ELEVEN
XEON
The first thing I notice is how quiet the streets are.
Not the broken windows, sagging balconies, or the rusted cars that line the sidewalk with weeds reaching through the frames like the city is trying to grow bones. I don’t even notice the old playground in the distance, where one swing moves gently with the wind without a child or Rot near it.
The quiet.
Ruined cities are never really silent.
The first city I remember was definitely never quiet. Seoul always seemed to have a pulse even through apartment walls, with traffic and voices and footsteps all stacking up on top of one another until the quiet felt like a myth, like something from a completely different planet.
I used to hate how loud it was.
Now I think I’d give up just about anything to hear it again.
Because apocalypse cities? They kind of breathe in strange ways now. Pipes rattle loudly inside empty walls, loose signs creak hauntingly, glass hides under stale, old rain, and Rots drag their feet through places they don’t even remember anymore.
This quiet, though? It’s waiting. And Fletcher feels it, too.
He lifts a fist in the air, and Ewan and I both stop behind a delivery van toppled on its side, faded letters peeling from the side panel.
Fletch doesn’t look back at us when he gives the signal, because he doesn’t need to.
Six years of runs have made words unnecessary for the easy things and too dangerous for the hard.
Crouching beside me, Ewan pushes one headphone slightly off his ear, even though there hasn’t been music playing through them since before we left the compound.
He says he wears them because silence is rude.
Fletch would say it’s because he likes pretending not to hear orders.
Personally, I think it’s because sometimes the world is a little too much to deal with, and having something between him and everything else makes breathing a little easier for him.
He catches me looking and raises an eyebrow, so I look away.
“Don’t give me that thoughtful face,” he murmurs. “Makes me feel like you’re about to get up all in your feelings and ask about mine.”
“We’re in a potential ambush zone,” I remind him softly.
Ewan nods. “Yeah, that’s what I mean. It’s a really shitty time for feelings right now, X.”
Fletcher glances over his shoulder only once, and Ewan snaps his mouth shut.
I shake my head before scanning the upper floors of the apartment blocks while Fletch checks the road ahead. We’re supposed to be on a simple run. Things aren’t ever really simple. Not really. It’s just a word the compound still uses because people like to lie to themselves in small, funny ways.
The objective was pretty smooth on paper.
Sweep the park district, check two old pharmacies already marked as potential losses, and confirm whether the western clinic is still accessible.
We were to look for antibiotics, sutures, batteries, ammunition, fuel stabilizer, and anything useful enough to haul back to the compound.
We were to avoid any unnecessary contact and noise, and return before it got dark.
Just the usual kind of run we’ve all done before.
The only problem is that the park district has been kind of weird for weeks now. There’s been too much movement, too many fresh barricades in windows. Rots have started disappearing from the streets that used to collect them in slow, dangerous herds.
Signs of looters? Maybe.
Survivors? It’s very possible.
Something organized? If we’re unlucky.
Something desperate? Only if we’re really unlucky.
Fletcher hates desperate, only because he understands it all too well.
He moves to the edge of the van and studies the road closely, broad shoulders tense under his dark jacket.
The light drop of rain has dampened his dirty-blond hair and makes the scar on his face look a little paler against his skin.
He carries his rifle like it belongs there, but not in that showy or even casual way.
Just like it’s a part of him. Which makes sense since Fletch joined the military before most people even learned what they wanted to be when they grew up.
Sometimes I wonder if he even got to ask himself what he wanted to make of himself.
He taps two fingers against his thigh.
Hold.
So I hold. Same as Ewan, though a little less gracefully. His knee bounces once before he stops it with a grimace, like he’s embarrassed by his own body.
Across the road, there’s an old dental surgery that sits with its front windows smashed in.
A sign in faded blue letters promises gentle care and brighter smiles, and the doorway is barricaded with overturned chairs and dead vines.
Next to it, a pharmacy has been stripped completely bare, down to the very bones. Even the shelving is gone.
“Anything?” Ewan whispers.
Fletch pauses before answering, “Not yet.”
His voice is so low that it barely carries over the damp air, his words almost swallowed before I catch them.
I look up at the rooftops, just as a gunshot splits through the silence, the shot coming before the sound even makes sense. There’s a flash from high on the closest apartment block, and then gunfire cracks through the district.
