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Lori had gotten herself the shakes. That don't make it better, but it's what happened. The world was going to shit around them. Shane had spent years training, serving on the force, and it afforded him no grasp on what to do when everybody he protected started coming back from sudden death, more and more by the second. There were certain kinds of chaos law enforcement simply couldn't train people to handle. He figured the goddamn apocalypse was probably one of them, but fear and grief he understood. If he couldn't do anything else -- Shane thought if he held Lori's hand and promised he'd see it through with her, he could at least help the shakes.
He won't apologize for that.
He couldn't have known in the moment that they wouldn't get to stop being scared, feeling a wide, sucking sense of loss. Communication breakdown is deep set all over only after two weeks in, every emergency evacuation plan imaginable in place as far as he can tell, but those people have about as much clue as he does.
Lori and Carl have a bag full of photos, and Carl keeps on talking about how when they go back, he needs to get the dock for his iPod. Long enough in, it doesn't even sound like he really means it anymore. Nobody means anything they say about going back, but it's like if they stop talking like it'll all be over soon, like the world will figure itself out, then they have to look each other in the eyes, accept dirty faces and commit themselves to pandemonium.
Several weeks later, Lori's still shaking, but it takes on a different variety. They've morphed into sporadic tremors, like a full body earthquake, there and gone, and when they look down at her hands together, she hums critically.
"They never tell you," she says, "that you can't ever keep your fingernails clean camping. Every time we'd go on trips that were all about the outdoors, I'd forget. Then it would drive me crazy."
"That's why people probably buy them little," Shane says, miming the way his lady used to do it, "those tiny scrub brushes."
Lori doesn't laugh so much as huff once or twice, humorless but trying. She flexes her fingers and Shane touches her wrist, covers her knuckles. There's a tremor, something small but cleanly felt. Her hand seems fragile against his for a moment, until she balls it into a fist and stills.
She asks, "Do you think he can catch up?"
Shane only wants to do what he can for her. He knows what it's like to miss someone, same as anyone lately. Shane left all his pictures and mementos behind to maintain a good speed.
He bites down on his lip, slowly drags his teeth across the skin as he thinks.
"The hospital's overrun," he says, but that's not what he means. He clears his throat. "If we're gonna be okay... if Carl's gonna have a chance in this, we can't wait."
Lori blinks, the kind of measured and deliberate blinks that Shane considers the signal for impending tears on people. It would be okay if she shed a few. He's still got his hand circled around hers, hoping it helps, and she hasn't cried very much at all. He's prepared for it, but Lori only nods a moment later. The tears don't come.
She looks over her shoulder and inhales all the way in, one long, troubled breath. When she moves to stand, she tucks her hair behind her ear and wipes her dry eyes.
"Carl," she says. "I should get him."
"Lori." Shane reaches for her arm, and she turns, comes up close and looks him right in the eye. He hadn't really meant to pull her, doesn't have much else to add, but he thinks she should know something reassuring. He's not Rick, wouldn't ever try to be, but he cares about Rick's like they're his own. He's known them all long enough.
He gets belatedly that Lori's breathing's kicked up. The shake is back, and then it's gone again when she swallows, still close. Shane's at a loss.
He says, "If you need..."
And Lori nods, steps back slow.
"Thank you," she says and wipes her hands across her shirt. "I'll be right back."
***
When Shane was first completing his six months in the academy, he'd wanted to be like Rick. Hindsight has a tendency to make things go all rosy, but it wasn't like Shane had thought Rick was perfect. Rick had this bullheaded focus about him, though, and to this day Shane's never sure if Rick was actually the most noble man he ever met, or if he'd only happened to pledge allegiance to justice and set his sights on seeing crime stopped like a personal mission from God himself.
He thinks about that while they're trying to get into the city, and then he thinks about it more when it's all he can do to them find a safe way out. He doesn't think about it so much the first time he kisses Lori, gripping her steady hand, thankful that she's alive, that Carl's okay as well, that everywhere in America's collapsing in on itself but he can at least make good on his promise to keep them safe.
Lori and Rick are a lot more alike than either one of them tended to consider. When Lori's got her shakes under control, she remembers she's a stubborn spitfire kind of woman, single-mindedly determined to get her way. When she turns her temper on him (and it's about batteries when it happens, of course, the kind of nothing commodities that have become everything in the aftermath of an outbreak), he thinks about Rick mentioning how they had trouble getting along sometimes. It's not because they're too different, Shane's decided. It's because they're too damn the same, and somehow Carl's the most level-headed of the family.
