THIRTEEN
EWAN
We’re being followed.
I know it before Fletcher, which is actually rare enough that I almost consider being smug about it for all of four seconds.
Unfortunately, smugness is pretty hard to maintain when you’re carrying a half-conscious pilot through a Rot-heavy city, with smoke scratching the back of your throat and something pretty fucking fast screaming like a dying pig from two streets over.
Fuck me, but it’s like the apocalypse has developed a soprano section.
Despite that, it’s clear we’re being followed. The first sign doesn’t come from footsteps, because that would be too obvious, and whoever is shadowing us is anything but. They’re light, patient, and careful enough to make the hairs on the back of my neck raise as if they’re personally offended.
No, the first sign is a branch. One thin, half-broken branch that hangs over the second-floor balcony.
It moves when we pass under it, and it’s not the wind that moves it.
The wind is pushing east, funneling smoke down the street and carrying the stench of Rots, burning fuel, and Fletcher’s shitty-ass mood straight into my face.
The branch shifts west. It’s a small thing, but wrong enough that I catch it. I keep walking, though.
Fletcher is carrying most of the pilot’s weight over one shoulder, which is no surprise.
Man sees an injured survivor and immediately turns into a mule with military trauma.
The pilot is barely conscious, head lolling about, flight suit torn open on one side where blood has soaked through the fabric.
Xeo walks on his other side, steadying him with one hand while keeping his gun clutched loosely in the other.
I’m bringing up the rear.
Normally, I much prefer to be somewhere in the middle, thank you very much. The middle comes with options. The middle has fewer teeth I have to worry about. The middle means if something goes wrong, there’s usually someone else to be dramatically grabbed first.
But Fletcher put me at the back because I hear things.
I’m not exactly better at hearing, exactly.
I just hear differently. The headphones help, too.
Most people assume they block the world out.
In a way, they do a little. And thank every saint, sinner, and half-functioning battery for that, because the world is an absolute mess on the senses right now.
Rots are groaning, metal is creaking, wind is whistling through broken windows, boots stomp over broken glass.
Someone is breathing too close, something is crying too quietly, and gunfire is echoing off the concrete until it feels like the sound tries to burrow under my skin.
The headphones dull the sharpness of everything around me.
But they also make spotting patterns that little bit easier.
Like a repeated footfall, or a scrape that stops every time we stop, or the lack of birds on a roof that should have them, or even the sound of someone breathing carefully enough to think they aren’t breathing at all.
I hear that now.
A pause. Not behind us on the street, but above us, which is both interesting and annoying. Maybe even kinda murdery. That’s my favorite kind of inconvenience.
Tugging one side of the headphones off my head and dropping them around my neck, I glance up at the broken apartment building to our left. Nothing moves, which is actually super rude, because something was absolutely moving up there before.
Xeon notices my head tilt, which is nothing new. He always notices things. He looks at me, a quiet little question in his eyes, and I give him the smallest shake of my head I can manage. I can’t tell him here, not yet.
The street ahead narrows where two delivery vans crashed nose-first into each other years ago, creating a metal barricade between the apartment blocks.
Fletch slows before we reach it, scanning windows, rooftops, alleys, trashed cars, and probably the emotional state of the concrete.
Man has never trusted a narrow space in his life.
Which, honestly, is so fair.
Narrow spaces are basically the Pennywise of the apocalypse. They have a way of saying, “Hey, come here. I’ve got a surprise for you,” and the surprise is a clown in a drain wanting to gnaw your arm off.
A Rot drags itself from between the trucks, a whole arm missing and its jaw hanging crooked. Fletcher doesn’t even break stride, shifting the weight of the pilot as he raises his sidearm and puts the Rot down with a single shot. The sound bounces harshly off the buildings and I wince.
“Any chance we could maybe use the loud death stick a little less?” I grumble. “I dunno, maybe as a fun little experiment or something.”
“Could use you as bait instead,” Fletcher volleys.
I glare at the back of his stupid head. “Damn. So there’s that Southern hospitality I’ve heard so much about.”
“Keep moving,” he says, avoiding my poking.
I don’t relent. “It’s warmer than I thought it would be. Pretty welcoming. Kind of like a porch swing in human form.”
