Chapter 36: Find the Exit First
Chapter 36: Find the Exit First
Liora woke me after three hours and made me take the second watch.
I sat by the doorway while she slept near the fire, one knife under her hand and her tail curled around her legs. Protecting her was mostly symbolic. Even asleep, she would probably wake and kill anything before I finished lifting the rifle.
The symbolism still mattered.
I checked the street, the rear window, and the meat strips every fifteen minutes. Once, I heard claws scrape below us. I held still until a pair of small shapes crossed the street and vanished under a collapsed wall. They never looked up.
Liora opened her eyes when I touched her shoulder.
"Two scavengers passed," I whispered. "Small. They kept moving west."
"And you did?"
"Nothing."
"Good."
Apparently restraint was the correct answer often enough to become annoying.
We left after sunrise with the smoked meat wrapped in cloth. The second day carried us through narrower streets where plants had broken the pavement and entire house fronts leaned over the road.
Before moving, Liora made me extinguish the fire, scatter the ash, and check the street from both windows. She inspected my pack and removed one pan, two pieces of damp wood I had carried for no sensible reason, and half a brick of broken soap.
"Weight charges interest," she said. "You pay it on every step."
The lighter pack still dragged at my shoulders by midday. Whenever I began leaning forward, she adjusted the straps rather than offering to carry it. The journey was meant to reveal what I could sustain after she left.
Liora taught me tracks as we walked. Fresh prints had sharp edges. Rain softened old ones. A line of deep marks followed by lighter ones meant the creature had slowed, while debris thrown backward suggested acceleration. She made me identify each trail before revealing what she saw.
Near noon, we found three narrow-toed prints crossing our route.
"One animal," I said. "Moving east. Recent."
"Three animals," she replied. "Same species. Different weight."
I looked again. The prints overlapped so closely I had mistaken them for one set.
"How did you see that?"
"I have been doing this longer than your world has been ending."
We detoured.
The next monster was safer: a ratlike scavenger rooting inside an overturned cart. Liora blocked its escape and forced me to approach from the side. I kept my feet under me, struck behind the foreleg, withdrew before it turned, and finished it on my second opening.
It tried to flee after the first wound. My instinct was to chase directly. Liora snapped her fingers and pointed toward the gap beneath the cart. I circled instead, closing the route before committing.
The scavenger doubled back exactly as she expected. For one brief moment, the fight slowed into pieces I understood: its escape, my angle, the distance between us. The second strike entered behind its jaw.
My hands still shook afterward. This time, I remained standing.
"Better," Liora said.
"That sounded almost sincere."
"Do not become greedy."
She made me clean the blade immediately. Blood drying near the guard would make the next grip slippery, and a dirty knife could infect any cut on my own hand. The lesson joined the growing list of small failures capable of killing me later.
We took only the cleanest cuts and left before the smell could attract company.
Neither of us looked back.
She made me butcher it alone. I ruined one cut, salvaged the other, and packed enough meat for two meals.
The mistake came that afternoon.
We entered a narrow house to avoid a patrol moving on a distant road. Something crouched at the bottom of the stairwell. It was small, hunched, and apparently slow. I saw it before Liora did and felt a spark of confidence that had no business existing.
I drew my knife and stepped through the doorway.
The creature crossed the stairwell before I completed the second step.
Its speed erased every assumption I had made. I slashed too early. It went beneath my arm, struck my hip, and drove me into the wall. When I tried retreating, its body blocked the only door.
Liora appeared between us. One knife knocked its claws aside. The other entered through the roof of its mouth.
The body dropped at my feet.
She checked me for wounds before becoming angry. Her voice never rose.
"What did you look at when you entered?"
"The monster."
"What comes first?"
I glanced at the doorway behind the corpse. "The exit."
"Where was it once you attacked?"
"Behind the thing trying to kill me."
"Say the whole mistake."
Shame heated my face. "I chose a fight in a place I couldn’t leave."
Her ears eased from their flattened position.
"Yes. I let you choose the previous fights because I had made them survivable. You chose this one because you mistook one successful kill for judgment."
"Two successful kills."
She stared at me.
"Sorry."
"Good. Now perhaps it will stay in your head."
I expected the lecture to continue. Liora instead put both hands on my face and pressed her forehead against mine.
"You frightened me," she said quietly.
That landed harder than the anger.
"I thought you trusted me to try."
"Trusting you does not mean believing every choice will be good." She released my face and wiped monster blood from her knife. "I trust you to listen after a mistake. I am trying to make sure you live long enough to do that."
We rested in the back room while my hip stopped throbbing. Liora made me describe the creature’s first movement, where my attention had gone, and the instant retreat became impossible. By the third repetition, embarrassment had given way to a clear sequence I could remember.
Trust: 42 → 50
Resonance: 10% → 13%
We left the building by its rear window. At the next intersection, Liora stopped and waited.
I checked the retreat path first.
Only then did I look for danger.