They moved like ghosts through the twilight streets. Streetlights stood useless, dark sentinels over cracked pavement littered with wind-blown debris and the occasional dark stain Quinn didn't want to examine too closely. Sarah walked with her tire iron held low, scanning constantly, her movements economical and alert. Quinn matched her pace, the backpack a solid weight, his hand never far from his K-Bar. The silence stretched between them, thick with unspoken questions and the ambient dread of the ruined world.
Finally, Quinn couldn't stand it anymore. The not knowing gnawed at him worse than the hunger had.
"Back there," he began, his voice quiet but clear in the stillness. "You said… Vance? Cleanup crews? What happened here?"
Sarah didn't look at him immediately. Her jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, her eyes fixed on the shadows pooling near a derelict bus shelter ahead. She radiated annoyance, like a force field pushing him away. "Doesn't matter now," she clipped out. "Just survive."
"It matters to me," Quinn insisted, keeping his voice even. "I was... away. On deployment. Woke up on that highway. I don't know how any of this started."
That got her attention. She stopped abruptly, turning to face him fully. Her eyes, hard and assessing in the gloom, widened slightly. "You don't know?" Disbelief colored her tone. "You were deployed and nobody told you? Your command didn't pull you back?"
"Last thing I remember is kissing my wife goodbye," Quinn said, the words feeling rough in his throat. "Then… blackness. Until the highway."
Sarah stared at him for a long moment, searching his face. The hardness seemed to crack, replaced by a weary kind of shock. She let out a short, humorless breath that wasn't quite a laugh. "God. You really don't know anything, do you?" She shook her head slowly, resuming her walk, but her pace was slower now, her shoulders slumped just a little. The annoyance was gone, replaced by something heavier.
"Tell me," Quinn urged, falling back into step beside her.
She was quiet for another block, navigating around an overturned minivan. The sky was deepening towards true night, the first stars beginning to prick through the hazy cloud cover.
"It started weird," she finally said, her voice low, almost reluctant, as if dredging up sludge from the bottom of a well. "Not like the movies. No sudden panic, not at first."
She glanced at him. "You ever hear of SIF? Systemic Immune Failure."
Quinn shook his head. The name meant nothing.
"Nobody had," Sarah continued. "News reports started trickling in. Hospitals getting busy. Not emergencies, mostly. Just... full. People coming in feeling weak, maybe a low fever, coughs that wouldn't go away. Doctors were baffled. It wasn't flu, wasn't pneumonia. Their immune systems were just... fading. Packing it in."
She kicked a loose stone off the sidewalk. "The World Health Organization put out a global alert. Said it was some new autoimmune thing, spreading fast. They warned every government – act decisively, contain it. Quarantine. Research."
Quinn listened intently, picturing the slow creep she described. It felt insidious, different from the sudden violence he'd woken up to.
"My town," Sarah went on, her voice distant now, lost in the memory. "Down in Florida. Little place near the coast. We had maybe fifty people admitted to the local hospital with SIF symptoms one morning. Seemed like a lot, but manageable. People were worried, sure, but nobody was thinking... this."
She gestured vaguely at the ruined street around them.
"By sundown that same day, the number had tripled. One hundred fifty. Then two hundred. Nurses were calling friends, telling them not to come in, the place was a madhouse. Then... then people just started collapsing. In the grocery store aisles – right where we just were. At gas pumps. In their own living rooms."
Her voice became flatter, more clinical, as if reciting facts helped keep the horror at bay. "Just... falling down. Out cold. Like someone flipped a switch. The streets started filling up with bodies. Not dead. Not yet. Just... gone."
"And this wasn't just Florida," Quinn prompted gently when she fell silent.
"No," she confirmed, shaking her head again. "God, no. It was everywhere. News channels, before they went dark, were showing footage from London, Tokyo, Lagos, Rio... same thing. People falling like flies. Panic finally hit then, hard. Governments declared martial law. Soldiers filled the streets – kids, mostly, looking terrified."
She stopped again, leaning against a graffiti-covered wall, rubbing her temples. "They thought it was containment. Crowd control. They thought they had time to figure out the SIF thing, find a cure, wake everyone up." She let out that same bitter, rough sound. "They were wrong."
"What happened next?" Quinn asked, though a cold dread was already pooling in his stomach. He thought of the things on the highway, their speed, their focus.
"Nobody knows exactly how," Sarah said, looking straight at him now, her eyes dark pools in the twilight. "Maybe it was timed. Maybe the SIF reached a critical stage all at once. But they didn't stay down. Someone told me later – another survivor I met on the road – that it happened simultaneously. All over the world. Within the same hour."
