I stopped at the edge of the container roof and let my eyes adjust to the geometry of the next sector.
Rows of containers stretched out below me like steel corridors.
Weathered steel walls formed narrow lanes where walkers wandered without purpose.
Some shuffled in loose circles; others leaned against container doors as if trying to remember what they had been doing before the world ended.
From above, the pattern was easier to read: movement lanes, shadow pockets, places where lurkers liked to stand still.
I crouched slightly and brought up the compound bow.
One walker drifted into a clean shooting lane below, about nineteen yards—side profile.
Perfect.
My hand dipped into the inventory and an arrow appeared between my fingers.
Nock.
Draw.
The cams rolled over smoothly as I pulled the string back.
The pressure settled into the wall of the draw cycle, steady and familiar.
Release.
Thwip.
The arrow dropped into the eye socket of the walker.
The corpse collapsed immediately.
Thud.
The sound of the body hitting asphalt was swallowed by the slow shuffling of the others nearby.
A few of them turned their heads lazily toward the noise, then lost interest.
Good.
Quiet kills were the good kills.
I tracked the landing spot automatically: lane two, near the yellow container corner.
Arrow retrieval later.
My hand moved again.
Another arrow, another target.
A female walker this time, standing half-turned in the shadow between two containers.
Lurker, I instantly thought.
The ones that didn't move until you were already close enough to regret it.
Nock.
Draw.
Release.
Thwip.
The arrow punched through the eye socket and the body dropped backward into the darkness between the containers.
No sound.
Two down, hundreds more to go, I thought wryly to myself.
I moved along the container roof.
Each step was careful, weight spread evenly across my boots so the corrugated steel didn't pop or flex under me.
By now, I had the technique of moving silently on the rooftops of containers down to a T.
The height gave me a different firing angle into the lanes below, opening sightlines that weren't visible from my previous position.
That was the trick with clearing sectors like this—angles of fire mattered.
What looked clear from one spot could hide two walkers behind a container corner.
I advanced another ten feet along the roof and crouched again.
Scan.
There.
Walkers clustered near a loading pallet.
One behind them standing perfectly still in the shade.
Another lurker.
I exhaled slowly and started the rhythm again.
Nock, draw, release, thwip.
The first walker dropped.
Second arrow already in my fingers.
Nock, draw, release, thwip.
Another body folded to the pavement.
Thud.
The third target took half a step forward as the corpse bumped its leg—too slow to matter.
Third arrow, thwip.
Three bodies joined the growing pile in the lane.
My eyes flicked to the shadow pocket behind them.
The lurker stood there unmoving, watching nothing.
I adjusted the angle slightly and loosed another arrow.
The shaft buried itself into the rotting eye and punched into the brain.
The walker crumpled silently.
Four arrows, four locations stored in memory; retrieve later.
I kept moving along the container roof, shifting firing positions every few yards.
Each change in angle revealed new pieces of the sector—blind corners, dark gaps between containers, the occasional walker standing perfectly still where sunlight never reached.
Lurkers, ambush points... all of them got serviced the same way.
Nock, draw, release, thwip.
Another body hit the asphalt.
As I worked, a stray thought surfaced from the old days.
Back in the military, I'd done this kind of work with technology worth more than a small country's GDP.
This kind of operation would have involved half a dozen systems: thermal scopes, drone overwatch, satellite imaging, radio chatter feeding constant updates.
And if things went wrong? Air support was five minutes away.
Now it was just me, a bow, a pile of arrows pulled from thin air, and a few gifts from something that might as well have been a god.
The ROB's voice flickered briefly in the back of my mind before I shoved the thought away.
It didn't matter.
The tools were what they were.
What mattered was the objective.
Another walker dropped below me.
Thud.
I watched coldly as the body settle between the others.
A quiet, grim satisfaction settled somewhere in my chest.
No gunshots, no alarms—just quiet work.
The sector slowly thinned as more walkers collapsed in the lanes below, one by one, accumulating on the asphalt.
Efficient. Methodical. Professional.
I stepped forward along the container roof and scanned the remaining lanes.
