TWENTY-SEVEN
DAKOTA
The compound is close enough to become a problem, but not close enough to be useful. Of course. That would actually require the universe to develop something crazy. Like manners. We’re all very well-versed in the knowledge that the universe was raised feral, in a barn, by wolves with rabies.
And yet it’s close enough that the streets start changing.
There are fewer random wreckages and more deliberate barricades.
Cars have been angled with purpose, windows are boarded from the inside, old shop fronts have been cleared of the worst of the debris, and watch posts are hidden in upper floors if you know just where to look.
I know where to look.
And so does Fletcher.
But so does Vector, too, apparently.
“Lower road’s watched,” Fletcher says from the cracked window of the road maintenance office.
I tug my bandana higher, mainly because Kaito is sitting too quietly near the wall and my mouth still remembers things it has no business replaying or filing away for future reference.
Stupid mouth.
Stupid memory.
Stupid injured Alpha behaving better than my nervous system is used to.
I cross to Fletcher instead of looking over at Kaito, because I am very much an adult with her priorities straight and absolutely no desire to emotionally analyze myself before I’ve at least had breakfast.
Beyond the maintenance office, the lower access road cuts between two old residential towers and a row of collapsed shops. Farther west, past toppled cars and a fallen pedestrian sign, the road should angle toward the cleared outer district near the compound.
Should being the operative word there.
Instead, there’s movement. Not the dead kind, either.
Human. Three figures close to the far end of the road, half-hidden behind a burned-out bus and wearing dark clothes.
There’s a yellow strip of material wrapped around one arm, and another one of them carries something long against his shoulder.
It’s not a rifle, because it’s too bulky at the… front…
My stomach tightens suddenly when I realize what it is. The launcher from before flickers through my memory, the helicopter falling, and the pilot rasping Vector like the word crawled through razors up his throat.
“Vector,” I say quietly.
Fletcher’s jaw tightens. “Likely.”
“Likely,” Ewan repeats, eyeing the scarred Alpha. “Can’t convince me that word isn’t just certainty wearing a fancy top hat and waistcoat.”
I ignore him. “They’re still tracking him.”
My gaze then lands on the pilot. Maybe they’re tailing him. Maybe they’re after the cargo he had. Or maybe they’re chasing whatever the guy knows. Hell, maybe they’re after the broken syllable he breathed like a ghost in that security office.
O’R.
My father’s name sits idle but patient in my brain like a door I refuse to open.
“They followed the crash line,” Fletcher explains. “Or the looters gave them a direction.”
“Or they could very well have been ahead of us this whole time,” Kaito comments quietly, and everyone looks over at him.
He’s still sitting, one hand pressed to his side, face calm in that infuriating way that makes calm look like a weapon he keeps sharpened.
Then he adds, “They knew enough to sweep the station. They knew enough to circle back. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out this isn’t random. ”
No. It’s not. Because random is messy, loud, and hungry. Like Zeds. Like desperate people. Like me on a bad day with not enough water and too much exposed stupidity contaminating my personal space.
This shit feels planned, and that is far worse.
The pilot makes a rough sound from the bench. His skin has turned that wrong fever color, too shiny and too pale under the dirt. Xeon presses two fingers to his pulse and says nothing, which is honestly becoming one of his more worrying habits.
Fletcher watches the service road through the gap in the boarded window. “Open road is out.”
“No shit,” I mutter.
“Residential tower,” he says, ignoring my bad attitude.
I stare over at the nearest building, a tall concrete block connected to the access road by a covered walkway.
Most of the lower windows have been blown out, the entrance doors hang all kinds of wonky, and laundry still dangles from some balcony rails six years after anyone cared if they even dried or not.
“Nope,” I say.
Fletcher glances over at me. “No?”
“Residential towers are basically vertical coffins with outdated wallpaper at this point. The stairs are death traps, if you haven’t already realized,” I explain.
Ewan hums under his breath, tilting his head. “Vertical coffins. I like it. She’s got a point, though. Sounds a little occupied.”
Sure enough, above us, somewhere deep inside the concrete coffin, something thumps once. Then again. And again. It’s slow, which tells us it’s a Zed.
“People got trapped inside when everything fell apart,” I tell them.
“Doors will be barricades. Stairwells will be blocked. Families would have been turned in their apartments. Every single sound echoes and climbs, every smell lingers. If those are Zeds, which I will bet a knife they are, there will be a whole lot of them.”
