Semua Bab MY EX LEFT ME TO DIE, SO I BECAME QUEEN OF THE APOCALYPSE: Bab 51 - Bab 60

By morning, everyone had heard about the feeling.Tracks could be argued with. People could blame rain, bad light, soft ground, fear, or imagination. They could call it an animal print distorted by mud, or a human track, stretched by panic, but feelings were hard to argue with.The sense of being watched by something they couldn’t see that Mark and Tess had described. People laughed it off at first, but the laughter didn’t last long. Too many strange warnings had turned out to be real, and nobody at the Fire Tower trusted easy explanations the way they used to.Evelyn found Lily near the cabin steps after breakfast. The little girl stood with her arms crossed while Nora tried to coax her toward the laundry line near the western fence.“I’m not going over there,” Lily said.Nora sighed. “It’s laundry, not a battlefield.”“I don’t like it.”Evelyn stopped walking.The laundry line stood inside the fence, close to the trees but nowhere near the gate. Nothing moved beyond it. Nothing look

Nobody used the word monster. That made it worse.Monster would have been simple.A monster attacked. A monster was killed. A monster could be hunted, trapped, burned, or shot if enough people were desperate and lucky.Whatever stood at the treeline the night before had not attacked.It had waited until people saw it.Then it left.By morning, the entire settlement had changed around that fact.People moved in groups even inside the fence. The children were kept near the main cabin. The western patrol route was abandoned until daylight, and even then, nobody volunteered until Warren finally assigned names.He did not argue when Dean requested to join the search.He did not argue when Evelyn said she was going too.That alone showed how much had changed.The search party left after breakfast.Evelyn, Rowan, Dean, and Caleb crossed the western gate while Warren stood inside, watching them go. For once, he didn’t offer an order disguised as advice.He only said, “Don’t chase it.”Dean ga

The infected remained on the ridge until morning.Nobody wanted to move the body in the dark, and by sunrise the story had already spread through most of the settlement. People discussed it while carrying water, checking fence lines, and preparing breakfast. Details shifted from telling to telling, but the important part remained unchanged.The Watcher had killed an infected. Then it left the body where they could find it.Not hidden. Displayed.By the time Dean, Warren, Caleb, Rowan, and Evelyn reached the overlook, a low blanket of mist still clung to the trees. The forest looked peaceful from a distance. Sunlight filtered through cedar branches, catching droplets of water and turning them silver.The corpse ruined the illusion.Dean crouched beside the body while the others gave him room to work. Nobody felt particularly eager to stand close to something the Watcher had touched.For several minutes, the only sounds came from birds deeper in the forest and the distant rush of wind m

The next morning, the Fire Tower became a settlement made from piles of supplies.Supplies covered every available surface. Crates sat outside cabins, fuel cans lined the garage wall, and travel packs leaned against porches with people’s names written on strips of tape. The air carried the noise of preparation from every direction: tools clattering, engines coughing, people arguing over what counted as necessary, and children being told for the tenth time not to wander into the middle of everything.Evelyn stood near the main cabin with a cup of bitter coffee in her hand and watched the place slowly come apart.Not collapse.That would have been easier to name.This was different. The Fire Tower was being carefully dismantled into whatever they could carry north. Food became inventory. Blankets became bedding rolls. Memories became things people hesitated over before either packing them or leaving them behind.Five days had sounded generous during Warren’s meeting.Now it felt impossi

Evelyn did not sleep. Not properly.She lay in the narrow bed inside her cabin with her eyes half-open, listening to the settlement breathe around her. Wood creaked softly as the night cooled. Someone coughed two cabins over. A lantern guttered outside, its low flame throwing faint amber light across the wall before steadying again.Beyond the window, the Fire Tower stood in darkness. Beyond the tower, the forest waited. And somewhere beyond that, unless it had already moved on, the Watcher did too.Evelyn turned onto her side and stared at the shape of her packed bag beside the door. Everything she owned now fit into canvas, leather, and a few carefully organized pockets. Spare clothes. Ammunition. Bandages. Knife. Water tin. A folded map with Rowan’s marks across the northern route. Small things that mattered more than they should because the world had become a place where small things decided who lived long enough to regret bigger mistakes.She pushed the blanket away before dawn.