Chapter 638: Chapter 638: Persistence (Part 8)

Black... that was all Don saw.

It felt like the world around him had completely vanished.

Unlike with the other scream he encountered earlier... he couldn’t hear any voices... or sounds for that matter.

No ringing. No distant impacts. No fire. Nothing.

Only emptiness.

His body felt missing too at first, disconnected somewhere beyond reach.

Then slowly—very slowly—feeling began returning in broken pieces.

The needle-like sensation crawling through his hands weakened little by little, fading from painful static into dull numbness.

His chest finally registered next. Tight. Heavy. Breath moving unevenly in and out of him.

Then the wind.

Cold air brushed faintly against one side of his face.

Don focused entirely on opening his eyes.

The effort felt absurdly difficult. His eyelids resisted as though weight had been placed directly over them, forcing him to strain just to move them slightly.

Muscles around his face twitched weakly before finally responding.

A slit of blurred light appeared.

Smoke.

Gray shapes.

Distorted movement.

His eyes opened a little more.

He found himself hanging sideways inside the overturned vehicle cabin.

The truck had rolled onto the passenger side, crushing half the frame inward hard enough that metal pressed uncomfortably close against him from multiple directions.

The scent of smoke sat thick inside the enclosed space, mixed with leaking fuel, blood, and burned rubber.

His face and forehead rested against shattered glass.

Small fragments scraped against his skin and even his eye itself, pressed there from the impact.

One thin shard dragged across the surface painfully when he shifted his gaze. It hadn’t pierced deeply enough to blind him, but the discomfort was immediate and ugly.

Still—

He ignored it.

His vision stayed blurred as he tried looking toward the passenger seat first.

K-4 wasn’t there.

The seat itself had partially collapsed inward, dashboard bent and cracked around it from where the vehicle had folded during the roll.

Blood streaked across the shattered interior, some fresh, some smeared during impact.

Don’s eyes shifted toward the back.

Olynk’s arm hung awkwardly between the front seats, unmoving. His hand twitched slightly from the weight pressing against it, fingers half-curled against broken glass.

A little blood ran down from somewhere above his wrist, dripping steadily onto the ruined center console below.

Then—

Just at the corner of Don’s vision—

Charles.

His body had been thrown hard against the rear side of the cabin during the crash. One wing bent tightly beneath him at an angle it clearly wasn’t meant to hold while the other pressed feathers against twisted metal near the ceiling.

Blood covered one side of his face, running down from his hairline and across his jaw before soaking into the collar of his outfit.

Motionless.

Don’s eyes widened instantly.

The movement dragged several loose shards painfully across his eye.

He still didn’t stop.

His head snapped forward.

And there—

Ahead of the overturned truck—

The child.

Or rather—

The infected.

Its body lay twisted across the street in a widening pool of blood and crushed flesh.

One arm bent completely backward beneath the torso while the lower half of its body had been flattened badly enough that bone pushed visibly through torn skin.

Standing over it—

K-4.

Blood covered the side of his head and neck, soaking one shoulder of his uniform as he held the rifle aimed downward.

CRACK~

CRACK~

CRACK~

The shots looked distant without sound.

Each round punched through the infected’s skull violently, jerking the ruined head backward against the pavement until barely anything recognizable remained above the neck.

Only after emptying several rounds into it did K-4 finally stop.

Then he moved.

Fast.

Not toward Don.

Not toward Olynk.

Charles.

He reached the overturned vehicle and forced the damaged rear door open with both hands.

Metal resisted at first before finally bending outward enough for him to drag Charles free carefully despite the urgency.

Don couldn’t fully focus on it.

His attention kept returning to one thing.

He still couldn’t hear.

Not even himself breathing.

His movements became more urgent after that realization.

He forced his numb arms underneath himself and crawled toward the shattered windshield.

Broken glass shifted beneath his weight as he pushed through the opening awkwardly, boots scraping against bent metal before finally dropping onto the street outside.

The ground felt uneven beneath him.

Disconnected.

Like his body understood contact without properly processing it.

Don kept looking around while trying to stabilize himself.

K-4 still wasn’t paying attention to him.

The man had lowered Charles carefully beside the vehicle now, checking him quickly before reaching back toward the overturned truck again.

It hit Don then.

K-4 couldn’t hear either.

Don pushed himself upright fully.

The moment he did—

K-4 spun hard toward him with the rifle already raised.

The barrel aligned directly with Don’s chest.

Don reacted immediately, knees bending slightly as his body prepared to launch sideways—

Then K-4 stopped.

Recognition crossed his face.

He lowered the rifle slightly and opened his mouth to say something.

"What!?" Don shouted back instinctively.

Nothing.

Not even his own voice reached him.

His expression shifted immediately.

Something was very wrong.

K-4 already seemed aware of it. There was no panic on his face, only urgency. He quickly raised one hand and began signing instead.

Fast.

Don couldn’t understand any of it directly.

Thankfully, fragmented augmented overlays flickered weakly across his vision and processed the gestures into rough text.

—The infected’s attack damaged my hearing. Yours too.—

The moment Don read it, his hand rose instantly toward his ear.

His fingers touched wetness.

Texture.

Blood.

When he pulled his hand back into view, dark red coated his fingertips.

That explained it.

His jaw tightened.

He wanted to ask what now.

Couldn’t.

K-4 didn’t wait anyway.

The man turned immediately and climbed halfway back into the overturned truck to drag Olynk free next.

Don moved toward Charles instead.

He remained unconscious beside the vehicle, breathing uneven but present.

Blood continued trailing down one side of his face while his injured wing twitched faintly against the pavement every few seconds.

Alive.

But in bad shape.

Don looked around the street after that.

Wrecked vehicles blocked most directions. Smoke rolled through intersections farther ahead while fires continued burning inside nearby storefronts.

Several corpses lay scattered across the asphalt from earlier impacts, some flattened beneath the truck’s path during the crash.

Then he looked upward.

His muscles tightened slightly.

He needed a better view.

Needed to know what was around them now.

He was just about to jump—

Then something caught his senses.

Fast.

Don’s head snapped downward.

The ground beneath his boots trembled subtly.

Once.

Then again.

Small fragments of glass shifted across the pavement beside him. Loose shell casings near the infected child rattled lightly against the street.

The vibration grew stronger.

Rapidly.

Don’s expression immediately turned sour.