Chapter 288: One Small Noise.
Venna and I sat at the window and watched them, and the patience went out of both of us at roughly the same rate.
We were slick with sweat now. The room had stopped being survivable somewhere around midday and neither of us had mentioned it in a while. The air sat heavy and motionless. Every surface I touched came away damp. The glass in front of us was warm under Venna’s forehead where she’d almost pressed against it.
"There’s no way we’re waiting these things out." Venna’s voice was low, tight. "They’ll take forever. Look at them."
"They’re moving." I kept my eyes on them. Three in sight now, drifting in the same loose direction across the road. "And it isn’t random. They’re all going the same way. Something’s pulling them. We give it a bit more time."
"See that." She jabbed a finger at one that had stopped dead in the middle of the road and simply stayed there, facing nothing—head tilted, body locked, as if the asphalt had spoken. "That’s what I mean. We’ll starve at this window before that one gets bored, Bram."
I looked at it and couldn’t argue.
The infected can stand in one place for a day. I’d watched one stand in the same spot outside a building on the plain for two full days once, because nothing had come along to give it a better idea. The memory arrived complete and unhelpful.
"Then we go now," I said. "While the road’s this thin. We get the keys."
"Yes."
"I distract them. You pick up the keys."
"Why me?"
"Listen to me." I turned on the chair to face her properly, because she needed all of it and not the summary. The wood creaked under the shift. "I go out first. They come at me straight away, all of them—"
"That’s insane." She cut across it. "Bram, no. I’m not losing you in a yard over a set of keys."
"You’re not losing me. Nobody’s dying today."
"It’s too much risk." She was already reaching for alternatives, eyes moving across the room as if a better option might be sitting in a corner. "Give me something long. A pole, a curtain rail. I’ll hook them through the window."
"Venna." I put both hands on her face and held it. Her skin was hot under my palms, damp at the temples. "Listen. Please."
"I’m listening."
"I go out first. They’ll come for me. They will not be able to hurt me." I held her eyes. The blue of them was darker in the hard afternoon light. "Trust me on that."
"Okay." A small nod inside my hands. The movement was slight, almost reluctant.
"Then you come out, you take the keys, you go back in and you close the door. That’s the whole plan."
"And what about you?"
I saw it properly then. She wasn’t afraid of being left alone in this building.
She was afraid of it being me.
"I’ll be fine," I said. "I’m coming back to you."
"No." She pulled her face out of my hands. The loss of contact was sudden. "That doesn’t work. We find another way."
She turned back to the window and I turned with her, and we both looked at the same problem.
The distance was the whole thing. From the window, the keys were close enough to touch with a broom. From the doorway, they were thirty metres of open yard, and thirty metres back with something following you is not the same thirty metres.
And the window had bars in it. Nothing was going out through there. The iron sat black and final against the glass.
"We’re out of options," I said. My hand came off her face. "Aren’t we?"
She didn’t answer that.
"We both go," she said instead.
"Venna, that’s the risky version. Not the other way around."
"I don’t care."
"You don’t have to worry about me. My body regenerates. Whatever happens out there, I come back."
She turned and caught my eyes and held them. The look was steady and searching and completely without armour.
"Is that true?"
"Yeah."
It’s true. It just doesn’t cover everything on that road.
"Then let’s go," I said. "We don’t have time to spend on this."
"Okay." She stood. The chair scraped softly. "But I’m not shutting you out. I take the keys, we both come back in."
"Okay."
I didn’t argue with her. We needed those keys while we could still run for them, and arguing was costing us the only thing we had left—time, strength, the thinning road.
****
We went down the corridor together and stopped at the front door. The air here was fractionally cooler, but only by comparison. The wood of the door was warm under my palm.
"Ready?" My hand was on the handle.
She nodded. Once. Sharp.
I eased it open, slow, no sound in the hinge, and stepped out into the light.
The heat hit like a physical weight. The yard was bright and empty and wrong. Three of them stood in it, spaced unevenly, all facing the same direction—toward the centre of the capital, toward CGI—heads slightly raised, as if something out there was calling and they were still deciding how much they cared.
Not one turned around.
I put my palm up flat behind me.
Stay. Don’t move.
I left the door open a hand’s width. The gap was narrow, dark against the glare.
Stay inside. I’ll get the keys.
What? Venna’s face through the gap, trying to read my mouth and failing. The blue of her eyes was almost lost in the contrast of light and shadow.
They haven’t heard me. Let me take them. Don’t close that door, the noise will bring them round.
Okay. Thumbs up, half of her body in the gap. Be careful, Bram.
I read it off her lips and turned around.
Then I started walking.
Slow steps. Weight down through the heel, roll forward, next one. Twenty years of exactly this. Eyes never leaving the three of them, watching for the head movement that comes before the turn. The dirt under my bare feet was hot and uneven. Every small sound—my own breath, the soft shift of grit—felt amplified.
The keys came up under me, bright in the dirt. Metal catching the sun in sharp, clean flashes.
I lowered myself into a squat, one degree at a time, and got two fingers around the bundle. The metal was hot. The ring sat light and ordinary in my grip.
Then I lifted.
The keys chimed.
Small. Bright. Metal on metal, and it went across that yard like a bell. The sound was perfect and catastrophic and completely irreversible.
I froze with my teeth clamped and my eyes on their backs.
Nothing. Not one of them moved.
I stood up.
And the bundle swung in my hand and struck itself again—soft, almost delicate, a second small chime that shouldn’t have mattered.
One head snapped round.
It found me. I found it. The empty eyes locked. Then it ran.
The other two turned a half second later, both of them across the yard, both of them already moving—broken gait accelerating into something faster, hungrier, the distance between us collapsing with every uneven step.