The world ended at 9:17 on a Tuesday morning.
Lillian Ashcroft knew the exact time because the clock above the pharmacy stopped when the first body struck the glass.
One moment, she was standing beneath the striped awning of Bellamy’s Café, admiring the engagement ring on her left hand while Thomas teased her for staring at it again.
The next, a man slammed face-first into the pharmacy window across the street.
The glass cracked beneath the impact.
He staggered backward, leaving a dark red smear behind him.
Lillian’s smile vanished.
The man wore the remains of a gray business suit. One sleeve hung in ribbons. Blood covered his collar and soaked the front of his shirt, but he did not seem to notice. He turned in a slow circle, swaying as if drunk.
“Thomas,” Lillian said.
“I see him.”
Thomas Blackwood stepped closer, placing himself between her and the street without appearing to think about it. He still held two paper cups of coffee, though his grip had tightened enough to bend the cardboard.
The stranger lifted his head. Half his throat was missing. Lillian stopped breathing. A siren wailed somewhere downtown. Then another answered it. The stranger lurched toward a woman leaving the pharmacy. She saw him too late. He seized her by the shoulders and drove her against the cracked window. Her handbag fell. Oranges rolled from the top and scattered into the gutter.
“Help me!” she screamed.
Thomas dropped both coffees. The cups burst against the pavement. He started across the street.
Lillian caught his arm. “Don’t.”
The stranger opened his mouth and bit into the woman’s cheek. Her scream became a wet, strangled sound. For a moment, no one moved. The entire intersection seemed to hold its breath. Then the woman clawed at her attacker. He tore away, taking a strip of skin with him. People began shouting.
A taxi swerved onto the sidewalk. The driver leaned on the horn as pedestrians scattered. He struck a newspaper box, bounced into a lamppost, and came to a halt beneath a shower of glass. The horn kept blaring. Inside the cab, someone was moving. Not the driver. Something behind him.
“Lillian.” Thomas’s voice was low and urgent. “We need to go.”
Across the street, the bitten woman collapsed to her knees. Her attacker dropped beside her and began feeding. A young police officer ran toward them, one hand raised.
“Sir! Get away from her!”
The stranger did not react. The officer reached for his shoulder. The stranger spun with shocking speed. He seized the officer’s wrist and sank his teeth into it. The gunshot was deafening. A flock of pigeons exploded from the rooftops. The stranger fell backward, blood blooming from his chest. The officer stumbled away, clutching his arm. For half a second, the street went silent. Then the dead man stood up.
His movements were jerky, unnatural, but he rose with a bullet hole in his chest and blood pouring down his shirt. The officer fired again. The second shot struck the stranger in the shoulder. He kept coming. A third shot hit him in the face. He dropped. This time, he did not move.
People screamed and ran. The officer stared at the body in horror. The woman on the ground convulsed. Her fingers scraped against the pavement. Then she lifted her ruined face and launched herself at the officer’s legs. Thomas grabbed Lillian’s hand.
“Run.”
They ran. They pushed through the crowd as panic tore across the block. A delivery truck jumped the curb behind them and crashed into the café where they had been standing moments earlier. Metal screamed. Bricks collapsed. The café’s windows burst outward in a glittering wave.
Lillian ducked, raising an arm over her face. Thomas pulled her behind a parked car as glass rained across the street.
“Are you hurt?” he asked. She shook her head. A shard had cut his cheek. Blood ran in a thin line toward his jaw.
“You’re bleeding.”
“I’m fine.”
A scream rose behind them. The taxi driver had forced open his door. He fell onto the pavement, dragging himself with both arms. His legs did not move. The passenger crawled out after him. The passenger was a child. A girl, perhaps nine years old, wearing a yellow coat. Blood covered her mouth.
The driver looked over his shoulder and begged her to stop. She climbed onto his back and bit into his neck. Lillian recoiled. Thomas pulled her away before she could see more.
They sprinted toward Mercer Street, where they had parked Thomas’s old sedan. The city seemed to be tearing itself apart around them.
Traffic lights changed over abandoned lanes. Car horns blared in endless, dissonant waves. People pounded on locked doors. A bus had crashed through the front of a bank. Passengers pressed against its shattered windows, striking the glass with bloody hands. Above them, every billboard screen flickered to the same emergency broadcast. A woman in a blue suit sat behind a desk, pale and sweating.
