Mikel stood in front of the lockbox, key in hand. He was trying to catch his breath. After a moment, he slid the key effortlessly into the lock, turned it, and was met with a pop-out keypad. He typed in David's code, and the box opened. A light illuminated the interior of the box, showing Mikel the contents. There was an older leather-bound journal that appeared to be well-used, a handgun, a few grenades, three USB cards, and a letter addressed to Mikel and Jesse.

The contents were quickly stored in Mikel's satchel, and he was again sprinting towards the apartment building. He knew it would take him six minutes to get there without interference but was afraid he might encounter resistance. On the way to the box, he had to jump up on a car, which set off an alarm. That would cause problems. He anticipated this and took a different route on the return trip but still expected trouble.

The only movement he did encounter was a teenager hiding behind a car. As Mikel ran by, the kid hollered at him. He stopped running and looked at the kid, who stood up and asked for a cigarette.

“Get lost, kid. Go home. Or better yet, get out of the city. It’s burning down. Didn’t you notice?”

“Telling me to get lost? Who are you? My history teacher? This says you should be the one getting lost.” The kid held up a kitchen knife. Mikel laughed at him and started walking away.

That's when Mikel heard the other kids. Two cars behind him had their doors open as three more kids got out. He glanced behind him and saw they all had kitchen knives.

Mikel set the satchel down and again told the kid to leave. Then he turned around and told the other kids to leave as well and that their mothers wanted them to leave. That last bit didn't land very well.

Kid number one ran at him, thinking he had the jump on him. Mikel stepped back and to the side, taking the kid by surprise. He disarmed the boy, popped him in the nose, then used his momentum to send him flying into one of the other kids.

The others rushed en masse. He had been planning on this. As they got near, he ducked down, waited till the closest was right above him, and sent out an upward sidekick into the kids' jaw. The boy lifted into the air, tumbled backward, and landed in a mess of arms and legs. His jaw was broken, and he was asleep.

He brought his leg down and spun around, taking the feet out from under kid number three, who accidentally stabbed kid number four in the side as he fell.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Mikel stood up and brushed himself off.

“Should have listened, you little bastards. I told you your mothers wanted you to leave. Now look at you.”

A snarling, snapping sound behind him made his skin crawl. The kids looked terrified and were in no condition to run and hide, so he spun around again, pulled his shotgun up, and caught the wolf in the mouth from three feet away.

“There, you’re welcome. Crawl into that lobby over there. I have to go, be safe, don’t be little jerks.”

Mikel ran on for a few hundred feet. He stopped at the end of the block and watched as the kids helped each other into the building. Another wolf was bearing down on them, so he shot it from a distance with the handgun he had gathered from David's box. It fell at the foot of the kid with a broken jaw. The kid was in tears, both from pain and terror, as he thought his life was over. He stumbled backward and fell into the lobby. The other kids secured the door behind him.

Mikel had no other incidents on the way to the apartment.

#

Jesse finished packing the Volvo just as Mikel came around the corner. He was out of breath but otherwise healthy. She relaxed a little. It always made her nervous when he was on a mission without her, and she couldn't relax until he was back. It was the same for him, even though he knew she could handle any situation better than either David or he could.

Sal saw him next and walked over.

"Must be some good reading if it's worth running all the way to your office and back," Sal said, implying that he wasn't an idiot and Mikel had obviously been off doing something else entirely.

"I don't go on road trips without my man Hemingway. It would be sacrilege to start now." He laughed and pulled out a very well-used copy of "For Whom The Bell Tolls."

“Ah, good old Mr. Jordan. I’ve always been a fan of his skills with women, rifles, and dynamite. In that order. Probably whiskey, too, but I never met the man.” Seth started laughing, thinking he had just landed the literary version of the Moth joke. He hadn’t.

“Anyways, I think we’re ready. I have Trisha, Byron, Julie, and Polly. Oh, and little baby H. I’ll tell you later. You’ve got you and Jesse, of course, and Seth, Becka, and Stevie. Turns out Glenn didn’t make it, so we don’t need the room for transporting him. Sucks, but so be it. I was guessing he would make it for two or three more days, and we’d lose him to sepsis or something.”

"Same. If that long. The guy was a mess. Byron did all he could. Poor guy. I feel terrible for him. He's probably going to take this hard." Seth responded, sounding genuinely concerned for Byron. He wasn't close to Glenn. In fact, Byron didn't like him much at all. The live fast and keep up by using drugs philosophy went against everything he was about. He offered to help Glenn and Rob get clean and even offered to let them stay at a ranch he owned in Montana until they were ready to come back. They turned him down and treated him like he was the one with a problem.

“Alright, let’s get out of Chicago and make it as far as we can on the interstate, then backroad it once it’s too congested to go any further. Everybody ready?” Mikel asked in his best game show announcer voice.

“Let’s hit the road.” Everyone was in agreement.

With the cars loaded, they started on their trek to the cabin. A block down the road from the apartment, Julie made an announcement.

“I have to pee.” She started laughing.