Chapter 190: Talk with Molly

After Sydney and the others departed with the reluctant escort of Jake and a handful of Rico’s people, the remaining group began making preparations for our own journey to the Boardwalk settlement. The memorial building’s interior bustled with quiet animation as weapons were checked, supplies were gathered, and final talks occurred between those staying behind to maintain the watch post and those making the trek to the main community.

I thought it wasn’t really necessary to send Jake along as protective escort for my departing companions—the gesture felt more symbolic than anything else given how hostile he’d been throughout every interaction. But perhaps that was Rico’s way of demonstrating some residual goodwill after I’d saved Shannon, a token acknowledgment that not everything between our groups had to be poisonous conflict. I was pretty sure however Molly sent a word though.

I turned my attention back to Clara, who remained slumped in the wooden chair with shallow breathing that concerned me more with each passing minute. Her face had taken on that grayish pallor that screamed severe blood loss and approaching shock. We needed to move, and we needed to move now.

"We’re leaving immediately, Clara," I told her gently. "I’m going to carry you. Tell me if you feel uncomfortable or if anything causes sharp pain, okay?"

I carefully lifted her into my arms in a traditional carrying position—one arm supporting her back, the other beneath her knees, her head resting against my shoulder. It wasn’t my preferred arrangement since having both arms occupied severely limited my combat capabilities, but Clara was clearly in no state to walk even with support.

"Y...You don’t have to do this, Ryan..." Clara said weakly. She probably understood the disadvantage as well as I did—if infected appeared or worse, if that sniper made another appearance, I’d have severely limited options for defending us both.

But I could still rely on my enhanced Dullahan senses for early threat detection, and honestly, Clara’s immediate medical needs outweighed other concerns. Getting her to proper treatment was the priority.

I smiled down at her. "Don’t worry about the complications. You know I’m not exactly a normal guy—I can handle whatever comes up."

"Y...Yeah..." She managed a weak, exhausted smile in return. "I know. Thanks for everything..."

"Just close your eyes and rest," I said. "Conserve your strength. We’ll have you with a doctor soon."

"I’ll do that..." She nodded slightly, her eyelids already drooping. Within seconds, her breathing had shifted into the deeper rhythm that indicated she’d lost consciousness again—whether simple exhaustion or something more concerning related to her injury, I couldn’t determine.

Seeing her like this—so vulnerable, so close to the edge between survival and death—I felt darker emotions rising within me. Rage at the coward who’d shot her. Similar to what I’d felt toward Jason.

I forcibly repressed those emotions, pushing them down into mental compartments. Right now, I just had to hurry and get Clara to their doctor, get her proper medical treatment with antibiotics and any surgical intervention if necessary.

I raised my gaze only to find everyone in Rico’s group staring at me with varying expressions I couldn’t quite interpret.

"What?" I asked bluntly.

"Is she your wife?" Molly asked with genuine curiosity softening her weathered features into something almost maternal.

"Huh?" I blinked several times, genuinely confused by the question. "Where does that even come from?"

Wife? I am seventeen?

"Because you’re being extraordinarily thoughtful and protective," Molly smiled warmly. "The way you’re holding her, talking to her, prioritizing her comfort—that’s the kind of tender care you usually only see between married couples or very close family."

"We’re not married," I said quicklyt. "Clara is part of my survivor group—someone I care about as a friend."

"You are quite nice then." Molly replied with a chuckle. "Regardless, are you genuinely planning to carry her the entire distance to the Boardwalk? It’s still several miles away—at least two or three depending on which route we take. That’s a significant physical burden even for someone young and strong."

"Are you concerned it will slow your group down?" I asked, trying to determine if this was gentle suggestion that I find an alternative or genuine worry about my capabilities.

"No, that’s not my concern," Molly clarified. "I’m more worried you’ll seriously hurt your arms and back carrying that weight for extended distance. Your body might give out partway there, and we don’t really want to have to stop for you to take rest breaks when she needs immediate medical attention."

"You won’t have to take any pauses or slow down for me," I said. "I can carry her the entire distance without stopping. Just get me to your doctor as quickly as possible—that’s all I’m asking."

Molly looked at my face for several seconds, apparently trying to assess whether this was youthful bravado or legitimate capability. Whatever she saw there must have convinced her, because she sighed and nodded acceptance.

