A Post Apocalyptic Thriller

baby bellowed through an open window a few floors up, directly above his
head. He didn’t even give it a second thought until he saw the two crazies
across the street stop feeding on the grisly remains of the fat man and raise
their heads. They hovered over the corpse for some seconds, then they
crawled to their feet and gaped sightlessly across the street, growling like
animals. Suddenly, both creatures abandoned the corpse and launched
themselves toward this new sound at a frantic run. One of them tripped over a
newspaper box and fell hard, but he was immediately back on his feet,
completely disregarding the fresh wound on his forehead and charging at full
steam after the other.

Mason saw both men racing toward him and froze in fear. Should he
run? If he did, they would hear him. But if he stayed, they would run right
into him. No choice, then. He had to make a break for it. But that fraction of
second it had taken him to decide was a costly one. It was already too late.
That single moment’s hesitation was enough. Both creatures were suddenly
there, barely five feet away from him, snarling and clawing up at the unseen
baby like wild dogs baying at a treed raccoon.

Just like that, he was trapped. The alcove that was supposed to be his
sanctuary had become his undoing. The horrible creatures dripping gore and
snorting blood were barely more than an arm’s reach away, gaping up at that
open window. He slowly drew in a deep breath, held it, and once more froze
like a statue. There was nothing else he could do. If he tried to run now, they
would be on him in seconds. Fool that he was to not flee when he had the
chance! He should have seen what was going to happen, and acted. As soon
as the baby started crying, he should have seen the future and made a break
for it. It was his own damn stupid fault for letting emotions override logic.
Then and there, even as he stared out at those two murderous creatures
covered in another man’s blood, he made himself a promise. If he somehow
got out of this damned booby trap, he would never let himself slip up like this
again. If he was to survive this... whatever it was, he had to think fast and act
even faster. Any action was better than no action at all, so from here on, he
would make decisions on the fly, and act without hesitation or second-
guessing.

But first, he had to survive this predicament. He couldn’t hold his breath
much longer, and as soon as he released it, they would be on him before he
could draw another. He had to get out of there. He had to move. Now!

With agonizing slowness, he lifted one foot off of the ground and inched
it forward. He lowered it as far in front of him as he could reach, and settled
it to the ground as softly as he could manage. One of the creatures flicked his
head toward the whisper of sound, and Mason froze. Several harrowing
seconds passed before the creature finally snorted its frustration and turned
back to the crying baby, and Mason moved again. He shifted his weight onto
the forward foot, raised the other, brought it forward, settled it to the ground,
and shifted his weight again.

Now he was clear of the alcove, but he was nearly face to face with the
man with the lacerated forehead. He was close enough to look directly into
the crazy blank eyes and smell the metallic tang of blood dripping down the
man’s face. The man’s eyes flicked down and settled on Mason’s chest, and
for one horrible moment, he thought the creature might have actually heard
his pounding heart. His lungs were burning, but he forced himself to remain
absolutely still as the creature gaped his way, snarling uncertainly. At last, the
creature returned its attention back to the wailing baby, and Mason moved
again. He took a single step to the side, away from the creatures, but then the
worst thing that could possibly happen happened.

The baby stopped crying.

Shit!

He froze in place, close enough to reach out and touch the two madmen.
Both creatures looked stupidly up at the silence as if waiting for it to resume,
then they ceased their growling, lowered their gazes to the ground, and held
perfectly still.

By now, Mason understood the behavior. They were listening. Listening
for any sound that might be a dinner bell. They were close enough to fill his
nostrils with the rancid stink of their breath, and they were listening. As soon
as he moved, they would hear, and they would pounce.

This time, he didn’t hesitate. He lunged forward and shoved the wounded
man back as hard as he could toward the other, and without waiting to see if
he’d been successful or not, he ran. He heard a crash from behind, followed
by a pair of insane bestial howls, but he was already in high gear and running
faster than he even thought he could. There was no way to disguise the sound
of his shoes striking pavement, so he didn’t even try. He ran as fast as he

could, panting heavily and tearing at breakneck pace down the sidewalk.
Then there came a flurry of growls and snarls and a pounding of footfalls
after him, and he knew that it had all been for nothing. They were gaining on
him. He had bought himself a second or two, but it wasn’t enough. They were
close now. Twenty feet, by the sounds of it. Maybe less. And getting closer
by the second. Mason was in decent shape, but his strength was already
ebbing, whereas those creatures were fueled by pure adrenaline and rage and
would never tire. They would keep after him until they had him. How could
he hope to...?

Idiot! They’re blind!

Without missing a beat, he veered left and cut across the street. The
madmen followed and continued to gain, but Mason reached the line of cars
parked on the far side of the street in the nick of time. He leapt onto the hood
of a big sedan, pounded across it in two steps, and jumped to the sidewalk on
the far side without breaking stride, then he heard muted thuds behind and
chanced a quick look over his shoulder. Both men had run directly into the
far side of the sedan, and now they were bumping along the sides of vehicles
like moths against a lampshade as they followed the sound of his retreated
footfalls.

He had eluded two, but the street was full of wild things. Another
appeared directly in front of him, attracted by the tumult, so he stopped in his
tracks and scanned the area in pure desperation. There was nowhere to hide,
no way past the madman, and now there were two other crazies tearing up the
sidewalk from the rear. He was quickly running out of real estate. They
would be all be on him in seconds. He had to move!

A Nissan parked directly beside him had a tiny red light flashing on the
dashboard. Not pausing for a second, he grabbed a metal trash can from the
curb and hurled it at the side window of the car. The glass shattered in a spray
of pellets, and the street was suddenly filled with the screeching wail of the
car’s alarm. Those creatures running toward him immediately changed course
toward this new sound, but then an unforeseen downside of the ploy made
itself apparent. The alarm was so loud that it was attracting others into the
street. They appeared out of doorways, and from around corners, and from
inside alleyways, and from everywhere at once, and every last one of them
was running directly toward the sound. Directly toward him.

While those close to him were distracted, and with only seconds before
the others arrived, Mason threw himself into the street and sprinted back
across the road, planting himself between a lamppost and a mailbox. A
middle-aged woman tore past and clipped the mailbox with her foot, but he
held the box to keep it from falling and watched the woman stumble on with
the jagged tip of bone protruding from her ankle.

This spot was safe for the moment, but only for that. The alarm was
echoing through the streets, and more creatures were coming from every
direction. A dozen. Twenty. More still. In a few more beats of his heart, he
would be out of options. Quickly doing the math and seeing only one option
left, he stepped out into the middle of the street even as a loose mob rushed
straight at him. He took a deep breath and held it, then he engaged in a
desperate, deadly game that would either prove his downfall or his salvation.
As the first creature arrived, he dodged to the side as quickly and quietly as
he could manage, praying that the harsh wail of the siren would cover any
scuff his shoes might make on the pavement, then he gauged the speed and
direction of the next in line even as he ran toward it, and deked to the side to
let that one pass too. Then the next. And the next. And the next one after that.
It was a game he had no chance of winning, but somehow, against every set
of odds imaginable, he reached the intersection and the rushing crowd
thinned.

But he didn’t stop to congratulate himself. He had managed to extricate
himself from the mess, but it had been a mess entirely of his own making. If
he wanted to live, he would have to be smarter. It would take all of his wits to
survive this hellscape. As he stepped gingerly over the destroyed corpse of a
young child, he knew that he would either survive or die trying.

He turned the corner, and with one last quick look over his shoulder,
walked as swiftly as he dared away from the noise.

CHAPTER

V

Now that the wail of the siren was dulled, other sounds took its place.
Screams. Growls. Glass shattering. Distant gunshots. The sounds of a city
tearing itself apart. Mason stopped for a moment and surveilled his new
environment. Three males were hunched over two different corpses near the
far end of the block. Two others were standing thirty yards away, heads tilted
and ears tuned to the street. A male and female raced from one side of the
street to the other and disappeared into an underground garage, followed
almost immediately by a man’s desperate howl. Two others were ambling
slowly down the middle of the road directly toward him. An old man and a
young girl, walking side by side and straight down the centerline. They
looked like they might be a man and his granddaughter, and they appeared so
unremarkable that Mason thought that they might actually be refugees like
him. He even went so far as to give them a little wave of recognition, but then
they drew close enough for him to see their faces. They had the same wild,
sightless eyes as the others, and their chins were painted red with fresh blood.
He stepped quietly to the side, held his breath, and let them pass by a dozen
feet away.

Halfway down the block, a door suddenly opened and a man stepped
onto the sidewalk. He was nattily dressed in a gray suit, but his tie was
askew, and a scrap of toilet paper was pinned to his chin by a drop of dried
blood. Apparently, this poor hapless buffoon had gotten through his entire
morning routine heedless of the strange new sounds coming from down
below. He’d nicked himself shaving in the dark, but had somehow managed
to get himself all the way down to the street without further incident. Now he
blithely strolled off to work with his briefcase in one hand and all of his
attention focused on his dead cellphone in the other.

Look up! Mason shouted in his head. Look up, you fool!

It was over in the blink of an eye. Before the man had taken a handful of
steps, the old man and the girl were on him. The man turned at the very last
moment and saw them coming, but then a bewildered look came across his
face and he simply stood there gaping like an idiot. Before his addled brain
even had time to register what was happening, the cellphone went one way,
the briefcase went the other, and the man fell backward, smacking his head
hard against the curb. His arms flailed about as the young girl tore at his
throat, and he attempted a weak punch as the old man clawed at his belly, but
that was the extent of it. By the time the old man had his face buried in the
man’s abdomen, all signs of struggle ceased.

An inadvertent cry of disgust issued from Mason’s throat, and he
immediately recognized his blunder. The two males who had been standing
like statues close by picked up on the sound and turned his way. Then, one of
them took a single step toward him and growled. Mason held his breath and
stood perfectly still, and a full sixty seconds passed before the madmen lost
interest and went back to their silent vigil.

Absurdly, with all that was going on around him, Mason couldn’t help
but wonder why these two hadn’t also been attracted to the man with the
briefcase. Sure, they had been farther away than the old man and the girl, but
they had to have heard his shoes on the pavement. So why hadn’t they
attacked as a pack? For that matter, why were these feral beasts not attracted
to the sounds made by others of their kind? Clearly, there was something in
their programming that allowed them to differentiate between a human and
one of their own, but was there also some underlying agreement among
them? Could it possibly be as simple as ‘this one’s mine, that one’s yours’? It
didn’t make any logical sense, but what part of this insanity did?

Just then, the sharp crack of a gunshot echoed through the street. Every
one of the wild things lifted their heads and heeded the noise, but none of
them moved. Again, Mason was perplexed. Shouldn’t they all be racing off
helter-skelter? But then he understood, and here was something that he could
finally wrap his head around. The buildings lining the streets in a big city
formed a natural kind of echo chamber, so by the time the gunshot reached
this place, it had bounced off of so many walls that even he himself couldn’t
tell its location. That meant that whatever else the creatures were, their
hearing was still human. To another, that tiny bit of understanding may have
seemed incidental, even trivial, but to Mason it was information that might

just help him survive.