So Lori's calm the first time they kiss, but she's pissed to hell the first time they fuck, tucked away from the group in a stairwell, with her leg hitched up around him. It's probably sick that Rick is on his mind, wondering if this is ever how they solved their own problems, desperate and rough while no one was looking or could stop them from getting under one another's skin.
Shane kisses Lori, lets her bite him and then whimper against his cheek. He tucks his face in the sweat at her throat, the small ridges of her necklace cutting against his lips. It's gotten twisted around, the drape of it threading down the back of her shoulder. Shane knows there's a ring there. He can't forget it even when it's out of sight.
There's nothing noble in screwing a good friend's wife. Shane tries to put it out of his mind, to drown himself in the scratch of Lori's jagged, dirty nails on his skin. She digs them into the flesh low on his back, right above his ass, pushing for more, demanding things through urgency and shallow breaths.
Before computers and cell phones went useless, everybody was looking up how to identify life versus the rate of decomposition. Heat, sweat, and the right kind of stink helped distinguish the living. Shane tries to focus on that, how they're just chasing life with one another with this, his heart beating too fast as he thrusts, but Rick's still right there, in the center of his mind, like a challenge and a reminder.
To Lori, he says, "We can't lose it."
"Shut up," she says, eyes closed, breasts heaving. She cants her hips forward, and he slams them back against the wall as he fucks into her.
He says, "I'm serious. We can't fall apart out here. We can't make it like that."
Appropriate times for a morale conversation change completely under circumstances like these. They can finish the argument here, get it all out their system and go back to rest of the group collected.
Lori tries to get her other leg up. Shane braces her. He says, "You hear me?" and she groans. "Lori."
"Yes," she says, mean about it, but he believes her word.
Shane holds them both together, gets them through it as they come and then come down. They gather as much ammunition as possible on the run, stock up on as many luxuries as they can carry.
Carl wants a bar of chocolate while they're taking from a gas station. Shane grabs the whole box of Hershey bars on the shelf and hands them to him.
He says, "Don't think anyone else'll need them."
"Thanks," Carl says. He hasn't been eating too much, Shane knows, but if he's got treats to look forward to, Shane figures it could encourage him.
Shane doesn't have kids, couldn't say for sure if he knows what's best, but he served on the force, and Rick was his best friend. He can figure out how to keep them all together. He owes that much.
***
Dale likes to tell stories. They comfort him.
It took Shane some time to catch on to it. He couldn't figure out why Dale was going on about times he went to Michigan or this man he met in Poughkeepsie once.
"And then in Vermont, it was beautiful," Dale says. "There wasn't anybody in this whole resort, not being skiing season. So I had breakfasts with the owner and watched CNN. The jam was some specialty brand, maybe locally made. I've had nothing like it since."
"That sounds nice," Amy says.
"You think Vermont's still that pretty?" Merle asks. "Place is probably as fucked as here by now."
"Back off it," Shane says, giving him a warning.
Daryl kicks his leg out, the heel of his boot thudding against dirt. With a derisive laugh, he says, "But probably plenty of untouched jelly left in all this, right?"
"Hey," Shane says.
Dale cuts right in, seemingly unfazed. He says, "In any case, there's plenty of mountains. If we need to, we can stay high. We'll go down for supplies in towns when we need."
He does an alright job of making it all relevant. He's quiet for the next twenty minutes, though, and Shane's deduced by now that survival tactics aren't really what it's about. Initially, it seemed like Dale might be trying to prove the RV could make it that far with enough care, that he could lead them in some cross-country caravan, or maybe he was trying to impress people. But, no, the stories are a decent pass at distraction.
He only talks about incidental memories, one-time meetings and amusing anecdotes. He doesn't offer too many details about anyone he might really miss, and Shane knows about that, too, how it's hard to start stories about the important people in your life, because so many of those stories have started to end the same way.
He and Rick told all kinds of stories on patrol. They spent most of their time around one another, working and bullshitting. Guns in the morning, beers after work; that was how it went, and yet they always scraped up some new tales. They needed to pass hours in a vehicle, broken up by chasing down teenagers or forcibly pulling drunk assholes out of convenience stores too angry to realize a clerk was refusing to give them anything for the good of all parties.
