one
Avery
It’sbeenfouryearssince the outbreak. Three since the Iron Wolves burned Clearwater to the ground, and I rebuilt it from the ashes.
The family at our gates looks exactly like every other desperate group I've turned away since then. Father supporting an injured wife. Teenage daughter hovering close, eyes too old for her face. That particular desperation of people who've been running for days.
"Please," the father begs. "Just one night."
I stand on the elevated platform above the main gate, rifle across my arms. Forty-three lives depend on me making the right call.
Something feels off about the daughter. The way she moves. The way she won't meet my eyes. But something always feels off. That's what keeps us alive.
"Check them for weapons and bites," I call down to Harry. "One night. Gone by dawn."
Three years ago, the Iron Wolves burned this place to the ground while I screamed into the radio for help that never came. We saved ourselves. Twenty-three survivors became forty-three through hard choices and harder walls.
Hard choices like locking the gates when people were still outside, screaming to be let in while zombies tore them apart. Lisa, fifteen years old, pounding on the metal until her fists were bloody. I can still hear her voice.
Please, Avery. Please.
"The new family's been processed," Harry says later. "Daughter won't stop asking questions."
My stomach tightens. "Post extra eyes."
"Already done."
This is why I trust Harry. Paranoid keeps you breathing.
I take my midnight perimeter walk alone. The walls are higher now than they were three years ago. No one gets in unless I allow it. No one gets left outside unless I choose it.
The east fence catches my attention.
Scraping. Metal on metal. Someone is climbing over.
I raise my rifle and signal the nearest guard with a whistle. My heart pounds with fury. Someone dared breach my walls.
The infiltrator drops into our compound near the generator building. Fast. Quiet. Skilled. My guards converge and he fights back—but here's what makes me hesitate.
Non-lethal moves.
He takes down two of my people with strikes that drop them without killing. Deliberately pulls his punches. Uses positioning instead of weapons. Like he's trying not to hurt them.
We corner him against the generator's metal siding. Six rifles aimed at his chest.
My finger hovers over the trigger, but something stops me. He could have killed my guards. Didn't. If he wanted us dead, he'd have come in shooting.
"Hold fire," I call out. "I want to know why he's here before we waste the ammunition."
"Hands up."
He complies immediately, and the moonlight catches him full-on.
Oh.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. The kind of build that says military training and hard living. Dark hair that needs cutting, a jaw shadowed with stubble. His face is all hard angles and sharp focus—the face of a man who's seen too much and survived through it all.
But it's his eyes that get me. Even with six rifles pointed at his chest, even knowing he might die in the next thirty seconds, there's no panic there. Just assessment. Calculation. And underneath it all, something that looks like bone-deep exhaustion.
