A Post Apocalyptic Thriller

As it happened, those two weren’t the only occupants of this floor. There
was an open door every few feet, with beds in every room and a patient in
every bed. Spare cots had been stuffed into every available corner of every
room to handle the overflow of patients, and those, too, were occupied. He
stopped and regarded each room as he came to it, and found the same
situation all along the corridor. Male, female, old, young, the occupants of
those beds all lay in the silent repose of eternal sleep.

They soon came to a nurses’ station tucked into a corner that declared
this place as ‘Ward C.’ The desk was neat and uncluttered. Patient’s charts
were carefully stowed, chairs were pushed under the desk, and the telephone
was on the hook. In all ways, the place was in perfect order. It was as if the
duty nurses had merely stepped away for a quick cup of coffee.

Mackenzie tugged at his hand and pointed. She’d heard something.
Mason listened closer, and now he could hear it, too. It was a soft, plaintive
sobbing, coming from further down the hall. He raised his weapon and crept
slowly toward the sound with Mackenzie once again in place behind his back.
As they padded deeper into Ward C, they passed more rooms and more
lifeless patients, and at last, Mason tracked the sobbing sound to its origin
and paused before an open doorway. Beyond, he could see one side of a
room, complete with a long couch and an end table stacked with magazines.
This was the break room, then. It had to be. And someone was within.
Someone alive.

He padded to very edge of the doorway and leaned in. Inside, a man was
seated at a table, his head laying atop his crossed arms as he quietly wept. A
small vial occupied the exact center of the table, and more importantly, a
pistol lay discarded on top of a crumpled white coat laying in a heap on the
floor.

Mason stepped fully into the room, and a squeak of his shoe brought the
man leaping to his feet. He spun around and faced the intruder with eyes as
wide as saucers and skin as white as a sheet.

“Wh-who are you?” he stuttered, backing away so clumsily that he
nearly toppled his chair.

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” Mason replied in a hush,
his weapon at the ready.

“I-I-I’m Doctor Walker.” The man caught the chair before it fell and
awkwardly positioned it between himself and this intruder. “H-how did you
get in here?”

Mason saw that he was a small man, slight of build and with a boyish
face. Clearly more frightened than malevolent.

“Believe me, Doc, it wasn’t easy,” he harrumphed, lowering the end of
his weapon to the floor.

“What’s that?” the doctor pointed anxiously. “Behind your back. What
is that?”

Mackenzie stuck her tiny head out from behind Mason, and the doctor’s
entire demeanor abruptly changed.

“Oh my!” he fairly howled.

“Keep your voice down, Doc,” Mason cautioned the man, flipping a
glance back toward the open doorway.

The doctor squinted stupidly, but awareness slowly sunk in and he shook
his head.

“Oh, I see. But you have no need to worry. No one in this ward will hear
us,” he said grimly. “Not anymore.”

Mason regarded the gun, the sorrowful hunch of the man’s shoulders,
and the sadness in his eyes. It wasn’t hard to do the math.

“You’re sure?”

The man sighed heavily and dropped his eyes to the floor.

“Trust me,” he said, his lips curled up in a bitter sneer. “I’m a doctor.”

Mason couldn’t quite picture this meek little man moving from room to
room, pressing a gun against each head and squeezing the trigger, but the fact
that they hadn’t already been swarmed was proof enough. In another time,
Mason would have been shocked and alarmed. Now, he merely nodded.

“We’re looking for this girl’s aunt. Sarah Cullen. Do you know her?”

“She’s a nurse,” Mackenzie offered sweetly.

Doctor Walker stepped around the chair and came toward Mackenzie.

“Sarah? Yes, of course I know Sarah. You’re her niece?”

“My name is Mackenzie,” the girl said politely.

Walker saw the girl’s beautiful green eyes staring blankly, and looked to
Mason. Mason nodded once, and the doctor turned back to Mackenzie,
speaking gently to her.

“Mackenzie. Of course. I’ve heard Sarah talk about you many times. She
always said that you were beautiful, but I had no idea!”

The girl smiled demurely, and Walker’s demeanor lifted perceptibly.

“Said?” Mason singled out the operative word.

Walker quickly corrected himself. “A poor choice of tense. I apologize.”

“Is Sarah okay?” Mackenzie asked excitedly. “Is she here with you?”

Walker came close enough to her for Mason to make the subtlest of
shifts in his stance. The doctor caught himself and stopped an arm’s length
away, then he dropped to one knee to be on a level with the girl.

“I’m sorry, Mackenzie, but your aunt’s not here.”

“Is she dead?” This, from Mason.

The doctor grimaced at the coldness of the question, but when the girl’s
expression remained unchanged, he discounted the harsh words and told her,
“Mackenzie, the last time I saw your Aunt Sarah, she was perfectly fine.”

“When was that?” Mason pressed.

The doctor stood quickly enough to cause a raising of Mason’s weapon,
but he ignored it.

“Just before dawn,” he said, then he turned and went to where a
refrigerator sat tucked into the corner. He opened the refrigerator door and
pulled out two bottles of water sitting alone on the top shelf. These, he placed
on the table, then he waved Mason in. “Come, come, please!” He drew two
chairs close together on the opposite side of the table as his own, then he sat
and folded his hands together in clear view.

Cautiously, Mason shepherded Mackenzie to the table and guided her to
a seat. She hoisted herself into the chair, and Mason touched one of the water
bottles to the side of her hand. She took it, screwed it open, and drank

thirstily. Mason didn’t sit, but he leaned his weapon against the table and
helped himself to the second bottle. It was only then that he saw that the little
vial in the middle of the table wasn’t alone. Beside it was a white cloth with a
single hypodermic syringe laying atop. Sheepishly, Walker quickly bundled
both syringe and vial in the cloth and tucked them into his lap.

“You caught me,” he forced a smirk.

“S’alright,” Mason shrugged, his eyes narrowing.

Walker actually blushed as he admitted, “I’m not nearly as brave as I
probably should be.”

“Everyone deals with things in their own way,” Mason said indifferently,
but inside, he couldn’t help but feel a familiar disdain.

What a piece of work is man…

He wondered what it was in the human equation that made a blind little
girl struggle on while an educated man resorted to spending the eleventh hour
of his life pumping God-knows-what into his veins. Mackenzie finished her
water quickly, so he gave her the rest of his with a gentle pat on her shoulder,
then he glared across at Walker and scowled.

“What happened just before dawn?”

Walker’s eyes misted over, but to his credit, he seemed determined not to
allow this bigger, braver man to see him shed another tear.

“The tipping point,” he said simply, wringing his hands together. He was
going to leave it at that, but Mason’s silent stare told him otherwise. At last,
he released an anguished sigh and reluctantly explained. “It was a madhouse.
Oh, we all tried, make no mistake. For five days, we accepted as many
patients as we could. The first day, we admitted thirty patients in stage one of
the disease. That would be those who had lost their sight. Within twenty-four
hours, every bed in the clinic was taken, and hundreds more were spilling out
into the streets. We tried to find room for the overflow at other facilities, but
we couldn’t. It was the same everywhere.”

Mason felt as if the wind had just come out of his sails. He lowered
himself slowly into a chair.

“Everywhere?” he asked bleakly.

“Everywhere,” Walker repeated with dire certainty. “Not just San
Francisco, not just California, it was the same everywhere. According to the
CDC, the pandemic was worldwide. There’s no way to contain an airborne
virus, and this pernicious bastard spread around the globe like wildfire,
reaching into every corner of our little lifeboat Earth. Right now, there’s
probably some stone age tribe living deep in the heart of the Amazon tearing
each other to pieces.”

“I’m not sick,” Mason put a hand to his chest, “And neither are you.”

The doctor narrowed his eyes and tacked on an ominous, “Yet.”

“You’re saying it’s just a matter of time?”

“Who knows? Maybe. Every virus acts differently, and every immune
system reacts differently. We both breathe the same air as everyone else, so
there’s little doubt we’ve already been infected. It could lie dormant in a body
for days or weeks before manifesting, or it might never manifest. We might
even have some kind of natural immunity. With every epidemic, there is
some percentage of the population who are naturally resistant, so it’s
possible.” Walker looked to Mackenzie listening to it all with nary a
whimper, so he felt it all right to continue. “Viral infections are notoriously
difficult to treat, you see? In fact, without an antiserum geared specifically to
a particular virus, all that our centuries of medical knowledge can do is wait
and see. It really is up to every individual’s own immune system to fight the
infection.”

“So, it’s possible for someone already in stage one to get better?” Mason
asked, taking Mackenzie’s hand in his.

Walker looked to the girl and made a point of declaring confidently,
“Most certainly. Especially if that person is young and healthy and strong.”

Mason allowed a smile of appreciation and felt Mackenzie give his hand
an excited little squeeze. She said nothing, but that squeeze spoke volumes to
him. He considered asking the doctor if anyone had actually recovered from
this particular virus, but he already knew the answer. If there had been,
Walker would have said.

“Anyway,” the doctor looked nervously to his lap, “by yesterday
morning, hard decisions had to be made. We were forced to begin advanced
triage.”

“Huh?” Mason cocked his head. “What’s advanced triage?”

“In a normal situation, patients are treated in order of need, you see? A
lacerated finger trumps a cough, labored breathing trumps a laceration, chest
pains trumps labored breathing, and so on. With advanced triage, only those
patients who have the best chance of survival are treated. I know it sounds
heartless, but the idea was to keep from squandering what was by then
extremely limited resources on those who had advanced to stage two, and
tend only to those in the first stage of infection.”

Mason nodded glumly, “I think I can guess what you mean by ‘stage
two.’”

Walker swallowed hard.

“Psychosis. Delirium. Dementia. Madness. Take your pick. The virus
eats away at the human brain, starting at the occipital lobe, hence the loss of
sight. As it feeds on, it destroys the higher functions, essentially deleting a
person’s humanity and reverting them to the feral animals we once were.
Yesterday, we still labored under the illusion that we actually stood a chance
to stem the tide. We called in police and private security to barricade the
clinic from the increasingly violent mob, but it was already too late. By
midday, we had to abandon the ER and the entire ground floor, and move
everyone we could to the upper floors. When a patient reached stage two,
they were sedated, but eventually, even our most powerful sedatives became
useless. Then, like someone throwing a switch, the whole thing collapsed.
And just like that, we were in a fight for our lives.”

“The tipping point,” Mason surmised.

“Like a nuclear chain reaction,” Walker shuddered at the imagery. “The
few policemen and security guards who survived that far took it upon
themselves to, dare I say, attend to those who couldn’t be sedated, and none
of us could raise a hand to stop them. Honestly, at that point I don’t think we
would have even if we could. By then, it was all about survival in a place
where survival seemed impossible.

“And then the worst possible scenario came to pass,” Walker’s hand
went to the rolled towel in his lap, “The back-up generators died. By one
a.m. this morning, it was abundantly clear that we were entirely on our own.
No one was coming to help, and the clinic was under siege. We did what we

could to seal off the upper floors, but the mob quite literally tore through the
last of our security. Those who saw an opportunity to make a break for it did
so, but I wasn’t so fortunate. I found myself surrounded, and took the only
avenue of escape I could. Eventually, I found myself up here, utterly alone.
But not utterly alone, after all, you see?”