They saw a lot of tough shit, but Shane finds himself reflecting on the waiting more lately. Eating in the front seat and listening to the CB radio hiss with updates and directives.
The stories had changed right along with them even if the routine hadn't, all the way back to starting days when Rick's intensity crackled more. Pushing themselves until exhaustion was par for the course, was something they chased, amped to make good arrests and welcome only enough danger to keep it exciting.
It's funny how a young gun is always aching to shoot something until he has the chance. Shane remembers the first time he had to fire his weapon, felt more regret than he'd been prepared for. It was during an almost unusually grizzly case for their town, a robbery gone brutally violent, and Shane shot a man to save a child, but it still resonated in him longer than any firearm recoil.
"You had to," Rick had said. From shooting to Rick speaking, that's how it plays in Shane's mind when he thinks back on it. He lost a lot of time in the middle, knows somehow that he'd been efficient and finished the job, saw it through, even though he can't drudge up the visuals since. He remembers his hand on the trigger and then Rick's hand on his face, commanding Shane's attention and saying, "You had to. You were doing your job. You saved that little girl, you hear me? Shane."
Sometimes he can remember the girl's face, how she'd gotten the man's blood on her hair and neck. She's not there all the time, but occasionally he'll be thinking about nothing, and then it's just there. Rick had some blood on him, too, because he'd picked the young girl up and got her away from the body. Shane can't recall that, but he's been told it a few times.
They didn't have the same kind of obligations then, mostly to themselves and the force, so Rick bought a case and a bottle of bourbon and they went back to his house. Shane had given himself too good a wind up over it was the problem, couldn't think to clear his head for realizing over and over how full it was. He knew he was a good marksman, he knew it had been a desperate situation, and he knew he couldn't quite let go of the phantom tremors of blowback in his arms.
He'd just kept thinking and thinking, and Rick said, "You did alright today. The captain said it. Everybody said it."
"When we fire we're supposed to mean it," Shane had said, turning his beer bottle back and forth, trying to pick apart a few blank minutes.
"He could've hurt her," Rick said.
Shane said, "I meant it."
He'd never meant something so completely in his life until then.
"Shane," Rick said. He'd moved in slow, careful, and Shane remembers how that made him angry. He'd killed a man, and now Rick was walking on eggshells around him like Shane was the one hurt. When Rick touched him, he'd flinched, pushed back, but Rick crowded in again, struggled with him until he got his hands on Shane's face and kept saying, "Look at me, man. Look at me," and Shane couldn't, because he was scared he'd start imagining blood there, and he couldn't even figure out what had gone all wrong about him that he'd stopped a terrible man but felt devastated by it.
He remembers kissing Rick clearer than anything that happened after the body went down. He'd popped the buttons on Rick's shirt trying to get it off, and it felt like a goddamn hands-up-in-surrender victory when Rick let this dark, guttural moan slip, exposing them both instead of letting Rick hold it together like he hadn't been there, too. Shane had bruised his shoulders to hell that night, the two of them slamming into things, Rick's hand rough on Shane's cock as Shane got his arms around Rick so tight, he thought he might choke him.
"Fuck," Shane hissed, that and every other filthy word he knew. He wanted it harder, rougher, he wanted it to hurt more, to pull him back into himself.
They'd landed on the floor in the very end, carpet hot and coarse along Shane's spine. Rick kept trying to shush him as he pushed in, promised Shane they'd get through it together, just how Shane liked, just let him know.
"Shane, look at me. Look at me," he whispered again, breath warm over Shane's cheek. He drew back enough for Shane to see him, holding himself up on his arms.
Shane couldn't think of nothing else to say after that, closed his eyes and held on, and they got the worst patrols for weeks after that. He was bored out of his mind, eating too much junk food and complaining to Rick about the heat. He'd hated it at the time, but that's what he thinks about now, how Rick didn't bring up Shane sifting apart in his place and never forgot to grab Shane some Starburst when he ducked into a convenience store in the middle of the job, and when he did talk, he only told Shane a bunch of stories about nothing, like the crap his crazy cousins got into while visiting from out of town.
Shane's okay with stories. He says to Dale, "Then we can head north whenever we pull out of here. If it's looking safe. It'll be good to stay high, like you say. However long we can."
