"What was that all about?" Logan tugged at my elbow, halting my steps; Bean was still screaming behind the cellar door.

I glared at him. "Not here," I said, flitting my gaze to Charlie bound on the chair. The boy had a horrified look in his eyes, bellowing something incoherent through his gagged mouth; he recognized me.

Jun hovered not far from him, arms crossed, staring back at me. Peter did the same, although I could not read the look he gave me. Was that worry? Mild amusement? Or perhaps, something else?

"Keep an eye on him," I said to Jun, and he nodded.

I marched up the stairs with Peter and Logan following close to my heels. Logan's face had turned red, breathing through his nose, and I assumed he might just puke right then and there. Though, he kept it together. Peter shut the door to the basement, and I finally rest myself on a couch. Logan remained standing in front of him.

"You're gonna kill both of them." It was not a question.

I sighed. "We have to."

Logan shifted on the spot. "Can't we just do something else other than that?"

"Like what?" Peter asked smugly.

"I don't know. Put them in the cellar? Bind them until this is all over?"

"Then, they'll starve to death once we leave. We have no intention of staying another day in this fucking town. When we get Yousef, Miguel, and Haskell, we're out of here. The sooner, the better. I don't want to leave loose ends, and Bean and Charlie are one."

"We'll be far away before they give us any trouble."

"They'll hunt us down."

"You don't know that."

"They'll hunt us down because that's what I would do. I've already killed their friends—and I killed two brothers—and who knows how many want to settle that score. Plenty, Logan."

"And it's not your fault, Bren," said Peter. I ignored him.

"Well, I think we've killed enough, don't you?" Something cracked in Logan's throat.

"Yes, we did." A knot clenched in my chest. "And we will kill more. If we're ever going back to Portland and reunite with our families, we can't live by the old rules anymore"—You have to survive—"not when others are already playing by different ones. Killing them now will be an act of mercy than leaving them to starvation or being torn apart by vectors. This way, our way, they die quicker."

"Only they won't."

I paused. "No," I said, gazing down to the floor, imagining Bean and Charlie facing each other, separated by one wall. "Although, that really depends on them. If they want it quicker, they'll give us what we want. If not, then, they'll die slow."

"Yeah, stop arguing, Logan," Peter interjected with a grin. "If you can't handle a little blood, why don't you go fuck off and let the big boys handle this. Go stay with Alfie."

Logan turned a shade redder. "I'm not here to argue!"

"Your mouth is still moving."

"I'm laying out all our options!"

"Sounds to me like arguing," Peter said with a sly grin.

"You know what, Gauthier, fuck you—"

I had enough. "Boys! Boys! Stop it! I don't want to hear any of this!" They both shut up. I massaged my temples with my fingers and trying to calm my nerves. "We gave Bean a little time to 'think,' and frankly, I also want this time for a little peace and quiet. I don't want to get back down there as much as you do, but I have to."

Peter shook his head and started walking toward the stairs leading to the upper floor. "I'm gonna get something to eat while we wait. You want something, Bren?"

"I'm not hungry."

Peter shrugged. "I'll get you some biscuits."

Logan turned around to face him. "Can I have—"

"None for you." Peter went upstairs.

Logan tightened his lips and remained where he stood, the silence hanging between us, but then he said, "You know, I see your point, even if it's hard for me to wrap my head around it."

I huffed and turned away from him. "Logan. Not now, please," I said. I let my head fall toward a throw pillow, and as if they had a mind of their own, my legs swing up and rest across the sofa. It almost made me fall asleep.

Logan didn't want to give up. "No, I see your point, and I know this is the only way, and I just thought..." Logan trailed off. His shoulders slumped down as he fell on the chair opposite the sofa, heaving a sigh. "I guess I just want a little warning first, you know? To prepare me? I almost shit my pants in there."

"It's my bad. I should have laid out my plans clearly. I just focused on how short on time we were."

"You don't have to carry this all on your shoulders, you know. Alfie, me, and though I hate to say it, even Peter, we're here to help. Maybe that new dude, too. I just don't want you to feel like all our problems are on you. I got your back, remember? Since New York, I got you."