“Your patients,” Mason sighed.

“An entire ward packed to the rafters with patients on the verge of
progressing from stage one to stage two.”

“So you dealt with the threat,” Mason concluded. “You... attended to
your patients.”

The doctor hung his head.

“I told myself that I was sparing them from an ignoble end, but really, I
was just being a coward. I was afraid, and I dealt with the imminent threat to
my life the only way I could.”

Mason saw tears once again welling up in the doctor’s eyes and told him
honestly, “That was the smartest thing you could have done, Doc. It was also
an act of mercy.”

Walker merely shrugged noncommittally.

“Everyone thinks that doctors swear first and foremost to do no harm.
Oddly, nowhere in the Hippocratic Oath do we make that promise. But we do
promise to tread with care in matters of life and death.” He recited from
memory, “‘If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be
within my power to take a life, and this awesome responsibility must be faced
with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty’. It has an ironic
ring, considering, doesn’t it?” His lips turned up in a broad smile, but tears
came to his eyes as he looked to Mason, “And do you know what the very
next line of the oath is? Get this, you’ll love it. ‘Above all, I must not play
God.’ How’s that for hilarious?”

Mason imagined the weak little man moving from room to room with the
pistol, then retiring to this room, discarding the uniform of a profession he
had abandoned in the most unambiguous way possible, and tossing the still-
smoking gun atop it. The image was positively rife with metaphor, but he
didn’t dwell on it.

“I don’t suppose Hippocrates ever envisioned a day quite like this,” he
told the man. “Believe me when I say, Doc, no one is going to judge you.
Before today, I wouldn’t have swatted a fly, but I’ve since come to change
my attitude.”

Walker laughed aloud, but there was no joy in it. This was the disjointed
giggle of a man pushed close to his breaking point.

“Yes, I’ll be sure to bring that up to Saint Peter,” he cackled. “Or, more
likely, his more... southern cousin.”

Mason could see that the man was perilously close to losing his shit, but
he wasn’t overly concerned. He outweighed the good doctor by eighty
pounds, so any confrontation would be over before it had begun. And
besides, he reasoned, maybe borderline insanity was what it took to survive
in this new world.

“Doc, you said that some people made a break for it. Did you actually
see Sarah get out? Did she say anything? Was she heading home? Was
anyone with her?”

Walker shook his head, and it was clear that he was fighting back his
tears.

“Honestly, I don’t know. We tried to stick together, but it was a mad
rush. People were everywhere, running, screaming, dying. Once I closed
myself off here, I looked out and saw a group of people run into the parking
lot at the rear of the building. I saw them from up here, watching them get
away.” He saw a spark of hope come upon Mackenzie’s face and tried to fan
it, “They got as far as the alley. That much I know. I’m sure I saw a woman
with short blond hair among them. It might have been Sarah.” He watched
Mackenzie’s eyes widen as she drew in a deep breath of anticipation, and
suddenly his tone was resolute. “Yes. The more I think about it, the more
certain I am that the woman I saw was Sarah Cullen. There is no doubt in my
mind that Sarah got away, safe and sound!”

Little Mackenzie curled her lips into a circle, and she squeezed Mason’s
hand hard.

“Oooo, Mace! Did you hear that?”

Mason threw his arm around her shoulders and drew her in tight.

“I heard it, Mack.”

He shared in her enthusiasm, but he was regarding Walker with
suspicion. The man was nowhere as certain as he claimed. He may have seen
someone who might have been Sarah, or the whole thing might be a lie, but
he wasn’t about to deny Mackenzie her glimmer of hope. Still, the
amelioration was dubious at best. Mackenzie’s spirits were buoyed for the
time being, but it only meant that the fall would be just that much harder.

His concerns evaporated when the girl leaned into him and planted a
delicate kiss on his cheek.

“Thank you, Mace,” she said sweetly. “Thank you for bringing me
here.”

There was nothing for it now. The deed was done. Mackenzie was
happy, and for now, that was enough. They would continue to take this
journey one step at a time, and deal with the future when it came.

“S’okay, Mack.”

So, now came an interesting question. Just what if anything was to be
done with the good Doctor Walker? Mason had certainly taken an instinctive
dislike to the man, but that was only par for the course. He had the same
instinctive dislike for everyone.

With a few notable exceptions, he allowed, giving Mackenzie’s hand a
gentle pat.

In a normal world, he would have preferred to never see Walker again.
He would have been perfectly happy to bid the man farewell and leave him to
his fate. But in this new normal, could he afford to be so cavalier? The man
was a doctor, after all. Weak, absolutely. Emotionally damaged, to be sure. A
coward, most assuredly, almost to the point of impotence. But a man’s lack
of mettle didn’t disprove his worth to Mason. In his book, there was
absolutely nothing wrong with a timely exit at full speed with tail tucked
firmly between ass cheeks, so he didn’t blame Walker one iota for being a
coward. But even with that consideration in mind, a niggling little detail kept
gnawing away at the back of his thoughts. When this man should have been
either running for his life or fighting for his life, he had chosen instead to
withdraw completely, compliments of a needle. That showed more than
cowardice. It showed weakness. Capitulation. Full surrender in the face of

adversity. Still, with a full accounting of his own panoply of faults, Mason
couldn’t hold even that against the man. After all, how many times had he,
himself, sought solace in a bottle? And Walker did acquit himself by
attending to the immediate threat, and that couldn’t have been an easy thing,
especially for a doctor.

At last, he came to a decision, and though he tried to tell himself that it
was a coldly calculated reckoning of the benefits of sharing the road with a
medical man, he knew that it was really more a product of his reignited and
damned annoying sense of morality.

“You can come with us if you like, Doc. We have a way out if you want
it.”

Walker dropped his eyes to his lap and considered for several long
moments, then he released a heavy sigh and brought up the rolled cloth to lay
it on the table.

“I think I should very much like that,” he admitted meekly.

Mason gave the doctor a nod of consent, then he looked to the white
cloth and flicked his head toward Mackenzie.

“Leave the drugs behind, Doc. I don’t mind a little recreational
chemistry, but I have to draw a line.”

There was a long moment where Walker stared at Mason
uncomprehendingly, but then he understood at last and forced a chuckle.

“No, no, no, you have it all wrong. Like I said, I’m a coward. This was
going to be my escape.” He unfurled the cloth and let the vial clatter to the
table. “Look, see? Propofol. An easy transition from this world to the next.
No pain at all. Just oblivion.”

Mason couldn’t help but scoff.

“A bullet’s faster, Doc.”

Walker glanced down at the gun on the floor and shrugged. “And if I’d
had one, I would have used it, believe me.”

“That’s too bad,” Mason scowled his disappointment. “I was hoping you
had a few extra clips.”

Even as he said the words, a dark shadow passed through his mind. It
was like the first vague tickle of a notion. A notion far too horrible to
imagine.

“Sadly, no,” Walker said. “I saw that poor policeman’s gun on the floor
and grabbed it as I ran. I had never even held a gun before, much less fired
one. I don’t know what I was going to do with it, but it just seemed right to
take it.”

The tickling persisted. The shadow was growing darker. But it couldn’t
be. It just couldn’t.

“I saw the cop,” Mason narrowed his eyes, “and the empty holster. The
spare magazines were gone, too. I assumed...”

He let the words trail off, and studied the man. What Walker said next
would either allay his concerns or give full life to that dark, dreadful thought.

“No,” the doctor scowled down at the pistol. “Like I said, things went
bad quickly. I guess the poor officer did all he could do. The gun was
empty.”

Shit!

Wrong answer.

Just then, Mackenzie’s hand gripped Mason’s like a vice. She gasped and
spun wide-eyed toward the doorway.

“Doc,” Mason felt his blood run cold, “Without bullets, how exactly did
you attend to your patients?”

Walker shrugged and rolled the vial in his hands.

“Propofol is quick and painless. They didn’t suffer, I assu—”

Something clattered to the hallway floor just beyond the break room,
making them all jump to their feet.

Mackenzie clung to Mason’s side and hushed a frightened, “Mace...”

Mason threw an arm around her shoulder and bent to whisper in her ear,
“I know, Mack.”

Another crash. Far down the hall, but not far enough.

“I don’t understand,” Walker said, holding the vial high as if Mason
might read the label and declare everything as right as rain. “They’re all
dead, I assure you. Every last one of them. I’m a doctor, for chrissakes!”

Something metal clattered to the floor close by. Way too close for
comfort.

“W-who is out there?” Walker stammered. “W-what is it?”

Mason turned a steely eye to the doctor, and his words fell like stones.

“Doc, welcome to stage three.”

CHAPTER

IX

“We gotta go. Now!”

Mason felt Mackenzie’s hand in the small of his back and heard a
whispered, “Ready, Mace,” but when he looked to Doc Walker, he saw the
man visibly shaking from head to toe.

“I-I don’t understand,” Walker managed. “D-Did they follow you? I
thought you said you had a way out!”

“I did,” Mason gruffed, and padded toward the open door.

He poked his head around the corner and saw a creature at the far end of
the hall. An old man in a hospital gown with an IV tube dangling from his
emaciated arm and trailing behind him like a tail. As he stumbled awkwardly
toward the break room, a young woman emerged through a doorway and
filed in behind him. She, too, was wearing a hospital gown, but hers hung
from one shoulder to expose skin already mottled with the lividity of death.
Like the reanimated man in the back room of the coffee shop, the movements
of both were awkward and staggered. They didn’t run, but came at a constant
slogging shuffle.

Walker pushed in beside Mason to have a look, and before Mason could
stop him, he blurted a frightened, “Good God!” into the hallway.

At the sound, the two creatures fixed their sightless eyes directly upon
him and snapped their jaws.

Mason withdrew from the doorway and shoved the doctor rudely back.

“Christ, Doc!” he scolded him in a hush, “They can’t see, but they can
hear!”

Walker’s face was a mask of abject terror and confusion as he gaped at
Mason.

“It’s impossible!” he howled.

Mason stood over the little man and raised his weapon threateningly.
“Keep your voice down, you damned fool!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” the doctor’s voice fell to a whisper, “But I don’t
understand. This is impossible! I remember those two. I checked their vital
signs. They were dead! I swear to you, no one on this entire floor had a
breath of life after I... after I...”

He let the words trail off.

Mason glared at him, “Yeah, they’re dead, Doc. But dead ain’t exactly
dead anymore.”

He whispered to Mackenzie to stay put, and hurried back to the pistol
lying on the floor. He popped out the magazine and cursed softly, then he
tucked the thing into his waistband and looked around the room for anything
else that might be used as a weapon.

“Grab a chair!” he hushed to the doctor, “The stairs are our way out. We
have to move fast before the rest of them turn, but we have to be as quiet as
possible, understand?”

The doctor was clearly lost in a stew of confusion. He couldn’t
understand any of it, yet he couldn’t deny the evidence of his own eyes, and
at least he still had enough of his wits to know that his only chance lay in the
hands of this big, capable man. He did as he was told and retrieved the chair
he’d been sitting on, then he ran back to Mason’s side at the doorway and
peeked around the corner.