It's too hot in the south anyway.
***
Shane had thought that if he ever got to see Rick again - and he didn't hope for it, just couldn't help his mind from wandering there, wondering what it would be like if he had to run headlong into an immediate past that felt years away already - he'd be a walker. He was terrified of it, staring down a rotted version of his best friend, with his wife and kid behind him, faced with hopelessness. Shane thought if he ever saw Rick again, undead and hungry, he'd promise to take care of his family, his most dedicated work, and he'd make it a clean kill with one shot. He couldn't use anything blunt on Rick, couldn't disrespect the man like that.
It's like falling down the side of the cliff when he spots him alive, dressed up like any work day, one of the bad ones maybe. Rick's near to hyperventilating, and Shane wonders if he's got the shakes too, pictures him getting shot down and then lying prone in a hospital bed, inexplicably doomed to it.
He never let himself imagine what he'd do if he saw Rick alive again.
"How in the hell," Shane coughs out when he gets his chance. "How the good goddamn."
Rick's still not saying much to nobody, comes over and hugs Shane once he can bear to leave Carl for a moment. Shane says, "You better not be fucking with me."
"Couldn't joke about this," Rick says back with the same old measured severity.
Shane spends a whole minute trying to think of how to admit he would've sworn Rick was rotting somewhere in a nice way, but there's no sugar-coating anything out here. He says, "They told me the hospital - the military couldn't even contain it."
"I can't explain it myself," Rick says.
"I thought you were dead," Shane says, straight. Rick needs to understand exactly how fucking unbelievable this is right here.
"I knew you'd make it out," is all Rick says back. He squeezes Shane's arm once, deliberate, and Shane thinks about signs of life: heat, sweat, coordination, speech. "You're shaking some."
"What?" Shane says and stops to assess. Well, sure as shit he is. He blows a breath out so quickly that the next inhale catches some, a hiccup. "I'm fucking spooked, that's why."
Rick exhales the same way, color coming to his face, and Shane nods, happy that Rick does get exactly how inconceivable what's in front of them is.
***
But it's easier to love a ghost.
With his line of work, Shane started making sure he didn't romanticize anyone. It only made some of the days harder, getting too invested in the humanity of the situations they encountered. He lost that discipline somewhere along the way, at least when it came to Rick. Shane had mourned him and praised him twice as much in death, claimed what was left of Rick as his own, and then the real deal shows up again, stubborn as ever.
Shane shouldn't have expected any different. He knows what Rick's like. He makes it look simple, showing up after the world's ended. It was no trouble at all trekking through a few cities and up into the mountains, so there's no trouble in heading right back into it again to save some worthless asshole, leaving Shane to tread lightly around a shattered home.
Because now Lori doesn't want anything to do with him, like he hadn't only wanted to reintroduce some stillness in her life. Now she's definitely got her wits and voice about her, the same amount of unbearable as her husband, and Shane's the bad guy for getting everybody to make do instead of living on farfetched notions. But that's the way it works with a Grimes family member. They're each fierce and immovable, and it's a fucking miracle to have people that solid in his life until they're doing everything to make Shane's hell.
Except for Carl. Two crazy, awing parents, and then there's Carl, who unknowingly bears the brunt of Shane being warned away from him but comes over to talk as if he could give a damn about boundaries.
Maybe he's a lot like his folks after all. He says, "There's a chance Merle could've waited it out."
"What you mean?" Shane asks.
Carl says, "I was thinking about it, from my science classes. We learned about plants decomposing. Eventually there's nothing. They said the walkers couldn't get him on the roof. They'll get worn out after a while."
The logic of children baffles him sometimes, how they come to conclusions based on their limited facts. Sometimes it's charming. Their wrong ideas can make a special sort of sense, and then sometimes it's untapped genius insight blindsiding Shane. Before, he never really had it in him to be father, he thought. He'd gotten all the good moments vicariously through Rick raising his son. Carl's smart. He's a boy to be proud of, and it depresses the hell out of Shane now, how all that curiosity and reasoning is spent calculating the odds around eating or being eaten.
Shane hadn't seen a dead body up close until he was in his twenties, in the line of duty. Carl's seen everything before his twelfth birthday.
Shane says, "Your father is the best strategist in this business. If there's a chance that man could be saved, he'll do it."
