Chapter 64 Who Leads II

Chapter 64 Who Leads II
Silence. Then the van door opened. Wang — one of the original group, solid and reliable, the type who understood utility before sentiment — stepped out first without being asked. He had been through enough of these runs to know the rhythm. He moved toward the supermarket entrance at a jog. Ryan and Nathan were already out. I followed. --- The twenty-two zombies came in two loose groups. The first group was eight, clustered near the supermarket entrance, drawn by the engine sound. They were standard class — slow, predictable, the kind of threat that had been terrifying nine days ago and was now a problem I could solve with a blade and controlled breathing. I went left. Ryan went right. Nathan stayed center and watched the angles. The first three were down before the group had registered the full shape of the threat. I kept moving — that was the rule that had kept me alive across a hundred loops, in a hundred configurations of this exact situation. Stay mobile. Don't let them close a circle. Kill the ones nearest to the people behind you first. The second group of fourteen came around the side of the building. Faster to react than the first, which meant they had fresh signal — maybe one of the engine sounds had only just reached them. Ryan intercepted the edge of the group. He had gotten better in the last nine days. Not trained-better — experience-better. The difference between someone who had been in three real situations and someone who had been in none was significant, and it showed in how he moved. He wasn't thinking about each strike anymore. His body was starting to do some of it on its own. Nathan was slower, more calculated, but he was accurate. He picked single targets at the edge of the group and worked inward rather than trying to fight the mass, which was smart. It kept him from getting flanked. I cut through the center. Four minutes. The perimeter was clear. I turned and looked at the van. --- The door was already open. Zhang Li came out first, which didn't surprise me. She crossed to the supermarket entrance at a walk — not running, conserving energy, already thinking ahead to how many trips this was going to take. Yuan Ying was two steps behind her, jaw set, eyes forward. Then Jade. Then three of the girls from the dormitory. Then, after a visible moment of internal deliberation, the man with glasses got out. He didn't look at me. He walked to the entrance and went inside. Zhao came out last and stood beside me. "You run things very directly," he said. "Yes." "Some people don't respond well to that." "They respond worse to being dead," I said. "Your group held for nine days. That means you know how to make decisions without consensus when the situation requires it." He looked at me sideways. "That's why you're not arguing with me," I said. A pause. Then something shifted in his expression — acknowledgment, maybe, or the early stages of it. "What's the plan after this?" he asked. "Sacramento. Government facility. Broadcasting on a loop, fifteen kilometers north of the city center." I watched the flow of people moving between the supermarket and the vehicles, carrying armloads of canned goods and bottled water and dry goods. "It's the best infrastructure option within range." "How long to get there?" "Six hours on a clear highway. Longer if it's not clear." He was quiet for a moment. Running the numbers, the same way he had probably run numbers for nine days about food and water and how long the door would hold. "Okay," he said. "Okay?" "I'm not going to fight your leadership every step. That's what you're trying to assess, right? Whether I'm going to be a problem." I looked at him. "I'm not going to be a problem," he said. "I have sense enough to recognize when someone knows what they're doing." I held his eyes for a moment. Then I nodded. "Help them carry," I said. He went inside. --- We were back in the vehicles in eighteen minutes. The supplies filled the rear of both vehicles to the ceiling of the cargo areas. Canned goods, bottled water, dry pasta, cooking oil, anything that was sealed and hadn't been opened. Not enough for thirty-seven people indefinitely. Enough for the drive north and whatever the first few days at Sacramento looked like while we assessed the situation. I climbed into the front of the van and looked back at the group. Thirty-seven faces. A range of ages, a range of what they had been through, a range of what they understood about what the world was now. Some of them were going to be functional. Some of them were going to be difficult. Some of them were frightened in ways that would take weeks to resolve into something useful. That was fine. I had worked with worse. I looked at Sophie. "Highway entrance is north on Route 50. Derek knows the way." She nodded and started the van. In the side mirror I watched the supermarket shrink behind us. The bodies of the twenty-two zombies on the pavement, already drying in the afternoon sun. The glasses guy — his name was Marcus, I had heard someone use it — was sitting in the third row, staring out the window, not talking. He would talk eventually. People like him always did. I would deal with it when he did. Right now the highway was ahead and Sacramento was six hours north and the engine was running clean. That was enough.