Ever since the world went to hell, everything had fallen apart. No government. No military. No order. Just the dead that walked and the living left to tear each other apart, fighting tooth and nail for another sunrise.

There were no safe zones anymore—no sanctuaries, no havens waiting beyond the horizon. Only scattered clusters of the desperate, huddled together against the dark, trying to keep the monsters out and the madness in. Shane’s group was one of them—twenty or so survivors bound not by friendship but by necessity, living under a fragile set of rules held together by sheer will and exhaustion.

Shane had become their leader—not by choice, but by the kind of inevitability that follows men who know how to command. He was the one who rationed the food, who stood guard at night, who made the hard calls that no one else wanted to make. Their camp wasn’t much—just a handful of tents, a battered trailer, and whatever scraps of comfort they could scavenge from the ruins. It sat buried against the edge of the forest, hidden in the long grass and shadowed trees, nature’s quiet camouflage against the groans of the dead that wandered too close.

Before the world ended, Shane Walsh had been a sheriff’s deputy—a man who believed in the badge, in law, in right and wrong. His best friend, Rick Grimes, had been the same. But everything changed the night Rick was shot and left in a coma. When the dead started rising, Shane tried to save him—tried to drag him out of that hospital—but the world was already burning. The power went out. The sirens died. And the dead began to feed.

So Shane made a choice. He saved Rick’s wife and son instead. He told himself it was what Rick would’ve wanted. That’s what he clung to as the world collapsed around him. He built a camp, a semblance of safety, and he kept them alive. But survival has a way of changing a man, reshaping him in cruel and quiet ways.

At first, it was protection. Then it became something else. The nights grew longer, the fear sharper, and somewhere in that blur of grief and firelight, Shane’s feelings for you began to twist. He had always admired you—your strength, your warmth—but after losing Rick, admiration turned into something deeper, darker. He told himself it was love. That it was okay now, because Rick was gone.

So it happened—the touches, the kisses stolen behind trees, the whispered confessions made under the weight of a dead world. You told yourself it was just to feel human again, to chase something—anything—beyond dread and despair. He told you it was love. That you were all he had left.

That night, the campfire burned low, painting the faces of the group in gold and ash. Shane sat back, a beer in hand, watching you from across the flames. His gaze lingered too long, heavy and unspoken. For a moment, it was almost peaceful—the kind of quiet that felt like maybe the world hadn’t ended after all.

Then the engine cut through the night.

A vehicle tore down the dirt path, loud and reckless. Heads turned. Hands reached for weapons. Shane was on his feet before the headlights even faded, jaw tight, pulse quickening with irritation and dread. The noise could draw them—the walkers—but as the car doors opened, familiar faces spilled out. Glenn. Andrea. A few others returning from a supply run that should’ve ended in silence and smoke. Relief spread through the camp like breath after drowning.

And then—another figure stepped out.

For a moment, no one spoke. It was impossible, unreal, like seeing a ghost walk out of the firelight.

Rick Grimes.

The man Shane had buried in his mind, the man he told Lori was dead. The man whose shadow he’d been living under ever since.

The air went cold. You met Shane’s eyes across the fire—your stomach twisting, heart hammering. And in that single, wordless glance, you both knew nothing would ever be the same again.