New to the series or certain you’ve missed a chapter? You can find the introduction Here and the table of contents Here.

The first few hours passed uneventfully. We’d managed to get out of the caverns around the depot by about nine in the morning, but Natalie, acting as the guide, had decided we’d skip lunch. No one argued, since I don’t think anyone in the group wanted to risk being too close to where the signal had gone off when we finally stopped moving. Better to push hard for a day and make distance than conserve our strength and risk being found.

As the light began to shift, though, one of our two scouts returned from the rearguard and reported contact with one of the monsters. It had apparently been walking towards us, only a couple paces away from our trail, but she’d been able to take it out before it noticed her or got within detection range of our group. Our slowly flagging pace picked back up again after that, and we pushed until nightfall.

The other scout, who’d been staying ahead of us, had managed to find another cavern dug out of the ground and we set up our tents in there, blocking the entrance with our barricades. It was not long before one of Cam’s fighters showed up and pulled away the two scouts and Ben, saying that they needed more firepower. The rest of us watched them go and then ate our dinner cold. Thankfully, we’d been able to fully replenish our supplies at the depot, so we had food that we could consume without lighting a fire. That would have given us away completely, if we’d been forced to cook.

Still, with only myself, Natalie, Lucas, Tiffany, and the two severely injured Wayfinders left to stand watch, I knew we were in for a rough night. Since I’d be unable to sleep anyway, I volunteered for the first shift and then didn’t wake anyone up to take over for me. Instead, I sat bundled up in my thermal gear and an extra blanket in a drift of snow not far from the entrance to the cave, watching for any sign of returning Wayfinders or scouting monsters.

It was a long night, just me and my anxieties, as my mind played out increasingly unlikely scenarios that explained why Cam hadn’t returned yet. Normally it only took a few hours at most to lose the monsters. They moved more quickly through the snow than we did, but we were smarter and they all moved fairly predictably. Anyone with a decent amount of knowledge could lay down a false trail, mislead them, and then hide until they lost the group. Anyone without that knowledge but enough guns could kill all of the monsters in range, cool or ditch the guns, and then flee before reinforcements showed up. Wayfinders, as a rule, had both.

Feeding and amplifying all of this anxiety was the change in normal behavior we’d seen. Rather than trying to kill anyone, the monsters had attacked with a trace. The monsters usually only attacked with those when they knew they were facing a larger group, were running out of nearby allies, or were faced with a target that could out maneuver them. As far as they should have known, Tiffany shouldn’t have been any of those. Either something had happened to make them think they were in a situation like that or, finally, after three decades, their tactics were starting to evolve.

The former was odd, but possible to figure out, especially once Tiffany was recovered, or at least sober, enough to give me the full details of what had happened. The latter was terrifying and the primary reason I was still awake in the morning, as people’s alarms started going off and breakfast got hastily consumed. There’d been no sign of Cam or any of the other Wayfinders so, rather than eat and get chewed out by Lucas and Natalie for standing guard all night long, I took care of scouting around our camp as everyone else packed up. When I returned for a quick bite and a quick chastisement from Lucas and Natalie, I found them huddled around the rear sled as they got Tiffany settled in.

Tiffany looked pretty haggard in the light of morning, her face pale and drawn, but her eyes were sharp. She had huge bags under her eyes, like she hadn’t slept, but she was still alert and quietly talking to Lucas as he helped her get comfortable.

When I was finally close enough to hear them over the general hubbub of packing, Tiffany was saying “-remember what happened, not entirely, but something’s nagging at me. I feel like I forgot to replace my thermal sheeting after I realized I’d ripped through it while setting up my tent.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Lucas gently pushed Tiffany back against a bundle of wood that he’d covered in some tarps. “I’m sure it will come to you eventually. If it’s urgent, I’m sure someone else can figure it out.”

“I guess.” Tiffany reached for something with her right arm and then flinched in pain when the stump where her hand used to be bumped into the edge of the sled. As I walked up, she was frowning down at her missing right hand like she’d forgotten she’d lost it. Natalie, who’d been anxiously watching Tiffany as Lucas settled her into place, noticed my presence and whirled around to start dressing me down. Instead of letting her, though, I took another quick step forward and addressed Tiffany.