Okay, good enough, but now what? Where should he go? Where in all of
this horror would be safe? He couldn’t keep wandering the streets. He had to
find some place to lie low and wait for help. Surely, the police would get a
handle on this eventually. Maybe the military would even show up in their
armored Humvees and hazmat suits to restore order. But even as he
considered those possibilities, he knew that it was all wishful thinking. No
one was coming to help. The police had a whole city to contain, and the army
would have bigger things going on than to worry about one idiot’s sorry ass.
He may as well make a wish for his fairy godmother to appear and whisk him
off to her magic castle. He was in this alone, just like the man with the
briefcase, and the woman in the high heels, and the poor guy in the stairwell.
In a city of over a million souls, it was suddenly every man for himself.

He had to get away from the madness. Out of the city and into the
suburbs. Burlingame, maybe, or Hillsborough. Maybe even as far away as
San Mateo. His car was in the underground garage of his apartment building,
but there was no going back there. His trick with the car alarm had seen to
that. Other vehicles were parked all around, but he had no idea how to break
into a car, much less how to hot-wire one. It looked easy enough in the
movies, but it would take him time to figure it out, and he doubted he could
do either in utter silence. For now, at least, he would have to go it on foot, but
he would keep an eye out for a vehicle that might have been left with keys in
the ignition.

He figured he would head generally south, assess each street as he came
to it, and decide his route as he went. Once he got away from the skyscrapers,
the going would have to get easier. And when he got far enough south, there
would a Red Cross nurse with a cup of coffee and a donut, and he would tell
her his horror stories, and she would tell him how brave he was, and slowly
but surely, life would eventually get back to normal.

He got his bearings, turned a hard left, and struck a barely acceptable
bargain between speed and stealth as he set off south.

He reached the next intersection without incident, and there he stopped
and checked out the way ahead. He could see eight creatures in the next
block, some feeding and others standing vigil, waiting, listening. He
considered bypassing the street, but the next block wasn’t likely to be any

better. In fact, only eight creatures thirsting for blood on a city street might be
as good as it ever got until he was out of the skyscrapers.

Christ! Surely there had to be a better way to go about this whole thing.
A car would be optimum, but that eventuality aside, there had to be some
other way to get from point A to point B less dangerously than slogging
through the city on foot. He briefly considered the rooftops, but without
webshooters or Batman’s grapple gun, the entire notion was ridiculous. But
wait. If he couldn’t travel above the city streets, maybe he could travel below
them. Now here was a real possibility. There were subways all the way from
the financial district, down to Daly City and south to the airport. Surely that
would be far enough to find his Red Cross girl with the donut.

Sadly, he could already see one major problem with the idea. The
subways would have their own share of crazies. Hell, they always had their
share of crazies. But now, those crazies would be a whole different kind of
crazy, and every last one of those crazies were trapped in a hole in the
ground. Every last one of those tunnels would be crawling with creatures.

But subways weren’t the only tunnels under a metropolitan city, were
they? What about the sewers? They literally crisscrossed all of San Francisco.
Sure, it would mean wading through filth, and the air was bound to be rank,
but it would be a damn-sight better than inching his way from one life-
threatening situation to another and another. And what were the chances of
coming across a homicidal nutcase in a sewer?

The more he considered the idea, the more he liked it. There was a
manhole cover a dozen feet away from where he was, so he padded lightly
over to it and crouched low. There were little gaps along the edge meant for a
specialized tool, but he figured he could pry up the lid if he could find a
crowbar or metal rod. With this in mind, he scanned the area and let his mind
work. A hardware store was what he needed, but this neighborhood was all
residential. The few storefronts in this area were all coffee shops and bodegas
and newsstands and flower shops. But there were vehicles everywhere, so
how about a tire iron? Every car would have a spare tire and jack cozied up in
the trunk, and right beside those would be a tire iron. But such a notion made
him return to his earlier dilemma. How does one break into a car without
making a breath of sound?

Just then, he became aware of a shuffling from behind. A young man in

bloodied coveralls was crossing the street toward him, not at a run, but rather
stumbling along haltingly as if he wasn’t quite certain of what he’d heard.
His long hair fell in swirls about his wild, dead eyes, and his face was a mask
of dried blood. Evidently, this creature had charged blindly into a wall or
tumbled over a curb, for his nose had been twisted into a question mark and
most of his front teeth had been shattered. With his lips curled up in a
perpetual snarl, those broken splinters of teeth only served to give the
creature the aspect of a hungry shark.

Mason stepped slowly and gingerly backward, and angled himself
between two cars parked against the curb. The sharkman approached to the
precise spot where Mason had been, bumped into the far side of the very car
against which he huddled, and came to an abrupt halt. Then he just stood
there, head atilt and staring blindly forward. Mason held himself absolutely
still and silent four feet away, and sure enough, some other sound from
further down the block soon caught the creature’s attention. There was a
flurry of hair as the sharkman’s head whipped one way and then the other,
then he launched himself away from Mason and tore off after this new sound.

Mason breathed a sigh of relief and stepped back into the road. He took a
quick survey of the swarm that suddenly seemed to blossom to a dozen or
more, and realized that the idea of breaking into a trunk to find a tire iron was
impossible. At least for now. There was no way he could do it silently, and
the creatures would be on him in seconds. Still, the idea of riding the sewer
subway was a good one, but he would have to wait for a more favorable
opportunity.

For now, he resigned himself to his current predicament. Somehow, he
had to get from one end of the street to the other without making a sound, and
the sharkman had just shown him that it was all but impossible to be
completely silent. He considered removing his shoes and padding through the
gauntlet in stocking feet, but decided against it. Firstly, his boots were soft-
soled, so the difference wouldn’t be much. And besides, if he suddenly had to
run, he knew he could do it faster with shoes on, and the thought of
encountering broken shards of glass in stockinged feet didn’t exactly fill him
with delight. He thought of setting off another car alarm to distract the
creatures so he could slip past, but he had no wish to revisit that particular
hell.

Then he had an idea. It was preposterous, but it might just give him a
tiny edge. With agonizing slowness, he slipped his keyring out of his pocket,
and with one eye always on the swarm, he spent a full minute slowly working
the keys off of the ring. Now he had eight keys and a ring in a tight fist, and
only the vaguest suggestion of a plan in his mind as he padded slowly and
softly into the fray.

His eyes were everywhere at once. He watched the creatures he could
see, and looked for others who might appear from doorways or from around
hidden corners, but mostly he scoured the ground in front of him. Before he
committed to taking a step, he would comb the roadway for any bit of detritus
that might give him away, then if the pavement was clear of debris, only then
would he bring his foot forward and touch his toe to the ground. If there was
no discernible crunch of grit or, God forbid, a tiny undetected stone, he
would gently lower his heel. If there was still no sound and no reaction from
the crazies, then and only then would he bring up his other foot and repeat the
process. Over and over he performed this grueling ritual, each time watching
closely for any indication that he’d been heard despite his best efforts.

At last he made it to the middle of this particular gauntlet, and the crazies
were dangerously close, all around. The closest was an old female twenty feet
away. He saw her stir as he came closer. So he froze long enough for the
creature to lapse back into a stupor, but he could see that even apparently
insensate, she was still fully alert and had her ears pricked to the slightest
sound. Ever so gently then, he eased his back foot up and forward, and
lowered it gently to the ground. Another two feet closer to the intersection.
Two hundred more such steps, and he would be out of the gauntlet. And then
there would be another. And another. And another.

It all seemed so impossible. At this rate, it would take weeks to get out of
the city, and every single second of every minute of every hour of every one
of those weeks, he would be perched on the raggedy edge of disaster. One
misstep, one unseen pebble between boot and pavement, and he’d be done. It
was impossible, and yet there was no other choice. And so, he continued on,
one step at a time, one foot at a time, and one potential catastrophe at a time.

When he got to within ten feet of the old female, she stirred again. He
froze in his tracks, but too late. He had already been heard. The woman didn’t
charge at him, but instead took a single awkward step closer, and listened.

Like the sharkman, she had heard something, but whatever passed for thought
processes in her puerile brain was uncertain whether or not the sound had
been prey. Not wanting to remove any doubt, Mason drew in a deep breath,
held it, and stood perfectly still.

It was time to test his ridiculous plan with the keys. Moving with painful
slowness, he unclenched his fist and selected one of the keys at random. It
was his apartment key. Perfect. Once he was out of this horror, he never
wanted to see that place again. Recalling the trick with his phone in the
stairwell, he chose a spot behind the woman and lobbed the key high over her
head. She heard a rustling of his sleeve and bared her teeth in an angry snarl,
but just as she was about to charge, the key tinkled to the pavement behind
her. It wasn’t much of a sound, but it was enough. With lightning speed, she
spun on her heels and ran toward the sound, and Mason took full advantage.
While her growls and heavy footfalls masked the sound, he took a series of
long, graceful strides further down the road, and by the time the creature
bumped into an abandoned delivery truck near the far curb, he had covered
thirty feet and could resume his slow, careful plodding.

Thrice more he used the tactic before reaching the next intersection, and
it worked like a charm every time. The gentle tinkling of a key striking the
pavement was enough to temporarily distract the creatures, but not loud
enough to draw others in. The ploy would only work in certain specific
situations, but it managed to get him through the gauntlet, and with that
success came the first suggestion of real optimism.

He stepped into the intersection and paused long enough to take a new
survey. The next block south was very much like the last, but with one
crucial difference. A city bus sat facing him at an angle, halfway down the
block, it’s front grill embedded into a row of parked cars. He could see the
slumped shape of a body draped over the steering wheel, and could just make
out movement behind. Someone else was on the bus then, but clearly no
longer human. A sentient person would have either pried the doors open and
fled, or hunkered down in silence. This shadow was pacing up and down the
aisle like a caged beast. And besides, Mason realized with a certain dread, a
human rattling around inside a stranded city bus would have already drawn a
swarm.

Idly, he wondered about the series of events that had brought that bus to

this spot. Had the driver’s sight failed him and caused the crash, or had he
been sleepily plying his route when that lone passenger in the back quietly
changed and attacked? Could it happen that fast? The newscasts said that the
first symptom was temporary blindness, but surely, no one waking up blind
would have hopped a bus instead of calling for an ambulance. So which had
come first, the crashing of the bus, or the passenger transforming from early
morning commuter to maniacal nutjob? As the rising sun peeked between the
buildings to illuminate the scene, Mason was afforded a better look and had
his answer. The driver was still strapped in his seat, but half of his face was
gone.

That one image was enough to shake him to the core. Clearly, the attack
had preceded the crash. So it could happen that fast. From first symptom to
batshit crazy in minutes. He felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck and
took another moment to consider the implications. For all he knew, he might
already be infected. After all, he had been part of that very first outbreak on
the plane, so maybe those little bundles of genetic material were inside his
body even now, churning out carbon copies by the billions and infiltrating
every cell in his body. No fever, no chills, no sneezing. His first indication
would be when he lost his sight, then it would be a quick descent into
madness. After that, he would be just like all these other monsters, mindlessly
prowling the streets for his next meal.

No! Not a chance. Mason decided then and there that he would not allow
it to happen to him. The moment his vision started to fade or blur or change
in any way, he would end it. He would climb to the top of a building and
jump, or throw himself off of a bridge, or find a piece of broken glass to open
a vein. If he was denied those options, he would stand in the middle of the
street and sing at the top of his lungs. Better he was destroyed by these
monsters than become one of them himself. He even managed a bitter grin
when he conjured up visions of being torn to pieces while belting out his best
off-key version of God Bless America.

