4. Beck
CHAPTER FOUR
BECK
This piece-of-shit town almost looked normal after dark.
Behind curtained windows, soft light glowed warmly as generators hummed steadily somewhere deeper in the settlement, their low vibrations faintly trembling through the pavement beneath my boots.
Smoke curled from chimneys. Men laughed around burn barrels, and nearby, faint music drifted through the air, quiet enough to be soothing.
I leaned back in my chair near the fire pit and watched another patrol move down the street for what had to be the fourth time in the last hour. I sneered at the ragtag group of men who had probably once been upstanding members of their communities.
Adrian sat opposite me, attentively observing his surroundings, monitoring security measures, and searching for vulnerabilities in their routines.
“The north patrol overlaps every twenty minutes,” he mumbled, his eyes narrowed.
I took a slow drink from the beer Gideon’s men had handed me earlier and immediately regretted it. Warm and flat. Still, it was better than no beer at all.
“Good for them.” I was still salty about him guilting me into this trip.
Children had always been my weakness, and the unfeeling bastard used it to his advantage. He knew the twins were the only thing that could persuade me to leave my Fox.
“They protect the generators more heavily than the armory.” He kept his eyes trained on two men heading to fuel up the generators near the courthouse.
My eyes shifted toward the building at the center of town, where lights burned brighter than everything around them. “Meaning?” I grimaced as I took another sip of the warm beer.
Adrian opened the map he was holding and laid it across his lap.
“Where in the hell did you get that?” I glanced around nervously, hoping no one saw what he was holding.
He answered absently. “Power matters more to Gideon than almost anything else. And the man himself gave it to me to look over.” His face grew smug. “He wants me to see where security could be tighter.”
This was good news, indicating that Gideon was beginning to trust Adrian. Hopefully, he would soon redirect the eyes that constantly watched us elsewhere.
“That could work to our advantage,” I murmured so low that only Adrian could hear.
“Possibly. I’d like to find a way out without destroying the town’s infrastructure.” He tapped his chin in thought. “Too many innocents could be harmed.”
I nodded. “That’s at least one thing we can agree on. Sounds like you’re getting pretty tight with him since he gave you the map, right?
Adrian pushed his glasses farther up his nose. “He’s coming around.”
I smirked. “That just proves he’s not the judge of character he thinks he is.”
Adrian's lips curled into a genuine smile. “I guess not.”
Across the street, a man dragged another infected body toward the burn trench outside the perimeter.
The infected had been female once. Her long hair dragged through the dirt behind her while blood streaked the pavement. She must have turned into the quarantine section of the hospital where they kept the sick women.
He dragged her body with one hand at a speed that was far from normal. I assumed that was the reason this place hadn’t been taken over or fallen yet: a large population of enhanced.
None of the people nearby even glanced at her. To them, she was just another woman who didn’t make it through the fever.
This was bad.
Adrian finally raised his head with a frown. “That makes several women on my count for today.”
“Yeah.”
At the very least, by coming here, we’d gained more knowledge than we’d had before. The danger to our world and the risk of human extinction were greater than we’d initially realized.
Our only hope was that nature had given us a small loophole to overcome this.
Crickets chirped somewhere near the railroad tracks. Wind rattled dry leaves against a rooftop. A baby cried briefly from one house before a woman’s voice soothed it back to sleep.
People who hadn’t experienced the fever would’ve missed those sounds.
I heard every damn one of them.
Including the heartbeat of the man standing several yards away, talking to his friend.
Mother Nature had given humans a chance.
Some more than others. A percentage of those who survived the fever gained only a fraction of the enhanced senses.
Those were the men most commonly getting into the ring.
They seemed the most desperate to prove their worth and to be among the fortunate few to find female companionship.
I hadn’t bothered to fight them for three reasons. First, they wouldn’t be much of a challenge. Second, Adrian and I had decided it was smarter to keep my skills to ourselves for now. Third, and most importantly, the woman I wanted wasn’t here to claim.
I narrowed my eyes at Mace—one of the men in Gideon’s circle—as he walked by on the opposite side of the street. He smirked in my direction, and I gave him a bloodthirsty grin.
I’d love to fight that weird bastard.
