Shane spun toward the door and yanked it open.
The smell hit him first. But this was concentrated. The yellow raincoat lay crumpled on the floor outside the office. Blood and chunks of flesh covered every inch of it, turning the bright color into something dark.
"Lucien..."
His vision blurred. He blinked hard, but his eyes were burning and it had nothing to do with the smell.
He saw the kid's face in his mind. The way he'd said "I'm a wizard" like it explained everything. The admission: "I don't have a home."
The kid was eleven, and he'd gone out into a horde of walkers wearing gore-covered clothes and playing ghost to create an escape route for a man he'd known for less than a week.
And Shane had been asleep through all of it.
He crouched down and picked up the raincoat. The fabric was stiff with dried blood in places. The smell made his eyes water, but he didn't put it down. This was what Lucien had made for him. He looked down at the note still clutched in his other hand.
There are people waiting for you.
They must be scared right now. Like I was before.
Lori. Carl.
His chest felt tight. The kid was right. Every hour Shane spent looking for him was another hour Lori and Carl might be in danger.
Lucien had bought him this chance with his life on the line.
He couldn't waste it.
But Christ, it hurt.
---
From his perch on a bench two blocks away, Lucien watched the office building.
The Invisibility Cloak was draped over his shoulders, rendering him invisible to the handful of walkers shambling past. His legs were tucked up under him, and he'd been sitting here for a while, watching for any sign of movement.
When Shane finally emerged, Lucien sat up straighter.
The deputy was wearing the gore-covered raincoat. Shane moved cautiously at first, testing whether the disguise worked. A walker passed within arm's reach and didn't react.
He kept moving. But he didn't head for the edge of the cleared zone like Lucien expected. Instead, he started searching.
Shane was looking for him.
The deputy checked storefronts and alleyways, peering into abandoned cars. He called out occasionally, not loud enough to draw walkers, but loud enough that someone hiding nearby might hear.
"Lucien! If you're out here, make a sound!"
Lucien pressed his lips together and stayed still.
Shane kept searching. The sun climbed higher. The raincoat had to be stifling in this weather, but he didn't take it off.
Hours passed.
Lucien watched it all. He'd known Shane would be upset. He hadn't realized the deputy would spend half the day combing through a walker-infested city looking for a kid he'd known for three days.
It made sense, logically. Shane was a cop. Protecting people was what he did. And after Rick, he probably couldn't handle the thought of losing someone else. But knowing that didn't make watching it any easier.
Finally, as the sun started its descent toward the horizon, he gave up. He stood in the middle of the street. From this distance, Lucien couldn't see his expression.
Shane turned in a slow circle, scanning the area one last time.
"I'm sorry, kid," he called out.
Then he walked to one of the cars parked along the curb, and tried the door. It was locked. He smashed the window with the butt of his crowbar, reached inside to unlock it, and climbed in.
The engine turned over after a few tries. He sat there for a moment, hands on the wheel, before putting the car in gear.
Lucien watched him drive away.
Only when the car had disappeared around a corner and the sound of the engine had faded completely did he move. He climbed down from the bench, stretched muscles that had gone stiff from sitting too long, and headed back to the office building.
---
The building was exactly as he and Shane had left it. Barricaded, secure, cleared of walkers. The second floor offered a clear view of the surrounding area. And most importantly, from the manager's office window, Lucien had a perfect line of sight to the hospital across the street.
That's where Rick would wake up. According to the show's timeline, it should be soon. When he emerged from that hospital, it would mark the official start of the story Lucien remembered. That would tell him exactly where in the timeline he'd landed.
For now, though, he was exhausted.
The all-nighter spent clearing walkers had drained him. He re-secured the barricades on the first floor, made his way back to the manager's office, and ate one of the energy bars Shane had left behind. Then he collapsed onto the sofa and was asleep within minutes.
---
Lucien slept through the night and well into the next morning.
When he finally woke, sunlight was streaming through the windows.
Time to get serious about survival. The first order of business was supplies.
He had the Invisibility Cloak, which meant he could move through the city relatively safely. But he couldn't carry much at once, not without drawing attention or exhausting himself.
He needed food, water, medicine, and weapons. In that order.
The problem was his trunk. He couldn't leave it here unattended. If something happened, he'd lose everything.
So the trunk had to come with him.
He found a hiking backpack in a sporting goods store two blocks away. The trunk fit inside, barely, and he could carry it on his back.
With the cloak draped over his shoulders and the pack better secured, he set out.
---
The scavenging became routine over the next few days.
Lucien would throw the cloak over himself and slip out of the building in the early morning, when the walkers were sluggish and few. He'd hit the nearest convenience stores and pharmacies, grabbing whatever he could carry, then return to the office building before noon.
He learned quickly to be selective. Canned goods were heavy but lasted forever. Bottled water was essential but awkward to transport. Medicine was light and valuable. Weapons were trickier. He found a few knives, some tools that could double as weapons in a pinch. Nothing as effective as Shane's crowbar, but better than nothing.
