Surviving the Apocalypse With My Yandere Ex-Girlfriend-Chapter 116: I’m so sorry

If I thought something felt strange back then, I definitely knew it now.

Lila reached over and tried to cover my eyes with her hand.

I gently pulled her hand away.

"I need to see," I murmured.

The bus slowed as it rolled down the road.

Someone behind us muttered, "Holy shit."

Another voice followed. "The hell happened here?" It sounded like Aubrey.

I kept staring through the window, and the scene outside made my chest tighten.

The highway was covered in blood. Bodies lay across the road and along the ditches, some twisted in ways that made it hard to believe they had once been people. A few cars had crashed into each other and sat abandoned in the middle of the road, their windows shattered and their doors left hanging open.

The trees along the roadside were still burning, and thick smoke rolled across the pavement as the bus carefully pushed through it.

No one moved outside.

No survivors, no infected, nothing but silence and the remains of whatever had happened here.

What made it worse was that the destruction did not stop.

The bus kept moving, and the farther we drove, the more bodies we saw. There were burned trucks, overturned cars, and entire patches of forest that had been blackened by fire.

I leaned forward slightly in my seat as the pit in my stomach grew heavier.

We were getting farther away from Chicago.

We were getting closer to Texas.

So why were things getting worse instead of better?

A smell slowly spread through the bus, and it became impossible to ignore after a few minutes. It was thick and rotten, like burned meat mixed with almost sweet smelling decay, and it crawled into the back of my throat.

My face went pale as my stomach churned.

I pressed my hand against my mouth and tried to steady my breathing while my eyes stayed locked on the road ahead.

Something was terribly wrong out here, and the closer we got to Texas, the more it felt like we were driving straight into it.

—

A few minutes passed before it came into view.

At first it was just smoke rising in the distance. Thick, black columns twisting into the sky.

Then the bus rounded the bend.

And it slammed straight into my sight.

"Oh, man..." someone muttered behind me.

My throat tightened as I stared through the window. Flames swallowed the buildings I had memorized so well. The front gates were gone, twisted metal scattered across the ground like broken bones.

Figures moved inside the compound, but not all of them were alive. Some staggered between the fires, while others chased the few survivors still trying to run.

Tears welled up in my eyes before I even realized it.

They slipped down my cheeks as I kept staring.

—

"Bus driver."

The man at the wheel didn’t respond.

His eyes were locked on the compound burning in front of him. The road led straight toward the entrance, where infected still wandered through the wreckage and lunged at anyone unlucky enough to still be alive.

"BUS DRIVER!"

He flinched when Julia’s voice cut through the bus.

"Turn around," she said sharply. "There ain’t nothing for us here."

He nodded and started turning the wheel.

But before the bus could even slow down, someone shot past the front.

The door slammed open.

A figure jumped off the bus and sprinted toward the compound.

Julia frowned.

Aubrey’s eyes widened as she recognized him.

"Shit," she muttered before rushing after him. "Adrian, wait!"

Lila was already moving down the aisle.

Isabella followed right behind her.

Damien stayed in his seat, arms folded across his chest as he watched the chaos unfold.

A small smirk slowly crept across his face.

—

No.

No, no, no.

My sprint slowed as the heat from the fire hit my face.

Then it turned into a jog.

Then I stopped completely.

The crackling of flames filled the air. Bodies were scattered across the ground, some burned, some torn apart.

The smell hit me all at once.

I dropped to my knees as my legs gave out beneath me.

Tears streamed down my face as I stared at what used to be the place I called home.

I was wrong.

I was so damn wrong about everything.

Everything that can go wrong will go wrong in a world like this.

Nothing spares you.

It does not matter how much you think you have already suffered. It does not matter if you believe you have reached your limit.

The world just keeps feeding it to you.

I slammed my fist against the concrete. The pain barely registered.

And it keeps feeding you.

My fist hit the ground again.

Until you reach the point where you cannot take any more.

Until eventually...

You become the meal.

I barely noticed Aubrey running up behind me until she stopped a few feet away, bent over with her hands on her knees as she struggled to catch her breath.

"Adrian..." she said between breaths. "Come on. This place isn’t safe anymore."

She reached a hand toward my shoulder.

I stood up before she could touch me.

She frowned when she saw the look on my face.

"Those people are smart," she said quietly as I stared at the burning compound. "They escaped. I know they did."

But the tremble in her voice gave it away. She didn’t even believe her own words.

Her expression darkened.

I started walking forward.

"I need to know."

My voice was steady.

An infected suddenly lunged at me from the side, its mouth open as it rushed through the smoke.

I raised my gun and fired without even looking at it.

The body dropped instantly.

I kept walking into the carnage with the same blank expression on my face.

—

Aubrey stood still and watched Adrian walk deeper into the compound.

The flames behind him painted the ground in flickering orange light. Smoke rolled through the broken streets while infected wandered through the ruins.

He did not slow down. He did not look back.

Lila moved after him and passed Aubrey without a word.

"Lila."

Her voice stopped her.

Lila turned her head slightly.

Aubrey looked at her, and for a moment the hard look she had been carrying all day cracked. Guilt and grief pushed through it.

"Make sure... he doesn’t see anything he shouldn’t."

Her words came out slower than usual.

Lila studied her for a moment. Then she frowned slightly and continued walking after Adrian without saying anything to her.

Aubrey stood there a second longer before turning around.

She walked back toward the bus with slow steps.

Isabella noticed immediately.

"Where are you going?" she asked with a frown.

Aubrey stopped near the door and looked back at her.

"We both know what we’re going to find in there," she said quietly.

Her face had already gone cold again.

"I don’t want to be scarred for life, thanks."

The way she said it made something twist in Isabella’s chest.

Aubrey had said it the same way someone talks about skipping a horror movie because it looks too disturbing. She had reduced everything that had happened here into something easier to swallow.

Isabella watched her climb back into the bus.

Then she sighed softly and turned back toward the burning compound.

—

Bobby.

Littleman.

Cairo.

Dr. Tekashi.

I recognized them one by one as I walked.

Some of them were burned. Some were torn apart. Some looked like they had simply collapsed where they stood.

Each one chipped something off inside me.

I did not know why I kept going.

Maybe Isabella had been right.

Maybe I needed closure.

The smoke burned my eyes as I stepped around another collapsed wall. Fire crackled behind me while infected moved slowly through the compound, searching for whatever scraps remained.

Eventually I noticed one of them crouched on the ground.

It was chewing on something.

I stopped a few feet away.

"What are you doing...?" I asked, like it was even able to understand me.

My voice sounded distant to my own ears.

The infected looked up.

Something slipped from its hand when it turned toward me.

It hit the ground with a dull clatter.

I stared at it.

A baseball bat.

Studded with metal.

Smeared with blood.

Cherie’s bat.

Something inside my chest finally broke.

The infected lunged at me with a snarl.

I raised my gun and shot it without thinking.

The body collapsed at my feet— and I had barely looked at it.

My eyes had already moved past...

— to writing on the wall behind it.

The letters were large and messy, carved deep into the concrete, highlighted with smeared dark blood.

ANNIE’S WORK.

ROT IN HELL, FLESHERS!!

My mind went completely blank.

For a moment I just stood there staring at the words.

Then warm liquid slipped from my nose.

A thin line of blood ran down over my lip while the fires continued to burn around me.