Chapter 376: Fun Birthday
We spent maybe ten more minutes inside Fun Birthday, moving through the aisles while Summer kept checking shelves with the focus of someone on a proper mission.
By that point, she had already filled one bag and started on the next. She had even brought extra carrying bags with her, which told me she had planned this whole thing way better than I first thought. Since we had already made it all the way up there, I understood the logic. Might as well take as much useful stuff as possible.
That was how she always worked, really.
Up until now, she had mostly stayed on the lower floors, scavenging in places with wider hallways, open sightlines, and more room to escape if things went bad. For all the trouble she gave me, she really wasn’t stupid enough to gamble her life for no reason. She’d said that herself enough times.
And to be fair, she had survived this long.
That didn’t happen on luck alone.
She was smart, light on her feet, and good at thinking fast. Still, luck had helped too. There was no way around that. In a world like this, everybody alive still carried some share of luck whether they admitted it or not. The problem was that luck didn’t last forever, and one day it could decide to stop showing up.
"I think this should be enough," Summer said at last, setting a couple of the bags down near her feet. "We still have to carry all this back."
I glanced at the pile she had built and let out a short breath through my nose. "Marlon’s going to ask where all this came from."
She looked up at me and smiled with way too much confidence. "I’ll just say I found it in the storage room where we keep scavenged supplies."
I stared at her for a second.
She clearly had that answer ready long before I asked.
Honestly, she had probably used that excuse before too, whenever she came home with anything she didn’t feel like explaining. The annoying part was, it sounded believable enough to work.
"Anyway," she said, brushing some dust off one of the bags, "we can leave now. Since that’s what you wanted."
"Yeah. About that." I shifted my grip on the axe and glanced toward the way out, then up, like I could somehow feel the terrace through the ceiling. "Stay here for a minute. I want to go check up there."
Her brows lifted right away. "Seriously?"
Then she smiled at me.
"After all that talk about how dangerous this was and how I shouldn’t even be here?"
"It wasn’t that bad," I muttered.
"It was exactly that bad."
I ignored that. "You know what I mean. You being here is why I kept pushing it."
She crossed her arms. "And now you want to go toward the weird dangerous thing by yourself."
"Yeah," I said. "Because I want to make sure it isn’t something that can turn into a problem later."
She waited.
So I explained it properly.
"This mall sits between both sides," I said. "Your people, our people. If there’s some Starakian device up there and it gets triggered, or activated, or whatever the hell it does, then it won’t only be my problem. It could hit both communities."
That wiped the teasing out of her face for a second.
She looked up toward the ceiling too, then back at me. "Right," she said. "Fine. But your plan is to leave me here alone while you go?"
"I’m not dragging you toward something that might be dangerous Starakian tech."
"And leaving me alone here is safer?"
"Yes," I said, dry as hell. "A lot safer than standing next to me while I poke alien death junk with a bad feeling in my stomach."
That got the faintest laugh out of her.
Then she exhaled and nodded. "Alright. I’m not in a hurry to die either. I get it."
"I cleared the path already," I said. "Lock yourself in here, stay quiet, and wait. It’ll only take me a few minutes."
She gave a small shrug. "I’ll stay near the back, then. Just in case."
That part I agreed with immediately.
If anything wandered in from the front, the back of the shop would at least give her a few extra seconds to react. Not ideal, but better than standing exposed by the entrance with party hats and balloons all around her like some very stupid last stand.
So I helped her carry the bags toward the rear of the store.
The deeper part of the shop was darker, more cluttered, packed with stacked boxes and shelving units that made the torchlight bounce in narrow strips. We had taken out the Infected on our way here, sure, but I hadn’t cleared the entire floor. This place was huge. Anything could still wander in eventually.
Summer lowered her bags near the back wall, then tipped her torch slightly to one side.
"There’s even a door here," she said.
I turned sharply.
In the dark, with all the shelves and boxes, neither of us had paid attention to it at first. It sat half-hidden in the wall behind a stand of plastic decorations. A plain door. Probably a staff room.
"Wait—"
I was too late.
She had already reached for the handle and pulled it open.
The infected came out so fast it looked like it had been pressed against the other side waiting for a body to throw itself at.