Oddly, facing that inevitability actually spurred him on. If he was to die,
then so be it, but he wouldn’t die as one of them. He would die as a human
being, on his own two feet, and he would go out swinging. He couldn’t fight
whatever microscopic things might or might not be taking over his mind and
body even now, but he could sure as hell do something about his own finale
on the world stage.

Now fully determined, he walked straight toward the bus. The vehicle
blocked his view of the far end of the block, but he strode confidently and
quickly down the center of the street. As he neared the bus, the shadowy
figure behind the glass grew more and more animated, charging up and down
the aisle like an enraged beast, but he paid it no mind and continued on. But
then he rounded the back end of the bus, and he was forced to stop dead in
his tracks.

The way ahead was a charnel house. Bodies littered the roadway, and no
fewer than a dozen creatures were busily feeding or standing vigil along the
curbs. All the keys and car alarms in the world wouldn’t let him get through
such a swarm. He was just about to turn and retreat when he spotted the
mouth of an alley off to one side. Instinctively, he headed toward it, but he
had no sooner reached the mouth of the alley than he saw three more
creatures within. Again, he considered turning back, but the hesitation was
brief. His mind now full of dogged resolve, he strode into the alley and
readied himself to confront the creatures.

A huddle of metal garbage cans sat inside the mouth of the alley, so he
took the lids off of two of them as quietly as he could and held them out like
shields as he walked into the alley. And just in time. The closest creature
charged. It was a young male, all hair and beard and hemp clothing covered
in blood. Mason braced himself and deflected the charge with one of the lids,
and the creature wound up running headfirst into a brick wall. The thing hit
the wall hard and slumped, but it quickly rose into a crouch and charged
again. Mason brought up the shield once more and deflected the animal to the
ground, then he brought down the other lid like a hammer and slammed the
creature on the back of the head. Again and again he pounded until he had
finally turned the back of the skull into mush. At last, the creature lay still,
but the fight was just beginning.

The noise of the battle brought the other two at a run. Mason had barely
risen to his feet when the first one was on him. He brought up the shield and
skillfully deflected the creature into the corner of a dumpster. It’s nose
promptly exploded, but the other was immediately on him, and it was all he
could do to hold the big woman at bay. She pressed her bulk against the
shield and clawed around it like a feral cat, hissing and snarling, and it was
all Mason could do to plant his feet firmly on the ground and shove back with
all of his strength. At last, he lashed out a foot and caught the creature’s

ankle, and the woman stumbled backward. He shoved again, pushing the
creature to her knees, and wasted no more time. He kicked the woman in the
side of the head, dropping her to the ground, then he lifted a leg and brought
his heel down on her breastbone. There was a horrible crack! and the woman
coughed blood in a fountain, but though she made no move to rise after that,
she continued to claw at Mason’s legs even as he backed away.

By now, the other creature was back on its feet and charging. The man’s
nose had been turned to pulp, and blood poured from a fresh cut on its scalp,
but he ran at Mason like a mad bull. Again, Mason brought up his shield and
deflected the man into the brick wall, then he brought up his foot and kicked
savagely at the small of the man’s back. There was a decisive snap! and the
creature folded to the ground, and Mason kicked again, targeting the back of
its head. The creature’s face smashed against the ground in an eruption of
blood, then it lay still. Mason quickly turned back to the woman and levelled
a kick at her head that flipped her onto her belly, then he brought all of his
weight down onto a heel aimed at the back of her neck. She continued to snap
her jaws at Mason as he stepped over her prone body, but it was clear that she
would never move from that spot again.

All of the commotion was drawing in others. No fewer than five more
were already hurtling down the alley after him, so he ran for his life. He
emerged from the far side of the alley and saw three others coming straight at
him, but instead of changing course, he sprinted headlong into them. He
deflected two creatures to either side with the force of his charge, then he
barreled with full force into the third. This last one was a child, but he
callously lowered his metal shield and plowed right over the thing, sending it
somersaulting away in a bloody heap.

Now, he didn’t even stop long enough to take account of his
surroundings. He turned south and ran over one creature after another in a
desperate scramble. Four, five, six creatures fell under the force of his blows,
and still he raged on. At last, as he felt a stitch in his side and his breath
devolved into a series of harsh gasps, he saw something that caught his
interest. There was construction going on in one of the buildings on this
street, and piles of earth and pyramids of bricks had been stored in an empty
lot adjacent to the place. Beside those was a mountain of debris destined for
the recyclers. There was drywall, wooden flooring, concrete, and a mound of
steel reinforcing bar. He stopped long enough to discard one of the garbage

can lids and trade it for a seven-foot length of rebar from the pile, then he ran
on.

Now, here was a weapon! Seven feet of good American steel. Thirty
pounds, more or less. Light enough for him to give it a good healthy swing,
yet heavy enough to damage the thickest of skulls. And presently, he had an
opportunity to test his new weapon. A big male was charging straight at him.
The creature’s eyes were glazed, but they shone with rage, and a mad growl
issued from his blood-rimmed mouth. Mason deflected the creature to the
ground with his remaining shield, then he brought the length of rebar down in
a heavy blow. The weapon cleaved through the back of the man’s head,
splitting it open like an overripe melon, but before Mason could even register
the carnage, he heard a growl from behind and turned to see another creature
closing fast. This was a middle-aged woman, hampered by a shattered ankle,
but still astonishingly fast. Mason swung the rebar and caved in the side of
the woman’s head, dropping her to the ground in a quivering, convulsing
mess.

The next closest was still fifty feet away. It had been a young man once,
still heavily muscled. At another time, Mason would have run. Now, he
dropped the garbage can lid to the ground, gripped the rebar in both hands,
and took a batter’s stance as the creature tore toward him. Mason waited until
the creature got to within reach, then he swung the metal bar across the
creature’s forehead and cleaved it open down to the eye sockets.

Mason coolly collected his shield and padded as softly as he could away
from the carnage, but then he saw something that brought him to an abrupt
halt. Four creatures were coming toward him, but they weren’t running. They
were plodding along slowly, almost casually. Not quite able to understand
what he was seeing, he stood perfectly still and watched the bizarre spectacle
approach.

A young female was leading the swarm. She was a tiny young thing, not
quite into her teens, with a big tangle of fiery red hair framing a pretty face.
She was obviously blind, but she was also most certainly still human, for she
skirted the front of a building with her hands outstretched, feeling her way
along. The other three formed a loose mob at a distance behind her, but the
girl made so little sound as she tip-toed along that they followed behind
almost suspiciously.

Suddenly, Mason’s heart went out to this unknown girl. Somehow, this
tiny wisp of a thing had survived this far, treading through the lions’ den as
gently and gingerly as a kitten. But it could never last. The creatures on her
trail were confused by the barest whispers of sound she made, but they
wouldn’t be for long. Their longer legs were gaining on her inch by
inevitable inch, and they would soon be close enough that all doubts would
be gone. And then they would be on her.

With that awful realization, Mason’s steadfast resolve toward self-
preservation was put to the test. The decision should have been an easy one
for such a confirmed misanthrope, but it wasn’t. If all of mankind had but one
neck, there were times when he would have gleefully hacked it through, but
seeing this young girl, all alone and desperate, fanned the faintest spark of an
underlying and endlessly irritating sense of morality buried deep down inside
of him. No matter how hard he tried to convince himself otherwise, he
couldn’t imagine simply abandoning this gentle creature to the monsters. She
wouldn’t stand a chance. She would be torn apart. And so it was decided. He
might very well die in the attempt, and the reprieve he offered would
probably turn out to be all-too temporary, but so be it. If his last act on earth
was to be one of mercy, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad way to go out
after all.

He brought up his weapon and was just about to act when the girl
suddenly stopped in her tracks. Clearly, the poor little thing was scared and
exhausted, but she had no way of knowing that stopping now was the worst
thing she could possibly do. She turned her sightless eyes back, seemed to
consider for a fraction of a moment, then she left the certainty of the wall and
stepped across the sidewalk. She held her tiny hands out in front of her and
soon came upon a line of vehicles parked against the curb. She bumped softly
against a minivan and followed it around until she came to the sloping front
end, then she stepped in front of the van, felt for the next vehicle in line, and
hunkered down between the two. Once she stopped moving, the creatures
who had been following her drew to a halt and adopted the familiar head tilt.

Mason was astounded by the sight. This tiny girl was as blind as the
beasts around her, yet she was beating them at their own game. But then she
made a mistake that might very well seal her fate. She raised a tiny fist and
rapped gently on the side of the old sedan. It was only two soft knocks, but
the creatures were stirred immediately into action. With a chorus of feral

howls, they launched themselves at the sound, but still the girl made no
move. Presently, the monsters came upon the car and took to snarling and
growling and clawing inches away from the girl, and only then did she move.
Softly and quickly, she snuck herself out into the street and guided herself
down the line of cars with an outstretched hand, using the clamor of the
beasts thrashing against the vehicle to disguise her footsteps.

Mason could hardly believe his eyes. This tiny slip of a thing wasn’t just
beating the creatures at their own game, she was kicking over the table,
snatching up the game board, and beating them over the head with it. She was
heading straight toward Mason, but when she drew to within a dozen feet of
him, she came to an abrupt stop, and an expression of puzzlement came over
her delicate features. Her curly mop of fiery red hair flopped down over one
eye, and her brows knit together as she turned one way, then the other, then
back again.

At last, she settled her sightless eyes directly on Mason and asked, “Who
are you?” in the barest hint of a whisper.

For a moment, Mason wondered if he’d been wrong about the girl being
blind after all, but though her eyes were a brilliant green and sparkled with
intelligence, they were obviously as dead as stones.

“I won’t hurt you,” he hushed back to the girl.

The girl’s expression didn’t change, but she raised a single eyebrow and
whispered with some suspicion, “Duh. If you wanted to hurt me, you would
have done it already.”

Before he could respond, there was a crash from somewhere off to the
side, followed by a desperate scream. The girl flicked her gaze that way and
drew in a short gasp of air, then the scream ended in a gurgle, and the girl
turned calmly back to Mason.

“There’s three behind you, you know,” she said, almost indifferently.

Mason flipped a glance over his shoulder and saw three creatures fifty
yards away, slowly wandering their way. He took two steps toward the girl,
but when she backed away nervously, he stopped and whispered to her softly.

“Are you out here all alone? Where are your parents?”

Again, her expression remained unchanged. She held a tiny finger

vertically against her lips, then pointed to the side.

“There’s another one over there,” she hushed.

Mason looked to where the girl pointed, and sure enough, a big male was
stumbling awkwardly across the street, the sharp tip of a bone protruding
from his shin and sawing through soft flesh with every step.

Despite the growing threat, the girl looked blindly up to Mason and
whispered as gently as a breeze, “Do you have any water?”

“No, I’m sorry,” he hushed, “but I can find you some.”

She turned her nose up suspiciously. “Can I trust you?”

“Do you have a choice?” Mason asked.

“Always,” the girl replied with absolute conviction.

