หน้าหลัก / Romance / MY EX LEFT ME TO DIE, SO I BECAME QUEEN OF THE APOCALYPSE / บทที่ 71 - บทที่ 80

บททั้งหมดของ MY EX LEFT ME TO DIE, SO I BECAME QUEEN OF THE APOCALYPSE: บทที่ 71 - บทที่ 80

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Chapter 71 — The Thing Giving Orders

“We save them by killing the thing giving orders.”Evelyn kept the enhanced infected centered through the narrow gap between branches.The rifle felt heavier than it should have.Not because of the weight.Because of what waited below.The enhanced infected crouched beside the rusted generator at the far edge of the ranger station clearing, head angled toward the trapped survivors as if listening to their fear take shape. Every shout, every panicked shot, every scrape of movement gave it something to use.A basic infected slammed into the side of the utility truck.The woman behind the hood fired.The enhanced one rasped.Two infected shifted immediately toward the sound.Evelyn’s finger tightened near the trigger.Rowan’s breath warmed the side of her face. “Branch in your line.”“I see it.”“Half inch left.”She adjusted.The sightline cleared, but only for a heartbeat. The enhanced infected moved with quick, twitching jerks, half-hidden by the generator and the trees behind it.Gab

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Chapter 72 — What Frostfang Closed

The woman’s voice shook across the ruined clearing.Gabriel stood near the rusted generator with one hand still wrapped around the handle of his axe. Blood streaked his sleeve. Mud clung to his boots. The enhanced infected lay crumpled at his feet, its body slack now that the thing inside it had stopped giving orders.For a moment, he did not answer.The woman stepped farther from behind the truck's hood. She was thin, sharp-faced, and trembling so hard the rifle in her hands rattled softly against its sling. Her eyes stayed locked on Gabriel as if he were the only solid thing left in the clearing.“You came back,” she said again, quieter this time.Gabriel’s jaw tightened. “Mara.”That name changed the air.Rowan noticed.Evelyn noticed Rowan noticing.Dean, standing near the fence with his rifle still raised, glanced between them. “I’m getting the sense there’s a footnote here.”Mara let out a laugh that was not a laugh at all. It broke halfway through and turned into something too

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Chapter 73 — Reduced Confidence

The place people thought would save them was no longer just a destination.It was a threshold.And something had already reached it first.Evelyn stared at the map until the red grease-pencil lines seemed to move.Rain tapped against the ranger station roof in a steady, patient rhythm. Water slid through the broken window and collected in dark streaks along the wall. The room smelled of mildew, blood, wet paper, and old smoke. Outside, Mrs. Carter’s voice rose and fell as she bullied the wounded into staying alive.Inside, no one seemed eager to speak.Warren stood over the map with both hands braced against the desk. His expression had gone flat in a way Evelyn had only seen when he was forcing himself not to react too soon.“Frostfang doesn’t close gates to refugees,” he said.Mara leaned against the cabinet, arms wrapped around herself. “You said that already.”“I’m saying it because it’s true.”“I’m saying what happened.”The two statements sat across from each other like drawn kn

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Chapter 74 — The Overlook Road

They were not traveling toward safety.They were traveling toward the reason safety had failed.Evelyn carried that thought with her as the convoy pulled away from the ranger station.The rain had slowed to a fine mist, but the forest still dripped around them. Water fell from pine needles in soft, irregular taps. Mud sucked at tires. The old ranger station disappeared behind the trees piece by piece, first the broken fence, then the slanted roof, then the crooked green sign half-hidden by rain and branches.No one waved.There had been too many endings today for gestures.The new survivors had been folded into the convoy with the awkward efficiency of people who no longer had the luxury of proper introductions. Mara rode two vehicles back with one of her wounded. The others had been split between trucks wherever there was space. Gabriel returned to the open rear of the lead truck, one hand on the rail, eyes scanning the road ahead.Evelyn sat beside Rowan again.The folded map rested

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Chapter 75 — Do Not Approach

Static swallowed the voice. For one breath, no one moved.The convoy stood scattered across the overlook in the thin rain, faces turned toward the lead truck as if the radio had become something alive inside it. Frostfang waited in the distance below them, walls dark against the mountains, smoke rising from inside the eastern quarter in thick, ugly columns.Evelyn felt the words settle under her skin.It learned the patrol routes.Not they.It.Warren reached the truck first and grabbed the radio handset. “This is the Fire Tower convoy, south of Frostfang. Identify yourself.”Static hissed back.He adjusted the dial with sharp, impatient movements. “Repeat. This is the Fire Tower convoy. We are south of Frostfang. Identify yourself.”For several seconds, only rain answered.Then a burst of sound tore through the speaker.“—don’t use eastern approach—”The voice cracked, faded, and returned thinner.“...watch posts compromised...”Warren leaned closer. “Who is this?”Gabriel stood near

