All Chapters of APOCALYPSE QUEEN: LEVEL UP OR DIE: Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

[ETA: TEN MINUTES, FORTY SECONDS.]I didn't have time to be afraid, so I used the time to be useful."Dutch, take the prisoners to the guard post. Two stunned, one standing. Zip-tie everyone. If the stunned ones wake up angry, you have my permission to be rude.""Yes ma'am." He hauled the first limp body over his shoulder like a sack of feed and went."Ronan, off the roof. Turret.""Already moving." His voice came from everywhere at once, steady and clipped, the Ranger fully awake. "Fifty cal's got three hundred rounds loaded and two hundred more in the can. Where do you want the first burst?""Wait for my word.""I always do."I turned in a circle in the cold gray light, and the yard around me was already coming alive. Rudy was running bodies toward the shelters, herding children and the new arrivals toward the stone gymnasium, shouting numbers like a man counting sheep. Emily had Grace pinned to her chest and Eli by the collar, moving with the grim grace of a woman who had decided t

I counted twice, because the first time I didn't trust the number.Ten dead, in the end. Three from the first team, seven from the nineteen. Four wounded, one of them badly enough that Thorne took him straight to the table in the clinic and sent everyone else out of the room. Eight men and women who'd laid down their rifles and sat in the gravel with their fingers laced behind their heads, waiting to learn what kind of woman ran this place.None of them were ours.I stood in the yard with my clipboard and let that sentence sit in my chest. It didn't feel like victory. It felt like a ledger balancing against my will.[CASUALTIES: APEX, 0 KILLED. 2 WOUNDED (MINOR).] [HOSTILES: 10 KILLED. 15 CAPTURED, 4 OF THEM WOUNDED.]"You're doing it again," Dutch said.He was standing at my elbow with a shovel over one shoulder, dirt to his knees, sweat dried in streaks down his face. He'd been burying people for an hour. He hadn't been asked to. He'd just gone out to the road at dawn, and he'd stay

I woke to the smell of terrible coffee.Tristan sat on the edge of the bed in a half-buttoned shirt with a tin mug in each hand, studying one of them with the focused suspicion he usually reserved for fuses. The window was gray. My wrists ached in a small, honest way, and my body felt like it belonged to me again, quiet and loose and unburdened."Don't drink it," he said. "I'm warning you now. I think I broke it.""You can't break coffee.""I found a way." He passed me the mug anyway, and I took a sip, and tried to look like a woman with dignity. "Well?""It tastes like a tire.""A warm tire." He leaned over and kissed me, slow and unhurried, then pulled back and studied my face. "Better. You look like a person.""I feel like one.""Good." His thumb brushed the faint mark on my wrist, once, with a tenderness at odds with the shirt he'd forgotten to finish buttoning. "The truck got back at three. Dutch told me to tell you, and I quote, 'tell her everyone's breathing and nobody's bleedi

We rolled through the Apex gate just after full dark. The rain had thinned to a fine mist that beaded on the windshield and made the compound lights look soft and far away. Dutch killed the engine. For a moment none of us moved.Ronan was already at the truck door, opening it before I could reach for the handle. He looked us over once, Dutch first, then me, then Justin and whatever he saw seemed to satisfy him. He didn’t say much. Just a quiet “Welcome home” and a hand on my shoulder that lingered half a second longer than necessary.People came out of the buildings in ones and twos. Tristan appeared at the edge of the yard, dark coat collar turned up against the damp, and gave us a single slow nod that somehow managed to be both welcome and assessment. Terra took the medical bag from Justin without asking. Someone else carried the empty thermos. Within ten minutes the truck was empty and the three of us were standing in the soft rain with nothing left to do but go inside.Dutch went

I heard my own name in the laundry yard, and I stopped behind the stacked crates to listen. Old habit."Four," said a woman's voice, low and scandalized. "Four. I counted. The big one, the soldier, the one with the hat, the one who sets things on fire, and now the doctor.""Medic," someone corrected."I don't care what he is. It's not natural."I knew the voice. Her name was Mrs. Delaney, one of Riverside's eleven, sixty-something, with iron-gray hair and a spine like a fence post. She'd arrived with a suitcase she refused to let anyone carry. I'd spent three days trying to decide whether I liked her."I think it's brave," said a younger voice. Sunny, the girl who'd followed Ashley to Apex. "She keeps them all alive.""There's a difference between keeping men alive and keeping them around.""There's a bet going," said a third voice, a man's, dry and delighted, and I closed my eyes. "On who's next.""Next?" said Mrs. Delaney."Ten rations to one on the hunter.""Tim's with Terra," said