And then he got creative.
The idea came to him on his third supply run. He'd been struggling with a particularly heavy bag of canned goods, trying to figure out how to carry it without making noise or losing his balance, when he remembered the Levitation Charm.
Why carry things normally when he had magic?
He tested it first with small items. A can of beans, held aloft beside him as he walked. A water bottle floating at shoulder height. It worked perfectly.
Then he scaled up.
He found a large duffel bag and filled it with supplies. The bag weighed at least twenty kilograms, maybe more. Too heavy for him to carry comfortably.
But magic didn't care about his age or strength.
He draped the Invisibility Cloak over the bag, then cast the Levitation Charm. The bag rose smoothly into the air beside him, invisible to anyone watching.
For added security, he found a raincoat, not yellow this time, just a plain gray one, and smeared it with walker blood and flesh the same way he'd done for Shane. He wore it over his clothes, making himself look like just another survivor too desperate or stupid to know better.
To any observer, he was a kid in blood-soaked clothes, carrying an empty backpack, barely surviving.
They had no way of knowing that beside him, an invisible bag filled with supplies floated along effortlessly, held aloft by magic.
---
With supplies secured, Lucien turned his attention to magic.
He'd proven he could cast the Levitation Charm. That was step one. But one spell wasn't enough. He needed more.
He started with the basics. The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1 only had so much to offer, but The Practical Spell Compendium that he'd bought on a whim turned out to be invaluable.
The first spell he tackled was Aguamenti.
Water-Making Spell. In the books and films, it could produce everything from a small stream to a torrential blast. Flitwick had used it to put out fires. Harry had used it to fill goblets.
For Lucien, it started as a dribble.
He spent hours practicing, wand pointed at an empty cup, trying to coax more than a few drops out of the spell. His pronunciation was fine, Latin-ish magical words weren't that different from the Latin he'd been forced to learn at his posh secondary school in his previous life. But the intent, the visualization, and the connection between what he wanted and what the magic could do...
It took three days before he could reliably fill a cup.
By the end of the week, he could produce a steady stream that lasted several seconds. Not enough to blast an enemy across a room, but more than enough to give him clean drinking water whenever he needed it.
The second spell was Scourgify.
Scouring Charm. It cleaned things, made dirt and grime vanish, restored fabric to pristine condition, and removed stains and smells.
In a world full of blood and decay, it was a godsend.
He practiced on his clothes first. The jeans he'd been wearing since the zombie apocalypse started were stiff with dried sweat and grime. One successful cast, and they looked and smelled freshly laundered.
He cleaned the sofa he'd been sleeping on. The desk he used for studying. His hands, which were always grimy no matter how many times he washed them with water alone.
It improved his quality of life more than he'd expected. Small things mattered when you were living in a dead world.
He tried learning more offensive spells, like Incendio for fire, Protego for shields, Expelliarmus for disarming opponents. But those were more advanced, required more power and precision than he currently had. He could feel the magic trying to respond, but he couldn't quite bring them to life.
Not yet.
So he focused on what he could do. Levitation, water, cleaning.
---
A week passed. Then another.
Lucien fell into a rhythm. Wake early, practice magic, venture out for supplies if needed, return before dark, study his textbooks, sleep, repeat.
The hospital across the street remained quiet. No sign of Rick yet.
The walkers thinned out as the days went on, drawn away by noises elsewhere in the city. His area became relatively safe, at least during daylight hours.
As time passed, he began to relax. He had supplies, shelter, and magic. He could survive here while he waited for the story to begin properly.
That's when he heard the voices downstairs.
He was on the second floor, sitting at the manager's desk with his textbook open, practicing his wand movements for a charm he hadn't quite mastered yet.
The sound stopped him cold.
Not walkers. Walkers moaned and shuffled and banged into things with mindless persistence.
Click. Scrape. Creak.
Someone was moving the barricade on the first floor.
Lucien killed the flashlight immediately, plunging the office into darkness. Voices drifted up through the floorboards.
"Fuck, this door's blocked solid." A man's voice. Southern accent, probably local. "Someone's definitely been holed up here."
"Even better." A second voice, lighter but just as rough. "Means there's probably supplies."
"Yeah, and maybe some fresh pussy too." A third voice spoke, and it made Lucien feel sick. "Haven't had any fun in days, boys. Hope whoever's here is pretty."
"Shut the fuck up and keep moving." The first voice again. Probably the leader. "Get this shit cleared. Search every room. I want everything they got."
Lucien's blood went cold.
Looters. Possibly worse than looters, given that comment about "fresh pussy."
He stayed frozen, ear pressed to the floor, barely breathing.
The warmth in his chest disappeared, replaced by ice.
He was trapped again.
But this time, the threat wasn't mindless corpses. It was living men.