All Chapters of The Zombies Apocalypse Brought Me Back To My Fiancee : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

They made it as far as the hallway before Vanessa finally let herself exhale, the careful composure from the meeting cracking the second the conference room door shut behind them."He knows," she said, voice low. "That wasn't a joke. That was him telling us he knows exactly what he said last night and exactly who heard him.""Probably." Adrian's jaw was still tight, the same tension from the meeting room not yet releasing. "The wedding comment was a message. A reminder that he can rearrange the board whenever he wants, including us.""That's not the part I want to talk about."He glanced at her, something careful entering his expression. "Which part do you want to talk about.""The part where you said it's 'not currently on the table.'""That's what it is. Currently. Not on the table.""That's a strange way to phrase 'absolutely not.'""I didn't say absolutely not.""You didn't say anything remotely close to absolutely not, actually, now that I think about it."He stopped walking, tur

By the next morning, "no cause for concern" had become the organizing principle of every single news channel Vanessa flipped through, a chorus of calm, practiced voices all reciting slightly different versions of the exact same lie."Health officials continue to monitor the situation," one anchor said, flanked by a graphic that somehow made forty confirmed cases look like a weather forecast. "There is no indication of broader public risk at this time."Vanessa muted it and flipped to the next channel, where a different anchor, equally composed, used almost identical phrasing with the enthusiasm of someone reading a grocery list."No indication of broader risk," she repeated, flopping back onto the war room couch beside Miriam, who hadn't looked up from her laptop in over an hour. "You know what that phrase actually means?""What.""It means there's indication. They just haven't finished deciding how to phrase the indication yet.""That tracks with everything we already know.""It's al

They got Clara into the east wing sitting room, wrapped in a blanket Rosa produced without being asked, a cup of tea pressed into her shaking hands that she didn't drink so much as hold, like the warmth alone was the point.Vanessa sat across from her, feeling strange and unmoored in a way she hadn't expected. Two days ago she would have taken grim satisfaction in watching this woman suffer even slightly. Now, faced with the raw, unguarded fear on Clara's face, she felt mostly just tired."Start from the beginning," Vanessa said. "What have you actually heard."Clara's hands tightened around the mug. "It's not just the news. The news says nothing, you've seen it, 'no cause for concern,' over and over until the words stop meaning anything." Her voice cracked. "But my neighbor, Dolores, her cousin works at the hospital in the northern district. She called Dolores three nights ago, crying, saying they're being told not to discuss patient numbers. Saying the numbers they're actually seein

They left at dawn, twelve hours after Victor's original forty-eight-hour window had collapsed into something closer to immediate, a four-person team loaded into two unmarked vehicles with equipment that actually matched the mission this time instead of whatever Vanessa had managed to smuggle out of a weapons locker."No crowbars," Adrian said, watching her check her gear one final time in the back of the lead vehicle."I know the rule.""I'm just confirming.""You confirm it every single mission. At some point you have to trust the growth.""I'll trust the growth when I stop finding crowbars hidden in unexpected places.""That happened once.""It happened in my glove compartment three weeks ago.""That was a gift. You should be grateful."The two additional team members, a quiet, efficient woman named Reyes and a younger operative named Park who still had the slightly too-eager energy of someone new enough to the field that danger hadn't fully worn the enthusiasm out of him yet, rode

Tracking Daniela Prieto took less time than Vanessa expected and considerably more time than Adrian wanted, a day and a half of quiet digging through personnel records, apartment leases, and one deeply uncomfortable conversation with a landlord who clearly thought they were debt collectors.They found her in a motel on the edge of the city, paying cash under a name that wasn't her own, the kind of place that didn't ask questions and didn't keep records anyone could easily trace.Adrian knocked twice, and the silence that followed stretched long enough that Vanessa started counting seconds in her head, reaching for the small blade she kept at her hip out of habit more than real expectation of needing it.The door finally opened on a chain, a single wide, frightened eye visible through the gap."I don't know who you are," the voice said, shaking, "but if Hale sent you, tell him I haven't talked to anyone, I swear, I haven't—""We're not here from Hale," Vanessa said quickly, keeping her