Mace was tall and broad-shouldered, carrying himself with the easy confidence common among the enhanced men. Dark hair fell carelessly across his forehead, and several faded scars marred his otherwise handsome face. One nicked his eyebrow. Another disappeared into the stubble along his jaw.
Most people probably saw him as a survivor.
A leader.
Maybe even a protector.
I saw something else.
Mace never seemed fully present in a conversation. His eyes were always moving, always watching. Like part of his mind was constantly evaluating every person around him and deciding whether they were useful, dangerous, or disposable.
But what really bothered me was his fucked-up sense of humor: a man being beaten nearly to death in a fight, or an infected getting burned outside the fence.
Nothing noticeable to most people, just a subtle twitch at the corner of his mouth.
Enough to make my skin crawl.
I’d met plenty of violent men in my life.
Hell, I was one.
But Mace was different, and every instinct I had warned me to keep an eye on him.
New world.
New hierarchy.
Only the strong were going to survive.
We hadn’t been here long, but we’d begun to figure out how this place ticked.
We weren’t prisoners.
Not exactly.
Gideon was smarter than that.
Men, like Adrian and me, didn’t get chained up if they could still be useful. Instead, we got food, beds, and beer.
They sent women to our rooms after dark.
The first night, a brunette with nervous eyes knocked softly on my door, carrying a tray of food. Clearly, the food wasn’t all that she was offering.
I told her to leave. I had zero interest in anyone but my Fox.
She looked terrified when I said it. Not offended, but absolutely terrified. As if my refusal were going to land her in the shit.
That was when I started to understand how this settlement worked.
The women here weren’t exactly prisoners. But they sure as hell weren’t free.
Some belonged to husbands or families trying to survive the end of the world together. I’d seen fathers carrying sleeping daughters through the streets and women sitting beside men who looked genuinely protective rather than possessive.
But others — others looked, watched, and measured. A prize for enhanced men who won in the ring. No option to refuse, as far as I could tell.
So far, Gideon had let the men who came here seeking sanctuary with females keep them. But I suspected it was only a matter of time before that changed.
I missed Taryn terribly, but I didn’t want her anywhere near this place. I hadn’t seen more than two enhanced women since we’d arrived here, and each had been claimed by the strongest family groups.
I’d heard that one of those women had come in with a husband who met with an unfortunate accident a few days later.
That seemed a little too convenient for my liking.
All of the family groups were made up of enhanced men like Adrian and me. Most of them already had females in their care, with a small number still waiting.
I suspected they were hoping more enhanced women would show up.
Mace was one of those.
Strength mattered here.
Powerful men got bigger homes and more food. They held more influence.
And sometimes more women.
A blonde crossed the street carrying folded laundry while two men openly argued behind her near the fire.
“Gideon already promised her to Carter.” The first man insisted.
“She ain’t claimed yet.” The other said, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
The woman put her head down and kept walking, as if she’d heard conversations like that too many times to react anymore.
Something ugly twisted low in my gut. “This place is rotting from the inside out.”
Adrian finally looked up from the map. “Most towns probably are at this point.”
“Not like this one,” I insisted.
He shrugged. “The shortage of women is going to cause society to break down faster than the infected, and places like this will be the rule rather than the exception.”
Gideon stepped out of the courthouse then, calm as ever, his dark coat hanging open despite the cold. He looked like the kind of man people trusted instinctively.
Tall, clean-cut, and relatively handsome.
An angel’s name wrapped around something rotten.
He spotted us immediately and smiled slightly before crossing the street toward the fire pit.
I didn’t bother hiding my irritation.
“Beck. Adrian.” Gideon nodded politely as he approached. “Settling in alright?”
“Fantastic,” I deadpanned.
His smile widened slightly, as if he appreciated sarcasm.
I wanted to punch him just on principle.
“We appreciate the hospitality,” Adrian answered smoothly before I could say something useful, like go fuck yourself.
Liar.
Necessary liar.
Gideon’s attention shifted toward me again. “I’m surprised you haven’t tried your luck in the ring yet.”
I shrugged. “I’m more of a lover than a fighter.”
Gideon smirked. “There’s a gathering tomorrow night,” he continued, ignoring my sarcastic remark. “You might be interested in throwing your hat in the ring. The number of available women is dropping steadily.”
Translation: I like to see what kind of asset you’ll be to my community.