Chapter 3

On the fourth day of the apocalypse, the first intruders appeared.

Three stragglers who had walked in from the highway spotted me.

I put down my binoculars and began to prepare.

At the hottest hour of noon, I watched them on the monitor as they climbed through a gap on the prison's east side. Two men, one woman, bulging backpacks on their shoulders, wet towels over their faces. The man in the lead carried a crowbar.

They thought the prison was empty.

I let them walk into the abandoned checkpoint passage on the eastern perimeter. The passage was narrow, flanked by concrete walls, with a sheet-metal roof overhead—it looked like the easiest route through. Precisely because it looked safe, I had spent a full day setting up a tripwire zone there with shelves, broken glass, and old iron wire.

The man in front tripped over the first wire and fell headlong into a pile of broken glass. His scream brought his companions running; they crouched down to help him and got dragged in deeper. Broken glass pierced their palms and knees. The three of them huddled together, trapped and immobile in the narrow passage.

I keyed the prison's internal old-channel radio and said one sentence: "Three minutes to retreat the way you came. After three minutes, the entrance seals."

They looked around frantically, unable to find where I was. The advantage of the watchtower.

Two minutes later, they retreated, leaving behind a trail of blood and bandage scraps. That would be enough to warn others: the prison was not unclaimed. Exactly what I wanted.

On the evening of the fifth day, Old Grey noticed something unusual on the perimeter. Three stones on the southeast patrol path had been kicked aside—he had placed them there that morning as intrusion markers.

I went out to check. Near the prison's back gate, I found a cigarette butt, saliva still on the filter, not fully stubbed out. Beside it on the ground was half a footprint, an oversized shoe with uneven wear on the heel. I had only seen that kind of footprint from one familiar person—his leg had been hit by a fire truck pedal during his firefighting days, and ever since, his weight had always leaned outward.

Four days ago, he had looked through binoculars from the wall. Now his men were tossing cigarette butts at my back gate. This wasn't probing. This was closing in.

I went back to the monitoring room and pulled up all the exterior feeds. A patch of brush to the southeast had been trampled flat; two sets of departing footprints were accompanied by bicycle tracks. He had transportation now—more than one.

That night, I made a decision.

I couldn't keep waiting. I had to go on the offensive.

The first three days of the apocalypse could be spent on defense.

But now people were scouting me, and the next assault would only be more professional.

If I let his people figure out my patrol patterns, find my weak points, and trap me inside the prison with nowhere to go—that wasn't the outcome I wanted.

I drew six routes in my notebook—three paths from the prison to the gas station, and three paths back. For each, I marked cover, exposure time, and possible encounter points along the way. After I finished drawing, I closed my eyes and ran through them in my head. By the time I reached the third route, a tightness suddenly gripped my temple—a sour ache, like someone pressing a fingertip to my temple and then letting go. The ache spread along my skull for about ten seconds.

I opened my eyes. The six lines in my notebook hadn't changed, but two details I had missed surfaced on their own: the third retreat route passed an abandoned bus stop, and its metal canopy would reflect sunlight at dusk, exposing my position at that hour. The fourth route passed a drainage ditch forty centimeters lower than the road surface, adding thirty seconds more travel time than I had estimated.

No new information. Just the known data rearranging itself in ten seconds.

Out of the corner of my eye, a gray bar moved. The silver edge at the top of the bar extended upward a small notch. The length had changed, the color had changed—from pale silver to a cold white like the edge of a blade.

The panel hadn't told me anything new. It had simply, after I had mapped out all six routes, pushed that ten-second ache and that cold silver light into my vision, then stepped aside. I went back to drawing trap diagrams.

In the early hours of the sixth day, I put on protective gear made from an old firefighter uniform, grabbed a crowbar, a flashlight, and a grappling hook, and walked about two kilometers along the highway until I found an abandoned gas station by the roadside. The tire tracks were fresh, heading toward the fire station. Cigarette butts stamped out on the ground—more than at the prison's back gate. He was sending people here too. This was their regular patrol turnaround point.

