TWENTY-TWO
DAKOTA
The service tunnel west of the transit station stinks of wet concrete, old grease, stale blood, and whatever happens when six years of dampness decides to become a permanent fixture like a bad personality you can’t get rid of.
Which, honestly, is really fucking rude.
I mean, if a tunnel is going to survive an apocalypse, the least it could do is smell like medical supplies, clean blankets, and maybe one of those sick pretzel stalls that used to make shopping centers worth going to.
Instead, we got rot.
Because the universe is a joyless bastard with issues falling out of its ass.
The tunnel must have connected to the station’s delivery level once, back when people still believed trains would arrive on time, coffee fixed every problem, and sandwiches wrapped in plastic counted as lunch.
Now it’s a narrow concrete grave lined with pipes, service doors, rusted electrical boxes, and red emergency lights that continue to flicker all around us like they’re warning and judging us at the very same time.
Fletcher moves ahead with the pilot’s weight dragging on him more than it should.
Xeon stays close enough to help with directions, his gaze taking in every door and hallway that branches off from ours.
Kaito guards the front corner with one hand near his blade and the other pressed to his side, the action happening more often than not.
I notice, but I’m not concerned. Concern is too soft. It’s a little indoor emotion that wears slippers and believes in soup. No, what I have is tactical awareness, not cutesy concern.
Behind me, Ewan walks with one side of his headphones over his ear and the other pushed back.
He looks less like the same idiot who would make jokes about mold having a social life and more like someone who is tuned into a frequency the rest of us can’t hear.
And, honestly, I hate that it suits him.
The tunnel carries every sound wrong. Fletcher’s boots become three sets of footsteps, the pilot’s breathing crawls along the walls, and rainwater drips somewhere ahead, sounding like nails tapping eerily onto a windowpane.
I keep my knife low but my guard high.
“Well, this is very cheery,” Ewan murmurs from behind me.
Rolling my eyes, I mutter back, “Stop flirting with the tunnel that looks like it would murder us quicker than the Zeds.”
“I was only complimenting the ambiance,” he argues.
“What? The same ambience a serial killer’s basement would also contain?” I ask shortly.
“Oof, bit harsh,” Ewan counters. “Could be a serial killer’s wine cellar. What do we really know? Maybe he’s building Lego down there.”
I glance back at him, eyebrow raised. “Is this you all the time? Like, are you always like this?”
“What? Beautiful, charming, and the life of the party? Yeah, it’s a curse,” he answers, voice dragged out like he’s truly burdened by it.
It should piss me off. It should definitely annoy me more than it actually does.
Unfortunately, the part of me that has spent the past hour trying not to think about Kaito, heat symptoms, my father’s research, Vector, or the blatant fact that my body is treating four Alphas like an unwanted survival strategy has decided Ewan’s voice is easier to process than the silence.
Which is completely unacceptable.
I look forward again, noting how the tunnel splits ahead. One route continues straight toward a set of double service doors. The other bends left, slightly narrower and darker, with old yellow arrows painted across the wall.
STAFF PARKING. DELIVERIES. MAINTENANCE.
Fletcher pauses and asks, “Which way?”
Xeon checks the old station map half-peeled from the wall. “Straight should lead west.”
“Should,” I mutter. “That small word sure is doing a whole lot of heavy lifting.”
Then Ewan stops walking. Not slows. Simply stops dead, and my spine tightens.
“What?” Fletcher asks.
Ewan responds by lifting his hand, and everyone grows quiet.
The tunnel changes the moment we stop moving.
Without our own footsteps, the silence underneath becomes visible in a way I can’t stand.
Water drips. Pipes rumble lowly. And somewhere far behind us, dead things groan from the station we just left.
But then I hear it. A low, wet scrape that’s a little too close for comfort. Not behind, either. Ahead.
Ewan’s eyes shift to the double doors.
“One?” Fletcher asks quietly.
Ewan’s jaw tightens, and he shakes his head. “More.”
The double doors rattle.
One.
Twice.
Then a dead hand slaps against the small wired glass window set into the left door.
I don’t jump. My soul flees my body for all of two seconds and only returns after leaving a formal complaint to HR, but on the outside, I’m nothing but cool, calm, and composed.
The hand drags down the glass, leaving a trail of old, black blood, smearing it across the already grimy window.
And then another face appears behind it.