"I remember."

"Still, I don't know you had it in you. I mean, after what we did to Payne, I guess we're all capable of doing things like that."

"And neither did I."

"I'm sorry if I sound like I want to fight you."

"And I'm sorry for snapping at you."

"So we're good?"

"We're good."

Logan smiled. "Do you think that old man is going to?"

"To what?"

"Break. You seem sure of it."

"Honestly? I don't know. But it's worth a try, and we're running out of time. Who knows what Carl might do to the others and what the Alphas have to say about it. They seem organized in this town, and their leadership won't ignore this little slight one bit. We had no idea how they communicate with each other."

"Do you think there are others across the country?"

"After what we've seen, they seem like a large group, probably two hundred from this town alone. And what? We killed probably less than thirty of their numbers?"

"Maybe there's more than two hundred."

"Hm. That's a scary thought. I wouldn't doubt if they managed to recruit lots of people to their cause over the past two months. Trying to overthrow the government for mismanaging the pandemic, again, right after we had one last year? Yeah. Very likely. A lot of angry people out there, angry enough to do fucked-up things for fucked-up people, all because of politics, and nothing to do about survival."

"He was adamant at getting us alive, though. That's strange to me. Maybe they're trying to recruit us as soldiers."

"I don't care what they want with us so long as I'm far away from them, and that's probably changed already. I think he wants us dead. As you said, we did kill a lot of his men."

"You think we shouldn't have bulldozed through them?"

I managed a weak grin. "Is that what you call it? Bulldozed?"

"It seems fitting. We did kill a lot of them. It's a miracle none of us died yet."

"We caught them by surprise." I shrugged. "And they didn't really give us any choice when they're shooting at you and calling you...other names."

"We're nothing like them, are we?"

I frowned. I knew what he was getting at. It was better to argue than face the inevitable: Our new world and its violent means. It made it easier to forget the old world behind with so much death surrounding you.

"We're still good people, Logan," I said, and he looked up to meet my eye. "But sometimes, good people have to do bad things for the greater good."

Logan was quiet for a minute, and then he said, "Yeah. But for how long?"

"Look, we have to think that we're doing the right thing," I said. "What do we have to live for if we aren't?"

——

We went into the cellar six more times.

Peter punched him bloody until his eyes puffed up shut, his upper lip torn open, and another couple of his teeth got loose. Then, I sliced off his pinky finger when he refused to tell me their base's location for the fifteenth time. By the twentieth refusal, I had taken his thumb and his left ear.

A little piece of me wanted to break, bile catching up my throat. I held it together, even when I walked out of that room, and Charlie's face turned from horror to anger to resignation. When he looked at me for the monster that I was. I ignored him, and that look.

When I walked up the steps back on that sofa, I didn't want everyone to leave me in my own thoughts, for they scared me half to death. I wanted Logan to argue with me more, to tether me back out of my senses, but even then, he had resigned himself to following my orders. I realized no one wanted to do the dirty job, except maybe Peter, and between him and me, he would do much worse things to Bean and Charlie without any restraints, and I shuddered to imagine the state they'd be in if I left them in Peter's hands.

There was no other person to do it properly than me.

Am I still a good person? I wondered. No. I had to be. I had to.

I wanted to scream at Logan, maybe pick up a fight with him, but it was only the adrenaline guiding my decisions, and yet I also didn't want him to; a mash of wants and needs and cares that mounted over my head until I drowned under it. I tried to stay calm by watching the stars out from the backyard, but it did not give me peace. All I saw were the light in Bean's eyes slowly dying away.

Am I still a good person?

Maybe I needed a good fuck, anything to get my mind off from what I had done, closed my eyes and welcomed my desperate need for a man's touch. Peter would be more than willing, and every look he gave me hungered for it, and to my shock, the man was actually aroused by the entire thing. My mind argued on it, yet I wanted to be selfish, thinking it doesn't matter what mental state Peter was in as long as I had my needs taken care of. Maybe both of us needed that. Perhaps that would cure him.

