Page 48 of The Atom Between Us

The scream of the woman lingers, a memory spike neither of us can erase.

I walk back to my APC, hands still bound, but head high.

The game is changing.

And I’m not the only one who knows it.

The landscape outside the transport doesn’t look real. Blue fungus, like living electricity, stretches across the cratered basin. The sky’s gone the color of surgical scrubs. The only thing that moves is the convoy itself, a mechanical animal crawling through a world that wants it dead.

It’s easy to pretend the APC is indestructible—until the world reminds you otherwise.

The first sign is the sound: a wet, concussive thud, like a full pig carcass hurled against a concrete wall. The impact throws every soul in the transport half a meter into the air. A heartbeat later, the vehicle pitches sideways, wheels on one side grinding through glassified mud as something pounds the exterior in a relentless, arrhythmic pattern.

Inside, chaos: two guards flung to the floor, rifles scraping against their own faces; the lieutenant’s tablet arcs through the air and cracks the ceiling; a civilian screams somewhere up the chain. I lurch sideways and collide with Kang’s chest, the breath knocked out of me so hard it’s almost funny.

He doesn’t flinch. He clamps one hand around my arm, the other bracing against the wall as the APC rolls to a lurching stop. Outside, the thuds have resolved into a pattern—two fast, one slow, repeat. There’s a rhythm to it, an intention. They’re not just hitting the hull. They’re communicating.

I try to tell Kang, but he’s already barking orders to the guards.

“Defensive positions, now! Gunports up, suppressive fire on my mark!”

The veterans snap into place, but the rookies freeze, eyes wide as the doors. Through the vision slit, I glimpse the enemy for the first time: skinless ghouls, their muscles striated and wet, crawling hand-over-hand across the APC’s shell. Their faces are half-human, half-insect, with lidless eyes and mouths that gape open and shut in time with the pounding.

A second wave surges from the fungus field—larger, meaner. Six-limbed predators, built for climbing and killing, slam into the vehicle’s side and anchor themselves with claws that punch straight through steel. The hull groans, rivets popping one by one.

Then the real hell begins.

A breach at the rear. The door doesn’t so much give way as evaporate: a spray of twisted metal and hot blue light. Three ghouls pour in at once, moving like one organism. The first drops onto the rookie, teeth finding the soft spot at the nape of his neck; the second rolls over the lieutenant and tears at her wrist; the third goes straight for the cockpit, hands outstretched.

Kang moves faster than I can see. He kicks the first ghoul off the rookie’s back, fires a single shot into the brainstem, then pivots and drills the second in the face. Black fluid sprays everywhere, sticking to my boots, my hands, my mouth.

The cockpit is gone, just a spatter of teeth and blood on the instrument panel. The ghoul turns, confused, then charges for the next living thing—me.

I brace, but Kang is already there, slamming his body between us. The impact knocks both of us flat, but I end up beneath him, my cheek mashed against the rough edge of his vest.

I can smell him. Blood, metal, a trace of citrus from the emergency wipes he pretends not to use.

He looks down, green eyes wild. “Are you hit?”

I shake my head, and he’s already moving, already up, already killing.

The world inside the APC narrows to Kang, me, and the two surviving guards. The rest is parts and horror.

The pounding outside intensifies. Through the slit, I watch as the predators on the hull work in concert: one at the engine, one at each wheel, two at the front glass, all applying synchronized force. It’s a tactic, not a frenzy.

I grab Kang’s sleeve. “They’re patterning,” I shout over the noise. “Not random—they’re following a sequence. Fibonacci or prime, I can’t tell. Every breach comes three pulses after a cluster at the opposite side.”

He blinks at me, then at the walls. “You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

He keys the radio. “All units, perimeter attack is sequenced. Target breach points in three-count intervals. Watch for coordinated entries.”

The channel crackles with static, but the message sticks. All up the line, I hear plasma rifles shift to a new cadence, matching the enemy beat. The hull vibrates, but now there’s return fire—less panic, more math.

The APC rocks again, harder this time. I’m thrown into Kang, chest to chest. His hand finds my shoulder, holds me in place.

There’s a moment. It’s not even a second, but I feel every microsecond: the heat of his palm, the tension in his jaw, the way his pupils dilate at the nearness of blood and death and me.