The Alpha Beast didn't charge. That was the first thing I noticed, and the first thing that worried me.In my memory, Tier-1 Alphas were stupid. They ran at the nearest heartbeat and kept running until something stopped them, and ten thousand people had died learning that. This one stood at the far end of the alley, tasting the air through that vertical mouth, and watched me the way a butcher watches a cut of meat.(Quest Started: First Blood. Slay the Tier-1 Alpha Beast. Time Remaining: 04:51)Translucent text hung in the corner of my vision, exactly where I remembered. I ignored it. A dead man's habit: never look at the clock while something is looking at you."Come on," I murmured. "You're early. Let's see why."It moved.Not a charge but a lunge, low and fast, so much faster than the one in my memory that my mind knew where it was going a full half-second before my body agreed. Ten years of instinct screamed *left*. Twenty-four years of soft muscle answered *late*.Claws raked the

I stopped dead in the middle of the cafe.Ten years of apocalypse had taught me every voice a monster could make. Screeches, growls, the wet clicking of things that hunted by sound. None of them had ever used a human voice. Not once. Whatever was in that storeroom had learned mine in a single sentence.Another thing that wasn't in my memory.I filed the thought away for later. A lot of thoughts were piling up in that drawer, and I was starting to dislike how heavy it was getting."Dale." I kept my voice low, level. "Don't open the door.""E-Ethan?" His voice cracked from behind the storeroom's steel door. "Ethan, is that really you?""Dale," the thing answered, in my voice, warm and patient. "It's me. Open the door."A second later it spoke again, this time in Dale's voice, high and breathless. "Please. Please don't."It wasn't talking to him. It was practicing.I crept to the end of the counter and looked up. Perception 12 wasn't much, but it was enough to catch what my old eyes woul

The man in the hardware store kept his hand up.He didn't wave it or call out. He just held it there, palm open, like someone waiting for a handshake to be returned. Twenty-one other people stood beside him in a line with their arms at their sides and their faces turned toward us.I did not raise my hand back."Do you know them?" Ruth asked quietly."No.""They know you.""Yes."Dale's voice came muffled through the wet apron. "Maybe they're just survivors. Maybe they need help.""People who need help don't stand in a row." I was counting again. Twenty-two. Every one of them wore a strip of white cloth tied around the left wrist, the same width, the same knot. Somebody had handed those out before noon. "We're leaving.""Which way?""West. Slowly. Don't run."We backed out from behind the kiosk and crossed Eighth Avenue at a walk. I kept the axe low and watched the reflection in a parked car's window. As we passed the corner, every head in that line turned to follow us, together, at th

I thought about Teodora's husband.I had met him once, years after the basement in Queens, on the road to the Wastes. A quiet man with a gentle face, carrying a rifle he did not know how to use. He had followed his master's orders for two winters. He told me, without any anger at all, that he could not remember the last time he had wanted something for himself.Five seconds.I pressed my thumb to the air, found the word Refuse, and held it.The pain came at once. It wasn't sharp. It was a deep, slow tearing behind my breastbone, as if something had been stitched there in the last thirty seconds and I was now pulling at the seams. My knees buckled. I grabbed the edge of the counter and held on while the room went white at the edges.Across the room, Dale gasped and arched off the chairs."Dale!" Ruth caught his shoulders. "Dale, look at me. Look at me!""I'm okay." He was panting, eyes wide. "I'm okay. Something just, something let go. Like a hand opening." He laughed weakly. "That's t

Nobody moved.Ruth had one hand on Dale's shoulder. Gil stood behind the register with his bat held low, like a man who had finally found a use for it. Lena had stopped breathing, or close to it. I held up a flat palm and pressed the other finger to my lips, and the room went quiet.The bell over the door rang once more, soft, almost apologetic."Mr. Cole," the voice said again. "We saw you cross the avenue. We don't mean to alarm anyone."I moved along the wall, keeping below the window line, and put one eye to the gap in the blinds.A single man stood on the step. He was in his fifties, thin, with a gray cardigan buttoned wrong by one button and reading glasses pushed up into his hair. He looked like someone's favorite uncle. His hands were folded in front of him, empty, and a strip of white cloth was knotted at his left wrist. Behind him on the sidewalk, in four neat rows of five and a couple of stragglers, stood the people from the hardware store. They hadn't come closer than the