Zubair opened the throttle and let the truck eat highway.
Perdition had vanished behind the trees like it had never existed out of fairy tales anyways. There were no roads, no tire prints, nothing to suggest that there was even a highway side exit there.
Nothing.
But there was good news, too. There were no riders in the mirrors, no dust trail chasing them. Just clean, empty lanes and the white glare of a sky with a sun that refused to budge.
Luci sprawled across the back bench with his chin on Sera’s knee, tongue lolling in pure dog-laziness.
Elias had the map out but didn’t bother pretending that it ant anything more than comfort.
Lachlan drumd a knuckle pattern on the back of Elias’s seat until Alexei pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Since the sun’s a liar now," Alexei murmured, his eyes on the horizon, "we need keep track of our own ti. It’s how we did it back in the old country when the sun refused to set."
"I’m pretty sure that in your old country, there were still clocks, watches, and cellphones," chuckled Lachlan sitting back in his seat. Sera was pressed tightly between him and Alexei with the massive dire wolf in an odd position in the foot well and over their legs.
Anything was fine, as long as it ant touching Sera.
Alexei rolled his eyes. "What I ant was that we should grab so sleep while it’s bright. I’m beginning to wonder if the sun will stay high for days at a ti if we let it."
Zubair flicked him a glance. "You want a roof or a field."
"A door I can lock," Alexei returned, flat as concrete.
Sera broke a square of chocolate and slid the rest of the bar into her pocket. "Door, beds, a kitchen table. Let’s play house."
Lachlan’s grin crept back. "Dostic goddess energy. I like it."
A battered green sign ghosted past—EXIT 14 FARM ROADS.
Zubair cut across two dead lanes, dropped his speed, and took the ramp.
Gravel clattered in the wells. Cornfields opened like a rusted book, stalks long since collapsed and bleached to bone-yellow. The farmhouse sat where it should, two stories, porch sagging, windows dim.
A classic, which ant predictable angles, predictable threats. And a scarecrow that Lachlan couldn’t promise wouldn’t kill them in their sleep.
"Drive-by," Zubair told them, easy and even. "Eyes left, eyes right."
They rolled slow past the mailbox. No fresh tracks, only wind scoring the dust. The front door stood half open with a shoe caught under it like soone had tried to wedge it shut and lost. No birds. No flies.
"Dogs," Elias warned, voice low, hand already on the d kit.
Luci’s ears shot up before the sound reached them—claws on wood, the wet click of jaws, that throaty not-quite-bark that ant hunger had rewritten a once-familiar animal.
Zubair killed the engine and the silence hit like a dropped curtain.
There was movent under the porch.
First muzzle nosed out, furless in patches, eyes the glossy marble of a broken toy.
The second slid after it, ribs counting themselves under mangy hide. A third pushed from the crawlspace, bigger, a shepherd mix gone wrong.
Very, very wrong.
"Three," Alexei assessed, already stepping out, knife reversed along his forearm.
"Four," Lachlan corrected as the last skittered from the porch steps, raw boned and fast.
Sera touched Luci’s ruff. "Stay," she told the dire wolf, her voice as calm as water. With a final pat, she hopped down from the cab without looking to see if anyone would argue.
The dogs ca as one tangle. There was no pack discipline or hierarchy left, just hunger and the need to get to prey sooner than the others.
Zubair moved to et them.
There was no panic in his movents; panic wastes air. He let the first commit, sidestepped, caught the back of its neck and drove it into the gravel with a heel on the spine—clean, hard, and enough to sever the spinal chord.
It thrashed once, then didn’t.
Alexei took the shepherd in a quick two-beat: a feint to draw its leap high, then the knife across the throat as it sailed past.
He landed in a half crouch, blade already wiped on his pant leg, face unreadable.
Lachlan turned his into cody that ended ugly—"there you go, mate"—as he caught a lunging jaw with both hands and used montum to spin it into the porch post.
Bone cracked and seed to echo around them.
He finished the animal quick, no flourish after the laugh.
The fourth veered from Zubair toward Sera, smarter than the rest or just hungrier.
Luci’s growl rolled low like a warning shot, but the other animal didn’t hesitate.
Sera didn’t step back. She waited for the paws to hit the porch boards, its weight to shift, then planted her boot and t it with a knee rising like a piston.
Air whoofed out with a wet cough.
As it staggered, she took a handful of scruff, twisted, and snapped. Efficient. No joy, no disgust—just the clean click of a job done.
Silence again. Alexei scanned the eaves; Lachlan listened for echoes; Elias watched their hands for blood not theirs.
"Let’s clear the house," Zubair nodded, not bothering to look at anyone but Sera for injuries. "Standard sweep. Sera with . Alexei, take Lachlan. Elias on the door."
They moved like they’d practiced it because they had, a hundred different houses ago. Just because the enemy was human back then, doesn’t an that they lost their edge.
Porch first—boards soft, one step ready to go through.
Entry—stale air, copper ghost of old blood, a sweeter rot cut drily by dust.
Hallway—a line of family photos turned face down on a sideboard, as if that had been enough to keep the faces from seeing.
The kitchen was to the right. The sink was crusted white around a long-evaporated pool, a pantry with shelves still ordered, labels outward, and soone’s last neatness refusing to give. There were two mugs in the drying rack turned mouth-down, a detail that landed like a small kindness in Zubair’s chest.
They took the left doorway together into the living room.
Zubair was the first one to spot the zombie at the window.
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