The morning after a horde attack is a lot like the morning after drinking something Old Joe swore was "safe-ish." You wake up alive, which is a small miracle, but everything hurts, and there's a faint suspicion that part of you might still be rotting from the inside.
I sat on the collapsed stack of shipping pallets in the fallen skyscraper, knees bouncing, watching my little empire shuffle around in the gray daylight. Smoke still curled from the blackened barricades. Our once-straight wall of welded metal and other shit we had was now a Picasso sculpture of twisted metal, ash, and teeth marks. The stench was unbearable: burned wood, gunpowder, and that rancid mushroom-reek the infected leave behind when they smear themselves into paste against your defenses.
We'd won. That was the official line. We weren't corpses. The horde was gone. But victory looked a lot like exhaustion and sounded like quiet sobbing muffled behind cloth wraps.
Cole stood ten feet away, talking low to Tasha. His left arm was bandaged from elbow to wrist, and the white fabric was already brown with seep-through. He'd taken a swipe saving one of the newer recruits a kid named Drew who hadn't yet learned that fighting infected wasn't like swinging at shadows in drills. Cole had shoved him out of the way and earned a souvenir scar for his trouble. He looked like hell, but then again, Cole always looked like hell. The difference now was that everyone else did too.
Tasha's voice rose for a second not angry, just sharp, like she was telling him to sit down before he toppled. She noticed me watching and sent me a grin. It didn't reach her eyes. She was still dead tired from last night. We all were.
The "front yard" bore the scars. Spent brass casings littered the ground in shining little constellations. Blood pooled in the gravel like someone had spilled paint. The barricades sagged in ugly patches where too many bodies had slammed against them. And underneath it all was silence. Not the good kind. Not peace. Just absence. The absence of the groans, the screeches, the pounding fists on metal. You don't realize how loud a horde is until it stops, and the quiet feels wrong, like you're waiting for the other shoe to drop.
And it was a small one, imagine the ones that can get into thousands, fucking hell.
Across the room, Donny sat cross-legged with three younger recruits, all of them looking like kids who'd seen a ghost. He was sharpening a blade while talking, soft voice, calm, measured. He was telling them that the shaking in their hands would stop and fear would go away. Donny had been one of the first to join me, and he carried the authority of someone who'd stared down hell more than once, from a kid who jumped at his own shadow to a man that sometimes jumped at someone elses shadow.
They grow up so fast.
The thing is, winning against a horde isn't actually winning. You don't get parades, no loot, no rations. All that winning against a horde brings is death, spent ammunition and being tired next morning.
If I have to chose I'd rather fight human enemies.
I walked into the middle of the floor and clapped my hands together. The sound cracked like a gunshot in the silence. Heads turned. Conversations stopped.
"Alright," I said, "We lived."
"We'll fix the walls. We'll patch the holes. We'll clean up the blood. But don't make the mistake of thinking we can relax. That was one horde. One, small one. There are more. There will always be more.
Cole limped forward, dropping a heavy hand on my shoulder. "Kid's right," he said. His voice carried in a way mine didn't.
Rusty nodded from the doorway. "We'll make it hold again. We always do, but fucking hell they smell bad when burning"
The murmurs started then, low, tired agreements. People went back to work with a little more purpose.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Two days after, the reports started stacking up on my desk like driftwood after a storm.
First was a grease-stained envelope slid under the alleyway house door at dawn. Then a coded chalk mark appeared under the third rung of the iron ladder by the east tunnel vent (Noah's "mailbox"). By noon, Joe came in with a canvas satchel he didn't let out of his hands even when he sat down. He set it on the table, looked at me, then at Alexandra and Noah.
"Picked clean off the dead drops," he said. "And I bought the last piece from a dock rat who swears his granddad worked there before the world ended."
I nodded once. "Show me."
The satchel opened like a throat. Out came folded maps, Polaroids with fingerprints smudged into the white borders, a torn UMass event flyer with a penciled arrow, and a hand-drawn shoreline sketch that looked like it had been done on someone's knee during a storm.
