Pretty Much Dead Already, page 23
There’s only one way off the warehouse: a fire escape on the far side, leading to a blind alley and—if the plan is worth anything—a cut through the old boiler yard, where the Fort’s fences loop back in a hidden dogleg. It’s a straight sprint, nothing clever, just speed and nerve.
The wind whips at us, carrying the stink of the horde. I risk a look back. Half a dozen men pour onto the roof behind us. Some are Viktor’s, armed and already aiming; the rest might be scavengers or just desperate. One fires, bullet whipping close enough I feel the heat past my cheek. We keep our heads down, Cass whooping back at them with every dodge.
At the fire escape, Cass doesn’t slow. He vaults the rail, sliding three stories down the ladder in one wild ride, boots hitting the ground so hard I hear the impact over the sirens. I grit my teeth, grab the rung, and go.
The metal shrieks under my weight. Halfway down, a foot slips; the world tilts, the alley spinning crazily, then I catch myself, skinning my palm on the rail. I land awkward, knees buckling, but upright.
Rhett and Michael take it slower. Rhett goes first, then steadies Michael, who nearly blacks out on the second landing but keeps moving through what has to be pure medical stubbornness. At the bottom, Cass is already dragging the crate through the trash-stewed debris, and the rest of us scramble after him. Bullets hit the dumpster behind us, spitting chips of rust and plastic, but none of them connect.
Not yet.
We take the alley at a dead run. A pair of infected at the end hear the noise and lurch forward, jaws wide. Cass yanks out the pistol, fires twice, drops both. He doesn’t break stride, is he even human?
The boiler yard is a frozen grave of metal tubing and upended barrels, each step a risk of hidden rebar or a patch of ice. We skitter forward, feet sliding, and then, just as the warehouse echo fades, we all stop at once.
A single figure stands between us and the battered chain-link fence, arms folded, backlit by the flicker of a barrel fire. He’s huge, a silhouette made of pure menace, with a shotgun slung low and a crowbar in his free hand. Even across the hollow, I know him: Garrett, the Fort’s own in-house thug, the one who led the first riot against me.
Cass slows, shakes his head in disbelief. “Aw, fuck me. How’d he get here?”
Rhett takes it in, jaw set. He slips the pistol from Cass, checks the chamber, and hands Michael to me. “Stay behind,” he says. “He wants a show. I'll give him a fucking show.” His voice is a low growl, his alpha instincts rearing their head at the threat to his pack.
I loop Michael’s weight around my shoulders, ignoring the warmth of his blood. “Why do you care who gets the credit for the crate?” I hiss in Rhett's ear.
He grins, teeth red with fresh blood from the cut on his cheek and split lip. “I don’t. I just want to hurt him.”
Cass and Rhett fan out, one to the left, one to the right. Garrett watches them both, calm as ever. He lets the silence build until the only sound is the whistle of wind through the ruined yard.
Then he cocks the shotgun, racks a shell, and says, “Viktor says hi.”
Cass growls. “If you side with him, you’ll last about two hours after this run, tops. You know that, right?”
Garrett shrugs, moves a step forward. “Maybe. Better odds than with you. You gonna hand over the crate, or do I have to take it?”
Rhett deadpans, as if he really doesn't care about the crate. “Take it, then.”
Garrett laughs, a rumble that shakes a candy wrapper on the ground. “You aways were a funny fucker.” It's clear to see this resentment of Rhett isn't a new development.
I see Rhett’s eyes go cold, his whole body becoming a weapon. Nothing is going to stop him from the ass whooping he's about to unleash.
The fight is short, brutal, and so quick I almost miss the first move. Cass throws the pistol low, a feint—but instead of going for the gun, Rhett barrels straight into Garrett’s chest, tackling him into a pile of barrels. The shotgun goes off, shattering the sky, but Rhett never stops moving. He lands three blows in the space of a blink, all aimed for the throat and nose.
Cass jumps in next, taking the back, wrapping Garrett’s arms in a kind of predatory hug. Garrett snarls, throws Cass off, but not clean—Cass’s knife catches in Garrett’s thigh, sticking there until he rips it loose and tosses it aside. The three go down together, boots and fists and blood slapping the asphalt.
