All Chapters of APOCALYPSE QUEEN: LEVEL UP OR DIE: Chapter 151 - Chapter 160

Apex woke up loud the morning we left.Rudy had a crew hauling pallets into the east field before the sun cleared the ridge, and Terra stood in the middle of it all with a roll of Eli's schematics pinned under one boot, pointing at stakes and calling out measurements like she'd been building barracks her whole life. Tristan was already shirtless and sweating over a stack of salvaged beams, a hammer in one hand and a running commentary going about how he'd never in his life expected to be doing honest carpentry."Temporary shelter," Terra said, catching my eye across the yard. "Pallet frames, canvas over the top, woodstoves from the Syndicate stock. Not pretty, but warm. We'll have room for fifteen by the time you're back, maybe twenty if Rudy stops perfecting every joint.""They're load-bearing joints," Rudy called over his shoulder, wounded."They're a tent, Rudy."I laughed, and let the sound of it settle in my chest as I walked the long way to the truck, past the garden plots. Emil

Ten miles sounds like nothing until you try to move nineteen people through them.We settled into a rhythm by the first hour. Dutch drove the truck at a crawl at the head of the column, children's faces peering out the back like a parade float. The walkers followed in a loose, strung-out line along the old interstate, packs bobbing, boots scuffing over cracked asphalt and weeds pushing up through the seams. Ronan took the rear, rifle ready, eyes on every dead overpass and ruined exit ramp. I walked the middle, where I could hear everything.Tim ranged ahead. He'd announced it with great ceremony back at the gate: "Somebody's got to be the canary, and I'm the only one here who looks good in yellow." Then he'd vanished into the ditch grass and reappeared forty yards up the road every few minutes, waving with a stick or holding up some small curiosity he'd found, a rusted license plate, a perfect pinecone, a single child's mitten that he turned over thoughtfully before tucking in his jac

The rain was gone by morning, and the world looked scrubbed.Every puddle on the old highway held a piece of pale blue sky. The pines steamed in the first sun, and somewhere in the trees a bird I couldn't name was making a great deal of noise about being alive. Nineteen people woke stiff and damp and quieter than they'd been the day before, and for the first time since Riverside, nobody was looking over their shoulder."Twelve point four miles," I told them over cold cornbread. "It's too far for one walk, so we're going to cheat."Dutch had worked out the cheat the night before, hunched over the map with a pencil behind his ear. The truck would run in relays: carry the slowest ahead two miles, drop them, circle back for the next group. Nobody walked all twelve miles, and nobody sat for all of them either. Walter, foot freshly dressed and propped on a dashboard Dutch had cleaned for the occasion, got to ride the whole way."I feel like a prize hog," Walter said."You look like a man wh

I woke before the bell and lay still, listening to Apex breathe.It had a sound I'd only learned to hear lately. The creak of the east wall settling as the dew came off it. A rooster working up to a decision. Somewhere a pot clanked, and a child laughed and was shushed, and underneath it all the low steady hum of a place with more people in it than it had ever held. Ronan's arm lay across my waist. Dutch's boots were at the foot of the bed. I let myself have thirty seconds of it before I got up.Rounds took the first two hours.Caleb and the teenagers were assigned to the garden crew under Emily, with Rosa shouting corrections from the end of the row. Walter had been escorted, protesting, to the supply shed, where Dutch put a wrench in his hand and a dead generator in front of him, and the two of them were already arguing happily about gaskets. Ashley and Sunny took the laundry line. Lily attached herself to Eli like a burr, and Eli, with the grave patience of a nine-year-old who had

I kept my promise to Tristan at dusk, on the north wall, where the wind came off the pines and carried the smell of woodsmoke up from the yard.He was alone. He'd sent the sentries to the far end and was standing at the parapet with his rifle slung and his hands flat on the cold stone, watching the road the way you watch a dog you've been told not to touch. He didn't turn when I came up beside him."Since this morning I've wanted to ask you something," he said."Ask.""When the LUS sent you back and you had all that time to get ready. Did you ever think about going after him? Before he could do it to anyone else." He made a small, flat gesture with one hand. "Just not letting it happen.""I thought about it," I said. "And then I didn't. There wasn't time for the dead, Tristan. There were the living."He nodded slowly. A muscle jumped along his jaw."I'm not going to tell you what to do," he said. "I'd like to. God, I'd like to. I'd like to walk down there and put him in the ground so