novelraw Chapter 74: New Plan
Chapter 74: New Plan
The Hummer’s tires crunched over the salt-stained slush, the sound muffled by the thick silence of the passengers inside. Zubair drove with one hand on the wheel, the other on his thigh, unmoving. Lachlan sat in the passenger seat, boot propped against the dash, half-tuned in to the static on the emergency radio.
Sera sat in the back, quiet, content to watch the buildings pass in fractured reflection on the tinted glass.
They’d loaded up as much as they could carry from the supply depot—ramen, rice, oil, dry protein. The Hummer was full. So was the secondary truck trailing behind them.
"Still light out," Zubair muttered, glancing at the clock embedded in the dash.
"Three hours till sunset, give or take," Lachlan added. "Could hit one more spot."
"I’m not sure there’s room for anything else," Sera said dryly.
"There’s always room for more supplies," Lachlan said with a grin, twisting to glance at her. "You just have to get creative. I once packed three months of MREs under a gym floor."
Zubair’s eyes didn’t leave the road. "We’re not pulling up floorboards."
"You’re no fun," Lachlan muttered.
Ahead of them, the skyline opened up into a hollowed-out shopping district. Glass walls glared in the sun. Signs hung limp from twisted scaffolding.
"Mall?" Zubair asked.
"It’s the biggest one in City H," Lachlan said. "Massive place. Six levels. Parking structure on the north side."
"I don’t care," Sera said. "As long as I don’t have to climb over any perfume kiosks. The smell gives me a migraine"
Lachlan pointed. "No kiosks. You see that?"
She followed his gesture.
The mall loomed like a concrete beast—grey and angled—but beside it, attached by a covered glass tunnel, was something entirely different.
A tower of steel and green-tinted windows. Elegant. Jagged in design. Its top floor sparkled even in the fading light, the glass up there darker—reinforced.
Sera blinked once. Then again.
Casino.
Hotel.
Penthouse.
Mine.
She didn’t say it. Not aloud. But the creature inside her didn’t need to speak either. It simply shifted, calm and certain.
"That," Lachlan said, clearly pleased with himself, "is the City H Casino and Hotel. Ten bucks says the only place more secure in the city was the bank vault."
Zubair didn’t react.
"Seriously," Lachlan went on. "Two floors of luxury suites. Top floor was the owner’s private residence—reinforced, bulletproof glass, backup power, internal filtration. There was even a wine cellar at one point. Of course, it is the only living space in the entire building. The rest is dedicated to the casino. If you look over on the other side, you can see the hotel that is attached to it. It’s the most expensive hotel here, unless of course you go for age over comfort. But it’s all in there. Over a thousand rooms, a gym, a pool, everything a person could need to keep themselves happy for a long period of time without ever having to walk outside."
Sera looked at where he was pointing and noticed the three sky tunnels that connected the three separate buildings via the second floor. It made the structures look like a massive triangle, where the mall connected to both the hotel and the casino with two tunnels, and the hotel connected with the casino with a single sky tunnel.
The Hummer circled the edge of the mall complex, the sun casting long bars of light across the pavement. Several dozen abandoned cars sat rusted in the parking lot. Some were broken from the first day of the apocalypse when people were crashing into each other, but Sera couldn’t help but see the tow truck carting the cars away.
The city was doing the bare minimum to make sure that there was no evidence of three days ago, but Sera didn’t think that it would be that easy to wipe the minds of the population.
Or convince them that the zombies were nothing more than just a bunch of violent mental patients that managed to escape.
No matter what the woman said at the store, no matter what the news was saying on the television.
It wasn’t that simple.
Sera let out a soft sigh as she turned back to the casino building. The government should be warning its people what was happening. They knew, they had always known. But instead, they were more than willing to let the majority of people die off.
The only problem with that was only people who listened to the government would die off. Those that didn’t give a fuck would be out collecting supplies and getting what they needed.
They passed a shattered delivery truck lodged halfway through a café window. Then turned again.
The casino’s main entrance had collapsed when a massive city bus plowed into one of the supporting pillars, but the tower itself stood tall. Untouched. Like it had been waiting.
It wasn’t about safety; it was about sovereignty.
And if the entire city was going to be under water soon, then Sera was going to make sure that she was in the highest building, on the highest floor.
"That hotel would be a fantastic place to retire," Lachlan continue cheerfully, pulling Sera from her thoughts. "Assuming you can get past the thousand-plus zombie tourists probably locked inside. The elevators would probably be shot, and you would have to weld the fire escapes shut to keep out looters."
Sera didn’t reply. She was already memorizing entry points. But not of the hotel... but of the casino beside it.
"You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?" he said.
"No," she replied with a shake of her head.
"You’re absolutely thinking about it," chuckled Lachlan with a sake of his head. "I see your brain going."
Zubair cut the engine. "We hit the mall. Nothing else."
"Fine," Lachlan said with a smirk, hopping out of the passenger side. "But if you see a roulette wheel, call me. I left something there during the last bachelor party I went to in Country A."
Sera remained in the vehicle for a moment longer.
The casino tower gleamed in the rearview mirror. A single beam of light caught the corner of the penthouse windows. They shimmered. Untouched.
It is ours, hissed the creature inside of her, clawing at the idea of getting to the casino. We kill anyone who stops us.
It looked like the creature and her were on the same side when it came to that building after all. That would make it so much easier.
She opened the door and stepped out into the cold.