The auto body shop was a pocket of silence in a dead world. The heavy, corrugated steel door was a solid barrier against the horrors outside, but it did little to block out the ghosts within. The air was cold, smelling of grease and stale gasoline. In the beam of Hex's flashlight, dust motes danced like tiny, restless spirits.
Exhaustion, held at bay for hours by adrenaline and fear, crashed down on them like a physical blow. Ben and Clara, two of the surviving fighters from the clinic, collapsed against a wall, their bodies finally surrendering to the trauma. The older man, who they learned was named George, simply sat on an overturned bucket, his gaze fixed on nothing, his face a stony mask of grief.
Lena, ever the doctor, pushed past her own weariness. She moved through the small group, her hands quick and efficient as she tended to the injuries sustained during the breakout. She stitched a deep gash on Ben's arm, her movements precise even in the dim light. She checked on Clara, who had a mild concussion from being knocked against the van door. She moved with a purpose that was both inspiring and heartbreaking. It was the only way she knew how to cope.
"Quinn, you're next," she said, her voice leaving no room for argument. She gestured to the raw, angry-looking scrape along his jaw where an infected's fingernails had raked him. He sat down without a word, allowing her to clean and dress the wound. Her touch was professional, impersonal, but as she worked, their eyes met for a moment. In that shared glance, an entire conversation passed between them—gratitude, grief, and the grim understanding of their shared burden.
Quinn and Hex established a watch schedule. There was no argument. It was an unspoken, professional courtesy. Hex took the first watch, positioning himself near a small, grimy window that looked out onto the alley. Quinn tried to rest, but sleep was a distant country he could not reach. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the faces of the fallen—Maria, David, the young man Alex who had sacrificed himself. The weight of their deaths was a physical pressure in his chest.
Lily was awake. She was not crying. She was sitting on a blanket in the back of the riot van, the door left open to the garage. She had her small pad of paper and her crayons, the ones she had found at the house where they had first rested. She was drawing.
Lena, finished with her rounds, went to sit with her. "What are you drawing, sweetie?" she asked softly.
Lily did not look up. She held the drawing out for Lena to see. It was not the happy family portrait she had drawn before. This picture was filled with dark, jagged shapes with sharp teeth and red eyes. In one corner, a building was on fire. It was a child's interpretation of a nightmare.
"These are the monsters," Lily whispered.
Lena's heart ached. She put an arm around the small girl. "I know," she said. "But we're safe from them now. Quinn and Hex won't let them get in here."
"Quinn is sad," Lily said, her voice barely audible. "He misses his sister."
The simple, profound observation from a six-year-old child hung in the air. Lena had no answer for that. She just held Lily a little tighter, offering the silent comfort of her presence.
Later, as Hex's watch was ending, the stress finally boiled over. Quinn, looking over their meager supplies, realized how little they had managed to escape with.
"We should have taken more from the clinic," he said, his voice tight with frustration. "More food, more water. We were right there."
"We were lucky to get out with our lives, Quinn," Hex shot back, his own nerves frayed. "There wasn't time for a shopping trip. My priority was getting the van started and getting us out of the kill zone."
"My priority was keeping people alive!" Quinn countered, his voice rising. "Maybe if we had a better defensible position, we wouldn't have had to run in the first place!"
"There was no defensible position!" Hex retorted, stepping toward him. "The place was a deathtrap from the moment we got there! You saw the way they were attacking. It was a lost cause!"
"ENOUGH!"
Lena's voice cut through their argument like a scalpel. They both turned to look at her. She stood between them, her face a mask of weary fury.
"Both of you, stop it," she said, her voice low and trembling with a tightly controlled anger. "This helps no one. Blaming each other, second-guessing decisions… it's a poison. We did what we could. We survived. That's all that matters now."
The anger drained out of Quinn and Hex, replaced by a shared, sullen shame. She was right. The stress was turning them against each other.
Lena sighed, running a hand through her messy hair. "We have three cans of beans, two cans of fruit, and about a gallon of water. We share it. All of us."
She opened one of the cans of beans and, using the lid, divided it into small, equal portions. She handed one to everyone, including George, who took it without a word, his eyes still vacant. They ate in silence, the grim reality of their situation settling over them. They were a tiny, fractured family, sharing a meager communion in the ruins of the world.
The fragile truce held for the rest of the night. As Quinn took over the watch, he saw that George had not moved from his bucket. His portion of beans lay untouched beside him. Quinn walked over.
"You should eat, George," he said quietly.
George did not look at him. He just stared at the far wall. "My wife," he whispered, his voice a dry, dusty rasp. "She was in one of the cots. Her appendix burst. Lena… she did everything she could. But without a proper OR…" His voice trailed off. He had not made it out of the clinic with the breakout group. He had simply been left behind in the chaos. His fight was over before it began.
Quinn put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry."
George just shook his head slowly. Sometime in the deep, quiet hours before dawn, as Quinn stood his watch, George quietly slumped over. Quinn went to him, thinking he had finally fallen asleep. But when he checked for a pulse, there was nothing. He had not been bitten. He had not been wounded. His heart had simply given out, broken by a grief too heavy to carry.
Quinn stood over the old man's body, the profound fragility of their existence a cold, hard fact. They had survived the monsters, the explosions, the desperate flight. And they had lost one of their own to a quiet, broken heart. He gently closed the old man's eyes. Another ghost to carry. Another reason to keep fighting.