THE LAST 100 DAYS

Dead Weight

Chapter 5: Dead Weight

"Leave him."

Pete said it flat, like he was reading a price.

Dana pulled her son closer. "Excuse me?"

"Eli can't run. He bleeds through every bandage." Pete jabbed a finger at the clerk, who sat gray-faced against the wall. "One man slows us down, we all die. Do the math."

"I'm right here," Eli whispered.

"I know. I'm sorry."

"You're not sorry," Ethan said. "You're scared."

"Damn right I'm scared! Four cans of beans. Half a bottle of water. Tomorrow we're empty." Pete turned on Marcus. "You've done triage. You know I'm right."

"Triage decides who gets treated first," Marcus said. "Not who gets thrown away."

"Same thing out there."

"Not in my group."

"It's not your group." Pete's eyes slid to Ethan. "And it's sure as hell not his. Nobody made him boss."

It landed, because it was true. Ethan had no title, no training, and no right to decide whether a man lived.

"Nobody's being left," he said anyway.

"Then tell me how we eat."

Ethan slapped the map on the floor. "Brandt Street warehouse. Municipal emergency stock, water and rations. Four blocks." His finger dragged along a red line. "Short route runs down Corliss. Five creatures at the intersection. I counted from the roof."

"And the long way?"

"Forty minutes through back lots. Eli won't make it, and we'd arrive in the dark."

"So we're dead either way."

"Give me an hour."

Pete laughed, ugly and short. "An hour's all you've got."

Ethan went up to the roof to think. He lasted six minutes before the sound of a scraping bolt pulled him back down.

Pete stood at the barricade, one shoulder wedged against the vending machine. Over the other hung the pack. Their pack. Every can. Every bottle.

"Put it down," Ethan said.

"You'll get them killed, kid."

"You're stealing from a baby."

"I'm surviving." Pete's voice cracked. "I have a daughter across the river. She's nine. You think I'm dying in this building so some stranger's kid can drink my water?"

Ethan stopped. He hadn't known about the daughter, and now he couldn't hate the man cleanly.

"Then take your share," he said quietly. "Not theirs."

"Don't talk to me like I'm a thief!"

"Then don't act like one!"

"*Both of you, shut up!*" Marcus hissed from the stairs.

Too late. Something thudded against the outer wall. Then another. Across the street, in the dark mouths of broken windows, pale shapes began to lift their heads.

Nobody breathed. Pete's fingers slid off the barricade.

"They're coming from the north windows," Dana whispered. "Ethan, they're *coming.*"

"No, they're listening." Ethan pressed his ear to the wall and counted the clicks. They were faint and unsure. "They don't know where we are. They only know we're loud."

He turned, and his stomach dropped as the idea arrived, whole and terrible.

"Marcus. There's a delivery van two blocks east. Dead battery, but the alarm runs on its own power. Did you see it?"

"I saw it." Marcus's face went hard. "Ethan, no."

"If I trigger it, every creature on Corliss runs toward the noise. The warehouse route clears."

"And everything else in a mile comes running with them. Including the things we haven't met."

"I know."

"You could be the thing they find."

"I know." Ethan's voice shook. "But if we sit here, Pete walks out with our food, Eli dies in the dark, and we starve by Thursday. Doing nothing is the only plan that guarantees we lose."

Marcus stared at him for a long, brutal second.

"I go with you," he said. "Someone has to pull you out when you freeze."

"I don't freeze."

"You did on the stairs."

Ethan didn't argue.

They crouched in the shadow of the van as the first gray light bled across the avenue. Marcus held a crowbar. Ethan held a rock.

"On three," Ethan breathed. "One. Two."

He put the rock through the windshield.

The alarm shrieked, and the street answered. Pale bodies poured out of doorways and storm drains, a dozen, then twenty, all sprinting toward the sound.

"Run!" Marcus roared.

They bolted down an alley. A creature dropped from a rooftop and its claws tore a strip from Ethan's jacket. He hit the ground, rolled, and kicked a trash can into its path. It slid across the concrete, then scrambled up again, close enough for him to smell it.

Marcus swung the crowbar and bought him one second. It was enough for Ethan to reach a chain-link fence and haul himself over, tearing his palms open. Marcus followed, and the creatures slammed into the wire behind them.

They didn't stop until they hit the warehouse loading dock.

The others were already inside, dragging crates into the open. Water. Ration bricks. Blankets. Dana was crying and laughing at once. Even Pete stood frozen, staring at the shelves.

"Ethan." Pete's voice was hoarse. "I..."

"Carry something," Ethan said. "Then we talk."

They loaded the packs fast. Then a shriek sounded from the roof, and a creature crashed through the skylight and landed on Eli.

Marcus got it off with the crowbar. By then Eli's leg was a ruin and his eyes had rolled white.

"Leave him," Pete said, but this time his voice broke. "Ethan. He's done."

Ethan knelt, got an arm under Eli's back, and heaved him up. He was heavier than he looked.

"Ethan," Marcus said.

"He's coming."

"You can barely walk."

"Then I'll walk slower."

He staggered out into the dawn with a dying man across his shoulders. Behind him, Marcus watched him go.

"You don't even know his last name," Marcus murmured.

"No."

"Then why?"

Ethan didn't answer. Alone, he thought, it would have been so easy. One pack, one direction, no one to carry. He could have lived a week, maybe a month.

But in a month, who would be left to know he'd lived?

He was still hauling Eli up the final stretch of alley when the alarm blocks away stopped. The silence that followed was wrong, and Ethan felt it in his teeth.

Then every creature on Corliss, the whole swarm that had run toward the van, turned around in perfect unison and began walking toward the warehouse.