Chapter 345: Blood Trails
"It’s been forty minutes now."
"How many seconds?" I asked.
Maribel turned and gave me a look that could have stripped paint.
"If one of them got bitten, the others would’ve pulled back and left them behind," I said, getting back on track before she could say anything. "That’s standard. That’s what you do."
"Unless they walked straight into a large group and didn’t have time to make any decisions at all," Maribel said.
"I don’t think they’re that careless," I said. "They took part in the big clearing operation around the Whitesun. These aren’t rookies stumbling around with no awareness, they know how to read a street."
I meant it, even as the quieter, less generous part of my brain was running through the alternative scenarios anyway. They’d been out here long enough to know better than to let themselves get surrounded. They had to have known better.
I hoped they had.
"We’re already pretty far out from your hotel," Maribel said, scanning the street ahead. "Don’t you think it’s strange they’d have pushed this deep? If they were just scavenging they should’ve stayed within a reasonable range and come back well before now."
She wasn’t wrong. We’d been moving steadily and we’d called out, checked doorways, looked for any obvious signs, fresh blood, abandoned gear, anything that suggested someone had passed through recently. Nothing. Which either meant they’d gone even further than this, or they’d veered off in a completely different direction. Toward the State Marina, maybe, but that made no sense as a scavenging target. There was nothing over there worth the extra distance.
The silence between us stretched for a few steps.
"Either way," I said eventually, "we find them."
I didn’t say the rest of it out loud, that if we found them in pieces rather than on their feet, I still wanted to bring something back. Some people at the hotel would need that. The chance to mourn properly instead of just waiting for someone who never returns.
"Depending on what state they’re in when we find them," Maribel said.
I gave her a long sideways look. "Sydney usually gets the honor of saying things like that."
Tactless and dark humor, that was Sydney’s trademark speech.
Maribel took a moment to process my words before her face scrunched up.
"Do not compare me to her!"
"Why do you dislike her so much?" I asked, genuinely curious. "You’ve barely spent any time around her."
"Barely was enough," Maribel said, her tone settling back into its usual composed irritation. "She treats everything like a joke. Serious situations, dangerous ones, it doesn’t matter, she’s got a quip ready for all of it. That kind of attitude gets people killed."
"And you treat everything seriously," I said.
Her eyes cut toward me. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means what it means," I said, shrugging my shoulders. "I used to be the same way, maybe I still am, more than I’d like. But somewhere along the way I figured out that if you can’t let yourself breathe a little, laugh a little, find something worth smiling about in the middle of all this, then what exactly are you surviving for?" I paused. "Sydney’s too much sometimes, yeah. She takes it further than necessary. But she has a way of lifting the mood just by being in the room, with her dumb jokes and her complete refusal to be serious for more than thirty seconds. And honestly, I think the people around her need that more than they’d admit."
Maribel said nothing, but she wasn’t arguing either.
"I’m not taking everything seriously," she muttered, more to herself than to me, almost sulking.
"Is that why boys never come talk to you?" I said.
"W..WHAT?!"
The word came out at a volume that was impressive, and she stopped walking entirely. A few streets over, something shuffled at the noise.
I think she misread what I meant completely.
"No, I mean, even though you’re clearly popular, and beautiful, some guys are probably reluctant to approach you because of your strict and stern and too serious attitude—" I started carefully.
She went very still. "What did you just say?"
"That some guys are probably reluctant to approach you because—"
"Before that."
"That you’re popular?"
"After that."
I paused. "That you’re... beautiful?"
I watched the redness climb Maribel’s face, slowly, spreading across her cheeks in a way that the sun overhead couldn’t fully account for.
"Aren’t you?" I asked, not understanding why she was looking at me like that. From where I was standing it wasn’t a complicated observation, it was just accurate.
Beauty was definitely subjective but I was sure that she was beautiful and definitely not the only one.
"W...why are you asking now!" She turned away slightly, hands balling at her sides.
"I mean—" I stopped myself.
The wiser move was clearly to leave it there. From my perspective it was simply a fact, she was striking in a way that was obvious enough that I’d have thought she already knew it and had long since grown tired of hearing it. But from the way she was standing right now, shoulders tight, refusing to look at me directly, cheeks burning I think I just embarrassed her.
Most men around her probably clocked it immediately and then immediately decided the likely cost of saying anything outweighed the benefit. She had the kind of presence that made people assume she’d reject them and punch them as well in case they confessed.
Of course I had no intents of saying that out loud.
"You are really the worst, you know that?"
"What exactly did I do to deserve that insult?" I asked, my expression tightening.
"That’s the whole problem, you don’t even realize what you’re doing!" She said, turning on me.