Then I thought of that man on the pond, my first kill, flailing toward the surface as he drowned, and that little lustful fire died inside me.

I was exhausted, almost twenty-four hours without sleep, my mind in a haze, one decision after the other without dwelling on it. I knew I couldn't go on much longer. I needed to end this quickly before I crashed, or before I took the mad and regretful decision to bring any of the men to bed with me, no matter who it was.

So, on the sixth time I entered the cellar, I smashed a hammer on Bean's right knee. I could tell right away that he wouldn't be able to walk properly again. And for that, it worked.

"I'll tell you!" He whimpered, thrashing on his seat as he rode the pain. "For fuck's sake, I'll tell you!" He looked down on his shattered knee and sobbed. "God damn you."

"You haven't been paying attention. God's not down here. I am."

Bean shot me a deathly glare, but a second later, it faltered, and I realized I had done the impossible. I managed to break him. "You killed my dog. My boy!" He sniveled. "He's my son's dog. You killed him, too! You killed him for a second time!"

"I don't care," I said.

"He was a gift. Bean was all I had of him left, and you killed him!"

"Then, you'll meet both of them again, and it'll be easier than you can ever imagine."

"You killed them..." his voice fell off.

"Tell me then. Where are they?"

Bean hesitated for a while longer. I made a show of gripping the hammer tightly, glancing down at his other knee, and he sniffled. "Okay, okay. There's another school."

"Go on," Peter urged impatiently. I raised my hand to silence him, and he slid back into the dark corner.

Bean eyed him carefully before fixing his eyes back on me. "It's west of town. A local community college. Lower Delaware County College. We made its football stadium our home base."

"How many men?"

"At least two thousand," he said. From this, his eyes glinted, though he did not grin. He knew we would be dead against a force like that.

I raised my brows. "Exact numbers, please." I didn't need to know how many since it didn't really matter how large the group was. We were fucked anyway, no matter how we looked at it.

"Two thousand and eighty-nine," Bean answered.

"How many can fight?"

"About five hundred."

"That many?" Logan asked.

Bean scoffed. "You're no longer in the city, boy. We here can fight."

"It doesn't look like it to me," Peter said, sounding bored.

"You only met our benchwarmers. Everyone who knows how to fight is back home, and they've fought tooth-and-nail trying to retake this town, our home, from those infected fuckers, and they will fight the same against the lot of you. When you all march down there, you are dead. I guess I have something to laugh at before I die, you egg-headed idiots. So, kill me! Kill me now and be done with it."

I narrowed my gaze, saw him eyeing my hammer. Would I kill him with it? Bash his head? He then looked to my gun holstered at my hip, and perhaps, he thought I would grant him a merciful death with a quick one. Then he shifted uncomfortably when his eyes landed on my icepick, and maybe I'm the bloodthirsty monster he already thought of me, and I would have my way with him, piece by piece.

"Bring him in," I said over my shoulder.

Peter pounded his fist against the door and opened it. Jun and Charlie waited on the other side. Tears streamed from his eyes, his mouth still gagged, and it was apparent he heard the entire conversation.

"Tell him what you told me," I said to Charlie. Jun pulled the gag off him. From the corner of my eye, Bean sat rigidly, his bruised lips parted. His face went pale underneath the grime and the dried blood.

Charlie's lips quivered. "There's a strip mall six miles south from the high school, well-fortified since the beginning of the outbreak. There were four CRA camps littered across town for the refugees, and we were able to retake all of them and drove the soldiers out. The mall is one of them."

"How could you!" Bean shouted. And my fears came true. He reeked of lies, and Bean wouldn't give up that easily, even when I had already cut pieces out of him.

Peter slapped him across the cheek, screaming, "Quiet!" Bean slowly righted himself up, moving his jaw from side-to-side.

"And this school he speaks of?" I asked.

Charlie looked away from Bean. "It's overrun by the crazies. We trapped two thousand of them inside the stadium."

I gave Bean a side-eye. You want us trapped there, don't you? Bean didn't meet my gaze.

"And?" I asked.

