Chapter 170: Galloway Time With Cindy [1]

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…

And it was clearly infected—the signs were obvious once you knew what to look for. Eyes that had gone milky-white with viral corruption, patches of fur missing to reveal grey-mottled skin beneath, posture that was wrong in subtle ways that made it look more like a hunting predator than a domesticated animal.

My last memory involving an infected dog wasn’t remotely pleasant—they were fast, agile, and possessed pack-hunting instincts that made them exponentially more dangerous than their size suggested. An infected dog could easily tear out someone’s throat or hamstring them before they could react, unlike shambling infected humans whose attacks were relatively slow and predictable.

I tried to reach out quickly to grasp Cindy’s shoulder and pull her behind me where I could position myself as barrier between her and the threat. But the infected dog reacted instantaneously to my movement, exploding into motion with the kind of terrifying acceleration that only predatory animals possessed.

What a freaky, unnatural leap!

The dog launched itself through the air in a trajectory that would have carried it directly into Cindy’s torso, jaws already opening wide to reveal yellowed teeth that could inflict devastating bite wounds.

I moved faster intercepting the airborne dog mid-flight. My hands closed around its body—one gripping its chest, the other behind its head to prevent it from twisting around to bite me—and I caught it before it could reach Cindy.

The infected dog immediately began growling with a sound that was absolutely nothing like normal canine vocalizations—deeper, wetter, carrying a rattling quality that spoke to corrupted lungs and restructured vocal cords. Its paws scraped frantically against my arms, claws grazing through my sleeves with enough force to draw blood. I felt warm wetness spreading where fabric tore and sharp points opened shallow cuts in my skin.

Oh fuck no! I have more than enough scars already without adding dog scratches to the collection!

Thoroughly annoyed by this assault—both at the dog for attacking and at myself for letting my guard down enough that we’d walked into this situation unprepared—I tightened my grip and pivoted my entire body. Then I threw the infected dog with considerable force back through the open doorway we’d just entered, launching it in a high arc toward the swimming pool.

Just drown already with your struggling friends, I thought with satisfaction as the dog sailed through the air.

But my expression froze in dismay when I watched what happened next. Instead of hitting the water and joining the other infected in helpless thrashing, the dog demonstrated intelligence and motor coordination that shouldn’t have been possible for infected animals.

It landed on one of the floating infected bodies in the pool—using the corpse as a stepping stone with perfect balance and timing. Then it immediately leaped again to another body, then another, crossing the pool by jumping from corpse to corpse like grotesque lily pads. Within seconds it had traversed the entire width of the pool and landed safely on the opposite side, completely avoiding the water trap.

I really, truly hate infected dogs with every fiber of my being…

“Here!” Cindy’s voice cut through my moment of stunned dismay. She grabbed my arm and pulled me forcefully backward through a different doorway—one that led into a small room positioned behind what appeared to be a mini bar area. She yanked me inside and immediately slammed the door shut behind us, engaging a simple push-button lock that wouldn’t stop determined assault but would at least slow intrusion.

The sound of the infected dog hitting the door echoed an instant later—a heavy thump that rattled the entire frame as the creature apparently tried to follow us by running straight into the barrier at full speed. The impact was followed immediately by continued assault, the dog clearly bumping against the door repeatedly while emitting those horrible wet growling sounds.

But judging from the door’s apparent sturdiness—solid wood construction rather than hollow-core interior door, probably chosen specifically for this room to provide privacy for whatever activities had taken place here—it wouldn’t get inside anytime soon. The lock was simple but the door itself could withstand considerable abuse before failing.

“Infected dogs are genuinely the scariest,” Cindy said, exhaling heavily as her adrenaline began to settle. Her hand remained on my arm, fingers gripping tightly enough that I could feel her elevated pulse through the contact. “Worse than most enhanced infected in some ways because you just can’t predict their movement patterns or anticipate what they’ll do next.”

Or maybe you are just scared of dogs Cindy…

I kept that thought to myself.

“Let’s just sincerely hope we won’t encounter any other infected animals during this search,” I said with feeling, because let’s be brutally honest—there were numerous animal species in this world that would be absolutely horrifying in infected form. Bears. Wolves. Big cats. Even large herbivores like moose or buffalo could be devastating if they possessed the infected virus’s aggression and pain immunity combined with their natural size and strength.

“You just raised a death flag, Ryan,” Cindy said.

Oh no… She was probably right about that. The universe seemed to have a perverse sense of humor when it came to making worst-case scenarios manifest.

Cindy sighed heavily before finally releasing my arm and looking around the room we’d taken refuge in, assessing our temporary shelter.