“Shit!” Mason cursed in a whisper. Two more creatures had appeared,
one at the far end of the hall, and the other stumbling clumsily toward them
from the opposite end of the ward. “Hold the chair in front of you, Doc. Use
it to keep them back if they get close, and I’ll do what I can to clear a path.”

The doctor nodded nervously and turned the chair sideways, legs
outward. Mason returned Mackenzie’s hand to the small of his back, heard
her hush, “I’m good, Mace,” and together, the three of them stepped into the
hallway.

Within seconds, the numbers doubled. As more creatures appeared out of
doorways up and down the hall, suddenly there were eight creatures, all

snapping their jaws and clawing the air and somehow following their dead
gaze to converge on the break room. Since they no longer drew breath, there
was no air passing through their vocal cords to produce a growl, but their
silence actually made them more frightening. Now, instead of feral beasts,
they were wraiths, and their silent advance made them seem somehow
otherworldly, like ghosts.

Monsters from the id... Mason thought, but kept the notion to himself.

Even as he prepared his little band of survivors to move, more creatures
stumbled out one by one to join the swarm. The old man with the tail was the
closest. He was less than a dozen feet away now, and raking the air with
gnarled, arthritic claws. Mason didn’t run at the man, but stepped quickly
forward, raising his weapon as he advanced. When he was close enough to
smell the stench of decay, he put all of his weight behind the rebar and drove
the end of it directly through the old man’s eye. He felt the weapon strike
bone at the back of the skull, and watched the creature crumple to the floor.

Walker bellowed a horrified, “Dear Lord!” but Mason ignored it. Rather
than admonishing the doctor’s indiscretion, the only consideration now was
flight. The stairwell was just fifty yards distant, but the swarm was thickening
even as Mason advanced. He jerked his weapon free from the old man’s skull
with a grating of metal on bone just as the woman with the ill-fitting hospital
gown made a lunge. Unable to bring his weapon to bear in time, he raised his
foot and levelled a ferocious kick at the creature’s legs. There was a harsh
snap! as her knee joint exploded, and she fell to the floor. He brought the
rebar up over his head again, intending to bring it down like a club on the
woman’s head, but the hallway was more confined than he’d anticipated. The
end of the weapon struck the ceiling and blocked his swing, and before he
could adjust for the close conditions, she was already clambering clumsily to
her feet. Despite her shattered knee, she kept coming at Mason, and he was
forced to back up a step as he swung wildly with the rebar. This time, the
steel rod caught the creature on the temple and she collapsed against the wall
and slumped to the floor. But it hadn’t been a killing blow, and as she
struggled to regain her footing, Mason called out in a hush to Walker.

“Stay close, Doc!”

He gathered his disparate group together and sped down the hallway.
With more of the horrible creatures appearing by the second, their only

chance was to get to the stairwell, and get there fast. Where there had once
been eight, all at once there were a dozen dead things converging on them,
and soon enough, there would be twice that number and the way would be
blocked. Mason changed tactics in mid-flight, and instead of taking the time
to fight the creatures one by one, he drew his weapon horizontally across his
chest at arm’s length and charged straight into the advancing swarm.

He ploughed into the next two creatures and bowled them over, barely
slowing as he hauled Mackenzie over their writhing bodies. A bent little man
was a few yards further along, stumbling down the center of the hallway, so
Mason ran right for him. The heavy rebar impacted the creature directly
between his snapping jaws with a horrible crunch and a hail of shattered
teeth, and the little man folded backward to the floor. Mason stepped over the
body easily enough, but he had a nervous moment when he felt Mackenzie’s
grip on the back of his waistband falter as she stumbled. She quickly regained
her footing, though, and wrapped her free hand around his middle, sticking to
him like glue as they both ran on.

Behind him, Walker followed along at a loping run, panting with the
exertion and holding the chair in front of him like the world’s most
implausible lion tamer. At first, there was little he need do other than hurdle
over squirming corpses, but then one of the creatures knocked down by
Mason’s charge began to rise awkwardly to its knees directly in his path.
With no time to second-guess his actions, he centered the creature’s head
between the legs of the chair and thundered into it. The force of the impact
brought him to a stop, but the blow also threw the creature back, causing its
head to smack the floor with the sound of a coconut striking stone. With that,
he was past it and tearing after Mason with a newfound determination.

Mason continued his charge, racing down the hall and barreling into
several more creatures in rapid succession. Running at full tilt with the sturdy
steel weapon as his battering ram, the creatures weren’t difficult to knock
down, but they never stayed down for long. He stepped over, around, and
sometimes overtop the creatures as they fell, always with a protective hand
around his back to make certain Mackenzie was still firmly attached. There
was only one frightening moment when she yelped once as one of the bodies
began to rise beneath her feet, but Mason hauled her quickly over the thing,
and it was soon left in their wake.

They had made it nearly halfway to the safety of the stairwell when the
reckless charge was brought to a sudden halt. Ahead of Mason stood a man as
big as a redwood. Thick-limbed and heavy-chested, the creature ambled
down the middle of the hallway, its lips curled back in a silent snarl. Already
in a full run, Mason adjusted his direction by two degrees, raised the heavy
rebar a foot, and only increased speed. It was his intention to catch the
creature above its center of gravity with as much momentum as he could
muster and see if the old adage was true about the bigger they are, the harder
they fall, but when he finally slammed into the goliath, he discovered that the
sufficiently big didn’t necessarily fall at all.

It was as if he had run into a brick wall. He thudded off the big man’s
chest and reeled back, but quickly collected himself and brought the rebar up
like spear. He made a stab at the creature’s eye, but just as he lunged, the
creature teetered awkwardly and the weapon only glanced off of hard bone. A
flap of skin now hung from the creature’s forehead, and a thick pasty ooze
dripped down its face, but the creature ignored the affront and stumbled on.
Mason took two steps back to gain distance, then he drew back the weapon
and put all of his weight into another lunge. This time, the rebar pierced the
creature’s face just above its upper lip, passed easily through the nasal cavity,
cracked through a thin layer of bone at the back of the sinuses, and skewered
the brainstem like a pig on a spit. Immediately, the big man’s back arched
stiffly, his muscled tightened in a spasm, and he began to roll back on his
heels. And as the goliath teetered, Mason couldn’t help but imagine a silent
timberrr... as the redwood finally toppled and crashed to the floor with a
resounding thud.

He had managed to fell the giant, but in the few short seconds it had
taken him to accomplish the feat, the swarm had nearly doubled. The
stairwell was still twenty yards away, but it may as well have been a mile.
Already there were no fewer than twenty creatures between them and
salvation. It was too many, and the swarm was thickening even as he
watched. The door was right there. Right fucking there! It was so close that
he almost tried for it despite the swarm, but even as he debated and pondered
and calculated and reconsidered, he couldn’t deny the math. The fact was, the
narrow window of opportunity they might have had was irretrievably gone.
They would never make it. Not a chance. They had to retreat. They had to
withdraw back to the break room, barricade themselves in, and come up with

another plan. He had no idea what form that plan would take, but of one thing
he was now absolutely certain. They sure as hell wouldn’t be going out the
way they came in.

He spun around, found a panting Walker at his heels, and his heart
suddenly rose up in his chest. As he looked past the staggering, gasping
Walker, he saw that the swarm behind them had grown every bit as much as
the swarm in front. There may have been twenty or more between them and
the break room. He looked longingly back to the stairwell, but it was all but
obscured by the sheer mass of the swarm converging from the front.

They were trapped. They couldn’t go forward and they couldn’t go back,
and every moment they hesitated, the worse the odds became. With the
undead converging on them from both sides, he could see only one option
left.

“In there!” he shouted to the doctor, then he took one last swing at a
creature standing in his way, gathered Mackenzie into his arms, and carried
her across the hallway and through an open door.

It was a patient’s room. Two beds were within; one recently vacated, and
the other still occupied by a big woman not yet reanimated. He lowered
Mackenzie to the ground, saw Walker huddle himself in a corner, and dashed
across the room. The woman’s eyes opened just as he swung his weapon high
over his head, then her skull exploded in a spray of red, and she lay still.
Mason ignored the resultant splatter of gore and raced back to the door.
Already, a young female and older male were in the doorway, but he acted
without hesitation. He clubbed the male over the head, shoved the female
back with a foot against her chest, and threw the door closed. He reached for
the deadbolt, but there was none. In fact, there was no lock at all. Not even a
latch. He cursed aloud, but he couldn’t help but understand the logic of it.
After all, why would a patient’s room need a lock? Thinking quickly, he slid
his rebar through the handle and wedged it against the door jamb as a
makeshift drawbar, then he tested it with a hard pull on the handle. It
scratched along the jamb, then it stuck fast. It wouldn’t hold for long with
any kind of weight behind it, but it would buy them a few minutes. Minutes
he had no intention of wasting.

He ran to the tall window on the far side of the room and looked down.
The Secret Garden was below, but it was several yards to the left, and his

mind immediately set itself to the math that would see them clear. He formed
a picture in his mind, directed Mackenzie to the empty bed, filled her hand
with one corner of the bed linen, and told her, “Strip the sheets, Mack.” He
then turned to Walker and howled, “The sheets! We need a rope, Doc! Tie
the sheets together!”

Mackenzie set to work stripping the empty bed, leaving the others to deal
with the one still occupied. Mason rudely pulled the dead woman over the
side of the bed, and Walker gathered up the sheets, mewling in disgust at the
blood and urine stains, but doing it nonetheless. Working together, they tied
the ends of all four sheets together, then Mason measured its length by feel,
calculating that it should be long enough to reach the ground.

Or close to it... he reconsidered, sourly.

As the men piled the bundle of sheets at the base of the window,
Mackenzie gaped blindly at the door and whispered ominously, “Better
hurry, Mace.”

There was a heavy thud against the door, and the rebar quivered against
the frame. Walker gave a yelp, but Mason calmly scanned the room. He
needed something to break the window, but there were few options. He tried
hammering at the glass with a metal bedpan, but to no avail. In desperation
then, he moved to the closest bed and barked at Walker.

“Help me with this!”

The bed was on rollers, so moving it wasn’t difficult. They pushed it into
the middle of the room, then Mason instructed Mackenzie to move to a
distant corner. The window was big, reaching nearly from floor to ceiling,
and the lower ledge was only two feet high. If they could push the bed with
enough force and tip it up at the right time, it should smash right through, but
the timing would have to be exact. Mason counted down from three, then he
and Walker both leaned into the bed and raced it across the tile floor toward
the window. At the very last second, Mason lifted the back end and threw it
forward, and it all worked better than he could have imagined. The front legs
struck the window ledge just as he took weight off the back end, and the
combined momentum of both caused the bed to pivot up and over. The
window exploded outward, the bed hung at the very apex of its somersault
for a long moment before gravity took over, then it canted forward and

disappeared over the edge, followed by a muted crash from down below.

Walker spared a second to look out. His only comment was a disgusted,
“Ugh...”

