Chapter 33: You don't get to make those calls in my world.
The school grounds erupted behind him. The shrieks weren't just mindless hunger now; they were a coordinated hunt. A dozen, no, two dozen Rippers poured out of the broken doors and windows, their milky eyes locked on him. The teacher's final scream had summoned the entire faculty.
Nate ran. He didn't waste breath on a battle cry. He conserved every ounce of energy, his legs pumping, the heavy pack of intel, chemicals and everything else slamming against his back. The growls and the slap of decaying feet on asphalt were a terrifying drumbeat at his heels.
He couldn't outrun them. Not in a straight line. He ripped a grenade from his webbing, pulled the pin, and without breaking stride, dropped it over his shoulder like a deadly piece of litter.
BOOM.
The concussive wave shoved him forward. The drumbeat behind him was replaced by a cacophony of wet, tearing sounds and severed snarls. He didn't look back. He did it again. A second grenade. Another deafening blast, another reduction in the pursuing horde.
He chanced a glance. Maybe a dozen left, but the ones that survived were the fast ones, the determined ones. They scrambled over the gore of their kin without breaking pace.
Last one. He armed the final grenade, counted a slow two-Mississippi, and tossed it into the mouth of an alley he was passing. He dove behind a rusted delivery van as it detonated, shredding the front-runners and filling the narrow space with shrapnel and smoke.
The distraction was all he needed. While the remaining Rippers were disoriented, he scrambled to his feet and cut down a different, narrower alley, leaving the main horde confused and circling the carnage.
For twenty minutes, he moved like a ghost, using the labyrinth of back streets, his senses screaming, every shadow a potential threat. But he was clear. He'd done it. He had the medicine, he had the knowledge, and he was almost back to her.
He approached the bookstore from the rear, circling to the shattered window. He paused, listening. Nothing but the distant, fading growls of the horde he'd evaded. Too quiet.
He slipped Inside, his eyes taking a second to adjust to the gloom. And there she was. Skylar. Sitting exactly where he'd left her, her back against the bookshelf, her head bowed. A wave of relief, so potent it felt like a physical blow, washed over him.
"Are you alright?" he asked, his voice rough with spent adrenaline.
He expected her to jump up, to cry, to yell at him for taking so long, to do something. But there was no reaction. No movement. She just sat there, a statue.
He just stood there a moment, the silence pressing in. And then he noticed it. The sound. Or rather, the lack of it. The constant, low buzz of the flies that had been feasting on the maggot-ridden body parts… was gone. The room was sterile. Silent. It didn't make any sense. Something was deeply, fundamentally off.
His survival instinct, which had just begun to quiet, screamed back to life. He slowly, deliberately, took one step back towards the window.
"Mighty impressive of you," a voice said, smooth as silk and cold as a grave.
Nate froze.
"You could tell just from how quiet it was that something was wrong," the voice continued. Kaelan stepped out from behind a tall bookshelf, his rifle held casually but pointed directly at Nate's chest. A cruel, admiring smile was on his face. "I gotta admit, you got instincts, kid."
From the other aisles, his goons materialized, their weapons raised. The trap was sprung.
Then, the final, sickening piece clicked into place. The figure he thought was Skylar stood up. It wasn't her. It was one of Kaelan's men, a lanky brute, now pulling a dirty blonde wig from his head and shedding the jacket Skylar had been wearing. The deception had been perfect in the dim light.
As if on cue, the real Skylar was shoved out from a back office. She stumbled and fell to the floor, her hands and feet bound tightly with zip-ties, a strip of duct tape over her mouth. Her eyes were wide with terror, fixed on Nate. She was trussed up like an animal, helpless.
He was surrounded, outgunned, and the one person he'd come back for was a hostage. All the risks, the grenades, the sprint through hell, it had all led him right into the one trap he hadn't calculated for.
The air in the bookstore was thick with dust and triumph. Kaelan took a slow, deliberate step forward, his boots silent on the grimy floor. He didn't shout. His voice was a low, resonant baritone, each word chosen with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel, filling the space with an effortless, chilling authority.
"You knw," he began, his eyes locked on Nate with a kind of predatory amusement. "We showed you mercy." He let the word hang in the air, letting its absurdity sink in. "That day in the parking lot. We had every right to put a bullet in your skull. A noisy, desperate fool, drawing every Ripper for miles. We could have ended you. It would have been cleaner. Simpler."
He paced a slow circle around Nate, who stood rigid, his hands held slightly away from his body, his mind racing through and discarding a dozen suicidal plans.
"Instead," Kaelan continued, his tone almost conversational, "we took what was rightfully ours, the supplies we had been waiting for and we let you run off into the woods. We gave you the gift of your continued, miserable existence." He stopped directly in front of Nate, his wintery eyes boring into him. "And how do you repay that generosity?"
His voice dropped to a dangerous, intimate whisper. "You break into my home. You steal from my armory. You pollute my ranks by seducing this…" he gestured dismissively at the bound Skylar on the floor, "…this trinket. And you kill one of my men."
The brute who had impersonated Skylar, a man named Rourke, stepped forward without a word. He drove a fist like a hammer into Nate's kidney.
Nate grunted, buckling forward, the air exploding from his lungs. He caught himself on his hands, vision swimming.
Kaelan watched, unmoved. "Oh, don't worry. We aren't mourning Pierce. That arrogant peacock was a liability. We were probably a day or two from putting him down ourselves for causing friction. But you see," he said, leaning down so his face was level with Nate's, "that was our decision. Our justice. Not yours. You don't get to make those calls in my world."
He straightened up. "You walked into our house, a little mouse, and you thought you could be a wolf."
He nodded again. This time, Rourke grabbed a handful of Nate's hair and yanked his head back. The man's other hand, holding a heavy pistol, slammed the grip across Nate's face. Nate felt his lip split open, the coppery taste of blood flooding his mouth.
"You took a sniper rifle. An M4 Carbine. Grenades." Kaelan listed the items off as if reading from an invoice. "You took our food. You took our woman. You have no idea the chaos you caused. The disrespect you've shown."
Another nod. A kick from a heavy boot caught Nate in the ribs. He heard a sickening crack, and a white-hot fire spread through his side. He collapsed onto the floor, curling instinctively around the pain.
Kaelan stood over him, a dark silhouette against the dim light from the window. "You had a simple, clean death available to you in those woods 5 days ago. You chose to spit in the face of that mercy. So now, you don't get a simple death."
He gestured to his men. "Get him on his knees."
Rough hands hauled Nate up, forcing him to kneel. He spat a glob of blood onto the floor near Kaelan's boots. Kaelan looked down at it, then back at Nate, a faint, cruel smile playing on his lips.
"You have spirit. I'll give you that. Wasted, but present." He drew a knife from his belt, not the crude combat knife Nate carried, but a long, sharp hunting blade. "We're going to take it all back. Every bullet. Every can of food. And then, we're going to take a little more. We're going to take your will. And then, we're going to take your life. Slowly."
He pressed the cold, sharp point of the blade against Nate's throat, not enough to break the skin, but enough to promise what was to come. Nate met his gaze, his own eyes burning with defiance and the cold, clear knowledge that he was going to die here, in this filthy bookstore, and that Skylar would be next.
The monologue was over. The real brutality was about to begin.