New chapter is live.
Settle in, take your time, and let’s see what waits in the dark 🖤
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When Evan woke, it was already the next morning.
Low walker growls dragged him out of a deep sleep.
The bathwater had gone cold, and the chill brought him fully awake at once.
He shook his head, climbed out of the tub, and got dressed.
From the window, he saw several walkers wandering around the place where he had parked the car.
From a distance, they almost looked like valets guarding it for him.
Evan pulled the Stone Sledgehammer from his inventory and dragged it along the ground as he walked toward them.
Scrape.
Scrape.
At the sound of stone against pavement, the sleepy-looking walkers snapped awake.
They lifted their heads.
The first swing caved in one walker’s face.
Several teeth flew from one mouth before the body even hit the ground.
“What are you staring at?” Evan asked.
“Never seen anyone tip this generously?”
Three walkers were not enough to trouble him.
In two swings, all three were down with their skulls crushed.
Evan looked at the three nearly identical corpses and rubbed his chin.
“Huh.”
“If I keep smashing heads like this, does that become my signature?”
“People see a walker with its skull crushed on the road and know I passed through?”
He shook the thought away, got in the car, and continued toward the eastern edge of town.
“Should be able to finish exploring the place today.”
From where he was, he could already see the town’s edge and the highway beyond it.
He drove past a movie theater, city hall, and a school without stopping.
The reason was simple.
Too much risk.
Places like that had once held crowds, and the resources inside were limited.
The return did not justify the danger.
Only when he reached the far east side of town, near a creek, did Evan stop.
Beside the car stood a large red sign that read FIREHOUSE.
“Food and water are fine for now,” Evan said, shouldering the sledgehammer.
“A fire station should have emergency gear.”
He walked toward it.
The roll-up door at the front was half open.
Blood was visible at the entrance, smeared in a trail that ran deep into the building.
Evan knocked hard on the metal door.
The roll-up door rattled loudly enough to carry thirty yards.
He stepped to the side, raised the Stone Sledgehammer, and waited for walkers to come.
“Hmm?”
“Strange.”
After a long moment, no walker appeared.
He did not even hear a low growl.
He looked inside through the gap under the metal door.
Once he was sure there were no walkers or people in sight, he gripped the door and lifted.
The roll-up door rose to about his height.
Evan walked in with the Stone Sledgehammer on his shoulder and swept the room with his eyes.
Everything was chaos.
Blood smeared across the floor.
Dead bodies lay where they had finally stopped moving.
Equipment had been scattered everywhere.
Then Evan noticed water flowing over his boots, spreading from behind a nearby door.
He opened it.
A familiar gray-white figure came into view.
The low, hoarse growl finally reached him.
Evan relaxed.
“There it is.”
The walker was trapped around the fire pole, tangled in a tough, nearly transparent mesh that kept it suspended and nearly unable to move.
“So this is what flying feels like?”
The sight of its clumsy struggle was absurd enough to be funny.
“Thanks for watching the place,” Evan said.
“You can clock out.”
Crack.
He swung the Stone Sledgehammer and crushed its skull.
[XP +300]
After pushing the body aside, Evan climbed the pole to the second floor.
“No sign of anyone living here.”
He wiped a layer of dust from a metal table.
The second floor looked like the firehouse lounge.
Metal counters held canned food and small appliances.
Evan took the cans, then opened a cabinet below the counter.
When he saw what was inside, he smiled.
“Coca-Cola.
I respect these firefighters’ taste.”
Four cases of one-liter Coca-Cola bottles.
Twelve bottles per case.
All with sugar.
Behind the cola were two dusty boxes of hardtack.
“Makes sense,” Evan said.
“When there was fresh food, who wanted to live on this stuff?”
He understood completely.
He swept the cola and hardtack into his inventory too.
Not starving and living well were two very different things.
In this town, Evan could still enjoy hot water and the remnants of human industry.
Daryl and the others, meanwhile, were eating meat when they could and washing it down with oats and milk.
The thought of Coca-Cola made him grin.
“Now this is a haul.”
He opened the side door of the lounge and began clearing the rest of the supplies.
Most of it was specialized firefighting gear, and the longer he looked, the brighter his eyes became.
“Fire proximity suits?
Taking them.”
“Firefighter hazmat suits?
Taking them.”
“Heavy turnout gear?
Taking it.”
Evan said little after that.
He packed everything.
He also took the fire station’s last three fire axes.
After clearing the second floor, he went down the stairs on the other side.
This area was another bay, one whose front roll-up door had never been opened.
When he reached the bottom and saw what waited there, his eyes widened.
Then they lit with real delight.
He rubbed his hands together and set one palm on a nearly new fire truck.
The red paint looked so fresh it almost seemed wet.
At a glance, the truck did not look like something that belonged in the apocalypse at all.
Through the side door window, Evan looked at the seven-seat minivan he had driven here.
Then he looked back at the red brute beside him.
Then he looked at the battered minivan again.
Bang.
Evan shut the fire truck’s door.
The Stone Sledgehammer rested in the passenger seat.
Evan put both hands on the steering wheel and slowly exhaled.
The heavy grip.
The camera system with four blind-spot feeds.
The onboard radio.
The GPS unit.
“Now this felt right.”
He closed his eyes for a moment.
The quiet inside the fire truck was almost intoxicating.
Sometimes a vehicle felt safer than any fixed shelter.
He took the keys from the wall nearby, started the truck, opened the bay door, and drove the red brute out of the firehouse.
As he passed the seven-seat minivan, he backed the fire truck up a few yards and jumped down.
He moved all the supplies from the minivan’s rear seats into the fire truck’s huge rear compartment, abandoned the lonely minivan, and turned the wheel toward Greene Farm.
Then a sharp gunshot carried through the cracked window.
Evan hit the brakes.
The fire truck screeched to a stop.
He looked toward the highway in the distance.
A thought struck him.
He spun the wheel, turned the fire truck around, and drove east.
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Want to keep going?
I hope this chapter gave you another reason to stay with the story.
There’s still plenty ahead, and things are only starting to unfold.