The space looked relatively small—maybe twelve feet by fifteen feet—but it appeared to have been designed as a typical recreation or game room for small groups seeking privacy. There were two leather sofas in deep red color positioned facing each other across a low coffee table, both pieces of furniture showing wear consistent with regular use but still in decent condition. A mini-table sat between the sofas with playing cards scattered across its surface in a half-completed hand that would never be finished.

Clearly people had been playing some kind of card game here—poker, maybe, or bridge—when the outbreak had reached this facility. Judging from the complete absence of blood or other signs of violence in this particular room, they’d probably heard screaming or alarms from elsewhere in the building and fled immediately rather than staying to see what was happening.

And I seriously doubted they’d made it safely outside, given the carnage visible throughout the rest of the facility. This room might have been a momentary refuge, but the journey from here to actual safety would have required passing through areas where infected had already spread.

Lowering her bag on the ground, Cindy took a seat on one of the leather sofas, sinking into the cushions with a slight groan of relief at finally being off her feet. She looked toward the door where the infected dog continued its assault.

“Will it ever stop?” She asked with mild exasperation but a bit of unease.

“It will get exhausted eventually,” I said.

“Do infected actually ever get exhausted though?” Cindy asked, skeptic. “I’ve seen them keep moving for hours without slowing down. Their endurance seems almost supernatural compared to normal animals.”

“Well…” I considered how to answer that honestly. “Maybe if it gets ignored long enough, it will just give up and sulk off to find easier prey somewhere else?”

At my nonchalant and clearly unserious answer, Cindy picked up one of the scattered playing cards from the table and threw it at me with surprising accuracy. The card spun through the air aimed directly at my nose—would have hit me squarely if not for reflexes that were now far beyond human norms.

My hand moved automatically, catching the card mid-flight before it made contact with my face. I held it up, examining it briefly—the three of hearts—before looking at Cindy with mild reproach.

“That could have hurt me,” I said.

Cindy rolled her eyes in response to my clearly exaggerated complaint, then leaned forward to begin gathering the scattered cards from the table. She collected them methodically, organizing the deck back into proper order.

When she’d assembled the full deck minus the card I was still holding, she looked up at me with an expression that mixed genuine suggestion with playful challenge.

“Wanna play a game while we wait for that thing to give up?”

I looked down at the deck of cards in Cindy’s hands, immediately catching something that made my expression shift.

“I would appreciate playing without the worm crawling on it,” I said, pointing my finger toward the top card where a small earthworm was indeed making its slow, meandering way across the surface—probably having been picked up from the ground outside when the cards had been sitting abandoned for months.

“Eh?” Cindy’s confused sound emerged as she followed my pointing finger, lowering her gaze to examine what I was indicating.

The moment her eyes registered the worm—thick-bodied and glistening slightly with moisture, its segmented body contracting and expanding as it moved with oblivious determination across the card—her entire body went completely rigid. Every muscle locked simultaneously in the universal human response to discovering you’re in close contact with something your hindbrain categorizes as ’creepy crawly thing that should not be touching you.’

Then she threw the entire deck away from herself with a sharp, panicked motion that sent cards flying in every direction like an explosion of rectangular confetti.

“N…Noo!!” The shriek that tore from her throat was pure instinctive revulsion, high-pitched and genuine in ways that would have been funny under different circumstances—and honestly, were still pretty amusing even given our current situation trapped in a room with an infected dog trying to break down the door.

I observed the scene unfold with growing amusement I couldn’t quite suppress, unable to hold back the smile that spread across my face as playing cards rained down all around us. They fluttered through the air with lazy spiraling motions before landing scattered across furniture, floor, and our clothes in complete disarray. The three of hearts landed directly on my head, perching there at a jaunty angle.

“H..How did it even get on there?!” Cindy asked in genuine panic, her voice climbing higher with each word as she stood up abruptly from the sofa. “Did I have others crawling on myself?! Are there more?!”

She immediately began removing her jacket with frantic urgency, pulling it off and shaking it violently as if expecting an entire colony of worms to come tumbling out.

The vigorous shaking and her raised voice had an unfortunate side effect. The infected dog outside, which had settled into relatively quiet persistence in its assault on the door, suddenly reacted to the renewed noise with fresh aggression.

“Haak!” Cindy screamed again, this time flinching and spinning around when the dog’s barking intensified dramatically—deeper, wetter, more aggressive than before. The sound was accompanied by a tremendously heavy impact against the door that actually made the entire frame shudder and created a loud BANG that echoed through the small room.

The combination of surprise and momentum from her spin made Cindy lose her balance. Her heels caught on the sofa’s edge and she tumbled backward, landing awkwardly on the cushions with her legs tangled and her hair falling across her face in disarray.

A long, heavy silence followed as we both processed what had just happened. The infected dog continued its renewed assault outside—bump, bump, bump against the door with metronomic persistence—but inside the room, neither of us moved or spoke for several seconds.

