Chapter 169: Galloway [6]

Cindy was standing about ten feet away on the pathway I’d just walked.

She was smiling at me a bit exasperated. Strands of her blond hair was plastered to her cheeks despite her hood, and her clothes showed the same soaked-through state as my own, but she seemed completely unbothered by physical discomfort.

“Cindy,” I said simply.

“You really thought you could escape us?” Cindy asked with gentle teasing as she approached across the rain-slicked concrete decking. “We already knew that if you disappeared, you’d lose yourself in your thoughts and probably wouldn’t come back until nightfall. You have a pattern, you know.”

“No…” I started to protest, but the word died in my throat because she was absolutely right and we both knew it.

As expected, I wouldn’t have been able to pull off any kind of solo escape or extended isolation when we were traveling with an entire community of around fifty people who depended on coordinated movement and collective security. Even if I’d wanted to genuinely separate myself and wander off alone—which some part of me definitely craved during my darker moments—responsibility would have prevented me from bothering the others.

“It wasn’t particularly hard to find you, actually,” Cindy continued, her tone remaining light despite the morbid subject matter. “I just followed the trail of perfectly headless bodies of infected. You’re very consistent with your killing methods—always clean decapitations, always the same efficient strikes. Like following breadcrumbs through a forest, except the breadcrumbs are corpses.”

I awkwardly looked away for some reason, feeling oddly self-conscious about having my combat patterns pointed out so directly. The observation made me sound like some kind of methodical serial killer or barbarian warrior who left distinctive mutilated remains in his wake. Which, I supposed, wasn’t entirely inaccurate from an outside perspective.

I must look like some kind of savage to people who didn’t understand the necessities of ensuring infected stayed permanently dead rather than risking them reanimating from insufficient damage.

Cindy giggled at my reaction.

She raised her gaze toward the sky, her expression shifting to something more contemplative. “Oh, look—it stopped raining.”

I followed her line of sight upward, my enhanced vision immediately detecting what she’d noticed. The persistent rainfall that had been continuing since early morning had indeed ceased, the grey overcast clouds beginning to break apart and drift away on winds I could feel picking up around us. Glimpses of actual blue sky were becoming visible through gaps in the cloud cover—patches of clear weather that suggested the storm system was finally moving on.

Lowering her hood to expose her blonde hair—darker now from being rain-soaked but already beginning to lighten as moisture evaporated—Cindy approached me more closely.

“Look at yourself,” she said with gentle exasperation, her eyes scanning my appearance with clear disapproval of what she found. “You’re completely drenched, your clothes are soaked through, and your hair…” She reached out to touch the wet dark strands that hung past my neck, falling loosely on both sides of my face in an unkempt mess that partially obscured my features. “Don’t you ever think about cutting it? Or at least tying it back so you can actually see properly during combat?”

Before I could formulate any response to that criticism, she was already implementing her own solution. Her hand went to her wrist where I noticed she wore a hair band—pink fabric with some kind of pattern I couldn’t identify from this angle.

She moved behind me, and I knew immediately what she intended to do.

She went up on her tiptoes to reach the full length of my hair, her hands gathering the wet dark strands. She was shorter than me by several inches, making this task slightly awkward from a positioning standpoint, but she managed efficiently. Her fingers worked through tangles with surprising gentleness, carefully collecting all the loose hair and pulling it back from my face.

I felt her tie the strands together at the back of my head with the pink hair band, securing them firmly enough that they wouldn’t come loose during movement but not so tight that it created uncomfortable pressure.

When she finished and slipped back around to stand in front of me, she studied her handiwork with clear satisfaction. A smile spread across her features—genuine and warm in ways that made her entire face light up. “Now you look much better,” she declared with evident pleasure at the transformation. “More like a person and less like a feral survivor who’s been living in caves.”

I managed to smile back at her—a small expression, barely more than a slight uptick at the corners of my mouth, but genuine nonetheless. It was hard to smile these days.

But with Cindy, and with the others who comprised my inner circle—Rachel, Sydney, Christopher and the others—it was clearly easier to access whatever remained of my capacity for positive emotion.

“Now then,” Cindy said brightly, stepping beside me and looking around the facility with renewed curiosity. “Let’s check around more thoroughly. I’m genuinely curious about what this ’adult entertainment center’ actually looks like. The name sounds vaguely scandalous, but I’m guessing it’s just recreation for elderly people rather than anything actually inappropriate.”

“There doesn’t seem to be anything particularly interesting here,” I replied somewhat dismissively as I started walking forward, moving past the disgusting swimming pool filled with floating infected corpses toward what appeared to be the park and recreational sports side of the facility. “Just standard community amenities that have been abandoned and deteriorated. Tennis courts, walking paths, garden areas—nothing unique or valuable.”