I dropped the bags in my hands without thinking.
My arm shot out on instinct, fingers locking around Summer’s wrist, and I yanked her toward me hard. Harder than I meant to, maybe, but there wasn’t time to be gentle. She stumbled straight into me, caught completely off guard, and in that messy half-second where she lost her footing and tried to brace herself against my chest, her mouth hit mine.
It wasn’t even a kiss.
Just a clumsy, accidental press of lips from bad balance and worse timing.
Still, it happened.
For that single stupid second, I felt the warmth of her mouth against my lower lip before she jerked back enough for me to see her face.
Her eyes went wide.
Mine probably did too.
Then survival kicked back in.
I shoved her behind me and swung.
The axe buried into the infected’s skull before it could lunge again. The body dropped in the doorway with a wet collapse, limbs folding awkwardly into the threshold.
"Stay there," I said.
I didn’t wait for an answer.
I stepped forward at once, raised my torch, and swept the beam through the staff room. Small space. Shelves. Boxes. Folded cartons. A chair tipped over in the corner. No movement. No second infected hiding behind the door. No one else left inside.
Good.
I backed out and turned around immediately.
Summer was still where I had put her, one hand half-lifted near her chest, more startled than hurt. Her face was flushed now, whether from the scare or from what had just happened, I didn’t even want to untangle.
I looked over her fast from head to toe.
Arms. Neck. Hands. Clothes.
No bite.
No scratch that I could see either.
Even so, I stepped closer and checked again, because at that point I knew I was being paranoid and I didn’t care. After Maribel a few days ago, after everything else, the last thing I needed was another woman getting bitten in front of me and adding one more disaster to the pile.
"You okay?" I asked.
The words came out rougher than I meant them to.
Summer blinked once, still processing everything, then looked down at the dead infected in the doorway and back at me. I stayed there in front of her with the torch in one hand and the axe hanging dark in the other, still scanning her for any sign I might have missed while my heart pounded way too hard for a damn staff-room jump scare.
She was still looking at me in that dazed, thrown-off way, but it was obvious by now that the shock on her face had less to do with the Infected in the staff room and a lot more to do with what had just happened between us.
So, naturally, I made it worse by speaking.
"Sorry," I said, awkward enough to hear it myself. "I pulled you hard, but... that was an accident."
Summer looked away at once.
"No," she said. "I’m the one who opened the door like an idiot."
I glanced toward the dead Infected in the doorway, then back at her. "They’re quiet most of the time," I said. "They don’t really make much noise until they catch our scent or see us up close."
I should have damn heard it him though.
Probably I just got drown in my own thoughts. I usually tried to turn off my Dullahan Senses, at least shut off most of it after clearing the spaces because of how straining it was to be constantly with enhanced senses.
"Yeah," she muttered, giving a small nod. "I should’ve known that."
Then silence dropped between us again.
A bad one.
And yeah, obviously it was because of that stupid accidental kiss.
I reached lightly for her arm, checking where I’d grabbed her. "I didn’t hurt you, did I?"
The question came out before I could stop it.
In the moment, I’d used more force than I’d meant to. I knew that much. Panic made you rough. It made you fast. And if I’d bruised her because I reacted too hard, that was on me.
Summer shook her head without looking at me. "No. I’m fine."
Her answer was short. Too short.
Then she drew in a breath and added, "Just go do what you need to do and come back quickly."
I hesitated for half a second.
Not because I wanted to drag this out. The opposite, really. The whole thing had gone weird enough already. But I still looked at her once more just to make sure she really was alright. No trembling in her legs. No blood. No bite. No scratch. Just embarrassment sitting over both of us like a blanket nobody wanted to move first.
"Right," I said. "Anyway, lock yourself in that room if you need to. There aren’t any more Infected inside. I’ll be back."
She nodded once.
I didn’t wait for anything else after that.
I turned and left before the silence could get any worse, stepping out of Fun Birthday and heading toward the access to the terrace floor with my torch in one hand and the axe still wet in the other. The moment I was out in the corridor again, the air felt colder somehow, emptier too, and whatever awkward heat had been stuck in my face from what happened got shoved aside by that same ugly pressure I’d been feeling ever since we climbed this high.
It was stronger now.
Definitely above me.