Harem Apocalypse: Every Moan Levels Us Up!

My eyes moved down the line of them.

They were getting set. I could see it in the way the shaking had changed, spreading through the mass in a wave, hundreds of bodies loading themselves. The tremor that had been loose and continuous tightened into something sharper—shoulders locking, weight shifting forward onto the balls of feet that no longer needed the adjustment, the whole front rank finding a shared readiness that had nothing human left in it.

And they outnumbered us. Not by much. A hundred, maybe more.

Bagins breathed in and let it out and turned to me.

"What’s next?"

"Make the final speech."

I switched my hearing on.

And the street filled up.

Four hundred hearts behind me, every one of them going too fast, layered over each other into a single sound like something enormous breathing. The wet collective thunder of living chests working past their limits. Mine was in there too and it wasn’t any steadier than theirs. Bagins’ pulse sat closest—hard, climbing, the particular rhythm of a man about to spend everything he had built on fifty metres of open asphalt. Mercury’s further back, steadier. Venna’s against my awareness like a second clock running too hot.

Do we win this?

I put it to the system directly, because I needed the truth more than I needed the hope.

[ No. ]

[ More than half of them are ability holders and they are prepared. ]

[ This is closer to a suicide fight. But you need to reach the headquarters. The awakening is closing. ]

Thank you.

The answer sat complete and without comfort. Direction only.

Bagins turned to face his men.

I could hear his heart. It was going harder than any of theirs and I couldn’t tell whether it was fear of what was in front of him or fear of what he’d done to four hundred people who trusted him.

"These walls are ours."

He said it quietly. Cooler than anything he’d said all night, and the men in front of him went cool with it. The volume dropped. The authority densified.

"And I’ll be frank with you. I’m more afraid right now than I was thirty minutes ago."

Nobody made a sound. The street lights held both lines in the same overexposed white.

Bram, I’m afraid.

Venna laid the thought on top of everything else so I’d catch it. The channel opened clean under the noise of the pulses.

My eyes were already moving and my mind was three steps ahead. I had the shape of a plan, something that could work against numbers like these—angles, the density of the centre, the way a first rush always left gaps at the edges if someone was willing to take them. The problem wasn’t the plan. The problem was that it didn’t include a way to keep the two women beside me alive while I ran it.

"But that fear is a signal," Bagins said, and his heart began to settle as he found the rhythm. "It means we’re close. It means they’re standing there feeling exactly what we’re feeling, and more of it."

The roar that came back sounded less like an army and more like something starving. It started at the front ranks and rolled back through the column without a single voice lagging.

"They are standing between us and what belongs to us. And that leaves us no option but to move them out of the way."

They went up again. The sound climbed the walls and came back denser.

My eyes found it in the middle of all that noise.

An open doorway. Right-hand side of the street, between us and them. A shop, maybe. Dark inside, door hanging open on a black interior that the street lights didn’t reach. Twenty metres of angled path if someone broke right hard enough and early enough, before the centre of the road became a single continuous collision.

I pulled Venna’s hand.

"See that open door?"

"Where?"

I turned her wrist rather than point. The contact cut through the noise. Her pulse against my fingers matched what my hearing was already giving me. "There. Right side. Twenty metres."

"I see it."

"When the men start running, you go for it. Not with them. Across them. Mercury will be right behind you." I kept my voice under the noise. The words stayed between the two of us while the ranks behind us continued their roar. "Get inside and lock it."

"What about you?"

"I’ll be fine. I’m coming back for you."

"Promise me."

"We don’t have time for promises." I put my hand on her shoulder. "Listen. We’re at the front. You need to be faster than every man behind us, because once they start running they’ll carry you wherever they’re going whether you want it or not. Understood?"

"Yes."

The roar stopped.

The silence that replaced it lasted less than a second and held the whole street inside it—hundreds of us, the trembling mass of the prepared dead, the open doorway on the right, the abandoned trucks behind us still throwing their headlights up the asphalt in long white rectangles that ended against the front rank of the infected.

Bagins turned around and faced the infected.

I let go of Venna’s hand. The absence of the contact registered and was filed. She was free now.

"FOR THE WALLS."

He started running.

The first stride was clean. The second already carried the weight of four hundred men about to follow it. Venna was already gone, breaking right, cutting across the front before the wave came—low, fast, the particular economy of someone who had been given one instruction and had decided the rest of the night depended on executing it before the centre of the street closed.

"FOLLOW VENNA," I shouted at Mercury.

She read it in half a second and went after her. No hesitation. No look back at Bagins or the centre of the road. Her body angled hard right and she was gone, the same forward energy she always carried.

I started running and matched Bagins stride for stride, and behind us four hundred men came off the line at once with the sound of the whole street coming with them. The thunder of boots on asphalt filled the space between the shuttered buildings and climbed.

The headlights threw the charge into a single continuous moving chaos of bodies and open mouths and weapons catching the light in broken flashes.

My eyes stayed sideways, tracking two women crossing right. Venna’s blue hair. Mercury’s darker shape closing the gap behind her. The open doorway still ten metres off and closing. The first of the ranks spilling into the space they had left and not yet understanding why two of the front line had broken away from the centre.

And ahead of us the infected broke and came, all of them, closing the fifty metres between us.

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