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The cages hit the road like dumped furniture. Metal doors popped open. Bodies rolled out. Not bodies anymore. They were already moving.Noah slammed the wheel left, because the first zombie was in the lane and there was no time to brake. The car clipped it and kept going, but the impact shook his arms and the hood buckled up like a bent mouth.Mara twisted in the passenger seat and fired twice through the open window. The shots were clean, but the zombie only stumbled, then kept running. Its skull looked wrong, thicker in front, like bone had grown into a mask."Headshots aren't dropping them," she said. Her voice stayed flat, but her knuckles were white on the grip.Noah didn't answer. He was already reading the road, the van ahead, and the trap behind all at once.
The second transport van was still there, two blocks ahead, swerving to avoid the flood of released infected. It had no escort now, not close. That was the first mistake Elena made.Then the van hit a loose cage. Metal screamed. The van fishtailed, corrected, and pushed through, but it slowed. That was Noah's window.He punched the gas. The stolen car groaned like it hated him. The engine whined, and the temperature needle jumped."Don't cook it," Mara said."If we stop, Owen loses his head," Noah said. He hated how calm his voice sounded.
A zombie slammed into the passenger door. Its face was shredded, but its eyes tracked like a hunting dog. It clawed at the glass, and the glass spidered but didn't break yet.Mara shoved the muzzle against the crack and fired. The shot blew out the cheek, but the thing didn't drop. It kept scraping, like pain meant nothing.Noah swerved hard and clipped a parked sedan. The impact snapped the zombie's arm against the frame. It fell, rolled, and got up again."Not dead," Mara said."No," Noah said, and his throat felt dry. "Just slower."
They reached the worst part of the trap. The street narrowed under an overpass, and the cages had been dumped right at the choke point. The released infected stacked up there, pushing and climbing over each other, not smart but relentless.The van ahead tried to force through anyway. It rammed two bodies, then three, and the pile moved like a living wall. The van's front bumper tore loose.Noah saw the choice fast. Go wide into side streets and lose time, or go straight and risk getting boxed in with no room to turn.He chose straight, because Owen was still alive and time was already gone.
Noah hit a zombie full in the chest. The body bounced off the hood, rolled over the roof, and cracked the windshield. The glass exploded inward.He didn't flinch. He couldn't. He drove by feel, by noise, by the van's brake lights and the gap that kept shrinking.Mara wiped blood off her cheek with the back of her hand. It wasn't hers, but she still looked at it like it was a bill."Daniel," she said, low."Not now," he said."You're pushing too hard," she said. "You'll wreck us before we reach him."Noah tasted metal. It might have been the blood in his own mouth. "Then we wreck them first."
The van's rear doors swung once, just a crack, then slammed shut. Someone inside was checking. Someone was scared.Noah's pulse jumped, because fear meant Owen might still be back there. Fear meant there was still a person to save.He forced the car closer, bumper almost kissing the van's back end. He saw a white sticker on the van's corner, half-torn.INTAKE UNIT. HEAD INTACT.Dr. Harrow's words came back like a cough in his skull.
The lane broke into an intersection. A burned bus blocked the far side, and the street was full of infected, sprinting now, not shuffling. Their feet slapped pavement like rain.The van hesitated. That hesitation was enough.Noah yanked the wheel and clipped the van's left rear, a controlled hit. Metal screamed, and the van lurched sideways.Mara grabbed the dash to keep her head from smashing the window. "What are you doing?""Opening it," Noah said.
The van's driver fought it, steering into the skid. The van started to straighten. Noah couldn't allow that.He reached down, pulled his pistol, and fired at the rear tire, twice. The first shot sparked off the rim. The second punched rubber and let air scream out.The tire collapsed. The van jerked again, harder, and its rear swung into the horde.Bodies hit steel. Nails scraped paint. The van slowed like it was drowning.
Noah stopped the car at an angle, blocking the van's only clean path forward. It was a trap inside a trap now, but it was the only way.Mara was already out, moving with that medic speed, fast and tight. She fired at knees, at hips, at anything that would slow them down."Cover me," Noah said, and ran for the van's rear doors.He slammed his shoulder into the lock. The metal shook. The door didn't open."Authority lock," Mara said, breath hard. "Remote."Noah grabbed the handle and shoved his knife into the seam. He pried, twisted, and felt the blade bend.A zombie hit him from the side. Its head snapped toward his neck, teeth clicking.Noah shoved the barrel into its mouth and fired. The shot blew out the back of the skull, but the bone didn't split clean. It cracked like thick ceramic.The zombie still moved for a second, twitching, then dropped.
His ears rang. The gunshot under the overpass was a bell. He knew what it meant.More were coming.
Mara dragged the dead zombie back by the collar. "Crystal," she said.Noah stared at the skull. The back was open, but the front was still hard, still plated. Old headshots really were dying as a method.He could run, or he could take the resource that might keep him alive long enough to finish this.He chose the ugly step.
Noah crushed the skull wider with the butt of his gun. Bone gave way with a wet pop. He forced himself not to look away.His fingers went in. Warm, sticky, wrong. Then he felt it, smooth and sharp at the same time.He pulled out a crystal the size of a thumb joint, cloudy gray with red veins like trapped blood.The moment it hit air, his brain screamed for it. Not hunger. Need. Like thirst in the desert.
