Chapter 248: They Could Knock Until Their Hands Fell Off

DOVE’S POV

The first demand came from a loudspeaker outside the front shop.

Residents were to open their doors. Supplies would be collected. Women would be moved for their safety. Anyone resisting would be treated as part of the problem.

Dove stood in the room she had paid to keep and felt something cold settle beneath the heat.

"That’s a lot of words for no," she said.

Edrik checked the front window from the side, keeping out of the direct opening. Thorne moved the last physical bags toward the rear door. The system storefront was already packed, their owned supplies and belongings stored, and the generator safely away with the convoy.

They were not beginning from nothing. Dove held on to that while the men outside began striking the neighboring door.

"Rear yard, then the pickup if the lane is clear," she said. "If it isn’t, the outside stairs to the clinic."

Both husbands nodded. She did not need to ask whether they had heard her.

At the front, their neighbor shouted that families were still inside. A different voice answered him, angry and frightened, telling the attackers to leave. Ordinary people had not all become monsters overnight. Some were hiding, some resisting, some trying to move children and injured relatives before the street closed around them.

That made the armed men at the doors more frightening, not less. They had chosen this while everyone else was busy trying to survive.

Dove slung the ready bag across her body and checked that its strap would not catch on the gate. Water, food, the two household treatment bottles, cloths. Her books and movie player were already stored separately. She could carry the bag and still move her hands.

Sprout offered to display her packed inventory.

"Not now," she thought. "Only tell me if I’ve missed something that stops me using what I already have."

"Your packed shop is secure. Your exit remains a physical route."

"Then let’s keep using it."

A shot cracked outside. Dove flinched hard enough that the bag struck her hip. Edrik looked back at her immediately.

"I heard it," she said before he could ask. "I’m moving."

He nodded, proud and grim at once, and went to the front door when its latch began giving under repeated blows. He held the existing metal brace while his power reinforced it, keeping contact as the wood around it shook. His palm stayed pressed against it, sweat running down his wrist as another impact shook the wood.

Thorne guided Dove toward the rear room. A man forced an arm through a broken section of the front panel, reaching for the inner latch. Edrik drove him back and covered the opening with his weapon. Dove heard their neighbor calling for his helper and shouted that the clinic side gate was still reachable. She could not go back into the street for them. She could give them the route she had checked and keep moving toward it herself.

The next shot came from outside, and everyone in the room heard the difference between a threat shouted through a door and something that could cross it.

Dove crouched behind the solid part of the counter, found the clear path she had kept, and moved when Thorne did. She did not stop to stare at the room she might never see again.

At the rear doorway, a loose upper panel jolted free as the building shook. Thorne touched the metal strip beside the frame, and a small silver web caught the falling piece at arm’s length. His face tightened with the effort.

"Through," he said.

Dove went beneath the held panel and into the yard. It was the same size it had been yesterday, which should not have surprised her, but fear made everything feel both too close and impossibly far away. The pickup stood along the wall. The side gate led toward the clinic road. She could see the outside stairs of the neighboring building beyond it.

She tried the gate carefully rather than flinging it open. Voices sounded from the lane, too close to trust. A truck blocked the easier turn toward the street.

"Not the pickup yet," she called back. "We use the stairs."

Thorne released the panel after she cleared it, letting it fall behind him instead of spending strength holding useless debris. He followed her into the yard as Edrik backed through the rear room, keeping the armed men at the front from rushing after them.

Dove moved a loose basket out of the path and checked the next gate. Her hands were steady enough to work, even while her heartbeat seemed determined to climb out of her throat.

Across the lane, a security group was trying to hold the public approach to the clinic. She saw horns above the moving men and knew Ash was there, but he could not reach through buildings and make the distance disappear.

She had a route. She needed to use it.

Edrik reached the yard just as a heavy impact struck the outer wall near the pickup. Bricks shifted above the narrow space between the vehicle and the gate. Thorne caught Dove around the waist and pulled her back against him before she could step beneath the falling edge.

The masonry came down with a crash that filled the yard with dust.

For a second, she could not see the pickup at all. She covered her mouth, blinked grit from her eyes, and listened for both husbands.

Edrik’s hand found her shoulder. Thorne was still holding her. Both alive, both close.

When the dust thinned, broken brick and timber blocked the short path to the vehicle. The pickup might still run. They could not reach its door without climbing beneath more loose wall. Dove could store the rubble she touched, but reaching it meant stepping under the part still falling. The armed men were already through the front. She was not spending their last seconds trying to save a truck.

Behind them, the front door finally broke.

Dove looked toward the neighboring stairs, still standing beyond the side gate.

"We leave the truck," she said, taking Edrik’s hand and turning toward the route she had chosen. "We don’t leave each other."

Then boots hit the floor inside their bedroom.