CHAPTER 2 (Iv)
Grey's POV – Present
"Grrrr—"
It echoes low and deep through the tunnel.
Not a sound you mistake.
Not anymore.
I don't speak. I move.
Scarlett hears it too. Knife in hand. Breath tight.
Jane clutches her coat, eyes wide. Luke's jaw tightens, and he reaches into his hoodie.
We don't have time to plan.
The first one appears in the darkness—a twisted shape where a person used to be. Jaw slack, arms jerking too fast, feet scraping against the wet concrete like it forgot how they work.
But its hunger hasn't.
Then the others follow.
Dozens.
Running.
Not slow. Not broken.
Alive, almost.
Screams rise. Not ours—yet.
The people we hadn't noticed before, further down in the station—they panic. Scatter. A man in a blue hoodie trips trying to climb over a fallen bench. Something grabs him before he even gets a scream out.
The woman holding a kid screaming as the infected approach fast .
An old couple already being feasted on .
We're moving. Fast. Through the swirl of bodies.
Something brushes my arm. I shove it away.
A hand—not dead, just some girl swinging a crowbar at anything moving. She's not with us. Not yet. Purple hair. Tight grip. Eyes like she's already seen too much.
Luke lashes out beside me—metal pipe against skull. It buys us two seconds.
Scarlett carves her way forward, precise, silent.
We slip through a break in the barricade. Rusted maintenance gate. I slam it behind us. Chain it. Lock it.
The noise dulls behind metal.
Barely.
Panting fills the tunnel.
Ours.
Theirs.
I count.
Luke. Scarlett. Jane.
Four more.
The girl.
A man beside her, older, bleeding.
A boy, maybe fifteen, shaking.
A woman holding a dead radio like it's still whispering to her.
No one talks.
Good.
Too much talking gets you killed.
The boy's eyes find me. "They weren't chasing… they were herding us."
Scarlett shifts. Jane wipes at her face. Luke mutters something under his breath.
I crouch by the tunnel floor, run two fingers through the dried track grease. Still warm.
Someone came through here. Recently.
Not just things.
People.
2 Years Ago <<
A flickering hallway.
Fluorescent lights blinking in rhythm with a pulse that wasn't mine.
Eva's voice behind glass door.
"I heard them talking. The ones in suits. The ones who think we're too dumb to understand."
Silence.
"They said the failures don't rot fast enough. That they're remembering more than they should."
I looked at her through the glass.
She never blinked.
Present <<
"Name's Blair," the purple-haired girl finally says, her voice cutting through the stillness. She nods to the man beside her. "That's Mitch. This is Jonah ,she said pointing towards the younger boy. The woman... doesn't speak."
The woman glances up. Vacant. Scarred. Her hands twitch like they're remembering something.
I say nothing.
Names are easy to lose.
We don't have time for grief or gratitude.
I rise. My fingers tighten on the makeshift bat I grabbed from the stairs.
"We should rest," Jane whispers.
Scarlett looks to me.
I nod once.
Luke leans against the wall, head back, breathing heavy.
But I don't sit.
I just listen.