Chapter 336: Linda For Defense!

I left Margaret and Martin to handle the introductions and drifted away from the group, heading into the Whitesun Hotel to find the others.

The top floor was where they’d most likely be, that had become the unspoken default by now, the place Sydney and the others gravitated toward when there wasn’t anywhere else to be. I didn’t think they’d gone out scavenging, not today. I’d told them ahead of time that I was coming with Marlon and the others, so they’d have stayed close.

I crossed through the lobby and got about three steps inside before I saw them.

Brad. Billy. Kyle.

Standing there like they’d been waiting, which maybe they had been.

"Look who it is," Brad said. "The treacherous bastard, finally showing his face."

I stopped walking and looked at him. "I’m curious what exactly I did to earn that one."

"Listen to him," Billy snorted, crossing his arms. "He doesn’t even know what he did wrong. Unbelievable."

Kyle made a sound of agreement somewhere between a scoff and a laugh.

"You switched sides," Brad said, his glare sharpening. "That’s what you did. You’re sleeping in their beds now, eating their food, and now you’re bringing them in here? Into our space? What have you been feeding them about us, Ryan? What did you tell them?"

Like we were sitting on classified intelligence worth protecting.

"I told them about you," I said evenly, already moving toward the stairs. "They needed to know to keep their distance if they wanted the visit to stay peaceful."

"Hey, where do you think you’re going?!" Brad’s voice climbed. "What are you planning?!"

I turned and looked at him. Just looked. "I’m not planning anything."

"Stop playing dumb!" Billy stepped forward, voice rising. "We know you’re setting something up with Callighan! Some kind of move—"

"Whatever I’m planning involves my group," I said. "You’re not part of it. You don’t need to be part of it. Same as always, you can stay back here, safe, behind the elderly and the children. That’s been working fine for you, hasn’t it?"

Billy glared and clenched his fists taking a step forward. "You want to go, bastard?"

I turned my gaze toward him, my gray eyes turning colder.

"Try it."

He flinched. Just slightly, just for a second, but it was there. He knew and I knew and we both knew he knew.

I let the silence sit a moment longer than necessary, then looked away.

"This is about getting Mei back," I said, keeping my voice as calm as I could. "That’s what it’s about. You don’t care about that, fine, that’s your business. But I care, and I’m getting her back. Nobody here has to be involved. Nobody here has to do a single thing."

"That’s easy for you to say!" Brad’s voice was climbing again, frustration cracking through it. "You’re up there on the Boardwalk with your group and your people! But if Callighan decides to retaliate, if he decides to come after whoever’s involved, it won’t be you who pays for it. It’ll be us. The ones living here."

"Callighan’s entire focus is on the Boardwalk," I said. "He’s not going to waste resources coming after a hotel community in the middle of his war with them. We’re not his target. But here’s the thing, if the Boardwalk falls, eventually we’re next. All of us. So waiting around and doing nothing isn’t the safe option, it just feels like one. Working with another group while we still have the window to do it is the only play that makes any actual sense."

"That’s real easy to say when you’ve got some kind of monster living inside you!" Kyle shot back, louder now, not really caring anymore who was in earshot. "You and those women in your group, none of you are scared of anything! But us? We’re regular people! We’re the ones who end up dead when your war comes knocking!"

It was loud enough. I could already see heads turning, people in the lobby who had found reasons to linger nearby, ears tuned in whether they meant to be or not. And some of the faces I saw weren’t blank. Some of them were troubled, chewing on it, already halfway to the conclusion Brad and his group were trying to push them toward.

That was the real damage these three were doing. Not the shouting, the shouting was nothing. It was the slow work of making people afraid. Margaret’s community had barely started to breathe again after everything that happened in Jackson Township. The wounds were still fresh, the trust still fragile. And Brad was in there every day picking at the edges of it, making sure the fear didn’t heal over properly.

It was working. I could see it working right now in the faces around the lobby.

"And we already lost someone because of a guy exactly like you," Billy said, till glaring at him but there wasn’t even sadness in his voice. "You remember that?"

He was just using it to rub it to my face otherwise he clearly didn’t care about the victim, none of those three cared.

I felt my hand close into a fist at my side.

Gaspar had come because of the Starakian blood in Wanda. He’d sensed it and he’d come for her specifically, that was the truth of it, the part that only a small handful of people in this community actually knew. Brad, Billy and Kyle weren’t among them. And I was deeply, quietly grateful for that, because I could already picture exactly what they’d do with that information. The way they’d turn it on her, consciously or not, looking for somewhere to put the blame that felt more manageable than the truth.

