Chapter 3

As the truck rolled into the warlord’s compound, I pressed my face close to a seam in the side panel of the cargo bed, careful not to make it obvious I was watching.

Outside was a ring of barbed wire first, with crooked wooden stakes and warning signs hammered into the dirt beyond it. The lettering had been bleached pale by wind and rain.

Two guard towers stood on higher ground. Men up top held rifles and turned back and forth, their muzzles tracking the convoy as it moved.

When the iron gate slid open, it screeched like metal tearing.

Inside the fence, the left side was a garage with several modified vehicles parked in a row, their tires absurdly thick. On the right was a warehouse, its sheet-metal walls tagged with crude markings. Farther in was a line of sandbag barricades and a weapons post, where a few soldiers sat under a makeshift awning, cleaning rifles.

Beyond that was a temporary camp—tents packed close together, a section in the middle fenced off with iron bars. Dozens of people in torn clothes were crammed inside, strips of cloth or metal tags hanging from their necks. They were penned like livestock.

The truck stopped. Someone yanked open the cargo door, and light flooded in all at once.

Two hands grabbed my arms and dragged me down.

The moment my boots hit the ground, a kick slammed into the back of my knee. My leg folded and I dropped hard, kneeling in the mud.

Low laughter rippled around me. The people in the labor pen were driven up to the fence to watch. Some stared with dead eyes. Some looked almost amused. Others were just afraid, like they were seeing what would happen when it was their turn.

“Stay on your knees.”

I didn’t lift my head. I only steadied my breathing.

The crowd suddenly split, and a set of footsteps came through with a slower, deliberate rhythm.

Someone muttered, “The boss is here.”

I didn’t raise my eyes until Viktor Kane stopped in front of me.

He was heavier than I remembered. The old scar was still there, running from his cheekbone to the corner of his mouth, making it look like he wore a permanent smirk. He stared at me for two seconds, froze, and then laughed out loud.

“I thought you’d been dead for years,” he said. “Caleb Hart.”

He circled me halfway, like he was inspecting a piece of meat. “You chased me back then like a rabid dog—bite down and never let go. Too bad your family died, and you still didn’t manage to kill me.”

He bit down hard on the word “family,” like he was grinding salt into exposed skin.

The soldiers around him laughed louder. Inside the labor pen, the noise died. People lowered their heads, afraid of being connected to me.

I didn’t answer.

Any word would only hand him another reason to keep going.

Instead, I put my attention on details behind him: two close guards on his left, three on his right, all with sidearms on their belts; the nearest guard’s holster strap wasn’t snapped, which meant a faster draw; the weapons post was less than twenty meters away, a machine gun mounted on a tripod there, half covered by cloth; someone was smoking by the garage door, a sign the watch was loose.

Viktor stopped in front of me again and nudged my shoulder with his boot, as if checking whether I’d still lunge.

“Listen up,” he said, turning to the soldiers and the laborers, voice raised. “Starting today, Caleb goes into the quarantine zone. He hauls supplies. He clears infected. If he can’t bring anything back, he doesn’t come out. Fail the job and toss him inside to feed the dead.”

A foreman beside him grinned, like he’d finally found a new animal to break.

Early the next morning, they yanked me out of the camp.

The quarantine zone was some distance from the compound, a whole district blocked off and ringed by the warlord’s men.

The foreman shoved a line of laborers into formation and counted heads like inventory.

“In you go. Search. Back before dark,” he said, stabbing a finger toward the barricade. “No supplies, no door. Anyone runs, we shoot them.”

The zone had once been part of a shopping district. Viktor’s people fenced it up like a mine they could strip again and again.

There was still loot in there—supermarkets, pharmacies, storage rooms—but there were more infected.

They didn’t want to risk their own men, so they used laborers as expendable tools and pushed us in.

The foreman tossed me a dull knife. The edge was worn nearly white, too blunt to cut meat without effort.

He looked at me and smiled slowly. “Don’t say I never did you a favor, Hart. Try not to die too fast.”

Then they threw us through the opening.

Ahead was a large shopping mall. Half the glass facade was shattered, and the entrance was choked with carts and collapsed ad boards. As we approached, dragging footsteps and low throaty moans rolled out of the shadows.

More than a dozen infected surged forward, clothes hanging in strips, teeth blackened with rot.

A few laborers panicked on the spot and spun to run, but rifles at the entrance cut them off. They could only scream and scatter to either side.

The infected hit them, grabbed, and bit. Blood splashed across the pavement.

I didn’t charge into open space. I stayed tight to the mall’s outer wall, forcing the infected into narrow angles so they could only come at me one by one.

When the first one lunged, I drove my shoulder into its arm and rammed the dull blade up under its jaw. The knife wouldn’t cut, so I put my weight behind it until I heard the wet crack of bone.

A second one came from the side. I backed into a narrow aisle between two rows of shelving, let its arm jam against the metal, and then punched the tip into its eye socket.

The handle jolted through my palm, but the body went limp immediately, collapsing in the aisle and clogging the ones behind it.

I used walls and shelves to keep shifting position, keeping every contact as short and close as possible.

There were a lot of them, but they didn’t think. They only pressed toward the loudest sound and the strongest smell of blood.

I drew them to choke points and dealt with them one at a time.

Time dragged. The light outside thinned. The watcher at the barricade checked his wrist and looked irritated.

Finally, a wavering figure appeared in the street.

I came back to the quarantine entrance with a wounded man in tow and a backpack full of supplies. I dropped the pack on the ground.

The foreman stood outside, eyes going to the loot first, then to the bodies returning.

His gaze landed on me, and it looked like disappointment that I hadn’t stayed inside to die.

The guy I’d pulled out nearly dropped to his knees to thank me.

The foreman stepped in and ripped the dull knife from my hand, weighing it in his palm with a cold grin. “Late. You come back at dark and think this is your home?”

I raised my eyes to him. He kept picking. “No food tonight. Rules.”

The wounded man blurted, “He was late because he saved me—he finished the job. Please don’t punish him—”

The foreman lifted his boot and kicked him down, then planted the sole on his chest like it was nothing. “Rules are mine,” he said easily. “Talk again and you go in first tomorrow.”

The young man coughed blood, clutching his chest, and shut up. The other laborers lowered their heads. No one moved.

The foreman turned to me, the smile deepening.

Like he’d finally found what he’d been waiting for, he lifted a hand and motioned to two soldiers. “Hold him.”

Hands seized my shoulders and drove me down. My face pressed into mud.

A boot came down on my cheek, grinding. Dirty water squeezed into the corner of my mouth. The foreman leaned in close enough that I could smell tobacco and sweat.

“Hart,” he whispered into my ear, “you can be tough out there. In here, you learn to obey.”

I didn’t struggle. My breathing stayed shallow under the pressure, but my eyes fixed on a small patch of light on the ground.

The boot pressed harder, like he wanted to force my head up, wanted to hear me beg. He waited, didn’t get the sound he wanted, and his irritation showed.

“Tomorrow,” he said, straightening and raising his voice so everyone could hear, “throw him into the worst section of the zone. Let him see more dead. Let him learn the rules.”

A few laborers sucked in breath under their teeth. The worst section meant denser infected. It meant dying faster.

I kept my head down, like a stone being ground into the dirt. But where no one could see, my fingers moved, slowly closing around something cold inside my sleeve.

It wasn’t the dull knife the foreman gave me.

It was a small blade I’d lifted in the mall—short, but sharp enough. Hidden against my skin, it sat perfectly inside the cuff.

His boot was still on my face. He thought I’d finally learned.

I let him press for half a second longer, then spoke in a voice only he could hear.

“Are you done?”