He's not sure how much he believes it in actuality. They're a mighty few good people against a vicious nation, even more dangerous than it already had been, but yesterday also saw Shane's best friend come back from oblivion.
He boxes that up, tries to keep it at the forefront of his mind. There's never been a harder task after the rescue team doesn't come back with Merle, after a whole band of disgusting, relentless walkers swarm the camp and cut into their numbers.
Shane looks at Rick after and can't even see him. The blood in his veins runs hot, head clouded in his anger and frustration, burning brighter than gratitude or trust. It holds over until the next day, through Rick's bullshit about seeking the CDC, because if he hadn't left, they might not be in this position. Shane had things under control. He'd led these people true so far. He may not be a noble fucking hero like the memory of a certain man, but he's someone who'd shaken apart once and put himself together again, held the pieces of Rick's life and did his best to bring them - to bring everybody - calm.
And what does he get for that? The wife's cold shoulder from a woman that isn't his and some placating comment about how he'd understand if it was his family? He'd been doing his best up to now, and he'd been doing a stand-up job, all of it thrown to hell by the triumphant return of someone whose good intentions might've made things worse. He thinks about how pale Rick had looked when he showed up, ghost-white in his uniform, and Shane hasn't fully realized he's weighing whether they'd all be better off and less confused if the dead stayed dead, gun trained on Rick's back like a target until Dale's there, shocking him sober.
Back when Shane was in academy, forever ago, the other guys used to pass around this story: an officer in training worked himself so thin so early that one afternoon he didn't notice he was holding his gun backwards until he popped himself in the face.
Personally, Shane's always liked funny anecdotes more than parables.
Anyway, he rethinks pulling the trigger.
He holds it together until the night, Lori spending time with Carl, both of them newly untouchable a tent or two away while Rick does he best to boil water before the sun sets. It's near impossible to do a good job of that over embers.
Sitting down in the dirt, Shane rubs a hand over his knee and says, "You know, I prayed for rain. Before we landed up here, I didn't know how I'd find enough water to keep long."
Rick lifts his eyes to Shane. He waits a beat before he says, "You did good finding this spot."
"I don't need you to tell me that," Shane says.
"I meant what I said about being grateful." Rick rolls his shoulders back, and Shane can hear something crack. Sleeping on the ground is wrecking all of them. The smallest burden on a long list of tribulation. "You kept them safe."
"I thought you were dead."
"I thought I was too at first," Rick says. He means it differently, but Shane supposes it all adds together the same.
Shane says, "I don't want to let these people down, Rick. I helped get us this far. I can't just lead them out in the open for more beatings like I ain't worried."
"But you trust me," Rick says with a sort of caution Shane hasn't witnessed from him in years. "Shane, look at me. I was gone, but I'm not dead, alright? I don't have plans to be that way any time soon either. You can count on it."
There's this one story Shane doesn't ever really tell anybody, from back before Carl, before Lori. Rick and Shane managed to get a couple days off at the same time and drove out to Florida. It was Rick's idea, and they left without a plan, with only a bag of chips, beer, and water. They slept in the car on night one for no other reason than sheer laziness. Seems that fucking in backseats take up a lot of a young man's energy, so they conked out half-naked, parked on the side of the interstate, and for breakfast Rick served up a Slim Jim delicacy for two.
When they'd left work the day before, Rick had said, "If I want to take you somewhere, do you trust me?"
Shane said, "Not phrased like that, you sneaky bastard," but Rick had shrugged, insisted.
"I'm serious," He'd said. "I want to show you something."
It turned out he hadn't wanted to show Shane much of anything, simply thought it sounded like an all right notion, heading to find the ocean from a different edge of land. They might have fallen in love with other people eventually, but nothing can touch how they went to the ends of the earth a few different ways together first, before anything.
"Shane," Rick says, brow knitted tight. Shane realizes he hasn't actually answered Rick at all. "Earlier, about leaving here? I need you to mean it."
"I said what I said," Shane says. He couldn't joke about any of this. He flexes his fingers, closes them into a still fist against the dirt.
"Without you, I'd have nothing," Rick says, looking right at Shane, and it's fucking like Rick Grimes to say that kind of sentence seriously.
"I meant it," Shane says.
Rick's the closest thing to family Shane's got out here, but that's been steady for years. He couldn't pretend to tell that one different, not even now.