Wade kept moving.
The city had changed in the span of minutes.
Not in the way a storm gathered gradually on the horizon and gave you time to prepare. This was faster than that. One moment it had been traffic and horns and people leaning on steering wheels and cursing through open windows. The next it was terror.
He stayed on the frontage road, cutting north and east as needed, keeping the highway close enough to track but far enough that he didn’t get trapped. He didn’t run now. The first burst of adrenaline had burned itself out of his legs, leaving behind the pounding in his knees and the deep, familiar ache in his lower back. He moved at a hard walk instead, fast enough to cover ground, slow enough to think.
All around him, the city screamed.
Multiple sirens wailed from somewhere deeper in the grid. A constant, jagged layer of noise – car horns blaring, engines revving, people shouting, glass breaking, the dull crunch of metal from another vehicle accident. It all blended into a cacophony that sat over the city like a blanket of smoke.
He ducked briefly into the recessed entryway of a small donut shop. Through the wide glass windows he saw darkness inside. The lights were off. The floor looked empty. No movement.
Good enough.
Wade shrugged off his go-bag, dropped to a knee, unzipped it and reached deep near the bottom until his hand felt the hard, plastic of the pistol case. In a swift motion, he pulled the case free, flipped it open and grabbed his Glock 19 compact 9mm pistol. He reached into another pouch and pulled out two loaded magazines. One went into the pistol with a firm click. The other disappeared into the pocket of his lightweight jacket.
He racked the slide, chambering a round.
The sound was small and sharp.
It was reassuring.
He shoved the case back into the bag, pulled the zipper shut, swung the bag over his shoulders and stepped back out onto the sidewalk.
Now armed, Wade kept moving.
Every few steps he checked over his shoulder. He checked storefront windows, scanned parked cars, alleys and intersections. He still didn’t fully understand what was happening, but he knew enough to understand that, more often than not, it was confusion and panic that got people killed.
He passed a strip of half-empty businesses at the edge of a commercial block. A laundromat, a tax office, a vape shop. A nail salon with its front glass door shattered inward.
At the far end of the strip sat a small tire and auto shop with its roll-up bay doors open.
Wade approached cautiously and noted the weathered sign over the front door: J&M Tire Shop.
Three service bays. Two customer vehicles up on jacks. One tow truck parked in the far stall. A tiny, empty office with a desk and stacks of paperwork. A small lobby with five folding chairs and two vending machines. No people. No movement.
The shop sat close to a road that would eventually lead him toward the foothills.
The tow truck had clearance and power.
It was everything he needed to handle side roads or push through debris if the main route was blocked.
He might still have a chance to reach the cabin. To reach Chelsey.
Then he heard it.
A scream.
Close.
Wade spun toward the sound.
Across the street, a woman was running hard toward him.
Two men were chasing her.
Not men.
Not anymore.
Even at a glance, Wade could see something about them was wrong. Their movements were uneven. Almost like they didn’t have complete control of their bodies. Deep set, milky eyes stood in contrast from the darkened flesh around the eyes. Both had that same sick, driven pace: clumsy and relentless at the same time. They weren’t sprinting, but they were moving quickly.
The woman locked eyes with Wade and ran towards him.
“Help me!” she screamed.
Wade moved a few steps toward her and raised the Glock in a two-handed stance. But the infected were too close behind her. No clear shot.
“Duck.” He shouted.
She didn’t. She kept running. Face twisted with blind terror.
At forty feet, the thing caught her from behind and dragged her to the ground – biting her neck as she fell face-first into the pavement.
He’d seen men torn apart by shrapnel. Seen bodies opened by bullets and bombs. But there was something worse about this.
These things weren’t angry.
They were hungry.
Wade opened fire, striking it in the head. The infected attacking the woman collapsed immediately across the woman’s back.
The second one moved past both bodies without hesitation, drawn by movement and noise. It came at him in a crooked, lunging gallop.
Wade opened fire twice more.
The first round tore across its cheek, spinning a spray of blood into the air. The second punched through its face. It skidded hard across the asphalt.
Wade jogged toward the woman, pistol up.
One look was all he needed.
The wound to her neck was catastrophic. She was still breathing, but bright red blood was spurting from the wound. She looked at him and tried to speak.
“I’m sorry,” Wade said quietly, a sadness written in his eyes.
A snarl came from his left.
He turned and saw another one coming from between two parked cars. It was wearing a blood-stained dress shirt and its face and beard were caked with dried blood. Its face was slick with sweat. Black veins spread from those terrifying cloudy eyes and mouth.
Wade fired a shot at the infected and missed.
It lunged toward him.
He fired again. The second round struck just above its eye, dropping it mid-stride.
The gunshots echoed off the storefronts and rang down the block.
Too loud. Way too loud.
He glanced back toward the woman. She was no longer moving. Her end was as brutal as it was quick.
Wade backed toward the garage, eyes moving, pulse hammering. He reached the roll-up doors and quickly recognized that they were manually controlled. He grabbed the chain and began lowering the first door. The steel door omitted a dreadfully loud metallic rumble as it rolled down.
Halfway down, he heard footsteps slapping across the asphalt.
