Free Web NovelChapter 347: Without Dullahan, I am...
Twenty minutes. That’s how long we’d been moving since we found that corpse, picking through the terrain, trying to piece together where they’d gone.
The blood trail bought us maybe five minutes of direction, a dark, irregular smear cutting through the dirt that gave us something to follow. Then it just stopped. Dried up, soaked in, gone. Like whoever left it had simply ceased to exist.
After that we had to improvise. The freshly killed Infected were our new breadcrumbs. Someone had been cutting through them recently, bodies still wet, still warm in that wrong way. We found them scattered across a wide stretch, not clustered, not cornered in one spot. Spread out.
That kind of spread meant numbers. A group, not a lone straggler. A significant one at that.
Not exactly the kind of thing that put your mind at ease.
But what unsettled me more wasn’t the size of the group. It was the why. Why were they out here? Why this far?
There was always the chance it was just another new outfit passing through, people move around, groups form and splinter all the time in this world. But I didn’t buy it. Not with what I’d seen back there. Not with the way that person had been left. Callighan’s men clearly had an easy trigger. Killing someone like that, with no apparent reason, no visible gain, that had their fingerprints all over it.
Theo and the others had just gone out to scavenge. Supplies, maybe food, whatever they could drag back to stretch another few days. That was it. They weren’t a threat to anyone. They didn’t deserve whatever happened out there.
That was enough reason for me to keep moving. Find Theo. Find whoever was still standing. Figure out what Callighan’s people were doing this deep into territory that wasn’t theirs.
Because that part really puzzled me. They had Brigantine. They had coastline, infrastructure, a functioning base of operations. There were other towns they could bleed dry without ever getting this close to the Boardwalk, or to us. Coming out this far wasn’t just bold. It was reckless, or intentional, and neither option sat well with me.
"It’s still not too late to pull back, Maribel," I said.
"It’s still not too late for you to shut up already," she shot back, annoyed to me.
I hadn’t stopped trying. Every few minutes, a new angle, a new argument. I had a bad feeling gnawing at me. That was why I wanted her gone. Back to safety, or whatever passed for safety these days. I could handle this alone. I knew I could.
She knew that too. She just didn’t care.
"You have no reason to come along," I told her.
"As long as Callighan’s trash are involved, I have every reason to get involved," she replied, not even looking at me.
"And if they start shooting? I can take care of myself, what about you?" The patience in my voice was wearing thin now, fraying at the edges.
"Worry about yourself," she said, already walking past me. "I’ll worry about myself."
I stopped. Reached out and caught her arm, pulling her back.
"Leave me—"
"I won’t let you die on me." The words came out harder than I meant them to. I was looking straight at her when I said it and I didn’t look away.
Because this was exactly what happened with Jasmine.
I let her come with me that time too. She insisted, I gave in, and I told myself it would be fine, that I’d keep her safe, that it would be different. It wasn’t different. I lost her. And that sat on me in a way that never really lifted. The circumstances here weren’t the same, the danger wasn’t identical, but the shape of it, the shape was the same.
Maribel went quiet for a moment. Something shifted in her expression when she looked at me, like she caught a glimpse of something she hadn’t expected.
"You’re the kind of guy who wants to do everything alone, aren’t you," she said.
"I’m more likely to walk out of this than you are," I said, because it was true and there was no gentle way to say it. "Just go back and warn the others—"
She pulled her arm free before I could finish. freewёbnoνel.com
"I’m not one of these women around you who just falls in line and does what she’s told," she said.
They don’t listen to me either, for the record.
Though at least they had Dullahan with them. That alone kept the knot in my chest from tightening too much when I thought about them.
"They’re different," I said. "They’re strong, they can handle themselves."
She looked at me sideways. "They’re Symbiote Hosts too?"
"It’s different," I said again.
She let out a short breath and turned back toward the path ahead.
"Whatever. I need to see what Callighan’s men are doing out here. That concerns us, it concerns us more than it concerns you, honestly. So don’t bother trying to stop me again." She said it walking, already a few steps ahead, not waiting to see if I’d follow.
"Damn it."
"If there are gunshots, I’ll leave," she said, throwing it out there like it was supposed to make me feel better.
"If there are gunshots, you won’t be running anywhere. You’ll be on the ground before you even process what happened," I said.
"That’s very kind of you," she replied dryly.
"Do you actually understand what we’re walking into?" I asked, falling into step behind her.
"I know exactly what we’re walking into. I’ve had bullets flying past my head before, more than once, and I’m still here, very much alive. So don’t worry about it."
"You want me to applaud you for that?" The words came out sharper than I intended. "Surviving once or twice doesn’t mean luck has a loyalty to you. That’s not how it works. You start thinking it does and you get reckless, and reckless people don’t stay alive long in this world. You know that."
"Thanks for the advice," she said, unbothered. "But I’ve done just fine up until now, and I managed it without any superpowers."
I went quiet after that.
There was a beat, just a few seconds of nothing but footsteps and wind, before I spoke again.
"You’re right," I said. "Without my Symbiote, I’d have been dead three months ago. Probably in my own high school hallway."
Maribel slowed, then stopped. She turned to look at me.
"I’ve always been weak. That’s not self-pity, it’s just fact. Strip away the Symbiote and what’s left is a guy with no power, no edge, no confidence, nothing that makes him useful in a fight. Just the same person I was before all of this started."
"W...wait, I never said—"
She tried to cut in but I kept going.
"Without Dullahan, I’m not sure I would’ve built what I have now either. The people around me, the connections." I paused, not saying the full thing out loud but thinking it clearly enough. Sydney, Rachel, Elena, Cindy, I couldn’t picture any of them ending up beside someone like the person I used to be. Quiet, hesitant, always half a second behind everyone else. And Christopher, there’s no version of events where someone like him becomes friends with someone like I was.
"The Symbiote covers the cracks," I said, meeting her eyes. "The weakness, the cowardice. I know that. But that’s exactly why I also know, it’s never just about skill or courage." My voice dropped a little, steadier than I expected. "Sometimes it comes down to luck. To tiny details that could’ve gone either way."
She stood there looking at me, mouth slightly open like she’d found the words but couldn’t figure out where to put them.
Then a gunshot cracked through the air.
We both snapped toward the sound at the same instant, every muscle going rigid.
It wasn’t close, but it was close enough. It was very clearly, not an echo from far off.
I moved immediately.
"Hey wait!" Maribel’s footsteps hit the ground behind me as I broke into a run. frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓
I pushed my Dullahan senses up to full stretch, letting the world sharpen around men, sounds separating out, distances compressing. It was nearby. Had to be.
I cut through several streets fast, keeping my footfalls light, staying low where I could. No point sprinting into something blind and loud. Northwest of the Boardwalk, we were already far outside the range we usually covered, deep into ground we’d had no reason to enter before today.
Then I stopped hard, pressing myself flat against a wall as figures moved in my peripheral vision ahead.
I held my breath. Eased my head out just enough to see.
My stomach dropped.
Theo. And two others with him, still alive, all three of them. That much was a relief. But they weren’t free. They were being held, hemmed in, clearly not going anywhere by choice.
And standing among the men holding them, I recognized the figure immediately.
Tommy.
