Chapter 181: Scouting Atlantic City [4]

I studied the alley carefully with my enhanced vision. She was right—it appeared to be empty of infected presence, probably because it was too narrow and uninteresting to attract their attention. But narrow also meant confined space with limited maneuverability if we did encounter threats inside it.

“Alright, I’ll lead the way through and—”

I froze mid-sentence, every muscle in my body locking up simultaneously as a sudden presence prickled at the very edge of my enhanced awareness. That same sensation from earlier—being watched, being targeted—but amplified a thousandfold, screaming danger with primal urgency that bypassed conscious thought and triggered pure survival instinct.

My head snapped to the side, enhanced reflexes responding to a threat I hadn’t consciously identified yet.

BANG!

The gunshot cracked through the air like a thunderclap in the residential street’s eerie silence, shattering the tense quiet with explosive violence. I felt rather than saw the bullet—a rush of displaced air searing past my face close enough that I could feel the heat from its passage, close enough that if I’d been standing even three inches to the left it would have punched through my skull instead of missing by a hair’s breadth.

The projectile continued its deadly trajectory past me, and in the fraction of a second it took to process what was happening, I watched in horrified slow-motion as it found a different target.

“Hahgh!”

Clara’s sharp gasp of pain cut through the ringing aftermath of the gunshot. Everything happened so fast it shocked all of us into momentary paralysis—our brains struggling to catch up with the sudden escalation from tense reconnaissance to active combat with an unknown human attacker.

I barely registered the details consciously, my enhanced vision capturing every terrible moment with crystalline clarity: the way Clara’s body jerked backward from the bullet’s impact, the spray of blood that erupted from her shoulder in a crimson mist, the shocked expression on her face as pain overrode all other sensations, the way her legs buckled as the trauma disrupted her motor control.

Her blood spattered hot across my face and clothes—droplets painting my skin and soaking into fabric. Then she was falling, her body tilting sideways as consciousness wavered from shock and pain.

“Clara!!” Martin’s cry tore from his throat as he lunged forward, his arms wrapping around his wife to catch her before she could hit the ground.

Clara groaned in agony, her face contorted with pain as one hand clutched instinctively at her wounded shoulder. Blood was already seeping through her fingers despite the pressure she was applying, staining her jacket and shirt dark red that looked almost black in the dim light.

She had been shot in the shoulder—left side, just below the collarbone based on the wound location I could see. Not immediately fatal like a head or heart shot would have been, but extremely serious nonetheless. I wasn’t an expert but the shoulder contained major blood vessels, nerves, complex joint structures. Bullet wounds there could sever arteries, shatter bones, cause permanent disability even if the victim survived the immediate trauma.

I felt a wave of relief wash through me despite the circumstances—relief that it wasn’t a killing shot, that Clara was still alive and conscious. After facing and witnessing so many deaths recently in such rapid succession—Jasmine’s infection and mercy killing, the dozens who’d died at Jackson Township, the constant threat of mortality that shadowed every moment of apocalyptic survival—I’d apparently become paranoid about losing people, always expecting the worst-case scenario.

But this wasn’t the time to process those psychological impacts or analyze my trauma responses. Clara was wounded, we were under active attack from an unknown shooter, and standing exposed on open streets made us all targets.

I immediately whipped around, my eyes scanning rooftops, windows, doorways—anywhere a sniper might position themselves for elevated shooting angles with clear lines of sight. The shot had come from… where exactly? The sound had echoed confusingly off surrounding buildings, making precise location difficult to pinpoint. Somewhere to our right and elevated, probably a second-story window or rooftop position.

Where?!

“Ryan! Get out of the open, man!” Christopher’s voice cut search. His hand clamped down on my arm with bruising force, physically dragging me toward the relative safety of the narrow alley Rachel had identified moments earlier. “Move, move, move!”

I gritted my teeth in frustration but followed his lead, my legs pumping as I sprinted the ten feet to the alley entrance. Rachel, Sydney, and the three dead weight members of our party—Brad, Billy, and Kyle—were already scrambling for the same cover, all of us converging on the narrow passage between buildings that would at least block direct lines of fire from our previous position.

I didn’t see the shooter, damn it. Despite my enhanced senses, despite the warning prickle of awareness, I hadn’t spotted the actual person pulling the trigger. They’d had perfect concealment and surprise advantage, striking from an unknown position before I could locate and neutralize the threat.

We tumbled into the alley in a chaotic mass of bodies and equipment, Christopher and Martin half-carrying Clara between them while the rest of us pressed against walls to make room. The narrow confines that had worried me tactically moments ago now felt like blessed protection—at least the shooter couldn’t target us easily from their previous firing position.

