Archive of Our Own

By the fourth week, Jaden had stopped checking windows for movement.

He still checked doors. He still checked the corners of rooms before stepping into them, still lifted the lid of every chest freezer with one hand and kept the other near the knife at his belt. He still listened before entering a stairwell, because stairwells carried sound in strange, useful ways.

But windows were different.

Windows showed him a city that had forgotten how to be alive.

In the first days, there had been smoke over the western blocks, black and oily, rising from warehouses and petrol stations. There had been car alarms that continued long after their owners were gone. There had been emergency broadcasts every hour, then every three, then only in the morning. People had shouted from balconies. Someone, somewhere, had played the same six notes of a piano song until the power cut out.

Now the streets below were a grey map of abandoned vehicles and windblown rubbish.

A bus sat crooked across the intersection, its front windscreen starred with a white fracture. A delivery van had been left with both back doors open, boxes spilling into the road. In the park opposite, the swings moved when the weather changed, but never because anyone sat in them.

Jaden had stopped wondering who had died in the cars.

Wondering was an indulgence. It used up the same part of him as hunger.

He was on the sixth floor of an office building that had once housed a company with a cheerful blue logo and motivational sayings stuck to the walls. The reception desk was still there, as was a plastic bowl full of mints gone white with age. Someone had written ‘HELP’ in permanent marker across the glass doors, then crossed it out and written ‘NOT HERE’ underneath.

Jaden had come for batteries.

He found a half-empty box in a stationery cupboard and put it in his pack. He found a packet of crackers in a desk drawer, hard and stale but sealed. He found three pens, a roll of tape and a packet of disinfectant wipes that had somehow survived the looting.

The building had been picked over by people who had known exactly what to look for. They had taken the water, the first-aid kits, the food, the portable chargers. They had left the things nobody thought mattered until they mattered very much.

Jaden took the batteries.

He took the tape.

He left the mints.

A soft thump came from above.

Jaden stopped with one hand still inside the drawer.

For a moment, the building seemed to hold its breath around him. Dust floated in the strips of afternoon light. Somewhere beyond the walls, a loose sign tapped against metal in a slow, patient rhythm.

Then came another sound.

A scrape. A pause. The faint drag of something over a floor.

Jaden eased the drawer closed.

The sound had come from the stairs leading to the rooftop offices. There was a lift beside them, but its doors stood open on darkness, the emergency lights long dead. He moved past it without looking inside.

His machete was too long for the stairwell. He drew the knife instead, holding it low along his forearm. It was not a proper survival knife; it had belonged to his flatmate, who had bought it after watching too many camping videos and had died before needing it. Jaden had sharpened it on a brick.

He took the stairs one at a time.

The upper floor had once been a boardroom and a series of executive offices. Glass walls divided the rooms, most of them cracked or broken. A collection of dead pot plants made a dark border beneath the windows.

The scrape came again, closer this time.

Jaden looked towards the sound.

A figure moved behind the frosted glass of the largest office.

His first thought was infected.

His second was that infected did not usually move that quietly.

He raised the knife.

“Come out,” he said.

The figure froze.

Jaden waited.

A voice answered from behind the glass. “You first.”

Human.

The relief was immediate and unwelcome. It loosened something in his chest, and that looseness frightened him more than the voice had.

He shifted his grip. “You’re in my way.”

“That’s interesting,” the stranger said. “I was going to say the same thing.”

The office door opened.

The man standing behind it was younger than Jaden had expected, though not by much. He was tall and narrow in the way of someone who had lost weight too quickly. His hair was long and purple? definitely in need of a cut, and a faded jacket hung off his shoulders. He held a pistol in both hands.

Not a toy. Not a flare gun. A real pistol.

Jaden stopped moving.

The stranger stopped too.

They stood across the broken boardroom, each with a weapon pointed towards the other.

The city glowed grey behind them.

For several seconds neither of them spoke.

Then the stranger said, “If you’re going to shoot me, do it before I get more comfortable.”

Jaden’s knife seemed suddenly inadequate. “If you’re going to shoot me, you’d have done it already.”

“Maybe I’m giving you a chance to leave.”

“This is a public building.”

“It was.”

“You’re standing in an office.”

“You’re holding a knife in it.”

Jaden glanced at the weapon in the stranger’s hands. “You know how to use that?”

The stranger’s eyes flicked down to the knife, then back up. “You know how to use yours?”

“Enough.”

“Same.”

The answer was irritatingly calm.

Jaden had met frightened people before. Frightened people talked too much, breathed too fast, looked anywhere but at the weapon in front of them. This man did none of those things. He watched Jaden with the careful stillness of someone who had learned that panic was a luxury.

Jaden looked past him into the office. There was a set of steel filing cabinets along one wall and a large built-in cupboard with its doors half open.

“What did you find?” he asked.

The stranger raised an eyebrow. “You’ve got a funny way of asking.”

“I’m not asking what you found. I’m asking what you found that I need.”

“That sounds like asking.”

“Then answer.”

The stranger’s mouth tightened, as if he had almost smiled and changed his mind. “Nothing worth killing over.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“Means we can both leave.”

Neither of them moved.

A distant bang rolled up through the building.

Not from outside. From below.

The stranger’s gun angled towards the floor.

Jaden heard the next sound before he understood it, a wet, dragging shuffle, followed by a burst of frantic noise. Something knocked over a display stand in the reception area. Metal clattered. A voice cried out once and cut off.

The infected had come into the building.

The stranger looked at Jaden.

Jaden looked at the stairs.

“How many?” he asked.

“Could be two. Could be ten.”

“You came up this way?”

“No.”

“Then how did you get here?”

“Window.”

Of course.

Another impact shook the stairwell door. The sound was close enough to feel through the soles of Jaden’s shoes.

The stranger’s gaze snapped to the windows.

Jaden pointed with the knife. “Fire escape?”

“Probably.”

“Probably?”

“Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

“Bad.”

“I haven’t checked the bottom.”

Jaden swore under his breath.

The stairwell door jolted in its frame.

The stranger raised his pistol. “Good news?”

“You’re going to say we can check it together.”

“No. Good news is they’re not very good at doors.”

The door jolted again.

A grey hand pushed through the gap.

Jaden moved before he had made the decision. He crossed the room, grabbed the nearest office chair and drove it into the door. The stranger fired once.

The shot cracked through the boardroom.

The infected on the other side shrieked. The sound was a broken animal noise, too high and too human. Jaden’s ears rang.

The stranger stared at the smoking pistol.

“You said you didn’t want to waste ammunition,” Jaden said.

“I changed my mind.”

The door buckled.

Jaden abandoned the chair. “Window.”

They ran.

The largest window had been smashed during some earlier escape, leaving a jagged opening onto a narrow external landing. Beyond it, the fire escape clung to the side of the building in rusting sections. The ladder down to the next level had collapsed at one end, but the balcony below looked reachable.

Jaden went first because there was no time to argue. He shoved his pack through the opening, climbed over the frame and dropped onto the landing. The metal flexed under his boots.

“Clear,” he called.

The stranger came through after him. He moved fast, but not carelessly, testing each step before putting his weight down. When he landed, his shoulder brushed Jaden’s.

Neither apologised.

The door behind them burst open.

An infected lurched into the boardroom. Its shirt was stained dark from throat to waist. A second shape stumbled after it, then a third.

The stranger swore.

Jaden grabbed the fire escape railing. “Down.”

They climbed.

The metal stairs were slick with rain and rust. Jaden went too quickly, sliding on the second flight. The stranger caught the back of his jacket and hauled him upright.

“Careful,” he snapped.

Jaden twisted out of his grip. “Don’t touch me.”

“Fine.”

“Good.”

They reached the next landing. The collapse had taken out the lower section, leaving a gap of nearly two metres to the balcony below. The infected spilled through the window above them, clawing at the railing.

Jaden looked over the edge.

The balcony below was part of the fifth floor. It had a low wall, a broken air-conditioning unit and a gap between the rails where someone could drop through.

He could make it.

Behind him, the stranger said, “You go.”

Jaden glanced back. “You first.”

“Thought you didn’t want me touching you.”

“Didn’t say you had to.”

The stranger looked at the gap, then at the infected above. He tucked the pistol into the waistband of his trousers and climbed onto the railing.

For one second he balanced there, silhouetted against the sky.

Then he jumped.

He landed hard on the balcony, rolled, and came up with one hand braced against the concrete.

Jaden followed.

The gap looked wider from the railing. His boot struck the edge of the balcony and slipped. He dropped with a shout, caught the lip with both hands and felt his injured palm tear open.

The stranger grabbed his forearm.

“Don’t touch me,” Jaden said through his teeth.

“Terrible time.”

The stranger pulled.

Jaden found the wall with one knee and scrambled up. They reached the far end of the balcony as the infected began dropping onto the fire escape behind them. One hit the landing badly and collapsed, but the others kept coming.

A door led into the fifth-floor offices.

Jaden tried the handle.

Locked.

The stranger pushed him aside, drew the pistol and fired at the lock.

The sound punched through the building.

The lock held.

“Again,” Jaden said.

“You know, if you’ve got a better idea-”

“Again.”

The second shot broke the mechanism. Jaden kicked the door open.

They plunged into darkness.

The offices were a maze of cubicles, overturned chairs and paper. The air smelt of mould and old carpet. Jaden ran by memory more than sight, following the faint rectangle of daylight at the far end.

Behind them, the door crashed open.

The infected had reached the balcony.

“Keep going,” Jaden said.

It was the first time either of them had used the words.

The stranger glanced at him.

Jaden did not look back.

They burst into a stairwell on the opposite side of the floor. This one ended in a loading bay. The emergency exit had been chained from the outside, but the chain had rusted through. Jaden threw his shoulder against the door.

It opened onto a service lane behind the building.

Cold air struck his face.

They ran.

They did not stop until the office block had disappeared behind a row of warehouses and the city had swallowed the sound of the gunshot.

Jaden bent over with both hands on his knees. His lungs felt scraped raw. The knife was still in his hand. His pack was still on his back.

The stranger leaned against a brick wall, one hand pressed to his side.

For a moment they listened.

Nothing followed.

No footsteps. No shrieks. No movement except the wind pushing rubbish along the lane.

The stranger straightened.

“You can stop pointing that at me now,” he said.

Jaden realised the knife was still angled towards his chest.

He lowered it.

The stranger took the pistol from his waistband and checked the magazine. His expression tightened when he counted the rounds.

“You’ve got one more,” Jaden said.

“Four.”

“You fired twice.”

“One was already missing.”

“Convenient.”

The stranger replaced the magazine. “You always this charming?”

“Only with armed strangers.”

“Lucky me.”

Jaden looked towards the end of the lane. The road beyond was open, but the afternoon light had begun to thin. He needed to leave before dark. He also needed to find somewhere to sleep, something to eat and a way around the infected gathering in the southern blocks.

The stranger pushed away from the wall.

“Wait,” Jaden said.

The man looked back.

Jaden checked the ground around his boots. Something felt wrong. His pack was lighter.

He swung it around and opened the top pocket.

The batteries were there. The crackers were there. The tape.

The folded map was gone.

Jaden’s stomach dropped.

He searched the pack again, then his jacket, then the pockets of his trousers. He checked the lane behind him, though he knew the map had not been there when he stopped.

The stranger watched him.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Then stop staring.”

“You’re looking for something.”

“Brilliant observation.”

“Was it important?”

“No.”

The stranger glanced down.

Jaden followed his gaze.

The map was half visible beneath the stranger’s jacket, tucked into the waistband of his trousers.

Jaden went still.

The stranger looked at the map, then at him.

“You dropped it on the stairs,” he said.

“And you picked it up.”

“I was going to give it back.”

“You were going to leave.”

“I can do both.”

Jaden took one step forward.

The stranger’s hand went towards the pistol.

Jaden stopped.

“Give it to me.”

“Tell me where it goes.”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Then it’s not important.”

Jaden held his stare.

The map was not just a map. It was the last thing he had from before the city went quiet: a road atlas with a red circle drawn around a point beyond the northern ring road. The circle had come from a hand-written note he had found in a ranger station. ‘EMERGENCY SHELTER - NORTH ACCESS. USE RADIO CHANNEL 4’. The note might have been weeks old. The shelter might have been occupied, empty or already overrun.

But it was a direction.

Without it, he had no direction at all.

The stranger took the map from his waistband.

He did not offer it.

“What’s at the circle?” he asked.

“A shelter.”

“Real one?”

“Supposedly.”

“Supposedly.”

“That’s more than you’ve got.”

The stranger’s jaw worked.

Jaden held out his hand.

For a long moment, the man seemed to consider keeping it. Then he folded the map once and tossed it across the space between them.

Jaden caught it.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t sound too grateful.”

“I’m not.”

“Good.”

The stranger turned away.

Jaden folded the map and put it in the inner pocket of his jacket, beneath the zip. He watched the man walk towards the road.

He should have let him go.

A stranger with a gun was a problem. A stranger who knew about the shelter was a larger problem. A stranger who had already saved him twice, once from the fire escape and once from the pavement, was a problem Jaden did not know how to name.

He checked the map again.

The red circle was just beyond the city. If he left now, he could reach the outer suburbs before nightfall.

He started walking in the opposite direction.

It took him nearly three streets to realise the stranger was following him.

Jaden stopped beneath the shade of a dead jacaranda.

The stranger stopped too.

They stood on opposite sides of the footpath, watching each other over the roofs of abandoned cars.

“You’re going the wrong way,” the stranger said.

Jaden looked at the street sign. “Am I?”

“If you’re going to the shelter.”

Jaden’s hand went to the map inside his jacket. “You don’t know where I’m going.”

“You keep checking the north road.”

“You’ve been watching me.”

“You’ve been walking like you expect someone to shoot you.”

“Maybe I do.”