Behind the convenience store, I found two propane tanks left by the previous owner. The connecting hoses were damaged, the valves a bit loose, but the tanks themselves were intact. In the auto repair shop, I found a time-delay fuse—a standard part for testing fuel lines, fixed length, burning for six seconds. What I could control was the distance from the door to the supply box. I paced it out: six seconds was enough for him to walk in and bend down in front of the box. There were also scattered nails all over the floor. I resealed the propane tank valves with electrical tape, connected the fuse to the valve outlet, and fixed the other end to the inside of the convenience store door frame.

Early the next morning—the sixth day of the apocalypse—a team rode bicycles along the dirt road toward the gas station. The leader wasn't him. He wouldn't come personally to scavenge supplies. He sent his men to do the legwork.

Four men, with backpacks and tools. The leader pushed open the convenience store door.

The fuse burned for six seconds. Enough time for him to walk in, see the neatly stacked supply boxes on the floor, and bend down to pick them up.

The explosion blew the roof off the convenience store. Two critically injured, one lightly injured. The lookout was thrown two meters by the blast wave; he scrambled onto his bike and rode off toward the fire station without looking back. The remaining three lay on the ground for nearly ten minutes before helping each other up and limping after him.

I watched the results from the watchtower with my binoculars. The familiar numbness behind my ear returned—faster than before, the numbness and the layering of sound almost simultaneous.

Then something new happened.

I lowered the binoculars and rubbed my eye. In that instant—the explosion's fireball not yet fully dissipated, smoke still roiling—the silhouette of the fleeing man was sharper than the surrounding smoke. As if someone had traced an extremely fine gray line around the edge of the cyclist's figure. It lasted less than a second; a blink made it vanish.

The silver edge on the panel's Perception bar was still faintly glowing, like cooling red-hot iron.

I raised the binoculars again. This time, no gray line. But I had already memorized that man's riding direction, his speed, and the fact that he had glanced back once—not at me, but at the explosion, to see if his comrades were still following.

The panel hadn't told me whether he had companions. It had simply, at the moment I confirmed the results, pushed the Perception bar up a small notch, and then—as if incidentally—given me one frame of extra clarity.

That night, on the sixth evening, the portable radio Old Grey had rigged up suddenly crackled to life.

His voice came through the static, broadcasting from the fire station's channel.

"Whoever's in the prison. I don't know who you are, but I know you're watching. That was a nice move. I won't send anyone to your territory again."

A pause. Old Grey turned up the volume.

"So let's talk. You can name your terms. Supplies, territory, people—anything's negotiable. We don't need another enemy out here."

Another pause, longer this time. Someone was speaking softly in the background.

"I'll leave a frequency open. Respond if you hear this. You have until tomorrow noon. If I don't hear back by then—"

The channel cut out. Static filled the monitoring room again.

I switched off the radio and sat down in my chair. Old Grey poured himself half a glass of water and propped his feet up on the console.

"Former colleague?"

"The bastard."

"He threatening us?"

I didn't answer.

On the seventh day at noon, I didn't respond. He didn't send anyone else. The perimeter around the prison was as quiet as a graveyard.

On the afternoon of the seventh day, Old Grey was stranded on the highway by the heat.

He had taken the old truck from the prison garage—I had replaced the battery, but the old engine couldn't hold up long in the heat. His knee had been inflamed for two days, and there was no suitable anti-inflammatory medicine in the prison. I drove out to pick him up. His lips were cracked and peeling, his cheeks blistered from sunburn. I helped him into the cold storage room converted into a rest area, poured two bottles of water into him, laid a wet towel across his forehead, and sat by the bed to make sure his breathing was steady.

His first words when he woke up: "The medicine?"

I placed the pill bottle I had found in his hand. He poured out the pills, then pulled a slip of paper from the bottom of the bottle.

"What's this?"

He glanced at it and handed it to me. A single line was pressed onto the paper: The people at the fire station say their leader is looking for you. He doesn't know who you are, but he knows you're not alone.

I stared at the slip for a few seconds, then crumpled it in my palm.

"What is this?" Old Grey asked again.

"A gift. But not for me."

I tossed the crumpled paper into the trash and walked back to the monitoring room. The searchlight on the screen was on again. He was expanding. He was turning from a raider into a lord.

And I was helping him accelerate.

I switched the monitor feed to the perimeter cameras, picked up my notebook, and began sketching new trap designs.

This would be my second big gift for him.