Still a few shadows left, a few more targets to service.
I reached into the Inventory for another arrow.
The job wasn't finished yet.
Thwip.
The last walker dropped face-first into the asphalt.
Thud. I stayed crouched on the container roof for a few seconds longer, bow still half-drawn, eyes moving through the sector one more time.
Three hours of work had turned this sector into a graveyard.
Bodies lay everywhere now—collapsed between the container lanes, slumped against steel doors, tangled together in slow piles where the herd had once milled.
From up here, it looked like someone had rolled out a grey carpet made of rotting flesh.
The silence felt heavy.
My shoulders rolled slowly as I lowered the bow.
Even with a Peak Human body, three straight hours of drawing a compound bow left its mark.
A dull ache had settled into the muscles between my shoulder blades and along my forearms.
Not real fatigue—nothing close to exhaustion—but the kind of deep mechanical soreness that came from repeating the same motion hundreds of times.
Hundreds of arrows.
Hundreds of silent kills.
My brain catalogued the result automatically: sector clear, no visible movement, no lurkers in the shadow pockets.
Good enough.
I slung the bow across my back and dropped down from the container roof.
My boots landed softly among the bodies.
Without my mask on, I'd have been suffocated by the smell here—a thick smell of rot mixed with the sour tang of old blood and ocean air.
I stepped over the nearest corpse and approached the first container.
Sixteen large, eight smaller support containers—twenty-four in total.
A logistics jackpot.
The heavy steel doors were sealed with a standard shipping lock.
I worked the bolt cutter slowly, careful not to let the metal snap loudly when the pressure gave way.
Crack.
I caught the falling lock in my hand before it could hit the ground.
Quiet, always quiet.
The door creaked open an inch.
I paused and listened. Nothing but the distant groans drifting from other sectors of the shipyard.
I opened it the rest of the way, then I stopped.
For a moment, I just stood there looking inside.
Shelving units ran the length of the container, stacked tight with sealed crates.
White pharmaceutical markings, temperature-controlled insulation panels lining the interior walls.
Medical supply containers.
My hand brushed one of the crates and turned it slightly to read the label:
Broad-spectrum antibiotics.
Production date: four months ago.
Expiration: years away.
A slow breath left my nose shakily.
This is it.
The quiet kind of victory that didn't come with fireworks or cheering, just a heavy wave of satisfaction settling somewhere behind the ribs.
Food kept you alive, but medicine? Medicine kept people from dying stupid deaths.
Back in the army, I'd watched grown men bleed out from infections that started as nothing more than a dirty cut.
I'd seen combat medics stretch the last of their supplies while praying the evacuation bird showed up in time.
Now I was standing in front of a container full of antibiotics, surgical kits, trauma gear, and bandages—things that meant the difference between surviving and thriving.
A thought passed through my mind like an old instructor's voice:
You can grow corn, but you can't grow penicillin.
I reached out.
My fingers brushed the first crate.
It vanished into my Inventory.
The air inside the container shifted slightly as the mass disappeared, leaving empty space behind.
I paused and listened.
Still quiet.
Then I continued.
The work became methodical again.
Touch, gone.
Touch, gone.
Entire shelves disappeared in seconds, the massive volume of medical supplies folding neatly into the endless storage space of the Inventory.
Every few minutes I stopped to listen to the perimeter.
Same as last time—bow ready in case some wandering corpse drifted too close.
Thankfully, nothing came this time as well.
One container emptied.
Then another.
Then another.
Some held antibiotics; others were packed with sterile surgical kits—scalpels, sutures, IV equipment sealed in vacuum packaging.
One container held trauma gear: tourniquets, chest seals, combat bandages, all kinds of medicines and inhalers.
By the time I reached the smaller containers, the sun had begun to sink toward the horizon.
The light shifted from harsh daylight to a deep orange glow that painted the steel walls of the shipyard in long shadows.
The last crate vanished into my Inventory.
I stepped back and looked at my work, nodding in satisfaction .
Rows of containers—twenty-four steel shells—once full with supplies, now sat completely empty.
(To be continued...)