“That makes two of us.”

Jaden stared at him.

The stranger sighed, as if the conversation had become an inconvenience he had brought upon himself.

“My name is Wemmbu,” he said.

It was not an introduction. It was a concession.

Jaden waited.

Wemmbu’s eyebrows lifted. “You don’t have to say yours.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“Fair enough.”

The wind pushed a newspaper along the gutter. It snagged against a tyre and trembled there.

Jaden looked towards the north.

“Are you going to the shelter?” he asked.

Wemmbu’s expression closed again.

“Maybe.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the one you’re getting.”

Jaden began walking.

After a moment, Wemmbu followed.

Jaden did not ask Wemmbu to come with him.

That distinction mattered, even if nobody else was there to hear it.

He walked on the left side of the road, where he could see the gaps between buildings. Wemmbu stayed several paces behind, far enough away that neither of them could reach the other without warning. It was an arrangement that pretended to be temporary.

The city changed as they moved north.

The high-rises gave way to narrow shopfronts and rows of small houses. The main roads were blocked by traffic, but the side streets were clear. Most of the cars had been abandoned with doors open. Some had people still inside.

Jaden kept his eyes ahead.

Wemmbu kept checking behind them.

By the time the sun had begun to sink, they had passed three infected without being noticed and one group of six by climbing over a fence into a drainage reserve. The group had been gathered around a body. Jaden had not looked closely enough to tell whether the body was fresh.

They stopped in a half-collapsed service station.

The forecourt canopy had fallen onto two petrol pumps. The shop windows were boarded from the inside. Jaden forced open a side door and waited while Wemmbu listened to the darkness beyond.

“Empty,” Wemmbu said.

“You checked?”

“I listened.”

“That’s not checking.”

“It is when you don’t want to make noise.”

Jaden entered first.

The shop had been stripped, but there were still shelves along the back wall. He found a packet of mints, a small bottle of water and a handful of coins. Wemmbu searched behind the counter and came up with a torch missing its battery cover.

“Does it work?” Jaden asked.

“Not yet.”

“Then it doesn’t.”

“You’re very encouraging.”

“I’ve been told.”

“By who?”

“People who are dead.”

The words settled between them.

Wemmbu turned the torch over in his hand. “Sorry.”

Jaden shrugged.

He did not want to talk about the dead. Talking made them larger. It put their faces back into rooms he had spent weeks emptying.

Wemmbu slipped the torch into his pocket.

Jaden noticed that he limped slightly on his right leg. It was not obvious unless he was tired. The landing from the fire escape had taken something out of him.

“You’re hurt.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re limping.”

“I said I’m fine.”

Jaden opened the bottle of water and drank half. He capped it and put it back into the side pocket of his pack.

Wemmbu watched the movement.

Jaden held out the bottle.

Wemmbu did not take it.

“You just drank,” he said.

“You can have some.”

“I’ve got water.”

“Then don’t.”

The silence returned.

Outside, something bumped against the petrol station sign.

They both turned towards the sound.

A long shadow moved across the boarded window.

Jaden crouched. Wemmbu lowered himself behind the counter, pistol in hand. The shadow paused. A second shape joined it.

The infected were not inside the building. They were on the forecourt, close enough that Jaden could hear their breathing.

He waited until the shapes moved past.

Only then did Wemmbu relax his grip.

Jaden rose.

“How long have you been alone?” Wemmbu asked.

Jaden looked at him.

“Just asking.”

“Why?”

“Because you keep looking at the exits like you’ve got somewhere to be.”

“Everyone has somewhere to be.”

“Not anymore.”

Jaden moved to the side door. “We should go.”

“Where?”

“The shelter.”

“Which shelter?”

“The one on the map.”

“There are at least four places called emergency shelter around here.”

“Not with a red circle.”

“That doesn’t make it more real.”

“It doesn’t make it less.”

Wemmbu leaned against the counter. “You know the northern access is through the freight district?”

“Yes.”

“You know the freight district is blocked?”

“No.”

“It is.”

“How?”

“Container trucks. Burnt out. There’s a bridge down.”

Jaden looked at the map. The red circle sat beyond the city boundary, marked beside an old quarry road. The route he had intended to take went through the freight district, then over the river.

“Is there another way?”

“Not unless you want to go around the river.”

“How far?”

“Two days if we move fast. Longer if we don’t.”

Jaden folded the map.

Wemmbu watched him. “You’re still going.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s there.”

“That’s not a reason.”

“It’s enough of one.”

Wemmbu looked towards the boarded windows.

The last light had gone. The service station filled with the smell of dust and petrol.

Jaden should have left alone. The shelter was uncertain, but the road was familiar. He had travelled parts of it during the first week, before the checkpoints failed and the city emptied. Wemmbu was an unknown quantity: armed, guarded and possibly injured.

But he had seen the way Wemmbu watched the roads. He knew the city. He knew the blockages. He had taken the map and given it back.

Jaden said, “You’re going there too.”

Wemmbu’s gaze flicked to him.

“You knew about the northern access,” Jaden continued. “You knew the freight district was blocked. You’ve got your own route.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m going to the shelter.”

“Then where are you going?”

Wemmbu did not answer.

Jaden let the silence stretch.

At last, Wemmbu said, “There’s supposed to be a military evacuation point further north.”

“How far?”

“Several hundred kilometres.”

Jaden gave a short laugh. “That’s not a destination. That’s a different sort of mistake.”

“I know.”

“Where did you hear about it?”

“Radio.”

“Have you heard it recently?”

“No.”

“Then it could be gone.”

“Yes.”

“Could be a trap.”

“Yes.”

“Could be nothing.”

“Yes.”

Jaden stared at him. “You’ve got a lot of confidence in this plan.”

“I didn’t say it was a plan.”

“What is it, then?”

“The direction I’m going.”

That answer, at least, made sense.

Jaden opened the side door. The street beyond was dark, but the rain had stopped. A line of low clouds covered the stars.

Wemmbu rose.

“Are you coming?” he asked.

Jaden looked at him. “You’re following me.”

“I’m walking north.”

“Behind me.”

“You’re faster.”

“That’s not a compliment.”

“I wasn’t trying to be nice.”

They left the service station together.

This time, Jaden kept his pace slower.

They travelled for another hour before the road became too open to cross safely at night. A row of houses stood behind a low brick wall, their front gardens tangled with weeds. Most of the windows had been broken. One house had a garage door half raised.

Jaden stopped outside.

Wemmbu scanned the roofline. “Could be occupied.”

“Everything could be occupied.”

“Then why stop?”

“Because I’m tired.”

It was the first honest thing he had said all day.

Wemmbu did not comment.

They entered through the garage. The interior smelt of damp cardboard and old oil. Jaden found the kitchen door and tested it with the toe of his boot. No sound came from inside.

The house had been abandoned in a hurry.

A bowl of fruit sat on the bench, collapsed into black mould. A child’s drawing was pinned to the fridge with a magnet shaped like a lemon. The drawing showed three people standing under a yellow sun.

Jaden looked away.

Wemmbu checked the downstairs rooms while Jaden searched the cupboards. They found two tins of baked beans, a packet of rice and a small jar of coffee. The beans were swollen but the rice was dry. Jaden put it into his pack.

“Upstairs,” Wemmbu said.

“Why?”

“Only one entrance at the back.”

“And?”

“Better sightline.”

Jaden followed him.

The stairs creaked. Every sound seemed louder in the quiet house.

The first bedroom was empty except for a mattress stripped of its sheets. The second had collapsed shelving and a wardrobe jammed against the window. The third was a child’s room, yellow walls and a single bed beneath a shelf of dusty books.

The fourth bedroom had a door that locked from the inside.

Jaden checked the wardrobe, the bed and the space beneath the curtains.

“Clear,” he said.

Wemmbu stood in the doorway.

“You take the room,” Jaden said.

“Why?”

“Because you’ve got the gun.”

“That’s not how beds work.”

“It’s how decisions work.”

Wemmbu looked towards the mattress. “You’re sleeping on the floor?”

“I’ve slept on worse.”

“Where?”

“Why?”

“Just asking.”

Jaden dropped his pack beside the bed. “You can sleep outside if you want.”

“I might.”

“Good.”

Neither of them did.

They argued for nearly ten minutes about the bed.

It was not a real argument. Neither raised his voice. Neither threatened the other. They simply refused to take the thing they wanted while insisting the other should have it.

“You need sleep,” Wemmbu said.

“So do you.”

“I’m the one with the weapon.”

“You’re the one limping.”

“It’s not bad.”

“You’re limping.”

“You’ve got an injured hand.”

“It’s a scratch.”

“You’re favouring it.”

Jaden looked down at his palm. The cut from the balcony had opened again, but the bleeding had stopped. “It’s nothing.”

“Then sleep on the bed.”

“That doesn’t follow.”

“It follows more than anything you’ve said tonight.”

Jaden sat on the floor with his back against the wall.

Wemmbu watched him.

Jaden watched back.

Eventually Wemmbu took the mattress. He placed the pistol beneath his pillow and kept his boots on.

Jaden took the first watch.

He sat beside the bedroom door with the knife across his lap and the torch beside his knee. The torch still did not work. Wemmbu had removed the battery cover and discovered the contacts were corroded. Jaden had given him the roll of tape. Wemmbu had used it to hold the cover in place.

The repair had not improved the torch, but it had given them something to do.

Outside, the wind moved through the trees. Once, a sound came from the street below, soft footsteps, then a scrape against the front gate. Jaden held his breath until it passed.

Behind him, Wemmbu slept lightly.

Jaden could tell by the way he moved. Even unconscious, he kept one hand close to the pistol. His breathing never settled into a deep rhythm. Every few minutes his eyes opened, checked the room and closed again.

They changed watch at midnight.

Wemmbu woke without being told. He sat up, took the knife from Jaden’s lap and handed it back hilt first.

“You should sleep,” he said.

“I am.”

“Your eyes are open.”

“That’s how I sleep.”

Wemmbu looked at him for a long moment, then moved to the door.

Jaden lay down on the floor.

The carpet was thin and smelled of dust. He put his pack beneath his head. The room felt too small with another person in it, but it also felt less empty. That was the dangerous part.

He closed his eyes.

For a while, he listened to Wemmbu moving around the room.

A floorboard creaked.

The window latch clicked.

The chair scraped softly against the wall.

Then silence.

Jaden drifted.

He dreamed of the emergency shelter.

In the dream, it was lit from within. There were people behind the doors, waiting for him. Someone called his name. He walked towards the entrance, but the ground stretched beneath his feet, making every step take longer.

When he reached the door, it opened.

Nobody stood behind it.

He woke with his hand around the knife.

The room was dark. The house was silent.

Something warm lay over his shoulders.

Jaden did not move.

It took him a moment to understand that it was a blanket. A thick woollen one, patterned with faded red squares. It had not been there when he went to sleep.

Across the room, Wemmbu sat with his back against the wall. His pistol rested on his thigh. His eyes were closed.

Jaden watched him for several seconds.

“Did you do this?” he asked quietly.

Wemmbu opened one eye.

Jaden held the blanket at the edge. “This.”

“You looked cold.”

“I’m not.”

“You were shaking.”

“I wasn’t.”

Wemmbu closed his eye again. “Go back to sleep.”

Jaden should have returned the blanket.

Instead, he pulled it closer around his shoulders.

By morning, the blanket was folded at the foot of the bed.

Neither of them mentioned it.

Jaden woke first. He boiled the rice in a saucepan with half a tin of beans and divided it into two cups. There was not enough for proper portions, so he ate slowly and hoped Wemmbu would do the same.

Wemmbu sat on the floor opposite him.

“You can have the rest,” Jaden said.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Liar.”

“You first.”

Jaden pushed the cup across the floor.

Wemmbu took it.

They ate without speaking.

The coffee was worse than the rice. It tasted of dust and old pennies, but it was hot. The warmth sat in Jaden’s stomach and made him remember mornings when the world had been ordinary enough to complain about breakfast.

Wemmbu held his cup between both hands.

“What?” Jaden asked.

“Nothing.”

“You keep looking at me.”

“You keep looking at me.”

“You’re holding the cup wrong.”

Wemmbu glanced down. “There’s a wrong way to hold a cup?”

“For you, apparently.”

“Maybe I don’t trust it.”

“It’s coffee.”

“That’s what someone who poisoned coffee would say.”

Jaden laughed before he could stop himself.

The sound startled them both.

It was not a large laugh. It barely lasted a second. But it existed in the room, bright and out of place.

Wemmbu looked at him.

Jaden lowered his eyes to the cup.

“Don’t get used to it,” he said.

“Wasn’t planning to.”

They left the house after sunrise.

The road north was clear for three blocks, then a collapsed building forced them through a narrow lane. Wemmbu went first, checking the corners. Jaden stayed behind him, watching the windows.

At the end of the lane, an infected appeared on the roof of a parked car.

It moved too quickly.

Wemmbu fired once. The shot missed the head and struck the shoulder. The infected fell, then lurched upright.

Jaden crossed the distance before it could reach them. He brought the machete down hard.

The body went still.

Wemmbu stared at him.

“What?” Jaden said.

“You didn’t hesitate.”

“Neither did you.”

“I missed.”

“You still fired.”

Wemmbu looked at the dead infected. “Keep going.”

Jaden wiped the blade on the hem of his shirt.

This time, when they moved on, he walked beside Wemmbu instead of behind him.

They reached the supermarket just before midday.

It sat at the edge of a shopping strip, its sign missing three letters and its automatic doors stuck open. The car park was scattered with trolleys. A delivery truck had jack-knifed across the entrance, blocking one lane.

Jaden stopped behind a concrete planter.

“Could be picked clean,” Wemmbu said.

“Could be food.”

“Could be infected.”

“Could be all three.”

