One2's Arc

Chapter 2 of 8

One2 held the ledger against his chest. Rex watched him, jaw tight, still worried about the hunter who now shared the book. But One2 had more to show his old friend. He needed Rex to believe he could win the block back. A dead man could not do it alone. He gripped Rex's sleeve and pulled him toward the cottage door. "Slow down," Rex said. He grabbed his rifle and followed. "Where are we going?" One2 led him behind the cottage, to a stump where he'd hidden something during his crawl back. He clawed the dirt loose. His gray fingers dug into a buried tin. He pried the lid and tipped it out. Neat bundles of hundred-dollar bills spilled across the ground, crisp and clean, Ben Franklin's face staring up in green ink. Rex knelt and picked up a stack. He fanned the edge. "This is real." He looked up. "Where'd a corpse get money like this?" One2 tapped the ledger, then the cash. Old debts, paid before the outbreak, buried and forgotten by everyone but him. Enough to buy guns. Enough to buy men. Rex counted three more bundles, and his hands started to shake. But money was only half of it. One2 stepped back. He fixed his cracked sunglasses. Then he set his dead hand flat against the cottage wall. His arm tensed. Wood split under his palm. He drove his fist through the boards, and a plank cracked loose and fell. Rex jumped up, rifle half-raised. "Easy." One2 gripped the fallen plank. He bent it slow until it snapped like a dry twig. Two years dead had made him strong. Stronger than any living runner. He dropped the broken wood at Rex's boots and let his jaw hang, gold teeth showing. Rex lowered the rifle. He looked from the cash to the split wall to the corpse who used to be his friend. Something changed in his face. Fear left it. "You've got money and muscle," he said. "That's more than the man running your block has got." He rubbed his beard. "But he knows this place. He knows you're breathing again, near enough." One2 nodded. He scooped the bills back into the tin. Rex made his choice. He slung the rifle over his shoulder. "I'm in. You need someone who can talk. Someone alive." He pointed at One2's throat. "Because you sure can't." One2 rasped once, low and wet. It was the closest thing to a laugh he had left. Then Rex went still. He looked past One2, toward the tree line. "We need to move the money and the book," he said. "Tonight. If he knows the cottage, he'll come here first." He grabbed the tin. "And I don't think we're gonna beat him by much."