Chapter 77: Auntie

For a moment Lana didn’t move. The crayon stayed in her fist. Then recognition hit her face so hard it looked like pain.

"Auntie!"

The crayon fell. She scrambled up and ran, small shoes slapping the concrete.

"Auntie!"

Elena went to her knees. Lana hit her chest and locked on. Elena caught her and held, one hand in the girl’s hair, the other across her back, as if the shelter might try to take her again. Lana buried her face in the shoulder of the coat. Neither of them spoke. Then the girl started to cry, the messy kind, all breath and no pride.

Elena’s eyes filled. "I thought I’d never see you again."

"I missed you."

"I missed you too." She held tighter. Her voice broke on the second word and she didn’t fix it.

Penny and Sasha looked at each other. They moved off without being asked. A family moment didn’t need a crowd. Sasha took the bat with her. Penny herded Maya toward the far bunks and kept her voice low.

Minutes passed. The crying thinned. Elena brushed the hair off Lana’s face, thumb careful on a cheek still wet.

"Where’s Grandma?"

The smile died. Penny’s expression went somber from across the room. She didn’t make Elena ask twice.

"She didn’t make it."

Elena froze.

"She was scratched by a zombie," Penny said, quiet. "Protecting Lana."

Elena’s arms tightened around the girl. Her eyes closed. The shelter felt smaller. Another name the apocalypse had already spent. A tear slipped and caught in Lana’s hair. Then another.

"I’m sorry." Barely sound. "I’m so sorry."

Ethan watched and kept his mouth shut. There wasn’t a sentence in the room that would put a woman back. The city had taken too much from all of them for comfort to be anything but noise.

He pulled a can of fruit from storage and held it out. "Here."

Lana looked at the can.

"Eat something."

She took it with both hands. He crouched so he wasn’t a wall above her.

"We’ll find your parents."

Her eyes came up. "Are Mom and Dad still alive?"

The question was so clean it made the concrete quieter. He didn’t hesitate.

"Of course they’re alive."

Elena wiped her face and forced the smile into place. "Ethan and I will bring them back tonight."

Lana looked at her. Then at him. Hope returned in pieces, careful, like it expected to be hit.

"Really?"

"Really."

She nodded hard. "Okay."

Ethan stood. His eyes went to the exit. Past the reinforced wall the city was still ruined, and somewhere in it the Museum sat with an indoor zoo that had stopped being a zoo. Elena’s brother. His wife. If they were breathing, he meant to walk them out. If they weren’t, he would still have to see the room.

It wasn’t a clean rescue. Mutant animals packed the ground. A flying wolf had already nearly taken Elena apart. There could be worse inside. Evolved dead. People. Things he didn’t have a name for yet.

He looked toward the Museum’s direction even though the wall was in the way. Night was coming. When it covered Silvermont, the two of them would walk into one of the worst stretches of city they had left.

They used the day.

Ethan laid the new rules out where Penny and Sasha could hear them. Anchor in the south corner, already set. If the radio died, nobody went looking until dawn. Food and water stacked by the bunks. The fruit can opened for Lana, and Maya got one too so the shelter wouldn’t grow a quiet war over a spoon. Sasha took the watch rotation without being asked. Penny kept touching the edge of her wing like she was checking the light was still there.

Elena sat with Lana until the girl fell asleep against her leg, the doll tucked under one arm, sugar on her mouth. When the breathing evened out, Elena eased free and crossed to Ethan at the map he’d scratched into a crate lid.

"The zoo entrance is on the east side of the Museum," she said. "Service road. That’s how I went in. That’s where it saw me." Her finger hovered over the crude lines. "Brother’s family was in the staff housing behind the reptile hall. Third floor. If they moved, I don’t know where."

"We don’t use the service road."

"The front is worse. Open plaza. Nothing to hide behind once the lights are gone."

"Then we use the parking structure on the west and cross on the second level. Less sky." He tapped the crate. "The wolf hunts from above. We don’t give it a clean look."

She nodded. The fear was still in her, packed down under the doctor. "If they’re gone~"

"Then we come back with an answer. Lana doesn’t get another maybe."

That landed. She breathed out and didn’t argue.

They left at dusk.

The shelter door shut behind them with the soft scrape of concrete. The street had gone the color of ash. Ethan took the alleys, not the avenue. Elena stayed on his left, ice already cold in her palm, not formed yet, ready. Her coat was buttoned. Under it she moved like a woman who had already run for her life once this week and did not intend to do it clumsy.

A block south, something big shifted on a roof. They froze in a doorway. Wings. Not the wolf. A bat, lone, riding the last light, then gone over the tiles. Ethan waited until the scrape of it faded.

"Still with me?"

"Yes."

They went on. Cars dead in the lanes. A traffic light blinking red at nobody. Far off, past the Museum roofs, a roar rolled and died ~ not the Tiger King, smaller, meaner, the sound of something defending a kill. Elena’s hand brushed his sleeve and stayed there for three steps. Then she let go.

The Museum district rose ahead of them, dark glass and broken stone, the zoo’s old banner hanging in strips. Shapes moved in the plaza. Low. Too many legs on one of them. Ethan pulled her into the shadow of a bus and felt her breath against his collar, fast, controlled.

"West garage," he said. "We don’t cross that open ground."

She looked at the banner. At the third floor she couldn’t see from here. Her brother was either behind that glass or he wasn’t.

"Ethan."

"Yeah."

"If the wolf is still there~"

"Then we don’t fight it in the street." He met her eyes. "We get to the housing. We get them. We leave. Anything else is a mistake."

She nodded once.

They slipped along the bus, then the wall, then the mouth of the garage ramp. The dark inside smelled of oil and old blood. Somewhere above the plaza, wings beat once, heavy, and went still.

Ethan set his hand on the sword.

Night had covered the city.

Whatever was waiting in the Museum was already listening.