“Residents are advised to remain indoors. Lock all doors and windows. Do not approach anyone displaying symptoms of aggression, disorientation, fever, bleeding from the eyes—”
The screen went black. A second later, the broadcast returned. The anchor was gone. Something moved behind the desk. Then the signal disappeared completely. Thomas squeezed Lillian’s hand.
“Stay with me.”
“I’m here.”
“Whatever happens, don’t let go.”
They reached the parking garage. The entrance gate was down. Thomas yanked on the metal arm. It did not move.
“Damn it.”
A woman slammed both hands against the glass booth beside them. Lillian screamed. The woman was trapped inside. Blood ran from her nose. Her pupils were so dilated that her eyes looked black.
“Please,” she whispered through the glass. “Please help me.”
Thomas stepped toward the booth. The woman’s expression changed. Her mouth stretched into a grin that was not a grin at all. She threw herself against the glass. Once. Twice. A crack spread across the pane. Thomas seized Lillian’s hand again.
“Back way.”
They ran along the garage wall toward the service alley. Behind them, the glass shattered. The woman’s bare feet slapped against the concrete. She was fast. Much faster than she should have been.
Thomas shoved Lillian through the service door and pulled it closed behind them. The woman struck the other side with enough force to shake the hinges. The narrow hallway beyond smelled of oil and dust. Emergency lights flashed red along the ceiling. Thomas twisted the dead bolt. The door bowed inward beneath another impact.
“Move,” he said.
They hurried into the garage. The lower level was packed with cars but almost empty of people. Somewhere above them, tires squealed. A man shouted. Several shots rang out, each one closer than the last.
Thomas’s sedan sat three rows away. They were halfway to it when someone crawled from beneath a station wagon. A parking attendant. His lower body had been crushed, but he dragged himself forward with both hands. His fingernails scraped against the concrete.
Lillian stopped. The attendant looked up at her. His face was gray. His eyes were cloudy. He reached for her ankle. Thomas kicked his hand away.
“Keep moving.”
They reached the sedan. Thomas fumbled for his keys. His hands were shaking. It was the first time Lillian had ever seen him afraid. Not nervous. Not worried. Afraid.
The service door behind them burst open. The woman from the booth staggered through. Blood streaked her bare feet. She saw them and shrieked. The sound echoed through the garage. Other shrieks answered from the level above. Thomas unlocked the sedan.
He pulled open the passenger door. “Get in.”
Lillian slid inside. Thomas rounded the hood. The woman struck him from the side. They hit the concrete together.
“Thomas!”
Lillian grabbed the door handle, but another figure appeared between the cars. Then another. A man in a hospital gown. A teenage boy with half his scalp hanging loose. An elderly woman whose left arm bent at the wrong angle. They moved toward the sound of Thomas’s struggle.
Lillian snatched the tire iron from beneath the passenger seat and climbed out. The woman straddled Thomas, snapping her teeth inches from his throat. Lillian swung. The tire iron struck the woman’s shoulder. She barely reacted. Lillian swung again. The blow connected with the side of her skull. The woman collapsed. Thomas shoved her away and scrambled to his feet.
“Get in the car.”
The creatures between the vehicles began to run. Thomas and Lillian lunged inside the sedan. He started the engine as the first infected struck the trunk. A second slapped both hands against Lillian’s window. She saw broken teeth. Blackened gums. A tongue split nearly in half.
Thomas threw the car into reverse. The tires screamed. They struck something behind them. The sedan lurched, rolled over the fallen body, and smashed into a concrete pillar. The rear window shattered. An infected man thrust both arms through the opening. His fingers tangled in Lillian’s hair. She screamed as he pulled her backward. Thomas grabbed her around the waist. The infected man’s teeth snapped beside her ear. Lillian swung the tire iron blindly. Once. Twice. The third blow broke his jaw. His grip loosened.
Thomas shifted into drive and slammed his foot on the accelerator. The sedan shot forward. Bodies scattered across the concrete. They climbed the exit ramp and burst into daylight. The city above was gone. Smoke swallowed the skyline. Vehicles burned in the intersection. People ran between them, chased by things that had once been human.
A helicopter banked above the buildings. For one hopeful second, Lillian thought it had come to rescue them. Then it spun sideways. Black smoke poured from its tail. The helicopter clipped the roof of an office building and plunged into the avenue ahead. The explosion lifted the sedan from the road. Thomas lost control.