He glanced out just in time to see two more infected rounding the side of the building about 50 feet away.
One had been a mechanic, dressed in oil-stained coveralls. The other was a younger woman dressed in yoga pants and a hoodie. Both sets of those dreadful white, mottled eyes locked onto Wade.
Both were coming hard.
Wade let go of the chain and brought the Glock up
He shot the mechanic first.
The round hit high in his chest and barely slowed it. Just a hitch in the body and then forward again, like the pain hadn’t even registered.
Wade fired again, this time hitting the neck. The mechanic stumbled but kept coming with the same blind determination.
Head.
Wade corrected his aim and fired a third round through the head of the infected. It dropped immediately onto the concrete, landing just inside the garage bay.
The woman was only a step behind. She came in fast, moving in broken jerky bursts. Black webbing stood out around her eyes like bruised cracks in the skin. Her milky stare never left him.
Wade fired and hit her in the shoulder. She stumbled but was on him before he could fire again.
She slammed into him a heartbeat later.
He jammed his left forearm into her throat just as she crashed into his chest and drove him backwards into a tool cart. It went over with a crash, wrenches and sockets exploding across the concrete floor.
Even at arm’s length, he could smell the blood and bile of her breath as she gnashed her teeth open and closed.
She snapped her teeth over and over, jaws working inches from his face.
Wade shoved hard with his left arm, raised the Glock to her forehead and squeezed the trigger. The back of her skull burst against the garage wall. She dropped instantly to the concrete floor.
The slide on the Glock locked to the rear.
Wade sucked in a breath and quietly cursed California laws prohibiting high-capacity magazines as he reloaded. He put the empty mag into his pocket. Ten rounds burned through.
He moved back to the garage door and quickly resumed lowering the first roll-up door. He found the locking bar and jammed it into place with shaking hands.
One down.
He crossed the garage to the second roll-up door and began lowering the door. Thankfully, this door was much quieter than the first. It rolled into place and Wade secured it with the locking bar. He took a deep breath and moved to the last door.
The last door fought him.
The track was bent and the metal shuddered and caught halfway down. He tugged on the chain again and felt resistance. Wade realized he was going to need both hands to work the chain.
Reluctantly, he tucked his Glock into the back of his waistband and grabbed the chain with both hands. Then he glanced outside.
The dead woman from the street was still there.
Even with the low light from the setting sun, Wade could see that her body lay crumpled where she had fallen, one arm thrown out beside her, a dark, widening pool of blood beneath her head and shoulder. The other infected bodies lay where he had dispatched them as well.
Wade glanced up at the chain and was ready to pull when something caught his eye.
Movement flashed to his immediate right.
An infected man emerged from the shadow of the outer wall so suddenly it looked for a second as if the darkness itself had produced him. He wore a mechanic’s shirt hanging open over a sweat-soaked undershirt. One side of his face was caked with dried blood. The skin around his eyes was dark from spiderwebbing with jagged lines emanating outward. Inside that darkness, his mottled eyes were clouded and milky though they pinpointed Wade without effort.
Wade had a split second to react. He snatched the Glock from his belt, but the man hit him hard.
The impact drove him flat onto his back and sent the pistol skidding across the concrete.
The infected came down on top of him with startling strength, one hand locking onto Wade’s jacket while its jaws snapped inches from his throat. Up close, Wade could hear its breathing. Its skin was slick with sweat. Black veins pulsed visibly at the temples and down the neck, standing out against his otherwise pale, ashen skin.
Wade tried to jam his forearm across its throat and turned his face away as the infected bit down. The infected man’s teeth closed on Wade’s raised forearm. Only the momentum of the fall and Wade yanking backward at the last instant kept his teeth from locking down. The infected rolled with him, fingers still buried in his sleeve.
Jesus. It was strong!
Wade rose to one knee and tried to rip free, but the infected man’s grip held. Wade glanced wildly across the concrete and saw a heavy-duty wrench lying within reach near the tire machine.
He lunged for it, grabbed it, and swung.
The first blow hit the side of the infected’s head with a meaty crack.
It reeled but stayed on him.
The second strike, splitting its head and splattering blood across the floor.
Still it came.
Wade saw the eyes again; those awful milk-white eyes swimming in their black webbing, still locked onto him.
He roared and brought the wrench down a third time with everything he had.
Its skull caved with a sickening wet crunch, and he collapsed immediately.
Wade stayed on one knee, gasping, waiting to see if it would move again. It didn’t.
He checked his forearm and, though it was a little tender where the infected’s teeth came down, it hadn’t broken the skin. He was lucky to have pulled his arm away at the last moment.
For several long seconds he heard nothing but his own breathing.
He pushed himself up, retrieved the Glock, and looked out toward the street.
Satisfied that no other ambushes were waiting nearby, Wade turned back to the third door and hauled it the rest of the way down.
He stood in the dim garage with the pistol in his hand and the smell of cordite, oil and blood all around him.
“What the hell is going on out there?” He wandered aloud.
The only thing he knew was that these things were once people. And now they were attacking others.
They were hungry. And relentless.
And to bring them down, you needed to aim for the head.
That knowledge settled into him like ice.