Mason cleared away bits of glass from the bottom of the frame, then he
tied one end of the sheet-line to a radiator and gave it a test pull. Ready to
move now, he had another look down, and once again cursed their luck. If
they had managed to get to a room two doors further down the hallway, they
could have shinnied down the sheet-rope directly into the Secret Garden. As
it was, they were twenty feet on the wrong side of the fence, directly above a
swarm of untold hundreds of the dead and the undead.

Mackenzie slipped her hand into Mason’s, and she turned her sightless
eyes up to his.

“Trouble, Mace?”

Mason gave her hand a gentle squeeze and replied, “Only a bit, Mack.”

Walker looked down at last, and his eyes went wide.

“We can’t get down this way!” he squealed. “It’s suicide!”

Another body thudded against the door even as gnarled fingers reached
through the narrow gap beneath. Mason flipped a nod at the door and told the
doctor honestly, “You’re welcome to stay.” But there was no reply.

If only there was a ledge or some kind of foothold further down, they
could scoot over and drop right into the Secret Garden. Sadly, they had no
such luck. The building was a sheer wall of concrete and glass from top to
bottom.

Mackenzie gave his hand a tug.

“There’s more outside, Mace. Lots more.”

He crouched down in front of the girl and took her slender shoulders in
his hands.

“Mack, how do feel about monkeys?”

“They’re alright, I guess,” she said, but then she scowled. “Except when
they throw poo. That’s just gross.”

Mason smiled in spite of the situation.

“Okay, but how about the nice monkeys? The strong little monkeys who
climb trees and swing from vines? How do feel about those monkeys?”

The scowl disappeared, but in its place was a raised eyebrow and an
irascible folding of her arms.

“If you want me to climb down, Mace, just ask.”

Once again, he found himself marveling at this incredible girl. She might
be blind, but she could see better than most able-bodied men thrice her age.

“I want you to climb down, Mack,” he admitted. “But there’s a hitch.
We’re not exactly over the Secret Garden. But I have a plan.”

Without hesitation, the girl nodded resolutely.

“Okay, Mace. Whatever you say.”

He outlined his plan in as few clipped words as possible, and as
expected, the girl readily agreed. When Walker couldn’t come up with
anything better, he shrugged, harrumphed, and nodded reluctantly. At that
unanimous decision, Mason coiled the end of the sheet-rope around
Mackenzie’s tiny waist, tying it into a slip knot, then he showed the girl how
to release the knot with a single tug and made her swear up and down that she
wouldn’t put her hands anywhere near the knot until he called down to tell
her to pull it.

“I promise, Mace,” she said sweetly. “I trust you.”

Suddenly, she threw herself into Mason’s arms and hugged him. He
wrapped his arms around her thin body and held her tight. At last, he heard
another thud from without, heard the rebar scrape along the door jamb ever
so slightly, and he kissed Mackenzie on the forehead.

“I won’t let you down, Mack,” he said, corralling an errant lock of hair
from her face. “Well, yeah, I’ll be letting you down, but you know what I
mean.”

“I do,” she said, then she found his face with her hands and kissed him
on the cheek as gently as the touch of a butterfly.

There was another thud against the door. All of those bodies pushing up
against it would have it open soon. There was no time to lose. He lifted
Mackenzie to the window ledge, brushed away any loose shards of glass that

remained, and had Mackenzie sit with her legs dangling over the side.

He paused long enough to ask, “Ready, Mack?”

The girl declared, “Ready, Mace,” then she allowed him to lift her out
through the open window and leave her dangling thirty feet in the air.

Once suspended, her natural momentum brought her back toward the
building, but she deftly held out her hands to cushion the blow, then she
simply felt her way down the wall as Mason lowered her toward the growling
swarm. When she was a dozen feet from the ground and barely out of the
reach of hundreds of claws reaching up at her, Mason and Walker worked
together to shift the upper end of the sheet-rope one way, then the other, then
back again.

The idea was to create a sort of pendulum effect, swinging Mackenzie
back and forth until she had gathered enough momentum to drop her on the
right side of the fence. If they miscalculated, the girl could slam against the
building and be injured, or the sheets could end up hooked on the top of the
fence, or worst-case scenario, they could drop Mackenzie right into the
swarm like a bait-ball into a school of sharks.

“Easy,” Mason hushed, “Easy now. This way. Okay, now back. Easy,
Doc, easy.”

Walker seemed as determined as Mason to get this right, and that just
made sense. Aside from the fact that they were playing with an innocent
girl’s life, this rope-line was their only way out. As such, whenever Mason
directed him one way or the other, the doctor obeyed every instruction to the
letter, replying with a strained, “Okay. Got it. Nice and easy.”

Working together, they soon had Mackenzie swinging like the proverbial
monkey at the end of the vine. At one end of the arc, she would sail far out
over the swarm and the creatures would instinctively claw at the movement
of air, then she would swing the other way, hover briefly over the Secret
Garden, then arc back over the swarm. At last, working as one, Mason and
Walker built enough momentum in the girl’s swing that she was clearing the
fence on every swing with room to spare.

Mason called down a cautionary, “Ready, Mack!”

It was the signal. All three knew what they had to do. Mackenzie took

one last swing out over the swarm, then when she passed back over the fence
and reached the very apex of the arc, Mason called out,” Now!” and she
pulled at the slip knot and fell eight feet to the ground. Thankfully, she had
been told exactly what to expect, so she hit the ground with legs bent, rolled
onto her side like a seasoned paratrooper, and popped back up to her feet,
gaping up at Mason with a broad grin.

She called something up to Mason, but the growling of the swarm was
like the roar of a jet engine, washing away her words. Still, she was down and
she was safe, and that was all that mattered.

Behind him, the door creaked and groaned under the weight of the
swarm. The rebar was still holding, but only just. He hauled in the line as
quickly as he could, tied the same knot around the doctor’s waist, and slapped
him on the shoulder.

“Your turn.”

Walker climbed over the window ledge and took a series of deep breaths
as if he were a deep-sea swimmer readying for a plunge. Sweat glistened on
his forehead, and his skin was ashen. For all the world, he looked about ready
to faint.

Mason barked at him, “Now, Doc! Move!”

With Mason’s help, Walker lowered himself over the ledge. Like
Mackenzie, his natural momentum spun him around, but unlike Mackenzie,
he flailed about clumsily and slammed into the building before he could
brace himself. He struck his head hard, and there was a frightening moment
when Mason thought he might lose consciousness, but the doctor shook his
head ponderously, wiped blood away from his eye, and offered a weak, “I’m
okay.”

Mason fed out the line as quickly as he dared, and soon had Walker
lowered as far as the rope-line allowed. At this point, the man was supposed
to start himself swinging, but he proved to be woefully bad at the exercise.
Whether it was fear at hanging so perilously close to the swarm, his general
lack of muscular strength, or the smack on the head, he simply hung there
like an exhausted fish at the end of a line. He tried to bring his feet up to push
himself off and start a swinging action, but every time he tried, his legs gave
out and he slammed back into the wall.

The door groaned behind Mason. The rebar was slowly but surely being
pushed back along the door jamb. In less than a minute, it would give way.
He looked down to Mackenzie standing alone in the Secret Garden separated
from hundreds of crazed monsters by a chain link fence already beginning to
buckle under the weight of the swarm, and his mind brought up all manner of
ugly images of what would happen should she be suddenly left alone in this
hellscape. He harbored no illusion that he was the only man in the world who
could take care of her, but for the moment, he was all she had. He just simply
had to get down to her, but he could only do so once Walker was down, and
the good doctor was proving to be all but useless.

He hurled a string of epithets down to the doctor to spur him to action,
but it was pointless. He swore again, but this time, all of his curses were
directed at himself. He had been a fool. He should have gone down first. If he
had gone ahead of Walker, he’d be with Mackenzie right now. But when he’d
made the decision to let Walker go first, it was after due consideration of a
number of factors. Firstly, would Walker ever have had the strength to climb
down by himself? Hardly. In truth, he didn’t much care if the man lived or
died, but there was the very real concern that Walker, left alone with a
creaking door about to give way, would have panicked. If so, he might have
tried to escape down the sheet-rope whether Mason was clear of it or not.
That much weight would have torn the line and doomed them both, or more
likely, the doctor’s strength would have ebbed halfway down, he would have
lost his grip, and he would have swept Mason off the line as he fell. Either
way, he would be dead, and Mackenzie would be alone. But now, even
considering those probabilities, he truly regretted his decision.

If Walker couldn’t start himself swinging, Mason would have to do it.
There was no other way to get him down and get the line clear. He began to
pull frantically at the sheet-rope, yanking it one way and then the other, but
two men moving a little girl was far easier than one man moving twice the
mass. At last, though, he detected a shift at the end of the line and knew that
Walker was finally moving. It was only inches, but it was something. He
pulled in concert with the man’s momentum, increasing the arc by tiny
degrees with every swing, but the man himself was giving little in the way of
assistance. He rained down another barrage of curses at the doctor and swore
to himself that if there had been enough bed linen in this room to hobble
together a second line, he’d leave Walker hanging there like a piñata and

make his own way down. But without that option, he was stuck. If he wanted
to live, he had to get down, and to get down, he had to get Walker down first.

Every muscle straining now, he pulled on the sheet-line for all he was
worth. Back and forth, back and forth he pulled, and at last he saw the arc
slowly building. If Walker could bring his feet up, flex his knees and push
off, he could increase the swing by yards, but he wasn’t doing that. Instead,
he seemed focused solely on keeping himself from hitting the wall a second
time, so he had his arms out and was scrabbling along the side of the building
like some kind of Spiderman wannabe. Mason hurled curses down at the
doctor, curses the man would never hear, and kept pulling.

The door creaked again, and Mason flipped a glance over his shoulder,
making himself a promise then and there. If the rebar came loose, he would
launch himself through the window and suffer the consequences. The sheets
might tear or the knots might give, but he wasn’t about to face off against
countless creatures bare-handed just to keep Walker safe. Hell, maybe he’d
even have the satisfaction of landing squarely on top of the pitiful excuse for
a man and crush the life out of him before the swarm could have their due.

Frantic now, he climbed bodily onto the window ledge, leaning
perilously out and grabbing as far down the line as he could. This new
position gave him more leverage, and by putting all of his weight into the
effort, he soon had the doctor swinging way out over the swarm and arcing
back far enough that he was starting to creep over the edge of the Secret
Garden. A few dozen swings later, Walker was well clear of the fence and
Mason called down to him, “Now, Doc! Pull the knot! Now!”

Walker either didn’t hear Mason or was purposely ignoring him. He
made no move at all toward the release.

“Goddam it, Doc! Get ready!” He gauged the pendulum and counted
down, “Three... two... one... Now, Doc!”

Again, nothing. Walker was too preoccupied in keeping himself from
hitting the wall to free up a hand to pull the knot. Or maybe it was the eight-
foot drop to the ground that was staying his hand. Whatever the cause, Mason
watched him pass up chance after chance to jump clear. The door was about
to give way at any moment, and here was the good doctor perfectly willing to
let another man die to avoid scraping a knee. Mason suddenly let loose a blue

streak of the foulest curses he could imagine, all aimed at Walker. He called
him every vile name he could think of, and came up with a few new ones that
surprised even himself with their crudeness. When Walker failed to react, he
even went so far as to tell himself that if he’d had a knife, he would have cut
through the sheet-line and let Walker drop. He would be condemning himself
at the same time, but at least he’d live long enough to see this useless human
torn apart by the swarm.