“But if we stay out here, Vector will see us in less than three minutes,” Fletcher says, and I hate that he’s right. I hate it with my whole chest.
He doesn’t tell us to move, though. He doesn’t demand that we follow, doesn’t tell us to hang tight, and that’s progress. Annoying progress, because it steals several very convenient reasons to argue. Damn it.
“Tower gets us above the road,” Fletcher informs instead. “Second floor walkway crosses over the stores and drops us closer to the west service lane. It’s risky, but it’s covered.”
I look at the road again. The Vector men are moving slowly, checking every parked car, broken door, and fucking shadow.
They’re not frantic and crazed about it, but eerily methodical.
One of them crouches on the ground, but he’s not just looking.
He’s literally tracking, and my skin prickles as I watch.
I step away from the window and mutter, “Fine. But we avoid stairwells if we can manage it.”
Fletcher nods once. “That’s fair.”
“Don’t sound so on board with it,” I grumble. “It’s weird. It’s freaking me out.”
“Noted,” he replies.
“Etch it into your brain, just in case,” I tell him.
We leave the maintenance office through the back and cross to the tower in a curved line, using trashed vans and the covered platform’s shadow to keep us hidden.
The pilot moves awkwardly between Fletcher and Xeon.
Kaito is walking at the back with Ewan now, because his side is still a pretty big issue and if he tries to pretend otherwise, I might actually knock him unconscious just for the sake of efficiency.
Not concern.
Efficiency.
That’s all.
The tower entrance smells like old smoke, stale water that’s been sitting for six years, rot, and the sour reek of bodies that have been dead too long to be useful but not long enough to be forgotten.
A row of mailboxes lines one wall, most of which have been pried open. Names sit under cracked plastic labels.
Haynes.
Webber.
Rivera.
Park.
Norton.
All people that once used to come home carrying their shopping bags and school projects and takeout.
They would argue over the bills, wives spending money on too many books when they have a case full they haven’t touched, forgotten birthdays or anniversaries, lost keys and phones, shoes left by the door.
Now the lobby is stained with old blood and the clear sign of dragged footprints. And this is why I hate residential buildings. There are always too many ghosts that haunt them now. Not real ones, of course. Imagined ones, and those are always worse.
Ewan pauses next to the elevator doors, and I mutter, “Lift’s out.”
He gives me a look that I would normally give him, and he says, “Looks like you’re wearing the captain’s hat now.”
I shrug, unfazed. “Figured you might try to do that stupid optimistic thing again. Stopped it before you could get ahead of yourself.”
“Optimistic about elevators? In the apocalypse? Gimme a bit of credit,” he says.
I raise an eyebrow at him and point at the headphones around his neck. “You literally have headphones and a death wish.”
“Both of which are considered very in right now. It’s called End of the World Chic,” he counters, giving his voice a little girly sass that makes me want to close my eyes and pray for patience.
Instead, I point at the narrow corridor tucked behind the dead lifts. A rusted sign hangs crooked from the ceiling.
SERVICE ACCESS.
“Maintenance corridor,” I whisper. “Less likely to be full of everyone who tried to escape at the same time.”
Fletcher nods. “That works.”
We leave the lobby before the building realizes we’re even inside.
The service hallway smells of damp concrete, old wiring, and mold instead of decay and old bodies.
It’s better, but not by much. It curves behind electrical rooms and abandoned maintenance cupboards, past a wall of meters with half of the covers torn off.
The floor is slick in some places, water dripping from the pipes up top.
Every sound is smaller here. Closer, somehow. Less echo and more breath.
Naturally, I still hate it.
The hallway ends at a narrow steel staircase that is no wider than my shoulders. It climbs up behind a locked maintenance gate toward a door marked SECOND FLOOR ACCESS.
I stare at it like the universe put it there to conspire against me.
Fletcher glances at me and quietly says, “I know.”
“I hate that you know,” I whisper back.
He nods. “It only goes up one floor.”
“Still stairs, though,” I point out.
“Ain’t arguing that.”
Sighing harshly through my nose, I eye the stairwell before muttering, “Fine. But these don’t count.”
“That’s a convenient rule,” the southern asshole quietly notes.
“I survived six years on convenient rules,” I grumble almost silently, glaring at the side of Fletcher’s head.