Rewrite the Apocalypse dream (by Dee Cari) novel Chapter 368

Chapter 368 You Put Jolie In The Ground

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88

+5 Pearls

“Joanna,” he said, almost fondly. “I wondered if you’d come yourself. My people have been calling you the demoness. I told them that was dramatic. Now I’m not so sure.”

“Shane.” Her grip tightened on the sickle. “You were watching my base for a month.”

“Thirty-one days.” He said it like a man proud of his arithmetic. “Do you know what I saw, up on that ridge? Full bellies. Clean clothes. Children laughing in a world that’s rotting. All of it sitting behind a wall, protected by one woman who hoards what she could be sharing.” His smile thinned. “The supplies were supposed to be ours. The ants would have cleared your people out, I’d have walked in, and every crate and every can would have belonged to me.”

“You fed my people to a swarm so you could steal their food.”

“I fed weak people to a swarm,” Shane said. “That’s called winnowing, Joanna. The world’s already made the decision. I was just going to finish it.”

“You put Jolie in the ground.”

“And she lived! I was generous.” He raised the pistol. “I won’t make that mistake with you.”

He fired. Joanna was already moving, the bullet tearing past her ear, and she closed the distance in a blink. Her sickle came down; he threw the vial at her feet. It shattered and gray vapor billowed up. She held her breath and slashed through it, blade raking across his forearm, and he howled and stumbled back, pistol skittering away.

He drew a knife and came at her in a flurry of ugly, desperate strikes. She parried each one, her face utterly flat. “You tried to take from me once,” she said, driving him back toward the cave. “Different life. Same man.”

“You’re nothing!” he spat. “A pocket and a pretty face! Without that space, you’re just another girl who got lucky!”

“Then it’s lucky I have it.”

She slammed her shoulder into his chest and he crashed against the cave wall, knife flying loose. He slid down the rock, burned and bleeding, and she set the curved blade against his throat. He looked up at her, and for the first time the warm mask slipped completely, leaving only hatred.

“Go on,” he rasped, and then he laughed, wet and ugly. “Kill me. It changes nothing. There are others, Joanna. Others who’ll come for what you’ve built. You’ll never be safe. Not for one single day.”

“Then I’ll be ready,” she said.

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9:16 Sat, Oct 24

Chapter 368 You Put Jolie In The Ground

88

+5 Pearls

The sickle swept across. Shane’s laughter stopped mid-breath, and his body slumped against the stone, eyes still open, smile still on his face.

She stood over him for one heartbeat, chest heaving, the firelight of the camp’s lanterns glinting on the blood running down her blade.

“BOSS!” Briggs’s voice tore across the canyon. “CLEAR OUT! NOW!”

“GET OUT OF THERE!” Kailee screamed beside him.

Joanna turned. Briggs and Kailee stood at the canyon’s edge, Briggs’s hands wreathed in white- hot flame, Kailee’s wind pulling the fire into a spiraling lance. They’d seen the barrels. The sap, the mushrooms, the stacked crates of solvents behind the cave mouths. They weren’t waiting.

Joanna blinked. In the half-second before the lance struck, she was beside her team at the canyon’s rim, snatching Jolie and Will back by their collars.

The fire punched through the nearest tarp and into the dark. For one full heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then the first cave went up.

The sound hit like the sky splitting open. A column of orange rolled out of the cave mouth, throwing boulders like pebbles. The second cave followed, then the third, each blast a thundering chain reaction racing along the canyon wall. The shock wave rolled over them, searing the air from their lungs, and Joanna threw herself over the nearest teammates as the ground bucked beneath her.

When the roar faded, the canyon was an inferno. Smoke boiled into the sky. Every cave mouth belched flame. Nothing inside would ever be used again.

Joanna rose slowly, her blood-soaked face turned to bronze by the firelight, her team gathering silent behind her, their shadows stretching long across the ground.

Julian watched the last cave mouth belch a pillar of flame into the night sky, then slowly turned his head toward Briggs and Kailee. “You know,” he said, perfectly deadpan, “when I said we needed a bigger fire, I didn’t mean that much bigger.”

Briggs, soot-streaked and smoking at the cuffs, didn’t blink. “You said that?”

“I thought it very loudly.”

“He did not,” Kailee said, though her voice cracked into a laugh halfway through. “But if anyone asks, the explosion was a carefully calculated demolition.”

“Of course it was,” Glacier said. “That’s why your eyebrows are gone.”

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9:17 Sat, Oct 24

Chapter 368 You Put Jolie In The Ground

88

+5 Pearls

Kailee clapped a hand to her forehead. “They are NOT.”

“They’re a little gone,” Jolie admitted.

Laughter rippled through the group, tired and ragged, loosening the knot of tension that had gripped them all night. Even Briggs’s mouth twitched. Fletcher wheezed against a boulder, and Will, still wearing the duck scarf, nodded solemnly as though he’d always suspected this would happen.

Joanna let it wash over her for a moment, then raised her hand. “Everyone close. We’re going home.”

They gathered around her, and one blink carried them through her space and back to the courtyard of the base. The air smelled of smoke and fresh paint. Lanterns glowed along the containers, and the sounds of hammering and low voices carried through the dark. Levi was waiting at the gate, and he took one look at the soot-blackened, bloodied group and let out a long breath.

“It’s done?” he asked.

“It’s done,” Joanna said. “Shane’s dead. The camp’s gone.”

Levi closed his eyes for half a second, something heavy finally lifting from his shoulders. Then he straightened. “Then all of you, rest. I’ve got everything covered. The walls, the repairs, the wounded. Go.”

“Levi…”

“Boss.” He met her gaze steadily. “I’ve got it.”

She studied him, then nodded. “If anyone needs me, tell Raven to call me. For anything. I mean it.”

“Understood.”

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