twd: the last silence

Chapter 40: Smoke Trails and Silent Thoughts

The road didn't speak.

It never did.

It just stretched forward, carrying the weight of tires, blood, and the ghosts of everyone who didn't make it.

Axel gripped the wheel tighter.

The engine hummed low.

The car already broke down and axel found some stuff and fixed it just for a few more hours

He chose this broken car so he can leave it behind if everyone go to hell and until now nothing happened so he fixed it with what he found and have and kept driving

Noah was fast asleep, curled in the passenger seat with a blanket over his shoulders. The boy trusted him. That much was obvious.

Axel didn't know if he deserved it.

But he didn't care.

He wasn't driving for trust.

He was driving for answers.

For revenge.

His mind drifted.

Back then…

When his family was murdered, when his home burned, when the world he knew was reduced to ash and screams—he hadn't chased the Nomads.

He hadn't hunted the ones with the symbol.

Because he was weak.

Because he had nothing.

No people.

No weapons.

No power.

Just pain and grief.

But now…?

Now he was a name whispered in fear.

A man who left kingdoms broken and put heads on gates.

Now, he had soldiers. Food. Power. He had built something. And more than that—

He had purpose.

"The man said two cars," Axel thought. That's not the whole group. No way. That's a scouting party. The gatherers. The vultures sent to steal and vanish.

That meant there were more.

A base.

A center.

A hive.

If he could find them—if he could learn where they slept, where they lived, where they hid—then he could burn it all.

Like they burned his life.

He looked at the map.

Spots circled. Routes marked. Areas where nomad attacks had been reported.

They moved like shadows, but every shadow had a source of light.

A center.

Axel whispered to himself.

"If I can find that... if I can get even a whisper of where they lay their heads... it's over."

Not for him.

For them.

He glanced at Noah.

Still sleeping.

Still dreaming.

Axel looked back at the road.

Dark. Endless. Cold.

But ahead... smoke. Faint.

Not from a fire.

From tires.

He pressed the gas. Hard.

And smiled.

--

The sky was a dying grey.

Clouds hung like the breath of something ancient and asleep. The wind carried dust and the faint stench of blood long dried. The sun had gone down hours ago, but Axel didn't need light.

Not tonight.

He stood at the edge of a ruined overpass, body still, eyes sharp as a blade. Beneath him—beyond a crumbled highway and a line of rusted-out cars—was a valley of shacks, tents, and crude stone walls. Makeshift towers stood like jagged teeth. Fire pits flickered in the night, sending up smoke signals only devils could read.

He had found it.

The place he'd seen in his mind every night since his world collapsed.

The Hive.

The nest of the Nomads.

The animals who took his life and carved a symbol into the wall with the blood of everyone he loved.

Three slashes.

A triangle.

A circle in the middle.

They lived here.

They laughed here.

They slept here.

Axel's hand curled around the hilt of his katana. His entire body trembled—not in fear, not anymore—but from wrath. It was so heavy in him it made his vision blur.

His shoulders rose and fell as he breathed deep.

Not now.

Not yet.

He crouched behind a concrete barrier and began counting.

Two guards at the north tower. One with a rifle, one smoking something in a rusted pipe.

Three more patrolling the southern perimeter.

At least twenty tents, six large huts made from old metal sheets and scavenged wood. They had generators—he could hear the low hum.

That meant power.

Lights.

Heat.

Weapons.

These weren't just survivors.

They were something worse.

They were comfortable.

He spotted a vehicle—a large armored truck with the same crude mark scratched across its side. The mark.

The mark.

His jaw clenched.

He remembered his father's eyes—glassy and cold.

His mother's outstretched hand.

His little brother's body, too still in his arms.

And they lived here?

They ate here?

They laughed here?

He closed his eyes for a moment.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

"Not yet."

He didn't come here to die.

He came to end something.

And to do that, he needed to know everything.

He slipped back from the overpass and made his way through the brush, circling the Hive. Every path was scouted. Every guard position memorized. How they rotated. When they changed shifts. Where they stored supplies.

The smell of cooked meat drifted from one of the tents. Laughter echoed in the night, loud and careless.

They didn't know.

They didn't know he was here.

Watching.

Counting.

One of them—a younger man—walked too far from the group to take a piss behind a rock.

Axel was on him like a shadow.

Hand over mouth. Knife through the kidney.

Silent.

Precise.

He lowered the body and covered it in dry brush.

Noah was half a mile away, hidden in a small dugout cave Axel found earlier. He made the boy promise to stay put no matter what.

He didn't want Noah to see what this place would become when he was done.

No child should.

He returned to his vantage point. The Hive still burned softly with its sick yellow fires.

Axel whispered under his breath.

"This is it."

He reached into his coat and pulled out the paper again.

The mark was smeared, but still visible.

He looked down at the camp and saw it again.

Painted on the doors.

On the walls.

Tattooed on skin.

He knew, deep down, that not all of them were the exact ones who killed his family.

But this was the nest.

This was where they crawled back to.

And this was where they would all die.

But not tonight.

Tonight he would watch.

And tomorrow...?

Tomorrow, he would burn it to the ground.

---

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