TWENTY-NINE
FLETCHER
The compound looks safest from a distance, but most things do. Houses with lights in the windows. Roads without bodies crawling in the middle of them. People smiling with clean hands and locked gates behind them. From far enough away, anything can dress itself up as salvation.
I’ve learned not to trust distance. It lies prettier than most men I’ve known.
From the rooftop, the compound is a stark contrast to the broken district ahead.
High walls built from sheet metal, shipping containers, reinforced fencing, and whatever else survived long enough to be dragged into place.
Watch posts sit at the corners, makeshift floodlights hang dead in the morning haze, and there are old signs that have been bolted to the outside that warn off the desperate, the infected, or anyone stupid enough to think the walls are meant as a welcome.
A good compound knows how to look strong.
A bad one knows how to look necessary.
This one is both.
Ewan crouches next to the roof edge with one hand pressed to his headphones, listening past the wind.
Xeon stays close to the pilot, checking him with a quiet focus I’ve come to trust more than most folks’ promises.
Kaito stands because sitting is apparently against his personal religion, one hand pressed low to his side where his blood keeps testing every bandage or cloth Dakota has slapped on him.
And Dakota stands three paces from the fire escape, staring at the compound like it insulted her mother in five different languages.
Small thing, that woman.
Small like a blade is small.
All edges, all purpose, and easy to miss until it splits you open from your bellybutton to your nose.
Her hat is pulled down low, and her bandana is tugged up high. Her torn sleeve is tied around her arm now, Rot blood drying on her jacket. She looks tired enough to shake apart but mean enough to bite the first person who dares to notice.
I notice, but I keep my mouth shut, because that seems to be the trick with Dakota. Notice everything but claim absolutely nothing. Offer facts, not hands. Let her decide whether the fact you offer is useful enough to tolerate.
It goes against pretty much everything that has kept me alive.
Not the noticing. I’ve always noticed things, and that’s the problem. Noticing led to controlling. Controlling led to survival. And survival led to folks standing behind me because I put myself in front and made damn sure everyone stayed there.
It worked, too. That is, until Dakota looked at me like the line between protection and captivity was much thinner than I thought it was. The words have been chewing at me since the tower.
Protection without choice is just another cage.
I hate it when lessons come wrapped in someone else’s fear. Makes them that bit harder to ignore.
“Roofline will carry us two buildings east,” Ewan says, voice low. “Then we’re out of roofs unless we fancy skipping our merry little arses to that adorable death trap over there.”
He points toward a collapsed office building with one remaining floor tilted at an angle that makes my knees ache out of sympathy.
“No jumping,” Dakota says mildly.
Ewan glances at her. “You say that like I actually suggested it.”
“You just called the death trap adorable. You already sounded suggestive,” she points out.
“It’s called sounding charming. You should give it a go one day.”
“You sound concussed.”
“Only emotionally,” Ewan sighs dramatically.
Kaito breathes out something that might be amusement if he has enough blood to actually waste on it.
I scan the route again. Two roofs east, then a drop into the alley running behind the old clinic. From there, the outer perimeter is less than half a block away. Too open, too obvious, and too many windows on both sides.
And to make matters worse, the road below has been touched recently.
That’s the thing most people will miss.
After six years, destruction settles. Dust gathers. Weeds outgrow edges. Rain smooths old blood until it turns brown and thins. And the dead drag the same patterns over and over again, weaving ridiculous tracks through debris like water through dirt.
Fresh disturbance looks different.
Boot scuff marks on dry concrete. Broken glass without layers of dust on the inside edge. A strip of cloth caught on a fence, too clean to belong to the old world. One of the warning signs along the alley hangs crooked, bolt recently scraped bright where the metal should have rusted over.
Someone moved through there, and not that long ago either.
And Dakota sees it at the same time I do.
Her shoulders shift under her oversized jacket, only barely. It’s a small change in the way she holds herself, like a knife turning in a hand.
I almost tell her to stay close. The words sit at the tip of my tongue on instinct, thick with usefulness. But I swallow them down, instead saying, “The alley’s been disturbed.”
Her eyes flick to me under the brim of the faded hat she risked her life to retrieve. She doesn’t look surprised. She looks like she’s measuring.
“Where?” she asks.
