Chapter 20: The First Blood Is Always the Slowest
It started with silence. Not the kind that brings peace or calm — but the kind that snaps into place too fast, too absolute, like something had cut the sound right out of the world. A silence that felt predatory. Tense. Wrong.
Aria felt it before she understood it. Her grip tightened around a bag of rice as she rounded the corner of the block, eyes flicking across the street that had, just yesterday, been thrumming with desperation. A scavenger's bazaar — makeshift tables, barterers screaming over salvaged batteries, voices cracking with fear and need. All of that was gone now.
The fruit crates still sat untouched. Some of the apples had begun to soften at the edges, bruises blooming like infections. A shopping cart lay on its side near the gutter, one wheel spinning slowly in the breeze. Nearby, a child's shoe had been abandoned in the dust, small and out of place like it had simply blinked out of someone's life.
And at the far end of the street stood a man. Still. Unmoving. His back to them.
"Selene," Aria whispered. Her voice broke on the first syllable. "He's not moving."
Selene didn't look. She didn't need to. Her body snapped into readiness, fluid and sharp, as if the silence had told her everything already. Her hand reached for the blade strapped against her thigh with the ease of muscle memory.
"Don't talk. Walk backward," she said, calm, quiet. "Now."
Aria hesitated, heart leaping against her ribs. "But what if he's hurt —"
"Aria." One word. Final. Steel pressed into sound.
The man turned.
His eyes were missing.
They didn't blink. They didn't breathe. They just ran.
Or rather, Aria ran. Her limbs flailed awkwardly across uneven concrete, her breath coming in sharp gasps. Selene moved differently — fluid, lethal, her strides cutting through space like a shadow. Her eyes scanned the alleyways, rooftops, broken windows. One hand never left her weapon. The other seemed ready to push Aria out of harm's way if needed.
It wasn't just one man for long.
Three emerged from behind a wrecked van, clothes shredded and stiff with old blood.
Then six.
They didn't groan or stumble like the infected in stories. They snarled. Lips peeled back, feral, like language had been the first thing to rot. Their movements were fast. Jagged. Their silence louder than any scream.
Aria's foot caught on an overturned crate. She hit the ground hard, pain blooming in her shoulder. One of them sprinted for her — close enough now that she could smell it. Not decay. Not exactly. It was rust. Dirt. Sweat soaked into skin. Something more primal than death.
It lunged.
Her hand found a wrench, metal cold and comforting.
She lifted it—
But froze.
She couldn't bring it down. Couldn't cross that line. Couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't kill.
The blow came from the side. Selene's blade cut through the air without sound. The body hit the pavement with the force of thunder. Blood sprayed across the broken sidewalk in an arc.
Selene was already yanking Aria to her feet.
"You can't hesitate."
"I — I couldn't —" Aria stammered, voice caught between guilt and shock.
"I know," Selene said, already turning. "But you will."
Aria looked down.
There had been a person once. A life. A history. A voice. A mother who named them. Eyes that once saw color and sky.
Now — just blood.
They ducked into a boarded bakery. Selene shoved a table and two chairs against the door, more out of instinct than hope. She leaned against them for half a breath, shoulders shaking just once before her composure snapped back into place.
Aria sank to the floor in a cloud of flour dust.
"Why didn't you tell me it would be like this?" she asked, eyes wide and rimmed with tears she couldn't afford to shed.
Selene crouched across from her, close enough their knees nearly touched. She didn't answer right away.
"I thought you'd have more time," she finally said.
The air outside was alive with snarling again. It rose and fell like breathing — erratic, shallow, hungry. Selene's eyes moved to the windows. She stared at them like they were already broken, already letting in the inevitable.
Then she looked back at Aria.
"You won't always have me to do the killing."
"I don't want to kill anyone," Aria whispered.
Selene's voice softened — not with warmth, but with something clearer. Truer.
"That's why you're still worth saving."
The words hit Aria like heat after a long winter. She looked up, startled by the sudden intimacy of it. Their eyes met — and for one long moment, something passed between them. Recognition. Not memory exactly, but familiarity. As if they'd stood in ruins like this before, in another life. Another dream. Or maybe the same nightmare, over and over.
The moment cracked when the door rattled.
A hard thud. Then another.
Glass along the front window spiderwebbed, pressure building against its thin, fragile resistance. Selene didn't flinch. She turned on her heel, moving to the back of the shop with quick, decisive steps. She pushed aside a crate — flour puffing into the air — revealing a jagged hole behind a collapsed wall panel.
A narrow crawlspace.
"What — what is that?" Aria asked, her voice trembling.
Selene didn't answer. She placed a hand on Aria's shoulder and guided her toward the dark opening.
"Get in," she said simply.
It felt wrong. The space was too small, too silent. Like a mouth waiting to close around them. Aria hesitated, fear crawling up her throat like vines.
But there was no choice. There never was.
She crawled inside. The floor was gritty. Cold. Her body brushed against wires, wood, something slick and unnameable. Selene followed, pulling the crate back into place behind them. They became shadow.
Outside, the world churned. Rustling. Footsteps. Claws. Nails. Breaths that weren't quite human. And then —
Nothing.
Aria's heart pounded so loud it felt like betrayal. Her breath caught in her chest, lungs aching. She wanted to turn her head, to check. But Selene's fingers curled around her wrist — gentle, firm — saying: Still. Now.
Time dragged its body across the floor like something else dying nearby. Minutes dissolved into something shapeless and cruel.
Then Selene's voice, low against Aria's ear, almost too soft to hear.
"We wait until morning."
"But… what if they find us?"
"They won't," Selene said, calm as a knife laid flat. "Unless you let them."
Aria shivered. She didn't know if it was fear or something else — something deeper, darker. Something that had begun to grow inside her from the moment she saw the man with no eyes.
She stared into the thin slice of light bleeding through a crack in the wall.
"Selene…" she whispered, not even sure why she was asking, "how long… how long until it's all gone?"
Selene didn't answer right away. Her breath was steady. Her body unmoving.
Finally, she said, "I don't know. But you'll survive it."
Aria closed her eyes. She swallowed the knot in her throat.
She didn't know if she wanted to survive it. But the choice wasn't hers. Not anymore.
The silence returned. And this time, it didn't leave.