THE LAST 100 DAYS

Dead Awake

Chapter 17: Dead Awake

"It moved," Dana whispered. "Ethan. The one by the fence. It *moved.*"

Ethan didn't turn. He was kneeling over a corpse near the foundry, a cracked plate in his hand, watching its seam widen. Forty bodies lay across the yard, and every one of them was changing.

"They're all moving," Noah said. "Just slowly."

"No." Ethan stood. "That's growth. This is something else."

At the fence, a creature lifted its head.

The dead creature.

Its ribs had been crushed last night. Brandt had put a bolt through its skull himself. Now the plates along its back were knitting together, thick as paving stones, and the bolt slid out of its head and clattered on the concrete.

"Everybody back," Ethan said quietly. "Walk. Don't run."

"It's dead!" Brandt barked. "I killed it!"

"Then it didn't get the message."

The creature rose.

It was bigger than it had been in life. Its limbs had lengthened, and its claws curled into hooks. The seam in its face opened wider, and a low, wet sound rolled out of it. Not a click. Something closer to a word.

Every survivor in the yard froze.

"Did it just..." Pete's voice cracked.

"Move," Ethan said. "*Now.*"

It charged.

It crossed the yard faster than anything they had faced, and it went straight for Brandt. Brandt swung his pipe and the thing caught it mid-air, snapped it like a twig, and drove him backward across the concrete.

"*Brandt!*"

Cole raised both hands. Flame ripped across the creature's chest and it didn't even slow.

"It's not burning!" Cole screamed.

"Pull back!" Marcus roared. "Civilians to the foundry! Fighters, hold the line!"

Ethan's mind raced. The beast had been dead for hours. It had no reason to be this strong. It had no reason to be alive.

*Something in it is still running.*

The creature pinned Brandt under one claw. Ethan saw the chest heave, saw the plates flex, and saw a faint black glow pulsing under the third rib on the left side.

*The core.*

"Brandt, don't move!"

"I'm *pinned*, you idiot!"

"Then hold still!"

**[CONVERT 5 MINUTES: BODY ENHANCEMENT?]**

*Five. Just five.*

His hands shook. His clock was still thirty-four minutes ahead of where it had been yesterday, and every minute felt like a coin he couldn't spare.

*Yes.*

The yard slowed. He crossed forty feet of concrete in what felt like three heartbeats, snatched a fire axe from the wall, and swung it at the pulsing glow under the creature's ribs.

The plates held.

The creature turned, almost lazily, and backhanded him into a stack of pallets.

He hit hard. Wood exploded around him. His ribs, the cracked ones, sang with white-hot pain. The enhancement was already fading.

*Not enough.*

The creature straightened. It looked at Brandt. Then at Ethan. Then, deliberately, it stepped over Brandt and started toward him.

*It chose me.*

"Ethan!" Noah's voice came from somewhere to his left. "Behind you! The welding rig!"

He rolled. Two feet from his head, a cutting torch lay on its side, still connected to a half-full oxygen tank.

*Noah, you beautiful idiot.*

He grabbed the torch, spun the valve, and the blue flame hissed to life. The creature lunged. Ethan jammed the torch against its seam, where the plates split, and held the flame there.

The thing screamed.

The plates glowed orange, then white. The hooks scraped at his shoulder, tearing through his jacket and into the skin. He didn't let go. The flame ate through the seam, through the muscle, until the black glow underneath cracked like an egg.

A dull *pop* echoed across the yard.

The creature stopped. It looked down at itself, at the hole in its chest, and its legs folded. It dropped to the concrete, and this time the light inside its eyes went out completely.

Blue text rolled across his vision.

**[EVOLVED CARRION BEAST: PERMANENTLY TERMINATED.]**

**[APOCALYPSE TIME ACQUIRED: 41 MINUTES.]**

He let go of the torch and sat down hard in the debris, shaking and bleeding. Forty-one minutes. More than four kills' worth.

"Ethan." Marcus knelt beside him, pressing a rag to his shoulder. "You're an idiot."

"It had a core."

"What?"

"The glow. Under the third rib. That's what keeps them going." He coughed. "If you break it, they stay dead. Everything else just slows them down."

Marcus stared at him. Then he turned to the yard, where two hundred faces were watching.

"You heard him!" Marcus shouted. "Break the core! Third rib, left side! Spread it!"

---

By dusk, the whole settlement knew.

It moved like a fever. Brandt, bruised and furious, was teaching his wall team how to find the glow. Priya drew diagrams on a sheet of corrugated metal. Hollis dissected a dead one on a table, narrating each cut in a voice that kept breaking.

"Four of them are changing slower than the rest," Noah said. He sat beside Ethan on the loading dock, sketching on the back of a ration crate. "The cores are different colors. The brightest ones are the strongest."

"Mapping them?"

"Trying to." Noah's pencil stopped. "Ethan, this isn't normal. A week ago, they couldn't learn. Now we're teaching each other how to kill them, and they're teaching themselves how to come back."

"Because the System wants both sides to adapt."

Noah looked up sharply. "Wants?"

"It's the only pattern that fits." Ethan stared at the dead creature, at the neat hole he'd burned through its chest. "Every warning says adapt or be removed. It's not just testing if we survive. It's making us evolve. Making *them* evolve. Pushing us toward a version of the world it's already decided on."

"Toward what?"

"I don't know yet."

He pulled the black core out of his jacket, the one from the factory beast. It was warm in his palm and humming faintly, like something waiting.

**[ITEM: MONSTER CORE.]**

**[CONSUMPTION WILL CHANGE YOU.]**

**[YOUR CHOICE.]**

The words sat there, oddly gentle.

*It's offering.*

Ethan closed his fist.

Across the yard, the evacuated foundry doors stood open, and from the dark behind them came a sound he had never heard before: a long, wet, perfectly human voice, whispering his name.