Ahead I could see a small ornamental pond surrounded by landscaping that had once been carefully maintained but now showed the same wild overgrowth characterizing the rest of the grounds. Beyond the pond, several tennis courts with chain-link fencing and weathered playing surfaces stretched in neat rows.

“Well, currently it certainly doesn’t look interesting at all,” Cindy agreed, punctuating her assessment by kicking at an abandoned plastic water bottle lying on the ground. The container skittered across wet pavement, creating hollow rattling sounds before coming to rest against a curb. “But I bet before the outbreak, this was actually a really nice place. Somewhere elderly people looked forward to visiting every day.”

When an infected suddenly appeared ahead of us—emerging from behind a maintenance shed and immediately orienting toward our location with its characteristic low growl—Cindy reacted fast.

She drew her weapon smoothly—a steel rod about three feet long and quite sturdy, probably salvaged from industrial equipment or construction materials. I’d wondered privately whether a simple metal pipe was really an effective weapon against infected, whether she should consider upgrading to something with an actual blade for better penetration and cutting power.

I immediately regretted that skepticism when I witnessed what happened next.

Cindy swung the steel rod in a devastating horizontal arc that connected with the infected’s head with tremendous force. The impact was catastrophic—the metal literally caved inward through the skull with a sickening crunch of shattering bone, penetrating deep enough that brain matter erupted from the wound. Both eyeballs were forced from their sockets by the pressure wave created by the strike, dangling grotesquely on stretched optic nerves before the entire head deformed from the structural damage.

But she wasn’t finished. The momentum of her swing continued with such power that the infected’s neck snapped audibly, vertebrae separating as the head was wrenched to an unnatural angle. Then the entire body was sent flying backward through the air like it had been hit by a vehicle, traveling at least ten feet before crashing to the ground and sliding several more feet across wet pavement before friction finally stopped its motion.

The infected didn’t move again.

Right…

With that kind of superhuman strength, Cindy really didn’t need a sharp weapon at all. A simple blunt instrument became devastating when wielded with force that exceeded human norms by orders of magnitude.

I suspected the choice of a steel rod over a bladed weapon was mainly about cleanliness. She probably just didn’t want to receive infected blood splattered all over her after slicing through their bodies, which would be inevitable with any kind of cutting weapon. I vaguely remembered Sydney mentioning something similar—that Cindy was particular about staying clean during combat if possible just like her because it was a pain to wash her clothes after hand.

Though Rachel didn’t seem to share that concern at all, cutting and chopping through infected bodies as if she was preparing ingredients for cooking, dismembering them with clinical efficiency that was honestly a bit scary to witness. The others had occasionally commented on how disturbing it was watching Rachel work, the disconnect between her gentle personality and the brutal thoroughness of her combat style creating cognitive dissonance.

We continued walking until we reached a small gazebo positioned near the ornamental pond. The structure was traditional octagonal design with white-painted wood and decorative railings, probably added to give the facility a pastoral charm that would appeal to elderly visitors seeking peaceful outdoor spaces.

Cindy moved ahead of me with obvious interest, stepping up onto the gazebo’s raised platform and immediately moving to lean against the railing. She gazed out at the pond with an expression of genuine appreciation.

“It’s really beautiful,” she murmured softly, almost speaking to herself rather than to me directly.

I stepped up beside her to see what had captured her attention so completely, and had to admit she was absolutely right about the beauty.

Yeah, this ornamental pond was in dramatically better condition than the horrific swimming pool we’d passed earlier. The water here was relatively clear, showing only minor algae growth around the edges rather than the thick green-brown sludge coating the pool. Lily pads floated on the surface in artistic arrangement, and I could even see small fish moving beneath the water—somehow having survived two months without human maintenance.

But what made the scene truly striking was the rainbow.

The storm clouds had broken apart enough that sunlight was streaming through gaps in the cloud cover, hitting the residual moisture still hanging in the atmosphere at just the right angle to create a perfect rainbow. And rather than appearing distant and unreachable as rainbows typically did, this one seemed to terminate directly at the pond—the vibrant arc of color stretching from sky to water in a display that looked almost artificially perfect.

“It really is beautiful,” I admitted quietly, feeling some of the tension I’d been carrying begin to ease slightly as I took in the peaceful scene.

“Aren’t we lucky to have arrived at exactly the right moment?” Cindy asked, turning to smile at me with genuine delight lighting her features. “Just when we reached this place, the rain stopped and left us this view. If we’d been even ten minutes earlier or later, we would have missed it completely.”

I considered that perspective. Was this the first time I’d ever witnessed the apparent end of a rainbow up close? I’d always seen them from considerable distance—beautiful but remote phenomena that seemed to exist in some unreachable location far beyond wherever I was standing. This sense of proximity, of being present at what appeared to be the rainbow’s termination point, created an entirely different experience.

When I reached that conclusion, something shifted in my chest—not happiness exactly, but a softening of the constant grief and rage that had become my default emotional baseline. I found myself leaning closer to get a better look, wanting to fully appreciate this moment of unexpected beauty in a world that offered so few such moments anymore.

