2026-07-29 16:08:02
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CHAPTER 160
"Don't go outside. The fog is probably carrying concentrated toxins from the rain. Breathing it in could be just as bad as skin contact.""I'm not going anywhere, Giorgia. I just sat down.""Good." She exhaled with relief. "Stay inside until it lifts. Could be hours, could be days.""Noted." He paused. "How's your friend? Still sharing that bed for body heat?""Goodnight, Marco." The line went dead.He smiled briefly, then turned his attention back to the thermal display. Several heat signatures that had been moving through the streets outside the neighborhood, residents inspired by his SUV run that morning who had ventured out to scavenge, were now wandering in slow, aimless circles. Lost in the fog. Some would find their way back. Some would not.At nine o'clock exactly, the thermal display lit up with a pattern that made Marco sit up straight on the couch.Thirty heat signatures poured out of Building 4's stairwell into the underground garage, moving in a tight, coordinated formati
CHAPTER 159
Marco set the portable gas stove on the living room floor and lit the burner. The pot went on top, filled with rich broth, and within minutes the safe house smelled like a restaurant that had no business existing at the end of the world. He sliced beef and lamb into thin strips, arranged leafy greens and mushrooms and cubes of tofu on separate plates, and set everything on the low table beside the bubbling pot.Natalie arrived first, then Sophie, then Rachel with her baby settled in a makeshift carrier, then Sarah. All four women sat around the pot in a loose circle, staring at the steam rising from the broth with expressions that ranged from disbelief to something close to religious awe."Is that real lamb?" Sophie leaned forward, her nose nearly touching the steam, her eyes glassy and wide."Drop it in and find out." Marco placed the chopsticks beside each woman's bowl.For the first few minutes, nobody talked. They ate with the focused, trembling intensity of people who had forgott
CHAPTER 158
A fourth round silenced him before the sentence finished.Panic broke through the mob like a dam collapsing.The organized charge dissolved into pure animal chaos.Two men dove behind fuel pumps, pressing themselves flat against the metal as if sheet steel could stop whatever was cutting through their group like wind through wet paper.Three others bolted straight out from under the canopy into the open toxic rain, the acid water hitting their exposed skin immediately, burning and blistering before they made it ten feet, but fear of the invisible death behind them outweighed the visible death falling from the sky.Marco picked them off methodically. No wasted rounds. No emotion.Each system deployed shot found its target with thermal guided precision, dropping runners mid stride and crouching hiders mid prayer.Within thirty seconds, eleven bodies lay scattered across the gas station in various states of collapse. Some motionless.Some groaning. One dragging herself toward the minivan
CHAPTER 157
The semicircle tightened.Twelve bodies closing in from every direction, cutting off the path to the SUV, their improvised weapons catching dull reflections from the ice coated canopy overhead.Bats, tire irons, a rusted kitchen cleaver, and at least two screwdrivers sharpened to points.Their faces were hollow and gaunt, but their eyes carried the sharp, feral calculation of creatures who had stopped being human approximately three missed meals ago."I'm going to count to five." The tall man with the bat took another step forward, his boots crunching on frozen concrete. "At zero, that jacket comes off your back one way or another. Your choice whether your teeth come with it."Marco reached into his waistband and pulled out the replica handgun. He held it loosely at his side, angled toward the ground, his finger resting just outside the trigger guard."Here's my counteroffer." Marco's voice carried no urgency, no tremor, nothing but the flat, conversational calm of a man who had been
CHAPTER 156
The sound of screeching tires cut through the frozen air like a knife through paper.A convoy of four mismatched vehicles, two pickup trucks, a battered sedan, and a minivan with duct tape holding the rear window together, sped into the gas station canopy and surrounded Marco's SUV in a loose, aggressive semicircle. Doors flew open. Twelve people spilled out, men and women bundled in layers of mismatched clothing, their faces raw from cold exposure and their movements carrying the frantic energy of people who had been driving blind through toxic rain for longer than their nerves could handle."Finally! A station with a canopy!" A heavyset woman stumbled toward the pumps, yanking the nozzle off its cradle and squeezing the handle. Nothing came out. She tried a second pump. Dead. A third. Nothing."Tanks are empty." A wiry man kicked the pump hard enough to dent the panel. "Someone already cleaned this place out. Every last drop.""That's impossible." A tall man with a thick beard and a
CHAPTER 155
On the seventeenth morning, Marco pulled back the blackout curtain over his reinforced window and blinked.For the first time since the world ended, he could see more than three feet into the distance.The thick, suffocating fog that had smothered the city for over two weeks was finally thinning, peeling back in slow, uneven layers like a bandage being removed from a wound that had not yet healed.The toxic rain still fell. The temperature still hovered somewhere deep below zero. But visibility had stretched from near nothing to roughly sixty feet, and sixty feet was enough."Stay here, boy." Marco knelt down and rubbed Tank behind both ears. "Guard the house. Bark at anything that moves. Bite anything that doesn't listen to the bark."Tank tilted his head as if he understood every word, then trotted over to his spot on the couch and lay down with the regal authority of a dog who took his security duties very seriously.Marco climbed into the armored SUV parked inside his garage bay.
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