Free Web NovelChapter 121: Sign Language.
Moonlight came through the gaps in the ruined buildings in thin silver pools, casting long, jagged shadows that stretched across the cracked pavement like fingers trying to claw their way out of the dark. They were the kind of shadows that seemed to shift and lengthen when you weren’t looking directly at them, alive in a way that made the back of my neck prickle.
Infected were everywhere.
Hundreds of them, pale and perfectly motionless, scattered across the open spaces and along the sidewalks as if some unseen hand had arranged them there and then walked away. Some leaned against rusted, skeletal cars, their bodies slumped at unnatural angles. Others stood frozen in doorways, heads tilted slightly, mouths hanging open just enough to show blackened teeth and dried tongues.
Their skin looked almost luminous under the moonlight, glowing with a sickly, porcelain sheen, the dark web of veins clearly visible just beneath the surface like rivers of ink frozen in place. The air was thick with the smell I had grown up with and never gotten used to, a heavy, cloying mix of rot, dust, and something faintly metallic, like old blood left too long in the sun.
We moved slowly. Boots almost silent on the debris-covered ground, each step carefully placed to avoid loose concrete or broken glass that could betray us. The silence was oppressive, broken only by the faint crunch of grit under our soles and the distant, lonely sound of wind moving through the upper floors of the dead buildings.
Sinn led the way, detector screen glowing faintly blue in his hand, casting cold light up across his scarred face. Code moved beside him like a living shadow, blades ready but not yet extended, his long hair swaying slightly as he glided between the frozen infected with eerie grace, never touching a single one. Owen walked next to me, that same mild, empty smile playing on his lips, his glowing red eyes faintly visible in the darkness. Those eyes I had first noticed back in Sophia’s office, predatory, calculating, and had never stopped filing away.
I kept him in my peripheral vision the entire time.
I moved between the infected without touching them, reading the narrow gaps the way the plain had trained me to read them for twenty years. The specific spatial awareness of someone who had been navigating around things that could kill him since before he could clearly remember. One wrong brush of a shoulder, one accidental footstep too close, and the entire square would come alive.
Sinn turned and pointed silently.
The building loomed ahead, a towering ruin with entire sections torn away, exposed floors hanging like broken jaws over the street below. Moonlight poured straight down through the missing roof, turning the structure into a cathedral of bones and silver light. We approached the entrance in total silence, stepping carefully over piles of debris and around the motionless infected standing like pale sentinels in the silver glow.
Sinn mouthed something to Code. Code nodded once. We went in.
The stairs had infected on them. A few leaning against the walls, heads down, unaware. Code moved through them like he was walking in an empty corridor, no contact, no sound, the specific grace of someone who was very good at being near things that could hurt him. Owen moved ahead of me, barely adjusting his path, almost contemptuous of the need to be careful.
I watched him and said nothing, and kept moving.
Second floor. Clear. Not a single infected.
Sinn exhaled quietly, relief visible on his scarred face. He gave the group a quick thumbs up. We caught our breath for a few seconds and kept going.
Third floor.
No roof. The building had been broken in half at some point and the top half was simply gone. Open sky stretched above us, moonlight pouring down clean and complete, bathing everything in cold silver. The walls had no plaster left, just exposed concrete and steel, the raw bones of the building standing naked under the night.
Sinn checked the detector and moved forward. "Together," he mouthed. "Motionless."
He led us to a room off the main corridor. Two figures stood inside.
These were different from everything we had cleared on the way in. Their skin was intact. No visible decay, no rot, no discoloration. They stood in the specific impossible stillness of high-level infected, the kind of perfect, unnatural suspension a normal human body could never hold, but they still looked like people. A girl, maybe twenty, with brown hair hanging wet against her skin, wearing blue jeans and a faded pink sweater. A man roughly Sinn’s age, larger and broader, standing with his arms slightly out from his body like he had been frozen mid-gesture.
Code was already preparing the equipment, moving with quiet precision.
Which one? Sinn signed.
I pointed at the girl.
Why?
I gestured. Lighter. Easier to carry down the stairs.
Sinn gave a thumbs up. Then he paused. Why not both?
I considered it. Two could make the exit harder, I signed back.
We’re four. Two carry one, two carry the other.
Someone needs free hands on the stairs.
Ohhhh.
I’ll carry the girl, I volunteered. You and Owen take the man. Code leads.
Sinn nodded.
Code finished with the girl first. She dropped into true motionlessness, different from the stillness she had been holding before. This was the complete absence of everything rather than the suspension of it. He refilled the needle and moved to the man.
She was cold when I lifted her. Not room-temperature cold. The deep, unnatural cold of something that had been running at a different temperature for a long time. The same cold I had felt when I touched Celestine Vale’s wrist in the dark outside School Central.
She smelled faintly of perfume. Which was the strangest thing I had encountered since crossing the life layer.
I bent her across my shoulder, her upper body behind me, arms hanging down against my thighs, legs in front. Heavier than she looked. The weight of something denser than its size suggested.
Code led. Owen and Sinn carried the man between them, one at the legs, one at the shoulders, his arm trailing near the floor. I followed at the back.
The stairs were the hardest part. The girl became heavier on the second floor, the angle of descent working against me. I shifted her into my arms and navigated around the infected on the stairway one careful step at a time, heart steady, breath controlled.
We stopped on the landing between the second and ground floors. Sinn was breathing hard. We all sat for a moment, the two specimens lying motionless beside us, the infected on the stairs above holding their frozen positions like silent guardians.
Need help? Sinn signed, looking at me.
I’m fine.
He turned to Code and they exchanged signs I couldn’t fully read. Twenty minutes. Then we stood and moved again. freewēbnoveℓ.com
Sinn leading. Code and Owen on the man. Me on the girl.
Through the lobby. Through the broken front door. Back into the moonlit street with its hundreds of motionless witnesses watching us pass.
We walked between them.
Almost, I thought. Almost done. ƒгeewebnovёl.com
Owen’s red eyes caught the moonlight as he moved ahead. He was still smiling.