Mara's eyes flicked to the crystal, then back to the street. "Move," she said.Gunfire popped somewhere behind them. Not theirs. Authority.So the trap was not just zombies. It was a funnel. Elena had built a kill lane.
Noah didn't swallow the crystal. He absorbed it the only way he knew, pressing it to his tongue and biting down.The crystal cracked. Heat flooded his mouth like a chemical fire.He dropped to one knee as pain tore through his jaw and into his skull. His nose started bleeding again, fast, heavy. The world sharpened until it hurt to see.Every sound came in too loud. Every motion left a trail in his vision. He could hear Mara's breath, the wet footfalls of the infected, and a drone blade somewhere above, all at once.Mara grabbed his shoulder. "Daniel. Look at me."Her hand felt like an anchor. His body wanted to sprint, fight, feed. His head wanted to split open.He forced a blink. Forced a breath. "I'm good.""Liar," she said, and kept her hand there anyway.
The van's rear door clicked. Not from Noah. From inside.A young voice shouted, muffled. "Help! Please!"Noah's stomach turned cold. Owen.He grabbed the handle and yanked. The door opened two inches, then stopped, caught on a chain lock.Noah shoved his fingers into the gap. He saw Owen's face in the dark, bruised, mouth taped, eyes wide and wet.Owen's wrist was strapped to a bench with a plastic tie. A white hospital band circled his arm.Noah read it in a flash because his vision was too sharp to miss anything.SUBJECT 13. INTAKE. HARROW.Owen shook his head hard, as if the band itself was poison.
"Daniel," Owen tried to say. It came out as a broken sound under tape.Noah snapped the chain with a bolt cutter he'd stolen off the first van's floor. It took two squeezes. The metal screamed like it didn't want to let go.The door opened wide.Mara moved in behind him. "Owen, can you stand?"Owen tried. His legs buckled. His hands trembled like they didn't belong to him.
A sharp crack echoed from the far end of the intersection. Authority rifles. Controlled fire.Noah looked up and saw three black-helmeted figures on the bus roof, aiming down into the choke point. They weren't shooting zombies to save people. They were shooting to shape movement.They were pushing everything toward Noah, Mara, and the van.A drone hovered above, camera eye locked on him. A speaker popped with static."Daniel Cross," a voice said. Male. Flat. Not Elena. "Step away from the transport. Kneel."Mara cursed under her breath. "They know."Noah wiped blood from his lip. It only smeared more. "Of course they do."
He grabbed Owen under the arm and hauled him out. Owen was dead weight, but Noah's body felt wired now, fast and cold.He could run. He could fight. He could do something stupid and live through it.That was the danger.
The infected surged again, drawn by the fresh blood and the open van. One of them climbed the bus side like an animal, fingers digging into torn rubber and rust.Its head was wrong too. The front plate was thicker, and the neck was swollen with muscle like rope.Noah fired a headshot. The bullet sparked. The thing didn't stop.It leaped down, landing hard, and sprinted straight at him.Mara fired twice. The shots hit shoulder and jaw. It didn't slow.Noah's new senses screamed at him to move now, move now, or die.
He shoved Owen toward Mara. "Hold him."Mara caught Owen, almost fell, then braced. "Daniel—"Noah ran at the plated zombie instead of away from it. It was a terrible choice, and he knew it, but the space behind him was the cliff.At the last second, he dropped low and drove his knife up under the jaw, into the soft gap where bone met throat.The blade sank deep. The zombie's body jerked like it had been unplugged. It still grabbed at him, but its grip was weaker now.Noah twisted, ripped the blade free, and finished it with two shots at the back of the skull.This time, it dropped.
His hands shook. Not from fear. From need.His mouth was still hot from the crystal. His brain wanted another. It whispered that he could take one more, get faster, get stronger, win.He hated that voice because it sounded like him.
The drone buzzed lower. The Authority shooter on the bus adjusted his aim toward Mara.Noah stepped in front of her without thinking. The movement cost him, because it exposed his own chest.The speaker crackled again. "You are interfering with intake. You will be processed."Noah looked at the van's side panel and saw another label, half-hidden under blood spray.RIVERGATE CLINIC. MOBILE INTAKE ROUTE B.A place. A real place. A lead he could follow, if he lived.
Mara whispered, "We can't win this."Noah watched the infected swarm toward them, and the rifles waiting above, and Owen's shaking hands on Mara's jacket.He felt the crystal in his belly like a burning coin. It was giving him speed, but it was stealing his calm."We don't need to win," Noah said. "We need to leave with him."
He grabbed a smoke canister off a dead guard near the curb. He didn't even remember seeing the guard fall, but the body was there, head split open, crystal already stolen.So someone else was hunting too. Another layer. Another enemy.Noah pulled the pin and tossed the smoke under the bus, between them and the shooters.Gray fog poured out, thick and fast. It wasn't mystery. It was cover.
Mara dragged Owen, half-carrying him toward the side alley. Noah stayed behind, firing into the legs of anything that moved close.The plated zombies didn't drop fast, but they did stumble when their joints broke.Old rules were dying. New rules were worse.
They reached the alley mouth.Then Owen screamed, sharp and sudden, because a hand grabbed his ankle from the smoke.Not Authority. Not human.A plated zombie crawled low, silent, almost smart, pulling itself with elbows like it had learned patience.Its head turned up, eyes fixed on Owen's face like it recognized him.
Noah raised his gun.The drone's camera light blinked red above him.And the Authority shooter's laser dot landed on Noah's forehead.