chapter 14

Chapter 14: The Pound at the Gate

The metallic echo of our welding torch faded, leaving a heavy, suffocating silence inside the newly sealed warehouse.

We had done it. The lower loading shutter was welded shut with reinforced steel plates, Derrick’s tools and spare auto parts were stacked neatly against the inner walls, and Maya was resting safely in the back office under a steady hum of filtered air. On paper, our ground floor was a fortress.

But paper doesn't stop bullets, and it doesn't stop people with nothing left to lose.

I was still staring at the encrypted photo of my northern valley bunker on my phone screen when a sharp, violent banging hammered against the front pedestrian door of the warehouse.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

"Open up! Please, God, open the door! They're right behind us!" a desperate woman’s voice shrieked from the street, followed by the frantic crying of a child.

Derrick, who was wiping grease off his uninjured arm with a rag, froze. His head snapped toward the front entrance.

"Evelyn," Derrick said, his voice dropping low. "Someone's out there."

I didn't move. I slipped my phone into my pocket and walked over to the security monitor near the front door. I tapped the screen to pull up the exterior street camera.

The view flickered to life. Three figures huddled against the heavy steel door in the dim light of the emergency streetlamps. A woman in a torn office suit was clutching a little girl no older than seven, while a bloodied man leaned heavily against the brick wall, clutching a deep gash in his shoulder. Down the block, the shuffling shadows of three infected runners were already turning the corner, drawn by the sound of their cries.

"We have to open the door," Derrick said immediately, taking a step forward. His protective instincts—the same instincts that made him a fierce older brother to Maya—flared up instantly. "We can't just leave them out there to be torn apart."

"If we open that door," I said coldly, keeping my eyes fixed on the monitor, "we let the noise, the blood, and the infected right into our staging room. The seal is broken."

Derrick stared at me, his eyes widening in sheer disbelief. The momentary peace we had forged after the garage accident shattered in an instant.

"Are you insane?" Derrick roared, stepping right into my space, his face dark with rage. "There's a little kid out there! You're telling me you're just going to stand here and watch them die?"

"I'm telling you that saving three people will kill the three of us," I fired back, my voice cutting through his anger with absolute, chilling resolve. "If one of them is bitten—if that man bleeding on the wall is already infected—he turns inside our walls, and Maya is dead in her sleep. We don't have the space, we don't have the medical quarantine zone, and we don't have enough rations to play charity."

Bang! Bang!

The pounding grew more frantic, accompanied by the wet, guttural snarls of the runners closing in on the alley.

Derrick gripped the heavy iron manual latch of the front door. "I don't give a damn about your rules or your rations. I'm opening the door."

"Touch that latch," I whispered, pulling my tactical taser from my belt and clicking off the safety with a sharp, metallic snap, "and I will put a thirty-thousand-volt charge straight through your chest. You want to save them? Fine. But you do it over my unconscious body."

We locked eyes. The air between us crackled with pure, volatile tension—a dangerous war between his desperate humanity and my ruthless, cold-blooded survivalism.

Down the street, the rotting screams of the infected grew louder. The choice was no longer ours to delay.