Apocalypse: After Reanimation, I Became The Queen-Chapter 46: _One Man Down

We’re out of time. We are fucking out of time.

"RUN!" I yell.

"We can still save Vic!" Dom shouts, shaking him.

Vic, who is barely holding on, groans. "Bro... I love the enthusiasm, but uh... pretty sure I’m screwed."

"We don’t leave people behind!" Dom snaps, voice breaking.

I wish we had time to argue. I wish we could afford to let this moment stretch, let the grief settle like a storm cloud before making the inevitable choice. But we don’t. The zombies are coming... more than I can count, more than we can fight.

One closes in and I swing my blade, slicing it across the jaw, but another grabs my shoulder, fingers clawing into my flesh. I throw my elbow back, dislodging it just in time for a third one to stumble toward me, its mouth hanging open with a thick and wet moan spilling out.

We’re losing ground.

Then Vic shoves Dom hard.

Dom stumbles, nearly falling over. "What the fuck..."

"Go." Vic’s voice is strained, but certain. "You need to go."

Dom clenches his jaw. "No."

Trish intervenes just in time. She grabs Dom by the arm and hauls him back.

"No—NO!" Dom fights against her grip, but she’s relentless, dragging him away.

Vic wobbles on his feet, sways, and then turns to us with the smallest, weakest smirk.

"Love you, assholes."

Then the swarm engulfs him. We don’t watch. We can’t.

My heart hurts. It hurts more than my entire aching body. We just run. I just run.

We tear through the forest, lungs burning, feet pounding against the dirt. The trees blur past us. Branches whip at my face, cutting into my skin. But hell, I don’t stop. I don’t even look back.

Because if I do... If I see what happens to Vic...

I might not be able to keep running and if I stop running, I’m dead, too.

Vic’s scream is still in my ears. Even as we sprint, even as my own breath drowns everything out, I hear him.

And I know... God, I know—his voice will haunt me for the rest of my fucking life.

.

I don’t know how long we run.

My legs scream. My lungs burn. My heart slams against my ribs so hard it feels like it’s trying to escape my chest. The forest blurs past us in a mess of dark shapes and shifting shadows, every breath tasting like blood and dirt.

I hear the others; Trish’s heavy panting, Dom’s ragged gasps, the stumbling footfalls of some of the cannibals who somehow made it out with us. Every now and then, someone trips. Someone falls. But they scramble up and keep moving because stopping means dying.

And we’ve already lost too many.

Branches whip at my face as I run. Roots threaten to snatch my feet out from under me. The screams behind us are fading, but the sound is still there, like a bad song stuck in my head, playing on repeat.

Vic.

Vic’s scream.

I squeeze my eyes shut for a second... just a second—but it’s too late. His face is burned into my vision. The terror in his eyes. The way his body jerked when the zombies took him down. His voice, that bitter, broken laugh before the end.

"Love you, assholes."

I feel sick.

"We... can’t keep this up..." someone gasps from behind me.

They’re right. We’re slowing down. Even my body is giving in, every muscle screaming for a break. We need somewhere to hide before the horde catches up.

Then someone shouts, "There’s a cave up ahead! We can take cover there!"

A cave.

Not ideal. Could be full of bats, rats, or worse... could be another death trap. But we don’t have options.

The cannibals veer left, leading the way. I glance at Trish, and she just nods. Fine. Cave it is.

We stumble after them, feet dragging, bodies heaving, and every step getting heavier. The cave entrance looms ahead. It is a jagged maw in the rock face.

It is almost not visible under thick vines and overgrown foliage. At least, it’s hidden and safe enough.

We push inside, gasping and tripping over rocks. The air is damp and filled with the scent of earth and something rotting. I don’t have time to care. I collapse against the nearest wall, pressing my forehead to the cool stone.

We’re alive... Kinda.

But then, my hands curl into fists. My whole body tenses, and the grief twisting inside me turns into something hotter and sharper.

This was all these bastards’ fault. We lost Vic because of them. First, because of their stupid trap and then, their stupidity.

I push off the wall and storm across the cave, straight toward the cannibals’ leader who had also made it safely.

In the blink of an eye, I punch him in the face.

His head snaps back with a crack. He stumbles, and spits blood, and before he can even process what just happened, I’m on him.

"This is your fault!" I roar, shoving him against the wall.

The others barely have time to react before he jumps back at me, slamming his shoulder into my ribs. I grunt, pain exploding through my side, but I don’t let up. We hit the ground hard, rolling with our fists flying.

"Garth!" Trish shouts. "Garth, enough!"

But I’m not done. I grab him by the collar, yank him up, and slam him back down. How dare they eat innocent people when barely even remaining alive because of our undead nemesis?

How dare they try to eat us?

"This never would have happened if you sick bastards hadn’t been too busy EATING PEOPLE to work together!" I roared.

The leader snarls, shoving me off. We both stumble to our feet, breathing hard. He wipes blood from his mouth, eyes dark with rage.

"You think we wanted this?" he snaps. "You think we woke up one day and chose to become this? We were just like you once! Normal people trying to survive! And then the world chewed us up and spat us out! The apocalypse didn’t just bring the dead—it turned the living into monsters! You don’t know what it’s like..."

"Don’t I?!" I bark out a bitter laugh. "Look around, genius! Every single one of us has lost someone! But we didn’t start carving up humans like we were at a fucking barbecue!"

The tension in the cave becomes grim. The scavengers glare at me, some shifting uncomfortably while others look too exhausted to care.

Then Trish steps forward, and she isn’t fucking around.

"This is on you. All the people who died today? The kids? The ones who didn’t choose to be a part of this? That’s on you." She pointed out as a matter of factly...

... because it was.