rcury looked down the long, empty hallway, chest heaving, then let out a short, breathless, slightly wild laugh.
"These weren’t normal," she said, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. "Those things moved completely differently."
She was right. I didn’t have an explanation for it yet but I was filing it. These infected were a different category. Sothing the books and the briefings and twenty years on the plain hadn’t prepared for.
"Room two hundred," I said. "That’s what he said, yes?"
"Zero two zero," rcury corrected, still catching her breath.
I looked at her.
"He said zero two zero," she repeated, with the confidence of soone who was certain.
I let it go. We moved down the long corridor, checking door numbers. Sunlight slashed across the floor in bright, dusty stripes. No zero two zero anywhere. The closest was zero zero two at the far end.
"I told you it was two hundred," I said.
"Jenn," rcury called back. "What did he say?"
"Two zero zero," Jenn answered calmly from behind us.
"Then why didn’t you say that the first ti?" rcury asked, genuinely offended.
We found room 200 in the middle of the corridor. I knocked. Nothing.
"Hello," I called.
"See," rcury murmured. "I told you."
The door creaked opened.
The man standing there looked like he had been surviving on personality alone for months. His hair was a wild, unkempt ss that hadn’t seen a comb in far too long. A thick, scraggly beard covered most of his face. Thick, smudged glasses sat crooked on his nose. He wore a faded cabana shirt with clashing tropical colors that had given up trying to coordinate soti last year, and short jeans that revealed legs far hairier than the situation required.
"Let’s go," I said, skipping any introduction.
"Relax," he replied, completely unfazed, with the calm energy of a man who had been waiting for rescue and was now determined to enjoy the mont on his own terms. "Where exactly are we going?"
We thought about it. No car. No food. No map. Ten minutes later, we were inside his apartnt.
***
The air was slightly less oppressive but still heavy with old dust and trapped warmth. The sofa gave slightly under my weight, the fabric warm and slightly worn against my back and thighs.
"Richard Hunt," he said, settling into his sofa and turning to rcury with the specific energy of a man who had been alone for too long and had opinions about it. "And you, beautiful?"
rcury smiled. She liked complints. Always had, from what I had seen.
"rcury."
He turned to Jenn with the sa energy. "You lovely."
"Jenn."
Then he turned to and his whole register shifted, the way n shift register when they stop performing and start communicating.
"I can see you don’t like already," he said. "It’s fine. I see it."
He wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t impressed. But I was in his apartnt and I was hungry.
"Are you hungry?" he asked, and disappeared into what passed for a kitchen without waiting for the answer.
Richard Hunt’s living space was shockingly well-organized, the careful order of a man who had decided that even in the apocalypse, he would maintain so dignity. Books were neatly stacked. A few faded photographs hung straight on the walls. The furniture, though worn, was arranged with purpose.
He ca back carrying two plates. Rice and beans. He handed them to rcury and Jenn.
"Last of what I had," he said. "Let the beauties eat. We two n are already good."
Richard, I thought, you absolute idiot.
He caught my eyes and grinned. "Joking, bro. Ladies first. Old saying."
He went back and returned with a plate for . Plain rice, no beans, which told the beans genuinely were the last of sothing. I didn’t complain. I cleared the plate before the girls had finished half of theirs.
****
The four of us sat afterward in the dusty afternoon light filtering through the windows.
"Where are you heading?" Richard asked, leaning back in his sofa with the ease of soone about to have a conversation he had been waiting for.
"The Fallen City," rcury said.
Richard sat up. "The Fallen City." He said it the way people say things they recognize. "I know the route."
Sothing I had been quietly losing started coming back.
The Fallen City was the only way back to the walls. The walls were my new ho. I had people waiting on the other side of them and a mission that was technically still running even if everything about it had gone wrong.
"Problem is we don’t have a car," I said.
Richard laughed. rcury didn’t laugh with him, which I noted and appreciated.
"This is the Safe City," he said, spreading his arms. "Everything you need is here."
"A car?" rcury asked.
"Right."
"Food?"
"Right."
"And you know the route?"
"The safest one," he said confidently. "All we need is to get moving."
He packed a large bag with the practiced speed of soone who had been ready to leave for a while and had just been waiting for a reason. We went downstairs together.
The building was quiet. The street outside was clear. A hundred and one dried infected still lay scattered across the square like gray statues of the fallen.
Richard stopped and stared at the carnage.
"You did that?" he asked, voice hushed with sothing close to awe.
"Let’s find the car," I said.
He smiled and led the way. I walked behind him and thought about everything he had just offered, the car, the food, the route, and how it had all arrived in one apartnt on the fourth floor of a city we hadn’t planned to stop in.
Too convenient, I thought, as the scorching air and dry grit continued grinding against my skin. Or exactly what the plain does sotis. Gives you the one thing you need in the last place you expected it.
I couldn’t tell which yet.
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