The car skidded across two lanes, struck a delivery van, and stopped beneath an elevated railway. Lillian’s ears rang. The windshield had become a white spiderweb of cracks. Thomas groaned beside her.
“Thomas?”
“I’m all right.”
“You hit your head.”
“We have to get out.”
Flames spread from the wreckage ahead. Behind them, infected poured from alleys and broken storefronts, drawn by the explosion. Thomas tried his door. It would not open. He kicked it once, then again. The metal groaned. Lillian climbed across the console and forced open her side. They stumbled from the wreck. The heat from the helicopter fire pressed against them.
“There,” Thomas said.
He pointed toward a maintenance stairway leading to the railway platform above. They ran. A man dropped from the platform and landed directly in front of them. His ankle snapped beneath him. He did not scream. He simply pushed himself upright on the broken limb and reached for Lillian. Thomas slammed his shoulder into him. They struck the wall.
Lillian heard the man’s teeth close near Thomas’s face. Thomas drove an elbow into his throat, then shoved him down the stairs. More infected appeared at the top.
“We can’t go up,” Lillian said.
Thomas looked behind them. The street was filling. To their left, a narrow alley cut between the buildings. He grabbed her hand.
“This way.”
They raced into the alley. It ended at a chain-link fence. Thomas did not slow.
He cupped his hands. “Climb.”
Lillian placed one boot in his palms. He lifted her. She caught the top of the fence and dragged herself upward. The wire tore her coat and cut her palm. She swung one leg over. A shriek sounded behind Thomas.
“Come on!” she cried.
He jumped and caught the fence. The first infected reached him. Thomas kicked it in the chest. A second seized the back of his coat. Lillian leaned down and grabbed his wrist.
“Thomas!” He climbed.
The infected below clawed at his legs. One caught his boot and pulled. Thomas slipped. Lillian’s shoulder screamed as his full weight dragged against her arm.
“Don’t let go,” he said.
“I won’t.”
The words came out as a sob. He kicked free and climbed high enough to throw one arm over the top. Lillian pulled. Together, they tumbled onto the far side.
They landed hard. Thomas rose first. A steel door stood open at the end of the alley, leading into a warehouse. He pulled Lillian toward it. Inside, rows of storage shelves disappeared into darkness. The door slammed shut behind them.
For several seconds, they stood together in the quiet, gasping for breath. Then Lillian began to laugh. It was not amusement. It was terror breaking loose inside her. Thomas pulled her against him. She buried her face in his chest. His heart hammered beneath her cheek.
“We’re alive,” he whispered.
“For now.”
“For always.”
She looked up. Even in the darkness, she could see the cut on his cheek and the fear he was trying to hide.
“You can’t promise that.”
“I promised to marry you.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“It is to me.”
He pressed his forehead to hers. Outside, the infected struck the fence. The metal rattled. Thomas touched the ring on her finger.
“When this is over, we’re leaving the city.”
“When this is over?”
“It will be.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No,” he said. “But I know you.”
For one impossible moment, surrounded by screams and smoke and the sounds of the dead trying to reach them, Lillian believed him. She kissed him. It was desperate and brief. A promise made in a dying world. A noise came from somewhere behind them. A soft scrape. Thomas turned.
“Did you hear that?”
Lillian nodded. The warehouse was not empty. A figure stepped between the shelves. Then another. And another. Workers. At least a dozen. Some wore orange safety vests. Others wore coveralls. All of them were covered in blood.
Thomas pushed Lillian behind him. The infected began to move. He scanned the room and spotted a loading door on the opposite wall.
“Run for it.”
They sprinted between the shelves. The infected came from both sides. Thomas knocked one into a stack of boxes. Lillian swung the tire iron into another’s knee, but it kept crawling after her. They reached the loading door. Thomas seized the chain and pulled. The door rose a foot. Two feet. Bright daylight spilled beneath it.
“Go!” he shouted.
Lillian dropped to the floor and rolled under. Thomas followed. A hand caught his coat. He twisted free, leaving the fabric behind, and crawled into the street. The loading door crashed down. Something struck the other side.
They were in another alley. A clear route stretched toward the river. Lillian almost wept with relief. Then a little boy stepped from behind a dumpster. He could not have been more than six. His blue sweater was soaked with blood. He looked lost.