I drag Michael and the crate past them, hands slick, vision tunneling down to just the next step, then the next. Behind, the fight is chaos—someone screams, there’s a crack of bone, then a wet gurgle that sounds final.
Cass emerges first, holding his side, one eye swollen nearly shut, but alive. He waves me on, then yells back, “Move, Birdie! I’ll cover!”
Rhett is second, limping, knuckles shredded, face unreadable. He’s got Garrett’s crowbar now, the metal glinting like a trophy. Behind, Garrett isn’t moving—just a hulked mass unmoving in a puddle of blood.
We don’t stop. The fence is twisted but passable; Cass peels it back with the crowbar and his boot, tears a hole big enough for Michael and me to squeeze through. Rhett shoves the crate after us, then follows last. Cass checks the street—clear for now, the infected too busy at the warehouse—but the gunfire has already set off alarms at every outpost.
We sprint the last block, hearts a single pulse in four bodies. At the Fort’s back gate, Jace is waiting, pale and shaking, holding a pistol in one hand and a flare in the other.
As he sees us, relief breaks over his face. “You made it,” he breathes, then lets us through, snapping the gate shut behind us.
Inside, the night is a swirl of old smoke and new fear, the population of Fort Hope blinking out from the safe zone just to watch us drag the crate across the yard. There are kids in the windows, faces ghostly, a few adults who just shake their heads and look away.
Cass falls to his knees when we hit the quad, forehead pressed to the side of the crate, laughing until he starts coughing blood. Rhett staggers to the bench, dripping a trail of red, but smiling like he’s won a war. Jace gets there in time to catch Michael as he starts to fade, lowering him gentle into the archway of the med block.
I stand there for a moment, not sure if I’m meant to laugh or cry or just drop dead like a character in an old cartoon. The world is so soft with shock I want to scream, but instead, I pull the med kit closer, press my hands into the cold plastic until it aches, and wait for the yelling to start.
They come for us immediately, a crowd of survivors hungry for news, for supplies, for anything that isn’t death by inches. The crate is opened, and there’s a cheer when they see the food, the antibiotics, even the ancient tins of sardines swimming in oil. Cass makes a speech, I think—my ears are ringing too hard to hear it, but whatever he says, it makes people brave again, just for a minute.
Michael is whisked off on a stretcher, Jace pushing an IV into his good arm and mumbling comforting lies about numbing agents and “No permanent damage.” I follow behind, not sure who to worry about more—Michael, who will need stitches and probably luck to keep the arm, or Rhett and Cass, who act like the world is a series of bar brawls and don’t seem to care if their own parts are hanging off in the process.
The med ward is a riot—people everywhere, moaning, sleeping, eating, or just staring at the shadows chasing each other across the ceiling. Jace helps me strip Michael’s vest and cut away the shirt. “You did everything right,” he says, and his eyes shine now, not with fear but with pride.
I don’t know what to say, so I just nod and grip his sleeve.
Michael wakes up after a while, groggy as hell but alive. He smiles when he sees me, and for a second, the world contracts to just this: the two of us, and the warmth of his hand in mine.
Cass and Rhett come in together, reeking of disinfectant and scraped skin. Cass has his arm in a sling—dislocated, he grins, “Popped it right back in”—and Rhett’s jaw is stitched, but their eyes are alight, drunk on survival.
Rhett leans in close, his voice for me alone. “You did good, Lira,” he says, and I can’t tell if he’s teasing or if he really means it.
Cass interrupts, “Yeah, Birdie. Next time, you take point.” He winks, then looks at Jace, who’s taping up his ribs. “Did you save any vodka for the rest of us?”
Jace shakes his head, then grins, “You’d just pour it on the wounds and scream.”
Cass lifts his good hand and pretends to toast the ceiling. “To pain management!” Then promptly passes out on the nearest cot.
The hilarity of it hits me all at once: the slapstick of survival, the way every plan explodes and every failure is just another story to tell.
I look at Jace, then Michael, then Rhett, and realize I’m beaming—my own teeth bared, my heart racing not empty, but full.
We made it.