“You can trust me,” Mason told her truthfully, one wary eye on the
advancing creatures. “And you have about ten seconds to decide whether or
not I’m lying.”

The girl nodded once, and it was decided. She held out her hand, Mason
took it, and they both stepped into a side street, away from the gathering
swarm.

CHAPTER

VI

Two blocks further along, Mason spotted a coffee shop on the corner and
headed for it. This street was quieter than most, but it was far from empty. He
kept them on one side of a row of cars to trap two creatures on the far side,
and used his diversion with the keys to get past two more before they reached
their destination. But then came a realization that nothing in this new world
was going to be easy. Getting them to the coffee shop was one thing. Getting
them in posed an entirely new set of problems.

He would have to break in, but how? Certainly, his length of rebar would
make quick work of the glass fronting the place, but the sound was sure to
attract any creature within earshot, and he would be turning a closed window
into an open door. At last, it was the girl who spurred Mason to act.

“Better hurry,” she said in a nervous hush.

Mason didn’t have to look. Even if he couldn’t hear the heavy footfalls
coming from behind, he would have taken the girl at her word. With only
seconds to act, he thrust the end of the rebar through the glass door to make
as small a hole as he could, then he reached in and flipped the lock. Quickly
collecting the girl in his arms, he pushed the door open with his shoulder,
deposited the girl on the ground, and threw himself bodily against the door.

Barely had he thrown the bolt before a crazed female charged into the
door, smacking her head hard against the glass. A frightening crack ran
through the glass with the impact, but it held. And now that they were safely
inside, both man and girl stood frozen in place, neither one so much as
drawing a breath. A full minute passed, then a blood-curdling scream echoed
from far down the block, and the female charged away after it, oblivious to
the blood coursing down her face.

At last, Mason could allow himself to relax, however nominally. For the

first time since setting foot outside of his apartment, he was out of harm’s
way. The girl sensed it, too, for she quickly found the counter and all but
collapsed against it. A single tear gathered in the corner of her eye and rolled
down her cheek, but no others followed. She sniffed once, wiped her nose
with the back of her sleeve, and took a deep breath.

“Thank you,” she said sweetly.

“You’re very welcome,” Mason said, then a crash resounded from
behind a closed door at the rear of the shop, and they both gave a startled
jump. Mason tip-toed around the counter, pressed his ear against the door,
and hushed back to the girl, “Wait there.”

He paused long enough to raise his weapon, then he grabbed hold of the
doorknob and threw the door open. A man stood slumped against a desk near
the back of the room, his face screwed into an angry grimace and his hands
red with blood. The room itself was in disarray, the floor littered with papers
and the walls streaked with bloody handprints, and as Mason stepped into the
room, the man swung around to face him with wild, sightless eyes. Suddenly,
the creature threw itself away from the desk and tore across the room, but
Mason was ready. He stabbed the rebar forward like a spear, and with the
combined force of the man’s lunge and Mason’s thrust, the weapon pierced
the creature’s chest, drove straight through its body, and emerged out the
back. The man slumped, Mason planted a foot against his sternum to pull the
weapon free, and the body collapsed to the floor in a pool of blood.

Mason left the office and closed the door behind him only to see an older
male hovering directly outside the front door, peering in with dead, crazy
eyes. Before he could caution the girl to retreat behind the counter, she was
on her feet and doing just that. Once on the far side of the counter, she
lowered herself cross-legged to the floor and leaned back against the side of a
cooler. Mason dropped to his knees beside her, out of sight of the creature at
the door, and gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder. Staying low, he gently
opened the cooler and gathered up two bottles of water, a few cans of soft
drinks, and two muffins from under a glass dome. He put everything on the
floor in front of the girl and pressed a water bottle into her hand. She
accepted it gladly, unscrewed the lid, and drained most of it in a furious
series of gulps.

“My name’s Mackenzie,” she said, dragging a sleeve across her mouth

and corralling an errant curl of hair from her face.

Mason popped open a can of Coke, “I’m Hank.”

The girl grimaced, “You don’t sound like a ‘Hank.’”

He allowed a soft chuckle, then he popped his head up like a prairie dog
to check the front door. The old man was gone, and he could see only vague
blurs racing one way or another beyond. Satisfied for the moment, he
dropped back to the floor, took a quick sip of Coke, and slid a muffin in front
of the girl.

“I’ve never felt like a Hank, either,” he said. “Only my parents really
ever called me that. My last name’s Mason, so most people call me Mace.”

The girl tried it on for size, “Mace...” then she nodded. “That sounds
better. I like it.” She sniffed the air, and her eyes grew wide. With unerring
aim, she reached for the muffin on the floor and put it to her nose, inhaling
deeply. “Mmmm... oatmeal raisin. I love oatmeal.” She took a bite and
washed it down with water. Mason offered her a Coke, and she accepted it
with a mumbled, “Thanks,” through a mouthful of muffin.

“Why are you alone, Mackenzie? Isn’t there someone looking after
you?”

“Nope,” she said, simply.

“There must be someone,” Mason insisted. “Where are your parents?”

“Dead,” she replied, almost dispassionately. “They died when I was
little. I live with my aunt Sarah. She’s a nurse.”

“Okay. So where’s Aunt Sarah?”

“Work. She got called in to the hospital, so Mrs. Dobson was staying
with me. Mrs. Dobson lives upstairs. She comes down to babysit when Sarah
has to work.” She took another bite of muffin and added almost as an
afterthought, “That was two days ago.”

“Two days?” Mason felt a cold chill of dread, but he kept his thoughts to
himself. “That’s a long shift, even for a nurse.”

“She’s never been gone that long before. She called yesterday to say she
couldn’t leave the hospital because of so many people getting sick, but said

she’d be home as soon as she could. Then the power went out, and Mrs.
Dobson ran upstairs to get some candles. She came back, but she was looking
all scared. Then she started to stumble around and bump into things. She said
it was just her ‘old bones’ ‘cause she didn’t want to scare me, but I knew
what it was ʽcause I’d seen it on TV. Sometime last night, I heard a loud
noise and woke up. When I went out to the living room, she was different.”

“She was sick,” Mason sighed.

“Like the people on TV. All crazy. She ran after me and tried to hurt me,
but I hid. Then, when I could, I ran away.”

“You’re a very brave girl,” Mason told her honestly.

She shrugged again.

“Not really. But I thought if I could get to the hospital, Sarah would
know what to do.” Almost imperceptibly, her eyes sunk to the floor, and her
voice lowered. “But then, all of a sudden, I couldn’t see either.”

Mason had no idea what to say. As hard-hearted as he was at times, he
could have wept for this incredible girl. Finally, he managed an awkward,”
That doesn’t mean...” but the girl held up a finger to stop him. She brought
the finger to her pursed lips as a caution, and the great mop of red hair fell
over one side of her face as she tilted her head, listening. A pair of heavy
footfalls raced by the broken front window, but they continued on and finally
faded into the background din.

The girl turned back to her muffin as if nothing had happened and swept
a handful of hair from her face.

“I know what it means, Mace,” she said coolly. “I’m not stupid.”

“No, you certainly are not,” Mason agreed.

Mason was dumbfounded. Here, this sightless girl was all alone in a
world gone to hell, her parents were dead, her aunt too, probably, and she
shrugged it all off as if she’d been given a bad grade in school. She should be
inconsolable. She should be a weeping puddle of goo, curled into a fetal
position on the floor. Yet here she sat, idly nibbling on the heel of a muffin
and calmly describing events that would have brought the strongest man to
his knees.

“It might not end like that,” he tried, but Mackenzie simply scoffed and
said nothing. Desperate to change the subject, he asked, “So your aunt’s a
nurse? Where does she work? San Francisco General?”

“No, she works at Trident. Trident Urgent Care Center. I’ve been there a
bunch of times. Everyone’s really nice there.”

Mason had lived in San Francisco most of his life, so he knew the place.
He plotted the route on a map in his head.

“That’s got to be four or five miles away. What were you going to do,
walk all that way?”

“Yup,” Mackenzie nodded resolutely and swallowed the last bite of
muffin with a purr of delight.

They sat in silence for a while then, listening to the city rip itself to
pieces. Mason forced himself to eat a muffin, and gave another to Mackenzie.
She ate most of it, then wrapped the rest in a paper napkin and set it aside.
Finally, she drained her Coke and asked Mason casually, “Do you have
kids?”

He shook his head, caught himself, and spoke aloud. “No, I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Never got around to it, I guess,” he shrugged.

“You sound like you’d be a good dad. You don’t talk down to kids.
Sarah’s like that. Are you married?”

Now, she was getting into uncomfortable territory, but Mason
immediately chided himself. What did any of that matter now? They might
both be dead today, or tomorrow, or in the next five minutes. For all he knew,
he and Mackenzie were the last two people alive in the city. In fact, it was
more than likely that this girl’s face was the last human face he would ever
see. And with that awareness came a new resolve. If this brave young thing
wanted to delve into his personal life, so be it. He would tell her whatever she
wanted to know, and be grateful to have had the opportunity.

“I was planning on it,” he admitted almost shyly, “but things changed.”

“Is she dead?”

Hearing such unemotional dispatch coming from a tiny girl with the face
of an angel was profoundly disconcerting to Mason, but he quickly came to
terms with it. The girl had the right idea, after all. If there had ever been a
point in subtlety or sentiment before, there sure as hell wasn’t now.

“No. Well, I don’t know... Maybe,” Mason struggled to answer. “She
was okay the last time I saw her, but that was a while ago.”

“How long?”

Mason’s chest tightened as he thought back to that final day with Becks.
“Two weeks ago. I surprised her with airline tickets, and she surprised me by
saying we were through.”

“Wow,” the girl shook her head. “That’s cold.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Mason replied with a sigh.

Mackenzie reached out, found Mason’s leg, and followed it to his knee,
then she patted his knee gently and offered a sympathetic, “Well, it’s her
loss, Mace.”

Mason chuckled and put his hand on hers. “You’re a clever girl,
Mackenzie. I’m glad our paths crossed.”

She smiled sweetly and turned her hand into his.

“I’m glad, too, Mace.”

Just then, a dark shadow crossed her face, and her smile vanished as she
uttered a whispered, “Uh oh....” as she put a finger to her pursed lips. Mason
tried to pick up whatever she was hearing, but the tumult from outside
seemed unchanged to him. He popped up to look beyond the counter, but the
front door was clear. He lowered himself back down and was just about to
ask what she’d heard when he picked it up at last. It wasn’t coming from
outside at all. It was coming from behind them. A soft but definite scrabbling
against the closed door at the rear of the shop.

“I thought you...” Mackenzie began in a whisper.

“I did!” Mason hushed back.

“For sure?” the girl asked, her sightless eyes as wide as saucers.

Mason recalled a crystal-clear image of seven feet of rebar skewering the

man through the chest like a human shishkebob.

“For sure,” he said without a shadow of doubt.

“Someone else hiding, maybe?”

“It’s a small room. No way.”

“Back door?” Mackenzie suggested.

