Harem Apocalypse: My Seed is the Cure?!

Chapter 374: Back at the Piers Shopping Mall with Summer

"I’m sorry about my dad earlier."

The second I stepped outside with her, Summer let out a breath and apologized like she had been holding it in ever since she came down the stairs.

"He gets way too overprotective," she said. "Especially now, with everything getting worse because of the Infected and all this mess with...Callighan."

"No, I should be the one apologizing," I said. "I basically broke into your house. That was suspicious as hell. And creepy."

She looked at me for one second, then laughed.

"It definitely was."

That only made me feel worse.

I looked away for a second. "I was just worried you’d already gone to the mall alone."

Her expression softened a little after that. "No. I told you to come with me, remember? I was actually planning to come find you if you took too long, but you showed up first."

"Yeah, thankfully." I glanced at her bag, then back at her. "Still, you shouldn’t go there alone. Not now."

She gave me a sideways look while we started walking. "You know I’ve gone there alone plenty of times these past months, right?"

"I know. But that was before things got worse."

She didn’t answer right away, so I kept going.

"Now Callighan’s side is moving more aggressively. Gaspar’s around too. If either of them got their hands on you, that would be bad enough already." I looked ahead. "And that’s without even talking about the Infected."

Summer’s face shifted at that.

"The mall is basically in our backyard," she said after a moment. "It’s not like I’m crossing the city to get there."

"It’s still far enough from your house for something to go wrong," I said. "And I’m not only talking about people."

She sighed through her nose. "You mean like that huge thing? And the fast ones that chased me?"

Her voice stayed steady, but her face hardened a little.

"Yeah," she said more quietly. "That was terrifying."

I looked at her properly then.

Most people would still be shaken after that. Hell, I’d seen worse than I ever should have and some things still sat wrong in me afterward. Getting chased by those Hybrid fast Infected wasn’t the kind of thing you laughed off and forgot. Once you saw how fast they closed distance, how wrong they moved, how little room they gave you to think, that kind of fear stayed honest.

"You handled it really well back then," I told her.

And I meant it.

Maybe adrenaline had done part of the work for her. Maybe fear had pushed her legs harder than she would have thought possible. That didn’t matter. She still ran. Still kept going. Still survived.

She glanced at me, then away. "Well, I had help. You and that woman."

"Ivy," I said.

"Right. Ivy." Summer adjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder. "You said she was a nurse?"

"At Cindy’s school," I said. "Back before all this."

Summer looked at me with the kind of interest she tried not to show too openly. "So you all really escaped together."

"Something like that," I said.

Then I shook my head.

"Not all of us."

That made her go quiet.

There were too many names tied to that silence. Too many faces. Too many people I could still picture too clearly if I let my mind drift in the wrong direction. In the end, survival stories always sounded cleaner when you shortened them enough. The truth was messier. People got split up. Some died. Some vanished. Some made it out but not whole.

Summer looked at me again after a few steps.

"Well," she said, voice lighter on purpose, "at least you ended up finding Cindy in the end. Your pretty girlfriend."

She smiled a little as she said it.

"That’s almost movie-like, you know. Finding your girlfriend in a post-apocalyptic world."

I let out a small breath that wasn’t really a laugh.

"It’s not that romantic. Believe me."

The words came out more awkwardly than I wanted.

Because once again, how was I supposed to explain something like that in a way that didn’t sound ugly? Cindy and I hadn’t gotten together through some sweet reunion lit by fate and perfect timing. We’d fallen into each other through panic, desperation, and things that should never have happened the way they did. The sex had changed everything between us, sure, but it had also come from circumstances so messed up that dressing it up as romance felt dishonest.

Not all of it had been forced. I knew that.

But it had still pushed us across a line neither of us would have crossed that way if the world hadn’t been what it was.

Summer stared me for a moment, then shook her head. "You really are weirdly negative about things."

"I’m realistic."

"No," she said at once. "You’re gloomy."

I grumbled hearing that.

I remember having heard such remarks from my past classmates about me, clearly insulting, watching me alone sitting slouching in front of my desk.

Though obviously Summer didn’t mean it like that.

She kept walking at my side, hands tucked near the straps of her bag, eyes ahead. "I mean it. You act like if something good happens, it has to come with an asterisk."

"Hard not to think that way these days."

That answer came out darker than I meant it to.

But it was true.

Too much was still unresolved. Too much was sitting in the background waiting to go wrong.