I point with two fingers, keeping my voice even. “Clinic sign. Lower bolt’s scraped fresh. Glass near the doorway’s broken inward but clean along the edges. Cloth on the fence doesn’t have weather on it.”
She looks again, and I wait, because that part matters too. Waiting. Letting her decide if I’m right instead of expecting her to take my word just because I’ve got a deeper voice, a rifle in my hands, and a dick between my legs.
After a few seconds, she nods once. “Someone used the alley recently.”
“Yeah.”
“Vector?”
“Could be compound scouts,” I answer.
She gives me a flat look I’ve seen her give Ewan countless times now. “I thought the optimism was copyrighted by that one.”
Then she jerks at the man in question, who is doing everything to act like he’s not listening to the conversation when I know he’s hearing it better and clearer than anyone on this roof.
“Ain’t optimism. Just don’t like picking one problem when I’ve got the chance to have two,” I tell her.
Pretty sure her mouth almost twitches under her bandana, the material shifting slightly. I count it as a win, because I’m apparently starving for poor judgment.
Kaito shifts, his gaze fixed on the compound wall. “If scouts used it, they’re probably watching it.”
“If Vector used it, they might be waiting in it,” Xeon adds.
Ewan sighs. “Wow. The alley has options. Love that.”
The pilot coughs from where he’s propped against the roof edge, his fever worsened. Sweat beads on his forehead, gray under his skin. Whatever he carries, whatever he knows, his body is running out of places to keep it.
Not cargo.
Blood marker.
NOVAC marker.
They can follow reaction.
I look over at Dakota before I can stop myself, only to find her already looking my way, and that tells me enough.
Not everything. Not even close. But it’s enough for me to know there’s something she’s holding with both hands inside her chest. Something sharp enough to cut anyone who even attempts to reach for it.
So I don’t reach. Not yet, anyway. Maybe not ever unless she gives me the handle.
“Open street’s no good,” I say. “Alley’s watched or trapped. Clinic roof might have a back stair.”
Dakota snorts. “Might?”
“Can’t see from here,” I explain, raising an eyebrow.
“Huh. That’s a refreshing bit of honesty.”
“It happens sometimes.”
“Bet it hurts,” she comments.
“Like hell,” I tell her seriously.
And this time, something shifts in her eyes. Not quite amusement, but closer to the place amusement would exist if she actually let it live.
Then it vanishes just as quickly as it came.
She crouches close to the edge and studies the next roof, the drop, the alley, and the clinic.
Her eyes move quickly but there’s nothing frantic about them.
The way she reads ground is different from soldier training.
Less textbook, and more like scar tissue and instinct. Every conclusion earned the ugly way.
I respect it, and that surprises me less than it should.
“There,” she says, pointing at the second roof to the east. “Drainpipe down the far wall. Not the fire escape.”
I follow her line. At first, I don’t see it. Then I do. The fire escape on the clinic side hangs too obvious, ladder dropped, path clear enough to invite use. The drainpipe sits half-hidden behind old ivy and a collapsed billboard frame. Harder descent and less exposed.
“Pipe may hold one at a time,” I say.
“Better than the escape they want us to use.”
I nod. “Agreed.”
Her eyes cut to mine again. Suspicious by habit, but not as sharp as it was before. I have to call that progress. Either that, or she’s just too tired to add the cutting edge to it she normally uses, and I don’t like that possibility.
“Pilot won’t be able to manage that pipe,” Xeon comments.
No judgment in it, just stating a fact.
“He doesn’t need to,” Dakota says. “There’s a maintenance hatch on the second roof. See the raised square by the vent? If it opens, it might drop us into the building. From there, we can use the interior stair to clinic level.”
I look.
Damn. She’s right. The hatch is low and coated in dirt, almost swallowed by weeds growing from the roof gravel. It’s easy to miss. Hell, I did miss it. A year ago, that would have bothered me enough to get defensive. Now, I just tell her, “Good eye.”
Dakota stills as if praise is the equivalent to stepping on a landmine, and I wish I could swallow the words back. Not because they’re untrue, but because she doesn’t know what to do with anything that she doesn’t consider a threat, order, or insult.
So I add, “Hatch gives us a better option. We check it before the pipe.”
The stiffness in her shoulders loosens then, only by half a breath, but it’s enough.
Information, not praise. All right, then. Lesson received.
We move shortly after that.