Cindy lay sprawled on the sofa trying to catch her breath, her chest rising and falling rapidly as adrenaline slowly began to ebb. Her cheeks were thoroughly flushed—partly from exertion, partly from embarrassment at having completely lost her composure over a harmless earthworm.

“Well,” I said finally, breaking the silence, “that was certainly entertaining to witness.”

Cindy’s head whipped toward me, her eyes narrowing as she glared with an expression that mixed mortification and indignation in equal measure. Her face was still blushing furiously, and I noticed with some concern that her eyes had gone slightly teary—whether from the startle, the embarrassment, or something else entirely.

I smiled a little at her predicament, unable to help myself despite knowing it would probably earn me more glaring. But my smile froze mid-formation when I noticed something that immediately shifted my attention from amusement to concern.

I stood up from my sofa and crossed the small distance between us, kneeling down in front of where she still lay tangled on the cushions. My hand reached out toward her neck before I consciously decided to make the movement, fingers extending toward a specific point.

“R..Ryan?” Cindy looked at me with confusion clear in her expression. “What are you—”

But I could easily tell now that I’d noticed it and was paying proper attention. The signs were subtle but clear once you knew what to look for—a very faint discoloration around the veins in her neck, visible only because I was this close and specifically searching. The slight tremor in her hands that wasn’t purely from adrenaline. The way her pupils had dilated just slightly too much for the ambient lighting conditions.

My fingers made gentle contact with her neck, feeling for her pulse. It was elevated significantly beyond what the recent scare should account for, and there was a quality to the rhythm that spoke to Dullahan virus instability rather than normal elevated heart rate.

“Are you unstable?” I asked after a moment of assessment, my tone shifting to something more serious as I processed what I was detecting. The question was direct but not accusatory—just seeking confirmation of what my senses were already telling me.

Cindy stiffened at the question,. She looked into my gray eyes for a long moment—I watched emotions flicker across her face too quickly to fully catalog—before she finally looked away.

“A bit, yeah,” she said quietly.

“Cinderella…” I stood up with a heavy sigh. “Come on. I already told you repeatedly not to delay addressing this or hold back when you start feeling symptoms.”

I’d given very clear instructions to all the women I’d stabilized with the Dullahan virus: at the first sign of instability—any symptom at all, no matter how minor—they needed to come to me immediately for restabilization. Waiting only made the process more difficult and dangerous, potentially allowing the virus to slip beyond controllable parameters.

“I…I just didn’t want to bother you…” Cindy said with a stammer; “Not after everything that’s happened. You have so much on your mind already, and I thought maybe I could just… wait a bit longer. Until you were in a better place emotionally.”

“I told you already—you would never, ever disturb me when it concerns this,” I said. “This is non-negotiable, Cinderella. Your health and safety take priority over my emotional state, and I genuinely don’t care about being ’bothered’ when the alternative is you potentially losing control or suffering virus complications.”

“But after what happened…” Cindy trailed off, not needing to specify what “what happened” referred to. Jasmine’s death. Elena and Alisha being taken. The complete devastation of everything we’d built in Jackson Township.

It must have been very recent then, I realized—probably within the last day or two at most. She’d been holding off on asking for restabilization specifically because she was worried about adding to my emotional burden when I was already drowning in grief and rage.

“I would be the one feeling genuinely disturbed if something terrible happens to you specifically because you were too scared of bothering me to ask for help you needed,” I said with complete seriousness, kneeling back down so I could meet her eyes directly. “That would be infinitely worse than any temporary inconvenience of addressing your stabilization requirements.”

“Right…” Cindy nodded slowly, understanding dawning in her expression as she processed what I was saying. She finally seemed to accept that I wasn’t just being polite—that I genuinely meant what I said about her health taking priority.

I couldn’t blame her for the hesitation and concern that had made her delay. The impulse came from caring about my wellbeing, from not wanting to add demands to someone already struggling under impossible weight. It was actually sweet in its own way, even if it was also dangerously misguided.

But that caring impulse demonstrated exactly why I valued her so much. She was important to me. Genuinely important in ways that made her suffering unacceptable regardless of my own emotional state.

I was already unable to feel anything resembling peace knowing I’d never been able to stabilize Emily. Not knowing whether she was alive or as expected had died in great pain…These questions haunted me in ways I rarely acknowledged even to myself. So I at least wanted to make absolutely certain that the other women close to me would be properly maintained and safe from virus complications.

I looked around the small game room for a moment then. The space was private, relatively secure despite the infected dog outside, and honestly we didn’t have many better alternatives given our current circumstances.

My gaze returned to Cindy, who was watching me with an expression that mixed nervousness and embarrassment.

“So…” I started carefully, acknowledging the awkwardness of what I needed to ask. “Do you want to do it here?”

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