Four hours later, Shane returned home with the best broken face full of sadness he could pretend. In his right hand, he held Carl's destroyed and bloodstained backpack, though he didn't know where the kid got it unless he used another one during the escape. One thing he was sure of: this escape had been well-planned and thought out. He was certain that Carl was still alive and doing well because he was too cunning, clever, and ruthless to die so quickly. He didn't even know how the kid hid his character from everyone since he seemed too honest and innocent to be so cruel, but one thing he knew for sure: sooner or later, Carl would die because after all, he was just a kid.
Shane slowly walked into the house with feigned tears, heading toward the kitchen where the devastated and anxious Lori was. When he saw her, he said, "Lori... I'm sorry, I..." and then he placed Carl's backpack on the table along with his bloodstained cap and school ID. Upon seeing her son's ruined and bloodstained backpack, Lori began to cry, and after a moment, she screamed, "CARL, MY CHILD!" and then she started to scream in despair. Shane approached Lori and hugged her, trying to calm her down a bit. He knew very well that Lori would be devastated; he even had a plan for if she wanted to see Carl's body, but for now, he had to pretend to be sad and grieving.
After several minutes, Lori calmed down enough to ask, "What happened... where is his body... where?" Shane replied in a broken voice, "I found his body by the treehouse; one of those beasts must have caught him when he was climbing the ladder... I buried him in the garden of that house under the cherry tree... I don't know how you feel, but Carl is definitely in a better place," Shane said sadly. Lori was about to say something when suddenly there was a terrifying sound. BOOM And five seconds later, the roar of machine guns and the sound of armored military vehicles could be heard. At that moment, Shane shouted, "What the hell is going on outside?" After that, he ran outside, and what he saw terrified him. There was a huge cloud of smoke over the isolation ward, and a military helicopter was flying above them. Shane ran back into the house and shouted, "Lori, we need to pack! Something happened at the isolation ward!" He knew that escape was now impossible, but by morning, they had to be gone. Despite the tragedy that had befallen Lori, they began to pack and prepare for the departure in the morning, also discussing their plan for tomorrow. Lori wanted to visit Rick in the hospital before they left to say goodbye and leave Carl's favorite teddy bear at his grave. Shane had to agree to this plan, even though it might be difficult to execute.
However, the evening and night turned out to be monstrous because the military began bombarding the entire King County. But their house remained untouched. The sounds of gunfire ceased around three in the morning; since then, only the sound of departing military trucks and sporadic gunfire and maybe a few explosions could be heard.
In the morning, around seven o'clock, Shane decided it was the best time to leave since the sounds of fighting had stopped, and the military had presumably retreated. They loaded their belongings into the car and headed toward the hospital. Just as Shane suspected, the military had retreated, and the streets were full of bodies, with a few of those beasts in sight, which, as soon as they heard the sound of the engine, began to follow them. After a few minutes, they arrived at the hospital. The hospital was in poor condition, with shattered windows and bullet marks in the walls. One of the staircases had even been blown up by an artillery shell. Inside, Lori and Shane met an old nurse and a few people looking for their loved ones. Lori began talking to the nurse. "What happened here?" she asked, frightened by the state of the hospital. "The military came and started killing patients as well as everyone outside the medical staff, but when they reached the third floor, they suddenly stopped and withdrew," the nurse said. Upon hearing these words, Lori immediately went with Shane to the third floor to the room where Rick was lying. The way there was a nightmare; the entire second floor was full of dead people, but the third one was not. When they reached Rick's room, it could be said that he was alive. Lori sadly told the unconscious Rick about Carl's fate, nearly breaking down again as she said goodbye to him, hoping that one day he would wake up. Moments later, they left the hospital and headed toward Carl's grave, where Lori couldn't hold back anymore and began to cry, saying, "Carl, why did you leave us... why?" Shane helped Lori calm down again. At Carl's grave, they left his favorite teddy bear and a plaque with the inscription "Carl Grimes." Then they drove toward Atlanta to the refugee camp. But there was something they didn't know. When Lori was telling about Carl's fate, Rick momentarily regained consciousness. After they left, Rick shed a tear and then fell back asleep.
The day before, at Carl's hideout, he spent the entire morning cleaning up the bodies of Mrs. Park and her sons. He decided to bury them in the garden so they wouldn't attract the infected. In the afternoon, he decided to go to Mrs. Park's neighbor's house. He spent three hours searching it, but since he found nothing except an old baseball bat, he decided to demolish the whole house. Tired but satisfied, he returned to his hideout and started preparing dinner by boiling pasta on a camping stove and opening a bottle of tomato sauce to mix everything together. Two hours later, Carl admired the powerful explosion and listened to the sounds of the battle. After a few minutes, he decided to return home and barricade it; he pulled all the curtains shut. He returned to the room where he had spent the night and barricaded it as well. The sounds of fighting varied from quiet to loud. He spent some time listening to reports from different states, thanks to a portable radio, planning his next steps and determining where things were worst. That night, while changing radio frequencies, he managed to tune into a military information channel. Through it, he learned several key pieces of information, including that all the infected were not people who had gone mad but real walking dead bodies. All those infected were dead. This was surprising for Carl, but it didn't matter much to him. He also learned that many countries had ceased to exist and that many scientists had died in the process.
He intended to listen a little longer, but the military stopped discussing because some important person ordered them to get back to their assigned tasks and stop using that channel because it was unsecured and too many people were listening in. Soon after that, the clock struck ten in the evening, and Carl turned on a small battery-powered lamp, began sorting his supplies. He gathered all the collected food, tools, medicines, and useful items in that room. After a tiring hour of sorting supplies, Carl turned off the lamp, put on headphones, turned on music on his MP3 player, and went to sleep.
There was one thing Carl never suspected: that Shane would actually follow the note left behind and fake his death. But soon he would find out about it.