Chapter 96: Chapter 96 - Leave It
They spilled out of the pickup fast.
The cold hit Iyisha the second her boots touched the ground, sharper without the metal walls, the wind cutting straight through her layers and setting her teeth clattering harder. She sucked in a breath that burned her chest and hugged her arms close, forcing her legs to move even as they shook.
"Move," John said, already looking down the road. "We ditch it and run for the trees."
Fenigan turned on him immediately. "We can’t leave the food."
"We need cover," Malcolm said at once, voice level but final.
Aaron was already grabbing Fenigan’s arm, dragging him backward as he spoke. "We can always hunt again," he muttered, the words tight and bitter. "We can’t replace people."
Fenigan wrenched his arm halfway free, jaw clenched, eyes flicking once toward the truck and the loaded meat, everything they had bled for over two relentless weeks. The protest was there, written all over him, but the shouting was closer now, boots pounding, shapes breaking from the dark.
He ground his teeth and turned.
"Go," he snapped.
They ran.
Iyisha forced her legs to obey, breath tearing in and out of her lungs as she followed Malcolm toward the trees. Snow slipped under her boots, cold biting deep, but fear shoved her forward. She glanced back once as she ran.
The pickup sat abandoned and crooked, the sled of meat and leather still piled in the back, the work of more than two weeks left behind as figures closed in around it.
Then the forest swallowed her, branches tearing at her clothes, darkness closing in, and she did not look back again.
Malcolm pulled her off the path and pushed her down between two dense shrubs where the branches knitted together low and tight, the space narrow enough that the wind barely reached her. He pressed her shoulders down once, firm and certain.
"Do not move," he murmured, mouth close to her ear.
Then he was gone.
Not running. Not rushing. Just melting back toward the tree line, his shape breaking apart into shadow until she could no longer tell where he ended and the forest began.
Iyisha stayed exactly where he left her.
The cold was still there, but muted now, trapped beneath leaves and earth. She curled in on herself, arms tight against her ribs, forcing her breathing shallow and silent, every muscle locked as she tried to make herself smaller, quieter, nothing at all.
Voices carried through the trees.
Boots crunched closer.
Five of them emerged near the abandoned pickup, spreading out with practiced ease, guns raised, sweeping the forest in slow arcs. The fading light stretched their shadows long and warped across the snow and brush.
"Come out," one of them shouted, the sound harsh and sharp. "Come out, come out."
A gun barrel swung toward the dark spaces between trees, toward where Iyisha lay hidden. Her lungs burned as she held her breath, eyes straining to make sense of the shapes moving beyond the shrubs, the world narrowing to sound and shadow and the pounding of her heart.
She did not move.
She did not blink.
The light was slipping fast now, the sky bleeding from gray to blue, the forest thickening as dusk pressed in. Soon it would be dark enough.
Voices multiplied.
Not five anymore. More. She could hear them now, overlapping and uneven, at least ten by the sound of it, maybe more, men calling out to each other, shouting for them to come out, their words sharp but uncertain, drifting through the brush without direction.
"Come on," someone yelled. "We know you’re here."
Another voice answered from farther left. "Show yourselves."
Gun barrels swept the dark, flashes of metal catching the last of the fading light, but no one stepped forward. No one pushed into the trees. They stayed near the road, near the pickup, near each other, shouting into the forest as if noise alone could flush them out.
As if the woods would listen.
Iyisha stayed pressed into the shrubs, every muscle locked so tight it hurt. Her breath stayed shallow and silent, lungs burning, ribs aching with the effort not to move. Her hands were numb now, fingers stiff, the cold and the fear folding together until she could barely tell where one ended and the other began.
For a moment, if she did not know better, she might have thought they had left her.
But Malcolm would not do that.
The certainty held even as time stretched thin and heavy. He would not leave her exposed. He would not abandon her in the open. That knowledge anchored her where nothing else could.
She stayed hidden.
The voices shifted. Circled. Never coming closer.
The light drained away completely, gray dissolving into blue and then into true dark. Shapes lost their edges. Distances lied. The forest thickened around her, sound muffled, shadows deep and endless.
No one advanced.
No one retreated.
Each group held their ground, frozen in a standoff shaped by fear and uncertainty, the road on one side, the forest on the other, neither willing to give.
Iyisha’s body began to lock up from the strain, shivers running through her in hard uncontrollable waves, muscles tightening until it felt like she might crack if she moved even an inch. Pressure built in her chest and throat, breath trapped and shallow, her pulse pounding so loud she was sure it could be heard.
She stayed still anyway.
She waited.
She heard the voices change.
The shouting faded into muffled talk, lower now, clustered closer together, words lost to distance and brush. Footsteps shifted. Metal clanged softly. Then the unmistakable sound of someone climbing up onto the pickup.
Something scraped in the truck bed.
A tarp rustled.
Hands riffling through what they had left behind.
Iyisha’s chest tightened painfully as a sharp gasp carried through the dark, followed by excited murmurs she could not make out. She did not need to hear the words to know.
They had found the meat.
Everything they had hauled. Everything they had worked for.
Her fingers curled into the dirt, nails biting into frozen earth, but she did not move. She did not lift her head. She stayed pressed into the shrubs, invisible and silent.
No one pushed into the forest.
No one fired.
Both sides stayed where they were, the road crowded with shadows and low voices, the trees holding their own silence, each group waiting for the other to make a mistake.
The standoff stretched thin and dangerous, balanced on fear and restraint.
