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Next update? Walking Dead: One Man Army
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Chapter 7
Lilly hadn't let go of her rifle, not really.
Sure, it was propped against her leg now instead of clutched in her hands, but her fingers still tapped the barrel with restless, silent tension.
She sat on the edge of an overturned cinder block, eyes drifting across the lot, scanning every masked man.
They were now spread out across the perimeter like sentries, quiet and disciplined, yet not threatening.
They hadn't made a single move that hinted at violence.
No barking orders, no suspicious glances.
Just… calm.
Watchful.
Her gaze shifted toward the vehicles they arrived in, sleek, dark, fortified, and then to the crates they'd unloaded.
Tools, food, medicine… things her group had only dreamed of scavenging.
Still, she didn't trust them, not fully at least.
But she was starting to wonder.
Her eyes drifted again to the boy, Leo.
He was crouched near the propane burner, ladling soup into a tin bowl, and for a second, she almost forgot about the armor, the mask he'd worn, the intimidation that came with his squad.
He didn't look like the menacing figure he was before.
He looked like a kid, trying to pretend he wasn't sneaking glances at Clementine from the corner of his eye while keeping his face buried in his work.
He's a kid.
Just a kid.
Clearly, he wasn't the leader of the group, and she needed to figure out who it was to get more information about this so-called "community".
She rose to her feet, brushing off her jeans, and crossed the lot with careful, measured steps.
Leo didn't notice her at first, too lost in his thoughts, not until she stopped beside him and cleared her throat softly.
He nearly jumped.
"Oh uh, hey," he said quickly, straightening up with a little too much urgency.
Lilly folded her arms, a smirk playing on her lips.
"You keep staring like that, and a certain someone is going to notice~"
Leo went red to the tips of his ears.
"I uh, w-wasn't looking, I-I was just… um…"
She raised an eyebrow.
He cleared his throat and looked away, trying to hide his flustered face and failing.
"…Soup's good," he muttered lamely.
Lilly smirked faintly but didn't press it. "You're not the leader, are you?"
Leo blinked. "Huh?"
"This group of yours. You're clearly not the one in charge." Her tone wasn't harsh, just curious. "So who is?"
Leo's awkwardness vanished, glanced over his shoulder, looked around for a moment, and pointed subtly with his ladle.
"That'd be Ghost."
Lilly followed the motion, and there he was.
The man in the black and green dragon mask was a few feet away, trying to impress Clementine and Duck with a magic trick.
Their guardians were close by, keeping watch.
Duck was clapping uncontrollably, and the older girl, though more reserved, was watching him with interest.
Ghost held out empty hands in front of them, his voice calm and even.
"Nothing in my hands, right?" he said, showing them both sides of his empty palms.
Duck nodded furiously, hopping up and down in place. "Yeah, yeah!"
Ghost gave a dramatic pause, then waved his other hand over the fist like a magician on a stage.
And with a quick flick of his wrist, he opened it.
A bright red flower sat in his palm.
Duck gasped. "Wooooah!"
Even Clementine blinked in surprise, a smile forming on her lips.
Ghost leaned forward, as if to present the flower to her with a gentleman's flair.
"For the lady."
But Clementine tilted her head, lips pursed in mild amusement. She took the flower and handed it to Duck, who took it with stars in his eyes.
"Thanks, but I don't really like flowers."
Ghost didn't miss a beat.
He gave a small hum of exaggerated disappointment.
"No? What would you prefer then?"
"Apples," she said matter-of-factly.
"Apples, hmm?" Ghost mused aloud. "Well, that is a tall order, but…"
As he spoke, one of his men casually passed behind him, unnoticed. In one smooth, practiced motion, a shiny apple was handed off behind Ghost's back.
With a swift flick of his wrist and a dramatic flourish, Ghost opened his other hand that was once empty, revealing a bright, perfect apple in its place.
"Would this do?"
Clementine and Duck's eyes went wide. Even the adults watching were in disbelief.
The older girl gave a breathless, delighted laugh, and for just a second, the guard in her eyes melted away.
"No way! That's so awesome!" Duck shouted, more excited than he had been in months. "How did you do that!?"
"Magic~"
"Mom! Dad! I'm gonna be a wizard!"
Kenny and Katjaa could barely hold back a laugh, happy that their son was happy.
