The System Eats First

Chapter Ten: Four

"Behind the cars. Now."

Okafor didn't wait to see if anyone argued. He had Milo by the shoulder and moving before the boy could even process the words, tucking him into the gap between two fused wrecks where the metal still held some shape, some cover. "Frank, down, stay low. Rosa, with him."

"I can fight," Rosa said, fire extinguisher already up.

"You can fight after you keep them both alive for the next ten seconds. That is the more useful job right now." Okafor's voice left no room for pride. Rosa dropped down beside Frank and Milo without another word, jaw tight.

Wes's panel painted the threat in dull red lines at the edge of his vision, four shapes moving fast down the narrow street, the same wrong-jointed silhouette as the thing in the hospital waiting room, dragging themselves forward on limbs that bent in places limbs shouldn't bend.

"Four of them, one choke point." Priya's voice was tight but steady, already scanning the wreck-narrowed street like it was a spreadsheet she could still make sense of. "If they can only come at us two at a time through that gap, that's better odds than open ground."

"That's the idea." Okafor planted himself at the mouth of the gap, rebar low and ready. "Wes, with me. You know where the soft points are on a body better than anyone here. Use it."

Wes's stomach turned at the phrasing, soft points, like he was about to run a trauma assessment instead of a killing blow, but there wasn't time to sit with the feeling. He grabbed a length of pipe from the wreckage, weight unfamiliar and wrong in his hand, and took the space beside Okafor just as the first Husk hit the choke point at a dead run.

Okafor met it head-on, rebar swinging low and hard into the thing's knee, and it buckled with a sound like wet rope tearing, but it didn't go down, kept dragging itself forward on the ruined leg with a determination that had nothing left of anything human in it.

"Neck," Wes shouted, some old part of his brain doing triage even now, cervical spine, brainstem, the fastest way to stop a body that wouldn't stop any other way. "Go for the neck."

Okafor adjusted mid-swing, and the second hit connected high, and this time the Husk folded and stayed down.

The second one was already coming through the gap behind it, faster, and Wes swung the pipe on pure instinct, catching it across what would have been a jaw, and the impact jarred up his arm hard enough to numb his fingers. It staggered, recovered, lunged for him with both arms at once, too many joints bending the wrong directions, and Wes barely got the pipe up in time to block.

"Wes!" Priya's scream, somewhere behind him.

He didn't have time to look. The Husk's weight drove him back a step, its featureless face inches from his own, and up close he could see something he hadn't been able to see from a distance, a ring, still on one of its ruined fingers, thin gold, catching the dim light.

Somebody's husband. Somebody's wife. Somebody who'd woken up in this place exactly like Wes had, exactly like Frank had, exactly like everyone crouched behind him right now, and whatever had happened between then and now had taken everything except that one small, stubborn piece of a life it used to have.

The hesitation cost him half a second. The Husk's arm caught him across the ribs, and pain lit up bright and sudden, enough to steal his breath, enough to drop him to one knee.

"Wes, move!"

Rosa was there, out of nowhere, fire extinguisher swinging with everything she had, and it connected with the Husk's head hard enough to knock it sideways, buying just enough room for Wes to scramble back and get the pipe up again.

"You were supposed to stay with Frank," he gasped.

"Frank told me to go." Rosa didn't stop swinging, driving the Husk back another step. "Said something about how paramedics don't leave people, and he figured that applied both directions."

Wes almost laughed, even with his ribs screaming, even with the thing in front of him still coming. He forced himself up, ignored the pain, and this time when he swung the pipe he didn't hesitate, didn't look for a ring or a face or anything that made it a person instead of a threat. He went for the neck the way he'd told Okafor to, and it went down and stayed down.

Two left. Okafor had the third pinned against the wreckage, rebar buried deep enough that it wasn't getting back up, and the fourth had circled wide, coming at the choke point from an angle none of them had covered.

Straight for Milo.

"No—" Wes was already moving, too far, too slow, and Priya was closer, throwing herself into the gap with nothing but her bare hands and the laptop bag swinging wild off one shoulder, and for one terrible second Wes thought he was about to watch someone else disappear right in front of him, this time not into thin air but under something with too many joints and no face at all.

Milo screamed.

Frank moved faster than an old man had any right to move, grabbing a chunk of broken concrete and hurling it with everything he had, and it caught the Husk hard enough across the head to throw off its lunge by a critical few inches. Priya scrambled back, breathing hard, and Okafor was there a heartbeat later, finishing it with two brutal strikes that ended everything the ring on its finger might once have meant.

Silence, after. Just breathing, ragged and shaking, and the slow wet creak of the walls settling back into their patient rhythm like nothing had happened at all.

"Everybody hurt?" Wes forced the words out through the pain in his ribs, doing the count out of pure reflex. "Sound off."

"Bruised. Alive." Rosa, breathing hard.

"Same." Priya, still staring at her own hands like she couldn't believe what they'd just done.

"I'm fine," Frank said, and then immediately sat down hard on the pavement, which suggested otherwise.

Wes crossed to him fast, checking pulse, checking pupils, running the whole assessment on instinct even with his own ribs screaming at him for it. "Talk to me, Frank."

"Threw a rock. Old man threw a rock and his heart didn't like it much." Frank managed a thin, exhausted smile. "Give me a minute. I've earned a minute, I think."

"You've earned a lot more than a minute." Wes squeezed his shoulder, some of the tightness in his own chest loosening at the sight of color still holding in the old man's face. "That rock probably saved his life." He glanced toward Milo, who still hadn't moved.

Milo hadn't said anything. He was staring at the four still shapes on the ground, at the ring still catching the dim light on one ruined hand, and something in his young face had gone older in the last thirty seconds than it had any business going.

Wes crouched in front of him, blocking the view of the bodies without making it obvious that was what he was doing. "Hey. Look at me, not them."

Milo's eyes came up slow, glassy. "That one almost got me. Priya jumped in front of it. She could've died."

"She didn't. None of us did. That's what matters." Wes kept his voice steady, even though his own hands hadn't fully stopped shaking yet either. "You did good staying where Okafor put you. That's not nothing. That's the reason everyone made it out of that."

"Doesn't feel like I did anything."

"Staying put when every part of you wants to run is one of the hardest things there is to do. Trust me. I've watched grown men fail at it." Wes managed a small, tired smile. "You didn't fail at it."

Milo didn't answer, but something in his shoulders eased, just slightly, and he let Wes pull him into a brief, hard hug before letting go.

The panel chimed, calm as ever, indifferent to everything that had just happened.

4 Threshold Husks defeated. +120 XP.

Level Up! Party members have reached Level 3.

New Threat Detected: Something larger has taken notice of the disturbance.