Chapter 3

The dust outside the gas station rolled closer and closer. Through the firing slit, I could see small pebbles on the ground trembling from the impact. It wasn’t the wind.

It was footsteps.

A mass of footsteps.

In my mind, I lined it up with the scene from my past life: the same place, the same distance, the same rhythm.

The vehicle alarm was still screaming. Harris had already braced his rifle against the firing slit, and the other two team members had locked their stocks firmly into their shoulders.

“Don’t get out,” I said, staring at the wall of dust outside. “Keep the vehicles together. Hold the road first. Move if you can.”

“Understood!” Harris answered immediately.

He lowered his barrel toward the gap ahead and pulled the trigger the instant the first shadows appeared.

Gunfire exploded inside the cabin. Shell casings clattered onto the floor. The first infected rushing in jerked sideways and dropped, only for the ones behind it to trample over its body and keep surging forward, as if they were all being poured out from the same opening.

My first instinct was to order the driver to punch straight through, but after only a short distance, the problem became obvious—the road in front of the gas station was blocked by several wrecked vehicles lying sideways. Broken rebar and shredded tires were scattered beneath the wheels. It wasn’t that the armored truck couldn’t force its way through, but if it got stuck, we’d be handing ourselves to the horde to tear apart.

“Don’t ram it. Clear a path wide enough for the truck first,” I ordered. “Keep suppressive fire up. Anyone who gets out stays glued to the vehicle. Don’t move more than two steps away.”

As soon as I finished speaking, I shoved the door open and jumped out.

Wind mixed with dust slapped my face. My vision went white around the edges, and my throat dried instantly.

I moved along the side of the vehicle, found a position where I could shoot and retreat at any moment, and dropped the frontmost infected with two quick shots, smashing open a brief gap.

“Hold that opening! Don’t let them get around the side of the truck!” I pointed once as I shouted, then pulled my hand back immediately, careful not to make my movements look too much like I already knew what was coming.

I deliberately avoided looking toward Claire. She was nearby, on the same side as Jack. If I looked even one time too many, she might sense something off in my rhythm—that I knew where the horde would come from, when it would thicken, where the line would break.

I had to act like an experienced captain.

Not like a man who had come back with all the answers.

Gunfire, snarls, and crashing impacts blended into one roaring mass. The gas station lot filled up in an instant.

The infected rushed us in waves, and we fought right beside the vehicles—no chasing, no scattering—using the armored truck and the wrecked cars as cover, forcing them back again and again.

As I fired, I calculated: how fast our ammunition was running down, how much longer the vehicles could hold, which stretch of road was most likely to clog, who would be most likely to fall behind during retreat. Every trigger pull wasn’t an outlet for anger.

It was a way to drag the living back from death.

Harris’s voice came from inside the vehicle, shouting rapid distances. “Another group ahead! Twenty meters! Fifteen!”

I didn’t turn back. I only gave him a hand signal to keep up the pressure while shifting my focus to the slope behind us.

The dust there was thicker.

The sound there was heavier.

That was the main force.

Less than two minutes later, the snarling from that direction suddenly intensified, like something bursting out of the earth itself. The first infected came charging faster, practically lunging as it ran, with a long stream of bodies packed tightly behind it.

“They’re coming in from the rear!” I raised my voice. “Don’t point every barrel forward! Keep half your fire on the back!”

Then I shouted at the driver, “Don’t kill the engine! Put it in reverse and be ready to back up anytime. Don’t wait for me to say it again!”

The driver gritted his teeth. “Understood!”

The instant our fire shifted, a gap opened.

The infected seemed like they had been waiting for that exact second. They climbed over piles of bodies and threw themselves at the vehicle, claws scraping against steel plating as they tried to force their faces into the firing slits.

One of the team members was driven backward and lost his balance. He was still trying to fend them off with his rifle stock when, in the next second, an infected lunging from the side sank its teeth into his shoulder and yanked him outward.

“Grab him!” Harris roared.

Another man lunged forward and seized the victim’s harness, pulling with all his strength. But it wasn’t just one infected dragging him.

Two.

Three.

They clung like hooks, his boots scraping a black trail across the ground. In the end, they still pulled him away.

His scream lasted two seconds.

On the third, it cut off as abruptly as if someone had crushed his throat shut.

I didn’t stop firing. I didn’t turn around and shout his name. If I stopped for even one second, three more people would die. I lifted my rifle and dropped one of the infected dragging him away, but the man himself was already gone.

Harris’s voice had gone hoarse. “Bastards!”

The team wavered for a moment. The two men at the back saw their comrade being dragged off and instinctively started forward to try to pull him back. I shut that down with the fastest, sharpest command I could.

“Don’t chase! Hold the truck! Hold the road!”