Every time Walker passed up an opportunity to jump clear, Mason’s fury
only increased. At last, it got to the point where he was fully prepared to
climb down the line despite the danger and personally kick Walker free. But
then he looked to Mackenzie and held himself in check. Her lips were
moving, and she was pointing and gesticulating wildly. He couldn’t hear
what she was saying over the roar, but she was clearly shouting, and not to
Mason. She was trying to help by calling out to Walker. Good for her, Mason
acknowledged, but the man shouldn’t have to be instructed by a little girl. If
he’d just grow some balls and pull the knot when the time was right, he’d be
free and clear, and all three of them would be away from this hell.

But the good doctor couldn’t figure it out, could he? He was so
determined not to hit the wall again that all of his attention was focused
precisely there. Somehow, Mason had to get the man’s eyes back to where
they belonged and get him to release the knot. If only he could... Aha! Of
course! Mackenzie! That little girl with the hypersensitive bionic Vulcan
ears! She could undoubtedly hear Mason from way up here, even over the
roar of the swarm. Maybe both of them working together could get the job
done.

“Mack!” Mason called down. The girl’s lips stopped moving, and she
gazed blindly upward. Yes! She could hear him! Halle-fuckin’-lujah. “I’m
going to count down from five, Mack! You count with me! Tell Doc to pull
the knot when it gets to zero! Tell him that I know he’s scared, but make him
understand that if he doesn’t let go this time, I’m going to cut the rope and let
him fall on the other side of the fence!”

Mackenzie hesitated for only a moment, then she nodded, and her lips
began moving. Walker’s demeanor didn’t change, but he was close enough to
the girl that he had to be able to hear her. Mason waited for one more arc
back and forth, then he shouted down to Mackenzie.

“Five!”

Mackenzie’s lips began moving in concert with his own, so Mason knew
she was counting right along with him.

“Four!”

Walker reached the far end of the arc and began the return swing. Mason
was timing the countdown right, so if Walker released the knot when he was
supposed to, he would sail well clear of the fence.

“Three!”

But what if he didn’t let go? What if he was utterly frozen with fear?
Mason’s threat had been an empty one, after all. He had no knife, so there
would be no cutting of the rope.

“Two!”

Damn it! Well, there was broken glass all over the floor. If that useless
excuse for a man didn’t comply, he’d grab one of those shards and hack his
way through the line. If that didn’t work, he’d damn well chew through the
fucking thing.

“One!”

The doctor sailed over the fence and hovered above Mackenzie’s head.
Mason saw the girl’s mouth move in concert with his own and saw the
doctor’s hand reach down.

“Zero! Now! Now! Now!”

At the very apex of his final swing, Walker tugged at the slipknot and
finally released himself. His body arced up and over Mackenzie’s head, then
he dropped hard and landed awkwardly. It looked like he might have hurt
himself on the landing, but he could have landed squarely on top of his head
and Mason wouldn’t have cared less.

At that exact moment, the door gave way, the rebar clanged to the floor,
and a rush of bodies flooded through the opening like Mongols through the
gates of Baghdad. Already perched on the windowsill, Mason grabbed hold
of the sheet-line and let himself drop several yards before gripping the line
tight to stop the slide. But no sooner had he come to a stop when he felt
something slam into his shoulder hard enough to make him nearly lose his

grip. He slid down another foot and heard something whoosh! past him on the
other side. In another world, he would have thought that castle defenders
were throwing boulders down to dislodge him from the wall, but then he
remembered the bodies splashed across the pavement outside of his own
apartment building and knew exactly what was happening. He looked up just
as a woman appeared at the open window, and sure enough, she pitched
forward, hovered there for several seconds, then the laws of physics took
over and she fell.

Mason kicked himself away from the wall and sprung to the side,
avoiding the falling woman by mere inches. He looked up just in time to see
another creature begin a dive, and deftly launched himself in the other
direction. Quickly, he clambered down the sheet-rope even as two more
creatures tumbled through the opening, one to either side. At last, he brought
up his legs, used them like springs, and began to set up his own pendulum
swing. He all but ran horizontally across the face of the building, back and
forth, allowing his momentum to build with each pass. He dodged two more
falling bodies with nary a stumble, and was soon arcing far out over the
Secret Garden. When the moment was precisely right, he released his grip on
the sheet-line, sailed a few feet past Mackenzie, effected a perfect tuck-and-
roll as he hit the ground, and bounced back up on his feet.

Walker was still on the ground, holding his ankle and writhing in pain,
but Mason ignored him completely and ran to Mackenzie. The swarm beyond
the fence had been worked into a virtual frenzy with all the activity, but he
ignored them, too. He scooped Mackenzie into his arms and hugged her tight.
She wrapped her slender arms around his shoulders and tucked her face into
the crook of his neck.

“It’s okay, Mack,” he told her, stroking her generous mop of hair. “I got
you, kiddo. We’re okay.”

The girl lifted her head enough to plant a gentle kiss on Mason’s cheek,
then she tucked her face back into his neck.

“I knew you’d make it, Mace,” she said sweetly. “I knew it.”

He turned just enough to catch a glimpse of Walker. The man was still
on the ground, clutching at his ankle and grimacing in pain, and he glared at
him without any attempt to hide his utter contempt. Here was the man whose

ineptitude had very nearly cost him his life. And more importantly, what
would have happened to Mackenzie, then? Would the good doctor have taken
her under his wing? Hell, the weakling couldn’t even take care of his own
ass. Chances were, the weakling would have enacted his so-called ‘advanced
triage,’ decided that Mackenzie’s blindness made her a lost cause, and left her
behind as he skulked quietly away.

The more he regarded the weak little man huddled on the ground,
mewling over his poor twisted ankle as though he’d suffered the injury of a
lifetime, the more his animosity grew. When he contemplated what might
have been, for two cents he would have picked Walker up off of the ground
and hurled him bodily over the fence. He fingered the empty pistol in his
waistband and pondered what he would do in the rashness of the moment if
there was but a single bullet left in the gun.

As his thoughts turned darker and darker, Mackenzie put her lips to his
ear and asked sweetly, “Can we go now?”

“Absolutely, kiddo,” Mason assured her, then his eyes fell again on the
hunched form of the doctor, and he had to add, “But the real question is,
what are we going to do about him?”

CHAPTER

X

Walker made no attempt to stand as Mason approached. Only when Mason
was hovering directly over him did he bother to look up, and when he did, it
brought a gasp to Mason’s lips.

Apparently, a sore ankle and a crack over the eye weren’t the only
damage the man had suffered during the escape. His skin had turned the color
of old parchment, his half-lidded eyes were dilated and bloodshot, and his
clothes were soaked through from the sweat pouring from his body.

Mason knew what fear could do to a body. He had seen it, and he had
lived through it firsthand. But what was happening to Walker was more than
fear. His mouth hung open, he was breathing in rapid little gulps of air, and
his entire body was visibly shaking. The man was damned close to catatonic
shock and a complete shutdown. His eyes were staring up at Mason, but there
was little discernible behind them.

“He’s sick,” Mackenzie whispered in Mason’s ear.

Mason scowled down at the doctor and shook his head roughly. “He’s
just scared.”

“We’re all scared,” Mackenzie reminded him.

Mason set the girl on the ground and knelt before Walker. The man’s
eyes followed his, and at last he was able to see the faintest spark of light
behind them. He reached out and touched the man’s hand. His flesh was as
hot as a branding iron.

“Doc?” he barked, but seeing the man in such a deplorable state
managed to spark some trace of pity left in his heart. He spoke again, but this
time he did so in a gentler tone. “Doc? Can you walk?”

A trickle of blood was pooling in Walker’s eye, but the man made no

move to wipe it away. He was shutting down, alright. Mason knew that once
someone reached that stage, little could be done. Just as he had almost
convinced himself that it would be in everyone’s best interest to leave the
man behind, Mackenzie reached out blindly and rested her hand on the
doctor’s knee.

“Doctor Walker, we have to go,” she hushed.

The doctor’s eyes flitted back and forth between Mason and the girl, and
finally there was something human behind them. He gaped at the girl for
some seconds, then he released his grip on his sore ankle and patted her hand
gently. She smiled back, and with that, he began to come slowly back to life.

“Yes,” he said, putting a hand to the goose-egg on his head with a wince.
“Yes, we have to go.”

Mackenzie took his hand, Mason sighed beleagueredly and grabbed hold
of an elbow, and together they helped Walker to his feet. The man stood
shakily, but at least he stood.

The fence was creaking and groaning all along the front of the Secret
Garden. The swarm had been whipped into a mad frenzy, and now hundreds
upon hundreds of bodies were pressing against that simple chain link fence,
claws raking, fingers reaching through, and teeth gnashing against the metal
links. Mason knew that the fence wouldn’t hold for much longer. It was built
to keep passersby from wandering into a staff area. It was never built to take
this kind of stress. Already, it was bulging in the middle and beginning to
buckle.

Once again, out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Mackenzie was right. They had to go.

Even with the good doctor on his feet and moving, Mason would just as
soon leave him behind, but Mack would never allow it. As well, he had to
admit that his infuriatingly persistent sense of morality remained, however
precarious and however fractured. Yes, Walker was afraid, but as Mackenzie
had pointed out so astutely, they all were. But there was something else
besides cowardice working away at the man’s insides. Beyond the fear,
beyond the rapidly swelling eye, and beyond the injured ankle, something
infinitely darker was chewing away at the man’s soul, and it didn’t take a
genius to figure it out. Mass euthanasia was just a start. Factor in the utterly

preposterous reanimation of those very same corpses and voilà... a doctor in
meltdown.

As they made their way to the open manhole, a horrible series of cracks
resounded from all around the Secret Garden. The metal posts holding the
fence up had been set in concrete a foot or two below ground level, but
around that solid concrete was simple, ordinary soil, and that was proving to
be the fence weak point. With so much mass being heaved against it, those
posts were now being ripped from the ground. Even as Mason watched, one
of the legs closest to them tore free, and the top of the fence canted inward by
ten degrees.

“Come on, Mack!” he barked, grabbing the girl by the hand and
whisking her away at a run.

He took her to the open manhole and lowered her in. She found a
handhold and the first step of the ladder, and called back up to him, “I got it,”
then she asked in a hush, “You’re not leaving him, right Mace?”

It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. Even if he had decided the other
way, one look at the expression on the girl’s face would have changed things.

“We’re right behind you,” Mason assured her. “Both of us.”

Barely had Mackenzie entered the hole when all hell broke loose. With
the fence already buckled, it wasn’t long before it collapsed completely. A
second leg popped free from its moorings, and with more strain put on the
posts on either side, the dominoes began to fall. One moment, the fence was
bowed but still standing. The next, it was leaning over at such an angle that
those in the front of the swarm could scramble up and onto it. Once that feat
was achieved, the combined weight of so many bodies flattened it
completely. And as if a dam had burst, the swarm gushed through the breach
in a wave and flooded into the Secret Garden.