Cindy moved closer to me, her shoulder touching mine as we both stood at the railing, and I realized this was probably the most peaceful I’d felt since watching Vladislav’s helicopters disappear into the night sky.

“I guess not everything has turned ugly in this world,” Cindy said softly.

“Yeah,” I agreed quietly, the single word feeling inadequate but honest. She was absolutely right about that fundamental truth.

And as I stood there watching prismatic light dance across the pond’s surface while Cindy’s warmth pressed against my side, I felt a strange sense of renewed purpose crystallizing in my chest—something that went beyond personal goals or individual grief.

This beautiful world called Earth. This planet with its rainbows and sunlight, its ponds and wildlife, its capacity to create moments of transcendent beauty even after civilization had collapsed and infected wandered streets that had once been safe. This was worth fighting for. Worth protecting with everything I had.

I didn’t want to lose it to these alien races—the Starakians with their genocidal pursuit of the Symbiosis, all the cosmic threats that viewed Earth as nothing more than a battlefield or resource to be exploited and discarded.

I clenched my hand on the railing slightly, fingers tightening against weathered wood hard enough that I felt it creak under the pressure.

This was our world. Humanity’s world, along with all the other animals and plants and ecosystems that had evolved here over billions of years. Not theirs. Not property to be seized or populations to be exterminated because we happened to harbor refugees from their ancient vendetta.

I might sound like a weird Hero from a novel but maybe my hate for the Starakians also fuelled this weird sense of patriotism I felt toward Earth.

We stayed there by the gazebo for several more minutes, neither of us speaking as we simply absorbed the peaceful scene. The rainbow began to fade as cloud patterns shifted and the angle of sunlight changed, its vibrant colors gradually becoming translucent and then disappearing entirely as the precise atmospheric conditions that had created it moved on.

Eventually, Cindy broke through the contemplative silence. “We should probably hurry up checking the buildings, Ryan,” she said. “The others will wonder what happened to us if we take too long, and we still need to search for supplies or survivors before leaving to Atlantic City.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” I nodded, reluctantly pulling myself away from the railing and the peaceful pond.

The sky had transformed completely during our brief respite. The oppressive grey overcast that had dominated the morning was gone now, replaced by expansive blue interrupted only by scattered white clouds drifting lazily on high-altitude winds. Rays of golden sunlight streamed down to illuminate the facility’s grounds, making everything look dramatically different from the gloomy, threatening atmosphere that had characterized our arrival.

Sunlight was always infinitely better than rain, no question about that. The psychological impact of clear weather versus storms was profound—everything felt more manageable, less oppressively dark, when you could see blue sky and feel genuine warmth on your skin.

I mean, thank whatever forces controlled weather patterns that we still had the sun at all, and that we were currently in the middle of July rather than facing this apocalyptic nightmare during winter months. Trying to survive infected hordes and alien threats while also dealing with freezing temperatures and potential snowstorms would have made an already difficult situation exponentially worse.

We walked back then toward the swimming pool area.

Beyond the pool lay the long main building—the facility’s primary structure where indoor activities would have taken place and where we’d most likely find any useful supplies that hadn’t been completely looted or destroyed during the initial outbreak chaos.

“Try harder, guys!” Cindy called out cheerfully as we passed the pool’s edge, as she observed amused the infected still struggling uselessly in the water. Several had managed to grab onto the pool’s edges but lacked the motor coordination to actually pull themselves out, their hands slipping repeatedly on wet concrete while they growled with frustration they couldn’t consciously recognize.

“They aren’t getting out anytime soon,” I commented with a slight smile.

I moved toward one of the building’s side entrances—a door that had been left partially ajar, probably by fleeing residents or staff during the evacuation. The frame showed damage suggesting it had been forced open at some point, whether by infected seeking prey or desperate survivors seeking shelter.

I pulled the door fully open, hinges creaking with the distinctive sound of metal that hadn’t been maintained or oiled in months, and gestured for Cindy to precede me.

“You haven’t been a very good coach, I suppose,” she said with teasing reproach as she stepped through the entrance. “Your swimming students seem to be failing quite spectacularly.”

“Or they simply haven’t been good students,” I replied automatically, continuing the dull joking banter. “Can’t blame the instructor if the pupils lack basic aptitude for—”

I stopped mid-sentence when I noticed that Cindy had frozen just inside the doorway, her entire body going rigid.

I immediately followed her gaze, my enhanced vision adjusting rapidly to the dimmer interior lighting, and cursed under my breath when I spotted what had captured her attention.

A dog stood about fifteen feet away in what appeared to be a recreation room, positioned near overturned furniture and scattered debris. It was staring directly at us with an intensity that was immediately recognizable as strange focus rather than normal canine curiosity.

Not a fucking dog again…

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