Wemmbu looked at the building. “We go in, we stay together.”

“You said that at the house.”

“You went upstairs alone.”

“You stayed downstairs.”

“I was checking the exits.”

“I was checking the rooms.”

“We were both checking things.”

“Exactly.”

Wemmbu’s mouth tightened. “This is why people travel alone.”

“Good. You can try it.”

He started towards the entrance.

Wemmbu caught his sleeve, then released it immediately.

Jaden looked down at the place where the hand had been.

“Stay close,” Wemmbu said.

The supermarket smelled of rot.

The power had been out long enough for the refrigerated goods to liquefy and dry. A dark tide of spoiled meat had spread across the floor near the deli counter. The aisles were mostly empty, but some shelves still held tins, jars and packets of food.

The quiet was worse than the smell.

Jaden moved down the left side of the store. Wemmbu took the right. They stayed within sight of each other, passing hand signals when the shelves blocked their voices.

Tinned fruit. Rice. Water. Matches.

Jaden filled his pack.

Wemmbu found a crate of canned soup and held up two tins.

Jaden shook his head.

One.

Wemmbu held up one finger.

Jaden nodded.

They moved deeper into the store.

The pharmacy had been stripped. The baby aisle was empty except for packets of nappies. Near the back, Jaden found a small stack of bottled water behind a fallen display. He crouched to pull two free.

A sound came from the far aisle.

A soft, wet cough.

Wemmbu raised his pistol.

Jaden stood.

The cough came again.

Then another answered from behind them.

They had not been alone.

Three infected stepped out from between the shelves. One wore a supermarket vest. Another had blood across the front of a white shirt. The third dragged one foot, its fingers opening and closing.

Wemmbu fired.

The first dropped.

The sound rolled through the store.

More movement answered from the back.

“Run,” Jaden said.

They sprinted towards the front entrance.

The infected came from both sides, appearing between aisles, knocking over displays. Jaden vaulted the counter at the self-checkouts. Wemmbu fired once, then swore as the pistol clicked empty.

“You’re out,” Jaden called.

“I know.”

They reached the produce section. A metal shutter had come down over the main exit, trapping them inside the store.

Jaden grabbed the handle and pulled.

It did not move.

Wemmbu ran past him, searching for another way out.

“Loading bay,” he called. “Back left.”

Jaden followed.

They crossed the warehouse doors together, but an infected crashed into the shelving between them. A stack of boxes fell. Jaden was thrown sideways into a narrow storage room.

The door slammed shut behind him.

He hit the floor hard.

For a moment he could not breathe.

Then the infected struck the other side of the door.

Jaden rolled onto his knees.

The storage room was barely large enough to stand in. Shelves crowded every wall. Boxes of cleaning products and paper goods were stacked to the ceiling. The only window was high and barred.

Another impact shook the door.

Jaden shoved a trolley against it.

The trolley bent.

He searched for something heavier. A crate of bottles. A steel mop bucket. A length of pipe.

The infected outside made a sound like a laugh.

Jaden’s hand closed around the pipe.

He looked at the door.

“Come on,” he whispered.

The door burst inward.

Jaden swung.

The pipe struck the infected’s temple with a dull crack. It stumbled, but another body pushed behind it. Jaden swung again, backing into the shelves.

There were too many.

The first infected reached for his neck. Jaden drove the pipe into its throat. The second climbed over it.

He could not get enough space to swing.

The shelves rattled. A bottle fell and broke beneath his boot.

Jaden kicked the nearest body away and reached for the door, but a hand caught his jacket.

The fabric tore.

He slammed his elbow backwards. The grip loosened. He shoved through the gap and found himself in the loading bay.

The infected followed.

A shot cracked.

The body nearest Jaden dropped.

Wemmbu stood at the far end of the bay, pistol raised. He had found another magazine.

“Move!” he shouted.

Jaden ran.

The loading bay was filled with pallets and abandoned trolleys. Infected poured through the warehouse entrance behind them. Wemmbu fired twice, then ducked behind a stack of boxes to reload.

Jaden reached the side door and pulled it open.

Wemmbu was still behind him.

He was surrounded.

“Wemmbu!”

The name came out before Jaden thought about it.

Wemmbu looked towards him.

One of the infected grabbed his jacket.

He shot it from less than a metre away, then turned towards the door.

“Go!” he yelled.

Jaden stepped outside.

The alley was clear.

He could have run.

He had the food. He had the map. He had a route north. The supermarket would not hold Wemmbu for long, but Jaden had no obligation to die beside someone he had known for less than two days.

He stood in the alley with one hand on the door.

Inside, gunfire stopped.

The silence that followed was worse.

Jaden swore and went back in.

He found Wemmbu near the pallets, pinned against a steel trolley by two infected. One was reaching for his face. The other had its teeth sunk into the shoulder of his jacket.

Jaden struck the first with the pipe.

The second turned.

Wemmbu drove his knee into its stomach and shoved it towards Jaden. Jaden hit it once, twice, three times, until it dropped.

“Run,” Wemmbu said.

“I am.”

They moved together.

The side door was still open. Wemmbu stumbled as they crossed the threshold. Jaden caught his elbow.

“Don’t touch me,” Wemmbu gasped.

“Terrible time.”

Wemmbu gave him a look that would have been offended if he had enough breath.

They made it into the alley.

Jaden dragged the door closed and wedged the pipe through the handles. The infected struck it from inside. The metal shuddered.

They ran until the supermarket was out of sight.

Behind an abandoned bakery, they stopped.

Wemmbu bent over, both hands braced on his knees. His face had gone pale. There was a shallow cut along his cheek and a tear in his jacket, but no blood beneath it.

Jaden checked anyway.

“Stop.”

“You could be bitten.”

“I’m not.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know.”

Jaden grabbed the torn jacket and pulled it aside.

Wemmbu caught his wrist.

The grip was strong.

Their faces were close enough that Jaden could see the tiny flecks of green in Wemmbu’s eyes.

For a second neither moved.

Then Wemmbu let go.

“I’m not bitten,” he said.

Jaden looked at the skin beneath the jacket. There was a bruise forming along Wemmbu’s ribs, but no teeth marks. He stepped back.

Wemmbu leaned against the bakery wall.

“You went back,” Jaden said.

Wemmbu looked away.

“You were out.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were surrounded.”

“So were you.”

“I got out.”

“Eventually.”

“You came back.”

Wemmbu wiped the blood from his cheek with the heel of his hand. “You had my food.”

Jaden stared at him.

“What?”

“That’s why you came back?”

“You had my food.”

“You had half a backpack.”

“Exactly.”

“That was your reason?”

“It was a good reason.”

“You could have left.”

“So could you.”

Jaden thought about the alley. The hand on the door. The silence after the gunfire.

He looked at Wemmbu.

“Why did you come back?” he asked again.

Wemmbu’s expression shifted, only slightly. The guarded calm slipped, revealing something exhausted beneath it.

“You had my food,” he said.

It was the same answer.

It was also a lie.

Jaden knew it.

Wemmbu knew he knew.

Neither of them said so.

They sat behind the bakery until the noise from the supermarket faded.

The food was divided between them. Wemmbu took two tins of soup, one bottle of water and a packet of crackers. Jaden kept the rice and the other water.

They ate the crackers without opening the soup.

Jaden found that he was still holding the pipe.

Wemmbu looked at it. “You planning to carry that all the way north?”

“Maybe.”

“It’s heavy.”

“So are you.”

Wemmbu glanced at him. “You volunteering to carry me?”

“No.”

“Then don’t complain.”

Jaden leaned his head back against the brick.

The sky above the bakery was a clear, hard blue. In the distance, smoke rose from somewhere beyond the shopping strip.

For the first time since they had left the office building, neither of them seemed in a hurry to move.

Jaden took out the map.

The red circle waited beyond the city.

Wemmbu looked at it without asking.

“The bridge is out,” he said.

“I know.”

“There’s an old rail line that runs north. It joins the quarry road after the river.”

“Can we use it?”

“On foot.”

“That’s the idea.”

“It’ll take longer.”

“Everything takes longer now.”

Wemmbu nodded.

Jaden folded the map and put it away.

“We go at first light,” he said.

“Why not now?”

“You’re hurt.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re limping.”

“I’m always limping.”

“You weren’t yesterday.”

Wemmbu looked down at his leg as if it belonged to someone else.

Jaden opened the water and held it out.

This time, Wemmbu took it.

He drank, then returned the bottle.

“First light,” he said.

Jaden nodded.

They sat in silence until the sun began to lower behind the buildings.

The city remained empty around them, a hollow shell full of locked doors and distant movement.

But when Jaden finally stood, Wemmbu stood too.

Neither said goodbye.

They had already stopped being strangers.

They reached the emergency shelter at noon the following day.

It had been built into the side of an old quarry, where the rail line curved through a stand of gums and disappeared behind a wall of pale stone. From a distance, there was nothing to distinguish it from a maintenance shed: corrugated roof, concrete frontage, two narrow vents high above the ground.

The door stood open.

Jaden saw it first.

He stopped between the tracks, one boot balanced on a sleeper, and felt the small, unreasonable hope he had carried from the city go still inside him.

Wemmbu came up beside him.

“That’s it?” he asked.

Jaden took the map from his jacket. The red circle covered the quarry road and half the surrounding bush. Someone had drawn an arrow towards a square marked NORTH ACCESS.

“That’s it.”

Wemmbu studied the open door. “Could still be occupied.”

“People usually close doors.”

“People usually do a lot of things.”

A strip of emergency tape fluttered from the frame. The words CIVIL DEFENCE had faded almost completely. Beside the entrance, a white noticeboard listed evacuation procedures beneath a crust of dirt.

Jaden folded the map.

“We should check.”

Wemmbu did not answer.

Jaden looked at him. “We came all this way.”

“That doesn’t mean we have to walk into it.”

“So we look from the outside?”

“We watch first.”

“For how long?”

“As long as it takes.”

They watched for twenty minutes.

Nothing entered. Nothing left. No smoke rose from the ventilation shafts. There were no voices, no generator hum, no movement except insects above the weeds.

Wemmbu went ahead with the pistol drawn. Jaden followed with the machete loose at his side.

Inside, the temperature dropped.

The shelter’s entrance tunnel bent sharply after ten metres, a design meant to protect the interior from blast or debris. Emergency lights lined the ceiling, but only one remained on. It flickered weakly, illuminating a trail of dried blood along the floor.

Jaden stopped.

Wemmbu crouched beside the stain without touching it.

“Old,” he said.

“How old?”

“I don’t know.”

“You said it like you knew.”

“I said it like I wanted it to be old.”

They continued.

The main chamber had once held sixty people. Jaden could tell from the rows of folding beds, the stacked water containers and the evacuation capacity printed on the wall.

Someone had tried to hold the shelter after the outbreak.

They had barricaded the inner door with tables. They had written names on pieces of tape above each bunk. They had rationed food, marked shifts on a roster and set up a play area in the corner with plastic blocks and colouring pencils.

Then something had got inside.

The barricade had been pulled apart from within. The beds were overturned. Dark stains covered the concrete floor. The emergency exit at the far end had been forced open, leaving scratches in the paint where hands had fought over the handle.

There were no bodies.

That was worse.

Wemmbu checked the adjoining rooms while Jaden stood in the centre of the chamber.

On the wall above the ration table, someone had written a message in red marker.

EVAC MOVED NORTH.

Below it, in different handwriting:

DON’T WAIT HERE.

Jaden read both lines twice.

Wemmbu returned from the storeroom with a single tin of peaches.

“That’s all?”

“There are empty boxes.”

“I can see that.”

“Thought you might need the explanation.”

Jaden looked at the rows of beds. He had imagined clean water. A radio. Other people. Perhaps a medic who would look at the cut on his palm and tell him it was healing properly.

He had known the shelter might not exist. He had known it might be empty.

Knowing had not made the emptiness easier.

Wemmbu set the tin on the ration table.

“We should go.”

“Where?”

Wemmbu glanced at him. “North.”

“That’s several hundred kilometres.”

“Yes.”

“The broadcast you heard could be months old.”

“Yes.”

“There might not be anything there.”

“I know.”

Jaden’s anger arrived quickly, because anger was better than what sat beneath it.

“You’ve got an answer for everything.”

“No. I’ve got the same answer.”

“Which is?”

Wemmbu looked towards the message on the wall.

“Keep going.”

The words irritated Jaden. They sounded too much like hope when spoken here.

He turned away.

At the entrance to the shelter, something moved outside.

Both of them went still.

A figure appeared at the end of the tunnel.

Then another.

The infected had followed them from the rail line.

Wemmbu raised the pistol. “Emergency exit?”

“Far wall.”

They ran.

The first infected reached the chamber as Jaden kicked the emergency door open. Daylight flooded the room. Beyond it lay a steep service path climbing around the quarry.

Jaden went through. Wemmbu fired behind him.

One shot.

Two.

Then silence.

Jaden turned.

Wemmbu backed through the door and pulled it shut. He jammed the handle with a section of metal shelving. The door shook immediately.

“How many rounds?” Jaden asked.

“Enough.”

“That’s not a number.”

“Six.”

“You had more yesterday.”

“I used some.”

“I noticed.”

They climbed the service path while the infected hammered at the door below.

At the top of the quarry, Jaden looked back.

The shelter entrance was hidden again. From up here, the bush seemed untouched, the pale stone bright beneath the sun. There was no sign that sixty people had once believed they would be safe beneath it.

Wemmbu opened the tin of peaches with a pocket knife.

“We may as well,” he said.

Jaden took one half with his fingers. Syrup ran down his wrist.

They ate beside the quarry, passing the tin between them.

When it was empty, Wemmbu drank the syrup.

Jaden pretended not to want any.

The military evacuation point became their destination because there was nowhere else to go.

Neither of them called it hope.