“Phantom Limb, is what it’s called. It will probably hurt at some points too, or maybe itch. Your brain isn’t used to the idea that you’re missing a hand yet, and might never really adjust, so it’ll keep trying to feel it or move it despite all the muscles and nerves it’s trying to move and feel being gone.”

“It’s weird as hell, Captain.”

“At least you’re left-handed, so it hopefully won’t be as bad.”

“Does that matter?” Tiffany held up her left arm and hand, flexing her fingers as she did. “I can still move the arm muscles that I used to flex my hand and it feels like it should work but it doesn’t.”

“Like I said, phantom limb.” Tiffany didn’t seem to have anything to say in response, but I could sense Natalie seething behind me as Lucas gently tried to insert himself between Tiffany and I so he could help her corral me off for a quiet dressing down. “Why aren’t you taking your pain meds?”

“Huh?” Tiffany looked up and then from Lucas to Natalie. “Did one of you two tell him?”

“No.” Lucas sighed. “He never came back from watch last night, so we didn’t get a chance to tell him.”

“Tell me what?”

“I feel like there’s something super important I had to tell you, Captain, that slipped my mind because of the pain meds.” Tiffany gestured into the distance with her left hand. “Something about the attack. I can’t remember what it is, though, since my mind’s still fuzzy from my second dose of the knockout stuff, so I’m hoping it’ll come back to me if that goes away.”

“Tiffany, you shouldn’t worry about it. Cam has things under control and you need to get some rest. Torturing yourself by not taking your meds isn’t going to do anything but hurt you.”

“Rather have normal pain I can deal with than nasty anxiety nightmares I can’t get away from because I’m drugged.” Tiffany shrugged and carefully grabbed her right forearm with her left hand. “And because I’m sometimes still awake. They’re weird.”

“Well, I’m not going to force you to take anything. Just don’t torture yourself. We’ve got everything covered. It’ll either come to you or someone else will figure it out if it’s important.”

“Speaking of not forcing things.” Natale placed a hand on the small of my back. “I need to talk to you quickly before we head out for the day, Marshall. Let’s leave Lucas with Tiffany so he can finish packing up our stuff.”

Resigned, I let myself be chewed out in the few minutes we had. Natalie wasn’t too harsh once I explained my anxiety and the odd nature of the situation with the monsters, but she was still mad that I hadn’t tried to rest at all. Not so mad that she didn’t give me the larger thermos of coffee she’d prepared when she realized I went straight from taking all the watch shifts overnight to do the morning scouting.

The coffee got me through the first few hours of the morning and then the urgent movement we were forced to take got me through the rest of it. Despite it now being over twenty-four hours since our first contact with the monsters, they were somehow still following us. Cam occasionally sent someone to update us or collect supplies for the force they were leading, but none of the reports we got indicated that we were going to be able to lose the monsters.

Cam showed up at the start of our second night out from the bunker, to grab some more ammunition and water. They told Lucas, who was on first shift after everyone demanded that I go right to sleep, that the monsters seemed to be able to find them no matter what, so they were going to head north for a couple days to try to ditch them further away from us, but they’d have to leave a couple people behind to call them back if the monsters tried to split up rather than all chase them.

By the time I learned of this and had a chance to object, the sun had risen through the still-heavy clouds above, casting a weak light down through the heavy snow, and Cam’s group had already split off. Instead of running after them like I wanted to, I steadied myself and focused on continuing to lead the remnants of our group towards the Chicago Enclave. Thanks to the people Cam left behind, we had enough people to stand guard and do scouting, even if we were all working way more than we should have been with a group this size.

Four days later, six out from the depot and three after the snow had finally returned to its normal rate, Cam and their group finally returned. They stumbled into camp, following our trail, just before dark. Natalie and I bundled the exhausted Wayfinders into their tents, got them fed, and Cam reported that they’d slain well over a hundred monsters, but still couldn’t seem to lose them. It was clear that none of them was thinking clearly at this point, after going so long without a full night’s sleep, so I ordered them all to spend the night. I also tripled the guard shifts for the night so that we’d be ready if the monsters showed up.

It was a tense evening, as we all waited for an attack I knew would come. I made sure that the injured people were on guard first, so that we’d have a full shift of healthy and refreshed people for the final shift, when it was likely we’d be attacked. My caution was rewarded, since there wasn’t a sign of them until the first glimmers of light appeared on the eastern horizon. Even then, they were trickling in slowly, one at a time every thirty minutes to an hour, so the guard who spotted them was able to take them out quickly and efficiently. Enough that I decided against waking up Cam’s group until after most of our preparations to leave camp were done.

