Chapter 63 Who Leads

Chapter 63 Who Leads
The dealership lot was quiet when we pulled in. I went through the front first, blade out, moving fast between the rows of vehicles. The showroom glass was broken on the north side and two zombies had gotten in through the gap. I put them down before they reached the door and checked the rest of the interior. Empty. A sales desk overturned, a display model with its hood propped open, coffee dried in a mug on the counter like whoever left it had expected to come back. I waved the group in. --- We took two vehicles. Derek picked a full-size passenger van — white, high roof, third-row seating, cargo space behind that. Ava went straight to a crew-cab truck with an extended bed and tested the engine before she said a word. Both had keys still in the glove compartments. The dealership had been locked up fast when the Veilfall hit, and nobody had come to strip it yet. That window would close. Everything got stripped eventually. But for now we had what we needed. We loaded the weapons and supplies from the bus into the van. The guns went in the back of the truck with the heavier crates, accessible but out of sight. Thirty-one people split between two vehicles — the van took the women and the new girls, the truck took Ryan, Nathan, Derek at the wheel, and the bulk of the weapons load. Ava drove the truck. I rode in the van's front passenger seat where I could watch the road and be heard by everyone. Sophie drove the van. She had gotten steadier in the last hour. Not confident — steadier. There was a difference, and right now steady was enough. The old school bus sat in the dealership lot, engine dead, looking exactly like what it was: something that had gotten us this far and couldn't go any further. I didn't look back at it for long. --- "Where are we going?" Zhang Li asked from two rows behind me. "There's a second location," I said. "Office building. Two kilometers east. A group sheltering there — I told them we'd come back if we had room." "How many?" "Six when I left them. Couldn't promise they'd all still be there." Zhang Li processed that without comment. She understood the math. Yuan Ying was sitting beside her, looking out the window with an expression that had settled into something quieter than the stairwell version of herself. She hadn't said much since the bus. She ate the bread I gave her and watched the city and kept whatever she was thinking to herself. Lin Qi was asleep. Genuinely asleep, sitting upright, head against the window glass. Nine days of barely sleeping and the moment she felt something like safety her body had just shut down. I let them be. --- The office building was a four-story block on a commercial street that had mostly emptied during the initial panic. Three vehicles were abandoned at the intersection in front of it. A scatter of zombie bodies near the entrance, older kills, already dried down in the sun. Someone had been clearing the perimeter. I got out before Sophie had fully stopped and moved to the front entrance. The door opened before I reached it. Zhao — the man I had spoken to nine days ago in the accounting office on the second floor, the one who had organized his small group and held their position rather than panicking and running — stood in the doorway with a look on his face that was trying to stay neutral and not managing it completely. "You came back," he said. "I said I would." He exhaled once, slow, and stepped aside. Behind him were five others. His group had been six when I left. It was still six. That meant they had held the position, stayed quiet, stayed smart, and not lost anyone. That was not nothing. In nine days, that was significant. "Good work," I said. Zhao looked slightly surprised. Then he nodded and started moving his people toward the van. --- Thirty-seven people. We were thirty-seven people when we pulled out of the commercial street and headed for the supermarket on the intersection two blocks over. I told Sophie to stop in front of it. The sound of the engines brought zombies. They always did. This stretch of road had been moderately populated before the Veilfall — enough foot traffic, enough residential density — and the resulting zombie presence was scattered but not thin. I counted twenty-two from the van window before we had fully stopped. Zhao leaned forward from the second row. "We're stopping here?" "We need supplies," I said. His expression tightened. "There are twenty zombies out there." "Twenty-two," I said. "Ryan, Nathan — with me. Everyone else: when the perimeter is clear, you're coming out to carry. Every able body. We move fast and we move everything we can." Zhao's voice went carefully measured. "Maybe we put it to a vote. Whether we stop here or push straight through to—" "No," I said. He blinked. I turned to look at him directly. Not hostile. Just clear. "This isn't a vote. If you want to stay in the van, stay in the van. If you want to eat tonight, you help carry. That's the deal." A pause. Someone in the back of the van — one of Zhao's people, a guy with glasses who had been running a low-level commentary of concern since we picked him up — said: "This is exactly the problem. One person making all the decisions for everyone. We should have democratic input on—" "You're welcome to democratic input on where you sleep tonight," I said without turning around. "This is a supply run, not a policy discussion. The zombies outside don't care about your vote."