CHAPTER 67: THE KILL ROAD [2]

"Scavengers," Holt said, his tone grim.

Ethan’s group adjusted as soon as Holt told the new guys’ identity. If there was one thing that they learned and was imprinted in their head after the encounter with Major Pike, it was to not trust all Awakened.

The very nature of Scavengers in the Apocalypse didn’t paint a good picture. They were not naïve enough to believe that these guys scavenged just what was left of the old world.

They would rather believe that they also scavenged for system drops.

This was why they changed the way that they ran immediately after the second group appeared. Even as they ran, they spared them a glance.

Just a glance and Kara realized their plan; she scowled. "They’re using us as bait. They’ll let us draw teeth and slip through from behind," she said.

"Save your breath," Reid told them. "Eyes up and on the road!"

"What matters is that we also make it to the wall".

With Reid urging them, they reduced their attention on the second group and focused more on the road as they cleared a field of cracked cars that still steamed faintly with Rift-heat.

Even as they ran, like they promised, the defenders on the wall didn’t stop helping them as their suppressive fire kept the worst of the Kill Road at bay.

Tutututututu...!

Turret gunfire kept on roaring in an endless cacophony.

And in this cacophony, three different groups of Awakened braved the Kill Road in hopes of reaching the quarantine zone.

The wall’s suddenly guns arced left as a shiver ran through the lane, the suppression changing. Ethan felt it in his bones now, the wall’s breathing.

The floodlights strobed and pivoted, making day where day was needed and letting the lingering mist of the departing night where monsters could be herded back into it.

As they ran, like the others, Ethan looked out for any trouble.

The Wheel kept on pulsing at the periphery of his vision.

Running alongside the others for his life, out of the corner of his eye Ethan saw a child’s shoe lodged under a car. He looked away before the memory could turn it into someone’s name.

He gritted his teeth. ’This damned apocalypse!’

Then, all of a sudden, a hum rose in the asphalt. It felt like standing on the skin of a drum that someone was about to hit.

’Huh?’

Ethan felt goosebumps ripple through him.

"Watch your feet!" Holt snapped.

And then, cracks opened like mouths.

Creak... creak...

Creeper Eels! Slick things with lamprey discs for faces unrolled from the gaps and slapped wet onto the road, quickly locking on to their targets... them.

Jonas reacted fast, stomping two to death. A third latched at Kara’s calf, but her spear butt smashed its disc flat. Ethan swung the Gauntlet and sent a fourth skidding into the dark where a floodlight had already moved on.

"Ten!" Reid shouted. "We’re halfway there!"

They weren’t halfway.

The wall looked close enough to spit on, but the Kill Road played with distance. It made kilometers out of strides and folded seconds into minutes when you couldn’t spare either.

Besides, the race towards the wall so far had been relatively straightforward and going according to plan, but where was the guarantee that it would continue that way?

None of them had a guarantee, they could only have faith like Reid and keep on moving, staying optimistic that nothing out of the norm would happen.

By now, exhaustion was already beginning to press in.

Jonas’s breath guttered as pain wrote a line from his ribs to his jaw. Despite it being days already since that day, and despite Travis’s healing bringing him back to life, his body was still not yet at 100 percent.

It was like a professional football player returning back to action after a long injury-enforced break.

The injury may be healed, but you don’t expect that football player to return back to his peak ability immediately.

He’ll have to train without the ball, restoring his body back to peak physical state. He’ll have to train with the ball to regain the feeling.

And most importantly, he’ll have to play actual games to regain match fitness. All these steps needed to be completed before a footballer could fully recover from an injury.

And something similar was what was happening with Jonas.

Travis saw it and immediately reacted. He may not act like it, but the experience of watching Jonas almost die due to him changed him.

He was the weaker Awakened, he was the one that needed protection but since that event, he put it at the back of his mind that he would definitely make sure that Jonas survives and makes it to the quarantine zone, even at the cost of his own life.

This was why he noticed Jonas’s sudden weakness first.

He immediately flanked tighter, drawing closer to Jonas as he let Vital Surge crackle along his palm in contact.

Gold Rift seeped from Travis into Jonas’s side. Jonas felt the familiar feeling of warmth; the feeling was like gasoline on fire, and Jonas ate it greedily as he felt his vitality returning to him. He ran faster.

"Thanks..." he muttered.

"Save your breath and run!" Travis snapped.

Jonas laughed.

But then, looking at the wall in the distance, Travis panted. "Remind me... to bill the apocalypse for overtime, because I didn’t pay for this".

"You’re billing it in bones," Kara said without looking back. "It pays badly."

Holt suddenly threw a palm up and cut right. "Debris!" He warned just in time as they grazed a field of rebar where a barricade had been chewed to skeleton.

The field of rebar came stumbling, but they narrowly avoided it.

Mira sent a steadying wind under their ankles to cheat gravity a little and prevent them from stumbling from the cascading.

Ethan’s world narrowed into inhale and exhale and the flicker of Shadowstep at the edges of his sightline. The ability was ready; it needed to be spent on the moment, not hoarded like coin.

But Ethan didn’t rush it, he was saving it for the right moment.

The rush through the Kill Road continued.