“Go, Mack, go!” Mason called down the hole, then he grabbed Walker
rudely by the shoulders and shoved him in after her. “Coming down fast,
Mack! Get out of the way!”

The vanguard of the swarm were all big men. They were the ones who’d
had the mass and strength to shove their way through the crush of bodies to
be at the front of the line, and the sheer power to survive the collapse of the
fence and ensuing flood. Now they raced toward Mason with hundreds more

at their heels. Mason waited as long as he dared to let the others get clear, but
it was counted in fractions of a second. When the closest snarling creature
was mere yards away, he finally threw himself into the hole and dropped like
a stone.

Fortunately, the way was clear, but his slide down the ladder barely
ahead of the raking claws and gnashing teeth came at a cost. There had been
no time to pull the manhole cover back across the opening, so a gaping hole
was left above. Even now, bloody hands clawed through the opening, and a
confusion of snarling faces and hulking bodies blocked all but a few
crepuscular rays of light.

As long as the swarm all crushed in together, the hole would remain
plugged, but such a state wouldn’t last forever. Sooner or later, one or
another would squeeze through or be shoved through by the weight of bodies
behind, and more would follow. Quickly then, Mason untied the backpack
from where he’d left it, flicked on his phone for light, and began herding
Mackenzie and the doctor back toward the main sewer line.

This time, there was no singing, and no playing with echoes. Mason held
Mackenzie’s hand tight and hurried her along, and Walker was left to keep up
as best he could. Mason certainly wasn’t going to carry the man, so if the
good doctor couldn’t keep pace, he would still sleep quite comfortably
knowing that his moral contract had been fulfilled. But the decision wasn’t
his alone. Every time Mackenzie heard the man falling too far behind, she
would haul back on Mason’s hand to bring him to a halt and let the doctor
catch up, and all Mason was ever able to do was grunt his dissent and implore
the man to hurry.

In truth, Walker looked to be fading fast. Mason had reckoned that the
farther they got from the hospital, the more spirited the man would become,
but the opposite seemed to be happening. Whether it was the stench of the
sewer, or the narrowness of their escape, or simply the doctor dwelling on
dark thoughts, he had no idea. Soon enough, he even began to suspect that the
issue might have a physical cause as well as a psychological one. Maybe the
smack on the head was worse than it looked. Maybe the man had suffered a
concussion, or maybe even some kind of internal bleeding. Unfortunately, the
only one who could possibly make such a diagnosis was the patient himself,
and it was all that man could do just to hobble along while offering meek,

breathless apologies.

Once they reached the main line, Mason herded them south, but no
sooner had they made the turn than Mackenzie reeled back on Mason’s hand,
bringing them once again to a sudden halt.

“Mace,” she whispered, “They’re coming. Behind us.”

Damn! They had unplugged the hole.

“How many?” Walker panted.

“Does it matter?” Mason chided him, “I left the only weapon I had back
in that room. One or ten, I can’t fight them off bare-handed.”

“The echoes bouncing back and forth might confuse them,” Walker tried
again, but he was too weak to offer the words with any real conviction.

Mason allowed the idea a full half-second’s consideration.

“It might confuse them a bit, but there aren’t too many paths to follow
down here. They’ll be like rats scurrying through a maze, and we’re the big
fat hunks of cheese at the end.”

“There’s three, I think,” Mackenzie had her ears pricked up, “It’s hard to
tell. Four, maybe.”

Mason knew that if there were three or four now, more were sure to
come. Now that the human presence was gone from the hospital grounds, the
swarm would slowly disperse, and with no crowd left to plug the hole, one
blind creature after another would blunder in. Then, they would do what they
naturally do. They would follow the noise.

“Let’s move,” he hushed to the group, “Quickly and quietly.”

They didn’t run, but even a brisk walk through the inch or two of muck
created too much noise for Mason’s liking. He knew that they couldn’t outrun
the creatures on their tail, nor could they elude them within a closed system.
What they needed was a hasty exit. They had passed a ladder leading to the
surface a minute ago, but there was no going back. All they could do was go
on and hope they reached the next manhole before the swarm caught up to
them.

As they hurried along, Mackenzie squeezed his hand and whispered a

desperate, “They’re getting close.”

She needn’t have bothered. Mason could hear them by now. Heavy
footfalls echoing from behind. Growling. Snarling. Running. Sloshing. No
hesitation. With no obstructions to trip them up or block their path, the
creatures were coming at flank speed. Mason gathered Mackenzie in his arms
and dashed headlong away from the sounds, leaving Walker to keep up as
best he could.

Mackenzie heard the doctor’s footfalls falling behind and hushed into
Mason’s ear, “He’s not as fast as you, Mace! We have to slow down!”

“We can’t!” Mason huffed between breaths.

“We have to!” the girl insisted.

Damn it!

If it had been just Mason and Walker in that sewer with no Mackenzie to
take care of, he might have stopped of his own accord to help the man.
Maybe. But even with his commitment to keep the girl safe, that curly-
headed conscience riding along on his shoulder was calling the shots. He
stopped dead in his tracks, turned to see Walker a good fifty feet behind, and
held up his phone to guide the man.

“Hurry up, for chrissakes!” he hushed, waving the light frantically.
“C’mon, Doc! Move!”

The light wasn’t much, but it was enough to throw a dim glow far down
the pipe. And what it illuminated was horrifying. Along with the rising
crescendo of footfalls, snarls, and growls, there was now a blur of movement
closing in behind the doctor.

Time was up. There was nothing more he could do for Walker. Despite
Mackenzie’s protests, he turned on his heels and ran as fast as he could away
from the swarm. He couldn’t hope to outrun the creatures, but in some grim
part of his mind, he considered that having Walker along might ultimately
prove useful after all. To paraphrase the old joke, he didn’t have to outrun the
swarm, he just had outrun Walker. If the swarm stalled for even a few
seconds to attend to the doctor, he might actually have a chance to get
Mackenzie clear.

Then he saw it. A ladder, just ahead. He made directly for it, and arrived

panting and nearly out of breath. He lifted Mackenzie as high as he could and
told her, “Here’s a ladder, Mack. Grab on and climb as high as you can. I’ll
be right behind you.”

Her hand found a rung and took hold, but once she found a place for her
feet, she turned back to Mason.

“Where’s Doctor Walker?”

“Dunno,” Mason told her honestly.

He started up the ladder, pushing Mackenzie higher with every rung he
ascended. At last, they were at the top, and the girl was all but crushed
against the manhole cover above. The footfalls were close now. Too close. So
many feet, pounding and sloshing at a manic run. In the close confines, it
sounded like a hundred ravening beasts on the chase, every one of them
growling and snapping their jaws in anticipation of the kill.

In the few seconds he had before the swarm was upon them, Mason did
the math. He might be able to throw back the manhole cover and shove
Mackenzie through in time, but he couldn’t do it quietly, and the bigger
swarm filling the streets would make quick work of her. But the ladder was
high, so he and Mackenzie were a good seven feet above the sewer floor. He
made his decision quickly.

“Shush, Mack....” he whispered, squeezing himself another few inches
higher up the ladder.

They were now as high up as they could go, so he drew in a deep breath,
held it, and froze.

And just in time. At just that moment, the first of the swarm appeared in
the ambient glow of his phone light. He recognized it as one of the big males
that had broken down the fence at the Secret Garden. The creature had
suffered a deep scalp laceration sometime between then and now that painted
his face red with his own blood, but despite the injury, he charged at full tilt
down the pipe, snarling and growling and raking the air with his claws. In
another second, he would be at the ladder. If he happened to reach up at the
wrong time, it would be all over.

Mason managed to lift his foot another inch, but that was it. He was now
as high off the ground as he could conceivably go. He watched the creature

advance, and felt his pulse thundering in his ears. At last, the big male ran by,
but it caught its foot on the base of the ladder and stumbled. It caught itself in
time to regain its footing, then it peered blindly about as if searching for
whoever or whatever had gotten in his way. Mason was certain the thing
would surely hear the thundering of his heart and discover the two of them
huddling up there a few inches over its head, but at last the creature turned
back to its previous heading and charged away down the pipe.

There was no time for celebration. The others were right on the first
one’s tail. Mason managed to release his breath and refill his lungs quietly,
and then the rush came. Two others tore past the ladder and continued on
after the first, then a fourth followed a few seconds later. But this last one
didn’t race by like the others. To Mason’s horror, it actually slowed as it
approached the ladder. It was another one of the big males from the hospital.
Leather jacket. Biker type. Massive chest and thick neck. It no longer
growled, but the sound it made while grinding its crooked yellow teeth
together was not unlike the rasping of blades against a whetstone.

Mason’s lungs hungered for air, and his legs ached from the awkward
positioning of his body. He could feel Mackenzie’s chest rise and fall against
his back, so he knew that she was breathing, but she was doing so as quietly
as a kitten. He wished he could do the same as she, but by now he was well
aware of that particular shortcoming. Still, as long as they remained frozen,
the biker would pass them by, then he could breathe all he wanted. In another
few seconds, the creature would surely tear off after the others and they
would be safe.

But then, the unthinkable happened. Maybe it had sensed something in
the air, or maybe it had actually heard Mason’s heart hammering in his chest,
or maybe it was just pure dumb shitty luck, but whatever the reason, the
creature slowed until it came to a sudden stop directly below. Once stopped,
it stood at the very base of the ladder, turning first one way then the other,
then it cocked its head to one side and stood perfectly still.

Seconds passed, and Mason could feel Mackenzie’s tiny body start to
tremble. She might be breathing all right, but she was crushed into such a
tight little ball that her muscles had to be screaming in protest. Too much
longer and she would cramp up, then her muscles would start to spasm and
there would be nothing either of them could do to stop it.

He considering dropping bodily onto the creature while he still had some
strength left, but even if he could somehow maneuver himself into the proper
position without being detected, the impact wouldn’t be nearly enough to
incapacitate the barrel-chested biker. He would then be forced into a bare-
handed fight to the death with a raging wildman with a fifty-pound
advantage. Such a struggle wouldn’t be a struggle at all. It wouldn’t even be a
scrap. It would be suicide. And then Mackenzie would be alone.

As he gaped down at the monster, he felt a gentle tap on the back of his
neck and a wetness beading under his collar. At first, he thought Mackenzie
might have been hurt and what he’d felt had been blood dripping down from
above. But no, he would have noticed if she’d suffered so much as a scratch.
Then he had it. She was a child, after all. She must be scared silly. The poor
thing was crying to herself in absolute silence, and what he’d felt was a
teardrop. But wait. No. Mack wasn’t like other kids. Even if she was the
crying type, she would never allow herself to do so here and now. But if it
hadn’t been a tear, what did that leave?

