Apartment 905 by Sahin, Ned (readnow .TXT) 📕

and eyes wide open. This post-apocalyptic beast’s success is off the charts, especially about first impressions.

“Lift the gate. We’re here for an urgent pickup,” I say through my open window. I decide to save kindness for another day when I notice how fascinated they are about the truck. I think the people who own the Centaur are the ones who make demands in this new world.

“Tiana didn’t say anything about that. Let me call her,” one of the Saviors says after moving his eyes away from the truck for a second to glance at me. The second Savior watches us from the other side of the truck.

“We don’t have time for that. There has been an incident in Raleigh. Boss wants food stock immediately for a remote operation,” I say, trying to use the sense of urgency psychology. I move the truck a few feet forward to rush him.

I am not sure if it was a good idea to mention the incident since Toshi and I became two of the most wanted people in the East as a result of it.

Since he said, “Let me call her,” I figure he doesn’t have a radio. I hope he didn’t hear about Raleigh.

“The boss sent his precious toy for a simple pickup?” he says. We most likely came across one of the most stubborn Saviors guards in the region. This thin gate is a joke, but this Savior is well-equipped to cause us trouble.

He looks at my t-shirt under my jacket. I unintentionally tilt my head down. I see blood on my chest. It must be the blood of the Savior who bumped me in the hall.

I feel like the guard is putting pieces together.

We can’t go back. I have to complete this personal mission. We also can’t risk exposing our identities. There is one option left.

I turn my head to look at Toshi in the command center. He understands my intention and hits the button.

A hissing sound is followed by a big cloud of orange gas all around the truck. Particles fly toward Saviors and they fall down in pain as they cover their eyes. They are probably making the burning feeling only worse by spreading the substance with their hands.

I push the gas pedal as hard as I can. The Centaur rears up and destroys the gate. We speed up toward the greenhouses. People are scrambling outside to understand what’s going on.

Toshi gets up in the turret and grabs the machine gun. I continue to accelerate the truck to make it hard to target in case there are guards among them.

I slow down once I see who the crowd is. They are the people who work at greenhouses. They are wearing green aprons, and they have various gardening tools in their hands. Almost all of them are women.

I stop about a hundred feet away from them. I open my door and stand on the doorstep while my other leg remains in the truck. Toshi holds the machine gun handles and watches the crowd closely.

Everybody is looking at us as if they are watching a movie. Our big entrance to the camp is probably the first exciting thing they have seen since the world went upside down.

While I scan the crowd for a familiar face, they just stare at us in shock except for one person. She walks forward, pushing others away. She stops one step in front of the crowd and looks at me with a confused face.

“Kathleen, get in the truck!” I yell.

I hear the happiness and excitement in my own voice. Since my bug-out from the apartment building, I have thought about her almost every day. I kept regretting throwing that paper to her balcony. Her reaction when Saviors took her away has been stuck in my mind all this time.

“Matt, what’s going on? What…are you doing here!” she says, perhaps trying to figure out why I have a Saviors jacket, what the heck this truck is, why I want her to get in, and all other questions that need answers to connect the dots.

“I don’t have time to explain. Trust me! Get in the truck!” I get back to the driver seat and reach out to the passenger door to open it. We should leave before people start clamoring. She runs to the truck and climbs to the passenger seat.

In front of all the puzzled eyes, I make a U-turn and drive back to the gate. The guards are no longer screaming out of pain, but they are still on the ground, trying to open their eyes. We drive over the broken pieces of the gate and head back to the highway.

“Matt, what is this?” she asks with wide eyes.

“I am so happy to see you! I thought I would never see you again after that day… The day Saviors took you away,” I say.

She looks more confused now. “You were there? I thought you left the city to find your family long before?”

I wish that was the case. She wouldn’t have gone through a painful process if I hadn’t exposed her hideaway.

“I need to tell you a few things about that day… and afterward,” I say. Recent memories come to my mind in a series of flashbacks. “Buckle up. It will be a long trip,” I say.

Chapter 16

We have been driving for about four hours.

There was only one Saviors checkpoint on the highway. They didn’t even try to stop us since they probably thought the state leader was in the truck.

We finally passed the North Carolina border and left the Saviors’ land behind. Even though North Carolina was our home, it feels good to be out of range from the gang.

We are now in Tennessee. I heard that most of the cities in the bridge states are abandoned but there are still peaceful local communities in several towns. On the contrary, some towns are managed by local mobs. Hopefully, they are nowhere near as big or cruel as Saviors.

We are all