Hello again everyone! Today's chapter is going to be a little different. We won't be focusing on Rick but instead we'll be getting a Carl POV! Carl was one of my favorite characters on the show but I did feel his character could have been handled better in some ways. As badass as he was on screen I thought he could have been even more so. So expect Carl to have some cool ass character development as the story goes along. Anyway, I hope you enjoy and please leave a review to let me know how I did.


Carl sat on the back of an empty wagon and watched. He watched everything. Everything fascinated him. A month ago he was a sheltered child living on a farm miles away from the closest neighbors. That changed overnight. Shane had come back from Newman with the news that his father was dead and the body was missing. Three days later the Walkers came. Three weeks later Carl went from living on a quiet safe farm to living in a terrified ragtag camp.

There were dirty white tents set up in the middle with wagons and animals surrounding them in a ragged circle. The animals varied in type and size. Most were draft mules chewing on the rough mountain grass or lying down on the ground. A couple oxen were mixed in as well. There had been more oxen when they first arrived but they had been butchered for meat. Carl didn't expect the remaining ones to last long. Then there were the horses. Not many of those were around. Two large draft horses were pawing the ground off to Carl's right and a dark brown light horse was keeping them company. Carl's favorite horse though, was on the other side of the camp. It was a reddish brown light horse loosely tied to a tree. The beautiful animal looked like it wanted to go somewhere. Carl wanted to see it run. Shane had told him it was a mustang from the Comanche plains. Carl was in love with it. He continued to watch the horse as it gracefully pawed the ground snorting.

Eventually Carl turned is attention elsewhere. Everything about the camp interested him, the people in particular. As a kid who hadn't had much contact with the outside world the interactions between members of the group were novel to him. Particularly between those who were white and those of color. He noticed that the people of color were generally treated worse by the whites and the division of work reflected that. The colored people always did more work and were relegated the worst jobs. Carl hand't seen many coloreds in his lifetime. At least not that he remembered. He did remember being curious about them and that his father didn't talk about them often. All he said was that before the war the coloreds were mostly slaves and that after the war they were freed and because of that many whites hated them. Carl had asked his father if he hated them. His father said no the coloreds had the right to be free. That was as far as the conversation went however, and Carl's curiosity had hardly been satisfied.

Because of his lack of information Carl didn't really have an opinion on the colored people doing the nasty jobs but he did know he felt sorry for them. Nevertheless Carl noticed that the division of work didn't end there. Some of the white men did more work then others. For one person it made sense. Dale was older than the others. He spent most of his time doing light work and keeping watch. It was what Dale was doing right now in fact. He was sitting in his wagon which was parked on the high ground of the camp looking out through his spyglass. Other than the mustang Dale's wagon was probably the most unique thing in the camp. It was covered with a white cloth, the same kind of cloth used for the tents. In fact, Dale slept in his wagon which Carl thought was weird. The wagon was abnormally large and seemed to be curved from end to end. He figured Dale must be rather uncomfortable sleeping on a bed that wasn't flat.

There was one other man who didn't do much work, Ed Peletier. He only ever did work when Shane told him to but Carl noticed he would quit doing it not long after Shane was gone. Mostly he bossed the coloreds or his wife around. Ed was also the only person in the camp who dressed like the world hadn't turned upside down. He still wore his full vest, frock coat and hat that he kept relatively clean. Every other man in the camp was a work coat or dirty dress coat. None of them wore vests anymore. Even the women had stopped trying to look nice. Dresses were dirty and filthy and any decorations had either been removed or fallen off. Carl even thought he saw one of the women wearing trousers one night went he had woken up to take a leak. Yet Ed still wore his vest and frock coat as if he were somehow important.

Shane was the hardest worker in the camp, other than the colored people. He actually worked just as hard as the coloreds did, he just didn't do the dirty work. Despite not being appointed or elected Shane had become the de-facto leader of the group. Most people were afraid of him.

Carl's reverie was interrupted. "How you doing little man?" Carl looked down from his perch on the wagon. Shane was standing there to his right holding an ax in one hand and a couple of split logs under his other. His rifle was slung over his back.

"I'm good." Carl told him.

"Want to help me get this fire started? The ladies are ready to start cooking dinner."

"Yeah." Carl hopped off the wagon and landed on the ground. Shane smiled down at him and they began walking toward the center of the camp. As they passed through the tents and reached the large fire pit in the middle Carl saw his mom and a couple of the other ladies holding some buckets and pans.

"Hey ladies! What's for dinner?" Shane called out. Lori saw them and smiled.

"Some fish Andrea and Jimmy caught down at the lake." She told them.

"So Daryl's not back from his hunting trip yet?"

"No. I was worried he might be lost or hurt but Meryl said he often spends this long on hunts."

"Okay fish it is then." Shane responded. "Those damn Dixon brothers." he muttered to himself shaking his head. He was so quiet that only Carl heard him.

"What's wrong with the Dixon brothers?" Carl asked.

Shane looked up apparently surprised that Carl had heard him, "Ah nothin'. They're just wild and uncivilized. Not much better than the dang Indians."

"You don't like them?"

"Eh.. If I'm being honest they'll be good to have around with the world the way it is. You're right though, I don't like them." Carl nodded storing that information away in his brain as Shane showed him to light a fire. He wondered what his dad would have thought of the Dixon brothers. He wasn't here though and Carl couldn't ask him for his opinion. He would have to settle for Shane's.


Whooh! So there it is. My first chapter that wasn't Rick centered. A thousand points to whoever can guess what wagon Dale has :D. What did you guys think? Was Carl believable? Is he likeable? Let me know in the reviews. Thank you so much for reading!