Page 47 of What Remains

Jay nodded. "No lanterns. Flashlights pointed down only. Let's get set up."

Seth climbed out of Beast with stiff shoulders while Josie lingered inside, watching Layla before easing the door open with careful hands.

Seth met Jay halfway between the vehicles.

"Bad spot for sound," he said in a low voice. "Anything comes down that road, we'll hear it.”

Jay swept his gaze along the tree line. "Then we stay silent. Rotate watch, same order as last night."

Cara gave a small nod. "I'll take second."

Jay reached for her hand briefly, a silent reassurance passed between them, before letting go.

Behind them, Josie wrapped her arms around herself and stared into the darkening trees.

"Is it always like this?" she asked.

Seth glanced over at her. "Only on the good nights."

That earned a slight smile—the first he'd seen from her since morning.

Jay exhaled, his breath steaming in the cold air. "All right let’s settle in. No fires tonight unfortunately.”

The group moved to unload sleeping gear from the SUVs, but Seth paused, turning slowly back toward the woods.

He couldn't say why. He saw nothing. Heard nothing.

But something was off, the birds were still calling, yet the sounds felt strangely off, as if the forest were hidding secrets.

The night settled, heavy and still—the kind of quiet that made Seth's skin itch. He sat on the hood of Beast, rifle across his lap, eyes methodically sweeping the tree line. The others slept inside the vehicles: Jay and Cara in one, Josie and Layla bundled in sleeping bags in the back of the other. Only the faint crackle of cooling metal and the occasional sigh of wind through dead branches kept him company.

A pale crescent moon offered just enough light to make everything look wrong.

Seth rubbed the grit from his eyes. Exhaustion pulled at him, but watch duty was the one thing he could always do, the one thing he still owed them.

A shape moved.

Barely a flicker at first—a shift in the shadows, then a staggering lurch from behind an abandoned pickup twenty yards out.

Seth froze.

Another step.

Then another.

A wet, rattling breath carried across the clearing.

An infected. Upright. Barely, but moving.

He raised the rifle to his shoulder, controlled his breathing. The sick man's head snapped towards him with the sudden, jerking precision of a predator sensing prey. It lurched forward with a sound that had stopped being human a long time ago. Its spine twisted unnaturally with each step, tendons visible through rotting flesh, fingers curled into rigid claws. Then the stench reached him something that didn't belong in anything still breathing.

Seth's finger squeezed the trigger.

CRACK.

The shot split the night. The sick man's head burst apart in a mist of black, and the body crumpled where it stood, finally motionless.

Inside the SUV, Josie jolted upright with a strangled cry. Layla shrieked, a sharp, terrified sound that cut through the ringing in his ears.