FIFTEEN #2
Ewan’s hand twitches toward where the hat used to be, tucked in his jacket, before he remembers she got it back. His mouth opens, then shuts. He nods. “Touché. I’ll give you that.”
The girl ignores him and looks at me. There’s nothing soft or asking about the look. “The hallway bends into maintenance access. There will be something like an old delivery passage somewhere. Buildings like these share guts.”
I hate how fast she maps it. I hate more that she’s probably right, even though I don’t know how that’s possible.
“Fine,” I say. “We move the pilot through maintenance if we can.”
Just then, a bullet cracks against the concrete wall and plaster flies near Ewan’s head.
“Contact!” I bark.
Every one of us drops.
The looters must have spotted movement. Maybe a shadow, maybe one of us at the window. Maybe they’re just spraying upper floors to see what screams. Either way, two more shots crash through the glass, spitting shards across the ground.
The girl moves first. She doesn’t move away, but toward, ducking under the broken window to grab a loose brick from the floor before throwing it hard toward the far end of the hallway. It clatters loudly down the stairwell, and the looters below shift fire toward the sound.
She’s played them at their own game, luring them with sound. Smart. This time, the good kind. She doesn’t wait to see if it worked, cutting left into the dark passage with her knife reversed in her grip.
“Move,” she snaps.
I don’t like taking orders, but I like dying less.
“Ewan, rear. Xeon, pilot. Kaito, with me,” I bark, spitting orders rapidly. Then I cut my eyes to the masked girl. “Route.”
She gives me a look as if she’s debating whether or not I’m worth disobeying, and then she moves. Of course she does.
The hallway ahead is narrow, damp, and half-swallowed by shadows.
The masked girl passes through it like she belongs to the dark.
She’s fast, silent, and almost angry at the floor for even existing.
Kaito follows her, not as close as he wants.
I can tell because every instinct in his shoulders leans forward while his feet stay disciplined.
Behind us, Ewan covers the stairwell. Xeon doubles back for the pilot with a look that tells me he’s not loving leaving the girl in my line of sight or fire, even for ten seconds. He goes anyway, because that’s the job.
More gunfire blasts outside, and then shouting. “Upper floors! Movement in the east block!”
Fuck.
“I think they saw the window,” Ewan says.
I nod. “Then they’ll be coming this way.”
The girl stops at an intersection where the passage splits, and then she tilts her head, listening.
I watch her shoulders, noticing the lack of movement.
She doesn’t waste it, not even for a flinch that would immediately turn into information.
She’s too damned young to look that tired.
Too small to carry that level of control and still have anything left behind her eyes other than the kind of exhaustion soldiers develop after too many bad orders and not enough sleep.
She points left. “That way slopes down.”
“You sure?” I check.
I might as well have pushed her in a pile of horse shit for the look I receive.
“Nah, I’m just choosing the directions solely based on vibes,” she answers.
Ewan makes a weird choking sound behind me, and I give the girl a hard look that she only gives right back. No fear of violence. Not one bit. But when Kaito shifts only half a step too close, she turns to stone.
There it is again. Terrified of being touched. Not of blood, or teeth, or men with guns. But of touch.
I file that away in the part of my brain that keeps people alive just as the first looter reaches the far end of the hallway behind us. Ewan fires once and the man drops back with a bellow, not dead but hit.
“Time to go, lads,” Ewan says, his voice lined with too much cheer. “Lovely hallway, but I can’t stand the decor.”
Just like that, we run.
The masked girl leads us through a broken service door and down a concrete stairwell that smells like stagnant water and electrical fire. There’s no railing on one side, half the steps are cracked, and Rots are groaning below from somewhere close enough that the sound slithers up my spine.
Xeon meets us at the next landing, the pilot only partially dragged over his shoulder. The man is conscious enough for it to hurt, but not enough to offer any kind of help, so Kaito steps forward and offers, “I can carry him.”
The girl darts her gaze over to him and snaps, “You’re barely carrying yourself.”
“I can help,” he argues.
She narrows her eyes on him. “No. What you can do is bleed in a straight line and attract every dead thing with a nose.”
“Rots don’t track like that,” Ewan points out.
The girl’s eyes cut to him. “Mine do.”
It’s a weird thing to say, something too quick and certain, but I’m not the only one who hears it. Kaito hears it. Xeon definitely hears it. But no one pushes it. Not now, at least.
