CHAPTER 24: THE TOWER

The tower was not empty.

Killian knew before he reached it because the mud around its base was not untouched. Tire tracks. Fresh. Deep. Someone had driven something heavy here after the rain stopped. The kind of tracks that only a military truck leaves, not a raider's pickup. He had seen those tracks before, on Day 1, when they sealed the bunker.

The fuel drums he had counted from the bunker window through binoculars were gone. For three days he had counted them. Four blue drums. 200 liters. Enough to run the generator for 19 days. Enough to keep the incubator at 36.5 degrees for Tiny Elena. Enough to keep Elena's twins alive until 24 weeks.

Now there were zero.

No. Not gone. Moved.

He crouched behind the fallen water tank, his chest heaving. The oxygen mask Bianca had forced on him was fogging. 22% oxygen in the bunker, 19% out here. Every breath out here was thinner, like the world itself was dying and taking less and less air with it. His knees hurt. He was 34 but felt 70.

He had walked two hours for nothing.

Then he heard it. A cough.

From inside the pump house. A small, rusted building that should have been empty since the water stopped on Day 9.

Killian's hand went to the pipe wrench on his belt. Not a weapon. A tool. But tools become weapons when you are hungry enough. When your wife is pregnant with twins at 20 weeks ruptured membrane. When your brother's daughter weighs 1.48kg and has fever 38.9.

"Who is there?" he shouted. His voice cracked. "That fuel is claimed. We marked it on Day 4! Bunker 3!"

Silence.

Then a laugh. A child's laugh. Not scary. Pure.

The door of the pump house creaked open. Slow.

It was not a raider. It was a boy, maybe 10, wearing a gas mask three sizes too big, holding a plastic jerry can that was almost as big as him. The can was empty, but he held it like it was gold.

And behind him - Jax.

Alive. Standing. But wrong.

Jax's eyes were red, not from crying. From veins. Black veins crawling from his neck up to his eyes. The same veins Killian had seen on the turned outside the fence on Day 12. The 6-hour ones that turned people into things that bang on doors.

But Jax had been gone 48 hours. He should be fully turned. He should be dead. Bianca had said incubation is 48 hours for the new strain. Jax had left on Day 21 at 14:00. Now it was Day 23 at 16:00. Exactly 50 hours.

"Jax?" Killian whispered. The wrench fell from his hand.

Jax smiled. His teeth were bloody, but his smile was Jax.

"I found it, Killian," Jax said. His voice was like gravel mixed with water. "The original formula. Cache A. Day 20. I drank it."

Killian's brain froze. Cache A. They were told to never open Cache A. It was the first batch, unstable, tested on rats only. Rats that lived 48 hours then bled from the eyes. Bianca had locked it with a code even Elena didn't know.

"You drank it to not turn?" Killian asked, stepping closer. The smell was terrible. Like iron and rot.

"I drank it to stay human long enough to bring fuel back to her," Jax said, and looked at the boy. "To my son. I had a son before the bunker. I never told Bianca. I was ashamed. He was in the water plant with his mother when it started."

Son? Jax never said he had a son. Jax never said he had anyone.

The boy tugged Jax's sleeve. "Dad, the man is looking at the drums. We should go. Trucks come at sunset."

There were four drums, hidden behind the pump house, covered with tarp and leaves. 200 liters. Real. Not a mirage from heat. Killian could smell the diesel.

"We can't carry it," the boy said. He was strong for 10 but not strong enough. "We need his help. Dad said Bunker 3 has strong man. Killian."

Jax coughed, and black blood hit the inside of his mask. Not red. Black. Like oil.

"48 hours, Killian. That's what Bianca said, right? 48 hours incubation? She was right. I have... maybe three hours left before I... before I am not me. Cache A gives you 50 hours human, then you turn fast. Very fast."

He pulled off his backpack and threw it at Killian's feet. Inside - not food. Not formula. Not fuel. Letters. Dozens of letters, written on toilet paper, on cardboard, on the back of a formula label.

"Give them to Elena," Jax said. "Give them to Bianca. Tell her... tell Bianca I kept my promise. I found fuel. I found my son. Tell Tiny Elena...that her uncle Jax..."

He could not finish.

Killian stared at the drums. At Jax. At the boy.

If he took the fuel back to the bunker, Tiny Elena lives. Elena's twins have heat for three more weeks. Bianca will have hope.

If he stays and helps Jax and the boy move the fuel, raiders will find them. The tire tracks meant raiders were coming back. The boy said trucks come at sunset. Sunset was in 20 minutes.

The cough came again, but not from Jax. From far behind Killian, from the road that led back to the bunker. The only road.

Engines. Diesel engines. Big.

Raiders. Or military. Either way, men with guns who would take fuel and leave nothing.

Jax heard it too. His red eyes went wide. Human again for one second. Clear.

"Run," he told the boy. His voice suddenly strong. Dad voice. "Take one drum and run to the bunker. The bunker with the radio. Tell them 1.48kg. They will let you in. Tell them Jax sent you."

The boy grabbed a drum handle, but it was too heavy. 50 liters is 50 kilos. He fell into the mud, mask falling off. He had Jax's nose. Jax's eyes, but clean.

The engines got louder. Headlights now visible through trees.

Killian made his choice.

He didn't grab the fuel. He grabbed Jax.

He dragged Jax - who was now screaming, not from pain, from the turning starting in his brain, a high sound like a child - behind the water tank, and left the four drums in plain sight in the open.

Let raiders take fuel. Fuel can be stolen again. Fuel can be found again. Jax can only be saved once. A man can only be human once.

The first raider truck turned the corner. Not raiders. People in white hazmat suits. Clean. Too clean. They jumped out and went straight for the drums.

And Jax's black veins reached his eyes. He stopped screaming.

He was gone. The thing that was Jax looked at Killian.

But his hand - his human hand, before it turned fully black - was holding Killian's hand tight, and holding a small silver chain. A tiny chain with a tiny cross.

It was similar to Tiny Elena's own chain. The one she still wears inside bunker.

The one Killian found on the road with 11 cans of formula on Day 88, when he thought his brother Keon was eaten by the infected.

And now it was bloody, in Jax's hand.