The Apocalypse Exchange: I Can Trade Anything

Chapter 7: Convergence

The relief lasted about half a second. Then Ryan nearly turned the SUV around and drove straight back home.

The street was choked with infected worse than he'd imagined from his window.

What made it even more unbearable was the graveyard of abandoned cars littering the road, boxing him in from every direction.

A cluster of infected had already spotted the SUV and started sprinting toward it.

Ryan slammed the gas. The engine roared, and the vehicle surged forward like something feral.

The noise only seemed to enrage them further they screamed and charged harder.

Ryan gripped the wheel and forced his way through the crowd. Blood and viscera splattered across the windshield, smearing his view into a red haze.

He fumbled for the wiper switch, flicking it on.

Wrong move. The wipers just dragged the mess into wider, messier streaks.

And yet in the middle of all this Ryan had never felt more clear-headed. Every decision, every twitch of the wheel, landed with strange, cold precision.

A jackknifed truck loomed ahead, blocking nearly the entire road. Ryan reacted on instinct, wrenching the wheel into a brutal sideways skid, scraping past the truck's edge with barely an inch to spare.

His heart slammed against his ribs.

The road ahead was a dead end of wreckage but the gunfire sounded close now. Close enough to reach on foot.

He killed the engine and abandoned the car.

He'd made it maybe a dozen steps when a deafening crash sounded behind him.

He spun around and found himself staring at something that made the word "zombie" feel embarrassingly inadequate.

The thing towered over two meters tall, its entire body a raw, skinless red, every cord of muscle visible and pulsing. Where a head should have been sat something shaped disturbingly like an infant's face. Across its chest, human faces writhed and twisted in the flesh itself.

Ryan's stomach dropped. Among those faces unmistakably were the woman from across the hall, and the man who'd led the mob to his door.

Every instinct screamed at him to run. So he did pure animal panic, no plan, just distance.

But the second he turned, the light above him vanished, swallowed by the creature's shadow.

He'd backpedaled instead of sprinting forward and that single misstep put him directly behind the thing.

Ryan didn't hesitate. He raised the M16 and unloaded the entire magazine into the back of its skull.

The creature let out a sound like three different screams layered on top of each other.

Its head caved in under the barrage but the body didn't drop.

It swung both arms backward in a wide, brutal arc.

The abandoned car behind Ryan took the hit meant for him, crumpling under the blow.

By the time Ryan recovered, the creature had already spun to face him. Its head had regrown but this time, wearing the neighbor woman's face instead.

His rifle clicked empty.

There was no more time to think. Ryan ripped the adrenaline shot from his bag and jammed it into his thigh.

Power flooded through him instantly, electric and overwhelming.

In that razor's-edge moment between life and death, his mind sharpened to something almost surgical.

The creature lunged. Ryan didn't flinch he charged straight at its incoming fist.

At the last possible instant, he pivoted, letting the punch whistle past his ear, and used the momentum to sling himself around toward its back at a speed that shouldn't have been possible.

There was no version of this fight he could win head-on. That backhand swing alone had shoved a car and a full-sized truck sideways by several inches. One direct hit from this thing, and a normal person would never move again.

But there was a strange kind of clarity that lived right at the edge of death and right now, Ryan was standing in it.

Between the nutrient formula raising his physical ceiling for weeks, and the adrenaline screaming through his veins now, every cell in his body felt like it had been set on fire.

The creature's attacks came fast and savage. But to Ryan, they might as well have been moving in slow motion.

Every swing, every step it took he found the gap. Found the half-second window to slip past.

It felt less like a fight and more like some grim, elegant dance playing out on a stage built entirely of ruin.

After a short, brutal chase, the sound of shouting and gunfire rose up ahead. Ryan felt something close to joy.

He needed to reach the soldiers before the adrenaline burned out.

He rounded a corner and finally spotted them a line of soldiers laying down suppressive fire against a wave of infected.

Some of the infected peeled off toward Ryan instead. In his current state, they barely registered as a threat if anything, his position turned him into an accidental obstacle in their path, slowing the ones chasing him down.

Then the massive creature crashed into view behind him, and every soldier's attention snapped toward it instantly.

Ryan dodged and weaved, waving frantically toward the soldiers' position, terrified of catching a stray round in the chaos.

These soldiers had clearly been fighting this war a long time they recognized a real threat when they saw one. The moment the creature came into range, every gun on the line opened fire without needing an order.

Under that much combined firepower, the thing was shredded in seconds.

For one triumphant moment, everyone celebrated the kill.

Ryan was the only one who noticed something wrong.

The instant the creature hit the ground, the surrounding infected swarmed it tearing into its flesh like starving animals. And the creature, even dying, tore back, devouring anything that got close.

Then, as one, every infected on the street abandoned the soldiers completely and surged toward the fallen creature instead.

Ryan might as well have turned invisible. Not a single one of them so much as glanced his way.

He used the opening to close the last stretch of distance and finally reach the soldiers.

The second he got close, half a dozen rifles snapped up, aimed straight at him.

Ryan ripped off his helmet and mask.

"I'm human! Not one of them!"

The weapons lowered.

One soldier stepped forward, stopping about ten feet out.

"Who are you? And what the hell was that thing?"

"I live in the complex back that way. Heard the gunfire and came running."

"No idea what that thing was. Ran into it on the way here."

"Look you're military, right? Can I come with you?"

"Yeah. But it's not a democracy out here. You follow orders, no exceptions."

"Trust me, I've got no complaints as long as it doesn't get me killed."

"Ha. Not likely. If anyone's dying out here, it's us we're the ones on point."

After everything Ryan had already seen people do to each other, that one line landed harder than he expected.