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

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

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

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

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

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