Chapter 44: Closer than you think

The truck fishtailed out of the gas station lot, tires spitting gravel before catching on cracked asphalt. My hands stayed locked on the wheel—steady. I’d never had a license. Never needed one. Rules like that didn’t survive the end of the world.

In the rearview mirror, bodies slumped and swayed with the motion of the truck. Aubrey was folded awkwardly against the door, mouth parted, exhaustion carved deep into her face. She looked worse than the others. She’d been on watch most of the night.

So had Hale.

Lila sat shotgun. Insisted on it.

Her fingers were already threaded through mine, warm and possessive. I let it happen for a while. Let her squeeze. Let her ground herself. But after a few minutes, I gently pulled my hand free and returned it to the wheel. Two hands. Control.

She didn’t protest. Not right away.

Thirty minutes passed in silence.

The road stretched ahead— rotted, cracked, swallowed by weeds. Burned-out cars sat like skeletons along the shoulder. Road signs were spray-painted with warnings, prayers, jokes that weren’t funny anymore.

Heads on pikes blurred past the window.

I barely reacted. I’d learned not to.

“Hey, baby,” Lila said softly. “Can we talk?”

My eyes flicked to her, then snapped back to the road.

That tone wasn’t casual. Lila didn’t say can we talk unless something was already decided.

My grip tightened.

“Sure,” I said. “What’s up?”

“I noticed you used a gun back there.”

I frowned. “What?”

“At the gas station.”

“Yeah, well—”

“I thought we had an understanding.” Her voice stayed calm. Too calm. “I was serious about you not using guns. At all. It’s dangerous for you.”

My jaw clenched.

“Lila,” I said carefully, “I thought we had gotten past this from before. In a world like this, we need—”

“Clearly we didn’t.”

The words dropped like a blade.

“Don’t you remember what happened?” she pressed.

“How you almost died? Hm?”

…yeah.

The accident.

My vision tunneled. Everything else blurred around me, including the road. The sound of her voice faded under the rush of memory—metal screaming, weightlessness, blood in my mouth.

Her doing.

“Adrian.” She turned fully toward me now.

“Look at me.”

I forced myself back.

“Yeah?”

“Do we have an understanding?”

Silence pressed in. I closed my eyes for half a second, exhaled through my nose.

“Lila, can we have this conversation later?” I said. My voice cracked despite me. “I’m driving. I really need to—”

“No.”

Her voice dropped. Darker.

“You’re going to understand now. Or I’m just gonna have to force you to.”

…what?

“You don’t need anything else to protect you. Or anyone.” she said softly. “You have me.”

Something hot and sharp rose in my chest. I opened my mouth—

Before I saw her slowly look at the road, her face going pale.

“ADRIAN!”

I swerved instinctively.

Too late.

The truck slammed into something with a wet, hollow thud. Blood exploded across the windshield, thick and dark, spiderwebbing the glass. A sickening crunch followed as the tires rolled over—

Something.

The impact jolted the cab. Bodies stirred behind me. Someone shouted.

Bile surged up my throat.

The wipers screeched to life, smearing blood instead of clearing it—

And then it happened again.

Another impact.

Then another.

The truck bucked and lurched as I fought the wheel, swerving left, right— there was nowhere to go. Shapes rushed out of the fog and blood and dawn-light. Red eyes. Shaking silhouettes. Hands slamming against metal.

I was already plowing through them.

“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!” Aubrey screamed from the back.

The answer was everywhere.

We were driving straight through a horde.

And I didn’t know when it had started.

It felt like hours when the truck finally burst free.

The last body rolled off the hood with a dull thump, disappearing beneath the wheels. The road ahead cleared in a sudden, awful way— empty asphalt stretching forward like nothing had happened at all.

I didn’t slow down.

My hands were shaking now, knuckles white around the wheel. The engine whined in protest as I kept the pedal down, lungs burning like I’d forgotten how to breathe.

Silence crept into the cab.

Not relief.

Not safety.

Just… quiet.

Behind me, someone was sobbing. Terri, maybe. Aubrey hadn’t said a word. I could feel her staring at the back of my head, eyes boring holes through my skull.

The windshield was a mess— smeared blood, streaks dragged sideways by frantic wipers. Red lines like fingerprints. Like they’d tried to hold on.

“Everyone okay back there?”

…No one answered.

I swallowed.

Something was wrong.

Not with the crash.

With them.

I’d seen something similar before. Back at the warehouse that night. That horde was chaotic. Loud. Close to mindless. Only driven by their Id, impulse. Bodies crashing into each other just to get closer, hands grabbing at air.

This wasn’t that.

They’d been spaced out.

Too evenly.

I hadn’t noticed it at first— adrenaline had blurred everything— but now the pattern replayed itself in my head, frame by frame. The way they’d stepped out instead of rushed. The way their heads had turned together when the headlights hit them.

Like they’d been waiting for me to hit them.

Like they were controlled by something.

My chest tightened.

I glanced sideways.

Lila was staring straight ahead, hands folded neatly in her lap. Her breathing was slow. Controlled. No panic written on her face like it should’ve been.

“You okay?” she asked quietly.

The question landed wrong.

I nodded automatically, then caught myself. My throat felt thick. “Yeah. I— yeah.”

She smiled, like she was was satisfied.

That made something cold slide down my spine.

I looked back at the road— and that’s when I saw it.

In the side mirror.

Figures standing at the edge of the asphalt.

Not chasing.

Not screaming.

Just… watching.

Their heads followed the truck as it passed. One by one. Slow. Deliberate. Red eyes reflecting dully in the early light.

I felt my pulse stutter.

They weren’t coming after us.

The road stretched on. The figures faded from the mirror. The engine’s hum settled into something almost normal.

But my skin wouldn’t stop crawling.

My hands hurt.

I flexed my fingers on the wheel and realized — distantly— that I couldn’t remember when I’d stopped shaking.

Or when I’d started feeling… steady.

The memory of the impacts replayed again. The sound. The weight. The way my body had moved without thought— corrections made before fear could catch up.

Like id practiced for something like this.

I swallowed hard.

Lila leaned closer, her shoulder brushing mine. Warm. Grounding. Familiar.

“You handled that perfectly,” she murmured.

“See? You don’t need guns. You don’t need chaos.”

Her voice dropped, intimate.

“You’re safest when you just… let go.”

I barely looked at her.

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