Once Cam was fed, dressed, and ready to take command again, I pulled them aside. “What’s going on? Is this new behavior?”

Cam shook their head, rubbing at their face through their mask. “It’s the same behavior. They just keep finding us, though. I’ve tried every trick in the book, including using a snowstorm to cover our tracks. Nothing. I even tried killing every single one we could find. Still nothing. The only thing I can think of is that the damned things might have upgraded their traces somehow, making them undetectable by us. Or so they don’t need our body’s electricity to run. I don’t know.”

“We didn’t see any while you were gone. Your distraction or mislead worked.” I reached out and gently punched them in the shoulder. “We’ve only had maybe half a dozen since you returned, all since dawn. Got any ideas for what to do next?”

Cam sighed and looked off past the Wayfinders and Naturalists to the West, where the monsters had been coming from. “We tried leading them north, going a full day’s hustle away from your path, and they all followed fine, though we needed to take a few potshots to keep them focused. Other than that, it was standard delay and remove tactics. I even had us break into smaller groups, but they seemed to always find at least one of the groups.

“Whatever is going on, it doesn’t seem to be tag based. I ditched it before the end of the first day, as part of my first attempt to lose them, but they barely noticed. Usually there’s enough power in one of them to last a day or two past removal, but they just ignored it. Maybe their tech has improved?” Cam looked over at me, like I would have the answer they sought, but all I could do was shrug. “Maybe they upgraded them. Maybe they can tell a dead tag from a live one, now.”

“Do you think they’ve stopped relying on wave and heat sensors? It’s difficult to fully hide our tracks out here, with a group this big.”

“I dunno. I’d have expected them to follow you a bit if they could just follow a trail.”

“True.” I sighed and rubbed a hand over my face, feeling the edges of my snow goggles dig into my face as my hand passed over my face without once touching my skin. “What do we do?”

“I dunno, Marshall. I’m back because we needed sleep, food, and supplies. All I can think to do is head back out there. Maybe now that I’m not exhausted, I’ll notice something I missed last time.” Cam sighed and started fidgeting with the straps on their backpack. Natalie had made sure everyone’s packs had been refilled while they all slept so they’d be ready to go in the morning or if we had to break camp in a hurry. “I just don’t know.”

“Alright, well, just start packing up and getting things ready. We’re going to keep moving east in about fifteen minutes, and you can figure out what to do while we walk for a bit.”

Cam just nodded and walked off to start getting their group back together. I watched them for a moment, feeling relieved that they were alive but also anxious because they seemed so defeated. I knew it was mostly the exhaustion talking and that Cam would push through it as they’d always done since they weren’t one to let their feelings impact the job they had to do, but I was still worried.

Eventually, as the final sleds were packed and I signaled the forward scouts to get moving, I started pushing thoughts of anything but our travel eastward from my mind. As I approached the rear sled, Lucas and Tiffany now in their familiar positions, Tiffany waved me over. When I paused, she asked “What’s the report? We splitting up again?”

“Yeah, probably.” I saw the same anxiety bubbling in my stomach flicker across Lucas’ face. “They keep finding Cam’s group and they don’t want to put the rest of us at risk, so I expect they’ll move out shortly, once they have some monsters to pull with them.”

“How’re they doing that?” Lucas leaned over, looking toward the western horizon as he idly shifted his rifle into a more ready position. “No one seemed injured. We got rid of the tag.”

I shrugged again. “Unless their tag technology changed somehow. I can’t think of any explanation other than something has changed that we still haven’t figured out yet.”

Tiffany, who’d been watching mine and Lucas’ face as we talked, suddenly spun around, her head twisting as she looked through the Wayfinders who were milling around Cam. “Shit. I…” Tiffany’s breathing started picking up, a note of panic starting to reach her voice. “Captain, I just remembered.”

I resisted the urge to leap forward and pull Tiffany’s face toward mine. Instead, I took a single deep breath and said “I’m assuming it’s bad.”

“Yeah. Real bad. I think I know why Cam;s group is being followed and ours isn’t.”

“What did you see, Tiffany? No one else saw the tag shot but you, right? Did their tech change?”