Mason considered. He’d had other things on his mind, so he hadn’t seen
a back door, but there was bound to be one. Not open, though. He would have
noticed that, certainly. He hadn’t given the encounter another thought, but
now his mind raced to do the math. The man was alone in the back room of a
coffee shop during a blackout, so he was probably a manager or owner
guarding his interests. He had locked the front door, so if there was a back
door, he would have locked that, too. Then he’d hunkered down to wait out
the night, but the virus took him. So, there were only two possibilities. Either
someone else was back there, or the weapon hadn’t done as much damage as
he’d thought.

“Dunno,” he whispered close to Mackenzie’s ear. “You wait here. I’ll
check.”

He gave her little hand a squeeze and released it, then he stood to a
crouch behind the counter and had a quick look out front. Assured that they
were still undiscovered, he collected his length of rebar from the floor and
padded softly up to the door to the back room. He pressed his ear against the
door, and sure enough, a soft scratching and scrabbling came through from
the other side. A rat, maybe? But just as he pondered the idea, he heard the
unmistakable sound of fingernails against the door that removed all doubt.
Damn! Someone else was back there, for sure. How could he have missed
them? Well, no matter. He would deal with the problem just as easily as he
dealt with the last. He took a few deep breaths to make himself ready, then he
turned the knob slowly, raised his weapon to his chest, and threw the door
open.

There was no way he could have been prepared for what was waiting for
him on the other side. The little man was back on his feet, but his clothes
were stained red from the chest down, and he was standing in the center of a
massive pool of blood. Mason had barely a single second to register the
horrible gaping wound in the man’s chest before the attack came. The man’s

movements were slower and more awkward this time, but he came at Mason
with teeth gnashing and hands clawing the air.

By rights, the little man should be dead. No one could have survived an
injury like the one he’d suffered. Mason was caught off guard, but he reacted
quickly. He didn’t swing the weapon, but instead thrust it again like a spear,
again stabbing the man through the chest just to the side of his sternum. The
thing pierced the man directly through the heart, but this time he didn’t go
down. Like a creature possessed, the little man remained on his feet, and to
Mason’s horror, actually took another step toward him. As the man advanced,
the rebar sunk even further into the creature’s chest, but still he continued
gnashing his jaws and glaring at Mason with wild, blank eyes.

Mason put all of his strength behind his weapon and shoved it hard,
driving it into the man until he could feel it coming out the other side. But
still, the man still didn’t stop. He absorbed the assault without uttering a
sound, then he actually took another step forward, then another and another,
riding the length of rebar through his chest like a train riding along a track.

For the first time, real fear gripped Mason’s heart and turned his blood
cold. He stepped back, jerked the weapon free with a horrible shluuck! and
jammed it forward again. It punched a ragged hole through the creature’s
chest where it’s lung must surely have been, but still the creature fought on. It
gnashed its teeth and clawed at him, raking the air mere inches from his face.
There was only one more thing Mason could do. He brought up his foot and
kicked the man as hard as he could, pulling the weapon free as the little man
stumbled backward, then he swung the rebar high over his head and brought
it down in the precise center of the creature’s head.

The man’s skull split in two, spewing gore in every direction. Mason felt
a tiny gob of detritus splatter at the corner of his mouth and uttered an
inadvertent “ugh!” as he wiped it away with the back of his hand, then he
watched the little man crumple to the floor in a tangled heap. Mason grunted
in disgust as he gawked at the carnage he had caused, but still, there was
something about the gory sight that piqued his interest. Something about this
whole situation was off. He studied the horrible scene for several long
moments until he finally had it.

Cranial trauma of that magnitude should be literally gushing blood. It
should be spraying from the wound like water from a fountain. Here, there

was nothing. Not a drop of blood issued from that gaping, cavernous wound.
He looked to the man’s chest and knew that all three holes should be spurting
blood like geysers, yet there was nothing. The one through his heart should
be painting the very ceiling, but there was nothing at all. In fact, now that he
looked back upon his second entry into the room, he couldn’t remember
seeing that original hole bleeding either. For all the world, he remembered it
looking as if it had already bled itself out.

“Christ...” he hushed aloud.

Was it possible? Was he really seeing what he thought he was seeing? As
much as his logical mind refused to believe the impossible, he couldn’t deny
the evidence of his own eyes. His first strike with the lance had killed the
little man. It had killed him as surely as those twenty-three knives had killed
Caesar at the feet of the statue of Pompey. And yet, this lifeless creature had
somehow stayed animate. And then it had come at him. Jaws snapping and
hands clawing, it had attacked.

With a sudden awareness, Mason realized that somehow in this new
world of the damned, dead wasn’t exactly dead.

He shuddered at the revelation, but as difficult a concept as it was for
him to conceive, he had to accept the fact. In this new paradigm, dead men
could walk. Dead men could attack. Dead men could kill every bit as
gruesomely as those other monsters tearing down his beloved city. His every
nerve suddenly on alert, he stood over the apparently lifeless corpse, rebar
held high. He stood there for the better part of a minute, every fibre of his
being, tensed and ready. The moment the creature stirred, he would bring the
metal rod down again and again until its skull was turned to pulp. If it still
wanted to come at him after that, it would have to do so without a head, and
even in his confused and anxious state, Mason could think of little the
creature could do without ears to hear or teeth to bite.

He stood over the body, watching and waiting, and only after another full
minute passed did he begin to relax. He poked at the thing a few times, gave
it a few swift kicks to be sure, and finally abandoned the vigil. Now content
that the man was well and truly dead, he left the back room and pulled the
door firmly closed behind him. Just to be sure, he grabbed a chair from the
far side of the counter and shoved it under the doorknob to block it, then he
collapsed back to the floor beside Mackenzie. He took her hand in his and sat

gasping for air for some time as he tried to wrap his mind around any of this
madness.

“There was someone else?” Mackenzie asked.

“Nope,” Mason panted.

“So you didn’t...”

“Yes, I did,” he countered. “I most certainly did. And I had to do it
again.”

The girl was quietly contemplative as she considered. At last, she looked
up at Mason with her bright green, sightless eyes and tucked a thick tangle of
hair behind her ear.

“So what does that mean?” she asked with a gentle tilt of her head.

“It means,” Mason told her honestly, “that our problems just got way
bigger.”

CHAPTER

VII

“Ready, Mack?” Mason asked.

The girl took hold of his hand and answered back with a nod, “Ready,
Mace.”

They had spent another hour or more in the coffee shop, discussing plans
and backup plans and backup plans to the backup plans, but they both knew
that all would likely be thrown to the curb the moment they left their
temporary sanctuary. Mason tried to explain to the girl that their best bet lay
in making their way south to the suburbs and that anticipated Red Cross girl
with the coffee and donuts, but she would have none of it. Even after Mason
told her everything he’d seen and experienced, holding back nothing about
the extreme threat they now faced, Mackenzie had only one goal, and no
matter what Mason said to try to dissuade her, she remained absolutely
resolute that this be their primary mission.

“We have to find Sarah,” she insisted, over and over and over again, and
that was it.

No matter how succinct Mason’s arguments were as to the problems
associated with covering four miles of cityscape, and the probabilities of the
Trident Urgent Care Center being overrun with the infected and the undead,
he could do nothing to convince the girl that the search for her Aunt Sarah
was a fool’s errand. He finally came to conclusion that if he didn’t agree to
take her there on the off chance that her aunt was still alive and on-site, she
would go it alone. Mason could have bound her hand and foot, and slung her
bodily over his shoulder to ferry her away, but she would eventually find a
way to escape and return to the city. And quite right, too, he ultimately had to
concede. Sarah was the only family she had left. If anyone in Mason’s family
was still around, he probably would have felt the same way.

And so, he had two choices. He could either accompany this blind,
determined girl on her wild goose chase, or he could go his own way and let
Mackenzie go hers. But, of course, it was no choice at all. After banging his
head against the proverbial brick wall for the better part of an hour, he finally
capitulated, but not without several caveats, the most important of which he
called the ‘Prime Directive.’ In essence, the Prime Directive was his power of
veto. They would both be equal partners in this endeavor, free to share
suggestions and debate courses of action, but Mason would have the final say
in all matters, and Mackenzie was duty-bound to comply without question or
hesitation. On this one point Mason was adamant, and at last his young
charge conceded. After all, his age may or may not have given him wisdom,
but she couldn’t argue with the fact that he could actually see.

He found a backpack stuffed under the counter, apparently left by one of
the young baristas in her haste to flee back home, and once he emptied out
the textbooks and notepads and feminine sundries, he found that it quite
adequately fit several bottles of water, a few cans of sugary soda, and the last
of the muffins. Mackenzie even managed to sniff out a box of granola bars,
so the haul would keep them fed for several days if they found nothing else.
Mason slung the pack over his shoulder, hefted the length of rebar, took
Mackenzie’s hand in his, and stepped to the front door. He snapped the lock
open and watched for a response to the sound, and when none came after
thirty seconds, he cautiously stepped across the threshold and back into
Bizarroworld.

Mackenzie’s footsteps were as silent as a mouse’s, but Mason didn’t see
a few shards of glass on the sidewalk before stepping into the street. The
glass crunched, and three creatures immediately tore around the corner and
charged at them. Mason dropped Mackenzie’s hand, and on prearranged
agreement, she stepped away from the fray and huddled into a doorway.

The nearest creature bashed into Mason with the force of a freight train,
but he deflected the force of the blow away from him with a well-positioned
shoulder, propelling the creature down to the ground. But before he could
bring up his weapon to finish the thing off, the next one was on him. He
stepped to the side and stuck out a foot as the creature flew past, and watched
as it stumbled to its knees. In the time it took him to swing the length of rebar
to crush in the back of its skull, the first creature was back on its feet. Mason
turned his attention back to the first creature, but then the third one launched

itself into his unprotected flank, and they both tumbled over in a mad
scramble of limbs. Mason found his feet quickly, but by then the first creature
was nearly on him. He held his length of rebar outward as the thing charged,
and like the creature in the back room of the coffee shop, the raging thing
impaled itself on the weapon. As it crumpled in a heap, Mason planted his
foot against the creature’s chest to pull the lance free, then he swung it
around in an arc that brought it down directly on top of the last creature’s
head. The thing’s skull cracked open like a walnut, and it collapsed to the
ground with a sickening wet thud. Mason then turned back to the creature
spouting blood from its chest, and swung the rebar down with as much force
as he could, ending it forever.

Mason clicked his cheek and Mackenzie came at a run. He gathered her
into his arms, and she tucked her head into the crook of his neck.

“I’ve got you, Mack,” he hushed to her, gently, “I’ve got you.”

“But who’s got you?” Mackenzie mewled softly into his ear. “Better let
me down. There’s more coming from behind. Three of them.”

Mason put the girl down and directed her into a doorway, then he leapt
back into the middle of the road to meet the threat. He raised his weapon and
fairly removed the first creature’s head from its shoulders with the force of
his blow. The second was on him a heartbeat later, but he swung the rebar as
hard as he could and caught the creature on the side of the neck, shattering its
spinal column and sending a spray of blood high into the air. The third
creature wasn’t far behind the others, but Mason had time to crouch and
propel the monster over his back in a perfect hip-check that dropped it in a
heap and disoriented it long enough for him to bash its head to pulp.

Once done, he clicked his cheek and the girl came running. The two
shared a brief hug, then they joined hands and set off south as softly as they
could and as quickly as they dared.