"Alright, if you’re certain. But if you do need to rest, speak up immediately rather than pushing yourself to injury. We can make accommodations." She glanced at Rico and gave a small hand signal indicating readiness to depart.

Then we proceeded to leave the memorial building, though several of Rico’s people remained inside to maintain the watch post. I caught glimpses of them taking positions near the fortified windows and firing slits, settling in for what was probably long, boring duty watching for threats that might never materialize.

"So this location functions as a fallback position and observation tower?" I asked as we emerged into Atlantic City’s darkness. Torchlights immediately lit on around.

Molly thankfully positioned herself beside me as I walked in the middle of their protective formation with Clara unconscious in my arms. The others arrayed around us in formation like before.

Rico’s people held their weapons ready but didn’t seem to be using firearms as liberally as they had earlier. Instead, they were engaged in quieter infected elimination using suppressed weapons or melee attacks when the shambling corpses appeared.

Molly nodded at my question. "Unfortunately, what happened to your companions earlier—that attempted ambush or attack—has happened to us multiple times as well from Callighan’s forces. Some of his scouts have even tried entering this area specifically to gather intelligence on our movements and capabilities. So we maintain a permanent watch post here with rotating guards to monitor for both infected threats and human hostiles."

"Doesn’t that seem a bit excessive?" I asked seriously. "Maintaining a separate fortified location requires supplies, manpower, coordination."

"Yeah, it is resource-intensive," Molly admitted. "But Marlon doesn’t want to take any risks with community safety. We’re genuinely concerned that Callighan might launch a full-scale assault us one day..."

"You think he’s actually planning genocide?" I couldn’t hide my shock. "Mass killing of everyone in your community?"

"Maybe not complete extermination," Molly said carefully, her expression darkening with remembered fear and anger. "But he’d definitely kill anyone who refuses to submit to his authority. The rest would be forced to obey him."

"What exactly does he want from your community?" I asked, trying to understand the core of this conflict. "There has to be some specific objective or demand driving this sustained aggression."

After hearing out Martin’s idea, now i was curious to know about the problem between these two communities.

"Well, that’s complicated..." Molly said awkwardly. "But you can ask Marlon directly if you want once we reach the main settlement. He can explain the situation better than I can—he’s been handling all the attempted negotiations and diplomatic communications."

"I heard from Maribel that Marlon is a former marina guard and also an experienced fisherman," I said.

Molly laughed at my phrasing. "Retired marine—not marina—and yes, he transitioned to full-time commercial fishing after leaving military service."

Her expression softened with obvious affection and respect. "A lot of us in the community knew Marlon before the outbreak—from the neighborhood, from the fishing industry, from various local connections. That’s why we trusted him from the very beginning when everything turned into chaos and Atlantic City became a nightmare of infected and collapsing social order. He had the leadership experience to organize survivors effectively."

"A marine, that sounds promising," I said, hoping he wasn’t one of those corrupted authority figures who’d abused power before the apocalypse. The military and police had their share of both heroes and villains, and post-collapse conditions tended to amplify whichever tendencies people had previously suppressed.

"Well, he’s been retired for several years, but he still has those old military habits and that command presence," Molly continued. "Above everything else though, Marlon genuinely cares about the wellbeing of everyone in our community. He’s strict about security and can be quite demanding about maintaining discipline, but don’t worry—he’s not a fool like that muscle-head Rico who nearly started a shootout over misidentification."

She delivered that last part with a conspiratorial snicker that suggested long-standing exasperation with Rico’s more aggressive tendencies.

Around us, Atlantic City’s ruins stretched in every direction—abandoned vehicles creating obstacle courses on broken streets, darkened buildings looming like tombstones marking civilization’s death, the distant sound of ocean waves mixing with occasional infected growls to create an eerie soundtrack.

The group moved with practiced efficiency through the urban terrain, navigating around obvious choke points and maintaining visual contact with each other through hand signals and subtle positioning adjustments.

"How long has your community been established in the Boardwalk area?" I asked then.

"We secured the initial hotels about three months ago," Molly replied, her eyes constantly scanning our surroundings even while talking. "The clearing took us almost six weeks of brutal, systematic fighting—room by room, floor by floor, building by building. We lost maybe forty people during that phase, some to infected bites, others to accidents or friendly fire in close quarters combat."

