━━Calamity¹

twelve.

chapter twelve
goodbye, hawk

Mikkael paced, often rising the binoculars at the sinking sun behind the hills in the distance when Alina hauled her backpack onto her good shoulder and joined him near the car in the parking lot. Most of their belongings, scarce as they were, had been packed and ready.

"We're thinking the same thing, right?" He asked finally, running a hand through his blond hair.

"Lieutenant?" At that, he nodded, and Alina continued. "I think so. He's been after us since Shore."

"What gives?"

She shrugged. "Don't know. But something about those Crawlers isn't right. How come they go everywhere we do?" She watched Dante drag out a figure wrapped in yellowing sheets, a brownish blood print on the side of their head where he had sunk the blade - the woman, that Wailer, had gone crazy on them the moment she woke up and no longer spoke, only groaned and snarled. Shuddering, she turned back to Mikkael. "Shore, warehouse, outpost. It's like we're running without getting anywhere."

"Still, we need to disappear before the motel is overrun." Mikkael said. "Think Hanying is coming with us?"

"Definitely." Hanying passed them with a bag on her shoulder and three different weapons visible, threw one last look at the motel and sped toward the car where she threw the bag into the trunk, nearly closing Denise's fingers with the trunk's door. "She's brave but not stupid enough to let herself be caught in a crowd of those things."

"Alina, Mikkael, we're getting a move on!" Denise shouted from next to the car and the two shared a glance before approaching the vehicle.

Alina placed her bag into the trunk and seated herself in the shotgun, staring at the decrepit walls of the motel while Denise and Hanying bickered over the seating arrangements in their already too cramped car, quickly shut down by Dante who stole the middle seat. The rest of the group soon filed into the car, each person giving the motel a once-over as Simone reversed out of the parking lot and sped down the road.

It wasn't until nightfall that they finally stopped somewhere along the road to a reserve called Idle Trees, a logging forest replenished every time a tree was cut down, to switch drivers and continued down that same road, past the cars and the wreckage. Dante soon switched to a less trodden path into the reserve, following the dirt road past numerous huddling trees.

He seemed to know that area well, and though Alina's eyes often found him focused on driving with unnerving concentration, willing to ask questions he wouldn't answer, she remained quiet for most of the drive before falling into uneasy sleep with the sounds of the engine in the background.

She awoke some time later deep into the night and stretched out of the uncomfortable sleeping position on the window. Dante was still driving, humming a song she couldn't recognise while the rest of the group slept soundly crowded into the backseat with only Hanying trying to stay awake, staring through the front window into the night ahead.

Dante gave Alina a quick glance before turning his eyes back to the dirt road beneath, and she watched him evade a small group of four Crawlers, speed back onto the road and continue.

"Where are we going?"

"Idle Trees Tower." Dante answered.

"That shit hole should be picked clean, Danny." Hanying answered from behind, whispering.

"Nobody's been there since the doors were sealed."