Chapter 161: Farewell Jackson Township [2]

“There was no need to go that far…” I muttered, looking down at my torso after Ivy had finally finished her methodical work. In my opinion, she’d gone significantly overboard with the bandaging—my entire upper body was now wrapped in what felt like several rolls’ worth of medical gauze and tape, making me look like some kind of mummy from a low-budget horror film.

I could barely move without feeling the restrictive pull of bandages wound so tightly they might as well have been a straightjacket. Every breath made the wrappings shift slightly, creating a sensation that was simultaneously protective and claustrophobic. White gauze covered my chest, shoulders, arms, and back in overlapping layers that suggested Ivy had been determined not to leave a single square inch of damaged skin exposed to potential infection.

Ivy paused in the process of packing away supplies into the pharmacy box, her movements precise and economical as always. She turned her head to fix me with one of her characteristically flat, unimpressed stares.

“That says a lot about the condition of your body,” she stated with her usual dry delivery. “Perhaps you have developed a pain fetish, in which case I must ask you to suppress that particular urge from here on out. Your body is not some kind of indestructible machine that can be abused without consequence.”

The accusation hit me like a slap, my face immediately flushing with embarrassment and indignation in equal measure. Several people in the van—I couldn’t see exactly who without turning around, but I heard the quickly suppressed snickers—were clearly finding this exchange far more entertaining than they should have been given the circumstances.

“W..Wait, I don’t have any weird fetish!” I quickly protested, stumbling over the words in my haste to defend myself. “Besides, I think I’ve mentioned before that I have something in my body that helps me heal wounds faster than normal.”

The Dullahan virus—though I couldn’t exactly explain that openly to everyone present. At the very least, my enhanced healing factor was working overtime to repair the catastrophic damage I’d sustained. Already I could feel the deep ache in my muscles beginning to ease slightly, torn tissue knitting back together at accelerated rates that would seem impossible to anyone without supernatural biology.

Ivy gave me a simple, devastatingly dry look and then, without another word, she turned and walked away toward the front of the van where she could stow the medical supplies more securely.

As Ivy moved away from directly in front of me, my line of sight cleared, and I found myself looking up at Wanda. She was still lying on the narrow sleeping berth attached to the van’s ceiling, positioned directly across from where I sat. Her body remained perfectly still, hands folded across her stomach, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling that was mere inches from her face.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m sure Joel is doing well. That old man is pretty tough—tougher than he looks, actually. Don’t underestimate him just because of his age.”

Despite his advanced years, the man had proven remarkably resilient and adaptable, maintaining both physical stamina and mental acuity that put people half his age to shame. If anyone from the Municipal Office community had survived tonight’s catastrophe, Joel would absolutely be among them.

Wanda’s head turned slightly, her blank gaze shifting from the ceiling to focus on me.

“Who said I was worried about him?” She asked.

The words were meant to sound dismissive, to suggest complete indifference to Joel’s fate. But I could read the subtle tells that contradicted her verbal message—the slight tension around her eyes, the way her fingers had unconsciously curled more tightly where they rested on her stomach, the almost imperceptible quickening of her breathing pattern.

Was that thanks to Dullahan I was able to pick on such details now?

“No matter how I see it, you’re anxious about whether he escaped safely or not,” I said, calling her bluff gently.

Before Wanda could formulate another denial, Christopher’s voice cut in from where he stood near the front of the van. “Well, if it’s about Joel, don’t worry too much,” he said with an encouraging smile that looked slightly strained around the edges. “I sent him with Margaret to the cars during the evacuation. He should be fine—those two are both smart and experienced enough to get out safely.”

“If you were going to get this worried about him, you should have stayed with Joel at the Municipal Office in the first place,” Cindy pointed out, her tone carrying mild confusion rather than accusation. She shifted position on the sofa to look more directly at Wanda. “How did you even end up with Ryan to begin with?”

The question hung in the air, and suddenly I felt everyone’s attention shift toward Wanda and me—curious gazes seeking explanation for circumstances that must have seemed odd from an outside perspective. Yeah, we’d arrived at the house together after all, and nobody had gotten a proper explanation for how or why that had happened.

“It’s complicated,” I replied quickly, keeping my answer ambiguous and non-specific.

