CHAPTER 1
The forest wasn't quiet — it was waiting.
Emmy moved low, breath held, eyes scanning the grey-green thicket. The air smelled of damp earth and something sour underneath — decay, but fresh.
She'd come out for wire and antibiotics. The compound's stock was running thin. Bob had told her not to go alone.
I don't take orders, she'd said.
Now, crouched behind a moss-eaten stump, she wondered if pride was worth dying for.
A twig snapped to her left.
Not a deer. Deer didn't breathe like that — ragged, wet, like lungs full of mud.
She turned her head slowly.
Forty yards away, between two pines, a figure stood unnaturally still. Pale, streaked with dirt and old blood. Clothes torn, eyes fixed on her.
It wasn't alone.
Behind it, shadows shifted. One. Three. Five. More emerging from the brush, heads tilting, nostrils flaring.
Fast ones.
Everyone in the region knew. These weren't the shambling corpses from old stories. These were predators. They could sprint. They could climb. They hunted in packs.
Emmy's hand tightened around her knife. Her rifle was slung across her back — too slow to shoulder now.
The lead zombie's jaw unhinged. A low, guttural rasp tore from its throat.
A signal.
They charged.
---
Emmy didn't think — she ran.
Branches whipped her face. Thorns tore her sleeves. Her boots pounded the forest floor, but their footsteps were louder — a storm of snapping twigs and snarling breaths gaining behind her.
She risked a glance back.
Six of them. Maybe seven. Loping like wolves, arms outstretched, eyes blank and hungry.
Too fast. Too close.
The gully. Just get to the gully.
Bob's trap was ahead — a deep ravine disguised with a lattice of branches. Last resort. Dangerous even for her.
She leapt over a fallen log, landed hard, rolled, came up running. Her heart hammered against her ribs.
The zombies fanned out, trying to flank her. One vaulted over the same log without breaking stride.
Shit.
She could see the trap now — a slight depression in the earth, leaves scattered too perfectly.
Emmy veered left, leading the pack straight toward the hidden drop.
At the last second, she planted her foot and pushed off sideways, grabbing a low branch to swing her body clear.
The first two zombies didn't slow.
They hit the covering at full speed — and vanished.
A crash from below, then the wet, brutal sound of rebar punching through rot-soft flesh.
But the others skidded, senses sharp. They avoided the pit, eyes locking back on her.
Emmy stumbled backward, unslinging her rifle. Her hands were shaking.
One zombie lunged — she fired.
Its head jerked back, but it kept coming, clawing at the air. She shot again. It dropped.
Two more replaced it, charging from the sides.
She was cornered.
Her rifle clicked — empty.
A clawed hand grabbed her jacket, yanked her forward. Rancid breath filled her face. Teeth — yellow, broken — snapped toward her throat.
BANG.
The zombie's head exploded.
Warm spatter hit Emmy's cheek. She staggered back as the body crumpled.
Up on the ridge, smoke curling from the barrel of his rifle, stood Bob.
Face like stone. Eyes cold.
He chambered another round, took aim, and dropped the last two zombies with two clean shots.
Silence rushed back in, louder than the gunfire.
Bob lowered his rifle, his gaze sweeping the tree line before landing on her.
No relief in his eyes. No warmth. Just a hard, simmering anger.
"You done?" he said, voice rough. "Or you wanna bring the whole damn horde down on us?" After the last zombie fell, the forest went still. Not quiet — never quiet — but still, as if holding its breath.
Gun smoke drifted, mixing with the smell of wet leaves and fresh rot.
Emmy's ears rang. Her hands shook as she lowered her empty rifle, fingers slick with sweat and grime. She stared at the body at her feet — the one Bob had shot mid-lunge. It lay twisted, a dark pool spreading beneath its shattered skull.
She looked up.
Bob stood on the ridge, rifle still shouldered, scanning the trees. His jaw was tight. When he finally lowered the weapon, his movements were stiff, deliberate. He didn't look at her as he descended the slope, boots crunching on deadfall.