Noah spread everything flat with two fingers, careful, precise. "South-east section," he said, tapping the cluster we'd circled weeks ago. "The peninsula we flagged, what the maps label as the Commonwealth Museum and the archives complex. Locals called it the museum peninsula. Water on three sides. Approach by land is basically one narrow run."
Alexandra leaned in, eyes tracking edges. "Causeway?"
"More like a neck," Noah said. "Morrissey line's half-broken, but the ground's still there. One lane worth of passable earth if we clear debris. The rest is water, marsh, and whatever the bay felt like doing that day."
Joe slid a Polaroid to me. Dull winter light. A rusting chain-link gate half-eaten by vines. Beyond it: low institutional buildings, a long rectangle that might've been a maintenance shed, and a stutter of pilings pointing to a small marina tucked into the lee of the point.
"That dock's legit," he said. "Two skiffs beached and one hull that might still float if Rusty and the fixers kiss it sweet for a month. There's also a repair bay looks like a small shipfitters' warehouse. Big doors. Overhead rail." He tapped the photo. "If the roof's stable, we could work inside even if the weather decides to piss on us, there are also other buildings, its basically the entire university and its other buildings are mostly intact"
Alexandra's mouth twitched her version of excitement. "Enclosed, high doors, room to hang tarps. Good for intake, quarantine, kit checks. And the land neck means we can force any approach down a funnel."
She turned to me. "Food?"
"Water means fish," I said, thinking out loud. "Crabs. Mussels if we can keep the kids from poisoning themselves. And we could drag nets from the dock if we salvage line. But we'll need purification. Salt plus fallout. We don't guess on that, also theres a lot of green space, we could plant some seeds and even a so called "calf pasture" in this university map, right beside the presidential library."
Noah pushed a second Polaroid across. This one was taken from lower ground. The "small harbor" was more obvious an L of rotted boards, a set of stone steps into the water, the black ribs of a pier sticking out like a broken comb. On the far side, a narrow strip of parkland: old picnic tables gray with salt, the bones of a gazebo, and the ghost of a bike path along the edge.
"Harborwalk's mostly intact," he said. "Fences down. Windward side's blunt, leeward side is sheltered enough that trash collects. I saw two dinghies jammed in weeds, one upside down. Hulls looked sun-baked, not chewed. Could be salvage."
"Patrols?" I asked.
"FEDRA stays off it," Joe said, almost pleased. "Too far from their usual loops, too visible if they tried to hold it. Fireflies don't like the water when they're moving gear they prefer rooftops and back alleys. Independents go there when they're desperate for crabs or privacy, but no one's staked it as home." He shrugged. "Maybe the bad luck of the water. Maybe because one bad storm could send the bay right through your front door."
Alexandra made a note. "We'd need flood plans. Anchor points. Elevated storage."
Noah tapped the map with a nail. "Infected density?" he asked, and then answered his own question. "Low. Runners in ones and twos. Stalkers in the tree strips. No clickers sighted on the point itself some might be hiding in the buildings. The worst cluster is inland, along the broken boulevard. You could skirt that by cutting across the old parking lots and hugging the museum fence."
I slid a fingertip along the "neck" on a street map. The line felt thin. Strong if we owned both ends. A noose if someone grabbed it from the city side and pulled tight.
"And tide?" I said.
"Gets you wet if you're stupid," Joe said. "Dock steps show a high-water mark. Some days the lower path will vanish knee-deep. Nights with wind will make the bay loud. That cuts both ways."
Lia ghosted in then, quiet as ever, a mug of something hot in her hands. She didn't ask permission to join; she just set the mug down in front of me and looked over the maps.
"What's the catch?" she asked.
"There are a few," Alexandra said, already listing. "Noise travels on water. We'll be ringing a bell every time we run engines or drop something heavy. The neck is both a blessing and a risk—one route in by land means one route out. If the wrong people get clever with trucks and wreckage, we could be penned. And any boat we float makes us desirable and visible."
"Desirable, visible, and fast," Joe countered. "You want to move a crate without Renner sniffing the trail? Put it on a skiff at dusk and tie up behind a different building every time."