The first stop on their agreed agenda was back to Mackenzie’s apartment
building, four blocks away. It took thirty minutes, several tense moments, and
too many violent altercations to count to get even that far, and as they
huddled in a doorway across the street from a lobby swarming with creatures,
there followed a heated but whispered debate as to the merits of continuing
the search. But in this, Mackenzie remained intransigent. Mason invoked his

veto with regard to climbing twenty-two floors through a meat grinder just to
confirm that Sarah had not returned home, and argued rightly that if she had
returned home, she could never have survived the climb herself, and
Mackenzie finally accepted it all as fact. But not without offering a
compromise. Conceding to the compromise with a heavy sigh, he quickly
located a discarded purse, took a lipstick from inside, crept across the road to
the front of the building, and scrawled a message on the brick facade in the
biggest letters he could manage.

Sarah Cullen. M is safe. Go 2 where u saw funny dogs.

The funny dogs were from Mackenzie’s store of memories. Mason knew
that if Aunt Sarah had come home and tried to climb through the swarm, she
was dead. But if she was still alive, she would fight her way home to find her
young niece at any cost, and she would have to see the message. It was a
longshot, but at least it was a chance. He had asked Mackenzie for a place
nearby that Aunt Sarah was sure to know but that only she would know. The
girl told him of a day when they had stopped for lunch in a park just as two
Papillon Spaniels turned up with their owner. Sarah had laughed and called
them gremlins, and thereafter, they were referred to as the ‘funny dogs.’
From the way Mackenzie described the nearby marina and the fish ‘n’ chips
hut shaped like a giant sea urchin, it couldn’t be any place other than Mission
Creek Park, a few miles south.

That eventuality seen to, Mason gathered Mackenzie to his side and
strode quietly north toward the Trident Urgent Care Center.

Four miles.

Thirty-six blocks.

Christ...

Mason did the math in his head and saw that it would take them literally
days to get that far at their snail’s pace. It was going to be a slow, careful slog
through chaotic city streets, facing death every step of the way. It wasn’t bad
enough that they had to avoid or battle through swarms of homicidal lunatics,
but now there was the added issue of the undead to worry about. Mason was
confident in his abilities and his big chunk of rebar, but if those bastards
could get right back up after he delivered a killing blow then all bets were off.

At last, he decided that their best bet was to revert to his previous plan

and go underground. The sewer system generally followed the road network,
so it shouldn’t be hard to gauge location, and four miles underground could
be covered in a fraction of the time it took them on the surface. The sights
and smells wouldn’t be pleasant, but it would be the best way to see that
Mackenzie was safe while they tilted at windmills.

He huddled the girl into a corner and whispered the plan in her ear. It
was clear that she didn’t much like the idea, but she acceded to the Prime
Directive and let Mason guide her where he saw fit. With that, he released her
hand, instructed her to stay, and set to work with the rebar. Several strained
grunts later, he lowered the manhole cover carefully to the ground and
clicked his cheek. Mackenzie came unerring to him.

“There’s a step,” Mason cautioned as he lowered her down into the hole.

“I feel it,” Mackenzie whispered in a hush, wrinkling her nose. “It
smells like poo.”

“It’ll get worse,” Mason promised her.

He held onto the girl until she was almost swallowed up by the hole, then
he guided her hands to the sides of the ladder and let her lower herself down.
With one last look at the creatures closing in on all sides, he quickly
clambered through the opening and descended into the sewer after her. He
didn’t have the leverage to move the cover fully back into place, but he
managed to drag it far enough across the opening that it should be enough to
keep any living or dead thing from dropping through. Once down, he allowed
himself a moment to shine the dim light from his cellphone up and down the
pipe, then he took hold of Mackenzie’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“All good, Mack?” he asked.

“All good, Mace. Stinky, but good.”

He started to laugh, but quickly cut it off short.

You damn fool...

This couldn’t last. It could never last. This sweet little girl was infected.
It might be hours, or it might be days, but sure as hell, this girl was going to
change. That pretty face would turn dark, and those thin lips would curl back
into a snarl, and when that happened, Mason would end her torment. He
would bring that discarded scrap of rebar down on her head, and turn it into

mush. And then he would cry. And maybe he would never stop crying.
Maybe he would fold up in this fetid, squalid sewer and weep his whole life
away. Hell, if his last action on Earth was to destroy a child simply trying to
find the only person she had left on Earth, maybe he would just lie in this
putrid shithole and cry until the virus took him, too.

But until that eventuality, they were on a mission. Mackenzie needed to
know whether or not Aunt Sarah was alive, so they would do what they could
while they could, and deal with the consequences as they presented
themselves. And when Mackenzie finally saw that all was utterly lost, they
would turn back south, and they would go on for as long as she stayed
Mackenzie. Then he would do the unthinkable, and end her misery once and
for all.

“I don’t hear anyone,” Mackenzie whispered.

Mason put his dire thoughts aside as best he could and focused on the
here and now. He listened closely, but could only hear the dripping of water
and the distant squeaking of rats.

“I wish I had your ears, Mack.”

The girl turned her face up to his and replied, grimly, “I wish I had your
eyes.”

The dark thoughts came back in a flood, and the best he could do was
shrug and offer a meek, “Well, we’re a team, right? So I guess we have
both.”

The girl said nothing at first, but after their shoes began to stir up the
sludge, she grimaced and quipped blithely, “I could do without my nose,
though.”

This time, Mason laughed out loud, and he let it come. As the sound
echoed down the pipe, Mackenzie heard the echo and giggled. Then she let
loose a little hoot. When she heard it bounce back, she called out,
“Hellooooo!” and giggled when it, too, echoed back to her ears. Then it
became a game, and she would sing snippets of songs, or shout at the top of
her lungs, or whisper furtively, and she would giggle every time the echo
came back.

Mason knew that it was more than just a game. This was the first time

Mackenzie had felt safe since fleeing home, and she was reveling in it. It
wasn’t just her whistling through the graveyard, it was her crying out to the
world, “I’m still alive!” Mason did nothing to stop her, and even came up
with a few shouts of his own, laughing along with her every time they
bounced back. Finally, they began to sing a chorus of ‘Row, Row, Row Your
Boat’ as a round, letting their echoes fill in the gaps, and Mason drank in
every bit of that simple pleasure.

The line they were in was narrow enough that Mason had to stoop over
as they walked, but the trek wasn’t difficult considering the alternative. His
phone gave off enough light to illuminate a few yards of pipe ahead, and
Mackenzie had no problem at all with the odd rat scurrying past her feet. In
fact, she giggled when one or another dashed past, and it was all Mason could
do to keep her from trying to reach down and pet each and every one. Instead,
she contented herself by giving each rodent a name as they were encountered.
There was ‘Splashy’, ‘Stinky’, ‘Pudgy’, ‘Princess’, and, oddly, one big
animal the size of a raccoon that she insisted on christening ‘Manfred the
Magnificent.’

Mason abided all of it as if she were the birthday girl whose every wish
was to be granted. He tried to shove all thoughts of the future to the back of
his mind and concentrate instead on the present, singing along, laughing
along, and bowing pretentiously to each mangy rodent Mackenzie named,
bidding them a pompous, “How do you do, Mr. Pudgy?” or “Your servant,
Madame Stinky,” in turn. At one point, he even called out a stilted, “Bonjour,
Mon Sewer Rat!” that made Mackenzie howl with laughter, but no matter
how much he tried to distract himself from his brooding thoughts, they were
always there.

They spent nearly an hour trudging through the dark and fetid tunnel.
There were bends and blind alleys and cross-pipes that taxed Mason’s 3D
perception to the limit, but even after back-tracking more times than either of
them could count, they still managed to travel in a few hours a distance that
might have taken them days to cover on the surface.

Mason finally put Mackenzie’s hands on the rungs of a ladder and told
her, “Wait here.”

“Okay, Mace,” she replied with a nod.

He climbed the ladder, pried the cover up a few inches, and looked out.
He didn’t know the neighborhood by sight from this odd vantage point, but
the street signs at a distant intersection were just legible. He lowered the
manhole cover back into place and descended the ladder, back to
Mackenzie’s side.

“Two more blocks, I think,” he said, then he took her hand once more
and followed his weak light farther down the dark tunnel.

At what he gauged to be two blocks later, he again oriented Mackenzie at
the base of the ladder and climbed up to have a look. Sure enough, the
Trident Urgent Care Center was directly across the street. But, as he’d feared,
the entire place was overrun. He couldn’t tell if the people surrounding the
place were alive or undead, but it didn’t matter. Hundreds were there, and
that was all he needed to know.

He backed down the ladder and crouched close to Mackenzie.

“Mack, listen,” he told her, “We’re here, but the whole place is
surrounded, just like we talked about. Everyone who got sick turned up here
looking for help, so there’s hundreds out there. Thousands, maybe.”

“Sarah,” Mackenzie said cooly, and left it at that.

“Listen, kiddo,” Mason tried again, “There is no way I can fight through
a thousand people to get in there. If only....”

The girl interrupted him with a subtly cocked head, “It’s Sarah. Find
another way, Mace.”

Jesus. Okay, so apparently the Prime Directive wasn’t absolute. Or
maybe it still was, but she was goading him into thinking outside the box.
Again, he knew he could drag her bodily away from this place, but he knew
just as clearly that she’d find a way to get back, and she’d go in, alone and
blind.

“Alright, Mack,” he said aloud.

“Really?” Mackenzie’s eyes grew wide.

“Yup,” Mason said simply, “But only if I can find us a way in. We sure
can’t go through the front doors, so if there’s no way past the swarm, we’re
right back to the impossible.”

“You’ll find a way, Mace,” she told him matter-of-factly. “I know you
will.”

With that, he led her a little farther along and discovered a narrow
offshoot of the sewer line that looked like it went in the right direction. It
would be a tight fit for a man of his size, but if it somehow went under the
road and took them into the hospital grounds, they might actually stand a
fighting chance. He led the parade in a hunch, and soon enough came to
another ladder. He wrapped the girl’s tiny hands around the side bars and
went up for a look. There was the scrape of metal on metal, then he was back
and corralling a tangle of curls from Mackenzie’s face.

“We’re inside, Mack,” he said. “Well, not inside the hospital, but inside
the grounds. Right above us, there’s a small yard with a chain-link fence
around it and a couple of benches. Do you know where that is?”

“Uh huh. It’s outside the cafeteria. You get there through another room,
then there’s a door that says, ‘Do Not Open’ but people go out there all the
time. Sarah calls it the ‘Secret Garden.’”

“Okay, good. Now, the fence is keeping out most of them, but I saw
three others in the Secret Garden that I’ll have to deal with.”

“You mean kill.”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” he told her without question. “If they were
to stand back and let us through, I’d have no problem leaving them in peace.
But they won’t do that, and you know it. As soon as those things hear us,
they’ll try to hurt us, and I intend to not let them. I will absolutely, positively
kill them. I just hope I only have to do it once.”

He watched Mackenzie’s face in the dim light of his phone, looking for
signs of dissension. To his amazement, she simply gave a quick head-bob and
declared, “Good. I just wanted to make sure.”