“What?” Tiffany looked back over at me, perplexed. “No, it’s the same as ever. It’s Ben.”

Everything clicked into place in my mind, everything suddenly making sense as the final missing piece of information appeared. “Ben wasn’t grazed. He got tagged.”

“Yeah.” Tiffany went back to looking around for Ben, but kept talking. “We were adjacent in the firing line. I only went closer to Ben, where the monsters were, when I heard him start firing more rapidly from further back than he should have been. When I got there, I saw a bunch of them crowding up on him and started firing. I was able to take a couple out, buy him some breathing space to keep running, but I had to change positions when the last two moved between us and that’s when one of them got me. I didn’t see Ben get hit, but they could have easily shot him with a trace. I never saw his injury and it was wrapped up by the time that Captain Cam showed up.”

While she was talking, I’d also turned to look through the camp, scanning for the familiar tall form of Ben in his balaclava, but unable to find it. Tiffany kept talking after her explanation, but I’d stopped hearing anything but the sound of my pulse pounding in my ears as I thought of the last few places he could be. Lucas grabbed my arm and said something, but I shook him off and said “I have to go. Lucas, call Cam over and tell them what’s happening. Also Natalie. I’ll meet up with you all. Southern pattern, standard jog pace.”

Lucas just nodded as Tiffany, a confused look on her face, asked him what I meant. I didn’t stay around to hear his explanation, instead heading to where my gear was sitting next to the front sled. I directed the Naturalists preparing to break a path for the sleds to wait until Natalie gave them direct orders to move out as I slipped my pack on and then started double-timing it to the west where I could just barely make out the dark form of the forward scout against the fresh white powder.

It didn’t take long for me to catch up to him. When he spotted me moving up behind him with no attempt to conceal my presence, he moved to a few skeletal bushes of some kind and waited for me to catch up to him. The less occupied parts of my mind, that weren’t focused on maintaining my quick gait and trying to go through what I was going to need to do shortly after reaching him, felt relieved that he’d noticed me so quickly. I needed to save some energy for catching up to the others later and it wasn’t like I could have shouted for him to slow down. The snow would have muffled most of it, first of all, and second, it would have also gotten the attention of anything else in the area, given how silent it was beyond the pool of huffing and crunching noises that was my unwieldy jog in the snow.

When I finally caught up to him, crouching down at his side as I tried in vain to steady my breathing, he gave me a quick salute. “New orders, Captain?”

After a few quick puffs that did more to quiet my mind and calm my stomach than catch my breath, I nodded. “Yeah. Cam’s going to take the group south. We’re meeting another squad a bit to the north, scouting for an old amphitheater near here that we can hole up and defend for a while. Going to try to stall the monsters for a bit before making a break for it. See if we can leave them behind.”

Ben nodded, looking back over at the scurrying dark shapes in the snow to the west. “Makes sense. I don’t know why you’re the one doing this, though, and Cam’s staying behind.”

“They don’t need a leader.” I shrugged and stood up, trying to get us moving as quickly as possible. “They need a protector. Cam’s better at that part than I am, by a lot. Plus, they might mutiny if I have to cajole them again.” I forced myself to chuckle and felt a little of the tension drain out of me as Ben returned the chuckle and stood up.

“Right, then. Let’s get going.”

Ben started off heading north and I fell in behind him, using the trail he forged to make my going easy and hide how many of us were present. I took a glance behind us, just in time to see the whole group start heading south, and did my best to start picking up speed. “Alright, Ben, let’s eat some ground.”

We moved north quickly for another half an hour, alternating who was in the front every five minutes so we could keep up a decent pace. Since we weren’t moving cautiously, we made it almost two miles in that time, though I kept us from going any faster. I knew I’d need some energy for the trip back once my errand was done. 

Right around the time we slowed down, I started spotting the pavilions that marked a park I remembered going to for a concert with some friends when I was much younger. A couple minutes past them, we came upon the smooth, undisturbed expanse that hid the sunken amphitheater. I stopped Ben and then pointed to a couple of partially collapsed buildings. “In there. We wait until the others catch up before we dive in.”

Ben nodded and the two of us moved inside. We took our packs off and leaned in the small shelter afforded by the remaining walls, catching our breath and scanning what parts of the abandoned park we could see through the gentle snow. After a couple minutes, Ben ditched some more of his gear and did a few stretches, trying to relieve his aching shoulders or back.