Mei was still in Brigantine.

I’d asked Tommy to keep an eye on her before the date set for moving her out, just in case anything happened before then. As far as I could judge, that was the best I could do for now without ruining everything by moving too soon. If something really went bad before we were ready, Tommy could always bring her to Callighan.

And yeah, the fact I had to rely on that sat badly with me.

Callighan was still a bastard. Still a murderer. Still a man I had no interest in trusting farther than necessary. But when he said Mei would be safe under his watch, I believed he meant it. That wasn’t the problem.

Gaspar was the problem.

Gaspar was keeping Mei there for a reason. I knew that much. He wanted pressure. He wanted leverage. He was dragging things out on purpose, seeing how long I’d stay patient, how long Tommy would stay cornered, how much fear he could squeeze out of all of us before we finally made a move.

What he didn’t know was the only reason I could still stand here acting calm.

He didn’t know the full truth about Emily.

He didn’t know she and I shared the same symbiote. He didn’t know what that meant. He didn’t know I could feel enough, know enough, and maybe do enough to help in a way he clearly hadn’t planned around. He’d been holding Tommy back by acting like Emily’s survival depended entirely on him, like only he had the answer, only he had control.

He was wrong.

And the best part was, he didn’t know he was wrong.

That was the one opening I kept coming back to in my head. The one thing that made this whole mess feel less hopeless. When the moment came, when Tommy moved, when we finally stopped playing along and forced the situation open, Gaspar would be caught off guard.

At least, that was the hope.

A lot of it depended on Tommy doing his part right.

Still, I trusted him.

"You’re doing it again."

Summer’s voice pulled me out of my head.

I blinked and looked at her. "Doing what?"

"That thing where you disappear into your thoughts and start looking like the world offended you personally."

"Maybe it did."

"That’s not an answer."

"It’s the only one you’re getting."

She gave me a look, somewhere between annoyed and amused, then bumped lightly into my arm with her shoulder as we kept walking.

"Fine," she said. "Be mysterious, then."

"I’m not mysterious."

"No, you’re right," she said. "You’re just dramatic in a quieter way."

That got a small smile out of me.

Dramatic.

Sydney used to call me that too, though usually in a meaner way. Not actually mean, just her kind of mean, playful, sharp, always sounding like she was half a second away from laughing at me.

I shook the thought off and followed Summer as she climbed over the same wall where I’d first seen her. The memory hit me right away. Her jumping over like it was nothing, me catching sight of her there for the first time.

I vaulted over after her and landed as quietly as I could.

We’d both kept our steps light the whole way here, cutting our voices low, watching where we put our feet, avoiding loose trash and broken glass as much as possible. Hopefully nobody had noticed us.

"Let’s go," Summer said, already moving ahead.

"The mall’s right there."

"Alright, but don’t rush like that," I said, lowering my voice as I followed. "Keep watching around you. Every direction."

She glanced back at me while still walking. "I think spending time with my dad is making you turn into him."

"I’m just being reasonably concerned like any sane person should be in a post-apocalyptic world full of wandering zombies," I said.

Dry as hell, too.

Summer rolled her eyes. "Sure. But the difference is, I’ve got a superman with me."

That made me sigh.

"Right. Count on me for that."

I meant it mockingly, but she only giggled like I’d said exactly what she wanted to hear.

I stayed close behind her as we slipped inside the mall and moved into the corridor.

The place was as dead and wrong as I remembered. Dust sat over everything in a thin gray layer. The light coming through the high windows looked pale and weak, spreading across the floor in long faded strips. A few old signs still hung crooked over storefronts, and every sound we made carried too far in the emptiness. The whole mall had that abandoned feeling that never really stopped at empty. It always felt like somewhere things had been interrupted violently and never started again.

My eyes kept moving.

Broken railing ahead. A dark shop entrance to the left. Scattered debris near the center of the floor. No movement. No sound except our steps and the faint creak of the building settling somewhere above us.

"What do you want this time?" I asked quietly. "After shoes, are you planning to rob a clothing store too?"

Summer gave me a look. "That’s not robbing. That’s surviving."

"Fine," I said. "Then where exactly are we heading?"

"The top floor."

I stopped for half a beat.

That was bad.

That was exactly where I had felt it before. That same strange Starakian pull. Not a sound, not a voice, not even something I could explain cleanly, just that ugly resonance under my skin, like something buried in the structure of the place was pushing against me.

And it had come from above.

From the top floor.