Episode 14: The Meeting Beneath the Ash

They called it neutral ground, but there’s no such thing anymore. The city library had burned down in the third month—flames and screams and paperback confetti—but the basement was still standing. So that’s where we met. Between the cracked pillars and the sleeping mold, beneath a banner that used to say SUMMER READING IS LIT!

There were three of us.

Three kings, if you’re being generous. Warlords, if you’re not. I wore a coat made of stitched denim and rust, because it made me look larger than I was. Because symbols matter when the world ends.

Brick came second. His teeth were gold and chipped, and his gang was mostly ex-cops and ex-cons who couldn’t tell which side of the line they’d landed on. He smelled like blood and peppermint. A showman.

The third was Anya. She came late, with one eye painted black and a chain of child-sized vertebrae around her neck. She didn’t speak unless she was sure it would hurt someone.

We sat in a triangle of broken chairs, surrounded by the graffiti ghosts of a better world. A rat dragged something dead through the corner shadows. I let it be. Everyone deserves a mission.

“So,” Brick said, tossing a coin he’d long since stopped believing in. “We gonna play cards, or are you here to cry about Marla again?”

That was his opening. No preamble. Just a knife shaped like a sentence.

“She was taken,” I said.

“Everyone gets taken,” Anya muttered. “That’s the game.”

“This isn’t that,” I said. “This wasn’t a gang hit. Wasn’t raiders. Wasn’t infected. You know who took her.”

No one replied. Not out loud.

But we all remembered the stories.

The American flag with no stars. The men with stone cold eyes. The Marine who walked without sound, who didn’t bleed, who took survivors and left nothing but their boots. Ghost Marine, they called him. Because monster wasn’t official enough.

“They have a base,” I said. “Out near what used to be Redmond. Big walls. Real electricity. Trucks. Heat. They’re organized.”

Anya rolled her eye. “Organized like a snake is organized.”

“They’ve been hunting my people. Targeting my scouts. Took out three of my runners last week. Burned their tattoos off.”

Brick leaned forward. “And you want us to what? Ride up with spears and bad attitudes?”

“I want us to fight back.”

Silence.

Not the respectful kind. The dangerous kind. The kind where everyone’s calculating how many bullets it takes to be king of two gangs instead of one.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “You’re thinking I’m desperate. That I’m weak.”

“You are,” said Anya.

I nodded. “I am. But you’re both smart enough to know what happens when they finish with me. You’re next. This isn’t about territory anymore. This is extermination. So I’m giving you the only offer that still means anything.”

I pulled a map from my coat. It was torn down the middle and stained with someone’s final thoughts, but it showed their base. The towers. The rotation schedule. Marla had given it to me before she disappeared, along with a look that said this isn’t bravery, it’s a favor to the dead.

“We go in,” I said. “Three nights from now. Small team. Hit their comms, sabotage their grid. Rescue who we can.”

“You sure anyone’s left?” Brick asked.

I lied. “Yes.”

Anya stared at the ceiling. Dust fell like snowfall from a forgotten god. “And if we say no?”

I looked her in the eye. “Then I go alone. And when they come for you—and they will—I’ll be too dead to say I told you so.”

Another silence. This one different.

Brick cracked his neck. “How many men?”

“Ten each. Quiet. Loyal. Not stupid.”

“And if it’s a trap?”

“Then you die hating me. But at least you die fighting something that matters.”

Anya didn’t smile. She just nodded, once, sharp as a guillotine.

“Three nights,” Brick said. “Bring your own bullets.”

They left. One by one. Like ghosts that had voted on a haunting.

I stayed behind. I always stay behind. There’s something sacred about the end of a meeting. About the dust that drifts after people leave. About the silence that’s more honest than any plan.

I stared at the mold-covered walls and whispered to no one in particular:

“We’re coming for you, Marla. We’re coming.”