Ghost, chuckling, offered the fruit to Clementine.
She gratefully took the apple offered to her with a smile before she was dragged away by Duck, who wanted to show off his flower to his parents.
(If someone listened closely enough, they would hear the sound of six hearts skipping a beat.)
Lilly, who was walking up to him, found herself clapping before she realized it, two soft smacks of her hands that got Ghost's attention.
He looked up, head tilting slightly in acknowledgment.
"That was impressive," she said, walking closer.
Ghost rose smoothly to his feet, offering her a small bow. "Thank you kindly."
She stopped a few feet from him, arms loosely crossed, her tone shifting slightly, still polite, but firmer.
"Mind if we talk? I've got some… questions about the community you told us about."
"Of course," he said easily, voice warm despite the vocoder filter.
Lilly hesitated only a second before nodding.
"Follow me."
Thankfully, her dad was asleep right now from the warm meal.
He would not have liked her walking off alone with a masked man.
——
He walked alongside her at an easy pace, the soft crunch of gravel beneath their boots the only sound between them for a moment.
The firelight behind them faded, replaced by the quiet dusk of the outer lot.
They moved just past the broken fence line, where an old streetlamp leaned sideways and the shadows thickened.
Then Ghost tilted his head slightly in her direction.
"Just curious," he said casually, hands tucked behind his back. "Why come to me with your questions?"
Lilly glanced at him from the corner of her eye.
"The kid said you were the leader."
Ghost stopped walking.
It wasn't a dramatic halt, but it was abrupt enough that she noticed.
He didn't respond right away.
No confirmation.
Just… silence.
Lilly raised an eyebrow.
His mask betrayed nothing, but she could feel the air shift; it wasn't threatening, just… unreadable.
Finally, Ghost started walking again, a touch slower this time.
"I see," he said simply.
That didn't feel like an answer, but she decided not to push, for now.
Once they were a fair distance away from the others, just barely within view of the motel lights,
Ghost came to a stop and turned slightly toward her.
"Alright," he said calmly. "Ask away."
Lilly crossed her arms, brow furrowed in thought for a second before settling on the most important questions first.
"How many people do you actually have?"
He didn't respond right away, he turned his head to look out into the quiet street beyond the broken fencing, as if the answer was out there somewhere in the dark.
Then he answered.
"Triple digits."
Lilly blinked at that nonspecific high number.
"Wait, what?"
He nodded.
"You're joking," she said flatly.
"I'm not."
She stared at him, searching for any sign that he was pulling her leg, but the mask, the voice, the stance, none of it gave her anything.
Just quiet certainty.
"How the hell…?"
He let her words hang.
It was hard to tell if he was just being dramatic or not.
She shook her head, trying to wrap her mind around it.
"That's not possible. There's no way you have that many people without running into serious problems, food, walkers, medicine, water, hell, space."
"We've had problems," Ghost admitted, nodding his head. "Still do, but we have enough manpower to fix most of those issues."
Lilly stared at him, trying to read between the lines.
She opened her mouth to ask something else, then hesitated.
But Ghost didn't push, he waited patiently.
So she tried a different angle.
"How long has your community been up and running?"
"Since the first few weeks when things went to hell. We started with ten and grew from there."
He gestured vaguely toward the west.
"There was an old military storage facility, off-grid, mostly forgotten. Fortunately, we got to it first and took everything we could from it; if not for that, we wouldn't be nearly as well off as we are now."
She studied him for a moment.
He tilted his head.
She sighed and leaned back against a broken railing, arms still crossed.
"How about housing? Power? Running water?"
"We're still working on the water issue, but we have everything else. It's not luxury, but it's more than just struggling to survive."
She hummed, shaking her head. "You're making this sound like fucking paradise."
"It's not," he said quickly. "It's work, every day, everyone has their part to do, or else everything falls apart."
She was silent for a beat.
She stared off into the distance instead, eyes narrowing at the skeletal outline of dead trees and old power lines.
Her arms were still crossed, but now they were clenched tighter against her chest, as if trying to hold herself together.
A working community, a place that wasn't falling apart at the seams.
It sounded too good to be real.
Too perfect to be true.
She'd been let down before.
By people.
By promises.
So what made this any different?
