The Unfortunate Master Of The Apocalypse

Chapter 4: Turning Point

They sat until the light through the broken door began casting long shadows across the floor. Long enough that Ethan's legs went numb and he didn't notice until he tried to stand. The sound didn't come again. Ethan told himself that meant something good. He didn't believe it, but he told himself anyway.

“We can't stay here,” he said. He looked around at what the group had left behind. A single bottle of water, a half-empty pack of something with the label long gone. It wasn't much. But it was enough to keep his hands busy while his head worked out what came next. He shoved it all into the pack and didn't let himself think about how light it felt slung over one shoulder. For the survival of two people, it wasn't enough.

Ethan found the bandages Caroline had left in the first aid kit. He also found painkillers wrapped in a strip of cloth. They were the only two things left in the box. He crouched in front of Priya, who looked at her splinted leg like it belonged to someone else, and held two pills out on his palm with a bottle of water.

“Take these before we move. It'll hurt less once they kick in.”

Priya stared at the pills like she didn't believe they would do anything. She took them anyway, grimacing at the bitterness.

“I’m going to need more than pain killers if I'm going to survive whatever is out there.”

“I know. You need proper medication. It's one of the reasons we need to move.” It was the only thing he had to offer.

She nodded, and something in her settled, and she let him help her up. He got his arm under hers before she could tell him not to. She was lighter than he expected and heavier than he wanted. Neither mattered. She was his now. A closed deal, signed the moment the group walked out the door and he was not going to abandon her the way they had. They made it seven blocks without seeing a single living person. The evening breeze swept across their faces and Ethan understood immediately how bad an idea going out at night had been. Every window they passed has a hole with nothing behind it. There was no hiding in a world this open. Only in places where it's harder to be seen.

“Over there,” Priya said, pointing with her chin at a strip of stripped-out shops. One had a reinforced door that didn't look damaged. “I think it might hold for the night.”

They crossed the street but they didn't make it. Two came out of a doorway that had looked empty a second before. The first dropped into their path, joints working at angles that once belonged to a person, mouth open on a sound that wasn't a growl or a scream, just noise, like something that had forgotten silence was an option. A shredded hoodie hung tied around its waist. Its eyes tracked nothing except motion and food. The second lurched after, head cocked sideways, one eye missing, the socket cased in black scarring. Ghouls, Ethan thought. Rabids, he remembered them now. He didn't have time to finish the thought before a third one came from the other direction upright and normal. This one was different. It looked at them instead of lunging. It looked at Priya, at the splint on her leg and the way she couldn't put weight on it. Ethan and Priya stood there, exposed and defenseless as the streetlight shone over them.

“They are not worth my time. You can have them.” The intelligent said. The two rabid ghouls nodded their heads like they had heard an order. They didn't speak. Rabids don't speak. Only the intelligents did. Ethan didn't know why, he just knew they didn't. Then the intelligent looked at them one more time, unhurried, like it was weighing a decision it had already made. It turned and left the way it had come. Down the street and gone.

With the intelligent gone, Ethan knew they were luckier than if it had come for them but they weren't any safer. The ghoul with one eye had gone still, eyes fixed on Priya. The other with the shredded hoodie was already moving.

“Run,” Ethan said, and knew even as he said it that she couldn't.

She got a few steps on the good leg before the bad one buckled. Ethan caught her before she hit the ground, and that was exactly what the ghoul in the shredded hoodie needed. It closed the distance, tore her from Ethan's grip, and threw her over its shoulder. Ethan was on the ground, scrambling backward as the one-eyed ghoul came toward him. Why weren't they eating? Priya fought with what little strength she had left, but the ghoul in the shredded hoodie didn't even slow down.

“Ethan, help me.”

Her eyes pleaded with him, and something in her face reminded him that everything that had happened to her was his fault. That she was his responsibility now. He knew it without the reminder. He wished there was something he could do. He couldn't take one ghoul by himself, let alone two. He tried to think, because Priya was getting farther away with every second he spent on the ground. The one-eyed ghoul reached him and dragged him by the leg before Ethan had decided to move at all. His body scraped against the asphalt. His breath was gone. The knife was already in his hand without him remembering drawing it. It felt strange in his hand. But it was the only thing he had. He couldn't save her in the warehouse. He couldn't fail now. He gripped the knife with both hands and looked up at the ghoul as it dragged him. He didn't know how to use it. He had watched Priya clean fish with a blade half this size, quick and certain, wrist doing all the work. Some small, cold part of him took the photograph, the way it always did.

Something in his chest lit up and steadied. It wasn't like copying Tram's talent. There was no strength in it. What came through was faster and flexible. His hand found an angle he would never have found on his own, wrist turning the way Priya's wrist turned, a whole vocabulary of motion arriving in his arm without asking his permission. And underneath it, close to the surface, was fear. Not his but Priya's. The same fear he had seen in her face when they took her. It didn't have words, just the memory of being weak, and someone stronger deciding what happened to her. It came through the copy like water through a crack, mixed with his own fear that he was going to lose her if he didn't move. Ten seconds. That was all the window he had.

