Chapter 155: Are you proud of yourself?

I opened my eyes with a sharp inhale that scraped my throat raw.

Sweat slid down the sides of my face and into my collar. For a second I didn’t know where I was. Everything around me was dark, cramped, and smelled like wet wood and old blood.

My wrists burned.

I looked down and saw rope cutting into my skin.

The chair. The same one I was bound to when Annie captured me.

…what the fuck?

My chest tightened so hard it hurt.

Damien stood in front of me with a pistol aimed between my eyes.

There was no one else in the room. Just…him.

His face was pale, almost gray.

I wanted to say something, but the words died in my throat.

Then the smile came. It was wrong. Too wide. Too calm.

“Rot in hell, you fucking monster,” he said.

His voice cracked halfway through it.

Blood started running from both his eyes.

I jerked against the ropes, breathing harder now. “Damien—”

Something lunged from behind him.

Teeth sank into his neck.

He screamed once. Just once.

Then more infected piled onto him from the dark. Hands clawed. Jaws snapped. Flesh tore open in strips. He dropped the gun and reached for me like I could help him.

They ripped copious amounts of chunks from his body like it’d been a fucking steak

And through it all, I couldn’t move.

I watched them pull him apart while tears ran down my face.

—

I blinked hard.

The woods came back all at once.

Smoke from the campfire. Mud. Pine. Blood.

My lungs dragged in real air.

I could still feel a tear streaming down my face. I wiped it with the back of my wrist.

Naomi stood a few feet to my left with her rifle half raised, blood dried beneath one nostril from where the kid had headbutted her earlier. Lila stood on my right, one arm hooked around the boy’s neck, her knife tucked under his chin so close that every swallow made the blade twitch.

The kid trembled, trying not to show it.

Around us, Bill’s people formed a rough half circle.

One of them was on the ground clutching his leg and screaming.

“Breathe, Carson. Hey— breathe, man, breathe,” somebody kept saying.

Carson wasn’t listening. His eyes were wild, fixed on the bite mark on his forearm. Blood ran from a stab wound high in his thigh too.

“That fucking bitch!” he shouted through clenched teeth. “She bit me! She fucking bit me!”

My eyes moved to Lila.

She calmly wiped blood from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand, then looked at the stain like she’d spilled wine on herself.

She smiled.

Not big. Just enough.

They still didn’t understand.

Or maybe they did, and nobody wanted to say it out loud.

“The hell’re you waiting for, Bill!?!? Shoot em dead!!!”

He stood ten yards away with his handgun lowered but ready. His expression was flat, unreadable.

I kept my rifle trained center mass.

I hadn’t meant for any of this to happen.

…I swear I hadn’t.

“You three aren’t the kindest people out here, are you?” Bill said.

His voice wasn’t loud. That somehow made it worse.

My stomach turned.

“What happened to no games?” he asked.

“It can still happen,” I said.

I heard the weakness in my own voice the second it left me.

No more fake confidence. No more pretending I had this under control.

I’d killed people in the scramble. I knew I had. Maybe two. Maybe more.

I didn’t even remember their faces.

Something in my chest gave way under that thought.

Was this who I was now?

Bill raised one eyebrow.

I turned to Lila.

“Let him go.”

Her head snapped toward me. “Adrian, are you serious?”

I looked right at her.

There had to be something in my face, because I felt close to breaking. Fear. Shame. Begging.

“Please.”

Her jaw tightened.

“He tried to kill you.”

“I know.”

“He’s going to do it again.”

“I know.”

“So let me fix it.”

“Lila.”

Her nostrils flared. Her red eyes glistened in the firelight.

For a second I thought she’d refuse just to spite me.

Then she closed her eyes, exhaled through her nose, and shoved Harry forward so hard he nearly fell.

“Fine,” she muttered. “But when he does it again, I’m gutting him in front of you.”

Harry stumbled, coughing.

I moved fast, grabbed the back of his shirt, and pulled him against me. My rifle stayed aimed at Bill while we backed toward the trees.

Naomi kept pace beside me.

“Tell me you have a plan,” she murmured without looking over.

“I don’t.”

“Great.”

We moved inch by inch. Every face around us burned holes into mine.

Some were angry.

Some scared.

Some looked at Lila the way people look at a rabid dog.

Honestly, fair enough.

Carson started sobbing now.

“I don’t wanna turn, man,” he said to nobody. “Please… please…”

A younger woman knelt beside him, crying too.

Bill still hadn’t fired.

That scared me more than if he had.

Once we hit the tree line, I shoved Harry forward with everything I had.

He hit the dirt, rolled, and crawled the rest of the way back to his people.

Then we ran.

No dramatic countdown. No final threat.

We just turned and sprinted through brush and roots and low branches like animals.

I waited for gunshots.

One.

Two.

Three seconds.

Nothing.

Only Carson screaming in the distance.

—

Harry’s breath grew slower as he watched the three charge off into the distance, his fingers tracing the shallow knife wound under his chin.

He barely reacted when he saw Bill, his eyes cold when he looked at him.

Bill wasted no time walking off.

—

We ran until Naomi bent over with her hands on her knees.

“Stop,” she gasped. “Stop— Jesus Christ.”