Of course. The air in the sewer was dank and fetid, but it was also hot.
The girl was sweating. And in this heat, who wouldn’t be? The revelation
was so incongruous under the circumstances that he disregarded it at first, but
then his active mind followed the math, and a new fear gripped his heart.
Who wouldn’t be sweating in this heat? No one, that’s who. No one,
including him. Even now, he could feel perspiration beading up along his
hairline and rolling lazily down his cheek to gather near his chin. In any other
place and time, it would mean nothing, but here he was, directly above a
creature whose every sense was attuned toward the detection of a living
human being.

It was such a movie cliché that he might have actually laughed had the
situation not been so dire. Imagine being undone by an errant bead of sweat
falling from above and hitting that raging creature directly on top of its head.
It was utterly ridiculous, and yet the danger was all too real. The creature
would undoubtedly feel it, but would its puerile mind be able to put two and
two together? Perhaps, but even if not, it might very well react with a flailing
of arms and discover the two of them hiding barely a foot away. With the
terrible imagery complete, Mason slowly drew his head back as far as he
could, and tucked his chin neatly into his elbow. Now his sweat could safely
accumulate, but there was a downside to this new position. With his head

tucked into his arm, he could no longer see the creature. But no matter. What
difference did it make? With a grim realization, he knew that the beast would
either reach up and find them there, or not. Despite his best efforts, their fate
was suddenly no longer in his hands. So, with nothing more to do but wait for
the universe to decide, he closed his eyes, and for the first time in more years
than he cared to count, he began to pray.

But even as he beseeched a God of whose existence he was dubious at
best, he knew in his heart that it was less a question of faith than it was of
how much longer he could hold his breath. Thirty seconds had already gone
by since he’d last filled his lungs. Maybe more. The way his chest was
already burning, he figured on another thirty seconds. Forty, tops. Mackenzie
might be able to draw breath without making a sound, but he couldn’t. As
soon as he gasped for air, it would be game over. Dispensing with his one-
way conversation with an improbable God, he instead made a deal with
himself, then and there, high atop that rusty ladder. When he finally reached
his breaking point twenty or thirty seconds from now and simply had to
breathe, he would do so even as he launched himself down at the biker-
creature. With luck, he might land directly on top of the thing and buy
himself a few seconds. If he could manage a kick to the knee, he might even
stand a fighting chance. More probably he’d be torn to pieces before he could
even get to his feet, but if providence stepped in and he got in a lucky shot or
two, he might just live long enough to lead the creature away from Mack.
Yes, she would be alone, but at least she would be alive. And either way, he
couldn’t imagine handing this monster its dinner on a plate without going
down fighting.

He counted off the seconds in his head. By the time he reached ten, his
pulse was pounding in his ears. At fifteen, his diaphragm began to spasm. At
twenty, he had to physically clamp his mouth closed to keep from exhaling.
And from then on, every second was an eternity. His lungs burned as if they
were about to explode from his chest. A sharp pain shot through his temples
and returned with every beat of his heart. Finally, after more than a full
minute had passed with every cell in his body screaming for oxygen, he knew
his time was up. He tensed up all of his muscles and made himself ready, and
with no time left and nothing left to lose, he released his grip on the ladder
and flung himself downward.

And missed!

He landed hard on his shoulder in two inches of muck, with shocks of
pain radiating through his back and up into his neck. He lay there for a
second, gasping for breath, then his vision cleared enough that he could make
out a pair of legs looming up next to him, and he knew that he had thrown
away his one chance. In another second, it would all be over. Claws at his
face. Teeth at his throat. Mackenzie, having the dubious honor of witnessing
the sounds of his death screams. As the last desperate act of the condemned,
he rolled onto his side and lashed a foot out at one of the legs, and he missed
again.

But then the creature did something for which he had been completely
unprepared. One of its legs bent, a knee was dropped into the mire mere
inches away, and the ashen face of Doctor Walker came into focus.

“Are you okay?” the voice asked, crazily.

Mason struggled to a crouch, ready to fight for the last of his life, but he
couldn’t understand why he was seeing the doctor’s face instead of the
biker’s. Clearly, his oxygen-starved brain was playing tricks on him. But no
matter. He shook the cobwebs from his head, curled his hands into fists and
prepared to battle to the end with the big leather-clad creature, but again the
pale, thin face of Walker hovered awkwardly before him.

“Are you okay?” the face repeated.

Mason spun one way, then the other, but the biker was nowhere in sight.

“Where....” he managed between great heaving gasps.

“Oh, he ran off after the others,” the face of Walker said, and a hand was
lowered.

Mason took the hand and allowed the doctor to help him to his feet.

“Are they gone?” he panted, his chest heaving. “How did you...”

“I hid,” Walker replied, weakly. “Well, not really. I tripped and fell, and
they were so close that I just laid there and tried not to move. I guess it
worked because they ran right past me. And yes, they seem to be gone. At
least for now.”

Up above, Mackenzie unfolded herself and descended a few cautious
steps down the ladder.

“Mace?” she hushed.

“Right here, Mack. Can you still hear them?”

She listened for a moment, then whispered, “Just barely. They’re still
running the other way.”

Mason put an arm around the girl’s waist to gather her back into his
arms, then he reached out to shake the doctor’s hand.

“I’m glad you made it, Doc, I really am. I wasn’t sure. You were so far
behind, and they were coming so fast...”

Walker’s hand felt like a wet dishrag. Still, the man nodded resolutely
and offered, “You did what you had to do. It was the wisest choice.”

“The wisest choices aren’t always the right choices, Doc,” Mason said,
bringing out his light and shining it to both sides nervously. “But let’s
continue this conversation up top, shall we? I think we’ve overstayed our
welcome in the underworld.”

CHAPTER

XI

By now, Mason had become quite adept at the discreet removal of manhole
covers.

Once Mackenzie moved to the side of the ladder to give him room to
work, he hoisted one edge of the cover an inch or two to assess the situation,
then slid the cover back along the roadway, one slow inch at a time. At last,
he tucked his phone away, secured his pack over his shoulder, and climbed
out.

It wasn’t hard to know where they were. This was a quiet side street, but
even in a world turned upside down, Market Street was impossible to miss.
He could make out that renowned thoroughfare just past a sprawling Texaco
station at the end of the block. Referring to the map of the city in his head, he
triangulated his position as being between Highway 80 and the 101, which
would put them somewhere in the Mid-Market area. Not bad, he considered.
Not counting the sideways diversion to the hospital, they had covered
something close to five miles via their own personal subway. If his reckoning
was accurate, the park with the funny dogs was no more than three miles
away. Mostly south, and a little bit west.

He clicked his cheek, and Mackenzie popped out of the manhole. She
made not a sound as she accepted Mason’s hand and let him help her to her
feet. Several long moments later, Walker’s head appeared and hovered just
above ground level.

Now that he saw him in the full light of day, Mason had to hold back a
gasp at the sight. The man’s flesh had turned as white as snow, his clothes
were literally dripping with sweat, and his hair was plastered to his scalp as if
he’d just emerged from a swimming pool. But it was his eyes that unnerved
Mason most. Holy christ, those eyes! The man’s pupils had retracted into
pinpoints, and the rest was the color of blood. One look at those eyes, and he

thought the man might shy away from the light like a mole, but the doctor
continued to rise laboriously out, rung by rung, laying a shaking hand on the
lip of the hole, and heaved himself up one more rung. At that point, the life
seemed to drain out of him, and he hung there in mid-air as if deciding
whether to continue up or drop back down to the sewer. Despite his
conflicted feelings toward the man, Mason had no choice but to come around
the doctor’s back, slip his hands under his arms, and lift him the rest of the
way out. Then they simply stood there for a moment, one trying desperately
to catch his breath, and the other surreptitiously wiping his hands on his jeans
and scanning the entire perimeter.

Clearly, escaping the inner city was the best thing they could have done.
They weren’t out of the woods yet by any stretch, but at least the swarms
were thinner here. And yet, there was something about the very sparseness of
the swarm that brought the horror closer to home for Mason. Now, instead of
a faceless horde, they became that little old woman who might have been
someone’s grandmother, or the guy in the tattered suit who might have been
the guy who sold him his last car. A young punk emerged from a side street
with his hoodie all bloodied and hanging off of one shoulder, and he
immediately became the kid behind the counter at the local 7-11 where he
bought his beer. A middle-aged woman tore past twenty feet away, and she
became the Suzie down at the works yard. A pretty young girl in a torn skirt
stumbled around a corner and just as quickly disappeared from sight, and she
instantly became the girl from Starbucks with the friendly smile and the cute
little wink. What was her name? Emily? Emma? Amy?

At last, he shoved all such thoughts aside and gathered his disparate little
group together, herding them south toward Market Street. The road was
littered with abandoned vehicles and more than a few corpses in various
states of butchery, but he could see a big Farragut’s department store on the
other side of Market that would be a good place to hole up. There would be
supplies there. Food. Water. Clean clothes. But really, it wouldn’t have
mattered if it had been an abattoir. They needed to get somewhere safe to rest
up. Just a few minutes to catch their breath and figure out their next move.
Time enough to wolf down a muffin and chug some water. God willing,
maybe even an hour or two so Mason could close his eyes and Walker could
get his shit together.

Mason and Mackenzie strode softly, hand in hand, but even at the slow,

cautious pace they’d set for themselves, Walker began to fall quickly behind.
Every few yards, Mackenzie would tug at Mason’s hand and bring him to a
stop, and they would wait for endless, interminable seconds for the doctor to
catch up.

“I’m not carrying him,” Mason hushed to the girl.

She fixed him with a blind stare and swept back a handful of curls.

“No, but you can still help him.”

“I am helping him,” Mason hushed back, “But he has to help himself
first.”

“He’s sick,” Mackenzie said, “If I was sick...”

He cut her off without another word.

“It wouldn’t be the same.”

Mackenzie gave his hand a gentle squeeze, and shrugged.

“It should be.”

Mason looked back to the doctor and did his best to conjure up some
feelings of sympathy. After all, the man was physically hunched over and
wheezing horribly, and every awkward step he took caused his entire body to
shudder and sway as if a stiff breeze might blow him over. He was obviously
in trouble, and yet when Mason weighed one against the other, he couldn’t
find it in his heart to feel anything like pity. Doc Walker was an albatross
around their necks. He was slowing them down and worse, he was quickly
becoming a real threat. If his shallow gasps for air didn’t soon attract the
swarm’s attention, his scraping, scuffing footfalls would. The best thing
Mason could do to protect himself and his young charge would be to leave
the man behind. His lingering, nagging sense of morality would have been
perfectly fine with abandoning the good doctor to his fate, but the little red-
headed conscience riding along on his shoulder would never be.

He sighed heavily, released Mackenzie’s hand, and went to the doctor’s
side. He pulled him upright, swung one of Walker’s arms over his shoulder,
grabbed him tightly around the waist, and began hauling him bodily along.

As Walker moaned and did his best to keep pace, Mackenzie smiled
sweetly and offered a whispered, “Thanks, Mace.”