Her voice lowered slightly.

"But once we’d secured the core territory, things stabilized rapidly," she continued. "Marlon organized everything—defense rotations, scavenging teams, fishing operations, garden cultivation in protected areas. Within a month we’d transitioned from desperate survival mode to something resembling sustainable community living."

"And then Callighan showed up to threaten all that progress," I asked.

It seems every story has a villain...

"Exactly," Molly said bitterly. "Just when we thought we might actually make it through this apocalypse with some semblance of civilization intact, along comes that despicable man."

In my arms, Clara shifted slightly, a soft moan escaping her lips before she settled back into unconsciousness. I adjusted my grip carefully, making sure I wasn’t putting pressure on her injured shoulder.

"How much farther to your settlement?" I asked a bit impatiently.

"Maybe another mile," Molly estimated. "Ten minutes at our current pace, maybe less if we don’t run into complications."

Ten minutes.

Clara needed to hold on for just ten more minutes.

Behind us, the distinctive sound of an infected going down cut through the night—a wet, meaty crunch, followed by the heavy thud of a body hitting pavement.

It was Maribel’s doing.

She moved ahead of the formation like a spearpoint, her wooden lance a blur in the dark. Even from where I walked in the middle, it was easy to see the efficiency in her movements: no wasted swings, no hesitation, just clean strikes to the head and throat before the infected could fully react. Up close she’d already proven dangerous; watching her work from a distance made it even clearer how much experience backed that anger.

Shannon was no longer on Maribel’s back. One of the other survivors—a broad-shouldered man in his thirties—carried her piggyback now, her arms looped loosely around his neck as her sprained ankle dangled uselessly.

"She’s pretty strong," I said, nodding toward Maribel as she withdrew the lance from an infected’s skull with a twist and stepped back.

Molly followed my gaze and let out a soft laugh. "Maribel, yes. You really don’t want to get on her bad side. She’s quick to anger, but she’s a good girl underneath all that fire. The poor girl lost—"

"Hey! See that big hotel?" Shannon’s voice cut across Molly’s sentence, bright even through lingering fatigue.

I turned my head. She’d twisted around on the man’s back so she could look at me while pointing ahead with one arm.

I followed the line of her finger.

There, looming above the broken low-rise buildings and dark shopfronts, stood a tall hotel tower—a casino-hotel combo from the old world, by the look of it. The façade rose several stories, broad and imposing, its many rows of windows catching the moonlight in a dull silver grid. Faded signage hinted at previous glitz and neon; now the letters were half-dead, but the bones of the place still screamed money and tourism.

"That’s our home," Shannon said, grinning despite everything.

"Hey, Shannon, what the hell?" The man carrying her, complained, shifting her weight higher on his shoulders.

"It’s fine, Frank," Molly said, a touch of amusement in her voice. "Let her show off a little."

"Aren’t you worried about telling me all this?" I asked, eyes still on the hotel. "About where you live, how your defenses look? You barely know me."

"Maybe I should be," Molly said lightly. "It would be very disappointing if you really did end up running to Callighan after all this. But from what I’ve seen tonight, you’re not that kind of person."

She smiled at me—small, tired, but genuine.

I didn’t answer. There wasn’t much I could say that my actions hadn’t already said louder.

Conversation died down after that. The closer we drew to the Boardwalk, the more focused everyone became. I could feel it in their posture—the subtle tightening, the way their eyes scanned higher, checking rooftops, upper windows, lines of fire and angles of approach.

A few blocks farther on, the city changed quite visible from desolated and filled with Infected to a clearer state.

The streets ahead narrowed under manufactured choke points where cars had been pushed nose-to-nose and side-by-side across the asphalt, welded and chained into solid walls. Between and above them, people had built layered barricades from scavenged materials—corrugated metal sheets, rebar, broken storefront shutters, sections of fencing, even ripped-out railings and torn-down street signs. Everything bolted, wired, or jammed together to form a solid barrier that turned the approach into a single controlled funnel.

Beyond those improvised walls, I caught glimpses of the casino hotel Shannon had pointed at, now partly hidden behind defense lines.