They followed the rail line north until it met the remains of an industrial road. The road led out of the city and into country that had not yet been completely hollowed out.

At first the change was subtle.

Buildings stood further apart. The concrete gave way to dry grass and wire fences. There were fewer abandoned cars, fewer bodies, fewer signs of the panic that had torn through the centre.

Then the city dropped behind them.

The sky widened.

Jaden had forgotten how much space it could hold.

For the next three days, they walked.

Jaden handled the map.

He knew how to estimate distance from landmarks, how to follow service roads when the main routes were blocked and how to keep the afternoon sun on the correct side of his body. When the road signs had been removed or painted over, he climbed embankments and searched for transmission towers, water tanks and the dark lines of distant tree belts.

Wemmbu handled the places between.

He knew which sheds were worth checking and which had probably been traps before the outbreak. He knew how to tell whether a house had been recently occupied by the ash in its fireplace. He found rainwater tanks behind farm buildings and tested their lids before allowing Jaden to drink. He spotted trip wires that Jaden missed.

They did not discuss the division of labour.

It simply happened.

In the mornings, Jaden woke first and checked the road. Wemmbu packed what remained of their food. At midday, they rested somewhere with shade. In the evenings, they found shelter before the light was gone.

Every few hours, one of them passed the water bottle to the other.

Neither asked anymore.

On the fourth day, Wemmbu stole Jaden’s map.

Jaden discovered the theft at a fork in the road.

“Give it back.”

Wemmbu unfolded it. “You’re going the wrong way.”

“I’m not.”

“The service road runs east.”

“It curves.”

“Eventually.”

“That’s how curves work.”

Wemmbu held the map beyond Jaden’s reach. “The highway is faster.”

“The highway is open.”

“That’s also how roads work.”

“Open means visible.”

“To who?”

“Everyone.”

Wemmbu looked along the empty highway. Grass had pushed through cracks in the asphalt. A sedan sat on the shoulder with all four doors open.

“Nobody’s there.”

“That’s not the same as nobody’s watching.”

“You’re paranoid.”

“You’re armed.”

“That’s because I’m paranoid.”

Jaden took the map from him. Wemmbu let go this time.

“We use the service road,” Jaden said.

“Fine.”

“You don’t agree.”

“No.”

“But you’re coming.”

“Apparently.”

The service road added half a day.

It also kept them out of sight when a convoy passed along the highway that evening.

There were three vehicles: two utes and a van with wire mesh over the windows. The people inside wore a mix of uniforms and ordinary clothes. One man stood in the back of the lead ute with a rifle across his chest.

Jaden and Wemmbu watched from the trees.

The convoy did not slow.

When the engine noise faded, Wemmbu looked at Jaden.

Jaden folded his arms.

“Don’t,” he said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to.”

“I was going to say the service road was a good idea.”

“No, you weren’t.”

“I was thinking it.”

“You were thinking something smug.”

“That too.”

Jaden shook his head and continued walking.

Behind him, Wemmbu laughed.

The sound carried through the trees.

It was the first time Jaden had heard it properly. Wemmbu’s laugh was quieter than his voice, roughened by disuse, as if it had surprised its way out of him.

Jaden found himself listening after it had stopped.

That night, they slept in a machinery shed.

Wemmbu took first watch. Jaden woke two hours later and found him sitting in the doorway, pistol across his knees, looking at the stars.

“You’re meant to wake me,” Jaden said.

“I was about to.”

“You said that yesterday.”

“Yesterday I was also about to.”

Jaden sat beside him.

The night was cold enough that their breath showed. Beyond the shed, paddocks rolled towards a line of black hills. No electric light disturbed the horizon.

“You ever see this many stars before?” Wemmbu asked.

“Yes.”

Wemmbu looked at him.

“No,” Jaden admitted.

They sat in silence.

After a while, Wemmbu’s shoulder touched his.

It could have been an accident. The doorway was narrow. The ground was uneven. Neither moved away.

Jaden watched the road until his eyes adjusted to the dark.

“Your turn,” Wemmbu said.

“You’re already awake.”

“So are you.”

“I just slept.”

“Then you’ll be excellent at it.”

Wemmbu stood and went inside.

Jaden looked over his shoulder. “You’ve taken my blanket.”

“Our blanket.”

“There’s no ‘our’ blanket.”

“There is now.”

“You said that about the water.”

“We both drink it.”

“You said it about the crackers.”

“We both ate them.”

“You see the problem?”

“No.”

Wemmbu lay down and pulled the blanket around his shoulders.

Jaden watched him settle.

The shed felt smaller than it had a moment ago.

He turned back to the road and smiled despite himself.

The next morning, Wemmbu made coffee from the last spoonful in their jar.

He handed the cup to Jaden.

“There’s only one.”

“I know.”

Jaden drank half and passed it back.

Wemmbu took it without argument.

Their routines became habits, and their habits became a kind of trust neither of them would have agreed to name.

When Jaden entered a building, he listened for Wemmbu behind him.

When Wemmbu crossed an open space, he glanced back to make sure Jaden had followed.

If one stopped, the other stopped.

If one woke, the other reached for a weapon.

If something moved in the distance, they looked first at the movement and then at each other.

They argued about routes, portions, weather, sleeping positions and whether socks could be dried by wearing them.

They did not argue about staying together.

That decision had stopped needing to be made.

They found the radio in a roadside pub.

The building stood alone beside a two-lane road, its faded sign promising cold beer, hot meals and accommodation. Someone had spray-painted ‘NO FUEL’ across the petrol pumps and ‘DEAD INSIDE’ across the front door.

“Helpful,” Jaden said.

Wemmbu looked through the window. “Could be honest.”

“Those are different things?”

“Sometimes.”

They entered through the kitchen.

The place had been searched before. Cupboards stood open, tables were overturned and every bottle behind the bar had been taken. A calendar hung beside the till, still turned to the month when the broadcasts had stopped.

There were no bodies.

There was, however, a radio.

It sat beneath the bar beside a nest of cables and an old eftpos machine. It was a heavy, rectangular model with a telescopic aerial and a battery compartment held shut with silver tape.

Wemmbu lifted it carefully.

“Does it work?” Jaden asked.

Wemmbu looked at him.

“Sorry,” Jaden said. “Is it going to work?”

“Better.”

They carried it to the dining room.

The batteries from the office building were the correct size. Jaden had protected them through rain, falls and the supermarket, although he had begun to think he had carried them for nothing.

Wemmbu fitted four into the radio.

Nothing happened.

Jaden leaned over his shoulder. “Does it-”

“Don’t.”

Wemmbu removed the batteries, cleaned the contacts with the edge of his shirt and put them back.

The radio clicked.

Static rushed into the room.

Both men froze.

It was only noise, but it was the first sound made by electricity they had heard in days. The hiss filled the empty pub, alive and continuous.

Wemmbu turned the dial.

Fragments of sound appeared and vanished.

A burst of music.

A high whistle.

A voice too distorted to understand.

Jaden pulled a chair closer.

“Go back.”

“I’m trying.”

“You passed it.”

“I know.”

“Then-”

“Do you want to do this?”

“No.”

“Then let me.”

The voice surfaced again.

“…repeat… northern… all travellers…”

Wemmbu stopped moving the dial.

The signal faded, returned, then strengthened.

A woman spoke through layers of static. Her voice was flat with exhaustion.

“This is Community Seven broadcasting on emergency frequencies. Our position is marked at the former Wattle Creek agricultural station, grid reference follows.”

Jaden reached for the map.

The woman read a set of coordinates twice.

He traced the numbers to a point roughly thirty kilometres northeast of the pub.

The broadcast continued.

“We have clean water, limited power and medical support. Travellers approaching the settlement must stop at the marked roadblock and wait for escort.”

A pause.

Then the woman’s voice sharpened.

“Do not approach alone. Community Seven does not accept everyone. You will be assessed before entry. Do not conceal bites, fever or contact with infected persons. Armed travellers must surrender weapons at the gate.”

The message ended.

Static filled the room.

Jaden looked at the map.

Wemmbu switched the radio off.

“Why did you do that?”

“We heard it.”

“They might say more.”

“It’s a loop.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I heard the first half before I met you.”

Jaden looked up. “This is the broadcast?”

“No. Different one.”

“But you’ve heard them before.”

“Once.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“That excuse is getting old.”

“It still works.”

Jaden studied the coordinates. The settlement was not directly north, but the detour would cost them only a day. Less, if the road remained clear.

“They have medical support,” he said.

“They say they have medical support.”

“And power.”

“They say that too.”

“It’s a real voice.”

“So was the last one.”

“The military evacuation?”

Wemmbu nodded.

Jaden folded the map around the new route.

“We should go.”

Wemmbu did not move.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“No. That’s the face you make when it’s something.”

“I have one face.”

“You have several. Most of them are irritating.”

Wemmbu sat on the edge of a table.

The pub windows had been covered with curtains. Thin stripes of light cut across the floor and touched the radio between them.

“What if it’s a trap?” he asked.

“Then we leave.”

“What if they take the gun?”

“You have a knife.”

“What if they don’t let us leave?”

“We don’t go inside until we know.”

“What if they separate us?”

Jaden paused.

Wemmbu looked away.

There it was. Not fear of the camp. Not really.

Fear of the word alone in the broadcast.

Jaden pulled out the chair opposite him and sat.

“We approach together,” he said. “If one of us doesn’t like it, we leave.”

Wemmbu’s gaze returned to him. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“What if I don’t like it and you do?”

“We leave.”

“That’s stupid.”

“You asked.”

“I didn’t ask you to agree.”

“What did you want?”

“I don’t know.”

Jaden waited.

Outside, wind moved through the long grass. A loose section of roofing tapped above the kitchen.

Wemmbu ran one thumb over a scratch in the table.

“Because if they’re lying,” he said, “we’ve got nowhere else to go.”

“The evacuation point.”

“You said yourself it could be gone.”

“It could.”

“And if the settlement is gone too?”

“We keep moving.”

“To where?”

Jaden did not have an answer.

The road north had become a line they followed because stopping felt too much like giving up. The shelter had been empty. The military signal was old. Every destination moved further away the closer they came.

“What happens when the road ends?” Wemmbu asked.

Jaden looked at the radio.

For weeks, he had believed the worst possibility was that there was nobody left. Now, sitting across from Wemmbu, he understood there was something worse.

There could be people left.

They could still have no place for them.

“We’ll find another road,” he said.

It was not a good answer.

Wemmbu nodded anyway.

They spent the night in the pub’s upstairs rooms.

There were six beds and no reason to share one room, so they chose the one at the end of the corridor and dragged a cupboard in front of the door.

Jaden lay on the mattress nearest the window.

Wemmbu slept on the floor between him and the entrance.

“There are other beds,” Jaden said into the dark.

“I know.”

“You could use one.”

“So could you.”

“I am.”

“Then we’re both happy.”

“You’re on the floor.”

“I prefer it.”

“You complained about the floor at the house.”

“I’ve grown.”

“In four days?”

“Difficult times.”

Jaden rolled onto his side. In the faint light, he could make out Wemmbu’s shape beneath the blanket.

“You’re worried about the camp,” he said.

“No.”

“Liar.”

“I’m worried about you getting us lost tomorrow.”

“I’ve never got us lost.”

“You added half a day.”

“We avoided armed strangers.”

“We’re walking towards different armed strangers.”

“We don’t know they’re armed.”

“They have a settlement. They’re armed.”

Jaden closed his eyes.

After a moment, Wemmbu said, “If it’s real…”

“What?”

“If they have beds. Food. A wall.”

Jaden waited.

“We don’t have to stay,” Wemmbu said.

Jaden opened his eyes again.

“No,” he said. “We don’t.”

Wemmbu’s breathing eased.

It was a strange promise: that safety would not be allowed to separate them.

Jaden lay awake long after Wemmbu had fallen silent.

In the morning, they took the radio.

It was heavy, awkward and consumed batteries they could not replace.

Neither suggested leaving it behind.

The first sign of the settlement was music.

It drifted across the fields in broken pieces, disappearing whenever the wind changed. Jaden thought at first it came from the radio in Wemmbu’s pack, but the set was switched off.

He stopped on the road.

Wemmbu stopped beside him.

A guitar played somewhere beyond the trees.

The melody was clumsy. Whoever held the instrument missed every fourth chord and started again whenever they made a mistake.

Jaden had never heard anything so beautiful.

The second sign was smoke.

Not the black, greasy column of a building fire. This smoke was pale and controlled, rising from cook fires behind a line of corrugated fencing.

The third sign was a roadblock.

Two tractors had been parked across the entrance to the agricultural station. Rolls of wire filled the gaps beneath them. A hand-painted sign read ‘STOP HERE. WAIT TO BE SEEN’.

Jaden and Wemmbu stopped.

A voice called from behind the barricade.

“Hands where we can see them.”

Jaden raised his hands.

Beside him, Wemmbu did the same.

Four people emerged.

They wore ordinary clothes beneath protective layers: motorcycle jackets, leather gloves, clear safety goggles. Two carried rifles. One held a long pole with a loop of rope fixed to its end.

The oldest of them, a woman with grey hair plaited down her back, approached the wire.

“Names?”

“Jaden,” Jaden said.

There was a pause.

“Wemmbu.”

The woman looked between them. “Related?”

“No,” they said together.

Her eyes narrowed slightly.

“Travelling together?”

“Yes,” Jaden said.

Wemmbu glanced at him.

The woman pointed at the pistol. “Put it on the road. Kick it towards me.”

Wemmbu did not move.

Jaden looked at him.

Their agreement had been simple. If one of them did not like it, they would leave.

Wemmbu’s jaw tightened.

Slowly, he took the pistol from his waistband, set it on the asphalt and pushed it forward with his boot.

The woman picked it up.

“Any other weapons?”

