Chapter 204: We’ve been through worse
"DON’T RUN FROM ME YOU STUPID FUCKING SLUT!"
The sound came before anything else, ripping through the street below like the city itself had learned how to scream.
The three of us were at the edge of the rooftop.
Below, in a narrow alley between burned-out apartments and collapsed storefronts, a man ran with a kind of broken urgency that didn’t feel fully human anymore. His movements were too sharp, too uneven, like something inside him had forgotten how bodies were supposed to work. Infection hadn’t erased him. It had just loosened whatever held him together.
In front of him, a woman sprinted with a child pressed tight against her chest. The child’s face was buried into her shoulder. She never looked back. She never slowed down. She just ran like stopping would end everything immediately.
The infected man gained anyway.
Terri stepped back from the ledge without realizing it. Her hand hovered near her mouth.
"Oh man..."
Her voice barely held shape.
I didn’t say anything.
I just watched.
The street below felt wrong in a way I couldn’t explain. Not just dangerous. Decided. Like everything down there had already accepted how it was going to end.
Aubrey stood slightly behind me.
"So you really think she’s not dead?" she asked.
Her voice wasn’t mocking yet. Just tired. Like she’d asked this question about too many people already.
I didn’t turn around.
"Even with all this going on?" she added.
I stayed quiet.
Below us, the infected finally caught the woman.
The sound that followed wasn’t clean enough to call anything. The child fell. The woman screamed. And then there was just movement and violence and noise that the city swallowed without hesitation.
I finally spoke.
"She wouldn’t do that."
Aubrey’s brow tightened slightly.
"Not to me."
I turned just enough to look at her.
"As long as there’s even a chance I’m alive, she wouldn’t let herself die."
Aubrey stared at me for a long moment.
"You sound fucking stupid."
No anger. Just honesty.
And I couldn’t even argue with it.
But I still believed it.
I walked past her and grabbed the ladder bolted into the side of the roof.
Aubrey watched me for a second longer.
Then she followed.
—
Terri lingered a second longer at the edge, still staring down at the alley as the infected man bent over what was left of the family. Her stomach tightened violently. Something inside her resisted the idea that this was normal now, that scenes like this were simply background noise to survival.
"Terri," Aubrey called.
Terri flinched.
"We’re heading down now."
Terri swallowed hard, nodding before she had fully processed the words.
She felt her fingertips get cold.
"Okay," she said.
Her voice came out smaller than she intended.
She followed them.
—
My feet hit the ground, my boots sinking slightly into something wet and iron smelling.
The smell of rot was worse down here.
I heard Aubrey’s feet land behind me. Then Terri’s.
My plan was— though it seemed strange— I was going to retrace my footsteps.
It was the only logical thing I could do.
To the place where the train Lila was pushed into. If I could get on that same line and follow it to wherever sector she was taken, it could not be that far.
We started moving.
—
At first, the city almost let us believe it would be simple.
That was the first lie.
The first infected came from a broken storefront, stumbling out like it had been waiting behind the glass for us specifically. I did not think. I just moved. My weapon came down once, hard, and it stopped moving.
The second came from above.
Aubrey shouted something I did not fully hear and fired before it even hit the ground. It twitched once, then went still.
Terri was slower.
I saw it in the way she hesitated half a second too long before reacting. That half second almost got her killed. I pulled her back without thinking, and she stumbled into me, breathing hard like she had forgotten how.
"Come on, Terri. Keep moving." I said.
My voice sounded farther away than it should have.
And so, we continued.
—
The streets stopped feeling like streets.
They started feeling like corridors designed to break people.
We passed bodies that were not fresh enough to matter and not old enough to ignore. Every intersection looked the same. Every direction felt wrong.
Aubrey stayed close behind me now.
"Adrian," she said after a while, her voice tighter than before. "This isn’t working."
I did not slow down.
"Just keep walking, Aubrey."
"It’s fucking not!" she snapped. "You’re walking us into worse and worse situations for something you’re guessing at."
Something hot burned in my stomach when I responded.
"I’m not guessing."
"That’s exactly what you’re doing."
Terri said nothing behind us.
But her breathing was getting worse.
That was what I noticed most.
Not fear.
Exhaustion.
Something closer to resignation.
