THE LAST 100 DAYS

Dead Signal

Chapter 4: Dead Signal

"Turn it up," Ethan said. "Marcus, turn it *up.*"

"It'll carry."

"Then they hear us. Do it."

Marcus twisted the dial on the hand-crank radio he'd pulled from a looted police cruiser. Static roared. Pete flinched. Dana clamped a palm over the toddler's mouth.

Then a voice broke through, thin and flat.

*"...evacuation center at Harlan Stadium. Food, medical care, and protection. Proceed on foot. Do not use vehicles. Repeat..."*

The clerk dropped to his knees. "Oh, thank God."

"Don't," Ethan said. "Not yet."

"It's *rescue!*"

"It's a recording." Ethan pointed at the radio. "Hear the loop? Same breath. Same pause. Someone set it and walked away."

Nobody spoke. Dana's eyes filled.

"Harlan Stadium is six miles," Marcus said. "Through the middle of the city."

"Then we go through the middle of the city."

Ethan unfolded the paper map he'd stolen from a gas station rack, the only thing in Meridian that still worked.

The first bridge was gone. Not blocked. Gone. Twisted steel hung over black water.

"Alternate," Marcus muttered.

The second was jammed with cars, and the cars were moving. Something was crawling through them.

"Alternate."

The subway entrance on Fifth was sealed with a steel shutter. Something behind it was hitting the metal, patient and rhythmic.

"Don't," Marcus said when Pete stepped toward it. "Just don't."

"We cut through buildings," Ethan said. He marked the map with a pen, a thin line threading from rooftop to lobby to loading dock. "Streets are open ground. They hunt in the open."

"You want to walk six miles through *offices?*" Pete laughed, high and cracked. "You've been playing hero for one night, kid."

"I've been alive for one night," Ethan said. "Want to argue with the math?"

Pete said nothing.

They moved. Lobby, stairwell, roof, bridge of fallen scaffolding, lobby again. Ethan counted every step aloud, every turn, every dead-end, until the map bled ink.

On the fourth hour, Dana stopped.

"My husband worked down there," she whispered, staring at a tower across the avenue. "Eleventh floor. I called him at midnight. He said, *I'll be home in twenty.*"

"Dana..."

"Don't tell me he's fine." Her voice cracked in half. "Don't you dare tell me that."

Ethan opened his mouth. Closed it.

"I won't," he said.

She nodded once and kept walking. It was the worst answer he'd ever given, and the only honest one.

At the edge of a plaza, the radio hissed again.

*"...Harlan Stadium has been compromised. Repeat, Harlan Stadium has been compromised. Civilians are ordered to avoid all marked shelters. Do not approach. Do not approach. Do not..."*

The voice cut off mid-word.

The static that followed was different. Hollow. Final.

"That wasn't a recording," Marcus said slowly.

"No."

"That was a person." He stared at the radio. "Somebody just *ran out of time.*"

The clerk whimpered. "So where do we go? Where do we go?"

"Nowhere's safe," Pete snapped. "That's what it said. Nowhere!"

"Quiet!" Marcus hissed.

Ethan hadn't moved. His mind was racing past the panic to something colder.

"Marcus. Before the power died. Did your dispatch give you orders?"

Marcus's jaw worked. "Yeah. Two sets. Within the hour."

"Contradicting?"

"Evacuate the hospital district. Then hold position. Then evacuate again." He swallowed. "I thought it was chaos. Now I'm thinking they just didn't know what they were fighting."

"Or they knew," Ethan said quietly, "and didn't want us to."

The words hung there.

Marcus looked at him for a long moment. Then he turned to the survivors.

"We're done walking," he said. "Daylight's dying. Ethan, find us a roof."

Ethan found a four-story commercial building with a rusted fire door and a stockroom full of canned beans and bottled water. They barricaded the entrance with a vending machine.

Marcus lined the bottles on a shelf. "Two sips each. Not a swallow more. We don't know when we find more."

"That's nothing," Pete said.

"That's tomorrow."

Pete shut up.

Ethan sat apart with the map on his knees and a pen he'd borrowed from the front desk. His hands shook as he wrote.

*Monsters hunt by sound. People vanish at the same moment, no cause, no pattern. The government is lying or blind. A clock is counting. And the clock is only on us.*

He stopped. Read it back.

It was the only proof that any of this was real. If he died, it died with him.

*Then don't die.*

He took the first watch.

At 3:07 a.m., the street went still. Not quiet. Still, the way a room goes still when someone walks in.

Ethan eased to the window.

A figure stood at the end of the block. Tall. Upright. Not crawling, not clicking, not hunting. It simply stood under a dead streetlight with its head tilted toward the building.

Watching.

Then it raised one long arm and, slowly, deliberately, pointed at the exact window where Ethan stood.