Followed quickly by another. Zeds press against the doors from the other side, mouths opening and closing, jaws snapping as if the scent of living flesh has finally reached whatever is left of their brains.
“Straight is out,” Fletcher says shortly.
“Very helpful,” I whisper.
He looks over at me and I simply look back at him with a straight face and a shrug.
“Move,” he commands, just as the door slams again, only harder this time.
The pilot chooses that moment to make a sound, groaning far too loudly. As expected, every Zed behind the glass surges forward.
Kaito shifts, already looking for a defensive angle, but pain slashes across his face when he twists too quickly. Fletcher sees it. Xeon sees it. I definitely see it. Hell, everyone is seeing every damned thing lately, and it’s starting to feel real crowded in here.
“Left,” Xeon says. “Now.”
We don’t waste any more time, moving as instructed.
The left tunnel narrows almost immediately, dropping into a delivery passage with a lower ceiling and pipes cluttered above us.
Fletcher and Xeon pull the pilot through first, because hauling an injured man through a concrete hellhole is apparently our newest group activity.
Kaito covers them, pale as a ghost but steady, tightly clutching his knife at the ready.
Ewan and I are at the back of our merry band of survivors.
The double doors suddenly release a metallic screech that has my stomach dropping, and I look back just in time to watch the door bow inward.
“That’s not holding very well,” Ewan points out.
“Apparently everyone is captain of their own obvious ship these days,” I grit, shaking my head.
Ewan, without missing a beat, volleys, “I have always wanted to wear an eyepatch and one of those funky hats with the feathers.”
“You’re an idiot,” I mutter.
“Only professionally,” he quips, unfazed and taking it all in stride.
That quickly changes when the first Zeds break through.
The left door bursts open with a vicious clang of metal, spilling dead bodies into the tunnel with a wet, snapping sound that turns my stomach.
They stumble over one another, limbs tangling together in a morbid little knot and mouths snapping mindlessly, then they right themselves as one ugly wave of rot and decay.
“Run,” Fletcher barks.
I don’t need telling twice.
We take off down the delivery passage, boots sloshing through the shallow water. The tunnel bends sharply, and then splits again around a collapsed section where part of the ceiling has fallen in a heap of concrete, rebar, and broken pipe.
Fletcher and Xeon drag the pilot right, and Kaito follows, right before he turns back. Of course he turns back.
“Dakota!”
“I’m coming, goddamn it,” I snap back, literally seconds before the pipe above me bursts with a sound that mirrors a gunshot.
Cold water sprays across the tunnel, and I flinch from pure instinct, slipping on the slick floor. Ewan grabs the strap of my pack for half a second, just enough to keep me upright, then releases it so fast I almost convince myself his hand didn’t even come near me.
The ceiling groans at that moment and, like I’ve stepped into a fucking horror movie, a chunk of the ceiling drops between us and the others. It’s not huge, but it’s big enough to separate Ewan and me from the other three Alphas and the deadweight pilot.
Dust and water explode upward, and Kaito lunges toward the gap from the other side.
His injured side buckles, and Fletcher manages to catch him by the shoulder just before he can force himself through and bleed all over the floor like some heroic dumbass with the worst self-preservation skills known to all Alphas, Betas, and Omegas alike.
“Keep moving!” I shout.
Kaito’s expression turns dark, but the Zeds behind us hit the bend before he can protest the command.
Ewan shoves me toward the left branch with a hurried, “This way.”
“I was already going this way,” I inform him hurriedly.
“Oh, lush,” Ewan says. “Looks like we’re both geniuses.”
“You’re pushing your fucking luck,” I warn, trying to focus on the path ahead rather than the Zeds behind us and the way my knee keeps screaming with every step I take.
“Luck disappeared a long time ago, love,” he tells me. “We’re working with pure charm and a heavy dose of denial and determination.”
“That’s actually terrifying,” I point out just as we bolt to the left.
This tunnel is narrower than the one before, only barely wide enough for two people.
The walls are painted with old delivery numbers and arrows pointing toward loading bays that likely don’t even exist anymore.
Our footsteps ricochet everywhere, bouncing around until it sounds like a whole group is still with us rather than just Ewan and me.
Love this for us.
A Zed lurches from a side alcove so suddenly that I slam into it before it can fully turn, driving my knife up under its jaw. Bone gives way with a wet crunch, and I tear the blade free right before I shove the body back into the alcove like it’s just another day of surviving.