God damn it. Why didn’t they just leave?
—
The next stretch was not a fight.
It was a sequence of mistakes we survived by accident.
A narrow street. Too many corners. Too little visibility.
They came in bursts.
Infected first.
Then something worse.
A soldier who did not hesitate long enough to be considered human anymore.
After that, there was no rhythm.
Just motion.
Just reacting.
At some point, I stopped feeling the weight of each swing or step. It all became the same action repeated in different lighting.
Aubrey was still sharp.
Terri was not.
Terri was slipping.
I saw it in the way she stopped asking questions.
Stopped reacting to close calls.
Stopped looking at anything like it mattered whether she lived through it.
—
At one point, we paused behind a collapsed bus.
Terri bent slightly, hands on her knees.
She did not speak at first.
Then, quietly, she said, "I...don’t think I can keep doing this, guys."
Aubrey turned her head slowly.
"You don’t get to decide that right now."
"That’s not what I meant!" Terri said, voice breaking slightly.
"...I just mean I don’t know how long I could keep surviving this..."
Terri was talking she’d already accepted she was gonna die here.
That?
It made my stomach twist.
Aubrey opened her mouth, then closed it again.
For once, she did not have a quick answer.
I looked at both of them.
"We’re close," I said.
Aubrey laughed once, but there was nothing in it.
"You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about."
I did not respond.
That silence did more damage than anything she had said.
—
It happened in a place that did not feel like an ending spot.
Just another street that refused to become anything else.
We turned the corner and there was no more space to turn back.
They were already there.
Too many to count cleanly.
Blocking everything.
Behind us, something else moved.
Aubrey stopped immediately.
"Jesus Christ.." she said under her breath.
Terri’s hands were shaking now.
"I’m gonna die here...I’m gonna die here..." she said quietly, like admitting it made it more real.
"I don’t wanna die here..."
Aubrey looked at her for half a second.
"We’re not dying here, Terri."
"Lying isn’t gonna help us!"
"Im not trying to be fucking helpful," Aubrey snapped.
"We’ve gone through worse."
The first one rushed.
Everything broke.
—
It was not a fight anymore.
It was noise.
I moved because stopping meant dying.
Aubrey covered angles that did not exist until she created them.
Terri tried to follow but kept falling behind the rhythm. Every time she froze, something almost reached her. Every time she hesitated, I had to correct it without thinking.
At some point, I grabbed her arm and pulled her through a gap that barely existed.
She was crying now.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just quietly, like she had run out of other ways to release anything.
Aubrey saw it and got more angry.
Not at Terri.
At me.
"This whole shit is because of you," she shouted over everything. "All of it."
I did not deny it.
That made it worse.
"We could’ve left, Adrian. We never needed to go through with this shit!! This is all because you’re so FUCKING selfish!!!"
"I told you not to follow me," I said.
"That’s not the point!"
Something hit the ground too close.
We separated slightly.
Then everything stopped.
—
Not gradually.
Not naturally.
Just suddenly.
Like the world had been interrupted.
Bodies dropped.
All at once.
The ones closest to me went first.
Then the rest followed in waves that did not make sense.
Silence came too fast afterward.
Terri stood frozen.
Aubrey lifted her weapon slightly but did not fire.
I did not move.
Then I heard footsteps.
Slow.
Controlled.
Coming closer.
A figure dropped from above, landing in the middle of the street like she belonged there more than anything else in the world.
Gun in hand.
Head tilted slightly like she was waking up.
Then she saw me.
And everything else stopped mattering.
Lila.
My chest tightened before I even had time to think.
She smiled.
Like she had been looking for me the entire time and just finally stopped losing.
She walked straight to me.
No hesitation.
No awareness of anything else.
And then she grabbed me.
And kissed me.
Hard.
The gun in her hand fell to the ground and she did not even look at it.
I kissed her back immediately.
Of course I did.
My hand went to her face, then her waist, like I was trying to make sure she was real through contact alone.
She was alive.
—
Aubrey stood a few steps away.
Watching.
Arms folded again, but this time it was not defense.
It was distance.
Terri just stared, still trying to catch up to reality.
Lila did not look at them.
Did not acknowledge them.
Only me.
Only this moment.
And she did not let go.