“What the hell was that?!” Brad shouted at full volume, his voice echoing off brick walls with enough sound to carry blocks. His face was flushed red with a mixture of fear and outrage, eyes wide with shock.

“S…Someone shot us! Someone actually fucking shot us! What the fuck is happening?!” Billy’s voice climbed toward hysteria, panic overriding any semblance of tactical discipline. “Why would someone shoot at us?! We’re not infected! We didn’t do anything!”

“Be quiet, you idiots!” Sydney let out, whirling on them with her hand already moving toward her weapon. “If you don’t have anything useful to contribute besides noise, then at least make yourselves marginally helpful!” She pulled a compact LED flashlight from her gear and threw it at Kyle, who fumbled the catch with trembling hands. “Hold that light steady on Clara so Rachel and Martin can actually see what they’re doing!”

Kyle nodded mutely, too shocked to argue, and activated the flashlight with shaking fingers. The LED beam cut through the alley’s shadows, illuminating Clara where Martin had lowered her carefully to the ground, propping her upper body against his chest to keep her elevated and reduce blood flow to the wound.

“Hagh… it hurts so much…” Clara’s voice emerged as a pained whimper, her face pale and drawn with shock setting in. “I can’t… it hurts…”

“Hold on, Clara, please hold on,” Martin said his expression hard. “You’re going to be fine. Rachel knows what she’s doing. Just stay with me, okay? Keep talking to me.”

Clara was bleeding profusely from the shoulder wound—much more than I’d hoped, suggesting the bullet might have clipped one of the major vessels or shattered bone in ways that created multiple bleeding sites. Dark red blood soaked through her jacket and pooled on the ground beneath her, far too much blood for comfort.

Rachel immediately knelt beside her, already pulling medical supplies from her pack. “I need light right here,” she directed Kyle, guiding the flashlight beam directly onto Clara’s shoulder. “Keep it steady—I can’t work if I can’t see properly.”

She quickly helped Martin remove Clara’s jacket, revealing the green undershirt beneath now completely soaked with blood. The fabric clung wetly to Clara’s skin, dark and glistening in the flashlight’s harsh illumination.

Without hesitation, Rachel produced a knife and cut away the blood-soaked clothing around the wound site, exposing the actual bullet entry—a ragged hole maybe half an inch across, edges torn and already swelling with trauma. Blood pulsed from the wound with each heartbeat, confirming my fear that a vessel had been compromised.

“We… we need to remove the bullet,” Rachel said suddenly. “I can see it’s not too deep—maybe two inches penetration. If we can get it out and pack the wound properly, we can control the bleeding.”

“Wait, are you absolutely sure you can do this, Rachel?” Martin asked, his voice tight with barely-controlled panic. “Removing bullets… that’s not basic first aid. What if you make it worse? What if she bleeds out while you’re digging around in there?”

His fear was completely valid. Improper bullet extraction could sever vessels, damage nerves, push fragments deeper into tissue, cause catastrophic bleeding. If Rachel made mistakes, Clara might die right here in this alley in this maybe. In some instances it was maybe even better to keep the bullet inside but that was in the previous world where hospitals existed and and Infected didn’t.

“Ivy taught me the basics of wound debridement and foreign object removal,” Rachel said. “I don’t have extensive experience, but I understand the principles. And leaving the bullet in is also dangerous—it could migrate, cause infection, create long-term complications if we don’t have access to proper surgical facilities later. We need to address this now while we can.”

She looked directly at Clara, holding eye contact. “Clara, I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”

Clara’s face was pale and drawn with pain, but she managed a weak nod through the tears streaming down her cheeks. “I… I trust you, Rachel. Do it. Take it out. Just… please be careful.”

“Alright, bite down on this,” Rachel said gently, taking the detached sleeve of Clara’s jacket and folding it into a thick roll. She placed it between Clara’s teeth. “This is going to hurt—badly. The sleeve will give you something to bite on and help muffle any screaming. We don’t want to attract more infected or alert the shooter to our exact position.”

Clara immediately clamped her teeth down on the fabric, her jaw muscles bulging with tension. Her free hand grasped Martin’s arm with desperate strength, knuckles white as she braced herself for agony she knew was coming.

“Ryan! Infected approaching!” Sydney’ called me out, pulling my attention away from Clara’s impending extraction.

I turned and saw exactly what I’d feared—multiple infected shambling into both ends of the alley, drawn by the gunshot’s loud report and now by the sounds of our voices and movement. The shot had been like ringing a dinner bell across multiple blocks, announcing fresh prey to every infected within hearing range.

Damn this.

We were about to be trapped in this narrow passage with a wounded team member and three useless civilians. The nightmare scenario I’d worried about was manifesting exactly as I’d feared.

Who the fuck had shot at us and why?! Attacking out of nowhere like that without warning or communication—what possible motivation could justify attempted murder of obviously human survivors trying to navigate the city?!