I slowed, lungs burning, every breath scraping my chest raw. Sweat ran down my neck beneath my shirt. My hand still throbbed where it had been cut earlier. Everything hurt.

Lila didn’t look winded at all.

She looked annoyed.

“That was stupid,” she said.

“No,” I shot back. “Biting someone was stupid.”

“It worked.”

“It made everything worse.”

She stepped toward me, eyes already sharpening.

“No,” she said quietly. “What makes everything worse is you caring about strangers more than the people who love you.”

Naomi laughed once. Harsh and tired.

“Love? Is that what we’re calling attempted murder now?”

Lila’s head turned so slowly it made the hairs on my arms rise.

“You still talking?”

“Still breathing too.”

I moved between them before either one pushed it further.

“Enough.”

Neither moved. Neither backed down.

I looked at Naomi first. “Check your shoulder.”

She stared at me for a beat, then tugged her sleeve down and inspected the graze. Blood had soaked the fabric but it wasn’t pouring.

I turned to Lila.

Her lower lip still had blood on it.

Not hers.

“You need to stop doing shit like that.”

“Like saving you?”

“Like enjoying it.”

Her face shifted. The anger loosened into something almost hurt.

“I did enjoy it,” she said. “He touched you.”

My jaw clenched so hard it ached.

She reached up and straightened my collar like we were standing in a kitchen somewhere, not in the woods after killing people.

Then she leaned close enough for me to smell smoke in her hair.

“I would do much worse than bite someone for you,” she whispered.

Naomi muttered behind me, “Yeah. No kidding.”

I didn’t smile. I didn’t react.

I just stared at Lila. Really stared at her.

Then something in me cracked.

“Do you hear yourself?” I said. My voice was low at first, rough from running. “Do you actually hear the shit you say?”

Her hand paused on my shirt.

“Adrian—”

“No.” I slapped her hand away. “No, you’re gonna listen.”

Even Naomi went still.

Lila blinked at me, surprised more than angry. I didn’t talk to her like that often. Maybe I should have.

“You think biting somebody is a warning?” I said. “You think it’s clever? You think it’s love?”

“It was survival.”

“It was sick.”

Her expression hardened. “Watch how you talk to me.”

“Or what?” I snapped. “You’ll bite me too?”

Naomi’s eyes flicked between us.

Lila’s nostrils flared, but I kept going before she could answer.

“No one deserves that,” I said. “You understand me? No one deserves to get that sick fucking disease passed to them. Not because they pissed you off. Not because they scared you. Not because they touched me.”

She opened her mouth. I cut her off again.

“Hailey didn’t deserve it.”

Naomi looked up sharply at that name. Her face cooled at once, eyes sliding to Lila like ice finding skin.

Lila went very still.

I felt my throat tighten, but I pushed through it.

“Hailey didn’t deserve whatever happened to her,” I said. “That man back there didn’t deserve it. Nobody does.”

For a second the woods were dead quiet. Even the wind seemed to stop.

Lila’s eyes searched my face, trying to find softness there. Permission. A way out.

There wasn’t one.

“You think I’m a monster now,” she said quietly.

“I think you’re becoming something you can’t control.”

“That’s rich coming from you.” Her voice shook now. “You’ve killed people too.”

“I know.” I swallowed hard. “And I have to live with that. But I never looked happy doing it.”

That landed. I saw it. Her chin trembled once before she steadied it.

“I did what I had to do.”

“No,” I said. “You did what you wanted to do.”

Naomi let out a slow breath through her nose, still watching Lila.

Lila’s eyes watered, but anger kept them bright.

“I did it because I love you.”

“Then start loving me in a way that doesn’t ruin everything around us.”

The words came out harsher than I meant them to.

They still stayed there between us.

Lila stepped back like I’d shoved her. Her lips parted, then closed. She looked smaller somehow, despite the blood on her mouth and the knife at her side.

“I found you,” she said softly. “I crossed hell and found you.”

“I know.” My voice dropped. “And I’m glad you did.”

That seemed to hurt her even more.

“Then why does it feel like you hate me?”

I looked away for a second, hand over my face, exhausted beyond words.

“Because every time I start feeling relieved you’re alive,” I said, “you do something that reminds me I might lose you anyway.”

Naomi shifted, uncomfortable now.

Lila stared at me. Tears slid free, quiet and angry.

“I was trying to protect us.”

“You were protecting yourself,” Naomi said coldly. “There’s a difference.”

“Shut up.”

“No. He’s right.” Naomi adjusted her rifle. “You infect somebody because it’s useful today, and tomorrow you create ten more enemies. You don’t think past the first impulse.”

Lila looked ready to lunge at her.

I stepped forward again.

“Enough. Both of you.”

Nobody moved.

Far off in the trees behind us, another gunshot cracked through the woods. Then screaming. Then several voices shouting over each other.

Bill’s people.

Maybe infected had found them. Maybe panic had.

I didn’t know.

I didn’t care as much as I should have.

I looked at Lila. Her mascara had run. Blood still marked her lip. She looked furious, ashamed, dangerous, heartbroken. All at once.

“Wipe your mouth,” I said quietly.

She hesitated. Then obeyed.

I turned and started walking.

Naomi followed after a beat.

Behind me, I heard Lila standing there alone for a few seconds before her footsteps finally came too.

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