The reunion with Kyle and Alice still lingered in Michael's mind as he, Sarah, and Lena settled into the reality of the quarantine zone. The soldiers called it a "safe perimeter," but anyone with eyes could see the difference between safety and containment. The chain-link fences stretched in overlapping layers, topped with barbed wire that gleamed even in weak daylight. Watchtowers overlooked the crowd of survivors like predators scanning for prey.
Inside, the air smelled of sweat, smoke, and boiled beans. People clustered in lines for water or medical checks, shoulders brushing against one another, tension riding on every glance. It wasn't chaos, not yet. But it wasn't peace either.
Michael walked through the compound with Kyle beside him, the man's expression carrying the same guarded sharpness he'd seen years ago when they'd trained together. "You notice how jumpy they are?" Kyle muttered under his breath, nodding toward a pair of soldiers checking ID tags. "These guys aren't used to crowd control. Half of them are kids with rifles. That's how accidents happen."
Michael kept his voice low. "Doesn't take much for fear to bleed into panic. You saw outside. People would've torn each other apart if the soldiers hadn't fired into the air."
Alice, keeping pace with Sarah and Lena just behind them, added, "I worked with relief camps during the Collapse… you can feel when the ground's about to crack under you. It's not today. Not tomorrow. But it's coming."
Sarah frowned. "Then what? If this breaks, we'll be trapped inside with them." Her eyes flicked toward the crowd of survivors men with makeshift bandages, mothers clutching crying children, loners who stared at the dirt as if they could disappear into it. "With all of them."
Michael said nothing. He'd already been thinking the same.
That first night in the zone taught them more about the place than any broadcast had promised.
The survivors were separated into sections: families, singles, suspected infected, and what the soldiers called "unverified." Everyone was scanned before entering, though the handheld devices looked crude slim black wands with blinking green lights. More than once, Michael noticed someone sweating and trembling, the scanner flashing red, only for the soldier to wave them through after a bribe or a quick shove. The system wasn't airtight. If infection slipped through, no one would know until it was too late.
Michael, Sarah, Lena, Kyle, and Alice were placed together in one of the "singles" sections, a converted parking lot beneath a half-finished overpass. Thin tents of plastic tarp stretched between poles, the ground a patchwork of mud, gravel, and cardboard. The sounds never stopped: coughing, whispering, arguments, the rattle of boots on concrete as patrols passed every few minutes.
"Better than the street," Kyle said, dropping onto a crate. He pulled a cigarette from behind his ear and lit it with a match. The glow briefly lit the hard lines of his face. "But not by much."
Lena huddled close to Sarah, whispering about a group of women she'd met while collecting rations. They'd traded scraps of bread and stories about where they'd come from Dallas, New Orleans, smaller towns burned out or abandoned along the way. Sarah smiled, just faintly, in a way Michael hadn't seen since before all this started. It reminded him how much Lena needed someone her own age, someone not drowning in command decisions.
Alice approached him later, when the others were settling. "You're quiet."
Michael shrugged. "Listening. Watching."
"You always did that," she said softly. "Back before any of this. You were the one who noticed the cracks in the wall before anyone else saw them."
He didn't answer. But she wasn't wrong.
The days passed, though no one counted them the same way. Time blurred when every morning began with the same shrill whistles and every night ended under floodlights.
Sarah and Lena found their footing quicker than Michael expected. Sarah helped with food distribution, calming arguments when portions seemed too small. Lena, with her quick tongue, made friends among the younger survivors girls who braided her hair, boys who taught her dice games scratched into the dirt. For a few hours at a time, she could almost forget the weight pressing in.
Michael kept to routines: checking weak points in the fences when guards weren't looking, studying the soldier's patrol timings, mapping the layout in his head. Kyle joined him, sometimes sharing a laugh, sometimes a grim silence.
"Feels like we're rats in a cage," Kyle said one evening.
Michael scanned the shadows. "Then the only question is what happens when the cage breaks."
On the fifth evening, a crack showed.
A soldier struck an old man during ration handout some dispute about him taking extra bread for his sick wife. The crowd surged, voices shouting, hands grabbing at the crate. Another soldier fired into the air, the shot echoing like thunder in the confined space. Children screamed. For a moment, Michael thought it would spiral into blood.
But the general appeared.
A broad-shouldered man in his fifties, uniform immaculate compared to his weary troops. He stepped onto a supply truck, voice booming through a makeshift loudspeaker.
"Enough! Order will hold here. We are not animals. You follow procedure, you get your rations. Anyone causing trouble will answer to me directly."
The crowd quieted, not out of trust but out of the kind of fear that came from rifles pointed in all directions. The general's gaze swept over them all, as if memorizing faces one by one. When his eyes passed Michael's, Michael held the look just long enough to show neither submission nor challenge. Then he dropped it.
Kyle muttered, "That man's keeping this place together with nothing but threats and spit."
"And it's working," Michael said. For now.
That night, Michael couldn't sleep. The noises around camp blended with the voice in his head the system, faint but persistent.
> Blueprint Access: Crude Modifications Authorized.
Note: Materials limited. Recommend discretion.
His mind traced through the tools they had, the scraps he'd scavenged, the lessons he'd picked up from mercenaries and engineers before all this began. He could build something. Not to show off, not yet. But to prepare.
Because Alice was right. Kyle was right. Everyone here could feel it.
This zone wasn't built for hope.
It was built to hold people until the dam broke.