Noah flipped a hand-drawn map to its back and sketched with a dull pencil: rectangle for the museum, block for the archives, long box for the ship shed, dots for light poles. He drew a line for the causeway and three X marks at different distances.
"Here, here, and here," he said. "Choke points. We can make Jersey barrier cousins out of junk cars and steel. Shoot lanes here and here." He circled the marina. "And we build a false dock with a noisy wind chime of scrap at the end. Anyone who tries to land quiet where they shouldn't gets music."
"Water watch?" Lia asked.
"Rotating pairs," Alexandra said. "High perch on the archives roof. Spotting scope. One long gun with a hard rule: you only shoot if we're made. Otherwise you count and record."
I sipped the drink. It was hot, bitter, and tasted vaguely like someone had boiled a tire in it. It helped.
"Who else knows?" I asked.
Joe spread his hands. "Robert suspects it's 'interesting coastline' because he's not blind. Meredith knows it exists, not that we're looking. The dock rat name's Vince, three teeth, lies when he's bored claims there's a stash in the ship shed. He couldn't describe it, so I paid him for the memory and not the fantasy."
"We're going to be followed," Noah said, like he was pointing out the weather.
"Already are," Alexandra added. "I had two looks yesterday: one on a roof, one shadowing our southern sewer grate. They're patient."
"Fireflies?" Lia asked.
Noah gave the smallest shake of his head. "Different gait. Different shoes. Independents or someone who wants to look like them. Either way, they're measuring us."
I let the maps sit under my hands for a full ten seconds. The peninsulas on paper didn't look like salvation. They looked like work. But work we could shape.
"Alright," I said. "We treat it like a candidate for a safehouse maybe more. We don't promise ourselves anything yet."
Alexandra nodded, jotting. "Scouting package?"
"Two teams," I said. "No engines. Two different routes in, same route out. One team stays on the neck to watch our backtrail. One goes to the water line and touches real wood. We want hands-on: rot tests, anchor checks, roof line, sight lines. Count doors, bolts, ladders, cameras that no longer work. Photograph everything. Don't move a single loud piece of sheet metal."
Noah's pencil kept moving. "Daylight in. Dusk out."
"Dusk out," I agreed. "The city will be watching for us anyway we don't need to gift them silhouettes at noon."
Lia set her mug down and folded her arms. "Supplies?"
I ticked them off. "Ropes, grapnels, chalk, tarps, lock kits, two bolt-cutters but only if we have to use them. One crowbar per pair. Two radios per team, different channels with a flip protocol if we think we're being listened to. Four flares total. No more unless it's life or death orange in the sky is a letter to the whole neighborhood. And masks. Water makes spores cling."
"Medical?" she pressed.
"Tourniquets, burn cream, one IV if someone decides to fall off something tall and live."
Alexandra looked up at me. "If we find it good if it's as good as it looks on paper how fast do you want to move?"
I didn't answer right away. I watched the pencil map grow fingers: sight lines, angles, little boxes for ideas we hadn't yet had. My brain made the click I'd been avoiding since the horde night: inside the QZ, outside the QZ, or somewhere that straddled both like a knife edge.
"Fast enough to plant a flag," I said finally. "Slow enough we don't make the bay our enemy. First it's a stash and a sleeping spot. Then it's a shadow market. If it holds, we turn it into something worth defending."
Noah slid a final Polaroid over, one I hadn't seen. It was taken from the far side of the point, looking back toward the city. The skyline was a jagged black mouth. Between us and it, the water lay slate and patient. The museum buildings hunched like stubborn old men refusing to go down.
"Looks like a place where nobody can sneak up without getting their feet wet," he said.
I met his eyes and nodded. "Looks like a place that could be ours."
He capped his pencil. Alexandra gathered the lists. Joe closed the satchel like he was putting a baby to sleep.
"Gear up teams," I said. "We scout at first light tomorrow. If anyone tries to tail, we give them a tour of our dead ends and lose them in the laundries. Nobody gets led to the neck unless we let them."