When he set his gun down, I carefully removed mine as well, using the motion and Ben’s distraction to move his gun out of his reach. After that, I took a sip of water and idly fiddled with one of the large zippers on my thermal jacket, zipping and unzipping the pocket as I steadied my breathing.

“How long we waiting, Captain?”

“Not long.” I sighed and settled back on my heels, opening a little extra space between us. “Did you know I grew up around here?”

“What?”

“When I was little. Before everything. Had a friend who lived a couple miles away, so I used to come to this park all the time before it all went down.”

“I didn’t. Huh.”

“Yeah.”

“Is that how you knew to find this place?”

“Yeah. I know where everything is, around the depot, and we’ve been moving along an old interstate for a while after it. Pretty easy to figure things out from that.”

“Yeah.”

“I know about the trace, Ben.”

Ben stiffened. As he did, I could sense him preparing to move, scanning around him for his gun. Before he could move, I slipped my hand into the pocket I’d unzipped and drew out the handgun I kept there and pressed it against his side.

“Captain, I…”

“You broke the rules, Ben. We could have saved you back when it happened, but it’s too late now.”

“It was just a nick! The dart didn’t stick. I feel fine.”

“It only takes a nick, Ben. You know this. You endangered ev-”

“I wasn’t going to lose my goddamn arm just because I just scraped by the dart’s casing or whatever.” Ben turned his head to look at me, his eyes watering as his voice cracked. “It couldn’t affect me with a wound that only bled a couple drops. There’s no way.”

“It plugged up the hole after itself, Ben. You endangered everyone. You put all of us at risk and broke every single one of the rules of being a Wayfinder.” I stared into his eyes, keeping my voice even and all emotion off my face as my heart pounded in my chest and my stomach roiled inside me. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“Please, Captain. You know me. I wouldn’t do anything to risk my-”

The gun jerked in my hand as a sharp crack rang out. I didn’t let him finish his excuses, nor did I linger to watch his final moments. I quickly dropped my gun into snow where it could cool off enough for me to tuck it back into its pocket and began to carefully prod at Ben’s side.It only took a moment and a little bit of pressure before the thin black tendrils poked out of the wound, showing the final form of the trace after it had fully developed within its host. Before those tendrils could drop onto anything, I rippled off his coat and bound it over the wound. I needed it to stay in him, now that I knew it was there.

After that was done, I loaded up his pack and attached its straps to the hooks on my own so that the weight would sit comfortably. I dropped my doubled pack next to the door, slinging the rest of his gear overtop it and taking a moment to make sure everything was settled before I stepped out of the collapsed building. I grabbed Ben’s ankles and dragged him through the snow, right up to about where I knew the drop off for the amphitheater was. After taking a moment to steel myself, I spun and heaved him into it.

For one moment, he was airborne, and then he hit the snow and disappeared in a puff of white, dropping at least a dozen feet into the massive snowdrift. It wouldn’t stop the monsters from tracking him, but it would at least confuse them a bit when they finally caught up. I didn’t know how much time that would buy me, but I hoped it would be enough that I could make it back to the rest of the Wayfinders. After that, if they still followed us, Cam would be able to handle things. This time, with Ben and his trace gone, our usual tactics would work.

It took me almost an entire day to catch up with the Wayfinders. I heaved my exhausted body onto the back sled, in the spot that Lucas usually held, and only rode for another fifteen minutes before we stopped to make camp in a clearing in a small forest preserve. No one asked me where I was or what I’d been doing as I went through the motions of setting up camp. No one said a word to me at all as I went through the motions and some small part of me was grateful for it.

Before I retired for the night–early, so I’d have some time to myself before Natalie, Cam, and Lucas showed up–Tiffany walked past my tent and quietly said “thanks, Captain” before moving on. I watched her for a minute, standing outside my tent, as she gently held her right arm to her chest as she wandered around the camp, looking for something she could do to help. In that moment, all my feelings of guilt over killing Ben vanished. He had stood there and not even watched as I’d removed her hand, all while hiding a much more dangerous injury because he couldn’t bear the thought of losing an arm even though it would put the lives of everyone else at risk.

When I finally turned to go into the tent, the exhaustion of the last few days demanding sleep, I found myself suddenly understanding how Lucas felt and thinking that maybe this was going to be my last trip with the Wayfinders as well.