They surrendered the machete, two knives and the length of pipe Jaden had refused to abandon.

The woman seemed most suspicious of the pipe.

“Sentimental?” she asked.

“It’s reliable.”

“So’s a brick.”

“Harder to carry.”

One of the guards snorted.

The woman did not smile.

They were searched separately but within sight of each other. A young man in a face shield checked Jaden’s arms, neck, ankles and torso for bites. Across the road, the grey-haired woman did the same to Wemmbu.

When she lifted Wemmbu’s shirt, Jaden saw the bruise from the supermarket had spread across his ribs.

“Old injury?” the woman asked.

“Two days.”

“How?”

“Loading bay.”

“Bite?”

“No.”

Jaden said, “I checked.”

Everyone looked at him.

The woman lowered Wemmbu’s shirt. “Did you?”

“Yes.”

Wemmbu looked as if he wanted to disappear into the road.

They were asked about fever, coughing, headaches, blood exposure and recent contact with infected people. Jaden answered honestly except for the number they had fought. He suspected Wemmbu made the same adjustment.

At last, the woman stepped back.

“You’ll stay in quarantine until morning.”

“We’re not bitten,” Wemmbu said.

“So everyone tells us.”

“You said the camp accepted travellers.”

“I said we assess them.” She handed the pistol to one of the guards. “You want inside, those are the rules.”

Wemmbu looked at Jaden.

It was the question without words.

Jaden studied the barricade.

Beyond it, he could see vegetable beds planted between old sheds. Washing hung from a line. A little girl chased a boy around a water tank while an adult shouted at them to slow down.

Nobody was screaming.

Nobody was running.

The guitar started again.

Jaden nodded once.

“We stay,” he said.

The quarantine building had once been used for shearing demonstrations. It was clean, dry and divided into wire pens. There were blankets on camp beds and a bucket with a lid in the corner.

Wemmbu stood inside their pen with both hands on his hips.

“Luxury,” he said.

“There are beds.”

“Plural.”

“And walls.”

“Mostly wire.”

“You’re impossible.”

“We could still leave.”

Jaden sat on one of the beds. The mattress sagged beneath him.

“Do you want to?”

Wemmbu looked through the wire towards the main camp.

A group of people carried a pot between the cookhouse and a row of tables. Steam rose from beneath the lid.

“No,” he admitted.

A woman named Emma brought them dinner.

She wore a yellow raincoat despite the clear sky and kept her hair tied beneath a scarf. She set two bowls on the floor outside the pen and pushed them through the gap.

“Stew,” she said. “Mostly potato.”

Jaden stared.

There were carrots in it. Onions. Pieces of meat.

“Where did you get this?” he asked.

“Garden. Sheep. Kitchen.”

“All of it?”

Emma smiled. “That’s generally how stew works.”

Wemmbu sat cross-legged beside his bowl. “Is it safe?”

“Probably.”

He looked at her.

“I’m joking,” she said. “If we wanted to kill you, we’d have done it at the roadblock.”

“That’s comforting.”

“You get used to him?” Emma asked Jaden.

“No.”

“Yes,” Wemmbu said at the same time.

Emma laughed and walked away.

Jaden took the first mouthful.

The taste hurt.

It was not extraordinary food. The meat was tough, the potato unevenly cooked and the stew needed salt. But it was hot, and someone had prepared it for more people than themselves.

Jaden lowered the spoon.

Wemmbu watched him.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re doing the face.”

“What face?”

“The one where something’s wrong and you don’t want to say.”

“I have one face.”

“That’s my line.”

“It’s a bad line.”

Wemmbu took another spoonful. “You’re not eating.”

Jaden looked into the bowl.

“My mum used to make stew.”

The words came out quietly.

Wemmbu’s spoon stopped.

Jaden waited for a question.

None came.

Instead, Wemmbu nudged his own bowl across the floor until it touched Jaden’s shoe.

“What are you doing?”

“Giving you the carrots.”

“You don’t like carrots?”

“I hate them.”

“You ate two.”

“I was confirming.”

Jaden looked at the pieces of carrot floating in Wemmbu’s bowl.

He transferred them to his own.

“Thanks.”

Wemmbu shrugged.

They ate everything.

Afterwards, Emma brought bread.

Jaden laughed when he saw it.

Not because anything was funny. The bread was dense and slightly burnt on one side, but it was fresh. He held it in both hands and laughed until the sound caught in his throat.

Wemmbu looked down at his own piece.

Then he tore it in half and gave the larger part to Jaden.

“Don’t,” Jaden said.

“I’m full.”

“Liar.”

“Eat it.”

Jaden did.

Quarantine ended at sunrise.

A man returned their weapons but kept Wemmbu’s pistol magazine.

“Camp rule,” he said. “You can carry it unloaded. Ammunition stays in the armoury.”

Wemmbu checked the chamber. “You took all of it.”

“That’s what unloaded means.”

“What if the fence fails?”

“Then you report to your assigned position and we issue ammunition.”

“I don’t have an assigned position.”

“You will.”

He introduced himself as Parrot.

Community Seven had forty-three people, though the number changed often. Some travellers stayed. Others took supplies and continued north. A few were turned away.

The agricultural station had a diesel generator, two rainwater tanks, a bore, a kitchen, a workshop and a radio mast. Solar panels on the administration roof provided enough power for lights in the infirmary and the communications room.

For the first hour, Jaden waited for something to be wrong.

By the second, he was helping repair a section of fence.

By midday, Wemmbu had been recruited to inventory the storeroom.

“They’ve got six hundred tins,” he told Jaden when they met at the cookhouse.

“Of what?”

“Mostly beetroot.”

“That’s not food.”

“Tell them. They’re serving it tonight.”

Jaden accepted a cup of weak tea from Emma. “You counted all of it?”

“I counted four shelves. Then they made me start again because someone took a tin.”

“Did you take it?”

“No.”

“Were you going to?”

Wemmbu looked offended. “It’s beetroot.”

They ate lunch at a wooden table beneath a tarpaulin.

Around them, the camp moved with the noise of ordinary life. Someone argued over a tool. A baby cried. The children from the roadblock played a game involving chalk circles and increasingly complicated rules.

Jaden watched a man repair a shoe with fishing line.

“I forgot,” he said.

“What?”

“What people sound like.”

Wemmbu looked around.

“Loud,” he said.

“That’s what you noticed?”

“It’s difficult not to.”

A woman at the next table laughed hard enough to snort. Her companion laughed at the snort. Soon both were bent over the table, unable to speak.

Wemmbu glanced at Jaden.

Jaden glanced back.

For no reason either could explain, they began laughing too.

It was quiet at first, restrained by habit. Then Wemmbu tried to stop and made a strangled sound, which set Jaden off again. Emma approached with a bowl of beetroot and found them both shaking.

“What happened?” she asked.

Wemmbu pointed at the bowl.

Emma put it down in front of him. “Eat your vegetables.”

That made it worse.

For a few minutes, the outbreak disappeared.

There was only sun through the tarpaulin, the scrape of plates and Wemmbu’s shoulder pressed against Jaden’s because neither of them had enough breath to sit upright.

Jaden carried that feeling for the rest of the day.

It frightened him more than the empty shelter had.

That evening, the camp powered the lights.

Only for two hours. Diesel was precious, and the generator needed repair. But when the bulbs came on above the cookhouse, people cheered.

Someone brought out the guitar.

The player was a boy of about sixteen named Kalal. He was as bad in person as he had sounded across the fields, but everyone sang with him anyway.

Jaden did not know the first song.

He knew the second.

Wemmbu knew none of them.

“You’re not singing,” Jaden said.

“I’m helping by not singing.”

“Coward.”

“I’ve fought infected with fewer survival instincts than you.”

“You don’t know the words.”

“I know words.”

“Not those ones.”

Wemmbu leaned closer so he could be heard above the music. “You’re enjoying this too much.”

“And you’re not enjoying it enough.”

“I’m here.”

“That’s not the same.”

Wemmbu looked at him.

The camp lights softened the sharp angles of his face. The bruise beneath his cheek had faded to yellow. He had washed at the water tank and pushed his wet hair away from his eyes.

Jaden became abruptly aware of how close they were sitting.

Their knees touched beneath the table.

Neither moved.

Kalal missed a chord. The crowd groaned good-naturedly.

Wemmbu looked towards the music.

“I’m trying,” he said.

The words were nearly lost beneath the singing.

Jaden heard them anyway.

He reached beneath the table and rested his hand, briefly, over Wemmbu’s wrist.

The contact lasted no more than a second.

Wemmbu went still.

Jaden withdrew his hand and picked up his cup.

Neither mentioned it.

Later, they were assigned beds in one of the accommodation huts.

There were eight bunks in the room and six other people. Wemmbu chose the upper bunk above Jaden without asking.

“Thought you preferred the floor,” Jaden said.

“I’ve changed.”

“In a week?”

“Difficult times.”

Jaden smiled into the blanket.

The mattress was soft enough to feel unnatural. The room smelled of soap, damp clothes and other people’s breath. Someone snored in the far corner.

Jaden expected to lie awake.

Instead, his body understood before his mind did that somebody else was keeping watch.

He slept.

When he woke, the hut was dark.

A weight rested against his shoulder.

At some point, he had left his bed and sat on the floor beside the wall. Wemmbu sat beside him, their backs against the lower bunk. Jaden could not remember getting there.

“You were dreaming,” Wemmbu said quietly.

Jaden lifted his head. He had fallen asleep against Wemmbu’s shoulder.

“What happened?”

“You got up.”

“Why?”

“You thought you heard something.”

Jaden listened.

The camp was quiet. Beyond the hut, a guard walked past on the gravel.

“I didn’t.”

“No.”

Jaden should have moved back to the bed.

He did not.

Wemmbu’s shoulder was warm beneath his cheek. The blanket covered both their legs. Their hands rested on the floor between them, close but not touching.

“You can sleep,” Wemmbu said.

“So can you.”

“I’m awake.”

“That’s not what I said.”

Wemmbu turned his head.

Jaden felt the movement before he saw it.

Their faces were close in the dark.

For a suspended second, neither of them breathed.

Wemmbu’s gaze dropped to Jaden’s mouth.

Jaden felt something inside him lean forward.

A shout came from outside.

“Gate!”

Wemmbu was on his feet before the second call.

Jaden followed.

The moment vanished so completely that he might have imagined it.

At the gate, guards surrounded two new arrivals. A man and a teenage girl stood with their hands raised. The man had blood on his shirt. The girl was crying.

“It’s not ours,” the man kept saying. “The blood isn’t ours.”

Parrot ordered them into quarantine.

People gathered at the edges of the light to watch.

The man looked over the camp with desperate relief. “We heard the radio.”

“You’re safe for tonight,” Parrot said.

The girl began to sob harder.

Jaden felt Wemmbu beside him.

Without looking, their arms touched.

This time, neither stepped away.

The next day felt almost normal.

Jaden repaired gutters with a man named Spongs. Wemmbu helped Emma reorganise the food stores. At lunch they were given eggs. Real eggs, fried in a black pan, the yolks still soft.

Jaden ate his too quickly.

Wemmbu gave him half of his.

“You need it,” Jaden said.

“So do you.”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t like eggs.”

“You’re lying again.”

“I lie a lot.”

“Badly.”

Wemmbu smiled.

Jaden had seen him smile before, but never like this. There was no threat beneath it, no deflection, no careful distance.

For a moment, Wemmbu looked like someone who expected to be alive tomorrow.

Jaden wanted to remember that face.

The thought unsettled him.

He looked down at his plate.

“What?” Wemmbu asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’re doing the face.”

“I have one face.”

“You’re stealing my lines again.”

“They’re improving with use.”

Wemmbu laughed.

Jaden looked up despite himself.

Across the yard, the teenage girl from the gate stood outside quarantine. A camp medic checked her temperature while Parrot spoke to the girl’s father.

The girl’s skin looked pale beneath the sun.

Jaden watched her shiver.

“Something’s wrong,” he said.

Wemmbu followed his gaze.

The medic drew Parrot aside.

The girl sat down hard on the ground.

An alarm bell began to ring.

The camp changed in less than a minute.

Children were pulled towards the accommodation huts. The generator cut out. The gates were closed and barred. Guards moved between buildings with rifles raised.

Parrot crossed the yard at a run.

“Everyone inside!”

The girl’s father stepped between her and the medic.

“She’s tired,” he said. “That’s all.”

The girl bent forward and vomited onto the gravel.

The smell reached Jaden from twenty metres away.

Blood.

Wemmbu grabbed his arm.

“We need our weapons.”

The armoury was inside the administration building. So was the radio room, the generator controls and half the camp’s ammunition.

They reached the door with six others.

It was locked.

“Open it!” Spongs shouted.

Someone pounded from the inside.

A voice answered through the door. “Parrot’s orders.”

“We’ve got an infected person in the yard.”

“We know.”

“Then open the bloody door.”

The answer did not come.

Wemmbu looked at the windows. Metal screens had been fitted over them.

“Back entrance,” he said.

They ran around the building.

The first scream came from quarantine.

The teenage girl had collapsed. Her father knelt beside her, holding her shoulders.

She stopped moving.

For a moment, nobody approached.

Then her eyes opened.

Her father leaned closer.

The girl lunged at his throat.

The sound he made was short and shocked.

The medic swung the looped pole towards her, but the girl moved too quickly. She tore free and struck him. The two of them fell behind the wire fence.

Parrot fired once.

The girl dropped.

Her father did not.

He pressed both hands to his neck. Blood ran between his fingers.

“Help me,” he said.

Nobody moved.

Parrot raised the rifle again.

The camp watched.

The shot echoed off the sheds.

Jaden had seen people die before. He had seen them turn, seen strangers killed in streets and doorways and fields.

This felt different.