I stacked the Polaroids back into a neat deck and pressed them flat with my palm. The paper was cold against my skin, but the picture in my head was sharp: a rectangle of buildings, a stubborn dock, and a narrow strip of land you could defend with twenty people and the right kind of meanness.
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The order came down the next morning. Cal had been patient enough; now he wanted answers. A proper scouting party was assembled, bigger than usual, a mix of veterans and a few eager younger hands, all well-armed. They moved out in two columns, carrying enough food and water for a long trek and ropes and paint for marking routes. The streets had been quieter since the horde was broken, but nobody trusted silence anymore.
From the start, eyes were on them. Not infected, worse. People. Twice Mara hissed for a halt when she caught movement on the edges of ruined buildings, the faint glint of glass that could only be binoculars. Shadows followed them at a distance, never closing, never showing faces. Whoever they were, they were disciplined. Too cautious for raiders, too loose for FEDRA. Fireflies, maybe. Independents, maybe. Every time the scouts shifted formation, the shadows shifted too, a reminder that the peninsula wasn't as secret as they'd hoped.
The further south they pushed, the more the city fell away. Buildings gave ground to open stretches, and the air began to carry the salt of the harbour that wasn't a dump like in QZ. Streets narrowed into cracked causeways, hemmed in by water and chain-link fences half-eaten by rust. The approach funneled them whether they liked it or not. If anyone wanted to cut them off here, they wouldn't need an army a few rifles here, a sniper there and it could pin them down. That knowledge put everyone on edge, weapons tighter in hand, eyes constantly scanning roofs and windows.
The peninsula itself was like a place forgotten by time. The Commonwealth Museum squatted near the center, windows grimy but intact. UMass buildings stretched around it, their glass fronts cracked but not shattered, like the infected hadn't poured through here in numbers. Nature had begun to reclaim the place, grass breaking through parking lots, vines creeping up the side of University Hall. Yet the silence was wrong. It was too clean. Too empty.
They swept carefully, room by room. Most doors were locked, brittle chains rusted into place. When they forced their way into other university building, the stench of rot hit them, but not the overwhelming spore-reek that usually marked infected nests. The few they did find were tucked away inside a pair of big fat infected that shambled, creatively named shamblers were trapped in a lecture hall, their jaws moving in endless chewing motions at nothing. Another had collapsed into a stairwell, fungus blooming out of its chest like coral. They put them down as fast as they could.
But mostly, the peninsula was clear. A gift, or a trap.
The small harbour told its own story. Two fishing boats still rested at anchor, hulls barnacled but intact, bobbing faintly with the tide. Another lay half-submerged, its cabin shattered, ropes trailing in the water like dead vines. On the far side, they found a warehouse with tools for ship repair - rusted welding rigs, spools of heavy rope, cracked containers that once held tar. Enough equipment that, if salvaged, could be repurposed. Enough space that, if fortified, could serve as shelter. And enough of hull left to make it see/river worthy.
And all of it was defensible. Three sides of water, the collapsed road back the only direct land route in. Mara stood at the edge of the causeway, squinting down its cracked span, and shook her head. "This is a choke point," she muttered. "One truck with a heavy gun, couple snipers on the sides, and anyone coming through is fucked. Ourselves included."
Anders disagreed, pacing with a notebook, already sketching. "Or it's perfect. We wall off the approach, clear everything Infront of it, plant watchpoints, and the whole place is ours. One corridor, one gate. Even FEDRA would think twice and if we have boats we can still leave to the opposite shore.."
The argument wasn't settled, and it didn't need to be, their job was only to bring the report back. But every one of them felt it: this was a place that could change their future.
When they turned back, the shadows were still there. Watching. Keeping pace at a distance. Whoever had been following them didn't try to block their retreat, didn't step out. Just enough to remind them that nothing stayed hidden in Boston for long.
By the time the skyscraper came back into view on the horizon, their packs were heavier with notes, sketches, and the uneasy weight of what they'd found.
They had discovered a peninsula of opportunity. And already, other motherfuckers knew about it.