Mason did his best to take as much of Walker’s weight as possible to
mitigate the scuffling footsteps, but there was nothing he could do about the
man’s horrible, labored wheezing. Two males were close enough to hear the
rasping, but thankfully they had the slow shuffling gait of the stage 2s, so as
long as the group kept moving, they would never be able to catch up. One of
the stage 3s was close, too, but it was presently hunched over a corpse and
quite contentedly consuming it from the inside out. Mason discounted it for
now, but he never left it entirely out of his sight as they slogged along. Three
others suddenly came tearing up from behind, so he halted his group, shushed
Mack into silence, clamped a hand over Walker’s mouth, and let the creatures
tear past less than thirty yards distant. Then he saw the object of their
attentions. A young man was blindly groping his way along the curb farther
down the block. The man must have heard them coming, for he suddenly
stopped and held himself still, but Mason could have told him it was already
too late. The creatures had his scent, and they were on him in seconds. They
tore into him like a pack of wild dogs, and as his screams echoed through the
streets, Mason took advantage and got his group moving again.

It might have seemed to another that the best course of action was to
keep close to the shadows, but Mason instinctively knew better. In this insane
situation, it was better to stay out in the open. A solid brick wall might give
the appearance of shelter, but every doorway and hidden recess held the
potential for a surprise, and there would be little time or space to react. Out in
the open, one could see what was coming and make their escape in any
direction. With this in mind, he led his group straight down the middle of the
street, staying as far away from buildings and fences and other obstructions
as he could. And with every step he took, he scanned the area all around,
watching for movement and continuously plotting exit strategies.

A woman in a torn dress staggered about at the far end of a narrow
parking lot.

Stage 3. Slow-moving. Not a threat...

A male in shorts and a t-shirt was fifty feet away, crawling on hands and
knees. His iPod was still strapped to his bicep, and a pair of earphones trailed
behind amid a braided coil of intestines.

No threat while it’s crawling. If it rises, reassess...

A fat man stood in the middle of a parking lot on the far side of the
street.

Head cocked. He’s listening. Stage 2, then. If he charges, duck behind a
row of parked cars to block him, then back away and cut a parallel course...

A sudden crash from behind, and the sound of breaking glass. Mason
swung around, but he could see nothing.

Keep an eye out, and proceed with caution. If something appears, freeze
and see what it does...

A woman’s scream, somewhere up ahead on Market. A desperate
scream. A dying scream.

Stage 2’s on the attack. Close by. If something comes racing around the
corner, make for one of the buildings on the left. If it’s a close call, grab
Mack, leave Walker, and run...

Even as he kept his mind actively attuned to every sight and sound
around him, he couldn’t help but factor in a more immediate issue. Walker
was fading fast. True, his feet no longer dragged and scraped on the ground,
but what had been a rasping wheeze was quickly devolving into a harsh
rumble deep in his chest, and every step forward was met with a low moan of
agony. If they didn’t rest soon, Mason would have to carry him after all. Both
sides of the street were lined with a mixed bag of offices and shops, and
Mason was confident that he could gain access to at least some of the
buildings with a swift kick, but such a thing had to be considered a last resort.
Once he laid foot to a deadbolt, the sound would attract the swarm. Even a
small swarm would be able to surround a dentist’s office or a cafe or a thrift
shop, but if he could get them to that big Farragut’s store, they would have
two floors of supplies and a multitude of exits to confound the swarm that
would surely gather.

It was a grand vision, but they still had to get there in one piece. It was a
hundred feet to the end of the block, then another hundred or so across the
wide expanse of Market Street. Doable, but far from a sure thing. Such a
major thoroughfare as Market was apt to harbor some unexpected challenges,
and their progress thus far could hardly be classified as inconspicuous. It was
only by the sheerest of luck that the only creatures within earshot of Walker’s
rasping, rumbling breathing were those two stumbling things following along

behind like someone’s pesky kid brothers, but it wouldn’t stay that way for
long.

Even now, the rattle in Walker’s chest was worsening. The man was
laboring for every breath, inhaling in a hoarse rasp, and exhaling in a
beleaguered grumble. Edema, Mason figured. Fluid in the lungs. Early stages
of pneumonia, even. The bitter irony was not lost on him that the very man
who could diagnose the problem was the man himself, and the man who most
needed a safe place to rest and recuperate was the greatest threat to any of
them ever making it there. Still, that big department store was their best bet
and their only bet, so he lugged Walker along as best he could and hoped
they could get somewhere close to it before being discovered.

But then Mason became aware of a subtle change in the doctor’s
carriage. It was no sudden thing, but it seemed to him that he was gradually
bearing less and less of the man’s weight with every passing minute. Indeed,
with every step they took, the steadier Walker’s comportment became, and
the more strength he put into the grip on Mason’s shoulder. He took this to
mean that the doctor might actually be on the mend, but he couldn’t ignore
the fact that the man’s labored breathing seemed to only be worsening by
degrees. Every rasping breath seemed to start as a rumble deep in the doctor’s
chest, then reverberate up to the back of his throat where it took on the
snoring rattle of a slumbering beast. It was a sound that could only come
from someone at death’s very door, but how then to account for the fact that
the man was now walking almost under his own power?

As he pondered the contradiction, he felt a gentle tugging at his shirt. It
was Mackenzie on his other side. Instinctively, he scanned the area thinking
that she had picked up the sounds of approaching feet, but aside from the
pesky Brothers Grim and the ex-jogger dragging his guts like a tail, he could
see nothing in their immediate surroundings.

“We’ll be able to move faster soon, Mack,” he hushed, “It looks like
Doc’s sprained ankle is getting better.”

“He didn’t sprain his ankle, Mace,” Mackenzie corrected him in a
whisper, “He scratched it.”

“Must’ve been one hell of a scratch,” Mason snorted, hoping Walker
noted the contempt in his voice.

“Back at Trident, he said some woman scratched him,” Mackenzie
shrugged. “He said it felt like it was burning.”

Mason absorbed the words with an exasperated sigh. A scratch. A simple
scratch. Well, maybe there was more to it. A sewer wasn’t exactly a sterile
environment after all. But no matter. He was already regaining strength, so a
few hours rest and a full stomach would go a long way to putting the man
right.

Another tug at Mason’s shirt. Mackenzie again, but more emphatic this
time.

“Mace?”

Her tone was different now. Uncertain. Disquieted. Bordering on
downright nervous. Again Mason scanned the area, but again he could see
nothing. Sure, Walker was rasping and snorting like an overweight bulldog,
but it seemed like they were being left alone so far. Still, if the girl was
worried, he knew there was a reason.

“Do you hear something, Mack?”

Again, he felt Walker’s grip strengthen on his shoulder. Had he heard
something, too? Mason pricked up his ears, but all he could hear was Walker
himself.

Suddenly, the girl stopped in her tracks, so Mason immediately hauled
Walker to a stop. The man protested with a low gravelly croak and leaned in
so close that he figured the man was going to whisper in his ear.

“Mace,” Mackenzie said shakily, “Something’s wrong...”

Mason was about to respond, but a sudden burst of pain in his shoulder
choked off the words. For one crazy second, he imagined eagle’s talons
digging into his flesh, then he was pulled off-balance and spun bodily around.
Walker’s face mere inches away filled his vision, but it was no longer the
face of a man. Where once there had been ashen skin, sallow cheeks, and a
pinched grimace of fear, now there stood a ravening beast, lips drawn back in
a snarl, and wild, sightless eyes ablaze with savagery and menace.

The Walker-creature issued a single inhuman, blood-curdling growl, and
then it lunged.

CHAPTER

XII

Mason tried to pull away, but he was held fast by the iron grip on his
shoulder. Walker’s jaws snapped closed inches from his cheek, and a second
claw was suddenly at his throat. Had these not been the well-manicured
hands of a doctor, they would have raked across his neck. Instead, Mason felt
fingers drag across his jugular, then close on his throat. He instinctively
threw a fist at the horrible, twisted face, exploding the man’s nose in a spray
of red, but the creature ignored the affront and the claw at his throat only
tightened. Mason drew back his fist and levelled another punch that caught
the creature squarely on the jaw, but where an ordinary man would have been
knocked unconscious by such a blow, the thing that Walker had become
merely howled with rage and lunged again.

Just then, Mason became aware of other movement around him. Blind,
scared, and exhausted, little Mackenzie was in this fight too. She was half the
size of a man, but she punched and kicked and pulled at the Walker-creature
for all she was worth. She was too small and weak for her efforts to have
much effect, but on she fought. With his air quickly being cut off, Mason
threw one fist after another at Walker, any one of which should have been a
knockout blow, but the creature absorbed the pummeling and raged on. Still,
the sheer strength of the blows kept the creature’s jaws at a distance, so he
kept up the relentless barrage. He landed a punch over the man’s eye and
watched blood pour from the wound. He threw another fist at an already-
flattened nose and heard the last bits of cartilage crush like chicken bones. He
aimed an awesomely powerful blow at the corner of the man’s jaw and felt
something give, then he levelled a thunderous right hook at Walker’s temple
and the man finally faltered.

Mason took advantage while the Walker-thing reeled by throwing
another right hook at his temple, this time making sure his knuckles
connected directly with that little sweet spot. When he saw eyelids droop and

knees begin to buckle, he pulled the claw away from his throat, tore the other
from his shoulder, and shoved Walker back in order to give himself time and
space enough to deliver a truly decisive knockout blow. He lined up his
heaviest shot at the same tender spot on the side of the creature’s skull, this
time intending to knock that ugly head from its very body, but just as he was
about to let his fist fly, the creature’s half-lidded eyes snapped fully open, and
only Mason’s quickness kept a claw from raking his face. He grabbed
Walker’s wrist, but then the other claw went for his eyes, and it was all he
could do just to duck out of the way in time. Before he could recover, Walker
gaped his jaws and lunged again, and this time Mason actually felt the
creature’s teeth graze his throat. Desperate now, he grabbed a handful of the
creature’s hair and pulled back with all of his might, and as the teeth retreated
from his throat and the horribly ravaged face came back into view, he
realized the reason why he still drew breath. The creature’s lower jaw was
hanging slack. One of his wildly thrown punches had just saved his life.
Walker’s jaw was broken.

He yanked back on the creature’s hair and threw two more quick
punches. Once he saw the jaw come completely loose and hang there like a
pendulum, he lined up another right hook at Walker’s temple and released the
handful of hair to let the force of the blow drive the creature back. As it
reeled from the blow and stumbled backward, Mackenzie’s stuck her foot out
directly in its path, and unable to regain its footing or break its fall, the
creature fell hard. The back of its skull hit the pavement with a dull wet
crack! but though it was momentarily stunned, the fight hadn’t gone out of it
completely. The Walker-thing howled with rage and clawed wildly at the air
as it began to clamber awkwardly back to its feet, but even before it reached
its knees, Mason levelled a ferocious kick at the thing’s head and sent it back
to the ground.

If he’d had his way, Mason would have taken the time to stomp the good
doctor’s skull to pulp, but the sounds of battle must surely have been picked
up blocks away, and with several stage 3’s already too close for comfort, all
he could do was to gather Mackenzie into his arms and run.

The closest escape route was Market Street straight ahead, but he had
taken no more than three steps in that direction before Mackenzie hushed into
his ear, “Not that way. Too many.” He stopped in his tracks, and the girl
added in a whisper, “Behind you too, Mace. Lots.”