Chapter 23: Not the bang you wanted?

The memory of a dimly lit camp came to me like it was etched into my mind. Shadows leaned against the walls, pressing in, but Lila didn’t care. She grabbed me by the shoulder, dragging me until my back hit cold concrete.

“Adrian, you can’t be serious… are you? I said they were dead—! It’s no use!!” Her voice was high with panic.

I didn’t respond.

“There’s still time to leave. We can… we can find a safe haven. N—New Jersey!!! I haven’t forgot about that! We can finally—”

“I don’t want to go anywhere with you.” The words left me before I could think. Maybe too harsh.

Her breath hitched. The air smelled of sweat and burnt coffee, tangling with the metallic sting of fear. I could see her chest rising and falling, her fists twitching.

I wanted to tell her— no, to scream at her—that we couldn’t run anymore. People were counting on us. They were still out there, somewhere, waiting for someone to make the right move. I needed to face this, not hide behind any more plans or empty promises of survival.

“You’re… you’re so selfish and stubborn. You never consider me…what I want!” she whispered, voice low now, almost dangerous.

“And you do?” I retorted. She went silent.

“It’s about time you understand, Lila.”

I stepped back before walking away, letting the tension release from me like steam. Her knuckles became white, nails digging into her palms, jaw clenched. Shadows flickered across her face. I wasn’t gonna argue with her.

Resolve shaped my every step as shadows painted my face.

I had a plan. Not foolproof— but to me it was the only path forward. And somehow by grace, it had to work.

Looks like this was gonna be easier than I thought.

The warehouse was a storm of noise and shapes, everything falling in and out of focus as the blinding white slowly thinned into figures that were hard to make out. My pulse hammered in my temples, each beat piercing through the leftover ringing.

But we finally had them,— Aubrey, Terri, the others— dazed, stumbling, but alive.

Their ropes fell in clumps. Hands grabbed shoulders. Clothes. Arms. Anything.

Terri’s fingers found my arm in the mess, clinging with a desperation that didn’t match her unsteady breath.

“Thank you— thank you, thank you so m—”

“We need to move.”

My voice cut through, laced with resolve. I didn’t slow down. I hooked my arm under hers and pulled her along, weaving through the groaning bodies writhing on the floor.

Metal clanged. Someone screamed. My ears fought to translate sound from static.

Shapes twitched in the fog. The members of the crucible blinked hard, trying to force vision back into their ruined eyes.

Then— a shadow lunged.

I only saw the blur a heartbeat before it connected.

Instinct took over.

I ducked, feeling the wind of the bat grazing over my skull and smash into a crate behind me. Splinters burst across the air.

“DON’T LET THEM FUCKING LEAVE!!!”

Her voice cut through the chaos— the piercings woman. She seemed half-blind, half-feral, but very much alive.

Unfortunately.

Around me, the others stumbled into motion. Carl dragged Aubrey upright. Lila fired blindly into the haze, each muzzle flash painting her face in stuttering frames of cold, brutal calculations.

The Crucible gunmen shook off the flashbang faster than expected. Some were still crawling. Others were already pushing to their feet, weapons jerking wildly as they regained balance.

One of them bolted forward— fast.

His arm hooked around a camp member’s throat. The knife flashed once, sharp and final.

A choking wet sound followed, before they collapsed together.

I froze for half a second, something warm stinging my eyes— before forcing myself forward, dragging Terri back into motion even as my stomach twisted seeing the body hit the ground.

“Go! Keep going!”

Gunshots rang out behind us. Another scream. The whole warehouse was tilting around me, like reality was moments from collapsing.

But by some miracle—

we made it.

The cold night air enveloped my face as I stumbled outside. It cleared the ringing just enough to breathe again. Relief washed over me so hard it almost knocked me down.

The others burst out behind me. I slowed, turning to look.

Aubrey’s arm was slung over Carl’s shoulder.

Two men carried a limping survivor.

Terri held onto me like I was the only solid thing in the world.

Barely any casualties.

That was a win in my book.

A smile tugged at my face, despite the blood drying on my hands. I didn’t want to think about that right now.