---------------------------------------------------------------
After 2 days, the scouts filtered back into the skyscraper one by one, dust-caked and reeking of swamp air. They looked like they'd crawled out of a grave and were still deciding whether it was worth staying alive. Which, given this city, was a fair summary of daily life anyway.
We decided to move from the skyscraper into the warehouse proper, gathered in the right storage wing that now doubled as "briefing central." A busted projector screen leaned against the wall, and someone had chalked a crude map over a row of crates. It wasn't exactly war-room material, but hey, we weren't exactly an army, just a half-secret gang of somewhat underfed opportunists cosplaying leadership.
Rusty sat cross-legged , Lia crossed her arms like she was daring the scouts to exaggerate, and Cole loomed in the back with that permanent "I'll break your jaw if you waste my time" expression. I played my part as the thirteen year old little warlord who somehow kept this circus from collapsing.
Mara led the scouts presentation."South-east peninsula's less torched than we thought. The museum's intact, most of it. Docks are still there. Some warehouses too along with most of the university buildings, a lot of greenery too, not many infected, confirmed 3 spore nests of small size. Didn't see much FEDRA activity, but… there were Firefly markings and we were followed to the peninsula and back."
That earned a chorus of groans. Lia pinched the bridge of her nose. "Of course,. They tag everything like it's some post-apocalyptic graffiti contest, and now we got stalkers, amazing."
"Any sign of them or Fireflies actually camping there?" I asked.
The scout shook his head. "Just paint. No patrols. Place looks quiet. Creepy quiet."
Another scavenger chimed in, "Lots of sealed doors. Some cracked windows. Dockside's half-blocked by wreckage, but one pier's usable. We saw gulls feeding off fish there. Water's not completely dead yet."
That last bit made me sit up straighter. Fish meant food. Docks meant movement. The museum meant… well, probably moldy paintings, but also storage rooms, basements, and whatever the apocalypse hadn't stripped clean.
Cole finally spoke, voice flat. "If it's untouched, it won't stay untouched. Either we get there first, or someone else does."
The room went quiet, the kind of silence where you can practically hear the unspoken math ticking away in everyone's heads—risk versus reward, hunger versus survival, me versus the idiots I'd have to drag along.
I broke it. "Alright. We don't charge in blind. We plan, we map, we find what's edible, lootable, or flammable. Then we decide if it's worth planting a flag."
Lia gave me a sidelong look, half smirk, half warning. "And if it's a trap?"
"Then congratulations, we'll finally know how much the Fireflies charge for guided museum tours."
The peninsula was on the board now. And whether it was salvation, suicide, or just another moldy landmark, it was ours to gamble on.
----------------------------------------------------------------
In the meeting room, maps spread across the scarred table, edges curling, pins stuck into places that had nearly killed them. FEDRA patrol routes marked in red, Firefly caches in green, neutral smuggler passages in blue.
And now, a yellow pin hammered into the southeast: the museum peninsula.
The lieutenants sat in a rough half-circle.
Cole was first. He leaned forward, his scarred hand tapping the peninsula like it owed him money."It's defensible, yeah. Surrounded on three sides by water, single approach road, choke point's good. But isolation cuts both ways. If FEDRA tightens patrols on the causeway, we're boxed. If Fireflies decide they want it, we're boxed. And if another horde gets lured down that stretch, there's nowhere to run. You think we'll swim across with rifles and packs? Half the boats down there are rotted to the ribs. Currents will gut us before the infected do."
Kev countered, rubbing his jaw as his eyes traced the docks on the map.
"Or it's exactly what we need. Trade's impossible bottled up here, we're scavengers running in circles. Down there? Boats mean trade. We can move goods to smaller camps, pick up supplies without dragging everything through QZ checkpoints. Plus…" he jabbed the university district marked on the map, "…you've got whole rows of buildings. Classrooms, labs, storage. Enough space to make a proper camp. Shelter that isn't just patched rooms in this tower and plenty of loot hidden behind locks, locks we learnt to bust open over the years."
Tasha shook her head sharply. "You're all skipping the obvious. A causeway that narrow is a noose. Someone's already proven they can sic a horde on us. What happens if they push a three or four hundred, straight down that strip? Even with barricades, we'd get buried. This isn't like our skyscraper, it won't take much to cut us off from escape."
Her voice carried the edge of someone still hearing the screams from the abomination. No one argued.
Then Noah, quiet until now, adjusted his glasses and leaned in. He tapped the green space near the presidential library, his fingers smudged with charcoal.
"You're thinking short-term. Look at the lawns. That's farmland, or could be. The soil's not great, but we can fix that. Calf pasture up north could be cleared for rows. Fish off the docks, tide-pools near the rocks, maybe even clams if we check. We start hauling earth onto the parking lots, reinforce with barrels, we can double what we grow. It's not just another hideout, it's a place to breathe. A place to build."
There were more arguing, more good points for everyone.
And Cal has been listening, hands folded, eyes moving across the map but seeing something beyond it. Finally, he spoke, voice steady and cutting through the stale air.
"You're all right. It's a risk. A death trap if we get sloppy. But we can't keep circling the same block here forever. The skyscraper works for now, the warehouse works for now, the alleyway house works for now.
But FEDRA's watching, Fireflies are sniffing, and every scav run costs us more ammo than we can replace and we are running out of crates to open in this warehouse or places to loot in QZ and around the skyscraper. We either stay rats in walls, or we step out."
He tapped the yellow pin.
"This is our step, its just a foothold. We'll build small, supply caches, farming plots, fallback rooms in the university buildings. We keep the skyscraper for now, but we prepare this peninsula for something more. Because neutrality? Hiding? That's over. We pick a road, or someone will drag us onto theirs."
The words settled like wet cement, heavy and shaping. None of them cheered. None of them smiled. But nobody argued.
The peninsula wasn't just a new spot on the map anymore. It was the next move.
"Alright," I said finally, leaning forward, elbows on knees. "We're not treating this as a curiosity. We're treating it as opportunity. We're not just mapping and running away. We're going to hold it."
The room shifted. Twenty pairs of eyes, all blinking at me like I'd just suggested we tame a pack of clickers and teach them ballroom dancing.
"Hold it?" Lia asked first, ever the brave one to poke holes in my insanity. "You mean… permanently?"
"Yeah. Permanently. A stronghold. Forward position. Call it whatever makes it sound less suicidal."
Cole grunted, arms crossed, expression flat as ever. "You're talking about sending people outside the warehouse, outside the QZ, to live in a building crawling with god-knows-what?"
"I'm talking about expanding," I corrected, holding his gaze. "We've been stacked shoulder-to-shoulder down here for months. Supplies keep piling up. We're tripping over empty crates just to find a place to piss, not even full crates, empty. We are running out of crates to open here, sooner or later we'd have to move.
We need space. We need fallback positions. We need a footprint bigger than this one busted sewer hub."
Joe rubbed his temples. "Kid, that building is big. Too big. You can't just send a broom squad and call it home. You'll need fortifications, barricades, watch shifts—"
"And engineers," I interrupted, pointing at him. "Good thing we have engineers. And masons. And scavvers. And, you know, people with guns. Twenty minimum on permanent rotation, plus the excavation team. They dig, they reinforce, they clear. You hold a line long enough, it stops being crazy and starts being normal."
Silence again, thicker this time. The kind of silence that comes when everyone realizes you're serious.
Tasha broke it with a dry laugh. "Oh great. So we're just starting our own colony now? What's next, Mayor Reyes?"
"Don't tempt me. I'd win the election by default."
"Look," I continued, softer now, "the Library isn't just another ruin. It's intact. Barely touched. Solid architecture, high walls, controlled entrances. You've seen it." I gestured at the folded map Lia had been guarding like a holy text. "There's potential there. And if it really is the Presidential Library, we're not just talking shelter, we're talking archives, supplies, maybe even comms equipment. It's a resource hub waiting to be carved out."
Cole's jaw flexed. "And if it's crawling with infected?"
"Then we clear it. Room by room, floor by floor. Methodical. We've done it before."
"Not at this scale."
"Then we adapt."