He stopped a few feet away. Close enough to touch. He didn't.
"You hit?" His voice was gravel.
"No." She wiped her face with her sleeve. It came away streaked with dirt and blood that wasn't hers.
"Count the swarm?" His eyes kept moving — treeline, the pit, the shadows.
"Seven. Maybe eight."
"You led six. One in the pit. I dropped five." A pause. "One got away."
A chill that had nothing to do with the air went through her. One got away. One would call more.
"It happens," she said, trying to sound like it didn't matter.
"It shouldn't." He finally looked at her. His eyes were the color of old ash. "You shouldn't be out here alone. Not this deep. Not with fast ones running these woods."
"I had a job to do."
"Your job is to come back alive." He took a step closer. The anger in his voice was low, controlled, and all the more cutting for it. "Not to play bait. Not to test traps when the hives are awake."
"I wasn't testing traps. I was scouting. We need antibiotics."
"We need you." The words hung between them, sharp and heavy. "Not your body in a ditch because you got reckless."
"I'm not one of your soldiers, Bob. You don't sign my orders."
"Someone needs to," he shot back. "Because you keep acting like you've got nothing to lose."
She almost laughed, bitter and hollow. "What do I have to lose?"
He stared at her. A long, silent beat. Something moved behind his eyes — something she couldn't name, something he always swallowed back.
"Come on," he said finally, turning away. "We're too exposed here. Move."
He started walking, not checking to see if she followed.
She did, because the forest was listening. Because the one that got away was out there. Because he was right — this deep, alone was a death sentence.
They walked in silence for ten minutes, the only sounds their footsteps and the distant cry of crows.
Then, without turning, he spoke again, softer this time.
"You're a good scout, Emmy. One of the best we've got. But good scouts come back. They don't try to die."
She didn't answer.
She just walked behind him, watching his back, the set of his shoulders, the way he carried the weight of everyone without ever seeming to bend.
And in her pocket, buried under a folded map and a half-empty canteen, her father's watch began to warm against her thigh.
She didn't feel it yet.
But it was already beeping.
The one that got away.
It lingered in the air between them, a ghost already calling others. Bob moved through the undergrowth like he knew each root, each low branch, but his silence was a wall. Emmy followed, her own breath too loud in her ears. The rifle felt useless in her hands. Empty. Like her.
"You're mad," she said, not a question.
"I'm practical." He didn't turn. "Mad is a luxury. We're fresh out of luxuries."
"I had it under control."
That made him stop. He turned slowly, and his eyes weren't angry. They were tired. Deep-down, bone-tired. "Under control? You were three seconds from being torn open. If I'd been thirty seconds later—"
"But you weren't."
"This time."
They stood there, a foot apart, in a patch of gray sunlight cutting through the canopy. Somewhere above, a bird cried — sharp, lonely. Bob's gaze dropped to her neck, where the zombie's fingers had torn her collar. His jaw tightened.
"You think I don't see you?" he said, voice low. "Pushing farther out. Taking stupid risks. You got a death wish, you do it clean. Don't make us watch."
The words hit like a slap. "You don't watch," she said, colder than she meant. "You just stand on the ridge and judge."
For a second, something raw flashed across his face. Not anger. Something closer to pain. Then it was gone, buried under that practiced calm. "Let's go," he said, turning again. "Light's fading."
They walked.
The forest thickened, shadows stretching long and blue. Emmy's mind replayed it — the snarl, the clawed hand, the gunshot. Bob's bullet. Bob's timing. Always there. Always just far enough away.
She remembered the first winter they'd met. She was half-starved, holed up in a collapsed pharmacy. He'd thrown a can of beans through the broken window like a grenade. Sat outside in the snow until she came out. Never asked her name. Just said, "You shoot?" She'd nodded. He'd said, "Then you're with me."
