By the second week, Brice and Brian had stopped feeling like guests.
That was the dangerous thing about Haven.
The walls worked. The food was hot. The chores came every morning with enough structure to make survival feel less like panic and more like a job. Breakfast at sunrise. Repairs after. Patrol rotations. Scavenging maps. Garden work. Dinner under lantern light.
A rhythm.
A very clean rhythm.
Brice didn’t trust clean anymore.
He spent the morning measuring a support beam on one of the cabins, pencil tucked behind his ear, tape measure hooked over one thumb. It was almost peaceful. Almost normal.
Then something cracked across the camp like a gunshot.
Brice didn’t even look up.
“You broke something again.”
Brian stood beside a cabin doorway, holding what used to be a wooden hinge. Splintered pieces dangled from his hand like evidence at a crime scene.
He stared at it with mild betrayal. “I was conducting a structural audit.”
“You opened a door.”
“And it failed.” Brian tossed the ruined hinge into the dirt. “Weakness has consequences.”
Tom walked over from two cabins down, paintbrush in hand, and stared at the broken frame with the expression of a man slowly losing his faith in humanity.
“You know those don’t grow on trees, right?”
Brian pointed toward the overgrown forest beyond the wall. “Doors literally come from trees, Tom. That’s their whole origin story.”
Tom opened his mouth, closed it, then laughed despite himself.
Brice made a mark on the beam and shook his head. “I’ve spent twenty years trying to improve him. Books. Patience. Positive reinforcement. Briefly considered an exorcism.”
Tom glanced at Brian, who was now trying to fit the broken pieces together like a tragic puzzle. “Any progress?”
“No,” Brice said. “Negative progress. If you graphed his personal growth, the line would dig straight into the earth’s core.”
Brian grinned. “Consistency matters.”
Before Brice could respond, a bell rang once from the center of camp.
The sound changed everything.
Workers stopped. Children quieted. Conversations lowered until the whole settlement turned toward the wooden platform near the firepit.
Father Elias climbed onto it with practiced calm.
Brice noticed how fast everyone looked at him.
Not because they were afraid.
That would have been easier to understand.
They looked at him like plants turning toward sunlight.
“My friends,” Elias said, his voice warm enough to wrap around the camp, “we’ve been blessed this week. The walls are stronger. The gardens are holding. Our scavenging teams have returned safely.”
A few people murmured thanks.
Elias let the gratitude breathe, then lowered his tone.
“But tins and dried grain only carry a people so far. Our meat stores are low. If we want the children strong and the injured healing, we need fresh food.”
The hunters near the front exchanged grim looks.
Brice saw it.
So did Brian.
Father Elias smiled gently.
“So today, we hunt.”
A murmur moved through the crowd. Not excitement exactly. More like acceptance. The kind people gave to something dangerous but necessary.
Then Elias’s eyes found Brice and Brian.
“You two have proven yourselves useful,” he said. “Strong hands. Clear heads. If you’re willing, we’d be honored to have you join the hunting party.”
Brian looked at Brice, already interested for all the wrong reasons.
“Hunting sounds better than fixing doors.”
“You weren’t fixing them.”
“I was removing structural liabilities from the community.”
Brice sighed. “You murdered a hinge.”
“It died for safety.”
Brice looked back at Elias.
The priest’s smile was still there. Warm. Patient. Almost impossible to dislike.
Almost.
Brice thought of the chained warehouse. The guard who never moved. The little boy asking if Tommy was happy wherever he went.
“Sure,” Brice said. “We’ll help.”
Elias dipped his head. “Thank you.”
The armory sat beside the forge, tucked under a slanted roof of patched sheet metal. Inside, racks of handmade weapons lined the walls: spears, machetes, hatchets, crossbows, and a few ugly metal things that looked like someone had tried to reinvent medieval warfare after three cups of bad coffee.
Tom handed Brice a spear.
The shaft was thick ash wood, sanded smooth but not polished slick. The steel head had been forged wide and brutal, more boar spear than throwing weapon. Two short side lugs flared beneath the blade to keep something large from sliding down the shaft after being stabbed.
Brice tested the balance.
Not pretty.
Effective.
“These aren’t for rabbits,” he said.
Tom’s expression turned proud. “Leaf springs from an old Ford F-150. Good steel. Hard to shape, but worth it.”
Brian took his spear and immediately gave it a one-handed spin.
The blade cut through the air with a vicious whistle.
Everyone nearby stepped back at the exact same time.
Brice looked at the sudden empty space around them. “See that? That’s the natural human response to standing near a walking blender.”
