They planned the trip for two days, and every hour of planning made the danger clearer instead of smaller.New York was out of the question. Wolfe's forces were all over the whole city now, and going anywhere near it meant walking straight into the strongest concentration of his power. Kansas wasn't safe either, but it was less watched, less guarded, a place Wolfe seemed to treat as already won and not worth as many eyes."We go around," Jane assumed and spread a torn map across the flat rock they'd been using as a table. "There's a wide loop, we avoid the main roads near the city and move west through the smaller towns. It will take time but might be the only way we would be alive."Ray looked at the map for a long moment. "How many of us are going?""Not everyone," Jane said. "Whoever we take, we take fewer. We must be fast, quiet and small enough to move without drawing attention."In the end, four of them made the call to go: Ray, Zoe, Saul, and Jane. It wasn't an easy list

The road into Kansas grew worse with every mile, and somewhere past the old county the horror stopped being something they fought and became something they simply had to watch pass by the windows.A cluster of survivors, maybe six or seven, caught out in the open near a collapsed gas station, never stood a chance against what came for them. The infected didn't bite and retreat the way Ray remembered from the early days. They swarmed, dragged bodies down under sheer weight of numbers, and tore into raw flesh with a hunger that had nothing restrained left in it, nothing that resembled the disciplined feeding Ray had grown used to seeing from Wolfe's more controlled creations.Zoe turned her face from the window. Saul didn't, he memorized it the way he seemed to memorize every horror he couldn't stop, and Jane kept both hands steady on the wheel, foot pressing harder on the gas than strictly necessary."We can't help them," Jane got out, voice flat with the effort of saying it. "Not

The shape in the intersection broke loose before their eyes, not falling, not collapsing, but pulling itself into something new. The mass of bodies that had climbed into one great shadow began to shift and fold,with flesh stretching and joining in ways that made no sense to look at directly. Limbs vanished into a central trunk. Heads sank into shoulders that weren't shoulders anymore. What came out of the other side of that change wasn't a crowd of infected wearing a single shape.It was something else. Something none of them had a name for."That's not possible," Saul got out, backing further from the wreckage of the car. "That's not how any of this is supposed to work."Ray didn't answer him because he couldn't. His eyes stayed locked on the thing forming in the distance, some new shape with too many joints and a texture like a monster, and every instinct in his body told him to run before it finished becoming whatever it was becoming.Then the radio crackled.Jane grabbed it

They moved the children out of the cellar as gently and quickly as the situation allowed.Ray carried the smallest boy on his hip when it became clear the child's legs weren't quite steady enough for the climb.Zoe keep close to the girl with the bandaged arm, one of her hand hover near her back without quite touching, ready to catch her if the strength finally gave out.Saul stayed on point, his weapon was up, and he watched the street outside the loading dock for any sign that the earlier stillness had broken. Jane brought up the rear, she scan behind them with the same careful discipline she brought to everything.They didn't go far. A half-collapsed maintenance office a short distance from the cellar show them four solid walls and one door to watch instead of an open street, and once everyone was inside and the door was braced shut, the tension in the room finally eased enough for anyone to breathe properly.Ray settled the smallest boy down on an overturned crate and crouched i

Ray raised both hands slowly, keeping his voice level even as every instinct screamed at him to run."We don't want trouble," he said. "We're not here to hurt anyone and whatever Wolfe told you to expect, we're not that."The man who'd greeted them tilted his head again, considering the words with an expression that looked almost thoughtful, almost human, and for a half-second Ray let himself hope reasoning might actually work.Then the man's hand shot out and closed around a support beam running along the tunnel wall, and with no visible strain at all, he tore a section of it clean away.The metal groaned and snapped like dry wood in his grip.Ray's stomach dropped.Around the room, more of them demonstrated the same impossible strength without warning.One drove a fist through a solid concrete pillar, sending chunks of rubble skittering across the floor.Another bent one of the reinforced iron doors sealing the chamber like it was made of tin, folding the metal inward with a single