“Hmmgnnn!!!”

Clara’s muffled groan of absolute agony tore my attention back to the medical crisis. Even through the fabric gag, her pain was audible. Rachel had apparently begun the extraction process, her fingers working carefully but necessarily invasively into the bullet wound to locate and grasp the projectile.

Clara’s entire body went rigid, back arching as every muscle locked up from pain that exceeded anything I could imagine. Her hand gripped Martin’s arm so hard I heard his quiet gasp—she was probably bruising or even breaking skin with her nails, but he didn’t complain or pull away.

“Ryan, I really need help here,” Sydney called me again. The infected were getting closer—maybe twenty feet from each entrance and shambling forward with increasing speed as they fixated on our location.

I nodded sharply, forcing myself to compartmentalize—Clara’s crisis had to be handled by Rachel and Martin, while Sydney and I dealt with the immediate threat of infected overwhelming our position. “There aren’t too many yet—maybe seven or eight total,” I assessed quickly. “We’ll take care of them fast and quiet. Christopher, keep your rifle ready and maintain watch around the perimeter. That shooter might try again, especially if they realize we’re pinned down dealing with infected.”

“Got this,” Christopher nodded grimly, immediately positioning himself where he could cover both alley entrances while keeping sightlines to the street beyond. He unslung the assault rifle from his back and attached a small tactical flashlight to its rail, using the beam to scan windows and rooftops for any sign of the sniper.

I moved to join Sydney at the alley’s near entrance where infected were closest, my hand axe already drawn.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Sydney said as she drove her knife with brutal precision through an Infected’s eye socket. The creature spasmed and dropped, only for another to lurch forward, arms outstretched. Sydney dodged, then slammed it sideways toward me.

The moment slowed. My arm was already swinging, the axe biting cleanly into the infected’s neck with a wet crack. Its head spun away, vanishing into gloom.

I couldn’t quite believe it either. This should have been routine—a silent incursion, charts and searching, nothing more. But now Clara was bleeding in the dark, and a human being—an actual survivor—had pulled the trigger. For all our skill, for the Dullahan power thrumming in our veins, we weren’t untouchable. Too much death lately had left something raw and brittle inside me.

“Careful, Sydney,” I warned, eyes straining to pierce the deepening night, senses sharp as razor wire for any sign the shooter had a partner lying in wait.

Sydney flashed a lopsided smile, but worry lingered in her eyes. “Come on, Ryan—aren’t we supposed to be superhuman?” She ducked under an infected’s grasp, blade stabbing and yanking free.

“Superhuman or not, bullets still punch through bone,” I countered. I kicked at an infected’s knee, toppling it, then drove my axe into its cranial vault. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking we’re immortal. That’s how you get killed in a place like this.”

“Okay, okay…” She muttered, then grinned weakly at me over the corpse. “Point taken.”

I surged forward, axe whistling as I split open the skull of the penultimate infected. Another stumbled in my peripheral vision, arms stained from some previous victim—a grotesque parade of death.

But then, movement caught at the fringe of my awareness—a shadow leaning out from behind a battered sedan at the far end of the alley, a rifle drawn. The shooter’s face was obscured, hidden beneath a dirty scarf and a worn cap. Confident in the darkness, assuming I wouldn’t spot him.

But I did. In a single motion, I seized the last infected by the collar, heaving its struggling body up as a living shield just as the muzzle flashed. BANG! The bullet tore through the infected’s ribcage, showering me with wet grit, then streaked over my arm, nicking flesh and leaving a blistering line of pain. I bit back a curse, already shoving the body toward Sydney.

“Kill it!” I shouted, and sprinted forward as adrenaline roared through me. My handaxe left my grip in a blur—faster than a thrown baseball, hissing through the air. Glass shattered; the axe hit a wall behind the shooter, missing as he scrambled away, eyes wide with shock.

He bolted instantly, vanishing behind wreckage and rusted street signs. A dark urge rose within me. You don’t get to shoot at my people and just run.

“You’re not getting away,” I growled, already weaving through a knot of infected drawn by the escalating chaos—my every sense blazing for another glimpse of the shooter. I felt Sydney grab for my arm—her voice behind me—but I shook her off, unable to let this danger slip away into the city.

My hand went for the time-freeze trigger but before I could activate the power, a sudden barrage of gunshots erupted from my left. BANG! BANG! BANG!

I dropped instinctively, flattening myself against the nearest car chassis as rounds tore through the infected ahead. One by one, their heads snapped back, burst open in sprays of gore.

I squinted down the moonlit street, pulse pounding. There stood a dozen figures—hard faces rimmed in torchlight, weapons raised and trained directly on me.

“Don’t move.”

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