Apocalypse Ground Zero: Refusing To Leave Home

A narrow concrete staircase disappeared beneath the house. Small lights ran along one wall, although most were broken. The two that still worked blinked weakly over stained steps.

Zhenlan went down first.

His lightning spread over his palm, giving him enough light to see the bottom without touching the switches.

Yuche followed behind him as Chenghai carried me down after them.

Gu Han remained at the top of the stairs.

Of course he did.

Because that wasn’t creepy at all.

The basement was much larger than the house should’ve allowed. The staircase opened into a long concrete hallway with metal doors on both sides. The rooms extended beneath the neighboring properties, joining several houses through the same underground structure.

This wasn’t something Gu Han had built after the apocalypse.

He had found it like this... and I didn’t even want to guess why someone had this built before shit had the chance to hit the fan.

But clearly, Gu Han wasn’t much better. After all, he had managed to actually fill it.

The first room was empty except for a chain bolted to the wall and a dark stain across the floor.

The second room held a woman.

She sat with her back against the concrete, one wrist chained above her shoulder. Her clothes hung loosely from her body, and one leg stretched in front of her at an angle that made my stomach turn.

A bite covered the top of her shoulder. The skin around it had gone black, with thin dark lines spreading toward her neck.

A number had been painted above her door.

Six.

I remembered that number from Head Luo’s records.

Subject Six placed near pharmacy shelter. Forty-three dead gathered before morning.

Gu Han had used her to destroy a shelter, then brought her back here afterward.

The woman lifted her head when Zhenlan’s light reached the room but she wasn’t looking at him.

Her eyes found me and for a second, the old bite on my calf burned like it had been hit by a fire poker.

The woman pulled against her chain, and somewhere beyond the houses, hundreds of dead bodies turned in the same direction.

Somehow, I felt them through her. Like I was part of them as a group. I wasn’t happy about that to say the least.

But there was no thoughts, no voice, nothing human enough to understand.

I could only feel their hunger shifting toward the cul-de-sac.

Chenghai’s arms tightened around me. "Rouxi."

"I know," I replied, because I did.

Yuche reached into the room with his power. The chain tore free from the wall, but he kept the metal wrapped loosely around the woman’s waist so she wouldn’t fall forward.

He didn’t touch her. None of us knew what the infection would do if the mark opened wider.

Zhenlan moved to the next door.

A man lay inside with one wrist still chained to the wall. He didn’t react when the lightning reached his face. The thread connected to him was so faint that I almost missed it.

The next room held two people.

One of them watched us through swollen eyes.

The other had already died.

Farther down the hall, someone began pounding on a door.

A voice from another room started begging.

Then another.

The basement filled with chains, fists against metal, and people trying to speak over one another after hearing the first door open.

"Help us."

"Don’t leave."

"Please."

"Is she here?"

That last one made me stop.

I looked toward the closed door near the end of the hallway.

The person inside couldn’t see me, but they still knew that I was here.

My scar pulled harder and I felt like a frigging dog on a leash. I hated it.

Zhenlan stepped closer. "How many can you feel?"

I closed my eyes long enough to separate the threads.

"At least six in this section."

My roots had found more rooms beneath the other houses. Some threads were weak while others dragged hard enough that I could feel the marked people moving against their restraints.

"Across the street too," I grumbled. I had officially reached my limit for people and fucked up stuff. Where was my couch when I needed it?!? "There are more under almost every house near the center," I continued, biting my tongue.

Being pissed wasn’t going to change the fact that I had to deal with all this before my couch could permanently become attached to my ass.

Gu Han’s voice came down the stairwell, dragging me back to the situation at hand. "Now you understand why they had to be separated."

I opened my eyes.

He stood at the top with the light behind him, keeping a safe distance from the people he had chained.

"What exactly am I supposed to understand?" I asked.

"That the mark can be used."

The begging around us quieted like the people inside wanted to hear what he said just as much as she did.

Gu Han continued as though he were explaining a good idea to someone too stubborn to appreciate it.

Essentially, he sounded like he was going to try to get my home and supplies all over again.

"The dead respond to these people. We can move them away from roads, shelters, and supply routes. We can clear districts without wasting ammunition or risking healthy fighters," he explained like these people should be willing to just be bait.

"You mean you can leave one bitten person somewhere and wait for the zombies to eat everyone around them." I clarified with a sigh.

"If that area is already lost, then the supplies shouldn’t be wasted," shrugged Gu Han in reply.

The woman in the second room made a broken sound.

Gu Han had probably said the same thing about the pharmacy shelter.

I looked at her bent leg and the chain marks around her wrist, then I looked toward the stairs. "You sent them back for another turn."

Gu Han didn’t answer immediately, but he didn’t really need to.

I could see the numbers above the doors. Gu Han had returned the survivors here after using them and kept them alive until he found somewhere else he wanted destroyed.

My roots slipped through cracks in the floor and the woman in the first occupied room followed them with her eyes. When a thin root crossed the threshold, she stopped pulling against the chain and stared at it.

The thread inside my scar became clearer and I let the roots continue.

They travelled beneath the hallway, entered the next room, and touched the wall near the man lying on the floor. Another root reached the two prisoners farther down.

Each connection became brighter.

First one thread.

Then another.

Then several more beneath the neighboring houses.

Gu Han descended two steps. "With your connection to the marked and the barrier around your property, we could control this instead of guessing. We could clear the entire eastern district."

I stared at him.

He wanted me to help.

That was the part my brain had been refusing to accept because it was too stupid.

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