Even if the city outside is a ruin, even if tomorrow we have to do it all again, for right now, we’re alive and together and not afraid to say so.
Funny thing is, I don’t feel like an object or a target anymore. Not even an Omega. Just a part of this, whatever “this” is—maybe a family, maybe a mutiny, maybe just a mess of broken people trying not to die.
Whatever it is. It’s enough.
Cass is snoring already, and Rhett’s eyes are drooping. Jace comes over, settling next to me at Michael’s bedside.
“You okay?” He asks.
I touch the bruise on my thigh, the claw marks on my arms, the burn where fear should be.
“I am, actually,” I whisper, surprised.
He nods, then leans his head on my shoulder, soft and warm.
I watch the med bay breathe, watch Michael dream, and when I finally close my eyes, I know that whenever I wake up again, at least things will be better.
Chapter Twenty One: Betrayal's Sting
Lira
Iwake up clawing for air, every muscle locked in the slow, reluctant surrender of lactic acid and old terror. It’s the cleanest pain I’ve felt in weeks—crisp and honest, none of the deep-rot kind that worms up from the marrow. For the first few seconds, I don’t know where I am. There’s just heat at my back, a numb pressure pinning my legs, and the distant, hungry moan of the dead like a lullaby played through a wall of wet rags.
I try to move, but there’s an arm across my stomach—heavy, the way only a sleeping man can be. Rhett’s breathing slow, his chest rising and falling against the side of my neck, radiating that perfect soldier-warmth, and I realize I’m spooned up under his chin like a stuffed animal someone left on the bed after a long, hard night. My right hand is pinned between us, fingers curled under the hem of his shirt, and the only reason I haven’t drooled all over him is that my mouth is dry as old chalk.
For a second, I consider going back to sleep. I could stay here forever. But the world outside my eyelids is already making demands.
The med ward has changed: it’s quieter than last I remember, the lights dimmed to a steady amber, and the bodies in the cots are mostly sleeping instead of screaming. Cass is sprawled in a visitor’s chair beside the bed, his feet propped on the rail, head tilted back at an angle that looks unsustainable. He’s got a bruise on his cheek the size of a sand dollar, and someone’s wrapped his left hand in so much gauze he looks like a cartoon boxer. He’s drooling. Just a little. The sound he’s making is somewhere between a purr and a snore.
Michael is in the corner, perched on a stool with his back to the door and his good arm braced on the exam table. The other is bound up in a fresh sling, fingers curled around a pill bottle and thumb ticking nervously against the plastic. His lab coat is off—just the t-shirt and scrub pants now—and I see the full spread of blood spatter across his torso, the badge of someone who’s had a night even worse than mine. He’s dozing, but not deeply; the kind of sleep that cracks at every sound and stitches itself back together, only to shatter again with the next emergency.
Jace is missing. The space where he should be—the good listener’s seat, by the window—holds only a folded towel and a battered mug with “World’s Best Dad” flaking off in blue letters. For a weird, panicked instant, I think maybe he’s dead. But then I catch the scent of his aftershave—lavender, tinny from the cheap knockoff—and remember he said something about “checking the perimeter” before I nodded off. So he’s out there, somewhere, doing his quiet triage on the world’s latest disaster.
My whole body aches, but it’s a simple, physical throb, no fever, no bite, nothing to suggest a new horror germinating under the skin. I flex my toes. I flex my fingers. I feel the press of Rhett’s thigh under mine, the rough scrape of his stubble at my temple, the sticky warmth where our hands are locked together like puzzle pieces. It’s too much, and not enough.
I try to sit up. Rhett stirs, muttering something in a language I don’t know. He tightens his grip, just enough to let me know he’s aware, then relaxes, his mouth moving lower along my neck until it finds the patch of skin just above my collarbone. He doesn’t kiss, not exactly—just breathes out, slow and ragged, as if scenting for disease or fear or something older.
I shiver. Not from cold. I think: I am home. I think: I am fucked. I think both things are true, and then I almost laugh, which wakes him up for real.
He blinks, eyes clearing, and pulls back just enough to see my face. “Morning,” he says, voice gravelly.
It is not morning. The window shows a sliver of violet sky, the last gasp of night before the new day. But I get the point.