She pushed off the wall, resuming their cautious walk. "They just... got up. The ones who had collapsed. But they weren't people anymore. They were fast. Strong. And hungry. And coordinated. Like..." she struggled for the word, "...like ants, or bees. A hive mind, maybe. They knew where to go. Who to hunt."
Quinn thought of the two creatures working together to flank him by the car. Hive mind. It felt sickeningly right.
"One bite," Sarah said, her voice barely a whisper now. "That's all it took. You get bitten, you get the fever, you collapse... then you get back up and join them. Their numbers swelled so fast... days. That's all it took. Maybe a week, tops. The military, the governments, police... overwhelmed. Gone. Civilization just... stopped."
She fell silent. The only sounds were their footsteps, the rustle of debris, and the vast, empty quiet of the dead city.
"That leaves us," Quinn said eventually, the words heavy as stones.
Sarah nodded grimly, not looking at him. "Yeah. Us. Scrabbling in the ruins. No backup coming. No cavalry. No hope of seeing another sunrise guaranteed. Every breath you take might be your last."
They reached a cross street. Dilapidated storefronts lined both sides. A park, overgrown and dark, lay directly ahead. Sarah stopped at the corner.
"This is where I leave you," she said, turning to face him. She looked tired, etched with a weariness that went bone-deep. "Greg and the others… they're scared, but they're predictable. It's safer back there than alone out here." She offered a small, tight smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Good luck, Marine. Hope you find what you're looking for."
She turned, ready to retrace her steps towards the dubious safety of Miller's Market. Quinn watched her go, a strange sense of loss settling over him. She was the first person he'd spoken to, properly, since waking up in hell.
Then it happened.
From the electronics store on the corner opposite them – "Radditz Radio & TV," the broken sign read – came a sudden, earsplitting burst of noise. Static first, then a blast of tinny pop music, ridiculously cheerful and loud. It blared for three seconds, cut out, crackled, then blared again, louder this time, the bass thumping distortedly. Faulty wiring maybe, a surge from a dying generator somewhere giving one last gasp.
In the profound silence, it was like a bomb going off.
Sarah froze mid-step, spinning back around, her eyes wide with alarm, tire iron gripped tight. Quinn dropped into a defensive crouch, his K-Bar instantly in his hand, scanning the street.
The music kept playing, a jerky, repeating loop of manufactured happiness echoing insanely through the desolation.
And then they heard it. From blocks away, but drawing closer with terrifying speed. A sound that wasn't music. A chorus of clicks, hisses, and shuffling scrapes that rapidly intensified, multiplying. The sound of unnatural speed on pavement. The sound of the hive, alerted.
"Damn it!" Sarah breathed, her face pale in the gloom.
Quinn didn't need to ask. He knew what the music had done. It was a dinner bell.
He looked left, then right. The street offered no cover. The park ahead was a dark unknown, probably crawling with them. Directly across the street, next to the blaring electronics store, stood a three-story brick building. An old apartment complex or office block, maybe. Some windows were broken, but the front door looked solid wood, set back slightly in an alcove. It was their only chance.
"The building!" Quinn yelled over the music, already sprinting across the street, ignoring the glass crunching under his boots.
Sarah didn't hesitate. She was right behind him, tire iron held ready, her earlier intention to return to the market forgotten in the face of immediate, overwhelming danger.
The sounds were closer now. Much closer. A wave of clicking, guttural noises washing through the streets. Quinn could see movement at the end of the block – fast, jerky shapes pouring around the corner, heads swiveling towards the source of the music. Towards them.
They reached the alcove, Quinn slamming his shoulder against the heavy wooden door. Locked. Of course.
"Help me!" he yelled to Sarah.
She wedged the tip of her tire iron into the frame beside the lock, throwing her weight against it. Wood splintered. Quinn added his shoulder again, ramming it with all his strength. More splintering.
Behind them, the first wave of creatures hit the street directly in front of the electronics store, drawn by the relentless music. Their milky eyes flickered, catching the movement at the adjacent building. Heads snapped towards Quinn and Sarah. Hisses escaped their throats as they changed direction, loping towards the alcove with horrifying speed.
"Harder!" Quinn grunted, putting everything into one more shove.
With a final crack, the wood around the lock gave way. The door burst inwards.
Quinn stumbled inside, pulling Sarah in after him, and slammed the heavy door shut just as the first creature reached the alcove, clawed hands slamming against the wood they'd barely managed to close. More bodies hit the door, pounding, scratching, snarling, the sound terrifyingly close.
They were inside. But they were trapped.