Chapter 95 - 94 - 94: The Family That Kept Losing

Chapter 95: Chapter 94: Chapter 94: The Family That Kept Losing

They had escaped the mansion.

They had survived the outbreak.

But the price had already been taken.

The vehicles continued down the road, leaving the chaos behind them. Nobody spoke much anymore. Even Caleb’s usual voice was missing from the back seat, leaving an uncomfortable space that nobody seemed willing to acknowledge.

Veronica kept her phone in her hand.

Every few minutes, she checked the screen.

Nothing.

She called Alexander again.

The call rang several times before ending.

Still nothing.

"Try again later," one of the bodyguards said quietly.

Veronica looked at him.

"I know."

She lowered the phone, but she didn’t put it away.

Iris remembered that part clearly.

At the time, she hadn’t thought much about it. The novel had moved quickly after Caleb’s death, and there had been so many things happening that Iris had barely had time to process one scene before another began.

Now, sitting beneath the tree in Velaris, she understood how cruel that pacing had been.

The Hales hadn’t even had time to grieve.

They had to keep moving.

For the first few days, they were actually doing better than most people.

They had several vehicles, enough supplies to last for a while, weapons, trained bodyguards, and money that still had some value in a world where people hadn’t completely stopped caring about it.

They also had connections.

At least, they had connections that still answered their calls.

For a short while, that was enough.

The family found a temporary place to stay and turned it into something resembling a camp. The bodyguards took turns guarding the entrances while the others sorted through whatever supplies they had managed to bring from the mansion.

Veronica insisted on keeping everything organized.

"How much water do we have left?"

"Enough for several days."

"Several isn’t a number."

The bodyguard glanced at the clipboard in his hand.

"Six days if we ration it."

"Then make it seven."

He stared at her.

"Mrs. Hale..."

"Make it seven."

He sighed and nodded.

Iris almost smiled at the memory.

That was Veronica.

Even when everything around her was falling apart, she still tried to solve problems as though there had to be a solution somewhere.

And sometimes, there was.

The first supply run went well.

The second one didn’t.

The third barely brought anything back.

Stores had already been emptied by frightened civilians, and the roads became more dangerous every time the bodyguards ventured farther from their temporary shelter.

Money stopped being useful surprisingly quickly.

Nobody cared who the Hales were when there was a zombie between them and a bottle of water.

Iris remembered one particular scene where a bodyguard returned with only two bags of food after spending almost the entire day searching.

Veronica looked at the bags.

"That’s all?"

"That’s all we could find."

She nodded.

"Then we’ll make it work."

She always said that.

We’ll make it work.

Iris remembered hearing those words several times throughout the novel.

At first, they sounded reassuring.

Later, they started sounding desperate.

The family began using things they had originally planned to save.

Medicine disappeared faster than expected.

A vehicle broke down and couldn’t be repaired.

One of the bodyguards injured his arm while fighting a group of infected and couldn’t hold a weapon properly for several days.

Nobody was useless, but everyone was becoming tired.

That was the part the novel had made easy to overlook.

The apocalypse wasn’t only dangerous because of the zombies.

It was exhausting.

Every day demanded something from them.

Food had to be found. Water had to be protected. Someone had to stay awake at night. Someone had to check the surroundings before anyone could leave the building.

And every time they stopped, they had to wonder whether staying there was safer than moving.

The Hale family had once been used to having people handle those problems for them.

Now there weren’t enough people to handle everything.

Iris remembered reading those Chapters and thinking the family was simply unlucky.

Now she knew better.

They weren’t unlucky.

They were losing the advantages they had started with.

One by one.

And the apocalypse didn’t give anything back.

There were still moments when things almost felt normal.

Someone would make a stupid joke during dinner.

One of the younger family members would complain about the food.

A bodyguard would argue with someone about taking the night shift.

Then everyone would remember why they were sitting inside a half-abandoned building instead of their mansion.

The laughter would disappear.

The conversations would become quieter.

Then someone would check the doors again.

Iris remembered how strange it was to read those scenes back then.

She had always been waiting for Rose.

Rose’s story was moving in the opposite direction.

While the Hales were struggling to stretch their supplies, Rose was meeting people who would eventually become part of her group.

While the Hales were losing resources, Rose was gaining allies.

The novel would briefly leave the Hale family and follow her for a few Chapters before returning to them.

Iris remembered those transitions now.

Back then, she had barely noticed what they meant.

The protagonist’s world was expanding.

The Hale family’s world was shrinking.

And neither side knew how the other was progressing.

The Hales eventually stopped trying to contact most of their old connections.

There was simply no point.

Some numbers never answered.

Some people had disappeared.

Others were probably dead.

Alexander was still the name Veronica checked for most often.

She never stopped calling.

Even when everyone else had begun suggesting that they should move on, she refused.

"He’s out there," she said one evening.

Nobody answered.

"He has to be."

One of the family members looked down.

"Mom..."

"I said he’s out there."

Her voice wasn’t loud.

It didn’t need to be.

The conversation ended there.

Iris remembered that moment more clearly than some of the bigger scenes.

Because Veronica had still been holding the family together.

She couldn’t afford to fall apart.

Not yet.

But the losses continued.

Another person disappeared during a supply run.

A bodyguard was bitten and had to be separated from the others before the infection took hold.

Someone else left after an argument, convinced that staying with the Hales was becoming more dangerous than leaving alone.

The family became smaller.

The rooms became emptier.

The conversations became shorter.

And somewhere in all of that, the original Iris became quieter too.

She had already been disliked before the apocalypse.

The rumors about Rose hadn’t disappeared simply because the world had ended.

If anything, the collapse gave people even more reasons to distrust her.

Some family members remembered what had happened before.

Others simply didn’t know what to make of her.

She wasn’t useful enough to be protected at all costs, yet she was still a member of the Hale family.

That complicated everything.

Iris remembered how the novel described her.

Always in the background.

Always tense.

Always trying to avoid making another mistake.

The original Iris had changed after Caleb’s death.

She spoke less.

She stopped joining conversations unless someone asked her something directly.

And whenever something went wrong, she seemed to assume everyone was already looking at her.

Perhaps sometimes they were.

Perhaps sometimes she only thought they were.

The novel never made it clear.

That was another thing Iris hated about those Chapters.

There was no easy answer.

No moment where someone sat beside the original Iris and told her that what happened wasn’t entirely her fault.

She had frozen.

Caleb had died.

And she had to live with that.

Iris opened her eyes.

The leaves above her shifted in the breeze.

For a moment, she didn’t know where she was.

Then she saw the familiar walls of Velaris through the trees.

The memory hadn’t disappeared.

It had simply pulled away.

Iris looked toward the direction of the Hale residence.

Caleb was alive.

The thought still felt strange sometimes.

Not because she had forgotten that she saved him, but because she remembered exactly what the original story had taken from him.

She had read the scene.

She had watched the family lose him.

She had watched Veronica continue forward while carrying that grief.

And she had watched the original Iris become smaller and smaller as everything around her fell apart.

Yet none of that had happened this time.

Not Caleb’s death.

Not the same collapse.

Not the same ending.

Iris lowered her gaze.

There were still parts of the story she hadn’t remembered yet.

She could feel them waiting somewhere beneath the memories she’d already uncovered.

The Hale family hadn’t fallen apart overnight.

It had taken time.

Loss after loss.

Until there was barely anything left of the family that had once seemed untouchable.

And if Iris remembered correctly, Caleb wasn’t the only person they would lose.

She closed her eyes again.

This time, she was ready to continue.