiked. Lee unlatched the heavy gate, and they stepped out into the unprotected woods. The air outside the farm felt different—colder, quieter. Without the fence between them and the trees, they were completely exposed.

  Lee grabbed the walker by its charred, smoking shirt. Mark grabbed it by the shoulder.

  "On three," Lee whispered, keeping an eye on the dark tree line. "One... Two... Three!"

  They both yanked backward with everything they had. The walker popped free of the fence with a loud tear of muscle and metal, tumbling into the dirt at their feet.

  "Got it," Mark sighed. He let go of the body and stood up, rolling his shoulders to stretch out the tension.

  THWACK.

  The sound was sharp, whistling through the quiet air with terrifying speed.

  Mark froze. His eyes went wide in shock. He slowly looked down.

  A wooden arrow with a steel broadhead was buried deep in his left shoulder.

  For a second, there was only a stunned, horrifying silence. Then, Mark let out an agonizing, blood-curdling scream, collapsing to his knees in the dirt.

  "MARK!" Lee roared, dropping his pitchfork. He lunged forward, grabbing Mark by his good arm to drag him frantically back toward the open gate.

  From the dark treeline, shadows began to move.

  End of Chapter 3

  Mark just took an arrow to the shoulder right after Andy turned off the electric fence. Who is attacking them?