“You did it…” Carl rasped, breath fogging.

“We saved our people because of your plan. Thank you, Adrian.”

A blush crept up my face before I could stop it.

The first time anyone had ever thanked me like that.

I opened my mouth to say something—

but just then, then their eyes widened— faces draining to white.

I was confused for a second. Did they not just—

“LOOK—!”

There was something behind me.

Lila lunged without thinking, driving her knife into the stomach of the infected woman who had crept up behind me. The woman’s eyes were spiderwebbed crimson, just like Mary-Ann’s that night— red, ruptured, hungry.

“Please…” she croaked, breath rattling.

“Just let me kill one person before I die… one—”

The knife twisted. She was dead. What kind of monster even begs for something like that in their last moments?

I stumbled back, trying to catch my breath, before I saw what everyone else was staring at.

Not one infected.

Not a handful.

A mass.

A heaving, staggering horde filling the entire lot, red-eyed bodies piled over one another, pressing through fences, dragging themselves through the fog like a tidal wave of dying humanity.

Give me a fucking break.

“What the fuck…” I whispered under my breath.

And with that, despair washed over the whole entire group once again.

I don’t get it. There wasn’t as much infected when we first arrived here.

…was it the flashbang?

“What do we do now?”

A voice cut through my panicked thoughts. Carl’s. When I turned, his eyes were wide, glistening— desperate in a way that twisted something sharp inside my chest.

“What..?”

I could barely respond, barely look at him. No, he couldn’t possibly expect me to…

But as i looked around at the rescued survivors— Terri clutching her ribs, Aubrey leaning heavily on Carl, even Lila, who was wiping blood off her blade with steady fingers. Every single one of them stared at me with that same unspoken plea.

They all expected me to bring them though this as well. Even this.

I found myself completely overwhelmed within seconds. My knees gave out, hitting the gravel hard enough to sting. I dragged both hands through my hair, gripping it as if I could force my brain to work faster.

Carl frowned, stepping closer. His shadow loomed over me.

Even he could’ve seen that this was a lost cause— couldn’t he?

Completely sandwiched between two pressures.

The surging infected.

The psychos that were still in the warehouse.

There was nowhere to run.

“Take all the time you need to think, Adrian.”

His voice was raw but steady. I barely looked up at him.

“I have faith in you. We all do.”

I lifted my head fully at that.

The world was a chaos— screams in the distance, the rattling groans of the infected, the muffled shouts of Crucible members inside the warehouse—

But Carl’s expression…

that quiet, absolute certainty in his eyes…

It cut through the noise.

Even though I knew deep down there wasnt much time to truly think, he really did believe in me, didn’t he?

I sighed.

A new sense of resolve and purpose began to surge through me, Carl’s words acting as my new backbone as I slowly got up.

My eyes flickered passed the survivors, to my surroundings…

There had to be something we could utilize.

“The infected, though somewhat sentient, are attracted to noise and light.”

Terri’s voice cut through the chaos in my mind, sharp despite her trembling. I barely had time to blink before every pair of eyes in the lot shifted to her. Aubrey’s bruised face was pale beneath the grime, yet her eyes focused.

“It’s just a theory, but I think that’s a side effect of what the disease does to your mind.”

I glanced at Lila for just a brief moment. A thousand questions hit me. Wasn’t she…—?

They flickered back to Terri.

“The first time I was at this warehouse, the first time Aubrey had let off shots at Sheldon’s crew, I noticed a change in the infected’s density in Hyde park afterwards.”

A moment of silence.

“Specifically…around this area.”

My gaze darted to the shadows where the horde surged, a living wave of red-eyed chaos, and for a fraction of a second, it almost felt like they were staring back.

“With the Crucible having created havoc in the air recently,” Terri pressed on despite the hoarseness in her throat,

“the infected seemed to pile… a lot. Now it looked like the flashbang tipped everything off.”

A cold revelation hit my face, eyes widening as if ice water had just jolted me awake.

My own idea…that flashbang wasn’t a mistake.

It was a trigger.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep