As the group was driving dev, suddenly yelled "look smoke" Chris slowed the truck to a halt. "That's not from debris or lightning. That's someone's fire."
Valez leaned forward. "Could be survivors."
"Or worse, I'll go scout it out" Chris said
Jess shook her head. "Are you sure it's safe to go alone?"
Before Chris could answer, Valez spoke up. "She's right. We don't even know what's down there. No ammo, no backup. That's suicide."
Chris kept his voice calm. "If someone's alive, we can't just drive past. If they're not human, better we find out before they find us. Besides as my class said I'm a pathfinder"
Valez sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I swear, you'll get us killed."
"Not today," Chris said ,as he slid out of the truck and began moving through the woods towards the smoke.
The camp was sat up in between two old cranes, three tents glowing faint orange due to a towering camp fire. There were two trucks parked in a way almost blocking off ways into the camp.
Voices drifted up. Laughter. A few slurring prayers of death and despair.
There was a cage near the fire, with a few people inside trapped.
Chris watched for another minute, then crawled back down the hill to his companions.
"They've got captives," he said quietly once he reached the others. "Ten, maybe twelve of them. Armed. Looks like the same cult markings from the industrial district."
Jess clenched her jaw. " If it's them, we can't just leave whoever's in that cage."
Valez stared at her like she'd lost her mind.
"We can, and we should, but we don't even have bullets, Jess."
"Then we will just take theirs," Chris said simply.
Valez exhaled through his nose, defeated. "You're insane."
"Maybe," Chris said, gripping the knife. "But they have people alive down there, we will also be monsters if we stop caring about that."
As night fell, they crept down toward the camp, their hearts pounding they were worried it would give them away.
Chris slipped into the nearest tent. A man was snoring on a bedroll, pistol under his arm. Chris crouched slowly, steadying his breath, and then quickly thrust the knife up under the man's jaw. It was quick. The man twitched, went still.
Outside, Valez swung his tire iron with all his weight, caving in a skull in one heavy blow.
Jess froze at the sound. Dev's hands shook so bad he couldn't even grip the wrench right.
"Keep close," Valez hissed.
They moved toward the firelight. A female turned, bottle of alcohol still in her hand, with laughter escaping her lips. Jess raised the wrench, but she hesitated. The woman blinked, confused at first, but then started to shout.
Chris burst from the shadows, slamming his iron bar across the female cultist ribs. She went down hard with a sickening crack, her pistol falling out of her hoodie.
"Take it!" Chris barked.
Dev lunged, fumbling with the weapon. His finger hit the trigger before the safety came off. Click. Panic surged throughout his body.
The world exploded in noise.
A shot cracked from the far tent. Valez dove sideways, dragging Dev with him. Chris ducked behind a barrel as bullets ripped through canvas. Jess screamed, ducking low as another figure charged from the fire. She swung blindly, felling the wrench crunch against a skull.
Valez met a second attacker head-on, swinging the tire iron until the man went limp.
Chris rolled behind another tent, yanked a pistol off a corpse, and fired back. The bullet caught one of the cultists in the neck collapsing near instantly.
The generator sparked, whined, and then died, due to it being shot in the process. Darkness swallowed majority of the camp only lit by firelight now.
Dev took aim at the last remaining cultist illuminated by the fire, as it was shooting blindly at them. While still laying down he shot the cultist ankle making him fall over, and then sent two more though his chest.
The air hung heavy with smoke and gunpowder.
Jess stood frozen, her wrench slick in her hands. While Dev was vomiting while, staring at the pistol like it might go off on its own.
Valez spat into the dirt, chest heaving. "We got lucky," he muttered.
Chris looked at him. "Luck didn't do that."
Valez met his eyes, then looked away. "No. We were lucky that Dev, and Jess did not die. They were not ready."
A faint noise broke the silence,someone was coughing, weak and dry.
They all turned toward the cage. The only one left alive inside was a woman crouched, chained to the bars by a metal cuff and cable. Her clothes were torn, skin streaked with soot. She seemed to try to shrink herself almost, worried about taking too much space.
Chris raised his hands. "Easy. We're done fighting."
She didn't answer.
Jess crouched, voice soft but shaking. "We're not with them."
After a moment, the woman nodded, slow and uncertain. Valez used a knife to cut the wire. She crawled out carefully, knees scraping the dirt, a small metal case still chained to her wrist.
"What's that?" Chris asked, nodding at it.
She flinched, hugging it close. "Mine," she said. "Don't touch it."
"Okay we won't, can you walk?" Jess asked.
The woman nodded once. "Yes."
"Then let's move," Valez said. "Before their friends show up."
They loaded into one of the cultists' trucks. It was a lifted pickup with 3/4ths a tank of gas.
As they pulled away, the woman sat silently between Jess and Valez, clutching the case so tightly her knuckles went white.
Half an hour later, her voice finally broke the hum of the tires. "They called themselves the Chosen of the Flame," she whispered. "Said the fractures were divine punishment. They thought I had proof."
Jess looked at her. " The cult of what? Proof of what?"
The woman's eyes stayed on the road. "That it started before the world broke."
Valez frowned. "What started?"
She didn't answer.
The road stretched for what seemed like forever after they stopped and grabbed their original truck as well. The woman's shoulders eased slightly, as if she'd made a decision the more distance they put between the camp.
"My name's Elara," she said at last. "Doctor Elara. I worked at Harrow Point Lab. We were studying the mutations, trying to understand what was changing people."
Jess blinked. "Studying it? This all started a week ago."
Elara shook her head. "No. It started showing up months earlier, in isolated cases, misdiagnosed as infections or rare diseases. Tissue samples we couldn't explain. It was spreading quietly long before the fractures opened."
Chris glanced at her in the rearview mirror. "And you think that's what caused all this?"
Elara hesitated. "No. I think whatever caused this noticed we were getting close."
No one spoke after that.
Outside, the red moon bled across the horizon, while behind them the smoke from the camp twisted into the dark.
The lines between humans and monsters blurred a little more in their minds as they all sat with what they have done, and more horrifying what they will have to do in the future.