The industrial district looked worse from the inside.
From a distance, it had merely seemed ruined. Broken fences, overturned trucks, shattered windows, smoke twisting through the air like black ribbons.
But once the two armored SUVs rolled deeper between the warehouses, Tang Li Yue realized that ruin had layers.
There was the obvious kind.
Burned vehicles. Blood on concrete. Bodies caught beneath half-open rolling gates.
Zombies wandering between loading docks with the lingering habits of people who had once clocked in for work and now clocked in for human flesh.
Then there was the quieter kind.
Lunch boxes spilled near security booths. A child's backpack lying beside a delivery truck, too small to belong to anyone who should have been there. A thermos rolling slowly in the gutter as the vehicles passed, its metal body tapping against the curb with a hollow little sound.
Tang Li Yue looked away.