Fletch gives me a look over his shoulder and I smile at him. Then I hear it again. Not a footstep, but the smallest scrape of material against stone. Above us, left side. Second, no, third floor.
Whoever it is keeps height where they can.
Honestly, it’s smart, because the streets belong to the Rots now.
The roofs belong to survivors with either enough skill to keep living or enough stupidity to have a death wish.
Sometimes it’s both. The small scavenger moved like that.
Fast even though they had a very clear limp.
Smart enough to use obstacles. Tiny enough to slip through places built to keep three whole grown men out.
Or grown Alphas, apparently, because the universe does love a cheeky insult every now and then.
My fingers brush the hat tucked inside my jacket. It’s old and faded, damp from the rain and the mud from the courtyard. I managed to snatch it off the ground before the Rots could trample it, because the Tiny Terror looked at it like they’d just dropped their heart on the ground.
It’s not just a hat, that much is very clear.
I didn’t have a whole lot of time to think about it then because the Rots were pressing in, the pilot was bleeding a river of blood all over the ground, Fletcher was barking directions, and Xeon went quiet in that creepy, terrifying way he does when he’s about to become one with violence in a way that would take a surgeon to separate.
So a quick decision had me grabbing it and tucking it in my jacket. I think it was a good decision, but the jury is still out on that one. Time will tell, I guess.
The thing about doing the right thing in an apocalypse is that, more times than not, it looks exactly like doing the stupid thing until hours later, when you’re either alive enough to justify it or dead enough that no one will think to complain.
The hat is pressed against my ribs now, heavier than a small amount of material has any right to be. I don’t like that at all.
“Fletch,” I mutter lightly.
His head turns only half an inch. “What?”
“We’ve got a shadow,” I inform casually.
The air changes then. Not dramatically. Like, Fletcher doesn’t just stop dead all of a sudden, and Xeon doesn’t spin around all crazy-like, and nobody announces anything theatrically, which is actually a shame.
I kind of enjoy a little bit of theatre when it’s not trying to eat me.
Both of them hear me, though. Xeon’s gaze slowly moves to the rooftops first, then to the apartment balconies.
Fletcher keeps walking as he asks, “How many?”
“One,” I answer easily.
“You sure?” he pushes.
I pull a face at the back of his head, muttering, “I hope you know how much that just emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually wounded me.”
“Ewan,” he practically growls, and I roll my eyes.
“One that I can hear,” I correct, dropping the amusement since grumpy guts isn’t in the mood for it. “Could be more, but there’s one clever little nightmare above and behind us, and they’re actually doing a pretty beautiful job of not sounding like they’re even there.”
Xeon looks up toward the upper floors. “The possible Omega?”
Fletcher’s jaw tightens at the word. Not Omega.
The possible part. Because it’s doing a whole lot of work.
I mean, we all scented it. Not fully, and it was bogged down by a chaotic clusterfuck of scents and almost buried by blockers, blood, and grime.
But it was there, cutting through whatever the Tiny Terror in a mask is using to erase themselves from the world.
But it was there.
Omega.
Terrified.
Alive and hidden under Beta clothes. The kind of discovery that makes every instinct in an Alpha body come to life so fast that it knocks over the alarm clock on the way up.
Fletcher mutters, “Likely.”
Xeon’s voice is soft as he says, “Could be the small scavenger.”
I stare at him, and then Fletcher, and then I place my eyes back on Xeon.
“Ever consider it could be both?” I ask, because apparently I enjoy being the one to state the very obvious horror. “You know, because the universe is like that. It’s all about being a dramatic bitch.”
Neither of them laughs, which is actually dead rude, because that was a good one. The pilot laughs, at least. Well, he actually groans, and I’m pretty sure it’s from the pain he’s probably in. But it counts.
Or, it did until he rasps, “Water.”
Fletcher adjusts his hold on the man and grumbles, “Soon.”
I eye the man over his shoulder and grimace before pointing out, “Now would probably be better. Like, before he becomes a very tragic and grim backpack you’re hauling around.”
“We stop when we have a defensible position,” the Southern bastard drawls bluntly.
I nod like that’s perfectly acceptable, muttering under my breath, “Oh, lush. Love a defensible position. Actually, I’m a big fan. Would marry one if it had decent legs.”
I’ll be damned if Xeon’s lips don’t twitch a little. An almost-victory. I’ll take it.