A shot explodes from behind us at that moment, followed quickly by a metallic clang of bullets against metal. Looks like the looters have found their way to the hallway.
“Fletcher,” Xeon warns lowly.
Nodding, I clip, “I know.”
The stairwell opens into a service floor, with pipes running overhead, rusted and dripping. The passage ahead narrows, then bends toward the next building, and at the far end I see it. A maintenance door.
It’s locked. Of course it’s locked. Christ.
The girl sees it and changes direction, suddenly driving her knife into a Rot that stumbles out from an alcove. There’s no hesitation as she slams one boot into its knee, drops it, and finishes the job with a blade through the temple before the body even hits the floor.
It’s brutal.
Precise.
There ain’t no flourish or drama.
It looks like violence is a language she can speak fluently, but it seems she only likes using very short, clipped sentences.
Kaito moves beside her to take on the next Rot, cracking the pipe in his hand against bone. He’s slower than the girl, still hurt, but still effective.
Xeon lowers the pilot behind a chipped pillar and fires twice down the passage behind us. “Three coming.”
“Looters?” I ask.
“Yes,” he answers quickly.
Ewan reloads his gun. “And they’ve brought plus ones. A lot of them. Dead ones, too. Very community-minded.”
A looter shouts from above before the last word is out of Ewan’s mouth. “Noise charge!”
My stomach drops suddenly, and I bark, “Down!”
Something small bounces down the stairwell seconds later. It’s not a grenade. It’s worse. Especially right now. A metal canister rigged with a battery alarm, built for one purpose and one purpose only. To make enough noise to bring the dead running.
It hits the landing and instantly starts screaming, a high-pitched, mechanical, and piercing sound.
Every Rot below answers and the service floor explodes with chaos.
Rots drag themselves from side halls, storage rooms, and behind maintenance cages.
A fast Rot screeches from somewhere beyond the locked gate, body slamming the metal hard enough to shake rust and paint loose.
The looters don’t even need to see us at this point. They just need to make sure the dead find us.
I shoot the canister, and it sparks and dies, but the damage is done.
“Smart bastards,” I mutter.
“I’d actually love it if they were a little less smart,” Ewan quips, firing a bullet into a Rot’s skull without skipping a beat. “Way less smart would be ideal. Like, I’m talking a bent-spoon kind of smart, you know? Or decorative-pillow kind of smart.”
The girl ducks under a Rot’s grasp, slicing tendons behind its knee before ramming her knife under its jaw. Another reaches for her from behind and Kaito moves, but he’s too slow. I fire before he even gets there, and the Rot drops inches from her back.
She spins on me, blade up and eyes wild with fury. Not fear. Genuine anger, because I was behind her. Because I witnessed her not seeing something. Because it means I could have touched her, grabbed her, or even taken advantage, and it looks to me like she would have rather faced the Rot.
Christ almighty.
“Clear behind you,” I tell her.
Her chest rises once. Twice. And then she turns away without a word and keeps fighting. Seems like trust, in her world, is not getting stabbed for saving her. I guess I’ll take that.
The grate at the far end suddenly screams as the fast Rot on the other side slams into it again. Kaito pushes his shoulder against a vending machine rusted in place near the wall, gritting out, “Help me.”
Ewan gives him a look. “What? With the haunted snack coffin?”
“Move it against the grate,” Kaito instructs, talking through clenched teeth.
It’s a good call, so I command, “Do it.”
Ewan and Xeon shove the machine across the floor with a bone-rattling screech. The masked girl darts past them, keeping Rots off their backs. She doesn’t turn away from any of us for more than a single breath. Even when she’s fighting, she’ll angle herself so no one can linger in her blind spot.
Some people are trained into that.
Some people are hurt into it.
The vending machine slams against the grate just as the fast Rot hits it from the other side. Metal yells, but it holds for now.
The next problem comes from above, when the looters start pushing down the stairs. I catch sight of a yellow scarf just as the bastard fires. The bullet pierces the wall just beside my head, and I return two shots. He ducks back with a laugh.
An actual laugh.
And that’s all it takes to make the decision for me.
These aren’t desperate survivors. They’re not just simple scavengers. They’re men with enough training and discipline to plan. These are men with enough cruelty to enjoy that plan, and I don’t like that combination.
“Smoke!” one of them shouts suddenly, a mere moment before a canister clatters into the service hall and coughs out gray smoke.
“Masks up!” I snap.