The Sweetness of Rust Series: Sherry Apocalypse: Schoolgirl Pack 1 P Mature Content Warning: Mature themes, psychological tension, survival horror.
Sherry pressed the blade against his carotid. The metal was warm from her pocket. “No, you don’t,” she said softly. “People with kids don’t come to The Hollow. They stay in the settlements and eat rats like the rest of us.”
She was seventeen, though the mirror in the ruined department store told her she looked forty. Her uniform was no longer a symbol of youth, but a tool. The pleated skirt, hemmed with fishing line and razor blades, allowed her to run. The white blouse, stained rust-brown and charcoal, was stuffed with Kevlar scraps from a shattered police drone. The red bow at her collar? That was for her. A last piece of the girl she’d been before the Siren went off.
The dog sensed Yuki a half-second too late. A silenced .22 round entered its ear. It dropped without a whimper. The shotgunner never even raised his barrel. Sherry Apocalypse Schoolgirl Pack 1 P Mature
“Mei, the left one has a gas mask. Take his air. Yuki, the dog first—then the man with the shotgun. I’ll take the leader.”
They ate in silence. Yuki leaned her head on Sherry’s shoulder. Mei hummed a pop song from before the Fall—something about a boy, a summer, a car. Sherry couldn't remember the words.
Inside the Vault of St. Agnes, the cryo-pod was dead. A frozen woman’s face stared through the frosted glass—peaceful, beautiful, utterly useless. The cure was a fairy tale. The Sweetness of Rust Series: Sherry Apocalypse: Schoolgirl
Because that’s what mature survivors do. They stop running from the dark. They learn to wear it.
Yuki, the sniper, who saw the world in bullet-drop comps and windage. Mei, the chemist, whose gentle hands could turn bleach and antifreeze into a room-clearing gas. And Sherry. The leader. The one who remembered.
They called her pack “The Schoolgirls.” It was a joke the raiders made—until they didn’t. There were five of them originally. Now, in Pack 1 P (Mature designation—meaning they had survived longer than any other juvenile unit in the sector), there were three. “No, you don’t,” she said softly
And somewhere deep in The Hollow, the Siren began to wail again. But for once, Sherry didn’t run. She just listened. Then she walked toward the sound.
She didn't kill him. That was the mature part. Instead, she sliced his belt, his bootlaces, and the tendons behind his knees. He’d live. He’d crawl. He’d tell others: The Schoolgirls are real. Don’t hunt near the cathedral.