This happened beneath electric lights.

This happened beside a cookhouse where they had laughed over beetroot.

Wemmbu pulled him towards the administration building.

“Keep going.”

They reached the back door.

Locked.

Wemmbu kicked it once, then threw his shoulder against it.

The door held.

Inside, someone shouted.

Jaden heard a word that turned his blood cold.

“Bitten!”

The outbreak had not begun at the gate.

It had already been inside.

A window shattered above them. A woman fell through the opening, struck the ground and rolled onto her back. Blood covered the front of her shirt.

Emma appeared at the window.

“Don’t touch her!” she screamed.

The woman on the ground convulsed.

Jaden backed away.

Emma climbed through the broken window. “Wifies was bitten three days ago. Parrot hid him in the infirmary. He said it was a cut.”

Wemmbu stared at her. “Three days?”

“He thought he’d be different.”

“Different how?”

“I don’t know.”

A crash came from the front of the building.

Glass broke. Gunfire followed.

The woman on the ground sat up.

Wemmbu drew his empty pistol by instinct, then swore.

Jaden did not have the machete.

The pipe was in the armoury.

Emma held out a hatchet.

Jaden took it.

The woman rose.

He swung once.

When it was over, Emma stood with both hands over her mouth.

“Wifies worked the radio,” she said through her fingers. “He spoke to every traveller who came in. He served dinner. He-”

Another alarm began to ring.

Not the hand bell at the gate. This was mechanical, connected to the perimeter fence.

Something had breached the eastern side.

The infected outside had heard the gunshots.

Wemmbu took the hatchet from Jaden and pointed towards the vehicle sheds.

“We need to leave.”

“What about the others?” Jaden asked.

“We can’t help them without weapons.”

“Our packs are in the hut.”

“So are fifty infected in ten minutes.”

“The map’s there.”

Wemmbu looked at him. “Leave it.”

“No.”

“Jaden.”

“The radio.”

“Leave it.”

“No.”

Emma grabbed Wemmbu’s sleeve. “There’s a drainage culvert beneath the south fence. We use it for runoff.”

“Where?”

“Behind the accommodation huts.”

Jaden was already running.

The yard had become a knot of people.

Some rushed towards the armoury. Others pushed for the gate. Children cried from inside the cookhouse. Gunshots came from the administration building, irregular and wild.

The quarantine fence fell.

Two infected reached the yard.

Spongs struck one with a shovel. The other went through the open door of the nearest hut.

Jaden and Wemmbu crossed behind it.

Their accommodation hut stood at the far end of the row.

The door was open.

Inside, the room was empty.

Jaden grabbed both packs from beneath the bunk. Wemmbu tore the blanket from the mattress and wrapped it around the radio.

“Thought you said leave it,” Jaden said.

“You weren’t going to.”

A body struck the outside wall.

They turned.

An infected man stumbled through the doorway.

Jaden threw one pack at him.

The man fell backwards.

Wemmbu drove the hatchet down.

“Move.”

They ran for the south fence.

Emmaled five other people between the huts, Spongs, the two children from the water tank, an older man Jaden did not recognise and Kalal, still clutching the guitar by its neck.

“Put that down,” Spongs told him.

Kalal shook his head.

A second section of fence collapsed.

Infected poured through.

The camp guards fired from behind the tractors, but the noise drew more shapes out of the fields. They came from the road, the sheds, the tree line.

Too many.

Emma reached the culvert first. It was a narrow concrete channel beneath the fence, half-filled with mud and rainwater.

“Children first.”

The little girl crawled inside.

Her brother followed.

The older man dropped to his knees behind them.

Spongs stood guard with the shovel. Kalal raised the guitar like a club.

Jaden looked back towards the cookhouse.

People were still inside.

“We can’t leave them.”

“We can’t reach them,” Wemmbu said.

A window shattered. Someone climbed through and fell. Three infected turned towards the movement.

Jaden took one step back.

Wemmbu caught him around the waist.

“Jaden.”

“They’re trapped.”

“So are we if you go back.”

“We have to-”

“No.”

Wemmbu’s grip tightened as an infected crossed the yard towards them.

“Get in the culvert.”

Jaden looked at him.

“Now.”

Jaden dropped to his knees and crawled.

The channel scraped his palms. Mud soaked through his trousers. Ahead, the older man struggled where the concrete narrowed.

Behind Jaden, Wemmbu shouted.

A gun fired.

Jaden twisted around, but the culvert was too tight to turn.

“Wemmbu!”

No answer.

Jaden clawed forward.

The older man cleared the channel. Jaden emerged beneath the outer fence and rolled onto wet grass.

The children stood beside Emma. Spongs came through next.

Kalal followed without the guitar.

Wemmbu did not appear.

Jaden dropped beside the culvert.

“Wemmbu!”

A hand reached out.

Jaden grabbed it and pulled.

Wemmbu came through hard, striking one shoulder against the concrete. His face was grey. Blood covered the side of his jacket.

Jaden dragged him clear.

“Are you bitten?”

“No.”

“Where are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“Not mine.”

The infected reached the culvert behind him.

Spongs shoved the blade of the shovel through the opening, blocking it long enough for them to run.

They crossed the southern paddock.

The camp burned behind them.

Someone had set fire to the fuel store, either by accident or to slow the infected. Flames climbed above the sheds. The smoke swallowed the radio mast.

The children cried as they ran. Emma held one by each hand. Spongs stayed at the rear with the shovel.

Jaden kept beside Wemmbu.

Wemmbu’s pace began to slow.

“You’re limping,” Jaden said.

“Always am.”

“This is worse.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“So you keep saying.”

They reached a dry creek bed and followed it into a stand of trees. The ground dropped sharply. Emma led them towards an old pump house hidden beneath the slope.

The building was concrete, windowless and barely large enough for eight people.

They pushed inside.

Spongs barred the door with the shovel.

For several minutes, nobody spoke.

They listened to the distant gunfire.

It weakened.

Stopped.

The children huddled against Emma. Kalal sat on the floor with his hands empty, staring at the place where the guitar had been.

The older man began to pray.

Jaden turned to Wemmbu.

Blood had spread along the side of his shirt.

“Take off the jacket.”

“I said it’s not mine.”

“Then prove it.”

Wemmbu pulled at the zip and flinched.

Jaden saw it.

“Now.”

The injury was not a bite.

A deep cut ran along Wemmbu’s side below the ribs. A piece of torn metal had sliced through his shirt. The wound was long, red and dirty with mud from the culvert.

Jaden’s hands began to shake.

Emma came over.

“I have a first-aid kit.”

“Why didn’t you say?”

“You didn’t ask.”

Jaden stared at her.

She seemed to realise it was the wrong answer.

The kit contained gauze, antiseptic, tape and a curved needle in a sealed packet. No antibiotics. No painkillers stronger than paracetamol.

Emma cleaned the wound while Jaden held a torch.

Wemmbu bit down on a folded strip of blanket and made no sound.

Jaden watched the muscles in his stomach tighten each time the gauze touched torn skin.

“Hold the light still,” Emma said.

“I am.”

“You’re shaking.”

“I’m not.”

Wemmbu opened his eyes.

Jaden held his gaze.

There was pain there, but also something steadier. A silent instruction.

Keep going.

Jaden forced his hand to stop trembling.

Emma closed the wound with six rough stitches.

When she finished, Wemmbu sagged against the wall.

“He needs rest,” she said.

“We all do,” Spongs replied.

They waited until dark.

Nobody from the camp came after them.

At midnight, Spongs decided to return.

“There could be survivors,” he said.

Emma looked towards the sleeping children. “There could be infected.”

“There are supplies.”

“That’s why you’re going?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It’s what you meant.”

Spongs’ face hardened. “We’ve got two children and no food.”

Jaden looked at the packs. One contained the tins and water from the road. The other held the radio, the blanket and the map.

“We can share,” he said.

“For how long?” Spongs asked.

Wemmbu stirred beside the wall.

“We’re going north,” Jaden continued. “There was a military evacuation broadcast.”

“How old?”

“We don’t know.”

Spongs gave a tired, humourless laugh. “Then you’ve got less than we do.”

He left before dawn.

Emma and the others followed two hours later, heading east towards a farm she knew. She asked Jaden and Wemmbu to come.

“There are people there,” she said. “Good people.”

“You don’t know that they’re still alive,” Wemmbu replied.

“No. But I know they were.”

Jaden looked at the children.

The little girl held Emma’s hand. Her brother carried a water bottle against his chest.

For a moment, Jaden imagined following them. A farmhouse. A fence. Perhaps animals, beds and another table beneath another roof.

Then he remembered the camp lights turning on.

He remembered the alarm.

“We’re going north,” he said.

Emma nodded as if she had expected the answer.

She gave them the first-aid kit and half the remaining water.

Kalal left the yellow scarf he had recovered from the camp around Wemmbu’s shoulders.

“For warmth,” he said.

Wemmbu touched the fabric awkwardly. “Thanks.”

The group disappeared between the trees.

Jaden and Wemmbu were alone again.

The pump house seemed larger without the others. Cold morning light came through a vent near the ceiling.

Wemmbu tried to stand.

His knees failed.

Jaden caught him.

“I’m fine,” Wemmbu said against his shoulder.

“Say that again and I’ll leave you here.”

“No, you won’t.”

The certainty in his voice stopped Jaden.

Wemmbu lifted his head.

They were too close again.

Not like the hut. There was no warm light, no music, no safety to mistake for courage. Wemmbu’s face was pale. Sweat stood along his hairline. The hand gripping Jaden’s jacket had almost no strength in it.

But his certainty remained.

No, you won’t.

Jaden helped him back to the floor.

“You’re right,” he said.

Wemmbu leaned his head against the wall. “I know.”

For the rest of the day, Jaden took care of him.

He changed the dressing when blood came through. He made Wemmbu drink in small amounts. He crushed paracetamol between two spoons and mixed it with water when Wemmbu could no longer swallow the tablets.

He checked the wound every hour for redness.

He checked Wemmbu’s temperature with the back of his hand.

He counted each breath.

Wemmbu complained until he was too tired to speak.

By evening, fever had set in.

“Not a bite,” Wemmbu murmured.

“I know.”

“You checked.”

“I know.”

“Twice.”

“More than twice.”

“Paranoid.”

“You’re armed.”

“Not anymore.”

Jaden found the empty pistol in the pack and set it beside him. “There.”

“Better.”

Wemmbu’s eyes closed.

Jaden sat with his back against the wall, Wemmbu’s head resting in his lap because it was the only position that did not pull at the stitches.

Outside, rain began.

It struck the roof in a soft, continuous rush.

Jaden had lost people before.

His mother had become ill in the first week, before anyone understood what the fever meant. His flatmate had gone out for medicine and returned with blood on his collar. A woman named Claire had shared a hiding place with him for six days, then disappeared while he slept, leaving half her food behind.

Each loss had taken something.

Jaden had survived by refusing to examine what remained.

He had thought Wemmbu was different because Wemmbu was temporary.

Until the shelter.

Until the next road.

Until the military point.

Temporary things could not be lost. They could only end.

Wemmbu shifted in his sleep and reached blindly for him.

Jaden took his hand.

The fingers closed around his.

Not tightly. Barely enough to feel.

Something inside Jaden broke open.

The truth arrived without warning and with none of the warmth it deserved.

He loved him.

Not someday. Not when they reached safety. Not if the road gave them time to become people who could admit it.

Now.

Here, in a concrete pump house that smelled of blood and wet earth, with the camp burning somewhere beyond the rain and Wemmbu feverish in his lap.

Jaden loved the man who stole blankets and lied about carrots. The man who came back for him in the supermarket and pretended it was about food. The man who watched the exits, checked the road and woke whenever Jaden dreamed.

He loved him.

Terror followed immediately.

Everyone Jaden loved died.

His chest tightened until he could not draw a full breath.

Wemmbu stirred.

“Jaden?”

“I’m here.”

“Thought you left.”

“No.”

The word came out too quickly.

Wemmbu opened his eyes. Fever made them unfocused.

“Don’t,” he whispered.

“Don’t what?”

“Go.”

Jaden looked down at their joined hands.

“I won’t.”

“Promise?”

Promises belonged to the old world. They belonged to train times, dinner plans and calls made later. They belonged to people who believed wanting something had any effect on whether it survived.

Jaden tightened his grip.

“I promise.”

Wemmbu’s eyes closed again.

Within minutes, his breathing deepened.

Jaden remained awake.

He watched the rain crawl down the concrete wall. He listened for movement outside. He counted the seconds between Wemmbu’s breaths and tried not to imagine what silence would mean.

The fever broke shortly before dawn.

Wemmbu woke drenched in sweat and confused.

He looked at Jaden’s hand around his.

“You’re holding me.”

“You were cold.”

“I’m not.”

“You were shaking.”

“I wasn’t.”

Jaden almost laughed.

Instead, he helped Wemmbu sit and held the water bottle to his mouth.

Wemmbu drank.

When he finished, he remained leaning against Jaden’s chest.

Neither mentioned it.

Beyond the pump house, the rain had stopped.

Morning spread slowly through the trees.

The camp was gone. Most of their supplies were gone. The settlement, the beds, the lights and the brief promise of safety had lasted two days.

Jaden should have felt as empty as he had at the shelter.

He did not.

Wemmbu was alive.

For the moment, that was enough.

Jaden looked towards the closed door.

“When you can walk, we keep going.”

Wemmbu’s eyes remained shut.

“North?” he asked.

“North.”

“Even if there’s nothing there?”

Jaden looked down at him.

“Even then.”

Wemmbu nodded.

His hand found Jaden’s again beneath the blanket.

This time, neither of them pretended it was an accident.

Wemmbu could walk by the third morning.

He could not walk quickly, and he could not bend without swearing, but he could stand without leaning against a wall. Jaden considered that sufficient.

