Chapter 2 : Dead Zone East

They moved before the smoke changed color.
No talking.
No questions.
Every step measured,
every corner treated like a loaded gun.

The older boy led.
No name.
No nickname.
Names were stolen the day the city collapsed.

Behind him, the girl with the slingshot stayed sharp.
Her eyes scanned rooftops.
She walked like someone who had already dodged bullets in her sleep.

The group reached a half-burned checkpoint.
Concrete walls,
barbed wire melted into spirals,
and a faded symbol on the gate
a red circle with a jagged X through it.

It wasn’t just a warning.
It was a message:
Anyone beyond this point is already dead.

They stepped through anyway.

The twitchy boy everyone called him Rook paused beside the wall.
He stared at the old security booth.
Its glass was shattered.
A boot lay inside, still tied.
No foot inside.
Just the boot.

“This place smells wrong,” he muttered.



The older boy turned.

“Everything smells wrong. Keep moving.”



They passed a truck flipped on its side.
A trail of dried blood ran from its open door into the cracked pavement.
No body.
Just streaks.
Like something had been dragged.

They reached a wall that had once been part of a school.
Now it held only one thing:
a spray-painted map, drawn in thick red lines.

The girl stepped closer.

“That wasn’t here last week.”



The boy scanned it.
Red X’s.
Circles.
Arrows leading underground.

His eyes narrowed.

“This is fresh.”



Rook dropped his bag and pulled out a lighter.
He burned the edge of a nearby poster to see how fast the paper caught fire.

“Ink’s still wet,” he said.
“Somebody just did this.”



They all stepped back.

Then the youngest his name still unknown pointed to a small symbol in the corner.
A triangle inside a circle.
Etched in black.

The girl’s face went pale.

“The Signal Division.”



No one replied.

That name was supposed to be extinct
eliminated two winters ago in a raid that burned half the city.

But here it was, freshly marked.

Suddenly, a noise.

Click.

From the wall itself.

A stone shifted slow, sharp, deliberate.

The boy shoved them all down, just as

POP shhhhhh

Gas hissed out of a tiny hole in the wall.

They scrambled back, coughing, shielding their faces.

The gas smelled like copper and rotting sugar.

It wasn’t smoke.
It was something else.
Designed to make you slow.
To make you weak.

The boy dragged the youngest behind a rusted bin,
ripped a shirt sleeve,
doused it in water,
and pressed it over the kid’s mouth.

“Stay low. Don’t breathe too deep.”



The girl had already pulled out two tiny black pills from her sock—
antitox.
She handed one to Rook,
swallowed the other.

They waited.

Minutes passed.

The gas drifted toward the rooftops.

Silence returned.

Then the boy stood.
Eyes locked on the red map again.

“They’re watching,” he said.



“How do you know?” Rook asked.



The boy pointed to a nearby building.
A shattered window.
And the faintest movement behind it
gone before you could blink.

“Because this wasn’t a trap,” he said.
“It was a test.”



“A test for what?” the girl asked.

He looked at the red circle with arrows.

“To see if we’re still smart enough to survive.”



Then he picked up the photo again the one with the man’s face scratched out.
Flipped it over.
A sentence was written in tight, sharp letters:

“Find the black wall. He’ll be there.”



The boy folded the photo.

“We’re not alone out here.”



He looked toward the skyline
past the fires,
beyond the ruins,
into the zone where no one dared go.

“Chapter’s over,” he whispered.
“Now we start the war.”