That was it. No speeches. No promises. Just you're with me.
And now…
"Bob."
He didn't stop walking, but his stride slowed.
"If I die out here," she said, "you don't come looking. You understand? You seal the gate and you keep moving."
He stopped then. Full stop. He turned, and his face was stone. "Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't talk like your life is yours to throw away." His voice was quiet, but it carried in the still air. "Not after all we've lost. Not after all we're still losing."
She wanted to say something sharp. Wanted to make him feel how heavy the air was, how every breath felt like drowning. But the words dried up.
He looked at her for another heartbeat, then shook his head once, sharp, like he was clearing a thought. "We're not having this talk in the open. Move."
He led. She followed.
And in her pocket, the watch pulsed again — warmer now, a slow, insistent beat against her leg, like a second heart waking up.
They didn't speak the rest of the way.
The trees began to thin, giving way to the scarred land that bordered the compound — old farm fields gone to weed, rusted machinery half-swallowed by earth. In the distance, the walls rose: stacked cars, welded sheet metal, barbed wire gleaming dull in the fading light.
Bob raised a fist — a signal to the watchtower. A moment later, the gate cranked open, a slow, groaning sound that carried across the silence.
Eyes were on them as they entered.
Old Man Harris leaned against a water barrel, his gaze tracking Emmy like she was trouble made flesh. A few kids paused their game of kicking a dented can, staring openly. Viper was on the catwalk, rifle loose in her hands. She gave Bob a nod — all clear — but her eyes lingered on Emmy a beat too long. You led them here. It was in the air, unspoken but loud.
Bob headed for the water station without a word.
Emmy stood just inside the gate, feeling the weight of the place settle on her shoulders. The Bastion. A fortress of scrap and stubbornness. It smelled of woodsmoke, boiled lentils, and unwashed bodies. Of survival, stale and tired.
She made it three steps before Lazzy materialized from behind a stack of tires. Tall, lean, sharp-eyed. He didn't speak — just looked her up and down, then at the treeline behind her, calculating. After a moment, he shook his head once and melted back into the shadows. His judgment was quieter than Harris's, but heavier.
The commons was a wide, cluttered space under the warehouse's high, rust-streaked ceiling. Lanterns hung from beams, casting pockets of shaky light. People huddled around small fires, trading, mending, staring into nothing. Bedrolls and makeshift partitions created a maze of private miseries.
Emmy moved through it like a ghost.
She passed Ace, who was grinding dried leaves into paste, her hands steady, her face calm. Their eyes met. Ace's gaze dropped to the tear in Emmy's collar, the blood that wasn't hers. She didn't speak, just gave a slight, weary nod. Alive. Good.
Bob was at the ration table now, talking low with Taya Zu. The radio operator was sketching something in a notebook — antenna designs, maybe. She looked up as Emmy approached. Her eyes were always a little too knowing, like she could hear the frequencies between words.
Emmy dropped her empty pack on the table with a thud.
"Antibiotics were in the old clinic," she said, voice flat. "Had to leave them. Swarm was too thick."
Bob didn't look at her. "We didn't need meds. We needed you here. Not out there playing hero."
"Playing hero?" Her voice lifted, sharp. A few heads turned. "While you sit behind walls counting cans?"
He turned then, slow. His eyes were dark, hollowed by lantern light. "You think running off makes you brave? It makes you reckless. And reckless gets people killed. Not just you — us."
"You don't get to tell me what to do."
"Someone has to." He stepped closer, his voice dropping to a rough whisper that carried heat. "'Cause you sure as hell aren't thinking."
They were inches apart. She could see the fatigue etched into his skin, the stubble, the thin scar along his jaw from a blade years back. She could smell gun oil and sweat and something underneath — something like dread. Or disappointment.
She had loved him once. Maybe still did, in some buried, bruised way. But he never looked at her like she wanted him to. He looked at her like a problem he hadn't solved. A loose wire in a failing system.
