The asphalt of Highway 221 didn't look like a road anymore; it looked like a jagged, black scar across the throat of the mountains. Nature was aggressively reclaiming the world, vines thick as an infant's wrist prying apart the cracks in the pavement, while rusted-out sedans sat like hollowed-out skulls in the mid-morning sun.
Amy moved along the shoulder, her boots making no sound on the carpet of dead pine needles. Every hundred yards, she stopped, dropping into a silent crouch, her hand ghosting over the grip of her machete. She wasn't looking for Shamblers—though the smell of them, like wet copper and spoiled meat, hung heavy in the humid air. She was looking for the Aegis.
If they had the tech to fly a silent Black Hawk, they had the tech to track her heat signature. She stayed under the canopy of the overhanging oaks, her eyes constantly scanning for the glint of a lens or the unnatural horizontal line of a rifle barrel.
Her pack felt heavier than it had at dawn. It wasn't just the gear; it was the weight of the coordinates stitched into the lining. Silas had been training her for this "Exit Scenario" since she was eighteen, but having the map didn't make the isolation any easier. For nine months, the world had been exactly six feet wide—the distance between her and her father. Now, the horizon felt dangerously infinite.
As she navigated around a pile-up of cars near an old rest stop, a flash of red caught her eye. It was a faded ribbon tied to a car antenna—a distress signal from the early days that no one had ever answered.
The sight triggered a memory, sharp and jagged as broken glass.
Two years ago. The school gym had been converted into a triage center. The smell of bleach and sweat was suffocating. Amy had been nineteen, her senior year cut short by a "flu" that turned people into cannibals.
She remembered standing by the water cooler, her hands trembling, when Leo had walked in. He looked exhausted, his school varsity jacket torn at the shoulder, but when he saw her, his entire face had shifted. He'd crossed the room in three strides, pulling her into a corner behind a stack of folded bleachers.
"Amy, thank God," he'd whispered, his breath warm against her ear as he pressed his forehead to hers. It was the first time they had been that close, the tension that had simmered between them in Chemistry class finally boiling over in the middle of a catastrophe. "My dad has a boat. We're leaving tonight. Come with us. Please."
He had taken her hand, his thumb tracing circles over her knuckles. For a split second, she had seen a future—a way out. But then she had seen Silas at the gym doors, his face a mask of grim determination as he signaled her to move.
"I can't, Leo," she had breathed, her heart breaking even as the world fell apart. "My dad... he won't go to the water."
Leo had leaned in, his lips brushing her cheek, a desperate, unfinished promise. "I'll find you, Amy. I don't care where you go. I'll find you."
A wet, gurgling snap brought her back to the present.
Amy froze. The sound had come from inside a jackknifed semi-truck twenty feet ahead. She shifted her weight, sliding her machete from its sheath. She didn't use her rifle; the crack of a .22 would be a dinner bell for every Shambler within three miles.
She crept toward the trailer, her heart beating a steady, rhythmic thud against her ribs. She peered through the gap in the doors.
It wasn't a Shambler.
It was a trap.
A thin, nearly invisible monofilament wire was stretched across the opening, connected to a military-grade flash-bang rigged to the doorframe. It was Aegis work—clean, professional, and designed to disorient a target so they could be taken alive.
Amy stepped back, her pulse spiking. They weren't just looking for Silas. They were waiting for her. They knew he'd leave a trail, and they knew she'd follow it.
"Clever," she muttered under her breath.
She bypassed the truck, cutting deep into the woods to circle the rest stop. She needed to get off the main road. The coordinates Silas left weren't just a destination; they were a lifeline. But to get there, she had to cross the "Bridge of Bones"—the massive interstate overpass that was the only way across the French Broad River.
As the sun reached its zenith, the heat began to bake the rot, making the air thick and nauseating. She reached the ridge overlooking the bridge and stopped dead.
The bridge was a graveyard. Thousands of cars were jammed bumper-to-bumper, a frozen river of steel. And moving between them, like maggots in a wound, were hundreds of Shamblers. They milled about aimlessly, their grey skin peeling in the sun, their moans a low, dissonant hum that vibrated in Amy's chest.
But that wasn't the problem.
On the far side of the bridge, a fortified checkpoint had been erected. Concrete barriers, razor wire, and a watchtower. It didn't have the Aegis markings—it was crude, built from scrap metal and wood.
Human survivors.
Amy pulled her binoculars from her pack, adjusting the focus. She scanned the tower. A man stood there, silhouetted against the sun. He was wearing a tactical vest and holding a long-range bolt-action rifle with practiced ease.
She moved the lenses down to the gate. A second man was inspecting a vehicle, his movements disciplined and sharp. Even from this distance, she recognized the way he carried himself—the rigid shoulders, the tilted head, the effortless authority.
Her breath hitched. She knew that stance. She had seen it every morning for ten years through her bedroom window.
Jax.
He was alive. He wasn't a ghost in her head; he was the man guarding the gate to the only sanctuary left in the state. But as she watched him roughly shove a scavenger back from the line, she realized he wasn't the boy who had taught her how to read a compass anymore.
He looked harder. Meaner.
Amy looked at the bridge full of the dead, then at the man she once thought she loved who was now holding the world at bay with a rifle. She had to get across. She had to get to Silas.
She sheathed her blade and began to check her magazines. She had three clips, two smoke grenades, and a map that said she had to go through Jax to find her father.
"Entry through the front door is suicide," she whispered to herself, her eyes tracking the river below the bridge. The water was high and fast, white foam churning over jagged rocks. "Guess we're doing this the hard way."
She began to descend the ridge, her mind already calculating the current of the river and the patrol patterns on the bridge. She didn't know that on the other side of that gate, Jax had just been handed a report about a silent helicopter spotted near a certain cabin in the mountains.
He didn't know she was coming. And Amy didn't know that inside that settlement, Leo was cleaning a scout rifle, still wearing a faded red ribbon tied around his wrist.
The silence of the mountains was officially over.