Free Web NovelChapter 28: Breadcrumbing
The transition into the reason why this district was called the slums felt immediate and complete, like stepping through a door into an entirely different world.
Tin roofs leaned overhead from both sides. Electrical wires hung at exactly the wrong height to catch a face. Even the air smelled like stagnant water, and cooking oil layered over something worse underneath all of it.
An infected exploded from a doorway to my left, and I nearly collided with it. My body reacted before my brain finished processing the threat, slamming a hand against the wall and pushing off sideways while its teeth snapped shut where my neck had been a fraction of a second earlier.
A clothesline appeared across the alley, and I ducked under it without slowing, immediately vaulting a stack of crates, right before sidestepping another infected emerging from a blind turn.
There was no rhythm to any of it anymore. Every corner held a different surprise, and every surprise wanted to end me specifically.
The horde hit the maze entrance behind me, and the alleys filled with screaming almost instantly, the noise bouncing between narrow tin walls until it doubled and tripled on itself.
I rounded another corner and nearly collided with an infected woman sprinting out of a doorway, one eye missing entirely, her mouth stretched wide enough to dislocate her jaw.
Shoulder-checking her into the opposite wall, I kept moving while pain detonated through ribs that had taken far too much abuse for one day.
Infected appeared on the rooftops above now too, jumping between tin sheets, scrambling over water tanks, keeping pace with me from up there while I ran the alleys below.
One dropped directly toward me. I ducked at the last second, and it sailed overhead, crashing into a wall before getting back up like the fall hadn’t happened at all.
And as I reached what I believed was the central area, a C4 appeared in my palms, and I threw it behind me.
Didn’t take long for the whole process to become automatic.
I vaulted a handcart and landed badly, the waist wound peeling open further with the impact, my vision narrowing at the edges for a moment before steadying again.
I shoved myself through a gate that stood half open ahead, and just as I did, I used telekinesis without slowing, slamming the gate shut behind me as several infected collided into it a second later, the metal screeching under the impact before giving way entirely.
It bought maybe two seconds, but it was enough for me to jump out of the window at the other end of the house.
Around the next corner, I grabbed a parked motorcycle with my mind and tipped it sideways into the path behind me, several infected hitting the wreckage and tumbling while others climbed straight over them.
The dead center of the slums pulled closer with every turn; I could tell by the alleys tightening and the structures becoming less organized the deeper I went, tin shacks bleeding into brick, then brick into things held together by faith and electrical wire alone.
My step had blurred into a blend of charges, corners, doorways, and rooftops.
All the while, my hand kept moving without me consciously tracking it anymore, inventory, throw a C4, and run, repeating into something closer to muscle memory than decision.
Then, gradually, something changed.
The screaming sounded farther away. The footsteps behind me felt less immediate.
I rounded another corner and found nobody waiting.
Another corner. And still nobody.
So, I slowed slightly, my lungs grateful for even that small mercy, and the realization arrived in pieces before landing all at once.
[I lost them...]
Not all of them. Most of them, scattered through dozens of routes inside the maze, and that was exactly the outcome I had been chasing this whole time.
I kept the rifle lowered and took the next turn without half-flinching in a dodge, which felt somehow strange after that chase.
My breathing was the loudest thing left in the alley now, and even that felt too loud.
I eased around another corner and froze immediately.
Three infected stood twenty meters ahead, wandering rather than sprinting, not alerted to my presence at all.
I backed away slowly before they could spot me, my heart hammering until a narrow side passage opened to my left, and I slipped into it sideways, walls scraping against my plate carrier on both sides.
I moved through it slow and quiet while the screams behind me continued fading further into the distance.
Fresh infected chased stimulus, not scent, or memory, or heat signatures. Variants did that.
As for the fresh ones, take the stimulus away, and their attention would collapse within minutes.
So I needed to move fast and quiet. freёwebnovel.com
I cleared another intersection, then another, and another, the alleys growing quieter the further I pushed from the center, slightly to the left, towards north-west, and no step of that was safe. I could run into a straggler at any moment.
A small house near the edge of the slums caught my attention, one room, tin roof, a wooden door hanging slightly crooked on its hinges.
I crossed to it and slipped inside, and all it had was a table, a chair, a mattress on the floor against one wall.
And most importantly, a wooden cupboard against the other wall. If you could even call a patchwork of tin a wall.
[Good enough...]
I crossed the room, opened the cupboard, found it empty, and climbed inside, pulling the door mostly shut behind me, and darkness swallowed everything immediately.
I stood there for several seconds, panting, sweating, fighting the urge to throw up, while my whole body trembled now that the adrenaline had started fading and the bill for tonight had come due all at once.
I leaned against the back wall and listened.
Distant screaming. Distant impacts. Most of it centered exactly where I had aimed it, the middle of the maze.
The trap was fully closed around them now.
I pulled the detonator from the inventory, my thumb settling over the trigger, and waited a full thirty seconds for the horde to lose the stimulus that was me while I got my breathing under control.
[C4 has the best cost-to-profit ratio...] I thought as my breathing turned to normal and pressed the button.
-BOOM-!
The first explosion rolled through the night. A heartbeat later another answered it.
-BOOM-!
Then another.
-BOOM-!
Charge after charge went off across the maze in overlapping waves until the entire slum lit up like daylight had returned early, fireballs blooming above rooftops, tin sheets launching into the air, and smoke columns rising in every direction at once.
The cupboard shook around me as the tin box I was in rattled with each new detonation.
Somewhere outside, car alarms started screaming in sequence. A propane tank went up somewhere inside the slums, adding its own fireball to everything already burning.
The infected reacted exactly the way I’d been counting on.
Every snarling thing from even beyond the slums rushed to the epicentre of the bullshit I had detonated.
Fresh infected thrived on stimulus, and the slum was currently offering more of it than anywhere else in the city.
They weren’t leaving that maze anytime soon.
That little suicide plan of mine turned out to be a resounding success.
Now all that was left was to get out of this hellhole alive.
"Nikki?"
Kara’s voice came through the comms, quiet, barely a whisper.
And for some reason, the warmth I felt justified the last fifteen minutes.
"I’m here."
"What the hell was that?"
Another distant explosion echoed somewhere behind the question.
"Part of the plan."
"Nikki..."
"Okay, a large part of the plan."
Silence for a moment. Then: "I... I heard all of it."
Of course she had. Every shot, every explosion, every sprint, those winces and yelps of pain and of damn near getting caught probably went through the comms.
"Good news... The horde’s gone."
A pause. "You sound exhausted." freēwebnovel.com
"I am exhausted."
"Are... you okay?"
"What’d you think?"
A small, tired laugh came through the comms.
"Listen carefully... Leave the chest. Get to the Ascender, and start driving..."
"And you?"
"Wait for me at the western edge of the slums, at that leading straight to that penthouse..."
Outside, the fires kept burning, and the infected kept screaming, and the slums kept collapsing into exactly the chaos I’d built for them.
Step one was complete.
Which would have felt satisfying if every successful plan in this shit show didn’t immediately turn into the setup for the next disaster.
After all...
I still had to get out.
And I couldn’t run-and-gun this one.