Her jaw tightened, heart thudding with something sharp and painful. Her voice, when it came, wasn't hard-edged like usual.
It was quiet.
Quiet in the way only desperate people could be.
"…Can I trust you?"
So she turned to look at him fully, brow furrowed.
"I need to know. I need to believe that this isn't just another scam. I've got people to protect, a father who's losing it, and a group that's holding on by threads. If I let them buy into this and you're full of shit—"
Her voice cracked.
She didn't look away.
"I'll never forgive you… And I'll never forgive myself for trusting you."
A silence stretched between them, heavy and thick like fog.
The mask gave her nothing, no twitch of expression, no flicker of reaction.
Then, finally, he spoke.
"…You can trust us."
There was no grand speech.
No impassioned vow or empty promise.
Just four words, spoken with a kind of sincerity that wasn't loud or showy.
It just… was.
Lilly's lips parted slightly.
And for the first time in a long time, she didn't know what to say next.
Ghost shifted slightly, his head angled downward.
"You don't have to decide tonight or tomorrow. Hell, you don't have to decide at all, if your people want to go, they go. If they don't, we'll leave supplies behind and wish you well and check in on you whenever we can."
He turned his body slightly toward the direction of the fire, where laughter still drifted faintly in the air.
She swallowed hard, finding it hard not to believe his sincere words.
"...I need to talk with the others and think about it," she said, voice lower now. "No promises."
Ghost nodded once, respectful.
"That's all we ever ask."
Having no more questions to ask for now, they began to make their way back to the motel.
The tension between them had softened, and the air was more relaxed.
She stole a sideways glance at the masked figure beside her, a question popping into her head.
"…So," she said, voice casual, "why do they call you Ghost?"
He didn't answer.
Lilly looked again, arching a brow.
"I mean, it's a pretty badass name, and I genuinely want to know how you got it."
That's when she noticed it.
The slight hitch in his step.
The barely perceptible shift in his posture.
Then his gloved hand reached up awkwardly to rub the back of his helmet, an unmistakably human gesture of embarrassment. Even though the mask covered everything, the way his shoulders hunched just a bit was all the answer she needed.
Lilly blinked. "Something wrong?"
He groaned softly, the vocoder barely hiding it.
"I… really don't want to tell you."
That just made her want to know even more than before.
"Oh, now you have to," she said with a sly grin. "C'mon, spill. What? Did you sneak through a battlefield like a ghost? Walk through fire? Scare the shit out of a walker?"
Ghost made another awkward noise.
She smirked wider.
"Oh my god, it's something embarrassing, isn't it?"
"…Yeah."
"Even better."
He stopped walking again, letting out a long sigh, and for a moment, she could feel the glare he was probably giving her through that mask.
"You're really not gonna let this go, are you?"
Lilly crossed her arms and smirked like a cat who had cornered a mouse.
"Not a chance."
There was a long beat of silence.
Then, finally, with the weight of a man reliving a trauma far worse than any walker bite.
"It happened… a couple of months back. We were scavenging through a city block during a thunderstorm. The building we were looting was flooded, dark, and filled with walkers. We decided to split up to cover more ground. I was doing fine by myself, found some batteries, even a gun."
He paused with a sigh.
"And then… I got jumped by a couple of walkers, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. I was about to deal with them, but as I took a step forward, I tripped on this stupid rolled-up tarp at the top of the stairs."
Lilly was already fighting back a laugh at how heated he sounded.
"I go tumbling down the stairs, making a lot of noise while at it," he said, groaning, "and halfway down, I somehow get tangled in a giant white bedsheet. Completely wrapped up in it, can't see, arms stuck, everything."
She was biting her lip now, holding her sides, the image of someone like him going that was too much for her.
"So I hit the landing hard, made a ton of noise, and wouldn't you know it? The crash draws more walkers. I can hear them closing in, growling, and there I am, trapped in a fucking bed sheet, flailing on the ground like a fish in a pillowcase."
She snorted loudly.
He turned to, from what she could guess, glare at her for laughing.
"I'm kicking and twisting, trying to get free, and that's when the others show up. They see this big white lump surrounded by walkers, probably thinking it was a walker that somehow got stuck, but…"
He rubbed the back of his head again, groaning.
"They realize it's me. Tangled up like an idiot."
