Chapter 255: Chapter 254 - Surprise
Marybeth’s POV
Marybeth pulled a gray sweatshirt off the hanger and snapped it once to shake the dust out.
Not much else was worth taking. Most of the clothes had been dragged to the floor and ruined. Some were torn into strips. Some were stuck flat to the tiles with old water damage and rat shit dried over them. A few looked like they had been stepped on for months. Still, a sweatshirt was a sweatshirt. Better than the wet, filthy mess hanging off them now.
"This one’s decent," she said, tossing it to Iyisha.
Iyisha caught it with one hand, but her eyes were not on the sweatshirt. They kept moving. Window. Counter. Back room. Ceiling. Window again.
Marybeth saw it and kept her own face flat.
Good. At least one of them was still listening to the bad feeling in the room.
Lance stood near the broken window with the pipe in his hand and the backpack hanging from one shoulder. He had already found a jacket and two shirts that did not smell too bad. He looked tired, but he stayed on his feet and kept his body turned half toward them and half toward the street.
"You find pants?" he asked.
Marybeth crouched by a fallen rack and tugged at a pair pinned under three others. "Found some. If a rat jumps out, it’s yours."
Lance made a face. "Why mine?"
"Because you’re the scaredy cat."
He snorted softly. "That’s rude."
"Yet, accurate." She smirked at him.
She freed the pants and stood. Men’s cargo pants. Ugly. Big. Intact. Good enough. She tossed them to Iyisha too.
Iyisha caught those as well, but she still looked wrong. Too still in the wrong places. Too sharp in the eyes.
Marybeth straightened and watched her for a second.
They had not known each other long. Not long enough for this to make sense. But Marybeth had seen enough of Iyisha already to know when something was off. The girl was reckless when she wanted something, stubborn when pushed, and loud when she had the strength for it. This quiet scanning shit was different. This meant fear she did not want to name.
"What?" Marybeth asked.
Iyisha looked at her, then past her toward the back room. "Nothing."
Marybeth’s mouth flattened. "That’s never true."
Lance shifted his grip on the pipe. "You feel something?"
Iyisha did not answer right away. She stepped closer to the counter and set the clothes on it just long enough to grab a dark pair of socks from a shelf. "I just want to get out."
Marybeth nodded once.
That was answer enough.
She moved to another rack and yanked a black shirt free from two broken hangers. The shirt came loose all at once, and something gray shot out from the counter.
Lance jerked back. "Shit."
The rat hit a shelf leg, changed direction, and ran straight over Marybeth’s boot.
She swore and kicked at it on reflex.
Iyisha flinched and raised the gun toward the floor before catching herself.
For one second all three of them froze.
Then Marybeth breathed out through her nose and rubbed one hand over her forehead. "See? This is why we didn’t change at the base."
Lance looked annoyed with himself. "I thought it was just one or two."
Marybeth barked a dry laugh. "There were whole families in the walls."
Iyisha gave a small nod. "They got into the blankets too."
"Into the food too," Marybeth said. "I opened one drawer and damn near moved out myself."
That got the smallest twitch from Iyisha’s mouth.
Marybeth went back to work. She checked sleeves, waistbands, and pockets fast. A lot of it was useless. Too torn. Too damp. Too dirty to carry. She found one more sweatshirt, a dark blue one, and tossed that at Lance.
"Take it."
He caught it and frowned. "I’m fine."
"You’re always fine. Take it anyway."
He did.
Good.
Marybeth had gotten used to that with him. He never asked for anything, so if he needed something, you shoved it at him and kept moving. He would carry too much, talk too little, and bleed through his clothes before admitting he was tired.
Maybe it had something to do with Malcolm.
Lance was trying not to be another weight on his brother. Marybeth could see it in the way he stood straighter whenever Malcolm looked at him, in the way he swallowed pain before anyone could ask.
She looked at him from the corner of her eye.
He did look better now. The pale skin was gone. So were the dull eyes. Under the sun, his skin had taken on a red flush that made him look alive again. Fresher. Stronger than he had any right to look after everything.
The street outside stayed too quiet.
That got to Marybeth more than the rat had.
Walkers made noise. Even the slow ones scraped, bumped, dragged, or groaned. White Plains Road had enough of them that the silence should have been messier. But now every sound seemed cut off. She could hear glass shifting under Lance’s boot and the soft rasp of fabric in her own hands. That was it.
