September 28 — Night
She surfaced into smoke and cold air.
The city was still happening — sirens, distant fire, the sound of things running out of reasons to keep standing. She'd been underground long enough that coming back up felt like stepping into something that hadn't waited.
She keyed the radio.
"Carlos, come in."
Static.
She kept moving.
The streets were different now. The chaos earlier had been loud — crowds, collision, motion everywhere. What was left was quieter and worse. Abandoned cars with doors hanging open. The infected drifting without urgency, because urgency belonged to things that still had somewhere to be.
She moved low, against the walls.
A block out she tried again.
"Carlos."
The signal cracked once — almost something — then dropped.
She lowered the radio.
Two blocks further she stopped at a corner and tried one more time.
Static.
She put it away. Didn't reach for it again.
Kendo's sat on a side street the outbreak had mostly passed over. The security shutter was down. No light behind it. Nothing to suggest anyone was inside except that the shutter was fully down, which meant someone had pulled it from inside, which meant someone was in there and had decided to stay.
She knocked. Three times. Even.
Silence. Then movement — careful, someone crossing a dark floor without wanting to be heard.
The shutter lifted two inches.
The barrel of a shotgun came through first.
She kept her hands visible and didn't move.
"Kendo," she said. "It's me."
A beat.
"...Jill?" The barrel dropped immediately. "Jesus — hold on."
The locks came undone faster than they'd gone on and the shutter lifted enough for her to duck through.
Inside, a single battery lantern on the counter cast everything in low amber. Kendo pulled the shutter back down and locked it and turned to look at her properly for the first time and his expression did something complicated that he covered quickly.
"You look like you went through a building," he said.
"Few of them." She set the launcher on the counter. "I need rounds for this. Incendiary, explosive — whatever you have that fits."
He looked at the launcher. At the Umbrella markings on the housing. His jaw moved slightly.
"Where'd you get that."
"Sewer facility. Don't ask."
He didn't. He went behind the counter and started pulling stock, moving with the efficiency of someone who knew exactly where everything was and had been doing this his whole life and was grateful right now to have something concrete to do.
She moved through the shop while he worked. Shotgun shells from the rack she knew. Two grenades from the locked case in the back — he called out the combination without her asking, which was how she knew he wasn't planning on needing it himself. Water from behind the counter. A protein bar from the drawer beside the register.
"You eating?" he said, without looking up.
"When I can."
"There's more in the back. Take what you—" He stopped.
From somewhere behind the door at the rear of the shop — a sound.
Movement. Soft. Wrong.
Kendo's hands kept moving over the stock. He didn't look toward it. His jaw set and his shoulders came up slightly and then he made himself put them back down.
The sound came again.
Jill looked at the counter.
Neither of them said anything about it.
"How bad is it," he said finally. Still not looking up. His voice had changed register slightly — quieter, careful, the question carrying more weight than the words.
"Bad," she said. "Don't go outside without a reason."
He nodded once. Set four rounds on the counter — two incendiary, two explosive — and slid them across.
The radio crackled.
"Jill?" Carlos. Slightly out of breath, the warmth in his voice not entirely covering the urgency underneath. "Come on, talk to me."
She picked it up. Didn't answer immediately.
"I'm here," she said. "Go ahead."
"Last train will leave in fifty minutes, maybe less . You need to move."
"Copy. I'm four blocks west of the station."
"Forty-five minutes, Jill. I'm not joking around."
"I know. I'm moving."
Static.
She clipped the radio back and looked at Kendo. He was watching her with the expression of someone who had understood the conversation and was already prepared for what came next.
"There's an evacuation train," she said. "Last one out. Four blocks east."
He picked up the remaining shells and set them on the counter beside the rounds. Straightforward. Practical. Like he was finishing a transaction.
"Come with me," she said.
Something moved in his face. His eyes went toward the back of the shop — not all the way, just the beginning of the movement, enough to say everything — and came back.
"No," he said.
"Kendo—"
"Jill." He said it quietly. Not cold. Just finished. "No."
She held his gaze for a moment. She could see what he wasn't saying and she could see that he knew she could see it and that he'd made his peace with that.
She picked up the shells and the rounds and the grenades and the water.
"Lock it back down after I go," she said.
"I know how to lock a door." A beat. Then, quieter: "You watch yourself out there."
"You too."
He lifted the shutter without being asked. She went under and heard it come back down behind her and the locks going — one, two, three — from the other side.
She stood on the street.
Forty-five minutes. Four blocks.
She started moving.
Half a block out she slowed.
The street ahead was wrong. This part of the city had been thick with infected all night — not for any particular reason, just because everything had been thick all night. But ahead the street was clear in the specific way that meant something had moved everything else out of the way recently.
She raised the launcher.
Kept moving. Watched the rooflines.
A click. Too mechanical for the environment.
Then the hiss.
The street lit up orange and she was already running as the flame hit the wall behind her and spread across the brickwork like it had been waiting for a surface.
Something came out of the alley to her left.
The flamethrower tracked her movement in a sustained arc — no craters, no shockwaves, just heat spreading across every angle behind her, fire that didn't go out once it started.
She kept running and processed it fast. Different from the rockets. The rockets had been about trajectory — predict where she was going, cut it off. This was about space. Fill enough of it and eventually there was nowhere left to stand.
"Are you serious," she said, to no one.
She cut into an alley.
The flame followed her in. The heat in the enclosed space was immediate and total. Her jacket caught on the left side and she slapped it out without stopping, came out the far end coughing.
Fire escape to her right. She took it — two flights, three — the metal shaking under her weight, the flame reaching the bottom of the structure and starting to climb.
Up.
Rooftop.
Open concrete. The city burning in every direction she could see. No way down except the way she'd come, and that way was burning.
"Of course," she muttered.
She turned.
It stepped onto the roof behind her. The flamethrower adjusted. Tracking.
Jill looked at the distance between them and raised the launcher.
"Alright," she said quietly. "Let's do this."