“Mommy?” he whispered.
Lillian froze. Thomas did too. The boy lifted his face. His lips were blue. A bite had torn through the side of his neck.
“Don’t,” Thomas said. But Lillian was already moving.
“He’s a child.”
“He’s infected.”
“He spoke.”
“Lillian.”
The boy began to cry. It sounded real. He held out one hand.
“Please.”
Lillian took another step. The boy lunged. Thomas shoved her aside. The child struck him at the waist. They fell. Thomas caught the boy beneath the arms and tried to hold him away. The child snapped his teeth, twisting with impossible strength.
“Lillian, run!”
She raised the tire iron. Her hands would not move. The infected child looked at her. For one second, his expression changed. Fear flickered behind his clouded eyes. Then he sank his teeth into Thomas’s forearm.
Thomas screamed. The sound tore through her. Lillian swung the tire iron. The blow struck the boy’s temple. He collapsed. Thomas shoved the body away. Blood poured from two deep punctures in his arm. Lillian dropped beside him.
“No.” He stared at the wound.
“No, no, no.”
“We don’t know what it means.”
“We do.”
“We don’t.”
“Lillian.”
“We can clean it. We can find a hospital.”
“The hospitals are gone.”
“Then we’ll find someone else.”
He reached for her face with his uninjured hand. She flinched from the blood. Not from him. Never from him.
“We have to keep moving,” she said.
A roar rose from the far end of the alley. The infected had found another way out of the warehouse. They spilled into the street. Thomas looked toward the river. A convoy of military trucks was moving across the bridge. Soldiers waved civilians toward the checkpoint.
“There,” Lillian said. “They can help us.”
Thomas followed her gaze. Then he looked at his bleeding arm.
“If they see this, they’ll kill me.”
“They won’t.”
“You saw what happened to those people.”
“You’re not one of them.”
“Not yet.”
The infected were getting closer. Thomas stood. His face had gone pale. They ran toward the bridge. The checkpoint was only three blocks away.
Soldiers fired into the approaching dead. Civilians screamed as they pushed against barricades. A loudspeaker crackled.
“All bitten individuals must remain outside the quarantine line. Do not approach the checkpoint. Lethal force is authorized.”
Lillian looked at Thomas. He had heard it too.
“No,” she said.
“Keep going.”
“Not without you.”
“You have to.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
The first fever tremor passed through him. She felt it through his hand. Thomas stumbled. Lillian caught him. His skin was burning. They reached the final intersection before the bridge. The crowd surged around them. A soldier spotted the blood on Thomas’s sleeve.
“Bitten!” he shouted. “We have a bitten male!”
Three rifles swung toward them. Thomas pushed Lillian behind a stalled bus. Bullets struck the pavement.
“Stop!” she screamed. “He isn’t sick!”
Thomas grabbed her shoulders. “Listen to me.”
“No.”
“You have to cross the bridge.”
“No.”
“You have to live.”
“I won’t do this without you.”
“You will.”
He kissed her forehead. She clutched his shirt.
“I love you.” His face broke.
“I know.”
“That isn’t enough.”
“It has to be.”
He turned and shoved a shopping cart into the intersection. The soldiers fired at the movement. Thomas pulled Lillian through a gap in the barricade and threw her toward the civilian line. Hands caught her. Strangers dragged her forward. She fought them.
“Thomas!”
He stood on the other side of the barricade. Blood soaked his arm. The infected were closing in behind him. He smiled at her. The same crooked smile he had worn that morning when he handed her coffee and teased her about the ring.
“Live,” he said.
Then the horde struck him. Lillian screamed his name. Bodies swallowed him. Soldiers fired. The crowd surged, carrying her onto the bridge. She twisted in the grip of strangers, searching for one last glimpse of him. For a moment, she saw nothing but blood and reaching hands.
Then the infected stopped. One by one, they stepped away from Thomas. He lay on the pavement, bitten and bleeding. But they did not feed. They did not tear him apart. They formed a circle around him. Watching. Waiting.
Thomas opened his eyes. They were no longer brown. They were black. And from somewhere deep inside the horde, something whispered his name.
“Thomas.”
His body went still. Then every infected in the intersection turned toward the bridge. Toward Lillian. And smiled.