All three of us turn just in time to witness a helicopter stagger into view.
For a second, my mind actively refuses to place it.
The world has become so ground-bound that things like that are pretty much a myth now.
The sky belongs to birds, smoke, weather, and whatever deity people still pray to when they’re suddenly out of ammunition.
But my eyes aren’t deceiving me. The helicopter is as real as I am. Dark body. Tail smoking. Rotor blades hammering the air in uneven, frantic beats. It’s also flying too low, too damaged, and far too desperate.
Ewan tilts his head to the side. “That’s not standard landing procedure, right?”
Fletcher’s face suddenly hardens before he sharply commands, “Down.”
All three of us drop behind the van just as more shots crack through the air from the roofline. Not ours or our compound. They have a different rhythm. Semi-auto. Controlled enough to be intentional, but messy enough to suggest whoever is firing is scared or rushed.
The helicopter suddenly jerks sideways and my stomach tightens. “It’s not ours.”
“Ain’t ours,” Fletch agrees. “Still our problem ’til I know what it is.”
He’s right. Because not ours means unknown, and unknown means danger. Danger means whoever is inside that helicopter could be anything. Military. Raiders. Splinter cells. Lab transport. Private militia. Or even desperate survivors with enough fuel and bad luck to fly over the wrong district.
Unknown also means whoever shot them down is still here somewhere, and that could be worse.
The helicopter clips the upper corner of an apartment block with a screech of metal. Glass bursts outward, the tail swings wide, and for one long, terrible second, the whole machine hangs crooked against the gray sky, dragging smoke behind it.
Then it drops behind the buildings, the crash shaking the road under our feet. A black plume billows upward from beyond the apartments, and for a moment, everything pauses.
It only lasts a moment before the district answers.
Rots groan from every direction. Not one. Not two. Dozens. The sound of the crash moves through the dead like a hand through water, spreading until each one in the vicinity answers its call.
Fletcher is already standing, eyes scanning sharply. “Crash site. Move.”
Ewan looks up at the smoke rising behind the buildings with a pinched brow. “Lush. Random aircraft, gunfire from the rooftops, and now a whole lot of teeth. Proper luxury outing, this, huh?”
“We need eyes on it,” Fletch says.
“I’d actually argue we need less of whatever that is,” Ewan counters lowly, still watching the smoke.
Fletch shakes his head. “Need to know who shot it down, what was inside, and whether any of it will follow us home.”
Ewan sighs, but his gun is already in his hands, ready to go like it’s inconvenient but inevitable. “Fine. But if there’s so much as a whiff of another helicopter, I’m putting in a formal complaint. This is mad, mun.”
Ignoring him completely, Fletch starts forward and I follow after.
The closer we get to the site, the louder the district becomes.
Smoke grows between the apartment blocks, cloying enough to sting the back of my throat.
A faint rain still hangs in the air, more mist than actual weather, turning ash into black smudges on the sidewalk.
Somewhere ahead, someone shouts, and another voice answers.
Then a chilling scream cuts off abruptly.
Fletcher raises his hand again, and we all stop at the mouth of an alley.
He stops to listen, and so do I, already hearing the Rots that amble from the park and side streets.
Feet drag over broken glass and nails scrape horribly over brick, because the crash has called everything slow and hungry within earshot.
But under all of that, there’s more.
A fast scrape. A wet breath. Something moving behind the walls of the apartment block to our left.
I glance up, spotting several windows on the lower floor boarded up from the inside.
It’s clearly a rushed job, the fresh wood boards badly pinned in place with nothing more than clean rope and a sheet tied across one broken pane.
Someone must have been living there recently.
Who’s to say they’re still not there? Though, I can’t imagine they’ll be there for much longer.
Fletcher catches where my eyes have traveled and his jaw tightens.
“Failed hideout?” Ewan asks quietly.
“Maybe,” I answer.
“Huh,” Ewan says. “Lovely. Those are always a barrel of laughs.”
A groan suddenly pours out from the stairwell ahead, and Fletcher wastes no time in stepping around the corner first with his rifle already raised. Ewan and I follow closely, just as the crash site appears in all its depressing and intense glory.