Nine seconds.

He struggled to shake his leg free. The one-eyed ghoul's grip was iron. He raised himself up and stabbed at the hand holding him, but the blade skated off its skin like something invisible had pushed it aside. The cut was shallow. It started sealing as soon as the cut was made. The sound it made told him it had felt the pain. The ghoul let go and for a moment Ethan was free.

Seven seconds.

The ghoul squinted its good eye. It looked angry now. It got on top of Ethan without slowing, it's working closer to his shoulder, and he shoved his forearm against its throat and felt his own strength failing under the weight of something that had never once had to worry about being tired. He was trying not to get bitten. He didn't want to become their food. Or worse, become one of them.

Five seconds.

It realized Ethan wasn't going to hold still. It grabbed him by the shirt with one hand, yanked him off the concrete like he weighed nothing, and slammed him back down. His head hit first. White light spread across his vision. He felt his collarbone snap. His ribs folded in. For a second he couldn't hear anything but the ringing. He tried to move. The pain came rushing in as the two broken edges of his collarbone grinded against each other. He regretted it immediately. He tasted blood and felt it dripping down his forehead. The white light was fading, and so was he, but his hand didn't let go of the knife. Adrenaline had welded it shut. His fingers wouldn't have opened if he wanted them to. The heart. Something in him said. It wasn't really a voice, just certainty arriving from nowhere the way the wrist-angle had. Not the throat. The heart but he didn't have an angle for that. Not injured like this.

Two seconds.

He found one anyway. Twisting hard enough and just as the ghoul lunged for him, Ethan drove the knife up, where a heart should sit. It went in wrong twice before it went in right. He twisted the blade. The ghoul let out a sound and tried to pull back, but Ethan didn't let go. He kept turning the blade through muscle that fought him the whole way.

One second.

The ghoul seized. Its head came down, with the teeth finding Ethan's right forearm. He felt his skin give before he felt the pain. Then it went rigid on top of him. Ethan shoved it off him and it didn't move again.

For half a second, nothing hurt. The fear was gone too. He understood, distantly, that the copy had burned out. The fear went with it. The pain then came back. His arm, when he looked down at it, was bleeding badly from the bite marks. It should have meant something, that he was going to turn into a ghoul soon and somehow, it didn't. He got up anyway. Down the street, past the collapsed shop fronts, he could still see the ghoul in the shredded hoodie. It was small now with distance, dragging Priya toward wherever it was taking her. He tried running but his legs didn't agree with the decision. He ran anyway. Blood ran warm down to his wrist, down the side of his face. His throat was sore from something that wasn't quite a shout. The distance didn't close. By the time he reached the corner they had turned, there was nothing there but an empty street and a groove in the dirt that stopped a few feet past the curb.

He stood there, not understanding how a body could keep standing after everything in it had stopped agreeing to. Priya was gone. He fell forward onto his hands and knees, in the open, under a moonless sky that had just taught him exactly how much that mattered. He pressed his good hand against the wound on his other arm and didn't cry, because some part of him had gone somewhere past that already. That was when the words appeared.

Something behind his eyes, cold and clean and entirely wrong for a man bleeding onto broken pavement. Letters assembling out of nothing the way rust finds metal.

[First Ghoul Kill Confirmed]

[Condition Met]

[Full Copy Talent Initialising…]

[Copy System Activated]

The street tilted. Or he did. He couldn't tell which anymore, and some distant part of him understood that not being able to tell was its own kind of answer. He put his hand down to catch himself. It folded under him, the same way his legs had stopped agreeing with him three streets back. The letters kept assembling behind his eyes, patient, unbothered like an entity that didn't know or care that the body it had chosen was failing. He thought about Priya. Her face pleading with him. The promise he had made not to fail her. He tried to hold onto the two grooves in the pavement, and the street went sideways instead. The ground rose slowly and certainly to meet the side of his face.

He thought about all the people he had tried to save. All the people he hadn't. The ones he had failed and watched die. He had spent his whole life trying to protect people who couldn't protect themselves and had failed every single time. But continued trying. That was something. And now he was dying in the street, alone, with no one left to save. He had failed. But he had tried. Maybe that was enough. Maybe it wasn't. He didn't know anymore. The last physical thing he was aware of was that it was colder than it should have been, like the faulty refrigerator in his apartment had opened somewhere close and wasn't planning on closing again. Somewhere inside him he could see his past memories overlapping before his eyes, all from before the apocalypse. Like his life was in exhibition. One memory half played then switched to the next. Like someone or something was not yet sure which one to pick. Then it settled on a particular memory and his consciousness faded into nothing.