Lia bit her lip. She was running calculations in her head, I could tell. "How long are you thinking? Days? Weeks?"
"As long as it takes. But the first month is critical. We send twenty to hold ground. Rotating shifts from the warehouse for support. They secure the perimeter, clear interior infestations, set up strongpoints on the main entrances. Meanwhile, the excavation crew fortifies. Reinforced doors, chokepoints, fallback corridors. We dig in like ticks."
"And food?" Joe asked, still skeptical.
"Already accounted for. We've stockpiled enough dried goods and MREs to supply thirty people for two months if rationed. Plus we'll push regular shipments topside. Hunting teams can expand to sweep the outskirts."
"You're assuming nothing goes wrong," he muttered.
"I'm assuming everything goes wrong," I corrected. "That's why we over-prepare. That's why we build redundancies. You think FEDRA or the Fireflies are gonna hand us breathing room forever? No. If they don't crack down, someone else will. We need more than this warehouse. We need territory."
The word hung there like a lit fuse. Territory. Nobody wanted to say it, but everyone felt it. That was the shift. We weren't just rats scurrying in the shadows anymore. We were staking claims.
Cole finally broke the tension. "You'll need command on-site. Someone who won't fold the minute a clicker charges."
"I was hoping you'd say that."
He gave me a look like I'd just sold him into slavery. "You're volunteering me?"
"You're the only one who can keep twenty half-trained survivors alive long enough to hammer boards across a window."
He muttered something profane under his breath but didn't outright refuse. Which in Cole-speak meant he'd already accepted.
Tasha crossed her arms. "And me? What, I sit here babysitting crates while the grown-ups go play fortress?"
"You're on rotation," I said. "Guard detail here, support runs there. Everyone cycles through. Nobody gets left out."
She didn't like it, but she didn't push either.
Lia exhaled, long and tired. "This is insane."
"Yeah," I agreed. "But so is hiding underground forever. I'd rather go insane with windows."
That got a laugh, finally. Thin, nervous, but enough to break the tension.
The planning session stretched into the night. We dragged crates together, used chalk across the concrete, started marking logistics like some apocalyptic board game.
Personnel: 20 permanent, 5 rotating every week.
Engineering crew: 8 total, split between excavation and barricade duty.
Armament: 14 rifles, 6 pistols, 2 shotguns, limited ammo. One MG salvaged from the armory, held in reserve.
Supplies: Two months' rations, water filters, medical kits, lanterns, batteries.
Objectives: Secure entrances, clear interior, establish fallback points, fortify perimeter. Secondary: reduce infected presence in surrounding area.
By the time we were done, the floor looked like a tactical manual written by lunatics with chalk.
Joe stared at it like it was witchcraft. "You're serious about this."
"Dead serious."
"And you think twenty's enough?"
"It's never enough," I said. "But it's what we can spare without gutting the warehouse. We lose more if we stay cramped and static. The Library isn't just a building, it's a lifeboat. And maybe, if we're lucky, it's a beginning."
Word spread fast. People whispered about the Library like it was some mythical land. Some were excited, others terrified. A few flat-out refused to go fine, I wasn't in the mood to drag anyone by the neck. But when the roster filled, twenty names sat there, each one a gamble.
Cole led them, naturally. Beside him were Donny, Tasha on first rotation, three engineers Rusty vouched for, and a mix of scavvers with varying levels of bravery and stupidity. Lia insisted on coming for the first week, "just to oversee setup." I didn't argue, though I hated it.
We prepped them for three days. Gear checks, ration counts, ammo drills. Cole barked at them until half looked ready to desert, then barked louder until they didn't. Rusty and his engineers packed tools like they were hauling treasure. Lia made trade runs to Meredith for extra sealant, nails, even scavenged sheets of corrugated metal.
On the fourth morning, they left.
It wasn't ceremonial. No fanfare, no trumpets. Just twenty people trudging out into the grey light, gear slung over shoulders, rifles clutched too tightly. The warehouse was quiet as they departed, everyone else pressed against shadows, watching.
I stood at the tunnel mouth with Cole before he left.
"You know this is a bad idea," he said.