“It’s not,” Wemmbu said.

Jaden tightened the dressing beneath his shirt. “You’re alive.”

“That’s a low standard.”

“It’s the one we’ve got.”

They left the pump house before sunrise.

The first hour was slow. Wemmbu kept one hand pressed to his side. Jaden carried the radio, though the weight of it pulled at his shoulder. They had enough food for four days if they ate carefully. The military evacuation point was still several hundred kilometres north-east, beyond the ranges and the dry farming country.

The route on the map passed through a town called Bellweather.

The town’s hospital stood beside the old highway, a three-storey building of brick and glass with a helipad on the roof. Jaden had marked it before the outbreak because hospitals were useful places to find antibiotics, clean bandages and information.

Wemmbu had marked it because hospitals were places where people went when they were sick.

“You know,” he said as they approached the first houses, “most people would go around.”

“Most people don’t have an infected wound.”

“It isn’t infected.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know.”

“You’re not a doctor.”

“Neither are you.”

“I’m not the one arguing against antibiotics.”

“I’m arguing against the building.”

Jaden glanced at him.

Wemmbu walked with his shoulders hunched against the pain. The yellow scarf Kalal had given him was tied around his neck. The colour looked absurd against the dust and grey road.

“Hospital,” Jaden said.

Wemmbu nodded once.

The town had been evacuated in layers.

Cars blocked the main street, but most had been pushed to the verges. Shop windows were broken. A line of black scorch marks ran along the footpath, where someone had burned rubbish in a hurry.

There were no infected in the open.

That did not make the town safe.

Jaden led them through an alley behind a bakery. The bakery’s back door stood open. Flour covered the floor in white drifts. A child’s drawing had been stuck to the wall above the sink. It showed a family standing around a birthday cake.

Wemmbu stopped.

Jaden watched him look at the picture.

“Keep going,” Jaden said.

Wemmbu’s mouth tightened.

The words had become practical again, something that could be used to move the body when the mind wanted to stop.

They crossed the car park behind the hospital.

A military truck had been abandoned near the emergency entrance. Its doors were open. Medical boxes lay scattered in the back, most empty.

The hospital doors were sealed with chains.

Wemmbu examined the lock.

“Can you open it?”

“I can make it worse.”

“That’s not the same.”

“Usually is.”

Jaden found a side entrance beneath the ambulance bay. The door had been forced open from inside. A trail of brown handprints marked the frame.

They entered.

The hospital smelled of disinfectant, mould and old blood.

The reception area was dark except for a strip of daylight beneath the automatic doors. Chairs had been overturned. A television mounted above the desk displayed a frozen emergency announcement:

REMAIN CALM. AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.

Someone had thrown a brick through the screen.

Jaden moved towards the pharmacy.

Wemmbu caught his sleeve.

Jaden looked down at the hand.

“Sorry,” Wemmbu said, and let go.

“There’s something?”

“Listen.”

The hospital was not silent.

A faint, repetitive clicking came from somewhere above them.

Not infected.

The sound of a turn signal.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

A car alarm had died into a single mechanical pulse.

Jaden looked towards the stairwell.

“Could be a battery.”

“Could be someone trapped in a car.”

“Inside the hospital?”

“Ambulance bay.”

They waited.

Nothing else moved.

Jaden entered the pharmacy alone.

The room had been stripped but not emptied. Shelves of medication had been overturned. Bottles rolled beneath cabinets. He found amoxicillin, doxycycline and two sealed packs of broad-spectrum antibiotics. He found antiseptic wipes, sutures, saline and enough gauze to restock their kit.

The locked cabinet containing stronger drugs had been smashed.

He put what he could into his pack.

A noise came from the corridor.

Jaden froze.

The clicking had stopped.

A door opened somewhere beyond the pharmacy.

Footsteps.

He reached for the machete.

“Wemmbu?”

No answer.

Jaden stepped into the corridor.

It was empty.

At the far end, an emergency light blinked red.

He moved towards it, keeping close to the wall.

The footsteps came again.

Above him.

Second floor.

Jaden looked back towards the entrance.

Wemmbu was gone.

He should have waited. He knew that. Their first rule had been simple: stay within sight.

But the hospital was a maze, and the noise above had the quality of something he needed to understand.

He took the stairs.

The second floor contained patient rooms, a nurses’ station and a long corridor lined with windows. Sunlight fell through the glass in pale rectangles.

Most doors stood open.

One was closed.

The clicking came from inside.

Jaden approached with the machete raised.

He put his ear to the door.

Nothing.

He opened it.

A bedside monitor blinked on a dead patient’s bed. Its alarm light flashed with no sound. The patient had been gone long enough for the sheets to have dried brown.

Jaden switched the machine off.

On the bedside table, someone had left a notebook.

He opened it.

The first pages were nursing notes. Names. Temperatures. Dosages. The handwriting became more hurried as the entries continued.

Patient transfer delayed.

No transport available.

Do not send additional patients to Ward C.

Evacuation order revised.

The final page had been torn out.

Jaden heard a door slam below.

He moved back towards the stairs.

A figure appeared at the far end of the corridor.

It wore hospital scrubs. Its head hung at an unnatural angle. Dried blood coated the front of its shirt.

Jaden backed away.

The infected turned towards him.

For one second, they faced each other across the corridor.

Then it ran.

Jaden ran too.

The hospital seemed to tilt around him. Doors opened as he passed, showing glimpses of beds, torn curtains and dark corners. More movement answered the first infected.

He reached the stairs.

Wemmbu appeared at the bottom, pistol raised.

The weapon was empty.

“Up!” Jaden shouted.

Wemmbu looked behind him.

Another infected came through the fire door on the ground floor.

Jaden jumped over the railing and landed on the stairwell landing below. Pain shot through his ankle. He caught the banister and kept moving.

Wemmbu grabbed his jacket.

“Down.”

They entered a linen cupboard and pulled the door closed.

The infected thundered past.

One.

Two.

Three.

Then more.

The cupboard was narrow enough that Jaden’s back pressed against the shelves and Wemmbu stood with his chest nearly touching Jaden’s shoulder. The smell of clean linen surrounded them, absurdly fresh.

Wemmbu’s breath touched his ear.

“Your ankle.”

“Fine.”

“You landed badly.”

“You’re one to talk.”

“I’m always one to talk.”

The infected ran past again.

The door shook as one struck it.

Jaden held his breath.

Wemmbu’s hand found the back of his arm, not gripping, simply there.

The impact came again.

Dust fell from the shelves.

Jaden turned his head.

Wemmbu was watching him.

In the cramped dark, the hospital disappeared. There was only the closeness of them, the pulse of fear in both bodies, the knowledge that if the door broke there would be no room to fight properly.

Wemmbu’s fingers tightened.

Jaden did not move away.

A voice came over the hospital’s public-address system.

“Please remain calm.”

The words echoed through the building.

The infected outside paused.

Then the alarm resumed.

Wemmbu leaned closer.

“On three,” he whispered.

Jaden nodded.

“One.”

The door shuddered.

“Two.”

Jaden braced his foot.

“Three.”

Wemmbu opened the door.

They moved as one.

Jaden drove the machete into the first infected’s shoulder, knocking it sideways. Wemmbu shoved past him and slammed the second against the opposite wall. Jaden struck the first again, then ran.

They descended to the ground floor.

The public-address voice continued.

“Please remain calm. Further instructions will follow.”

The entrance doors stood open.

They crossed the reception area as the infected poured from the stairs.

Outside, the sun struck them hard.

Jaden did not stop until they reached the ambulance bay.

Wemmbu bent over with both hands on his knees.

“You’re bleeding,” Jaden said.

“Where?”

Jaden pointed.

A narrow line of blood ran from Wemmbu’s side.

“The stitches opened.”

“It’s not bad.”

“You don’t get to decide.”

“I’ve been deciding all week.”

“Badly.”

Jaden pulled him into the shade beneath the ambulance bay and made him sit on the concrete. The wound had opened at one end but had not torn fully. He cleaned it with saline and replaced the dressing.

Wemmbu watched him work.

“You took a long time in there.”

“You disappeared.”

“I was looking for you.”

“You found me.”

“You were upstairs.”

“I was looking for medication.”

“That’s what I was doing.”

“You found me too.”

Jaden taped the dressing down.

For a moment, neither spoke.

Then Wemmbu said, “I found something.”

He reached into his jacket and brought out a plastic folder.

The pages inside were damp and folded. A hospital stamp marked the top: REGIONAL EMERGENCY COORDINATION UNIT.

Jaden took the first page.

It was a logistics report.

He read the first paragraph, then the second.

His fingers tightened around the paper.

“What?” Wemmbu asked.

Jaden kept reading.

The military evacuation point at Outpost Kestrel had been abandoned twenty-three days earlier.

The base had lost power. The evacuation convoy had been redirected south. The last personnel had withdrawn after the perimeter failed.

There was no rescue waiting at Kestrel.

The report ended with a note in red ink.

COMMUNICATIONS TOWER REMAINS OPERATIONAL ON AUXILIARY POWER. MAINTAIN EMERGENCY FREQUENCY IF POSSIBLE.

Jaden looked at Wemmbu.

“Where did you find this?”

“Records office.”

“You went alone.”

“Yes.”

“You could have been trapped.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I was busy.”

“Being nearly eaten?”

“Mostly.”

Jaden looked back at the pages.

The road ahead had just emptied itself.

“No evacuation,” he said.

“No.”

“We’ve been walking towards a dead base.”

“Probably.”

“And you thought we should keep going?”

Wemmbu looked towards the highway.

“I thought we should know.”

Jaden folded the report.

The hospital roof rose above them, streaked with grime. On the highest point, a faded red cross turned slowly in the wind.

The tower at Kestrel had become the last thing left.

Not a shelter. Not a gate. Not a camp.

A voice.

They could reach it. They could climb the tower, power the transmitter and broadcast a distress signal. Someone might hear them. Someone might not.

It was not rescue.

It was proof.

“We have enough food for four days,” Jaden said.

“Three if we stop sharing.”

“We don’t stop sharing.”

“I wasn’t suggesting it.”

“Good.”

Wemmbu took the report from him and tucked it away.

They left the hospital through the ambulance bay.

The radio stayed silent in Jaden’s pack.

At the edge of town, they passed a row of emergency vehicles parked nose to nose.

Each windscreen carried the same message in marker.

‘NO MORE PATIENTS.’

The countryside opened beyond Bellweather.

The road climbed through low hills covered in dry grass and eucalyptus. Wind moved over the ridgelines in long, visible waves. From the highest points, Jaden could see farmhouses scattered across the valleys, their roofs shining in the afternoon light.

Most were empty.

A few had smoke rising from chimneys.

They did not approach them.

After the hospital, their silence changed.

It was not the old silence of strangers saving words for emergencies. It was heavier, crowded with the report in Wemmbu’s pack and the understanding that Kestrel might be nothing but a tower and a locked room.

Jaden walked ahead with the map.

Wemmbu followed for the first hour.

Then Jaden realised the footsteps behind him had stopped.

He turned.

Wemmbu stood in the middle of the road, one hand pressed to his side.

“You need a break?”

“No.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

“I know.”

Jaden went back.

Wemmbu looked at the hills.

“I can walk.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t.”

“You’re thinking it.”

“I’m thinking you’re stubborn.”

“That’s different.”

“Not really.”

Jaden took the radio from his pack and carried it under one arm. He offered Wemmbu the other.

Wemmbu stared at it.

“What?”

“You’re volunteering.”

“I’m reducing the amount of time we spend stopped.”

“That’s a long way to say helping.”

“You can take it or not.”

Wemmbu took it.

His hand wrapped around Jaden’s forearm, careful not to put weight on the injured side.

They walked together.

For a while, the only sound was their boots on the road.

Then Wemmbu said, “Before this, I worked in a warehouse.”

Jaden looked at him.

“You asked once.”

“When?”

“Back near the service station.”

“I asked how long you’d been alone.”

“You were curious.”

“I was assessing you.”

“Sure.”

“What did you do in the warehouse?”

“Forklift. Stock. Deliveries. Whatever needed doing.”

“You drove a forklift?”

“Yes.”

“Were you good at it?”

“No.”

“Then why were you allowed?”

“I had a licence.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“It does in most places.”

Jaden smiled.

Wemmbu glanced at him. “What about you?”

“I worked at a community centre.”

“Doing what?”

“Everything.”

“That’s not a job.”

“It was.”

“Did you have a licence?”

“For a forklift?”

“For anything.”

“I could drive.”

“That’s not a licence.”

“It was enough before.”

“Before, people cared about those things.”

“Some people still do.”

“Where are they?”

Jaden looked towards the farms below.

The nearest house had a trampoline in the yard. The fabric had torn through the middle, leaving a dark hole.

“Dead,” he said.

Wemmbu’s hand tightened on his arm, then loosened.

They walked another kilometre.

Jaden said, “I had a sister.”

Wemmbu did not respond immediately.

“How old?”

“Older.”

“Is she…?”

“Yes.”

The word came out flat.

Wemmbu waited.

Jaden did not explain.

“She lived in another city,” he said. “We were meant to meet at the evacuation centre. I got there late.”

“You don’t know what happened.”

“I know she wasn’t there.”

“That’s not the same.”

“It is to me.”

Wemmbu looked at the road.

Jaden had never told anyone that before. He had never said it aloud in a way that made it real. The name of the evacuation centre had become a place in his mind rather than a location, somewhere he could return to and keep failing.

“I’m sorry,” Wemmbu said.

Jaden shrugged.

“I hate when people say that.”

“I know.”

“You don’t.”

“I hate saying it.”

“Why say it?”

“Because I am.”

The answer was so simple that Jaden had nothing to give back.

They stopped at dusk beside a creek.