"I'm done," she said, quiet but clear.
"Yeah," he said, not backing down. "You are. Next time you go out alone, you don't come back in."
He held her gaze for a second longer — a silent, heavy standoff — then turned and walked away, leaving her standing there in the lantern glow, surrounded by the murmur of a world that had no room for her anger.
---
She didn't remember walking to her corner.
One moment she was in the commons, the next she was pushing through the faded tarp, into the dimness.
Her space. Cot. Crate. Cracked mirror.
She sat. The canvas sighed under her weight.
Outside, life went on — a cough, a laugh too loud, the clang of a pot. Normal sounds. They felt miles away.
Her hands were still dirty. Trembling. She stared at them, at the lines of grime etched into her skin. They didn't feel like her hands. They felt like tools. Like things she used to survive, not to live.
She reached under the pillow.
Cool metal met her fingers.
She pulled the watch out.
It lay in her palm, heavier than it should be. A relic. A stupid, fragile piece of the before-world. Her father's hands flashed in her memory — rough from work, gentle as he fastened the strap. "For emergencies," he'd said. She'd thought he meant if she got lost. If she needed help.
She didn't know he meant this. The end of everything.
It was warm.
Not from her skin. From inside.
A slow, deep heat pulsed through its casing. And the screen — dark for years, a dead little eye — glowed.
A soft, green light.
Beep.
So quiet she felt it more than heard it. A vibration in her palm.
Beep.
She brought it closer. The light pulsed like a slow, steady heartbeat.
Beep.
Each pulse matched the pound in her own chest.
Her breath caught. Stalled.
For a moment, the world shrank to the space between her hand and her eyes. The compound noise faded. Bob's voice dissolved. There was only the watch. Beating. Alive.
And then the memories came — cold, clear, cutting through the years of gray.
---
Her father's voice, low and frayed. "When it sings… you find your sister. No matter what."
Mira, braiding her hair by candlelight, humming a song their mother used to sing. The last safe night. The smell of rain through an open window.
Gunfire at dawn. Mira's face, pale and fierce, shoving her into the crawl space under the floorboards. "Stay. Don't come out. No matter what you hear." Rough wood against her cheek. The smell of damp earth. The silence after the engines roared away.
Years of gray skies. Empty roads. Faces that came and went. Bob, finding her curled in the wreck of a school bus, snow drifting through broken windows. His hands, rough but careful, wrapping a blanket around her. He didn't speak. Just sat with his back to her, rifle across his knees, and watched the dark.
---
The watch beeped.
Emmy's eyes opened.
She was still in her corner. Still on the cot. Still alone.
But something had shifted. In her chest. In the air.
The watch glowed in her hand like a tiny star fallen to earth. A guide. A promise. A countdown she didn't understand but could no longer ignore.
She stood, walked to the cracked mirror.
The face looking back was sharp, scarred, older than it should be. But the eyes — her father's eyes — still held a flicker. A stubborn, stupid, relentless flicker.
She fastened the watch onto her wrist.
The metal was warm against her skin. The beeping seemed to sync with her pulse now — a steady, silent drumbeat in her veins.
She looked past her reflection, past the tarp wall, past the compound walls, toward the darkening horizon where the Badlands waited. Where Mira was. Where answers were. Where maybe, just maybe, something more than survival still existed.
Her voice, when it came, was low. Solid. Not a whisper, not a shout. A vow spoken to the silence, to the watch, to the ghost of her father and the memory of her sister.
"I'm gonna bring the family together."
A deep breath. The green light pulsed on her wrist.
"I'm gonna find my sister."
Outside, the night bell rang — two sharp clangs. Shift change. Voices murmured. The compound lived on, unaware.
But something had been set in motion.
Something quiet.
Something irreversible.
Emmy turned, blew out the lantern, and stepped out of her corner — into the gathering dark, the watch glowing softly on her wrist, leading her toward a horizon she could not yet see.
--