"Every idea's bad until it works."
He studied me, then nodded once. "If it holds, it changes everything."
"That's the point."
He turned, lifted his rifle, and led them out.
Reports trickled back that night. The Library's outer courtyard was clear. A handful of shamblers put down. Doors barricaded. Engineers marking load-bearing walls. No casualties.
The next day: first floor mostly cleared. Infected in the east wing, slow and not that numerous. Rusty's crew reinforced stairwells with welded scrap. No casualties.
Day three: second floor secured. An abandoned survivor camp discovered
The news spread like wildfire. The Library wasn't just a plan anymore—it was real. Bloody, dangerous, but real.
And as I sat there, chalk in hand, marking another X on the concrete floor of the warehouse map, I realized something terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure.
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Cal sat down with Joe later that night, the warehouse had gone quiet. Most of the workers were eating in tired silence, the kind that followed long shifts of hauling, sorting, and patching. The smell of boiled beans and fried rat grease lingered in the air, heavy enough to make the walls seem tired too.
Joe leaned forward over the rough table. His eyes were sharp, not dulled by age like Cal sometimes expected.
Cal didn't waste time. "I need people," he said, low, blunt. "Not just bodies. Not just mouths to feed. People I can trust. People who aren't waiting for FEDRA orders or Firefly slogans to tell them who they are. People who just want a better shot at life."
Joe snorted under his breath, half amusement, half caution. "Trustworthy, huh? Kid, that's a luxury word out here."
"Then find me the closest thing," Cal shot back. His voice carried a sharpness that cut through the dim, cramped air. "We've already got enough people who know how to lift boxes and scrub floors. If we're going to hold anything that matters, we need the kind who won't sell us out the second a FEDRA officer waves an armband or a Firefly promises them a rifle."
Joe studied him for a moment, tapping a finger against the tabletop. "You're talkin' about the ones that slipped through the cracks. Folks FEDRA doesn't bother feeding unless they're desperate enough to sign up for patrol duty. The widows. The ones with no papers. The ones who already lost too much to care who runs the checkpoints."
Cal nodded. "Exactly. I don't care if they're broken, angry, or just tired. As long as they don't carry someone else's flag, I can use them. Promise them food. Promise them safety. And tell them it's real because here, it actually is."
Joe then spoke, his voice flat but steady. "You're asking for loyalty in a world that doesn't trade in it anymore."
Cal's gaze didn't waver. "I'm not asking for loyalty. I'm offering a choice. FEDRA offers a cage. Fireflies offer a grave. I'm offering a door. You'd be surprised how many will walk through if someone leaves it open."
That earned the faintest curl of Joes lip not a smile, but close after a bit he chuckled outright this time, shaking his head. "You've got a sharp tongue for an thirteen-year-old. You sound like some half-burned preacher I knew before the world went to shit."
"Maybe he was right," Cal said. "Maybe people just need someone to tell them there's still a way forward."
Joe leaned back, folding his arms. "Alright. I'll start feeling around. Quietly. The kind of people who keep their heads down, who already know better than to brag in the Spine or drink too loud after curfew. They'll come cheap, too, if all they're buying is a fair shot."
Cal gave a short nod. "Good. Don't bring me zealots. Don't bring me anyone looking to be a hero. Just people who want to wake up tomorrow and not feel like they're waiting to die."
"And if FEDRA notices a few too many of these 'nobodies' disappearing from their rolls?"
Cal's answer was simple. "Then we make sure FEDRA thinks they disappeared somewhere else. River, raiders, plague. Take your pick. Just don't let the trail lead here."
The lantern flame wavered as the draft crept through the cracked brickwork.
Finally, Joe stood, pulling his patched coat tighter. "Alright, kid. You'll get your people. Might take time, but I'll find the ones who've got nothing left to lose. The ones who'll take your deal because it's the only one that makes sense anymore."
Cal exhaled slow, like the air in his chest had been waiting for that answer all night. "Good. Bring them one at a time if you have to. Just make sure when they walk through that door, they understand this isn't another cage. It's a gamble but it's their gamble."