All Chapters of MY EX LEFT ME TO DIE, SO I BECAME QUEEN OF THE APOCALYPSE: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The storm never stopped. Rain hammered steadily against the motel roof while darkness swallowed the mountains beyond the parking lot. The figure Evelyn had spotted below disappeared between the abandoned cars before either of them could get a clear look.Neither she nor Rowan moved away from the window immediately.“You saw that too?” Evelyn asked quietly.Rowan kept watching the parking lot through the narrow gap in the curtain. “Yeah.”No reassurance. No pretending maybe it had been nothing. Just yes.Somehow, that steadied her nerves more.The motel parking lot sat empty again beneath flickering lights, with rainwater streaming across the cracked asphalt. A shopping cart rolled slowly through the far corner of the lot before catching against a curb.Evelyn stepped back from the curtain slowly. Every muscle in her body ached now that the adrenaline had faded enough to leave room for exhaustion.The motel room suddenly felt very small. Two beds. One door. Thin walls. Not safe. Just t

Morning arrived gray and cold. Rain clung to the mountains in drifting sheets of mist while Evelyn followed Rowan down the motel stairwell toward the parking lot below. Wet leaves stuck against cracked asphalt beneath their boots, and somewhere farther down the highway, smoke still crawled slowly into the sky.The world looked abandoned already. Not empty. Just left behind too fast.Several motel room doors hung open now from people fleeing during the night. One car near the far end of the parking lot still sat idling softly with the driver's side door open. Nobody inside.Evelyn avoided looking too closely at the dark stain trailing away from it across the pavement.Beside her, Rowan scanned the tree line automatically while adjusting the backpack higher across one shoulder.“You sleep at all?” Evelyn asked quietly.“Enough.”She could see exhaustion around his eyes now, beneath the rough calmness he carried everywhere.But he kept moving anyway.That felt familiar in a way she didn’

Morning settled slowly over the overlook. Fog drifted through the evergreens surrounding the ranger station while rain tapped softly against the roof in uneven bursts. The mountains below looked washed-out and distant beneath layers of gray cloud, though smoke still curled upward from somewhere farther down the valley.The world kept burning quietly in the background.Inside the station, the air smelled like damp wood, cold coffee, and wet clothing. Rowan sat near the window with the splitting maul resting beside his leg while he watched the tree line through a narrow gap in the curtain.Evelyn wasn’t sure he’d slept at all.Or maybe he had in the same way wild animals rested, lightly, never fully, always listening for danger.Across the room, the woman who’d arrived during the storm sat carefully wrapping a faded emergency blanket around the little girl beside her. Both of them still looked soaked through despite the dry clothes Evelyn had dug out of storage bins earlier that morning

The mountain slope behind the ranger station was steeper than it looked. Mud slid beneath Evelyn’s boots while wet branches clawed against her jacket, and fog swallowed most of the forest around them. Above, infected shrieks echoed faintly through the trees from the direction of the overlook.They were too close, even with the distance growing between them.Rowan moved ahead through the underbrush, clearing a path where he could, while Nora struggled beside Evelyn, trying to keep Lily steady on the slick terrain.The little girl stayed quiet. She was trying very hard to win the game Rowan had given her. That realization settled strangely in Evelyn’s chest. Children adapt frighteningly fast.A sharp crack echoed uphill behind them. Everyone froze instinctively.Another infected shriek rolled through the fog, closer than before.“They’re following us,” Nora whispered. Fear frayed the edges of her voice now.Rowan listened silently for several seconds before speaking. “Not all of them.”

They didn’t stop moving until the gunshots disappeared behind the mountains. Even then, Rowan kept pushing the group deeper through the forest while fog drifted thick between the trees and rain soaked steadily through their clothes.Nobody talked much.The sounds from the creek crossing still clung heavily to the surrounding silence. Especially the screaming.Lily finally stumbled hard over a root hidden beneath wet leaves and nearly fell face-first into the mud before Evelyn caught her.“I’m okay,” Lily said quickly.Too quickly, like she was trying not to become a problem.Evelyn crouched beside her carefully. “You don’t have to pretend.”The little girl looked exhausted enough to cry, but she only nodded and tightened her grip on the emergency blanket instead.Rowan scanned the surrounding woods one more time before finally speaking. “We’ll stop here for a few minutes.”The area around them dipped into a shallow ravine where fallen trees and thick brush provided decent cover from t