The Apocalypse Started Today, but I've Lived It for Ten Year

The First Companion

I crossed Ninth Avenue at a dead run.

The infected nearest her was a big man in a delivery uniform, one sleeve torn off, the arm underneath already swelling and dark. He was three steps from the alley mouth when I reached him. I swung the axe flat across the back of his knees, and he dropped in the road with a sound like a sack of wet laundry. The second one turned toward me. I hit it in the throat with the pick and kept moving.

The third one had her.

It had closed the last few feet while I was busy, and she was pressed so hard against the brick that her sneakers had left the ground. Its hand was at her shoulder. Its mouth hung open. She didn't scream this time. She drove the scalpel straight into the side of its neck, once, with both hands, her eyes squeezed shut.

It staggered. It did not fall. A small blade into the throat of something that no longer needed to breathe meant almost nothing, but it made the thing flinch, and that was all I needed.

I buried the axe in its skull.

The body dropped. The alley went still. Behind me, the two I had put down were already breaking apart into gray motes, drifting up into the purple sky.

[Essence gained. Hollow Crown: Essence Tithe applied.]

[Level 5 → Level 6.]

The girl in the blue scrubs slid slowly down the wall until she was sitting in the gutter. She was shaking so hard I could hear her teeth. The scalpel was still in her hand, black to the knuckles.

"I killed it," she whispered. "Did I kill it?"

"You hurt it. I killed it."

"Oh." She looked at the blade. "I thought. Never mind."

Something shimmered at the edge of her eyes, and she flinched. "There's writing," she said. "In the air. It says, Level one to level two. What is that? Is this a hallucination? Is it the dust?"

"It's not the dust. Everyone will see it soon. It's called the System." I crouched in front of her, low and slow, the way you approach a frightened animal. "I'll explain properly in a minute. First I need to know if you're bitten."

She checked herself with trembling hands. Her sleeve was torn, her shoulder scraped raw, but the skin wasn't broken. A thin lanyard hung from her neck, and I read the card without trying to.

PARK, L. NURSING PROGRAM.

I had known her name for ten years. Hearing nobody say it out loud, seeing it printed on a cheap plastic card, hit me harder than I expected.

"Lena," I said.

She looked up sharply. "How do you know my name?"

"It's on your lanyard."

"Oh." She exhaled. "Right."

She was twenty-two. Her face was round and young and smeared with dirt, nothing at all like the carved, exhausted face I remembered from the wall. But her eyes were the same, dark and steady even through the fear. Somewhere inside this girl was a woman who would hold off an army with her bare hands.

Right now she couldn't stand up.

"Can you walk?" I asked.

"I think so."

"Then come with me. There are people across the street. They're safe. For now." I held out my hand. "If you come, you do what I say. If you don't, you're on your own, and I'm not trying to scare you, I'm telling you what happens."

She stared at my hand. At the blood on it. At the fire axe.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"Ethan Cole."

I watched her face as I said it. Nothing. No flicker, no recognition. Just a frightened girl hearing a stranger's name. I felt something in my chest loosen, then tighten again for reasons I couldn't name.

She took my hand.

Ruth took one look at her and started barking orders. Within five minutes, Lena was sitting on the counter with her shoulder cleaned, a bandage taped over the scrape, and a cup of Gil's tea in both hands. Her breathing had slowed. The color was coming back to her face.

"She needs rest," Ruth said quietly. "But she's tougher than she looks. She killed one of those things with a scalpel."

"She stabbed it."

"Same thing, from where I'm standing."

Dale was sitting up now, watching the new arrival with open curiosity. Lena glanced at him, then did something I hadn't expected. She put down her tea, slid off the counter, and crossed to the chairs.

"May I?" she asked.

Dale blinked. "Uh, sure."

She took his wrist, found the pulse, and held it for fifteen seconds. She tilted his chin, checked his eyes with the light from her phone, and turned his arm over to study the faint gray lines still visible beneath the skin. Her hands had been shaking a minute ago. They were perfectly steady now.

"His pupils are reacting well," she said. "The discoloration is retreating along the venous path, so whatever you gave him is working. Pulse is a little elevated but settling. He needs fluids and sleep." She paused. "What did you give him?"

Ruth and I exchanged a glance.

"Later," I said.

Lena nodded and went back to her tea. But I'd seen what I needed to see. In an hour of terror, she had made herself useful the moment someone was hurt. In my last life they had called her a saint. They had never mentioned that it started like this, with a girl who could not stand but could still count a pulse.

"Lena," I said. "Where were you coming from?"

"Boston." She wrapped her hands around the cup. "I had an interview this afternoon at NYU Langone. I took the early train. I got in at about eleven-thirty and I was going to walk, because I'm cheap, and then at noon the sky..." She trailed off.

Boston. I had been right. She was supposed to be in Boston. In my timeline, she'd had that interview, gotten the job, and moved here in the spring. She had not been on a train this morning. Another detail the world had moved.

"The train from Boston," I said. "Was it crowded?"

"Not really. The 6:40 is always quiet." She hesitated. "Except for the last car. There were a lot of people in the last car, all together. About twenty. They were sitting in rows and none of them was talking. It was strange. I remember noticing because it's so rare to see a group that big on that line."

Everything in the room went very still.

"Did they have anything in common?" I asked carefully. "Any clothing? Anything on their wrists?"

Lena looked at me. She nodded slowly.

"White cloth. Tied just here." She touched her left wrist. "They all had it. One of them offered me a piece when we got off the train. I said no."

"Did he say anything?"

"He asked my name." Her voice dropped. "I told him. I don't know why. He seemed so polite. And he said, 'Good. We'll need a healer.' And then they all walked out of the station together, at the same speed, like they'd practiced." She swallowed. "That was before. Before the sky. When it turned purple I got scared, and I ran, and I saw them again in the window of a store, all lined up, standing completely still. That's when I knew something was wrong. I was trying to get away from them when those other things found me."

"Lena." I kept my voice even. "Did you hear any of them say anything else? Anything at all?"

"Just once," she said. "On the platform, before they left. The man who offered me the cloth said something to the person beside him. I wasn't supposed to hear it."

"What was it?"

She looked down at her tea.

"He said, 'He'll reach the pharmacy by one.'"

I turned my wrist over and looked at my watch.

12:59.

At the front of the pharmacy, very softly, the old brass bell over the door began to ring.

It wasn't the door opening. It was something outside, pressing a finger against the glass.

Then, from the other side of the locked door, a calm, courteous voice I had never heard before called through the wood.

"Mr. Cole. It's one o'clock. May we come in?"