"And what am I doing, exactly?" I asked, trying to follow her logic. Then I paused, replaying the last thirty seconds. "I just paid you a compliment. That’s generally considered a good thing."
She answered with a glare that communicated several things at once, none of them particularly warm.
"It’s not that," she said after a moment, pulling herself back to something more calm. "It’s that you do it too easily. Too freely. Like it costs you nothing and means nothing, just words you hand out to whoever is standing in front of you."
"I’m fairly certain you might be one of the only people I’ve actually called beautiful," I said, frowning slightly. "I don’t just say that to everyone."
Who did she think I was?
I looked at her and found her expression had shifted into something I hadn’t expected, caught off guard, lips slightly parted, staring at me almost shocked.
The moment stretched just long enough to get uncomfortable.
"Let’s focus on what we’re here for," I said, turning forward and moving on before either of us could add anything to it.
Maribel nodded, and there was something almost relieved in the quickness of it. We fell back into walking without another word on the subject.
Though I had to admit, she wasn’t entirely off base. Cindy had said similar things to me before. Sydney too, in her own roundabout way, usually framed as a joke that wasn’t entirely a joke....
Something to think about later.
The sun continued beating down on us as we moved, relentless and heavy, the kind of August heat that sits on your shoulders and doesn’t let up. We were weeks away from autumn, and then winter after that, and out here, winter was going to mean a completely different set of problems. Scavenging in the cold, keeping people warm, food stores. We needed to be thinking about all of it already.
"Ryan."
Maribel’s voice cut through my thoughts.
I looked over at her and followed her gaze down toward the pavement ahead.
My feet slowed without me deciding to slow them.
Someone was lying on the ground near the curb.
I moved quickly, closing the distance and crouching down beside them. The face was familiar, not a name I could pull up immediately, but a face I’d seen around the hotel. One of ours, without question. Not Theo, but one of the three who’d gone out with him.
"He doesn’t look like he was attacked by Infected," Maribel said quietly, coming up behind me.
"He wasn’t," I said.
I was looking at his forehead. A single dark entry point, clean and red.
"He was shot," I said.
"What?" Maribel let out dumbfounded.
I reached out and gently closed his eyes. Then I stood up, turning my gaze slowly across the surrounding street, reading it.
"Stay sharp," I said. "Whoever did this, it’s Callighan’s people. Has to be. We’re not alone out here."
Maribel’s head snapped around, suddenly very aware of every shadow and doorway in a way she hadn’t been thirty seconds ago. "What are they doing this far out? This makes no sense—"
"I’m going to find out," I said.
"You’re serious?!" Her voice jumped. "Someone from your group just got shot, a single bullet, clean, which means these aren’t panicking amateurs, Ryan—"
"I know," I said. "That’s exactly why I need to move." I scanned ahead. "The other three aren’t here. No bodies, no gear left behind. Which means they were taken." I looked at her. "Callighan’s men take prisoners, I know that much. They’re not automatically executing everyone, right?"
I heard from Molly at least, that some of them had been taken as prisoners to work in Brigantine.
"Yeah, usually," Maribel nodded slightly.
"So the others might still be alive and moving with them," I said. "I have to close that gap before it gets any wider."
"Wait—" Her hand shot out and caught my arm before I could take another step. "Just, wait a moment. Think about this for a second." She wasn’t panicking, just focused and serious. "If they already have hostages and they’re Callighan’s people, wouldn’t they be heading back to wherever they came from? Why would they still be moving around out here instead of pulling out?"
She had a point. It didn’t add up, take your prisoners and retreat, that was the logical move. Lingering made no sense unless something had disrupted the plan.
"Look," I said, nodding ahead.
A trail of blood ran along the pavement, dark against the pale concrete, clearly recent, still wet enough to catch the light. Not a clean trail either. Something, or someone had been dragged.
"Someone’s injured," I said. "Maybe that’s slowing them down. Maybe they’re waiting for something. I don’t know yet. But they haven’t gotten far."
"This keeps getting stranger," Maribel said, staring at the trail. "Moving with injured hostages in open streets instead of clearing out, that’s sloppy, or something went wrong for them too."
"Either way, I’m going," I said, already moving, my grip tightening on the handle of my axe. "You should head back, Maribel. Get Martin, get anyone—"
I heard footsteps behind me almost immediately.
"I’m coming," she said.
"I really don’t think—"
"I don’t care what you think," she said simply, stepping up alongside me and moving ahead with a stubborn expression on her face.
I watched her walk ahead of me for a moment, spine straight, spike in hand, not looking back.
She was definitely not going to listen to me or anything I had to say.
I exhaled slowly.
"Alright," I said, and followed.