Wanda was already carrying more than she should have been. Already blaming herself for things that weren’t hers to carry. She didn’t need these three anywhere near that weight.

She was already suicidal enough.

"You’ve got nothing to say, huh?!" Kyle asked smirking.

"Enough."

The word came from from the entrance, quiet but carrying enough weight that it landed on the whole room at once.

I turned.

Linda was standing there, Martin’s wife, arms at her sides, eyes moving across Brad, Billy and Kyle with a pointed glare.

"Don’t you have any shame?" She said with a stern tone. "Standing here insulting Ryan. Need I remind you how many of us made it out of Jackson Township alive? How many times the Infected would have rolled over those cars on the road if Ryan and the others hadn’t been there holding the line? Do you remember that, or is that inconvenient right now?"

"We wouldn’t have had to run from Jackson Township in the first place if it wasn’t for them," Billy muttered, jaw clenched.

Linda looked at him for a moment like she was deciding whether he was worth the full response.

"So you’re blaming the collapse of Jackson Township on a teenager," she said. "That’s your position. Is there anything else intelligent you’d like to contribute, Billy?"

Billy’s mouth closed. His teeth ground together but nothing came out.

Brad stepped in to fill the silence. "You know what we mean. Ever since these people showed up, everything has gotten worse for us. That’s just the truth."

"Is it?" Linda’s eyes didn’t waver. "Because I’m fairly certain that thing hurling fireballs at the Municipal Office showed up before Ryan’s group ever arrived in Jackson Township. So how do you explain that, Brad? Walk me through that one."

"T...That’s..."

Brad opened his mouth.

Closed it.

The color shifted slightly in his face.

He couldn’t answer because there was no answer. The Fire Spitter had come before us, come specifically because of Wanda, though Brad didn’t know that part and I intended to keep it that way. The timeline alone gutted his argument and he knew it.

Linda let the silence make its point, then continued.

"If anything, we were the ones who pulled Ryan and his group into our problems. They didn’t ask to be part of any of this. And despite that, they stayed. They helped. They’re still helping." She looked at all three of them in turn. "And I don’t need to tell you, but Ryan and Sydney and the others are doing more for this community on any given day than the three of you manage between you. So if you’re genuinely so worried about Infected and enemies getting through, go reinforce the barricades. Make yourselves useful for once. Because standing in a lobby shouting at someone who’s done nothing but help us is not protecting anybody."

The silence that followed was a different kind.

Brad was grinding hard on his teeth, a muscle working in his cheek. He held the look for one more beat, then turned and walked, Billy and Kyle moving after him without a word, the three of them disappearing through the door and taking all that noise with them.

Linda watched them go. Then let out a long, audible breath, some of the tension releasing from her shoulders.

She turned to look at me, and the sharp edge in her expression had already softened into something apologetic.

"I’m sorry, Ryan."

"No." I shook my head. "I’m the one who should be sorry. And... thank you. Genuinely. You didn’t have to do that."

I meant it more than it probably sounded. Martin and Linda both, they’d been nothing but decent to us from the beginning. The kind of people who didn’t make a show of their goodness, just extended it quietly and consistently. Good people, in the way that actually meant something.

Linda smiled, a little wry around the edges. "What are you thanking me for. We’re the ones who should be grateful, grateful that people like you are here watching out for us." She paused, then added, "Don’t listen to those three. They’re jealous, that’s all. The women around here are practically falling over you and Christopher. It’s driving them insane."

"Please," I said, exhaling. "Don’t exaggerate."

She laughed in response "I wonder."

"Can I help with anything?" I asked, noticing the supplies she was sorting through nearby.

"I’m almost done actually, and then I’m going to go check on your guests." She closed up what she was packing with as always calm and efficiency taking her job very seriously. "They sound like good people."

"They are," I said.

She glanced up at me. "Of course they are. You wouldn’t have brought shady people in here."

"You trust me too much," I said, and I felt the embarrassment of it in my chest before I finished the sentence.

"Stop being so hard on yourself, Ryan." Linda stepped closer, reached up and ruffled my hair gently. "Lord, you’re tall." She let her hand drop and smiled. "Don’t worry. Almost everyone here loves you. Whether you think you’ve earned it or not."

I looked at her feeling something inexplicable in my heart. Her words clearly had an effect.

She picked up her things and walked away, leaving the lobby quieter than it had been in a while.

I stood there a moment and reached up slowly, touching my hair where her hand had been.

It felt like for a brief moment my mother’s touch. That same warmth, that same uncomplicated tenderness that didn’t ask for anything in return.

Something in my chest relaxed just by that.

I smiled and turned toward the stairs.