Chapter 57 - Mapping the Route
Hanks stopped dead.
His ears shifted slightly — just a fraction — and his enhanced senses caught it: footsteps and low voices coming from the alley mouth ahead. Not walkers. People moving with purpose.
"There — cut them off! Don't let them through!"
They were being flanked from the front now. The pursuit was still behind them.
Kenny looked at Hanks with something close to despair.
Hanks's eyes hardened. He shoved open a nearby iron door — half-ajar, coated in old grease — and pushed Kenny through ahead of him, then slipped in after and eased the door shut, leaving just a hair-thin gap to watch through.
The space smelled overwhelmingly of motor oil. Some kind of small automotive repair shop, back storage room. Tools and parts on shelving. One way in, one way out — the door they'd just come through, and a window across the room that someone had boarded over years ago.
Outside, footsteps thundered past. Four, maybe five people running hard, cursing as they went, heading toward where the school bus was.
Hanks and Kenny pressed against the cold wall and didn't breathe. Hanks's heart was hammering. He kept his eyes on the gap.
The footsteps faded.
He waited another full minute before he let his shoulders drop half an inch.
"Hell..." Kenny slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor, voice shaking too badly to finish the sentence. His legs had apparently decided they were done for the moment. He'd barely fired a shot through the whole chase — just ran, head down, surviving by staying close to Hanks and not getting hit.
Hanks ignored him and swept the room quickly. No other exits. The boarded window was the only option.
"We can't go back the way we came," he said quietly. "They'll be searching that route. We need to find another way around."
He pulled his tactical knife and crossed to the boarded window. He worked the blade under the edge of one plank and levered it up, prying just enough to look through.
Another narrow alley on the other side. Garbage cans, broken concrete, no movement.
"This way."
Kenny got to his feet and came over. Together they worked the boards loose — the wood was soft with age and came away without much resistance. In a couple of minutes they had a gap wide enough to squeeze through.
Hanks went first, dropped silently to the ground outside, and came up with the P226 covering both directions. Kenny followed, landing with somewhat less grace.
"This way." Hanks read the alley's angle against where they needed to go and picked a route that ran roughly parallel to the path they'd taken in.
They didn't run anymore. Running drew attention and burned energy they couldn't spare. Instead they moved fast through every shadow they could find, using debris and doorways and the natural cover of the ruined streets. Hanks's stealth and awareness passives worked quietly in the background, steering him away from anything that felt wrong before he could consciously name why.
The few stray walkers they came across never heard him coming.
They looped wide through the back streets, scrambled over a low wall at one point, cut through an overgrown park where the grass had gone knee-high, and gradually, gradually, the shouting and the gunshots fell behind them and were swallowed by the dead buildings.
When they finally pressed against the remains of a collapsed wall and there was nothing behind them but silence, they stopped.
Both men breathed.
Sweat dripped from Hanks's jaw. Kenny looked like he'd been pulled from a river. Neither of them spoke for a moment.
"Map still in there?" Kenny managed, voice rough.
Hanks patted the backpack. "Yeah."
Kenny let out a long, unsteady breath. Then the guilt hit him all at once, written plainly across his face.
"Hanks. I'm sorry. That's on me — if I hadn't — "
"It's done." Hanks cut him off, not harshly. "Talking about it now doesn't change anything."
Kenny nodded heavily. He watched Hanks straighten up and check their surroundings and felt that particular mix of admiration and shame settle somewhere in his chest.
They moved out again, taking the quieter routes back toward the river.
---
By the time they made it back to the riverside camp, the sun was tilting toward the horizon.
Both of them were caked in dust and dried sweat and the kind of ground-in grime that came from crawling through alleys and squeezing through broken windows. Kenny's face was still pale, a residual shakiness in his step. Hanks looked composed by comparison, but anyone watching closely would notice the tightness around his jaw and that his breathing was just slightly faster than normal.
He thought, without sentiment, about what had just happened. The factory raid had worked because of smoke grenades and favorable terrain. This had been a straight-up trap with no room to maneuver — if they'd been half a second slower getting back through that post office door, or if the gang had had better angles on the back alley, the story ends differently. He was stronger than most people. That didn't make him bulletproof. Most of the time, a bullet still did what bullets do.
Lee spotted them first and was on his feet before they'd fully cleared the tree line.
"Thank God — you're back." He crossed to them quickly, eyes scanning for damage. "What happened? Are you hurt?"
Carley and Katjaa were right behind him, worry plain on their faces.
Clementine came at a run and wrapped her arms around Hanks's leg, face tipped up, eyes wide with the particular fear of a child who has been trying very hard not to imagine the worst.
Hanks rested a hand on top of her head and kept his voice easy.
"We're fine." He looked at the group. "Ran into some Moser Gang members. Had to take a long way around to shake them. Nothing serious."
He left everything else out — the ambush, the rooms full of flying debris, the long chase through the back streets, how close the corners had actually been.
Kenny opened his mouth. Closed it. He rubbed his face with both hands.
"Yeah," he said finally. "Just ran a lot. I'm done."
Lee and Carley exchanged a look. They could both see something had happened. But Hanks and Kenny were standing in front of them alive, and there was an unspoken agreement not to push it.
"You're back, that's what matters," Katjaa said, stepping in smoothly. "The venison's still warm — eat something first."
The deer meat was still on the fire, fat hissing quietly, and the smell of it hit both men at the same moment. They sat down without another word and ate.
The warmth of the food and the fire worked its way into muscles that had been locked up tight for hours, and slowly the deep cold that had settled in behind the ribs began to ease.
When they'd eaten, Hanks wiped his hands and reached into the pack.
"All right. Come look at this."
He spread the map on a flat patch of ground and weighted the corners with stones. Everyone gathered in — Lee, Carley, Katjaa, Kenny, even Duck and Clementine craning in from the edges to see what was on it.
The Georgia state highway map was the best one they'd had. Main roads, secondary routes, smaller towns, rivers, ridgelines — all of it laid out in detail.
Hanks traced his finger across the page, moving from their approximate position down toward the coast, and tapped a spot in the southeast.
"Savannah. That's where we're going."
His finger moved back up and tracked along a thick line running southwest to northeast.
"US-80. Direct route, theoretically the fastest." He paused. "But any major highway is either completely blocked with abandoned vehicles, or it's controlled by groups like the Moser Gang. High risk all the way."
He shifted to a thinner, winding line.
"SR-57. State highway. More remote, longer distance, probably worse road conditions." He looked at the map for a moment. "But the chances of running into large walker concentrations or organized groups are a lot lower."
Kenny stared at the map. When he spoke, his voice still had a slight hollow quality to it.
"Hanks. Our vehicles." He paused. "You've seen what they're running on. A rough back road might finish them off before we get halfway."
"I know." No change in Hanks's tone. "That's why we plan carefully. Identify the worst sections ahead of time, avoid them where we can. If we have to abandon the vehicles and go on foot through part of it, then that's what we do."
Carley looked up from the map. "What about communication? If we're out in the back country and something happens — "
"We picked one up." Kenny reached into his jacket and produced the handheld radio they'd taken from the teenage gang member. He switched it on.
Static crackled from the speaker — and then, cutting through it, a voice:
"— Moser Gang — all members — stand by for orders — "