Marybeth stepped to the broken window and looked across the street.
Malcolm and the others had found the shop. She could not see the sign clearly from here, but she saw Arnulf near the side entrance and Archie half holding Harry upright. Aljun was turned outward, not toward the door. He was covering the street.
Good.
That meant at least one of them was looking the right way.
Marybeth kept her eyes there for another second, then turned back when she heard a scrape behind the counter.
Three men rose at once.
Military gear. Clean enough to stand out. Vests. Rifles already up. One had a sidearm strapped low at his thigh. Another wore a radio on his shoulder. The third moved first and fastest. He came around the counter with the muzzle steady and his eyes already on Iyisha.
"Don’t make a sound."
Marybeth froze with the sweatshirt still in one hand.
Lance stilled near the window.
Iyisha had Malcolm’s gun in her hand, but it was low, too low, and all three rifles were already trained on them.
Marybeth’s heart kicked hard.
The angle.
From where Malcolm stood across the street, he would not see them. The counter blocked most of the soldiers. The racks blocked the rest. He would only see the three of them standing still in a ruined store.
One soldier stepped forward and looked straight at Iyisha. "Iyisha Clarcke."
The way he said it made Marybeth’s stomach drop.
Iyisha did not answer.
Her fingers tightened around the gun. Her face had gone white.
Marybeth shifted half a step toward her.
The nearest soldier swung the rifle toward Lance. "Stay where you are."
Marybeth stopped.
The man with the radio spoke without raising his voice. "We’re here to take her. Quietly. If she comes now, no one else gets hurt."
No one in the room believed that.
Marybeth looked at the window. Malcolm was still by the gun shop. His head was turned toward Arnulf now. Archie had Harry pressed against the wall beside the side door. Aljun still watched the street.
None of them were looking here.
Marybeth forced herself to breathe once, slow. Three rifles. One pistol in Iyisha’s hand. Lance with a steel pipe. Broken glass underfoot. Ten feet to the counter.
The soldier kept talking. "If she doesn’t come, we kill you two first."
He tipped the muzzle from Marybeth to Lance.
Then back again.
The third soldier jerked his chin toward the street. "Your companions outside won’t get far either. We have shooters on the road."
Iyisha flinched.
Marybeth wanted Malcolm to look up. Just once. Just one wrong glance in the right direction. But across the street he still had his back half turned, and she knew better than to call out. The second one she did, Lance would drop beside her with half his chest gone.
"Iyisha," Marybeth said quietly.
The gun in Iyisha’s hand shook.
Her eyes moved to Marybeth. Then to Lance. Then to the rifles. She looked young for one bad second. Too young. Too scared. Like the weight of every wrong thing had just landed on her shoulders at once.
The first soldier spoke again. "Put it down."
Iyisha did not move.
He nodded once. "Fine."
He raised three fingers.
"On three, they die first. Then your people outside."
Marybeth’s pulse beat so hard it hurt. She could hear the street again now. A walker scraping somewhere outside. A loose sign tapping in the wind. Her own breathing. Lance’s too. Fast. Controlled. Too controlled.
The soldier started counting.
"One."
Marybeth looked at Malcolm through the broken window and begged without moving her mouth.
Look here.
Just look.
He didn’t.
"Two."
The soldier shifted the rifle fully onto Marybeth this time. The black hole of the muzzle sat level with her chest.
Iyisha made a broken sound.
Then she lowered her arms.
The gun sagged first. Then her shoulders. Then her head. Tears had started down her face, and she did not even seem to notice them.
"Okay," she whispered.
Marybeth stepped toward her. "No."
The rifle snapped back at her.
"Stay there."
Iyisha bent and set Malcolm’s gun on the floor.
It landed soft on a pile of ruined clothes.
Marybeth felt something tear loose in her chest. "Take me too."
None of the soldiers answered.
One of them moved in toward Iyisha.
Lance moved first.
Fast enough that Marybeth only saw the start of it. The steel pipe came up in a hard swing toward the nearest soldier’s rifle.
The shot went off before anyone else could breathe.
It hit Lance in the stomach.
The sound inside the store was worse than it should have been. Too close. Too heavy. Lance jerked hard like someone had yanked him backward by the spine. The pipe dropped from his hand. He stared down once at himself, confused, then folded.
Marybeth went cold.
Iyisha screamed.
Everything broke at once.