“Hey,” I whisper, and my voice cracks like a promise.
Rhett doesn’t say anything else, just strokes his thumb along my jaw. I feel the callus, the groove where a knife hilt once wore down the flesh. He’s making sure I’m alive, that I’m really here. He looks at me the way a dog might look at a favorite bone, or a soldier might look at a grenade with the pin already pulled: reverent, terrified, obsessed.
Cass mutters from his chair, “Christ, you two need to get a room.” His eyes are closed, but the smirk is in full effect.
I grin, or try to. “We are in a room.”
Cass cracks one eyelid, looks at me, then at Rhett, and then flings his feet off the bed, sitting up with a groan. “Could’ve fooled me. Last I saw, you were out colder than a freezer burnt chicken wing.” He squints. “You okay?”
I check myself again—limbs, face, ribs. There’s a bandage on my thigh and a raw taste in my mouth, but otherwise I’m better than expected. “Yeah,” I say. “I think so.”
Cass grins, wobbly but real. “Told you. Tough as nails.”
There’s a sound in the hall: the slap of rubber soles, the jangle of keys. Michael snaps awake, popping the cap off his pill bottle with his teeth and swallowing whatever’s inside dry. He stands—too fast, and winces, but he’s already in doctor mode. He glances at me, then at the door, then back at me. “Good to see you conscious,” he says, and his voice is the softest I’ve ever heard it.
I try to answer, but the hall noise gets louder. Voices. Excited. Maybe angry. There’s a buzz in the air—a flavor of panic I’ve learned to fear.
Cass hears it too. He cocks his head, then grabs the battered comm off the bedside and flicks it on. There’s a burst of static, then a voice—female, Beta, the one who runs the Fort’s security desk.
“…repeat, situation in the quad. All supervisors to the main hall, stat. We have…guests.”
Cass’s eyes go wide. He looks at Rhett, who’s already swinging his legs off the bed, careful not to jostle me. The two share a look—long, loaded, unspoken.
I want to ask, “What is it?” But the door slams open and answers for me.
The Beta messenger is young—maybe fifteen, with a homemade haircut and a t-shirt two sizes too small. He looks at me, then at the tangle of men around me, and goes beet-red. But his mission wins out over embarrassment.
“Sorry, uh—urgent message. For you. All of you, but—” His gaze flicks to me. “Mostly for you.”
I don’t move. My heart does. It gallops in place, something primal clawing at my insides.
The Beta takes a breath, like he’s about to confess a murder. “There’s… Alpha Westbrook. He’s here.”
I hear the name, but it doesn’t make sense. Not at first. Then the blood drains from my face, and I feel my fingers dig into Rhett’s arm like claws.
Cass’s chair nearly topples as he bolts upright, voice tight. “You’re sure?”
The kid nods, words coming faster now. “Came in just before dawn, with an armed escort and two supply trucks. Says he’s here to help with the defense, but…” He glances at me again, like maybe I can translate the rest.
Rhett goes rigid beside me, the muscles in his arm banding like steel cable. He doesn’t let go, but his grip changes—protective now, a wall.
Michael moves first, steady and slow. He crosses the room, voice pitched low so only the four of us hear. “Did he ask for anyone by name?”
The kid nods, uncertain. “He asked if his fiancé was here. And if she is doing well.”
The room is silent. Even the hum of the med bay seems to pause.
Cass is the first to break it. He paces once, twice, then stops with his hands on his hips. “Shit. Shit. This is bad.” He looks at me, eyes dark. “Birdie, you want to run? I’ll have you out of here in five.”
I shake my head. It’s not a brave gesture; it’s just the only one I have. I can’t run. Not anymore.
Rhett looks at me, face unreadable, then glances at Michael and Cass. “What’s the play?” He asks, and I can tell he’s running through every tactical option, every disaster scenario.
Michael answers, voice a cold, clean scalpel. “We meet him. But we do it on our terms.”
Cass snorts, but there’s respect in it. “And if he’s armed?”
Michael’s lips twitch. “So are we.”
The kid lingers in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot. “They want you in the main hall in ten minutes,” He says, and his voice is almost apologetic. “Said to ‘come as you are.’”
