Someone near the front started to say something and he continued without acknowledging it.

"We have water for eight days at current usage. We have food for four, possibly five if we’re careful. The university has a borehole that engineering is working to get operational today. If that works, water stops being a problem." He paused. "Food does not stop being a problem."

Murmuring through the crowd.

"Foraging teams will go out in groups of six starting this afternoon. Only awakened individuals on the outer teams. Civilian support in pairs for interior building sweeps within two hundred meters." He looked across the crowd. "I need volunteers for both. See Amara."

A man near the middle shouted something about leaving the campus being suicide and the Colonel looked at him with an expression that didn’t argue the point and didn’t validate it either.

"Staying here is also a choice with consequences," the Colonel said. "Hunger doesn’t care about walls."

More murmuring. Tobi scanned the crowd. Fear wearing different masks on different faces. Some people angry because anger was more comfortable than fear. Some people looking at the Colonel with the specific desperate expression of people who needed someone to be certain because they couldn’t afford to be uncertain themselves.

He thought about what it meant that the Colonel had four hundred people looking at him that way and was still standing up straight.

Chike appeared at his elbow. "You look terrible," he said conversationally.

"I didn’t sleep."

"Yes I know, I was awake at two in the morning when Ada stopped breathing and awake at three when you came back from whatever you were doing and awake for most of the time in between." He paused. "You have dark circles under your eyes which is impressive given that you apparently healed your ribs overnight."

Tobi looked at him.

Chike looked back steadily. "I told you I noticed things."

"And I told you—"

"Not to tell anyone. I know." He looked at the assembly. At the Colonel still talking. "I’m not telling anyone. I’m telling you that you look terrible and you should eat more than one serving of rice before whatever today decides to be."

Tobi closed his mouth.

"Also," Chike said more quietly, "my hands stopped being tingly about an hour ago and I’ve been practicing the freeze and I think I can hold two targets for about ninety seconds now before it starts draining badly." He paused. "Thought you should know."

Tobi looked at him. At this man who had picked up a fire extinguisher and walked toward monsters less than twenty four hours ago. "Why are you telling me?"

Chike seemed genuinely surprised by the question. "Because you’re the one planning things," he said simply. "Someone should be giving you accurate information."

The assembly was breaking up around them, people moving toward Amara’s table to volunteer or moving away to avoid having to. The Colonel was already back at the command table, head down over the map.

Sade found Tobi through the dispersing crowd. She looked better than yesterday, rested, a fresh bandage on her forearm where something had grazed her. She stopped in front of him and looked at him for a moment.

"Northern foraging team," she said. "I’m leading it. I want you and Festus."

"Colonel cleared it?"

"I’m clearing it with you first." She tilted her head slightly. "You’re faster than yesterday."

He kept his face neutral. "Good sleep."

"You have the same dark circles Chike just pointed out so that’s a lie but okay." She crossed her arms. "Northern foraging. There’s a wholesale food warehouse four hundred meters up the road. If it hasn’t been hit we could bring back enough to double our supply." She paused. "I did a supply run last year for my family’s restaurant. I know exactly what we’re looking for and how fast we can move it."

He looked at her. "You ran a restaurant."

"My family does. I’m a final year engineering student." She said it with the specific tone of someone who was done explaining that their whole life didn’t fit into one category. "Are you in or not?"

"I’m in."

"Good. We leave at ten." She started to go and stopped. "Eat something first. Both of you." She pointed at Chike without looking at him. "You too. You look like a strong wind would solve you."

She walked away.

Chike watched her go. "I like her," he said.

"Don’t tell her that."

"Absolutely not."

The warehouse was four hundred and thirty meters from the campus gate.

It took them twenty two minutes to cover it.

Not because of the distance. Because of what the city looked like on the other side of the walls.

Tobi had seen it last night in the dark, had processed it in the specific filtered way of someone moving through it with a task and no time. In daylight it was different. In daylight you couldn’t filter it. The collapsed shopfront on the corner. The car on its side with the door still open. The things on the road that the team stepped around without looking at directly and without commenting on because commenting required acknowledging and acknowledging required feeling something about it and feeling something about it right now was a luxury nobody could afford.

A child’s shoe in the middle of the road.

One shoe.

Sade saw it and kept walking and her jaw set and she kept walking.

Tobi kept walking.

His new nose was making everything worse. Every detail of the city’s damage arrived in layers of smell that his brain translated into information he didn’t want. He breathed through his mouth and it helped maybe fifteen percent.

The team was eight people. Him, Sade, Festus, Chike, Remi, Taiwo, and two civilians named Grace and Emeka who had supply experience and no combat ability but moved quietly and followed instructions without freezing.

Remi walked next to Tobi.

He’d been quiet since they left the gate. Not his usual loud-nervous energy. Just quiet, eyes moving across every building they passed, hands in fists at his sides.

"You alright?" Tobi asked.

"I was screaming yesterday," Remi said. "At the southern fence."

"You were also sending compressed air bursts through creatures at point blank range." 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

"While screaming."

"The screaming didn’t stop the bursts from working."

Remi was quiet for a moment. "My mum would be so embarrassed," he said. And then, against what seemed like his own intentions, he laughed. Short and surprised, like it had escaped. "She’s always like, Remi you are too loud, Remi why are you always shouting. And now the apocalypse starts and I’m out here proving her right."

Tobi felt something in his chest that was almost a smile. "Where is she."

"Abuja. She was visiting my aunt." The almost-laugh faded. "I can’t reach her. Network’s been dead since midnight."

Tobi nodded.

They kept walking.