The forsaken city held its breath.

General Sinn stood exposed but partially shielded by the armored vehicle, his scarred face set in a grim line. "We are not looking for a fight," he called again, voice carrying across the cracked street like a challenge.

The silence that answered felt alive, thick, watchful, and heavy with the weight of people who had learned that quiet kept them breathing.

Then a rough, gravelly voice drifted from the shadowed buildings ahead.

"Hello."

"Can you hear me?" Sinn raised his voice.

"We need food," the voice replied. "We know you’re from the zombie city."

"We don’t have food," Sinn replied.

A fresh volley of arrows hissed through the air and clattered uselessly against the armored plating of both vehicles. Sinn stayed low. The barrage lasted a full minute before stopping.

"Say that again, son of a bitch." The voice had shifted from negotiating to something with more edge. "You think we’re fools?"

I watched Sinn from inside the car. He was losing it. Not because he wasn’t capable but because he was a soldier dealing with something that wasn’t a military problem. This was a survival problem. Different rules.

"Open the door," I told Sherry.

She opened it without hesitation. I climbed out over her, my hand landing on her thigh in the process. Not intentional. I kept moving.

Sinn saw me and his expression went through several stages. He was squatting behind the car, covering from the east positions, and I was standing in the open with my hands moving.

"What are you doing," he whispered, reading his own lips more than mine.

"Let me handle it," I said, hands gesturing toward the building.

"What?" He couldn’t read the signal.

"Say that again," the voice demanded from the buildings.

"We have food," I shouted.

Silence. Then: "You do?"

"Yes," I said.

Shouts from the buildings. Clapping. The specific sound of people who have been waiting for something and have just been told it exists.

"Though we have a little," Sinn added.

I looked at him. He looked back like he had contributed something useful.

Why, I thought. Why would you say that.

"What did you say?" The voice from the buildings again, the warmth draining back out of it.

I understood how this worked. These people had probably been sitting in this forsaken city for months watching the road, waiting for something to pass, surviving on whatever the city had left and whatever the infected hadn’t claimed. You didn’t tell them you had a little. You didn’t leave them calculating whether to take your vehicles after you gave them the little you had.

"Little but enough for all of us," I said, walking out from behind the car with both hands raised.

Sinn came out beside me.

"Why didn’t you say that first?" the voice said, and the warmth was back, and with it something that sounded like genuine relief.

Footsteps from the buildings. Not one set. Many. About two hundred people came out of the structures, emerging from windows and doorways and positions I hadn’t identified, and they made a path through their own number.

A thin man walked down the center.

He wore a faded gray suit vest, buttons undone, over a dirty shirt. A red bandana was tied around his head, and a coiled, wiry mustache sat above a mouth that had forgotten how to smile easily. His oversized shoes flapped slightly as he walked. He carried himself with the worn authority of someone who had kept two hundred starving souls alive in a dead city, through cunning, ruthlessness, or both.

He stopped in front of us.

He didn’t look as dangerous as his voice. He looked like one very hungry man who had been managing two hundred other hungry people for a very long time.

"Major," he said. "Mayor of the Forsaken City. Welcome to my land."

"Sinn," Sinn said.

I looked at the two hundred people around us. We did not look like outsiders. Nobody in our team had torn clothes or hollow eyes or the specific thinness of people who had been rationing. We were going to be asked about it.

"Abram Nadez," I said. "From Goth."

"Gooooth." Major stretched it with recognition. "Knew it." He looked us over. "Who leads this crew?"

Sinn pointed at me without hesitation, which was either trust or self-preservation and I chose not to examine which.

"Okay, Abram." Major turned to me. "You see how we cleared this city? No infected for months. Hard work."

The detector in Sinn’s recovered equipment had confirmed it. No infected in this zone. But I was fairly certain Major hadn’t cleared them so much as inherited a city they had already vacated for their own reasons. He had stayed when others had run, which was its own kind of courage even if it wasn’t exactly what he was claiming.

"Nice work," I said.

"I knew there was food in the zombie city," he said. "We were afraid of the risk so we developed a plan." He smiled. "Bring the food out."

I knew exactly how this worked. Outside, food created its own kind of debt, and debt created its own kind of danger. People who were starving made calculations that full people didn’t. You gave them what you had and then you became a vehicle full of people who had just given away their leverage.

Sinn was already moving to order the team to unload. I stayed with Major.

"Goth keeps developing," Major said, nodding at our armored cars with the appreciation of someone who had been looking at the same crumbling buildings for a very long time. "Armored vehicles now."

"Progress," I said. Then: "Major, I have a suggestion."

He looked at me.

"We eat together," I said. "Then some of your men ride with us. We go to the city, we come back with enough food to sustain this place for months. One trip. Real supply."

Major looked at me for a long moment. Then he laughed. The real kind.

"Abram." He said my name like he was deciding whether to trust it. "You’re wise for your age." He turned and raised his hand toward the buildings.

"We have visitors," he called.

The two hundred people clapped.

****

We unloaded everything from the cars except one box of chocolate that I left in Sinn’s vehicle without announcement. Major didn’t check the cars. He waited, patient, and when we came out each carrying a box he led us toward the buildings without counting what we had brought.

He walked beside me.

"You walked with beauties, my guy," he said quietly, watching the rest of the team moving through the crowd.

Every man on the outside notices the same things, I thought. Survival doesn’t change that.

"Yes," I said. "I did."

Major chuckled low. "Lucky bastard."

The tension in the air hadn’t vanished. It had only changed shape, two hundred desperate people, one smart deal, and the constant knowledge that hunger could turn a celebration into slaughter in a single heartbeat.

We were still very far from safe.