I PICKED UP A CHILD IN A DUMPSTER

Chapter 214: Raid

We kept walking for what felt like a long TIME, the buildings around us starting to thin out the further north we went, replaced more and more by open stretches of overgrown lots and the occasional collapsed parking structure.

At some point I asked what time it was, mostly out of habit at this point.

"6pm," Jisoo said, glancing at nothing in particular since the skill didn’t need her to check anything physical.

"Already?" I looked up at the sky, the light starting to shift into something heavier, the blue dimming at the edges even with two moons still hanging up there doing nothing useful. "Feels like we’ve been walking forever."

"We have been walking forever."

"I’m being sarcastic."

"Oh... (,,╹⌓╹,,)"

We pushed on, and not long after that the road dipped down toward a river— or what used to be a river, mostly dry now except for a thin trickle running through the center of a wide cracked basin.

A bridge spanned it overhead, except spanned was generous. The middle third of it had collapsed entirely, hanging in two broken halves over the gap, rwbar twisted out at angles like exposed nerves.

Vines had already started climbing up the support pillars on both ends, threading through the gaps in the railing.

And sitting along the remaining intact section, lined up in a neat little row like they’d been waiting for us specifically, were monkeys.

Real ones. Or at least real-looking: small, grey furred, perched along the railing with their tails hanging down, watching us with an attentiveness that felt slightly too coordinated for animals that should’ve just been animals.

None of them moved. None of them made a sound. They just watched us cross the basin below, heads tracking in unison like a slow, silent panel of judges.

"...Are they gonna do something?" I asked quietly, not looking away from them.

"I don’t know," Jisoo said, equally quiet. "Just walk normal. Don’t run."

We walked normally. They watched the entire way, and the second we cleared the underside of the bridge and put a building between us and them, I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

"What was that," I said.

"No idea. They didn’t attack, so I’m thinking... it’s ’not our problem.’ (￣ー￣)"

"Yep."

"Hehe."

Past the bridge we came across a ruined camp— similar setup to the one we’d seen earlier from the rooftop, tents collapsed, barricades knocked over, scorch marks scarring the pavement in wide uneven patches.

No bodies, which somehow felt worse than if there had been. Just abandoned gear scattered everywhere, a few packs still zipped shut, like whoever had been here left in the middle of doing something ordinary and never came back to finish it.

We didn’t linger.

Jisoo grabbed a half full canteen off the ground without slowing down and kept walking, and I followed her lead.

By the time we found the next building, the light had dropped low enough that the shadows between structures had gone properly dark, long and reaching. I asked the time again.

"7:48," Jisoo said.

"Yeah. We’re staying here tonight."

She didn’t argue.

The building in front of us had clearly taken some damage at some point— a whole section of the lower floor caved in, windows blown out along one side, the kind of wreck that had probably been someone’s camp once, given the scattered crates and rope still tied off near the entrance.

Whatever had happened to it, it hadn’t happened recently. We approached slow, sticking to the shadows, and slipped inside through a gap where the main doors used to be.

The lobby was dark and quiet, dust hanging thick in what little light made it through the broken windows.

I caught movement near the far wall almost immediately— one of them, slumped against a pillar, head down, completely still until it wasn’t. It lifted its head the second we got close enough.

I crossed the distance before it could finish standing and snapped its neck in one clean motion, the body going slack and sliding back down against the pillar like it had simply changed its mind about getting up.

"Dead," I said quietly.

Jisoo was already moving toward the stairwell, scanning every dark corner along the way. We checked the second floor next— another one, shuffling near a row of broken cubicles, and I handled that one the same way before it noticed we were there.

The 3rd floor had two. 4th floor had three, and that one actually took effort, all of us making noise we didn’t want to make before it was over.

"Every floor has at least one," Jisoo said, breathing a little harder than before, wiping her hands off on her pants. "This isn’t sustainable. We’ll wake the whole building up eventually."

"So we go up instead of clearing as we go?"

"Up," she agreed.

We moved faster after that, skipping the floor-by-floor sweep and just climbing, only stopping to deal with anything that actually got in our way instead of checking every room.

Actually... It worked better than I thought.

Fewer fights, faster pace, though by the 8th or 9th floor I could hear Jisoo’s breathing start to drag, her steps slowing just slightly behind mine even though she wasn’t saying anything about it.

I glanced back. "You good?"

"Fine," she said, which was the same thing she’d said the last three times I’d asked, and which was getting less true every time she said it.

I’m not dumb... come on.

By the 11th floor she’d stopped pretending. I caught her stumble slightly on the landing, catching herself on the railing, and I didn’t bother asking again.

I just turned, crouched slightly, and picked her up before she could protest: one arm under her legs, one across her back.

She exhaled, tired, and let her arms come up around my neck, her face tipping in against my shoulder. "I can walk," she mumbled, not very convincingly.

"Sure."

"I can."

"I know."

"Hon Hon..."

She didn’t argue past that.

I kept climbing, her weight settled against me easy now, light in the way she always somehow was despite everything she carried in that head of hers.

The 12th floor passed quietly. 13th floor came next, the door to the stairwell creaking open into a wide, dim space that used to be an office— rows of empty desks, toppled filing cabinets, glass walls cracked but mostly still standing, the last of the evening light bleeding in pale and grey through windows coated in dust.

And most of all... no fungal looking zombies.

I carried her in, scanned the room again for anything moving, found nothing, and walked her over to one of the few chairs still upright near a desk close to the windows.

I set her down.