He turned his helmet toward her slowly, awaiting her judgment.
"They never let me live it down. Ever. Called me Ghost from that day on, because I looked like some angry low-budget Halloween sheet ghost flailing around in an apocalypse."
Lilly burst out laughing.
A real, genuine laugh.
Loud and unfiltered, the kind of laugh she hadn't let herself have in months. Her arms wrapped around her stomach as she nearly doubled over, tears prickling at the corners of her eyes.
"You—you—" she gasped between laughs, "and you survived?!"
"It's not that funny!" Ghost protested, but it only made her laugh harder.
"How does that even happen!?"
"I tripped!"
She was nearly wheezing now, stumbling back against the fence post for support, laughing so hard her chest hurt.
And Ghost?
Ghost just stood there, deadpan through the mask.
Waiting.
"…You done?"
She took a few ragged breaths, wiped at her eyes, still chuckling. "No, never, I'm going to think about that every time you try to act serious now."
He let out a dramatic sigh of defeat. "Goddamn it,"
Lilly laughed again, softer this time.
And the tension in her chest uncoiled.
She didn't know who these people were, not fully.
Didn't know if she could trust them, or if this place they spoke of was truly as good as it sounded.
But in that moment, under the dusky sky, with laughter still echoing from her throat and warmth prickling at her eyes, she realized something.
She wanted to believe.
Even if just a little.
"…Thanks," she said softly.
"For what?" Ghost asked, confused why he was being thanked.
"For the story," she said, smiling faintly. "And for reminding me that the world still has some room for stupid, ridiculous things."
He tilted his head again, watching her.
"Anytime."
___
As they made their way back from the fence line, the lights of the motel flickered dimly ahead, casting the world in a warm, golden haze.
The fire crackled softly, laughter drifting in the air like distant wind chimes, fragile, but alive.
They were only a few paces from rejoining the others when a blur of movement cut across the lot.
The man barreled toward them like a freight train powered by pure hope, practically glowing with excitement.
He came to a halt in front of Ghost, boots skidding slightly in the gravel, face flushed and wild-eyed.
"You!" Kenny pointed, breathing hard. "Leo told me you're the leader of your group."
She could hear a tired sigh coming from beside her.
"I am."
"By any chance, you guys got a boat?" Kenny asked, eyes wide with hopeful expectation.
She audibly groaned beside him.
What is with this man and boats?
"Here we go again…"
Ghost tilted his head slightly at the question.
His mask gleamed faintly in the firelight, unreadable, but there was something in his posture that suggested genuine curiosity.
"Depends on the type of boat you're looking for, Captain." Ghost said smoothly, getting a smile from the man. "Fishing boat? Speedboat? Patrol? Cargo? Lake or ocean?"
Kenny straightened like he'd been electrified.
"Ocean, something sturdy enough to make it through rough waters and big enough to fit at least seven people."
Only seven people, the man clearly didn't want her or her father to go with them… that was more than fine with her.
Now that there was a whole community of other people, she didn't want to stay with them anyways…
Despite thinking that, she couldn't hide a sad frown that appeared on her face.
She shook her head to get rid of stupid thoughts.
Ghost paused, even Leo, who was busy cleaning, turned his head at that.
"Salt water?" Ghost echoed, and you could almost hear the surprise behind the mask. "That's… a big ask."
Lilly threw her hands in the air, happy someone agreed with her.
"Thank God someone else finally says it."
"Hey now," Kenny said defensively. "I'm willing to bet my life there ain't no walkers in the middle of the ocean."
"Also, no food, no gas, no dry land, no medicine, and no help for miles," She muttered, listing off all the problems with that plan.
That got a heated glare from him.
Ghost let the silence hang for a moment before replying, voice more serious now.
"Our group scouted the coast about two months back. Most marinas were wiped or stripped clean. Few derelict vessels here and there, nothing sea-worthy."
Kenny's face fell.
"But," Ghost continued, "one of our guys spotted what looked like a good-sized sailboat dry-docked at a fortified yard, with hundreds of walkers all around it. Took a while to clear the area, but we got a boat out of it."
Kenny blinked. "You're kidding."
"Nope," Leo chimed in, grinning as he tapped the side of the pot.
"You've got a sailboat?" Kenny asked, voice cracking slightly. "An actual sailboat?"