I didn’t know whether Wanda wanted everyone to know about her being part of the Starakian race. That information could fundamentally change how people viewed her.

The truth of her origins was Wanda’s secret to reveal or keep as she saw fit. I wouldn’t make that decision for her, wouldn’t expose her heritage without explicit permission no matter how curious people became.

“Hiding things once again,” Rebecca spoke. “Always keeping secrets, always holding information back. Same pattern, different day.”

“C…Come on, Rebecca…” Daisy interjected quickly. A small, somewhat uncertain smile played across her features. “Ryan is just tired. We all are. Maybe now isn’t the best time for interrogations about things that might be personal or sensitive.”

“T…They’re here!”

Rachel’s voice suddenly cut through our conversatio. The van lurched slightly as she applied the brakes with more force than usual, bringing us to an abrupt stop that made everyone grab for handholds to avoid being thrown forward.

I rose up quickly despite the protest from my bandaged torso, moving toward the front of the van where I could see out the windshield. My eyes widened as I took in the scene before us.

In the middle of the road—blocking our path forward completely—sat a collection of vehicles that had clearly been stopped for some time. Cars, trucks, a few motorcycles, even what looked like a converted school bus painted in camouflage colors.

And surrounding those vehicles were people. Dozens of people, maybe more, their forms visible in the moonlight and the flickering illumination from battery-powered lanterns and flashlights scattered throughout their makeshift encampment.

The Municipal Office community. They’d made it out.

As our camping van’s sudden appearance registered, heads began turning in our direction. People who’d been sitting or tending to injuries or organizing supplies all stopped what they were doing to stare at the new arrival. Conversations died mid-sentence, creating a spreading wave of silence that rippled through the gathered survivors.

For a moment, nobody moved. We stared at them. They stared at us. The two groups of survivors—separated by maybe fifty yards of cracked asphalt—simply regarded each other with the kind of wary caution that had become second nature in this nightmare world.

Then Rachel opened the driver’s side door with a creak of hinges. The sound seemed to break whatever spell had frozen everyone in place, giving permission for movement and interaction to resume.

We began filing out of the camping van one by one, moving carefully as exhausted bodies protested being forced into action again so soon after the trauma we’d endured.

“Oh! Isn’t that Rachel and the others?” Martin’s voice carried clearly across the distance. He stepped forward from the cluster of survivors, moving toward us with arms spread in a gesture that was equal parts greeting and relief.

Martin looked like hell—and that was probably being generous. His clothes were torn and bloodstained, his face sporting fresh cuts and forming bruises that suggested close-quarters combat. One arm was wrapped in what looked like a makeshift sling fashioned from torn clothing. But he was alive, conscious, and apparently functional enough to still be organizing the survivors, which made him infinitely better off than many.

Actually, looking at the gathered crowd more carefully, I realized that basically everyone looked similarly battered. Injuries were universal—bandaged wounds, makeshift splints, visible burns, the glazed expressions of people dealing with pain through sheer willpower. But they were alive. They’d survived. That was what mattered most.

Though even from this initial glance, I could see devastating absences in their numbers. Faces I’d come to recognize over two months of working together were simply… gone. The spaces where they should have been standing felt like physical voids, holes in the fabric of the community that would never be filled.

And judging from the expressions of those who remained—the blank stares, the occasional person standing alone with tears streaming silently down their face, the clusters of survivors holding each other with desperate intensity—they were still mourning friends and family lost in tonight’s attack. The grief was fresh and raw, wounds too recent to have even begun healing.

“Martin…I’m so glad you’re doing well. And the others…” Rachel trailed off, her gaze sweeping across the assembled survivors as the full scope of their losses became apparent.

They’d numbered over a hundred strong when I’d last visited the Municipal Office—a thriving community that had represented one of the largest concentrations of survivors we knew about in this region. Men, women, children, elderly, people from all walks of life who’d banded together to create something resembling civilization in the ruins.

Now? I counted quickly, my enhanced perception allowing me to tally numbers faster than normal observation would permit. Maybe fifty people. Perhaps sixty at most if I was being generous and some were inside vehicles or obscured from my current vantage point.

Half. They’d lost half their community in a single night.

