The silence didn't last.
Arty felt it before he heard it, a shift in the air that didn't belong to wind or distance, something subtle yet wrong, like the world had taken a breath and forgotten to let it go, and every instinct he had was suddenly telling him that staying still was no longer an advantage.
He raised a hand slightly, signaling Leah to stop.
She froze immediately, eyes snapping to him, reading the tension in his posture without needing an explanation.
"What is it?" she whispered.
He didn't answer.
Not because he didn't want to, but because he didn't have the words for it yet, only the feeling, and the feeling was enough.
Something was moving.
Not close.
Not yet.
But coming.
His gaze shifted across the open yard, scanning the long approach lines between structures, tracing the paths anything would have to take to reach them.
Out here there were no blind corners to hide behind, no walls to muffle sound, just distance and exposure, then he heard it.
A faint metallic clatter somewhere beyond the far edge of the yard, irregular and out of rhythm, like something dragging across a surface it didn't quite understand.
Followed by a low, wet sound that made his stomach tighten in a way that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with recognition.
Leah heard it too.
Her grip tightened on his arm. "That's not an animal."
"No it's not." he said quietly.
The sound came again, closer this time, accompanied by a second, slightly offset, like there was more than one source.
More than one thing moving in the same direction without coordination, without purpose beyond forward.
Arty stepped back slowly, pulling Leah with him, angling them toward the ute without taking his eyes off the direction the sound was coming from.
Distance was their advantage right now and he wasn't about to give it up by standing still and waiting to confirm what he already knew.
Shapes appeared at the far edge of the yard.
At first they were just that, shapes, wrong in the way they moved, unsteady, uneven, but persistent, closing the distance in slow.
Dragging steps that somehow felt more threatening than speed would have, because there was no hesitation in them, no awareness, just movement.
Then the details came into focus.
Greyed skin.
Slack expressions.
Eyes that didn't track properly, gaping mouths that hung slightly open as if breathing wasn't something they needed anymore.
Leah sucked in a sharp breath. "They're—"
"I know," Arty cut in, his voice low but firm.
He had seen this before.
He had died to it.
And seeing it again this early, this clearly, confirmed something he hadn't wanted to accept.
It wasn't just coming, it was already here.
Three of them.
Maybe four.
More shapes moving behind them, not yet clear but enough to suggest that this wasn't an isolated encounter.
Arty's mind shifted gears instantly.
Distance.
Time.
Options.
Fighting them here, in the open, was possible.
Risky, but possible.
Running was safer.
For now.
Running meant giving up ground, giving up the one advantage this location offered, and more importantly it meant learning nothing.
He tightened his grip on the length of metal wrench the one he had taken from the ute earlier, the weight of it familiar enough now to feel like something he could rely on, even if only barely.
"Stay behind me," he said.
Leah didn't argue.
That alone told him how serious this had become.
The first of the infected crossed into the yard fully, its movement uneven but relentless, dragging one foot slightly as it advanced.
With its arms hanging loose until it got close enough to react, at which point its posture shifted, not into something controlled, but something instinctive.
Predatory.
Arty stepped forward.
Not far.
Just enough.
The distance between them closed.
Five metres.
Four.
Three.
The smell hit him then, faint but unmistakable, a sour, decaying edge that didn't belong to anything alive, and for a fraction of a second, memory overlaid reality so cleanly that he could almost feel the moment of his first death again.
He pushed it aside.
This wasn't that moment.
Not yet.
The infected lunged.
Not fast.
Not skilled.
But sudden.
Arty moved with it, stepping slightly to the side rather than back, letting its momentum carry it past where he had been standing, and as it stumbled forward, he swung.
The wrench connected with the side of its head with a dull, heavy impact that travelled up his arms, the resistance different from anything he had hit before.
Softer in some places, harder in others, and the body dropped instantly, collapsing into the dirt with a twitch that didn't quite stop.
He didn't pause, didn't check, most importantly he didn't hesitate, because the others were still coming.
The second one reached him a moment later, slower, arms outstretched, fingers clawing at the air in a way that would have been almost pathetic if it wasn't so dangerous, and this time he didn't wait for it to lunge.
He stepped in, closed the gap and brought the bar down hard, straight onto the top of its skull.
The sound was sharper this time, more final, the body folded.
Two down.
The remaining shapes faltered slightly, not out of fear, but confusion, their movement stuttering for a fraction of a second as if something about what had just happened didn't fit whatever broken logic drove them.
It didn't last, they kept coming.
Arty exhaled slowly, forcing his breathing to steady as he adjusted his stance, the weight of the wrench settling more comfortably in his grip, because as crude as it was, it worked.
It would have to.
The third one reached him.
He repeated the motion.
Step. Turn. Strike.
This time it didn't go down cleanly.
The blow landed off-centre, the impact glancing rather than crushing, and the infected staggered but didn't fall, its arms snapping toward him with a sudden burst of movement that was faster than the others had been.
He barely pulled back in time, feeling the rush of air as its fingers closed where his arm had been a fraction of a second earlier.
Too close.
He adjusted instantly, shifting his grip, bringing the wrench up again in a tighter arc, and this time when it connected, it held.
The infected dropped.
Three.
The fourth stopped a few metres away, not because it chose to.
Because something behind it collided with its back, pushing it forward in a jerking motion that revealed more movement beyond the initial group, more shapes resolving out of the distance, drawn in by the noise, by the movement, by something that Arty was starting to understand with uncomfortable clarity.
Fighting drew attention, every action had a consequence, and out here, there was nowhere to hide it.
"Arty," Leah said, her voice tight. "There's more."
"I see them."
And he did.
Too many.
Not immediately overwhelming, but enough that staying here would turn into a losing fight if he didn't move soon.
His gaze flicked briefly to the bodies at his feet.
Three down.
And something inside him shifted again.
That same pull.
Stronger now.
Not from the metal.
From them, from what was inside them.
The crystals.
He didn't understand it.
Didn't question it.
He moved.
Quick, efficient, dropping to one knee beside the first body, ignoring the smell, the twitching, the part of his mind that wanted to reject what he was doing, because instinct was louder now.
He drove the metal edge down.
The skull gave.
And there it was.
A faint glint, small, faint and dull, yet utterly unmistakable.
He grabbed it without thinking and stood, already moving to the next.
Behind him, Leah made a sound, half protest, half disbelief. "What are you doing?"
"Getting what matters," he said.
Because somehow—
It did.
He pulled a second crystal free.
Then a third.
Each one sending a faint pulse through him, not power, not yet, but something that felt like progress, like a step forward in a direction he couldn't fully see but instinctively trusted.
The shapes in the distance were getting closer.
Not fast.
But steady.
Relentless.
Arty backed toward the ute, crystals clenched in his hand, the weight of them negligible but the importance impossible to ignore, because whatever this was, whatever had started when he woke up
This was part of it.
And if he was going to survive what was coming—
He was going to need more.