Mason smiled and gave her a peck on the forehead. Then it was time to
plan their egress. The manhole cover would make noise as soon as it moved,
so he wouldn’t have time to help the girl out. She would have to do that much
on her own. He told her to ignore everything she might hear and climb out as
quickly as she could. Once out, she was to turn left and walk swiftly away.
The side of the building was no more than a dozen paces from the manhole,
so if she counted in her head and held her hands out in front of her, it should

be a piece of cake. Once this was agreed upon, Mason tied the backpack to
the side of the ladder and started up, Mackenzie at his heels.

He lifted the cover a scant few inches and peered out, whispering,
“Ready, Mack?”

“Ready, Mace,” came the reply.

He eased the heavy steel cover away as slowly as he could, but as
predicted, it didn’t go silently. Finally, after scraping the thing against the
ground enough to cause a growling from above, he abandoned any hope of a
furtive exit and used all of his strength to throw the cover back. It clanged to
the ground, and he launched himself through the opening.

The Secret Garden was a small space, perhaps thirty feet to a side, but
the fence around it was thick with dozens upon dozens of creatures. They
hovered, they leaned, and as they became aware of noise within, they
growled and snarled and thrashed at the fence. But they weren’t the
immediate problem. Three... no, four creatures were inside the fence and
charging full speed at him. He barely had time to make sure Mackenzie was
out of the hole and headed to safety before they were on him, and then he
fought like a madman.

A young male was ahead of the others, charging at him in crazy,
awkward strides. When it approached to within striking distance, Mason
swung the length of rebar as hard as he could and caught the creature directly
across its throat. There was a satisfying crunch! and the creature collapsed,
gurgling and spewing frothy blood from its mouth. Mason continued the
swing and performed an admirable pirouette on his heels, using the built-up
kinetic energy to bring the iron bar down on the next creature in line. It
connected with the female’s left temple, and the thing’s skull split open like
overripe fruit. As it fell in a heap, he turned toward a big male racing at him
from the side. He deked away at the last moment and stuck out his foot,
causing the thing to stumble and skid to the ground. It immediately began to
struggle back to its feet, growling at him through teeth now turned to
shrapnel, but before he could finish the thing off, an old female charged from
the other side. He turned and threw his body into the creature, sending her
clattering to the ground, and in the seconds it took her to scramble back to her
knees, he swung around and buried his weapon in the male’s skull.

The old female was the last one. She found her feet and charged at him,
her mouth drawn back in a snarl, but there were no gnashing teeth. In fact,
there were no teeth at all. He looked to where she’d fallen and saw a pair of
dentures lying on the ground. Still, the creature clawed at the air, snapped its
gums like a landed fish, and charged. Mason struck a batter’s stance, swung
the rebar over his shoulder, then turned his feet and body into the swing as if
he was batting for a homer. Once the creature’s skull came apart and sprayed
across the ground, he turned back to the male with the crushed larynx. The
bleeding had stopped, so his heart was no longer beating, but before the dead
man could become undead, he brought the rebar up like a spear and drove the
end of it directly between the corpse’s eyes.

He yanked his weapon free, clicked his cheek, and Mackenzie came
running. He drew her into his arms and carried her over the fallen bodies and
puddles of gore, then lowered her to her feet in front of the door marked
‘Staff Only.’ This was a fire door, but someone had long ago stuck an empty
cigarette pack into the striker plate to keep the door from locking, and
everyone since then had left the little bit of rebellion against the powers-that-
be in place.

He put his eye to the crack, but could see nothing. It was all black inside.
He listened for activity, but the swarm outside had become agitated with the
noise of the battle and now thrashed against the fence so violently that he
could hear little else. He pulled the door open another few inches and planted
his foot against the base of the thing, weapon at the ready lest someone try to
barge through, but all seemed quiet inside. At last, he pulled the door wide
open and shone the dim light of his cellphone inside.

He could hear movement, now. Not here, though. Close, but not here. He
shone his light one way, then the other, and saw that they were in some kind
of boardroom with a long table surrounded by chairs, and a white screen on
the far wall for PowerPoint presentations. He collected Mackenzie, ushered
her through, and held her close by his side as he padded across the room.
There was a single door on the far side of the table, thankfully closed.

“Mack, does the door go straight into the cafeteria?”

“No,” she whispered back. “It’s in a hall just outside the cafeteria. The
emergency room is at the other end of the hall. That’s where Sarah works.”

“Okay,” Mason replied coolly, but he knew that no one in the emergency
room stood a breath of a chance. The ER was always open to the public. The
masses would have flooded in, sick or feverish or already blind. And then, all
it would have taken was that very first potential patient to turn rabid, and
there would have been pandemonium. With no way to shut the doors and
block the infected and the blind and the ravenous, they would have swarmed
the emergency room like a pack of wolves. Anyone still human would have
been torn to pieces.

Should he tell Mackenzie? Should he inform this sweet little girl that her
aunt had most likely been turned into chum? Or worse? As dedicated as he
was to holding nothing back from his young charge, he couldn’t bring
himself to deliver that bit of news to her. He justified it by convincing
himself that it was all conjecture at this point, so it didn’t count as a lie.

He crouched down and whispered in her ear, “Is there some other place
she might be besides the emergency room? Say that a whole bunch of people
rushed in, and she knew she had to get to someplace safe. Did she have an
office or anything like that?”

Mackenzie mulled it over for some seconds, then she pushed back a
tangle of red hair and turned her sightless green eyes to Mason in an accusing
scowl.

“What you’re trying not to tell me is that if she stayed in the emergency
room, she’s either dead or one of them,” she harumphed.

He tousled the curls on the top of her head and hushed, “I apologize,
Mack. I keep forgetting that you’re wise beyond your years. Would you like
to withdraw your assessment of me as good father material?”

The scowl melted away, and one corner of her lip went up in a sly smirk.

“I guess not. But Sarah is the smartest person I know. If something
happened, she would have seen it coming.”

“Okay, so where would she go?”

“Well, she doesn’t have an office, but there’s a... a break room on each
floor. If she couldn’t get out, she would have gone to one of those.”

Mason put an ear to the door and heard shuffling noises beyond. He told
Mackenzie honestly, “Alright, Mack. I can hear people on the other side, so

this could get real ugly real quick. You stay close behind me and hang on,
okay? I can’t fight them off if I’m always worrying about you.”

“Okay,” the girl replied, “Mace, if you tell me that there’s no way
through them, then okay. But Sarah...”

She left it like that, and what could Mason possibly do? One look at that
desperate face was all it took. He squatted down and confided, “I truly don’t
know if we can do this or not, Mack. But I promise you, we will try our very
best.”

The girl gave a single nod, and that was it. Mason unlatched the door,
pulled it open an inch, and put an eye to the slit.

Fucking hell...

Beyond the door was a length of hallway littered from one end to the
other with bodies. At either end of the hall, Mason could make out flurries of
movement, but he could see no detail from his vantage point. The creatures
might be close, or they might be far. There was just no way to tell without
committing themselves.

He closed the door without a whisper of sound and crouched to the girl’s
ear.

“Mack, there’s a lot. You’re going to have to stay right on my tail and
hang on for dear life, but if I say we have to go back, then that’s it, okay?”

“Fair enough, Mace,” the girl answered, staunchly.

She put her hand in the small of his back and took hold of the top of his
jeans. Come what may, she and Mason were now one. There would be no
more hiding in a corner while the big man fought the monsters. From here on,
Mackenzie would be right there, stepping into the fray right along with him.
Whatever he did, wherever he went, whatever frantic movements he made,
she would keep hold of him as if their very lives depended on it. And, as
Mason explained to her at length and in no uncertain terms, they most
assuredly did.

Once they were both ready, Mason eased the door open, and he and his
shadow took the first tenuous steps into the corridor.

Immediately, he had to lead them around a body. It was that of an older

man, nattily clad in cotton pants and a pinstriped shirt. Most of the man’s
head was sprayed on the wall, so Mason disregarded the corpse. Other bodies
lay in huddled heaps against the wall or splayed out across the floor, all
showing varying degrees of trauma. Some had been partially consumed,
others had been quite literally torn apart, and more than a few looked to
Mason as if they’d suffered the manner of injury that could only have come
from a bullet through the head. This latter phenomenon became clearer when
he spotted a blue uniform some twenty feet away. The sleeve patch read
‘SFPD,’ but the rest of the body was unidentifiable. Mason squatted over the
corpse and reached for the exposed duty belt, but the holster was empty. He
scanned the immediate area for the missing gun, but it was nowhere to be
seen.

He couldn’t waste more time looking. The hallway was closed off with
doors at either end, but just beyond those doors was the swarm. On one end
was the hospital cafeteria, through a set of double doors. They were the type
that opened with a push bar, and the push bar was on the other side. Not
good. He put an eye to a vertical slit window and saw a dozen or more
creatures within. If any of those monsters heard a single peep from this
hallway, a rush of bodies would come together at the door, one of them
would stumble into the push bar, and they would all be through in a flood.

He spotted a cane lying buried halfway under the corpse with the
pinstriped shirt, so he quickly snatched it up. The thing was sticky with
blood, but it was aluminum and he figured it should hold. At least for a while.
He gingerly slipped the cane through the double handles so that the curved
end held it firmly in place, then he and Mackenzie tip-toed away from the
door.

At the other end of the hallway was another set of doors with too many
shadows beyond to count. This swarm wouldn’t even need a push bar to get
through. These were swinging doors, and the hinges went both ways, so one
awkward stumble from someone on the other side would send it through.
Thinking quickly, he returned to the corpse with the striped shirt and
removed its shoes. They were rubber-soled to provide good traction for a man
with a cane. They would have to do. He squeezed the cheap plastic toes into a
wedge and gently eased one under each swinging door. Like the cane, they
would hold for now, but they wouldn’t for long.

As quiet as mice, he and Mackenzie backed away from the swinging
doors and took the only other route available. There was a doorway near the
cafeteria with a dark sign above showing a cartoon stick figure climbing
stairs. Great, he sighed. More stairs... Still, it was the only way, so he gently
eased the thumb paddle down, pulled the door open without a hint of a sound,
and listened for any change in the swarm. Hearing nothing, he stepped into
the stairwell and held a hand against the inner push bar of the door as it
closed so that it shut as silently as it had opened. There was the subtlest of
clicks as he released the push bar, so he froze again, listening. There was a
general background din, but inside the stairwell was only silence.

He crouched down and put his lips to Mackenzie’s ear.

“If Sarah stayed on the first floor, she’s dead,” he told her with brutal
honesty and in the barest breath of a whisper, “Her only chance is if she went
up.”

Mackenzie nodded once and said nothing, but Mason could see her
worried expression in the ambient light provided by a small, grated window
high above.

Slowly then, one cautious step at a time, Mason started up to the next
floor. Mackenzie held onto his waistband as tightly as she could, hugging
against him so as not to hinder his movements, and ten steps later, they were
on the first landing. Atop the next flight of stairs was a door marked ‘2nd
Floor’. Mason climbed slowly, and was soon at the very door. As gently as he
could, moving hairbreadths at a time, he thumbed the latch. There was the
barest of squeaks, then the bolt released with a faint shnick! He eased the
door open a fraction of inch and put an eye to the gap. He could neither see
nor hear anything beyond, so he pulled it open another inch. Then another.
Then another still. At last, he stepped into a dark hallway and brought out his
phone to illuminate the scene.

