Chapter?22 (Joshua’s?POV)

  The cottage greeted me with a musty exhale the moment I pushed through the front door—dust, old wood, and a faint under?note of rot that had seeped into the floorboards during years of neglect. Still, it was four walls and a roof, and after downtown’s carnage it felt like a fortress.

  I spent the next hours in a blur of nervous labor. First, I hauled busted furniture—an armless sofa, a bookcase with one good shelf—against the front windows, wedging table legs between sill and floor until nothing short of a truck could shove them inward. I jammed rusty nails through scrap planks, bracing them over cracks where glass once lived. My hammer rang with every blow, each clang echoing down the empty hallway like a gunshot, but no roamers answered.

  Sweat rolled off me in greasy rivulets, soaking the collar of my hoodie. Between barricading sessions, I tore through the kitchen: swept rat droppings into a dustpan, pitched moldy dishware into a trash pile, wiped counters with a rag dipped in boiled rain?water from a cracked barrel out back. Not perfect, but better than breathing spores all night.

  At some point, exhaustion forced me to pause. I checked the battered wristwatch I’d scavenged earlier. The Gate’s inner countdown pulsed in the back of my skull—a dull, rhythmic ping that translated to roughly fifteen hours before the Key yanked me home or stranded me. A chill rippled over sweat?slick skin. Work faster.

  I remembered the bicycle—my plan for quick supply runs. I jogged onto the porch, war?hammer bumping my thigh, and scanned the overgrown curb. Nothing. Just crushed grass where I’d laid it. My breath caught. “You’ve gotta be kidding.” I limped to the street, heart pounding, found only a faint pair of tire ruts leading south. Someone had stolen it within an hour of my arrival.

  “Son of a—” I bit off the rest, kicked a chunk of concrete. Pain zinged up my toe. Bike gone, sunset coming, fifteen hours shrinking. Cursing under my breath, I retreated inside and shoved a dresser in front of the door for good measure.

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  Dusk seeped through cracks in the boards, turning the cottage into a cavern of amber gloom. I lit a stub of candle set in an old mason jar and spread my gear on the living?room floorboards:

  Pearls: 27

  Cash: $8,545—two grand scavenged earlier, $500 from the red?armored corpses, plus the fat roll from the roamer pocket, minus grime?ruined bills I’d tossed.

  Weapons: War?hammer (solid), pistol with half a magazine, bent shotgun (maybe salvageable), short sword, K-Bar combat knife, Compound bow with 12 arrows.

  Food & Water: Eleven MREs, 13 purified bottles, two purifier straws.

  Tools: Hammer, nails, small coil of rope, half roll of duct tape.

  Time: 14 hours?57 minutes—according to the insistent tick in my skull.

  Not great. But not hopeless.

  Night pressed against the boarded windows like a living thing. I set my phone—miraculously still half?charged—to alarm four in the morning; any longer and I might oversleep the Gate. I stuffed a rolled coat under my head, kept the war?hammer within arm’s reach, and lay down on bare floorboards. Every creak of the house felt amplified. My muscles twitched, replaying the afternoon’s hammer swings and the men’s screams beneath a roamer pile. Eventually exhaustion crushed the noise, and I slid into a dreamless pit.

  The alarm’s tinny chirp jolted me upright in blue?gray predawn. For a second I forgot where I was—then the boarded windows, the dust, the war?hammer pulled everything into focus. The internal countdown chimed again: five hours left.

  My body protested—stiff, filthy, starving for real food—but adrenaline silenced it. I shoved a MRE into my pack, checked the pistol’s chamber, and slung gear over aching shoulders. The cottage was as secure as I could make it, but it wouldn’t matter if I missed the Gate. I had five hours to scavenge a new ride, maybe find Anna, and then I looked at the Burnished copper door and felt the key in my pocket.

  “Five hours,” I whispered to the empty room, voice rough. “Move.”

  I slipped outside into a dawn painted the color of bruised peaches, war?hammer ready, and started south down the weed?choked street—determined not to waste another second.