Semua Bab MY EX LEFT ME TO DIE, SO I BECAME QUEEN OF THE APOCALYPSE: Bab 41 - Bab 50

Three days after Mark brought back the map, Evelyn still found people standing around it. This morning it was Mrs. Carter. She stood alone near the folding table in the main cabin with her glasses low on her nose and one finger hovering above a red route drawn across the paper. She didn’t touch it. Nobody really did for long. They only stopped, stared, traced the lines with their eyes, then walked away looking worse than before.Yesterday, two scavengers had been arguing quietly over one of the northern roads. Before that, Caleb had stood there for almost twenty minutes without saying a word.The map had become part of the tower now. Like the generator, like the patched eastern fence. Like the fear nobody talked about directly anymore.Evelyn stepped into the cabin carrying a crate of damp firewood and found Lily sitting on one of the benches beside Nora. The little girl had a pencil in her hand and a scrap of paper balanced across her knees.She was drawing roads. Not houses. Not peop

The map gained another mark three days later.Nobody planned for that to happen.Mark had spread the ranger station map across the table after dinner while Dean compared it against an old road atlas scavenged months earlier. What started as curiosity slowly became something else as more people drifted into the cabin.By the time Evelyn stepped inside, half a dozen survivors were gathered around the table.Nobody was speaking much. That alone caught her attention. Normally, a group that size would have been arguing.Instead, they were studying the paper as though it might reveal a secret if they stared long enough.Dean looked up when he noticed her. "You should see this."Evelyn crossed the room and stopped beside him.The map looked different now. The original red migration routes still crossed the paper, stretching north through highways, logging roads, and abandoned towns. Over the past few days, Mark had added new observations based on Dean's reports and recent scavenging runs.Th

The settlement woke earlier than usual.Evelyn noticed it before she even opened her eyes.Voices drifted through the cabin walls. Boots moved across damp ground outside. Somewhere nearby, wood clattered against wood, followed by the scrape of something heavy being dragged across the compound.For a moment, she lay still beneath the blanket, listening. The sounds weren't urgent. Nobody was shouting. No one was running. Yet something felt different. It was as if an entire community had quietly reached the same conclusion overnight.When she stepped outside a few minutes later, cold morning air greeted her along with the smell of smoke and wet pine.The compound was already moving.Mark stood beside the fuel shed with a clipboard in one hand, while two scavengers helped count containers. Near the eastern fence, Mrs. Carter sorted medical supplies into smaller packs spread across a folding table. Several people were hauling spare parts from storage into one of the garages.Nobody had ann

The visitors arrived shortly after sunrise.Evelyn spotted them from the tower while finishing watch, a thin line of figures emerging from the morning mist along the old logging road. There were about fifteen of them in total, moving slowly but steadily toward the gate with packs on their backs and one battered pickup crawling behind them.They didn’t look like raiders.They looked tired.Not frightened exactly, and not panicked. It was the deeper kind of weariness Evelyn had begun to recognize everywhere now, the kind that settled into a person’s bones after months of surviving one bad situation after another.A few minutes later, Rowan stepped onto the platform beside her. “Know them?”“No.”He studied the group in silence for a moment. “Think they’re trouble?”“Everyone’s trouble eventually.”His mouth twitched. “That’s almost optimistic for you.”“I’m growing.”Below, the gate opened after Caleb spoke briefly with the lead woman. The newcomers entered cautiously, not like people t

The memory of the river town followed Evelyn back to the Fire Tower.The empty streets remained miles away along the Columbia, sitting beneath gray skies and silent docks.Yet she couldn't stop thinking about it.The abandoned homes.The untouched grocery store.The half-finished cup of coffee beside the register.People had left. Not died or fled. Left.The distinction bothered her more every time she thought about it.By the time the truck rolled through the gate that afternoon, most of the settlement was waiting.Word traveled quickly in places like the Fire Tower.Especially when scouting teams returned with more questions than answers.Evelyn climbed out of the passenger seat and immediately spotted Warren near the main cabin.He wasn't pacing. That alone told Evelyn he was worried.Warren only stood still when he was trying very hard not to show concern."Well?" he asked as the group approached.Dean removed a folded notebook page from his pocket. "I found something."The statem