Chapter 5: On the Road

The water went down like fire. Sweet, stinging against his cracked throat. The fruit the villagers shared with him felt like a banquet, though he barely tasted it before slipping the pieces into his bag. He filled his flask to the brim, checked the shotgun’s load, and set out.

His fingers brushed the patched pockets of his weather-worn cloak, pulling three more shells. A quiet reminder: he’d need to make more if he lived to return. Hunger still gnawed at his gut, exhaustion still pressed behind his eyes, but Alexander’s condition left no room for weakness. At least the gun wasn’t his only weapon. The knives at his belt. The rust-bitten knuckleduster clenched to his right hand, cold and familiar like an extention of his own bones. And hidden beneath his coat, two sharpened wooden stakes; never far from reach, never meant for anything but the Immortals.

He told no one where he was going; just as Alexander had asked. Irritation pricked at him - he had passed through this place before reaching the settlement. Why hadn’t the old man spoken of it sooner? He forced the thought away. The elder had his reasons. He had to. The road offered no answers, only cracked asphalt and silence. Beside him trotted Dog, muzzle lifted like a herald of purpose. The place lay only hours away, somewhere in the heart of the dead city, where the ancient marketplace bled into the wreckage of a world that had ended thirty years ago.

Once, in another lifetime, he had dreamed of becoming an archaeologist. As a young boy, he had been fascinated by the thought that before him, millions had lived, each leaving behind wonders. The only collection he had ever managed to gather while the world still lived was a series of magazines, each issue devoted to a different culture, each paired with a plastic replica of some monument. In his small hands had rested the Colosseum, the Acropolis, the Sphinx, the Taj Mahal - fragile imitations of greatness. What he wondered now was what an issue about their own civilization would look like, now that it too had become a relic of the past.

The title, he imagine, would be something like: "A Thousand and One Ways to Stupefy Yourself: A Short History of Western Civilization.” As for the plastic replica? A Coke can, maybe. Or perhaps, a miniature warhead. The finest treasures modern humanity had offered to the cosmos.

The closer he drew to the city’s heart, the more cautious his every move became. His path was broken into halts: crouching behind rubble, listening, measuring which way he would run when danger stirred. The city's ghost felt heavy like a living threat hidden in every corner. He loathed every inch of it: the asphalt that scorched beneath his boots, the skeletal remains of towers toppled into twisted heaps, the dust drifting constantly just above the ground like a faded carpet that refused to lift. Dog padded at his side, hackles faintly raised, as if the ruins exhaled warnings only it could scent.

Every sound carried menace. Thin, indistinct whistles wormed up from beneath the rubble. Packs of mutants gathered in circles of ember-light fires, their laughter brittle and wrong. Higher still, clouds trailed shadows that were not their own: ghosts plummeting through the gray sky, only to vanish into the broken streets. And through it all lingered the same awful stench: sulfur and ash, a taste of fire that coated the tongue, thick enough to chock memory. Nothing here was alive. Nothing endured but decay.

And yet, amid the silence of crumbling stone and drifting ash, a faint, grotesque sound reached his ears: laughter. Low, gurgling, and almost inhuman, it carried across the empty plaza like a promise of violence. He pressed Dog down at his side, quieting the animal’s growl, and inched closer to a low wall that offered cover. Ahead, four figures moved around the body of a mutant - three men and a woman - laughing as they prodded its entrails with long, crude wooden stakes. From the pitiful cries of the creature, Fabio could tell it was still alive, writhing in every brutal sensation.

Only one among them, a man, remained somewhat detached. He lounged atop the hood of an old motorized carriage, its frame grotesquely decorated with human skulls and fragments of bone. His gaze skimmed over the struggling mutant with apathetic indifference while the others reveled in the carnage.

He was clad head to toe in tight, worn leather, crudely stitched from scraps probably scavenged long ago. A long steel pipe, dented and scarred from repeated use, rested in his right hand, shifting slightly as though testing its weight with each subtle movement. His left arm ended at the elbow, replaced by a hook, sharp and ominous, its surface streaked with old stains that hinted it had claimed lives before. Fabio couldn’t make out his face beneath the crimson bandana that hid his mouth and nose and the dark goggles that swallowed his eyes. White-streaked hair spilled in wild tangles over his skull, jabbing outward like the quills of a predator ready to strike.

"Finish him!”

The command cracked like a whip over their laughter, sharp and sudden. Fabio ducked behind the wall, heart hammering, convinced they had spotted him. The only woman in the group, all reckless energy and teasing malice, plunged her knife into the mutant’s skull, putting a merciful end to its suffering. With a playful flip, she bounced toward the man.

"Tony, relax, babe! It’s been ages since we had this much fun!”

Tony leaned forward slowly. His left, metal arm hovered, and the hook at its end rested under her chin. She toyed with it, caressing the cold steel with delight as her blonde mohawk swayed. Tony pressed the hook a little more and pierced her skin - just enough for a few drops of blood to smear along its edge.

"We’re not here for fun,” he whispered, the malice in his tone sharper than his words. "Boss wants her. Nothing more. We need to find this fucking building.”