Suddenly, there was bedlam. Out of the shadows, a body fell hard against
him, and he instinctively shoved back. Then another creature threw itself
against the door, pushing it open wider, and enough light finally streamed in
from the stairwell that he could finally see how wrong he had been to think
that they might have had the place to themselves.

The place was crawling! He gave an inadvertent yelp and swung his

weapon at the closest creature, but there was little room to maneuver. Still,
the blow was enough to knock the creature back into two others, and they all
collapsed in a heap. He swung again and took the legs out from another, then
he leapt back into the stairwell and grabbed for the door. He managed to push
it closed most of the way, but it suddenly stopped short, leaving a gap a foot
wide. He put all of his weight into the door, but it wouldn’t budge another
inch. Something was blocking it. A bloody claw reached through and groped
within inches of his face, and he instinctively grabbed hold of the arm and
slammed it against the door jamb. There was a horrible snap! as the elbow
joint exploded, but the arm continued to flail, dangling the forearm at the end
of the elbow like a dead fish on a line.

He kicked furiously through the gap and felt his foot connect with
something soft, and at last the arm disappeared. He tried again to push the
door the rest of the way closed, but it barely moved another inch before it
stopped dead again. He caught movement from below and had his answer. A
creature had become wedged firmly between door and frame, keeping the
door from closing. It had been a boy, perhaps in his early teens, and the thing
was growling and clawing and trying to rise even now. He leaned his weight
fully into the door to keep the creature pinned to the spot and gave it a
vicious kick to the head, but the creature absorbed the impact with a snarl and
continued to snap its teeth and claw the ground inches from Mason’s legs. He
lined up another kick and caught the creature between the eyes with a
horrible crunch!, but even though there was a new oval-shaped dent in the
boy’s forehead, it continued to struggle.

In desperation, he raised the rebar high and brought the end of it down on
the back of the boy’s head, and at last the creature lay still. But that wasn’t
the end to it. The boy’s corpse was still blocking the door, and two other
creatures on the far side were even now trying to squeeze their bulk through.
They clawed the air mere inches from his face, snarling and growling like
wild animals. He pulled his weapon free from the boy’s skull and stabbed one
of the creatures through the heart, but even as the thing fell away, another
appeared to take its place.

It was no use. With the boy’s body still wedged between door and frame,
he was fighting a losing battle. The creatures on the other side were slowly
but surely squeezing through, one inch at a time, and it wouldn’t be long
before they were in. The body had to be cleared, but it was all he could do

now just to maintain a grip on the door. If he eased up long enough to deal
with the body, he would lose the fight, and the swarm would pour through in
a flood.

“Mack!” he shouted, “I need you!”

Mackenzie let go of his waistband and came to his side. “Tell me!”

“There’s a body blocking the door, and I can’t let go! You’ll have to pull
it clear!”

“Got it, Mace!” she said, dropping to a crouch and feeling along the
floor.

“To your left! Left a bit more. A bit more. There!”

Mackenzie found one of the boy’s hands, and despite the fact that she
was holding onto a dead body, she hesitated not for a second. She leaned her
tiny body back and began to haul at the hand as if she were in a tug-of-war.
Mason eased up on the door the tiniest bit to take some of the pressure off of
the boy’s body, but doing so allowed the snarling creatures to squeeze
through even further. More creatures appeared behind the two already
fighting for purchase, and now a flurry of arms groped through the opening,
clawing the air and leaving bloody streaks on the door.

“C’mon Mack, pull!” he howled. He was playing a game of inches
against the swarm on the other side, and he knew it.

“I am pulling!” the girl hollered back, both hands gripping the dead
boy’s hand, and all of her meagre weight pulling.

Yet another face appeared in the gap. It was the horribly disfigured face
of a man in a white coat. And then another appeared behind it. And then
another, and another.

“Christ!” Mason cursed, “Okay Mack, I’m going to let up on the count
of three, and you pull as hard as you can! Ready? One... Two... Three!”

He released enough pressure to let the door fall open several inches, and
the body on the floor moved, but just barely.

“C’mon Mack! Pull!”

The girl pulled. She pulled for all she was worth, but the boy’s narrow

hips were still too wide for the gap. Mason let the door open another inch,
and the man with the white coat eased a shoulder through, pawing at his face.
One inch more and the man would have his shoulders through, and like a
newborn baby, once his shoulders were through, the rest of him would
follow, and there would be nothing Mason could do to stop him. At that
point, the battle would be lost.

But then, all at once, the boy’s body popped free like a cork and skidded
across the floor. As soon as the impediment was gone, Mason shoved all of
his weight into the door, but one of the creatures chose that particular
moment to try to crawl through, and its head became pinned between the
door and the frame, keeping it once again from closing. The horrible thing
snarled and gnashed its teeth and tried to push itself through, but Mason put
all of his weight into the door to keep the head pinned.

Having pulled the boy’s body free, Mackenzie was on her backside on
the floor, all but tangled up with the corpse, but her job wasn’t over yet.

“On your feet, Mack!” he shouted to her, “I still need you!”

Grunting and huffing, the girl disentangled herself from the corpse and
returned to Mason’s side, panting heavily.

“Take my club! Here! Right here!” Mason pressed the rebar into her
hand. “You need to stab, got it? Don’t hit. Stab! Hold it sideways, point it to
where I tell you, and stab it like a spear as hard as you can!”

The girl offered a breathy, “Okay,” and held the weapon as Mason
instructed.

“A little higher! A little more! Just a bit higher and an inch to your
right!” Mason called out until the thing was aimed directly between the
intruder’s eyes. “Okay........as hard as you can when I tell you! Ready?
...Now!”

In truth, there wasn’t much strength behind the blow. It would never
have been enough to crack open a skull, but the tip of the rebar dropped an
inch or two when the thrust was made and just so happened to catch the
creature directly through the right eye. Even with such a small girl behind the
weapon, it managed to punch cleanly though the eye, crush the thin bone
behind, and cleave directly into the creature’s brain.

The head dropped away, and Mason shoved with all of his might,
slamming the door closed with a thunk! Mackenzie fell back as Mason
collapsed to his knees, then he lowered himself to a seat on the floor just as
Mackenzie crawled over to him and climbed into his lap. She put a hand on
his leg, he wrapped an arm around her slender waist, and there they sat, both
gasping for air.

“That was close?” Mackenzie asked, barely able to get the words out.

“That was close,” Mason panted back. “But you saved us. Good work,
Mack.”

She tossed her head from side to side and uttered a noncommittal,
“Meh....”

Once his breathing returned to something approaching normal, Mason
spoke plainly. “Okay, Mack, the second floor is overrun. If Aunt Sarah’s
here...”

“Then she’s dead,” Mackenzie finished the thought as if they were
discussing the weather. “I know, Mace.”

It was still disconcerting to him to hear such a young girl speak so
casually about such horrible things, but after all the tragedy she’d already
suffered through, he figured that maybe she simply had no more fucks to
give.

“Yeah,” he acknowledged grimly, “I know you know.”

This was a mission destined to fail before it had begun. It was a
ridiculous waste of time and energy, and was sure to end badly for both of
them. The smartest possible move now would be to abandon the quest and
get the hell out while they still could. Back to the sewers and then south, out
of the city and away from the madness. That girl in the Red Cross cap was
waiting, and a coffee and donut would taste pretty damn sweet right about
now. If he had any intelligence at all, he would use his power of veto, tell
Mackenzie in no uncertain terms that the search was over, and get her as far
away from here as he could. He might have to drag her away, kicking and
screaming, but so be it. Hell, he’d throw her over his shoulder if he had to.
Whatever it took to call off this insanity.

He felt a tiny hand on his arm and saw the girl turn to him with her big,

green, sightless eyes. She slid her hand down his arm to find his hand, and
she clasped it tightly.

“Okay then,” she said determinedly. “If Sarah had to go up to be safe,
then we go up too, right?”

Mason drew in a deep breath and released it in a heavy sigh.

“Right, Mack,” he said, knowing when he was beaten. “We go up.”

CHAPTER

VIII

They leaned heavily into each other as they climbed exhaustedly to their feet,
then Mason retrieved his weapon from where the girl had dropped it to the
floor.

“Dibs,” he said inanely, then he took her hand and directed it back to his
waistband. “Alright, kiddo, onward and upward.”

And onward and upward they went. The next half-flight took them to a
platform where Mason could see the door stenciled in black, ‘3rd Floor’, and
as they padded up those last few steps, he made himself a promise. This was
the top floor. There was nowhere else to go. The third floor was bound to be
overrun just like the rest of this accursed place, so once they got to that door,
if there were any sounds from within, he would put an end to this whole
lunatic venture once and for all.

Ten more steps, he promised himself. Just ten more steps, and we can get
out of this hell-hole...

They tip-toed up, and Mason counted off each step in his head. Once on
the landing, he pressed his ear against the door and listened. He could hear
nothing, but before daring anything further, he asked Mackenzie to have a
listen. The girl pressed her delicate little ear to the door, instinctively closing
her eyes to concentrate on picking up the subtlest of sounds from beyond.

A full minute later, she lifted herself away from the door and proclaimed
in a hush, “I don’t hear anything.”

“Me neither,” Mason admitted, but as he gnawed nervously at one corner
of his lip, he mentally added a silent... yet...

He had to look. He had to take that last onerous step. For Mack. For his
own sense of obligation. Though every fiber of his being screamed at him to
back away, he had to open that damned door. That determination made, right

or wrong, he slowly eased the thumb catch down, releasing the bolt with the
barest shnick! and cracking the door open. He braced himself for the
inevitable onslaught, ready to slam the door closed at the first indication of
movement beyond, but none came. This time, there was no rush from a
swarm on the other side. In fact, there was nothing at all. He pulled the door
open another inch, ready to throw his weight back into it to slam it shut again,
but all was quiet beyond. In fact, the place was as silent as a grave. He let the
door fall open another few inches, and peered nervously inside. He shone the
pale light of his phone into the darkness, sure he would see a phalanx of
creatures just waiting for the precise moment to attack, but again, there was
nothing. At last, he pulled the door open wide enough to squeeze through,
and found himself standing in complete isolation.

“Mack,” he hushed.

Mackenzie came out from behind his back and whispered, “Yeah,
Mace?”

“Which way to the break room?”

“On the side facing the street,” she hushed. “I remember ‘cause I could
see the ambulances coming and going.”

To the right, then. There were enough windows to cast an ambient glow
down the hallway, but there were shadows there, too. The entire third floor
looked to be vacant, but those dark recesses might hide all manner of danger.
Here, he would have to rely as much on Mackenzie’s ears as he did his own
eyes.

He eased the door shut behind them, and now the place really was as
quiet as a tomb.

Deadly quiet.... Mason thought to himself, and immediately regretted it.

He took one slow step at a time, weapon at the ready, and Mackenzie
scurried along beside him on her tiptoes and making not a whisper of a
sound. They soon came to an open door, and Mason peeked around the
corner. Inside were a pair of beds, both occupied. He expected the people in
those beds to suddenly jump up and come at them, but they didn’t. There
were no beeping monitors to tell him whether these patients were alive or not,
but they both looked dead enough. He guided Mackenzie past the door and
continued on.