The water was shallow but clear. They filled the bottles and filtered it through the tablets they had taken from the hospital. Nearby, a stand of paperbarks leaned over the bank, their pale trunks catching the last orange light.

Wemmbu sat with his back against a tree.

Jaden cooked rice in a dented pot and mixed in the final tin of soup.

There was not enough for large portions.

He divided it anyway.

Wemmbu stared at his bowl. “You gave me more.”

“No.”

“You did.”

“You’re taller.”

“That’s your reasoning?”

“It’s the one you’re getting.”

“You’re becoming predictable.”

“Stay alive long enough and you’ll see worse.”

They ate.

The water moved over stones beneath them.

Beyond the creek, the hills darkened against the sky.

Jaden felt the words before he spoke them.

“If this all ended tomorrow, what would you do?”

Wemmbu stopped eating.

Jaden watched the last light move across his face.

“I mean,” Jaden said, “if they found a cure. If the infected dropped dead. If the power came back and every phone started ringing.”

“That’s a lot of conditions.”

“Answer the question.”

Wemmbu leaned his head against the tree.

“I’d find somewhere quiet.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere with water. Trees. No neighbours.”

“You hate neighbours?”

“I hate people who borrow things and don’t return them.”

“Like maps?”

“Exactly.”

Jaden smiled.

Wemmbu looked at the darkening creek.

“A small place,” he continued. “A house with a roof that doesn’t leak. A kitchen. Maybe a dog.”

“You don’t like dogs.”

“I like dogs.”

“You said they’re unpredictable.”

“So are people.”

“What kind?”

“What?”

“Dog.”

“Medium.”

“That’s not a kind.”

“Medium-sized.”

“Very specific.”

“I’ve thought about it.”

Jaden looked down at his empty bowl.

“With who?” he asked.

The question arrived lightly, as if it were another joke.

Wemmbu did not laugh.

The creek moved between them.

“With who?” Jaden repeated.

The pause stretched.

Wemmbu looked at him.

“You.”

The word was quiet.

Jaden heard it anyway.

The air seemed to change around them.

Wemmbu looked back towards the creek.

Jaden could not tell whether he wanted him to speak or not.

A moth moved through the fading light and struck the side of the pot.

“You’d hate the dog,” Jaden said.

“Why?”

“You’d name it something stupid.”

“What would you name it?”

“Something sensible.”

“Like?”

“Ranger.”

“That’s terrible.”

“You’d name it Wemmbu.”

“I would not.”

“You’d name it Jaden.”

“That’s worse.”

They both laughed, but the sound did not remove what had happened.

The word remained.

You.

After dark, they made a small fire beneath the paperbarks. Smoke kept insects away and gave them enough light to check the road.

Wemmbu lay on his back with the yellow scarf beneath his head.

Jaden sat beside him, knees drawn up.

The sky was clear.

Without the city, the stars seemed close enough to touch.

“Do you think anyone is listening?” Jaden asked.

“To the radio?”

“To anything.”

Wemmbu turned his head.

Jaden kept looking upwards.

“The broadcast from Community Seven,” he said. “The military message. Every signal we followed. People talking into the dark, hoping someone’s there.”

“I think someone always is.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the one I’ve got.”

“Does it matter if they can’t hear us?”

“Maybe.”

“How?”

Wemmbu shifted onto one elbow.

Jaden could see the outline of his face in the firelight.

“It matters that we tried,” Wemmbu said.

“That sounds like something Parrot would say.”

“Parrot  would say it more angrily.”

“He would.”

They fell quiet.

The fire settled, sending a small spray of sparks into the dark.

Jaden could feel Wemmbu watching him.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’re doing the face.”

“I have one face.”

“Not around me.”

Jaden turned.

Wemmbu was close.

Not close because the fire was small or the bank narrow. Close because neither had moved away.

Jaden could see the faint scar near Wemmbu’s eyebrow, the one he had not noticed until they stayed at the camp. He could see the tiredness beneath his eyes. He could see the question held there.

Jaden looked at his mouth.

Wemmbu’s breath caught.

“I don’t think I want to survive if you’re not there,” Jaden said.

The words came out before he could soften them.

Wemmbu’s expression changed.

“Don’t say that.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t know what I’d do if you meant it.”

“I do mean it.”

“Jaden.”

“I’m not saying I want to die.”

“It sounds like you are.”

“I’m saying that surviving alone isn’t the same thing anymore.”

Wemmbu looked away.

Jaden waited.

The fire cracked between them.

At last, Wemmbu said, “You don’t get to make me responsible for your life.”

“I’m not.”

“You just said-”

“I’m telling you where I am.”

“Why?”

Jaden had no answer that did not expose too much.

Because you came back.

Because you put the blanket over me.

Because you look over your shoulder every time the road bends.

Because when the camp fell, I could not bear the thought of finding you missing.

He said, “Because you asked.”

“I didn’t.”

“You asked when you said you’d find somewhere quiet.”

“That was different.”

“How?”

“I didn’t know you were listening.”

“I’m always listening.”

Wemmbu’s eyes returned to his.

The space between them had become unbearable.

Jaden leaned forward.

Slowly, as though the movement could still be stopped, he lifted one hand and touched Wemmbu’s cheek.

Wemmbu closed his eyes.

Jaden waited for him to pull away.

He didn’t.

Their kiss was quiet.

There was no urgency in it, no hunger, no dramatic collision. Just the careful press of mouths, the warmth of skin beneath Jaden’s palm and the fragile knowledge that either of them could break the moment by moving too quickly.

Wemmbu’s hand rose and closed around the back of Jaden’s neck.

The kiss deepened by a fraction.

Jaden felt Wemmbu’s breath tremble.

Then they separated.

Their foreheads touched.

The fire burned beside them.

Neither spoke.

Wemmbu’s thumb moved once against Jaden’s neck.

Jaden closed his eyes.

“Was that a mistake?” Wemmbu asked.

“No.”

“You answered quickly.”

“I’ve had practice.”

“With what?”

“Nothing.”

Wemmbu made a soft sound that might have been a laugh.

Jaden opened his eyes.

“Was it a mistake for you?”

Wemmbu looked at him.

“No.”

The relief was immediate and so powerful that Jaden almost laughed.

Instead, he kissed him again.

This one was shorter.

When they lay down, they shared the blanket.

Jaden slept on his side facing Wemmbu. Their knees touched. Wemmbu’s hand rested between them, palm open.

At some point during the night, Jaden placed his hand over it.

He did not dream.

In the morning, Wemmbu woke first.

He did not move.

Jaden opened his eyes.

They stared at each other in the pale light.

“Morning,” Wemmbu said.

“Morning.”

“Your hand’s on mine.”

“So is yours.”

“I know.”

“Then move.”

“You move.”

Neither did.

Eventually Jaden sat up.

The road ahead was still there. The military base was still dead. The distance had not changed because they had kissed beside a creek.

But when they packed the blanket, they folded it together.

They walked north-east.

They did not talk about the kiss.

They did not need to.

They reached the outskirts of Outpost Kestrel on the ninth day.

The land flattened into scrub and old military fencing. Warning signs leaned at angles along the road. Most had been shot through or painted over.

A communications tower rose beyond the trees.

It was taller than Jaden had imagined: a thin lattice of steel reaching into the washed-out sky, its dish pointed towards the horizon. The tower’s red obstruction lights were dark, but the structure stood intact.

Beneath it, a cluster of low concrete buildings formed the remains of the base.

There were no vehicles moving.

No flags.

No lights.

Jaden stopped beside a rusted gate.

“Kestrel,” he said.

Wemmbu looked through the bars.

The base seemed abandoned. Grass grew through the parade ground. A watchtower had collapsed across one section of perimeter fence. Beyond the main gate, the roads were filled with abandoned trucks.

The silence had weight.

Wemmbu reached through the gate and tested the chain.

“It’s open.”

Jaden looked at him.

“What?”

“It’s never that easy.”

“It’s not open. It’s broken.”

“Same problem.”

They moved along the fence line until they found a gap beneath the wire. Wemmbu went first, then turned to help Jaden through.

His hand closed around Jaden’s wrist.

For a second, the memory of the night beside the creek returned: warm skin, quiet fire, a hand at the back of his neck.

Then something moved beyond the fence.

A single infected stood in the trees.

It wore a military uniform.

Its head snapped towards them.

Wemmbu raised the pistol.

The weapon was still empty.

Jaden drew the machete.

The infected ran.

Jaden met it halfway.

He struck once, twice.

The body fell against the wire.

Beyond it, more shapes moved.

One became three.

Three became ten.

Wemmbu swore.

The base had not been empty.

It had been waiting.

A low moan travelled through the trees.

Then another answered from the road.

The horde moved towards the sound of them.

“Back,” Jaden said.

They ran along the fence.

Infected spilled from the buildings, climbing over vehicles and pushing through the broken gates. Some wore military fatigues. Others wore civilian clothes. A few still had the white strips of emergency bandages around their arms.

The tower stood beyond the parade ground.

The communications building was on the far side of the base.

The generator building sat beside it.

Jaden saw all of this in a single glance.

“We go around,” he said.

“There’s no around.”

“North fence.”

“Collapsed.”

“Then through.”

Wemmbu grabbed his arm. “We need the communications room first.”

“The report said auxiliary power.”

“If it’s not running, we need the generator.”

“I know.”

The horde reached the fence behind them.

The wire bowed.

Wemmbu fired the pistol by instinct.

It clicked empty.

“Still no ammunition,” Jaden said.

“Helpful.”

They crossed beneath a torn section of wire and entered the base.

The ground was uneven with old rubble. Jaden ran towards the nearest building, but an infected stepped out from behind a truck.

He swung the machete.

The blade caught in the infected’s shoulder.

Jaden yanked it free and stumbled.

Wemmbu struck the infected with the pistol grip, then shoved Jaden forward.

“Keep going.”

The words cut through the noise.

They reached a concrete checkpoint.

The door had been barricaded from inside. Jaden kicked it open.

They squeezed through as the horde hit the outer wall.

The building was a guard post with windows on three sides. It offered no exit except the door they had used.

Infected pressed against the glass.

Their hands slapped the windows.

Jaden looked through the northern pane.

The communications building stood eighty metres away.

A straight run across open ground.

Wemmbu checked his side.

Blood had started seeping through the dressing.

“You’re opening the wound.”

“I know.”

“We should wait.”

“For what?”

“An opening.”

Wemmbu pointed at the infected outside. “That’s not coming.”

A body hit the door.

The barricade shifted.

Jaden tightened his grip on the machete.

“We run on three.”

Wemmbu nodded.

“One.”

The door shook again.

“Two.”

The glass cracked.

“Three.”

They burst through the opposite window.

The drop was less than a metre. Jaden landed badly and rolled. Wemmbu came down beside him.

The horde poured out of the guard post.

They ran.

Jaden reached the communications building first. The door stood open. He crossed the threshold and turned.

Wemmbu was twenty metres behind him.

The infected had caught up.

One grabbed the back of Wemmbu’s jacket.

Wemmbu twisted free and struck it across the face. Another came from his left. He raised the pistol, used it as a club and pushed towards the building.

Jaden ran back.

“Don’t!”

Wemmbu was swallowed by moving bodies.

Jaden reached for him.

A hand closed over the back of Jaden’s shirt and pulled him hard.

Wemmbu.

He dragged Jaden through the doorway and slammed it shut.

The infected hit the other side.

The building shook.

Jaden pressed his back to the wall, breathing hard.

Wemmbu leaned against the door.

For several seconds they could only hear the bodies outside.

Then the pounding shifted towards the windows.

Jaden scanned him.

“You’re bleeding.”

“Still not mine.”

“Your jacket.”

“Caught it on the fence.”

“Take it off.”

“Jaden…”

“Take it off.”

Wemmbu looked at him.

Something in his expression made Jaden pause.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Stop saying that.”

Wemmbu unzipped the jacket.

The shirt beneath was torn at the upper thigh.

Blood ran down his leg.

Jaden’s heart stopped.

“Wemmbu.”

“It’s a scratch.”

“It’s not.”

“It is.”

Jaden crossed the room.

Wemmbu backed away.

The movement was small, but it was enough.

Jaden stared at the wound.

Four marks curved across the outside of Wemmbu’s thigh. The skin around them had already begun to swell.

The bite was not deep.

It did not need to be.

“No,” Jaden said.

Wemmbu looked towards the windows.

The infected outside blurred behind the cracked glass.

“Don’t,” he said.

Jaden grabbed his face with both hands.

“Where?”

“Out there.”

“When?”

“By the guard post.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“There wasn’t time.”

“There was time in the building.”

“There was a horde at the door.”

“You could have said something.”

“And what would you have done?”

“Helped.”

“You couldn’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

Wemmbu caught his wrists and pulled his hands away.

“Jaden.”

The room was dark except for the light spilling through the broken window.

Wemmbu’s eyes were clear.

That was the cruelest part.

He was still himself.

Jaden looked at the bite again.

“No,” he said.

Wemmbu’s grip loosened.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I’m-”

“Don’t.”

The pounding outside continued.

They had reached the communications building, but the tower still stood beyond it. The transmitter room was upstairs. The generator was in a separate structure across the parade ground.

The horde filled the space between.

Wemmbu sat against the wall.

Jaden knelt in front of him.

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

“You have to know.”

“An hour ago. Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“It happened fast.”

“Symptoms?”

“None.”

“Fever?”

“No.”

“Dizziness?”

“No.”

Jaden put the back of his hand to Wemmbu’s forehead.

Wemmbu let him.

“You’re not warm.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means you’re not warm.”

“Jaden.”

“You’re going to be fine.”

Wemmbu looked at him.

Jaden realised what he had said.

He repeated it anyway.

“You’re going to be fine.”

Wemmbu’s face softened with something that was almost pity.