I didn’t know whether I should feel relief that so many had survived against such overwhelming odds, or horror that so many had died despite all our preparations and countermeasures. Both emotions warred within me, creating a confusing tangle of feelings I couldn’t properly process.

“Wanda! W…Wanda! Is that really you?!”

The shout erupted from somewhere in the middle of the survivor group, desperate and disbelieving in equal measure. The crowd parted as someone pushed through with single-minded determination.

Joel emerged from the cluster of survivors moving faster than I’d ever seen the old man move before. His face was a mask of shock, hope, fear, and overwhelming relief all mixed together into something that transcended simple emotion and became something almost spiritual.

He’d spotted Wanda climbing down from the camping van with her characteristic careful movements, and the sight had clearly struck him.

“Wanda!” Joel called again, his voice cracking on her name as he rushed forward. He didn’t slow down, didn’t hesitate, just closed the distance between them quickly.

Then he reached her and immediately pulled her into a tight embrace—arms wrapping around her smaller frame with enough force that I momentarily worried he might actually hurt her despite his age. His face pressed against her shoulder, and I could see his entire body shaking with the intensity of emotions he couldn’t contain.

Wanda, however, remained perfectly calm in his desperate grip. Her arms hung at her sides rather than returning the embrace, her expression still carrying that same blank affect. But she didn’t pull away or resist the contact, just stood there and allowed Joel to cling to her like a drowning man clutching a life preserver.

“I’m fine,” she said simply.

She was sure playing tough, maintaining that stoic mask even when confronted with someone who clearly cared desperately about her wellbeing.

She could at least try being honest with herself about what she was feeling. But I supposed everyone dealt with their problems in their own way, and I had no right to judge someone else’s coping mechanisms when my own were probably just as unhealthy.

“It has been a long, dark night for all of us.”

Margaret said as she approached our group with measured steps.

Margaret looked exhausted but intact—fewer visible injuries than many of the others but she seemed really emotionally tired: the deep shadows under her eyes, the tension in her shoulders, the careful way she moved that suggested someone conserving limited energy reserves.

“Margaret…” I said softly.”Yes. We’ve all lost someone tonight.”

The words felt inadequate—hollow and insufficient to capture the magnitude of what had been stolen from us. Jasmine’s face flashed through my mind again. Jason’s betrayed expression in the moments before I’d torn the stone from his chest. All the anonymous faces from the Municipal Office I’d never see again, people whose names I’d never learned but who’d deserved to survive just as much as anyone.

“We have,” Margaret agreed quietly. “And we’ll mourn them properly when we have the luxury of safety and time. But right now, we need to focus on the living—on getting everyone far enough from Jackson Township that we’re not at immediate risk.”

She was right, of course. Practical necessities had to take precedence over emotional processing, at least temporarily. We could grieve later. Survival came first.

“I agree that we need to keep moving,” Christopher said. “But do you have any idea where we should head next? Maybe another town nearby? Somewhere we can fortify quickly and establish a new place to live?”

The question hung in the air, and I could see people’s minds working through possibilities, weighing options against the limited information we had about surrounding areas. In the silence that followed, I noticed several people glancing at me expectantly for some reasons.

“I don’t think settling in another nearby town is a good idea,” Clara’s voice cut through the contemplative quiet as she stepped forward from where she’d been standing with a small group of Municipal Office survivors. Her expression—usually so cheerful and optimistic, one of those people whose smile could brighten even the darkest days—seemed dimmed now. “We’d be vulnerable to attack from every side, just like what happened at Jackson Township. Being in the center of populated areas means being surrounded by potential infected hordes.”

The others nodded quickly at her words, murmurs of agreement rippling through the assembled survivors. The traumatic experience of being surrounded and overwhelmed was clearly fresh in everyone’s minds—the feeling of being trapped with nowhere to run, infected pressing in from all directions while the Screamer’s calls drew more and more of them into the killing zone.

Yeah, being surrounded from every side by infected was clearly something nobody wanted to experience again. Ever.

“Then what about the coast?”

The suggestion came from an unexpected source—Daisy, who’d spoken up timidly but with growing confidence as she realized people were actually listening. Everyone turned to look at her, and I watched her straighten slightly under the attention, raising her gaze to meet the assembled eyes with surprising seriousness.

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