"Sure thing babe, but... do you think I can have a bite once she’s in our hands?”

"For the last time, Starr. She’s not for eating. She's an Immortal." Tony said impatiently and then leaning even closer to her added with a smile curling on his lips behind his bantana, "But maybe… if you are a good girl, I will let you have a sip before we hand her over.”

Starr squealed with delight, blowing a teasing kiss before flipping into the vehicle. Tony and the other two men followed, and the vehicle roared to life, leaving a cloud of dust, rust, and the suffocating smell of burned oil behind. Fabio didn’t need another clue. The house Alexander had marked was just two blocks away, and the chance these four bloodied, reckless Reavers were hunting a different Immortal was less than zero.

But, as he pressed out of the shadows, Fabio’s eyes narrowed. Tony’s words about a boss were stack in his mind. No Reaver he had ever known would speak of hierarchy in such a way. The implication was clear and chilling: these weren’t mere opportunistic killers. Someone - or even worse something - was orchestrating them.

He had to reach that house first.

The high-rises that once marked the city center had long since collapsed, reduced to carcasses of brick and concrete. Smaller houses on the other hand, clung stubbornly to existence. Roofs were torn away, walls half-collapsed, yet their foundations endured. These fractured shells gave the city the look of a corpse unwilling to rot entirely.

Fabio approached one such ruin: two-story house, once beautiful, now torn and battered, its inner frame defiantly intact behind the rubble. Somewhere in the basement, if the elder’s directions were right, waited the Immortal he had come to find. For now, the street remained empty; he hadn’t seen the Reavers or their carriage.

Inside, the main support column had collapsed, bringing the interior staircase down with it, though the ground-floor rooms remained largely intact. Only the dining room and a small portion of the living area had vanished beneath the debris. From the sloped heap, it was still possible to climb to the upper rooms without much trouble. Given more time, Fabio would already have been there, rifling through whatever might prove useful. But the thought of the violent group that without a doubt also searched for this place forced him to choose the quickest route. He knelt before Dog, meeting the gray stray’s eyes with a sharp, silent command, hoping his gaze alone would carry it.

"Stay here. If anyone comes, alert me.”

The dog tilted its head, puzzled, then scratched its left ear furiously. Fabio sighed and shook his head before rising. His eyes swept the ruined rooms, searching for any hint of a basement entrance. Almost against his will, he began to notice the remnants scattered among the wreckage.

Alexander had said this place once belonged to a vampire, but the more Fabio looked around, the less he could believe it. Everything here was too… ordinary. Immortals were predators, creatures that bled the world dry for a single taste. Why then would one surround itself with trivial comforts? A television, a computer - why? Why would a leech, one of the worst parasites the world had ever known, to choose a home made for a family? Shattered trinkets, half-buried photo frames, books with torn covers and mangled pages - if he had to guess, Fabio would have sworn this had belonged to a simple human, not a creature of the night.

The greater surprise though, waited in the kitchen.

A wide, double-door refrigerator stood silent and lifeless. Rusted soda cans, bottles of water, two turned-to-vinegar wine bottles, and a half-full bottle of gin lined its shelves. Heaps of scraps and garbage filled the gaps. Wooden cupboards, thick with dust, still held pots, dishes, glasses, even tablecloths. Beneath the twin steel sinks, an overturned cardboard box revealed the most fascinating secret: decades-old food, still mostly intact. Half a dozen dented cans, a rusted tin of olive oil, four sealed bags of legumes. A broad blue plastic sack bulged with dry animal food.

He might have been in a hurry, but only a fool would leave such a prize behind. He stuffed his pack with as much as it could hold, snatched a bottle of water from the fridge, and shoved the gin into a side pocket. Still unsettled, he turned his gaze to the room’s only other door. It was small, white, plain and looked undisturbed- like so much else in this place. Unlocked. The hinges creaked as it swung open, breaking the silence of that tomb.

The staircase was narrow, wrought in iron that shivered at his touch. The darkness below seemed to breathe in sync with him, listening, waiting, eager to devour him. His fingers fumbled through the folds of his cloak until they found one of the slim phosphorescent sticks he kept on him. He cracked it, and a harsh bluish glow bled across his face.

The first step buckled under his weight and the whole stair quivering as if it would collapse, yet Fabio kept going. He skipped the last two rungs, devoured by rust, and dropped steady into the center of the basement. His boots sank into a shallow skin of muddy water. Aside from that, the place was perfectly still.

Not a storage cellar, as he had expected. This was an office. A dusty laptop slumped beside a carved, antique wardrobe. Shelves climbed the walls, sagging under the weight of leather-bound tomes, their spines warping against moisture and time. A massive desk crouched against the far wall, buried under scattered papers, notebooks packed with strange diagrams, and handwritten notes - most disturbingly, in Italian.

Fabio’s gaze swept the room, frantic. No corpse. No trace of the Immortal.

A cold dread coiled in his chest.

The blood he had come for was…

Suddenly, Dog barked.

Wild. Frenzied. Warning.