They froze, then finally stopped themselves and brought their rifles back to the firing slits. The pressure steadied again. The vehicles didn’t get split apart. That was the only reason we still had a chance to retreat at all.

I knew casualties were unavoidable.

But I also knew I had to keep them to an absolute minimum. Otherwise, I wouldn’t even have room later to fake my own death.

At last, the number of zombies began to thin.

We had held.

My eyes swept over the convenience store beside the gas station. There was a corpse lying there—half its face torn off, its lower body gone, a hole ripped open in its chest.

It was probably one of the men who had gone down in the chaos.

My heart sank.

Then steadied.

The chance had come.

I didn’t rush over immediately. First, I dropped the infected nearest the body with two quick shots, clearing that patch of ground for a moment. Then I moved around the edges of everyone’s sightline, doing my best not to draw Claire’s attention.

At that moment, she was pinned down by the pressure from the rear, and Jack was fighting hard right beside her, playing the role of protector.

I took the opening and dragged the corpse into a concealed spot. The smell of blood hit my face hard. I yanked open my jacket without hesitation and tore the insignia from my left arm.

That was the first thing recovery teams checked when identifying bodies.

I dressed the corpse in my jacket and positioned the insignia where it would be the most visible.

Then I removed my main communicator from my chest, hit the emergency shutdown, and tore out the tracking module.

I left the body somewhere obvious, then slipped into the convenience store. The glass had long since shattered, and the shelves had collapsed. The space inside was cramped, but it was enough to hide me.

I crouched behind a shelf and watched the outside through the broken glass.

The zombies had been driven back. The armored truck hadn’t pushed through or retreated elsewhere. Instead, it was using suppressive fire to keep forcing the horde outward.

The vehicle only made small adjustments, shifting angles so the firing slits could still cover the surrounding area.

The snarls were no longer coming in solid waves, only in scattered echoes.

Claire was fighting more awkwardly than she had in my previous life, because this time I wasn’t out on the outermost edge blocking attacks for her from every direction.

An infected burst in from the side, fast and low to the ground.

Jack lifted his gun to fire, but he was half a second too slow. The angle was too tricky. The creature went straight for Claire’s leg.

Claire twisted to dodge, but not fast enough. It raked across her, leaving behind a vicious gash.

Her body stiffened. She didn’t cry out. She only smashed the infected’s skull with her rifle stock. Jack fired then, finishing it off.

In my last life, Claire hadn’t been injured.

That was why she had been able to pin every last emotion she had onto the idea that I had killed Jack.

In this life, she had been scratched.

Pain and fear would force her to make a choice.

And choice would reveal far more than words ever could.

The zombies thinned out. So did the gunfire.

Harris glanced back—and his face changed instantly. His eyes locked onto the “corpse” by the convenience store entrance, the one wearing my jacket.

“Captain!” he shouted, his voice raw. “Ethan’s over there!”

That one sentence pinned everyone in place for half a second.

Claire looked over too.

Her gaze cut through the dust and landed on the body—on the jacket, on the insignia. Her pupils contracted violently, and all the color left her face in that instant.

Harris instinctively started toward me, but Claire grabbed him. “Don’t go. He’s already beyond saving.”

I saw Harris swallow hard, his eyes bloodshot.

Claire stood beside the truck, one hand pressed over her wound, blood seeping through her fingers.

Her lips moved, as if she wanted to say something, but no words came out.

She wasn’t the kind of person who lost control on a battlefield.

But in that second, she was clearly shaken.

She had thought that this time she could control everything. At the very least, she had thought she could control whether I lived or died. But now I had “died” too fast, too suddenly. It wasn’t part of her script.

I held my breath and kept watching.

Very quickly, Claire forced her emotions back down. The situation was under control now. The zombies were no longer the immediate threat. She turned to the driver and the remaining team members. Her voice was tight, but still clear.

“Count the casualties.”

The team reported in. Three dead. Five injured. Both Jack and Claire had been scratched by zombies. Most of the others had been hurt by stray rounds or flying debris.

Claire continued, “Did we retrieve the serum?”

The refrigerated case was brought out. The moment the lid was opened, everyone’s face changed.

An entire box of serum had been reduced to a single dose.

Just like in my previous life.

But there was one crucial difference.

Last time, only Jack had been injured.

This time, Claire had been scratched too.

And there was still only one dose left.

Every problem had now been forced into a single point.

Someone asked in a trembling voice, “Th-that serum… who gets it?”

The air seemed to tighten.

Claire stared at the one remaining vial, her fingers paling slightly, but she didn’t answer right away.

Her silence was heavier than any order.

I stayed hidden in the shadows of the convenience store, watching the side of her face, watching the hand she had pressed over her wound.

I didn’t move.

I didn’t make a sound.

For the first time, Claire was caught between Jack and reality.

And I wanted to see what choice she would make when it was her own life on the line.