Chapter 211
The truck rumbled over broken roads, its tires thudding over cracks like a pulse—alive, just barely.
The mist hadn’t thickened yet, but it drifted low and slow along the ground, curling like pale fingers reaching for something just out of sight. In the silence inside the truck, the faint growls from somewhere distant felt sharper, more personal, as if the mist remembered them.
Zara didn’t speak.
She stared out the cracked window, one arm protectively around Leo, who lay curled up and sleeping in her lap, his small fingers loosely gripping the fabric of her coat. Winter sat beside her, his hand wrapped around hers, the calloused edge of his thumb occasionally grazing her skin as if to remind her they were still here. Still alive.
Behind them, City H had vanished from sight—but not from memory. Its chaos still rang in her ears: the gunfire, the scream that cut through metal and bone, the sickly wet thud of bodies hitting wet pavement. And above it all, Adrian’s voice, that cruel edge to his laughter when he realized he had them cornered.
Not this time.
She squeezed Winter’s hand harder.
They passed a cluster of houses half-swallowed by vine and rot. Moss climbed the broken siding like veins through a corpse. Windows yawned open, jagged and empty.
Miles, from his seat across the aisle, muttered, "Used to be cleared out. Guess the mist took it back."
His voice was rough from smoke and exhaustion. No one replied. What was there to say?
The truck groaned as Mike guided it off the broken main road, veering onto a semi-sheltered overlook. A once-tall apartment block loomed ahead—shattered but standing, its upper floors still clinging to shape like old bones under loose skin.