"Yup~" He waved his ladle in the air. "The boys call it the Siren's Mercy, due to how many people tried to get to it but failed and turned into walkers. My squad has been meaning to check it out, but we haven't had a chance."
"Sweet merciful Jesus," Kenny whispered.
He looked like he might cry.
Lily looked like she might cry, for a completely different reason.
Leo raised an eyebrow, curious. "You know how to sail?"
She resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose.
It was like every time they took two steps forward, he found a new way to derail the conversation with his obsession.
Ever since she met him, it was always boats this, boats that.
And now that someone actually mentioned a real, working sailboat? She could already feel the headache forming.
She crossed her arms, watching with narrowed eyes as Kenny leaned forward, practically vibrating with excitement.
"I know how to sail," Kenny said quickly, his voice picking up. "I was a commercial fisherman back in Florida for fifteen years. Damn, I miss the water."
Lilly didn't roll her eyes, but it was a close thing.
He always missed the water.
Missed the sea breeze.
Missed catching grouper or whatever the hell he talked about when he went off on his rants.
What about the people around him? What about the group?
His own family?
Don't they get a say in this?
She looked at Katjaa and Duck, quietly eating on the other side of the fire, completely unaware of what their husband and father was already planning without them.
There was a whole community of survivors and he was still on about a damn boat!?!?
Ghost stood still across from Kenny, arms crossed, and gave a short nod at the explanation.
"Sounds like you know your way around a deck."
Kenny grinned. "Damn right I do. I could take it down the coast, find a quiet island, start a whole new life for us."
Us.
He kept saying us, but Lilly didn't miss the way he conveniently left out her and Larry.
Seven people.
Seven.
She clenched her jaw and looked away before her expression could twist too much.
It wasn't the first time she felt like an outsider in her own group, but now, with new people and new possibilities, it was like Kenny was ready to drop them the first chance he got.
She hated it.
Hated how easy he made it seem to leave, like everything they'd been through together didn't matter.
Across from him, Ghost tilted his head slightly.
"Unfortunately, the boat's not mine to give," he said plainly. "You'll have to come with us and ask the man in charge."
Lilly perked up at that.
But to her surprise and dismay, Kenny's grin didn't fade in the slightest.
He didn't argue, didn't protest.
He just nodded with the same wide-eyed eagerness that had been plastered to his face since the word boat had been uttered.
"Absolutely," he said, chest puffed out. "I'd be happy to talk to him. You just say the word, and I'm ready."
Lilly groaned quietly and rubbed her temples.
Of course, he was.
Nothing, not the walkers, not the risks, not even the fact they were still technically strangers to these people, was going to keep Kenny from chasing that dream of open waters and wind in his hair.
Lilly pinched the bridge of her nose.
"Enough about your boat fetish, Captain Ahab."
Kenny turned and gave her a glare that might've meant something if he didn't look like a kid two seconds away from asking Ghost to play pirates with him.
Ghost chuckled under his mask at what she said.
"I'm guessing this isn't the first time you've heard him go on about boats."
Lilly didn't even dignify that with an answer; she just shot Kenny a look that said everything that needed to be said.
Leo, now wiping his hands with a rag and watching the whole scene from a distance, snorted and tried (and failed) to hide his amusement.
He mumbled something about Kenny needing a captain's hat.
That earned him a heated glare from her, and he raised his hands in a sign of surrender.
While Kenny kept asking questions, Ghost doing his best to answer, and her trying to stop him from making a stupid decision.
No one noticed two members from Ghost's group were missing.
___
…
…
…
The two masked figures moved through the woods like shadows, silent, precise, and vigilant.
Branches swayed in the wind overhead, masking the occasional crunch of a bootstep or the soft rustle of foliage.
One took the lead, crouching low as he studied the broken dirt beneath him. A deep bootprint had been pressed into the wet soil, fresh.
He reached down and brushed away a loose layer of leaves, revealing the full impression.
The other man knelt beside him, observing the shape.
No dragging.
No shuffling.
Heel-to-toe pressure.
Not a walker.
The one leading tapped twice on the ground, then motioned with two fingers, moving.
The other nodded, standing up as he followed in lockstep.
They continued forward, weaving through the underbrush, following the faint trail like wolves on the scent.
