Before Sera could even open her mouth to reply to Zubair, a disturbance outside had already caught everyone’s attention.

The engines started as a low growl through the trees before turning into a rumbling that felt like the world was coming to an end. Again.

Lachlan tilted his head, letting the sound roll across his hearing like wind through wire. Too big to be bikes. Too heavy to be anything farm-grown.

There were more than one. And they were moving fast.

"Company," he murmured, voice dry enough to cut.

No one wasted breath asking how many.

Elias already had his rifle braced on a splintered beam, calculating distances with the calm of a man measuring grain.

Alexei drifted toward the gaps in the boards, his eyes slitting against the late light.

Zubair pushed off the post he’d been leaning on and rolled his shoulders like heat lived under his skin waiting to get out.

Sera stayed in the center with Luci pressed to her thigh, one hand on the dire wolf’s head, the smirk that he loved to see on her face quickly disappearing.

She didn’t fidget. Didn’t pace. It was like something else was taking over her body, getting ready to protect her.

And Lachlan hated it.

The engines got louder.

Lachlan moved to the edge of the barn and crouched low enough to keep the sun out of his eyes.

He didn’t tense up. He never needed to. His shoulders were loose, the grip that he had on the machete was almost careless as it leaned against his knee.

His breath was as calm and steady as ever. That’s how you stayed fast when things got close enough to bite.

The first truck came through the tree line with a cough of black smoke and metal teeth welded across the bumper.

Mad Max wasn’t just a movie anymore.

It was crawling out of the woods in real time.

Three trucks, rust-bitten and armored in corrugated steel, slammed through the underbrush like the trees didn’t matter.

They had blade teeth welded to the grilles, spikes across the roofs, slat-metal shields bolted over windshields with holes cut out for rifles.

A steel battering ram swung off the front of the lead truck, clearing the path as it went.

And then there were the cages welded into the beds.

The things inside those cages shrieked and threw themselves at the bars hard enough to rattle the welds.

Stupid zombies.

The wind shifted, and the smell hit.

Rot. Sweat. The sour stink of men who clearly hadn’t been introduced to water or soap in a very long time.

Behind them was a whole parade of exhaust fumes, burned oil, and iron-rich hunger as the trucks rolled through the trees and landed in the barn’s rafters like a weight.

Lachlan felt the grin start before he even meant for it to occur. Raiders thought they were clever, bringing teeth to a gunfight.

He would be more than happy to teach them who had the bigger teeth.

"Tell me those aren’t what I think they are," Alexei drawled from the shadows.

"Oh, they are," Lachlan replied, almost vibrating with excitement.

The trucks spread wide across the edge of the field, engines coughing black smoke into the orange light.

Raiders in leather and road-dusted armor bristled across the tops and sides—masks of scrap metal and goggles, red cloth tied like war paint, rifles leaned against roll bars.

One climbed up the side of a cage with a crowbar.

Lachlan’s grin sharpened.

"It’s show time."

The raider slammed the crowbar down. The lock snapped.

The first stupid zombie launched out of the cage like it had been shot from a cannon. It hit the ground running—full tilt, head down, arms pumping as it tried to get to the food first.

It headed straight toward the barn. Straight at them.

The others poured out behind it in a wave of gray skin and snapping teeth.

Lachlan waited for the punchline.

It came fast.

The first stupid zombie hit the halfway mark across the field...and stopped. Not a dead stop. Just... hesitated as if it didn’t know what was going on.

Its head snapped toward the barn. Toward Sera. Toward the horde between her and everything else.

It wasn’t fear exactly. Lachlan didn’t think that the stupid zombies could feel fear. But they felt something.

The creatures inside Lachlan and Zubair and Alexei and Elias stood up close under their skin like wolves leaning over a fence. The air shifted, low and electric.

The stupid zombies smelled it.

And turned.

One by one, like strings pulled tight, they pivoted on filthy heels and went for the raiders instead.

The man who had opened the cage didn’t even get his rifle up before the first one tore his throat out.

Screams cut across the field.

Gunfire answered sharp and too late.

The raiders tried to slam the cages shut again, but the things were already out, already climbing over hoods and windshields, teeth snapping, nails dragging men down the sides of their own trucks.

Lachlan felt the satisfaction slide through him like good whiskey.

"You seeing this?" he murmured, mostly to himself.

Alexei snorted once. "I see it. You would think that they’d be smarter than to use a weapon they can’t control."

Another raider went down under a gray wave of teeth and elbows.

The stupid zombies weren’t smart, but they were fast, and they were hungry, and they were very much done being in cages.

The lead truck tried to swing the battering ram toward the barn, engine howling, but two stupid zombies hit the cab at once and started clawing through the slat metal like it was soft wood.

The gunfire doubled. Raiders shouting over engines, over screams, over the thunder of their own bad choices.

None of the horde moved yet.

Sera stood in the center, one hand still on Luci’s head, watching the field come apart like it wasn’t worth the energy to look surprised.

Elias lined up a clean shot on the man swinging a chain off the second truck and dropped him before the chain ever landed. Calm. Precise. Like marking items off a list.

Zubair’s heat started to creep higher, the air around him bending like it was leaning out of his way.

Alexei shifted, eyes on the far treeline where two raiders tried to circle wide with machetes. "More coming around the side."

"I see ’em," Lachlan said, rolling his shoulders back.

The field had gone full chaos now—zombies tearing into raiders, raiders shooting everything that moved, trucks grinding gears trying to swing around.

Lachlan rose slow, easy, the machete still loose in one hand.

Sera didn’t call out orders or make any suggestions. She didn’t have to.

He gave the smallest hand signal toward Elias, another toward Alexei. Silent agreement. Positions shifting.

The last cage hit the dirt off the third truck. More stupid zombies spilled out.

They didn’t even glance at the barn this time.

Every single one went for the raiders.

And the raiders finally realized they weren’t the ones running this show.