Brian stopped mid-spin. “Fair. Forgot the audience wasn’t fireproof.”
“You keep saying things like that, and somehow I believe you less every time.”
Within the hour, six people stood outside Haven’s main gate.
Brice.
Brian.
Tom.
Two younger scouts named Rebecca and Lucas.
And Harris.
Harris was older than the rest, lean as dried rope, with pale eyes and a face carved by weather, hunger, and hard decisions. He carried his spear like he’d used one before and survived because of it.
That made Brice pay attention.
Father Elias walked down the line, touching each hunter’s shoulder in turn.
“Stay together,” he said. “Listen to Harris. If the woods feel wrong, come home.”
Brice caught the phrase.
Not if you see something.
Not if you’re attacked.
If the woods feel wrong.
Harris didn’t react, but his jaw tightened.
The iron gate rolled open with a long metallic groan.
Beyond it, Los Angeles had become a forest wearing the bones of a city.
Trees punched through asphalt. Vines swallowed rusted cars. Roots split sidewalks into jagged plates. Houses sagged beneath green weight, windows dark and broken behind curtains of moss. The air smelled of wet leaves, old smoke, and something sweet rotting in the heat.
The hunting party moved without chatter.
Harris took point. Rebecca and Lucas spread wide. Tom stayed near the middle. Brice and Brian moved behind him, close enough to cover each other, far enough not to trip over one another if something charged.
Brian leaned toward Brice, voice low. “They keep looking at you.”
Brice scanned the tree line. “Maybe they’re worried I’ll get lost.”
“I’m worried you’ll get lost.”
“Thanks.”
“But that’s not what I mean.” Brian’s joking tone thinned. “When there’s a decision, they keep checking your face.”
Brice had noticed.
At every blind turn, every blocked street, every choice between overgrown alleys and collapsed roads, the group’s eyes drifted toward him. Not all the way. Not openly. But enough.
He had been in sales too long not to recognize when people were measuring leadership without saying the word.
“I guess I have one of those trustworthy faces,” Brice said.
Brian stared at him.
Brice glanced over. “What?”
“I’m trying to decide whether to insult you now or wait until we’re not in murder-forest.”
“Growth. I’m proud of you.”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t.”
They moved deeper.
The ruins swallowed the sound of Haven behind them. No hammering. No children. No bell. Just boots crunching through dead leaves and the occasional creak of old metal shifting in the wind.
Harris raised a fist.
Everyone froze.
He crouched near the collapsed awning of an old gas station. The sign above it was faded beyond recognition, half-hidden under vines. Beneath the awning, the mud had been churned into deep, ugly gouges.
Tracks.
Big ones.
Harris touched two fingers to the print, then looked up.
All humor had left his face.
“Boar,” he said.
Tom gripped his spear tighter. “How big?”
Harris followed the torn path through the brush. Whole branches had been snapped. Not bent. Snapped.
“Bigger than the last one.”
Brian smiled faintly. “I like bacon.”
Nobody laughed.
Brice looked at him. “I don’t think four hundred pounds of mutant muscle and tusks is going to appreciate being called bacon.”
Brian’s smile held, but his eyes sharpened. “Then I won’t say it to his face.”
“You probably will.”
“Probably.”
Harris rose slowly.
The forest had gone quiet.
Not normal quiet.
Dead quiet.
No birds. No insects. No rustle of small animals in the brush. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
Brice felt the hair rise along the back of his neck.
The tracks didn’t lead away from them.
They crossed the road, vanished into the brush, then curved back.
A loop.
Brice looked farther ahead.
Another broken branch.
Another deep print.
Then another.
His stomach tightened.
“Harris,” Brice said quietly.
The old hunter didn’t look away from the trees. “I see it.”
Brian shifted his grip on the spear. “See what?”
Brice’s eyes moved across the brush line.
The path was wrong.
Too clean in places. Too obvious. Like something heavy had crashed through on purpose, leaving enough sign for them to follow.
Then, somewhere ahead, hidden behind a wall of briars and shadow, something massive stepped on a dead log.
Crack.
The sound tore through the silence.
A low, wet exhale followed.
Deep.
Animal.
Close.
Rebecca lifted her spear with shaking hands. Lucas swallowed hard. Tom muttered something under his breath that might have been a prayer.
Brian’s grin disappeared.
Brice tightened his grip on the ash shaft and forced himself to breathe slow.
The forest wasn’t empty.
It was waiting.
Harris raised his spear, eyes locked on the dark.
His voice dropped to a whisper.
“…It’s hunting us.”