Scuffed bark, a snapped twig, and bits of disturbed moss.
All of it pointed in the same direction: southeast, deeper into the trees and away from the motel.
After nearly an hour of quiet pursuit, they slowed and dropped into a crouch.
Ahead, partially obscured by a wall of brambles and overgrown brush, was movement, figures.
Lots of them.
They were camped along the edge of a dried-out creek bed, clustered in groups near makeshift lean-tos and tarps rigged between trees.
Old tires formed a crude barricade on one end, and a rusty chain-link fence had been salvaged and strung between trees on the other.
Smoke curled lazily from a dying fire pit in the center of the camp, and a handful of men lounged nearby, weapons never far from reach.
They counted forty in total.
They slowly raised their hands to their masks and adjusted the focus.
A few wore mismatched armor pieces, others had torn jackets or blood-streaked jeans.
A loud voice rang out from the fire pit.
"—we should've taken the damn hummers when we had the chance! Those supplies they got? Worth a fucking fortune!"
A man near the center of the group spat into the dirt and leaned back in a camping chair, his beard matted and flecked with dried blood.
"And get shot for our trouble?" another barked. "Those masked freaks look like they don't play around. You wanna end up in pieces?"
"Yeah?" the first man sneered. "Well, maybe we wait for them to get comfy. Let 'em think they're safe. Then we hit 'em when they're fat and lazy, thinking their fucking safe when they fucking not!"
The others chuckled grimly.
A man near the fence began counting bullets on a dirty rag, muttering to himself.
Another man was dragging a wounded woman back into one of the tents, her screams muffled by a cloth gag.
Their jaws clenched beneath their mask.
These weren't survivors.
They were monsters.
Kidnappers.
Raiders.
Killers.
People who didn't earn their survival, they stole it from others.
"...How many masks do we have?"
"Between the two of us? Ten."
"Good."
They stepped away from the bandit camp, retreating silently into the tree line without a single twig snapping beneath their boots.
Once far enough that the campfire glow was nothing but a faint shimmer behind thick brush, they began moving with urgency, weaving through the forest with practiced ease until they reached a clearing.
In the clearing, nearly a dozen walkers milled about, aimless and sluggish, bumping into trees and low branches. Some groaned, others let out hoarse gasps, jaws snapping at the air, unaware of anything beyond their next victim.
The lead masked man reached down to his belt and unclipped a pouch, pulling out a crude, low-quality dragon mask, less detailed, made of layered paper resin and cracked paint.
The second did the same, both holding the eerie masks in their hands like ceremonial tools.
They worked quickly, mechanically.
First, they restrained the walker by stepping behind it, grabbing it by the head and shoulder in a tight lock. Then, with swift precision, they jammed the dragon mask over the walker's rotting face.
As soon as the mask made contact, the walker froze.
Its limbs went rigid.
Its moans cut off.
Then came the trembling.
A low, guttural growl built in its chest and rapidly transformed into a horrible, inhuman scream, piercing, ragged, and filled with agony.
The walker thrashed, clawing at the sides of its own face, but the mask wouldn't budge.
Veins bulged beneath the thin skin as its flesh rippled, muscles spasming violently beneath the surface.
Its posture straightened, bones cracking and snapping into alignment. Rotted, broken fingers twitched and realigned as if reknitting into new flesh, nails falling off and growing anew.
The scream stretched higher until it abruptly stopped.
Then silence.
The once-rotting corpse slumped forward slightly… then lifted its hand and took the mask off.
Now it stood tall, skin clean, face unmasked, and unmistakably familiar.
Bare-chested, lean, with the same quiet, steel-eyed stare.
He drew a deep breath like someone rising from cold water.
They handed him a pistol and a combat knife before stepping back, already moving to the next walker.
Another mask.
Another scream.
Another transformation.
Each one was identical in result.
From rotted corpse to living soldier.
Six more joined the line, all identical in face, height, and build.
"I hate how painful this is." One of the newly transformed masked walkers muttered while rubbing his face.
"We all do."
The leader looked toward the dark treetops, expression unreadable beneath the mask.
"But we do it anyway."
The forest was quiet for a moment until one of the new clones tilted his head.
"Orders?"
The lead nodded.
"Prepare to move, we strike tonight , I want to hear those bastards scream."