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Chapter 76 — The Patrol’s Path

The shed went silent.Even Mrs. Carter’s hands paused over Vale’s wound.Rain tapped on the roof in quick, delicate sounds that had no right to exist beside the weight of what Vale had said. Outside, the convoy waited on the overlook. People whispered near the vehicles. Frostfang smoked in the distance, enormous and wounded beneath the low sky.Evelyn stood in the doorway of the relay shed with Rowan close behind her and Gabriel at her side.Wearing a patrol’s path like a key.The phrase made her skin crawl because she understood it too quickly.Not a disguise.Not clothing.Pattern.The Watcher had learned where the patrols walked, when they returned, which roads the guards trusted, and which signals meant a safe approach. It had not needed to break Frostfang’s defenses if the defenses opened around habit.Warren’s voice came rough. “Explain.”Vale leaned her head back against the wall while Mrs. Carter worked at her side. Her face had gone gray under the dirt, but her eyes stayed fo

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Chapter 77 — Where Frostfang Stopped Looking

“We go where Frostfang stopped looking.”The words settled inside the relay shed like a decision with teeth.For a moment, only the rain answered; it tapped against the roof, slid down the warped doorway, and softened the mud outside into dark, shining patches. Beyond the overlook, Frostfang smoked beneath the low clouds. The eastern gate stood sealed in the distance, barricaded from the outside like a wound someone had tried to hold closed with metal and desperation.Warren stared at the southern approach on the map.“The drainage culvert,” he said.Gabriel nodded. “Old runoff channel below the southern wall. It cuts under the outer slope before turning west. Maintenance crews used to access it before the rockfall.”Vale shifted against the wall and winced as Mrs. Carter tightened another stitch. “It was removed from active patrol routes last winter.”“Because of the rockfall?” Evelyn asked.“Because command decided no infected would use a half-collapsed drainage route when roads wer

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Chapter 78 — The Southern Culvert

The road no one had thought to guard began as a gap between two leaning pines.Caleb stopped the lead truck at the edge of it and stared through the windshield with open disgust.“No.”Gabriel stood on the running board, one hand braced against the door frame. “This is the service trail.”“This is a deer having a nervous breakdown.”“It widens after the first bend.”“Does it widen into a road?”Gabriel paused.Caleb closed his eyes. “I hate you a little again.”The convoy had left the overlook and descended below the ridge, following an old maintenance track until the ground flattened near a stand of dense firs. Mist clung low between the trunks. Frostfang was no longer visible from here, hidden by slope and forest, but the smoke still stained the air with a bitter edge.The vehicles were tucked beneath cover as best they could manage.Branches were pulled across reflective surfaces. Engines were shut down. People spoke in whispers, as if the forest itself might report them.The servi

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Chapter 79 — The Road Frostfang Forgot

Evelyn stood before the black mouth of the southern culvert with Caleb’s flashlight cold in her hand and water whispering over stone at her feet. The sound from inside came again after several seconds.A faint metallic click.Then nothing.Behind her, Dean breathed out very slowly. “I would like to revise my earlier position on scouting. I now believe that scouting is a concept invented by people who hate staying alive.”Rowan did not look back. “Quiet.”“I’m being quiet emotionally. My mouth is adjusting.”Gabriel crouched near the broken grate, one hand resting against the concrete lip of the culvert. Moss clung to the old structure in thick green strips. Rainwater dripped from roots overhead and pattered against rusted metal below. His eyes moved over the collapsed stones, the bent bars, the scrape marks along the mud.“Someone widened this,” he said.Evelyn stepped closer. “Recently?”“Not today. But not last winter.”Rowan knelt beside the partial footprint near the waterline. “R

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Chapter 80 — Both Ways

The wounded patrolman’s voice scraped through the maintenance chamber and seemed to vanish into the sounds of rushing water.No one touched the yellow latch.Gabriel’s hand remained half-raised toward it, fingers still, palm open. Slowly, he lowered his arm.Dean stared at the latch as though it had personally betrayed him. “I knew yellow was a suspicious color.”Rowan moved his light from the latch to the dark passage beyond the chamber. “What’s on the other side?”The patrolman tried to answer, but the effort folded him inward. He coughed once, wet and painful, then pressed his blood-slick hand harder against his side.Evelyn crouched closer.Not too close.His flare gun still rested against his thigh, and fear made people dangerous even when they were half-dead.“My name is Evelyn,” she said. “We came from the south ridge. Captain Vale sent us.”The man’s eyes sharpened despite the fever glaze. “Vale’s alive?”“Yes.”A breath went out of him.It might have been relief. It might hav

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