Charlie continued. "Our only base left is the mall and some of the CRA outposts. But that's it. There's only six hundred of us in total. I know because I was part of the census last week."

"Ah. And how many can fight?"

"Barely one-fifty. You already took a good chunk out of Carl's scouts."

"He lies! It's not true! He's a fucking liar!" Bean roared. "Once I get out of here, I'm gonna wrap my hands on your neck, boy! Just wait and see! Your father's a coward just like you. I expected better!"

A pained look crossed Charlie's face. Between them, Charlie looked the most sincere. He had heard Bean's screams of anguish for three straight hours. After we finished cutting off Bean's two fingers and walked out of the cellar for the third time, Charlie spilled everything. We only did it three more after to make sure Charlie wasn't lying to us, to show him what happened if he did.

Charlie picked self-preservation, blood-related or not.

I turned to face Bean. "If you are two thousand strong as you claimed, then that school we burnt down would have a lot of people in them. It doesn't make sense to me for you all to abandon a camp that big and well-supplied for only fifteen men. If I were you and I have that many people, I would have to spread my large population across those outposts to gain control of this town and kept those, er, crazies out. As we can see, that didn't happen."

I also wanted to tell him that they were spread out too thinly, which made them vulnerable to outside attacks, that their blind focus to retake control of the town from the vectors ignored their needs for safety as a whole...and that's what I took advantage of. I had already deduced that the mall was probably manned and protected by a skeleton crew if they're also holding onto the other outposts left in town. I didn't tell him those because it wouldn't matter much to a dead man.

I stepped closer to him. "I believe you when you said there is a lot of you. Were. One group went to the resort, far from town, but they had brought most of the supplies with them, and well, another group stayed in town. That's when the Alphas walked in and planted their roots here, and they used the townsfolk to get rid of the CRA and the soldiers."

"Then, once the dust clears, the Alphas are now in control, thereby the townsfolk had their home back." Bean remained quiet. "But then they started complaining about the Alphas' tactics; stealing, murdering, ambushing strangers, perhaps abusing their power. Am I getting close? When they wanted you all gone, the only way to silence them is by destroying them, right? Is that what Carl did? Is that what you did? You joined them and fought your own neighbors, your own friends. That's what Charlie told me. You took him in after you killed his parents."

Bean made a snort. "Ha! Spare me your sense of superiority, you pathetic boy." Bean sneered. "And Charlie, I taught you everything, and you betray me like a weasel? What? Can't you handle a little blood? Fucking pathetic, you worthless worm. And you!" He looked at me. "You're no saint. Don't get over your head. You look more pathetic than he was."

"I didn't say that I was." I cocked my head to Jun. "get the boy out of here," I said, and Jun escorted Charlie out of the cellar. I regarded Bean once again. "And besides, how many people have you killed?"

Bean shook his head and chuckled. "I did what I had to do to survive like all of us. You can't blame me for that. I did it for my family. For my friends."

"Semantics. You did all those to survive, yes, no argument there," I said. I placed the hammer on my right hand—my dominant hand. "Just so we're both in agreement: I will do the same for mine."

I bashed the hammer's claw over Bean's head, sinking deep into his skull. He keeled over, bringing the chair with him, and he crashed to the ground. His legs twitched for a couple of seconds longer, thrashing like a fish out of water. But then his body stilled rigid, the low hiss of his breath escaping his lungs.

Bean was dead.

——

Peter stared at the slumped body. "At least he gets to be with his dog."

"Ah hell, Gauthier! Too soon, man. Have some respect," Logan said, and he stomped out of the cellar. "I'm gonna get the tarp."

From beyond the wall, I could hear Charlie sobbing, though Jun didn't seem to comfort him, probably standing there in silence, looking at the boy like some lost puppy begging for food. Jun seemed pleased when I told him earlier that I was going to kill Bean. He was disappointed when I told him that Charlie was still useful since he could lead us to their base.

I did threaten to feed him alive to the vectors. Logan was genuine enough to corroborate that threat, and Charlie probably saw the truth in his gaze that I wasn't bluffing.